Functional Medicine Tips to Survive the Holidays | Podcast #262

Happy Monday! It’s the holiday season and everybody is feeling the holiday rush. As much as we are excited for the holidays, it is also important to keep our body sane and healthy. Today’s chat will be all about functional medicine tips and tricks to keep our health, sanity and stresses down in the holiday season. Check out this episode to learn more.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:40 Portable IQ Air

5:35 Stave off stress during Holiday Season

14:38 Nebulizing

25:04 Air and Water Filtration for travels

31:34 Tips on Traveling

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live it’s Dr. J here in the house, Evan, how we doing today my friend?

Evan Brand: Hey man, Happy Monday. I’m glad to be back. I took a week off and felt like a month off. And I was like, God, I can’t wait to get back to work. So I’m glad I’m here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally man, I hundred percent agree. So that’s good. We got the holiday season. We are here in the thick of it. I know you were off in Florida this last week trying to get some sun and some good rays. Let’s kind of chat a little bit today about you know, functional medicine tips and tricks that we can do to keep our health and our sanity and our stress down in the holiday season.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so why don’t we start talking about just the travel component and then we could go wherever you want in terms of like herbs to help the immune system and nervous system. I think there’s a lot of cool directions we can take this but I’ll just start out with the air travel because I just got off the plane yesterday. Right? And it wasn’t terrible, but I’m not a huge fan of air travel for many reasons. And one is just The air pollution the fact that you’ve got, there’s no fresh air on airplanes, they’re pumping the cabin full of the research related or recycled air from the exhaust of the engines. And so it’s just really not a good place for fresh air. So what I did and some may say, Oh, this is extreme or whatever, but that’s why you’re listening to us because you want to be the best and you want to be the healthiest you can be. So what I have is the portable IQ air. It’s pronounced autumn, but it’s spelled atom at em. It’s like a desk It looks like a little UFO. And it’s a portable air purifier. We have one in our car that hooks up to the 12 volt outlet. But then we also have another one that we can take for travel and they have a portable battery pack that they sell with it and it fit inside of my backpack, no problem on my carry on bag. And I put this little portable half the air purifier on my tray table on the plane ride with the battery pack and cranked it up on high and you couldn’t even hear it because of the engine noise of the plane. And my my two daughters and my wife and I all got fresh hepa pure air Right in our face, we just angled the vent of it. So it pumped our direction. And the air was noticeably cleaner and more pure. And we’re not talking just filtering jet fuel, you know, you’re filtering potential mold on the plane, you’re filtering out the neighboring people’s perfumes and colognes and all that. So it’s just one simple way to try to reduce your exposure to toxins. And if you’re weak from an immune perspective, hopefully that’s filtering out some bacteria and viruses and other things like that. I mean, I remember, I don’t know if it was this year, last year, whenever it was, I think it was when you went to Mexico and you came back and it was like you picked up a cold from the plane because the plane was Germany or something. So it’s like, I’m not going to say this is a cure all, but I think it’s a good preventative medicine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. So the IQ air the ATEM. Okay, cool. We’ll put some links below. And that’s a good portable one, huh?

Evan Brand: It’s gorgeous to It’s very pretty. You can control it from your phone if you want to. You can you know Turn up the speed turn down the speed, there’s blue light on it that you can turn off. So overall, it’s a very, very good portable setup. And when we were in hotel rooms as well, we would just unplug the battery pack and plug up the wall outlet. And then we would just crank it on high in the hotel room and then boom, by the time you step back in your hotel room, you’ve got real fresh air in there as well,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that says absolutely great. And then did you use the atem desk or the atem car or?

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, good question. So the car is better, because there is an extra layer of carbon or something involved in the car versus the desk. So I only recommend buying the car version and then you can just use it inside your home as well. That is great. That’s awesome. And then you can bring that with you on trips and then you have that extra bit of air filtration. That is awesome. And could you use it in like a kid’s bedroom or a bedroom? Oh, totally. Yeah, I mean, it was the perfect white noise to for the kids to take a nap. We just cranked it on high and it’s just a nice white noise but then you know the kids are breathing in pure air too. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And can you keep all the lights turned off to?

Evan Brand: yep on the app. You can just go boom, and then the blue light turns off. So it’s just a completely dark air filter.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Awesome. I like the ones that are small and portable. Some of the ones that I have by the Austin area great, but that, you know, they’re not quite as portable, you know?

Evan Brand: Yeah, you can’t put it in a suitcase, you know, and like, you know, other people, Dr. mercola, he had promoted these like neck things where it’s like a portable ionizer that you wear on your neck, I bought one those things are garbage. This thing is way better. I mean, it’s a hepa filtration versus, you know, people try to say, oh, here’s a negative ion generator that you wear on your neck. It’s like, No, those are so stupid. This is way, way better and more functional.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what does it cost to change out those filters?

Evan Brand: I got an extra filter when I bought it. I think the extra filter was maybe 100 bucks. Don’t quote me on that. Okay, good. And you can monitor the filter life from your app. So it’ll say, hey, you’ve got 89% left of your filter, and then it’ll give you a notification when the filter needs to be changed.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, God, that’s cool. So I like the air filtration aspect of I think it’s powerful because Air Quality is important, especially on the airplane. I mean, you know, I think you may only be able to do so much because you have so much recycled air coming through. So, in general may not move the needle too much, but I think it’s really cool to have it in your hotel room, especially people using whole bunch of cleaning products that you know, aren’t as nice. It’s nice to have that good quality air filtration at least in the room. That’s great.

Evan Brand: Yeah, filters out the voc right. So yeah, if you had you know, we did request fragrance free hotel rooms and made sure they only clean with vinegar and all that. So it helped a little bit but filter would help reduce or remove any other voc if you’re sensitive like I am.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And we’re really diving into the functional medicine and natural health kind of principles to stave off stress during the holiday season and when traveling and such that’s really the title and the topic of today’s chat. So off the bat we also can be utilizing natural antioxidants to help deal with stress when we’re flying to. I’m always a big fan of when flying or travel or vacation starts. I’m going to be adding in include a phone and or glue to find precursors. This is kind of our body’s natural, very most powerful antioxidant to try peptide antioxidant. And we’re going to use this at higher levels to deal with stress from travel, just the radiation you’re exposed to and traveling. We’re also going to do maybe natural medicinal mushrooms or herbs like a strapless and geographics. akinesia. We’re going to be doing things like this to help bump up our immune system in my supplement line at protocol them, you know, Supreme, and that’s powerful that has a couple of different herbs in there, some medicinal mushrooms and it has some of the stragglers and akinesia that kind of get your immune system right ready. So it’s just kind of getting those natural killer cells up and ready on attention. So if we get exposed any viruses or bugs, we’re more likely to stave off an attack. So herbal support medicinal mushrooms, Reishi, [inaudible], ekenasia, these are going to be very powerful and then of course things to new actually deal with oxidative stress which could be glued, if I own high dose vitamin C, which is going to help include if I own as well. I’d also say you could even add in some natural anti inflammatory support like curcumin, but I’d say if you’re going to keep it simple, high dose kluth iron and vitamin C is going to be very, very powerful.

Evan Brand: Good advice. You know a lot of people post articles and snippets and all that about top 10 ways to naturally fight the flu or top 10 ways to naturally fight a cold, it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be better if you could just keep your immune system on alert, like you mentioned and up regulate these immune system pathways as opposed to getting sick and then now you’re trying to read an article on how to get yourself sick like just if you are on these herbs and your immune systems up regulated, you may not even have to go to the top 10 Natural Ways to fight the flu because you never got the flu because your immune system was so strong

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% so on the vitamin C, you know we’re going to do a couple of grams, so anywhere between two to five or six grams and the vitamins See, again, typically just below bowel tolerance is ideal. So a lot of people will start getting loose stools around six to 10 grams or six to 10,000 milligrams. So somewhere in that two to five, two to six gram dosage range is probably good. You may have to feel it out to see where you sit. And then in regards to Reishi, you know, I’ll go anywhere between two to five grams a day, probably closer to two to three if I’m just trying to like, get my immune system upregulated and I’m not fighting something probably like two to three grams just to be like, Okay, I’m ready to go. And then acutely, I’ll go off to three to five if it’s really acute. And then I would say what the gluta Island probably you know, up to a gram or so a day on the glue to die on and get my immune system kind of hyper regulated and ready to go.

