Functional Medicine Steps to Reversing Depression and Mood Disorders | Podcast #382
In this video, Dr. Justin and Evan talk about depression. Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by persistent sadness and hopelessness. Treatment options include anti-depressant medication and mental health practices such as therapy. Recent research suggests that factors such as amino acids and gut health may also play a role in the development of depression.
Another approach to treating depression and mood disorders is Functional Medicine, which focuses on identifying and addressing the condition’s underlying causes. This approach may include addressing nutrient deficiencies, addressing gut health issues, and identifying and addressing any underlying chronic health conditions contributing to depression or mood disorders.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:26 – Depression
03:12 – Amino Acids
10:14 – Gut
28:17 – Key Takeaways
Dr. Marchegiani: Hey guys it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, today we are here with Evan Brand. Excited to have a nice conversation with you, man! How’s it been? It’s been a little bit! What’s cooking, brother?
Evan Brand: Yeah, not too much is cooking. I figured that over the weekend, I was looking at statistics, and I thought, okay I wonder if things have changed since a year ago or five years ago, or 10 years ago when I really got interested in the topic of depression.
Turns out nope nothing’s changed, depression is still the number one leading cause of disability in the United States. That’s shocking! and…
Dr. Marchegiani: Isn’t that crazy?
Evan Brand: This affects everything! This affects your marriage, the way you treat your kids, the way you treat your co-workers if you’re an employer, the way that you’re treating everyone. And so our job today would be to provide Solutions and maybe some testing strategies that someone who’s suffering from depression or other mood issues. What could they do at home from the functional medicine perspective, and how could you actually reverse it? Is it actually possible to reverse it?
And I would say yes, it is because we see it all the time and I’ve suffered tremendously but I’ve made massive strides in my mood over the years by slowly and systematically fixing little pieces of things that have been wrong with me from parasites and gut infections and mold and lyme and tick-borne issues, all of these add up it’s not just “Oh he’s in a bad mood!”, There are literally underlying causes you can fix so let me just jump into that first and say that from the Psychiatry model of depression, let’s talk, what about your childhood?
Well, what’s your relationship and how do you feel, and how does that make you feel? And it generally stops there. Maybe there’s a prescription given but they don’t ask “Hey when’s the last time your basement flooded?”, “Oh, I saw you had mold growing around your window trim let’s talk about that.” They don’t go into that. They don’t go into your environment, or how your environment may be contributing to it from a biochemical biotoxin perspective and that’s a huge missing piece of the mental health puzzle.
Dr. Marchegiani: Oh I agree! I mean, you know, there’s a study that just came out last year we talked about it, I think, in a previous podcast that looked at antidepressants, and they’re essentially not being effective right? And kind of that whole Serotonin model as being kind of an antiquated model. Right, so a lot of these older medications, they block these reuptake ports where Serotonin would come back into that presynaptic neuron and essentially go back into the neuron and be used up again.
And so essentially, that model of causing the Serotonin to accumulate in between the synapses, so we have a neuron, that’s the presynaptic neuron, this is the postsynaptic neuron, Serotonin would hang out in this area called the Synaptic Cleft. And essentially, the Serotonin will then go back up into the presynaptic neuron, and the medications would block that, it would block that port, so then it would accumulate more in the Synaptic Cleft. And so they’re kind of saying this model is kind of more antiquated. It’s not quite necessary that’s what’s happening.
And that’s interesting because this is the kind of drugs that have been talked about and used in this area, and this mechanism for, you know, 20 to 30 years and so, there’s also some nutrients that you use that are similar. We talk about, kind of 5- HTP, and some of the cofactor nutrients that we use on the amino acid side may plug into that model or maybe it’ll be a little bit different than that. Can we kind of talk a little bit more about the amino acids?
Evan Brand: Yeah, well, first what we do is we look at the urine. And you can measure the metabolites of your neurotransmitter, so Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphin, you can measure these metabolites. Think of it, the analogy I’ve been using lately is to prove that there was a bonfire, you look for the ashes. So we kind of look at those ashes, and we’re like okay, look at the evidence here, there was a fire burning, so we measure the urine in the same way where we look at these breakdown products of those brain chemicals, and we can infer what the level of brain chemistry may look like.
And we often see low Serotonin in people that are anxious, depressed, irritable, they have trouble sleeping, and so we will plug into that amino acid pathway with things like Tryptophan, or Five Hydroxytryptophan, we’ll combine that with B6 which is a necessary cofactor for Serotonin and then for Melatonin and people feel better. So I think it’s crazy to think about how many hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds and millions of prescriptions were given out if truly those drugs don’t work! I mean are people going to go ask for a refund now? I mean that’s crazy!
Dr. Marchegiani: I know, right
Evan Brand: Like, what a disappointment really that model was the model, and what we’re seeing is totally the opposite. We’re seeing massive success with amino acids you and I’ve talked about free-form amino acids, these certain blends where if there’s low Serotonin and low Dopamine, we may sprinkle some Tyrosine in there, or DL-Phenylalanine and these people can make a recovery within just a few weeks.
We’re talking if you’re on a scale of one to ten, your depression is a 10-max like you don’t want to live. You could knock that down by half, I’d say, in as little as a month if you’re doing all the right steps.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah, I think part of the reason why we see clinical benefit using some of these amino acids or nutrients, so number one, the medications are working differently. They’re not actually adding building blocks, they’re blocking the reuptake of that. The problem with when you block the reuptake of these neurochemicals into the presynaptic neuron is you increase the recycling, right?
It’s kind of like these neurotransmitters go back into that synaptic neuron to kind of hide out from the cold or from the harsh weather, if you will because the longer they’re outside the more they get depleted and so the whole goal of these medications is they block that reuptake but then they end up depleting and impacting a lot of the Serotonin long term. That’s part of the reason why doses have to be increased over time. So there is that mechanism that’s part of the reason why we see side effects with these drugs.
Number two is we’re actually adding building blocks, and we’re also adding the important cofactors that are needed for synthesis. B6 needed for synthesis, we’re providing the amino acids. Also, we never see a patient that has mood issues and we just say “Hey, here’s B6 and 5HCP.” We’re making changes with their diets. We’re reducing inflammation, we’re managing Dysglycemia that means preventing these high and low blood sugar swings.
We’re maximizing protein, we’re making sure we’re breaking down our protein, we’re making sure the fats are good that’s important because every single cell in your body has a healthy lipid bilayer and these lipids if they’re rancid, junky, Omega-6 processed vegetable oils that have been oxidized, that’s going to create stress within your cells and so if we’re using good healthy fats that are Omega-3, fish oil, good healthy saturated fats from pasture-fed eggs, grass-fed meats, you know, wild game organ meats or grass-fed butter or tallow.
These fats are going to make healthier cell membranes, less oxidative stress, and so we’re fixing the Glycemia, we’re fixing the nutrient density, we’re fixing the healthy fats, we’re fixing the digestion, we’re adding in cofactors and so then when we add in different amino acids whether it’s 5-HTP, Tyrosine, different cofactors, Calcium, B6, Folate, B12, these are important cofactors as well so we’re never just giving one nutrient in isolation.
Another problem with a lot of the studies, they’re going to be like “Hey this amino acid without making any changes in this person’s health, didn’t really create that therapeutic effect.” And we’re like “Yeah, well, we never would just do that anyway.” So that may be true that’s why science and functional medicine is hard because science wants to deduce all the variables and just do one thing at a time but we just control 20 different variables right there by getting their diet right, they’re water right, their sleep right, their supplements right, their environment-mold right.
So you know all these things that’s like 20 variables, and so that’s kind of where medicine and functional medicine have a hard time because there’s too many variables that can’t be isolated when we see patients.
Evan Brand: Yeah it’s really not fair too because you’ll see this one headline, this amino acid or natural medicine for depression is BS, it’s snake oil, it’s pseudoscience it’s like okay, well, take Johnny, who loves his wife, loves his kids go for a hike every morning, gets plenty of sunshine, clean house, eats great, no gluten, no Dairy, and he takes it and he does amazing and then you have Betty over here she starts her morning with donuts and she watches negative news, and she sits in the dark she gets no natural bright light in the morning and she takes it and she hates her life, and she hates her kids, and she’s divorced and lonely and smokes a pack of cigarettes and she takes the 5-HTP and it doesn’t work and therefore it’s BS.
So yeah, I agree with you it is hard because what we’re doing is 20 to 30 variables all at once and then we’re not even addressing the part that we talk about too, which is trying to get the Limbic System dialed in because if you’ve been stuck in a chronic state of fight or flight because of your depression, you want to get out of this hole, you feel trapped in this home, you’re trapped in this job, I mean this could be a three-hour mega podcast but the long story short of it is all these other variables those change, how your brain processes, stress, fear, and that all can lead to more depression too. So we’re always trying to implement some sort of mental health practice.
I love doing meditations. It used to sound crazy to me. I used to hate to sit there for five minutes and be quiet but now I look forward to it. Now I’m like “Oh! I’m turning back into the real me!”, versus this busy version of me is different so I think you have to be miserable enough to listen to us when I say and I know that our friend and Mentor Kayla has said this for years something like if you don’t have an hour to meditate you need two and I was guilty of that because I was like I’m too busy. I’m too busy to slow down, I’m too busy to relax and think and now I’m like no I need that time so that I am clear-headed and not depressed during the day because I’m less overwhelmed because I’m more clear-headed.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yes, so when we talk about a lot of things here different factors, just take it with a grain of salt you can find studies you can find people that have had benefits or not, the issue is we’re not going to ever just take and do one variable at a time. There’s going to be a lot of things, and the more leverage you move and the more you set that foundation of health up, the more a supplement or a nutrient or an herb or a Botanical or a hormone could potentially provide a therapeutic effect even though data out there isn’t supported because we’re setting a foundation and moving a lot more variables than these studies are. It’s important to note.
Evan Brand: Yeah, we hit the organic acid test also, if you are having mood issues at all. You need to look into your gut as you and I know there’s a huge correlation between gut infections and mood disorders, whether that’s anxiety, bipolar, depression even panic attacks, this could be coming from the toxins released by the overgrowth of the microbes in your gut so to me a stool test would be a critical component of a mental health workup.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah, so in general that’s super important because 80%, 90% of all the neurotransmitters come from the gut now. Some of the data says hey these neurotransmitters don’t cross the blood-brain barrier but either way the amino acids that we take in those do have to get through the gut into the bloodstream and then those would then either get converted in the gut or go past the blood-brain barrier the astrocytes in the brain and they would get converted in the brain so the whole idea of like 5-HTP is those can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and go to the brain but we need to have good health, good healthy gut function to be able to break down and absorb these things and then also the newer model of depression looks at the brain’s inflammation.
They’re saying, hey a lot of the inflammation in the brain could be what’s causing problems. The problem is we know a lot of conventional medicine’s way of addressing inflammation tends to have side effects. We know NSAIDs kill about 20 000 people a year with gut and liver issues. We know Vioxx from the early 2000s killed 60 000 people with strokes and cardiovascular issues. So when you start to inhibit and stop these uh Cyclooxygenase the Cox Pathways. Cox-1, Cox-2, Cox-3 they can have impacts on reducing inflammation but those enzymes are also really important for rebuilding other tissues so you’re kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
And so conventional medicine, they have a lot of tools that may have a lot of side effects and so we know this new model of brain inflammation and mood is real and I think that’s why we can move the needle so much when we fix the gut because so much of the inflammation is in the gut. Whether it’s from food dysbiosis, endotoxin from bacteria, mycotoxin from fungus, or colonized yeast or mold, H. Pylori, parasites, just not breaking down foods and having larger food molecules of of dairy, Casein, wheat right grains and so all of this inflammation in the gut can be easily driving inflammation in the brain.
Evan Brand: Do you think you can eat your way out of this because that’s a common thing that just spreads on social media like wildfire is this idea like if you just get your diet perfect, all your problems go away and I already have my answer but I want to hear it from you because 90 plus percent of people that come to us are already doing something to improve their diet and they still have these issues.
Dr. Marchegiani: The more chronic the problem is no because I give an example of a patient, right? If you’re driving down the street and you get a flat tire right and now your car is not driving well, if I change that flat tire that day, do all my problems with my car go away? Yes because it just happened that day. But if I were to drive around on that flat tire for years and then be like well the root cause was that flat tire if I just change the flat tire I’m addressing the root cause the car should go back to normal like it drove three years ago well now you have collateral damage because you drove the car now aligned for years now the front end, the axle the suspension the shocks, the steering, everything’s jacked up and so just because you fixed the underlying root cause collateral damage happen in other places in the body.
And so then now you have to come in there and fix all the other collateral damages that occurred.
Evan Brand: Yeah that’s a great analogy. I mean the sound bite makes it difficult for us because then we have to explain that to people because people say oh well I heard from so and so if I just eat this, if I do kefir, if I do grass-fed Meats I’ll just be fine. That’ll fix my SIBO, that’ll fix my infections, that’ll fix my health issues and if you could eat your way out of this, if everyone could eat their way out of this then you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah and a good history is really what tells you because usually with a good history, you can kind of see where the first shoe to fall was right. you’re like going to the person’s history their diet was good their lifestyle was good they had a mold issue in their basement because of a flood that wasn’t addressed and it’s like oh okay that screams to me this is an environmental thing or you can go back and see there was emotional stress and then there was some diet issues and then antibiotics you’re like okay.
So the history kind of can tell you you know how things started to unfold just like if I told you my history about my car and I told you three years ago I got a flat tire, you could say Okay, I see how that kind of unfolded. So this is where a good history you know really makes a lot of sense and then you want to also go into it not thinking it’s just one thing. It’s just the mold, It’s just you’re the gluten, it’s like no no. So when you have people that are like just dietitians, the problem is all they have is food. So all they’re looking at is food as being the underlying issue and that’s the problem.
You have to have a broader tool belt because then you’re like okay, food definitely is blood sugar, definitely is. But then other things could be as well and you want to combine everything.
Evan Brand: It may be a little harder for us to explain that and we’ve done this for a decade plus now which is that we have to be generalists and specialists at the same time like if you go to just the diet guru he’s going to convince you everything that you do diet wise is going to fix all of your problems and then you and I go wait a second you take 20 depressed people that come to us there’s going to be 20 different clinical outcomes and 20 different clinical protocols for this people here.
Dr. Marchegiani: And diets too!
Evan Brand: It could be this lady here, it was the death of her husband, it was an illness, it was moving out, it was Trauma from her children and it was mold exposure and dysbiosis and she was on XYZ medication versus over here lady just had thyroid issues. Okay easy fix that depression, this lady here gut infections, fixed that, that depression is gone. So the problem with the mental health space is it’s like okay depression and everyone thinks they have the same flavor of depression. You can have 20 different flavors or 20 different little small rivers that all end up at the same symptom depression but not everyone is getting there the same way the same path.
Dr. Marchegiani: Bingo! 100 percent! And even with diets right, I see some patients and they’re super sensitive to vegetables. They can’t even handle vegetables; some have to be on an elemental or even a carnivore diet. Some are just okay with the Paleo template, some need some level of variation between an autoimmune or an SCD or low oxalate or so there’s always a different variation depending on what’s going on.
So food always is important, so when we look at food, we’re looking at nutrient density, anti-inflammatory, low Toxin and we’ve got to make sure that you can break the foods down that’s super important and then the next part on top of food is that we don’t have enzymes acids in bile support, dial then and you can’t break that food down that food’s going to be a stressor inside of your body. And then, of course, all those nutrients to run our brain chemicals and pathways have to come from that food so if we don’t break them down and absorb it then that’s a problem too.
Evan Brand: So let’s make that visual for people so this is a 52-year-old woman, she’s had digestive issues for 20 years and she has depression. She was told if she does go autoimmune or she does go animal-based, she’s going to be fine. She does it, now she has diarrhea, she doesn’t know what to do, she’s confused. How do we approach that and break that down?
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah, so I mean, the first thing is we have to look at her gut because even a healthy diet and healthy enzymes and acids there could be infections and stuff inside the intestinal tract that could be creating stress and inflammation so we’re going to work on the enzymes, we’re going to work on the acids, we’re going to make sure she’s breaking down her fats, we’re going to make sure the food is dialed into to whatever degree we think we need to based on how severe the issues are and then we’re going to be testing, we’re going to be looking at what’s going on with her microbiome and her and dysbiotic bacteria and yeast and bacteria and potentially colonized mold. This colonized mold from the living arrangement for where you live could be impacting things as well so we’ve got to look at everything.
Evan Brand: Yep, Candida could be in the puzzle too so people blame the food and they’ll say oh well I don’t feel good with meat like I’ve tried that I don’t feel good I’ve tried to increase fats I don’t feel good and then they may give up and we’re like okay it’s not the food that’s the problem it’s everything else that’s in your bucket that’s making that a problem. You should tolerate this, you should feel fine with it, it’s just a matter of getting your nervous system calmed down.
Someone in the comments has a vagus nerve yeah I mean your nervous system is a piece of it, we were talking about the limbic system. You know if you’re stuck in fight or flight all the time that you know that’s going to impair your ability to digest your food I mean how many times have you been in an argument at the dinner table you get done with the meal and you don’t even remember you’re still hungry. You’re like did I even eat? Like that’s what we’re talking about here.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah, when you’re activating your amygdala and or your limbic system, this is kind of your fight or flight response, that’s going to go up the vagus nerve or your parasympathetics go down it’s not a seesaw. So as the limbic, amygdala, brain stem right that’s the back part of the brain these are all primordial reflexes for fight or flight and survival okay. So very very important and the problem with that is if this is over activated the parasympathetics which are really that’s the vagus nerve, that’s this whole entire nerve cascade that helps with rest digest, activates the frontal cortex so you can make decision making, you can see the outcome of poor decisions and actions and then you can stop acting in a bad way right.
Most crimes and people doing bad things it’s because they’re thinking from their amygdala brain stem and not their frontal cortex, and so the more stressed you are that can create problems. I also saw, I read an article one time where a lot of things like road rage and like serious crime done like impulsively, was done from people that were hypoglycemic, so very low blood sugar. Because the low blood sugar kind of creates a stress response, and that activates the frontal cortex I mean, everyone can have that response of like dealing with their spouse and they haven’t eaten all day, and they’re just like, “Oh my God! I just need to eat like I’m just, I’m angry!” right.
So things like nutrition and blood sugar could easily impact that kind of brainstem response now outside of that there are different programs and things you can do, like you mentioned earlier in meditation or there’s different programs like DNRS or the Gupta program or NLP or EFT or EMDR. These are different programs that help get at the subconscious, limbic system, brain stem response kind of calm down which then brings up the parasympathetics and brings up the vagus nerve.
Evan Brand: Yeah and this was a critical step for me I mean I didn’t realize I was stuck in fight or flight until I downshifted from it and then I’m like, “Oh wait a second, man I was running running running like a little rat on a wheel”, and then finally I kind of snapped out of it, and I was almost running on autopilot I’m like wait a second I need to be more conscious with what I’m doing my actions and all of that.
So sometimes you have to say no to be able to say yes and what I mean by that is if you’re a people pleaser, you may end up as a depressed, anxious person because you’re constantly trying to satisfy everyone’s needs. This could be for your children or your spouse or whoever. If you’re a people pleaser we find this a lot. Those people are the ones that end up more burnt out, more anxious, more depressed, whether it’s a caretaker role as any sick family member or a sick parent or aging parent or just trying to please people in society.
So it’s okay to say no if you’re too booked up, if you’re too tapped out, you can say no to someone. Get your mind right, sit down, get your functional medicine labs done, get your work up done, so you can see what you’re up against. When you’re so stuck in fight or flight, you’re dealing with blood sugar crises, you’ve got toxins, you’re worried about your house, you got to get the plumber over to fix the leak, you got to separate from all that if you need to go sit out on the front porch and watch the birds fly for a minute to get your mind right that’s what I would do.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah you kind of mentioned the people pleasers. I grew up with some of those and it’s interesting right? Because you think people pleasing comes from a place of like, you know this is good, I want to help all these people around me. The problem is there’s also on the other side of the people-pleasing spectrum is a lot of resentment, because people pleasers will do a lot for this person XYZ, family, friends, kids, etc.
But then there’s this unspoken kind of goal or agreement that they’re kind of making that person is also going to make them a priority at some point and help them and if they don’t, it’s totally unspoken, this is where the resentment comes in. “Hey, you didn’t do this for me but I did this for you.” It’s like “Well, wait a minute. I didn’t realize I had to pay you back on that. I didn’t realize that was something I had to like to be indebted to you. I thought you were just doing that out of kindness.”
So it’s really important that you know, one, that you make yourself a priority that’s important because only you know what you need. Only you know the rest you need, the self-care you need, the things that you love, the hobbies, the time that you need right? Only you can put food in your mouth and get to bed on time. I can’t ever force you to do that.
And then you’re kind coming from a place of abundance where your cup is filling over and then, the spilling over is what you give away to friends and family and obviously, this is different if you have young kids right because they can’t take care of themselves but as kids get older and family gets older right it’s kind of more of that cup running over and that’s a much better mindset than having a low cup where you just give away and then your cup super low to begin with.
So just kind of make sure that you’re making deposits into yourself and then using the abundance to help others around you after the fact.
Evan Brand: Yeah and this could be something simple, this doesn’t necessarily have to be a supplement, this could be you taking a hot bath, you could be scheduling a massage, you’d just leave the house, go take a little drive, if you got to get away hopefully your spouse is supportive. If you say “Hey, gotta get my mind right. Gotta reset, go for a drive honey.” Perfect! These are the small steps that allow us to think clearly about our next action step but if you haven’t looked at your underlying issues, it’s time to look.
If you’ve done the diet, you’ve done the lifestyle, get the data because if you’re not testing, you’re guessing.
Dr. Marchegiani: Yep and anyone that has young kids, you have three kids, I have two young kids. We know kids, their needs are insatiable and they will never fully be satiated where like, you go do this activity, you do this, you give them this treat, you have this meal, you have this experience, the kids will never say “Mom and Dad thank you so much for this great day. You go take care of you now.” That never happened, it’s like “Now we’re on to this! And now we’re on to that!” right? There will never be that closure of like, “Great job Dad, thanks!” It’s like “Now what’s next? Now what’s next? Now what’s next?”
So you have to have that like all right, “Now it’s Mom and Dad’s time.” We’re gonna get a sitter, we’re gonna have a date night, we’re gonna have, I’m gonna schedule a time to go for a drive or go for a walk or meditate or exercise right so you have to kind of have that boundary within yourself and know that no one’s gonna just probably pat you on the back and say “All right, you go do you now,” probably not going to happen.
Evan Brand: Yeah and that’s not really a sexy advertisement that’s going to come from the media or anywhere else. There are benefits to society being caught up in this Loop and when you can step back from that it really helps change your perspective and even just that perspective change alone can help improve your mood so this topic is all about depression but as you see there’s a million different little spider webs. Yeah little inputs here and I think this is a totally reversible condition, yes there are genetics involved, yes there are environmental pieces, biochemical pieces, nutrition, lifestyle, digestive, all of it adds up but you really have to just plug and fix each little hole in this happiness bucket.
If you think you’re happy I think of it almost visually this bucket of happiness, default that’s what it is like my baby she’s default happy but as you age you get inflamed, you get infections, you get nutrient deficiencies because the soil’s depleted. Even if you eat an organic orange, you gotta eat 20 of them to equal the orange of 1920’s,
Dr. Marchegiani: Exactly
Evan Brand: Well, that’s a hole in the bucket. And then it’s, you’re overworked, okay that’s a hole in the bucket. This is why tribal societies, you ask them, they rarely have a word for depression because all the inputs they’re getting are keeping that happiness bucket full or set another way, they don’t have as many holes in their bucket that we in the modern world do so try to plug those holes, fill that bucket and you can totally reverse from this to where your life is something you look forward to, rather than you dreading your life and wishing it away.
Dr. Marchegiani: I love it! I love it! And so outside of that, if you have like previous trauma, whether it’s sexual abuse or issue with marriage or kids, get the support you need on the counseling side, behavioral therapy or if it’s like some kind of a subconscious trauma that’s there from the past, you know, EFT, EMDR, NLP, these are techniques that really work on that kind of subconscious stress, just make sure you have support for that if that is a thing or not and then everything else that we’re going to recommend is going to be customized because I could have a patient with really really high cortisol and all these nutrient deficiencies, we got to get that cortisol in check because that’s going to be causing limbic system problems.
And if I see these neurotransmitters off or important cofactors like Folate, B12, and B6 off, that could be a bigger deal for someone that maybe have normal markers for that. And so a lot of the rec like, these are things that could be wrong, but then we like to have that individualized approach so we’re not guessing, we’re assessing. So this is where we’re going to do organic acids and nutrient tests, this is where we’re going to look at the hormones so what we’re going to look at blood sugar and diet.
Just causing dysglycemia issues can cause massive problems so you can go get like a Freestyle Libre Three, put it on your shoulder, connect it to your phone, and test your blood sugar for two weeks, see how you do, see how you feel, monitor that, creating awareness, check, track your sleep, track your HRV, see how you’re doing in regards to your recovery and your parasympathetic response. These are some cool kinds of devices that you can do to kind of monitor and bring awareness to what’s happening.
Evan Brand: Yeah absolutely and I would say for someone that is on the verge of giving up and they have no hope, have hope, just reach out to someone, talk to someone. If you are obviously suicidal, you know call The Suicide Hotline. Don’t kill yourself over this, it’s not worth it. There’s too many people ending their lives that they could have been fixed. I mean just a famous recent case of suicide was, it was the either president or there was someone high up in Texas Roadhouse. It was a, there’s a restaurant chain that was headquartered in Kentucky where I’m from, and the guy, post virus, had tinnitus, and of course he got depressed from that and ended his life.
It’s like, well, there’s a million things we could do to help with tinnitus, like if he could have had a functional workup, he might have been able to fix that and would have ended his life. So there’s so many different situations that lead to someone doing that but I’ve even had clients where in the beginning they feel like they’re at the end of the rope and by the end, they think, “Why did I ever think that?” “I’m totally out of that mindset now.”
Dr. Marchegiani: Yeah, the last thing you want is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, right, that’s what suicide is. It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. We gotta have that solution-based mindset, okay? And again, the healthier you are, the more adaptable to stress you become, right, the more you’re going to think with that frontal cortex, the more you’re going to be able to problem-solve and get to the root.
So I think we have some good things here, that we kind of laid out. Again a lot of this will be individualized again if you guys want to dive in deeper, head over to evanbrand.com. Evan has research and resources for y’all, sees patients worldwide, and you also can head over to justinhealtstg.wpengine.com as well. We do functional medicine support worldwide, so you can reach out to either of us. We’ll put some links down below of different supplements that we like, different labs that we, like highly recommend work with a practitioner so you can have a guided approach.
Again it’s not just if I gave you a recipe right and I said, hey these things are, this is what you need for the recipe, but I didn’t give you the right order, and I didn’t customize it for you you’re gonna have a bunch of slop because if you put the eggs in after you baked it right it’s just not going to taste good and so the order of operations and that customization approach is so important that’s how we get patients better so just kind of FYI on that. Anything else Evan you want to leave a listen with?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I appreciate the website and we are some of the best guys out there. We don’t say that just to toot our own horns, we say it because we’ve been through our own struggles, and we’ve helped thousands of people worldwide.
I’ve confirmed with the labs that we work with that we are in the top 10 worldwide of practitioners running the most labs, and from that, we see a ton of data, and with that data, we can help people the average person has been to 5, 10, or even 15 different practitioners specialist, other functional medicine people, naturopaths, conventional doctors, neurologists, cardiologists, and then somehow they wind up with us, and we give them good results so if you do decide to work with us we’re going to take great care of you, as he mentioned, Dr. J at justinhealtstg.wpengine.com that’s justinhealtstg.wpengine.com or me Evan Brand at evanbrand.com.
We’re happy to be there for you guys, and we’re always willing to look someplace that someone else hasn’t looked at, that’s why we don’t give up. We’re just ruthless for the pursuit of health and happiness, so thank you all, and take good care.
Dr. Marchegiani: Excellent! If you guys found value in this, please give us a share with friends or family, write us a review, put a comment, give us that five star on iTunes we really appreciate it. Thanks, guys! Have an awesome day!
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How to Deal with Stress and Feeling Overwhelmed – Functional Medicine Approach | Podcast #380
Let’s get real: there are times when you’re going to feel overwhelmed. Whether with work, school, social obligations or just life, we all feel anxious, overwhelmed, or stressed at some point. In this podcast, Dr. J and Evan discuss that giving yourself grace and patience when you have these feelings is essential as well as your gut health.
Different coping mechanisms work for each person. The following suggestions can help. If one doesn’t work for you, consider trying a different one. The most important thing is to check your diet since what you eat can significantly affect your overall function.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
2:28 – Foundational Physiology
12:51 – Mold and Fight and Flight Response
28:35 – Takeaways
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. I’m with Evan Brand today. We are so excited to be back at you with a live podcast. We’re going to be chatting about stress and overwhelm, and how to deal with it. What’s the functional medicine approach? Evan what’s cooking, man? How have you been?
Evan Brand: Oh, really good man. The first thing. Let me make sure my camera looks good. The first thing is like people run to alcohol in modern society, it’s socially acceptable to run to the liquor store, even as a soccer mom, and go buy enough alcohol to just kill your whole family and nobody bats an eye. And that’s like our.Coping mechanism not just as Americans, but other societies too. So I’m hoping today everything people have been through. Overwhelm is huge, man. A lot of people are burned out. A lot of people are frazzled. The stress response is broken. Their fuses are short. They’re nervous systems are stuck in fight or flight. So I was like, man, let’s hit this as a topic because, let me tell you, the pharmaceutical route is nasty too. It’s Gabba like products, but it’s Xanax and lorazepam and all these benzos, which are benzos terrible. They’re addicting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That could be hard to get off. You start at a, you know, 0.25 to 0.5 milligram dose, and then you keep on ratcheting up and then it’s hard to come off it once you start getting really high.
Evan Brand: Now if you saw a VAT of adaptogenic herbs that you and I have consumed in the last decade between us it would be a large VAT of adaptogenic herbs, but that’s what allows us to work hard with sick people and raise children and keep up with animals and wives and houses and all of that. And so for me, that’s my first thing for someone. If I could take someone as a conventional American on the street going to drink alcohol tonight because they’re stressed or overwhelmed. I’m gonna say, hey, instead of reaching for that bottle, reach for the bottle of water or maybe some herbal tea like chamomile if you want. But then let’s hit some adaptogens. Let’s go for maybe some Relora. Let’s hit the passion flower. Let’s hit Rhodiola, let’s hit something that we can do to change the stress response. There’s tons of studies but today’s more free flowing conversation. But if you type in Rhodiola stress, there’s many, many studies done on this and how it literally alleviates the feeling of stress meaning, you and I can’t magically make the stress and overwhelm disappear from someone’s plate. But what we can do is provide their body nutrients so that their brain, their nervous system, doesn’t think that plate is as full as it really is. And that’s the cool thing about these.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So when I look at any type of stress, I always look at the foundational Physiology because if you take someone’s Physiology and you throw it off kilter like for instance the easiest stressor to put someone under acute is acutely is just don’t sleep for a night and then let me just kind of, you know, see you in the morning and list out all my problems and complaints and stressors that you have to then deal with. Well, you’re gonna have problems being able to take that information in and be able to execute. So we have to look at the foundational Physiology. So the first thing is sleep means if you can just get 8 to 10, eight hours of sleep and get to bed on the other side at midnight. That sets your Physiology up in regards to recycling your neurotransmitters having a good healthy cortisol awakening response. That circadian rhythm or cortisol is higher in the morning and lower at night. So then you have this inverse melatonin-Cortisol ratio. Where your cortisol drops at night, your melatonin goes up and then of course, you know, making sure the food is nutrient dense, good proteins as fascinate meal and we’re not overdoing the carbs, what our body needs and it’s anti-inflammatory and we’re stabilizing that blood sugar because people forget one of the biggest stressors on our hormones is that blood sugar fluctuation throughout the day the more this glycemia we have, the more our blood sugar goes up and down, like a roller coaster. We have to make stress hormones to bring it up and then insulin to bring it down, which then causes us to be in a fat storing mode. And so if we can manage your blood sugar, prevent these disc glycemic swings, we can make sure we have good proteins and fats. Stay away from the junkie process, fats, and we manage that blood sugar reading every maybe five hours or so and getting to bed on time. That sets the foundational Physiology and then we can come in there and biohack and add other nutrients and stuff as well.
Evan Brand: Meaning if you’re a vegan, living on date bars and drinking yourself to sleep with wine. Yeah, you gotta stop.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, like with alcohol, like every now and then is having a little bit of alcohol to kind of distress. Is it OK? Sure. Choose clean organic alcohol, do it after a meal, maybe have some activated charcoal or or some NAC. But that’s like at the end you really want to have the foundational food, the foundational nutrients. Again, if supplementally, the easiest things I’m going to add and I like to stick to nutrients first, so I’m gonna do magnesium. That’s a very kind of sedating, calming, supporting herb. I mean nutrients and minerals. It’s going to have 300 enzymatic roles in the body, anywhere from blood sugar to relaxation, to relaxation in the heart, to vasodilation, to sleep. Very anti-inflammatory in the brain so I love magnesium. You can even do it with a magnesium salt Epsom salt foot bath which is great too. If you have gut issues that help with the absorption you could be doing theanine which is an amino acid that helps upregulate and support healthy GABA levels you can even add-in pharma GABA, maybe a sublingual GABA tablet, that’s excellent as well. So a magnesium, GABA theanine, these are excellent things out of the gate from a nutrient standpoint. Anything else nutritionally you want to highlight?
Evan Brand: Well, I told you, I was texting you over the weekend. I got hit with something luckily I’m back in action. But my resting heart rate was pretty fast, so my nervous system was just kind of boom, boom, pumping, responding to whatever type of sickness I had. And so that kept me up. So I took some motherwort as you know, motherwort is one of my favorite herbs, because it’s great for the heart. We use it for A-fib, we use it for atrial flutter or any kind of heart palpitation type symptoms. It’s amazing, it’s calming that, but it’s great it’s calming emotional stress too. So if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re frazzled, if you’re even getting to the point where you’re like.I’m going to have a mental breakdown. I’m gonna have a panic attack. Somebody put me on some kind of drug. A lot of times psychiatrists will prescribe antipsychotic medications, which are not the answer. They’re not the root cause at all, but motherwort can really calm you. So it’s an emotional support and it’s a heart nervous system support and it’s great if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t get back to sleep. Take a little squirt, go lay back down. It’s amazing. Doesn’t taste great, but it works amazing. So I would rate that as more potent than something like theanine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. And then also um ashwagandha I find to be very helpful as well. I’ll take that before bed if I need to, I’ll typically do a magnesium before bed. Ashwagandha can be really good, especially if you’re stressed because that’s going to help modulate the high cortisol, but also can help bring up any of the low cortisol as well, so ashwagandha is excellent. You can easily combine that with the Rhodiola. Two things like ginseng tend to be a little more stimulating so things like ashwagandha are going to be great and even phosphorylated serine. Serine can be very common. What serine does? It sensitizes the receptor sites on the hypothalamus to cortisol. So there’s this natural feedback loop of cortisol circulating in the body. It binds to receptor sites in the brain and the brain is like, whoa, this is a little bit high, let, let’s kind of calm down that cortisol secretion so it helps regulate that cortisol from getting too high, so phosphorylated serines are excellent. PhosphatidylSerine is kind of 1 electron. It’s one step in the enzymatic process backwards. So phosphorylated it’s better because it’s a little bit more activated and activated state. So that’s excellent.
Evan Brand: Man, I’ve been looking at some papers on mold toxicity and melatonin. So mold actually does a couple things. That’s crazy. If you type in mycotoxins, dopamine, you can find papers saying that mycotoxins damage the part of the brain that makes dopamine, so then you’re less likely to have energy and focus and concentration. So I’m sure that brain fog increases your stress and overwhelms you because you feel like you’re less capable of being a parent, being a boss, whatever you got to do at work. So, that’s one impact of mycotoxins and then also it’s reducing melatonin. So, I know when I was out of my house, we were staying in a hotel for like six weeks with the kids. It was crazy, but I didn’t sleep. I mean, it took me 3 different hotel rooms to find one where I could sleep and I just, I’m assuming now it was a mycotoxin issue, screwing up my sleep. I’m sure I was stressed from being out of my house. I mean that was years ago now. But I look back at that time and I go, Oh my God, anytime I’m exposed to mold, like in a hotel, I just don’t sleep. And then the research proves that. So my advice is if someone is dependent upon medication and herbs, a supplement for sleeping. If you are sleep deprived, the first thing you mentioned is the foundation. If you are sleep deprived and that’s creating stress, well, what’s your environment look like? Do you have good air purification? Do you have dehumidifiers? Do you have a mold problem? Do you have water leaks? Are you living in a moldy apt, a condo or townhome? It has water damage because if so even the most perfect supplement protocol can’t counteract us, so you may need to take steps to investigate your air quality, like some Petri dishes. And maybe there’s something there. Maybe when you get out of there, you sleep better. That’s a good clue that you’re onto something.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem is most people, they have issues and they take action, but they’re still kind of anxious about what’s going on. So it’s really important. Action should help with the anxiety. Like the reason why anxiety is there from an evolutionary standpoint is to get you to take action to avoid, I don’t know if there’s someone gotten that woods. Last month they got eaten by a bear. Well, yeah, when you get near that woods you should be anxious because your body’s hardwired and make you more alert so you don’t get eaten by that bear. So you have to understand where the anxiety is coming from and as long as you’re taking actions. And you’re closing the loop, so to speak, on what that anxiety is coming from. You should feel better about it. And so I always say whatever the anxieties are, just try to have one or two solutions for each one of those. Then your brain knows, hey, I’m doing something about it, I can turn down that stress response because action are already being taken. So think about that as well. And then also like you mentioned, hey, if I have, if I’m uncertain about my environment, let’s get that mole test. If the mold test is positive, let’s do at least one thing to make sure that the environment gets better. Are there active leaks? Do I see water stains on the ceiling? Is there a chronic high level of humidity? Let’s work on that.If not, we can always just get in some good air filtration. We can work on fog in that area, make sure there’s no active leaks coming in. Then we’re, you know, getting a dehumidifier in there. We’re taking active steps. So you shouldn’t feel as anxious about that environment because you’re starting to make it healthier.
Evan Brand: And people say, what the heck are they talking about molds for on a podcast about stress and overwhelm? Well, here’s the mechanism. Your immune system responds to the mold as a threat, and it is a subconscious threat, meaning you Evan, or you Justin sitting here, you might think, OK, I’m not very stressed right now, like, I’m having a good time, this is great. But your nervous system subconsciously is running all these programs that are saying, hey, look, there’s actually a toxin in this room I’m responding to. And so you’re amygdala, your fighter flight system, part of your limbic system sends out an alert. Danger, danger, danger. And you may not even know it. So you could be sitting here on your couch, anxious for no reason. And it’s your limbic system. And many, many people report when they improve their air quality. They can settle down. So that’s the mechanism. I want people to understand when you think overwhelm you think just emotions in your head. But no, these external factors, these external toxins and variables can impact you. I mean, what about a bad neighbor? What about every time you see your neighbor’s car pull up, you’re like, Oh my God, there’s John again. And John stresses you out every time he pulls in the driveway because you guys got in an argument, so, you have to.Integrate some four of, I would say trauma release into all of this too. So you and I are big fans of tapping. So I would say if you’re catching yourself in these loops, you mentioned closing, closing the loop, which I think is smart but if you’re stuck in a loop well maybe you could integrate some tapping to pull you out of that. So tapping is basically acupuncture, but without the needles. You tap these points and then you say an affirmation. You know, I’ve done that many, many times here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s very good. Kind of helps calm down the nervous system response. There’s different programs out there. I’ll put some links down below like there’s DNRS or the Gupta program. These are excellent programs that involve visualization, maybe some aspects of NLP. You really work on controlling the thoughts and the images in your brain, whether you do tapping or eye movement like EM DRI movement, desensitization, response techniques, these things help calm down that fight or flight response and then you kind of allow you to be using more of your frontal brain because the data is when you’re in this chronic stressed out state, the amygdala right that. That forebrain or that hindbrain is kind of more active, that’s the prehistoric brain that is involved in fight flight and that fear response. And so most people are all working from this reptilian brain versus that frontal cortex that involves thinking and looking at your options and coming up with solutions and problem solving and predicting outcomes based on where you’re at, right. We need that frontal brain. But if we’re using our reptilian brain right, then that’s gonna be activated with a lot of these stressors. And so one study right here, I’m looking at, I’ll pull it up here and we can talk about it. I think that kind of supports what you’re saying regarding mold and this fight or flight response, being a big deal. So this one study here was looking at mold inhalation causes an innate immune activation, neural cognitive and emotional dysfunction. And they were talking about intranasally administering different, you know, this is black mold Stachybotrys. And they were looking at, you know, innate immune activation, toxic mold and how it affects your emotions. And of course it’s going to impact inflammation. It’s going to cause joint pain. It’s gonna cause sleep issues. You mentioned earlier, it also has a major effect on dopamine. Can you highlight that again?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Dual control F is dopamine in that paper. It might be a different paper. See if you can find it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, here you go. So exposing drosophila to 0.5 mil part per million of this chemical causes significant loss of dopamine neurons. So decreased dopamine levels and initiated onset of Parkinson’s, suggesting that exposure to mold produces the chemical that may be another environmental risk factor for Parkinson’s disease. So dopamine is really important for feeling good, for focusing, for dealing with stress. It’s that neurotransmitter that gives you that kind of connection that makes you feel loved, so really, really important and it talks about long term inflammation following mold exposure and autoimmune changes in the brain. So that’s that’s powerful.
