Natural Solutions to Address Eczema | Podcast #361
If you live with eczema, you know what it’s like to search for relief from red, itchy skin. You’ve probably already tried a variety of products. Unfortunately, some items can leave your skin feeling drier and even more irritated.
Dr. J and Evan emphasize not giving up hope yet! In addition to medications, there are many options you can try at home to help with your symptoms. They talk about drugs and natural remedies that may help replenish moisture and protect your skin’s natural barrier.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
4:29 – What is Eczema and Its Signs and Symptoms?
6:51 – The Comparison between Eczema from Rosacea
10:38 – What to eat and not to eat when you have eczema
16:20 – Helpful products that can help avoid and or alleviate Eczema
19:25 – The link of glutathione in skin conditions
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: In the house with Evan. Today, we’re gonna be talking about natural solutions to address eczema at the root cause level. Really excited to chat about this topic here today. Evan, how we doing my friend?
Evan Brand: Hey, doing better. I was super stiff over the weekend so I thought, my God maybe we’ll do a whole, like stiff neck podcast but for now I’m mobile and I’m on my feet so that’s good and excellent. We’re recording this in December and winter is usually a time when people start coming of the woodwork with more skin issues and I think a lot of it is because they’re indoors more than in spring, summer, fall and so if they’re indoors and they don’t have good indoor air quality, they’re gonna be exposed to more dust, mites, molds and other toxins which may aggravate or irritate the skin. Also, in general, when you start to kick on the heater, you’re gonna be drying out your home and so generally your humidity level in your home may be like in our house it’s give or take 10% lower than it is in the summer so with the whole house dehumidifiers, I keep our house at 40% in the summer but in the winter with the heater on, man, we’re down into the mid20s, 25, 28% humidity. That’s pretty dang dry so sometimes it could just simply be an environmental change like that but I think some of it is also related to the toxins that people are getting exposed to. And now instead of playing outside with their kids, now they’re inside all day with their kids and their skin is reacting to those toxins so you’re really got to get your air quality dialed in and the winter to me just exposes the poor air quality that people have.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100%. I mean especially this time of the year, we have our humidifiers on, it has a tiny bit of moisture into, um, the ventilation system because it’s like, you know, in the upper teens, low 20s so just adds a little bit in there just to take the edge off, I mean that can be helpful to add a little more moisture to the air obviously, you can do more moisturizer on the skin. Remember that is gonna be your internal moisturizer. So high quality coconut oil, grass-fed butter if we can tolerate those things. That’s gonna be the best way to do it but obviously we can add more moisture directly onto the skin but we wanna always internally moisturize with good fat and again hydration as well that’s the carrier for that moisture to the skin so that’s a really important thing. I remember in college, just having chronically dry like my legs were really dry all the time and I realized, you know, at that time I was trying to be a little bit lower fat because I thought that was healthier and I started kind of understanding okay more coconut oil, more saturated fats, I’m like all right and then I noticed the dryness really improved and went away so fat consumption is really important thing for natural moisture to skin.
Evan Brand: You know, what is interesting now that you mentioned that, I mean, years ago, like my wife and I first got together, I mean, we were eating grass-fed beef but I wasn’t really prioritizing the fats, I wasn’t necessarily seeking them out, I was just maybe cooking with a little bit of butter but I wasn’t intentionally going for good fats and I remember in the wintertime having to put lotion on, man, I don’t use lotion at all anymore. I literally don’t need it, my hands are perfectly dry, they’re not itchy, they’re not patchy like it’s a miracle and you kind of forget where you’ve come from. Once things start to improve, you forget that that used to be a problem where I used to have to put a lotion on. Imagine how much of a hit to the lotion industry you could create if you could simply get everyone optimizing the strategies we’re talking about today, I bet we could reduce the need for lotion by 80%.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, totally, 100%.
Evan Brand: And to mention conventional lotions are actually one of the big triggers of eczema because when you look at conventional lotions and some of these products that are advertised, you’re getting into propylene glycol, you’re getting into artificial fragrances, you’re getting into many, many synthetic toxic chemicals that people are lathering on their skin just to supposedly fix their skin but they’re actually making their skin worse so you mentioned like topical coconut oil. There’s many good, like, organic shea butter type lotions out there, like Dr. Bronner’s, they make a really good lotion, um, the everyone brand, I know they make a good soap, I believe they make a good lotion too. Trader Joe’s, they had a pretty good quality, low priced lotion that was really clean ingredients so that’s the problem is like people are trying to do things to fix their skin but they’re actually making it worse with these topical toxins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Now, when it comes to eczema, eczema does have an autoimmune component, right? So, eczema is a type of dermatitis, just to be 100% clear. So, think of, you know, dermatitis, think of, like skin inflammation, essentially dermatitis, the derma, that’s the second layer of the skin, epidermis first. Derma, um, dermis is the second layer and then essentially, um, titis is inflammation and so you have different types of dermatitis. Okay, so you have atopic which is kind of the one that eczema, uh, falls into. Atopic is the major one that you’re going to see there. There’s other kind you’ll see contact dermatitis which is kind of what poison ivy kind of falls into. There’s this dyshidrotic eczema, where you get more blisters. There’s hand eczema, there’s neurodermatitis, which is another one as well. Uh, there’s nummular eczema as well and then there’s one last one called stasis dermatitis. Those are the big ones. So, atopic is gonna be where eczema falls under and there’s an autoimmune component, there’s all kinds of studies showing that people that has celiac, Crohn’s, irritable bowel disease issues, lots of different autoimmune issues, there’s an increased risk of eczema, so there’s an autoimmune component there and if you look at a lot of the medications that are used to address eczema, you’re gonna typically have like your anti-inflammatory steroids like cortisone which are gonna be topically rubbed on that area. The problem with that is, it tends to not actually fix it. It just calms it down but it can also thin out that skin and make it more prone to have a flare-up later on so it can be helpful in the short run but you’re kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul, right? And then you have other medications like, um, Eucrisa or Elidel that are, like, kind of more on the calcineurin inhibitors. They’re kind of an immunosuppressant so there’s definitely like an autoimmune component there because you’re coming down the immune response to kind of like chill out, um, the eczema and it can be helpful, those kind of medications could be helpful if you’re working on fixing the underlying root cause, the problem is most people don’t address the root cause and they just rub these medications on and then the problems continue to stay at the root level and so over time it’s gonna come back and get worse and worse and worse because you can’t just suppress the immune system in the long run and expect for a lasting solution. So, these medications may be okay if you’re working with someone to really get to the root cause so that’s pretty much what conventional medicine has for options. It’s gonna have those things. Now, just kind of highlight, um, you have eczema, you have Rosacea and psoriasis, they kind of have an overlap, all right, there’s like an overlap with these three conditions and I want to just kind of show a comparison guide for this because it’s really important. I want to just highlight this really quickly. Um, okay, here’s what I want you guys to see. All right, perfect. So, out of the gates, right, all of these skin issues are gonna have redness with all of them right, eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, they’re both gonna itch so there’s gonna be similar out of the gates the big thing with psoriasis, you’re gonna see a lot of the silver and white scales. That’s gonna be psoriasis and the difference with rosacea, you’re gonna see a lot more flushing across the skin, all right. Both are gonna have dry skin, both can have raised bumps. Psoriasis sometimes raised here says none. But the big issue is rosacea, more of a flushness with the redness. Psoriasis, more of the silver, um, scaliness. That’s the big difference. Just so, if someone’s like, what do I have, right, um, that’s kind of the big thing out of the gates there. Hope that makes sense. And there’s a couple of things I wanted to highlight with eczema is food components make a huge difference so autoimmunity, autoimmune diet plays a big role, really reducing inflammation makes a big role. Trying to cut out a lot of the scents and fragrances can play a huge role so of course like free and clear types of, um, laundry detergent, you can do all has a free and clear, Seventh Generation has a free and clear. There’s all kind of different brands that have a free and clear, um, all’s recommended by the, um, eczema dermatology association. So, you really wanna cut out all scent’s fragrances, dryer sheets that play a huge role out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s a big, big stressor and it’s a big stressor for people like me that have to smell it, people don’t wanna smell that crap anyway but you’re poisoning yourself, you’re poisoning your children too, you’re sending them off with those synthetic fragrances and those are irritating to the skin but also those can affect the hormones too, I mean, synthetic fragrances, in general, can have some xenoestrogen type compounds to them, meaning that you’re gonna be increasing the estrogen. We’re in a highly estrogenized society and that creates a big problem. Hormonal changes, hormonal imbalances, they are a big factor in skin issues and we see that with a lot of women that have irregular menstrual cycles or maybe heavy bleeding or something that happened especially after childbirth. A lot of times, they’ll be skin issues that would pop out and we fix it in a roundabout way and I want to go back to one thing you said earlier which was the fact that people that have eczema, they may be linked or more common in people to have issues like celiac and that of course takes you to the big gatekeeper of these skin issues which is the gut and so you and I found with hundreds and hundreds, now we’re into the thousands of clients between us that the major way to fix the skin is to obviously do some of the easy low hanging fruit like you said get rid of scented detergents and all that but it’s really focusing on the gut because if you have gut infections, I mean, if you even look at like some of my very, very old earliest YouTube videos, when I have H. pylori and other gut infections, my skin was nowhere to where it is now in terms of my skin health. My skin health in the last seven years has gotten way better and honestly, it’s just been by working on the gut, my diet was already dialed in back then so I just wanna address one thing with people which is that if you’ve already gone polio or autoimmune or keto or carnivore, you’re eating good quality food and you’re still struggle with your skin, you’ve got to dig deeper, it’s time to look in and see if you’ve got these gut infections, bacterial overgrowth, candida, all these things inside your gut are gonna be making toxins disrupting your gut barrier. So, I don’t care how much bone broth you drink, you’re not gonna fix your skin if you don’t fix these infections.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely! I mean there’s two categories, right? Infants and kiddos, right, in the first year of life, they’re gonna be a lot more sensitive because of their immune system, so, I mean, of course, the big thing you have to look at is high quality breast milk and really got to look at what the mom’s consuming. The mom’s consuming a lot of potential food allergens. I recommend an autoimmune diet out of the gates. Sometimes, we even have to look at potentially pulling out salicylates. Salicylates can be anti-nutrients in vegetables. Here’s a couple things out of the gates, right. Salicylates are natural chemicals found in many fruits and vegetables, they’re really good things and so out of the gate, I wanna pull these foods out as a means of calming down and chilling out the immune system. Uh, this is really important so you can see, kind of the negligible, the low, the moderate, the high and the very high. I just try to tell patients to, like focus on the 80-20 because there’s so many foods that are, like, really good for you that are high in salicylates and a lot of times it’s not about being perfect, it’s about calming down, you know, kind of the 80-20. So, what are the 20 of things that you eat the most frequently that are the most high and we’ll try to sub that and put that in the negligible to low category that can be really helpful as well. So, you can see the different vegetables, you can see the different nuts and seeds, you can see the different, obviously, meats tend to be on the lower side unless you’re doing a lot of processed stuff, that’s where you get into trouble there.
Evan Brand: That’s why so many people do so well with carnivore-ish diets. That’s kind of what I say I’m eating carnivore-ish because I still do berries, I still do rice and I feel okay with that, um, I still do on occasion, I’ll do some organic pecans as kind of a treat and those are delicious and those don’t appear to affect my gut or my skin. So, in general, if you’re going for more animal based good-quality fats, you’re knocking out as you mentioned, you’re knocking out salicylates, um, you’re knocking down lectins, you’re knocking down oxalates, you’re knocking down all these things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Here’s my oxalate guy. We may wanna look at oxalates as well. There’s kind of a members area for my patients here. If you’re a patient, you have access to this area, top right-hand corner of my website. And you can see I have a low oxalate handout as well and again I don’t recommend going crazy out of the gates. I just try to look at what’s the 20% of food that you eat the most and let’s try to cut out the high stuff out, right, and then sub that with the lower one out of the gates. That can make a big difference especially if you have a baby who has a lot of eczema issues. If we can really get a good autoimmune diet, kind of get the oxalates and the salicylates down, that could make a big difference. But, like Evan said, we have to look at gut microbiome stuff, we have to look at things you may be getting in contact with in regards to detergents, even essential oils on the skin. Some of these things can be stressful on the body, so we really got to calm all of these things down. Got to look at good bacteria, maybe have to address bacterial imbalances. Again, if you’re not a baby, you’re an adult, we have to look at the hormones because of times if you’re chronically stressed hormonally with the adrenals or you have estrogen dominant issues as a woman that can affect your immune system and that can make you prone to having some immune imbalances and your immune system is kind of hyper responding and overly sensitive and of course we definitely test the gut because we have SIBO, bacterial overgrowth, dysbiosis, H. pylori, fungal overgrowth, right, fungus and candida can actually produce oxalates too so you can have endogenous oxalate production via candida. These things can stress out your body thus stressing out your immune system. So, really looking at the adrenals, looking at cortisol, looking at the female hormones, estrogen and progesterone dominance, really looking at the gut are you able to digest and break things down, are the anti-nutrients in vegetables a problem. Again, I hate cutting out the anti-nutrients in vegetables, if we don’t have to because there’s a lot of good food there. So, cooking these foods down can help but it’ll lower it a notch. It won’t take a high food to make it a low food. It may not make a high food, maybe like a medium food. So, cooking obviously, avoiding a lot of the raw salad steaming sauteing can help a little bit and kind of lessen that load for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. Detox is important and detox can get screwed up by your gut infections. We’ve talked about this before but there’s a pathway called glucuronidation in the body and this gets impaired due to bacterial overgrowth. So, sometimes we’re coming in and fixing the gut but then we’re also trying to upregulate these detox pathways so that could include specific support for the liver that may include binders that may include liver gallbladder combinations, maybe there’s some acid and enzymes that we throw in. You know, when you look at someone’s face or just their skin in general, to me, it’s really the window into their gut, into their immune system. So, if you see somebody with just major, major issues with their face generally, there’s a gut problem, I had a woman, she was young when she first started with me, I think she was around 20, 21, and we got on facetime together and my God, her face was so terrible, she hardly wanted to be seen on facetime but she said, I think, it’s important for you to see me, to see how bad this is, I’m like, yeah, I appreciate you showing me this, and man by the time we got through working through some of the tests and the gut protocols her skin was flawless and I even had to ask her like do you have make-up on, I just want to clarify and confirm do you have makeup. No, I don’t. so, it’s amazing to see what you can do and timeline wise, I mean, we’re talking maybe a few months but within a couple of years, I would say you could completely reverse many of the skin issues that people are suffering with and that’s actually a really short timeline, I mean, we’ve seen people that have had skin issues for decades and as you mentioned they’ve been on these topical steroids or other medications for a very long time and not once has the dermatologist ever said, hey maybe you need to go animal-based with your diet and see how that goes. I’ve never heard that conversation, if you’re a dermatologist out there practicing like that let us know maybe we can chat with you, but in general, that conversation is not happening at all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m in a lot of eczema groups online, on Facebook and it’s amazing how resistant parents are and I just, people are, in general, to change in their diet when it comes to eczema. It’s unbelievable. They’re like oh, I’m gonna go get this food allergy test from there, like, dermatologist and like most of the time that’s just like an IgE kind of skin prick test and then again IgE stuffs, you know, it’s okay, but it’s, that’s kind of more on the anaphylactic side that tends to not be the massive driver of course, you know, if you have any IgE stuff like environmentally like dander and cedar in Austin, obviously we can get a really good high quality HEPA filter with a activated charcoal filter as well to kind of filter a lot of this stuff out to keep the indoor environment good. I’ll put, we’ll put some links down below for the recommended air filters that we use with our patients. Cutting out all of the scents and fragrances in detergents in laundry, everything, no dryer sheets, all that stuff makes a big difference. Keeping the skin moist does help because if the skin’s already dry, you’re more prone to itching, if you itch it, you increase the inflammation, it’s this vicious cycle and the problem is if you’re kind of naturally oriented a lot of the things that may have like an essential oil or something in there that may be more natural that you may think is helpful because the immune system is already hypersensitive that may actually flare it up and make it worse and so one of the things that we’ll use, it’s just a really clean super hypoallergenic moisturizer. I’ll put a couple in the links down below that I found to be successful, there’s a couple off the back of my head, I could think of, um, uh, Vanicream makes one called Vaniply, that’s a really excellent one. There’s one by a La Roche-Posay, it’s a Lipikar Baume, that’s another really good hypoallergenic one. Aveeno makes one that’s decent with a little bit of oatmeal in there, the colloid and the oatmeal can be helpful but keeping that skin moist can be helpful so you’re not scratching. It won’t fix it though, right, there’s no magic solution but it will at least help to calm it down and then I find like if you’re a mom and you’re breastfeeding your kid, you have to change the foods that you’re eating because that is going to get passed down to your child and can stimulate their immune system and so typically for a good month or so and then we do a very methodical reintroduction, I know with my wife, eggs were a big trigger for a while and now she can do eggs and like my kiddos can do eggs but for a while, they couldn’t and so we had to keep that really under control for a bit and probiotics did help as well and really helping to support good bacteria help but we had to really do everything kind of full cycle and we did use a little bit of that Elidel calcineurin inhibitor, just a little bit to calm it down but it’d be like foa a day or two and then we would do all the other things and salicylates were a little bit problematic as well so we did try to cut some of those things down and it’s like the, imagine the immune system’s all wound up and we’re just trying to calm it down, calm it down and once you have it below a threshold so to speak, you kind of have a little bit more wiggle room but until you calm it down to that level, you don’t quite have that ability to move.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. There was one other paper too we were looking at on glutathione and this was just a, it was a quite old study but still very, very timely in terms of like glutathione. We have it in our conversations all the time and depressed glutathione levels were observed in patients with psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis and other skin issues and so we know that glutathione is gonna be depleted when you’re exposed to toxins whether it’s chemical whether it’s mold toxins or other things, we often see glutathione levels depleted and this is one of your master antioxidants and so you may need to work into the detox protocol, sometimes that can aggravate people so you just gotta work with the practitioner on this because I’ve taken too much glutathione and reacted poorly to it before so you got to go slow and steady with it, sometimes it’s gonna flare people up if they’ve got a big toxic load and it starts mobilizing things that may overwhelm your system and you may feel worse or have some sort of like a die off or what feels like a Horkheimer reaction. What about zinc too? Do you want hit on like some nutrients for skin too?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, I think, out of the gates, like probiotics are really helpful. Omega-3 plays a really great role in anti-inflammatory. Vitamin D plays a good role in modulating the immune system. If you’re doing glutathione and you’re breastfeeding mom, be careful because you don’t wanna overly mobilize toxins out of the breastmilk, so you may wanna go really gentle on that or maybe a little bit of NAC and just kind of naturally, you know, increase that very slowly as long as you don’t have any die off, you’re probably okay. I would say zinc is also gonna be excellent as well, it’s gonna be a good building block for the skin, really good building block for the immune system so is selenium, so some of these may just get in a really good multivitamin, uh, some you may get from eating high quality grass-fed meat, fish, some green vegetables, seafood. So, a lot of these may come from whole foods sources, as well as, supplement sources as well. And then, you know, we have some really good anti-inflammatory things that we can do whether it’s curcumin, resveratrol, these are kind of plant-based antioxidants that are very powerful, also, there could be a histamine connection as well. And so, histamine from the environment, from allergens, you know, good air filtration is excellent and then we can do things to help modulate the immune system, like quercetin, like stinging Nettle. These can be very helpful and very calming on the immune system in regards to the histamine response. Anything else you wanna highlight there?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. I think it’s a good start olive lead, we use a lot too and some of the gut protocols and that may help some of the skin issues too. So, it really just depends. I don’t want people to just go out and buy everything we just mentioned and assume it’s gonna fix their issues, I think it’s really important to try to get a good work-up and figure out where your issues are coming from, I think it’s great to be able to look into some of the topical stuff, get rid of your conventional shampoos and conditioners, go high quality organic products with your skin care but beyond that you really need to get some investigation done and figure out what the heck is going on because for years I was doing good clean products topically but I still have skin issues and it was all because of my gut. So, I really encourage people to reach out if you need help. Dr. J and I work with people around the world so we can get at home lab testing done to where we can investigate the root cause of your skin issues and often, we’re gonna be using urine and stool. Those are probably the two most common things you’re gonna be looking at and these are far more effective than what you’re gonna get run from a conventional doctor. We’re gonna be able to tell you what the heck is going on. Your dermatologist is not running stool tests but they should because the issues they’re seeing in their clinic would certainly be improved if they could fix the issues that we’re finding on these stool panels so I think it’s really important to test not guess, figure out what the heck we’re dealing with because you could take probiotics for your whole life and never fix these infections.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yeah. I agree. And again, if you go to the dermatologist, it’s pretty typical, right? They may recommend like oatmeal bath or a diluted bleach bath or Eucrisa or a corticosteroid or Elidel. They may recommend these things but that’s not gonna be the solution. Again, some kids naturally grow out of it because their immune system evolves, gets better, their gut becomes less leaky naturally, um, maybe they start making healthier food choices as their parents become more aware of what’s going on, right? There’s a lot of different things that can shift and things can just, kids can grow out of it, and if you’re an adult that probably may not be that way. It’s a little bit different there. So, you’re really gonna have to make changes and you really have to look at the root cause and not just get hyper obsessed with just something topically that’s gonna fix it and that’ll be it, probably not the case. And so, you really have to look at the gut, you really have to look at stress, you have to look at how digesting and breaking down your foods, you have to look at the nutrients that modulate your immune system like zinc and selenium and vitamin D and glutathione, you have to look at gut bugs that can have a negative effect on your immune system and also beneficial bacterial balance. These play a massive role and again you may have to get stricter with the diet, like some people, a paleo template may be enough. Some have to go to way more extremes like autoimmune, cutting out salicylates or at least being salicylate and oxalate conscious that may have to happen as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and the good news is this stuff is in general pretty reversible, I mean, like I said, we’ve seen amazing before and after, working with people, and it’s just a wonderful thing because there’s so much of your confidence level that comes from having good skin, I mean, in regards to seeking new jobs getting a raise, finding a date, finding a spouse, I mean, your kids, wanting your kids to not have any, uh, self-confidence issues so I mean, I just tell you just the impact of skin, it could change your income if you don’t feel attractive enough, may be you’re not gonna seek that higher paying job or maybe you’re not gonna seek that raise, If you have self-confidence issues because of your skin or maybe you feel like you can never leave the house without making makeup, I mean skin is one of those things that really is important to address so sometimes it seems like a vanity-based thing but that vanity really does turn into success and so I think it’s really important for people not to feel self-conscious and just you know that you can fix this thing so no matter how down in the dumps you are you gotta keep digging.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And skin can be a really good sign if you’re healthy or not and it’s a lot of times, it’s gonna tell you if you have gut issues, gut, uh, food allergy issues, microbial imbalances, also, consuming good fats, good collagen, good proteins, this is the building block of your skin, so you really wanna make sure you have good dietary, nutritional foundations and we chill out a lot of the food that’s gonna throw off our gut bacteria. Now, topically, there’s a couple of things you can do topically, I mentioned some of the moisturizer that can be helpful to provide moisture relief which then helps decrease the itching, which then decreases that perpetual inflammatory cycle, there’s some soap that you can do that are descent, um, I find just a 10% sulfur soap can be excellent. It’s been used in dermatology for decades but just 10% sulfur soap unscented works wonderfully. Usually, the sulfur comes from like volcano ash or some type of, uh, soil that’s very high in sulfur but sulfur has an anti-inflammatory quality to it. It can have some anti-fungal, anti-bacterial quality so that it can be calming. You don’t wanna lather it on too long because it can be very drying to your skin. But sulfur is good and again, it’s just one part of the equation. There’s no magic solution, magic soap, magic potion, that’s gonna fix it but it can be very helpful as long as you’re plugging in all the other things to the big equation.
