Natural Strategies to Help Relieve and Support Your Allergies | Podcast #313
Some people with allergies may find relief by using natural plant extracts and foods that will act as antihistamines. So in this video, Dr. J and Evan Brand talk about allergies and natural and functional medicine approach.
Dr. J and Evan recommended initial things that can help you manage stress. Stress hormones wreak havoc in the body, especially in the immune system, making seasonal allergies even worse. Consider stress management methods such as meditation, taking time out for self-care, and avoiding over-committing your schedule. Constant house cleaning can get rid of many allergens and help relieve your symptoms.
Often, allergies will get worse by toxins within our body. The liver is a great negotiator of inflammation in the body, and when it is working overtime metabolizing our stress, alcohol, medications, and processed foods, allergies can flare up. Detox your body by eliminating fried foods, sugar, alcohol, and other toxins from your diet. For more detailed steps and solutions, don’t miss out on the full podcast to fix or avoid allergies!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:36 Conventional Approach on Allergies
7:49 Getting the Diet Dialed In
12:54 Gut Infections Connecting to Allergies
16:08 Air Purifiers
20:30 Natural Supplements
30:29 Low Histamines
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to be talking about natural solutions to help relieve and support your allergy springtime is officially here. It’s like the last week everything around my home has been blooming, it’s been amazing. Love that feeling of that transition from winter to spring. So that’s really exciting. But with that comes a whole host of other challenges with allergies and sinus issues and headaches and, and runny nose and itchy eyes. And we’re going to talk about natural solutions that we implement with our patients clinically in real life that actually get results, not just you know, stuff you read in the blog post, but real stuff. Evan, how are you doing, man?
Evan Brand: I’m doing pretty good. Why don’t we talk about the conventional approach first, I think it’s good when we do that comparison and that contrast for people. So you go down the street, you see the Joe Blow allergy clinic, you’ll walk in, they give you some type of medication and you go home. And that’s pretty much as far as it goes in regards to treating allergies. And you know, they have different options. I know some people get shots. I know some people do nasal spray, some people do anti histamines orally. So there are several options. But they all have the same goal, which is really just a band aid. It’s trying to block receptor sites maybe decrease inflammation somehow from a drug perspective, but it’s not addressing the root cause of the allergies in the first place. And I’m not going to speak for you but my opinion is that allergies are a side effect. Humans have been outside for forever. And now all of a sudden, we can’t tolerate the outdoors and we need drugs to manage us to handle the outdoors. That’s not natural. That’s not primal. That’s not ancestral. I don’t think that there is an ancestral allergy. I think this is a new problem based on the toxicity of the planet, but also other issues that we’ll get into in regards to the internal health of the human host.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, if we talk about some of the mechanisms of how these medications work, I think that’s helpful. Right? So there’s a bunch of ones that are out there. So you have things like Allegra, right or Claritin, I think they work the same way. They’re kind of like an h1 receptor. They’re they’re like an anti histamine and they weren’t they antagonize the h1 receptor. So there can anti histamine, right? I think Pepcid AC also works, I think on the h2. So you have anti histamine ones, whether they’re Allegra or Claritin, they tend to be more on the anti histamine side. Zyrtec similar as well. They’re a h1 blocker. They’re they blocked the h1 receptor as well. And so you have a lot of the anti histamines the problem with those is they come with a lot of side effects like drowsiness, right, drowsiness, brain fog, cognitive, low energy, so not good. If you have to perform, you have to function you have young kids, right? Most people have to be on it, you know, at 100% to be functioning in the daily life. So that doesn’t really work too well. And then you have more advanced things like I want to say Singulair would be one that would be more anti histamine based, there’s, I’m sorry, more steroid based, more corticosteroid based. So there’s ones that are more steroid based, or people that have, you know, more significant allergy, whether it’s throat closing or needing an inhaler, of course, then you have things like albuterol, that may get worse, right. And so these are, you know, the steroids tend to get used when there’s more advanced allergies. And then of course, you have some of the allergy shots, which tend to be a little bit more natural, which tend to be exposing yourself a little bit to the allergen as a way of kind of building up an immune response, that’s not going to be over responsive com that allergy season, those are some of the big things off the bat. And I think you want to highlight Evan?
Evan Brand: Well. I want to highlight the fact that billions and billions of dollars are being spent per year globally with people being on these medications. And it really gives them a false sense of security, meaning, yeah, it might help the symptoms. But this is not getting to why someone is unhealthy in the first place. And I could go down a whole rabbit hole with this. But I mean, just because you get a shot for something, and now you feel a little bit safer. Well, you didn’t under you didn’t address the underlying issue with your histamine intolerance in the first place. Is there a gut issue going on? Is there some sort of imbalance with your gut bacteria, you have a lot of histamine producing bacteria, are you eating a lot of food allergens and your bucket is already so full of allergens, the now the outdoor flower blooming puts you over the edge See, if everything else in your quote bucket is not filled, you should be able to tolerate the outdoor environment just fine. And so I think we should mention mast cell issues. mast cell activation could be triggered by mold. It could be triggered by Lyme it could be triggered by co infections like bartonella babesia. And you’re definitely going to have a lot more issues. Now. I’m not somebody that would say I have outdoor allergies, but I have felt a little different with everything blooming. And I’m just doing my herbal anti histamines to help which we’ll get into but I know that there was an underlying trigger, because for my whole life 30 plus years I haven’t had allergies. And now I feel a little weird a little spacey when everything’s gloomy. So now I’m like, oh, okay, my buckets full from these other things. So all I’m saying is, I just want people to really focus on the whole picture. have their whole health. And if you have allergies, that’s just the warning light or the check engine light on your dashboard, but there’s probably something else under the hood going on that you should address because there might be other issues that are downstream that you don’t even realize are related like allergies and diarrhea, allergies and constipation allergies and insomnia, allergies and anxiety and panic attacks and heart palpitations and blood pressure issues and skin issues. I mean, we could go on and on about how allergies is just one piece of this whole puzzle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep 100% and then just to kind of recap here I made a mistake here Singulair is not a corticosteroid essentially is blocking luco triangles, which are kind of going to be an immune response from the leukocytes. So some of the allergy medications that are going to be on the steroids side that’s gonna be like Nasacort, Nasanax, Flonase will be another Rhinocort, [inaudible], those are going to be more of the steroid options which are going to be more severe. Then you have the leuco trying blockers right which is the Montelukast sodium, which essentially is the Singulair and then you have the h1 receptor site blockers or antagonist. And those are going to be like