Evan Brand: Yep. And talk about the nebulizer. We spoke about this a few episodes ago, I said, hey, you’ve got to try it. And you’ve tried it. So what’s your what’s your feedback?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so this is a very powerful tool and a means to get Certain compounds into your lungs and into your bloodstream fast because we know when we get sick a lot of times, you know, we have the ability to control essentially our hands by washing our hands. And we have the ability to control not quite as much what we breathe, maybe if we have a mass, that’s probably the best that we can do. But in general, a nebulizer allows us to take compounds in my favorite two things to us are going to be silver, and we’ll choose a 15 ppm to a 10 ppm or less of silver. And we’ll nebulize that and we can breathe it into our lungs. So we have all of the silver in our lungs, in our sinuses, and that’s going to help kill any bugs or biofilms that we may be getting exposed to so I like nebulizing silver, acutely, especially after a flight or after any exposure to someone because you get the silver in your lungs, and it’s anti viral as well. So the problem is, number one, you don’t want to be using antibiotics prophylactically but number two will not touch a viral issues. So the best thing with the silver is you can knock down some of the virus stuff. And the second thing is cluded I own concluded I own really helps with inflammation. And it really is increased so much more especially in your lungs when you do it when you nebulize it and you break it down to really tiny particle. So with nebulize go to dial and you can do that as well. One you’re getting the Bluetooth ion to help with the oxidative stress. But number two, it’s also going to help with inflammation and it’s going to help modulate your immune response. I’m a big fan of nebulizing the silver and nebulizing the Bluetooth ion is a couple of good nebulize that are out there I have one that’s really small and recommended to me there are two really two or three really good small ones. I’ll do a separate video on this and you take the nebulizer and essentially you use some sodium chloride kind of a nice taylean solution that sterile and then you’re going to add anywhere between a teaspoon of silver of there or you’re going to do about 200 milligrams of glutathione and a sodium bicarb form so it’s an a breakdown. And then you can nebulize that 200 milligrams a load of biome, or that one teaspoon of silver, and you get it directly into your bloodstream and the nebulize go to die on significantly increases in your bloodstream and in the lungs even more than oral when it goes orally. It has to kind of go throughout your body. But when you do it in your nebulizer, it goes right into your lungs, it’s going to help with things in your sinuses, it’s gonna help with all the inflammation in your lungs. So you get it right there. It’s fast and it increases your blood sugar levels so much faster.

Evan Brand: Yeah, not to mention, you can cross the blood brain barrier when you’re breathing something in like that too. So I got to give credit where credit’s due. This whole idea of me getting interested in nebulizers and Bluetooth ion and then trying in and then you and I talking about it, Stephen Buner. He’s like one of my favorite herbalists. He’s written a lot of really great books on Lyme disease and co infections. I believe he’s personally suffering from COPD and, of course, many people out there suffering with COPD so he actually came up with this COPD protocol. And I just took a couple pieces from his protocol which was the nebulizer with the sailing and the glue to die on. Now he’s talking about, I think it’s frankincense and some other essential oils. And he’s doing a lot of these other like Japanese herbs and Chinese herbs and mixing all these in a combination as this big old 20 to 30 p COPD protocol. I don’t have COPD. So I just took the pieces that I thought would help me the most from that protocol and then implemented it and then I had had watched the I don’t know if it was a webinar, what it was about, it was a guy speaking about using silver hydrosol which same thing Colloidal Silver silver hydrosol is the is the right name, and he was using this for lung cancer. And he was putting the silver into a nebulizer for lung cancer and I thought okay, that sounds pretty cool. And then I just mixed them I just thought why don’t we mix silver mixed Bluetooth ion. And as you mentioned, it’s the one with the bicarbonate added so it doesn’t burn your lungs or anything, and it’s a very smooth process I get, and I don’t know if it’s placebo or what but I feel like I get a little bit of a head rush after I do it. Like I feel a little bit more mentally clear, you know, Bluetooth ion is, is said to increase energy levels to right because you’re increasing your detox ability and a lot of times that helps increase energy. So after I do it, it kind of hits me like a wave. It’s like whoosh, and then I feel good for you know, a couple hours after I haven’t had any bad side effects. I don’t know if you have I haven’t had any headaches. I haven’t had any like detox reactions from it. Overall, it’s been very, very good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Also, I find it very helpful with kids that don’t want to swallow supplements or take supplements. The nice thing about it is you can don’t even have to put it over the face, you can kind of keep it a couple inches away and just let them read it for a few seconds, and they’ll get it into their system. So I like it because if my son may have gotten exposed to something, I can just give them maybe a minute with a silver, just kind of reading it in or I can give them a minute of the Go to File and I can at least get some good antioxidant support which does help with the immune system, Bluetooth Iowans a really important immune system modulator. And I can also get the silver up there which will help with viruses and biofilms as well. So it’s pretty powerful to have that, especially with kids. And especially with just being around people that are sick, I can get stuff into my respiratory tract fast. And I’m not sure if any studies in this but you know, there’s a lot of times it’s like a one or two, one or a week or so latency period on getting an infection and it manifesting. So I’m curious to know, you may have an infection, it may be an latency period, and I wonder if just doing that preventatively would prevent that infection from manifesting?

Evan Brand: I think it would, right I mean, think about if it’s sitting in the nasal cavity, maybe it’s found a way to hide in some biofilm and the nasal cavity or the sinuses and then the silver comes in and kills it. You know, I think yeah, I think you’re right. I think it could kill it. While we’re on the topic of the nasal cavity area for the holidays. You know, this would apply for people going to a family member’s house where they’ve got air fresheners or plugins are, you know, if you’re a smell smell sensitive person like I am, even if you’re not and you just don’t want that crap in your sinus cavity, you and I really like the x layer, which is the stevia based nasal rinse, or is it Earth return those xylitol, I’m sorry, it’s xylitol. You know, if you squirt that up your nose, I wonder if you could just add some of that mixture to the nebulizer. I mean, it’s the same thing right? You’re squirting it up your nose versus nebulizing I don’t know, maybe overkill, but at least you could use the X ray or nasal spray, boom, boom, a couple sprays each nostril and spit it out. If you end up getting some drainage,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: what I think is even better, what I’ve been doing is I’ll do the Neti Elixir packet so it’s actual packets and and I mixed it with four ounces of water, clean, filtered reverse osmosis water, and then I squeeze it up one nostril and it goes all the way up my frontal sinus and then back down and I do have about two to three seconds of flow. Then I blow my nose, clean it out and then to the other side. Two to three seconds, and then blow. And then what I’ll also do is if there’s any kind of infection that I’m thinking about, I’ll do the Neti actually or packets because you only can spray, barely anything with the spray. But if I can do the packets, I get constant flow for two to three seconds. And then number two is I’ll add a teaspoon of silver. I’ll add a teaspoon of silver as well to it. So then I’ll have the Neti Elixir with the xylitol in there, and then I’ll see it has the minerals in there to make it more you know, sensitive against the mucosa. And then I’ll add the silver and then the silver goes up and can really kill any viruses or pathogens or biofilms as well. So that’s a double whammy. That better Yeah, and then afterwards, then you can do if you want to nebulize some silver because that way it goes in your bloodstream because it’s not going to really go into your bloodstream, right? But when you nebulize a silver now it’s in your bloodstream and in your lungs. So if there’s any incubating viruses That’s where it’s going to be really, really helpful because then I’m really work on knocking and killing that down. And then you could also nebulize the Bluetooth icon, which I don’t think is anti viral, but it will help with inflammation, and it will have an effect on modulating your immune response for the better.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m using the nebulize glue to find to get mycotoxins out of my brain. If you just go into PubMed and you just search okra toxin. Okra toxin is a really common mold toxin that we see. If you type in okra toxin cerebellum, you can read that okra toxin has an affinity meaning it likes it goes to that part of the brain, the cerebellum and so you can literally detox the brain. When people say detox the brain. It sounds like it’s like trendy or buzz worthy or something. But no, it’s real. You literally can detox the brain because that’s where okra toxin can can damage it can create damage in that part of the brain. So all right, well, let’s move on. I think we’ve talked about the sinuses all day,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll do a video I’ll do a video of myself kind of dealing with the issues. So I’ll break On the nebulizer and kind of the solutions and, and we could talk about it and go over what those look like. That’s perfect. All right, good. I think those are powerful tips. And then obviously, we have low hanging fruit, which could be getting sick from food. So of course, we’re going to use things like activated charcoal, which is going to be a really good binder. We typically say take activated charcoal away from food and supplements, when you’re using it for like a detox protocol for mold or for bug killing. But if we’re eating questionable food, or we’re getting exposed to things like alcohol, we may want to actually take it with the alcohol or the questionable food. So you kind of have to just draw a line and say, Hey, is this an acute exposure issue? Or is this more part of the long term protocol? If it’s acute, and it’s food or alcohol or just you know, partying, then we’re going to take it with that food. 