Evan Brand: Yeah, this is huge. Uh, trying to get Dale Bredesen on the podcast, he wrote a book called the End of Alzheimer’s. And now he’s really hitting the mold angle as an Alzheimer’s link. I think it’s a huge piece of the puzzle. That and heavy metals but many people may hear this and they may just glaze over what we’re seeing. We’re literally saying that your environment could be contributing to a neurodegenerative disease where your neurologist is not going to have a clue. They’re not going to be testing you for this stuff. They’re not going to ask you about your water leak under your kitchen sink. They’re not going to be running mycotoxins in the urine, they’re not gonna look at the Great Plains or organic acids test. So in terms of. We’ll talk about testing in a second, but I think we should describe to people, how do you know if you’re in a state of overwhelm? Because many people are so used to living in fight or flight that they don’t really know how to downshift. So maybe we should go through symptoms, I will say inability to make decisions or analysis paralysis, like, if you’re struggling just to decide what to make for dinner, or you’re struggling just to decide what to do tomorrow, that’s that’s a huge problem. You can’t comprehend simple decision making, I would say loss of libido, loss of energy, motivation, sleep disturbance, maybe some sugar cravings, brain fog, anxiety, I would say distractibility or escapism, meaning you’re always jumping from like social media app to social media app. Like you just don’t want to live in your reality because you’re in a state of overwhelmed, that’s like escapism. What else would you add to the list?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like, well, I would say it just depends where someone’s at, right? If someones going into an acute exposure or an acute stressor and they have a good foundation. That’s a good, that’s good because a good foundation you know allows you to deal with and adapt to stress. So I always look at it’s always good to model healthy people. So you work on the water, you work on the food, the blood sugar, the good fats, the good proteins, the sleep before midnight, getting enough movement so you feel energized but not tired. That’s a foundation. And then if the stressor comes into your world like mold, right? In this study, they talk about not just mold, but pesticide exposure, smoking. Right. So basically I’m looking at air and living quality. So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to just cross things off my list. I’m gonna get a mold test from my house, whether it’s a plate test or an army test. I’m going to make sure I have good quality air filtration because even at my home there is no mold. You’re going to still have some off gassing of some furniture or paint or carpet or hardwoods or professional grade vinyl. There’s something in your air that’s gonna be more stressful and so you want to make sure you have a good quality air filter. Whether it’s an Austin air or an air doctor, you’re going to want to make sure your water is filtered and clean, and then you want to make sure if you’re in a human environment, you know, get a dehumidifier for your home and keep the humidity below 50%. I think that’s really key out of the gate.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. What other symptoms do you think somebody would experience if they were in a state of overwhelm? Well, it depends. I mean, chronic overwhelm can just happen by having a lot of open loops on someone’s plate, a lot of stressors that are in your environment, emotional stressors, and you’re not taking action on them and now you have 2, 3, 4, 5. And so your body is going to cause you to get really anxious, really stressed and really overwhelmed because you’re not closing the loops. And so I just look at what are the top three things that are stressing you out from an emotional stress thing you haven’t taken action on. Just pull out your phone or paper and just write down what they are and write down A&B options for each one. And then say OK, good, I got them down and I’m gonna execute it when the time’s right, but I can at least put that to bed. And so that’s a really important thing. It’s kind of like that. Just trying to think of one situation. We had a, you know, mold issue in my home and it was like, OK, took action on it, got the remediation person out, got the air filtration, did it the right way, did in a negative air containment. Make sure we test it like.I just, I took action. But, you know, when I knew this problem, this environmental stressor was there, it was stressing me out because of all the unknown, right? And so I just said, I’m going to take action. I’m going to handle it the best way possible. I’m going to make sure we test, I’m going to make sure we clean it out. And I felt a lot better about it. But the more you leave these things open, it just kind of gnaws at you quite a bit.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, this applies to the debt too, right? A bill here, a medical debt here, a debt here on the car and then the car is going back like, so those things, you got to try to chip away at those too, I mean, this is in the financial podcast, but I would tell people try to knock out your smallest debts. Because if you’ve got like this bill and this card and that card and that debt, like that really weighs you down emotionally. And I see it all the time with people. It’s a huge piece of the stress. So like if you’ve got a credit card. Let’s say you’ve got an Amazon or Target credit card with 500 bucks. Like knock that one out first and then go to your $5000. One, like you have to chip away at these things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I think biggest thing out of the gate, I mean you can look at some of the Dave Ramsey stuff on that, but if you use a credit card or not, like I use credit cards because they get 2% back on everything, right? So it’s like, OK, I’m gonna get paid 2% for using it. Sure, I’ll use it. The difference is I pay my credit card off every day. And the reason why I do that is running a business and doing all these things. There’s lots of expenses and one if I have hundreds of transactions at the end of the week.What if there’s fraud? What if there’s issues? At least I can see it every day and then I can also monitor it. I can have my pulse on what’s where money’s going in and out. And so it makes me feel on top of it. And I would say just from a stress standpoint, financially, you know, three to six months of living expenses, I think is a good one to have in savings at all times. So if any issues happen, you have that to lean back on too many people. I think you don’t have that three to six month buffer. I think that can be a big stressful thing. That’s just kind of in the background for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah so even some of I think it was Shaq or someone I saw it’s been some, I think it was Shaq or someone I saw recently an interview, some extremely high level millionaire was saying that every day they still look at the numbers, they still check their numbers, the bills, where the moneys going, where the credit is, where the debt is, they still look at it even though they could buy anything in the world, they still take a look. So if you’re just out of the loop on, that’s a big problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And with phone apps, you know you can jump on it and you can finalize it and look at it in about one or two minutes. The more you kind of have your pulse on things, the better. I think it’s really good and then you know you could talk about all the inflation that’s happening. That’s a whole different strategy in regards to investment and such like that that you know we do a lot of things on the investing side as well. But I think the biggest thing is to have about three to six months and just be on top of income coming in and expenses going out. So you have your pulse on it.That allows you to pivot and make changes.
Evan Brand: Yep. So that’s the financial piece, to try to get that buffer. The environmental piece, try to have a good clean Oasis where you can properly sleep, your nervous system can calm down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think a couple of good air filters. Couple of good air filters. Get your home tested. Even if you just get a couple of the plates and you just wait five or seven days and count the spores and make sure the spores are under five or so, that’s fine. You can avoid setting it to the lab that is more than five, then we definitely want to send it to the lab. Um, you know, take a look at your ceilings. Go walk around, make sure you don’t see any spots on your ceiling. You know, go hire someone to come out once a year and just do a roof inspection. Just make sure your roof looks good. Go take a peek in your attic right, get a moisture meter and just kind of test the walls out a little bit and make sure everything looks good there. You know, those are all good simple things you can do out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Keep the exhaust fan on if you’re gonna take a hot shower. I’ve seen many, many people have issues with that just because of that hot steam of 2020 minutes or however long the shower you’re taking, all that steams.Gotta go somewhere. So if you’re not sucking it out with an exhaust vent, it’s gonna have to soak into that drywall so that paper backing on that drywall can get real moist. We see that as a huge problem area.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. Or even just get a dehumidifier for your bath or even just a portable one. That’s a big one. If you don’t have an exhaust fan and you get a portable dehumidifier and just keep it on to at least pull that moisture out of the air and think that’s important.
Evan Brand: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then I would say, I would say message. Get body work done, whether it’s chiropractic, that very coming on your nervous system, having your spine adjusted, that’s where your central nervous system flows from your brain down the spine, making sure your spine and your vertebrae are moving. Make sure soft tissue is doing well, those good pliability in that soft tissue. Making sure that fascia is being manipulated. Myofascial release different things to help that fashion that connective tissue stay soft and supple like a tenderloin versus harden and flame like beef jerky. Chiropractic, I think it’s powerful as well just to make sure all the joints in your hips are moving your upper cervical spine. Really important that that’s all kind of dialed in as well. All these are all really important things that can calm down that nervous system and inhibit the IML, the intermedial, I think it’s the intermedial cell column that kind of stimulates that fight or flight nervous system.
Evan Brand: Turn your screen share off. That way I can see your figure. Yeah, the message is huge. I went to get a massage a couple weeks ago and the ladies like, yeah, we’re all fragrance free. And I went in there and my God, I left smelling like a dryer sheet. Like my wife is ready to kick me out of the car on the way home. She’s like, you reek. And so I guess they’re, they’re sheets at the massage studio just had driver seats on them or something. So that was a stressor for me because here I am going to do something good like call my system and then I leave smelling like a dryer sheet. So double check the head.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The best thing you can do, and I told you about it too, the best thing you can do is the cheapest thing is to get washed soda, which is basically baking soda for your washing machine. And then what you do is you do your wash and then you put like a 30 minute soak on there. Or one hour or soak you could do 30 minutes, right? Put a cup of the wash soda in there so you know it’ll sit for 30 minutes. The baking soda absorbs any smell, any stink. I had a little lemon shirt that was moldy. It was so bad because it got washed and then it sat there for a couple of days and it got moldy and the washer, I couldn’t get it out. I washed it like a dozen times. My mom comes into town, she’s like, oh, here, it’s just, it’s an Italian trick here and she will put the arm and hammer in there, do an hour soak, and it literally kills it. It felt brand new and I had washed it dozens of times wiith all these essential oils and anti mold uh, shampoos couldn’t touch the smell. So wash soda, especially if you’re sensitive. Use that to suck all the smell out of what’s in your detergent or anything else. And I’ll use just like the free and clear, no sense. I’m like Evan. I’m very, very sensitive to smell. Just really. It’s really ready to shop there for me, man.
Evan Brand: It was my skin though. My skin ripped. I had to take like 2-3 showers. I still smell. Maybe I should, like, scrub myself with baking soda. It was nice. It was like impregnated into my skin, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know what it is, but there’s like a I think it’s like I’m not sure if it’s younger woman today, but it’s like it’s like my parents generation that group wore at least the females a lot of perfume. Like you could literally be 15 feet away from someone and you could smell their perfume, it’s definitely changed. Like my wife’s generation, right, women in their 30s and 40s, there’s a less perfume smell. I think people are using more essential oils and natural things, but it’s funny how generations change how much perfume to last more and but I’m super sensitive to perfumes. We try to keep zero in our home and if we do anything, it’s like an essential oil or like a lavender or like a little bit of cedar or kind of rose. Those kinds of things keep it simple.
Evan Brand: We could hit the smells for a minute too. That is a stress to the system. It’s a big stressor, yeah, especially if you’re burning it. So, like candles, throw them away. If they’re not essential oil based, it’s just garbage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dryer sheets. Throw dryer sheets away. If you want to get the benefit of dryer sheets, you can get one of those static balls. Just put it in there.It’s like a little ball that knocks the static down. That’s the purpose of dryer sheets mostly, right? But then you don’t have all that scent and smell, so that’s a good way to kind of mitigate the stress from that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, we hit the blood sugar, the sleep, the environment, the smells, the finances, I mean, those are a lot of pieces of overwhelm, really. What else are we missing?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, close those loops. Look at what’s on your plate for stressors, what’s bugging you out, what pops into your head. Be on top of that. Also monitor that self talk. Most people, if you look at how you talk to yourself, that inner voice. right? Behind your head that you hear. Most people would not be friends with a person that spoke the same way as their inner voice. So make sure you really upgrade the quality of your inner voice. Having that inner voice really gives you guidance, intuition. But also don’t beat yourself up. I think it’s super important. There was no Anthony Robbins quote that was really important as well. It’s like, you’re going to do so many things right in the day, so many things you’re gonna do right and well. And you gotta give yourself a pat on the back. Because if you’re not watching yourself succeeding and then giving yourself that congratulations to that PAT in the back and you’re looking for your kids or your spouse or your friend to do it all the time, they’re not going to see enough of it. So really make sure you’re catching yourself doing a lot of the good things and pat yourself on the back for it. And you know, take your wins whenever you can take your wins.
Evan Brand: Yeah, no, that’s great advice. The rumination, right this negative self-talk, ruminating about your problems, thinking about your past, the things you did wrong, living with regret. Those are big problems. So someone told me years ago,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to hit that. It’s really important. So the rumination, I find serotonin and acetylcysteine plays major major role that sulfur and serotonin for me I used to be a little more OCD and ruminating and getting my NAC up and getting my serotonin levels up five HTP and B6 really help rumination. It allowed me to kind of like OK that that’s the issue and then allowed me to disconnect from it and and then just kind of focus on what the next thing is and not have to be playing the loop on repeat all the time, which is very stressful.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah, it’s huge. So people don’t understand that. They think once again negative self-talk, they think rumination they think .We’re talking about these emotional things, but no, we’re actually talking biochemistry. We’re talking neurotransmitters also. So what I was going to say is someone told me years ago, if you want to get out of your head to get into your body. So that’s what I do a lot of. If the weather is decent enough, I’m out there on the mountain bike, I’m out in the woods, I’m hiking, I’m biking and moving among the water. I’m doing something to get out of the head by getting in my body. So do that, and then the testing. Let’s talk about that, because you brought up serotonin and then overwhelmed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, go. Go ahead, go ahead. Hit that part. One more thing that you brought up, I wanna hit it too.
Evan Brand: OK, don’t forget. So if you’re overwhelmed, I would say do the following. Get the urine test, urine done at home. You can order it through our office. If you need help, reach out to Doctor J at justinhealth.com or Evan Brand on evanbrand.com. Let us help you order these at home from the Functional Medicine Lab so we can investigate the cause of this overwhelmed because there could be internal toxins. There could be pesticides, mycotoxins, bacterial overgrowth, parasites, worms, H. pylori, gut inflammation, brain inflammation, low neurotransmitters, nutrient deficiencies, all combining to create these emotional issues. So get the oh, we may want to look at stool, we may want to look at chemicals. But reach out and then we can help you develop a plan to figure this out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Really important one last thing I wanted to highlight too is appreciation. Because most of the time when you’re overwhelmed, you’re thinking about what’s missing in your life or you’re thinking about this problem that you have to address and you’re like, I don’t know what, do I have time to do this? So you’re thinking about this expense that you’re thinking about things that you’re you’re missing or things that you have to expand or you have to lose, but when you appreciate your focusing on all the things that you have and you’re really trying to create context for that and really feeling that sense of gratitude and appreciation and appreciate essentially like if your finances appreciated, if your investments appreciate, they get greater, they get bigger. So you’re taking everything in your life and you’re feeling that sense of gratitude, making everything bigger in your life in regards to how you feel about it and how appreciative you are and having a perspective of, you know, if you live in the United States like you’re, you’re a one percenter just living in the United States, right? I mean I think it’s if you make $19,000 a year, right, which is poverty in this country. You’re 1% in the world. It’s like, whoa. That’s like, that’s perspective, right? Perspective also gives you appreciation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I can have dark humor with my grandparents. Like my grandma called me the other day. Apparently my grandpa hit a curb and busted a tire. They were without their car, then the tires on backorder. Nobody has that size in stock. And I was like, well, it’s better than being dead and she’s like, you’re right, you’re right. I’m gonna enjoy this. This is fun. We’re gonna get a rental car. It’s no problem. And so I just tell her all the time, you know, if there’s a complaint, like, at least you’re not dead because, you know, her relatives have disappeared. And you know, she’s one of the last women standing elf, that generation, you know, from the 40s. So I’m like grandma, like, enjoy it, you’re alive. This is amazing. And usually it kind of snaps her out of the funk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, appreciation is important, right? Because usually you’re just focused on all the things that are going wrong and you’re just flipping that switch. And if you look at NLP and kind of the work of Richard Bandler, he is a really interesting guy, but he would always take a look at successful people and he talked to them. He’d want to know what’s the image in your head when you’re in this peak state and you’re succeeding and you’re doing well, what are the images in your brain look like at the time? Meaning like, what are you thinking of? What’s the picture real in your brain look like when you’re achieving and doing these things? And almost always it’s in the positive, almost always it’s showing in visualizing the outcome and you’re already seeing it happen multiple times already before you actually do it. And versus it’s the negative, it’s the worst case scenario. So really be aware of the picture screen on your brain almost like go within, pretend like you’re in a movie theater and you’re literally seeing the picture screen, which is what you’re seeing through your eyes. And then you’re really changing that screen. Like you’re the director directing that movie screen while you’re seeing it in the movie theater through your eyes. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: It does. It does to me because I do it all the time. I’m always trying to visualize the outcome. This has already happened. The person I want to say yes, already said yes. What I needed? It’s already here. Even though I don’t have it yet, I’ve already got it. And that goes a long way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then also pretend like if you’re there in that movie theater inside your brain, remember you have control over that. If it’s in a bad space and you’re just all negative and you’re just looking at everything the wrong way, you can just put a new movie in, right? You’re not a victim, you’re not sitting there chained down like Clockwork Orange, right where they peeled the guys eyes open, right? It’s like you have control over what you’re watching, so put a different film in there.
Evan Brand: Yeah, the last thing I would say is just take a nap. Like if you’re just so overwhelmed the middle of the day hits, you’ve got fatigue that can also be overwhelming because you’re so tired. You have so many obligations you’re trying to do, but you’re so fatigued. Number one, get the labs run so we could figure out why you’re so damn tired on paper will,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your adrenals looked at, yeah. See how stressed out there do you have that chronic low DHEA? Are your neurotransmitters VMA, HVA, 5-hydroxy, indoleacetic? Are they all depleted and down? Because this could take a while to get this thing repleted.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So if you’re feeling that, get the data then. If you gotta close your eyes for a minute, close your eyes, lay there and take a nap. If you can do it, if your lifestyle allows you to take a nap, escape from the kids, whatever you gotta do, do it. And hopefully you’ll come back a little more refreshed, a little more in control when you’re not so exhausted.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when your neurochemistry is depleted, it’s really hard to willpower out, willpower that. And so sometimes, yeah, they get the food and the supplements on track and then it’s like then the willpower and then the energy and then the ability to now start doing the things you need to do is start to become easier, there’s less resistant to get this downhill kind of momentum, so that’s very important. And again, looking at the adrenals, looking at the neurotransmitters, looking at your DHEA sulfate, looking at your circadian rhythm, right, that circadian rhythm should should go up in the morning and down at night, and the more dysregulated that is if it’s reversed or flat, that tells me that stress feedback loop is disrupted and you’re probably using that amygdala in that brain stem. You’re operating more from that fight or flight state all the time.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that makes sense if you need help, reach out. You can reach Doctor J at justinhealth.com worldwide consult meaning labs can be sent to your door. Wherever you are. You get the results. Look at them, make a protocol, get yourself better. So justinhealth.com for Doctor J and myself Evan at evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping you guys, and hopefully this content was helpful. Share it with your friends, your family. If we can get somebody else out of the whole, that’s what we love. I mean, it just takes one person that could totally transform your life. This is your husband you’re trying to get out of, overwhelm your wife. Have them listen to this so we can help lift them up because it’s gonna make your life way better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just pick one thing. If you’re overwhelmed already and you’re like, crap, he just said 15 things, just pick one, like what’s the easiest thing that you can do? And then once you get some momentum, then we’re gonna go to two and then we’re gonna go to three. So just start kind of stacking and get that momentum and then you get that downward momentum going. Then it starts to be easier to add new modalities to the mix.
Evan Brand: Yep, Amen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Alright man, great chatting with you Evan and hope everyone listening enjoyed it. Feel free to share with friends or family. We’ll put a link down below where you can review us. We really appreciate a review on both our iTunes channels. Super helpful. It’s the word out there and you guys have a phenomenal day.Take care of y’all.
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Collagen & Inflammation Reduction, Sunlight, Epigenetic & Anti-aging Strategies – Dr. Bernd Friedlander | Podcast #377
Collagen supplements are associated with several health benefits and very few known risks. It may increase muscle mass, prevent bone loss, relieve joint pain, and improve skin health by reducing wrinkles and dryness. And since your body naturally produces collagen from amino acids, you can support collagen production by ensuring that you’re eating adequate amounts of protein from foods like animals, poultry, fish, beans, and eggs.
Lastly, Dr. J and Dr. Bernd share that collagen promotes gut healing in inflammatory digestive conditions, such as irritable bowel disease (IBD). By taking collagen, you would help correct a deficiency and potential injury.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
5:13 – Diet Modifications
12:10 – Collagen and mTOR
37:35 – Protein
1:00:37 – Take aways
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! Doctor Justin Marchegiani here. Really excited we got a guest back on the show. High demand doctor Bernd Friedlander, a great guy, known him for many years. He is a fountain of knowledge on many different health topics. We’re going to dive in, let’s see what we hit. I know we’re going to be coming out of the gate.Talking about collagen, reducing inflammation, sunlight, 5G, epigenetics. We’ll dive in and see where the conversation goes. Doctor Bernd, how we doing, man? What’s cooking?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: How are you, Justin? I’m doing great. You’re wonderful. Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good, excellent. So let’s start off. We were talking kind of pre show, let’s kind of take that here. You were a chiropractor for the 1984 I think was it the the summer or Winter Olympics?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It was. No, it’s the Summer Olympics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was in LA, right?.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In LA. Yeah. And matter of fact, I got selected for the 1980 Olympics, but there was a boycott in Russia, so we never went there. So what we did is we took over from 80 and get and training the athletes from 78 to 80 while I was going through chiropractic school and I also had a degree in physical therapy and exercise physiologies in a strong nutritional bracket background. So that helped me with uh, you know, working with athletes and now it myself played professional soccer. I ran track in college, I swam in college, so I did a lot of sports. I was into the sports arena quite a bit. And having six, eight years of physical therapy training from 72 to 78, that seemed to have helped me the most, you know, in preparing myself for training and rehab and nutrition and getting into Chiropractic work, all of that help and so in 19.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you had to have had a connection to get picked for the beat of the Doctor of the 1980 and 84 Olympic Games. So how did that happen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Boy, it’s karma. What happened was I was finishing up my degree in.Glendale getting my LACC chiropractic license. And I was, I didn’t like. I wanted to be closer to the ocean, to the beach, because I grew up there and I moved down to Santa Monica. And had bought a house down there and I was going to UCLA and working out every day, and then I devote relationships with coaches and athletes there.They started realizing that I had some knowledge about training and rehab and and also injuries because of my physical therapy and they found out I was going through chiropractic school and I was getting my degree there.One of the coaches, Bob Bush, they named the stadium after him at UCLA. He asked me to work with him and many of his athletes. He and they were training for the 84 Olympics because the 80 got boycotted and we were working for the 80 at that time with Bob Bush, but we got, you know, cancelled. So we started the program again at UCLA and then I get, I gravitated to Patrick Connolly, who was training Evelyn Ashford, the fastest 102 hundred meter women athlete in the world at that time? And then I was working with Bob Kersee, who was, who took over for Bob Buesch as the head of the UCLA track and field coach. And he started using me for all of his athletes and training them and rehabbing them and giving them exercise programs and then work on nutrition as an alternative to steroids because that was my background there at UCLA, was working on alternative steroid programs for the athletes, and then I started to gravitate with him and all these athletes were coming down to train at the 84. Olympics at UCLA. So many countries came, you know, England, Russia, Germany, East Germany, all these countries came down to train with us. And then I became very good friends with John Wooden and the president of UCLA, and he saw what I was doing and he came up to me and I treated him on a couple injuries that he had and he says you, you know, I couldn’t even walk the other day. Now I’m walking today. You know it’s amazing. So he asked me to come in and he gave me a position, Durham and honorary molecular biology degree that he gave me and he asked me to head up the Sports Medicine Research Center at UCLA. And that’s how I got involved with everything. And then the coaches that I was working with, they asked the US Olympic to have me on the team and that’s how I got involved with it. And I also had my own athletes that was trained.The 84 Olympics, like Ron Brown and I was working with Carl Lewis and other people like that. So I had quite a few people. Bob Kersee had all the female athletes that I was training with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when you look at a lot of the athletes that you’ve had insight to how deal with their diets back then when they pretty crappy and they just were relying on good trading in genetics or were they dialed in back then?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, Twinkies was their popular dish. Can you believe it? Peanut butter. Yeah. Peanut butter. Reeses cups. That’s what they ate. And that’s why they were always inflamed and injured. And then when I worked in 85, 86 with the Raiders and Rams and Lakers, their diet was mostly pasta and bread and carbs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean you know you’re you’re exercising so much so from a caloric standpoint an insulin wise you’re going to be able to burn that off but your fatty acid profiles so inflamed. So you’re if you get injured, it’s gonna be hard to heal, plus you don’t have any connective tissue building blocks coming in. So as you get injured, the pliability of that tissues and then we just, uh, you get less pliable tissue, less ability to absorb force over time with injuries, it’s crazy.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. So what we did was we worked on nutrition with them protein, eggs, fish, you know meat and cut down the carbs like pasta and breads and less, uh, rice and potatoes. So we increase almost like a carnivore diet with these people. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You do healthy. I mean, obviously they’re burning a lot of carbs. Could you do starches like sweet potato and squash or even white potato? Would you?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you consider those still more anti-inflammatory type of starches?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you were trying to grain and gluten back then, the out in the early 80s too.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we knew it was leading to a lot of information. I was very fortunate at UCLA that I was involved with so many great minds, you know. One of my patients was Roy Walford, who was the father of caloric restriction diet. So I learned everything about restriction diet and what it contributes to and how it works on the body and he took it too fa into it. I did not. I kind of realized that we can’t do a strict diet like that because we need calories or we’re gonna have oxidative damage and stress and the athletes need to eat. They need 6-7 meals a day. OK. And they needed small protein and they needed the route, right? Amount of carbs from vegetables they have to be cooked and potatoes, they have to be mashed potatoes or rice, they have to be white and they have to be. And we added butter with it. Not Gee at that time because we didn’t have Gee, but it was mostly butter that we used. We use butter for all our training sessions with the athletes. And then fortunately I got a mini companies donating uh research to us, you know, like supplements like Co-Q10 came from Japan, didn’t know anything about Co-Q 10, we started using it, so amazing results. We started using pycnogenol from France. And started giving that to the athletes and saw an increase in oxygen levels. It was amazing. And then knocks gelatin came over and supplementing us with Knox gelatin powder, which then that’s how I got into the collagen. Before I I didn’t know anything about it. And I started talking to the Knox gelatin chemist at that time and they, they were explaining to me how important, you know, it was in rebuilding and rehabbing, you know. It was more for rebuilding, regenerating and and and helping with injuries, recovering it faster and that’s what we use at that time. We use a packet of Knox gelatin with vitamin C at three times a day. And the increased results were amazing with that, wow. And that’s when
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll talk about the amino acid difference with gelatin or collagen, obviously collagen peptides are probably even better because those long chain peptides are broken down, so they’re better absorbed, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Gelatin is a great product, but it has to still be broken down by the stomach. OK, you need hydrochloric acid, you need pepsin, and you need B6. Collagen is already broken down into peptides. I just knew how to do it even faster and better by eliminating uh by doing a certain enzymatic process to make collagen which made it into a signaling peptide. So you have what’s known as signaling peptide collagen in your product. And that’s what
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With that. So, so what’s the signaling peptide? What does that mean?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, what it does, it actually turns, it turns on the signaling effects of the peptides in the collagen. That’s what it does. So you’re going to get better utilization from it, that’s all you know, uh, you know, I started it in an 84 collagen. I was probably the only person out there that knew a little bit about it and was trying to find researchers.Out there, and there weren’t that many companies making collagen. There was only a few companies. And then I started in the 90s, I started meeting a guy, Bob Buesch, I mean Bob Buescher from Great lakes. He was the only other fellow that I knew was into gelatin and collagen at that time. He was more into gelatin, so Great Lakes was more of a gelatin thing. And then as I, you know, got into it, I realized that you as a chiropractor, your patients coming in are all cartilage damage, are ligaments, tendons, muscles and bone. And so I realized one of the most important foods we can supplement people with is collagen, and that’s how I got into the collagen business in the late in the Twenties, 2000s, you know, because at that time I was just using whatever I could from anybody, you know, it wasn’t abundant at that time. Today, everybody’s using it, you know, I got David Asprey bulletproof involved with it. He didn’t know anything about it. I got vital proteins involved with when they came to my lecture at Expo West in Anaheim and they were listening to my lecture and that’s how everybody got involved. They realized the importance of collagen and one of the key importance of collagen is, it’s devoid of three amino amino acids. It’s the only protein on the planet that’s devoid of these three amino methionine, yes, and they’re leaders of mtor, which are inflammatory compounds. They cause oxidative damage, they can lead to thyroid oxidation, thyroid damage. So it affects mitochondrial function. And that’s the molecule that we all live on. It’s mitochondria. That’s the key. That’s what I studied over 30 years ago, was how athletes train and why do they train differently in different countries. And what makes a good athlete versus a bad why I sold the Kenyans and Jamaicans and all these other athletes being so good at, in track and field, it’s because sunlight and mitochondria was the predominant thing in the 80s that I didn’t even realize then yet that I discovered later on was the key to everything and the type of food stage, which was very gelatinous foods, you know, collagen derived foods. That’s where we ate you know many hundreds of years ago and maybe 30-60 years ago, 1000 years ago we were more gelatinous people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to dive a little bit deeper in there. We can go then we can move on. But collagen is so important for me because, one like you said, we eat a lot more muscle meat which is going to be more methionine, Cysteine rich right, not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re missing the connective tissue because we always talk about old foods don’t cause new disease, one of the biggest, oldest foods they’re there was, was, was soups and bone broths putting the bones in, in the pressure cooker or in the pot and really extracting those amino acids. So collagen is really high in hydroxyproline, proline, glycine, both of those. One are really high and connective tissue, glycine so important for gut health that’s I think part of the the guts diet is a lot of these bone broths which really what’s that healing property, it’s that glycine to help with those enterocytes. So you have connective tissue you have gut health, right. And they’re also good precursors, especially glycine. That’s a backbone for glutathione too, because you comment a little more on that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, well, we know collagen is a perfect food, almost. You know, as you get older. What did they give you in the hospital? Gello, right? Yeah. Besides the other things. Yeah. But you’re getting a sort of a good protein that helps with recovery and rebuilding. One of the things is we’re eating a very inflammatory diet today you know we’re eating fried foods. The worst foods on the planet Earth for the last 30-40-50 years has been fried foods. Anything that is seed oil made with canola or even Avocado oil, olive oil, any of these oils, they’re very lipid, oxidative. They cause mitochondrial damage and thyroid damage, and causes
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t avocado a little bit higher smoke point though, I know it’s you.You always want to use a saturated fat. It’s better your tallow your coconut oil, but isn’t it a little bit higher of a smoked point than the other ones though?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, but in the body the oxidative chain of the these fats, fatty acid composition are very long. And so they’re more exposed to oxidative damage. And the smaller the chain is, the less oxidative power damage we’re gonna have, you know, and that’s the key. I mean that’s, yeah, that’s why get everything from ghee and butter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they did it, beef tile. They had a beef tile up to 89 and then went to soybean oil. So yeah, having it low or some kind of saturated fat that that has the doesn’t have all the double bonds between the carbons. They’re going to be a lot less prone for oxidation.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. So you want less of these little acids, Omega 6, which is the most conducive problems we have today to every disease we know of. An aging is number one. You know, my background was at UCLA was studying aging you know, and athletic performance and and so I got into everything what causes aging, it’s a pathway that we take. And we take the right pathway and don’t make the wrong turns. We live longer and and also we survive longer and we feel better and healthier if we take the wrong pathways and eat fried foods and starches and carbs and you know, in and out burgers, everything out there is conducive to medical medication, that’s what they want. They want the medications, you know, and the more you get.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we choose good fatty acids, ideally we want to be choosing more saturated fats, probably more animal fats, or exactly and if we choose. Probably on the more dressing side, avocado oil may be addressing olive oil. Olive oil may be more of a dressing. And then obviously you probably like cooking with ghee over butter just because it has that lactose and casein kind of more pulled out, right? Would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I love ghee. Ghee is my predominant, uh, butter that I use right now for everything. It has a higher point. It’s very high in the antioxidant vitamin E, and it’s very high in Gerald Pollack’s book on 4th phase of water. You know, and how to keep, you know, we gotta maintain that water in the cells. That cells and gels the engine of life. And I was very fortunate to meet the Gilbert Ling on the phone and Gilbert is probably the greatest scientist of our time who discovered how cells function and how energy works in the in the cells in the cytoplasm of the mitochondria and the MRI device was developed by Raymond Amanian, who we just lost recently, and so sad, he was a genius and it was because of the water structure and the protein of the cells, that was the basis for the foundation of how cells work and that’s how the MRI came up to play because of Gilbert Ling work and that’s how Gerald Pollack discovered the cells and gels the engine of life and then the fourth phase of water, it all came around, it accumulated because of the knowledge of all these great minds we have today and going back to college, and one of the key things I think is that collagen is on the nitrogen utilization. Uh, you know, chart. Egg is maybe number one and collagens #2 and then meat. So, also the other thing with collagen does it, it protects us from mtor pathways, inflammatory pathways, oxidative pathways. It the nutrients in the peptides and proteins in the collagen balances us from getting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What mTOR is? Just so people have a little background.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: mTOR is a, it’s a wrap on myosin compound which helps to what it does when we’re young, OK, like we’re growing up in that early, uh two to five, 10,18 years old, we are growing. We need muscles, we need the growth and repair, and we need cell growth. mTOR is part of that pathway. So that’s what helps in helping cells replicate faster. So we get bones, we get muscles, we get organs we get. But as we get to about 30 years old, these things can lead to damaging uh cells like senescence, they can lead to cancer cells, they can lead to diabetes, heart disease. They can overdo too much and we don’t want that extra growth at that period of time, we already fully develop. We don’t need it, so we need to keep it down. And it’s the same thing with the deuterium, the water deuterium is the same thing. We need it when we’re young.The deuterium is a heavy hydrogen nuclear um, you know, that’s found in all the water and foods all over the world. We need it when we’re young. As we get older, it can disrupt the mitochondria from functioning and making ATP correctly so it can damage it. There’s a spin in the ATP process of the cytochrome 5 which makes all the electrons takes the electron, protons and protons. Protons from our foot. With oxygen and sunlight to make every single component of energy that’s made in the ATP chain, and if we have too much deuterium in there, it slows down the spin cycle so the batteries are not working as well, so the body has