your anti histamines, right? That’s gonna be like your Allegra, your Claritin, right, your Zyrtac, those are going to be more on the anti histamine side. And some make you drowsy, Allegra may not as much. But in the end, like you mentioned, Evan, these medications are not getting to the root cause, especially if you weren’t born out of the womb with allergies. This is not something that’s something that’s developed over time typically, because your antigen bucket or your stress bucket has been filling up over time. And diet plays a big role. The more inflamed your body is, the more inflamed your body is, the more your immune system will over respond to allergens in the environment. It’s kind of like the more inflamed your back or your joints are. Something very simple like going for a walk may inflame your near back. But we know a walk generally speaking shouldn’t be in flaming your near back, right? So it’s not a proportional response. Same thing with allergies, it’s not a proportional response, your body shouldn’t be responding to allergies, like it’s a virus or some bacteria in the environment it shouldn’t be. And so the first thing we have to look at is what are the big stressors in your stress bucket out of the gate. So the first thing we look at is diet. One, the solution to pollution is dilution. Are you drinking nice, good clean filtered water with extra minerals in it? Are you eating kind of an anti inflammatory diet, a good paleo template, we’re keeping grains and refined sugars out. And especially if you have allergens, dairy and grains are big ones. And you may have to cut out nuts, seeds and eggs as well is a good one out of the gates where you’re focusing on healthy meats, healthy vegetables, dialing in the carbs, according to you, and then also having healthy fats that are going to be away from the process vegetable fats as well as gonna be a good thing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and we’ve seen people have significant improvement just by getting the diet dialed in. I mean, I’ve heard 50 60% improvement with allergies just by eating clean, people that were eating gluten for breakfast and dairy for lunch on their salads, you know, doing the ranch dressing and their bread crumbs and all that crap and then we get him eating clean and all of a sudden the allergies are better and people that are either reducing their medication or they’re able to completely get off their medication, which is a big goal. For a lot of people they feel dependent and they feel scared like well what if I travel or what if I go somewhere and I don’t have access to this medication? You know, they feel the same way they do about their eyeglasses. What if I break my glasses when I’m on a desert island and I can’t see people feel that way about allergy medication they feel very afraid to to try to live without it because they know how they’ll respond. The good news is it’s possible that you don’t need it if you can fix all these other issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And histamine is basically an immune response due to these allergens, right allergens are just foreign antigen, they’re their foreign proteins or compounds in the environment, whether it’s dander in Austin cedars really, really big this time of year, you can see like literally you go on the parking lot to coats the cars, you know this, this yellow cedar. So the first thing is, make sure all the diet and lifestyle things are dialed in. The next big thing, especially if you’re outside a lot during the days, is most people’s sinuses are full of these allergens and dander and pollens and so a good sign is flush protocols and the bee Bay. So during allergy season, morning and night is going to be essential. If it’s really acute, you may do morning, midday and night but morning and night, you want to be able to go to bed with a clean sinus and you want to wake up with a clean sinus. You may even want to do it when you’re at work as well or when you come home from work especially if you’re inside for the day like around six, seven o’clock, maybe do it then so you can get some relief. And of course we’re doing a really good sailing or a high quality filtered water or a distilled water solution. We’re going to be adding in some sodium bicarb and some minerals. So it’s pH balance so won’t irritate the sinus mucosa. If you just do a whole bunch of water up there and it’s not balanced, it could really create irritation. So make sure it’s balanced with minerals. Now we’ll typically do some things that have Xylitol in there, which is very good at breaking up bacterial biofilms and also have some antifungal qualities. So that’s wonderful. I’ll do two to three seconds of flow down each nose blowing in between. That’s wonderful. I’ll even chase it a before with a spray called Xlear rescue spray. It’s wonderful because it has about six different herbs in there, parsley and pati arco and all of oregano, and they’re gently diluted in the pH balance water with some saline. And so I chased that up because as an antimicrobial anti biofilm effect, and then I flush it out each sinus and you can do like a good sinus irrigation bottle is Sinusgator, there’s, there’s the Nasaline, there’s the Neomed bottle, the Xlear bottles, you just type in sinus irrigation or sinus irrigation bottle on Amazon, I’ll put the ones that I like below. If you go to my site, JustinHealth.com/shop I have a recommended list of all the things that I use, Evan does as well. And so take a look at those and we’ll kind of have recommendations below in the link so you guys can see it. But the first thing is get the sinuses flushed out get the crap out of the sinuses, if it’s sitting there for six or eight or 10 or 12 hours, it’s gonna create inflammation. So the first thing is flush it out. And if it’s really sticky, or like has a hard time flushing, you know, use some of those biofilms to break it down. That’s kind of my first recommendation out of the gates there. And in preventing these things from brewing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s great. And the rescue is intense. So if you’re, if you’re like super inflamed, take it easy. I love it, though, it feels amazing. And then also, we like silver too. So we will use some professional, we’ll use some professional professional version of silver, we call it Argenton. And that one works great. So I like to do both, I’ll do a little bit of the essential oils. And then if we think there’s like a more colonization issue with mold or something like that in the sinus, we’ll use the silver. And it can be very, very helpful. And I just want to make a note to people because I was one of those guys who said, Well, I don’t have any sinus problems, because I never had any runny nose. I never had like what I thought was a stuffy nose. Like I could breathe fine. But man, when I started doing some of the sinus treatment and these protocols, whoa, I realized I had like 30% more breathing capacity. I’m like, Whoa, I mean, I really opened all this stuff up. I didn’t know it was bad to begin with. So if you’re one of those skeptics like me, who’s like, Oh, I don’t have sinus problems, try it and see what happens. You may feel that you can breathe so much better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. And especially if you’re like you got young kids, because I you see it with young kids all the time. I have young kids, you’re their friends or whatever they’re hanging out with, they got runny noses, like non stop all the time. And I’m like, yeah, your kids probably got a little biofilm colony up there and need to work on flushing it out. Because the more that’s hanging up there. So anytime we see a kid, you know, our kids with chronic runny nose for a day or so we’re flushing that thing out within a day or two, we’re not going to write out and that works phenomenal. And then you can also use things like n acetylcysteine, to dry out those sinuses to which can be very helpful. So there’s a lot of mucus you can dry it out with the NAC, which is excellent. Very, very good out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yep. So let’s talk about the guts. I want to hit on some of the gut infections. And we hear Justin’s cat if you hear me out. That’s his cat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just gave him a little kick under the table, like “get out of here!”