Evan Brand: That’s a good idea. I mean, think about it. You’re going over to Uncle Jerry’s house. You know, everybody’s going to be drinking wine and cocktails and whatever. There’s going to be bread There’s going to be all kinds of food allergens and dairy and, and who knows what else cornbread and pumpkin pie. I don’t know what all you’re eating that’s not good for you. But, you know our clients report this every year they say hey, I’ve got off my diet on the holidays and now here it is January and they feel like crap, you know, so we’re trying to help prevent some of those calls.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So I like that. Also bug killer so my line I have a product called gi clear 4 which I have found to be the best for me. And for most patients with food poisoning issues, it just works amazing. And it could be food poisoning from a bacteria like e.coli or Campylobacter or salmonella. It could be food poisoning from an infection. Right Giardia. Cryptosporidium H. pylori, maybe a parasite like blasto and this works really good at knocking it down. So I like my gi clear 4 which is very high in Golden seal, which is a really good bug killer, very high in berberine, which is great for SIBO. It’s also very high and all of which leaf which has antiviral properties, and burdock which is really Good for the lymph and the lymphatic system. So my gi clear 4 is good avid has some ones in his micro biome line that are similar to. So you know, we love a good bug killer in case we get exposed, and you can stay on a low dose of those preventatively to like I’ll do, I’ve got one that’s got all of leaf in there, which is just a good antifungal, and it’s been said to take antifungals while you’re detoxing mold, so for me, I’ve just been doing a little bit of a low dose of some antifungals just preventively. And the good thing is with something like olive leaf, that’s an antiviral as well. So you can have that’s the cool thing why we love herbs so much is because you can have as you mentioned, bugs is kind of a generality, bugs could be viruses, bacteria, parasites, you could have an herb that can be antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, all in one so we love these anytime of the year but especially if you’re around like you said potential bad food that who knows what if they didn’t cook the shrimp cocktail good enough, right? Or if it was all shrimp and and you got a exposed to something there. Yeah, so if you’re on vacation like let’s say Mexico or somewhere where the food may be a little bit different than what you’re normally used to people that go to Bali or Mexico or sometimes other countries, they’re exposed to things they’re not used to. So going on like a preventative dose, like one capsule with each meal, a lot of times can be super helpful. We may also do, I always recommend my patients flying with a full bottle of probiotics too, because that can really help with food poisoning as well. So we can do like one probiotic capsule every hour or two. And that can acutely address any food poisoning works phenomenally.

Evan Brand: So I like doing that to help with any food poisoning too. Beautiful and of course acid and enzymes deserve a mention up to just because you mentioned the travel. You know in theory if your stomach acid levels are good enough and you’ve got your gallbladder releasing store bile, you’re breaking down your fats good. Hopefully everything’s okay but it wouldn’t hurt to add in some extra enzymes and acids to hopefully neutralize any pathogens you could expose to

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: one Hundred percent. I think it’s vitally, vitally important. Probiotics clearing herbs we talked about gluta time we talked about silver, these are all really, really important modulating things, HCl enzymes, digestive support, kind of as needed, just so we can digest and break down our food. I think those are all very, very, very powerful things. Next, I think will be sleep support. So you could always do something like a sublingual, melatonin and just kind of do that. Once you get your schedule back on track, you can take it maybe at sunrise the next day. I’m sorry, you could do it at at nightfall. So as soon as the sun goes down, you can you know, as it gets dark, you can take it as it gets dark to kind of reset your cycle. And then when the sun comes up, you could do some kind of the caffeine with some light exposure and grounding can be very helpful to get your circadian rhythm back on track. You take a little bit of a caffeine or a mild stimulant. As the sun comes back up. You do a little bit of grounding your feet on grass or some kind of a stone while getting light exposure to the sunrise. That’s a great way to get your circadian rhythm restarted. And then at nighttime when the sun sets, do a little bit of melatonin, you know you can do anywhere between like a third of a milligram, very small those couple hundred micrograms to it sublingually and that can kind of get your circadian rhythm kind of back on cycle for your time zone again if you’re traveling to Mexico or something or the DR and then you’re only a time zone or two off, or even the same time zone not a big deal. You travel to Bali or maybe Hawaii or Europe then you’ll You know, you’re going off maybe 5678 hours that you may have to do a significant reset there.

Evan Brand: Yeah, good advice and of course light pollution at night always trying to address that a lot a lot of hotels luckily these days have pretty good blackout curtains and such but you know, we had several places where the outside light was still trying to sneak in so we would take extra blankets or towels or whatever else you got to do unplug alarm clocks, cover up lights, take out light bulbs, you know whatever you got to do to to cover it up. We had One room we had had a smoke detector that had a super bright green light and green light can suppress melatonin just like blue light can at night. So I just took a pair of swim trunks and threw them over the smoke detector, boom, we had darkness. So sometimes it’s tricky to get a nice dark room.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One thing I will travel with his electrical tape, black electrical tape and any lights like that, I will literally just take a piece tape, put over light,

Evan Brand: that’s easy, that’s great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So just a little bit of tape. And then you can just tape up all the lights and then you want to make it black so blocks out the lights a little bit thicker, you know a little more opaque blocks the light out better. And I always call ahead and say hey, you know do you have dark shades or blackout shades? I think it’s really important. I stayed at one place that didn’t and I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, man, your sun goes up at seven o’clock you’re up at seven it’s like this, you know, that’s just you know, forget sleeping in. So I always try to call ahead and make sure I do have blackout shade options if not, you know get A blanket, tape it up against the wall. That’s your best bet. It’s kind of Yes. But yeah, go ahead.

Evan Brand: And also on the on the traveling thing too. We talked about air filtration. I travel with the water filter as well. I mean, you can buy bottled water for drinking, I’m talking about for bathing. So you know, a lot of places, a lot of cities really heavily chlorinate the water. And so of course, chlorine is like a natural antibiotic. So first of all, if you’re drinking water with chlorine in it, you’re killing your good bacteria and your microbiome. But regarding the skin, chlorine, I just doesn’t agree with my skin. It makes your hair nasty. It makes your skin nasty. It smells bad. It’s it’s toxic. It’s a neurotoxin. So I personally use the Berkey there’s other brands out there. Yeah, Berkey makes a really good shower filter. And I forgot to travel with my wrench. But luckily the shower head on the hotel was loose enough I could unloosen it. Put on the Berkey shower filter and boom, you got super pure water and for the little kids for my little girls. I don’t want them bathing and chlorine. So Guess what we do we just turn on the shower to fill up the bathtub and now you got a perfect chlorine free bath.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, that’s definitely a good option. Also, if I’m staying at a hotel in the states you know, I’ll just instacart for Amazon Prime now good filtered water, you know, couple bottles, couple dozen, maybe a dozen bottles of Pellegrino or or Voss or Fiji water, try to buy it in bulk or if there’s a whole foods nearby, just buy a couple of gallons and just leave them in the hotel room. So I have clean filtered water, you’re not paying an arm and a leg for the hotel price. But that way you can get some good clean water. Ideally, if you can get like a bunch of Pellegrino dropped off and glass that’s an awesome class may not work especially if you’re traveling a lot and you have young kids, you may have to do classes just for the convenience of it not breaking. So those are good options for you in the states try to use instacart or prime now or they can drop off within an hour to attend to be super helpful. And then I’ll also stay at a lot of places in the states that have a like a little kitchenette. So then I’ll just have a couple of dozen eggs dropped off maybe a pound or two again. again so then I have breakfast covered every single morning at least eggs or bacon and that way you’re set you could at least start the first meal out of the day pretty good and you can control the quality of it and I just try to make sure if I can there’s an instant Carter prime now service available where I could have it dropped off.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s what we did. We did we didn’t do the delivery. We just stopped at Whole Foods, but we did have a kitchenette. So we did bake and we did eggs. We bought some frozen fish. We had a freezer and we had an oven so we were able to bake some fish for a couple nights that was great. And we did find a couple good restaurants luckily they had some grass fed steaks and such but we tried to mix it up 5050 because you know you go on vacation you don’t want to be doing dishes three times a day either my wife’s like I’m doing dishes again what’s going on so like Okay, let’s go to a nice place get you a grass fed burger. And that was a good break from from dishes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah, I actually was able to find so what I believe the country I like going to Mexico for vacation because number one you get, you know, nice little warm retreat, but it’s not far. It’s only just a couple hours from Austin. It’s easy nonstop flight virtually the same time zone. And when you get There, I found a resort The brand is charisma. And if you let them know I sent you over, but I found them because they were one of the only gourmet food brands meaning they grow all their food on site, super high quality. And they cater to food allergens. So really good quality food, lots of good restaurant options, all inclusive so you don’t pay anything extra. You get what you pay, and then you have unlimited access to the food. And then you can you know, you can get gluten free options. They really cater to the food allergen and you get better quality food. And it’s even you know, local locally raised right there on site.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I know you live like a king when you go down there. It is pretty cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s nice because there’s a couple there’s a of like maybe 16 maybe 20 different hotels in the charisma brand, but it’s KARISMA just type in Karisma hotels, but they have a bunch of hotels couple doesn’t have a gore main line and that the formula This the food quality is five star so you have great quality food, organic, and you have lots of options and they cater to food allergens. That’s one of the best things about it.