Evan Brand: I wonder if that’s because it’s helping with detox support on the skin or something, I mean, if you think about glutathione and the sulfur connection there. I’m mentioning topical sulfur that’s pretty interesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Topical sulfur, I mean it’s a lot of different data on it being very helpful for acne, I mean with that it can be very cleansing for the pores, cleaning out the sebum, there’s also the anti-inflammatory effects to it, very helpful with like seborrheic dermatitis, psoriasis, eczema, so I think it has some anti-inflammatory qualities, um, to it, I mean it’s been used in dermatology for decades so it’s natural so I kind of like it.
Evan Brand: Very cool. Well, I think we’ve covered everything I wanted to cover.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean I think a lot of it too, with the sulfur is. There could be a fungal, bacterial imbalance issue, right? And I do think sulfur does have antibacterial, anti-fungal, it also helps break down a lot of the keratin, excess in your skin, so like if you have, um, a keratosis pilaris (KP), where you kind of feel like the bumps in the back of your arm, it can kind of help break down those excess keratins that form in the pore so the back of your arms don’t feel as bumpy, so that’s really good too. I know, a lot of women have that. Of course, you know, getting your omega-3s up can also help that too, omega-3s and zinc.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I was gonna say, my kids had a little bit of that early on. We just bumped up the omegas and then boom, we knocked out the keratosis pretty easily so that’s, that’s probably one of the easier things to address. Sometimes, this thing gets tricky, like you mentioned, there’s no magic bullet or potion, a lot of times it’s a combination of us getting small gains and different categories of the body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s nice. Just get a nice 10% sulfur soap and you know lather that up, put it on your kids for like 30 seconds, rinse them off, it can be a very helpful kind of cleanse out that keratin, keeps the pores really healthy and it’s totally natural. So, I’ll put some links to the ones that I like, uh, down below on the ones that I personally use.
Evan Brand: Sounds good. Well, if people need help, they can reach out, we work with people online so wherever you are in the world with skin issues, we’re happy to help. You could reach out to Dr. J at justinhealth.com or me, Evan Brand at evanbrand.com, and we’re happy to work with you, help you run labs, figure out what we need to do to get you feeling better, more importantly get your skin looking better. If you have issues, don’t give up, uh, it’s okay, we’re gonna get you taken care of.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And to be a great functional medicine practitioner to really solve a lot of these things, you have to be a master general practitioner, you really have to understand the gut hormones, diet, skin. You really have to kind of connect everything together. If you’re like a master skin person and but you don’t have the diet or anything else to kind of interweave and connect to it then you’re not gonna be able to help your patients 100% so, it’s really important that you, if you’re working with someone, you find a master generalist that really understands how all the systems connect and you don’t want to just work with the hormone person or the gut person, you wanna work with someone that really understands the connection so that’s really important that people are interviewing their practitioners, really try to make sure they have a full 360 kind of perspective on it and if you wanna reach out, evanbrand.com for Evan, they’re be link there for Evan. And for myself, Dr. J. at justinhealth.com. We are available worldwide to help you all out and we’ll put links down below for some of the recommended products that we talked about today, things that we actually use with our family and patients. Outside of that, Evan, phenomenal chat with you man, you have an awesome week, and everyone listening appreciates your support, comments down below and share with our friends and family.
Evan Brand: Take good care. See you next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks. Bye you all.
Evan Brand: Bye-bye.
References:
Recommended Products:
Genova Organix Dysbiosis Profile
International DSL GI MAP genetic stool test
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-solutions-to-address-eczema-podcast-361
Hack Your Alcohol Consumption and Avoid Hangovers | Podcast #300
Whether it’s a few glasses of wine with friends, beer over sports, or a fun night out, there’s ways you can enjoy drinking yet mitigate the health consequences and skip the hangover. What are some of the consequences of drinking too much alcohol? Gut damage, issues with blood sugar levels and gut permeability, candida overgrowth, adrenal stress, and more. The big stressors of a hangover is the acetaldehyde made from the alcohol and getting the body to process it into acetic acid. The enzyme responsible for this conversion is glutathione-based, so glutathione can help clear alcohol out of your system faster, think: N-acetylcysteine (NaC), liposomal glutathione, vitamin C, milk thistle. Since these help the catalase enzyme to clear the alcohol out of your body faster, it’ll also be better for your liver. These are the kind of tips and tricks Dr. J is dishing out (and more!) today and we’re pretty sure you’ll be using them to help avoid future hangovers. Drink responsibly and be safe!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:46 What is alcohol?
6:03 Alcohol Metabolism
15:18 Alcohol Poisoning
21:33 Blue Zones, Good and Bad choices for Alcohol
35:06 Alcohol Cravings
41:03 Different Types of Alcohol
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today we’re going to be talking about how to hack your alcohol consumption. Again, people are out there, they’re gonna want to have a little bit of alcohol now and then maybe at the end of the week, maybe to kind of signify like, Hey, you know, the weeks over whatever it is, you’re relaxing, it’s summer, it’s fall, how can we do it in a way that’s one not gonna damage your body. But two, we can also hack the hangover, so we can do it responsibly and mitigate some of the health consequences. All right, Evan, what’s going on man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: All doing really well excited to dive into this thing with you read a quick article from USA today that said that since all the shutdown stuff happened, that alcohol sales, does that contribute to consumption as well? I’m sure it does. It didn’t say alcohol. Yeah. So said alcohol sales are up 27%. And this was since June. So that’s a big bump in alcohol sales and people are stressed out and I mean, you and I are working with clients. Everyday, all day people that have been laid off or furloughed or lost jobs or kids can’t go back to school or whatever else is going on with them. And so what are people going to do when they’re stressed? Well, hopefully they go meditate and go to the park, but they’re probably going to have extra alcohol too. And so we don’t want people to make themselves sick. We don’t want hangovers. We don’t want gut damage. We don’t want increased issues with blood sugar. We don’t want increased issues with gut permeability. We don’t want candida overgrowth, we don’t want all those things to happen. We don’t want adrenal stress and sleep issues that then affect energy and motivation and, and productivity. So, you know, alcohol can affect all of the body systems because of the impact on potentially blood sugar and adrenals and gut and all of it and so I think there is a way to do it smartly, which is what we’re going to dive into today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, everyone talks about alcohol being a toxin, right? Well, alcohol essentially, is ethyl alcohol, and your liver has to metabolize that and break it down. So the metabolism goes like this. Alcohol, ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol, that’s like a toxin, right? ethyl alcohol is the alcohol that we consume. That gets converted into acid aldehyde. And this enzyme here, right, this whole enzyme, it goes alcohol to acid aldehyde. And this is what alcohol dehydrogenase two right here, from alcohol to acid, aldehyde. And an acid aldehyde gets converted to a C to gas, which is basically apple cider vinegar. Okay, now acid aldehyde is the same compound that fungus or Candida actually produces. And that’s why Candida can actually make you feel a little bit drunk. Really, the big stressor. The big hangover stressor, is this acid aldehyde. Usually the body’s pretty efficient at taking alcohol and clearing it to acid out behind. It’s the acid aldehyde process that really has to go from acid aldehyde to Apple, the acetyl acetic acid right here, and we talked about this earlier. I think it was Asian descent right. Asian descent has a very, they they’re really efficient at taking alcohol and going to acid aldehyde. But they have a hard time of going acid aldehyde acetic acid. So this acid aldehyde increases, increases. And this acid aldehyde has a, let’s say histamine like effect. So high amounts of acid aldehyde can really increase that flushing kind of feeling. And so, a lot of people use the medication called Pepcid AC, which is that which is an h2 blocker. h2 blockers are an anti histamine. And what that does is anti histamines take the alcohol to acid out the high conversion they slow it down. So Asians they’re so fast at it, they increase their acid aldehyde like this acid aldehyde goes up. And so what they’re doing is they’re taking a h2 blocker to slow down the alcohol to acid aldehyde conversion again, it may help with the facial flushing and the histamine but not good on the liver because it’s creating more more that more of the alcohol is summer is basically surrounded That liver so your liver has to deal with the alcohol longer. It’s like you’re clogging up the coffee filter and it’s taking way longer to filter that out. Yep, you’re saying acid aldehyde. I think how you pronounce I think how you pronounce it is a sido. Allah cetyl alcohol. Yeah, I’ve always pronounced that as an aldehyde. I think someone where I learned about 10 years ago, they said it that way. I’ve heard it both ways. But yeah, a cetyl alcohol acetal aldehyde. So that’s going to be how it’s spelled.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s a big word. And you mentioned the issue with fungal overgrowth. And we’ve seen that a lot with people. Now when we’re talking about brain fog you and I’ve done so many podcasts on cognitive function issues, brain fog, anxiety, depression, those kinds of things. So if you’re somebody who has a Candida problem, maybe we should briefly go into this. This is you if you have a Candida problem. You’re probably not a good candidate for it. Now, could you get away with a little bit here and there, maybe so but if I have clients where we see that they’ve got major brands, Fogg, they have cognitive problems, they have memory problems, they go into a room and they forget why they’re in there, they lose their keys all the time, that kind of thing. And they show up with Candida on their labs, I’m going to tell them, hey, best case scenario, the question always comes up. And what about alcohol? I say, based on what’s going on, probably wise to stay away from it for a month or two while we get your gutter under control. And then let’s add it back in later, and you know, at a small amount and see how you do so I think there are some cases where you know, you and I work with quite a lot of people that are that are quite sick, and they don’t feel very well. So in those cases, we may try to say, hey, you can hack it like we’re going to talk about today. Or maybe just stay away, let’s let’s get your gut in better shape, let’s get your liver in better shape, especially if there’s a big mold problem. I’m gonna say, Man, your liver already needs help and, or if we test their chemical profile, we see they got a ton of pesticide herbicide. It’s like, ah, I really don’t want to add any more toxins to the bucket. So I personally try to stray people away from it, but at a certain point, you know that people want to live their life and have fun and that’s one of the ways people live. in society have fun. So then we go into the hex.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of talking about the alcohol metabolism one more time, right? We have ethanol, that’s our alcohol that goes to a seal out acetaldehyde acid aldehyde. Right? This the enzyme that’s responsible for that conversion, guess what it is? It’s catalysts. And catalyst is a glutathione dependent enzyme. So having good glue ion function helps you go alcohol ethanol, to acetyl aldehyde. That’s glue to fire independent as catalysts and then acetyl aldehyde to acetic acid or acetate, right? That’s going to be your apple cider vinegar. This is alcohol dehydrogenase to ALDH2. Okay, and so this is the enzyme A lot of people have a hard time with the Asians, they have a hard time clearing that and so the acid aldehyde goes up really high. So big things I want to highlight here, we’ll talk about it in the strategy standpoint. glutathione is good because glutathione clears the alcohol out of your system fast. So things like n acetylcysteine liposomal glutathione s acetyl glutathione, vitamin C, milk thistle, things that help increase catalyze clear the alcohol out of your body faster, that’s less stress on the liver. But then now we have this acetal aldehyde thing that has to happen next. And so typically, I’m going to I’m going to guarantee that a ldh is going to be supported and boosted via glutathione. And a lot of those nutrients some way shape or form. So I’ll try to pull that up here as well on the enzyme standpoint. Any comments on that?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I think milk thistle is something that’s pretty cool too. I don’t have any papers that are just specifically milk those by itself. But we know milk thistle is very, very beneficial for protecting the liver. So I think if you were to take which you and I have several of our own, like a liver complex or maybe you’ve got Got some and AC milk thistle which the active ingredient is silymarin. And that helps to act as an antioxidant and an anti inflammatory in right paddock cells. And here we go, I’ve actually got something right here that the milk thistle is going to help metabolize toxic compounds lowering the damage to the liver cells in the process. So there’s a guy here Dr. Weston child who was talking about silymarin. And he said, although it’s helpful, he said it’s not a cure all. And it doesn’t reduce all the damage from drinking in excess. However, it can help heal the process once the person has stopped drinking. Bla bla bla bla bla, so a parent Apparently, the in German, Germans in Germany, apparently they’re recommending milk thistle to treat liver toxicity. So yeah, so long story short, I mean, any of the stuff we’re typically doing clinically to help the liver is is going to be beneficial and protective. Now here’s one funny thing. So the wine industry You know, it’s all about resveratrol, right? It’s like resveratrol, resveratrol wine. But, you know, according to just looking at some of these labels and the actual amount of milligrams of resveratrol, you’re getting in red wine, you would literally have to drink like 100 bottles to get the amount of resveratrol that you would get in a single pill supplement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. Yeah. So a little bit. Yeah, it’s a little off there. I mean, there’s a lot of Blue Zones. These are very healthy parts of the world that live a very long time into the hundreds, you know, over 100, and they do consume some alcohol. So I don’t think alcohol should be looked at like it’s this unbelievable toxin on the body. I mean, I think there may be a mild stress to it, right? But exercise is a stress, right? So I think there’s have been a little bit of stress on the body does help with adaptation. The key is, is allowing your body to receive that stress and allow you to be able to adapt to it as efficiently as possible. Instead of it being the stressor you put in your bucket that causes your bucket to overflow. Now it’s going to be the stressor. helps make your body a little bit stronger. By just getting back here briefly, I found one article here talking about acetyl aldehyde. And it talks about the fact that cysteine and glycine again, which are the two major backbones to making gluten, what’s clewd a file and it’s a tri peptide, right? tri meaning three, glutamine, glycine. cysteine are the three amino acids in glutathione. So it talks about Long live sulfur containing bio molecules, including cysteine and glycine that incorporate acetyl aldehyde might affect cysteine, including ion homeostasis and also plays a protective role in reducing circulating acetyl aldehyde levels. Okay, this is one article called binding of acetyl aldehyde to a glutathione metabolite, so glutathione does bind up acetyl aldehyde. So we talked about an acetyl cysteine. We talked about glycine and bone broth, we are now glutamine. We also talked about things like Milk Thistle are silymarin, which are actually a glutathione recycler, so is cortisol that helps maintain the recycling of glutathione. And then of course, taking lipids, omo glutathione, itself. And then also things like charcoal, I think also have a positive effect at binding up a pseudo aldehyde as well. So look at acetyl aldehyde and charcoal, you can take binders that help you right here, a study of acetyl aldehyde absorption on activated carbons, right, which essentially activated carbons is going to be what you see with activated charcoal. We’ll talk about that in a second.
Evan Brand: I saw that one. So here’s what you’re saying. You’re basically saying you should make a Grass Fed Whey Protein Shake that’s going to be loaded with cysteine and all that make you a grass fed protein smoothie with a shot of vodka added to it. You’re going to have a good time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you want to do it. Right. I think that’s there’s there’s definitely a couple of options right? So when I look at alcohol consumption, right, the first part is choosing healthier versions of alcohol. We’ll talk about that in a second. The second is how do you detoxify? So there’s a couple of mitigating effects. Alcohol is a diuretic. Some of the effects that you have on alcohol is the fact that you are decreasing ADH antidiuretic hormone from the post here pituitary. Okay. So, I hate when they do double negatives. Remember double negatives equal a positive. All right, so anti diuretic so diuretic means it’s your diuretic means it makes you pee. So it’s the anti. It’s the anti pee hormone, if you will. So essentially, it’s the anti p anti anti p hormone. So in other words, it makes you pee. It allows what’s in your body from a hydration standpoint to be released out. So that means you’re going to lose a lot of water. You’re going to lose a lot of minerals. So part of the mitigating effect of hangovers is Yeah, you have the seat. Allow the high but you’re also going to be low in minerals and low in hydration. So if you’re going to be drinking more having a Pellegrino or having a nice mineral water at your table or at your home and having a glass of mineral water in between each drink is going to be huge from a hydration standpoint and a mineral standpoint, that’s number one. Number two, you may do a binder during the drink to kind of help mitigate and bind up some of the the acid aldehyde to help bind that up. And then number two, you can add in some things that are can be protecting the liver whether it’s clear to thiam you can do NAC you can do some vitamin C, you can do some you can do some milk thistle. Those are all good options. Now I keep it very simple. I’ll do n acetylcysteine, vitamin C and activated charcoal. And then when I come home, I’ll typically do some liposomal lumify and once I get home, all right and then I’ll also really make sure the minerals are good. I’ll typically sip on something like a tub of cheese Go in between the keep my minerals up. That’s a kind of a really good way to look at it. So alcohol is a diuretic.
Evan Brand: They need to sponsor you Topo Chico, you know, many times you flashed that Topo Chico bottle over the hundreds of episodes we’ve done they need to send you a free case or two or three.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. No, I totally I totally agree, man. I got to reach out to him for sure.
Evan Brand: I found I found one paper wanted to tell you this real quick. So maybe this is a study that maybe it’s been done on humans, and I just didn’t find it in PubMed, but when I found quickly was the effect of activated charcoal on ethanol blood levels in dogs. And apparently, they gave the dogs different amounts of ethanol and then they measured their blood after a dosing of charcoal. And it of course, duh. It just said that blood ethanol concentrations were significantly inhibited by activated charcoal during the first hour after administration and then blood ethanol levels are significantly lower throughout the study in the activated charcoal group. So this is what they do supposedly, this is what they do in poisoning emergencies in the hospital. Like if you go into the hospital with alcohol poisoning, supposedly they pump your stomach full of charcoal. Is that still standard practice? I’m not sure if you-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I can tell you personally not that I was ever affected but my college roommate freshman year, yeah, I had alcohol poisoning. I had to take him to the hospital. And we went to the ER. And I watched the whole process happening. They gave me a huge glass of activated charcoal. He was just drunk off his gorge. And he was just they had him sit him up at an angle and he was just out of it. And they were just kind of feeding him. The activated charcoal right down his mouth.
Unknown Speaker: I witnessed it myself. And then they also had them hooked up to an IV which is good, right? Because then you get the minerals in. Right and then you get the activated charcoal. Now is that worth $1,000 ER bill don’t know, I mean, you’re probably getting a $1 if of activated charcoal and then maybe a $5 IV, right? It’s quite the markup on there. So in other words, folks, if you’re listening, get your $20 bottle of activated charcoal, bring five or six capsules with you take them throughout the night, and then just get your little mineral water, right little Topo Chico sponsor right there. And then sip that throughout the night. And then this is your IV, okay, and then you get your activated charcoal, that’s going to kind of be your little binder. And I have one study right here, I’ll just kind of read the conclusion. And again, it’s amazing how researchers just do not know how to write in a way that connects with the average person. Let me read it and then I’ll translate talks about it talks about right here. This is due to the contribution of hydrogen bonding to the dispersive interaction of hydrocarbon moiety with the act of carbon pore walls after oxidation for the carbons with unaltered decreased surface area The esoteric heat of the acid aldehyde absorption is decreased. Alright, right here. This is it basically activated charcoals, which are these hydrocarbons, bind up acid aldehyde and decrease its absorption. So there’s less acid aldehyde or acetyl aldehyde in your body to be absorbed, because it’s being bound up by the activated charcoal.
Evan Brand: Let me point out what you’re saying. Because there’s people that are, you know, 17 minutes into this and they’re going yeah, but I don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol is stupid. It’s poison. I haven’t touched alcohol in years. I’m 20 years sober. Hey, he just said acetyl aldehyde. So if you have dealt with gut issues, and you’ve got a Candida overgrowth, that’s why we use binders for people. We’re not giving someone a binder and saying, oh, by the way, this is going to help with your Friday night drink. No, we’re using binders clinically, because it helps with the toxins that Candida and bacteria and parasites and all these gut infections that we talked about. That’s very beneficial for that, but it just so happens to be helpful with the alcohol piece too. So for those people like oh, Alcohol is the devil, which I joke around and say that many times. If I see my dad drinking, I’ll say, you know, I’ll call the devil right? And he’ll laugh. But anyway, for those people that don’t drink Look, the charcoal is still beneficial. Now, here’s one like side tangent, but I think it’s important to mention because it’s a sad reality is that up, women suppose you know, majority are going to go out to if they go out. I mean, whenever everything’s back to normal, they go out to a bar, and date raping still happens. I had a friend from high school who I saw at the gym years ago, and she apparently got dosed with gh B, you know, she was drinking water, and ended up getting date raped, and here she is not even drinking alcohol. I guess someone slipped ghp into her water and you know, next thing she knows that’s what happened. And so, the good news is there’s a study from European Journal of pharmacology, what’s it say here Pharmaceutical Sciences. Long story short, activated charcoal has clinically relevant ghp binding capacity. There you go. So if you have kids that are 2125 30, whatever they’re in college, you’re worried about them. Just make sure no matter what that if they go to a party or they go to a bar or whatever, that they take the charcoal because it’s going to help with the alcohol. But hey, if somebody tries to potentially date rape them, Look, now you’ve got that absorption as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I imagine that you’d also see glutathione as being a big one because fluidify on helps run those cytochrome p 450. oxidase pathway. Yeah, and right here ghp is naturally occurring compound and glutathione peroxidase, which is one of the major enzymes made by Luna found does help deactivate that. So yeah, these are all really good things. I mean, the goal of this podcast isn’t to tell people to drink it’s just the fact that hey, we know people are going to drink and there are people out there that still may drink and be very healthy, healthy minded. I like to consume a little bit of alcohol a couple glasses a week a lot of my patients do you know they want to have a social life not that you have to be drink alcohol to be social but they enjoy making that a part of their life and how can they do it in a way where they enjoy the the spirits and the the the levity that they get from their alcohol drinks, but at the same time, still maintain good health, cognitive benefit, good decisions, you know, and really still having a good social life without having the hangover and or having any negative health consequences. And so these are good strategies to do it. And we’ll talk about alcohol in a minute. But just to kind of reiterate, we had talked about the enzyme conversion glutathione is very important. We talked about the acid aldehyde is where a lot of the negative consequences happen. glutathione and activated charcoal can help with that as well. We talked about some of the liver tonifying herbs, such as milk thistle or silymarin. Things like dandelion or artichoke, things that support liver and gallbladder function can be helpful too. We talked about some of the nutrients like vitamin C and selenium, selenium is a glutathione precursor as well. And then we talked about the three amino acids and acetylcysteine is a core one and glutamine glycine, are really good amino acids. And Evan mentioned whey protein, which is really high in those amino acids as well can be really good supports to help with that alcohol, to acetyl aldehyde, acetyl aldehyde to acidic acid or apple cider vinegar, that’s the conversion process. And we’re just trying to help one either bind up some of that nonsense or help your body converted optimally. So you don’t deal with the deleterious consequences.