Evan Brand: Maybe he wants some sinus rinsing. I know. So Oh, God would be terrible. No, no, that’d be impossible to do. Alright, so let’s let’s hit on the gut. So because this is this is a big deal. And I’ve had many, many, many, many people with histamine and sinus problems say that the single biggest thing they’ve ever done beyond the sinus rinsing and the actual coat allergy treatments was actually just fixing the gut. And I believe this is because of all the histamine producing bacteria that we see and all these bacterial overgrowth cases. So if you’re coming to work with us clinically, what we’re going to be doing is looking at your urine and looking at your stool to be looking for different infections or imbalances. And the good news is when you use herbs to rebalance all these bacteria, now you’ve drained the bucket so much that you can handle the outdoor environment. And so in fact, even some of the reviews on some of the products we use that people will say, hey, these herbs cured my histamine intolerance. And we did nothing with the sinuses, we did nothing in the quote, allergy realm, we simply fix the gut. So I don’t want people to ignore that. That’s why I was saying I was a little frustrated in the beginning because people will go to the allergy doctor and they never bring up the gut. They never bring up the diet. They just don’t even have a clue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110% So, so the first thing is, it’s like get the inflammation down in your gut. That’s going to be food. Excess refined sugar, inflammatory foods, junky omega six process fatty fats, which are going to be like soy, canola safflower, right if you’re going to do any plant based fats, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil are going to be better some palms gonna be great. animal fats are going to be of course awesome. And then if you can tolerate ghee or butter, great if you have allergies out of the gates pull those out because those can be mucus forming. I always say get your allergy straight in and make those one of the first fats you add back in and see how we do because if we can handle it, I want you to handle it. I want it in There. And the next thing after you have all the food stuff dialed in, and then you’re doing sinus irrigation. I like doing the rescue spray first because it is intense, like Kevin said, so then I put it up there and I chased it with some saline behind it, therefore it flushes it out, cleans out antihistamine, anti inflammatory anti histamine benefits. Because the problem with allergens up the nose if you’re outside, and then you come back inside to a nice clean home, even with awesome air filtration, which air filtration is a huge, important component to this. You’re still breathing all this dander and pollens up your nose all day long. That’s why you got to flush it. And that provides the relief from those allergens. And then of course, we want a really, really good air filtration. So Evan and I are big supporters of the Austin Air healthmate plus, which is good as a couple. They have an allergy machine too, but I think the healthmate Plus is the best out of all of them. Because of the charcoal, the zeolite. It’s a bigger filter last longer. And then it has the potassium iodide coating which filters out the volatile organic compounds, the voc’s which are going to get in mattresses and paints and new furnitures and that’s an extra allergen that could be adding to your histamine bucket as well.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah, speaking of air purifiers, I’ve got a cool update for you here. I’m going to see if I can load the email from one of the head honchos at Austin. Because I wanted to ask them about aluminum nanoparticles, you know, they’ve done some air sampling of what people call Kim Trails. Meteorologists say it’s conspiracy, and it’s a contrail. It’s just exhaust vapor. Don’t worry about it, even though Bill Gates plan just got shut down. They were gonna do the solar blocking, basically, anyhow. But this plane flew into these trails and tested and found that it has aluminum nanoparticles. So long story short, I asked our guy at Austin, and I said, Hey, hoping to find out if this air system can filter aluminum nanoparticles. And the guy who did analysis on the trails in the sky, he found that the aluminum was around 400 nanometers. And the guy said, Yes, four nanometers. 400 nanometers equals point four microns. And the Austin filters down 2.3 microns at 99.97%. So now Yes, our filters will handle this. No problem at all. So whether or not you believe the geoengineering thing is going on whether you simply want to filter, the allergens plus the stuff out in the sky, either way, you’re covered with the Austin and so contact our office if you want to get ahold of Dr. J, or myself, and we would love to help you. I’ve got one right here in my office, and it runs 24 seven. And I wish you could smell the air in here. Because it smells like nothing because it’s so pure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I 100% agree. Like there’s a lot of controversial things that are out there. But here’s the deal. If we just talk about the things that we know, which we know, pesticides are out there, right? We know you have voc’s in your home from paints and that new couch robot and the new furniture. We know that there’s allergens out there. We know this potential smoke, especially if you’re in certain areas in California and the west coast where there’s fires throughout the year. We know those things are part of your stress bucket. And they’re they’re a part of that antigenic load. So you want to at least filter them out. And if we have other things, you know, aluminum salts, and Berry and other stuff going on there great. You’re also going to have benefits from that as well. So want to make sure that’s clear. The goal is to decrease all the stress bucket and you’re going to be inside sleeping eight hours a day, you’ll probably be inside at least 12 hours a day on average. And most people with the environment and the world that today we’re while people work from home. And so having super high quality air is incredibly important. super high quality water is very important. And then having very nutrient dense anti inflammatory, low toxin food is foundational. And then after that we can kind of talk about natural anti histamines and things to help kind of dry up sinuses. So I like NAC. I like propylene I like quercetin. I like stinging nettle. I also like things like potassium, potassium bicarb. I also like things like kidney glandular and D A O dia mean oxidase. My plug here is a product called Allerclear which has some of these things in it. I know Evan has a allergy product as well Evan, what’s yours called?
Evan Brand: Histamine Support.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links down below. So if you guys are enjoying the content and you want to support the show, feel free and purchase that from us. We appreciate it. We’re only recommending things that we recommend for our family and friends and patients. So those are helpful. Now again, I always draw a line like okay, what’s conventional medicine doing? Zyrtec? Allegra Singulair? Nasacort, right? We already know they’re like anti histamines h1 antagonist, steroids, right. luco trying blockers. That’s the mechanism over there on conventional medicine, which we know has more side effects right. Now, especially with the steroids, that’s a big one that can stress out your adrenals and create blood sugar issues and potentially can create issues with joint loss and bone loss.
Evan Brand: Let me add one thing before you ever get before you move on. So another mechanism that makes you actually worse and more dependent on those medications is that a lot of those conventional medications Actually down regulate or deplete your body’s do production. So now you’re even in more trouble. So you mentioned da o and you and I like to use that. And that helps with the ingested histamine. Meaning if you’re going to eat a high histamine food, we can give you supplemental do extract, and then that’ll help degrade the histamine coming from your diet. However, if you’re on those medications, you’ve now drained your do and you’re likely going to have more histamine intolerance, digging yourself even deeper in the hole. So I just wanted to add that in while you’re hitting on the comparing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, yeah, so we have conventional on this side. And then we have like all of these natural things, supplements that I just mentioned, quercetin bromelain do now these are better. These are much, much better, less side effects. Some of them are going to be our actual nutrient base like glutathionr building blocks, right, really helpful there. Potassium, super helpful. Kidney glandulars, da L, but a whole bunch other B vitamins and b, 12, and vitamin A. So those are actually really good. But I urge you, right? Don’t just listen to this and say well, I’m going to trade my Zyrtec for kidney or Dr. J’s Allerclear, try to actually make root underlying changes. If eating a whole bunch of grains and dairy and sugar, try to focus on the root cause stuff. Or if you know you’re outside a lot, and you’re not doing sinus irrigation, or you don’t have air filtration, try to get the external environment in your home, external environment in your sinuses and your internal with your body fix first, if you can. Now it’s okay if you go to the supplements at some point, but try not to go to them first, because then we’re just kind of acting like conventional medicine. Even though these have less side effects. Like Evan mentioned, they don’t deplete do some of them build it up. And some of them also have nutrients. So still better. But we don’t want to replace palliative care, which is supplements, we want to get to the root cause as well. It’s all about getting to the root cause.
Evan Brand: And it’s very simple. But I hope everyone is at least taking their shoes off when they enter their house. I mean, what a simple way to reduce bringing in oil and gas and pesticide herbicide who knows what else so you know, if you’re not already take your shoes off before you come in the house. And then if you have any carpet, so there, there are some carpet cleaning solutions that we use that are essential oil based, where if you had a pet, for example, that brings a lot of stuff in from outside, and that’s irritating you you can rent your carpets with this cleaner. And then also laundry solution, we do have some essential oil laundry solution that we use. And that will actually help to treat mold and pollen and all that on your clothing. So if you’re out like rolling in the grass, which is fine, you might want to just treat your clothes a little bit to make sure that they’re okay, but what let’s go back into the supplements because you were hitting on some good stuff. So also, in some of the products you and I use is vitamin C and vitamin C can actually help degrade the histamine. It’s amazing. My body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so essentially there is like anti histamine to granulators they help break the histamine down. Okay. And then there are essentially anti histamines they have natural, they decrease the production of histamine, right. And then we have the DA o enzyme support which does kind of also help degrade the histamine down as well, right because da o dia mean oxidase helps break the histamine down. Like Evan mentioned, a lot of the medications deplete the eo so they actually create long term dependency on it. It’s kind of like people that have proton pump inhibitors or acid blockers, well, it creates more problems because you’re not breaking down your proteins, your fats and your amino acids, therefore you have more issues down the road with other symptoms, right? Got to get to the root. And then Evan kind of alluded it one big other, let’s say, antigen, antigen or compound that goes into that stress bucket is if you’re if you’re washing your clothes, or your sheets, or your laundry with dryer sheets, or any fragrance laundry, no bueno. That’s a big, big thing. If you’re just conventional, at least get the like I like the all free and clear. That’s a good one that’s like dermatologist approved for like eczema and like chemical sensitivity that’s at all major stores. So you can always get the all free and clear. You can do seventh generation free and clear. There’s a couple of other brands that are out there that have just essential oil based no sense no nothing like that. That’s ideal. And ideally, no dryer sheets. And if you need more support to get extra odors out. There’s baking soda is a baking soda company makes one called wash soda wash soda, essentially baking soda for your laundry and it’s got ammonium or pseudo it’s got sodium bicarb in there and it just sucks out any mold or kind of like more pungent smells in your clothes. And so if you need that, that’s a great way to kind of get your clothes and your laundry clean without extra chemicals and crap in it.