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break a couple things down. You’re saying a lot of good things. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. So First off on the collagen because you really went into that right now talk about collagen and mTOR is it because it’s missing some of those big free amino acids it keeps you need low. So essentially mTOR good when you’re younger, anabolic protein bone, but at some point having it too high as you get older it can cause this cancer growth so. Collagen amino acids are in a profile that is gonna limit mTOR. What else is? Is that correct? And then what else can we do to also limit mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It’s cutting down, well collagen has the best safety factors because it’s so it has zero, um, of these three amino acids. So if you have a certain level of these amino acids, let’s say leucine is a mTOR pathway. It’s in a branch chain amino acid, right? But leucine has to be over 2000 grams of, 2000 grams of leucine a day. If you keep it under 2000 grams like 1000, you’re not going to get into our pathway because there’s not enough of those amino acids to switch it to it. And that’s why collagen doesn’t have these tryp thing, methionine, cysteine foods. So it’s not going to promote it, but certain foods in nature like you know organ meats and meats in general can do that. You know, if you’re eating a lot of it, it will produce mTOR pathways and this research the only known true research today is that was a extension of lifespan by 40% was by the reduction of mTOR. By lowering methionine and tryptophan, specially methionine in the diet. Low methionine diet. Richard Miller, MD, PhD published this work and now it’s well known out there in publication that you know, Life extension is really by lowering methionine and then cysteine and tryptophan.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what else you mentioned the Omega-6 especially the processed Omega-6is it’s really the Omega-6 that’s gonna be from processing that’s going to get oxidized and damaged and rancidity we have that, does that affect mTOR, what about carbs, what about insulin resistance, what else on your diet and lifestyle can Jack up mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Anything that is rich foods that are in tryptophan, methionine, those cysteine. So if you have a lot of high cysteine foods, high methionine foods, like you know you will, I mean if you over process too much of these type of foods and a lot of fruits and a lot of vegetables have high methionine and tryptophan.Think of this yogurt. OK, yogurt whey protein is very high in tryptophan and methionine, especially methionine. So any of the whey protein that people are using today that are above 25 years old, 28 years old, 30 years old. There’s so many people using it in their milkshakes, in their athletic performing drinks. Whey protein has the highest form, methionine, so it you keep constantly taking that you will get a mTOR and I have seen that with professional lifters, they got increased heart disease, enlarged heart, they had cardiovascular damage, they had kidney failures. So I seen it that these athletes, so if you’re going to have yogurt, have Greek yogurt because the way protein is totally removed from that. So you’re not getting any of the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of these amino acids like cysteine for instance, a lot of studies on and N-acetylcysteine with all kinds of different things from lung health to glutathione levels to to helping with virus stuff and and viral replication and immune function, a lot of data on that being beneficial, how does that, how does that connect? Because we see a lot of data on some of these things being beneficial, also tryptophan, you know, that could be really helpful for serotonin, sleep and all that. How do those connect?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK glutathione is a very controversial thing. I never use it, never have, never will. I’ve been doing Cancer Research for almost 40 years, 50 years now, and one thing I learned from the Germans, they were the best in this field. In the 80s when they were visiting me. In the 90s when I went to Mexico and worked with clinics. Glutathione is an antioxidant that protects cancer cells from chemoradiation surgery. They know how to protect themselves, they know how to build the defense systems, and glutathione is one of the key defense systems that cancer cells use to protect themselves from oxidative damage, from death, or whatever. There’s another thing that we need to know is oxidation reduction. OK. Oxidation is how everything is electron flow into the chamber to make energy. In the end of all this is the reduction state. All the electrons are received and they need to be converted back to donation instead of receiving, only if we only receive electrons and don’t know how to donate back. That’s how we end up dying, and that’s how we end up being sick. And that’s how we start aging. It’s called oxidation reduction NAD NADH. And there’s one other thing that people don’t understand is called glutathione, oxidative glutathione and reduction glutathione and everybody today is in that reductive state of glutathione which is only grabbing electrons but is not converting it back to energy. And that’s what we need to do as a living system. We need to have those things functioning. Oxidative reduction states low. NAD High, NADH low. Then we have the glutathione stage, the oxidative stage and the reductive state and oxidative.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break some of it down for the listeners to make sure we’re on the same page, so when you’re talking reduction, reduction is nothing more than a gain of electrons. You have an extra electron and we’re talking oxidation, we’ve lost an electron. And so the goal with a lot of antioxidants, they’re trying to come in there when they’re in an oxidized state, they’re trying to give off that electron to bring that electron back up to a stable place, is that correct?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Right. But then a lot of that, yeah, a lot of the antioxidants are in the reduced state. Think of vitamin C. What does vitamin C? Vitamin C is an antioxidant, but in the cell, It’s ,uh, we oxidative state. In the normal chemistry of this cell or vitamin C supplements, they’re in the reduced state, so they need to be converted inside the cell to dehydroxy C ascorbic acid, which is a oxidative state of vitamin C. Vitamin E is one of the few other ones that really is a very strong antioxidant that can be used as an anti-inflammatory, as an oxidative state. Umm, vitamin and not too many. You know a lot of your polyphenolic, so you know all your fruits and vegetables, especially your juices. They have a lot of flavonoids. And flavonoids are very important in reducing inflammation. But also, they’re also reducing oxidative stress. And promoting electron flow in the electron chamber because they can produce an increase electrons in oxygen and that’s what we need.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How does sodium potassium pump come into play because we know sodium potassium really important and we know a lot of these vegetables have a lot of potassium. Many large percent of the population deficient potassium. Where do those electrolytes come into play here?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK, that’s Gilbert Ling has shown that these cells do not have sodium potassium pumps. They don’t work that way. That’s Gilbert Ling. Read cells the engine life. Ray Peat is one of the best in the field in understanding sodium pumps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We need these potassium and we need these electrolytes though, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, we don’t really need it. We get enough of those in the cell. It, uh, here’s what it is. If you studied the electron mitochondria. Douglas Wallace, he’s the father of mitochondria by far, you know, and there’s many others. Every disease, 99% of all disease is based on what we call mitochondria decay. OK. And it’s the damaging effects of mitochondria, OK. And that’s all the diseases out there, you know and can. So what we’re seeing is that in nature, there is no, energy is required by the cytoplasm of the cell, and that’s where the mitochondrion takes electrons and makes energy ATP, and that’s how the cell survives. And water is key in structuring the cells, the gels of the cells and so is protein and that’s why it looks like a jello and having that, that’s the key to everything out there. And so if you read the book Cells and Gels, you read Gilbert Ling work, you leave Tom. Do you know Thomas Cohen? The MD. Yeah, he is very controversial because he was against the vaccine and all that and the virus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He was up in San Francisco, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: He was in San Francisco and he’s in New York now. And he has now. Yeah, yeah, he’s doing consultation and he’s 100% right about the cells and gels of how the cells exist today. They don’t have any sodium-Potassium, you need sodium and you need potassium as an electrolyte for nerve function, for electricity to occur in the body because we’re a DC current, we’re not an AC we’re DC current. That’s Robert Becker’s book on body electric, and I had a chance to work with him when I was at UCLA and the guy was a brilliant scientist. And that we’re all a DC electrical system. Everything works on that. And it’s all on low frequencies and low, uh, hertz. And everything is low gas. We’re a very extreme low gas human being and when we’re under a lot of high gas, we get damage. And so, uh it if you have a chance, read the Cells and gels by Gerald Pollack, Read Gilbert Ling book, Ray Peat. He’s got millions of articles on sodium pump and then Thomas Cohen’s work and Jack Cruz on who’s a neurosurgeon on biohacking the mitochondria with sunlight. They all know about the cells now they understand, and that’s how they know how to work with the cells and fix it again. And that’s what I’m doing today, is understanding chemistry and how it started 303 billion years ago, how it all came into play.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, so we put a lot of things out here, but in regards to it like the average person listening, they’re like OK, like what am I gonna do? What’s the action item? So give him one or two things that they can do to help improve the cells and gels, the mitochondria, I mean outside of we already talked about a couple of things with processed food, we already talked about sunlight, collagen, you know, having the mTOR, the Omega-6, what else can be done kind of low hanging fruit wise?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, I think, I think going back to how we were created OK and who we are OK and what chemistry of life created us? 600 Billion, uhh, million years ago, sunlight was starting to develop and just going back to little history so you understand who we are. The sunlight was developing and was maturing and chlorophyll was present 600 millions years ago. But it was needed by plants. And then 500 million years ago, the Sun developed even stronger and UV light, A, B and C was the foundation of the sunlight. That’s the strength of the sunlight. And it was maturing 500 million years ago. And guess what, that’s what helped to create the hemoglobin, which was the iron part of the blood, not the magnesium is part of the plant. But then the mitochondria was developing because at that period of time, the UV came through the ozone layer and tripled the lay amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and that’s what created life. All of us. So that’s what helped with us was the sunlight. And the sunlight and the mitochondria was perfect. The oxygen levels was perfect. Thermodynamic temp, Temperatures of the ocean and the land was perfect. And that’s why things started developing humans and everything. So going back today, we live in an indoor world. OK. All the food we can eat today, it doesn’t make a difference because what we need is the function of the mitochondria and that is stimulated by the whole spectrum of the sun’s, not just the portion of the spectrum. The ATP cycles this cell electron transport C1,C2,C3,C4 and C5 requires photosynthesis to occur in order to make energy in the food. So we need to be exposed in the sun more early in the morning. So we get our circadian going, our pineal gland and thyroid going. That’s how we get a stimuli. Then at lunchtime, we need to expose ourselves 30 to 60 minutes of with no shirt to get vitamin D and unique cholesterol to make vitamin D so you cannot deprive yourself of the cholesterol foods. That’s how you’re going to get sick. And then again, you need that they are reduction of blue light at night, so you need to escape blue light and that’s where you try to get some sunlight in the evening because a different spectrum of light, so we’re exposed to blue light damage, artificial lighting, and it was all discovered by a guy named Kessler. We need to develop the AC current. Remember that? And what did they operate in the 1800s? Kerosene in the street. So we were using artificial lighting then, and that’s what started the decay of the human population since then. And then the other thing is realized, we need good food. We need to get good water, Not fluoride, fluoride, you know fluoride is a damaging effect in water. We need to get non fluoridated water. We need to ,Um, We need to eat a higher amount of protein and less, Uh, starches and carbs and not. So we don’t, you know, vegetables are good, but they’re not because they can cause a lot of oxalates and oxidative damage to the thyroids. Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogenic foods in nature.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So can you get protein from animal products? Can can you be making vegetarian in your mind and be healthy and get your protein from animal products strictly?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You have to be from animal products only. That’s how we do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And why though? Why?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well. Did I lose you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I’m here.You’re going. Alright. Well you’re well you’re kind of getting your stuff here. I’ll kind of riff on a little bit. I mean the reason why I think Dr Bernd may be a big fan of animal protein and they I am as well obviously is going to be just the amino acid profile you’re going to get essential all your top eight or nine essential amino acids with a lot of vegetarian proteins. You gotta combine them, and when you combine them, usually you’re missing either methionine or lysine or protein. You get to combine them. The problem is when you combine them, you get a lot of extra carbohydrates. You know when you typically combine animal or or vegetarian proteins? Rice, beans, whatever, quinoa. Usually it’s about a 60 to 70% starch.To your 15 or 20 grams of protein. So you end up getting a lot of carbohydrate. So people attend to do OK on the vegetarian, vegan type, they tend to be more ectomorphs, tend to be people that do well on high carb foods if you’re more prone to insulin resistance like I am, or most of the population.You you’re gonna get too much carbohydrates for you and for your activity level and so you really gotta choose good animal proteins where you get the proteins, you get the fats obviously. You’re also getting less Omega 6 less to the inflammatory foods that are going to be in those vegetarian protein, so it’s good to get it from animal sources that are pasture fed, um, naturally raised, grass fed, whether it’s eggs, chickens eating bugs, whether it’s whether it’s beef and grass and cows and grass, whether it’s chickens, whether it’s Lamb pasture fed diets going to shift that fatty acid profile and that fatty acid is more in the natural state, it’s in any more anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and you’re going to get a lot more nutrition in in the animal product. So we lost Dr Bernd here. So I’m going to just keep on riffing unless he can jump back on here and just try to provide a lot of value for y’all and if you want to kind of chum it, come in here in the chat guys and just put some questions in. Feel free and rip off some of that. So just summarize, collagen, really helpful, really good building blocks, connective tissue for your joints, ligaments, tendons, you’re not going to get that animal protein. So, love collagen, again, I worked out to Dr. Bernd to kind of formulate my own collagen that has the the peptide form. We’ll put links down below where you guys can get it. Um, the problem with a lot of collagen on the market, they’re made with sulfuric acid, so when you blend it in coffees and teas, you taste it. It’s got this really not so good after taste. So when you use proteolytic enzymes, it’s gonna blend better, it’s not gonna have the after taste and then you get these signaling, uh proteins in there which are which are really important. So if you have joint issues, especially as you get older and you started to see your gaps and your X-ray start to drop a little bit. That the hip or the knee and you started to go bone on, bone in knee, the connective tissue building blocks to build back up that joint base. Very important. If you don’t bring the raw material in, you’re gonna have a problem. Next big thing, you should need the Omega. You know, good quality fatty acids, more from animal. If you’re gonna do more of the vegetable, make sure it’s keeping on the the low temperature side. Very important. I’m a big fan. Doctor Bernd, is more of a carb guy, but you can see him. He’s a leaner, he’s a leaner kind of wiry guy, right. He’s going to do really good with more carbohydrates, those kind of things. You gotta adjust your carbohydrates for your body type. So if you’re kind of a an ectomorph, think of that as the the dancer, the basketball player, leaner, taller person, then you need to adjust. You could probably handle more carbs, if you’re the mesomorph, that’s the in between. I’m kind of the mesomorph. I’m kind of like the, the linebacker, right. You can be lean, but you can also get big too. And then then you have the endomorph. That’s the the lineman, right? That’s the the person that’s more prone to just to be big. And gain weight with carbohydrate, yet to figure out where you sit. And then you also have to look at your activity level. If you’re walking ten, 15,000 steps today, doing a little bit of lifting, you can always get away with more carbs. The more active you are, the less active you are, you got to adjust that.Well, get that to Dr. Bernd back on here. Let’s see if I can plug them back in. Alright. Bernd. We were just kind of riffing that. I was riffing a little bit here on collagen and fatty acids and we had a little collagen. Yeah, no big deal, we’re just kind of roll with it. Can you go back and just talk about joint issues? Umm, have you seen a lot of case studies your experience people with bone on bone or serious joint issues. Have you found they’ve been able to build that joint back up with collagen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know what, in combination with your, uh, the work that we do and using red light in infrared light. Heat lamps. I think the combination we definitely need collagen for the recovery, I found an interesting study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have you seen clinically though, you can build that joint back up when it’s already worn down, when you’re like, hey, I may need a knee or hip replacement in a couple of years. Can you avoid that? Can you build it back?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: If you still have cartilage left, OK. And I think, you know, most of us do.If we use a certain, I found that if we go from 60 grams to 100 grams of collagen.There’s a greater chance of recovery and rebuilding and restructuring the cells, yes, if we get you know. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We lost some folks. I’m gonna keep riffing here. So yeah, Bernd’s talking about bringing that collagen up to 100 grams or so. Again, usually you get about 10 to 15 grams per scoop. I do about 20 or 30 grams a day. I put it in my coffee. My collagen, it blends well, it just acts like a Creamer. It just thickens it up and then I’ll throw a little bit of butter and MCT oil and blend it up. I try to get good fats cause you gotta think of eating good healthy fats. That’s support for your cell membranes, right? Cell membrane health is so important because that’s how your cells communicate. And the more you consume fatty acids that are going to be more on the oxidized side, that’s going to create oxidative stress that’s going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. It’s also going to make your cell membrane stiff and inflexible. We’re just talking about cell membrane stiffness with all the excess fatty acids here, but go ahead with the collagen and the joy of recovery.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So I feel if we, uh, use a combination of.Vitamin D calcium and a good gym diet and keep the collagen up about 45 to 60 grams a day, which is, you know, and I’ve had 100 grams a day with many of my athletes. I seen faster results from college and you know, I’ve seen better results with the higher level of you know collagen in the grams, adding calcium, vitamin D and light therapy and as much as he, If we can generate into that area. So we can get
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: better more articulation over like chicken or fish multi collagen, is there a reason why you like the beef better versus the other?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: The reason I like better and I you know I’ve used it only if pretty much in my whole career going back to the 80s, maybe a little pork at that time because of Jello. Gelatin.Yeah. Um, At least I today I know I’m getting quality I would would beef. I know I can get grass fed beef. Chicken. There’s no way of getting grass fed chicken. They’re mostly using, uh, soy and corn, right? And so you’re getting hormones in there, you’re getting estrogen. And then in the no control of the environment that then because there’s so much contamination today in the water. And what they’re feeding them. So I don’t really use that either. It’s all because of the process of how they’re made. If I can get collagen and I get beef that’s grass fed 100% all the way to the end, I know I’m getting quality and I’m getting, you know, consistent results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So that’s very good And how does, how does the? What? What the animal eats? Whether it’s cows eating grass or chickens eating bugs, how does that affect the amino acids? Do you notice like collagen from let’s say factory farm chickens or factory farm carbs? Does the amino acid spectrum in that collagen change? Which shifts?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In collagen, you know, the only thing I notice is the quality of the collagen comes from a good source of grass fed cows, OK? Umm. So I can tell the difference with my clients and patients for years, their response, their results are better. I’m getting you know, yeah and I’m not getting any of the inflammatory conditions and I don’t have to worry about any of the hormonal factors that may be found in residues and really low residues in these things. You know and then the vitamin E level and collagen is a little bit higher in grass fed animals than and they’re lowering in you know the polyunsaturated fats. So I’m getting almost none of that in my grass fed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s good. So someone else listening here, we talked about sunlight, that’s easy. Obviously we don’t want to get a sunburn. We talked about mTOR and insulin and fasting and fatty acids. What else can someone do to kind of help put their kind of start signaling those healthy anti-aging Epigenetics, right, the genetics are just kind of what’s there that’s that’s the hardware that’s already written. We’re talking about the epigenetics which is the software to help maximize that hardware use. What else can we do to optimize our epigenetics to be in that anti aging, healthy aging kind of path?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know, eating a good meal, right? Having the right proteins, almost reducing the levels of polyunsaturated oils from seed oils. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any other thing, is anything else more nuance and anything that yeah, my life reducing, they got anything else that’s more nuanced that they may not have heard before?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Reducing stress. Go for walks, get in the sun more often. Eliminate the amount of exposure indoors with blue light technology, you know, uh, put, if you’re going to bed here is the most important thing you can do at a certain time in the evening, do not look at your video or cell phone after 5,6,7 in the evening, OK? Get your body and mind ready for sleep and regeneration and anabolic steroids and all the stem cells that comes at night.That grows back. Get rid of all the Wi-Fi. Turn it off. Do not have your cell phone in the bedroom. Put it on airport mode or.I turned the whole phone off and I never have my Wi-Fi on during the days. Most of the days I’m inside and I’m very rarely inside and so I try to keep my bedroom free of any EMF electrical magnetic or radiation and I have a meter and I use that meter to give me sort of an idea what’s going on and I like, I like to try feel that’s the one I use because, Yeah, and that’s one I use every day for everything. You know, I go in the people’s home and I see what’s going on and I can say here’s your EMF levels, you need to reduce that and the only way to do that is unplug most of the electrical keep your refrigerator yeah and you know certain things on but you can pretty much turn everything off and if you can the, best thing is get a Ley line you know i know we’re out of it people don’t even know there’s Ley lines anymore. But you know we don’t lay line is where you you plugged in everything you know
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: a landline.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. I’m sorry, landline. I meant landline. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some of my patients that they’re. It you, you can also just try killing your breaker box to your house. Just kill the power for the night. Again, may not work. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, fridge come. But you can at least kill your room if you want. Again, it just depends upon how chronically sick you are too. You know the more sick you’re right, the more you can decrease that electromagnetic stress if you’re pretty healthy you could probably. That’s probably something you can adapt to. How do you manage the 5G stuff? Because that’s kind of everywhere now and these things are harder to avoid.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go in the sun pretty much every morning, every afternoon I’m 2-3 hours in the sun. If I’m exercising, I’m exercising outdoors totally. I’m walking. I’m grounding myself. I walk in concrete. Or the best ideal place to walk is is in the beach. You know, being by the beach is ideal. That means there’s no 5G’s there and you’re grounding your body and you know, uh, getting back to nature, that’s really who we are. And try to limit the out indoor as much as you can unless, you know, get John Ott’s lamaran or any of those full spectrum lightings. Start using natural lighting back in the inside you know no LED’s and you know try to avoid that and get more of a full spectrum light. Where the it almost gives you the same resonance of a sunlight you know and that’s what you want to do and eliminate as much as you can 5G just don’t be near it and the like I said don’t be on the phone, don’t be on a video and avoid it. And I wear blue light glasses for last 10 15 years anyway at night, so if I’m exposing myself to anything I always wear my blue lights. And I have it all over my house now, blue light lamps. You know where they produce red lamps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Dr. Bernd, very good. Well, anything else you want to highlight and leave with the listeners? I think you kind of put some really good information out there, fatty acids, collagen, the right types of collagen. We talked about sleep, we talked about light. Obviously with light you don’t want to get burned.Right. You want that minimal erythemal dose, morning hours, yeah, 8-9 or so. Later on. But just don’t get burned, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, here’s how you do it. Your body is exposed. The uh, you know, exposing yourself to UV light is how life started. OK, that’s the creation of every living system in our planet, OK, and UV is part of the importance of the mitochondria and building the mitochondria and all that. So what I’m thinking and what we need to do is, you know, don’t if you expose yourself slowly every day a little bit to sunlight.you’re not going to get burned OK. Burn only happens when you have a bad diet. If you eat a lot of polyunsaturated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: mornings exposure, you haven’t acclimated your skin to it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, I have no problems because I’m in the sun all the time, so if you go out in the sun. And you expose yourself, uh, 30 minutes, 15, 20 minutes in the morning. You’re protecting yourself already by doing that. Then at lunchtime 12 to 3, where UV is the highest, you’re not going to be damaged by it so much because you’re already developed a defense mechanism against that through the early sunlight, right? And if you’re worried about it, take an aspirin. And if you take an aspirin before you go out in the sun, you won’t get burned. And this was a study done in Israel, in Australia, about 1990s, that sunlight, taking an aspirin before going out on the sun doesn’t cost any inflammation or sunburn. And that was one of the two studies that they’ve done in Australia, the papers I read. It was phenomenal. So I take aspirin every day, especially at night, to protect myself against clotting mechanisms and strokes and cardiovascular things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So why you choose an aspirin over ginger or some kind of something a little bit more natural? Because there’s an aspirin have other type of potential side effects though. Gastrointestinal upset or maybe a liver stress?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: when I attended.The anti aging conference in Las Vegas. One of the people I met at the one of the speakers was the head of Bayer aspirin researcher. Yeah, and his whole speaking assignment that day was on Fox 2 Gene. It’s an anti aging gene that’s seen to be found in certain animals like you know worms and mice and now it’s shown to be in humans, aspirin actually extended the Fox 2 gene. So you’re not going to get diseases and aging and aspirin has probably more clinical studies than any other nutrient on the planet today. For anti-inflammatory condition for it’s mitochondria function I used to give my athletes coffee and aspirin to increase uncoupling mechanism which increases mitochondria function in the cells. So it has so many potentials, you know it, it is a truly, instead of causing reduction state in the cells, which we were talking about how oxidative states is the key and keeping electron flow going into the mitochondria and keeping our Redox cycling function going. So we’re donating electrons back to the energy chamber. Aspirin does that and and when you take with coffee in the morning, it doubles the uncoupling mechanism. So our athletes is so much like a steroid for them they can see a difference. And I’ve had people say this is worse than a steroid. I’ve never seen anything so good as aspirin and coffee and if you take it at night, it lowers the inflammatory condition. And one thing I learned from a cardiologist at Harvard was that it protects us from ever getting a stroke. When we get up in the morning, our cortisol levels are high.The potential for a blood clot to occur is greater at 4, 5, 6, 7 in the morning then any other time of the day. It’s because we’re just getting up and the blood is getting very stagnated and there’s a clotting mechanism and aspirin protects that. It prevents the platelet aggregation so it doesn’t happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What about curcumin though? I’ve seen a lot of drug companies kind of focusing on the research of curcumin with anti cancer. It’s everywhere plus we know curcumin is really good for that platelet aggregation reduction that blood thinning effects. What about using that too, what do you think about other natural compounds?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, it’s interesting. Um, I work with Elizabeth Dimarzio, University of Florida AMM. OK. She’s the leading world expert in inflammatory compounds from herbs from all over the world, OK? And I’ve been involved with her for over 10 years now, and I’m on her board. And curcumin was not even close to being the highest in the anti-inflammatory or anti tumor cancer things, there were so many other compounds like Boswellia. If you’re gonna take anything Boswellia would be my second choice from aspirin because it has a Cox 1 and Cox 2 inhibitor. Yeah. And so there are many other herbs she found that a lot of the Chinese 1000 year old herbs, 2000 euro have tremendous medicinal benefits in anti-inflammatory and antitumor and frankincense is one of the big ones and Boswellia and ashwagandha.Those yeah, ashwagandha is very good. I would pick those over curcumin and turmeric would be on my second choice. My down the line 10th, 11th, 12th, because turmeric is the whole plant and has much more medicinal purposes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you had to choose like whether a drug like aspirin or ibuprofen, you would choose the aspirin any day?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Every day because it also has a key molecule in there that we discovered in one of the research at Ohio State University Medical Center and at the Florida AM. It promotes ATP production, Mitochondria. Ibuprofen, Tylenol has a reductive state. Aspirin is an oxidizing state.It helps with oxidation. So that’s why I would choose that, because of the oxidative state. The oxidation of aspirin is very high, so it helps with mitochondria uncoupling. So we’re getting more ATP production, where Tylenol and all the other ones do not have that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aspirin profound effects on mitochondria is it uncouples mitochondria oxidation and induces mitochondrial permeability transition. Interesting. That’s cool. Yeah. Take a look at that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I have hundreds of papers on aspirin, so we can move on that anytime. Absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s very good. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that, Doctor Bernd, very cool. OK, anything else you want to leave the listeners with, drberndfriedlander.com We’ll put links down below and we’ll put some reference links to the collagen that we’re talking about and they’ll be show notes.Up with everything. Kind of transcribed for y’all. So you wanna go through. They actually read the transcription. That may be easier for you all. Anything else you wanna leave, listen with Dr. Bernd?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, starting out the day. Get some sunlight, have a good breakfast. Don’t skip on protein. Protein is just so crucial. That again in the, uh, utilization of nitrogen.There was no plant protein on the top list. This is scientific studies that were done. And so you wanna stay on a good protein diet. You wanna make sure you get plenty of sunlight, you do the right exercise. Don’t overdo it. Don’t get into oxidative stress. Um, you know, casually. Uh. Be careful with fasting too, because fasting is a stressor. The body goes under stress, so you don’t want to go on too much. People are doing too much. Uh, fasting and not getting enough protein. And so the quality of repair, regeneration is reducing itself. So we’re seeing more injuries, we’re seeing more carless from like you probably have everybody’s talking to me in the gym say, well, you know I gotta get knee replacement this replacement that replacement because you know they’re stressing the joints out and not eating the right foods and like you said, collagen is necessary in keeping our cartilage up and ligaments and tendons and muscles up, but it lowers the inflammatory mechanism that is produced by majority of all the foods we eat today. And that’s all the fried foods and all the carbs and starches and wheats and grains. And we got Roundup in all our foods anyway. So that’s another problem. We haven’t even talked about Roundup, you know, and how it’s damaging mitochondria. It’s literally damaging the mitochondria. It’s costing ATP damage. And that’s another study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have a question I wanted to hit you with. So we talked about kind of cardiovascular exercise, right? There’s a lot of different types of cardio you can do. There’s some data on just kind of that long term steady state type of exercise being harder on your adrenals, more catabolic, but there’s data out there on Tabata, our interval type training is also I think it’s couple of people out there. Peter Attia kind of brought it to light the zone two type of cardio. Uh, where you’re keeping your heart rate and that you know mid to low one hundreds, you’re, you’re, you’re you’re still able to talk while you’re doing some exercise, whether it’s rolling or an elliptical. What’s your take on different types of cardio and their application, whether it’s an interval, Tabata, zone two? What do you like? What do you recommend for the average people?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, being an athlete specialist, exercise physiologist, I have changed my attitude to a lot of these things from the beginning, when we were excessively training people. I’ve learned more in the last 20 years about how to preserve the mitochondria. How not to damage it. OK, so if I do anything, I like walking. I don’t wanna stress my body out anymore, OK? I’ve done. I’ve been an Olympic athlete. I’ve been a professional athlete and I’ve seen the injuries that come with that, I’m very fortunate that I never had an injury in my young life, you know, until about 60 when I had to replace my hip because of the excessive wear and tear of my body as an Olympic athlete.Training five different professional teams. Coaching 3 Olympic teams, you know, 80, 84 and 88, it was too much. So I find that it is best to do some walking and some concentric workout. What’s a concentric workout? Short centric shortening the muscle, but on your way back down you still wanna show use resistance so you’re using resistance in both direction like slow push up 10 second push-ups, where you only count to 10 seconds going up, going down, 10 seconds holding in
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Holding it the whole way. That’s a long contraction.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That was our studies in the 80s at UCLA, was concentric and short 10 second uh, workout so when you’re doing a curl. You take uh, I’m trying to show you it’s the curl is goes. You going like the bicep and you code down. Slow, slow, slow. Yeah. And you do 10 seconds up
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 10 seconds.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, same thing. You get a better workout in the shorter reps than you need. You don’t need that many reps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I’m a big fan of slower eccentric because the problem is that prevents you from lifting too heavy weights and it’s lifting too heavy with crappy form that bounced the weight or that hurt their back and the deadlift or squat. So when you have that slow eccentric, it’s really hard to hurt yourself on the end. Also, I just, I was thinking about this here. You got guys like Tom Brady who are just playing forever, is he consuming collagen? What do you think he’s doing? Obviously we got the book. He’s kind of autoimmune paleo guy. What’s he doing then to kind of keep himself longevity wise with his joints and everything else. You have any inside game on that?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know when I was in a starting to work with a lot of the athletes we were introducing.Uh, hyperbaric chambers. We were introducing infrared saunas in the 80s. You know, nobody knew about it. Today, most of your athletes are using, you know, some many different forms. They’re using infrared saunas.They’re using red Infrared light therapy, they’re using heat. They’re using vibrational things, Shockwave. A lot of them are getting PRP. They’re getting uh, ozone therapy. I can tell you a lot of these are professional athletes and are becoming more aware of what’s going on. I used, I knew Tom Brady. I played basketball with him when he was in high school in Sierra High.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is he in San Mateo, because you’re, you want right down the street from him at San Mateo.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I gave him a couple adjustments, you know, quietly at the gym. I knew he was a very bright individual and you have to be very bright. Like Howie Long was my favorite athlete overall. OK, here’s my really first really favorite athlete that I work with at the Raiders. And at that period of time he was very bright. He understood diet and he understood, you needed to do a lot of flexibility, like Pilates, yoga or stretching. Jerry Rice is like that. Jerry was very much into stretching. Tom is much more into that as well because
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pliability work. He talks about it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, it doesn’t do a lot of weight training. And when Howie Long started working out with Lyle Alzado, his, you know. He started getting disc herniation and hamstring and calf damage and that’s How I Met him. And I think was you don’t want to do too much weight training. You do just enough. But you gotta do flexibility and if you don’t do that, your career is not gonna be long.You need to elongate the body, you need to do it alright. And I think people becoming smarter, you know, and I think nutrition is very important. I can only tell you the athletes I work with. I cut down their carbs, I increased their proteins and fruits and et cetera so that they have a better quality of health. As they’re working out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Doctor Byrne. Well, let’s put a book in on this. Let’s bring this conversation back up. I’ll get you back on in a few months. We can continue the dialogue. I appreciate it. We’ll put links to find you. drberndfriedlander.com. Anything else you want to leave the listeners, Doc?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, just enjoy life. Don’t get into everything you know. Stay away. Medicine really is your, you know, eating right, getting sunlight.Little exercise. That’s the medicine. That’s all you need. You don’t need anything else. You can live without taking any blood pressure medication or other medications because nature was there. That’s where we started. That’s what we need to get back to is live outside, eat, right and get plenty of natural lighting and enjoyment in your life. Just let food be your nature, but now your sunlight too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Bernd, I Appreciate it. You’re the man. Great chatting with you. We’ll talk soon. You take care.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Alright. Thanks. Bye. Talk to you then.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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The Mold Gut Connection – How Your Digestive Issue Maybe Caused by Mold Toxins | Podcast #371
If you’ve encountered mold from a water-damaged building or contaminated foods, you’ve likely encountered mycotoxins—toxic byproducts of mold. They’re common environmental toxins, and they have adverse effects on many body systems, including the gastrointestinal tract.
While you’ve probably heard about other symptoms that can follow mold exposure, Dr. J and Evan discuss that mycotoxins can also cause severe problems for your gut. They also talk about how mycotoxins impact gut health and the microbiota and what you can do to help restore your gut health once you are exposed to mold.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
1:57 – Mycotoxins
10:16 – Functional Medicine Approach
13:54 – Dopamine Mechanis
15:20 – Mold Inhalation Effects
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live, It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today’s topic is gonna be wonderful for the podcast. We’re gonna be talking about the mold-gut connection and how your digestive issues may be exacerbated by mold toxins, so great topic here Evan, personally been affected by himself and we see lots of patients all the time with these issues so let’s dive in. Evan, how are we doing today man?
Evan Brand: Yeah man, doing really well, and a lot of people have been to naturopaths, they’ve been the functional medicine people they’ve been a conventional doctor, they’ve been treated for SIBO and SIFO, whether it’s Rifaximin or natural SIBO protocols, maybe they’ve done SIBO diets or some of these rotational food diets and that sort of things, maybe they’ve tried berberine, oregano, garlic, and maybe they’ve made some progress, but then they’re still stick, they’re still suck, I’m gonna mix up my words, they’re stuck and sick so that’s a bad combination of essays and this is likely due to a mold toxin problem because I’ve seen it too many times and I suffered on my own and even the labs now tell us they give us a cookie-cutter report but that cookie-cutter report nonetheless is still valuable because even the lab has painted the connection between mycotoxins which are essentially mold farts that you breathe in, in a water damage building and the connection to certain bacterial overgrowth, specifically Clostridia but also Candida and the mechanism of why this is so damaging especially to young children is because we know that Clostridia bacteria screw up the organic acid levels called HPHPA and this affects levels of neurotransmitters, so when you get these children, they have behavioral issues, they may be diagnosed with something like PANS, which is a Pediatric Acute Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. These kids usually have sensory problems, food sensitivity, skin issues, histamine problems, allergies, maybe they’re biting children, maybe they’re angry or irritable, this can all be traced back due to this toxicity.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: 100%. So that’s quite interesting, now you talked about mycotoxins essentially being mold fart, so essentially the mold off-gasses, right? And, your different kinds of mold, right? It could be Penicillium, it could be Aspergillus, right? It could be the black mold, Stachybotrys, these types of things and then they produce various mycotoxins and when we do different tests, like plate testing on homes, supposedly each mold or so can produce about 300 different mycotoxins, whether it’s Ochratoxins, or aluminum is that correct?
Evan Brand: Yeah, which is crazy because we can only test for a very, very small amount on the urine so really, we’re trying to just look for some evidence of this bonfire, we’re looking for the ashes, Oh my god, there must have been a fire here, this big mold exposure, we’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg so yeah, you’re right. Our testing is good but it’s still very primitive compared to the amounts of mycotoxins that are being produced.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yeah. And the type of organic acid testing that we’re doing is on the great plains. We’ll look at some of the organic acid compounds that correlate with, like Aspergillus or different mold toxins. Is that correct? What are those big mycotox? What are the big organic acids again?
Evan Brand: So, it’s all on paper.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Membranes
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, you’ll see oxoglutaric. You’ll see citric acid can be high in a fungal overgrowth too so it’s all page 1. Oxaglutaric, you got hydroxybenzoic which is related to bacteria. I could pull up an O but in general it’s just page one. It’s typically numbers 1 through 18. If you see any big red flags on that either a combination of a bacterial overgrowth specifically a clustering problem and or Candida or fungal colonization and the lab indicates that so tartaric acid would also be on there, carboxy citric acid is also on there. So, in parenthesis, you’ll see under these organic acids now which is great because this has improved over the years that you and I’ve been running these labs. It now says Aspergillus so on number 6, which is tartaric acid under number six, it’ll now say Aspergillus. And you’ll know if that’s elevated, you’re colonized for Aspergillus which means that you’ve now been exposed to a couple situations could have happened either you had a large enough amount of mold, you were exposed to mold, long enough or your immune system was weak enough where now you become a mold factory. So, you can be a mold reservoir, more specifically a mycotoxin reservoir where you just have this exposure at the moldy hotel in Mexico and then you come back home and you’re sick or if you were weak enough, now you’re growing mold. Even if you move to the desert to avoid mold, you stay sick because you’ve got that colonization so with
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Ionization, that’s happening.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, you can prove that which is very important because now that would justify the use of herbal antifungals to try to remedy this situation.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: That makes sense. Let me go pull up one of my old tests. Let me see if I can find it. Hold on.
Evan Brand: Now, the conventional treatment is typically antifungal medications that are gonna knock this out. But, as you and I with our functional practice, we don’t like to use that. So, number 4 would be classified as the fungal, the ferran-2,5-tricarboxylic, you’ve that Ferran carbonyl glycine. Yeah. So, number six. Yeah. So, this is old enough where they didn’t have the molds but on the new ones in parentheses
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Let me say Aspergillus. It is primarily Aspergillus for all three of these.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and the number nine tricarboxylic is Fusarium.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Fusarium. Yep. And then Arabinose and Tartaric are also correlated with yeast overgrowth. This test here for instance, I did a great plane and a Genova test at the same time and this one actually came back much higher on the Arabino side than the great plains. then the Genova tested. So, it’s interesting you know different samples and such. But yeah, this one Arabinose is strongly correlated with Candida but then
Evan Brand: I just ran my own, I’ve got Candida right now too so I’m on a protocol, right? Now, I just run. Yeah. I showed up with Candida and I want people to know because you were a speaker on the event. It was called the Candida summit which I ran like five years ago and you know we had like 30 people talking about it and I could look back but I tell you I don’t think anybody had made the connection here which was the mold Candida connection back then and now what I’m finding is basically you’re just playing whack-a-mole with Candida until the mold’s gone meaning you may rotate through various rounds of antifungals but out the back door, you’ve got to be using the appropriate binders to pull out the mycotoxins so if you’re just beating Candida down and it keeps coming back. It’s probably the mold, not the Candida that you need to be after.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yeah. And, that’s where it’s good to run a test like this. Also, maybe a urinary mycotoxin test or just make sure your environment’s good because I always tell patients if the environment’s not good and you’re having reoccurring issues then you’re just not getting to the root cause. So, the first thing is to isolate the environment. Make sure the environment, your home, your apartment wherever you’re living run a high-quality mold plate test on there. We’ll put links down below where you guys can access the plate testing. Isolate that, right? Make sure there’s no water damage or if there’s been leaks. Make sure it’s been addressed and dealt with. Make sure that’s dialed then the second thing is you can run a test like an organic acid test with your functional medicine provider. See if there’s any colonization. And, it that’s chronic, yo can get to the root on that and then you can always run urinary mold where you’re looking at mycotoxins coming out in the urine that can also be helpful but typically if this is good and there’s nothing at the home then you’re probably in pretty good shape and it’s probably more of an acute kind of dysbiosis thing probably from poor diet, poor digestion other bugs, other infections, etc.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the cool thing is that you can kill two birds with one stone or even three birds with one stone and what I mean by that is let’s say you run that oh and you showed the elevated Arabinose, you know, there’s a Candida problem but if we see tartaric above that’s high and then down below, we see some of the bacterial overgrowth markers, the blends that you and I formulate and have, we might be able to kill bacterial overgrowth, fungal overgrowth and a Candida problem. All in one fell swoop and that’s incredible and you know your gastroenterologist or even your mold doctor is likely not gonna be able to do that. They may come in specifically with itraconazole or fluconazole or nystatin. But as you know, we’re facing this big problem of antifungal resistance just like we’re finding with antibiotic resistance and so now, you’ve got these very virulent strains which are difficult to kill with conventional medications. You and I have talked about this before but the long story short of it is all the different alkaloids and terpenes and beneficial nutrients in the plants, those don’t have this resistance problem. And if you’re mixing this herb and that herb, it’s not one plus one equals two, it’s one plus one equals ten. You get the synergistic effect.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yeah. You see the same thing with addressing bacteria and other bigger bugs and berberines and Artemisia Wormwoods have synergistic effects. Also, the fact that you get a lot of antioxidants in a lot of these herbs. And so, especially if they’re high-quality, you get a lot of antioxidant support because when you start killing bugs, it’s a lot of oxidative stress that’s happening. And then, when you provide like an antifungal like Diflucan or an Amphotericin or a nystatin or a ketoconazole, obviously, there’s no antioxidants in those drugs and so you’re gonna have a lot of oxidative stress so it’s nice to have a blend different herb in there. One, to prevent the resistance. And then, also, people have yeast issues and a lot of times they have bacterial bugs as well and efflux pumps are a big thing that a lot of bacteria and bugs use to kind of protect themselves. So, I cannot say, like bacteria is like a sinking canoe, right? and essentially, you poke holes in that canoe with a lot of the herbals and think of the efflux pumps as the person in the canoe, baling water, right? So, they try to keep on bailing water, bailing water, so they don’t sink, right? And so, think of the herbals when you inhibit the efflux pumps whether it’s a ginger or different antimicrobials, it’s like taking the buckets away from the bacteria that’s bailing water and allows then to sink that allows them to effectively be destroyed that along with addressing biofilms too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. That’s awesome and the cool part too is you can minimize the die off if you’re doing this right. You know a lot of people when they hear these conversations, they get afraid. They go oh my God, Candida, mold, bacteria, parasites, worms like oh my God, this is a lot of stuff in me. I want it out of me but now I’m afraid. Am I going to feel worse before I feel better and the answer is if you do it properly that should be minimal to a nonexistent problem? I think you and I have refined our protocol so much over the years now that we have these tools and these other therapies in place that are standalone products but we often add those in or if we see that we hit a roadblock or a big bump in the road like a die off, we can change dosing. We can rotate. We can add in other support. We’re always talking about liver and gallbladder and binders and hydration and biofilms. These other pieces, these other variables, these are the make-or-break things for some people.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: 100%. And when people kind of want to go after the gut, we live in an antibiotic like kill, kill, kill generation so people tend to, when they find out they have an issue, they want to go kill, kill, kill and that can be very stressful in the body so it’s always very important to calm down the inflammation, get the immune system stronger, get the hormones that help with anabolic metabolism which is healing, recovering, anti-inflammatory support that kind of sets the table because the more stressed and inflamed you are, your lymphatic system, your detoxification system, your immune system won’t work as good and plus people forget your detoxification system, right? The cytochrome p450 oxidized pathways, especially the phase two pathways, they’re gonna run off of a lot of sulfur-based amino acids and so if we don’t have great digestion and we’re not eating you know good healthy animal protein or good healthy plant cruciferous vegetables. If we can’t tolerate them, we can’t break them down. May not have a lot of those sulfur building blocks to run those phase two pathways and so that’s why kind of getting the deck set so to speak so we can really hit phase two better just not with support but just getting digestion working better and a good diet working better sets the table and allows us to effectively kill so much better.
Evan Brand: Yeah and I know we’ve talked about a lot in a short amount of time, we’ve gone fast so listen back as needed but I want people to understand the connection because of the title of this episode, I want people to understand the mold-gut connection. So, the connection is the following: the mycotoxins weaken the immune system and allow the opportunistic bacterial overgrowth to thrive along with the Candida. So, if you’re working upstream at the SIBO-SIFO situation but you’ve got an underlying mycotoxin problem, you’ve got to address that if you fully wanna get better. The other mechanism of the mycotoxins is a couple. Number one is they damage the microbiome so we know specifically that mycotoxins do the same thing as, like food allergens, they disrupt the gut barrier and create intestinal permeability. So, that’s another reason you want to pull those out of the circulation by using specific binders based on your labs. And then the other mechanism too is we know mycotoxins affect the brain chemistry and specifically lower dopamine so when you get into pain signaling, you get into motivation and mood and just your overall vitality. If your brain chemistry is affected, we can also measure that but it could be directly attributed to the toxin for example in like rat studies when they inject them with mycotoxins or expose them to mold toxin, the dopamine levels crash. So now, all of a sudden, you’ve got this brain chemistry piece to address too, now people have heightened pain sensitivity, they’re depressed. They may be just more flat with their life. Once again, they go to their psychiatrist. They’re not gonna bring up mold toxicity, they’re putting them on an antidepressant medication. They’re never gonna say, “hey, oh your basement is flooded, that’s why you’re depressed and anxious and you have diarrhea”. So, the connection of the gut symptoms too, the diarrhea, any type of bloating, burping, digestive pain especially in children. Children don’t use the same language as adults. So, if your child is complaining about stomach pain that could be one clue that there’s something related. That was my issue for my daughter, Summer. She was complaining of tummy aches so we did run stool on her. She did have H. pylori when she was two. We tested real high. Maybe I gave it to her by sharing water bottles or something but either way, we took care of that and then stomach pain was continuing that was when we had got exposed to mold. Luckily, I got her on binders. Now, she’s in a better place. So, I’ve seen it unfortunately with my own kids and it’s stressful to see your kids suffer but it’s a good lesson. It’s a good learning lesson that your children are not crazy and if your kids are complaining of a chronic issue like this with pain, you know, consider this as a possibility especially if you as the mother are toxic because the toxins go through the placenta and they also go through breastmilk. So, if you have your own digestive skin, whatever problems, mood problems in your kid, has similar issues as you, well, it could be the generational passing of toxins.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: So, let’s go over that mechanism one more time with dopamine. So, obviously dopamine is a neurotransmitter and when we’re chronically stressed, physical, chemical or emotional, dopamine can go downstream and get converted into adrenaline which kind of helps manage the acute stress response. Is it just a fact that the mold is inflammatory and creating a stress response and activating the sympathetic nervous system that the dopamine is being taken and depleted downstream or is there something else? I want to make sure I get that mechanism hammered down.