Evan Brand: That’s beautiful. You know, I actually on my searches for hotels, I came across this website called pure rooms. PURE which was supposed to be this. It’s basically a company that works with different hotels, Marriott and whoever else and they basically put in water filters. They put air filters in the room, they use no fragrance, they take out any feathers for any allergens to like down comforters and such. The problem is every hotel I call they said oh no, we don’t do that anymore. Probably because nobody was ever booking the rooms and they didn’t want those rooms just sitting there wasted. So I called like three hotels and they’re like, Oh, yeah, we had the pure room, but we don’t have it anymore. So I don’t know if it’s somebody had to request in advance. But if somebody super sensitive, you know, you could look up your room and there’s basically a directory on the planet on the whole world where you can look at a hotel that would have a quote, pure room available for you to book.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the nice thing is a lot of hotel rooms You know, they’re they’re getting better because people are more hypoallergenic people smoking is kind of a more taboo so they have non smoking rooms, I think just the big thing you can do is just try to request in advance, you know, not all the harsh cleaners or harsh smells, or just get a really good air filter like you have kind of drop it off, plug it in for a couple of hours, get the room kind of cleaned out, and then you’ll probably be good to go.

Evan Brand: Yep, that’s what we did. We put it on full blast, took a walk to the beach came back the room was was much better, still not optimal. I mean, I’d rather be at my house with my big ol nice air purifiers, but you know, you got to make the best of it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then when I travel when I choose vacations, I want to come back on a vacation feeling good. So I don’t want to be eating crap the whole time. I want to be eating quality foods. When I come back. I’m not like bloated and inflamed and feeling like crap. So I want to food quality is a big deal for me. Number two is I don’t want to spend a day on the way there and a day on the way back traveling. So I try to choose places that I can go in a non stop and ideally be there within three to four hours on a non stop. I don’t like to get my sleeping all day. jacked up. So I don’t want to be up at like 3am leaving. So ideally, I try to find flights that I can leave at, you know, you know, get up at six or seven, get to the airport, leave at nine or 10 and get to where I want to be by, you know, three or four at the latest, you know, just because I don’t want to waste the day on each on each side and I want to feel relatively rested. So Mexico, Dr. Jamaica, you know, if if you’re like trying to go somewhere more tropical. Those are pretty good places because you get the tropical feel you can get an all inclusive access, and it’s not going to be too far or too expensive to get there.

Evan Brand: Yep, yep. Good advice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So anything else on the travel side, you want to highlight? I mean, the only thing I could say is, if you know you’re going to be eating more crap, we talked about glutathione. I’m sorry, we talked about activated charcoal. And you can always want if you know you’re going to be having gorging yourself, you can always intermittent fast the next day to compensate. You can always do a little bit more movement before after whether it’s interval or resistance training just to deplete glycogen and to get your metabolism up on that way. The extra alcohol or sugar won’t hit yes hard. Those are all other good options that you can kind of add in.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I would just last thing just in general is some type of good adaptogenic herbs to help cope with the stress. So ashwagandha would be great. I know you love ashwagandha I love it too, but you could use it at night. You could use it during the day for stress, you could use it at night for sleep you could do you already mentioned the the the reishi mushroom for immune support, but that’s also kind of an adaptogen. Basically, you’ve got rhodiola which can help boost your energy. I took a mitochondrial support that I have. So that’s like a B vitamin combo that can be helpful because the stress of traveling burns up your bs B as in Bravo. So mitochondrial support can be helpful. Vitamin D, hopefully you’re going somewhere sunny. You don’t need vitamin D, but that’s also important for immune function. We talked about the enzyme piece, I would say liver support I did take some liver herbs to just some milk this old and some other basic stuff methionine tarin. I think That’s it. I mean, I’m sure we could riff on more but that’s that. Oh, yes. Oh, this is important. So anybody that has like any travel anxiety, which I don’t know if I have traveling anxiety, I just get stressed travels is stressful for me, especially with two kids and is the kid hungry and Okay, and the diaper and you know what I mean? So, what I took is just a blend of some calming herbs. So I took like some other war. I took some skullcap I took some Valerian some thenI, and just had a combo in tincture form. So we’re at the airport, you got 1000 people in front of you, you’re waiting to get past I just boom, boom, boom. Shoot a few squirts of some calming herbs in my system, and I was cool as a cucumber the entire time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Love it, man. Yes, smart. You know, try to do it the right way. Like you said, That’s why I try to do nonstops in and short flights. But if you’re going to Europe or anywhere else, that becomes a little bit tough. So like you mentioned, the adaptogens are helpful. That’s where definitely bringing the melatonin to be helpful. Some of the extra Bs, the B vitamins to help with stress, I think they’re going to be really helpful as well. Anything else you want to highlight or add today, Evan?

Evan Brand: I don’t think so I’ll just make a comment. You know, it’s so interesting. You see all these people that get on the plane, you can tell some people, they’re nervous and they order alcohol from the flight attendant, and they’re trying to drink alcohol to calm themselves down. That’s the worst thing you could do. The elevation of being on the plane causes dehydration. It’s like being on top of a mountain, the stress of it is depleting. So, I mean, if you need to calm yourself down, a glass of wine on the plane is not what you want. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying Would you rather have something awesome? Like, you take a few squirts of some passionflower and ashwagandha then your your nervous system is going to be calm. You’re not gonna have any crazy blood sugar swings on the plane, you’re not going to be dehydrating yourself. So I just, I just, I think in five to 10 years, maybe we’ll see more people like shooting adaptogens down their throat on the plane versus taking alcohol.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I think number one, if you are going to consume alcohol, let’s say you got the upgraded seats and they cover a nice drink. Like when I go to Mexico, I think it was like I think I was I got the ability to upgrade to first class like 50 bucks. I’m like, heck yeah, you know, an extra foot a leg room. And so when I go to Mexico, I think I’m going to be going in February, I will be doing a glass of champagne on the flight because it’s complimentary. But what you do is number one, when you get to the airport and you have time, get a nice like, get a nice bottle of Pellegrino or something, hydrate before the flight where you know, so you have the good minerals in your system. And then if you’re going to drink then just have a nice, bringing a couple activated charcoal with you. So then you have that just kind of go back and forth. And if you are going to drink, just try to space out one drink one glass of mineral water, one drink one glass of mineral water. That way you don’t get too dehydrated, you get the extra minerals in the water, so you won’t be getting to deplete it. But I think that’s really a good important points.

Evan Brand: Perfect. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you do want to reach out clinically, we work with these gut issues that we’re talking about detox problems. You know what we do? We love helping people get to the root cause of their problems. You know, we were used to someone being through 510 15 practitioners before they get to Dr. J. Or me And we kind of like being I’ll speak for Justin as well, we kind of like being in that position because it allows us to show them what we do differently. And oh, here’s why you didn’t get better. It’s because you didn’t you didn’t do this or you didn’t look in that ballpark or you did it in the wrong order. So we love and some, sometimes it comes with the territory of our jobs to be in the in the cleanup crew category. We’re cleaning up somebody else’s mess. And that’s fun. I love that and we’re both very grateful to be able to serve you well. So if you want to reach out to Justin clinically, please do so his website is Justin health. JustinHealth.com. My website, EvanBrand.com. And thank you for listening. We appreciate it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I think next week is was next year, next week, next month in New Year’s Eve. Yep. So I think I’ll be here next Monday as well. So I’m excited to chat with you again. How about you Evan? Will you be here?

Evan Brand: I’ll be here. I ain’t going anywhere.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Excellent. I love it. You’re back from your vacation. You’re supposed to be refreshed. So yes. Excellent. All right now great chatting with you put it thanks for all the information on the product. We talked about or recommended. We’ll put them in the references links below. Evan, great chat with you have a phenomenal week. Will you take care bye bye. Thank you, everyone. Bye

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/functional-medicine-tips-to-survive-the-holidays-podcast-262

Recommended product:

Xlear Rescue Nasal Spray with Xylitol

Austin Air Health Mate Junior Plus

https://justinhealth.com/water-pitcher

Bio-Balance – 10% discount

The Thyroid, Adrenal and Microbiome Connection | Podcast #255

Together with Evan Brand, Dr. Justin talks about the adrenal, thyroid, gut, microbiome, brain connection and a lot more. Go through this podcast to discover more about functional medicine world.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

4:13 Potential probiotics to treat thyroid nodule

9:06 Microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior

15:02 Stress in gut

20:16 Chemicals in water

23:10 Eating organic

How To Find A Good Functional Medicine Practitioner – Podcast #52

Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand in this podcast talk about how to find the ideal healthcare provider, holistic functional medicine doctor or functional nutritionist, as well as the qualities, traits, and skill sets that a practitioner needs in order to help you. 

This interview stressed the importance of having a systematic approach that lays down diet and lifestyle as the foundations then find out where stress is coming from and do some labs to  figure out what those underlying chemical stressors are. The next step will be focusing on the hormones then moving on to the gut killing and infections.