Evan Brand: Candles. I mean hopefully I don’t have to beat the drum on this too hard. Hopefully you and you all listening have heard enough of us talking about this. But for anybody new. Please get the synthetic fragrances out of your house, you’re destroying your hormones. You know, man, you’re affecting testosterone and estrogen and women Same thing for you. So any Glade plugins, air fresheners after you poop, turn the exhaust fan on and use essential oils if you have a nasty smelling poops. You know you don’t need to be using synthetic toxic chemicals because that’s filling up your bucket. Then you’re using Pine Sol to clean your floor. So make sure your floor cleaners are legit. And those are clean. Make sure all of the cleaning chemicals you’re using are clean, seventh generation or branch basics. There’s so many good brands now there’s no excuse to not use clean products. When you’re cleaning your dishes, make sure you’re not using synthetic fragrances in your dishwasher. You can use free and clear for that, and your hand soap, your shampoo, your conditioner, your deodorant, everything needs to be cleaned, because you’re just filling up your bucket. If you’re exposing yourself to all that garbage. Now, you could do all that stuff and still feel bad. So that’s where we come in and do some of the functional testing to assess your gut. We’ll look at mitochondrial function, we’ll look at neurotransmitters amino acid metabolism, fat digestion, there’s so much that we look at from the testing perspective, we’re just giving you some good strategies today that can help but there still is a deeper layer that we need to investigate. And that’s where we come in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% out of the gates. And so just to kind of highlight a couple of things there. You talked about the gut. That’s important. h pylori, fungal overgrowth. SIBO can create stress in the gut that creates more histamine. Imagine that histamine bucket filling up. So as you mentioned, gut issues create a lot of inflammation like a lot of these mast cell issues even like mast cell, Mass cell, right? mass cell activation disorder, right? Well, that’s just a sign that you’re inflamed and your immune system is spitting off histamine got to get to the root underlying issue. A lot of people talk about things like it’s the cause, but they’re really talking about the effect, right? Oh, my arthritis, my arthritis. Well, that just means you have an inflamed joint. What’s the cause of that, though? Of course, we know that’s the effect, right? inflammation in that area pain, right? We know that’s the effect, right? But what’s the cause? Right? So you have to always say most people in conventional medicine and even natural medicine, get people talking about the effects, but don’t address the cause. So make sure if you’re labeling anything, it’s only worth labeling something if you can connect it to a cause. If not, you’re just describing the symptoms that are presenting itself, which aren’t hard to do.
Evan Brand: Agreed. So yeah, if you were diagnosed with like a mast cell, or you suspected like masel activation m casts for short, you got to get to the big triggers. I talked about that in the beginning, mold, bartonella, Lyme, babesia, any kind of like tick borne issues, mosquito borne issues, vectors like that, they can aggravate your system and can cause you to be more allergic. So you may have to treat those things. I know, for me personally, you know, I know that just treating Lyme and co infections has made me feel better with some of my reactions. So you may need to dig a little bit deeper. And that’s really where you want somebody on your team because just trying to do this alone. It can be challenging, and you’re going to end up with a supplement graveyard and buy stuff you don’t need. So yeah, the herbal anti histamines are great, but what led you to need those in the first place? That’s, that’s the question need to ask.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I agree. And I can tell you like, there are some low hanging fruits that can do amazing things I’ll give you Case in point I had one patient, literally before me went to Mayo Clinic. She had chronic sinus issues. They’re literally telling her that, that that’s it like she asked she needs she’s already did surgeries didn’t relieve it. They’re telling her I think she can do just cut out cut out simple things like grains, her sinus issues were gone. And Mayo Clinic literally told her, there’s nothing she can do. She’s already on the surface, nothing else they can do all the medications, we just kind of grains gone. It’s like what it was that easy. Like, sometimes you have to kind of shake your your like, you kind of have to like, you know, give yourself a little wake up because you think oh, you’re gonna have to go into some elaborate protocol, and sometimes simple foundational things, move mountains, and you’re like, how did that happen? But that’s why we kind of have our checklist in our flowchart. And we don’t ever skip things no matter how elemental or easy. It seems like it would be it can move the needle sometimes.
Evan Brand: Yeah, now and I would just totally repeat that in a different story. You know, a lot of people, even practitioners like you and I, we could easily get lost in the weeds, we could go down these complex rabbit holes, and then we can lose sight of the foundations. And I see a lot of practitioners doing that part partially due to marketing, right, they have to become the thyroid guy, they got to become a guy. So so they’ll skip over foundations because it doesn’t fit into their brand, which is totally stupid. But my story is I had a female client a few weeks ago, and she just had extreme shortness of breath. And she didn’t know if it was like post COVID or what it was. But anyway, we looked at her ferritin on her bloodwork, and all the doctors had been like 20 doctors, her ferritin was seven. Oh my god, forget you. And I know. I mean, if you’re less than 20, you’re not going to be able to catch your breath. So we started to boost up her ferritin. But in the meantime, based on everything else during the initial call, I thought it could be like a histamine problem as well. So I said why don’t you just I’m going to give you this low histamine God, I want you to just eat low histamine until we get your labs back. When we did the lab review call. She said that it was 90% better. She said that within 48 hours of going low histamine. She was at least 50 to 60% better with her breathing. She could barely catch her breath while we were talking. She could speak in full sense It says without having to stop just just doing the lab review. I’m just pointing out, we didn’t even get to look at the data yet. Just a low histamine approach was enough to get her better. So this is in your allergist is not I’m sorry. I mean, if you’re an allergist out there and you’re prescribing low histamine diet, please email us, maybe we’ll do a podcast with you. But I don’t think this is happening. And there’s people sitting somewhere in an allergy room, an allergy office clinic right now. And they’re going to go home with the medication and they’re not going to learn a single thing about low histamine diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And I agree, sometimes low histamine needs to be added on top of maybe our paleo or autoimmune thing, and I have a handful of patients right now where I had to go to that tool. And it can work amazing now that what are low histamine, paleo foods that are pretty common, any of your age meats, so like bacon, those kinds of things, pepperoni, salami, even if it’s pasture fed, or organic, your citrus fruits going to be a big one, sometimes your nuts and seeds. And I would say sometimes your fermented vegetables and your fermented drinks, even if you’re like, Hey, I’m, I want to get my probiotics and naturally, that sauerkraut or that kombucha may be a problem. Sometimes you have to go and pull that out. And so that’s, that’s a big thing we have to look at. And then also, sometimes mold in the environment could be a big thing. Now, I don’t go there first, because there’s too many other things that typically have to go there. So we’ll add that to our list. And especially if we have visible more for sure. But if people are feeling better coming back in their home, that’s usually a good sign. Most people with allergy season this time of year, it’s a punctuated response. And they really feel worse when they’re outside. That’s when you kind of know that it’s probably more environmental than not, if it’s just mold inside normally, it’s an all year round kind of thing. Would you agree on that, Evan?