Evan Brand: I don’t know. Type in rat dopamine, mold or rat dopamine, mycotoxin. See if you can find it. There were several papers on this. I don’t know if they discussed the mechanism in it or not. My assumption would be that it’s multifactorial. I think the big mechanism would be that the mycotoxins affecting the gut barrier then affecting nutrient absorption then there’s likely less amino acid conversion to dopamine. So, I’m thinking, it’s more of a malabsorption problem but also we know that ochratoxin for example damages
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Like malabsorption, like it’s affecting the absorption of protein in the gut?
Evan Brand: Yeah. I think that’s one mechanism. I think the other mechanism would be direct brain damage. We know that okra toxin for example damages the cerebellum. We know that the Verrucarin and the Stachybotrys mycotoxins affect the brain and the prefrontal cortex which impairs, like your ability to think clearly. So, I think it’s both. I think it’s the gut damage and I think it’s the direct brain damage too. I am going to pull it up here. Can you see it on screen?
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: Let me make it bigger on my side here.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yeah. So many mycotoxins, trichothecenes. We test that in some of the mycotoxin tests. Yeah. Induced neuronal cell apoptosis so some of that could be you’re just causing the cells in the brain and especially in the substantia nigra of the midbrain. That’s where dopamine cells are being produced. Some of it could be apoptosis that means programmed cell death and or inflammation in the olfactory epithelium.
Evan Brand: Interesting.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: So, it seems to be a neurodegenerative and then look it says it caught ochratoxin A causes acute depletion of dopamine and its metabolites.
Evan Brand: Look at that.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: So, I wonder if that’s a, it sounds like it’s possibly a stress response, right? Because dopamine can, tends to go downstream to adrenaline. It could be almost like an autoimmune response because you’re having apoptosis. This is neuronal cell death, program cell death. This is part of the reason why apoptosis is important, right? Because if you don’t have good immune function, this is how cancer forms, right? Your immune system helps program cells to die when they need to die. This is apoptosis but if you can’t do that then cells can overgrow hence you have a tumor, right? And so, this is actually happening to unhealthy or the very healthy tissue that you need to be functionally healthy that produces dopamine in the midbrain. So very interesting.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Talking about the hippocampus too, we know that hippocampus, I’ve got two of them. Remember, that’s why a lot of people have brain fog problems and also I would say that short-term to long-term conversion is impaired.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Can you see this one here? The mold inhalation one
Evan Brand: I’m just seeing that you’re highlighted on the hippocampus word for now.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Let me switch back to the other one here. This is mold inhalation. This is interesting. Let’s go pull this up. All tight. Mold inhalation causes innate immune activation, neural cognitive and emotional dysfunction.
Evan Brand: So, this is pretty new. July 2020 paper here so relative.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yeah. Yeah. So, the ability of mold to cause such symptoms is controversial since no published research has examined the effects of controlled mold exposure on the brain. Patient symptoms following mold exposure are indistinguishable from those caused by innate immune activation by bacterial or viral exposure. Interesting. So, in this study here they added in. See here. Toxic and nontoxic mold stimuli would cause innate immune activation with concomitant neural effects and cognitive and emotional behaviors. We internationally administered intact stachybotrys. This is black mold extracted non-toxic stachybotrys spores and a saline vehicle to mice.
Evan Brand: You don’t want to be that mouse.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Wow. No. As predicted, intact spores increase interleukin 1 beta, immune reactivity in the hippocampus both spore types decrease neurogenesis. This is forming new neurons in the brain and causing striking contextual memory deficits in young mice while decreasing pain thresholds. So, this is another word saying, causing more pain in the body. So, if you have mold exposure, joint pain could happen, right? And enhancing auditory acute memory in older mice. Nontoxic anxiety. Yeah. Also increase anxiety like behavior. Levels of hippocampal immune function correlated with decreased neurogenesis that’s creating new neurons in the brain. Contextual memory deficits, right? Obviously, less memory and or enhance auditory cued feared memory. I wonder what that means. Maybe it’s just like, uh, you’re more sensitive to external stimuli.
Evan Brand: I read that. Yeah. I read that as sound sensitivity which is yeah part of the toxin and light sensitivity too so people will often have to wear sunglasses even when it’s not very bright. You and I talked about that in the context of adrenals years ago but that’s also a mold toxin thing.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Yep. And an immune activation may explain how both toxic mold and nontoxic mold, skeletal elements cause cognitive and emotional decline. So, it’s really important. We don’t wanna be in an area where there’s a bunch of mold toxins and we can do a whole other podcast on how to mitigate mold toxins as a whole. I mean, of course, get your home tested. That’s the first thing. If you have water damage, make sure it’s mitigated by a professional right away because mold starts to form when sitting water in as little as two days. Got to make sure that’s under control and then if you’re on the fence, get yourself tested, right? We’ll run an organic acid test. Maybe run a urinary mycotoxin test and see what your actual load is but again one of the big telltale cue signs is you know, get your home. If there’s mold there and you start feeling significantly better and you go back, you notice an increase and definitely get your internal mold tested as well via urine.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well. I know we got to wrap this thing up. We got calls to get to but I hope this is helpful for people. We can always get geekier and dive deeper and go longer but I think you guys get the gesture, the connection of the brain toxicity, the gut damage. There’s a mitochondrial element with the chronic fatigue piece. So, if you are suffering from any chronic issue whether it’s mood like depression, anxiety, energy problems like chronic fatigue, low libido, poor erectile function, cold hands, cold feet, increased light sensitivity, blurry vision could be other things but this is a big smoking gun and all of us are inside way too much. We’re not outside like the Amish are all day. They might have moldy homes but they’re not breathing it in the majority of time. They’re outside in fresh air where the toxins are diluted. So, us with our indoor lifestyle as modern humans, we’re at more risk of this stuff and our buckets are already full due to pesticides and other toxicity in the environment so this is a really, it’s an epidemic problem, maybe the biggest one.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: And not everyone is as genetically sensitive, right? Some people, they go into a moldy area. They get brain fog, right away. Some people do fine. Either way, it’s definitely a stressor in the stress bucket and if you know it’s there, you definitely wanna pull it out because it’s gonna help give you more resiliency and more adaptability. Great podcast today Evan. Everyone listening on the audio version, we pulled up some studies and some lab tests on the video version. We’ll put the link down below so you can see the video version. We’ll put some links to some of the labs and the products that we talked about today so you guys can take a look at those. Evan, great chatting with you. Head over to evandbrand.com to reach out to Evan via functional medicine nutritional support worldwide as well as justinhealth.com, Dr. J myself at justinhealth.com for me myself. We are here to help and support you guys wherever you are. Have a phenomenal day everyone.
Evan Brand: Take it easy. Bye-bye.
Dr. Justine Marchegiani: Take care. Bye now.
References:
Audio Podcast:
Recommended Products:
Genova Organix® Dysbiosis Profile
The Gut Anxiety Connection | Podcast #352
How do your emotions get affected by your gut state? In this video, Dr. J and Evan talk about anxiety and stress as an example and how we can manage them based on evidence-based practice. Excessive worry and stress can worsen GI problems, and studies show that treatments and good food templates will help people cope with their GI symptoms.
Dr. J and Evan clarify that the brain immediately affects the gut. For example, the thought of eating can stimulate the release of the stomach’s juices before food gets there and vice versa. A sick intestine can alert the brain, just as a troubled brain can alert the stomach and intestines. Therefore, a person’s intestine and stomach distress may cause or be the product of stress, anxiety, or depression. It’s because the gastrointestinal (GI) system and the brain are intimately connected.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
2:21 – The Importance of Gut Microbiome
4:21 – The Gut Microbiota’s Effect on Mental Health
8:43 – Strategies on how to Approach Adverse Reactions to Probiotics
15:13 – Potential Neural Marker in Anxiety Disorders
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For the podcast, really excited. Evan and I are gonna be chatting about the gut-anxiety connection. A lot of people have mood issues, uh, mental, emotional issues and they’re connected to the gut. And most people unless you have bloating gas, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, they’re not really connecting any gut issues to their mood especially anxiety. So, we’re gonna try to connect the dots for everyone here today. Evan, how are we going today man?
Evan Brand: I’m doing really well, you know, I’ll start out by saying if you were to go to a conventional doctor and the referral for anxiety or depression to a psychiatrist, they’re never gonna consider the gut. They’re never gonna run a stool test or an organic acids test or a mold toxin test. There’s a study done on mice and mice that were exposed to various mold toxins. They have lower levels of dopamine and we know people with lower dopamine, they could be more apathetic, they could be more depressed, they could just be less excited for the world and although the organic acids doesn’t measure GABA, we can tell just based on symptoms, like easily stressed, hard to relax, you need alcohol to calm yourself down or maybe you need chocolate to self-medicate. We know these people probably have low GABA and GABA is the breaks of the brain. At least, that’s how I refer to it. Think of the GABA as being able to inhibit or slow down the sympathetic overdrive and GABA is going to calm that and increase that parasympathetic reaction. Now, the connection is to gut, well, we know, there’s a paper here we pull up just because we like to have a couple studies, there’s one titled, “Gut Microbiota’s Effect on Mental Health: The Gut-Brain Axis”. Long story short, the study backs up, what we’ve already known and you and I have been doing clinically for a long time, which is that we’re fixing dysbiosis because we’re finding that when you increase levels of lactobacillus, this is key in producing GABA and so that’s pretty interesting and the study goes on to talk about the different inflammatory pathways and how dysbiosis creating inflammatory proteins in the gut. That’s gonna also affect anxiety. So, dysbiosis alone that’s sounds crazy to some, maybe to mental health physicians but if you have gut overgrowth problems, that could be the biggest single smoking gun for you mood issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% because the gut microbiome very important. It helps modulate the immune system. So god healthy levels of beneficial bacteria, Bifidolactobacterium, Lactobacillus beneficial flora. They’re gonna actually, help modulate the immune system, they’re gonna help with permeability, keeping gut permeability down. They’re gonna help with inflammation reduction. They’re gonna keep the inflammation down. They also help, um, take mold toxins that you may get exposed to and make them less virulent, less strong, less inflammatory as well and then also beneficial bacteria are gonna synthesize nutrients based on the food coming in, so it’s gonna take your poop and it’s gonna take poop and convert it to nutrition versus dysbiotic bacteria is gonna take you poop and make things take your nutrients and make you more toxic, right? So, we wanna really get high levels of nutrition and you’re gonna get endogenous production through health gut bacteria, like vitamin K, different B vitamins, you’re gonna get some fermentation acids that actually make it harder for a lot of bad stuff to grow. So, this is kind of important starting place and if you look at some of the medications that are coming out for more mood stuff, some of the mechanisms seem to be more of an anti-inflammatory on the brain. That’s very interesting because we know, the mechanisms in the past have been kind of SSRI or tricyclics in the 80s and 90s or SNRI, right. These different kinds of medications of course, you have benzodiazepines that work on GABA and the different GABA agonist, right. So, now, we’re working on inflammation and we gotta be careful because we had some inflammatories natural, not natural but anti-inflammatories in the early 2000s, they called, that was called Vioxx that killed 60,000 people. So, we gotta be careful because when you, uh, use a lot of pharmaceuticals anti-inflammatories there could be side effects and I imagine if it’s on mood and the brain, you could see strokes and things like that. So, we gotta be careful. So, we try to use as many natural components foundationally with diet and supplements. First, because of the least likelihood to cause problems.
Evan Brand: Wow. That’s insane. Well, you and I talked about the impact of exercise on anxiety before, we’ve covered that. We know that exercise is a super potent antidepressant. Here’s something cool about the gut in this particular paper. I put it in the chat for you if you wanted it, but it talks about how Lactobacillus strains upregulated BDNF, which is the brain derived neurotrophic factor and that resulted in increased regulation of the HPA axis. Let me just read the last part again because that’s pretty nuts. Supplemental Lactobacillus increase the regulation of the HPA axis, so here we are working with people using adaptogenic herbs but let it, but the cool thing is we’re actually fixing the adrenals by fixing the gut too, which is amazing and then it goes on further to talk about supplementing with Bifidobacteria and how the patients in the study rated an overall happier mood using six dimension of mood including: energetic, uh, composed versus anxious, elated versus depressed, clearheaded versus muddled, confident versus unsure, and agreeable versus angry. So, long story short, this actually improved the HPA axis functionality, as well as diazepam, or there’s another one here citalopram, that’s an anti-depressant, that’s an SSRI so long story short, this is pretty nuts. Probiotic therapy reduces the depressive symptoms and improve the HPA axis as well as an SSRI. So, there you freaking go. And here’s one more thing, Bifido infantis increases tryptophan, a serotonin precursor. So, we always talk about, okay get tryptophan in the diet but simply the good bacteria can actually make tryptophan, which then makes serotonin and GABA. This stuff is just amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I put the study up on screen. So, anyone watching this video here could take a look at it again. If you are listening to audio, we put the video link down below. If you guys want to look, this in the journal clinical practice 2017: Gut Microbiota’s Effect on Mental Health. And I’ll just gonna read that conclusion again. Dysbiosis and inflammation of the gut have been linked to causing several mental illnesses including anxiety and depression, which are prevalent in society today. Probiotics have the ability to restore normal microbial balance, therefore, have a potential role in the treatment and prevention of anxiety and depression. It gets really powerful there. And again, that’s only one of many things. Now, um, just to comment, I see a lot of people that get their mood worse when they have some of these things too. So, what’s the deal? Well, probiotics can be high in histamine and they be high in FODMAP. So, if you have a lot, if your immune system is so wound up, the histamine from these probiotics may cause problems, also the fermentable nature of these probiotics may cause problems, if you have SIBO. So, if you have massive bacterial overgrowth or your immune system is so wound up, when you can’t process histamine or you’re sensitive to histamine then you have to be careful with these things. So, even though we say, this is good, it doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone. So, we’re just trying to lay out, hey, it maybe good for you but if it’s not, here’s maybe the reason why and we just have to dig in deeper and so there’s really no just magic solution. There’s a lot of tools that we kind of line out and we go in sequential order and work them through with our patients to get the best results possible.
Evan Brand: I’m so glad, you went that direction with the conversation because me listening to myself as a third person, I’m thinking, oh my God, I need to go out and buy probiotics right now and I’m gonna just feel happier and less anxious and all that. And that certainly was not the case for me when I had gut infections and I tried probiotics, it made me worse, it made my skin worse, it made mood worse, I got more anxious, and what the hell is going on. Well, as you mentioned, there’s a sequential order so I love that and this is why it’s important for you to do, and for I to do what I do because you and I are seeing these things clinically and the trenches is totally different versus somebody with a health podcast. They could look at this study and they could do a whole podcast about this, and then they could trick people not on purpose but just not having the clinical background, they could look at this and go, oh my God, probiotics are gonna be the miracle cure and then people are gonna listen to the podcast, they’re gonna do it and then they’re not gonna have a good reaction like me and they’re not gonna know what to do. So, I’m so glad that you’re integrating the clinical approach to this thing which is wait a second, yes, this is all true but there’s an asterisk next to this study and the asterisk as you mentioned is what if there’s bacterial overgrowth and the histamine bucket’s already so full or what if a mold or a mast cell has problem and the histamine bucket is already so full, so you can’t tolerate these probiotics. So, maybe walk us through what you’re doing, what do you suggest people do if they’ve had a reaction like that to probiotics, maybe they didn’t do it at the right order, or how should they approach this?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, the first thing we have to really do is just calm down the immune system and the biggest factors that we have to do that is the food that’s coming into our body. So really, choosing a good anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense whole foods and, and if we know that there’s a lot of digestive issues, bloating gas, we may have to restrict FODMAPs and fermentables out of the gate to kind of decrease the dysbiosis. Because when we address like gut microbiome issues, we hit in three ways, right, we starve it, we kill it, we crowd it out. So, starve, kill, crowd, starve, kill, crowd. And so, the first aspect of that is shifting the foods to starve some of these microbiomes that maybe bad and then again it’s gonna be short-lived, we’re not gonna, we don’t wanna go low FODMAP forever, right, because there’s a lot of good foods that have FODMAPs in it and even histamine in it. So, there’s no reason, we’d want to do that but, in the beginning, if we can shift the immune system, calm it down, if we can shift some of the microbes down and then as we start adding different things in supporting our ability to break down food, start adding in adrenal support because when our nervous system is just stuck and our vagus nerve and our parasympathetics are low and our ‘fight or flight’ is high, our immune system is gonna be, it’s gonna be overly sensitive, okay. It’s gonna be overly sensitive and we’re also gonna have poor digestion and when we have more poor digestion, we’re gonna have gut permeabilty issues, we’re gonna break down our food and we’re gonna have more of these foods in our gut get into the bloodstream and stimulate the immune system in a negative way. And so, if can calm down that immune response through decreasing our sympathetic nervous system whether it’s breathing techniques just good diet and lifestyle, good food, managing blood sugar throughout the day, not over under exercising, good hydration. All of those things are kind of, you know, the foundational marks, that we put as we work up a patient. So, we have that foundation there.
Evan Brand: Here’s the question that came in from Keith, he said, “what are your thoughts in taking colostrum for gut health? We use colostrum but as you mentioned in that in immune situation, we might not want to use colostrum. I’ve had some people, where their immune system is so just haywire that colostrum does affect them. It’s not super common but there are some cases where we can’t use it and so in that case, we may be coming in with more herbal based leaky gut supports DGL, glutamine, zinc, carnosine, more amino acids
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: amino acids, nutrients. Yeah, I mean colostrum, because it comes from a cow, right? It’s gonna be, more dairy based. Supposedly, colostrum is dairy free meaning, you’re not gonna get the casein and the lactose. So, it depends on how sensitive, you are. Some people, they may be sensitive were they still in a problem. Some may, it may be okey. I tend to just avoid colostrum, just because my patients are very hypoallergenic and so I tend to use more of the more hypoallergenic compounds like the zinc and the glutamine and the DGL and just things like that. Not saying, it’s not beneficial and I’ve had my patients take it and do well with it. So, I’m on the fence with it for sure, I have a little bit of colostrum in my true keto collagen and patients do really well with that. And so, it’s a tool that we put in our tool belt, but for our sensitive patients, I tend to not be the first thing that I jump on for sure. I think we’re on the same page with that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Uh, here’s a person here, “what about a probiotic that has both Lactobacillus and Bifido, will they cancel each other out?” No, we used those together all the time and some of the most high-quality professional formulas we make. We have combinations because you get different nutritional benefits in the gut from different species. There are some cases, where I have done straight Lacto or I’ve done straight Bifido, just to see how people do? But those are like the one percent sensitive people. The average person, we’re working on, they can tolerate a combination and then obviously, if we’re working on mold or Candida or some other problem, we’re often throwing in Saccharomyces boulardii in there too. So, then now you’re doing Bifido, Lacto and you’re doing Saccharomyces. That triple combo which technically Saccharomyces boulardii, even though it’s marketed and sold as a probiotic technically a yeast will often work that into the protocol and it does so much better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100%. Evan, what’s your experience using spore-based probiotics?
Evan Brand: You know, they give me just terrible gas. My God. It just hurts my tummy; I’ve tried them and I went on them and I went off of them. I went low dose. I went high dose. I mean, we even manufactured some too and I’m like, God, I just don’t feel that good with them, I’ve had some people that are like, hey, this thing is a miracle cure, this is the best I’ve ever felt and good for them. But for me, it just did not go well, so I feel much much better with a low histamine, more I guess, you would just call it living probiotics as opposed to the spores. What about you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, It just depends, I think patients that don’t do well with your Lactobacillus, Bifidobacter, I definitely have a good bunch that do better with the spore based probiotics. So, depending on the level of SIBO that’s going on, some patients do really great with it. I have no problem myself with higher dose Bifidobacter, Lactobacillus infantis species, so I don’t have with it. But some patients, I know with significant SIBO history just do well on, if they just do much better and supposedly that the spore-based probiotics really help potentiate the growth of these other beneficial flora. So, it does help a lot of the other beneficial flora and they do hang out a lot longer too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I’ve tried a couple of different professional brands. I mean there’s two big brands out there. I tried both. The one I did actually feel pretty good on, a couple others I didn’t feel so good on. So, I think it could be a brand difference too. There was another question here, “when is the best time to take probiotics with fiber or empty GI?” I don’t know the whole wheat fiber deal. I’ve never heard of that before. I personally take them on an empty stomach and I’ll do them first thing in the morning like before breakfast. I’ll just pop all my supplements or I’ll take them before bed. Unless, I’m taking a binder then I won’t. My thought on it is to try the bacteria in there especially because some of the professional manufacturers, you and I use, we’re using an acid resistant capsule. So, it’s gonna actually bypass the stomach acid and deliver the beneficial microbes to the gut so in that case, that’s why I like it to be there. Just because, there’s not as much competition with the food could just be theory, I don’t have any proof that it works better but that’s how I approach it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean you can definitely have some beneficial effects with some fiber, with some probiotics because the fiber does act as prebiotics and it can help kind of provide the fertilizer for the seed, the seed being the probiotics to grow. I do like it. A lot of your conventional probiotics tend to do better on an empty stomach but I mean taking them with food has some beneficial effects as well with digestion and such and so I say. Try to take most of those with food. I think that’s good. I just wanted to pull one study up here, I think this is interesting, um. Let me pull this up here. So, just kind of support we’re talking about right. This study is looking at neuroinflammation association alterations of the brain is a potential neural marker in anxiety disorders, so we’re just trying to build up the case that we’re talking about here. Preliminary evidence suggests anxiety disorders are also associated with increased inflammation. Systemic inflammation can access the brain and enhance pro-inflammatory cytokine levels that have been shown to precipitate direct and indirect neurotoxic effects. Prefrontal and limbic structures, these are parts of the brain that have to do with higher thinking, uh, emotions, memory are widely reported be influenced by neuroinflammatory conditions in concord with these findings various imaging studies on panic disorders, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety have been reported alterations in the structure and the function and the connectivity of our prefrontal and limbic structures so what they’re saying is inflammations affecting the parts of you brain that are involved. They’re higher thinking, higher function memory cognition anticipating, you know, cause and effect based on your actions, right. Prefrontal cortex is it’s the part of the brain that allows you to anticipate, to think, to plan, um, most of people from our you know from evolution we’ve been more, um, midbrain kind of reptilian brain type of you know, kind of knee jerk reaction kind of response and the frontal cortex gives us the ability to think and certain nutrients have allowed that part of the brain to grow. High quality cholesterol, Omega-3, free fatty acids, amino acids help that brain to grow. But if we’re driving inflammation in that’s gonna have a negative impact. Now what are the things that are gonna be driving inflammation in our diet? Well, Omega-6, refined processed vegetable oils, trans fats, refined sugar, too much carbohydrates, too much sugar, these are all gonna drive brain inflammation. And of course, inflammation in the gut can cause inflammation in the brain. Inflammation in the gut is bidirectional, it is a two-way highway. Inflammation in the body whether it’s like getting exposed to round up or mold toxins can cause gut inflammation. Inflammation in the gut through dysbiosis and food allergens can also cause leaky gut and cause inflammation from the gut to go outward up to the brain and it can activate the microglial cells in the brain which can create fogginess and more immune response that can make us feel worse and more, um, more anxious or depressed based on what’s happening in the gut.
Evan Brand: I just sent you one, other paper too, which kind of interesting, talking about antibiotics and how antibiotics are gonna drive up depression and anxiety and talked about treatment with just a single course of antibiotics was associated with a high risk for depression and then also anxiety. So, I’m not saying don’t take them, I mean if you need them to save your life. But I will just say, that’s there’s so many people that have been put on these different medications that affect the gut and so when we’re trying to paint the picture here of what went wrong, why did someone become anxious, it could have been that they went in for a routine dental procedure and they were taking the antibiotics, they screwed up their gut, now they have dysbiosis as you mentioned, this big inflammatory link to the brain. Now, they’ve got this bacterial overgrowth, they simply were using something as preventative medicine, these antibiotics and then boom, now they’ve got this overgrowth. And then as you mentioned these bacteria are pooping poop and then that’s going to make you more anxious, so there was a question that came in about, well, “how much time do probiotics take to work for anxiety?” I mean, that’s a really tough question to answer because what else is going on, are there gut inflammation issues, are there bacterial overgrowth issues. What about Candida problems, I mean, there’s other things we have to factor in, so I wish it were just so easy to say hey take this probiotic in three weeks, you’re gonna be less anxious. I wish that were the case but, I think the answer is it depends.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. One study here, I’m putting the study up on screen, so you guys can see, Anxiety exposure and the risk for depression, anxiety or psychosis, journal of psychiatry 2015. So, you guys can see the abstract and the conclusion down below. Take a look at this study, all right. All right, where is it. Systematic Administration of Curcumin Affect Anxiety-Related Behavior in a rat model. So, it’s interesting. So, what we’re trying to look at here is results suggest that curcumin has anxiety-lytic like effect on biochemicals and behavior. Uh, it may be useful agent to alleviate or treat psychiatric disorders similar to those observed in patients with PTSD. So, what are they saying here? They’re saying in this rat study, giving curcumin actually resolved and significantly had a benefit on anxiety. Now, why is this? Well, because it has natural anti-inflammatory benefits and the postulate is that by reducing inflammation in the brain and in the body that also helps the mood and anxiety. Now, we don’t wanna just rely on the supplement. So, people that are watching this right now, don’t just say hey, I’m saying to fix your anxiety get curcumin. Fix all the foundational things that set the table, that drive inflammation and then once you have the foundation then you can go dig deeper and using specific supplements to reduce inflammation like curcumin, like Boswellia, or frankincense. You can also, there’s systemic enzymes that can be taken away from food. There’s a lot of good higher dose fish oil, ginkgo. These are excellent nutrients that can help drive down inflammation. A lot of the bioflavonoids and some of our lower sugar fruit like berries and quercetin, those kinds of things. And other studies on a handful of blueberries a day can reduce inflammation in the brain to. And we talked about that in the past, so inflammation plays a major role and get the foundation right. Because if you have a lot of dysbiosis but you’re trying to take curcumin to cover up the inflammation, fix the gut stuff first, fix the adrenals and the sympathetic overload first, fix the food and the blood sugar and then you can dive in deeper with extra functional medicine nutritional, uh, tools.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. Good point. And I’ll just say it in another way, which is that you could take all the generic stuff meaning generic natural stuff as you mentioned Boswellia, curcumin, potentially high dose fish oil to reduce inflammation. Maybe you’re gonna lower the anxiety some but you’re still not getting to big root of it which for me was gut infections. I had parasites, I had H. pylori, I had major bacterial overgrowth, I had Candida problems, I had mold problems. All those things were affecting my gut which were affecting my brain so I was having just out of the blue, anxiety, I mean some points, I was panicking, I thought I was dying in some situations. My blood pressure was going crazy for a while, I mean it was all related to these toxin issues and so I encourage people to get some of the labs run so you can figure out what the heck’s going on. The first place to start obviously is gonna be a stool test. So, we run a DNA stool test that you can do at home and you get that back to the lab and then you can get a really work up on what type of infections do you have. Is it just bacteria or do you have parasite? What about your gut inflammation? Have you measured that? Because if you’re anxious and we see high gut inflammation, we gonna go ding ding ding look at the connection there. And then, we mentioned on the Oak test, there’s not GABA but we can do trial runs. I manufacture a chewable version of GABA that we use, it’s pharmaGABA, which is fermented and bioavailable. So, we use that. And if people have a good response to that, then we assumed that they had a low GABA situation. If they take one or two of those and then they feel better then hey we’re pretty happy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also, let me just. That’s very good and so, if you wanna support the show, some of the supplements that we’re gonna recommend we’ll put it down below in the notes section you know recommended supplements. So, Evan has a chewable GABA. I also have a liposomal curcumin. When you’re taking curcumin, you wanna make sure it’s liposomal. So, it has maximal absorption, only about 15% get absorbed,uh, it’s also better absorbed with black pepper as well, but people that have night shade sensitivity that may be problematic. So, if you want curcumin supreme is a liposomal version, we’ll put down below. Put Evan’s recommended products too. Now, interesting study here, when I look at inflammation in the same rat study. When they looked at the administration of curcumin, they actually saw a decrease in cortisol. So, this is serum cortisol here and as they increase the curcumin, you can see the drop in cortisol. And it makes sense because cortisol is an anti-inflammatory, so, the more your inflammation your body has, the more you’re gonna surge cortisol to help reduce the inflammation. The problem is cortisol is catabolic. It’ll break down tissue and so in the long run, you don’t want cortisol out of the balance because it will start breaking up tissue. So, in interesting enough to see that the reduction in cortisol followed by the increase in the amount of curcumin given to the rats. And the increase in, um, improved mode, the decrease in anxiety. So, that’s powerful. So, we wanna look at everything from a root cause. We wanna have all of our foundational tools and our palliative functional medicine, nutritional tools to plug in. And its good data to back it up, so we, you know, we can see, yeah, these things make sense because I always tell patients I’m talking to, what’s the mechanism, what’s the root cause, are we getting to the root cause and are there anything else we can do palliatively to support the healing of the root cause.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Meaning, okay we could do some chewable GABA, we could do some curcumin, or whatever else to try to calm things down, while behind the scenes, we’re working on getting the mold out, fixing the bacterial balance, integrating probiotics, restoring gut flora, bringing in Saccharomyces boulardii to address Candida. All thes things are, I mean, that’s the art of it, right? That’s the fun and the beauty of what we do and it’s just a blast. Let’s hit this question here from Sarah before we wrap it up. She said, “Are there any thoughts on raw milk to help heal the gut if tolerated, ok? There are mixed thoughts with this.” I’ll rant on it really quick. My thought is because I had a lot of issues with dairy, I personally just do butter and I feel best with that. And I would argue that to help heal the gut, we can use all these clinically shown ingredients that don’t use dairy proteins like the zinc, carnosine, the glutamine, the chamomile, the DGL. So, my bias is to go for that. But, what do you think?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have the same as well, um. I don’t do great with raw milk. I get massive diarrhea, massive bloating issues even raw. Now, the benefit of raw milk is, you have all the cream right the homogenization tends to like kind of damage a lot of the globules and then of course pasteurization destroys all the enzymes that help you handle casein and lactose, which is the sugar in the milk better, the caseins, the protein. And so, there’s that right? And so, you tend to had. If you have problems with dairy, you have a better chance of being able to tolerate it with raw milk. Now, even with raw milk, I don’t do it as well, but I do, I don’t tolerate as well but I do tolerate butter and ghee wonderfully because it’s cut out the casein, it’s cut out also the lactose as well. So in general, if you’re more hypoallergenic probably stay away from it, wait till you’re healthy or try it, um, if you’re relatively healthy and you wanna give it a try, sure, but in general, if you’re having immune issues or chronic inflammation issues, probably stay away from it until you get things under the control and then you have a better baseline and then when you try to add it in, then you’ll really be able to know, if you can handle or not because you’ll, you’ll go from feeling good to not and It’ll be quite clear.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Question from Ty, “what’s the first diagnostic tool we can use to determine the state of your microbiome?” uh, typically two things were gonna do, the stool test, the DNA stool test we use at home and something that Justin and I run clinically on pretty much everyone and then the organic acids test is helpful too because we’ll certain bacteria pop up that maybe the stool test missed or vice versa. So, stool and urine at home, those are thing that we can run and they’re incredible valuable tools, so valuable that I almost don’t even want to work with somebody without those data points because at that point you’re just guessing and we prefer to test not guess.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally, now on those tests, we may look at commensal bacteria like Bacteroides and Firmicutes, uh, Bacteroides and Firmicutes, you want essentially, you know good levels of Bacteroides or Firmicutes. If people have high levels of Firmicutes in relation to Bacteroides that could be a problem but that usually is never the problem in and of itself. Usually, there’s dysbiotic bacteria, Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, um, Morganella, right? These are all dysbiotic type of flora that are overgrown, that can throw off a lot of the commensal stuff. So, ideally if we see commensal bacteria off. We want to address the dysbiosis first and then we can use different fibers and prebiotics and probiotics down the road. Once we’ve kind of fixed a lot of the dysbiosis and that kind of help get it back in the balance.
Evan Brand: Man, I tell you half an hour flies but we gotta run and this is something we could do a part two part three on but the big smoking gun for people with anxiety might in my opinion based on suffering for years and years and years of with different issues, it’s the gut, the smoking gun for anxiety, mood issues, depression, fatigue. A lot of this is coming from the gut. You and I have hit upon how B vitamins are made in the gut too, you did a really eloquent explanation on previous podcast about how you’re making the nutrients that fuel the mitochondria, we went pretty deep into that before so that’s an exciting mechanism that I think most people are not talking about they’re putting people on Adderall or other things to try to boost up their mental energy. You gotta look at the gut so I encourage people to get tested. And if you need help, you can reach out clinically. We have a question from, uh, where’d it go, Pelona, “how can I contact you or have an appointment?” So, uh, Dr. Justin Dr. J, he’s available worldwide, so am I. If you want to reach out to him, it’s at justinhealth.com. You can reach out worldwide, phone, facetime, skype, whatever and then for me Evan, evanbrand.com. We’re available for consults and we can send labs to your door, we run those, we get them back to the lab, jump on a follow-up call, review the results and then make you a protocol, get you feeling better as quick as we can.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I’ll put a list of recommended products and recommended, uh, resources for today’s podcast to kind of back up what we’re saying. Also, you can watch the video on screen where we pull up some of the studies and if you guys enjoyed it. Gives us a thumbs up. Put your comments down below. Let us know what you like and what you wanna see improvement on and recommended topics coming up all right. Evan, thanks for everything. evanbrand.com, justinhealth,com We are here to help you guys. Have an awesome day.
Evan Brand: Take care though.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-gut-anxiety-connection-podcast-352
Recommended Products:
International DSL GI Map Genetic Stool Test
Genova Organix Dysbiosis Profile
Signs and Solution for Gut Inflammation and Leaky Gut | Podcast #351
In this video, Dr. J and Evan stress the importance of what you eat and how it impacts the rest of your body. However, what you might not realize is how your food is digested in your body, and when it gets inflamed and leaky, how do you fix it?
A lack of digestive enzymes can cause leaky gut syndrome—another unfortunate result of chronic inflammation in the digestive system. Many culprits cause leaky gut, including stress, medications, poor food choices or quality, alcohol, cigarettes, and even hormone changes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
1:08 – Poor Gut Health Connection to Virus.
4:31 – What is the role of bile movement and production?
11:16 – The influence of gut michrobiota on Inflammation and Insulin Resistance
19:29 – General recommendations on carbohydrates and for a healthier gut
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hi! Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the signs and solutions of gut inflammation and gut permeability or leaky gut for short. Really exciting topic. We see it a lot in our patients every single day. Evan, how are we doing today man?
Evan Brand: Hey. I’m doing really well. I can’t remember if we covered this on the podcast or not, this specific study but there was a paper that came out all about leaky gut and worsen outcomes with the virus and so people could put in the, you know, what virus in PubMed and leaky gut and we’re finding that a lot of people with leaky gut that’s actually one of the precursors and that’s what’s leading to worse outcomes so this is more important, It’s always important but this is more important now because we know that there’s a massive link and I’ll actually pull this up here and I’ll show you this, American Society for Microbiology, they did this. Did we talk about this yet or not?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s talk about it. Let’s go ahead.
Evan Brand: This particular paper. Let’s bring it up there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let me check here. Oh yeah. Let me add it on. Go ahead.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, there we go. So, poor gut health is connected to severe blank, new research shows and long story short, you can go into this microbiology article but long story short they actually show a picture too. Let me see if I can get to that picture. Here we go. That was the picture. I think, we already showed this picture but forgive me and people listening on audio. Basically, we’re just showing that viral particles with a leaky gut are gonna be able to get into the circulation and that’s gonna increase your inflammatory response so the real goal of today is making sure that your gut is in good shape because therefore you’re not gonna have leakage into your circulation. You’re gonna be far far better if you have that healthy gut barrier. So, that was really kind of the spark notes of that but that’s like a 19 pages paper that you can dive into and many people I think have thought of leaky gut as kind of trendy topic that only people like you and I talk about but this is finally, actually getting into the mainstream. So, I hope gastroenterologists are gonna realize the importance of addressing the gut and I hope they actually start taking it more seriously. Right now, it’s just antibiotics that’s really the only thing that gastroenterologists do for gut, right? I mean steroids maybe and immune modulating drugs in the case of like, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s but beyond that there’s not really much leaky gut conversation going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. There’s not and again, really, a leaky gut has an effect, right? Or we’ll call it gut permeability, right? If you go on PubMed, a leaky gut is like a slung. If you want to really find it, you want to look at, you know, gastrointestinal permeability, right? These are gonna be the big things, it’s the tight junctions, the epithelial cells and the small intestine, they start to come apart like my fingers here interlocked like I’m saying a prayer, they come apart and then you can see lipopolysaccharides undigested food particulate can slip out. So, this is, um, this is part of the major, major mechanism. Now, with gut permeability, it’s an effect not a cause so I always tell patients, we don’t go in and treat leaky gut, we treat the corresponding vectors of inflammation that drive gut permeability so that could be food allergens, that could be immune stressors like virus, parasites, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, general dysbiosis, poor digestion, antibiotic exposure, creating rebound overgrowth, fungal overgrowth, you know, just poor digestion, lots of stress, increased sympathetic tone and adrenal stress, that’s shutting down the digestive system and making gut permeability more probable. So, these are the big vectors so we always wanna draw a line. What’s the root cause and what’s the effect and gut permeability is in the effect not necessarily a cause.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of, even advertisements now on social media for all these leaky gut healing formulas and that kind of stuff and it always has the word heal involved but you could take as much glutamine and whatever else you want. You could go into an elemental diet and all of that. It’s not gonna get rid of these big root causes and certainly for me, I tried some gut support but ultimately it was resolving my parasite infections. That was the most important thing for me and so, you can test for this. This is not an uncommon situation; you and I personally and clinically see parasites every single week. So, when you hear this idea of like, oh, it’s a third world country problem, you haven’t traveled to Mexico or anything like that. That’s just crap, I see it all the time and I had them and I was not out of the country and I had multiple parasite infections and then that affects your bowel flow, right? Can we talk about the bowel for a minute, what’s the role there, because you and I talked about how you have to have adequate bile to act as sort of a natural antimicrobial but how is this happening. What do you think are the big driving factors for why bile production is just not good?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, first off, we look at the domino rally of digestion. The first thing that has to happen is good, nice aesthetic pH in the stomach. So, we need adequate HCl in the stomach, hydrochloric acid that lowers the pH and again, lower pH tends to have an antimicrobial effect, right? So, if we have to bring the pH down a little bit, that makes it harder for bugs to grow and that pH is also responsible for activating a lot of proteolytic enzymes in our stomach so if we have a good pH, we activate our enzymes, that starts the digestive cascade, we make it harder for bugs to grow and then once all that kind that mixed up food and enzymes and acids and all the stuff in our stomach is all mixed up. That’s called chyme, C-H-Y-M-E, that gets released into our small intestine, our pancreas then produces a bunch of bicarbonate to bring that pH back up to around neutral but that pH being nice and acidic, it triggers bicarbonate and then it also triggers cholecystokinin production, CCK, which then causes the gallbladder to contract so then you get a whole bunch of bile that comes out, you get a bunch of bicarbonate that comes out of the pancreas but then you’re also gonna get a bunch of lipase and proteolytic enzymes, trypsin, chymotrypsin lipase, lipolytic enzymes is coming out of the pancreas as well. So then, you bring the pH back up, you add the fat digestive enzymes, the proteolytic enzymes and then you also stimulate that bile production which then emulsifies that fat. Think of emulsification as you have a nice greasy pan where you cook some bacon on, right? Throw under water, you feel the fat on the pan, throw some dawn soap on there, it emulsifies it. It breaks that up so then you can get it all out the intestinal tract and be able to absorb it, carry on, mycells and be able to use it for lipid bilayer, hair, skin, nail, energy all that stuff. Prostaglandins.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. And though bile is produced by your liver but it’s stored in your gallbladder so people that have had their gallbladders removed which is a very common surgery, a lot of surgeons are very happy to remove gallbladders, I think in many cases, they may have been saved with fixing these other upstream issues but, well, once it’s gone, it’s gone. So, people listening that have no gallbladder, you have to take that into consideration. There was a study here in 2018, it was in the annals of gastroenterology, it found that poor bile flow can contribute to the development of inflammatory bowel disease. So, you’re really setting yourself up and find all the time with people clinically when they come in, they’ve had gallbladder removal, we see a lot of issues, we see massive bacterial overgrowth problems in these people and I think that’s partly due to not having enough bile being stored anymore like you and I have talked about it before, I think you said it was a 10x concentration in the gallbladder, is that right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 10 to 15x. Yeah.