Podcast: Play in New Window|Download

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Hey there, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani.  Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio.  Feel free and head over to BeyondWellnessRadio.com where you can access our full podcast transcriptions.  While you’re there, you can also sign up for our Thyroid and Female Hormone video series.  This series goes into the root causes of why your hormones are out of balance.  While you’re there, you can also schedule a functional medicine consult with Dr. Justin, myself, where we’ll dig deeper into the root cause of your health challenges.  Feel free and think of sharing this podcast with at least one person.  This podcast grows by people sharing it.  Sharing is caring.  If you think of one person that can benefit from this information, please feel free and share it.  If you’re enjoying the podcast, click below the video or podcast where you’ll see the iTunes review button and leave us a review on iTunes.  You can also sign up for the newsletter at BeyondWellnessRadio.com where you can get updates before anyone else.  Thank you so much and enjoy the show.

Hey, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani with Beyond Wellness Radio, again my guest co-host, Evan Brand, will be with us today and we’re gonna be talking about how to find the ideal healthcare provider.  How to find your holistic functional medicine doctor or functional nutritionist, what qualities, what traits, what skill sets do you need in your practitioner to find someone that can help you.  So first off, Evan, what’s going on, man?  How we doin’?

Evan Brand:  Hey, what’s up?  I’m doin’ great.  I just avoided a tornado.  I thought I was gonna get blown away and not be able to make this call, but I’m super thrilled to be here and still be alive luckily.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s good, awesome, and if we get cut off during the show, we will know why.

Evan Brand:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So what did you have for breakfast this morning?

Evan Brand:  I just had a shake today.  So I did some organic almond milk, a handful of blueberries from the local farmer at the farmer’s market.  I did 2 scoops of grass-fed whey so probably about 30-35 grams of protein there, and then 1 fat spoonful of coconut oil.  I feel like I said I did that last time but that’s kinda my go-to shake.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s good.  Awesome.  And for all the listeners I am upgrading the command center’s bandwidth so we’re gonna be going from 20 megabytes per second to 200 megabytes so the quality will get better.  We apologize for last show having a couple of crackles in there but that’s gonna get better, so just hang in there.  We’ll continue to deliver the high quality.  So for me today, I did beef protein, grass or grass-fed beef protein with just water.  I did a whole scoop of greens, organic green powder in there, and some coffee, MCT and butter.  So I had about 40 grams of protein, got about a scoop of collagen in there, about 4 servings of vegetables and the organic green powder and then some good fats and proteins combined, so I’m–I’m ready to go.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, sounds like a good way to start the day and you’ll be hungry for a real solid food lunch.  That’s why I like doing shakes because when you actually eat a real steak again, it’s amazing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, and it’s just nice in the morning to just get those aminos in your body fast.  I’ll do like half my breakfasts will be shake-based just because it’s easy, it’s nutrient-dense, I’m getting a whole bunch of greens in there, too, and I can just make sure it’s highly absorbed really.

Evan Brand:   Yup. Yup, that’s nice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Cool, man.  So today we talked about kinda in our pre-interview that we wanna to kinda lay out for all of our listeners what kind of qualities that, you know, you should be looking for in your practitioners and you know, obviously a little plug for us, I think we both exhibit a lot of those qualities so if anyone’s needing a healthcare functional medicine doctor or a functional medicine nutritionist in yourself to feel free and check out JustInHealth.com or NotJustPaleo.com if you wanna get more information.  But outside of that, because I know I’m booked out almost 2 months in my clinic.  I know you’re booked out a bit in your clinic, so we’re really busy so we’re not gonna be able to help everyone.  So we wanna make sure anyone that needs help and can’t get to us, they at least will be able to interview their provider and look for the skills that are needed to be successful.

Evan Brand:  Right.  Yup, I agree.  Where do you think we should start?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I think the nutrition part.

Evan Brand:   Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Well, so for me, I’ve had people that have gone to holistic nutritionist because there’s so many different schools of thought out there now and there’s so many different nutrition certifications that nearly everyone could be considered a nutrition expert and unfortunately, some of those people are training clients to become complete vegans and raw food vegans–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Evan Brand:  And things like that and I’m sure you have some stories as well and I’ve definitely had to help people recover.  I mean their hormones have been destroyed.  They’ve become very fragile, low energy after about 6 months.  They feel good at first and they just get sicker and sicker.  So that’s kind have been my experience so it’s not to say that our way is the only way, but that you should be eating some animal–you gotta be eating animal products preferably organic, pasture-raised animals whenever possible, because those amino acids that you’re gonna be hopefully digesting and breaking down from those animals will–are going to be converting into neurotrasmitters and making you feel good so it–it’s no surprise that, you know, veganism routes of–of nutrition and depression go hand in hand.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I totally agree and I don’t like the term diet when I’m talking to my patients.  I like the term template and I do believe a Paleo template is best and I believe a Paleo template really is non-dogmatic because within that template you can be high carb, you can be low carb, you can utilize more of a specific carbohydrate diet approach for patients that have more gut or diarrhea or constipation issues.  You can use gap-side approach or you can use a low histamine approach, a low FODMAP approach.  So there’s a lot of flexibility that you have within that Paleo template.  You can use an autoimmune diet approach.  Again I work with so many vegans and vegetarians and we may just be choosing like, “Hey, we’re gonna get some egg yolks in your diet this week, and then everything will be vegan minus the grains and the legumes.”  So we can have someone who’s eating 95% vegan but getting some animal protein and animal product in there and they–they’re still doing 95% of what they were doing as a vegan but they’re not getting all the other crapohydrate and inflammatory foods and we may give them some extra free-form amino acid and some extra protein powder to maximize the aminos that they may not be getting in let’s say a vegetarian or vegan diet.

Evan Brand:  Right, yeah.  And then if–if it’s not quality soy that we can start pulling that off and weaning people on to real products and opposed to tofurkey and things like that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, they aren’t real foods, and I think also you need to have like a non-dogmatic approach or a non-dogmatic filter in which why you choose the foods you choose, so if I’m choosing a Paleo template, why are we choosing those foods?  My filter is, well, they’re anti-inflammatory, they’re nutrient-dense and they’re low in toxins.  It’s that simple.  You go through a vegetarian, you’ll pick out all the phytates and oxalates and the lectins, wheat germ agglutinins, and potential food allergens.  I mean, I just had a vegan last week, great vegan, but she has osteoporosis in early 30s and her teeth are already getting brittle and having extra cavities because of a lack of mineralization.  So why is that?  Because there’s all kinds of other irritants and toxins that are in our food that are affecting absorption.

Evan Brand:  That’s incredible, yeah.  And I’ve had similar stories and I’ve gone, you know, the kind of on the, I guess on the application side, I’ve also added in like some sublingual B12 and things like that just to help them because they’re–they’re so exhausted.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.  Yeah, exactly.  And I find that a lot of like, let’s say, I’m getting someone to transition over from a vegan-vegetarian diet from–on a functional medicine perspective because they’re low on these aminos, they’re–let’s say, there’s fat-soluble nutrients, right?  A, D, E, and K you can’t get in plant foods and again, beta-carotene ain’t vitamin A, so a lot of people can’t make that transition of beta-carotene to vitamin A especially if you’re hypothyroid, especially take a look at your palms, if you see a slight orange tinge to your palms, you’re not converting that beta-carotene to vitamin A.  So on that note, regarding the vegan solution there–where was I going with that?  Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people that are vegan-vegetarian and they’ll start eating a little bit of meat, and they’ll feel like crap.  They’ll be like, “Look, it’s not good.”  And I’m just like, “No.”  Your digestive system is shutdown.  You are not used to making stomach acid.  You don’t have the physiological equipment turned on to even process that kind of protein and fat, so we gotta add in the enzymes and hydrochloric acid and that makes a massive difference when we’re switching someone over onto a diet.  The enzymes and the acids may be a game changer.

Evan Brand:  Yup, so I think you kind of already alluded to what I was gonna bring up in terms of another trait that you want from your practitioner and that’s someone who sees the picture as a whole.  Now, you know, specialization is good in certain aspects but if you have that, if you’re using a magnifying glass or even a microscope in some cases to zoom in on a patient’s health issues, you’re going to miss the point.  You’re gonna miss what you just mentioned.  You’re gonna miss the fact that they may be low on stomach acid, so you don’t–you’re not able to start north to south if you didn’t see that process.  So do you wanna kinda hit on that string a little bit?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, so once we have the diet in place, we kinda wanna figure out where within that Paleo template, if you will, they’re gonna do best.  So I had 2 vegans this week, “Hey, we’re just trying to get a little bit of egg yolk in and we’re gonna get some pea protein and some additional free-form amino acids.”  So once we have that, because we have such a non-dogmatic approach, we’re gonna be a ble to work with these people.  Now the next thing to layer on top of that is we gotta look at lifestyle, right?  Like forget labs, that’s–that’s gonan be the next thing but where’s the lifestyle?  Like are you chewing your food up?  Are you chewing your food properly?  Are you drinking enough water?  Are you eating within that first 30-45 minutes of getting up if you’re adrenally fatigued?  Are you going 4 or 5 hours without eating?  Are you skipping breakfast?  Are you trying to do intermittent fasting?  Are you doing too much CrossFit and that’s screwing up your adrenals?  Are you going to bed too late, right?  Are you getting cross-contaminated with rice and corn thinking that you’re still gluten-free, right?  These are all other things that need to be factored in to the diet and lifestyle thing and you gotta have a really good nutritional and lifestyle filters and not to bash on the medical doctors, but I find the MDs tend to be ones that miss this because they didn’t have a strong nutritional background in medical school because they don’t have nutrition at medical school for the most part.  I’ve talked to Stanford MDs, they had like a one hour, one credit hour nutritional course that was online, and basically if you just pass the test, you passed the course, and it’s all having to do with like nutritional disease like, you know, beriberi–what’s that?  Oh, that’s a B1 deficiency.  Scurvy–what’s that?  Vitamin C.  So it’s more from a disease perspective, not a functional optimal health perspective.