Evan Brand: Let’s talk about the, you know, kind of the good, not so good, bad choices for alcohol. But first, I want to comment back on the Blue Zone thing you mentioned, because that’s interesting. You’re talking about the Blue Zones and how so many cultures around the world where you’re seeing a massive amount of centenarians, people that are living to 100 years or greater. These people, a lot of them do consume alcohol. I remember that story of that guy down in Austin. He passed away a few years ago, but it was that that African American guy, he lived like 113 or something, and he was like, he was like a world war two veteran, he was super famous. There’s a street named after him in Austin now, but this guy, don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure this guy was drinking whiskey and smoking cigars every day. Wow. But here’s the funny thing about him and all these Blue Zones. Alcohol is just the lubricant for the social life. All these people in these Blue Zones, these are people who they have multiple generations of family living with them. They’re gardening, they’re there, they’re getting exercise, they’re getting sunshine, they’re barefoot in the dirt all day, they’re possibly eating food that’s not sprayed with chemicals. And they have much, much more of a social life than like your typical nine to five or so I think that when you look at those things, it’s hard to say, hey, the alcohol helped them live to 100 because they were relaxed. Part of its that too. Maybe they got a little bit relaxed, so they weren’t as stressed. And maybe they took let life less serious. Maybe they laughed a little more. But then also those people were super social with all their friends and family and data. So maybe that’s contributed to the longevity because we’ve seen all those papers on like social isolation being compared to smoking cigarettes and how toxic being isolated is so it’s kind of like the alcohol is there at the party, but the main benefit was the party in the people at the party.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and I just kind of want to highlight here, because there are many people that are listening to this and they’re saying, you know, they may have a history of alcohol abuse or being an alcoholic. Of course, this isn’t for you. But one of the things I want to highlight of why alcohol can be a problem and some people, some people that really have chronic alcohol abuse, the B six vitamin is incredibly affected by alcohol. And B six is really important for synthesis of neurotransmitters in the brain, serotonin, dopamine, it’s very, very important and B six is important for methylation for detoxification for full A and B 12 absorption. So basics really One article right here it’s called vitamin B six metabolism in chronic alcohol abuse to talk about individuals with chronic alcohol abuse frequently exhibit lower plasma levels of pyridoxal five phosphate, that’s B six, because the liver is the primary source of this coenzyme in plasma. Basically, it talks about that liver. toxicity of ethanol can impair hepatic peroxyl five phosphate metabolism. Now this is a rat study, but they’ve seen the same thing in humans. And basics. He talked about ethanol is diminished in the in the rate of release of pyridoxal phosphate phosphate perfused by the livers. The effects of ethanol in vitro were abolished by four methyl piracetol, an inhibitor of alcohol dehydrogenase, so they found that the alcohol dehydrogenase drug actually increased B six, so something to do with that alcohol metabolism really do ranges that be sick. So what does that mean? What’s the Reader’s Digest version means maybe getting a little bit of extra benefit. Complex on board there couldn’t hurt either way so if you have a history of alcohol in your family maybe you don’t but you want to provide extra support for yourself taking a B complex while you consume alcohol could still be a good thing for you. People that are more at a preventative side not saying if you have it still avoided if you have alcohol issues, but if you want to be extra preventative be complex could be something that you may want to add in on top of that.
Evan Brand: Cool. Yeah, I’m like a one shot a year guy historically, I remember I took like maybe two shots on my bachelor party for my for my wedding and then I we were out playing pool with my dad and my friends, my best man and all that and I just got to the point where I just felt stupid. I was like, God, even after this small amount of alcohol, I couldn’t comprehend simple things. And obviously, my brain likes to run. And so I was like, No, this is slowing me down too much. And so that’s that’s what kind of got me away from it. But But I may try it and see you know, I think there there are some Good, maybe stress reduction benefits. I’d like to see something on alcohol and cortisol. I wonder if there’s anything on that like seeing if salivary cortisol drops, like, let’s say you’re super stressed. I mean, think about like the TV show where you see the guy get pulled over by the cops. First thing he does is whips out a cigarette and starts smoking to take the edge off. I wonder if you took like salivary cortisol, you know, took a shot of vodka, took salivary cortisol. 30 minutes later, you think you’d see it drop?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see a modulation of serotonin and dopamine, I know nicotine does stimulate dopamine. So you’re gonna see some kind of acute input, some type of acute synthesis of those compounds. Now it’s all about the dosage right? chronicity of it, you’ll actually deplete it more, right? It’s kind of like doing a stimulant, you’re going to get a little bit more dopamine. But if you do it chronically, well, now you’re going to deplete that dopamine and you’re going to need more stimulant to get the same result. But just to kind of highlight that last article. I wanted to read the last sentence that said, the data supports the previous findings that acetal aldehyde is the responsible agent for which acts by accelerating the degradation of intercellular b six. So what does that mean? The more acid aldehyde The more we decrease our B six. So the more we can help metabolize acid aldehyde or cetyl aldehyde with charcoal and glutathione and binders, then we’re going to degrade less B six and then if you really want to support and on top of that, you can do extra B six on top of that extra B vitamins and you’ll be good. Now I consume maybe if I go out I consume alcohol maybe only on a Friday or Saturday. That’s it. I do not do any alcohol during the week. It’s just kind of my personal thing. I like to have that at the end of the week, my hard week done, and I’ll typically do one to two glasses of high quality like a clean dry champagne. I like that I like the bubbles in it. For me bubbles are like my best friend to Chico lots of bubbles. There’s been some studies that the bubble and the carbonation and alcohol actually increases the ability eruption of alcohol into your bloodstream. So what does that mean? bubbles mean you have you need less alcohol to get that alcohol in your bloodstream. So I like that they’ve it’s actually studies on that. Imagine the college study where you sit down and you get one group that’s taking shots of vodka. The other group take shots of vodka with carbonated water and they test your blood alcohol content, yet they’ve done studies like that. I’ve seen them. And so you need less alcohol with the bubbles, which is kind of cool. And then you can do a lot of the strategies that we talked about afterwards. So that’s kind of my strategy. Maybe I’ll drink three. It was my kids birthday this weekend. So I had maybe three glasses of you know, I like a nice, nice champagne. Or I’ll do my Dr. J’s Moscow Mule, which is another great recipe. So we’ll do a high quality Tito’s vodka from Austin and get the potato vodka. It’s filtered as well really clean. I’ll do some Tito’s vodka and I’ll mix that in a nice ginger kombucha and I’ll do a half a wine squeezed and that’s a wonderful drink because you get B vitamins in the kombucha. You get a lot of antioxidants in the kombucha and then you have the the line which provides some extra vitamin C, which does can particularly the thigh own. So it kind of gives you a lot of nutrients that actually help with any acid aldehyde metabolism, which is cool.
Evan Brand: That’s very cool. Okay, so I want to talk real quick about neurotransmitters and bits and you kind of got into it and then we’ll go into maybe the good worse bad kind of choices. So I sent you a in the chat there, I put you a link to this big long paper about neurotransmitters and alcohol. And so we know this but it’s always good to see it in in paper form that both metabolites of serotonin which is they probably were measuring five aiaa, just like we see on the organic acids test, I’m guessing but it talks about here how in humans the levels of serotonin metabolites in the urine and the blood increase after a single drinking session indicating increased serotonin release in the nervous system. And so, you know, if you and I both love, Julia Ross, I’ll speak for you and talk talk about You love her because I love her. I’ve had her on the podcast several times. She’s done amazing work on amino acids. And you know, when she talks about serotonin being low, the deficiency symptoms of serotonin, this these are the things that drive people to drink in some cases. So these are like negativity, depression, worry, anxiety, low self esteem, and then you notice how those people who were kind of anxious and kind of closed in and introverted. Guess what, what happens when they drink, they become extroverted, they’re talking louder, they’re more bubbly, they’re, they’re more happy, they’re more, they’re less anxious, they’re less worried, and that’s because you get that quick boost of serotonin. Now, here’s the problem. And I haven’t read into the paper to confirm this. But I’ve read other papers on this and everybody knows this. If you’ve been in society, what happens at the end of the night when the guy goes home with the wrong girl or the girl goes home with the wrong guy at the end of the night? That’s because you have this temporary boost initially of serotonin and then guess what happens the serotonin crashes and when you have not Not enough serotonin, your decision making goes down, your prefrontal cortex just shuts down and you make bad decisions and you do things that you shouldn’t do. So you have this initial spike, because of the five htt receptors being hit by the alcohol, and then boom, rapidly declines after that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think also alcohol just naturally decreases frontal cortex activation anyway. And so frontal cortex is the part of the brain right here, the neocortex that makes us human beings, it basically allows you it’s impulse control. So I don’t know you get in a fight with someone you’re like, oh, man, I really want to whack that person. But then your frontal cortex is like, Oh, no, don’t do that. That’s not good, right? You’ll go to jail. So your frontal cortex kind of like, Can like take a decision, that may be a bad one that you’re thinking impulsively, and it can shut that down. It also can, it can predict outcome of actions. And so when your frontal cortex is closed down, now you don’t have impulse control. So you just start saying whatever comes to your brain, and then you also don’t think about the consequences of your actions hence bad decisions. Yep. And then also in this paper it goes into how serotonin and not only just serotonin but GABA, you know alcohol is going to have an effect on gab as well. So, you know, people are familiar with GABA, it’s kind of the brakes of the brain, I call it and so when people are doing benzodiazepines, like Valium, and Xanax and those kind of things that’s working on the GABA receptors to calm anxiety. You and I prefer to use things like naturally fermented pharma gabbeh. We like to use things like elfy to help boost GABA, but you know, from a toxin perspective, the Gabba Gabba nergic pathway that’s also affected by alcohol too. So that would probably contribute to the relaxation a bit. Yeah, it’s interesting how the date rape drug which is gamma hydroxybutyrate ghp is actually a GABA metabolite. But it’s amazing that that can have the mind altering effects of memory loss. So obviously it must be a dose dependent type of thing.
Evan Brand: It is Yeah, I was actually Looking at the GH B page, like a data page on it, it was talking about how at a low dose you get like a little bit of euphoria. But then when you go moderate high dose, yeah, you’re unconscious, you got no memory, it’s bad stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s funny when my wife and I go out to eat, I have my little stomach case. And I have enzymes and HCl on one side, and then I have activated charcoal, NAC or vitamin C on the other. And so when we go out, it’s funny, I just pull it out. And I kind of just set up my little supplements as a as I’m going like trying to always hack things, right. And then I’ll do glutathione later at home, because number one, it tastes really bad. anyone that knows liposomal glutathione. I don’t want it to affect the taste of my meal. But then I do those amino acids while there and so that’s just kind of how I hack it. And I’m guessing too. One thing you could do on top of that is people that are trying to whip their serotonin or dopamine levels up, you can just use amino acids as well, to bump up your brain chemicals, right, so we’ll do tyrosine or l dopa. When appearing is to really help improve dopamine or adrenaline levels. And dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline. So part of the way we support healthy dopamine levels is we fix the underlying stressors that are causing your dopamine to go to adrenaline. And then of course, five HTP with B six and B six is very important because it helps with the conversion of your neurotransmitters. And we talked about the article showing a cetyl aldehyde decreases B six levels. So you can see the interplay here, so you can you know, if you’re smart, right, and you have issues to begin with, just avoid alcohol. But if you don’t, and you want to engage in it and have a couple of drinks per week, and you want to do it safe and effectively and hack it so you feel great doing it don’t have a deleterious effects, B six is one, okay. And then we can even do the amino acids five HTP and tyrosine with B six right, I talked about that. And then we have your binder, we have your glutathione precursor and then we have your minerals or your hydration which could just be a nice bottle of Pellegrino dropped off at the table with some limes and you can get some vitamin C in the lime juice and then you’re set.
Evan Brand: Let me mention this. The people that have alcohol cravings, so you’re like hey, workweeks done great week let’s chill out a little bit that’s not you craving it that’s you just going to it because you’re enjoying it now the people that have to go to it the people like oh my god, I got to have a drink. Those people need more functional medicine help. So you know, Julia Ross talks about this a lot people that are having cravings for alcohol. You know, these are people that may need something like glutamine to help with the the brain to help the brain feel stable and calm. The people that are low in serotonin, they may crave alcohol as well. So like you said, that’s where the five HTP comes in. If someone’s burned out their catecholamines, they may have alcohol cravings, and some people it manifests as dark chocolate cravings, and some people it manifests as sweet cravings and some people it’s alcohol or it’s cannabis craving so you can have different vices tied into the same neurotransmitter. Same thing with Gabba. If you’re real low in GABA, you’re going to be someone who it’s hard for you to relax your real tightly wound. And you may crave sweets or starches, but you also may crave alcohol. So when you get the alcohol, oh my god, you loosen your shoulders a little bit, that’s a sign that you need help and the GABA department and then reach out to somebody like Dr. J. And let’s help you boost your natural levels and some of its genetics. Some people are just genetically going to be lower, they’re more anxious, maybe family history, childhood, whatever. And some people it’s the stress of toxicity and gut bugs or whatever else. It’s affected neurotransmitters like you and I see when people have gut infections, we’ll look at their serotonin and serotonin is often low. And my theory is that, hey, you’ve got a lot of gut bugs, you’re probably not able to manufacture enough serotonin in the gut, and therefore that’s why you’re anxious and depressed. And that’s why you have to have your alcohol to be happy or to do whatever you have to do but if you fix the gut, we retest the organic acid, boom, serotonin. goes back up to normal, which is really cool to see on paper.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yep, totally. And again, alcohol isn’t there is some genetics to it. You’ll see it in a lot of people of Irish descent. Supposedly there’s some issues with with B vitamin or thymine deficiency, which is B one. And alcohol consumption actually further depletes that. So you see it in the Irish population. You also saw in the Native American population, a lot of alcoholism there. So thigh means a big role. That’s kind of why I was saying that. A good B complex would be one and B six can be very helpful as a preventative for people that may not be alcoholics but may have it in their family as a good preventative. Number two, if you are an alcoholic, you really want to look at supporting the adrenals you want to really look at supporting blood sugar, blood sugar is really important. You want to look at treating Candida because of the acid aldehyde in your gut from Candida can still mimic that. You want to look at supporting B vitamins and digestion and absorption. And one of the best things you can do when when you go out to eat is have Some protein and fat with your meal, it’s very helpful. One of the things I’ll do when I consume alcohol is I love oysters. And oysters are very high in zinc. And I’m pretty sure oysters are also very high in B vitamins too, I have to look at that real quick. Yet oysters are very high in B 12. And they’re also very high. And they do have some smaller amounts of timing nice and in full eight. And so that’s really good. So really, if you can go out and actually consume really nutrient dense foods, foie gras, liver, high quality grass fed steaks, you know, good seafood consumption, you’re going to have a lot of extra B vitamins there that will help fill in the gap nutritionally as well.
Evan Brand: Yep. So let’s get into the good, worse, bad choice if you want to now. So you mentioned vodka already, which is good, because you mentioned it’s going to be distilled. It’s going to be ultra purified. So if you’re looking for just the pure stuff, it’s going to be that and then a golf a would probably be up at the top of the top of the list. Do you mean Yeah, tequila made from a GAVI. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One thing to add though the volca I’m a big fan of titos I’m pretty sure it’s potato bass and I think it’s also a filter like seven or eight times and isn’t it also isn’t also go to a charcoal filter.
Evan Brand: Supposedly that’s what we read. I haven’t confirmed it but yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so very clean. So if you want to consume that, and then I’ll do the Vodka with a high quality kombucha to really help improve the self improve the B vitamin nutrient levels too.
Evan Brand: Yep, so so tequila are coming from a GABE that’s gonna be generally really, really clean and then you get into the brown stuff. So you’re going to get into the whiskies. And then of course, you got bourbon which bourbon just means that it was made in Kentucky where I live Nice, huh? Same thing, whiskey and bourbon, same thing like Bourbons made in Kentucky and that’s what that’s what allows it to be called bourbon. So, but that’s but that’s made from grains. And generally grains are going to be genetically modified. They’re going to be sprayed with a lot of chemicals. So if you get a quote, really high grade High School Last whiskey bourbon, guess what, it’s not going to be certified organic and it’s not going to be, you know, GMO glyphosate free. So I would argue that the tequila and vodka choices would probably be far better. Now there’s also one. It’s like a Hawaiian company that makes an organic vodka. I’m gonna see if I can pull it up. It had like a blue bottle. It was like a, it’s called ocean. It’s organic vodka. And it was by a company called ocean. So and they make it from organic sugarcane. So that’s kind of cool. I like that it comes from an 80 acre farm and distillery in Maui and they use solar panels to power the distillery and blah, blah, blah. So it’s organic sugar cane, blended with deep ocean mineral water. So that’s kind of cool. So I think if you could get organic, and that would be smart. Now people that have allergies with corn. There’s another brand called frankly, who makes organic vodka but it’s made from organic corn. So when cause any issues if you had a corn allergy, I don’t know, maybe go for the sugar cane stuff instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Usually it’s filtered enough, it’s gonna have lot of its proteins. Proteins are a lot bigger so usually those are gonna get filtered out. Vodka’s gonna be the cleanest, there are antioxidants and some of those compounds. So you mentioned Gin, which is made of Juniper Berries which are very powerful antioxidants. Also things like Whiskey for instance, which is made from grains but typically the distillation process filtered it out, and it has different antioxidants in there, so it’s allagic acid which is a powerful antioxidant. And there are some decent compounds in there so your hard alcohols are gonna be good. Vodka’s my favorite because it mixes really well and you can get a high quality one that’s really clean. And we have like a nice dry apple cider, it’s really good, just try to get the one without sugar added. There’s a good brand in whole foods in Austin called Anthem, it’s a pretty good one. Another one is Magner which is pretty good too. Then of course you have your dry wines right so you have like a champagne which is basically a bubbly wine where the grapes come from one province in France right, but then you have like versions of prosecco which is a champagne version in Italy you have cava which is a champagne version in Spain and so I’ll tend to lean to some of the sparkling wines or really clean dry apple cider or really clean like my Dr. J’s Moscow Mule which i have a blog post on how to make and that’s the vodka, the ginger kombucha, half a lime squeeze and that’s phenomenal stuff. And then of course you have the regular white wine, drier version you have the redder wines, which could have some other types of gluten in there because of the uh the granules of flour that may line some of the bottles, the like the big bins the big like barrels of of actual wine there could be some cross contamination there, and then you have like your flavored liqueurs, and then you have your beer, your lager, and then of course your not so good mix drink with lots of high sugar that’s kind of the spectrum.
Evan Brand: Yeah you notice like we barely even give any credit to the existence of those garbage ones like your Smirnoff blue dye colored sugary corn syrup cane sugar mixture with alcohol, I mean the stuff like if you go out to like an american restaurant you get a margarita i mean it’s going to be a disgusting combination of artificial colors and dyes and sugar. It’s probably more sugar than there is alcohol in most of those things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I mean I can tell you, market demand though a lot more higher quality healthier alcohol drinks. I’m seeing a lot of sparkling water with a little bit of vodka, and some even just sweetened with a little bit of stevia, I think it’s like the white claw one and there’s another one out there, so there’s a couple of decent ones that are out there that are made from mass consumption. They kind of are dialed in with a little bit of vodka, a little sparkling, maybe even a tiny bit of Stevia and so not as bad.
Evan Brand: Cool. I’ve heard of the white claw. I haven’t looked it up yet. I’m going to try to see what are the ingredients here. I’ve got an ingredient label here- black cherry-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s another one it’s like fawn and something vaughn and forget.
Evan Brand: So apparently, it’s carbonated water alcohol which I’m not sure what kind of alcohol it is. It just says it’s a gluten-free alcohol base natural flavor cane sugar citric acid. So yeah I mean I guess I would argue that’s not terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You have to look at some some are low it’s another one bon and vive are one that i’ve seen before that just on the shelf that like pretty low sugar, like for me, i would probably just make my own with kombucha, because i feel like i can i can add more nutrients to it, and have that natural sweetness there. But so just kind of giving you guys an idea of kind of how we think about it, Evan doesn’t drink at all i drink a tiny bit on the weekend, not during the week, so just kind of how we approach it. One, how do we choose the healthiest version possible. Two, how do we mitigate the side effects with some of the supplements that we recommend during.
Evan Brand: I’m not opposed to it. I know I would go for it if it’s something clean i would probably go for it. I was just staying away because after my mold exposure you know i developed some histamine issues and when you look into alcohol and dao the enzyme that breaks down histamine the idea is that alcohol down regulates the dao enzyme and then it increases histamine because of that whole acetyl-aldehyde path that we talked about earlier. So people with histamine issues, uh people with gut issues those are probably people that should proceed with caution, but you know, once I feel like i’m on steady ground with the histamine thing i’ll probably try some. Let’s see what happens, maybe i’ll — but here’s here’s the funny thing. I’ve always been so social uh such an extrovert, so outgoing, that anytime i were at a party if i were driving friends around or whatever, i was always more social than the people there and like people would think i was buzzed or think i was drunk because of how social i was and so people have to drink to get on my level of sociability which has always been pretty funny.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I get that. That makes sense. So just kind of recapping for everyone right, choose the highest quality alcohol you possibly can based on that scale that we gave. Vodka, tequila, to whiskey, to gin, to your dryer kind of bubbly champagne, to your dryer red and white wines, to your beers lagers and kind of sugary drinks at the end. So choose kind of the best on that spectrum. Metabolism of alcohol right, ethyl alcohol, acid alcohol, two acetaldehyde acetaldehyde to acetic acid right so catalase enzyme here in that first step glutathione helps with that, and then from the uh acetaldehyde to acetic acid- that’s the alcohol dehydrogenase II, activated charcoal and different sulfur amino acids help decrease that as well. So use those. Be very mindful of alcohol, especially hard alcohol can actually decrease your blood sugar. So what happens is your liver does help with blood sugar stability, gluconeogenesis, when you lean up a whole bunch of ethyl alcohol against it, guess what happens? Your liver stops helping with blood sugar and so you when you take in alcohol. You can actually lower your blood sugar because there’s no sugar when you take in vodka for instance. So you’re actually decreasing your blood sugar, now what happens? When this happens it can create cravings, so when you go to a bar or restaurant they want to give you alcohol first a lot of times that’s going to decrease your blood sugar, because what your body can’t help maintain blood sugar stability. So the harder it is you have a lower blood sugar level. What does that do? More cravings, more appetite, more eating sugary and crappy carbohydrates and that can create a blood sugar roller coaster. So have good proteins good fats first before you eat so you can have better blood sugar control, and then use a lot of the supplementation that we talked about activated charcoal, vitamin c, milk thistle, nac, glutathione, and then make sure you hydrate in between to maintain your mineral levels.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The restaurants know that if they can get you drinking you’re more likely to order that brownie with vanilla ice cream on top.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo. 100%. So I always want to put myself in a position where my cravings are not driving the bus, so to speak. I’m able to make decisions based on what I want versus what my cravings want.