Evan Brand: So, you’re missing out on that when you have just liver production, you don’t have that storage facility. I mean you have some but just nowhere near what you would have had if you had your gallbladder. So, please. Try to save your gallbladder. You got to fix these upstream infections because that’s gonna be and get off proton pump inhibitors with the help of your doctor if you can because we know that, that suppression of stomach acid is gonna lead to the overgrowth which then fuels these downstream issues to not happen the domino effect, it literally gets stopped or prevented by the PPIs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And so, we need good, think of bile, it’s an emulsifier, it breaks down fat, it’s also an antimicrobial and so we create antimicrobial environments by having good, nice, low pH by having good enzyme and acid levels that also helps and then also by having good bile output and plus the longer that food sits there and rots and putrefies because we are not breaking it down into its constituent parts, right? Then it’s gonna create future petrification, fermentation, and rancidification. Essentially proteins and fats and carbs are rotting, right? Then you can get gas and bloating and that just creates this incredible breeding ground for bugs to grow. It’s like you can have this beautiful home that you take care of but if you leave the garbage in there like, a week too long it’s gonna get like, stinky and then you’re gonna get a whole bunch of bugs attracted to it, right? Same kind of thing in our microbiome so it’s really important that we stay on top of, you know, those good health practices.
Evan Brand: Let’s hit the symptoms and signs and symptoms because people know most of the gut ones but there are some that you and I find clinically that maybe people wouldn’t think are a gut symptom, right? It might not manifest outside of that so we can cover the stuff like unusual color texture, smell, messy poops, you have floating stool. You have maybe alternating diarrhea, constipation, bloating, gut pain. But, what about like, skin issues and what about anxiety and depression and hormonal imbalances and brain fog. I mean, you and I have seen, we lost count how many times we’ve seen cases where we simply just fix the gut and all the sudden, this depression is lifted. I had one client named Miranda, who she had been depressed for, she said quote 20 plus years, all we did is do a gut protocol. I gave her no antidepressant herbs. We simply just did a gut protocol and when we did a six-week follow-up, she said her depression was 90% better and when she said 90% better, she didn’t even sound too excited and I said, are you realizing what you just said to me. You’ve been depressed for over 20 years and you’re 90% less depressed in six weeks of doing a gut protocol like do you realize how profound that is and she goes oh yeah, I guess that is amazing. Thank you. And, I think people, they get so used to feeling a certain way that when the clouds lift. They’re almost not even ready for it but depression, anxiety, I would put at the top of the list for mental health issues connected to these gut inflammation problems, I will tell you. And, you and I discussed this I remember calling you one-night years ago is probably like coming up on be six, seven years ago was like 2014, 2015 and I was like man, I’m having like a panic episode or something and this was when I was living down in Austin and it was H. pylori. It was driving that because as soon as I cleared the H. pylori, all those weird episodes of panic completely disappeared and I’ve seen that more than just the n equals one, me, I’ve seen it many, many times. So, if you have anxiety problems, you go to the psychiatrist. They’re not going to suggest you have gut infections but that’s something you need to be thinking about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Yep. 110% for sure. Anything else you want to add in that topic?
Evan Brand: If you’ve got mental health issues, look in the gut maybe even look in the gut before you look in the brain. Now, obviously, we’re gonna be doing organic acid testing and other things to look at neurotransmitters so we’re gonna check out dopamine, serotonin. We’re gonna look at what’s called quinolinic acid so we can look for actual brain inflammation or brain toxicity related to gut infections like sometimes Clostridia, we’ll see will drive up the quinolinic acid markers but we still have to fix the gut. So, if you have a family member, they’re anxious, they’re depressed, they’re fatigued. We’ve seen a massive link between chronic fatigue and gut infection. So, there’s another big one that people may not recognize, the gastro doc may not suggest your chronic fatigue is from a gut infection but it certainly can be skin issues as well. My skin was a wreck years ago. I had major acne even though my diet was clean. It was my gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. I also wanna highlight one other kind of variable here. I think it’s really important. I’m gonna pull this on screen here. I think this is really interesting. So, an interesting abstract here and it’s looking at the influences on the gut microbiome on inflammation and insulin resistance so this is interesting because we talk about insulin resistance, right? Consuming too much carbohydrate and refined sugar. All carbohydrates get broken down typically into glucose, fructose or a combination of the two, right? And so, the more sugar that gets released into our bloodstream that gets broken down whether from refined sugar, sucrose which is fructose in glucose, high fructose corn syrup is fructose in glucose 55, 45 concentration and then of course we have starches which get primarily broken down into glucose and then we have fruit which is more on the fructose side. These things all have an impact on our blood sugar and the more insulin resistant we become, we, it drives inflammation. It’s hard to utilize these fuel resources and these fuel sources to get deposited in our fat because our muscles don’t have the ability to store it. our liver loses the ability to store it. We don’t have the activity level. We don’t have the mitochondria stimulation to burn it so we store it as fat. Now, this article is interesting. It talks about obesity as the main condition that’s correlated with the appearance of insulin resistance. Think of this as when your cells get numb to insulin. Now, this is on screen here. People that are looking if you’ve got mental health issues on the audio version, we’ll put the link below for the whole video. Whole bacteria, their byproducts and metabolites undergo increased translocation through the gut epithelium. Translocate, let me give you the translation on that. Here’s your gut. Leaky gut happens, right? Where it talks about gut permeability and things start to translocate meaning move from the inside of the gut back into the bloodstream, right? So, it translocates through the gut epithelium into circulation due to the degradation of tight junctions. This is a leaky gut, right? Here. And it increases intestinal permeability that culminates in inflammation and insulin resistance. So, what this says is the inflammation caused by gut permeability caused by gut permeability caused by lack of enzymes, bile, food allergens, all the gut microbiome issues can actually drive inflammation and insulin resistance. Now, it makes it harder for your mitochondria to generate fuel because you’re not able to get that fuel into your cell and you start to become more of a sugar burner. It’s very difficult to burn fat when you have high levels of insulin, Very, very difficult. So, several strategies focusing on modulation of the gut microbiome using antibiotics, again, we would use antimicrobial herbs, probiotics and probiotic fibers are being experimentally used to um, in order to reduce intestinal permeability, increase the production of short chain fatty acids. Guess what, things like butyric acid, medium chain triglycerides. Those are all very helpful. And again, this helps promote insulin sensitivity and counteracts the inflammation. So, really, really important here. This study, influence of gut microbiome on subclinical inflammation here and this is the 2000, see what’s the study, 2013 study so we’ve known this stuff out for a long time here that the gut microbiome plays a major role on your blood sugar, blood sugar handling and if you’re a diabetic or someone with insulin problems, you need to be looking at the gut. Yeah. look at the diet, look at, you know, getting your diet and your macros in order, make sure your food quality is good and then look at really getting the microbiome dialed in to really help. That could be a missing piece of the puzzle for people that have really changed their diet but not quite gotten the metabolic benefits of losing weight yet.
Evan Brand: Wow. That’s a good point. You know, when I think back, when I had gut infections, my blood sugar was definitely not as good. I mean, 2 to 3 hours is as far as I could go without having to eat a meal. Now, I could fast all morning and not eat till 1 pm and I’m perfectly fine. I think there is an adrenal component too. I think I’m in a lot better place with that but I can tell you that certainly after mixing my gut, my blood sugar and blood stability is much better. So, I think you’re onto something with that paper and how people that even have gone paleo or animal based or keto. That still has issues with blood sugar regulation. That could be a sign of gut issues and I think even If diet dialed in in some cases what like you’re showing here, there could still be issues with the blood sugar. So, sometimes, it’s portrayed as like just fix your diet and everything else falls into place but you have to consider these other factors and also, I’ll throw in at the, you know, 11th hour here, mycotoxins, we know that mold toxins significantly affect the gut barrier and create a leaky gut. They damage the mitochondria, and we know that certain mycotoxins promote the overgrowth of bacteria like Clostridia and Candida. In fact, the lab will tell you that on paper, for example mycophenolic acid, it’s a very common mycotoxin that we see that comes from water damaged buildings. You breathe that in, that’ll then affect the gut and allow the overgrowth. So, if you’re just treating the antimicrobial herbs or fungal herbs and you’ve missed this giant mold exposure that can still affect the gut, still affect the brain and people won’t get fully better. So, that’s really the beauty of what we do is we try to work through all these puzzle pieces and help you because you could have this guy who says everything is gut and you go all the way down this gut rabbit hole and not get fully better or you go all the way down this insulin resistance rabbit hole and you still miss the smoking gun. You got the leaking dishwasher and your whole kitchen cabinetry. We had a woman in Texas last week, her dishwasher apparently leaking for years. Her entire kitchen has to be replaced now. She’s looking at 25k, just to replace her whole kitchen and she’s been to 10 doctors, 10 practitioners and nobody’s figured it out and I’m not trying to toot my own but I’ll just say I kept suspecting something because she said that she would always feel weird while she was washing dishes at her sink. She would get a little bit of a headache, feel a little bit sick to her stomach, said, ‘huh, is it possible that something’s leaking?’ and then boom brought in the remediator and they found it. There was a leaking dishwasher black mold everywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Mold plays a major role in stressing out the immune system. It can create gut permeability within itself and then obviously drives the insulin problems. And also, people that eat this type of diet, I mean, it’s natural when you have microbiome issues to create a bunch of sugar because these foods are from an evolutionary standpoint, things that had a lot of sugar in it ended up having a lot of nutrients in it, right? Oh, a bunch of berries, some honey, right? And they were very rare in society. It was hard to find a lot of these things. Even fruit, you know, back then, tended to be a lot more sour and bitter and we’ve kind of hybridized and you know selectively grown fruits that tend to be sweeter and more, uh, and more plump and luscious now they taste. And so, we have sweeter fruits today and so it’s natural for people to want to crave all the crap that feeds the bad bugs because the bugs are producing chemicals to make you crave these foods. So, you have to be educated and understand that these foods, even though you’re craving them, you need to like not listen to those cravings sometimes and really shift your gut in it. If it shifts your macronutrients in a way to starve out some of these bugs, it can make a big difference.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. I mean, a lot of fruits hybridize now too as you mentioned to be sweeter, so like a strawberry. I’ve seen strawberries as big as my hand sometimes, like, ‘God’, you know wild strawberries, they’re tiny. I mean they’re like the size of a fingernail, if you’ve ever seen wild strawberries out in the yard, very tiny and definitely not anywhere as sweet as the other ones. So, when you hear people talk about fruit, like our modern fruit, like you said it’s not really, it’s more like candy with some, it’s like natural candy as opposed to the more ancient fruits so If I can find like some heirloom apples and that kind of stuff, I’m totally into it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And you know, my general recommendation with carbohydrates, just make sure you earn it, make sure you’re not in a place where you’re inactive and try to get some activity because sugar goes three directions: gets stored in the liver and muscle, okay, so, if you’re working out, you’re always draining that muscle every day, you have a storage reservoir for it a little bit in the liver; It goes to fat or it stays in the bloodstream and gets burned up by the mitochondria essentially. It gets burnt up mitochondria-wise by the muscles etc. So, it’s gonna go either stored, burnt, you know, it’ll stay in the bloodstream but burnt up by the muscles of mitochondria or it gets converted to fat. So, if you’re doing things that allow you to utilize the glucose in that bloodstream, not as big of a deal, but that’s what you really have to look at what activity level is and you have to work with your functional medicine doctor about dialing in those macros and some people they need to starve out certain macros especially the fermentable carbohydrates and a lot of the inflammatory foods especially grains, legumes, dairy. Those things are really, can be, drive a lot of inflammation and that can keep your sympathetic nervous system and your immune system on high alert which just drains a lot of energy from you. Food allergens can make you fat and they can drain energy from you. Yeah. Seeds too. You know, I cut out almond seeds, nut seeds. Yep, even some eggs too for sure.
Evan Brand: I cut out eggs for her while greens, I mean, some people are way overdoing it on the leafy greens. I can’t tell you the last time I ate a salad. I don’t really care. I don’t do leafy greens. I used to but, you know, I see way too many people doing these like kale smoothies. I had a lady doing like a pound of kale a day. Oxalates were off the chart. We know those affect the gut barrier too so there are downsides to plants.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, it’s all about, you know, how you tolerate it, can you eat and feel good afterwards, how does your stool look? Do you see a bunch of undigested particulates? If so, you may want to work on just chewing your food up more. Taking some enzymes. See if that helps or sauteed it a little bit and see if that moves a needle. Again, there’s almost always a way, we can adjust things so it works but everyone’s a little different.
Evan Brand: If you need further help, you can reach out to Dr. Justin at his website, justinhealth.com. Now, we do worldwide consultations, phone, facetime, skype, whatever it can connect to, we do it. Lab tests are sent around the world. It’s awesome we have distributors to work with. We can get these things to your door. We sign off on it and get you rolling so we can investigate and look deeper. So, justinhealth and then for me Evan Brand, it’s evanbrand.com. You can reach out and we’re both happy to help you. We love what we do. We’re very blessed for the opportunity to be in the trenches. We’re always improving our own health. We work on our families, our children. We work on everybody around us. We’re always trying to improve them and to be able to do it clinically too is just great. We learn so much from you all and we like to be the shining light in a world of darkness where people have been to countless practitioners and the stuff that to you and I is just common everyday conversation, functional medicine stuff. This stuff to some people is like wow why has nobody ever mentioned that to me before. And for us, it’s like, oh yeah uh-uh, we do it with everyone. So, we look forward to helping you uncover your root causes if you have gut inflammation, what’s going on. There’s something under it so don’t give up, keep pushing forward and please reach out if you need help. We’d love to help you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Evanbrand.com, work at Evan. Dr. J, justinhealth.com, works with me. We are here with you guys. And, put your comments down below. Let us know the different things that you guys are applying, what’s working, what’s not and if you get overwhelmed listening to this. Try to take at least one action item out of it. I would say action items from a supplement standpoint. We’ll put our recommended supplements down below. We have different hydrochloric acid and enzyme support products that we’ll put down below for links. That’s always low hanging fruit. Again, diet wise, you know, a good autoimmune, lower fodmap diet can really be a good starting point and I would say for liver gallbladder, you know, we have our different formulas. I have one called liver supreme and again some of the hallmark nutrients in these products are gonna be bile, phosphatidylcholine, taurine, some products will have things like Tudca, which can be very helpful for biliary flow. Beetroot can be really helpful. if I didn’t mention Ox Biles. These are all maybe some milk thistle, very supportive for liver, gallbladder function, liver-gallbladder flow. So, very beneficial, we’ll put the links down below so if you guys enjoy the information and you wanna take action feel free to take a look at some of those links and support the show by grabbing some of those products and Evan will have his links down below as well. Anything else, Evan, you wanna add?
Evan Brand: I think, I said, we give people the links. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast if you’re listening on apple that’s probably where most people find us if you’re looking up. Justin’s show, make sure you subscribe there or my show, Evan Brand. We don’t care how you’re listening, you know, obviously we cross pollinate. We put these on each other so make sure you’re subscribed to both of them so you don’t miss it and we appreciate it. give us a review too. I think we should probably do a giveaway. I know some people giveaways so we can give away a book or you know free supplement or something but, in the meantime, give us a five star review on apple, we would love it. That’s how we stay up in the rankings so that we can actually share true functional medicine education to the masses because right now there’s still a lot of people that are in the top charts just theory. They’re not clinicians. They’re not in the trenches every day, all day, I mean we look at an exhaustive amount of lab testing that helps us to really dial the stuff we’re saying in. We then sprinkle in some studies and we stay up on the research but you could keep your head in the research all day and totally miss what actually works and it’s all about what actually gets people the results. So, keep that in mind and make sure you subscribe. Give us a review on Apple, we’ll love you forever. Thank you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110% All the links will be below for you guys. Alright, thanks a lot. Evan, great chat with you man. Have a good one. Bye everyone.
Evan Brand: You too, take it easy. Bye-bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/signs-and-solution-for-gut-inflammation-and-leaky-gut-podcast-351
Recommended products:
The Gut Lung Connection – Your Gut Health Can Affect Your Breathing | Podcast #348
In this podcast, Dr. J and Evan talk about the connection between the gut and respiratory system. You might not immediately associate gastrointestinal problems with lung disease, but the two frequently coexist. The tissue and glands in your lungs and intestines are the same and react to the same triggers.
At first look, the operations of your digestive and respiratory systems appear to be somewhat dissimilar. Though, the systems are connected in a variety of ways. The digestive tract can function because of the outcomes of respiratory action and vice versa. In addition, the systems collaborate to deliver energy to the body’s cells.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
3:08: Key factors of lung inflammation
7:48: Probiotics as regulator of immune response
11:56: Foods major role in gut-breathing connection
20:17: Available Testing and Herbs
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the gut, lung connection. This is really important. Lung health today, it is very important. We have to get good oxygenation. We have to make sure that inflammation from different microbes in the environment, whether it’s allergen or infections, we have to make sure that we’re able to still breath and transfer oxygen even with those stressors in the environment. We’re gonna talk about how the gut is connected to that, how inflammation in the gut can be bi-directional and can affect the lungs as well. So, let’s dive in. Evan, how are we doing today man?
Evan Brand: Hey. Doing really well. Starting this thing off, I was looking at some papers this morning. I told you this was just too important for us not to cover so in the journal of immunology from this year 2021, I’m just gonna read you one, really, really big thing here which is the fact that intestinal dysbiosis is associated with increased mortality in respiratory infections due to an exacerbated inflammation and decreased regulatory or anti-inflammatory mechanisms in the lungs and the gut and they say here, pointing to this important relationship. So, this was actually the first time I’ve heard. You and I have been talking about stuff for years, I mean, we’ve done between us both close to, you know, thousand podcasts and we’ve been talking about gut-brain axis, we’ve talked about the gut-thyroid axis, we’ve talked about the gut-skin axis but I don’t think we’ve ever hit on the gut-lung axis and so this paper is just really reviewing the literature on this and it’s absolutely incredible because guess what, the beneficial bacteria helps respiratory infections and there’s 30 pages, if not more, I haven’t even had a chance to review all the papers on this but there are countless, countless papers now and pages of papers showing that the probiotics actually can reduce the inflammation in the lungs, however, if you’re in the hospital or if you were in the unfortunate situation of being in a critical care unit, an ICU, you’re gonna be getting antibiotics more than likely and you’re not gonna be getting probiotics. And, we could go into the mechanisms but I think the mechanisms will probably bore people but long story short, there’s an increase natural killer cells and obviously decreases in inflammatory cytokines and there’s many, many other mechanisms but long story short, probiotics are absolutely amazing and we know that the antibiotics that you’re gonna get in these situations are gonna do the exact opposite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Here’s a great study here. I know, we’re kind of referring to some of it. I’m going to share my screen here with the audience so everyone can see it, all right. Let me know if you guys can see this here. I’m gonna pull this up here so you guys can see it. All right. Can you see my screen there? All right. Awesome. All right. So, off the bat right, one of the key driving factors of lung inflammation is gonna be dysbiosis, right? Why is this? A lot of this has to do with the fact that bacteria, 80% of the immune system is in the intestinal tract, right? You have some in the GALT, which is gonna be the gastric associated lymphoid tissue, that’s in the stomach, right here. And then, you have the MALT, which is the mucosal associated lymphoid tissue. So, the mucosal, uh, that’d be the intestine. So, the small intestines in the middle here and then the peripheral on the outside is the large intestine. And so, a couple of the big things that you’re gonna see is when the immune system is overactive. One of the first things the immune system does is when it’s overactive, it actually creates inflammation, right? Part of inflammation is vasodilation so it can bring the immune system, the immune cells there to help fight it off. Think if you get bumped in the eye. What happens to the eye? It gets swollen, right? And so, you create this low-grade inflammation which is part of how the immune system works. The problem is, you know, most that inflammation that we’re seeing in people, it’s not an oops, I broke my elbow, it’s gone in a day or two, it’s a chronic low-grade inflammation and so you can see, um, when we add in things like probiotics over here, right, probiotics do a bunch of different things, they regulate the Th1, the Th2 immune cells, right? So, Th1, Th2, right, so that’s gonna be the natural killer cells on the Th1 side versus the antibodies on the other side and so, we have this balance between helper natural killer on the one and we have the antibodies on the two. So, we have this good balance and if they have it out of killer, like, let’s say we have higher Th2, you may see more allergies and things like that which can obviously stress out the lungs and obviously if we have some kind of infection in the lungs, we want good Th1 modulation because if the Th2 is really high, the Th1, those natural killer cells are gonna be lower. And so, you can see, obviously, it’s gonna express several viral defense genes. It inhibits various cytokines and chemokines so the chance of you having, um, what’s that, what’s the expression they call it here, it’s the inflammation after a virus kind of comes in and ravages the lungs
Evan Brand: Like the cytokine storm
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Cytokine storm and so this really helps modulate the imbalance in cytokines after the fact, right? And obviously, it’s gonna modulate immunoglobulins, that’s your antibodies, your IgG, IgA, IgM, IgG and then to modulate your innate and adaptive immune system and obviously it’s gonna help with the allergenic anti-allergenic property, so that’s gonna be a Th2 stimulator. So, you can see, it’s gonna really help modulate this here. And again, this article doesn’t even really address it but if we don’t have good gut absorption of let’s say of vitamin A or vitamin C or vitamin D, right, if we don’t have good absorption in the gut then obviously all those nutrients play a major role in modulating the immune system too. Any comments on that, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. So, I’ll take it a step further. We see all sorts of dysbiosis, bacterial overgrowth, Candida, parasites, worms, gut inflammation coming from the diet. You alluded to the malabsorption. So, let’s say, you’re giving someone X amount of zinc, let’s say you’re giving someone X amount of quercetin and vitamin D and vitamin C and you’re thinking that you’ve got a good protocol, well, we talk about this all the time. It’s not really about what you eat or what you take, it’s about what do you actually digest, what do you absorb and what do you assimilate from that so the problem is I have first-hand experience now with some really, really intense medical cases, we’ll just leave it at that for now. And, this particular person has been getting vitamin C in a crushed-up tablet form where in reality, we should be getting IV vitamin C. So, it’s not just about what you get, it’s how you get it, it’s how much you get it, it’s how much what you get from what you’re taking. And, there’s a lot of issues and if you say you’re getting 2 grams orally in a crushed-up low-quality form, we know that Vitamin C. In general, we see it low all the time on organic acids testing. Maybe, you’re getting a tenth of that so you’re really just gonna get the therapeutic amount so a lot of people I find are either being fairy dusted or fairy dusting themselves because they’re putting so much hope into the products they’re taking and they’re just not getting much from that due to these underlying issues with the gut. And, you and I have beat the drum on the gut for freaking 10 plus years and we’re still having to beat the drum on the gut but I hope that you feel as good as I do about all the work we’ve done because we know that everything, we’re doing with the gut is improving people’s responses so that if they do get exposed to something, they gonna have a much, much healthier, better response to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. I want to show one more article up here if you don’t mind. We’re trying to incorporate some of these new systems here so people can kind of see what’s happening with some of the articles that we’re looking at while we go live. I think it should be helpful. All right, there’s one thing I wanted to post here. So, we’re looking at different infectious stress on the lungs and what’s happening but look at what’s happening with probiotics, right? Probiotics are having an effect on modulating TNF alpha, Interleukin-6, it’s having also effects on modulating over here, your CD4 cells, these are your natural helper cells. Probiotics, actually, have a major role in modulating this whole immune response and so, you know, I think one of the best things you can do if you have poor gut health out of the gates here is potentially adding in some probiotics, uh, maybe adding in some fermented foods as long as you are getting bloated or gassy. Now, some people that have SIBO, these things may make it worse and so if you’re one of those people that probably won’t be the best thing but if you’re trying to be more in preventative mode, we probably want to get some of this dysbiosis under control and work on building up good bacteria after the fact, kind of my general analogy is you get your car washed before you get it waxed. You go and throw down seeds only after you’ve done the weeding in your lawn. Anything else you wanna add, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Except for like in acute situation, you might have to change the order of operations, you might have to go hardcore in it maybe some bloating, some burping, some gas, some kind of reaction, you know, you gotta make a pros and a cons list, right? There’s always a risk benefit analysis and those short-term effects from a probiotic if it were in the wrong order per se are not gonna be a huge deal, long-term.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely. Let me just kind of, all right, good, so I think that’s really good. So, first thing I wanted to add on top of that is we know gut permeability is a major stress on the immune system because you’re allowing undigested food particulate potentially or potentially like endotoxins which are like the outer shell of the bad bacteria, potentially even mycotoxins from fungus or mold, right? These things affect gut permeability. When the gut is more permeable, that allows more foreign antigens, think of antigens as like foreign proteins, right, so you could put bacteria, viruses, food, all in that kind of anagen category. It exposes more things to the immune system and the more you expose bigger chunks of things to the immune system, the more responsive the immune system will be. And so, ideally, we don’t want to poke the bear, right? Think of it like, gut permeability is poking that sleeping bear and we don’t want to over stimulate that and create immune responses unless we really need to.
Evan Brand: Yeah. You know, what’s crazy too, this, I mean, we’ve seen so many things with obesity and you know worse outcomes and diseases and you know. I went to the restaurant yesterday, I got some delicious chicken wings, some grilled chicken wings and I look around and everyone, this is on a Sunday, everyone’s drinking mimosas and bloody Mary’s and whatever else and the majority of the people are obese and they’re getting pretzels and nacho cheese and then they get donut holes delivered to their table and then they get a sandwich with like six pieces of bread and the cheese is going off the sandwich and then they go and get chocolate cake afterwards. It’s like, my goodness, just imagine how much better we could be if people just had chicken wings like me for lunch. I didn’t have donuts, I didn’t have queso, I didn’t have freaking pretzel, I didn’t have bloody Mary, like, come on. People, it’s like, they don’t care about their health until they are forced to care about their health but by the time you get to that point it’s already too late so I guess my little rant here is just, I really want people to start taking their health seriously now. Stop waiting until you’re at rock bottom before you decide you wanna change things. Use this information that Dr. J and I are providing and implement it now, like, people listen, listen, listen and then the implementation is just not there. I really hope people implement the stuff you and I talked about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:100%. So, I mean, out of the gate, I mean, of course, you know, you have caught people on a bad day, maybe they’re 90%, you know good and 10% off and you caught them on their cheat day, right? But odds are that’s probably not the case but we have patients who are really good and may have a bad day every now and then. And so, hey fine, if you’re doing great and you’re on point and you’re in great health and you want to cheat every now and then, I always recommend trying to choose the least damaging cheat possible, right? That probably isn’t the best example of that but in general, food plays a major role, right? Because food’s gonna have nutrients to run your immune system, right? Our fat-soluble vitamins, our antioxidants, you know zinc, magnesium, selenium, all play major roles with the immune system. Our antibodies are made from proteins so if you’re not getting and digesting good protein, you’re not gonna be able to make good antibodies for your Th2 immune response and then obviously, if you’re eating inflammatory food, the more omega-6, the more you stimulate your prostaglandin E2, that’s more the side inflammatory side, the more you’re gonna have unprovoked immune responses and you’re just gonna be chronically inflamed and then you may have this cytokine storm we talked about because you don’t have good balance to your immune system and so, also, on top of that, right, we know how much carbohydrates, especially refined processed carbohydrate. It feeds a lot of bad bugs. So, if you have a lot of fungus overgrowth, yeast overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, these bugs prefer refined processed foods, right? It’s gonna just be easier to digest, easier to feed them and so you’re gonna create overgrowths like that. And these bad bugs, obviously, produce other types of toxins in your body, right? Bad bugs eat your nutrients and poop. And then, instead, versus eating your poop and producing nutrients, right? Bad bugs take the nutrients you’re eating and they’ll produce more toxins and endotoxins and different metabolites, lithocholic acid, etc., versus producing B vitamins, producing vitamin K, producing different beneficial acids that prevent the colon from overgrowing, right? Probiotics, acidophilus, literally, translates to acid loving and so good probiotics actually produce and lower the pH in the intestinal tract which actually makes it harder for bad bugs to grow, right? Bugs tend to prefer an alkaline type of environment to actually grow in the lower intestines.
Evan Brand: That’s a great point. I don’t think many people know that about acidophilus. I’m glad you broke that simply for people that you actually want lower pH environment because that’s not really a place for these pathogens to thrive versus when you’re on proton pump inhibitors, for example, acid blocking medications or if you’ve got an H. pylori infection, you’re gonna have that higher pH, you’re gonna have that more alkaline gut and then that’s where things really get into trouble, I mean you and I, I think we’ve done a whole podcast on this but the brief spark notes are lower stomach acid, age, stress, not chewing your food, that’s gonna increase malabsorption and feed the bugs too. So, this once again goes back to the same thing and we’ve said 100 times you get your gut tested. Figure out if you’ve got this overgrowth going on. Don’t wait until you’re in a critical situation. We got to get your gut fix now. Think of working on your gut as preventative medicine. How revolutionary is that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And then also, when you consume too much carbohydrate, we talked about how you’re gonna feed the bad bug. We talked about what the bad bugs do in regards to impeding nutrients, adding more toxins, pooping poop, right? There was one more thing I wanted to kind of highlight on that realm, we talked about the gut permeability and the overstimulating immune system. Also, high levels of carbohydrates, glucose looks very similar molecularly to vitamin C and so you have these macrophages, little Pac men and Pac women that go along in the lymphatic system and in your bloodstream. They gobble up bacteria, gobble up viruses, gobble up crud.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also, high levels of carbohydrates, glucose look very similar molecularly to vitamin C, and so you have these macrophages. These little pacmen and pacwomen that go along in the lymphatic system and in your bloodstream. They gobble up bacteria, gobble up viruses, gobble up crud. Vitamin C kind of docks on that macrophage and and kind of supercharges the macrophage so it can gobble things up more. Guess what glucose can actually come in there, and docks on that macrophage, and it can decrease the macrophages’ ability to gobble things up. Now in literature, the literature logs to make things confusing, so there’s kind of like two sets of language. There’s like the lay language right where we’re kind of communicating it in a way that everyone gets it. In the literature, they’ll call it the phagocyte index, right P-H-A-G-O-C-Y-T-E-S, so phagocyte with a P-H, right? So go on PubMed, type in phagocyte index and you’ll see, that’s the macrophage. The ability to gobble critters and bacteria up, and so if we decrease the phagocyte index, it’s going to be just they’re not going to be able to gobble things up as much, and so this is really important and so high levels of glucose, high levels of insulin, which, again, glucose and fructose stimulate insulin production, right? And so, you’re going to have. Less gobbling of your pacman and pacwomen in your bloodstream to be able to control these critters.
Evan Brand: That’s crazy. Ok, so you’re saying if I’m in the hospital and the nurse or whoever brings me my lunch, which I saw when my grandmother was in the hospital couple years ago for heart issues. You know what they brought her for lunch? It was this little like packet of peanut butter which was corn syrup and like peanuts. And then I think it was probably a piece or two of bread and then it was a little Jelly packet. And guess what that was? Corn syrup and like fake artificial flavor and purple dye and whatever else. So, you’re saying that’s not the optimal diet for good macrophage. I guess you would call it bug eating per southeast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. One, it’s going to feed a lot of despotic bacteria. Two, it’s going to decrease the phagocyte index, so your body’s ability to gobble up the bacteria and such. And then I would say on top of that, the more insulin resistance you have, ’cause, how, how It works is right? You take in glucose, you take in fructose, right? When there’s fiber attached to it, it actually decreases; glucose and fructose is damage. I.e. like if I consume some fructose from blueberries 1, there’s a bunch of antioxidants with the blueberries. Bunch of different course. It ends and bioflavonoids and vitamin C on that. There’s also fiber so fiber kind of blunts the effects that you may get from fructose when you consume things like blueberries or strawberries. But when you consume fructose without the fiber, i.e., high fructose corn syrup, right or table sugar, which is sucrose to gross is fructose and glucose. High fructose corn. Syrup is just like 55-45 fructose to glucose. Where table sugars, half and half right? When you consume it without the fiber and out the nutrients. What happens is the body says ok, we gotta go store it in the liver. So, in the 1st place it goes to to dump that fructose is stored In the liver. Once the the fructose sources are done. There can’t store it anymore. It starts to convert it. With that, and then once the liver starts getting fatty, all this fructose just hangs around in the bloodstream and it’s creating all this oxidative stress. It’s like putting a barbecue sauce right on your chicken before you barbecue it. It creates this browning effect. And so when you have all this high level to fructose in your bloodstream because your liver saturated, your liver is now fatty. It can’t store anywhere else. You have high levels of insulin now you start browning all the arteries. And then what does that do? It creates inflammation and makes your platelets and your blood cells just more sticky. So you have increased chances of clotting. What’s going to happen when you have clotting in the lungs? It’s going to create a whole bunch of lung stress, right? Obviously hard issues if it’s in the heart. Brain issue is in the brain. And so if we can get the fructose and the high levels of insulin down, one, that’s going to help blood flow. It’s gonna decrease your oxidative stress reserves and so when you have high levels of oxidative stress, what does that? Due to your needs of vitamin E and vitamin A and vitamin C? It increases it, because your body is having to put out these fires and think of these antioxidants is like the fire extinguisher. So, it’s wanting to use all these antioxidants. And of course the fuel that feeds a lot of this stuff is going to be high sugar and crap that also feeds the bacteria, which then makes the immune response worse so you can see all these things, they kind of compound on each other one after another.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, that was a great way to put it out so I was kind of picture in my head. This snowball effect that gifts. You and it gets nasty quickly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It does. It really gets nasty.
Evan Brand: And then if you’re really, really bad and then you’re on the feeding tube, I mean we’ve seen, and I know you’ve talked about this before with your some of your work in the medical industry years ago. I mean, you’ve talked about some of this stuff they feed people. It’s it’s bad. These feeding type solutions. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s just straight garbage. I don’t have an ingredient list in front of me, but I know it is not good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100% and uhm… You know sugar is used, it hits that opiate receptor, right? It’s, it’s people use it to kind of modulate pain, modulate all the bad stuff that’s happening so it’s you know it’s very addicting. You know, once you’re stuck on it. We had a question come in, “How do you test for some of these things with the bacterial overgrowth?” So you can do a SIBO breath test Lactulose breath test. We can do one of the different organic acid tests that we’ll look at some of the bad bacteria metabolites like benzoate, hiparate 2, fat 2 3 phenylacetate, Indicam; These are different organic acid or bile acid markers that we can look at. Will also run good, comprehensive DNA stool tests that will look at some of these bacteria, and if they’re overgrown right, some of the common bacteria will see, or Klebsiella, citrobacter, prevotella, morganella, Pseudomonas, right? There are some of the common ones that we’ll see, and there will be elevated way outside the reference range when this happening.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you’ve got strep. You’ve got staff. We’ll look at Candida on the stool, even though it’s not as accurate as the urine will look at. The parasites too. What about like blasto and crypto and Giardia? What about H. Pylori infections? All these things add up against you, so our goal is really trying to get everything on paper and figure out what all you’re up against and the. Cool thing is. A lot of times, you and I are knocking out infections that maybe we didn’t even know were there because we can’t test for everything like we have really, really good testing. But I’m sure there are still different pathogens that we don’t even know, but the cool thing is with these herbs and with these synergistic formulas that we’re using clinically with people is that you may have some antiviral, antifungal, antimicrobial antiparasitic properties all to these same compounds. So you may knockout 4 different infections with the same nutrient as opposed to, let’s say a specific drug designed to target a specific pathogen, like an anti-giardia antiparasitic medication. Whereas herbs we may come in and knockout, giardia plus crypto, you know. Plus the H. Pylori all in one fell swoop, so that’s the benefit and not to mention. Let’s say it’s berberine, that we’re using for antimicrobial support. We may help support glucose there. We may, with some of these.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah, there’s some of that.
Evan Brand: We may. We may lower inflammation at the same time as we’re eradicating the infection, so that’s just really beauty. Once you get the data, the beauty is that you can work on multiple mechanisms at the same time getting someone to the finish line fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and also when you take some of these herbs, these herbs are going to have antioxidants in it so the oxidative stress that you kind of create with the killing of these microbes. These herbs are going to have some antioxidants present in them just due to their their phyto signature. Obviously when you take in an antibiotic, right, you’re not going to have a lot of nutrients or antioxidants present with that. They actually they can create more oxidative stress. Just going to PubMed type in antibiotics and oxidative stress or antibiotics and mitochondrial stress. There is a study supporting this, so the part of the benefits with the herbs is that you’re going to get some antioxidant nutritive properties ’cause based on their phyto signature and again, this is all going to be dependent upon. These herbs being higher quality right, not cheap ones, and if they’re grown in soils that have high levels of lead or mercury then that could obviously be a negative impact. So we want to make sure we’re sourcing out high quality herbs. That’s why we want to have a professional grade where we have third party testing on them to make sure they’re adequate. The next thing on top of that is there’s synergy between some of these herbs. So, for instance, you talked about berberine’s right very helpful. Barbarians also help modulate lipids, right, triglycerides, cholesterol, right. They also help with blood sugar and guess what? Berberine’s combined with warm wood our shown actually have antiviral qualities which is very helpful. So if you have any kind of lingering viral stress that can also be very helpful. I see people when we do gut killing, they, they may start to flare their herpes because their immune systems going after it. Sometimes that can happen too. Or there may be very helpful with their EBV or something else going on in their bodies. So we gotta keep an eye on all those things.
Evan Brand: That’s cool. Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Oregano 2, right? We love oregano will use that as a broad spectrum too. That has a lot of cool different antiviral into microbe properties olive leaf is another great one. That we use and…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, olive liters of antiviral properties to anti inflammatory for sure.
Evan Brand: Sure, and it’s gentle. You know some of these things are just so gentle that even in young children that were seeing with these issues, I mean, I know with you and. I you know. I’ve actually had couple clients, they they’ve really tooted you and eyes horn. They say you know that you and doctor J or kind of the only guys out there with young kids that actually are doing functional medicine because so many people are doing like, functional medicine theory you know? Or maybe they’re clinician and they’re older. Maybe they don’t have kids, so I wanted to pass that feedback on to you that are our clients. They they really love that about us that we’ve got young kids, ’cause we’re implementing this stuff with our kids too. I know you and I have both done antimicrobial nutrients and other supportive stuff for our children, and it’s been really great because there’s so much fear and I, I guess you would just call it misinformation when it comes to to kids. Kids are so resilient, but they do sometimes need help and you know, you’ll often get the recommendation or the the comment that, Oh well, the pediatrician doesn’t know anything about that. For the kids, I will tell you, personally herbs are great for kids and we use protocols and kids all the time. There’s so much to be done with kids.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, just kind of out of here just if we kind of re summarize what we’re trying to, you know, make sure you. Guys extract from here. Is number 1, beneficial bacteria is going to help modulate the immune system, decreased permeability, immune permeability, which or gut barrier permeability, which takes stress off the immune system. it’s going to modulate the cytokines the interleukins. So, when your immune system comes in there you’re not going to create more damage from the immune system, so it’s kind of like the firefight is coming in and you have a small fire and instead of putting it out with one of those portable little fire extinguishers they bring the whole big ladder and truck in there and spray so much water they knock down all your walls. It’s kind of like, well, that’s kind of an inappropriate response to that kind of fire. Same thing with your immune system. We don’t want your immune system to be creating stress and inflammation because the response is inappropriate, right? We could see this with other stress infection. We see it with allergies, right? And so we want to make sure we have good immune stress. We want to make sure that your gut is healthy where it’s extracting all of the nutrients we’re putting foods in there that aren’t feeding the bad bugs, but also providing lots of good beneficial healthy fiber and healthy full spectrum antioxidants and nutrients that help the gut in the immune system as well. Any comments on that Evan?