Evan Brand:  I’m not surprised to hear that, yeah, and Ricketts I’m sure was in there, too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh yeah.

Evan Brand:   Which is–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Vitamin D, yeah.

Evan Brand:  You’re not gonna experience them most of the time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  So we gotta have the diet perspective and the lifestyle perspective.  So the first thing before any supplements, any labs, any fancy schmancy protocols, is you gotta have the diet and the lifestyle, and you gotta say, “How are we gonna customize this diet for me and where I’m at?”  I think that’s super important and we gotta have a general template but I mean, patients that come in, we’ll, you know, we’ll do an SCD approach, maybe with an autoimmune filter on top of it that have a lot of gut issues.  Patients that are more healthy, we may just use a general Paleo template and we may up the carbs if they’re doing a lot more CrossFit and such.  So we–we figure out where they fall on that spectrum and customize.  So that’s kind of the–the foundational layer, the diet and lifestyle layer that any functional nutritionist or functional medicine doctor needs to have.  And that should be a key thing that you interview them on.

Evan Brand:  I like that and just to kinda harp on that a little bit more.  You’ll see the programs out there that are very cookie-cutter and there’s a lot of–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Evan Brand:  A lot of marketing involved in these programs within–within the health space and–and people think that this is a solution because they saw the before and after pictures of someone and hopefully, you know, today we’ve reframed that a little bit and make the distinction that there’s so many unique things going on with your environment, how many toxins you’re exposed to, all of these things that it’s–it’s not in your health decision to go for a cookie-cutter program like that.  So there always needs to be, you know, your specific life factored in to your protocols.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, exactly.  So what step next should we talk about regarding a practitioner?

Evan Brand:  Well, I think just someone who is actually going to speak to you on the same level.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  And you know, that’s what I like about you as well is you have a lot more training and clinic experience and hours than I do but yet we’re still able to connect on the same level.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Evan Brand:  And that’s a huge off-putting thing when a–a patient’s going to a practitioner and they’re getting maybe not belittled but they’re feeling like they’re, you know, a couple inches tall and that they’re not smart and that they need to just bow down and listen as opposed to a good practitioner approach would be to sit down with this person and they should give you a warm good gut feeling and honestly–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  I think you’ll know as soon as the, you know, as soon as the doc comes in or as soon as you just on the phone if you’re doing a, you know, an online consult with one of us, that you’ll know immediately if you’re gonna click or not and based on how you’re treated ultimately I think that’s–it’s a huge thing, man.  Personality is a big deal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I agree.  I always say is you need a plan, right?  When I talk to my patients the big thing that I’m addressing is “When did everything, you know, go south for you?  When did all your symptoms start occurring?  When did that happen?  What was going in your life?  What was–what was the stressors like?”  I wanna know how the broke down because I wanna make sure that we’re incorporating diet and lifestyle strategies that make sure those stressors are neutralized if you will.  But even if they are neutralized, right?  Let’s say the original stress is hitting a nail while you’re driving your car and you get a flat tire.  But if I just drive around in that flat tire for a couple of months, there’s gonna be a lot of collateral damage that happens to my car outside of the original injury.  So let’s say the original injury is stress from work, poor eating, sleep, well, now we changed all that but basically you’ve done the equivalent of driving around on a car with a flat tire for 6 months.  So now you have axle issues, front and alignment issues, everything’s screwed up.  So now we actually have to go in and fix other parts of the car that weren’t even originally damaged in the beginning.  So I kinda see that as how functional medicine works.  The diet and lifestyle strategies fix kind of the environment that set the person up to fail but with functional medicine we’re now digging to the hormonal system damage, right?  Adrenals, thyroid, female hormones or ATM–adrenals, thyroid, and male hormones if it’s a male.  We’re digging into the gut issues, right?  The inflammation, the infections, and the malabsorption.  And then we’re digging into the–the detoxification backup, right?  What’s happening with detox?  So body system one hormones, body system two gut, body system three detoxification.  And I find when the body’s chronically stressed, almost all of my patients who have been sick for at least longer than a year, there’s some kind of infection because their gut has been worn down because of stress, and that infection has come in and is basically preventing them from healing.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, man, you know something that was brilliant you just alluded to without saying it directly is that the healing process is gonna take time and I think that’s another distinction of how to judge your practitioner.  You know, if you go in the conventional model, you go in and, you know, like I–I told you for example, we were thinking that my wife may have had Lyme.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  So we go in and you get the quick fix recommendation, you get the pill for the antibiotics and you run out and that’s it and you won’t see them again until 3-5 years later down the road when something happens and you go back in, and so what I’m getting at here is that you should get a realistic approach to your health journey from your practitioner.  If you go and you meet once and they’re telling you all you gotta do is just buy this, this, and this and this magic pill, and then see you later, then you’re not gonna get better that way.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  No.

Evan Brand:   You need to find someone that’s–that’s down to join you on this journey and you guys are gonna do this thing together for 6 months and even longer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly, like most people for instance, if they ever had to go to court, they get a lawyer.  Most people that, you know, are doing a lot, let’s say in business, they get an accountant or someone to help file their taxes, right?  People–higher people that have done something a lot of times, so they can have the ability to know it’s done right and the efficiency.  So it’s the same thing.  The most important thing we have is our health because our health is which–is the vehicle in which we experience everything, right?  Fun, life, our family, friends, our work, so that vehicle is a clunker if you will.  Everything else is gonna be bad.  So we wanna have an expert, like you’ve dealt–you’ve dealt with hundreds if not thousands of patients.  I dealt with thousands of patients a year.  You want that experience because we’re able to connect the dots and see, “Okay, you’re here.  Alright, here’s the next step.  Here’s the next–”  We can put the dots together where if you just have one person who is on there and equals one journey, everything’s new, everything’s foreign, everything’s different, and it’s hard to have confidence to know one, what to do, but also the order in which to do it.

Evan Brand:  Right.  So–so what would be the wrong order?  I guess, maybe we should–we’ve talked some of the rights, so let’s talk about the wrongs of how someone can really derail themselves if they’re trying to do this on their own, like say they just go jump on an adrenal support or an adrenal glandular because they’ve heard that that’s good for them.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Well, the big thing I see number one is people find out they have an infection, they freak out and treat the infection and they get worse.  They haven’t made any of their changes.  So the big thing is jumping towards treating an infection when you don’t have any other foundation before it.  Number two is their fatigued, they just take a whole bunch of adrenal support which just like throwing gasoline on the fire if you don’t make any other changes.  So there needs to be a systematic approach in my system which is similar to your system.  It’s diet and lifestyle as the foundation, right?  We do an audit of where the physical, chemical, and emotional stress is coming from and we collect some data.  We do some labs to figure out what those underlying chemical stressors are, because a lot of time we may have no idea what they are, right?  If you’re fatigued or brain fog or have anxiety because you have a parasite infection, well, how the heck are you gonna know you have a parasite infection?  You may just think your anxiety is caused by Xanax deficiency or Wellbutrin deficiency.  You may not know that there’s a chemical stressor there.  So we gotta get information to dig in deeper.  So once we dig in the information we gotta ensure that the diet’s good, the lifestyle’s good, the sleep’s good, because we wanna make sure those foundational things are there.  Also on top of that, are you breaking down your food?  Are you having a bowel movement once a day?  How does your food look?  Are you breaking it down?  Do you need enzymes and acids to help break down your food?  Because if you can’t break down your food, even if you’re eating a great diet like an autoimmune diet but you can’t break it down, forget it.  And then once we’ve done that, then we’re moving into the phase 1 where we’re really focusing on the hormones, adrenals, thyroid, and/or female or male hormones, and we–we’d like to do it in a sequence.  Adrenal hormones should always be addressed first, followed by male or female hormones second, and then thyroid typically last.  Typically in that order.  It may reverse based on certain situations but that’s a good general order.  Typically thyroid’s either second of third depending on what’s going, and we hit it in that order.  And once we’ve kinda stabilized the hormonal system, then we go to the gut killing.  Then we go to the infections because dealing with an infection can be stressful on the body.  Your body has to deal with the biotoxins and the lithocholic acid and the endotoxins and the mycotoxins, basically all of the dead soldiers if you will from the infection, and we have to process those–those skeletons in you will.