Evan Brand: Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you want to reach out, you can check out Dr Justin at JustinHealth.com. He does consults worldwide- phone, facetime, skype, whatever we have to do to connect. That’s what you do. We send lab tests to your door, we help you with a wide range of health issues, you can view more on that website and if you want to reach out to me, Evan Brand that’s the website- EvanBrand.com. Same thing available worldwide. We’re blessed, we love being able to help people, we love being able to help hack things where people can still feel like a normal human. You know sometimes when you’re in this functional medicine health world, you feel like things are restricted. You’ve got these dietary restrictions, and now you can’t do this and now you can’t go eat the birthday cake and da da da da da so the good news is you can hack things like we’ve talked about today and you can still feel like a quote normal human. I really don’t want to feel like a normal human because most normal humans are super unhealthy and sick and overweight and whatever. So I’d rather feel the way we feel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% agreed. I can’t believe this is one of our longest podcasts in a while, but I guess there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to uh alcohol consumption and how to do it the right way. So hopefully um the listeners enjoy the extra in depth and the biochemistry and some of the mechanism stuff and uh just you know walk away and apply a couple of components here to make your alcohol consumption healthier. If you feel the need to engage so far.
Evan Brand: Yep or share the content so sharing is caring. Please do and I would love if you’d write a review for us on iTunes because wherever you’re listening on your podcast app you should just be able to click write a review. So do it, I know we’re like we’re real people we’re not just like the annoying pop-up where the app’s like please rate me and you’re like maybe later or you’re like no thanks, don’t do that to us. Actually give it to us, we need it, we appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We appreciate it. We wanted to get uh in front of more people so they can take control of their health and that makes the world a better place so we appreciate that. Evan excellent chat today really appreciate it. We will be back next week you guys, have a phenomenal week. Take care y’all. Bye now.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/hack-your-alcohol-consumption-and-avoid-hangovers-podcast-300
Natural Ways To Increase Your Glutathione Levels | Podcast #292
Glutathione is an antioxidant that is capable of preventing damage to cellular components and also gives a lot of benefits to our body. For today’s podcast, the topic that came to mind is glutathione. Dr. J and Evan point a lot of information and tips on how glutathione is important in our health, how we increase our glutathione levels the natural way, the pros and cons, and a lot more. Read and listen below.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:37 Glutathione as Tri Peptide
06:06 Conditions Associated with Low Glutathione
11:32 Glutathione in Helping with Treating Cancer
23:03 Food and Supplements
38:46 Tips, Ideas for Higher Glutathione Levels
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Really excited to chat with y’all today. We got Evan brand here in the house, Evan, what’s cooking my friend?
Evan Brand: Oh, not much. We cook some bacon and some pastured sausage earlier, but nothing is cooking at the moment beyond that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, brother. Well, I know we were chatting about topics that for today’s podcasts in the pre show and glutathione was one of these topics that kind of came to mind based on challenges that we’re seeing with our patients based on things that we’re seeing in our comments section on our pages, and we decided glutathione will be a great topic for the show today. So really excited. Let’s just start off the day what is glutathione? So glutathione is a tri peptide. What does that mean? Tri means three, Peptide means essentially amino acid. And there’s three amino acids that make up glutathione. Glutamine, cysteine and glycine, those are the big three glutamine cysteine glycine. Now we really important because these are all amino acids. Sulfur rich amino acids and you’re not going to find a lot of these amino acids by the way in in plant based products, you’re going to find the mainly in animal based products. So for amino acids are much more rich from animal than you do plants. A lot of plant based products tend to be lower in sulfur amino acids and you actually have to combine them to even get them appropriately right. That’d be like rice and beans, right? Because they’re missing certain amino, so you got to combine them just right. So glutathione really important try peptide, glutamine, cysteine, glycine, glycine, very, very high in bone broth and collagen. Right. cysteine very high and a lot of high quality animal products. Also whey protein. Okay. And then glutamine is obviously in a lot of gut healing supports glutamine is really important for the gut lining. Glutamine can also be more inflammatory, too. If you don’t have enough B six, it can go down glutamate pathways without B six. So we also want to make sure we’re getting enough B vitamins and we’ll talk about glutathione metabolism. We’ll talk about some of those pathways and what nutrients are needed to maximize glutathione and healthy glutathione metabolism besides just those try peptides, glutamine, glycine, and cysteine. Any thoughts seven?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I think it’s all excellent. I look forward to breaking it apart more. Now, how do we measure glucose ion? One way is we like to look at organic acids testing. There’s not a direct marker that says, glutathione, boom, that’s your level. But using some of the metabolites that you can measure in the urine, you can get an indicator of it. And we know that when people are exposed to toxins, whether it’s mold, or heavy metals or pesticide or herbicide, whatever it is, you’re going to be reducing your glutathione levels. And as you mentioned, you know, people that are on veggie based diets, they’re probably going to show up low. And so we can measure that on the oat test other other ways that you know, have to measure glutathione or is that what you use?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So yeah, the big ones, like you mentioned are going to be the pirate glutamate. The sulfate and the alpha hydroxy butyrate. Those are going to be some of the best ways to test it on the organic acids. Those are precursors to solidify own and a lot of the the sulfur nutrients cysteine, glycine, glutamine, those are big, big ways to do it. So when you look on the organic acids section, it gives you about five different organic acids that are that are very, very helpful at looking at glutathione the big three of the ones I just mentioned, I’ll pull up a couple others that I use as well, that are more on the precursor side for glycine. So glycine is another big one. Because that’s really important for glue to found as well then there are others that look at glutathione than the cysteine and the glutamine on top of that I’ll pull that up in one second. So organic acids are great. There’s also a red blood cell glorify on that you can do doctors day that does it. I think spectra cell does it.
Evan Brand: Have you ever done it or do you run it or do you think it’s not worth it? If we’re doing that oat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think if you already have a good look at the oat, there’s four or five markers on there that you can elucidate from so I think the oat’s fine, but if someone has a chronic condition chronic detoxification issues, I don’t think it’s a bad way to just kind of give it a an extra look, see, especially if you’re struggling on the organic acids, or if the organic acids look good, but you’re still having some detoxification issues, I don’t mind running it. A lot of times I’ll run an ion panel with some of my patients which will come with an organic acid and a intercellular nutrient blood test as well. So it would be on there and then also be on the organic acids so that’s a way to kind of get a package deal on and kind of get two for one if you will.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I love the combos. Love the combos yes to like you mentioned the, like vegetarian sources where people are going to get sulfur to boost glutathione. I mean, that’s going to be the cruciferous stuff. This is why you and I will use some of these like broccoli sprout extracts. There’s some kale sprout extracts, things like that. There’s different greens powders, and there are some encapsulated products that we use and I’ve used them with children were if they weren’t able to swallow or they couldn’t stomach like a encapsulated glutathione or maybe alive was almost like they didn’t like the taste and some of the broccoli sprout extracts tend to work pretty good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally and on the organic acid just to highlight sulfate and pirate glutamate are the big ones for glutathione that’s really big. And then the other ones are going to be to methyl hip right we’ll really look at glycine and then the gluco re also looks at glycine so those are some of the other ones that can be ultra ultra helpful.
Evan Brand: This is why oat test is like I don’t know desert island you only have one test to choose from between like a DNA stool and an organic acids. Oh, man. It’s tough. I mean, I some days I go with the oat over the stools, my only test if I had to pick one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, it can be helpful because you get a good window into yeast and fungus, which can be really helpful. So that’s really nice. And then also, we can talk about gluten if I own the different conditions that are associated with their other nutrients that help you recycled modifying and that are very helpful in the healthy metabolism of fluidify own and we have a nice handout here. I’m going to pull up so you guys can see I think it’s under Very, very, very helpful. I’ll pull this up here for you guys to see. So there’s a bunch of different conditions that are associated with low glutathione. Everything from aging to all simers to cancer to chronic liver, cognitive issues, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, hypertension, any immuno deficiency and chronic viral issues, lupus, mental health issues, multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative issues, Parkinson’s, I mean, this is like through the freaking roof. It’s unbelievable. The association with other conditions, it’s not saying this is a direct cause they’re just saying, hey, they test a lot of people for who to die on. And they just find this chronic association with these issues. Now, I would say there’s definitely going to be there’s definitely going to be a causation link there for me, it’s hard for research to say that it takes a while for research to do a causation thing you got to do a metabolic war and you got to really take people in, give them Low, low defiant take people out, give them some glutathione and study the different it’s really hard at metabolic Ward studies are tough. So it’s you have to kind of look at more of associative studies versus metabolic Ward that really give you the causation. Let me show a couple things here for you guys to see. me pull this up for you guys.
Unknown Speaker: Okay, can you see my screen Evan?
Evan Brand: It’s loading. Yep, there it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, cool. So these are a bunch of the conditions here that are associated with low glutathione. And then there are the links here. So you can actually see the scientific studies right Alzheimers, the emerging role of glutathione and an Alzheimer disease, right? You can see diabetes glutathione synthesis is diminished and patient with uncontrolled diabetes is really important. And again, this is the article right here I wanted to highlight is called a review of dietary phytonutrients for gluten support. It’s in the journal nutrients September 2019. So pretty, pretty fresh study. But this pathway here I really wanted to highlight for everyone. I think this is super important. When I get this just the right size, does that look good to you?
Evan Brand: Yeah, looks perfect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, cool. So let me kind of highlight a couple of things that are happening here so people that are listening, we got a video on screen so you guys can actually see the different pathways and how glutathione gets into the cell and works. So you have your three major amino acids you have cysteine right here, which can come from an acetylcysteine and can get converted from cysteine assisting right there, you have glycine, right very high and collagen and bone broth. That’s why I like to do my 20 grams of collagen in my coffee every morning. Okay, and then you have your glutamate or glutamine inside the cell. So outside the cell, these are the big two amino acids and then inside the cell, you have your glutamine that gets conjugated here. Now also outside of the cell, look at the the green vegetables right the brassica vegetables, the high cruciferous vegetables. Some of the polyphenols like green tea are very important in this glutathione to conjugated, basically it helps conjugate a lot of these foreign chemicals xeno biotic means foreign chemicals, you know, biotics could be xeno estrogens that could be xeno neurological things from pesticides right? So basically they’re going to be chemicals that are foreign to the body that are stressor on the body this can help with fluidify on to GST and conjugate Gosh, conjugate just means binding a protein to it, typically, so the body can excrete it via the stool or the kidneys or urine, right?
Evan Brand: Now, here’s the thing. You mentioned that big list of conditions so it would make sense why cancer would be associated with low glutathione because this pathway you’re showing if you’ve got a build up of all these toxic chemicals and hormone disrupting chemicals whenever if that pathway screwed up. I mean, it sounds like you’re going to end up sick so it’s not that like you said, it’s not causation, but that pathway could be you know, if I were somebody like focusing on an anti cancer regimen, I mean, this pathway here would be a huge piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and this GST stands for glutathione S transferase and they’re actually making drugs that are glutathione s transferase in nature. So this GST is very very very important in excreting toxins and crap outside of the body. And we know this to like a lot of the things we may use on the brassica vegetable side, we may do broccoli sprouts, we may do sulfur rich compounds like dim, which is di n Dom methane, or we may do indoor three carbinol these are all going to be so for concentrated compounds, we may even do things like calcium to glucose rate. And these can help improve this clarify own clarify on s transferase pathway. Any comments there?
Evan Brand: I’m trying to figure out what the I would love to learn about that you’re saying they’re using or they’re making prescription drugs to work on this pathway?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so let’s um, let me see I can pull it up here on screen for you. Can you see this right here?
Evan Brand: We’re still on the image we still see the image of the pathways.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, let me just pull this up here this is an older study but you know I like to just show people what’s going on so they can actually see it
Evan Brand: Because here’s if they’re gonna make a prescription here’s what they’re going to do they’re going to jack up the price 1000 X to do the same thing that in AC or DC now do yes sir.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, so you can see this the role of fluidify on s transferase. In anti cancer drug resistance. So it seems like this may be helping a lot of the cancer drugs work better. So they’re talking about who defined as transfer rates are a family of phase two detoxifying enzymes that help catalyst catalyst is a gluten independent enzyme. And it basically helps when I say conjugate that means bind a protein to it, a variety of endogenous and exogenous toxin. So endogenous means toxins that are made by your body. exogenous means toxins that are come into your So think of mold and pesticides as exogenous. Think of maybe yeast overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth and those toxins being produced like acid aldehyde, maybe being endogenous. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: It does. I actually found something on this. I’m looking on this drug website, and actually found out here that for chemotherapy, doses of 1.5 to three grams of glutathione have been given in a 15 to 20 minute time period right before a chemotherapy treatment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense. Yep, totally makes sense. So I’m trying to go down to the conclusion of this one study here. I haven’t gone through it yet. Yeah, I’m just trying to look through this here. Alright, cool. I’ll have to go through this here later on. But I mean, it just shows you how important glutathione is with detoxification, cancer and also we can talk about the immune system, right. There’s the reason why that page had immune issues, AIDS and viral issues as being a low glutathione issue. Because gluten has a major, major role in immunomodulation and immune balancing any comments there?
Evan Brand: I just wonder where this conversation is happening in an oncology office though, hey, we need to boost up your clue to find out I want you to eat broccoli sprouts and take some extra NAC and vitamin C and some of the stuff we’re going to get into. It’s like, Where’s that happening? I mean, maybe in a holistic oncologist office, but I feel like your conventional guys, it’s still just the chemo model. It’s not going to be anything like this. Exactly wrong. If you’re, you know, cancer doctor out there, then let us know who you are, what you’re doing. We’d love to hear about it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, the problem is, people on the pharmaceutical side or conventional medicine side, their perspective when they look at things is how can we make a drug that modulates this pathway or interacts in this pathway? The problem is once you start making the drug, you’re forgetting why these pathways are low to begin with. Right? Hay diet issues, digestion issues, stress issues, exposure to toxins, right They’re forgetting why these pathways are low to begin with. And then number two, anytime you make a drug, you can’t patent Mother Nature. So you can’t patent the actual codify on building blocks, you have to do isomers, or different substrates that look similar, but may not be the real deal. And the problem is once you start deviating from Mother Nature, all drugs have what Evan?
Evan Brand: They have side effects, side effects. It’s like the designer babies. It’s like, oh, let’s play with these genetics. We’re going to make this baby have this color hair and this color scan and whatever there. It’s not what nature intended.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So once you start doing that, then you have an increased risk of side effects. And because you can’t patent Mother Nature, you know, that’s the problem. That’s the big issue. You can’t patent Mother Nature. Therefore, you have to go and create compounds that are isomers that look similar, they may work a little bit will never work as good as the real thing. And then you’re going to have a whole bunch of side effects.
Evan Brand: Yeah, let’s get back to that first paper that you and I have pulled up with the graphic on it because we wanted to go through some things that have been shown to help with this whole glutathione people think just pop glutathione pill in that scene of the day. But there’s and that’s true. You can do that. You could do your oral, your sublingual, your zomo, your intravenous glutathione. But there’s other things along the way they can help, like NAC is a game changer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So let me let’s kind of let’s work from the top and go down. Okay, so we talked about what’s happening outside of the cell, right? We need cysteine. We need glycine, these are really really big pathways. We talked about maybe some of the sulfur compounds in the vegetables, we hit that right now inside. If we go to the top of this cycle and work our way down, you can see folic acid or we’ll just call it full late. Okay? And you can see thf this is tetrahydrofolate and this goes to mthfr. Right everyone talks about methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase right mthfr right. So you need full A B vitamins, and then you’re also going to need b 12 betaine, which is trying methyl glycine, so these are important nutrients that are needed. So this pathway can go around and essentially when you have an mthfr issue, this pathway up here, this enzyme is lower. Therefore, you need more of these nutrients here to run this pathway and of course not folic acid we activated fully, whether it’s cat you know, folic acid or calcium D fully or mthfr folate, we need to activate it fully. And then you can see here I’m assigning gets stuck as homocysteine if we don’t have enough of these nutrients and we know homocysteine can create vasculature inflammation, inflammation in the vasculature right? associated with heart disease. You can go look at the research of Kilmer McCauley over at Harvard, and we need enough of these nutrients to take pining to go to homocysteine and then go all the way down to cysteine down here so then you can see cysteines are really good sulfur amino acid cysteine then binds with glutamate or glutamine. Okay, and then you can see cysteine and glutamine go downstream to actually make glutathione and guess what else you need? Well, you know, if you look at some of these nerve pathways over here where you know, you know that multi level product called Protandim, right, it’s got a lot of the phytonutrients the green teas ashwagandha fits in this category, a lot of bioflavonoids like resveratrol, vitamin e omega three and guess what? Magnesium. So these nerf two which is really important for binding that cysteine to the glycine and making glue to find magnesium is really important as well. And then you can see glutathione also is very Selenium dependent. So fluidify on gets utilized in the body, it needs to be two and then also when it gets reduced to reduce go to diet, it needs vitamin C and lipoic acid to bring it right back up and to recycle it. So if you don’t have enough vitamin C or lipoic acid, which is a silver component, we may not recycle our glutathione and then Selenium is very important too because Selenium helps take the metabolism of Go to found it spits out a lot of hydrogen peroxide right here, h2o. And Selenium actually binds an oxygen off and makes it water. So it actually helps the metabolites of glutathione that are very inflammatory h2o to and it turns it in the water. And then we use a lot of these phytonutrients as well to buffer that oxidative stress.
Evan Brand: It’s beautiful. It’s a it’s amazing how that happens. So you and I’ve talked about autism and behavioral issues and detoxification issues and all that and how it’s related to mthfr defects. So what we’re kind of showing here can show how just simply improving the methylation component of this picture can improve detox because methylation helps with detox on its own, but you see the mechanism downstream of glutathione. So this is why some kids that we work with even just by improving methylation, and as you mentioned, we’ll give them like an activated, you know, l mt hf or something similar data We’ll clear up some of the mood issues that will clear up some of the skin, it will clear up dark circles under the eyes. I mean, just improving methylation alone could be a game changer. My favorite part of this whole picture is the vitamin C, because in this paper that you and I were looking at, it was shown that even just taking 500 to 1000 milligrams a day of vitamin C for 13 weeks. So what’s that give it three months or so led to an 18% increase in gluten ion levels? So that’s it. That’s such low hanging fruit. You and I are such huge fans of addressing low hanging fruit. I mean, how much easier can it get? You’re boosting Bluetooth on 20% just by vitamin C. I’m rounding at 18 but I’m calling it 20. I mean, it’s close enough.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanted to highlight this one study here so you can see it to kind of just dovetails with everything we’re talking about. I want to just make sure that makes sense. pull this up screen here so you guys can see it.
Evan Brand: Okay, while you’re doing that, I’m going to just keep ranting about other nutrients. So yeah, I just pulled up Selenium. I want to say one thing about that real quick. So Selenium. It was found that beautify on increases just by giving Selenium as well. So I’m not saying spot tree. But let’s see someone had a thyroid issue were like, Hey, you really need some extra selenium, that alone could be boosting Bluetooth ion. So it’s really, really cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the nice thing is when we’re looking at patients, we’re testing all these nutrients because of course, yes, it’s going to help but if you’re deficient in one nutrient over the other, that nutrient could be the bigger linchpin for supporting your glutathione. Right. Now, this study, I thought was really important because one of the major mechanisms of glutathione and how it works with cancer is it modulates the immune system, better immune system, right? It controls cancer cell growth, right? What’s cancer just cells growing out of control, and then it helps with oxidation, right? oxidation is when you lose electrons and cancer is very oxidative. It causes a lot of loss of electrons which then creates a lot of free radical stress and damage. To the DNA into the immune system, so really powerful abstract here, role of fluidify on and cancer progression and chemo resistance which means resistance to chemotherapy. It talks about codifying, placing an important role in the cellular process, including proliferation and a pop ptosis. That means cells growing and cells dying, so it helps cells so they don’t grow too much until they die sooner. That’s good. We need that. Then it talks about while glutathione deficiency or decrease in glutathione ratio leads to an increase in susceptibility of oxidative stress. What does that mean translation, you lose a lot more electrons, and that creates free radical damage and DNA implicated in the progression of cancer elevated glow to final levels increase the antioxidant capacity. That means it helps you take electrons that you’ve lost it helps bind to them and stabilize the cell and resistance to oxidative stress observed in many cancer cells. The presence highlights the role of gluta thiam as a cytotoxic That means it protects the cells from being damaged. Carcinogenic means means the formation of cancer. So it protects cells from being inhabited by cancer and the sensitivity to tumors to the cytotoxic agents, or the cytotoxic effects of anti carcinogenic agents, so what that means it’s going to protect you from getting damaged by chemotherapy. And it’s going to protect you from the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy. So that’s kind of the the layman’s translation as we go. So what’s the moral of the story glutathione protects you from the damage of cancer, it protects your cells from growing into cancer and it protects you from the damage of chemotherapy. So three ways it’s very beneficial.
Evan Brand: That’s amazing and not that this was the glutathione cancer podcast, but hey, I’m sure everybody listening would agree that you don’t want cancer. So, of course, you can’t say glutathione prevent you from getting it, but man, it’s an incredibly protective molecule.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Evan, can you see me back on screen now?
Evan Brand: Yes, sir.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Awesome. I think we hit that one really, really well. Let’s keep on rolling though, if you don’t mind. So we talked about that pathway, which I thought was really helpful. We’ll put the links down below. So if you guys want to see it, why don’t we talk about some of the big foods, so beautify on right cysteine glutamine glycine, so now we just back into it what foods are really high in cysteine, glutamine lysine? Well, of course, things like whey proteins and to be great as long as you’re not ultra dairy sensitive whey proteins great sulfur rich foods are going to be helpful like a lot of your brassica cruciferous vegetables right bok choy, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, kale, mustard greens, turnips, again, the problem is that’s not going to really help you with a lot of the intercellular glutathione but it’s still going to be helpful. Now what other other foods that are more high in some of those intercellular nutrients? Well, you’re going to see all of your high quality animal products, beef, chicken, fish, eggs, all of these things. The higher quality the animals are, meaning the less hormones the West junk, the less toxins, the more they’re fed high quality grass, the more nutritionally dense they’re going to be.
Evan Brand: I found, I’m looking at a couple of like food data sheets. So in one large egg, you get almost 150 milligrams of cysteine. And who knows if that’s even, I mean, that could have been a conventional egg. I mean, what about like a fully pastured organic egg, you may even get more cysteine you’re talking almost I mean, if you do two eggs, you’re at 100% of even over 100% of your daily intake for assisting with two eggs. Love sunflower seeds, and a handful, a one ounce handful of sunflower seeds. You’re at over 100 milligrams of hemp seeds. You get a ton from hemp seeds as well. So like let’s say you did a smoothie in the morning where you put in some collagen with maybe some hemp seed or maybe some hemp protein added to it. Maybe a grass fed way. I mean you’re going to be stellar in the solidify on generating department.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. 100%. So your animal products are always going to be the best way to go off the bat just because of how high they are and how nutrient dense they are. Also, when you look at amino acids and plants, you have to look at the digestibility of the amino acids, there are certain scales, you can look at that look at the digestibility because plants have a lot of anti nutrients that bind a lot of these amino acids up because plants don’t have claws and teeth to fight or flee. So how they survive is they have anti nutrients which makes some of their nutritional compounds harder to break down which means they pass through the stool and then they can grow seeds and flourish and other parts of the soil. So they have to have anti nutrients so they can pass other animals digestive tracts right. Animals just have claws and teeth to fight and flee plants don’t so there’s a lot more anti nutrients that prevents some of the digestibility whether it’s mineral blockers like fighting And oxalates, whether it’s trypsin inhibitors that help decrease proteolytic enzymes, so their proteins can’t be digested, whether it’s lots of hard to process fibers, all those things are potential and could be, could play a big role in those amino acids not being fully absorbed.