Evan Brand: Well, you know that just kind of spurred the five and we could do a whole Part 2 on this, but I mean there is a role of some leaky gut support outside of probiotics. During this, you and I have our own custom professional formulas that we use with various nutrients like Aloan, Muk and cama meal and other things that you can use to actually support the gut lining. So this would be another great thing to. Implement if you’re in these situations, maybe you’re unable to get testing because you know it takes. You know, couple weeks, turn around time or a little more, depending on what you’re doing. So if you’re kind of in a more acute situation, I think not knowing what you’re up against, you still could bring in some of these leaky gut supports now. And then if you’re in a situation like I’m telling you to wait before you hit rock bottom, wait before you know, don’t wait before you hit rock bottom. Don’t wait before you have to go. To the hospital work on your gut now. If we have all the data we can work you through these steps here and then we may have already gotten you to the gut healing point to where you’re not coming into this infection with a leaky gut. I would much rather someone come in with a healthy gut. We know we’re gonna, they’re gonna do far better and with this discussion you and I talked about today of the gut-lung axis, now is the time to focus on your gut, so you don’t have to focus on your lungs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and it gets great. Makes a lot of sense. So you guys listening to you enjoy today’s content here, we’ll put a list of some of the products that we use. Some of the probiotics that we that we specifically like in use with our patients. I’ll put some of the the immuno-nutrients that we’d like to kind of modulate the breathing pathways- quercetin stinging nettle-all excellent. I love ginger tea as well, we’ll put that in the links down below those are all excellent things. And of course some of the herbs that we like as well will put some of the clearing herbs that we like for the dysbiosis and such in the comments or in the comments, ah description below. And if you want to support us, you can purchase some of those things there. If you also want to reach out, we’re available for functional medicine consultation support all around the world. Will put that link down below as well; evanbrand.com to reach out with Evan. Doctor J, justinhealth.com to reach out with myself. Thanks so much. Evan, any last things you want to highlight?
Evan Brand: No. That’s it. If people need help, feel free to reach out. We’re here for you. We’d love to help you do, do an overhaul. You know what I mean? If we got to look at your system, let’s look at your system. Please reach out if you need help. Doctor J at justinhealth.com me, Evan, evanbrand.com. Would love to help you and we’re here for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome! Alright. Have a good one everyone! Take care. Bye now.
Evan Brand: Take care. Bye, bye.
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The Top 5 Nutrients to Address Gut Inflammation and Leaky Gut | Podcast #339
Whenever you are worried about your gut health and having inflammation, Dr. J and Evan are here to share five essentials that may help you.
Lessen your intake of highly processed foods, refined carbs, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and alcohol. Opt instead for anti-inflammatory foods like fruits, vegetables, spices, and healthy fats but, if you suspect that several foods are triggering inflammation in your gut, it might be worth giving an elimination diet a try.
It may require removing foods from your diet that you suspect are connected to your gut problems for roughly two to three weeks at a time. Inflammation in your gut may cause a host of harmful health symptoms, from fatigue to irregular periods and chronic constipation. However, a few changes to your diet and lifestyle might be vital to helping you control these symptoms and improve your gut health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this podcast, we cover:
0:48 Looking into the Gut Deeper
3:53 Good Foundations
6:26 Chewing is Important
8:22 Mushrooms as Anti-Inflammatory Properties
16:00 Probiotics
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today’s podcast is we’re going to be talking about the top five nutrients to address gut inflammation, and leaky gut or gut permeability. So this is a topic that’s pertinent to a lot of our patients as gut inflammation, there’s usually some component in why they’re not feeling good. So I’m really excited to address this today with Evan, we’re gonna dive into the things that we do clinically, the things that work with our patients, the things that actually get results, we’ll break it down, and we’ll kind of give you guys some action items for today as well. And what’s cooking man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: Hey, you’re doing really well. And you know, we always come up with a title. And then we over deliver on that title. So we’re calling this something along the lines of top five nutrients to help your gut or to heal your gut or support intestinal permeability, but maybe we end up going over five. So I’m just gonna go straight to my favorite because it’s so easy. It’s so broad spectrum in its use. And it’s so safe for people across the board to use it, whether it’s kids, adults, the elderly population, even people that don’t have testing, you know, our philosophy is test don’t guess we want to have the data, we want to have good stool testing, and good organic acids testing to look into the gut deeper and figure out what’s going on under the hood. But there is usually a three, sometimes four week timeline between talking with a client or a new patient and then getting the test results. So what do we do to help these people in that in between time before we can do the real work based on the data, I’d say my favorite is probably aloe, and specifically you and I use an aloe extract. It’s a 200 to one, so it’s 200 pounds of gel converted to one pound of extract, and then that’s encapsulated. We had a young boy, not super young, maybe 16 17. But he was diagnosed with autoimmune gut issues, Crohn’s all sort of colitis, actually pan colitis where the whole digestive tract was affected major bleeding in the store. We got him on simply a 200 to one extract of aloe. And within three weeks, we did a new gi map stool test, and we dropped his calprotectin levels, which is his gut inflammation by 1000 points, just by aloe alone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable. Yeah, it’s powerful what nutrients can do now I always tell patients, if you’re trying to come in and make some changes out of the gates, I mean, your best bang for your buck would be fixing the food, because the food is constantly getting your body getting your gut in flames. So the first thing we can do is look at the the the inflammatory food that could be coming in this could be gluten or other technically gluten free grains like corn, oat, rice, those kinds of things. So you want to really get the grains out, you want to really get a lot of the poly polyunsaturated omega six vegetable oils. And again, the reason why vegetable oils tend to be more, let’s say poor is because they’re highly processed to extract the fat. And the processing actually damages the fat and creates free radical stress within those fats. Because the more you take in damaged fats, your body has to utilize antioxidants to stabilize the fats. So they don’t create free radicals. And so it depletes a lot of your antioxidants. And then those fast take on and become part of your cell membrane. And to have healthy cells you have to have good membrane. Because the membrane essentially is the brain of your cell. It provides a lot of good cellular communication happens with the membrane. So if you have junky fats, whether it’s omega six junky fats, or trans fats like hydrogenated soybean oil, right, those kinds of things, canola, you know, safflower, those are going to be more junky omega six, and they’re going to really not make the healthiest cell membranes, they’re going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. And if they’re on the trans fat side, they’ll make your cell membranes very inflexible too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. And I apologize for skipping over the diet piece, you know, you think of the typical American person, they think, just give me the pill. Give me the magic remedy. So we’ll talk about some of those remedies. But yeah, you make a great point, you can’t go out to Pizza Hut for dinner, and then just take an aloe capsule, and everything’s going to be okay. Correct.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So that’s it’s good to look at the foundation out of the gates. I’d also say like, I’ll just kind of put this next category into a broad category and just say, amino acids. And these amino acids could be things like an acetylglucosamine, NaG that could be things like glycine, which are going to be very high in collagen or bone broth. And they could also be things like glutamine, so I kind of put these in the amino acid bucket, when they tend to be very good support for the entire sites of the gut lining, that can be used as fuel for the gut lining, they also can help with gut permeability. And, and glycine is a really good backbone for connective tissue. So it can be very helpful for that lot of that connective tissue healing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: So how about enzymes? When you hear nutrients to heal the gut or support the gut, you don’t necessarily think about enzymes, you think of more like you mentioned, the glutamine, Aloe, the kind of calming, soothing things, but I would argue enzymes have a role in helping with reducing gut inflammation simply by improving digestion and reducing the putrifying and fermenting of foods because I know my gut was Super inflamed. If I look back at some of my original stool tests, when I had gut infections, yes, I was doing things to soothe my gut, but simply just treated, the infections alone got the inflammation down. And part of that process of treating the infections was using enzymes, because my digestion was so terrible, I would get exhausted after a meal. And that was a sign that I had low stomach acid. So I would say the enzyme should be on our list here, because so many people do to age due to stress. Maybe you’re eating in a loud restaurant, like you’re on your lunch break for work, and you’re listening to us or there’s music, boom, boom, boom in the background, and you’re sympathetically stressed while you’re eating enzymes, to me would be a good insurance policy to help break down your foods and then therefore reduce inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, foods are not broken down properly, they’re going to sit, they’re going to ferment, they’re going to purify, they’re going to read certify also, those foods are more likely to create hydrogen and methane gases because they’re fermenting, and those gases can throw off your motility, motility and how you move the bowels. And if the bowels are one too short, or should take too fast on the diarrhea side, you may not absorb those nutrients well. And if they’re too long, on the conservation side, you may reabsorb fecal toxins. And so you know, long or short on the bowel motility can definitely affect absorption or create more toxins in the body. So I think that’s a big one. And then just kind of connecting the enzymes and we could throw HCl in there too, because HCl helps activate enzymes, I would say chewing, chewing and and really just the mastication and healthy eating habits because chewing your food up really fine, allows more surface area for those enzymes and acids to work. So you can have a good amount of enzymes or acids, you only have a couple of chews. you swallow your food, those enzymes and acids aren’t gonna work as good as you really chew it up, you know, 30 to choose one chew per tooth, you know, ideally like an oatmeal like consistencies and allow those enzymes and acids to work better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m 18th down. So I guess I get off the hook with 32. You know, I have my wisdom teeth and my 12 year molders out so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, there you go. I mean, I have my wisdom teeth out as well. So I’m kind of at 28 as well. So I get it. So let’s just say 30 plus or minus a couple.
Evan Brand: It’s hard. I’ve tried to do that I’ve tried to do that many choose, oh man, my jaw gets tired. So and that’s the that’s the problem too, that we have with our food is like you go to Chipotle, a for example. Everything’s really soft. Like if you get rice if you get like carnitas. Or if you get the chicken, you barely have to chew it. It’s almost like mush. So I try to personally seek out occasionally I will seek out whether it’s like beef jerky, or no bison jerky or even just a steak, you know, I try to really get something that works my job because I just feel like in America, our food is so soft and easily digestible, that we don’t have to really chew anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you have a nice steak or a nice whole chicken, just make sure you chew it up. Same thing goes with over hydrating, you know, try to get your first thing I do is and I get to go eat a meal, I kind of go to the reverse osmosis filter, get a nice big glass of water to add some minerals, one, two, and then I get my meal going that way it gives me 10 15 minutes or so for everything to absorb. And of course the colder the water you got to take a little bit longer because your body holds that water in your stomach, heats it up to about room temperature and then passes it through. So the colder that water is, the longer you should wait in between the meal
About mushrooms. This is something that you know, just doing a little bit of research before we hit record, that this is something that I don’t necessarily go to right out of the gate but I’ve been using mushrooms for a long time. I know you and I personally have been taking mushrooms for a long time. And it turns out that for example, Lion’s Mane mushroom has some really, I would say probably just as impressive as some of the other herbs you’re mentioning, whether it’s like dgl, licorice or marshmallow kind of the conventional gut healing ones. Lion’s Mane has some really awesome anti inflammatory properties. There were two papers that we had found here on Lion’s Mane mushroom being shown to protect from and shrink gastric ulcers. Also, Lion’s Mane was shown to significantly improve symptoms of two major inflammatory disorders of the digestive system. And so that’s cool, because normally we’re using Lion’s Mane for cognitive problems. I know for me, my brain is much more clear. I’ve got Lion’s Mane mushroom in my system right now. I took two capsules this morning, and I certainly feel it mentally. But I did not even think that I was feeling it in my gut. So that’s cool.
Totally. Yeah, that gets really important. Again, a lot of gut issues, the immune system can be a big player at it. And so of course, if you’re able to modulate the immune system with the medicinal mushrooms, or immunogenic compounds that are going to be in those mushrooms, whether it’s beta one, three, D glucan, whatever that is, it could have an effect on gut permeability and improving digestion. I think all that’s very, very important. Also, just kind of one pet peeve of mine. Someone in the comments was chatting about this. A lot of people when they talk about leaky gut, they talk about leaky gut like like it’s the cause of Problem. leaky gut is the effects of on what’s happening with the gut. So the more inflamed you are, the more you’re not breaking down your food. The more crappy The food is, the more inflammatory The food is, the more dysbiosis we have, the the lack of certain nutrients we have, the more stress we are right. All that then creates and increases the chance of gut permeability. Gut permeability isn’t the cause unto itself. It’s the effects of a lot of other issues happening. So when people talk about Oh, you gotta fix the leaky gut. It’s like, not necessarily, you know, it’s like, it’s like saying, Oh, we have to fix. Imagine you have a leak in your roof and the waters pulling on the carpet below you. So we got to fix that water on the floor. It’s like, No, no, you fix the hole in the roof. And again, it may be semantics, but we got to call a spade a spade. If the water’s coming into the roof, you talk to them, we got to fix the hole in the roof. You don’t say we fixed the the water on the ground, right? So I just want everyone I want to train everyone to kind of get thinking about things from a root cause standpoint, versus labeling the damage at the end result conventional medicines really good at labeling damage down here and not talking about the effects of top that should the cause up top there labeling the effects down here. So we want to go root cause?
Yeah, that’s great. And I’m sure we could come up with other analogies on it. But that makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of like, okay, we need to come in with the towel. Oh, no. Now we have this super absorbent towel, this towel is going to absorb 1000 times more water on your floor than any other towel. And then yes, this, this carpet is mold resistant. So if you use this carpet, that water in your carpet won’t create mold, but you’re still missing the frickin hole in the roof roof.
Exactly, exactly. So we just got to really be on top of that. Make sure everyone’s thinking root cause I think that’s really helpful.
Well, let’s call it out. Let’s call out why that happens, though. It’s simply money. And it’s the supplement industry. There’s a lot of money. Yeah, it’s marketing. There’s a lot of money made on leaky gut this and this leaky gut book and this leaky gut protocol and this leaky gut practitioner. The problem is you could take all these leaky gut support for a decade and never treat the infections like if you just went and did like you mentioned glutamine, and we hit the zinc carnosine and the dgl. And we did the aloe, like we talked about in the beginning, none of those are going to erase a blastocyst is hominis, parasite infection, none of those are going to get rid of Giardia. None of those are going to treat the H pylori, they may help. But they’re definitely not going to eradicate the issue causing the leaky gut in the first place. So that’s just marketing. It’s money involved in this. And, you know, as practitioners, I think it’s really smart of you to call it out like that, because it’s, it is frustrating for us because we’ll look on a new client or new patients intake form. And they’ll be taking all these quote leaky gut supplements. Yeah, I found this leaky gut protocol online, and I still have all these digestive problems. And it’s like, well, yeah, look at your stool test, you have all these issues. And you could do that for 20 years and never fix it. So I could rant on that all day.
Yeah, other thing I would just say out of the gates is it’s okay to palliative Li support the leaky gut, we just have to make sure when you’re palliative Li supporting something we’re also root cause supporting it as well root cause fixing it. Palliative support, totally fine, right. Nothing wrong with that we just got to call a spade a spade and and not pretend the palliative leaky gut support is root cause support. Yeah, long as we can do that, then I think we’re pretty good. Next thing I would highlight out of the gates and you see this herb being listed as being very helpful for the gut permeability, but it’s also very helpful on the adrenal. So that’s licorice. And so when we use licorice is a lot of licorice being used in leaky gut supports. That’s that’s d glycerides. And this is the glycerides component of the licorice is pulled out. And the glycerides component of a licorice is is the component that slows the breakdown of cortisol, I think it’s the 11 beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase to enzyme. The licorice inhibits that enzyme. That’s the enzyme that helps break down cortisol. So we know cortisol too low, we need healthy levels of cortisol to actually build up the gut lining. It helps with building up the gut lining. Of course, if our cortisol levels are too high, and we’re chronically stressed, right, that can also break down the gut lining. We know that with people that are chronically stressed getting ulcers, right, we know that as well. And so when we look at licorice, it really helps with cortisol improvement. So if we do a cortisol test, and we see chronically low cortisol, that can actually help with the gut lining with the mucosa with the stomach with the duodenum. And that can actually help with the cortisol bringing that back up. And that can help build back up that gut lining. And so we like licorice, that’s non diglycerides for the gut and Nanda glycerides licorice, we give it typically orally sublingually, to our patients, that will eventually trickle downstream to the gut as well. And so licorice can be a powerful thing. You just have to be careful if you’re giving a non diglycerides version that people that have already higher level of cortisol, that may make things worse. So we just got to make sure we’re testing that to know what kind of pattern we’re seeing.
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we could do a whole part two on that. If you want. Give us some feedback. Like maybe the gut hormone connection. And we could hit that in detail. But yeah, you highlighted a very important point, which is that cortisol is involved with this whole process. And it really is a Goldilocks zone. If you have too little cortisol, you’re exhausted. And you’re probably going to be dependent on stimulants and caffeine and sugar and things that are going to damage your gut. But then simply, you don’t have enough to build up the gut. And then if you have too much, now you’re catabolic, you’re breaking down your muscle tissue, and you’re breaking down your gut barrier. That’s probably part of the reason that I lost a lot of weight and a lot of muscle. When I first moved to Texas, I had gut infections, and I was incredibly stressed, just moving and leaving my family behind, you know, emotional stuff, homesickness gut infections, I had the perfect storm to tear up my gut. So I can tell you firsthand that adrenal supports did help. And that was probably because it was helping regulate the cortisol levels, which then in turn, took the load off my gut, so to speak.
100% Yeah, I like that. And so it’s good to really make sure that’s under control.
Evan Brand: How about probiotics? I think it’s worth mentioning. These are totally valuable tools that can help regulate histamine. Yeah, and regulate bacteria with it. So let’s dive into that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so you have to you I said you have three to four big families. Okay. So you typically have your lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, which are typically come together and usually a good high quality broad spectrum probiotic. So my line we have one called profile, Florida doesn’t have a lot of the different lactobacillus whether it’s kci acidophilus Bulgaria’s brevis, rhamnosus. And then of course, you have a lot of the bifidobacterium whether it’s bifidobacterium, bifidum, longum, brevis, right. So those are your broad spectrum lactobacillus or bifidobacterium. Probiotics, lots of good data, lots of good research anywhere from food poisoning for inflammation reduction, gut permeability reduction. nutrient absorption is all kinds of different studies connecting the dots on those so that’s kind of the bifidobacteria, lactobacillus Of course, we have more of our spore based or soil based probiotics. These are going to be a lot of your bacillus strains, right, whether it’s bacillus, subtlest class ei coagulans, like Informix, right. These are the bacillus strains. These are really good if you are very much cebo sensitive, fodmap sensitive, we may use some of these over a bifido lactobacillus species. And then of course, I’m a big fan of the probiotic that’s kind of more of a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii in my lammie, one called sacral flora, again, we’ll put the links below for for all y’all so if you want to see it, we’ll put the links below sacral Flora Saccharomyces boulardii is very helpful a lot of studies on it, helping to improve immunity in the gut IGA IGA levels going to get low and just gut inflammation or gut stress. Of course, it’s going to help with food poisoning a lot of studies on it helping with H. pylori, C. diff, Clostridium difficile, blastocystis hominess. It also helps crowd out yeast and Candida so there’s a lot of excellent benefits with saccharomyces we love it and it’s usually going to be a core part of my probiotic, my fifth r which is repopulation re inoculation on the good healthy probiotics, once the fourth hour is done right fourth hours and to be removing the gut bugs removing the gut infections. Fifth hour, we come in repopulate re inoculate with good bacteria. Most people kind of sweet they want to start probiotics sooner, and that may not be the best step. Not saying it may not help. But some people have just found one that’s just a lot of pills. And two, if they have a lot of bad bugs in there. It’s like going and getting a whole bunch of good fresh grass seeds throw down on a lawn full of weeds, right? You got to get the weeds done before we throw down the seeds right got to get the car washed or we get waxed.
Evan Brand: Kind of like that. Yeah, we had a lot of good feedback on the podcast we did remember we were talking about probiotics and how a lot of new research is showing probiotics are being used to help with getting out mycotoxins and we know that mold toxins damage the gut. So yes, so I have been I’ve honestly been working in probiotics into the protocol sooner and most people do well. There are some like you said that just don’t you got to pull the weeds before you throw the seeds. But there are a lot of people doing really good with throwing probiotics and sooner in the protocols now. So like you said, if they can handle the amount of pills, maybe we try to sneak one or two in or we could do like powdered versions, typically, it’s like a quarter teaspoon, we could throw in a blend like that sack be you could you could do powder and maybe throw it in a smoothie or something. So we are trying to integrate those a lot. And I’ve had amazing success personally with probiotics. So I think it’s interesting, there’s still a lot of people that poopoo probiotic probiotics I know you and I we kind of get, you know, so caught up in the clinical trenches that we may miss some things, but I do get a couple of emails, you know, here and there from from people, clients sending them like, hey, this guy like says probiotics are a waste of money, and you know, that they don’t work. And I would just say that’s not true. We have so much clinical data personally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about context, right? It’s like if someone comes in, they have chronic gut issues, and they’re just taking a probiotic thinking that that’s going to be the answer to their gut problems. It’s probably not right, and that’s where we’re trying to have a comprehensive functional medicine plan. That’s root cause and not just trying to Pro supplements at the wall thinking that that’s going to fix it. So yeah, I understand if that you know where that person is coming up with that, that bias that biases from not having a comprehensive root cause plan with a functional medicine practitioner, they’re just trying to throw stuff at them instead it hoping it will fix the symptoms, not fix the root cause.
Well, here’s Yeah, good, good point. Here’s the other thing, too, it’s even some probiotic companies will say that about other companies, it’s more of a marketing thing like, hey, their probiotic is crap, or it doesn’t work because of X, Y, or Z. But I will just say with what you and I use, clinically, we’re using professional supplement manufacturers exclusive only to health care providers. And a lot of the stuff we use, we have extended release technology. So when arguments like probiotics are going to die in the stomach, they’re not even going to make it to where they need to. But a lot of the new technology we use, they’re not even going to break open, they’re going to be resistant to the stomach acid. So that’s another problem too, when you hear these little like, super sometimes buzzworthy type articles. It’s not taking into consideration the quality, the quantity, the purity, the potency, the technology involved, it’s like probiotics, they get the label, and then that’s it. And that’s just not a fair classification.
Correct. And then also consumer reports that a study on probiotics a couple years back maybe 5 10 years ago. And what they found is most probiotics that they put a number on the outside of the bottle, hey, this is how many colony forming units. And what a lot of the cheap companies do is they say, Okay, this is how many should have been in this probiotic at manufacturing of this product. Let’s say it’s 20 billion. Now, what the professional companies do is, right, when you’re buying high quality, professional ingredients, they’re gonna say this is how many colony forming units should be in this capsule at expiration. And so you’re looking at something like two to three times the amount of those that species that CFU on the bottle colony forming units, is going to be typically in there. So when you see like, in my probiotic, I think it’s 40 billion per two capsules, right? That’s going to be what’s in there two years from now at expiration, right? And so obviously, it’s going to be two to three times the amount of that before. And so you want to use professional companies. So what you see on the label is always worst case, scenario, number one, and then also how products are stored by professional companies is very important. So like, where we have our warehouses, like everything is stored in an air conditioned or a refrigerated environment for a lot of our probiotics, some don’t necessarily need that. But which we value, the the scenario and how that store because that really increases potency, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the funny thing is, too, we’ve seen some papers on supposedly expiration dates, you know, this is something that you and I are forced to do with the professional companies we work with. But you know, we’ve seen some research on supplements from 2030 years ago, still being viable, meaning they still had some potency and purity to them. And obviously, they still had a biological effect. So to me, I would if I had to pick like a consumer shelf bought probiotic, or a suppose that expired professional product, I’m going to go for the supposedly expired product, I’d go for a five year old professional probiotic, then, you know, on the shelf today consumer level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And also a lot of the probiotics or supplements that require refrigeration on the warehousing side, a lot of times you’re just not going to get that on Amazon, you’re not going to get that level of specificity just because that’s not how their warehouses are set up. And so with ours, we make sure that that refrigeration components is there because we’re working with patients and we need we need that potency, because we’re trying to get clinical outcomes, right. We’re trying to sell and provide a clinical outcome for the patient. And if we’re just providing products that aren’t meeting that standard, we’re not going to win. And of course, we want to be successful on that front.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Well say Well, I think we covered a lot of it. So the mushrooms are beneficial Lion’s Mane the mushroom is amazing for the brain, but for the gut also Chaga mushroom would be great reishi mushroom could also deserve a good mention, you hit upon the amino acids. So the glutamine or the various types of glucose amines involved. We love amino acids, we use those all the time you mentioned like collagen also being you know, part of that makeup, we hit on some of the herbs like the the licorice, or the dgl version of it, the marshmallow, we like to use a lot, we hit upon the aloe, and then we hit the probiotics, I think those are the big categories. And then the enzymes we hit that too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think we did a really good job hitting a couple and I just I really want to plug in concepts, right? Like a lot of people, they just try to throw information at people and and try to memorize that. I think that’s not beneficial. But if you can just understand concepts, right? A concept is just something that sticks. You either get it or you don’t. And so we try to use a lot of analogies and understand we try to plug in a lot of the concepts of root cause versus palliative cause. We try to get you to think about, hey, if this helps, why does it help? is it just an anti inflammatory? is it helping just improve better digestion? is it helping your immune system? is it helping your adrenals and helping you that your body’s natural process to build back up that gut lining? What’s the underlying mechanisms if you understand that, then you see how it plugs into the greater matrix of healing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I agree 1,000%. So, I think the big concept of today is Yes, here are some things here are some nutrients you can use. However, we really want to make sure you’re testing, not guessing. So if you do need the aloe to calm the gut for now, you need the enzymes to help improve digestion. For now, you notice that HCl is helping with your heartburn or you notice that the enzymes are reducing your bloating, or your burping or your gas. Great, but what led to all that in the first place? What led you to need the aloe because you had gut inflammation, what led you to need the enzymes, that’s where somebody like us can come in and help you figure that out and plot it on paper. And, you know, we’ve been through the trenches personally. And clinically, we’re always improving upon herself. You know, I work on my children, I know you work on your children, we’re giving our kids things to help their guts, I mean, so this is like a, there’s no finish line, I don’t want people to think, Hey, I just do this aloe for a month, and then I’m done. You know, there’s not a finish line with the gut, we’re constantly being exposed to new toxins and new pathogens. We’ve even seen with the virus that’s been going around a lot of issues with the gut there, we’ve seen a lot of issue with tissue destruction in the intestinal tract. So who knows? Right now with the 5 10 year outlook of the GI health in the US is right now, our guts are notoriously bad, due to glyphosate and other things, damaging them. So just a quick note, you kind of started with the diet all and with the diet 100% organic is important, if you’re going to go buy all these probiotics, but yet, you’re going to eat strawberries with an average of 22 pesticides on them. If they’re not organic, you’re wasting your frickin time and your money because we know all those pesticides are just killing the beneficial bacteria in your gut that you’re trying to re inoculate or repopulate with. So please go organic, you know, before you spend money on probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then also how long do these probiotic strains last in your gut, I mean, a lot of times, you’re going to see the data show in about one month or so. So that they don’t stay forever. So when you take a probiotic, it’s not like it’s there forever. So it’ll it’ll hang around typically for a month, it’ll help with a nutrient synthesis, it’ll help with nutrient absorption, it’ll help with inflammation, modulating the immune system, there’s some data that maybe the spore based probiotics hang around a little bit longer, and they may help proliferate the growth of other beneficial species. So just think when you take a probiotic, it’s not forever. Now the goal is that we’re getting some level of fermentable foods in your diet, whether it’s from sauerkraut, or low sugar kombucha, or some kind of fermented pickle or something, or, you know, cultured coconut milk or potentially high quality raw milk if you can tolerate it. So you know, that’s typically how we’re getting exposed to probiotics more on a day in weekend kind of situation. If you’re someone that can’t get that level of exposure with fermented oils from food, then you probably want to be on a probiotic a little bit more frequently, if you’re not getting those fermentable. So we just got to plug and play where we’re at. I think our ancestors probably did more fermentable foods, which is ideal. But if we can’t we plug in a good quality probiotic, or at least throw in something every couple of months, just to kind of fill in the gap to make sure we’re getting exposed to those good for mandibles.
Evan Brand: Yeah, great point, I just want to highlight what you said too, which is like your gut bacteria are actually going to help you with your health in other ways. So once gut bacteria optimize your healing the gut, you’re making neurotransmitters the way you should you’re making serotonin, you’re making things to improve yourself, you’re making B vitamins to help your energy and your mitochondria. So this is why I really the gut, I mean, we just we can’t stop talking about it because it literally is the foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of want to make sure that is understood. And that makes sense for everyone. We’ll put a list of recommended products down below. So you guys have access to those you want to support us support the show, we appreciate it put those down below. Also, if you guys want to reach out to Evan brand, head over to EvanBrand.com, Evan is there for you guys worldwide. And again, I’m there for you as well, justinhealth.com, Dr. J myself, there’ll be a little link button, you guys can click and reach out to us we are available worldwide to help you guys help you help support y’all. We want to make sure they have the support you need. And you have a good comprehensive plan to get what’s going in the right direction if you’re not having success. And then also just try to apply one thing today as well. If you’re having if you’re overwhelmed, and you’re having a sticking point great to reach out, if not just try applying this information, we want to really help as many people as possible. And we know we’re going to help many more people than we actually see in person with this information. So just make sure you’re applying it. And if you are enjoying it, share it with family and friends that could also benefit put your comments down below. Let me know the best part that you liked about this what resonate with you the most. And give us a like and share as well. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you’re on the apple listening, if you’re on your Apple podcast app or Stitcher or wherever else, give us some stars, let us know what you think the show deserves between us both we have I lost count, but it was somewhere over 705 star reviews for our podcast in between our various feeds. So please give us some stars. Give us some sentences give us a blurb on whether you still call it iTunes or Apple podcast. We’d love to beat out people that are not clinically oriented. There’s still like top health podcast out there that it’s just theory theory theory theory. And then we have to like recalibrate people’s theories because they’re not clinically based. So we would love to beat those people. How do we beat those Before we go higher in the charts, how do we do that? With your reviews! So we have a some stars.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks to all you guys have a phenomenal day. Take careDr. Justin Marchegiani
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today’s podcast is we’re going to be talking about the top five nutrients to address gut inflammation, and leaky gut or gut permeability. So this is a topic that’s pertinent to a lot of our patients as gut inflammation, there’s usually some component in why they’re not feeling good. So I’m really excited to address this today with Evan, we’re gonna dive into the things that we do clinically, the things that work with our patients, the things that actually get results, we’ll break it down, and we’ll kind of give you guys some action items for today as well. And what’s cooking man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: Hey, you’re doing really well. And you know, we always come up with a title. And then we over deliver on that title. So we’re calling this something along the lines of top five nutrients to help your gut or to heal your gut or support intestinal permeability, but maybe we end up going over five. So I’m just gonna go straight to my favorite because it’s so easy. It’s so broad spectrum in its use. And it’s so safe for people across the board to use it, whether it’s kids, adults, the elderly population, even people that don’t have testing, you know, our philosophy is test don’t guess we want to have the data, we want to have good stool testing, and good organic acids testing to look into the gut deeper and figure out what’s going on under the hood. But there is usually a three, sometimes four week timeline between talking with a client or a new patient and then getting the test results. So what do we do to help these people in that in between time before we can do the real work based on the data, I’d say my favorite is probably aloe, and specifically you and I use an aloe extract. It’s a 200 to one, so it’s 200 pounds of gel converted to one pound of extract, and then that’s encapsulated. We had a young boy, not super young, maybe 16 17. But he was diagnosed with autoimmune gut issues, Crohn’s all sort of colitis, actually pan colitis where the whole digestive tract was affected major bleeding in the store. We got him on simply a 200 to one extract of aloe. And within three weeks, we did a new gi map stool test, and we dropped his calprotectin levels, which is his gut inflammation by 1000 points, just by aloe alone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable. Yeah, it’s powerful what nutrients can do now I always tell patients, if you’re trying to come in and make some changes out of the gates, I mean, your best bang for your buck would be fixing the food, because the food is constantly getting your body getting your gut in flames. So the first thing we can do is look at the the the inflammatory food that could be coming in this could be gluten or other technically gluten free grains like corn, oat, rice, those kinds of things. So you want to really get the grains out, you want to really get a lot of the poly polyunsaturated omega six vegetable oils. And again, the reason why vegetable oils tend to be more, let’s say poor is because they’re highly processed to extract the fat. And the processing actually damages the fat and creates free radical stress within those fats. Because the more you take in damaged fats, your body has to utilize antioxidants to stabilize the fats. So they don’t create free radicals. And so it depletes a lot of your antioxidants. And then those fast take on and become part of your cell membrane. And to have healthy cells you have to have good membrane. Because the membrane essentially is the brain of your cell. It provides a lot of good cellular communication happens with the membrane. So if you have junky fats, whether it’s omega six junky fats, or trans fats like hydrogenated soybean oil, right, those kinds of things, canola, you know, safflower, those are going to be more junky omega six, and they’re going to really not make the healthiest cell membranes, they’re going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. And if they’re on the trans fat side, they’ll make your cell membranes very inflexible too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. And I apologize for skipping over the diet piece, you know, you think of the typical American person, they think, just give me the pill. Give me the magic remedy. So we’ll talk about some of those remedies. But yeah, you make a great point, you can’t go out to Pizza Hut for dinner, and then just take an aloe capsule, and everything’s going to be okay. Correct.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So that’s it’s good to look at the foundation out of the gates. I’d also say like, I’ll just kind of put this next category into a broad category and just say, amino acids. And these amino acids could be things like an acetylglucosamine, NaG that could be things like glycine, which are going to be very high in collagen or bone broth. And they could also be things like glutamine, so I kind of put these in the amino acid bucket, when they tend to be very good support for the entire sites of the gut lining, that can be used as fuel for the gut lining, they also can help with gut permeability. And, and glycine is a really good backbone for connective tissue. So it can be very helpful for that lot of that connective tissue healing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: So how about enzymes? When you hear nutrients to heal the gut or support the gut, you don’t necessarily think about enzymes, you think of more like you mentioned, the glutamine, Aloe, the kind of calming, soothing things, but I would argue enzymes have a role in helping with reducing gut inflammation simply by improving digestion and reducing the putrifying and fermenting of foods because I know my gut was Super inflamed. If I look back at some of my original stool tests, when I had gut infections, yes, I was doing things to soothe my gut, but simply just treated, the infections alone got the inflammation down. And part of that process of treating the infections was using enzymes, because my digestion was so terrible, I would get exhausted after a meal. And that was a sign that I had low stomach acid. So I would say the enzyme should be on our list here, because so many people do to age due to stress. Maybe you’re eating in a loud restaurant, like you’re on your lunch break for work, and you’re listening to us or there’s music, boom, boom, boom in the background, and you’re sympathetically stressed while you’re eating enzymes, to me would be a good insurance policy to help break down your foods and then therefore reduce inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, foods are not broken down properly, they’re going to sit, they’re going to ferment, they’re going to purify, they’re going to read certify also, those foods are more likely to create hydrogen and methane gases because they’re fermenting, and those gases can throw off your motility, motility and how you move the bowels. And if the bowels are one too short, or should take too fast on the diarrhea side, you may not absorb those nutrients well. And if they’re too long, on the conservation side, you may reabsorb fecal toxins. And so you know, long or short on the bowel motility can definitely affect absorption or create more toxins in the body. So I think that’s a big one. And then just kind of connecting the enzymes and we could throw HCl in there too, because HCl helps activate enzymes, I would say chewing, chewing and and really just the mastication and healthy eating habits because chewing your food up really fine, allows more surface area for those enzymes and acids to work. So you can have a good amount of enzymes or acids, you only have a couple of chews. you swallow your food, those enzymes and acids aren’t gonna work as good as you really chew it up, you know, 30 to choose one chew per tooth, you know, ideally like an oatmeal like consistencies and allow those enzymes and acids to work better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m 18th down. So I guess I get off the hook with 32. You know, I have my wisdom teeth and my 12 year molders out so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, there you go. I mean, I have my wisdom teeth out as well. So I’m kind of at 28 as well. So I get it. So let’s just say 30 plus or minus a couple.
Evan Brand: It’s hard. I’ve tried to do that I’ve tried to do that many choose, oh man, my jaw gets tired. So and that’s the that’s the problem too, that we have with our food is like you go to Chipotle, a for example. Everything’s really soft. Like if you get rice if you get like carnitas. Or if you get the chicken, you barely have to chew it. It’s almost like mush. So I try to personally seek out occasionally I will seek out whether it’s like beef jerky, or no bison jerky or even just a steak, you know, I try to really get something that works my job because I just feel like in America, our food is so soft and easily digestible, that we don’t have to really chew anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you have a nice steak or a nice whole chicken, just make sure you chew it up. Same thing goes with over hydrating, you know, try to get your first thing I do is and I get to go eat a meal, I kind of go to the reverse osmosis filter, get a nice big glass of water to add some minerals, one, two, and then I get my meal going that way it gives me 10 15 minutes or so for everything to absorb. And of course the colder the water you got to take a little bit longer because your body holds that water in your stomach, heats it up to about room temperature and then passes it through. So the colder that water is, the longer you should wait in between the meal
About mushrooms. This is something that you know, just doing a little bit of research before we hit record, that this is something that I don’t necessarily go to right out of the gate but I’ve been using mushrooms for a long time. I know you and I personally have been taking mushrooms for a long time. And it turns out that for example, Lion’s Mane mushroom has some really, I would say probably just as impressive as some of the other herbs you’re mentioning, whether it’s like dgl, licorice or marshmallow kind of the conventional gut healing ones. Lion’s Mane has some really awesome anti inflammatory properties. There were two papers that we had found here on Lion’s Mane mushroom being shown to protect from and shrink gastric ulcers. Also, Lion’s Mane was shown to significantly improve symptoms of two major inflammatory disorders of the digestive system. And so that’s cool, because normally we’re using Lion’s Mane for cognitive problems. I know for me, my brain is much more clear. I’ve got Lion’s Mane mushroom in my system right now. I took two capsules this morning, and I certainly feel it mentally. But I did not even think that I was feeling it in my gut. So that’s cool.
Totally. Yeah, that gets really important. Again, a lot of gut issues, the immune system can be a big player at it. And so of course, if you’re able to modulate the immune system with the medicinal mushrooms, or immunogenic compounds that are going to be in those mushrooms, whether it’s beta one, three, D glucan, whatever that is, it could have an effect on gut permeability and improving digestion. I think all that’s very, very important. Also, just kind of one pet peeve of mine. Someone in the comments was chatting about this. A lot of people when they talk about leaky gut, they talk about leaky gut like like it’s the cause of Problem. leaky gut is the effects of on what’s happening with the gut. So the more inflamed you are, the more you’re not breaking down your food. The more crappy The food is, the more inflammatory The food is, the more dysbiosis we have, the the lack of certain nutrients we have, the more stress we are right. All that then creates and increases the chance of gut permeability. Gut permeability isn’t the cause unto itself. It’s the effects of a lot of other issues happening. So when people talk about Oh, you gotta fix the leaky gut. It’s like, not necessarily, you know, it’s like, it’s like saying, Oh, we have to fix. Imagine you have a leak in your roof and the waters pulling on the carpet below you. So we got to fix that water on the floor. It’s like, No, no, you fix the hole in the roof. And again, it may be semantics, but we got to call a spade a spade. If the water’s coming into the roof, you talk to them, we got to fix the hole in the roof. You don’t say we fixed the the water on the ground, right? So I just want everyone I want to train everyone to kind of get thinking about things from a root cause standpoint, versus labeling the damage at the end result conventional medicines really good at labeling damage down here and not talking about the effects of top that should the cause up top there labeling the effects down here. So we want to go root cause?
Yeah, that’s great. And I’m sure we could come up with other analogies on it. But that makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of like, okay, we need to come in with the towel. Oh, no. Now we have this super absorbent towel, this towel is going to absorb 1000 times more water on your floor than any other towel. And then yes, this, this carpet is mold resistant. So if you use this carpet, that water in your carpet won’t create mold, but you’re still missing the frickin hole in the roof roof.