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah, I would agree. Yeah. And with like, our air purifiers and everything, I know that I feel significantly better when I’m in my house. Yes. So to me, I’m like, Okay, good. We I’m kind of the canary right. So I can pick up on things. And so I think if people are in tune enough, you should know, like, if you’re out at the store, and you’re outside, and then you go in your home, Do you get any relief? If not, then your home could be a contributing factor. And we can rule that in RL.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then of course, the good scientists irrigations wonderful, we’ll put links for that below. We talked about the diet, talked about food, we talked about supplementation, we’ll put links for everything. And then outside of that, hormones do play a valuable a very important role. So women with chronically low progesterone and people with low cortisol, in general, these are kind of natural anti inflammatory hormones. If they’re chronically lower depleted, they can affect your immune system. And so again, we know medications like nasal core, if you destiny, they’re steroids, right? And so they’re giving you steroids to kind of help with the inflammation of the allergens. And so we know if your natural steroids are incredibly lower depleted over time, for many reasons, we mentioned already, looking at your natural progesterone, your natural cortisol levels may play an important role. So taking a look at the adrenals taking a look at the female hormones, especially right around day 20 or in the luteal phase or so is very important. It plays a very important role.
Evan Brand: Good call. I mean, we could probably do a whole part two on that the adrenal allergy connection. Yeah, totally. I know. adaptogens helped me feel better. So I don’t even think we fully understand adaptogens and how they may help with stress response, but they may help with allergy response to I mean, there’s definitely a really cool, yeah, yoked up a whole new can of worms there. So I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll leave it at that we may want to do a follow up on this the hormone allergy connection that maybe we’ll save that for another week coming up?
Evan Brand: Well, I hope people enjoy this as much as you and I do. I mean, just listening back and trying to like, listen to our conversation. As an outsider. I’m like, wow, this is such amazing information. And you’re not hearing about this. So I really hope that you guys listening will share this with your friends, your family, and review us go on your Apple podcast app. That’s the best place to review us. And look at Dr. J show. Look at my show. And just click five stars. If you think we deserve it and give us some words, give us some words of affirmation. Tell us what you think. Because this really helps us. And we don’t have to do this. We just love doing it. And we love sharing with people. You know, we get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people listening per year. We just love it. And if we can just put a dent in the world and make people feel better than our job is complete. So please, sharing is caring. And if you need help clinically, you can reach out to Dr. J he would love to help you with these issues. The website is JustinHealth.com. If you’d like help for me, my website, EvanBrand.com has all the info. You can book free calls with our staff and talk to us about your symptoms, your goals, what’s going on, we’ll see if you’re a good fit for care and take it from there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And we appreciate you guys for you know sharing everything and, and writing some good reviews and putting your comments down. It helps keep us inspired and it gives us more ideas of future topics to write about. So put your concerns on there. make notes and things you want to hear about as well love to see it. And that’ll give us good fodder for future podcasts. Hey, Evan, it was awesome chatting with you, man. You have a great week. Take care now.
References:
Recommended products:
Allerclear Histamine Support
Nasaline
Sinus Flush Bottle
Xlear packets
Xlear rescue spray
Navage Nasal Irrigation
NeilMed Sinus Rinse Complete Kit
Xlear Sinus Rinse Kit
Austin Air Healthmate Plus
Air Doctor Air Purifier
Whole House Water Filter
Water Filtration Devices
Clearly Filtered
Audio Podcast:
Top 10 Anti-Inflammatory Foods | Podcast #197
Welcome to a functional medicine podcast! In this video, Dr. J and Evan Brand discuss what the top 10 anti-inflammatory foods are, what nutrients derive from them and how essential can those nutrients be to our gut and overall health.
Keep tuning in for more videos to get the latest about what’s happening on the functional medicine world. Hit subscribe, smash the bell, and don’t forget to share!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
02:34 Importance of Nutrients in Anti-Inflammatory Foods
05:35 Ways and Mediums for Foods to be Consumed
10:44 All About Priorities
23:54 Glyphosate Affects Glycine
28:10 Digestion Problem Epidemic
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, guys. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Evan Brand, happy Monday! How are you doing?
Evan Brand: Happy Monday to you, man. I’m doing great. Summer’s going along fast. I mean, it’s already like mid-August now, and before you know it, it’s gonna be September, October, November. Then I’ll be complaining that it’s cold. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. Can you believe it, man? Time flies when you’re having fun. Any uh— fun stuff happen this weekend for you?
Evan Brand: Not— Not, I mean, every
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -saw a bunch of butterflies and— Oh! We did get chiggers on us. That was not fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [incomprehensible] chiggers are interesting. Yeah.
Evan Brand: It was two weeks— Not two weeks, two hours picking chiggers off of us. They were so small I had a little magnifying glass. You literally could barely even see it. At first, I thought it
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!
Evan Brand: It’s small. And so now, we’re all covered in chigger bites. But besides that, We’re doing good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very good, man. Yeah. Doing a lot of water skiing this weekend, uh— enjoying Austin. It wasn’t quite as hot as it normally is in the summer this weekend so it’s pretty fun.
Evan Brand: That’s great. Yeah. you’re gonna— You’re gonna miss out on the uh— the water. I guess I have to revisit the water.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Absolutely. Well, let’s dig in, man. Let’s talk about our top ten anti-inflammatory foods. So we make a lot of recommendations to patients on, you know, certain foods, and— You know, we tend to follow like a Paleo template, right? And the Paleo template is nothing more than utilizing anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense, and low toxin foods. And we typically— Animal protein, the quality component’s also factored in, right? Organic, pasture-fed, you know, antibiotic-free, hormone-free. Animal products can have a lot of really great nutrient density, right? A lot of people that are plant-based, they kind of miss out on that. Do you know, uh— I got a lot of conversation to people on nutrient-density. So, for instance, 500 calories and grass-fed meat packs a lot of nutrition, right? You can get 500 calories of grass-fed meat in about eight ounces of meat, which is pretty reasonable, right? A lot of people, they’ll go out and they’ll get like a sev— you know, a six to eight ounce kind of Filet Mignon, or a bigger Rib Eye. Lot of good nutrients there. To get 500 calories of Kale, you got to consume 16 cups of Kale. That’s a lot of Kale! Most people would never consume that much. So the nutrient density is easier in some of these animal products, and it’s easier to get. It’s easier to access. Most people couldn’t do 16 cups of Kale in two days, let alone one day. But almost anyone could do eight ounces of grass-fed meat at one meal. And I’ll— Typically, if I go to a nice steak restaurant, I’ll even do— I’ll even do 16 in one meal for some good Rib Eye.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Let’s talk about why. I mean, why is it so important? You got to have these nutrients to—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: For one, you got to stabilize your blood sugar. And so, if you’re not getting good fats-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: -good proteins in, you must stabilize in blood sugar. And then, two, all the different-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great.