Evan Brand: Well, here’s a couple other things, too. So in that paper, they’ve got a table on there that talks about preparation of the sulfur rich vegetables. And apparently freezing of broccoli does reduce the sulfur. And then of course, if you are eating it overcooked, you’re likely gonna it’s like a sweet spot, right? Because we’ve talked about this before nutrient density of raw versus lightly steamed. So lightly steamed is going to be the way to go. But if you cook too much, then you’ve broken it down that way. If it’s frozen broccoli, then you’re already at a disadvantage state. So it sounds like it’s just too difficult. I mean, I’m not saying that. veggies aren’t important. I still eat a ton of veggies, but if I’m looking to it To increase glutathione I’m not just going to be doing a broccoli smoothie, I’m going to be focused on the way and the collagen. And also, here’s an interesting one. Number one food for my pining king crab, one crab leg, you’re over 700 milligrams of Matheny. It’s the number one source. So if you like crap out there, there’s a reason to like it because of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. I love it. I think that’s really, really awesome points. So a couple of kind of deal breakers, let’s call it low stomach acid, we don’t have enough high quality stomach acid, it’s gonna be hard to break down a lot of these sulfur rich compounds. So of course, that’s going to be a big, big problem. So if we don’t have enough stomach acid or enzymes, we’re not going to be able to digest a lot of those animal products, and also a lot of the sulfur rich vegetables. Let’s be real, a lot of them are very high and fodmaps, right, fermentable oligo, disaccharide, mono and polyols. So guess what, if you have SIBO guess what kind of response to those vegetables you’re going to have? Yes. A lot of bloating and gas, they may even disrupt motility they may even cause diarrhea or constipation. So you may not really be able to tolerate much of these vegetables. So a lot of people that are like on a carnivore template, a lot of times they have SIBO, and a lot of autoimmune sensitivities and they’re really sensitive to a lot of the anti nutrients in these plants. So a lot of people kind of come down on people that are doing a carnivore template, but the reason why they do it is because they feel significantly better because of the anti nutrients and because a lot of times there’s some SIBO going on and cutting out those fermentable carbohydrates or even going carnivore can help starve out some of those critters too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and important. And let’s point out that’s not forever. I mean, if somebody is on a carnivore template, we’re using that to stabilize those people until we can work behind the scenes on these other issues like the infections you mentioned. Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we may be able to add some other things down the road for sure. So a lot of your vitamin C rich vegetables are going to be awesome. A lot of the sulfur ones a lot of the lower sugar fruits are going to be awesome. Those are going to be great things to do off the bat. Of course, we talked about yourself. Millennium rich foods as well animal products, oyster seafood, high end zinc high in selenium, Brazil nuts can be excellent as long as you can tolerate the knots very, very high in Selenium. We talked about the stomach acid and the enzymes as being a rate limiting factor because of the fact that they need good acid levels and enzyme levels to be able to break them down. And also say we talked about this earlier. Vitamin D is really important for glutathione in the brain. Can you talk about that a little bit, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. So I think the best way to talk about this and implement it is through the nebulizer. So there was a couple papers talking about increase included found in the brain. I don’t have it pulled up. But long story short, I’ve looked into this. I’ve done it over the weekend. I will tell you, I get more energy, I get more mental clarity. I feel honestly I feel relaxed. I mean, it’s almost like I snuck in a little bit of gamma powder into my nebulizer something because after breathing in the glutathione, I just felt relaxed. Maybe because I was like focusing on deep breathing and such while I was breathing it in. But I looked at a couple papers on the administration method. So just eating glutathione orally meaning in a capsule form like zomo, doing foods to increase it versus IV versus nebulized. The only way to get it in the brain is nebulizing. At we’re talking at therapeutic levels now, the some of the glutathione made in the body get into the brain, probably, but we’re talking if you want to just crank up brain power, let’s say you have a traumatic brain injury, maybe you had a head injury or you’re an athlete or a soccer player or you fell off a bike or you fell down a set of stairs or you have mold because we know mold damages the brain to me nebulizing with the sodium bicarbonate and the saline solution. It’s a miracle cure, so I can’t say enough good things about it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I love it. I think it’s really, really important. I wanted to highlight a couple more things that I thought were also very important. Let’s talk about supplements. So we talked about a couple things when we review that solidify on pathway that you guys can see the video on. Alpha lipoic acid is very important in recycling clarify him. Also, milk thistle is a really good tone of fire and does help support glutathione levels as well. Vitamin C is really important, right? That helps with reduced glutathione and help activating it again, that was also very, very important. Oh-
Evan Brand: Here’s one thing. Go ahead. Here’s one thing I forgot to mention this was in the paper. So I kind of went on a tangent on the on the nebulizer. But in that particular paper, you and I were discussing it I was wrong. It is true that you can increase at least this was in rats. So is it the same in humans maybe. But by just giving an IV dose of NAC they were able to increase glutathione in the brain. So what about oral NAC? Does that increase glutathione in the brain? I don’t know. But at least in that paper IV NAC did boost Brain levels include glutathione.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Yeah, I imagine over time, I mean, those amino acids will eventually cross. I know sometimes the amino acids cross the blood brain barrier and then the glutathione converted in the brain I think glutathione maybe too big to cross the brain itself. I know some of the amino acids like cysteine Oh l cysteine. can cross the blood brain and can then convert to glutathione in the brain. So I know cysteine is a big one. I don’t think NAC can but l cysteine can.
Evan Brand: You think just because it’s smaller?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, smaller because NAC gets broken down into cysteine by the body and some people they say just take cysteine because I know a lot system is very important with adrenaline. And we know adrenaline is a really big, nervous system. amino acid right? And we know dopamine actually gets converted to adrenaline and we know dopamine to adrenaline. That pathway involves sulfur in particularly cysteine.
Evan Brand: So wonder, I’m just thinking out loud just for for my purposes. So I want to People that are having issues with anxiety, if they would be able to reduce the anxiety by boosting up that pathway working more on sulfur.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sulfur can be really helpful. Now in my line, I have a product called detox and he knows that we’ll have some cysteine some and acetylcysteine some calcium to glucose, which is a really good binder for mold and for hormones, refining, cysteine, taurine, glycine, so all the amino acids which is really helpful, I like that a lot. I’ll also do a lot of the the phase one nutrients, a lot of the antioxidants, a lot of the B vitamins, milk thistle, those kind of things for phase one support. Phase One is taking toxins that are fat soluble and converting them to water soluble phase two is going to be water soluble, excrete it out the body and that involves lots of sulfur, all the amino acids I just mentioned. And with some people we may do a combination of El glue or lipids almost glutathione we may do glutathione, there’s another good found has these little these little Bucky balls? Can you talk about that?
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah, I love I love the seat elated. Yeah, so there’s a couple out there with the Bucky balls that basically the idea is to try to just shrink the molecular size of it, so you can kind of sneak it into the cell. So there’s, you’ve got the light zomo where you’re going to do like a sunflower and then you’ve got this buckyball idea now I don’t know if it’s a carbon molecule, if this is the same thing as the C 60. You and I’ve been talking about or what but but there are ways to to make Bluetooth ion smaller for me, I just look at the papers on it. And the acetal version is the one that I believe you have your own I have my own as well have an S acetal ad glue defi on. I’ve had people doing here just just a quick little debate. I’ve had people doing various versions of like Bumble glue defy on and liposomal vitamin C and I’ve measured them and many of these people are still low on the test for vitamin C and glue to violence. So when we switch them over to like an acetal ated and then just a mixed ascorbate I see the levels come up so it’s not that I’m against the life was almost glutathione. But I’m just finding that the acetal works just as good if not better, and it’s capsule because the lipids almost generally tastes like crap. Or if you’ve got a really sensitive person, there’s going to be citrus oil or some other flavoring to cover up the terrible beautify on taste. And then those people don’t tolerate it, and then they’re not compliant and then they don’t get better.
Dr. Justin Marchegian: 100% Yep, I totally agree. So right now, I use a lot of lipids almost, but you still do the seagull and you still get good results with that clinically?
Evan Brand: I do. Yeah, it works great. And I feel good on it. So I’ve done an experiment on myself where I’ll go life as normal for a month and then I’ll go acetal I feel just as good Now it could be because my acetal version has a gram of NAC added to it. So I’m kind of cheating because I’m really getting the NAC plus the gluten. Maybe that’s why I’m I’m getting so much better. Oh, so while you were talking I just did a quick search on studies on glutathione and anxiety because you brought up this whole dopa mean endorphin thing and this is not for the podcast, but really more just Brain Candy for me. Turns out Yes, there’s a link between glutathione and anxiety and bumping up glutathione been shown to reduce depression and anxiety. So there you go.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I make a lot of that has to do with the catecholamine. The dopa means synthesis in the brain. So I think it’s really really important to know. Dr. Marty hands I think he’s over at neuroscience or neuro research. He talks about how sulfur is very important for synthesis of serotonin and dopamine and a lot of your adrenaline over time you will deplete it, especially when you get stressed and you’re taking a lot of your dopamine and you’re converting it downstream to adrenaline, you will be depleting a lot of your sulfur. Now, what does this matter? So this matters, because the more stressed you are, the more sulfur you deplete, which means you’ll have less sulfur leftover. So now if you’re stressed and now you’re exposed to toxins, or you’re living in a moldy home, you can see how stress can make everything worse because now you have less flow glutathione precursors to help you in that situation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, speaking of stress, I’ve got a paper in nature right here. was called I’ll give you the link in case you want it in case you want to show anybody but it was called glutathione depletion, mitochondrial dysfunction induced by chronic stress. And I don’t know this is a rat thing so you know how they deal with rats they do something to them to stress them out but long story short stress in this paper had reduced glutathione brain glutathionr by over 35% so it would make sense why glutathione would help with depression too because you think about the toxicity I mean, heavy metals and such those can impact neurotransmitter function you can get depressed just for being toxic. So by reducing the toxicity, you’re less depressed. I mean, I think that’s really cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now a lot of people are asking well where can you get the nebulized glutathione right now the third natural site is sold out but JustinHealth.com/glutathione would be where you can find that as the third natural site if not head over to EvanBrand.com or JustinHealth.com just put glutathione in the search and we have some of our own sulfur based compounds that we use in the lead As well mold based compounds we use so feel free to reach out to us, we’ll put pertinent links down below for you guys as well. And then outside of that, just really make sure you have good stomach acid levels because you need good stomach acid to break everything down. And then we also talked about, you know, the animal products if you’re vegan vegetarian, try to get some animal products in there, even if it’s egg yolks, or if it’s a little bit of fish, do your best on that and just try to make it healthy. And then really look at B 12. And fully, you’re not going to get enough b 12. On the on the plant based side, you really need animal products to get b 12. So if you are really plant based, you need to make sure you’re supplementing with the high quality methylated B 12. And maybe some activated full layers to be safe, because you need full eight and B 12 to run those glutathione pathways.
Evan Brand: Let’s just do like a quick 30-second recap because those with brain fog are like oh my god, what am I supposed to do? Do I go like swimming? Am I in a pool filled with glutathione? What do I do? So whey protein, grass fed meats Good cruciferous veggies probably lightly steamed over raw, maybe some greens powders or greens juices if you if you just for some reason can’t tolerate it like the broccoli sprouts, I think that’d be great for somebody that can’t eat broccoli because maybe they have digestive troubles and you could go for some of the extracts, making sure you’re doing enough vitamin C as you mentioned, adequate stomach acid, so making sure you’re testing your gut for infections. If you have H. pylori, and other infections, you’ve got to fix your gut, so possibly extra enzymes, possibly anti microbials, antifungal, anti parasitic herbs to treat the infections, maybe doing an oat test to check in on your overall levels and getting some micronutrient panels run. And then if there’s other issues that are keep depleting you then maybe looking into the mold, the heavy metals and the other toxins that are going to deplete glue to die on. That’s kind of your recap.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% now, what do you need for sulfur amino acids a day? I would say you know 1500 to 2000 milligrams on some of the NAC and some The sulfur aminos I’ll do one to two scoops, you know, 1020 grams of collagen a day, I think it’s great on the vitamin C on the low side, you know, one to two grams, I think it’s great if your diets amazing and you’re getting lots of leafy greens and some low sugar fruit, maybe a gram or nothing is probably okay, if you’re really great there, if not a gram or two on the vitamin C sides are great on the light bulbs almost go to file. And if you want to go that road, I think half a gram to one full gram is fine half a gram on the maintenance side. Or if you’re just getting sulfur amino acid, that may be enough. But if you’re under some stress with mold a half a gram to a full gram. And if you’re dealing with more acute stress, right, a lot of viral issues today can really create stress in the lungs and glorify them can be very helpful with that long stress. You may want to go up to two grams on the glutathione more acutely and those are a couple of good first things go ahead.
Evan Brand: Yeah yeah don’t forget about the NAC too. You and I did I don’t know if we did a whole show or if we just kind of rained it on it for a little bit, but NAC in regards to immune health and NAC being very very protective so I’m usually at around a gram but you could go higher possibly 2 grams per day of NAC combined with that 500 to 1000 milligrams glutathione that is an awesome one-two punch.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just be careful what the NAC cuz it’s an expectorant it will dry out your sinuses and and your throat a little bit so it’s great if you’re really mucus ease but be careful if you’re getting too dry you may want to pull back on it. So just kind of know that NAC is awesome for a lot of the excess post nasal drip excess mucus but if you go a little too much you may get a little bit too dry in some of those areas.
Evan Brand: I can confirm. I haven’t had a nosebleed but when I was going higher like, two grams. Yeah I was pretty dry I felt like I could breathe better though, man I tell you my sinuses felt clean as a whistle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you’re getting over a cold and you got a little bit of post nasal stuff going on, NAC you should be one of the first things you go to in your medicine cabinet specially if you get that little bit of a nagging post nasal drip cough and they cease the first thing to hit.
Evan Brand: Yep.Maybe that some Exley or nasal spray something like that you got anything.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah, well you definitely the sign is flush with the X clear like that’s number one, because you got to flush things up, and the number two, you dry it up and then you do those you’re in good shape. Anything else you want to highlight Evan?
Evan Brand: No, let’s wrap this thing up it was fun and if y’all have further questions or comments of course we always want to hear your experiments and your experiences- how did it go, what did you do with glutathione, did you do like me and then I called Justin in like 10 o’clock when I hey man I took like a double or triple dose of glutathione and I got a terrible headache I remember that so now. We’re always being the guinea pigs and that’s what we love doing and we are available clinically. So if you need help, you can reach out to Dr. J at JustinHealth.com, we work with people around the world. So JustinHealth.com, my website EvanBrand.com and we’ll be in touch next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we talk about these things guys, this isn’t theoretical for stuff. We see thousands of patients, tens of thousands over our decade-long careers and we know it works. We know it doesn’t and if you’re leaning into glutathione, maybe put a little bit of a binder in there an activated charcoal bentonite clay taking way away from food and supplements just to kind of soak up or kind of broom up anything that may be already liberated from your body. So that’s kind of a good first step just to be on the on the alert and always start low taper up don’t ever go over the top on it always start low work your way up try to make sure you’re working with a
practitioner so you have ways to monitor, test and assess as well as figure out the best order of operations and addressing your concerns. And if you want to reach out to Evan, EvanBrand.com, myself Dr. J JustinHeatlh.com. We are available worldwide for support and health consults and feel free and reach there. All right guys if you enjoy it let your friends and family know put your comments down below and what future podcast topics you’d like to hear about. Have a good one guys, take care.
Evan Brand: I got one final comment on that sure, I’m so glad you brought up the binder. So this podcast is not designed for people to go, hey I’m you know feverishly writing down everything that Justin said. This many milligrams of this is I’m gonna go do his protocol- no, that’s not what he said. These are just guidelines okay because if you go and you do a gram of glutathione and you’ve never taken it you’re probably gonna get a headache or feel like crap because you’re mobilizing things. This thing glutathione helps push and I think of it as the push so when we’re talking about a detox protocol it’s kind of a push catch push catch repeat and if you don’t have something in to catch it meaning something to upregulate phase 2 or potentially also in addition the binders like the charcoal the clay zeolite bentonite you know chlorella whatever it is you could get in trouble so please don’t just go to glutathione, you’ve really got to have some sort of catcher’s mitt in place or just help your you know allow your practitioner to guide you because you can have too much of a good thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent point, Evan. We’ll put some of our favorite products down below so you guys can take a peek and we’re here to help you as needed Evan you have a phenomenal day.
Evan Brand: Great chat with you, take care. See you later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks, bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-ways-to-increase-your-glutathione-levels-podcast-292
Improving Mitochondrial Function | Podcast #222
Today’s episode talks about mitochondrial health. Listen as Dr. Justin and Dr. Tim, a doctorate of Physical Therapy (DPT), a nutritional biochemist and functional endocrinologist engage in an informative discussion about improving the mitochondria, ways to protect the DNA on the mitochondrial side from oxidative stress and damage and importance of Superoxide Dismutase (SOD).
Watch the video and answer the questions about genetic markers that we need to look at to gleam a predisposition of having mitochondrial stress or dysfunction, learn the effects of glutathione deficiency and superoxide dismutase, and many more!