Evan Brand:  Right and yeah.  I–I wanna get better at analogies because I love yours so much.  But–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It’s taken me years to get these things up because doctors create this language that’s like meant to make patients feel disempowered, and I wanna just take that language and say, “Screw it.”  We’re gonna use words and analogies and stories that actually connect with what’s happening because if you–if you understand a concept you never have to memorize it, right?  If the concept–if you understand the concept, it’s there.  You can never forget it, like concept I just said with the, you know, the–the so-called dead soldiers and the debris and like you don’t have to memorize that, you got the concept.  I don’t have to talk about Herxheimer’s reaction and all these things, that’s what it is.  But what the heck’s a Herxheimer?  If I give you the concept and the analogy, you got it.  You never have to memorize it, it’s there.

Evan Brand:   Totally, yeah.  In analogy, I was picturing when you were talking about that kind of why you need to get these support systems in place first is, I mean, that’s basically a flood is coming and all you’re doing is putting up a few sandbags, that’s all you have.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Evan Brand:  You don’t have a good foundation–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Evan Brand:  You’re gonna get wiped out and the flood is–is gonna take over.  So–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  So and I think that would be another thing is, your doctor needs to tell you what’s going on, where are you now, what’s your vision next month, what’s your vision 3-6 months from now, what’s the plan?  And like with my patients, I graduate them from phase 1 to phase 2 because I need compliance from my patients.  I need to make sure they’re doing what–they’re doing their part, right?  Doctor is latin for teacher.  So I’m doing a lot of teaching.  I’m also doing a lot of coaching and motivation because I need to make sure they’re doing what they’re doing.  I need to hold them accountable.  Sometimes patients need a pat in the back when they’re doing good and sometimes a–a kick in the butt when they’re–when they’re doing bad.

Evan Brand:  Yup.  Yeah, I like that.  Yeah, docēre to teach, yeah, and–and that is part of the process and you’re doing it together.  You didn’t say reprimand or you didn’t say gawk at or–or talk down.  You’re teaching.  It’s a–it’s a–it should be a fun, enjoyable, you know, process for people and so if you’re miserable with your practitioner, maybe this is another good key here, is don’t be afraid to fire the practitioner.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, yup.  Ab–absolutely and sometimes you know, the practitioner–I’ve had to fire patients.  Because, you know, I put my reputation out there with every patient I work with and some patients, every now and then you get really difficult patients and there’s a lack of compliance and it’s really hard because you wanna be able to help someone but you need a certain level, a baseline of compliance and if that compliance isn’t there, it’s hard.

Evan Brand:   Yup.  So I’m trying to think if I had–I had one more in my brain and I lost it, so I didn’t know if you had any other good qualities for a practitioner.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I think, you know, just kinda tooting our horns is free information.  I mean, you have 300 or hundreds of different podcasts.  I have 160 podcasts and over 200 YouTube videos and almost 100 blog articles, lots of free information that shows people what our brand is about, what our system is about because you need–there’s too much stuff out there to go over in a consult, so you need lots of stuff that can be gone over in a podcast or a YouTube video or, you know, on the weekend by checking out a free blog or something.  So lots of good information to support everything in the consult, I think, is important.  It’s a–it’s a value-added that I make sure all my patients have access to and I know you do the same as well.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, right.  It’s–it’s not like we just popped on and “Here we are, we’re gonna help you.”  I mean, there’s thousands– probably thousands of hours that you can spend reviewing all of the trench work, I guess–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  I would call it that you and I have both posted for people.  So all of that stuff’s there if you’re not ready to actually get committed.  This will be kind of the stuff to maybe inspire you to think, “Huh, maybe this isn’t normal for me and feel exhausted but when I try to lay down on the pillow at night, I’m wide awake, and this video here explains why.  Huh, maybe it is time for me to get tested.”  So, you know, that’s kind of a good–just a good way to get familiar with the concepts if you’re just new to this whole space and you’ve been led down the conventional route and it has failed you or made you sicker than, you know, always have hope.  I think that’s maybe my last good quality is you wanna find a practitioner that is going to encourage you and that has hope for you because if you just feel like you’re number 62375, then that’s all you are and that’s how you’re gonna feel, and you’re not going to leave empowered from your consultation.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes, I agree.  I think also when the doctor is sitting there and talking with you about the labs they’re recommending, you always wanna ask yourself, “How is this addressing the root cause?  How is this getting to the root cause?”  That’s always a question that needs to be in the back of the patient’s mind and I always stress it with the patient pro-actively, but the patient needs to be asking the doctor, “How is this getting to the root cause?”  And also looking and prioritizing what labs.  So when I sit down with my patients and recommend labs, they’re always on a priority scale.  We’ll recommend between 1 in 5 labs or 1 in 4 labs with each patient depending on how sick they are and how fast they wanna get better, and we prioritize it from 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.  And I always prioritize them and there’s some labs out there depending on, you know, how much extra income a patient wants to put on labs, I’m not a huge fan of food allergy testing.  I’m not because anyone with a leaky gut, anything they consistently eat, they’re gonna develop a food allergenic response to it.  So I’m not a big fan with food allergy testing, yet sometimes I will use it for patients that are uncompliant.  I’ll use it for autistic children who are eating terrible diets and their parents don’t wanna cut out their food.  And I’ll also use it for patients that are just allergic to everything across the board and maybe we can gleam a little bit of extra info but for the most part, there’s always a relative rotation element to the diet where we’re getting variety in it and we’re rotating what we love so we’re not developing food intolerances based on that food slipping through the tight junctions of that leaky gut because our gut’s inflamed.  So that’s–

Evan Brand:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  One thing that’s really important.  You wanna comment on that, Evan?

Evan Brand:  Well, no, I was just gonna say that I’ve–I’ve had great experience rotating my diet as well–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Evan Brand:  Because I’ve loved things like coconut so much that I’ve overdone it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Evan Brand:  Things like leafy greens, I’ve loved them so much that I do have to cycle on and off of these different nutrients so that’s something to keep in mind.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Probably eggs and bacon, too, right?

Evan Brand:  Oh, totally eggs, yeah, and bacon.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I mean, Paul Chek, he said something early on in my career that resonated with me.  He said, “If you love it, rotate it.  If you love it, rotate it.”  So if you really love what you’re eating, get a–an element of rotation there.  And again, how fastidious do you have to be?  Again, the more sick you are, the more fastidious you have to be.  Okay?

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And the next thing is supplement recommendations.  So supplements are powerful tools.  So number one, you wanna make sure your doctor is recommending the highest quality supplements.  Not a big fan of MLM products, not a big fan of that stuff.  There are some decent things out there but I’m a fan of dealing with the highest quality supplement companies out there.  Tier 1 companies.  Companies that are independently tested, that use the highest raw materials, and you know, will probably cost more than your products at Whole Foods in general or at Costco.  So a good product will cost you a little bit of money, but again I always tell patients the most expensive supplement is the one that doesn’t work or the one that contains fillers or additives or a whole bunch of junk in it.

Evan Brand:  Totally, yeah, and I–I think a good rule of thumb is if it’s a product that’s available on a shelf or this–not always the case, but if it’s on Amazon and it’s not exclusively sold to practitioners then there may be a chance to raise some eyebrows and I’ve kinda switched away from some of the companies I used to use before becoming–becoming a practitioner and I’ve kinda strayed away from those and really upgraded the quality and I’ve noticed the difference in how it works and when you look at some of the articles on ingredient quality, something could say rhodiola but if it’s not extracted to, you know, the 3% rosavins that you actually need–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Evan Brand:  Or it’s extracted only 1% or you know, et cetera, then, yeah, it’s expensive.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It is.  It is.  And also I’m very leery of patients buying their supplements on Amazon or eBay.  I have multiple supplement reps from the companies that I work with directly so I purchase directly from the manufacturer so there’s no middlemen, and I have seen these major supplement companies that do their quality assurance, they will actually buy their products on Amazon from some of these third-party distributors and they will buy the product and they will actually send it back to the lab and test it, and they’re finding literally like rice flour.  Like just innocuous supplements, innocuous compounds in the supplements.  And if I get someone who’s taking rice flour and then they’re gluten-sensitive and inflamed, they aren’t gonna get better.  Or if they’re getting a product, you know, that’s counterfeit, they’re just not gonna get better and it’s–it’s really difficult, you know, to help a patient when, you know, they’re trying to say 10% on a product but then they’re getting something that’s totally crap, they end losing 100% in order to save that 10% so it’s gets difficult especially when you wanna make sure you’re delivering the highest quality that can happen and it does happen and the New York Attorney General did a whole raid on GNC and all these different stores and found that majority of their products didn’t even contain what was on the label.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, Walgreen’s I believe.  CVS, too.  I don’t wanna–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  GNC.