Evan Brand: -micronutrients in amino acids that you get from your meats. Those go into fuel hormones, and neurotransmitters.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: So this is why like Vegetarians and Vegans, they come to us so often, but they a lot of times have a mental health issue, like an Anxiety problem. And it’s because they have no protein in. Or if they do have protein, as you mentioned, it’s beans. And then they have a bunch of digestive problems ‘cause they’re eating like cups of beans a day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So when we look at animals, right? Animals have a great ability to concentrate plant matter. So part of the reason why a lot of animal products can be superfood is because they concentrate plant matter. Number two, if you do organ meats— organ meats. If you look at like— Just Google like Vitamin A, you know, animal versus plant. I mean, you’re gonna see a lot of the plant-stuff. It’s— It’s beta-Carotene and uh— precursor compounds, right? These mixed Carotenoids, these beta-Carotene things, they have to get converted. Right? It’s not active Vitamin A. But if you get animal-based Vitamin A, whether it’s from Cod liver oil or actual liver— liver glands but they weren’t from good quality grass-fed meat, it’s already activated. So a lot of these nutrients are ar— already activated in animal-based forms. And number two, they’re— they’re concentrated, right? Part of the reason they’re concentrated is because the animals concentrate plant matter as they grow. If they’re— you know, if they’re like a natural kind of sustainably farmed type of thing, they’re gonna be grass-fed, and they’re gonna have access to it. We’re not talking about the CAFO feedlot thing. A lot of these, you know, documentaries, you’ll see like cow-
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -to make it work, right?
Evan Brand: Yup, well said. Let’s talk about gut real quick and then we’ll get into the food. So, if your-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -gut’s
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: You and I measured this on Stool testing. We look at levels of Calprotectin. We look at secretory
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: And if your gut’s inflamed, you’re more susceptible to pick up infections. So bacteria and parasites, and worms, and everything else that we see, if you’re gut’s leaky because your gut’s inflamed because you’re eating inflammatory foods, that’s a big like Domino effect. And you could take all the herbs in the world to kill your infections but you have to have an anti-inflammatory diet at the base of it. Otherwise, it won’t work. I’ll just give an example. I did a case review this morning with some clients. And they’re vegetarians. And I’ve been really trying to get them to eat animal proteins but they won’t listen to me. The biggest foundation of their diet is grains. And we’ve looked at their IGA levels, and their IGA levels are still terrible. Now, we did clear some infections, but they have a bunch of parasites. And, I don’t think they’re be— gonna be able to heal their gut if they stay a hundred percent vegetarian. All they eat is like salad three times a day, and then they poop out undigested leafy greens. It’s like your body’s trying to tell you something, but they won’t listen. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: E— Exactly, and that’s a really important component. We talked about some of these foods. There’s lots of different ways and mediums in which these foods can be consumed— soup, or smoothie,
Evan Brand: Yeah. Y— You got to do something.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Big time.
Evan Brand: Let’s dive in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, cool. So off the bat, I will just say, we’ll just kind of go into our animal products. I would say, grass-fed meat,
Evan Brand:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Totally. So, I’m gonna put the— I’m gonna put the
Evan Brand: Yup. I would add Avocados to the list while we’re talking about fats.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: I do an Avocado, not
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …or Polyol reaction. I’m not sure what it was but uh— I believe isn’t Avocado a FODMAP?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is. It’s a moderate FODMAP. It’s also a monounsaturated fat, so it’s a good one. It’s that good meme on the Face— Facebook I— I see a lot. It’s just great. It’s like an— an Avocado looking in the mirror like having a conversation with himself and he’s like, “You’re fat,” and then he goes, “But you’re a good fat.” [laughs]
Evan Brand: Exactly. I love that one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [laughs] Is it a great little meme? So I like it. It’s a good quality fat.
Evan Brand: There’s a huge difference. Some may say a note about that. There’s a big difference even between certified organic eggs and certified organic pastured [crosstalk] local—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: So like the Whole Foods Organic Eggs, the yolk is still pretty yellow, but we get these local eggs. There’s a pasture like 20 minutes from here. The eggs are— the yolk is so orange, you can’t even believe it. You’ve never even seen a yolk like that. So if you guys haven’t sought out a local farm, go on the website Eat Wild. Just Google “Eat Wild” or “Local Harvest” and type in your zip code and you can find all sorts of farms, and you could probably find farmer’s markets where you’re gonna get legit— legit quality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And— And Joe Salitan who runs Polyface Farm, he’s taking some of his pasture-fed organic eggs. He sent them to the lab, and he actually compared
Evan Brand: That’s amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I mean, it’s like, let’s say, you do spend twice the amount of money on something— Let’s say you don’t even get 20 times more. Let’s say you get three or four times more nutrition in certain parts. Is that worth it? I think so.
Evan Brand: Absolutely. Well— So I posted on my facebook page last week. I just put up a podcast with Stephanie Seneff all about Glyphosate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: It’s a really good episode. And I told people that of you’re not eating a hundred percent organic, that you’re slowly killing yourself. And the lady said that— that I was in an elitist and I was an
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It hits a lot of people’s hot buttons because it’s— the argument really is about priorities. Right? It’s w— where things are more important, money tends to go, right? The problem is, there are a lot of people that kind of have an entitlement, where they expect optimal health but they want to put zero time or money towards it.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And like if you read Micheal Paulins book— I think it was The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He talked about the amount of money that we use to put towards our food in the 1950’s. It was about 18% of our daily income— or our yearly income. And then, today, it’s been down to 9%. So what does that mean? We’re allocating 50% less of our resources to healthy quality food. I think that’s part of the reason why, you know, we’re sicker as a country, is that we want cheaper, more convenient food, which tends to be more processed and more inflammatory, and less nutrition in it. So there’s a sense of entitlement out there, and we’re just trying to fix the entitlement by, one, inspiring people and motivating them, and number two, giving them the education of like—alright, “Where can I get these things? Which foods are the best from a nutrient density anti-inflammatory stand point. And then piggybacking on that, the Monsanto had a big lawsuit. Uhm—They came back Friday night to take a 290,000,000-dollar lawsuit with this
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said, and so just to clarify for people, if something is not marked organic at your grocery, you can assume that it is sprayed with Glyphosate. We have millions— hundreds of millions of pounds sprayed in the US each year, and it really should not be called conventional food. I should really be called chemical, and then— So there’s the chemical section and then there’s organic. It shouldn’t be conventional because that’s not conventional. Conventional was organic just a short time ago. Now, organic has to be labeled organic but-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: Your grandparents ate conventional in the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: -didn’t exist.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And here’s the— he’s part of like the reason why a lot of this stuff’s skewed. RIght? If like, you’re Monsanto, and you’ve invested billions of dollars into a product, and you’re researching the product, what are the odds are that you’re gonna come up with negative information— let’s just say, shutting down this product, like sho— like showing that it’s negative and bad and harmful? Now, again, a perfect world would happen is, it would— you may— you may kind of like, you know, manipulate the study a little bit. A lawsuit like this happens and then, it sends a signal to every company. “No. We got to be really careful because we don’t want to be shut down with a massive lawsuit like this that would cripple a company. . Number two is, if I’m like, you know, Josh Mo, scientist at a university, and I want to do a study at this— looking at the safety of Glyphosate or Roundup, how do I get the ability to do a study on that? I have to license that product, that chemical, from Monsanto. Would you think Monsanto’s gonna license that product to me to use in the study? Probably not. This is what becomes, This becomes really hard to— to know the safety of some of these things, where it’s a little bit more ay, easier to do a study on Vitamin C, or an herb because there’s no major patent or massive company behind it. So it’s easier to study nutrients and herbs because it— they’re just out there in nature. There’s no patent on it. No one has exclusive rights to it. So I think it’s easier to believe some of the plant or nutrient or vitamin-based research out there. But when you have a licensed product that people have invested billions into, it’s harder to get unbiased research on those compounds.