Dr. Tim Jackson
In this episode, we cover:
00:17 Genetic Markers
01:42 Ways to Protect DNA from Oxidative Stress and Damage
09:55 Carnitine
15:31 Three Pronged Approach: Repair, Protect and Fuel
29:06 Glutathione S-transferase Mu
Dr. Tim Jackson: Dr. Justin, thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Well, what’s going on there? We were talking about some genetic test, uhm, pre-called with one of my patients, you gave me some good feedback, I appreciate that. Let’s dive in to some genetic markers that we can look at to maybe gleam a predisposition for having some mitochondrial stress or dysfunction. What would those be?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So, uh, looking at superoxide dismutase or SOD-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -polymorphisms, uh, along with polymorphisms in the glutathione pathway, whether it’s uh, GSTN uhm or GPX, uh because both glutathione and Superoxide Dismutase are the two bodyguards that sit in front of your mitochondria. Uhm, our nuclear DNA is protected by histones and so is not as susceptible to oxidative damage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what are histones?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Histones are just proteins uhm, that help, uh, kinda coil up uh-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -the DNA, and uh, organize it and also protect it. Uh, and mitochondrial DNA uh, does not have those, so it’s kind of sitting out uh-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aah…
Dr. Tim Jackson: -alone by itself. And if you’re deficient in glutathione and superoxide dismutase, then uh, it’s much easier for the mitochondria to become damaged.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So regular DNAs has histones which protect that coil up around the DNA, but mitochondrial DNA does not have histones that make it more vulnerable, is that correct?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ok, got it. So, what does that mean? What can we do to protect our DNA on the mitochondrial side, uhm, form oxidative stress and damage?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, obviously, you know, looking at things like stealth infections, mold, dysbiosis, blood sugar imbalances, all of those uhm, will create inflammation and ultimately stress the mitochondria-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uh but in order to, you know, protect it and upregulate the SOD compound or superoxide dismutase and glutathione, uh, we can use things that upregulate NRF2. And NRF2 is just uh ce- cellular control switch, uhm that is responsible for detoxifying, uh, certain compounds-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -but also upregulating your antioxidant, your endogenous antioxidant production. So if we can do things that control many different reactions-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -that’s a lot better than going, you know, tip-for-tat, trying to uhm, you know, correct imbalances.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it. So let’s repeat those nutrients. So, obviously, superoxide dismutase is a- is a big one, and where can we get that supplementally?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So, there are several companies that have uh, SOD, uhm, in the capsule or tablet. Uh, I haven’t seen any good data on how terrible it is, uhm, so, I try to do things that will upregulate it upstream, uhm, instead of just uh, you know, trying to absorb even in the uh- and optimally helping gut, I don’t know how will absorb SOD would be. Uh, but if you upregulate NRF2, and things- plenty of things can do that. Uh, but one that’s specific to the mitochondria is molecular-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -hydrogen. And molecular hydrogen- what makes it so unique, is that it’s-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -really tiny. So it can get to where we need it to go, which is in the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: It- it helps to stab in the nasty- really nasty free radical called peroxynitrite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And not only that, it stimulates the production and creation of new mitochondria, which the only other things to do that are exercise and PQQ.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. What about fasting? How much does fasting have an impact on the mitochondria?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, it has a tremendous impact uhm, in terms of upregulating, you know, autophagy, cleaning the cells-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uh, that sort of thing. Uh, the only thing I would caution with fasting is that, you know, if someone’s HPA, thyroid, gut, vanadyl axis [crosstalk], and uh, you fast, then that may in fact worsen their metabolism and metabolic rate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s a thing. I see a lot of people with adrenal issues and also thyroid issues, and they may even have some blood sugar stuff, and they’re hearing all the rage of fasting that people getting lots of benefits but that may actually exacerbate their issues, right, it can increase the HPA-TA, or, you know, increase that stress and it can even potentially lower thyroid hormone more by increasing reversed T3.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right, yeah, absolutely. And uh, lot of times, you know, you can develop hypothyroid symptoms-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, adrenal insufficiency-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and/or cortisol resistance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Good. So, we have- you mentioned- was that the molecular hydrogen you mentioned- you mentioned the superoxide dismutase, correct? Uh-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Err- what about various compounds like resveratrol or curcumin, what do you think about them? How do they do with the mitochondria?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So, curcumin works on uh, control switch called NF-kappa-beta. And basically, uh, you know, genes generally aren’t turned completely on or off, it’s more-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -like adjusting the volume on your stereo. And so, curcumin helps downregulate NF-kappa-beta-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and that results in less inflammatory markers which is-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -cytokines-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uh, TNF-alpha, ___[05:48]. And so, curcumin, uh, works, uh, on several levels. It upregulates glutathione by up to 600%-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uh, it downregulates NF-kappa-beta, so-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -you’re not giving the inflammatory stress. And that’s also has some antimicrobial properties. And, uh, not to get too far off topic but certain viruses can get- retroviruses can get stuck in the mitochondria. And if- if you have a patient, or if you’re someone who- you’ve been taking a lot of CoQ10, you’ve been taking lot of carnitine, you might even have done IV-NAD, and you didn’t felt benefit, then it means your mitochondria are damaged and we need to repair them. Uhm, and you tell me when you want me to go into the three pronged approach of how to heal the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great, excellent. So is there anythi- other supplements you can- you can highlight before we dive into that? What about resveratrol? People have talked about that. What’s your take on resveratrol?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, uhm- it- it’s not very absorbed, uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -by most companies. Uhm, you know, even if you add uh-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -___[07:01] to it, or black pepper. Uh there was a company that had transdermal resveratrol-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -but I think the vinyl FDH shut them down. Uhm but I think there are a few products out there uhm, that have liposomal resveratrol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, you know, that would be better absorbed, for sure. Uhm, but yeah, I mean, it works on multiple levels, it can help, you know, with hormone metabolism, uhm, and free radical stress-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -anti-aging, so many things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Any other supplements you wanna highlight, kinda low-hanging fruit nutrients, you wanna make note of?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- B- well, I would say, you know, L-carnitine, or Acetylcarnitine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, you know, if you had certain polymorphisms, you might not be able to carry fatty acids into the mitochondria-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -where they get burned for energy-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -what we call beta-oxidation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so Acetylcarnitine is like an uber for fatty acids-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: American shuttle.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Exactly. And so, you know, that’s a supplement that uhm, helps mitochondrial health, helps improve metabolism, uhm it can help burn fat, uhm, energy production, etc. So, yeah, I would say that- that’s definitely low-hanging fruit. Uhm, and then, you know, the molecular hydrogen, you’re not to harp on that too much but it- it does so many different things. Uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do you get the molecular hydrogen? I know you mentioned Cindy Crawford has a skin-care line with those compounds in it. I know you mentioned there’s a molecular hydrogen machine that you’ve been supporting and using for a while.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How we can get more molecular hydrogen into our body?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So, uh, the company trusii, T-R-U-S-I-I, uh, there’s many companies offering molecular hydrogen machines. But this company, uhm, they have a- a really great machine, uhm depending on how much you’ll wanna spend, uhm you just add reverse osmosis or ___[09:08] as water. And it’s- uhm, add some molecular hydrogen to it, uhm, so you don’t have to keep buying out the supplement, you know, every month. It’s a better alternative investment in my opinion. Uhm, the more expensive machine also contains a nasal cannula-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -so you can breathe that in, uhm, and molecular hydrogen. So the highest concentration of mitochondria is in our nervous system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: The second co- highest concentration is in our heart. Uhm, and so, by improving uh, mitochondrial function, we can improve brain health, brain fog, fatigue, uhm, you know, difficulty concentrating, and also, uhm, have better for fusion to our tissues, because we have better cardiac output.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, interesting, very good. Awesome. Uh, one thing I wanted to highlight too, you were talking about carnitine a minute ago. Carnitine is important because there’s key amino acids you need to make it. Methionine and lysine are really important ones, and a lot of those amino acids are missing in vegetarian type diets. So if you’re not eating animal products, we are not getting supplemental amino acids while being vegetarian, it may be hard- you’d be missing some of those key nutrients that are important for making carnitine. [Crosstalk]
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And the process of methylation, uh, which is you know, collection of a hundred and- or almost 200 different uh reactions in the body. Uh, helps reduce CoQ10 and the L-carnitine. And so if you’re deficient in B12 or methyl folate, or your methylation cycles disrupted because of uh heavy metals or environmental pollutants, then you won’t create as much endogenous uhm L-carnitine and CoQ10.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. And can you talk more about methylation. So, a methyl group is a carbon in 3 hydrogen. So essentially hen we methylate, we’re just binding those compounds, uhm, to whatever that reaction is, whether it’s neurotransmitters or B-Vitamins. Can you talk kinda more about it like, what does that really- what’s really happening kinda at a biochemical level inside of our cells when we’re methylating and- and where does this happen?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, so it happens uhm, and all the cells in the body and it involves no just B12 and methyl folate but all the other B-Vitamins, as well as-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -mineral cofactors such as magnesium and zinc. Uhm, and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -you know, you probably heard of supplements like TMG or DMG-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, those are-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk]
Dr. Tim Jackson: -yeah those are major methyl burners uhm that have been shown to improve cognitive function. Uhm, but methylation is responsible for everything from detoxification, to producing glutathione to uh, producing certain immune cells, the CD4, CD8, T-helper, T-suppressor cells. Uhm, and also, metabolism of your estrogens. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -if you’re not methylating your estrogens, you tend to recycle or reabsorb them. And uh, you know, methylation can get turned off, uh, independent of any polymorphisms, you know. But if you have polymorphisms and uh methylation or MTHFR, then that certainly uhm, you know tells us that you at some point, you know, in the right context, need both B12 and methyl folate along with the other B-Vitamins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so what’s happening in the body? These nutrients are- are- they’re affecting obviously brain chemicals or affecting detoxification like, what’s happening? Like, just to keep it simple.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, so, basically adding a methyl group, uhm, helps with the creation of glutathione, but you’re also getting neurotransmitters like ___[12:54]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -to turn into dopamine, produce.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, there’s a condition called cerebral folate deficiency, where uh, due to certain antibodies, uhm, you might have uh, enough, uhm methylfolate or folinic acid in your cells but it might not be in the cerebral spinal fluid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uhm there are a couple labs I think that test for it now, it used to be mostly research-based, uhm but those people to need higher doses of methylfolate-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm with the other thing with uh B12 is that it needs a- a transporter, a mover. So, lithium orotate, the trace mineral, not the psychotropic drug but, it helps uhm transport vitamin B12.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, very cool. I know you mentioned that on- on our last podcast we did together. That’s very good. So we have this carbon-hydrogens, then we need all these nutrients, trimethylglycine or- or HCL, essentially betaines gonna have a lot of that in there. Our methylating B-Vitamins like B6, B9, B12, ideally, we’re having uhm folate, not folic acid, we’re having methylated or LMTHF folate, we also may be doing choline like B1, like riboflavin, thiamine, nycine as well.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So, uhm all the B’s, biotin, etc., uhm all need to be there for the methylation cycle to occur. Uhm, and, you know, you could- there are many polymorphisms that we won’t give into that can affect the methylation cycle outside of MTHFR. Uhm, so, you know, it’s really ab- about the environment and the terrain that determines whether these-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -polymorphisms expressed or not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Alright, so let’s go dive into your 3-prong approach. So, what does that look like and- and how do you apply that clinically with your patients?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So, basically, err, we’ve been taught that you know, okay, give more CoQ10, give more carnitine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And let- let’s say you have a ferrari, and the transmission’s out. Putting more gasoline in the gas tank is not gonna help the-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -transmission. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re just giving CoQ10 or carnitine. And that’s okay uh, but you have to adjust the other aspects and one of them we mentioned earlier, and that’s uh, protecting the mitochondria. How do we protect them? We make sure we have adequate glutathione, reduced glutathione, not oxidized glutathione, and uh optimal levels of SOD or superoxide dismutase.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Okay, got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, the 3-pronged approach is protect the mitochondria, the antioxidants, provide mitochondrial fuel, you know with L-carnitine, CoQ10 etc.-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: PQQ.
Dr. Tim Jackson: PQQ, NAD, uh nicotine ___[15:47]-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -a- all those things. And then the 3rd of uh aspect or 3rd uhm, prong of the approach is to repair the mitochondrial membranes. And so those get damaged from inflammation, and also certain pesticides and petrochemicals, and uhm, you can use different supplements uhm that have high doses of phospholipids, uhm, ___[16:14] in them to help remodel the mitochondria, and uh, you know, it’s been studied in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, uhm to help the mitochondria for sure-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, so the 3 pronged approach, just to summarize is, protect the mitochondria with glutathione superoxide dismutase, repair the mitochondrial membranes with uhm NT factor energy, or uhm, uh group of phospholipids that are gonna rehab or rehabilitate mitochondrial membrane, and then provide mitochondrial fuel via CoQ10, carnitine, PQQ, NAD, etc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. So, repair, protect, and fuel. So, protection is glutathione, antioxidants. Would curcumin also fall into that category too?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Curcumin, uhm helps to upregulate glutathione-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I guess it could right ’cause glutathione’s uh antioxidant. So, would it kinda have some protection qualities, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, absolutely. And because it lowers uh inflammatory markers-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uh that’s gonna put less oxygenated stress on the mitochondria-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good. Excellent-
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -so that’s the protection. Then on the fuel, that’s like B-Vitamins, CoQ10, carnitine, PQQ and then with- with like the niagen or the- the nicotinamide compounds fit into that category?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh they- uh could uh potentially but I think of them more as uh mitochondrial fuel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh that’s more- yeah, fuel, that’s in- in that fuel, yup. Correct?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. And so, uhm you know, the- they can definitely help and you know, in the clinic we’d use uh IV-NAD, it’s great for uh drug detox-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It burns though doesn’t it?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, it should be between a 6- and 8-hour drip, and you have to do it 10 days consecutively, you can’t miss a day. Uhm, and that can help for example people who’d take in the antibiotics that fall under the 4-Quinolone-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: [Crosstalk]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Lot of damage.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, lot of damage. So, IV-NAD, coupled with the NT factor energy, uhm can help the mitochondria for sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then on the- so you have the repair side which is like a lot of the- so we have the protect which is lot of the antioxidants, the fuel is more of the nutrients we just mentioned, the NAD, the B-Vitamins and CoQ10, carnitine. And then repair, it was- it was- I’m sorry, protect, fuel and then repair. And the repair is gonna be more glutathione, and a more sulfur amino, correct?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So the repairs are gonna be more of the NT factor energy, the phospholipid complex-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Phospholipids. Okay, and then how-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What does that mean supplement wise? What supplements would you look for, and then what foods, what good phospholipids can we eat in our diet- consume in our diet that will help?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, well so, uh anything uh, like sunflower, lecithin, as a supplement-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -to the health but, there’s actually a product called uh NT-factor energy-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, ___[19:15] helped developed it. And uh certain, you know, chemicals and pesticides can get lodged into the mitochondria. And according to him, uh the NT-factor energy can take up to a year that can help displace some of these chemicals from the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good, excellent. I love that! I mean, really good. Protect, fuel and then repair. And that makes a lot of sense. And then how are you applying this with your patients? So if someone comes into your clinic, are you just starting with diet and lifestyle changes first, uh what lab test are you doing, how does this plug into your clinical model when you work with patients?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, so, I mean, their- uh, actually the U.K. has some really good mitochondrial testing because of the work of Dr. Sarah Myhill. Uhm and I think the lab is called RED Labs. Uh, but it- you can measure various markers here, you know-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -cerum, CoQ10- [crosstalk], pyruvate, lactate, etc. Uh you can look at fatty acid markers on an organic acids test-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -if they’re high, that means they’re not-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk]
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. They’re not- yes, not being transported into the into the mitochondria, you might need some L-carnitine. And the difference between L-carnitine and acetyl carnitine – acetyl carnitine can cross the blood brain barrier. And so it can work on neurotransmitters as well as uh mitochondrial health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then carnitine’s- like L-carnitine is more downstream, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you would use that to improve the carnitine shuttle and to help improve fatty acid oxidation and energy burning from fat, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. And then kids, on the spectrum who have low muscle tone, uhm, you know we definitely use uh lot of carnitine, CoQ10, you know, the gold standard in traditional uhm mitochondrial uh disorders is the muscle biopsy. But you know, traditional medicine does a great job of finding things if aren’t there on the extreme here, or extreme here, but most of the world exist on this continuum. And just because you’re on that continuum doesn’t mean you don’t have it- an issue for it to be corrected.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we can also use carnitine too to help modulate thyroid hormones too, I mean, if you’re on the hyper side or on the grave’s or hyper side, carnitine is some really great modulatory effects, and also with the lithium orotate as well. So, 2 interesting mitochondrial compounds but also help with modulating high thyroid function.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Mm-hmm- mm-hmm. Absolutely. Definitely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, to continue walking everyone through your kind of how you would, you know, work up a patient and incorporate this 3-pronged approach.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So basically, the more systems that are involved in someone’s symptom presentation, the more you should take uh mitochondrial dysfunction. And, you know, mitochondria- by making the mitochondria work better, everything in your body will work better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Now off-air we were talking about uh, you know, the different, uh Kindle Store that I trained with an Austin Texas, you know he calls-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -an mitochondrial bucket.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, let’s say you start uh today working on healing your mitochondria, you’re not gonna notice all the benefit that you will 6 months down the road. Uh the first system that goes offline when the mitochondria are dysfunctional, is the nervous system. So, brain fog, fatigue, memory issues, etc. And that’s one reason why the IV NAD issues for drug rehab because it helps kind of rehabilitate the brain and so those cravings for the drugs and withdrawals go down dramatically.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what did you learn specifically from Kindle when you were down in Austin?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh methylation, you know, at that time back in 2012, you know, it was all uh checking bile titers, and using uh anti barrels, uh, and liquid boron for uhm cerebral folate deficiency, uhm, and the mitochondria at the time he wasn’t as comprehensive uh with it, uhm but now he’s gotten more so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, interesting. Alright, next. What else?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, so, you know, outside of the 3-pronged approach, the way, you know, that I uhm look at the mitochondria and- and work with someone uhm with mitochondrial issues is to uh, you know, again, upregulate glutathione. Some people may not be able to tolerate glutathione the beginning-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then what happens? If that is the case and they can’t even handle sulfur amino acids like methionine or cysteine or NAC or taurine or- I don’t- m- maybe they had little taurine but what would you do? How would you incorporate those aminos which are tapered in, would you incorporate binders, what would you do?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So, I would look at the potential for SIBO, and the production of hydrogen sulfide gas. Uhm, I’d seen that happen a lot, uhm, you can also- Amy Yasko has a list of, you know, foods that are really high in sulfur, uhm, and so I would, you know, you might want go in a low sulfur diet for a period of time. Uhm, but basically, uhm using uh, like the ___[24:32]-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah molybdenum? Mm-hmm?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Molybdenum, yeah. That uh will help that CBS polymorphism work as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And or facilitate that enzyme working better. Uh, so someone can’t tolerate glutathione, uhm, you know, we use it uh, in lower doses, uh or we’ll back off completely, open the drainage pathways to the body, make sure the biles are moving, we’re supporting the kidneys and liver and lymphatic system, and then out again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, what does that mean? Because obviously, I mean you need glutathione to detoxify it- it’s a great antioxidant, right, it’s a great protector of our uhm, our mitochondria. So, obviously we need it. So why does that mean like, do we have to just decrease it, doesn’t that decrease our mitochondria’s ability to be protected because it doesn’t have the histones, right? So what happens? I mean, is it- is it kind of a short-term kind of mindset?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, yes. it’s short term mindset for sure because you now- you definitely need it, but in people who are really toxic, uhm their elimination pathways are compromised, then, you know, they’re not gonna be able to tolerate it. And-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So- so the reactions are because we’re mobilizing too much crap? Or too much toxin essentially?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Typically, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so when you try to upregulate like the lymph, are we giving like certain gentle herbs that may upregulate the lymph or the detox just to kinda generally allow things to to flow better and not get excited, do we add in binders? What does that look like?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Drainage remedies- I use drainage remedies uhm, to support the lymphatic system. You can use things like coke root- red root-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, but also, you know, vibration plate, chi machines, mini rebounders to get the lymphatic system moving, dry skin brushing, uhm drainage remedies for sure for the kidneys, liver, uhm and lymphatic system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. ___[26:25] is great, I’ve used it on my wife uh before she had a- almost little bit of mastitis, breastfeeding and that works really well, it really opens things up, I love ___[26:33], that’s great.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s very good. Yeah, so, in general, Amy Yasko has the low sulfur diet, we’ll put the links in for the Amy Yasko diet. So we kinda keep some of the sulfur down, we made you what some breath testing to look at hydrogen sulfide, and- and why would that be a problem? What’s happening with that SIBO or that hydrogen sulfide overgrowth that is affecting glutathione or making us more s- uh- sensitive to sulfur amino acids?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, uh, hydrogen sulfide is a mitochondrial inhibitor.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And, so it basically puts the body in a state of torpor, or energy conservation. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great! Torker?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Torpor. T-O-R-P-O-R. So like-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, yeah. And that was the way I was you know, described to me but uh, you know, you can lower body temperature-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -decreased energy production-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -cause major brain fog, uh, as far as the breath testing goes, it can be helpful but 25% of the time you get a false negative.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you wanna do conventional stool- or you wanna do some more cutting stool testing to look for bacteria overgrowth?
Dr. Tim Jackson: That uhm- on the organic acids test, I think it’s 21 hydroxyphenyl acetate-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh that’s the marker that can be indicative of SIBO, uhm you know, if you see that, uhm, and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Phenyl acetate is interesting ’cause that’s also an oxidative stress marker too.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uhm, yes, so, the uh, SIBO. If you had concentration for any period of time or extended period of time, the only way SIBO can develop is when there is a lack of peristalsis or decreased peristalsis-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -so you get a migration of the bacteria that belong in the large intestines, moving up to the small intestines which should be relatively sterile. And so uhm, you know, err- you wanna correct the large intestines, you wanna optimize stomach acid, uhm, bile production, digestive enzymes and uh, you know, you can use herbs or antibiotics to treat the SIBO, but if you don’t improve peristalsis, it’s just gonna keep coming back.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Now there are a lot of patients that are doing a lot of DNA testing these days for 23 of May, what are the big DNA Markers you would look at to say, hey there may be a mitochondrial issue, or even maybe an issue with detoxifying? What would you look at genetically, what are the top 3 or 5 things you would look at and highlight and say, “Hey this- this may lead you into faking there’s an issue”?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So GSTM, uh, for glutathione.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, you know, we can measure uh glutathione levels. Uhm, it’s best to measure the reduced-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm to oxidize ratio ’cause some people can’t recycle glutathione. Uhm, but glutathio- any polymorphisms in the glutathione pathway, that’s gonna affect detoxification, uhm, and on mitochondria, uhm, and polymorphisms and the superoxide dismutase pathway. Uh, that’s gonna affect it, uh, polymorphism called endufs, uh N-D-U-F-S, uhm that affects uhm fatty acid transport-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -into mitochondria. Uhm there’s one called ACAT, A-C-A-T, and that can affect the conversion of protein, and fats into Acetyl-CoA, and so that’s a great limiting step in energy production.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, uhm Vitamin B1, uhm, can be helpful in facilitating uhm or bypassing that polymorphism in particular-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, and then there is one called SLC, there’s a whole family of them. SLC uh 16-A1, uhm and there are others uhm but it has- those also had to do with fatty acid transport, uhm and so, you know, that’s where you could look at uh blood or seer models of L-carnitine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would MTHFR fit into this or COMT fit into this at all?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh it would it in the sense that MTHFR affects the levels of CoQ10 and carnitine-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk] lower levels so you gotta make sure those are higher?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: COMT, how does that affecting things?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So COMT uhm basically uh it affects- so it can create uh elevated uh catecholamines, and that can create a stress response in the body, and uhm, you know, long term sympathetic dominant stress response will turn the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can that also deplete dopamine too?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Uhm, and so, well what it does is, people with COMT, they don’t metabolize it as quickly depending on the exact COMT uhm, but dopamine, norepinephrine epinephrine tend to be higher, uhm, and usually norepinephrine epinephrine are more of an issue, uh, but yeah, it can uh for sure affect uh the mitochondria indirectly through that mechanism.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great. So let’s re-summarize that, we have our COMT and our MTHFR, right? Now you mentioned the endoxin and the B- B1 importantly, with the MTHFR you me can- you mentioned the carnitine and the CoQ10-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With the COMT we’re working on what decreasing sympathetic stress, breathing, not over exercising, good- good food, is there anything you’d want or also highlight to help reduce COMT?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, making sure that uh you check your estrogen levels-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -uhm, and man, you know, checking estradiol, and women checking-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -E1, E2, and E3-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, and measuring that compared to progesterone, uhm, but that can uh, certainly affect uhm or be product of COMT.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great. And then the other 3 again? The first 3 that you mentioned, I wanted- just make sure we have a good summary.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So the ACAT, A-C-A-T-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, affects uhm the production of Acetyl-CoA which is the first step in the Krebs cycle-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Krebs cycle, yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and so vitamin B1, thiamine can be used for that-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, other polymorphisms like ___[33:03], uh FADS, uh those affect uh an SLC, affect the transportation of fatty acid into the mitochondria-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so extra carnitine may be needed-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm and then the polymorphisms that you know may interfere with protection of the mitochondria are GSTN or any polymorphisms in the glutathione pathway, along with uh SOD polymorphisms-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and you know, to upregulate those, uhm we can use again molecular hydrogen, we can use uhm things like ___[33:42] glutathione or uh liposomal glutathione as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If someone wants to learn more about interpreting these genetic tests, do you have a- a resource or reference that you like to go to?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I wish I had a comprehensive uh resource that I can tell you to go to that cover them all, uh unfortunately I don’t. Uhm I mean, there might be someone somewhere, you know there are new apps coming out all the time, and all they’re doing you know, it might save- this is oh, a neurotransmitter profile, this is a hormone profile, they’re just reporting those polymorphisms that affect that particular area of the body, it’s not a separate test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Is there one source you could point us to?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, mthfrsupport.com, I helped them design their report, uhm I’ve done a- if you google my name Dr. Tim Jackson I’ve done a ton of articles, interviews, podcasts, summits on methylation MTHFR, uhm so that should be a lot of free content available if you google my name.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Dr. Tim if listeners wanna find more about you and wanna work with you, what’s your website? How can they reach out?
Dr. Tim Jackson: healyourbody.O-R-G, so healyourbody.org, or my email, I know it’s long, but it’s drtim- D-R-T-I-M-0-7-29-81, and you know-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my God, we gotta shorten that up to like office.healyourbody.org or whatever [chuckles]-
Dr. Tim Jackson: I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We gotta shorten that up. Alright, we’ll put the links below so if you don’t- if you don’t recall and don’t remember Dr. Tim’s info, we’ll put it below so it’s a one-click option for you all. Dr. Tim, it’s been awesome. We had 2 other podcasts for Dr. Ji- Dr. Tim, so feel free and go back and review those podcasts, great uhm treasure trove of information. Dr. Tim, thank you so much for being a part of the podcast. And you have a phenomenal day.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Thank you Dr. Justin, you the same.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks doc!
References:
Dr. Tim Jackson – Mitochondrial dysfunction, mold and MTHFR solutions – Podcast #124
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Dr. Tim Jackson dive into a stimulating discussion about mitochondria, the enzyme MTHFR, genetic testing, and mycotoxin. Join them and pick up some valuable information as Dr. Tim Jackson shares his knowledge and expertise on gene SNPs, factors that affect them, the supplements he recommends, as well as the approach he implements to create a positive impact on someone’s health.
Learn about the mitochondria’s function and discover its connection to the Kreb’s cycle and electron transport chain, both of which are naturally occurring chemical reactions in our bodies. Know and understand the different mitochondria-related issues like infections, low iron and low B vitamins. Get valuable insight on how these issues are tested, including the diet, nutrients and supplements to support the mitochondria. And lastly, gain helpful information about mycotoxin and find out different ways to prevent and get rid of them.
In this episode, we cover:
4:11 Mitochondria
15:20 Bacterial infections
21:50 Iron and B12 issues
27:10 Glutathione
35:41 Gene SNPs (MTHFR, APO, PON1)
49:13 Mycotoxins
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. We got Dr. Tim Jackson back on the show. Really uh, excited to dig in to some MTHFR, some genetic testing. Maybe we’ll even talk about some mycotoxins. Who knows if we’ll have enough time to get it all. Doctor Tim, how we doing today?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I’m doing great, Evan Justin. How you doing’ sir?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful, wonderful, man. Glad that we’re in touch and your back on the show.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, it’s fine. It should be a good time today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well let’s dig in, man. What’s new on your radar and functional medicine land?