Exactly, exactly. So we just got to really be on top of that. Make sure everyone’s thinking root cause I think that’s really helpful.
Well, let’s call it out. Let’s call out why that happens, though. It’s simply money. And it’s the supplement industry. There’s a lot of money. Yeah, it’s marketing. There’s a lot of money made on leaky gut this and this leaky gut book and this leaky gut protocol and this leaky gut practitioner. The problem is you could take all these leaky gut support for a decade and never treat the infections like if you just went and did like you mentioned glutamine, and we hit the zinc carnosine and the dgl. And we did the aloe, like we talked about in the beginning, none of those are going to erase a blastocyst is hominis, parasite infection, none of those are going to get rid of Giardia. None of those are going to treat the H pylori, they may help. But they’re definitely not going to eradicate the issue causing the leaky gut in the first place. So that’s just marketing. It’s money involved in this. And, you know, as practitioners, I think it’s really smart of you to call it out like that, because it’s, it is frustrating for us because we’ll look on a new client or new patients intake form. And they’ll be taking all these quote leaky gut supplements. Yeah, I found this leaky gut protocol online, and I still have all these digestive problems. And it’s like, well, yeah, look at your stool test, you have all these issues. And you could do that for 20 years and never fix it. So I could rant on that all day.
Yeah, other thing I would just say out of the gates is it’s okay to palliative Li support the leaky gut, we just have to make sure when you’re palliative Li supporting something we’re also root cause supporting it as well root cause fixing it. Palliative support, totally fine, right. Nothing wrong with that we just got to call a spade a spade and and not pretend the palliative leaky gut support is root cause support. Yeah, long as we can do that, then I think we’re pretty good. Next thing I would highlight out of the gates and you see this herb being listed as being very helpful for the gut permeability, but it’s also very helpful on the adrenal. So that’s licorice. And so when we use licorice is a lot of licorice being used in leaky gut supports. That’s that’s d glycerides. And this is the glycerides component of the licorice is pulled out. And the glycerides component of a licorice is is the component that slows the breakdown of cortisol, I think it’s the 11 beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase to enzyme. The licorice inhibits that enzyme. That’s the enzyme that helps break down cortisol. So we know cortisol too low, we need healthy levels of cortisol to actually build up the gut lining. It helps with building up the gut lining. Of course, if our cortisol levels are too high, and we’re chronically stressed, right, that can also break down the gut lining. We know that with people that are chronically stressed getting ulcers, right, we know that as well. And so when we look at licorice, it really helps with cortisol improvement. So if we do a cortisol test, and we see chronically low cortisol, that can actually help with the gut lining with the mucosa with the stomach with the duodenum. And that can actually help with the cortisol bringing that back up. And that can help build back up that gut lining. And so we like licorice, that’s non diglycerides for the gut and Nanda glycerides licorice, we give it typically orally sublingually, to our patients, that will eventually trickle downstream to the gut as well. And so licorice can be a powerful thing. You just have to be careful if you’re giving a non diglycerides version that people that have already higher level of cortisol, that may make things worse. So we just got to make sure we’re testing that to know what kind of pattern we’re seeing.
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we could do a whole part two on that. If you want. Give us some feedback. Like maybe the gut hormone connection. And we could hit that in detail. But yeah, you highlighted a very important point, which is that cortisol is involved with this whole process. And it really is a Goldilocks zone. If you have too little cortisol, you’re exhausted. And you’re probably going to be dependent on stimulants and caffeine and sugar and things that are going to damage your gut. But then simply, you don’t have enough to build up the gut. And then if you have too much, now you’re catabolic, you’re breaking down your muscle tissue, and you’re breaking down your gut barrier. That’s probably part of the reason that I lost a lot of weight and a lot of muscle. When I first moved to Texas, I had gut infections, and I was incredibly stressed, just moving and leaving my family behind, you know, emotional stuff, homesickness gut infections, I had the perfect storm to tear up my gut. So I can tell you firsthand that adrenal supports did help. And that was probably because it was helping regulate the cortisol levels, which then in turn, took the load off my gut, so to speak.
100% Yeah, I like that. And so it’s good to really make sure that’s under control.
Evan Brand: How about probiotics? I think it’s worth mentioning. These are totally valuable tools that can help regulate histamine. Yeah, and regulate bacteria with it. So let’s dive into that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so you have to you I said you have three to four big families. Okay. So you typically have your lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, which are typically come together and usually a good high quality broad spectrum probiotic. So my line we have one called profile, Florida doesn’t have a lot of the different lactobacillus whether it’s kci acidophilus Bulgaria’s brevis, rhamnosus. And then of course, you have a lot of the bifidobacterium whether it’s bifidobacterium, bifidum, longum, brevis, right. So those are your broad spectrum lactobacillus or bifidobacterium. Probiotics, lots of good data, lots of good research anywhere from food poisoning for inflammation reduction, gut permeability reduction. nutrient absorption is all kinds of different studies connecting the dots on those so that’s kind of the bifidobacteria, lactobacillus Of course, we have more of our spore based or soil based probiotics. These are going to be a lot of your bacillus strains, right, whether it’s bacillus, subtlest class ei coagulans, like Informix, right. These are the bacillus strains. These are really good if you are very much cebo sensitive, fodmap sensitive, we may use some of these over a bifido lactobacillus species. And then of course, I’m a big fan of the probiotic that’s kind of more of a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii in my lammie, one called sacral flora, again, we’ll put the links below for for all y’all so if you want to see it, we’ll put the links below sacral Flora Saccharomyces boulardii is very helpful a lot of studies on it, helping to improve immunity in the gut IGA IGA levels going to get low and just gut inflammation or gut stress. Of course, it’s going to help with food poisoning a lot of studies on it helping with H. pylori, C. diff, Clostridium difficile, blastocystis hominess. It also helps crowd out yeast and Candida so there’s a lot of excellent benefits with saccharomyces we love it and it’s usually going to be a core part of my probiotic, my fifth r which is repopulation re inoculation on the good healthy probiotics, once the fourth hour is done right fourth hours and to be removing the gut bugs removing the gut infections. Fifth hour, we come in repopulate re inoculate with good bacteria. Most people kind of sweet they want to start probiotics sooner, and that may not be the best step. Not saying it may not help. But some people have just found one that’s just a lot of pills. And two, if they have a lot of bad bugs in there. It’s like going and getting a whole bunch of good fresh grass seeds throw down on a lawn full of weeds, right? You got to get the weeds done before we throw down the seeds right got to get the car washed or we get waxed.
Evan Brand: Kind of like that. Yeah, we had a lot of good feedback on the podcast we did remember we were talking about probiotics and how a lot of new research is showing probiotics are being used to help with getting out mycotoxins and we know that mold toxins damage the gut. So yes, so I have been I’ve honestly been working in probiotics into the protocol sooner and most people do well. There are some like you said that just don’t you got to pull the weeds before you throw the seeds. But there are a lot of people doing really good with throwing probiotics and sooner in the protocols now. So like you said, if they can handle the amount of pills, maybe we try to sneak one or two in or we could do like powdered versions, typically, it’s like a quarter teaspoon, we could throw in a blend like that sack be you could you could do powder and maybe throw it in a smoothie or something. So we are trying to integrate those a lot. And I’ve had amazing success personally with probiotics. So I think it’s interesting, there’s still a lot of people that poopoo probiotic probiotics I know you and I we kind of get, you know, so caught up in the clinical trenches that we may miss some things, but I do get a couple of emails, you know, here and there from from people, clients sending them like, hey, this guy like says probiotics are a waste of money, and you know, that they don’t work. And I would just say that’s not true. We have so much clinical data personally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about context, right? It’s like if someone comes in, they have chronic gut issues, and they’re just taking a probiotic thinking that that’s going to be the answer to their gut problems. It’s probably not right, and that’s where we’re trying to have a comprehensive functional medicine plan. That’s root cause and not just trying to Pro supplements at the wall thinking that that’s going to fix it. So yeah, I understand if that you know where that person is coming up with that, that bias that biases from not having a comprehensive root cause plan with a functional medicine practitioner, they’re just trying to throw stuff at them instead it hoping it will fix the symptoms, not fix the root cause.
Well, here’s Yeah, good, good point. Here’s the other thing, too, it’s even some probiotic companies will say that about other companies, it’s more of a marketing thing like, hey, their probiotic is crap, or it doesn’t work because of X, Y, or Z. But I will just say with what you and I use, clinically, we’re using professional supplement manufacturers exclusive only to health care providers. And a lot of the stuff we use, we have extended release technology. So when arguments like probiotics are going to die in the stomach, they’re not even going to make it to where they need to. But a lot of the new technology we use, they’re not even going to break open, they’re going to be resistant to the stomach acid. So that’s another problem too, when you hear these little like, super sometimes buzzworthy type articles. It’s not taking into consideration the quality, the quantity, the purity, the potency, the technology involved, it’s like probiotics, they get the label, and then that’s it. And that’s just not a fair classification.
Correct. And then also consumer reports that a study on probiotics a couple years back maybe 5 10 years ago. And what they found is most probiotics that they put a number on the outside of the bottle, hey, this is how many colony forming units. And what a lot of the cheap companies do is they say, Okay, this is how many should have been in this probiotic at manufacturing of this product. Let’s say it’s 20 billion. Now, what the professional companies do is, right, when you’re buying high quality, professional ingredients, they’re gonna say this is how many colony forming units should be in this capsule at expiration. And so you’re looking at something like two to three times the amount of those that species that CFU on the bottle colony forming units, is going to be typically in there. So when you see like, in my probiotic, I think it’s 40 billion per two capsules, right? That’s going to be what’s in there two years from now at expiration, right? And so obviously, it’s going to be two to three times the amount of that before. And so you want to use professional companies. So what you see on the label is always worst case, scenario, number one, and then also how products are stored by professional companies is very important. So like, where we have our warehouses, like everything is stored in an air conditioned or a refrigerated environment for a lot of our probiotics, some don’t necessarily need that. But which we value, the the scenario and how that store because that really increases potency, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the funny thing is, too, we’ve seen some papers on supposedly expiration dates, you know, this is something that you and I are forced to do with the professional companies we work with. But you know, we’ve seen some research on supplements from 2030 years ago, still being viable, meaning they still had some potency and purity to them. And obviously, they still had a biological effect. So to me, I would if I had to pick like a consumer shelf bought probiotic, or a suppose that expired professional product, I’m going to go for the supposedly expired product, I’d go for a five year old professional probiotic, then, you know, on the shelf today consumer level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And also a lot of the probiotics or supplements that require refrigeration on the warehousing side, a lot of times you’re just not going to get that on Amazon, you’re not going to get that level of specificity just because that’s not how their warehouses are set up. And so with ours, we make sure that that refrigeration components is there because we’re working with patients and we need we need that potency, because we’re trying to get clinical outcomes, right. We’re trying to sell and provide a clinical outcome for the patient. And if we’re just providing products that aren’t meeting that standard, we’re not going to win. And of course, we want to be successful on that front.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Well say Well, I think we covered a lot of it. So the mushrooms are beneficial Lion’s Mane the mushroom is amazing for the brain, but for the gut also Chaga mushroom would be great reishi mushroom could also deserve a good mention, you hit upon the amino acids. So the glutamine or the various types of glucose amines involved. We love amino acids, we use those all the time you mentioned like collagen also being you know, part of that makeup, we hit on some of the herbs like the the licorice, or the dgl version of it, the marshmallow, we like to use a lot, we hit upon the aloe, and then we hit the probiotics, I think those are the big categories. And then the enzymes we hit that too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think we did a really good job hitting a couple and I just I really want to plug in concepts, right? Like a lot of people, they just try to throw information at people and and try to memorize that. I think that’s not beneficial. But if you can just understand concepts, right? A concept is just something that sticks. You either get it or you don’t. And so we try to use a lot of analogies and understand we try to plug in a lot of the concepts of root cause versus palliative cause. We try to get you to think about, hey, if this helps, why does it help? is it just an anti inflammatory? is it helping just improve better digestion? is it helping your immune system? is it helping your adrenals and helping you that your body’s natural process to build back up that gut lining? What’s the underlying mechanisms if you understand that, then you see how it plugs into the greater matrix of healing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I agree 1,000%. So, I think the big concept of today is Yes, here are some things here are some nutrients you can use. However, we really want to make sure you’re testing, not guessing. So if you do need the aloe to calm the gut for now, you need the enzymes to help improve digestion. For now, you notice that HCl is helping with your heartburn or you notice that the enzymes are reducing your bloating, or your burping or your gas. Great, but what led to all that in the first place? What led you to need the aloe because you had gut inflammation, what led you to need the enzymes, that’s where somebody like us can come in and help you figure that out and plot it on paper. And, you know, we’ve been through the trenches personally. And clinically, we’re always improving upon herself. You know, I work on my children, I know you work on your children, we’re giving our kids things to help their guts, I mean, so this is like a, there’s no finish line, I don’t want people to think, Hey, I just do this aloe for a month, and then I’m done. You know, there’s not a finish line with the gut, we’re constantly being exposed to new toxins and new pathogens. We’ve even seen with the virus that’s been going around a lot of issues with the gut there, we’ve seen a lot of issue with tissue destruction in the intestinal tract. So who knows? Right now with the 5 10 year outlook of the GI health in the US is right now, our guts are notoriously bad, due to glyphosate and other things, damaging them. So just a quick note, you kind of started with the diet all and with the diet 100% organic is important, if you’re going to go buy all these probiotics, but yet, you’re going to eat strawberries with an average of 22 pesticides on them. If they’re not organic, you’re wasting your frickin time and your money because we know all those pesticides are just killing the beneficial bacteria in your gut that you’re trying to re inoculate or repopulate with. So please go organic, you know, before you spend money on probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then also how long do these probiotic strains last in your gut, I mean, a lot of times, you’re going to see the data show in about one month or so. So that they don’t stay forever. So when you take a probiotic, it’s not like it’s there forever. So it’ll it’ll hang around typically for a month, it’ll help with a nutrient synthesis, it’ll help with nutrient absorption, it’ll help with inflammation, modulating the immune system, there’s some data that maybe the spore based probiotics hang around a little bit longer, and they may help proliferate the growth of other beneficial species. So just think when you take a probiotic, it’s not forever. Now the goal is that we’re getting some level of fermentable foods in your diet, whether it’s from sauerkraut, or low sugar kombucha, or some kind of fermented pickle or something, or, you know, cultured coconut milk or potentially high quality raw milk if you can tolerate it. So you know, that’s typically how we’re getting exposed to probiotics more on a day in weekend kind of situation. If you’re someone that can’t get that level of exposure with fermented oils from food, then you probably want to be on a probiotic a little bit more frequently, if you’re not getting those fermentable. So we just got to plug and play where we’re at. I think our ancestors probably did more fermentable foods, which is ideal. But if we can’t we plug in a good quality probiotic, or at least throw in something every couple of months, just to kind of fill in the gap to make sure we’re getting exposed to those good for mandibles.
Evan Brand: Yeah, great point, I just want to highlight what you said too, which is like your gut bacteria are actually going to help you with your health in other ways. So once gut bacteria optimize your healing the gut, you’re making neurotransmitters the way you should you’re making serotonin, you’re making things to improve yourself, you’re making B vitamins to help your energy and your mitochondria. So this is why I really the gut, I mean, we just we can’t stop talking about it because it literally is the foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of want to make sure that is understood. And that makes sense for everyone. We’ll put a list of recommended products down below. So you guys have access to those you want to support us support the show, we appreciate it put those down below. Also, if you guys want to reach out to Evan brand, head over to EvanBrand.com, Evan is there for you guys worldwide. And again, I’m there for you as well, justinhealth.com, Dr. J myself, there’ll be a little link button, you guys can click and reach out to us we are available worldwide to help you guys help you help support y’all. We want to make sure they have the support you need. And you have a good comprehensive plan to get what’s going in the right direction if you’re not having success. And then also just try to apply one thing today as well. If you’re having if you’re overwhelmed, and you’re having a sticking point great to reach out, if not just try applying this information, we want to really help as many people as possible. And we know we’re going to help many more people than we actually see in person with this information. So just make sure you’re applying it. And if you are enjoying it, share it with family and friends that could also benefit put your comments down below. Let me know the best part that you liked about this what resonate with you the most. And give us a like and share as well. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you’re on the apple listening, if you’re on your Apple podcast app or Stitcher or wherever else, give us some stars, let us know what you think the show deserves between us both we have I lost count, but it was somewhere over 705 star reviews for our podcast in between our various feeds. So please give us some stars. Give us some sentences give us a blurb on whether you still call it iTunes or Apple podcast. We’d love to beat out people that are not clinically oriented. There’s still like top health podcast out there that it’s just theory theory theory theory. And then we have to like recalibrate people’s theories because they’re not clinically based. So we would love to beat those people. How do we beat those Before we go higher in the charts, how do we do that? With your reviews! So we have a some stars.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks to all you guys have a phenomenal day. Take care.
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The Root Causes of Constipation & Slow Motility | Podcast #331
Wouldn’t it be easy if you could blame your constipation on one thing? While that typically isn’t the case, your irregularity could be pointing to either one or multiple causes. Let’s watch and listen to Dr. J and Evan here, helping you learn what your gut may be trying to tell you, and what you can do about it.
Dr. J and Evan emphasized to make a few changes to your lifestyle and see if they result in any positive bowel changes. Such as more high-fiber foods in your meals: fruits, vegetables, whole grains. These steps will help you observe health changes – what works and what’s not via tests results as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:56 Slow Motility, Bowel Motility
8:06 Detoxification
15:57 Food for Detox
22:00 Vegan Honeymoon
27:40 System Approach, Solutions
30:51 Conventional Side
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we are going to be having a podcast all about constipation and bowel motility issues. This is a topic that we deal with all the time with our patients, especially when we’re dealing with and addressing potential infections. This can be a common side effects. So we’re going to dive into the underlying mechanisms and what you can do what we do about it with patients. Evan, what’s going on, man? How we doing?
Evan Brand: Doing really well. If someone listening is still embarrassed to talk about their poop, then I would encourage you to shed that shit shed the shame or embarrassment. We talk about poop all day. We love it, we enjoy it. This is part of being a human number one being a healthy human number two, because if you’re not pooping, you’re reabsorbing toxins, whether that’s xeno estrogens from environmental exposure or pesticide and herbicide or mold toxins, I mean, how we get rid of our toxic waste and chemicals and things we’re making internally and that we’re exposed to is peeing and pooping. And so when you look at someone who feels bad, they have dark circles under their eyes, they have skin issues, they’re irritable, they’re fatigued, they have headaches, a lot of times constipation is one of the underlying issues with those people. And if we can just get them pooping properly good amount in good shape, good size, good consistency, good frequency, we can really increase their productivity, their energy, their mental cognition, we can get rid of sugar cravings. I mean, there’s a lot that can happen when you just regulate the bowels. So we’re going to dive in today on some of the big root causes root triggers, I’m going to go straight to number one for me, which is going to be gut infections. Now, you and I were just talking before we hit record about different gut bugs and how some people with IBS, they’ll end up IBS constipation, others end up IBS D diarrhea. And so depending on what type of infections you have, your bowels may become dysregulated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And so, when you have different gut stressors, slow motility can easily be a result. So you can easily see on the on the fast side, motility is too fast. Our body doesn’t have the ability to reabsorb water and electrolytes in time, because usually electrolytes and water kind of follow each other. So as the colon kind of pulls out the electrolytes, usually the water comes out with it. And so when we have slower bowel movements, right, they’re usually harder, more compact kind of stools. So if we look at like, for instance, the Bristol stool chart, I’ll pull that up on screen. So anyone that’s watching the podcast can take a look at it. The Bristol stool chart, the chart that’s used by gastroenterologist and such, but it’s just a way of kind of assessing where you’re still fit. So the typical number four is like the poopy policeman. And that’s like just a really good solid looking snake, like not overly hard not overly soft stool. That’s number one. If you go to the actual number one on the Bristol stool chart that’s like kind of the rabbit poop, right, the rabbit pellets really hard, hard to move. And then number seven is just pure liquid. So four is kind of right in the middle, and in between. So let me just show you what I’m talking about here. So you guys can visualize if you’re watching the podcast video along with it. So here is the Bristol stool charts that you guys can see. Okay, so number one, right separate heart clubs, nuts hard to pass. This is like the rabbit poop, right? That’s type one. And then it gently progresses back to two and three, right? where it starts to get more sausage shaped like it says except it gets more smoother, and that as it goes to three. And then step type four is the perfect poopy policeman kind of more of a sausage like more smooth, not overly cracked or not overly soft. And then you can see as you go to five and six, it becomes more liquid and then seven and just entirely liquid watery, no solid. And so that gives us a pretty good window. And so we usually when we have when the guts really inflamed, and we have usually a lot of toxicity in the gut, we can usually see it go to number seven where it’s pure liquid. And that’s because the body is just trying to flush things out. And when things go a little bit slower, you could still have inflammation and have type one right so you could have h pylori, that’s lowering stomach acid, you could have a lot of cebo that is meth that’s producing a lot of methane based back gases. And how do you know it’s methane is you have a lot of foul smelling gas or flatulence that’s a sign that there’s a lot of methane present. And methane can easily screw up that migrating motor complex and make the bowels go more on the slow side. But you can have the same level of infections like h pylori, or maybe histo or Giardia. And that could also cause it to go on the diarrhea side. So it just kind of depends. Everyone’s a little bit different. But we always you could have cebo you could have h pylori, you could have low enzyme and low acid levels that can easily be causing type one. But for someone else, those same infections could easily be driving steps type seven, right where it’s pure liquid. So you got to look at everyone as an individual on that. And really, you know, come up with the right plan.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and it can Alternate to write. I mean, that was my situation when I first had gut issues and I was losing weight uncontrollably when I had H. pylori and parasites and bacterial overgrowth and Candida the whole nine yards. You know, there’d be some days the gut was good. And most days the gut was not good. Luckily, I’m over that now. But man, I’ll tell you, I have a lot of empathy for people that, you know, you never know what you’re going to get, you kind of wake up and it’s like, Is today a good day or not a good day. And now that I’ve learned so much, you and I, both over the past few years about mold toxicity, that’s a big trigger for gut issues, too. So I’m get constipated, but a lot of diarrhea. And I think that’s the body’s way of trying to get rid of the toxin, but also the gut is so irritated. And you can have leaky gut from mycotoxin exposure, that that can be a factor too. So eventually, we’ll get into the gut healing phase of our conversation. I think that’s critical to healing constipation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And so on the constipation side, there could be issues with obviously, the bowel motility has to be slow. So what’s constipation. So if you’re not having a BM, you’re not passing about 12 inches of stool in about a 24 hour period. That’s typically constipation. And there are millions of people in this country that aren’t able to have a BM every day. Now, once you start going 2 3 4 5 6 7, I see some patients that go up to seven days about a BM, that’s a problem because half of your stool is going to be bacteria. The other half is going to be you know, fiber and such. And within that stool, some of that bacteria and toxins needs to leave your body. If you’re not having that pass through your intestinal tract into the toilet, your chance of reabsorbing a lot of those toxins goes up really high. That’s definitely not good. Because those toxins get reabsorbed into your body. There could be xeno estrogens, there could be mold toxins, there could be a whole bunch of junk in there that you could be reabsorbing, and that could be really stressing out your body. So the first thing we talked about with detoxification is people talk about Detox Detox Detox, right? Well, if you’re not pooping every day, and that’s because of a gut infection or not chewing your food well enough or having insufficient hydrochloric acid or enzyme levels, or having some kind of a h pylori or SIBO issue. All of those things can easily affect your detoxification people are really focused on detox. Just by getting your digestion and your motility better. That makes a huge difference on your liver, and all your detoxification pathways, your lymphatics, your immune everything.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s funny, you’ll see women on Instagram, they’re all done up their hair and their makeup and their lipstick, and they’re like marketing, hashtag add hashtag detox hashtag tea. And they’ve got these like, I don’t know, you know how it is like, these ridiculous products that they’re marketing and they’re not talking about poop. To me, that’s the best way to detox is get poop out. I’m not going to buy detox tea, maybe like a little bit of dandelion or some who knows milk thistle, blend it in. Yeah, I mean that that’s part of it. But unfortunately, detox has kind of gotten co opted by the marketing industry. And so most people don’t even focus on that, though. You know, they’ll poop once a week, but then they take a detox tea and they think they’re doing it correctly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, my whole take on detoxification out of the gates is very simple. Okay, first, get enough good clean water in your system, to make sure you’re digesting your amino acids and all your nutrients. Well, remember, sulfur based amino acids run the majority of your detoxification pathways, along with B vitamins, right. So we need good B vitamins, good antioxidants, good sulfur amino acids. So if we’re breaking down those nutrients, well, there’s not a bottleneck with HDL levels or enzyme levels. We’re getting enough good clean water. And we’re not overly stressing our sympathetic nervous system because remember, the more we overly overly stress the adrenals the sympathetic nervous system decreases that migrating motor complex, which are the wave like contractions that move stool through your intestinal tract just like you kind of roll up the to pace roll at night, I get that toupees moving through to get your toothpaste out to brush your teeth. your intestines do the same thing. So if you can do those top three things, right, you’re on the right track. Now there may be extra things where we need extra sulfur or extra antioxidants or compounds or binders to help with mold or heavy metals. That’s true and that that would be addressed down the road but a lot of toxic patients detoxification happens hepatobiliary liver gallbladder back into the intestines and then out the intestinal tract. So we need to have really good motility and really good absorption of nutrients and a lot of good clean water to help fuel that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. Good point. Yeah, so we both manufacture our own custom blends of supplements that are professional grade, and we both have a liver support that has some gallbladder nutrients built into it. That can be really helpful because, as you mentioned, with sluggish bowels, a lot of times there’s also sluggish bile production. So just helping to thin the bile, whether it’s using supplemental ox bile or muthoni, taurine, beet powder, whatever else we could do to increase bile flow that’s going to be helping and then why don’t we hit on the diet piece. I mean, I think this is the low hanging fruit that you’re having. American is still really really blowing it on, which is just the fact that they’re not doing enough good meats, good fats, good veggies, you know, your average, American might wake up and I don’t know, do a piece of toast and maybe in 2020, or 2021, it’s an avocado toast. But still, you know, that’s not the optimal thing for good poops.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, so inflammation in the diet can easily mess up the intestinal tract, inflammation in the diet can easily create inflammation in the gut. And that could either move the body more to diarrhea or more constipation. Now, for the sake of this podcast, if we start moving more to constipation, not good. And of course, you know, these foods can stress out the intestinal tract. And then when we start creating inflammation in the intestinal tract, and then we already have indigestion, and we don’t have adequate enzymes and acids, so we’re kind of burping a lot after our meals, food sits longer in our tummy, right, and we’re not in a lot of gases are produced because the foods are not being broken down properly, that’s a problem. So we got to really make sure we’re masticating and chewing our food very, very, very well, we got to make sure that increases surface area for enzymes and acids to work, we also have to make sure we’re not overly hydrating with our meals. So hydrate 10 minutes or more before meal. And then if you’re consuming a little bit of liquid with a meal, just do it to kind of help with swallowing pills, don’t do it for hydration purposes. Because water has got a pH of seven, your intestinal tracts a pH of 1.5, or two. So if you start adding a whole bunch of seven, Ph to a to a pH of two, you’re going to move that pH more in the alkaline direction away from the acid at direction. And we need good acidity to help activate our enzymes and our acid levels very important. So that’s low hanging fruit is chew your food up well. Second, is make sure you’re not overly hydrating with the food do all your hydration two minutes before.
Evan Brand: I’ve got my grandfather so many times till this drink liquid with almost every bite of his food, held his Drink, drink drink, like take a bite of food and wash it down with liquid. I’m like no, like you’re literally just pouring water on your digestive fire don’t do that. So yeah, it’s it’s easy. And it actually does make a difference. I mean, you know, I’ve probably talked about that before. But it does make a difference. Like if I, I’ve got a mason jar here, my goal, if I sit at the dinner table, I will try to not have it more than like two ounces of liquid. You know, if I have a full cup, I’m more I’m liable to drink it. If I’ve just got a little bit I know, hey, this is the only liquid I have if I need a little help with the meal. Otherwise it just food, no liquid with the meal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, for me, as soon as I know, like a meal is coming, I’m gonna go just maybe take two mason jars, add some sea salt to it, I’m going to down them and then I’m good. And then you know, 510 minutes later, I can start the eating process and I chew my food out very well. So then that gets the digestive juices rolling as well. So on top of that another low hanging fruit is let’s say you eat good quality proteins or fats, and that makes you constipated. That’s almost a surefire sign. You’re not making enough enzymes or acids. So some people they really do poor with enzymes, and acids, and it reveals itself through animal products. Now, a lot of people when that happens, guess what their natural tendency is, unfortunately, either going to go vegetarian or yeah, oh, it’s the meat that’s so bad for my gods, the meat that’s in my intestinal tract for days and days. It’s rotting in there, you know, yeah, documentaries, I have to cut out the animal products. Well, it’s just a sign that your enzymes and your acids are really poor. And the meat is revealing that now what’s the solution? Now in the meantime, you may want to drop down some of the meat that you’re doing, or some of the protein or fat you’re doing, just to kind of lessen some of the stress off the intestinal tract. But the first thing we’ll do before that is we’ll add in some HCl and some enzymes, maybe even some bile salts, we’ll see how much that starts to correct it. And then if we need then we can drop the animal protein and fat down a little bit if we need. Now, if your intestinal tracts really messed up, you may have to do an elemental or a bone broth faster, or something more liquid based to make it easier on your intestine. So everyone’s a little bit different. And we have a lot of clinical experience about being able to meet someone where they’re at so we can get optimal results.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and it’s sad that the meat gets the blame, you know, and like you said, all these documentaries that will pop up on Netflix, they’re all like, majority, you know, anti meat vegetarian vegan documentaries, and then you kind of have to help clients because sometimes we’ll get clients that have not listened to enough of us where the we haven’t convinced them to get back on me actually had a vegan or ex vegan client come to me last week. She said she was vegan for six years. And she got back on me with the help of listening to our podcasts. And she says she feels better than she ever has, which is amazing. She was able to transition back onto me without necessarily a bunch of supplemental enzymes, but in most cases, yeah, we’re going to come in due to and people may say why why do I need the supplement? Well, we don’t live in a world where you’re sitting on the edge of a cliff overlooking a river valley with no stress. And you know, hunter gatherer average work 18 hours a week. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re working 40 60 hour work weeks. We’ve got kids, we’ve got technology we’ve got Got smartphones taking our attention away, we’re scrolling in Bowling at chipotle looking at our phone while we’re eating, or we’re stressed from bills and mortgages and obligations and whatever and age, by the time you’re age 40 50 60, you’re not making hardly any enzymes and acids compared to when you were younger. So all those factors add up that is the answer of why why do you need enzymes to support you? And how do enzymes help you poop? Well, because when that food is digesting better, your body’s going to be able to get rid of what it doesn’t need. And if you have a lot of malabsorption problems, you know, you may see on digested food in the stool. And over time, I’ve noticed people just adding in a handful of berries a day was all we needed to really clear up their their issues. Once we got all the gut infections enzymes in, you know, infections resolved, enzymes put in if they still needed help, we’ll go into a couple other things you want to get into. But handful of blueberries, I mean, that does a lot.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it just kind of going back to some of the the vegan stuff. So I always tell my patients will in general, ie more non starchy vegetables, most paleo people eat more non starchy vegetables than vegans do. Most vegans I find have lots of processed carbohydrate, they have lots of grains, lots of lentils, or legumes and they don’t typically eat tons of non starchy vegetables, it’s it’s difficult. On the vegan side, most don’t do it right now, if you’re going to be a vegan, you need to do lots of good fats from avocado and coconuts. And you probably need some kind of an amino acid supplement from rice or pea protein or some kind of some kind of an algae kind of protein source because most aren’t doing it right if you’re going to do it that way. But number two is sometimes the vegetables can jack you up to especially if they’re raw, because a lot of that fiber or if the vegetables are higher in fermentable, carbohydrates, some can be like garlic and onions and, and broccoli and asparagus, they can be higher and fodmaps. And fodmaps can be fertilizer for a lot of the SIBO base bacteria. So if you have a lot of bad bacteria that’s producing maybe more methane, and some of those vegetables start to feed some of that methane producing bacteria that may make you more constipated too. So I’ve seen some patients do better more with the meats than with a lot of the plants. So I’ve seen it go both ways. And you know, it’s hard because if you’re let’s say you’re one person, and you had an experience where you went vegan, and you felt great, well guess what, you only have your experience, I see patients that have gone carnivore and felt great. And so because we have this perspective, where we’ve seen dozens of people do great from different things, that allows us to form a unbiased clinical recommendation on what we think is best for the patient, because we’ve seen successes work from both sides. And the question is, we don’t have a dogmatic belief in Oh, well, this is what does it well, this is why it would do it for this person. And this is maybe why it doesn’t for you. And we’re going to we’re going to move the levers around because the goal isn’t to do this thing is to get you the result. So it’s really important that if you’re working with someone, you know, kind of talking to patients that are out there, you want someone you want to work with someone that’s results driven, not process driven, meaning, hey, this, you have to do this diet, this is the most important thing, this should get you the results versus Hey, no, I want to get you these results, we’re going to try pulling some of these levers and see what happens as a result. And then we’ll we’ll go backwards from there. So just really important. You want to make sure you’re working with someone that’s results driven, not necessarily, you know, dogma driven, if you will.
Evan Brand: That’s another great soundbite. You’re just rolling out these things. I love it. This is exactly the point that we needed to hit on. Because in this day and age, unfortunately, everything is kind of a soundbite. So you go to the lectin guy, you’re going to get the lectin diet, you go to the carnivore guy, you get the carnivore diet, you go to the vegan guy, you get the vegan, and you and I don’t really have any labels for us, we’d like you said we were results driven. And so we’re able to be more flexible. I love that we’re not in a box, like these people, because once you write the carnivore book or the lectin book, you’re kind of that guy, and then you’re stuck in that box. And it’s like, oh, wait a second, I’ve got all these other people doing really good with some cooked lightly steamed veggies and blueberries over here. But you told me I need to be carnivore. So what the heck, and then it just blows your credibility. So I yeah, I don’t want to be in a box.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now I tend to lean more on the Paleo template, but I use the word template, not diet, so I can have flexibility. And there’s some patients that I’ve seen that haven’t been able to tolerate any meat, we’ve had to just lean on free form amino acids, with some good vegetables or starches that are easy to handle. And I’ve had to go to that extreme with some patients. And if my dogma was no, you must eat animal products all the time. While I may not have been able to help that Paris person so we try to have the levers that we work with. We kind of have like a foundational bias, but it’s a bias that is flexible and that we can adjust according to the patient.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And eventually I would argue that that person you’re referring to could probably get back in and they may have been able to get back here forever later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not the case, not a forever thing. It’s kind of a starting point where, hey, you break your ankle, you probably may have to be in a wheelchair out of the gates. And then we progress you to, you know, some crutches and they put you on a boot and then you just maybe Walk slowly, you don’t run and now you start jogging and majesty, right, there’s a progression and how you how certain things heal? Well, it’s the same thing, the four year digestive system that’s not quite as outward, it’s inward, right and how it looks and performs. But you can feel it just the same as an outward injury to your foot or hand.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m gonna keep this thing going a little more philosophical than action based for a minute, just to to further this conversation, which is that let’s say someone goes to the bookstore. It’s funny, everything’s changing with society, isn’t it now it’s the Amazon bookstore, the Kindle bookstore, it used to be the real physical brick and mortar, there’s still a need that exists out there. I know there are some. So you go into the store, right, and you go to the diet section, and then someone picks up like, the, like I said, the Paleo book, The lectin book, The carnivore book, they do that, and then they get different or weird results. And then they kind of just give up, and that’s why they get so opposed to the word diet, or they get so opposed to the idea of changing the way they eat to change their symptoms. But the problem is, all these people writing these books are missing all the other root causes. So just because Jane didn’t do well, with a lot of meats, she might give up on meats, like you said, or she saw the documentary and give up on meats, but she never worked with somebody like us. So when we have these clinical tools that we have, where we’re going to be measuring the stool measuring the urine and looking at different infections. If we could just resolve those for Jane, get some of the enzymes back in clear the infections, guess what now she does great with the meat. So it’s sad, because there’s so many people that may have tried stuff like this, but they got so turned off with the non amazing results that they thought it was the diet to blame. But it wasn’t it was just the root causes. And like you said, the indicator is it sort of for us, it’s a clue Oh, that happens when you do meets, that doesn’t mean give it up. That means let’s figure out why. And the H Pylori could be the big one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s true. And I call it the vegetarian or vegan honeymoon. A lot of people that do go vegan, they can feel great their first year, it all depends where they’ve come from if they ate a lot of processed food or crappy food. And they’re eating lots of organic vegetables, and maybe some good healthy or plant fats like olives, or avocado or coconut oil. And they’re just getting a lot of organic food in their system, they may feel a lot better now over time is essential fatty acids and amino acids start moving more in the deficient side. And a lot of those fat soluble vitamins like a d k start moving downward, they’ll start having more problems over time. And that’s kind of I call it the vegan honeymoon where they’re kind of chasing that honeymoon. They’re like, I don’t feel as good as I did last year. And they kind of get stuck. And usually it’s a protein, fatty acid kind of issue, or maybe even a carbohydrate issue too much carbs. And then you got to look deeper. So getting back to the constipation part right, we have the six hours that I used to work with my patients. And we kind of start with that as a framework, removing the bad foods, or placing the enzymes and acids to the first two hours. And we adjust the diet accordingly. So it could be cutting out cutting down a lot of the fiber or a lot more cooking or going lower fodmap. or cutting out salicylates or females or going on to a moon, it could be a combination of all of that could be an elemental diet, of course, adding in enzymes and acids. And bio, especially if the stools are floating more, that’s a sign that we’re not breaking down fat, so we may adjust those first two hours. And if we’re having bowel movement issues, I may add in things like ginger, or bitters or D lime any, we may have to even add in some natural things like trifle or magnesium to really get the bowels moving. It just depends. I don’t like to add in bow movers unless I really can’t move the bowels with those first two hours, right. If I can’t move the bowels with those first two hours changing the diet and changing enzymes, acids and bile support, then we may lean on things to kind of get the ball moving. But I always want to see how the body responds before we have to add those things in first.
Evan Brand: Well, you make a great point. And even clinically, the things you would recommend to be used directly for moving the bowels those things are still a hell of a lot safer and more effective than some of the conventional stuff you’re going to get. So I mean, if you go to your conventional doc and they refer you to the GI doc and you’re diagnosed with let’s say IBS, C constipation, IBS type issue, there’s going to be some type of a pharmaceutical involved and there’s likely going to be side effects with that. And once again, it’s not the root cause so in your case like you mentioned clinically, you may not go straight to the magnesium hydroxide to help move the bowels by adding water to the bowels However, there’s so many people deficient in magnesium anyway that you could be actually fixing simultaneously fixing an underlying mineral deficiency plus helping to move the bowels. So the cool thing about what we do, is there a positive side effect so we can kill multiple birds with the same stone?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, I’d much rather use a nutrient than like an abrasive herb like Cena or Cascara Sagrada, right? No one has a deficiency of that, but they may have some deficiencies in some of these magnesium so that can be helpful. Now if I get bowels moving out of the gates, usually one or two months in, I’m going to try pulling back on some of these compounds to see if the bowels can move on its own. So it just depends, right? We’re getting the body hydrated, we’re chewing better. We’re working on eating and a non stressful environment, we’re getting enzymes and acids better. We’re cutting out the inflammation. And we may be changing some of the format, the building and the food. So all of those things are moving so many levers. So when I work with patients, patients are like, want to know like, what’s the solution for this? What’s the solution for that? It’s like, I don’t know, I’m going to just give you what I’ve seen to work. And we’re going to do eight or nine or 10 things out of the gates. And we’re going to see what works. But in general, to know exactly which one it is, it’s really hard because you’d have to like make one change, wait a couple of weeks, make one change, wait a couple of weeks. And it would take patients years to get better versus weeks and months. And so we make a whole bunch of changes at once. And then we monitor and we check in on those changes.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. So just to give a little more clarity, somebody who’s listening, like what does that even mean? Eight or nine changes. Oh, my God, that’s overwhelming. No, I mean, it could be Hey, look, we’re going to give a little more enzymes and acids, we’re going to pull this food out, we’re going to get you to do a little bit more water and a cleaner water source, we may throw in a little bit of this extra mineral, or maybe a little extra vitamin C, you’re going to do a handful extra of some blueberries, you’re going to make sure you’re getting enough adequate movement because you’re a sedentary job. So we’re going to get you a standing desk. And now you can stand up and move around, we’re going to get you to do a 10 minute walk a day, we’re going to get you to you know, take a couple deep breaths, we’re going to get you to chew your food better, we’re going to make sure that you’re not sitting in, I don’t know a crazy loud restaurant with like, you know, speakers blasting, you know, techno music in the background, we want you to just settle down, we want you to go to bed on time. I mean, yeah, those things give you 5 10 15%. And then by the time you add it all up, you’ve got really good success.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you’re not chewing your food. I’m sorry, you’re not hydrating when you’re eating right? All these things matter. And maybe getting a little bit more sunlight, right? All these things matter. And so that’s why it’s so hard to be like, well, what’s the solution? for this? It’s like, well, there’s a lot of things that can be a contributing factor, it could be 10%, for this 5% for that 20%. For that it’s very rare that this one thing is at 90 100%. Sometimes you get big, like you just make one simple change. And you the next week you check in with the patient. They’re like, well, I’m 80 or 90% better, it’s like whoa, that’s a home run, that can happen too. But we don’t count on it. And that’s why we do things kind of in a systematic fashion of what’s going to be the low hanging fruit and then we kind of move up from there, right? You got to build up the foundation of the house once the foundation solid, now you can you can build up, the foundation is not solid, then you have a whole bunch of problems that have happened with with the building of the house as you start going up.