Evan Brand: Yup. Agreed. So, eat organic is the goal. Check out the podcast with Stephanie because it will make you just really
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense, and we a little kind of— We went off the— the beat and path here for a sec but I think it’s important to highlight this because if foods have these various residues, even if it’s on our top 10 list here, it may not be a good food for that.
Evan Brand:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Little different, yeah.
Evan Brand: Yup. Go for organic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can make that claim. There’s a little more behind that claim.
Evan Brand: Let me say a couple things about coconut. You mentioned coconut oil. I would tell people too. If you— If you like it, or if you’re looking for a swap, and you’re not doing well, with like Almond milk or if you’re still drinking conventional milk, coconut milk, you can do
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Now, let’s go onto some various herbs that we can add
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s great. I would say Cinnamon would be one to add to the list, too, of things you should have.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For blood sugar too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I love using Cinnamon to help with stabilizing blood sugar. There’s actually-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: -some blood sugar supplements that have Cinnamon as an ingredient, so that show you how powerful it can be, not only as a spice or a
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Let’s go into some various nuts and seeds. I mean, there’s some really good seeds. Chia seeds are great. They have really good Omega-3 content. Omega- 3 is that anti-inflammatory
Evan Brand: ‘Cause you’re avoiding the conversion process, you’re saying?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [crosstalk] Yeah. you’re bypassing the conversion process when you’re doing animal products. When you’re doing plant, there is a conversion process. Now, the less inflamed you are and the more Insulin-sensitive you are, the more you can convert that. So there’s an enzyme called delta-5 desaturase. Should it delta-5 or
Evan Brand: Makes sense
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very high in Zinc.
Evan Brand: -feeling so good with pumpkin seeds. I found a brand that’s organic, just a little touch of salt on them, and I do great with those, and most people can tolerate those quite well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very good. Now, if we go to some of the fruits, I mean, I would go to the more nutrient-dense lower sugar fruits ‘cause high sugar in— in higher forms can be inflammatory just because it increases Insulin, and it causes these Advanced Glycation End Products. So we got to be careful with the sugar component. So I would say things like
Evan Brand: I would throw in the Citrus a bit too. Some Lemon, some Limes could be great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: I do that in the morning. A lot of people say that they just don’t have an appetite to drink water, or just, they don’t like the taste of it or something, so they just don’t drink much, especially a lot of teenagers that I work with. So I just tell them, “Make a little homemade Lemonade. Do a dash of Stevia or Monk Fruit, Lime, Lemon, and drink it, and that can be great. There’s a ton of benefits to that. And even some of the heavy metal detox protocols that I’ve learned-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: -the companies recommend that the client drinks Lemon to help during the process, so that’s pretty cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Absolutely. Is there anything else? So then we also have like our green vegetables. And then again, a lot of these green veggies are gonna be very high in Sulforaphane, uh— Diindolylmethane,
Evan Brand: Yeah. And we weave and use Broccoli extract in some of our protocols, so there’s actually really, really good solid evidence on the helping with Estrogen metabolism. So if you’d have any type of uh— Phthalate or plastic PA type exposure, which everyone has, then Broccoli extracts, or just eating Broccoli or Broccoli sprouts are awesome. I have a friend who actually makes a lot of different sprouts. He grows them and sells them at the farmer’s market, and people loved that stuff, and they feel so good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. That’s great. And also say, uh— bone broth and/or organ meats, kind of put them on the same category ‘cause they’re more like
Evan Brand: So— Yeah. It— I believe the— So the Glyphosate, it is uh— I believe it’s a Glycine molecule that has something extra added to it. So, it replaces a Glycine. It’s like the body thinks that it’s Glycine but it’s not, so that’s why it’s so dangerous.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I imagine it may block some of the effects that Glycine would normally have on the body.
Evan Brand: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Glycine has a lot of beneficial effects at helping to be a backbone for Glutathione, so I imagine that Roundup or Glyphosate probably decreases Glutathione function. And I imagine it probably decreases the enterocytes that line our gut, ‘cause I know there’s research that in— increases gut permeability. I know Glycine’s really important for gut function. Correct?
Evan Brand: Yeah. That would be the mechanism. She did talk about that. How it does— not only does it increase the leaky gut situation but it also increases blood-brain barrier permeability, too. So, if you have a leaky gut, you have most likely
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we’re getting some questions in here that are inquiring about like, “Oh! If I get Glyphosate toxicity, what will I do?” I mean, I would say, liposomal Glutathione is great and/or just a lot of the Sulfur amino acids to make it. So, like, we have products that we use that give concentrated Sulfur-based amino acids like Glycine, Glutamine,
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, uh— Samuel had asked about a product form Zach Bush called Restore. I’ve had clients who’ve been taking Restore for over a year. I tested their levels of Glyphosate. These were people who said they’ve been eating organic, so we know they’re getting no new exposure to Glyphosate. They’re not using it around the house, and they’ve been taking Restore for a year. Their levels wer— we’re still off the charts. So I’m not convinced. I know he’s done some research on— on his own about gut permeability, which is awesome, but I’ve seen the data firsthand, testing people, and Glyphosate levels are still high. Now, I don’t know what their levels were like before they started that product. So maybe their levels were—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [crosstalk] It could have been higher.
Evan Brand: …higher.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: And maybe it reduced it 10 times, so I’m not against it. I think it’s in the category of things that might help. Can’t hurt. But it’s not the ultimate cure-all. I talked with Dr. Shaw. He says sweating is key, and then Stephanie said that Fulvic acid is one of the best binders to— to soak it up and so I’ve been using a couple different tinctures lately to help with heavy metals, and it happens to have Fulvic acid in it. So, that’s kind of the go-to.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s excellent. So, in general, a lot of the Sulfur amino acid compounds I think are good to help with Glutathione. Uh— I think getting liver-
Evan Brand: I want to say the last food, and it’s sweet potatoes, and it’s because everyone is against-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm—
Evan Brand: -Carbohydrates so much, and sweet potatoes changed my life. When I had adrenal problems, I was going so low carb, and I couldn’t handle the stress of it. I believe my— my adrenals may have been just too weak to adapt to Ketogenic— maybe I’m wrong, maybe there was something else and my gut infection’s weakening me, but when I just added in a small sweet potato, just a couple times a week, that was the— Carb read feed at dinner time that I needed to really help me-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -sleep better. And then once I slept better then I had more energy during the day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I think, you know, we got to look at your situation as you’re definitely leaner and more Insulin-sensitive. So, just remember, if you’re an Insulin-resistant individual, right— uh— maybe a little bit overweight,
Evan Brand: You’ve got Vitamin A.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: You’ve got Vitamin B5, B6—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Potassium, uhmhm—
Evan Brand: Yeah, Potassium, Riboflavin— I mean, there’s a lot of good B’s in your sweet potatoes. I want to hit this question up, and I didn’t mean to distract if you have something else to say, but there was a question, or just a comment, from Gary, and he mentioned that the dilemma is you talk to the cardiologist nutrition people and they
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Jack Wolfson, yup.