Dr. Tim Jackson: You know, I’ve just been delving deeper and deeper into mitochondria. And you know- I am always up for myself whether through research, dealing with clients and patients. You know, what I can do to make everything else work better. And you know- almost always I find myself saying, “Well, make mitochondria work better.” And so, looking at different therapies to, you know- protect mitochondria, to rehabilitate the cell membrane, uhm to make sure it has no optimal fatty acid composition-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm
Dr. Tim Jackson: To make sure environmental toxic load is reduced as much as possible so that the Krebs in TCA cycle can go on. And in making sure the two rate-limiting factors oxygen and ubiquinol or CoQ10 are present in adequate amounts. Uhm- one just quick aside, is that even low-level sleep apnea will affect your mitochondria negatively.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Alright. So we need oxygen. Sleep apnea is basically that delay where you just stop breathing while sleeping. And with sleep apnea, typically inflammations gonna be driving that. Is that correct?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And it’s a self perpetuating type cycle where inflammation driving it want that- wants that inflammation gets going uhm- it has a self-perpetuating mechanism especially- I know this is a $64,000 word- cytokine or inflammatory molecules-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: interlude six.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So true coz I notice every now and then I’ll have like a little sleep apnea episode like where I wake just kinda like gasping for air.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh-hmm
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it’s typically at nights where I have like a glass of wine or maybe have something I shouldn’t have. I noticed that food allergen response really has an effect on my airway and I wake up with a hypoxic type of you know, gasping episode. So I know that inflammation and even food allergens can be a subtle you know, causative factor for that inflammation.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Exactly. Anything that uhm- creates inflammation you know or contribute to the burns and turns out there, but what we called that, our static load-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, stress bucket
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah- your stress bucket, exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so you know, we might be someone that we you know, label as a hothead or they can’t tolerate stress. They may have a ton of physiological imbalances and all their ATP energy being diverted to that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. I always tell patients like yeah, physical, chemical, and emotional stressors. Physical could be too much or too little exercise. It could be chronic pain from an injury. You also have the chemical stressors, whether it’s food or infections or metals, or mold, or food allergens, or low stomach acid or etc. And then you have obviously, the emotional stress- relationships, finances, uhm- family, work. All of those stressors are like a little ball that go into that stress bucket. When that bucket starts overflow, that’s where your kinda allostatic is tapped out. And that’s where symptoms tend to tend to occur. And then typically allostatic, allopathic medical world, symptoms = drug prescriptions. Then drug prescriptions have side effects, which cause more symptoms. So you’re in this vicious cycle where medicine actually tries to solve allostatic load problems or stress bucket problems by actually giving you more stress. And so in functional medicine world, we’re trying to actually take those stress balls out of the bucket, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Exactly. The more stressors that we can take uhm- off our bucket, you know- we wanna try and eliminate as many stressors humanly possible. Uhm- and the ones that we can’t completely eliminate, we wanna certainly mitigate as much as possible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. And let’s go back into the mitochondria because basically the mitochondria is kinda the powerhouse of ourselves. It’s- you have what’s called the Krebs cycle, which is part of the mitochondria we you’re generating ATP, you’re generating these uhm- reducing agents call FADH 2 and NADH. And you’re basically grabbing hydrogen molecules-these electron to then bring those over to the electron transport chain so we can generate more energy. Would you mind talking more about the mitochondria and just how it connects into the Krebs cycle, the electron transport chain, and even uh, even glycolysis, too?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So when we think about mitochondria, we always talk about, “Oh, those are batteries of the cells”. They provide your energy source, your energy currency, the ATP. But what we’ve learned in the past 10 years is that they do so much more than that. Uhm, I actually have a 400 and something page e-book on mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow
Dr. Tim Jackson: -that goes into details. And if, like I said it’s one of those dots that you know, you can connect pretty much every illness out there uhm- to some degree to mitochondrial dysfunction. And producing energy you know, fats, carbs, proteins, get broken down and go into the energy producing, the Krebs cycle. And uhm- you get oxy dephosphorylation and fatty acid burning in the mitochondria. But mitochondria- some of the other roles that they participate in, one is self sensing and signaling. So uhm- you know, controlling how they’ll wind up in the age of extracellular matrix for that little area that surround the groups of cells. Uhm, it’s important for growth factor uhm- sensing, uhm- immune function because a lot of times what happens is you know, people may test the account or the amount of immune cells that they don’t pass the activity of them. And a lot of our means, those require a lot of ATP. And uh, your immune function may not be working very well because you don’t have enough energy to heal. Healing takes a ton of energy. And so you know, if we have a lot of other stressors, the ATP or the energy currency is gonna be going down that pathway.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Now, how does the electron transport chain and the Krebs cycle connect in with the mitochondria?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So the mitochondria have an inner mitochondrial membrane and an outer mitochondrial membrane. And you have certain fatty acids in on those membranes. And what happens is that we inherit our mitochondrial DNA from our mom and you can have mutations in mitochondrial DNA. But more often, you have what we call mitochondriopathies, which is just a fancy term for damaged mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so anything that damages the mitochondria, and the most common things are environmental pollutants, persistent organic pollutants-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -and disrupting chemicals. Or we can have what Dr. Alex Vasquez calls uhm- a microbial mitochondriopathy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm
Dr. Tim Jackson: So you have an infection, maybe you go through a period of stress, a virus gets reactivated. Well, that inflammatory cascade that’s produced, even if you don’t know the name, you felt it before, that’s called a cytokine storm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And those inflammant there’s prone, inflammatory cytokines and anti-inflammatory cytokines. And when you have a lot of stealth pathogens or microbes and bugs build up in your body uh, there’s a constant low-grade level of inflammation. And our mitochondria are extremely susceptible to free radical damage. And that’s important point because the two antioxidants that we need to protect us or protect our mitochondria are glutathione which you know, we both love-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Dr. Tim Jackson: And you and superoxide dismutase. So if you have- I know you mentioned uhm you know, genetic- genetic testing but if you have certain uhm- polymorphisms which is like a minor version of a mutation, you may not make enough glutathione superoxide dismutase, or you may not recycle them to the reduced state which is how our body needs to use them. So uh, that’s incredibly uh, important because like I said, the mitochondria are very susceptible to oxidative damage, and if you don’t have those two antioxidants there to protect it, uhm- it’s really open to enemy fire.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense. And so, I’m just kinda comin’ back here for the energy production part. So part of the ATP part is, is through the uh, Krebs cycle as well as the electron transport chain, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Exactly. So electron transport chain is five complexes. And they basically play hot potato-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Dr. Tim Jackson: -with electrons. And uh, an important point for people to understand here is that, this is really biophysically driven more than biochemically driven. And what I mean by that is that your body uses photons and protons uhm- and light to uhm- create energy and increase ATP in the mitochondria. And at any time we can uh, tweak or uh, alter biophysical status of the cell or cellular machinery, then we can control multiple biochemical reactions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And how about the Krebs cycle, as well? Krebs Cycle’s the same thing. We’re producing all these reducing agents to help basically bring those electrons into the electron transport chain, so they can be kinda tossed back and forth, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Exactly. So you know, protein, carbs, and fats get broken down into a single way so they can go into the Krebs cycle. And uhm- one other thing that’s uh- it’s just on the side you know, we talked about L- carnitine and you know, the benefit to have of carnitine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, it transports fatty acid from the cell, the cytoplasm of cell into the mitochondria where you can uhm- burn fat and through process of beta
oxidation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So if you’re deficient in L-carnitine, uhm- you’ll certainly be fatigued because you won’t be able to burn fatty acids.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. And that’s called the carnitine shuttle. And I appreciate, your- your biochem background. You got a Biochem degree from NC State, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm – NC State, definitely not. Wake Forest, the Wake Forest.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wake Forest. The Wake Forest, okay. Got it. Very cool. Oh, I appreciate Biochem. Brings me back to my undergrad days. I love it. The carnitine shuttle’s so important because basically your body is using carnitine, which is made from two amino acids, methionine and lysine. And it basically shuttles fat into the mitochondria so the fat can be burned up through that betaoxidiation pathway. Now, in my Biochem textbook that I have on the- the shelf behind me here, it was really interesting coz it even said in the biochem textbook that these amino acids methionine and lysine could be deficient in a vegetarian-based diet. So I’m like, this is quite interesting coz the sulfur amino acids are harder to get in these vegetarian diets. So really important. I see a lot of my sicker patients, especially faced with mitochondrial issues, aren’t getting the right fats, aren’t getting the right enough of these high quality sulfur amino acids, especially the ones that may include glutathione, glycine, glutamine, cysteine. And you mentioned earlier that you have to build that membrane, too which we know that the high-quality good saturated fats are gonna be building blocks. So I went off on a tear there but fats, amino acids, and the amino acids for glutathione, which all play into this whole mitochondrial thing, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Exactly. So uhm- you know, we can burn uhm- you know, fat and protein. Uhm- you know, the carb advocates say you know, “we have to have you know, glucose or sugar.” But you know, people in the biochemistry, that’s not true. But yet, different environmental toxic can- and nutrient deficiencies can basically block the conversion of one metabolite of the Krebs cycle to another. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So you know, you have uhm- a few CoA, pyruvates, all those type of molecules malatase or malate. And the different compounds, metabolites like oxalites, etc. The enzymes that convert them may be impacted negatively by environmental toxicity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Totally. And we need all these various nutrients to pump that Krebs cycle up. I mean, some of my, some of the nutrients that I put in my mitochondrial support, called mitochondrial synergy, is obviously the B vitamins are really important, L-carnitine as we already mentioned is really important. I also like Creatine.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like Alpha Lipoic acid, I like a lot of the Krebs cycle intermediary nutrients like uhm, malic acid, succinic acid, uh the-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. Malic acid is good for aluminum detox as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, very cool. Also, I do a little Resveratrol-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -which we know is really good for the electron transport chain and then uhm Alpha Lipoic acid even some Curcumin as well.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Oh, yeah. Curcumin is one of my go to- probably my first go to supplement for mitochondrial help. And it’s more of an indirect effect where it turned down the volume on enough kappa beta.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm
Dr. Tim Jackson: Which is the uh, molecule coding or trying to read our pro-inflammatory genes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. So if we we’re trying to get someone’s diet dialed in, what would that diet look like to that average patient?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- You know, I’m gonna tell people to avoid gluten and dairy in general. Some people they get stressed out over what they’re gonna eat and so I don’t focus too much on the gluten cross-reactive foods. Uhm- but I try to restore and calm down inflammation in the gut lining first and repair the tight gap junction in the microvilli. And uh, I use the product- And again, I’m not connected to this product, but restore, restore4life.com. And it works really well in terms of healing the gut lining, but also helping to increase your overall micro biodiversity. And you know, we don’t typically think about the gut mitochondria together, but particular compounds that are released from bacteria in the gut. One is very inflammatory and it’s called lipopolysaccharide.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it increases systemic inflammation greatly. And it turned on those inflammatory genes. So curcumin goes in, and it says, “Nope, must turn that knob back down.” And that’s why I like Curcumin coz it works on so many different levels of law as well as having antimicrobial properties.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What are the big bacterial infections that you’re seeing in your clinic that are driving up the LPS? One of the things I’m seeing with under specific stool test, we’re seeing a lot of H pylori. I’m seeing a lot of Citrobacter, a lot of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of Klebsiella. Those are the big things that I’m seeing. What are you seeing, Doc?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Those are the exact same ones that I’m seeing. I’d also add in BlastocysticHominis.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yup. Parasite for sure. Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah and uhm- you know, I’d do the PCR testing which I’d have good results with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Which one? GI map?
Dr. Tim Jackson: It’s uh, the DRG labs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I use both. I run them both side-by-side.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. And uhm- you know, I wasn’t happy when Genova merged with MetaMetrics and they changed one of their pages.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Terrible.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And you know, the price is pretty high, but I like DRG labs. I think it’s you know, more economical. Uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The problem with that is-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yes, those are the common infections that I’m seeing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: You know, along with of course, you know, Candida. But one important point to kinda make about gut health is that one thing I see people forgetting is that they don’t reboot their secretory IGA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And that’s the imm- mucosal immune system and the gut lining, the lining of the lung, the nasal passages, etc. And if you just go in, and kill off these pathogens are uhm- bad bacteria, they’re gonna come back if you don’t create an environment that is not conducive to their living.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. And you’re doing uh- increase sacamai polarity to help bring up the IGA post uh- infection removal?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I don’t anymore. Occasionally, I do uhm- actually a chiropractor colleague showed me a study that look at those with leaky gut, and you know- some type or some level of neuro-immune syndrome. And he showed that you know- with leaky gut, if you don’t heal below first, taking something like uh-___may actually provoke an autoimmune type reaction. Now the study wasn’t very big but not the principle that people forget is that you know, if you cut your forearm, you’re gonna wanna wipe it off and put in uh you know, Band-Aid on to prevent pathogen entry.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Same type of thing in the gut you know, if you have a leaky gut, you start supplementing with probiotics. Yet some probiotics you know, heal the gut lining but it can lead through and create a huge inflammatory reaction.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think it’s really important you have a sequence on how you treat infections. In my clinic, we always remove the foods first, like you mentioned. We replace enzymes and acids that’ll help digestion. We repair the hormonal system, whether it’s thyroid imbalance, adrenal, or female, or male hormone imbalances. We support the gut lining nutrients. Then we remove the infections. Then we repopulate probiotics. Then we retest. And I find that water tends to work the best. But I agree that you really have to do all the other things ahead of time so you have the best bang for your bucks when it is time to put the probiotics back in the system.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. I just ran into a lot of people that’d been taken probiotics for years, even good quality probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And most people think that they just kinda go down there, and set up shop. Uhm, but they don’t realize it’s more of a transitory interaction with the gut associated lymphoid tissue. And that’s why you need to constantly you know, have the intake of bacteria because our ancestors that’s what they were exposed to you know, based on the soil.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. That’s why you do a lot of fermented foods. I recommend once my patients are really good and cleaned up, I typically throw a bottle of probotics at once a quarter, as long as they’re getting in good probiotics daily whether it’s with kimchi, or sauerkraut, or Bobby’s fermented pickles, or a low sugar kombucha, not the high sugar uh, alternatives that are- I might as well call them, soda.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, I agree with you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now on the DRG, though they’re not testing the individual bacteria molecules, though. I mean I’m seeing that they’re looking at H- pylori, though look at like some of the transient food allergen or food uhm, poisoning bacteria like Campylobacter or Shigella. But how are you looking at the other ones that I mentioned. The Klebsiella, the Citrobacter, etc.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, I’ll have to go back and look. But I thought that DRG tested for Citrobacter. I could be wrong on that one. But I do- to answer your question, uhm- provide- I go about addressing the gut similar to what you do. But uhm- I provide some broad-spectrum antimicrobial support. One of my favorites, which I know you’ve heard of, is uhm-Parsitan.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uhm- So you know- again, a lot of these pathogens, like you mentioned, very specific supplementation. Uhm- but you know, some you can eradicate with you know, broad-spectrum biofilm busting and then antimicrobial.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. What’s your favorite biofilm buster?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, I use InterFase Plus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm. Klaire Labs
Dr. Tim Jackson: From uh, Klaire Labs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uh, I have pretty good results with that. Occasionally, I’ll have someone uhm, like I have this guy who’s a yoga teacher and help coach and he’s been doing detox, and this type of stuff for years. And he took uh, just the kind InterFase plus by itself had a very negative reaction. And because he has you know, such a high metal load underneath that biofilm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the InterFase Plus I think is a EDTA chelating compound that so of the biofilms will use led in some heavy metals as a kind of a composition for that it so-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh, some of the biofilms will use lead and some heavy metals as a kinda composition for that shield that hold up, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Exactly. So they’re using calcium, magnesium-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: You know that’s a – uhm- a great way for them to hide from the immune cells. Uhm- you know- on top of the bacteria doing the quorum sensing and exchanging DNA, people don’t realize exactly how smart they really are. Uhm- in terms of kinda manipulating our immune system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hmm. And just to bring you back a little bit, but you made a couple of really good points early. You talked about oxygen.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And because oxygen is really important because we have various anemias, whether it’s an iron-based anemia, or a B vitamin based anemia. Both are really important for maturation, maturing healthy red blood cells, and helping red blood cells to carry oxygen. So we can’t carry oxygen and we can’t care nutrition, our mitochondria for the most part, screwed. So how are you addressing in your patients optimal iron and/or B12 levels. What are you looking at to assess that?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, you know I think it’s one of those things like, if we just started with a client right now, and we tested for food sensitivities, they you know- light up like a Christmas tree-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, of course.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- and so I tend to work on the gut to improve our iron absorption, uhm- increase vitamin C levels-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- to look at those things and look you know- the binding proteins as well. One thing uh- that I learned from Dietrich Klinghardt, he talks about uh- in different pathogens have a different effect on it. But at different stages of an infection, it may drive up creatine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And at some point may drive down creatine. So you know, I felt to- that was kinda interesting. So I do see a correlation with a lot of pathogens. Uhm- you know, that uh, you know, correlates with these issues as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, my clinic typically the big three things that I see their driving iron issues are gonna be vegetarian diets.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Number two: female hormone issues that are driving excessive menstruation or hemorrhage.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or number three: is just gut malabsorption. They have low stomach acid. They can’t ionize minerals, or they have leaky gut and malabsorption. And they just can’t break down some of the, the heme- uhm- compounds in the food. So those are the big three that I see. And we try to work on all of those. Uhm- what are you seeing regarding the female hormone issues and low iron?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- you know a lot of times, I see, you know low thyroid function.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Dr. Tim Jackson: And with low iron, and obviously you know, I think I’m learning expression from Apex but they talk about, if you don’t think iron and you don’t fix insulin, you know- nothing else will work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s a deal-
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, you know, I try to look at you know, the transport proteins uhm- yeah, as well as like what you said, overall absorption and gut health and making sure that people don’t realize how energy intense breaking down protein is. And is a lot of times you know, it’s good beneficial to give the client. I found at least the uhm, essential amino acids on an empty stomach and luckily I just need a steak. I don’t realize that you know- what we’re giving them, hand delivering the bioavailable version of what so many reactions in their body uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree. The thermic effect food on high protein compounds like steak is 30 to 50%, meaning- so 50% of the calories that the energy in that food just gets used up in breaking it down. So when you get free form amino acids, you’re basically giving 100% of it versus half of the getting used to pay the bill to break it down, so to speak.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And how- go ahead, yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Go ahead. No, I’m sorry.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And how are you looking at – how you diagnose B vitamin, like B12 issues, or low iron issues? What test are you running to assess that?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I will run it all on like the urinary iron binding capacity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: York and total iron binding capacity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm, B vitamin issues uhm- you know, if someone can do at least what LabCorp was doing I think they still are on RBC D12 and RBC folate-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh
Dr. Tim Jackson: If not, the lab in Germany. They used to have a branch in New Jersey, but they closed Health Diagnostics Research Institute and do a whole, like real time methylation panel that shows what your methylation pathways are doing with the nutrients you have at that specific time slot versus the 23andMe, which is just the genetic or epigenetic blueprint.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so, yeah. Uhm- in terms of iron, I look at gut health and think of that nature. And sorry, what was the last part of your question?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: B12. Any other B12 markers?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So I work at you know, the NMA and things like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: From the studies I’ve read like, for example, like many other markersuhm- B12 levels in most Asian countries are much, much higher than here. And there been no documented cases of adverse reactions to B12. The only thing I’ve seen clients is you know, if they have a polymorphism called COMT-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Sometimes too many metal donors a methyl group is just the carbon with three hydrogen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so all the methylation reactions, given to many metal donors they can get overstimulated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, man. Very good information. So just kinda recapping here just for all the listeners at home. I know were going really kinda down the rabbit hole. So we’re talking about the mitochondria, powerhouse of the cell. We need healthy fats in our diet. We need to keep the food allergens out. We need to make sure we’re infection-free so the LPS isn’t poisoning our mitochondria. We need healthy nutrients, B vitamins curcumin, house of the nuclear factor kappa beta, good hormones, good absorption, good iron levels, good B12. Is there anything you wanna add to that summary for optimal mitochondrial function for our listeners, Tim?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. It’s just glutathione again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Because it’s most the depressed on its ability to detoxify. But people don’t realize that it’s an- a natural antiviral that you have to have it for gut healing to occur. Uhm- it’s extremely important in immune function. It’s extremely important in terms of mitochondrial protection. Uhm- and that again, with the other antioxidant superoxide dismutase, that I’ve mentioned. Now without getting too much into Biochemistry, and instead of kinda just chasten those individual markers, we can take different nutrients or nutraceuticals that increase in RF, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Which activates all of your antioxidant enzymes, and turns off lot of the pro-oxidant uh, signaling it’s going on. And so things that would activate that or things like sulforaphaneuhm, possibly turmeric and resveratrol. But uhm, thinking more of what can I do to affect all the different symptoms and systems, is kind of the approach that I take.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. When you try to improve glutathione levels, do you try to just give some of the amino acids so the patient to make the glutathione? Or do you give the actual liposomal glutathione? How do you differentiate the two?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I use a lot of times, the neurobiological transdermal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- glutathione. Sometimes I’ll use the Apex Energetics Super OxiCell which has glutathione and superoxide dismutase. Uhm- but overall uhm- sometimes I will give people N-acetyl cysteine-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: But for some reason, and you made delicious light on this for me, I’ve searched for answer for years- But some people including myself will respond negatively and have a huge metal stir up when they take N-acetyl cysteine but if I take glutathione, I’m fine. Which doesn’t make sense. NAC is the precursor to glutathione. And I’ve had this and a small subset of people like I said, including myself, back many years ago when I took uh- N-acetyl cysteine, you know- I had a major yeast flare and uh- you know, I had a metallic taste in my mouth, all sorts of negative things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The only thing I could think of clinically as the NAC is a pretty strong biofilm buster.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s some kinda biofilm release with the high amount of NAC. I’d be curious if it happens with cysteine uh- or glycine versus just NAC by itself.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Doesn’t’ happen with glycine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. So could be a biofilm issue. Wouldn’t be surprised.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Excellent. Well thank you for shedding some light on that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And no problem. And you mentioned the nerve stuff. The nerve uhm- 2 inhibitors there. I think it’s the nerve 2. Is it an activator- no inducers. Nerve 2 inducers that you mentioned. Green tea is also a big one. Milk thistle, pomegranate, even green coffee, ginkgo, olive leaf and then you mentioned the sulforaphane which will be primarily found in your cruciferous vegetables.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right, exactly. And uh, you know- we’re talking about these acronyms, enough kappa beta and RS2.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: But the take-home message for people is that, instead of chasing you know- just one marker and take one supplement for that, if we can try and control what genes are being read, we can have a lot more impact on someone’s health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. So let’s segue to the gene portion here. I mean, talked to then Ben Lynch last year in one of the conference that I went to. And he was talking about that everyone’s looking too much of the genes, do so much of the genes or the junk DNA. There’s only a couple of genes that really matter. Obviously his big focus is on the MTHFR gene, which is the methylenetetrahyrdofolatereductase gene SNP. What genes are- do you think are the most important? Coz you know when we look at these gene pages, whether it’s like genetic genie or livewello, you get like 50 pages. It’s super overwhelming and then one page says this, and the other page contradicts the other. So how the heck do you make sense of it all?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well first of all, I’m gonna try to go back to my biochemistry background. You know, when all my you know- friends and everything are ready to get out and finish biology I was really getting into it coz I’m like, if you understand how the cell works, then you can really understand the body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uhm- so that- that’s you know, I kinda approach things. It’s looking at the biochemistry. Uhm- but you know, in order to do that you have to test for active biomarkers. So biomarker it can be anything. It can be like a physical measurement like blood pressure, or it can be your iron level, or your testosterone level, or any marker tested through urine sample, uhm- or a stool sample. And so uhm, you know- that’s kinda how I approach uh- thing. That is to look out- take into account the polymorphisms. But I don’t sit there and add them up and say, “okay this, that” It’ll drive yourself crazy, you know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And we have hundreds of thousands of polymorphisms. You know, what are we gonna do when the report reaches 200 pages? 300 pages? I mean- the situation situation where you can’t see the forest for the trees and uh- I’m probably one of the people to blame for that coz is around 2010-2011 I started really talking about MTHFR after learning about it from Kendall Stewart who’s in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: But I look at uh- GSTM which is glutathione S-transferase.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm GSTP, SOD which stands for superoxide dismutase.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Then when someone have the polymorphism, just so we’re clear, it may mean that the enzyme that tho- gene or that gene is coding for uhm- speed up or they may slow down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it just depends on the specific polymorphism and uhm- you know, you have to look. So like one polymorphism is called CBS. It’s Cystathionine Beta Synthase or Synthatase. And uh- one of them uhm- speeds up the enzyme whereas another one slows it down. So you may have some canceling out of effects. But what you’re doing is looking in a blueprint. And I call them biochemical hiccups or potential biochemical hiccups. In your physiology, and it’s meant to empower people because then you can bypass you know, these genetic hiccups. Uhm, so to listen to the others that I’ve looked at uhm- one is the APOE, which plays a role-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cholesterol
Dr. Tim Jackson: -in health as well as your ability to tolerate a Paleolithic type diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: It also plays a significant role in your ability to detoxify.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And so uh- it really uh- I take a case by case but I tell people, you know- get the printer in me done, fine $9, a one time deal you never have to redo it. But in order to figure out what’s going on, like real time we need to do OATs test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: – or methylation panel from that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo.