Evan Brand:  Throw everybody under the bus without knowing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.  And not to mention like they found like for instance, I think it was last year, they found 10 mcg of lead in the female multivitamin at the vitamin shop.  So you get–you gotta–you gotta be careful, so I know the people that I work with, the people that you work with, they’re doing third-party independent-tested lab assessments and they’re also buying the highest quality raw material, right?  If you see fish oil, let’s say, Kirkland’s Costco fish oil like 300 caps for $10 and then you see like a higher quality fish oil for $30, there’s a reason why.  And part of the reason why is that fish oil, most of the cost actually goes into the filtration process not the fish oil.  So when you buy a crappy fish oil for cheap, you’re getting what you pay for.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, so here’s the–here’s the official story, I wanted to make sure we were accurate here.  So it was New York State Attor–State Attorney General and he instructed Target, GNC, Walgreen’s and Walmart to immediately cease selling a number of scam herbal supplements, they–4 out–4 out of 5 products did not even contain the herbs and their ingredients listed that contain like you said powdered rice, house plants, and asparagus.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Fraudulent projects–products included Echinacea, ginseng, St. John’s Wort, garlic, gingko biloba, and saw palmetto.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  God, that’s terrible.

Evan Brand:  And I use those–I use those specific ingredients and I’m sure you do, too.  So if we were just sending people, “Yeah, just go down to Target and go buy it.”  I mean, that would be not–that’s not a good practitioner quality, there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  No, no, and you really do get what you pay for.  And that’s why I’m working on creating a private label line so I have even more–my own quality, my own custom label line, so I can ensure a higher quality than before, because I–I mean for me, it’s everything.  I want to make sure my patients get the best results.  So if they’re not getting enough of this B vitamin, this B6 or this herb to wipe out an infection, we may not get them better as fast, and I–I need to be able to be confident that what they’re getting is exactly on the label.  So like for instance, with one of the probiotic companies that I use, they put on there for their CFUs, the colony forming units, the put on there how much will be in the probiotic 2 years after it expires.  So when you say–when you see a hundred billion units per serving that’s what’s in there 2 years after it expires.  So they literally put double or triple the amount in there to ensure you’re gonna get what’s on the label 2 years from now.  That’s what you get when you’re using a higher quality company.

Evan Brand:  That’s great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So Evan, I think the next question after that is how many supplements is right for you?  So dealing with patients, when we create an adrenal program for instance, we’ll start with anywhere between 2-6 products, and we try to work on what the patient needs, where they’re at, how sick they are and how fast they wanna get better, and also what’s their emotional tolerance, can they handle a whole bunch of pills or not?  So we have to have that conversation and some patients that are sicker and wanna get better faster, we need more nutrients, we need–we need extra support especially if they’re life’s stressful, their nutrition isn’t perfect, they’re maybe not sleeping the best, we may have to give a few extra products.  So I think that conversion needs to be had with the doctor and with me, it’s a sliding scale of how much I recommend and I customize that with the patient.  And sometimes if we’re–have an adrenal program lined up with a good multi, a fish oil, and some adrenal support, and let’s say we have a–a gut-killing program lined up and a person has a couple of different gut infections, it may be a fair amount of products.  So you have to sit there and talk with your doctor and figure out what you’re on, why you’re on it, figure out if it’s in your comfort zone and also find the timeframe of how you’re on–how long you’re gonna be on things and when you can consolidate.  Some patients are under so much stress they just–they need that, and that’s just how it is and they feel better and perform better with it.  So there has to be that conversation and it can’t be like, “Oh, you’re on 10 things, your doctor’s, you know, ripping you off,” it needs to be “Why,” like, “Did you have a conversation with your doctor about that?  Does it make sense?  Do you know why you’re on everything?  Is your doctor making sure your diet’s good?  Is the lifestyle and the sleep good?”  You gotta have that conversation.  It’s gotta be individualized.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, I–I’ve find a lot of people that come in and they fill out the–the little form.  What are you taking?  Supplements, herbs, medications, if I do prime them about those, “Why are you taking those?”  “Oh, I don’t know.  I just–I read it was good.”  And so there may be some imbalance created, I mean, especially with things like zinc.  I mean, throwing off the zinc and copper balance for example.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Evan Brand:  I’ve seen tons of people.  “Oh well, I read zinc is good for testosterone so I just started taking 50 mg of it because I’ve read it on a bodybuilding article.”  That’s not the wisest idea and you–you’re coming in the door with, you know, tons of supplements–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  That you actually may get helped by removing those supplements and then just completely starting from ground zero again.  So–so always being open, I guess would be a–I don’t know–a good–a good way to come into the door because you never know what’s gonna need to be adjusted.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I totally agree.  And there’s a site I use called the HealthAliciousNess.  HealthAliciousNess.com and it’s a great site looking at all of the various nutrients in foods.  So like when we have a person that, let’s say, on a test comes back with low in zinc, we’ll look up the top 10 zinc foods and we’ll make sure those foods are in their diet.  Or if they’re low in calcium or-or potassium, we’ll look at those foods and we’ll see if those foods are in their diet, and again, this is part of the reason why we kinda have a Paleo template is because those top 10 foods almost all of the time are staples in a Paleo template, go figure, right?

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So the diet and the supplement part, it needs to be customized and I do with some patients sometimes that are sick and not feeling good but they don’t wanna take a lot of supplements and that’s okay, we just have to make sure the diet’s lined up and perfect and you’re managing stress and your life isn’t too much stressful and you’re sleeping good, and we also have to kinda gauge your expectations of healing.

Evan Brand:  Right, yeah­_­–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  If you have maj–

Evan Brand:  Yeah.  I was gonna say–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  If you have a major infection and you don’t wanna take maybe 1 product, you may not get that infection cleared out.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, or if you’re a teacher and you have the summers off and you have the time that you’re gonna be relaxed enough to actually be more compliant then maybe you can skip out on a couple but if you’re high flying day by night person then you’re gonna need a little bit more support there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, and I do adrenal test pre-imposed and it takes a long time to heal the adrenals, just doing lifestyle and diet alone.  Typically it takes like a couple of months of vacation time with perfect diet and lifestyle and the way I look at it is “Well, why don’t you do that and take the supplements and super charge the healing even faster?”

Evan Brand:  Totally, yeah, I mean even if someone’s still working 40-hour work weeks, I mean, sometimes I try to estimate a year even–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Depending on the person.  What would you say?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, we look at their adrenals test and based on their adrenals whether they’re normal, stage 1, stage 2, or stage 3 and that’s basically an indicator looking at how little cortisol or how much cortisol they’re making in conjunction with the rhythm of their cortisol and in conjunction with DHEA or sex hormone levels, we can base a good timeframe of healing.  So stage 1 is 3-6 months, stage 2 is 6-9, and stage 3 is 9-12 months.  And anyone that’s chronically ill with multiple infections 1-2 years minimum.

Evan Brand:  And that’s actually really fast if you’ve been sick for 20 years.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It’s really fast.  I mean, yeah, especially when conventional medicine will probably just throw you some anti-inflammatory COX2 or NSAID drugs, maybe some prednisone, and maybe some anti-depressants.  I mean, that’s not ever gonna fix the problem and will probably make things worse down the road.

Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So I think we went over some really good stuff.  I mean, I think the summary would be make sure your doctor has a approach that addresses and looks at diet and understand why they recommend their diet and make sure there’s customization within that diet, number one.  Number two, make sure there’s lifestyles being looked at, meal timing, stress, meditation, exercise, sleep, blood sugar; make sure that’s being look at.  Number three is what’s the approach, right?  What labs are we gonna order to get to the root cause, right?  And are we addressing the other stressors that were in our life that caused the problem to begin with and then also, how are we gonna recommend the supplements?  How do–how do we prescribe them?  What are the phases of care?  How I do get to the next phase?  What are our markers of success, objective and subjective?

Evan Brand:  Yup.  I think you covered it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I think it’s a really good place.  Do you want to add anything to that, Evan?

Evan Brand:  No, that–I mean, that was killer, man.  That was more concise that I could have made it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Alright, good.  And again, I’m available over at JustInHealth.com and you can take a look at the free Thyroid video series and Female Hormone video series, and again my most successful patients–my most–the patients that I’m able to help the best and the fastest, they are the most educated, so anyone whether you’re gonna work with myself, Evan or another great doctor out there, get educated.  The education process is a huge part in healing because it creates compliance and it’s gonna allow you to not self-sabotage yourself because you’re already gonna have the good subconscious gems of what you gotta do to heal.

Evan Brand:  I love it, yeah.  And it saves us a lot of time not explaining why that piece of bread is not gonna help you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, my gosh.  I fight with so many patients on things that we could just be putting more of that time towards actionable items versus fighting on the old.  So the more you get educated outside of the doctor’s office in call, the better it is and the more money you’ll save yourself, too.

Evan Brand:  Amen.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Alright, Evan.  Hey, great talking to you, man.  We’ll talk very soon.

Evan Brand:  Likewise.