Evan Brand: Good point. Good point. And this is the whole reason that we do a workup and we run people through a sort of a system. You call it a system approach. Because if you come in and you go to the doc, hey, I’ve got constipation. Pharmaceutical laxative, see you later. If you come to us constipation, it’s like, Huh, Interesting. Interesting. Okay, let’s figure out why. And if you ask why enough and you do the proper testing, you’re going to get to that why. So I just want to make sure we’re always comparing and contrasting because you ask, you know, Bobby, who hasn’t pooped all week what he’s going to do for his constipation, he might go to Walgreens, he’s going to go to the laxative section. Oh, I found this laxative. This one looks good. Let me drink some of this stuff. Oh, yeah, I poked Problem solved. It’s like, huh, yeah, you solve the constipation problem, but you didn’t solve why that’s happening in the first place. So I just, it shouldn’t have to be revolutionary to think root cause, but it still is not the mainstream. So until it’s the mainstream, our job is not done.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And so when for most conventional, like gastro people, for instance, they’re just like, hey, motility support, here you go laxative support, here you go. It’s very rare, you may get one that say, hey, let’s do a Siebel breath test, maybe that, and then what after that, maybe they’re gonna just recommend, hey, you know, do this quick little diet thing, because a lot of the conventional fodmap diet still have a lot of grains and other crap in there. So you may not change the inflammation. And they may throw some Rifaximin or neomycin at you, boom. And then now maybe you have a fungal overgrowth or something on the backside, because they don’t do or address the gut bacteria, right? And then that can create other rebound overgrowth down the road. So let’s say you have a very progressive kind of forward thinking gastro Doc, maybe that’s what happens that I just mentioned, but most that’s going to be hey, here’s your motility enhancer. And you know, you got to just learn to relax and meditate and hey, maybe taking antidepressant a lot of time. That’s it. So you’re kind of stuck. And that’s just the insurance space model. When you have three to five minutes with a doc, that’s typically all they’re going to recommend for you. They don’t have enough time to really dive in deeper. And that model doesn’t give them the ability to dive in deeper. So you really need to see a functional medicine doctor to really have the ability to go deeper and get to the root cause.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I get so frustrated with that term, integrative it just makes me angry because I’ve had so many people and I know you have to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients and patients that have said I’ve worked with this angle. Right of guy, Mike Oh, integrative What did he do? And you know, they kind of market it as it’s like so forward thinking, but like you said, it may be the Rifaximin at most. And then guess what a lot of these people they have antibiotic resistant infection. So we’ll test them and guess what the SIBO situation is still going on. Maybe they have parasites or like you said, there’s a fungal overgrowth component to it as well, their guts leaky, their guts inflamed. Now they’ve got all sorts of other problems as a side effect of hitting this Rifaximin. In some cases, it can help maybe play whack a mole a little, it may knock some things down, but they still have enough problem when they come to us that we need further work. So I get frustrated with this integrative idea. Because and I know there’s good intention behind it. But as you mentioned, with that model, the way the model exists, it doesn’t doesn’t allow enough time and there’s not enough advanced testing, like we’re doing to to fully get to the bottom of it
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. And once you kind of talk to your conventional medical doctor, and you say, hey, walk me through your thinking on what you think the root cause of this could be. Usually it kind of reveals their that they really don’t know. Because if you’re just providing a drug to treat the symptoms, well, obviously, they’re not worried about the root cause because it’s Band Aid down below, right? So we kind of look at everything in my line, kind of as the SSS approach, right? You have the underlying stressors here, could be physical stress, chemical stress, emotional stress, food allergies, bacterial overgrowth, sibo, right, all of these stressors, increase our stress bucket, and then the body systems start to dysfunction, hormones, digestion, immune detoxification, as the system starts to dysfunction, then you have all this, the symptoms happen down below. And so conventional medicine just band aids, these symptoms down below, they don’t ever go upstream. So you got to have conversations with your doctors that talk more about the upstream issues. And so we try to nullify all of the underlying stressors, make sure foods good chewings, good, hydrations. Good. And then we’re going to do tests that look at the function of the systems. So it’s a lot different of approach. So if you’re working with someone, you know, you want to be able to ask the right questions, what do you think the underlying root causes are, and as a patient, make sure you walk into it with an open mind that there’s probably not one underlying issue, it’s probably a bunch of things that are spread out, that are part of the underlying cause, from a stress standpoint, and the body system standpoint that are emanating the symptoms downstream?
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said Well said, that’s a great, great visualization, and you have permission to have 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 things going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the key, that’s that that’s the missing assumption, you could have a lot of different things. And then as you walk through with the clinician, and you’re making changes, you need to not go into it as Oh, I made this diet change and the supplement, I don’t feel better yet. It’s okay. There’s always a plan B, a Plan C, a plan D, a plan E. And if the answers down here, and E and F and you, you quit and get discouraged that B and C, then you never get a chance to kind of go deeper. So just as patients are listening here, always make sure you have that ability to kind of just like, have a good attitude and keep on progressing down the line.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and you can’t blame them on me. This is the way that people have been conditioned over decades and decades of conventional medicine, but it still does frustrate me when someone will approach us whether it’s a friend or a family member or something and they’ll say, Hey, you know, I’ve got autoimmune. I’ve got sjogrens or I’ve got alopecia or I’ve got, you know, diabetes type two. What’s wrong with me? Like, why did this happen? Where did this come from? It’s like, Where do I even start? You stay up till 1am? You posted a picture the other day on your Facebook page? Have you eating an ice cream Sunday? Yeah, never get exercise. I know what you do. You sit all day, you don’t get outside and you’ve never had a tan in your life. So you’re afraid of the sun. If you do go outside, you lather yourself in sunscreen chemicals. You don’t eat organic, you’re super stressed. I mean, you know, so when people ask, well, what’s wrong? Why is this happening? It’s almost like, Oh, are you ready for this? Because I’m about to open up Pandora’s box here. And I’m going to tell you 20 things of what’s happening, I’m gonna tell you 30 things of why this has happened to you. So it’s just a reeducation really, of telling people look, it’s there’s not a one smoking gun, rarely to you and I find one smoking gun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, I 100% agree. It’s nice every now and then where you kind of get a home run and functional medicine, when you kind of make a couple of changes. And it’s like boom, and you blast it out of the park. It’s always a good luck little ego check. Because you know, you work with a lot of difficult patients over over time. And so it’s nice to get a couple of home runs every now and then. But if you work with a good clinician that has the right algorithm and kind of goes through the things goes to the options that give you the greatest chance of success out of the gates, and then work to the things that give you the less success at the end, then you have the greatest chance of success as a patient early on. And you set the foundation for greater healing over time. So I think that’s really the most important mindset is clinically go with the high percenter options.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and I’m not being a bully here. And I’m not making First of these people, I’m just saying, we really need to re education. You know, you you people eventually come out of the woodwork at at you when you and I do what we do and they’re not ready for the red pill. They’re not you know, they’ll ask what’s wrong me? Why do I have diabetes? Or why do I have this headache? It’s like, ah, are you ready? Are you ready? Because there’s there’s a lot to uncover. There’s a lot to unpack.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think most people once they’ve kind of gone through the conventional medicine model, and they’ve kind of said, Hey, all right, well, I just don’t want to be relying on laxatives or enemas my whole life. What’s next? Usually, once there’s, they kind of have this level of like, okay, these are the only options I have from conventional medicine. There’s a level of openness that occurs from that, where they’re like, Alright, what’s next? What’s next? I’d see functional medicine and nutrition is helping people all the time, what’s next outside of this because they just kind of have this yearning that there’s got to be something more. And I think that’s creates a level of openness and readiness to.
Evan Brand: Good point. Good point. Yeah. I often say people have to hit rock bottom or they have to be miserable enough to listen, I mean, you and I’ve heard countless stories of husbands and wives that are stubborn and they want to eat the pizza while the other spouse has to eat the grass fed steak and sweet potato that grass fed steak sweet potato tastes better anyway. So I don’t know what they’re doing. But But anyway, they’ve got to have their own issue right? And then finally, once the other person once they get miserable enough, then finally they’re they’re willing and you don’t have to drag them into this whole thing as much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I totally agree. Well, if you guys are listening, and you enjoy the podcast here, put your comments down below. Really appreciate the thumbs up and a share. We also reviews are great JustinHealth.com/iTunes, EvanBrand.com/iTunes. It’s great. If you feel free to head over to EvanBrand.com you can schedule an appointment with Evan anywhere in the world. Vice versa with myself Dr. J at JustinHealth.com. We’re here to help y’all. And I appreciate you guys listening and just feel free to share this content with some friends or family that can benefit. Again, we’re clinicians that have had 10s of thousands of patients experience kind of combined, and we want to provide actionable information with y’all so you can take action and get your health back in your hands. So we really appreciate you guys being listeners and attending.
Evan Brand: Take great care yourself. We’ll be back next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-root-causes-of-constipation-slow-motility-podcast-331
The Gut Skin Connection – How Your Gut Health Can Impact Your Skin | Podcast #330
The gut and skin enjoy a constant dialogue via what has become known as gut-skin axis. In this video, Dr. J and Evan are discussing that while symptoms of gut health issues can be incredibly varied, the skin is often a great barometer for what’s going on inside the gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:51 Different Skin Aspects
5:37 Getting Good Skin
13:12 How Gut affects Skin Health
20:28 Collagen Benefits
28:52 Tips to Remember
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here today we’re going to be talking about the gut skin connection, how your gut health can impact your skin. This is a, you know, quite a big topic of discussion. A lot of my patients have gut health hormone health. And part of that whole sequelae of symptoms is going to be skin issues. And it’s important right skin kind of is your first representation to the world of who you are and your health. And if you’re healthy, you want good skin as a byproduct. So we’re going to dive into that and talk about, you know, things you can do to improve your skin and your gut health. If it’s not at an optimal level, Evan, how are we doing today, my friend?
Evan Brand: Doing really well. And you’re right, when you see someone your initial gut reaction, you know, they say, Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pun intended.
Evan Brand: Exactly. When you look at somebody, you go, oh, wow, they don’t look healthy, or they look pale, or they look frail. Or they look weak. I mean, we make a lot of quick judgments on people. So you know, for the people listening that are like, well, I don’t really care about my vanity, you know, that’s so vain or whatever. It’s like, Well, do you want a good paying job? Do you want a good spouse? You know, you might not even get to the second date. If the person looks at you and goes, Oh, wow, you know, this person looks unhealthy. They look sickly. So I think it’s, it’s important to try to go beyond feeling vain about it and know that as you mentioned, your skin is it’s it’s a picture of your health picture. And my skin was a really good barometer. For me going through some of my detox protocols, my wife would look at me and say, Honey, you look pale, and I would go take a binder and then all of a sudden my skin tone would get better. It was almost like I was recirculating toxins. And then when I took my liver detox or binder support, my skin looked better. So for me, I kind of personally use it as a barometer. Or if I eat dairy as a treat, I may see acne pop up and I’m like, Oh, look at that. Look what I did. Here’s the effect of that dairy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And the pre show, we were trying to figure out effect versus a fact. Right? And so effect is the end result. A fact is, is the verb so we’re trying to wrap our heads around that the English language is quite the the crazy thing. So yeah, absolutely. So skin is very important. So there’s a lot of different aspects of skin right? Its first aspect is, you know, just keeping acne and skin rashes under control, whether it’s psoriasis, or eczema, or just general acne, there’s different food allergens that can have effect on that. There’s different enzyme and acid and just indigestion with foods, not breaking them down, that can have a big effect on that. And there can also be things like hormones. So whether it’s elevations in testosterone with women, whether it’s, you know, testosterone, androgens, that can have a major impact on women’s skin. Also just inflammation in general food allergens, in general, high levels of insulin can create more oil from that sebaceous gland. And that sebaceous gland, that oil can feed a lot of the bacteria on the skin, which can create, obviously the acne vulgaris bacteria feeding and creating acne. So there’s a lot of different mechanisms, right. So when you look at skin health or anything, is a lot of different components. And so food allergies are one component in digestion, not enough acid and enzymes, a component and of course, things like H. pylori, and bacterial overgrowth and fungal overgrowth, and parasitic infections can all impact that. And then of course, female hormones can play a big role. estrogen dominance is a big thing. Insulin resistance is a big thing. Insulin resistance can feed excess androgens and women, that’s a big thing. And then of course, increase aromatization. And estrogen in men can also feed skin issues as well. So there’s a lot of different connections here that play a big role. And of course, certain nutrients, if you’re deficient in zinc or vitamin A, can also play a big role in skin health as well. And then, of course, poor detoxification, because your skin is the integumentary system. And it plays a major role in detoxifying. So the biggest organ of detoxification in the body. So there’s a lot of different mechanisms here. And we’ll kind of dive through them one by one.
Evan Brand: Imagine how much profit we could reduce from the makeup industry. If Well, I guess it would be a multifactorial process, right. And number one, you’d have to convince women that natural skin is beautiful, and that you don’t need the six inch long eyelashes and all that. But imagine how much of a hit we could put into the makeup industry if we were to improve people’s skin because you have so many women that they’ll say oh, well, I wake up with bags under my eyes. It’s like, well, it’s not the bags that are the problem that needs to be covered up by makeup. Those bags under the eyes are the clue that maybe there’s some lymphatic issues or there’s some detoxification issues. And so many women, yeah, food allergies. You’re right. I mean, I have so many women that report that just by working through some of the protocols that you and I use that they need less makeup, and of course their husbands are always wanting women to look more natural anyway, at least my wife, I look at her and I’m like wow, she’s naturally pretty, I don’t think you need or should be putting stuff on. So and of course, there’s the mental brainwashing of society and the psychology behind makeup and all that that we don’t have to get into. But I think from a biochemical perspective, women should embrace the way they look and use that as a motivating factor. to work on these underlying issues that we’re talking about, meaning don’t just go for the foundation or whatever, it’s called to cover up the bags, let’s fix the bags.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and ideally you get healthier so if you want like a natural healthy makeup option, there’s some decent ones out there, you need less of it to kind of get the job done. You know, because some women it’s, it’s, it’s part of who they are is they’ve been doing it for so long. So let’s just try to reduce it and try to use healthier ones that are going to be less toxic, right?
Evan Brand: Yeah, and the Environmental Working Group will just get that out of the way now the Environmental Working Group has done a great job of their skin deep database you and I’ve covered that I know you’ve mentioned some of the micelle products and some of these others that that are that are helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I like the Marie Veronique has a couple other good companies from a skincare standpoint. So the first rule of thumb when you’re supporting your skin is do with food. Right? Don’t put toxins and food allergies, fix your gut. Use good nutrient dense foods right your skin needs high quality fats. It needs high quality amino acids. It needs collagen in each vitamin A it needs zinc. It needs a lot of good nutrient dense foods to support it. We also want to decrease inflammation right? A lot of the junky omega six fatty acids, trans fats, foods that are refined processed grains lots of sugar that drives insulin. Insulin feeds the sebaceous glands to make oil oil can feed bacteria on the skin and create acne. And then of course, food allergens can also drive eczema can also drive psoriasis, sub harangued dermatitis right, a lot of these things that are fungal or bacterial or autoimmune base can be driven by a lot of these things. So foods really important. And again, there’s a big disconnect in the dermatology community, like you go to a lot of conventional dermatology offices, they’ll say in some of the pamphlets like food does not influence your skin. And that’s an absolute crock of crap. Right. And part of the reason why that’s the case is because dermatologists aren’t educated in nutrition. They’re not doctors in medical school, conventional allopathic doctors have very little education and nutrition. And when they do, it’s primarily from the aspect of disease, vitamin connection, right? scurvy, but low vitamin C very, very low B one, right? A lot of these diseases that are connected to low nutrient levels. But we know health is not about diseases, it’s about a health is on a continuum. And so the extreme end is a disease but there’s a lot of stuff in between, that we’re looking at. And part of that could be skin issues. And so certain nutrients play a big role. And I can tell you having seen 1000s of patients and hundreds who have skin issues, and I’ve been able to have you know 95 99% resolution with these issues, partly because of the fact that diet plays a major influence. So foods, keeping carbohydrates in check reducing insulin, insulin and women drives lots of androgens, androgens will create more cystic acne, inflammation, even dairy like even sometimes butter in really healthy people could be a problem. So I always say anytime you have any acne issues, we’re cutting out 100% dairy, even carry gold grass fed butter out of the gates. And that’ll be one of the first things we try to add back in as the skin gets clear to see if it’s kryptonite or not. But that plays a very important role. I’m trying to get more zinc in your diet, whether it’s like pumpkin seeds or oysters or just high quality grass fed beef zincs very important can always throw in some extra zinc in your molti or in a zinc lozenges things are very important for the skin vitamin A very important some studies back in the 1920s on to dermatologists called Pillsbury and Stokes and they found that probiotics and called Never Oil were very important for skin health. This is 100 years ago. So the fact that dermatologists aren’t up on this literature is just ridiculous. It’s because they aren’t interested in a nutritional intervention. When you have retinae and clindamycin and Accutane and tetracycline and, and different, and you chrissa and you know, all these different medications that are used for skin, right, that’s what their go to is and that’s what they’re educated on. And it doesn’t fix any of the problems anyway, it’s it covers it up. And so a lot of other things that can be done and have been done for a very long time.
Evan Brand: It’s funny that you and I are not dermatologists, but that we have, in most cases, better results than dermatology offices. And at least if it were a comparable success rate, like with their drugs, that’s palliative care. And what we’re doing is root cause care. So maybe if you took Joe Blow and Jane Doe over here, and let’s say they work through you and I and our protocols and testing, and then they go to the dermatology office and just get the Accutane or whatever, maybe in terms of look, maybe you’d make the person look similar because those drugs do work. But then you get off of them and things go backward. But man, all I’m saying is I think we’re better at skin now. I don’t know how to recognize melanoma. My grandfather’s had it and he’s got it cut out. So in those skin cases, yeah, go to your dermatology office. But if it’s more of these chronic issues, these more functional scan issues. I tell you, we’re gonna have much, much better results and somebody listening may hear what you said and go oh my god, he said 95 to 99% success rate. You’re not you’re not inflating those numbers. at all, I can tell you with confidence those numbers are legit that you’re saying because I’ve seen the same thing, even within just six weeks of Gut protocol, sometimes we’ve had 80 to 90% improvement in skin symptoms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think dermatologists do a really good job at handling skin cancers. You know, I think that can be very helpful picking up melanomas. There’s also a lot of the autoimmune stuff that they recognize, it’s typically you know, they’re just going to recommend corticosteroids or some kind of, you know, immunosuppressant like Ella dal or you chrissa. They’ve done a lot of options, or they’re just throwing a lot of antibiotics on the skin, which can screw up your skin microbiome as well, your skin has its own microbiome. So some of these things acutely may be fine. If you have a teenage kid that has an acne flare, and you want to decrease the chance of scarring, right? That makes sense. But you know, what’s the long term solution, right, you need a long term solution outside of that, and they may not have those options for you. So it’s good to have someone in your back pocket know where they’re good know whether or not there’s getting to be more holistic ones out there that understand diet plays a big, big role. And that’s good to know. I mean, I think, you know, if, if your kid eats like crap, and your dermatologist says it doesn’t matter, and then that keeps your kids acne flaring. Well, that’s not going to fix any problems. And plus, we know skin requires nutrition, amino acids, fat soluble vitamins. So just kind of from like a foundational level, you need to consume good building blocks. So your body can repair and turn over and use those good building blocks to help your body becomes stronger, right. Food and calories that you consume and nutrients you consume. They’re not just for energy, they’re actual building blocks so your skin can turn over. So very important there. I think also with sunlight and things like that getting some sunlight don’t burn, right, minimal urothelial dose, if you’re going to go outside, make sure you’re using you know, for a long periods of time where you would burn make sure you’re doing a full spectrum sunscreen that’s in a block out UVA and UVB for a long time, we’ve only blocked out UVB light, and we let a lot of UVA come in and people will damage their skin because the collagen will get destroyed. If you’re chronically allowing a lot of UVA exposure, the UVB that gives you the burn is kind of the it tells you whether or not you’re out there too long. But if you block the B and allow the A in, you’re basically allowing yourself to potentially destroy collagen. So if you’re going to be out in the sun, use a full spectrum, UVA UVB maybe even a UVC to make sure you have coverage if you would get burned, and then try to get yourself some sunlight. And then for me topically, I’m going to be using some natural retinol not a lot of the retina the retina has a lot of side effects can create redness and irritation, don’t love it. But I’ll use some of the retinol with some vitamin C and glue to fire and in some of the skincare products that I use, I use a really excellent prebiotic probiotic miss that have good bacteria for my skin. Because I want to really support my skin microbiome. Those are really important things for me on the skincare side. And then of course, like keeping the food allergies down. Now, for some people coming out that have a lot of acne, we’re going to come out of the gates with some autoimmune stuff out of the gates because I’ve seen eggs and nuts and seeds, dairy and butter be problem. So we’re going to be a little bit more strict out of the gates. We’re going to make sure we’re digesting our foods really well indigestion is a problem. We’re going to look at the gut, the gut can play a major, major role. And I’ll pause there and you can you can kind of dive a little bit.
Evan Brand: Sure. Yeah, I’ll take it further. So the gut, to me, the big mechanism is h pylori. Now parasites are big. I mean, you saw my skin was six, maybe I can’t keep up with yours, maybe six or seven years ago, my skin was messed up. And it was because I had various gut infections. I do believe parasites are a big contributor. But really, it’s hard to pick a smoking gun for the gut, because Candida bacterial overgrowth, parasites, they all contribute to the same thing, which is an issue with nutrient absorption, they create this malabsorption problem. But I think h polarize is one of the big ones for people because of what it’s doing with the parietal cells and reducing your stomach acid because then what’s really happening is you have this domino effect of the H pylori, then allowing the purification of your food which then creates the overgrowth of even more pathogenic bacteria, which then may allow parasites to thrive because now there’s not enough stomach acid to kill them off. So I really do think that h pylori was one of my big variables for my skin. And I can tell you with confidence that I’ve seen it in countless countless teenagers and people in their 20s that are still dealing with acne. If we get rid of H. pylori alone, we may have 60 to 75% improvement in the skin just based on that. And then the question is, well, can you bring in enzymes to help reduce some of the malabsorption and 99% of the cases? Yes, rarely is there too much inflammation or gutter rotation where we don’t do enzymes and acids out of the gate. But really, if I were a dermatologist running a brick and mortar practice, you know what I’d have on my shelf, I’d have digestive enzymes, and every client that comes in with skin problems, here’s your enzymes, and that would fix it.
Enzymes and HCl as long as there’s not so much gastritis or gut irritation, definitely a combination of the two for sure. I 100%. Agree and then a good elimination diet plays a big role. These you know, if you have bags under your eyes, that’s called allergic shiners and allergic shiners. They’re basically a pool of the lymph under the iron because there’s a lot of lymph in this area. And so lymphatic increase lymphatic fluid increase is going to happen with inflammation. Think about if you bump your head or get in a fight and get a black guy, what happens there’s inflammation and pulling, while you’re doing that at a at a micro level when you have inflammation from food, and you’re going to see it in the eye area, because that’s where there’s a lot of lymph. So if you’re having allergic shiners, right, don’t carve it up with makeup, try to cut out the foods out of the gates, that’s gonna be a big one out of the gates. Make sure you’re consuming enough water, people that have chronically dry skin, it’s not a hydration issue. Remember, fats provide a lot of the moisture to your skin to be moist and not overly dry. So if you’re having a lot of chronic dry skin, you know, eat consume good water, right, but also really make sure your fats are up and make sure you’re digesting those fats that’s really important. And if you want to topically add some shea butter or some coconut oil to your skin, if it’s the winter and you’re in a really, really low humidity environment, you know, you may need to topically add a little bit of that to during the winter months if it when it’s drier out. So you may want to topically hit it. But you don’t want to get into the habit of only doing the topicals because you got to support your skin inside and out.
You know what’s amazing now that you mentioned it like that. When my wife and I first got together, it will be 11 years ago, our diet was not like it is today. And every winner her and I both we would get really itchy our skin would get red, we get really dry skin. I’m telling you, man, I did not put lotion on but maybe once this entire winter. And I used to have to do that all the time. How funny is that? We could put the lotion industry out of business with this advice too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, you may topically need to add a little bit but you’ll be able to reduce the 80 to 90%. I remember when I was first trying to get healthy 15 20 years ago, 15 years ago, I was trying to low fat thing. I’m the gates and I remember one winner, my skin was so itchy and dry. And I remember I came across an article and I started adding in coconut oil and an olive oil. And I was just doing a tablespoon of a day and I remember being like Wow, my skin the dryness just it reduced at 90% with just internally adding fats, because I’m thinking like oh dryness, that just means more water, right, you need more water, but you need to be able to carry that water to the skin. And the fats provide that kind of support, the fats help bring that hydration to the skin. And so fats for me played a huge role. And I’ve seen that as well. And of course with all this fat phobia, the more dry your skin gets. That means the more inflamed is going to get the more inflamed the more redness and and and potential for other issues are going to happen. So if you don’t have enough fats on your skin that can create this cascade of a lot of other skin issues.
Evan Brand: Well, you know what else is I’ve noticed too, you know, Irish descent, at least some Irish some German. And years ago, I would never be able to get tan, I would just straight burn. And I rarely wear sunscreen, maybe you advise me different. But I typically just wear like a big sun hat in the summer. If it’s like 95 degrees and it’s frickin hot. I might do some zinc oxide if I’m out all day, but if I’m just out like half an hour plane in the garden, and then I’m gonna head back in and cook lunch or something I’m not putting sunscreen on I’m just out there with no shirt. And I used to just burn so bad even from that dose. Now, I don’t burn. The fats are helping me not burn now. Maybe it’s the meats to the collagen. I mean, there’s something changing where I just, I can I can bronze now, which is pretty interesting, especially for an Irish guy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the fats definitely play a big role and helping to bring calcium to the skin that can be I’ve seen that be something also having a lot more of the bioflavonoids whether it’s Grapeseed, or a lot of the antioxidants, those can go to the skin and also have an SPF kind of factor. I know Grapeseed extract plays a big role. A lot of these oligomeric proanthocyanidins, which are like these antioxidants, and in fruits and vegetables can play a big role. The fats, like I mentioned, the omega threes play a big role.
Evan Brand: Oh, you make a good point. Yeah, sorry, I forgot to I forgot to mention that. Yeah, I mean, I do a ton of blueberries like come spring, early summer, I’m doing a ton of blueberries, I think you’re right, there’s probably some antioxidant factor too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Antioxidant factor, there’s a good fat factor, the fast to play a big role with bringing calcium up to the skin, which I know helps. And then obviously having enough zinc plays a big role because we typically, the more natural skincare is going to use like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide for kind of natural sun scare sun skincare. And so of course that that has a deflective aspect to it. And I imagine that the zinc that you consume orally is also going to play a big role. So like in summer months, you know, I’ll bang down six to eight oysters in a week. And you’re getting you know, eight milligrams of zinc per oyster. So if you bang down eight or nine oysters, I mean you’re getting 70 or 80 milligrams of zinc and you know the daily requirements only like 10 so you can get like a week’s worth of your zinc in one oyster session.
Evan Brand: Wow, that’s impressive.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so it’s really good and you can also get some extra from pumpkin seeds too as long as you tolerate the seeds.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I actually had some pumpkin seeds yesterday they were good just some I got some sprouted ones supposedly those are easier to digest so if someone reacts, maybe tried to sprout it I personally don’t have an issue either way. So some one thing to consider Alright, so we hit the gut infection piece. You did great hitting on some of the nutrients Stephen some of the good nutrients that would be in a multi which you and I make some really professional multis.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright guys, you’re gonna have 20 or 30 milligrams of zinc in there. So that kind of gives you a good whack and then if you’re adding in, you know, mushrooms or grass fed beef, right or any some of the healthier nuts and seeds that are out there, that and obviously, that’s gonna play a big role and then collagen, collagen really helps because we’re just not getting a lot of collagen based amino acids, right, we’re getting a lot of muscle meat, we’re not getting a lot of skin or joint. So having the skin on your chicken or chicken thighs very helpful, right having soups or bone broth helps. And you can also really take an excellent collagen amino acid support. I know mine, we use collagen from grass fed cows and we also use proteolytic enzymes to help break down those amino acids to make it easy and you can mix them in your water you can mix them in your tea or your soup or your coffee. So it’s just a great way to get extra building blocks for your skin. And it also helps your hair and your nails and your joints.
Evan Brand: I was speaking to college and let me do a little rant here and an anti plug. So the bulletproof collagen bars I used to eat those. Dave Asprey is bulletproof company, who he was the CEO of and then he stepped down couple years ago and now the ex or current CEO of hostess who makes like ding dongs now he’s the CEO in charge of bulletproof product. Anyway, I was at Whole Foods a couple weeks ago, I used to love eating those collagen, like the collagen bars, you know, it’s like a hydrolyzed collagen with like a little bit of stevia or monk fruit in there with some organic cashews. And I go in there, and there’s a new box, and it’s like new and improved recipe and I’m like, Yes, this is gonna be delicious. And I didn’t even read it because I just thought, okay, it’s gonna be awesome, right, you know, and I get home and I start to eat it. And it’s like real slimy. And it used to be kind of crumbly. I’m like, What’s weird wise, it’s slimy. Maybe I got a bad batch or something. And I flip it around, I look at the label. And it’s no longer organic cashews. Now it’s just regular cashews. And then now there’s safflower oil, which Dave was extremely anti bad oils. So now there’s safflower oil in there. And there was one other thing that tripped me out. But yeah, so safflower oil from organic to non organic nuts. And then there was one other thing. So luckily, I was able to return them and get a refund. But that used to be my go to thing that I’d recommend for people to get a good easy source of collagen as a snack, and I can no longer recommend that product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I had an experience to where I bought a mainstream collagen brand at Whole Foods, I have my own called Tru collagen, but I ran out. And I needed something right away, because I typically put it in my coffee or tea in the morning. And I grabbed the you know, good one, or named a brand that everyone will recommend put it in my coffee and my coffee tasted sour as heck. And I’m like, this is unflavored what’s going on. And basically, there’s two ways you can manufacture collegen. Of course, like you buy the best raw material you can, but then you got to break that cut, you know that collagen into peptides, right. And so there’s two ways you can do it. You can do it with sulfuric acid, or you can do it with enzymes. And so mine we do it with enzymes, which gives it a very, very neutral taste. So when you mix it and stuff, there’s not an extra taste. But this brand, I guess had used sulfuric acid because that’s the major side effect is you get that little bit of sourness or a little bit of a bitter aftertaste when you mix it and things. Now it’s like, oh, okay, got it, even though it’s unflavored. And you don’t see anything in the ingredients. You know, how you extract those, how you extract those amino acids matters, and it can really affect the taste.
Evan Brand: Wow. So I’d love to put them on blast. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine. And we’ll just tell people that storebought is not the best. And there’s a reason that Justin and I have professional healthcare manufacturers. And there’s a reason that what we have is considered a practitioner grade, you know, I get kind of annoyed when, when people will market supplements as like pharmaceutical grade because pharmaceuticals are crap. They’re filled with corn and fillers and all kinds of garbage. So when I see like, you know, pharmaceutical grade, like vitamin C, it’s like, ah, get out of here with that crap. So I would just prefer that we use the term professional, professional quality. And that’s not bs marketing. That truly is a difference.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, when people say pharmaceutical grade, because there can still be a lot of crap and pharmaceuticals, it’s more like the cleanliness of the factory or the manufacturing facility is very clean. But you could still add a whole bunch of crap into the supplement that’s not clean. But because the the manufacturing process is clean. It’s it’s pharmaceutical grade, right? And so yeah, so it’s professional grade, because we’re also cutting out all of the extra crap that we know isn’t going to be as good fillers, dyes, corn, you know, potential glutens all those different things that aren’t not going to be as good so for sure we keep all that in consideration and then We also do testing, right? I mean, we, I tested bunches of ashwagandha from major, you know, manufacturing people that we get it in and we test it and it’s got lead in it, we’re like nope, see later, you know, because we need to have the highest quality of product because we’re working with patients and we need to, we need to have a clinical outcome. It’s not just selling something and making some money, I need a clinical outcome, I need the highest quality because that matters, the outcome really matters. So you’re 100% right on that professional grade, so where to go. So we talked about collagen, I think low hanging fruit anyone, you could always do tablespoon of cod liver oil a day, tablespoon or two across the world, the vitamin A, and there’s excellent central fatty acids really good at eating high quality animal products is obviously going to be great. If you’re not doing high quality animal products, we’ll fix your digestion. But you could always do some seafood. If you can do that, you could always do some egg yolks, you could do that. You could also do some nuts and seeds, as long as you can tolerate them, especially the pumpkin seeds can be really good or chia seeds can be really good, or at least some algae on that side of the fence can be great. And then I would say make sure you’re pooping every day, make sure your bowels are regular. If you’re not going every day, you can be reabsorbing a lot of toxins in your gut. And if you have a lot of bacterial overgrowth, what happens? The bad bacteria Creek creates an enzyme called beta glucuronidation, this enzyme de conjugates metabolize estrogen. So what happens is you bind these proteins to estrogen. And these proteins are that you’re basically conjugating you’re binding this protein, and that allows you to excrete these hormones. And this enzyme comes in their ad conjugates. It breaks the handcuffs and allows those hormones to go back into general circulation. And so it’s possible that bad bacteria can really create hormonal imbalances. And if you’re a female, and you have potential estrogen dominance, that can be part of what’s going on. And so estrogen dominance can drive hyperpigmentation and skin issues as well. So you got to be on top of that. And of course, if you’re taking the birth control pill, you can almost guarantee that you’re going to be in that estrogen dominant state as well, because you have all this synthetic typically ethanol estradiol in your bloodstream as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. So we technically could have called this something like the SIBO hormone skin connection or something, but it is all connected. And we do find that when you get gut infections resolve skin’s better. And also, when like you mentioned, you’re knocking out the gut infections, you’re able to lower the beta glucuronidation. And now that pathway, the glucuronidation pathway works more efficiently. And then you get other toxins out to like mold toxin. So you can have skin issues with mold toxin, I certainly did. And that’s because we know that mold toxin can affect the gut barrier, mold can create leaky gut. So if you are treating the infections, you don’t get that toxin out to you’re not fully out of the woods. And in regards to testing, let’s mention that real quick. And then we can wrap up. So if you’re working with somebody like Dr. Justin and I what we’re going to be doing is a GI map stool test or similar, we’re going to be using organic acids testing, maybe some hormone profiles, and maybe some other toxin profiles. So with urine and stool, we can get so much information into this. And your dermatologist is never going to run a stool test. They’re never going to run an organic acids test and find that you have clusters and Candida and strep and klebsiella, Giardia and H pylori and give you herbals to kill it herbal antibiotics antifungals. That’s never the protocol. So I’m not saying don’t go to them. I’m just saying if you want root cause solutions. These are the types of tests and solutions you need to implement. Not a topical steroids, which is exactly what my wife got prescribed when she had a lot of issues. They did a good job with testing, but it was a patch test. And they found that she was reacting to some parabens and all the garbage that was in her conventional skincare products at the time. So they at least did a good job of testing that. But they never tested the actual body. They just tested the chemicals. They didn’t go and say hey, what are the deeper underlying issues? Oh, you’ve got poor methylation poor detox function. You’re not pooping. You’re pooping once every three days. They don’t go into that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100% you know, so we got to try to get to the root underlying issue. The problem is when you do steroids, you also weaken your connective tissue, you weaken the skin, and then it sets you up for more dependency. And then it also weakens the immune system and it could also create more blood sugar imbalances, especially if you’re having to use a lot of steroids. And that blood sugar, guess what, that can increase insulin and increase insulin increases what more sebum oil production, potentially more acne. So a lot of times these medicine medications can create a vicious cycle. So you got to be very, very careful with that. So out of the gates, kind of what’s the Reader’s Digest version, work on the diet, work on your carbohydrates, work on certain nutrients, fat soluble vitamins work on digesting your protein, adding college and adding vitamin A and zinc. Get your gut looked at work with a good functional practitioner. If the low hanging fruit things aren’t working? Right, it’s okay to you know, stop guessing and assess what is going on. Also, put your comments down below. Let us know things that have already helped you in the past. I’m curious to know, let us know your successes. Also feel free and share this information with friends or family that are suffering or dealing with issues and want to dive into the next step or want to do deeper testing into it. Give us a thumbs up, I really appreciate it. And we’ll put our links down below you want to reach out to Evan EvanBrand.com, great place to go. You can schedule with Evan worldwide, as well as myself, Dr. J JustinHealth.com. As well, we’ll put links underneath as well where you guys can review our podcast, we appreciate your feedback. This helps us to help more people. So if you’re enjoying this information right now, give us a quick review just a sentence or two, let us know if we’re doing good. And if we’re not give us some feedback, we always want to do better, Evan, anything else you want to highlight?
Evan Brand: Yeah, if people are just sitting there like maybe they’re like halfway awake, or they’re daydreaming, snap back into reality, review us, we will love you forever. We really do need the reviews, it helps us beat out other people. You know, we don’t do ads on this show. Maybe one day I’ll go back to doing some if I have a good partner that we work with again, but for now, this is a non ad show. And so many other shows are just filled with it. You just have to put up with the spam, we try to give you guys all killer, no filler. So I hope you recognize that. Take the two seconds go on your your app. for iPhone users, it’s probably the easiest. That’s the best place to review us on your Apple podcast app, see the show, click write a review. Boom, give us the stars you think we deserve? Give us a few comments. It really helps motivate us, you know this kind of a thankless job, you’ll get hundreds of thousands of downloads and then maybe two people are like, yeah, that was a good episode. So we really want to hear it. And we really appreciate it. It’s what keeps us fueled up and just mentioned the links, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re going to save you more time and more money. Yes, you got to pay to play, so to speak to get labs and console’s done, but I tell you if I knew what I know now, man, I could have saved myself years of suffering with my skin issues throughout high school. I mean, I just had, it wasn’t the worst that wasn’t the pizza face, kid. But I certainly have my my issues with acne. And man, if I would have been able to get it dialed in now like we do for some of our kids and teenagers that you and I work with. Wow. And we’re literally changing the trajectory of their entire life. It doesn’t go this is like I said the beginning. This is beyond the vanity. I mean, I had a kid in California who’s 17 and now that his skin is so much better he’s so much more confident he got a promotion at work so he’s making more money. He’s feeling better he’s got a new partner so he’s you know, he’s he’s with a female now and he was previously too like embarrassed to to want to date anyone. So I mean this this could affect everything. Career finances, this is not just how you look in the mirror. So I want people to go beyond that and think about how much more could you achieve if your skin was better? And I think the sky’s the limit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, also scanning god are intimately connected. If you have skin issues, you may not be breaking things down. You may be gassy. You may be bloated. So look within right above below inside out. Alright guys, hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. Really appreciate it. Share, care, thumbs up review links below.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-gut-skin-connection-how-your-gut-health-can-impact-your-skin