Dr. Tim Jackson: – plus all the lab. And you know, what people understand is that you- you may not have any copies of MTHFR, that you can have what I call a functional polymorphism where those pathways are not working because of too much oxidative stress, or environmental chemicals, or nutrient deficiencies.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Malabsorption, gut issues.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Exactly. So lot of times people will say, “okay why are we working on methylation?” I’m like, “We are- We’re working on gut health first, which is gonna help unload the liver. And you know, if you have too many like a lipopolysaccharide-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: It can back up phase 1 detox. So you know, the first step is really working on the things you have to work no matter what your goal is. And so whether someone wants to be pro athlete, have more energy to their kids or grand kids you know- their gut has to function well, just like their adrenal and thyroid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very Cool. So let’s do a quick rapid fire and just go to the top 10 SNPs. What’s number one?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Okay. Uh- I would probably say uh- MTHFR
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And we have the-
Dr. Tim Jackson: And then there’s multiple versions of it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Basically, to give people a summary uhm- it affects glutathione production, the production of DNA and RNA, production of myelin that coats our nerves, uhm- the production of neurotransmitters, uhm- and growth factors. And then after that, I would list probably APOE. Then I would probably list the glutathione-related polymorphisms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And the superoxide dismutase polymorphism. Uhm then I would probably look at uh- the DDR.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup
Dr. Tim Jackson: Which the vitamin D receptor and I would include in there too the BCMO polymorphisms, which prevent the conversion of uhm- beta-carotene into retinoic acid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. And so- then you have to use you know, a more bioavailable form of vitamin A. And you know, people they’re so focused on Vitamin D, they don’t know that Vitamin A is really important for thyroid help and immune function, and gut health. Uhm- so you know, those are the ones that I really focus on. You know, if research comes up tomorrow- Oh, another one that I forgot is PON1, P-O-N 1.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: At- uh, greatly affects your ability to detoxify certain environmental chemicals. So someone has to be a lot stricter with their dirty dozen clean 15 beatings.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Especially if they have a glutathione polymorphism on top of it because you know, there- didn’t have such a reduced capability of detoxifying.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright. So we have our MTHFR. We have the APO: APOa1-2. We have the PON1. We have the COMT. We have the glutathione. We have the VDR, the vitamin D receptor. Does that sound about right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yup. That sounds good to me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I just wanna make sure the listeners really understand coz the big one that’s out there is the MTHFR.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll just break it down here for a second. We have the C67787. We have heterozygous or homozygous; second we have the C67787. We have heterozygous or homozygous. Heterozygous is you have-
Dr. Tim Jackson: T70 and A2198C. Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. A2198C, correct. And the big one is, I think the C is the bigger one of four. And four homozygous in that, that’s an 80% reduction. If for hetero, works only a 40% reduction. And it’s –
Dr. Tim Jackson: More of this- have affect different things-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And again, you know, if you get the report from MTHFR support, they have so many forms of MTHFR. But the two lucky that had been most researched are A1298C.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup
Dr. Tim Jackson: And the- you know, you hear about the C677T because it can lead cardiovascular events, strokes, heart attacks, and associated with elevated homocysteine. Uhm- but you know, you wanna really look at all the other factors that are involved as well. And so, uhm- with different polymorphisms, like I said before, you know- it may just be something that you avoid like in the case of PON1 you know, we need to avoid those certain foods. Uhm- NAT2 is another one that’s involved in the phase- liver phase to detox process called acidulation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And uh- again, this is another example. Some of the NAT2 SNPs will speed up that enzyme. Meaning it labels things harmful but aren’t really harmful. And other forms will slow things down or- so that you miss potentially harmful compounds. So again, you kinda have to look- I look at groups of polymorphisms, overall. And again, if someone’s come to and they have mold practice being asleep in a room like mold, 39:40 listen, MTHFR is not gonna be the first think we’ll work on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- Yeah. And that’s the time, I approach them uhm, along with healing the gut. And really controlling off the distress because if often distressed inflammation is present, none of these goals can be achieved.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally understand. So with the MTHFR, we have the C and the homozygous, heterozygous for the C6778T or whatever- and then the A1298C. How much percent is reduced depending on whether it’s hetero or homozygous for each?
Dr. Tim Jackson: It’s different for different versions of MTHFR. Ah and uh-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For the C and A versions.
Dr. Tim Jackson: What’s that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For the C and A versions-
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh, Yes. So the C677T and the A1298C are the two that you’re talking about, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Correct.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. So the A1298C doesn’t get much attention. It’s more associated with neuro-immune type issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Meaning autoimmune disorders, uhm- lupus, sjogren’s, rheumatoid arthirits. Those sorts of things. Uhm- it’s also associated uh- to some degree in the research with autism. Uhm- but research shows for both C677T form and the A1298C form uhm- you know, they are responsible for different things. And again, you haven’t even know there’s dozens of different versions of MTHFR SNPs. Those are just the ones with uh- most research behind them now. And so in order- you asked me how much is that enzyme function reduced, I forget the statistics- you know, varied by ethnicity. Uhm- but again, we have to factor in oxidative stress, uh- heavy metals, uhm- nutrient depletion.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: People don’t take those into account. And I won’t name any names but there’s a lady that you know- wants you to do like $2000 a month of testing and you need if you have the polymorphism, you take these four supplements and that you have this polymorphism to these two and could wind up on like $600 a month of supplement. And you don’t even know if they’re expressing. And so a lot of the so-called uh- polymorphisms will be silent by doing things we discussed, such as controlling inflammation, improving gut health, improving blood sugar, optimizing iron and oxygen delivery. All those things are positive signals sent to our nucleus of ourselves.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So let’s say we have the homozygous of the C677T, so we have that 70 to 80% reduction in that enzyme. So let’s say we’re doing all the downstream things, right. We’re doing the glutathione, the diet, the- the,uhm- oxygen support, the B vitamins. What other supplements would we add in on the methylated nutrient side? Will we just be focusing on L- LMTHF Folate? We do methyl B12, or hydroxyl, or adenosyl B12? Will- what would you recommend on the supplement sites specific for those SNPs?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, first would be- And I know I sound like a broken record- supplements to go after inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So Carnosine, maybe CBD oil. Uhm- but the- one of the two probably most important nutrients that are crucial for all these methylation reactions, there’s hundreds of them, are magnesium and zinc. You know- let’s not get away from the basic too far here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- they’re cofactors. That’s what they are, for enzymatic reactions in the body. And so now I work on repleting someone’s RBC magnesium and RBC zinc. I make sure that we have the other B vitamins like, B1, B2, B3-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: B5. Uhm- and as far as B12, usually most people do pretty well in a combination of the Adenosyl N-Methyl. Like I said, some people who are really sensitive to metal donors uhm- will get overstimulated by too- too much folate and B-12. But one important point I make here- just, I’m not trying to scare people, but a lot of people coming to me with these reports, and uhm- you know they just want to take methylfolate and B12 and be done with it. But if you take those two nutrients in the presence of oxidative stress, you create something called proxy nitrite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhh-
Dr. Tim Jackson: That is a very harmful compound to all of our cellular structures. And so order here is important. There is a method to demand. And so, you know- again, the other B vitamin cofactors B5, B6, biotin, uhm- you add in B12 and methylfolate is last. And then for the transport of B12 to get into your cells, you need lithium orotate. Uhm- you know, lithium is important trace mineral.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hum-
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it uh- it has really good properties in terms of neural protection or brain protection.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. So when we add all these nutrients in, we talked about the magnesium, the zinc, the B vitamins, when would you in particularly use methyl B12 versus the Adenosyl B12 versus hydroxyl B12? How would you apply that specifically with each patient?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So with Adenosyl, it works more on the mitochondria. So if you really have someone with a lot of mitOochondrial issues, I’ll use a lot of Adenosyl.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Methyl, I- what I do is you will start on methyl adenosyl and then later on, when they’re processing uhm- the B vitamins well, I’ll add in you know the methylcobalamin. As far as the hydroxy B12, you can check someone’s uhm– T-ADMA for nitric oxide status. Uhm, hydroxy B12 works on improving nitric oxide levels which-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Tim Tim Jakson: – is you know, important self-signaling molecule in immune function and that’s your function.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Excellent. So anything else you wanna comment on regarding methylation? Do you feel you’ve done a good job hitting all the key points?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. The fact- so many systems in the body and I wanna make an important point here, if you don’t remember anything else. Remember that if you have MTHFR, the more copies you have, the less ability you have to uh- metabolize folic acid. So the whole point here is that-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Folic acid will build up in your bloodstream and studies show that it will lower your natural killer cells, which is not good for fighting pathogens or for cancer risk. And so uh- I see a lot of OB/GYN putting people on folic acid even when they know they have MTHFR.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it just goes back to a fundamental misunderstanding or lack of understanding of basic biochemistry. Because that’s the whole point of MTHFR that you cannot process the folic acid that’s added to things like grains and cereals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. That’s the key thing is, you gotta make sure you’re at least on LMTHF Folate uh- or Calcium Folinate. But again, if a supplement company chose to put folic acid in there, they’ve really made a statement that they’re undervaluing the raw material that they’re putting in their supplements. So that’s super important and like you said, the refine fortified junk food, is what’s gonna have the folic acid in. It’s gonna be the orange juice, the bread, the grains, that kinda stuff.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Right. Uh and real quick there’s the condition uhm-
called cerebral folate deficiency, whereby you cannot get folate into the central nervous system uhm- in the cerbrospinal fluid uhm- I know there’s- I think one maybe two lab tests for it. When I learned about it was actually a research project by Doctor Quadro’s State University of New York. And uh- different you know, experts or authority years in the area will say you know different things about it. But uhm- with cerebral folate deficiency, most of the time the way someone supplements is using Leucovorin which is prescription folinic acid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So we have about folic acid. Well one step more active than that is folinic acid. And I asked Dr.Quadros, “why do you guys use this in the study, that they have MTHFR why not use different–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Dr. Tim Jackson: Or when I used up on your you know- L-5-MTHF directly and he said, “One, it was just the way to study was written and two, there’s some potential neurotransmitter neurological uhm- functions that can be improved with Leucovorin versus uh- L-5-MTHF”. But you basically have to hypersaturate the receptors so that you can get transport across the brain and this affects the central nervous system greatly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Excellent knowledge bombs there, Dr. Tim. I wanna give it here briefly, man. I wanna talk about mycotoxins. And mycotoxins are gonna be the toxins produced by mold. We’ve talked about this in our previous podcast that we did. So please refer back to the first podcast. But mycotoxins are really important. Obviously the first line of defense. I’m not gonna put words in your mouth. Correct me if I’m wrong. But get out of the environment where the mold is. That’s probably number one. And number two is it will involve other steps. I wanted to kinda get you a breakdown of what people should do outside of the first step, environmental removal uhm- next to kind of eliminate and reduce mycotoxin exposure.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Well, yeah. Number one you gotta get rid of the moisture source.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Tim Jackson: So depending on where you live, like I was in South Carolina, I have to have two digimon of fires underneath the house. And I have one running upstairs even during the winter. And uh- you know there’s gonna be mold everywhere. But what happens is in a lot of people think mold is only in older homes. But with new homes, they try to build them to be so energy-efficient that it only leaves a few species of mold in the house. And you know it’s called niche exclusion like in the gut. If you only have a couple species of good bacteria, you can have an overgrowth of those good bacteria and undergrowth of- or deficiency of the others. And uhm- with mycotoxins, we can do a few different types of environmental test. The ones at your hardware store are not accurate. But uh- typically that will come back. There’s one test called an RMI.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: RMI. Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Capital R-M-I. Uhm- and there’s uh- you know, it’s not really new anymore but it’s called the HERTSMI-2 Test. And this third one I’ll mention is the Realtime Lab. They offer environment test. And so wanna test your environment and you’ll be surprised because I know it takes darkness and a moisture source and most people don’t to their ductwork clean enough. And these mycotoxins are very low molecular weight proteins. So most air filters will not get them. But uh- you can have someone who’s certified in testing come in, which I did. And then type up a pretty long report and they list the species that you have and what’s important here is that there are certain genetic glitches. And this is not on a 23andMe but there’s one called the human leukocyte antigen. And there are many of those, but one has to do with your ability to detoxify mycotoxins. I happen to have the worst one called the dreaded genotype. And that means –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, man.
Dr. Tim Jackson: My immune system does not tag mycotoxins when I ingest some, whether it’s through food or breathing. And so they build up in my body. And you wanna talk about something that would disrupt every other system in the body, you can have the male- you can have a testosterone level of a thousand and a great free testosterone level. But if you still have mycotoxins, you’re gonna feel horrible. Your- five different types of your immune cells are gonna be turned off. And that’s just from one mycotoxin called the gliotoxin. And you know, it affects- causes system wide chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And even after the removal of the stressor, your immune system may still be reacting strongly. And so you can kill the mold but a lot of people will use things like ozone and ozone industrial mold. But it releases dead mycotoxins which are immunogenic or stimulating to the immune system. So the most reliable method I’ve come across is using biodegradable enzymes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: It was expensive. It was about $10,000 but I’ve heard of people spinning up to 70 grand per mold for mediation. So you wanna really work with someone who is reputable and you know, who’s not out just trying make money and failed when you did everything to tear down your house. So the- I bring up the genetic glitch that can be tested through LabCorp and there’s five different levels of that genotype. And 25% of the population has one. So what I’m getting at here is that, you can have an allergy or sensitivity to a mold, but the issue that I’m really focusing on here is the inability to detoxify mycotoxins. And that’s where ___ comes in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: We have the dreaded genotype as well. That’s why he makes bulletproof coffee.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Coffee, nuts, grains. Things like that are gonna be resources of mycotoxins available.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Big deal. Uh, but they’re not part of that 25% of the population that have the genetic glitch. And so these things may be- be very small, very low molecular weight, but they can disrupt everything from hormones to brain function, to immune function. Gut health is another one, if you have a client or patient who’s gut won’t heal. I won’t get into why that it has do with the hormone help alpha-MSH. But the mycotoxins- so we talked testing the environment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Test your body level, there is a urine mycotoxin test RealTime Labs. But there is a kicker to it. You want to do a glutathione push you know, you’re hooked up to the IV and they just push some glutathione or taken a large oral bowl of some glutathione, about 30 to 45 minutes before collecting your urine to this test. Because if I were to take that test, and I didn’t do that, it would come up with low levels because I’m a porch greeter. It’s sort of the same thing as metals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Metals. Yes
Dr. Tim Jackson: So when I take little time and then check my mycotoxin levels, it will tell me where I am. And uh- the follow-up testing is much cheaper than the original test, which is pretty expensive. But we want check your body burden to see how aggressive we need to be in terms of getting each mycotoxins out. So how we get them out? We bind them up in the bile and/or we use a protocol called the lipid exchange protocol. And it can be a combination of oral and IV fatty acids. And all you’re doing is you’re rehabing the cell membranes. And when you do that, that allows talking to move out and nutrients to move in. and it’s a high-fat diet, uh- moderate protein diet, low carbohydrate diet because you’re trying to reduce positive stress in the cell membranes. And a combination of that, the Patricia- It’s called the Patricia Kane protocol or lipid exchange protocol, along with using binders, works really well. Uhm- you may also have an infection of those mycotoxins. So they may have created a systemic infection. Then you would have to take either herbal, some sort of neutraceutical prescription, antifungal to get rid of that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So looking at all the different options we have, right. We’re decreasing the moisture, the humidifiers, we’re maybe using a mold remediation service that uses some enzyme therapies to help clean things out.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s some decent air filters out there that are better that will at least help partially. Uhm- you mention the glutathione, right. Especially like a challenge when you test it with Realtime. But you could probably use liposomal glutathione as well. What about- And you mention the bile, right. So eating fats gonna be helpful coz that will stimulate the bile to release your- stimulate your gallbladders release bile, which is like changing that the gunky oil. What about modified citrus pectin? What about zeolite? What about activated charcoal? What are your thoughts on those things?
Dr. Tim Jackson: From my friends who are certified in the Shoemaker Protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Shoemaker uses a cholesterol medication called cholestyramine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: The issue with that is that-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Super expensive.
Dr. Tim Jackson: You get it sometimes it is very expensive. But two, it’s gonna bind up all your good nutrients.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it usually constipates you. And most people with bile issue’s already constipated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- But you- that medication and also have aspartame in it. Uhm- for $200 and something for a month supply, you can get it compounded. Uhm- there’s another prescription called Welchol. And again, these are both cholesterol medications.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And it’s interesting because they hand them out like candy for high cholesterol. But when my clients need them for binding mold, they look at you like, “Oh, no! we would never do that.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. It’s crazy.
Dr. Tim Jackson: But if question about modified citrus pectin and act with a charcoal-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What about bentonite clay?
Dr. Tim Jackson: What- bentonite clay. Yeah. The one that uhm- the KIinghardt Community, the Biotoxin Community is kind of found to be most efficient. It’s from a nutraceutical perspective. It’s TakesumiSupreme .
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Which is this uhm- you know, from bamboo tree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bamboo shoots. Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah. And so it’s pretty much like activated charcoal. Uhm- but there’s also another uh- process and I’ll try to find the link whereby uhm- while you’re trying to detoxify the mycotoxins, you neutralize them so they’re less reactive in the body. And someone figured out that uh- specific type of Hawaiian Noni Juice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:Ahh-
Dr. Tim Jackson: -like that. Uh, I have no connection to the company but you know, I’ve heard great things about it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How about just juicing the herbs? I know what uh- I know you’re referring to Dr.
Dr. Tim Jackson: serves no way to know your friend it to Dr. Michael Leibowitz. He has a talk, Takesumi Supreme. He also has the Noni Supreme. Do you prefer the Noni as well to have those same effects?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Uhm- I have not used Noni a lot, to be quite honest. And so, you know- Again, my go to is uhm- the Takesumi Supreme uhm- or Modified Citrus Pectin, uh- you know, Pectasol, uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jackson: But you can also use, like you said, the bentonite clay. I just don’t have a tox of experience using it. And I just kinda you know, lots of times- It’s hard to research in all these different areas. So you kind have to stick to some of your-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Dr. Tim Jackson: -routine. Uhm-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How about Zeolite?
Dr. Tim Jackson: So that’s pretty much what I do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How about Zeolite, Doc?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Oh, Zeolite. Sorry about that. Well a lot – as you know, a lot of uh- different companies sold Zeolite that- It’s contaminated –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: – with aluminum. Uhm- and I extense up my cells.Uhm- I won’t name the company but uhm- five of their models went out, they took it. There is a product that- and I’m not gonna mention it coz I haven’t fully- I don’t feel fully comfortable mentioning it, but it is a certain type of Zeolite that very public figure recommends to get into the cell. But it’s also sold by another company in another name and it- supposedly has testing to show that is not contaminated with uhm- aluminum. Uhm- and it’s supposed to be small enough this- the biophysical structure is supposed to be small enough that it can cross over into the cell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Awesome, Doc. You drop some serious knowledge bombs here. Well, to save everything else for a part two. I love it. But last question here for you. If you’re stuck on a desert island, what’s the one supplement you- you bring with yourself?
Dr. Tim Jackson: Curcumin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Curcumin
Dr. Tim Jackson: Hands down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Curcumin. Love it. Hands down. Kinda help modulate that nuclear factor kappa beta, right?
Dr. Tim Jackson: That’s right. There you go. You got it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, Doctor Tim. Well, anyone listening here, Doctor Tim is available worldwide for Skype and phone consults. His Facebook is healyourbody.org He’s got a great blog post there. He’s also been on lots of other podcast like myself, bulletproof radio, etc. etc. So he’s a knowledge wealth. Dr. Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate the knowledge bombs. Anything else you want to leave our listeners with here today?
Dr. Tim Jackson: I would say that uh- the general concept is just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not having a tremendous impact and effect on your health. And that applies to two things I deal with daily. One, EMF.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhh.
Dr. Tim Jackson: You know- uhm, electro magnetic pollution.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And the other one is mycotoxins. So two things that we can’t really see, but are having a tremendous impact on us. I know we don’t have time to get into this, but EMF have been shown to activate something called the cell danger response.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oohh.
Dr. Tim Jackson: And basically hijacks all the workings and uhm- metabolism of the cell. And so uhm- an interesting fact for Dietrich Klinghardt points out is that people that are in high EMF environments or non-native EMF environments who have mold. They get sicker because those vibrations and frequencies send signals to the mold to produce more mycotoxin and and more potent mycotoxin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think it’s’ stronger. Yup.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally make sense. We gotta be inflammation detectives.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Absolutely. You gotta understand what you see and understand what’s happening of the cell and how to fix the cell, you fix everything else coz you gotta remember all your different organ systems are made of cell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well it’s really great to have you Biochem background here in the show, Doctor Tim. Thank you so much and you have an awesome day. We’ll talk real soon.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Awesome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thank you.
Dr. Tim Jackson: Alright. Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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