Evan Brand: He’s a Board-Certified Cardiologist. Guess what he’s dietary protocol is for all of his patients. It’s Paleo. It’s a Paleo template, and he reverses heart issues with the Paleo template. So you can’t pay attention to the conventional nutritionist that are trained by big Pharma.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just remember, when we— when we talk about any dietary advice, we don’t talk about
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that template allows us to take meat and bring it
Evan Brand: Right. Yeah, well said. Uh— There was uh— comment here from Eva that you probably like to hear. “Hi, Justin. Wanted to say my nightly light cramps are gone since I started to take magnesium malate three times a day. That’s cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Really cool. Excellent.
Evan Brand: Has a question here about Charl— from Charlie, “Grass-fed beef but grain-finished beef still optimal?” No, it’s not. You want a hundred percent grass-fed, grass-finished. They do the grain at the end because it helps to add some fat and marbling to it, but I, personally, like grass-fed and -finished.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, if you don’t have the ability to get that because
Evan Brand: That’s a good point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: There’s a good question from another person. My son had GALP He eats grass-fed meats, organic chicken. He’s Gluten dairy-free. Any thoughts?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uuuhm— Who’s
Evan Brand:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Got to— I’m trying to find that question.
Evan Brand: It was near the top.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it. Uhm— So in general, I would just say first, goat tends to be driven up by fructose. Okay? So, fructose can get converted to Uric acid. And again, it’s Fructose. We had a lot of questions about this. So, like, “Dr. J, what’s— what’s Fructose? It’s Fructose.” No, it’s not. It’s Fructose. I got a big conversation with Dr. Robert
Evan Brand: I’ll just start saying it like you then. I wouldn’t say Fructose. I’m gonna have to correct myself now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Oh, he was like, “Dude, it’s Fructose.” I’m like, “Alright. I’ll say Fructose from now on.” Uhm— But in general, with Fructose, that can be the big driving factor of Uric acid, alright? That can be the big one. So, they may need to go. They may need to decrease some of the Purine-rich meat to start, so a lot of the Purine-rich meat may be the organ meats, may be the higher fatty meats, in the meantime, while they get the carbs down and they cut the fructose down beneath like 12 to 15 grams per day. And then—
Evan Brand: And then grains too, ‘cause she said gluten-dairy free but she didn’t say [crosstalk] grain-free.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course, grain-free— all that. Get all that stuff out of there. I’d even do nightshade-free as well, and make sure the Carbs are very low and the Fructose— the Fructose is low as well, below 13 grams. And then start from there.
Evan Brand: And alcohol. I’ll get rid of alcohol if they’re doing it. There are people could, “ Oh! I’m organic, gluten-free!” And then they drink two glasses of wine at night.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup. So I would start with that and then I’ll— the alcohol as well, and then see how it goes.
Evan Brand: Alright, let’s keep going here. Thanks for the feedback, Mary Anne. Uh— Did you see any other questions? I think that was most of them. We— We hit Samuel. He was asking about the supplements to eliminate Glyphosate. I commented on that already. And then, Em-Em here. Do you know of a good d— desiccated glandular supplement?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So desiccated glandular— So it’s got to be— So it’s got to be porcine. So for my thyroid support, thyroid balance, I have one. It is— It’s got some active thyroid constituents in there, so it’s something I only recommend to someone that needs it and has lab testing to support it. So, that’s a good product but it wouldn’t be necessarily recommended in unless there’s Lab Testing saying that you need it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Uh— Last question here form Roshan, “It’s becoming evident. My Hypochloridia’s due to
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, number one, just getting the stomach acid and the enzymes up
Evan Brand: [incomprehensible] will work better, you’re saying?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It will make it work better, I mean. So, they’re saying that the pyloric sphincter— so that’s the sphincter that goes from the stomach to the small intestine. Uhm— That is opening up soon. So I would just get the food digested better. You could always throw some bitters in to help as well. But I get that sphincter working better by getting the right pH there, and that tends to help in obviously like the low-hanging fruit, like not eating when stressed and such.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Not eating in a rush-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: -not scrolling on Instagram while—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Chewing your food up enough.
Evan Brand: Yeah. A lot of people have terrible eating habits. You know, my clients, I tell that I want them to eat in peace and they laugh and say, “But that’s so boring.” It’s like, what are you doing then? And they’re like watching TV, playing on their phone, reading the newspaper, and like in an argument with their friend, all at the same time while they’re eating. It’s like, “No wonder we have a digestion problem epidemic.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, I would just say, if your digestion’s better and good and you’re feeling good after your meals, you can obviously cheat a little bit with some of those recommendations. But if your digestion’s not good, then you want at least give yourself that 10-15 minutes of peace.
Evan Brand: It’s easy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: Five minutes before the meal, chill out. Five minutes after— you know, try not to rush through the meal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then, what can help a Hiatal hernia is on— one, there’s some
Evan Brand: I had a Hiatal hernia one time, and I think it just disappeared ‘cause I’m not bothered by that part of my—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [crosstalk] Yeah.
Evan Brand: I don’t feel anything anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It could have been infection-based. So let’s kind of summarize a lot of the foods. And again, in no particular order just ‘cause
Evan Brand: Pumpkin seeds. Don’t forget—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds. Is there anything else you wanted to add to that list, Evan? I think good quality hydration.
Evan Brand: Uhmhm— Don’t skip out on that. A lot of people do a lot of teas and a lot of coffee because they don’t do Soda, which is great, but you can’t skip the good
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: Organic coffee all day, great! But, okay. You got to drink water, as well. How simple.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo! I guess that’s excellent, Evan. Well, hey! Today was a great podcast. Appreciate everyone listening. Head over to thyroidresetsummit.com. We got a Summit coming out, end of the year to probably be in January. We’re moving it back a little bit to get more great speakers involved in the summit. More time here. And, Evan, anything else you want to say? I would just say give us a thumbs up. GIve us a share. You know, hit the— the bell as well so you get the alerts to these great talks so you guys can be involved and connected. Anything else, Evan, for you?
Evan Brand: Uh— People can reach out if they want to. Schedule a consult with you, your site. And they also— you also have those supplements mentioned on there. The Curcumin Supreme. That’s at justinhealth.com. And then, if you want to check out my site, consult with me, evanbrand.com. We love helping you all. We really appreciate the feedback. Take good care of yourselves.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, you have a great day. Everyone out there, have a phenomenal week too.
Evan Brand: See you later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye now.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Paulin’s book