Natural Way to Increase Blood Flow And Decrease Inflammation | Podcast #343

For starters, blood flow is why your body can get what nutrients it needs and how it can eliminate what it doesn’t. If you have reduced blood flow, your body will take longer to heal and recover. Reduced blood flow can often result in inflammation, pain, muscle cramps, fatigue, numbness or coldness in the hands and feet, digestive issues, and slower recovery time.

According to Dr. J and Evan, there are three primary concerns to address when looking at improving circulation by reducing inflammation, blood viscosity (blood’s stickiness or thickness), and supporting healthy arterial function (ensure the arteries can contract or dilate needed).

So, how can food help us to do that? While the healthy foods we eat can benefit our blood flow and circulation, some foods are to be aware of as part of a healthy diet. Often, the additives we add to our food through sugars, trans fats, and salt can be tasty but with a few adverse side effects.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:57:     Inflammation and ways to reduce it

4:46:     Signs and symptoms of hypercoagulability

11:07:   Natural Herbs to improve blood circulation

16:47:   Tips to improve blood circulation and reduce inflammation

20:06:   Food template, tests, and supplements

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are are live! It’s Dr. Justine Marchegiani here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to chat about blood flow. How do we increase blood flow, decrease coagulation, decrease inflammation. All the natural strategies to get to the root cause. Blood flow is really important. We need blood flow to carry oxygen. We need to carry nutrition to our organs and our body systems. And if we have stress in our body, whether it’s infection, inflammation, diet issues, lifestyle issues, hormonal imbalances that affect circulation, that’s to impair our body’s ability to generate energy, generate heat; right healthy metabolism, feel good, feel energized. And we’re going to dive in on that topic today. Evan, how are we doing today man?

Evan Brand: Doing really well. You know, I had a few friends actually suggest that I had a hyper coagulation problem due to batonella and babesia, and mold toxin, and some other crap I’ve dealt with. And so I ran a coagulation panel. There’s some of these coagulation panels online that you can order and I went and run the blood on myself and my, my panels turned out perfectly. Even according to some of the functional ranges. Now, I don’t have a baseline. You know, several years ago, when I first got exposed to mold to compare to. But I will tell you just in terms of symptoms; my great coagulation blood work results correlates with my symptoms. Meaning, my hands and feet are perfectly warm these days. I told you years ago, my arms and feet are chronically cold . I mean, as long as I can even remember, even as a child, I remember my feet being freezing and having to use a little electric space heater in my grandma’s basement to keep my feet war. I remember that from years ago. So I’m just really happy that the blood showed fine and some of the strategies which we’re going to dive into today that those worked and those actually helped me because, on paper I look great and symptomatically doing much much better in the blood flow department.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Yeah, I love that. Makes a lot of sense. So of course, one of the first things that we look at when we’re trying to improve blood flow is reducing inflammation. So when you have lots of cytokines or in interleukines or inflammatory messengers, right? They’re there to kind of say, “hey we have inflammation”. And what is inflammation? Let’s define that. Everyone talks about it but, what is it? So, inflammation is essentially we have this increase in cytokines, interleukines, due to the fact that our body is breaking down faster than it is repairing, okay. There’s natural inflammation that is good. Like think of having a good workout, right? You naturally get a little sore afterwards and then a day or two later, you get stringer and your muscles get more, I don’t know, adaptable. And then you develop more strength, more tensile strength, more power, more output; because your muscles adapted to that inflammation. So there’s a little bit of inflammation but in the end, your body adapted to it and it built up just a little bit more than it broke down on average, right? That’s healthy inflammation. And so, inflammation that we’re talking about is inflammation out of balance. Were let’s say you work out a little bit too hard. And now that soreness is prolonging days later, and now you’re almost a little bit weaker than when you started because the breakdown is now greater than the build up. And so healthy inflammation is the build up is a little bit greater than the breakdown that’s healthy inflammation. Unhealthy inflammation is the breakdown’s a little bit higher than the build up, and that’s what we’re talking about today. And so, of course, too much exercise, too much inflammatory foods, especially in the way of foods that are nutrient poor, foods that are too high in refined vegetable oils, good healthy fats; they become your cell membranes. Every cell has a lipid bilayer in the body. The brain’s you know, 70 fat and cholesterol. So if you are eating junky fats, that’s going to cause your cell membranes to turn over to being very unhealthy. It’s also going to cause your brain to turn over to be very unhealthy and there’s some data showing that you’re going to have those cell membranes hung up to six years with the junky fats that you’re eating. So you’re really want to look at the fat. So, vegetable oil fats not good because they have to be processed in a way that damages those fats in the extraction process. And so you have a lot of oxidation happening, a lot of hydrogenated oils due to either oxidation or the trans fat process that occur. And again, you, why are fats made in the trans fats because they have a longer shelf life, right? And so, we want fats if they’re on the plant side, they’re not going to be denatured, so avocado oil may be okay, olive oil of cold press, and extra virgin and good quality and good brand’s okay. Of course our saturated fats are the best because they’re the most heat stable. So coconut animal fats, maybe some palm, of course like any of your tallows are really good, especially if the animals are healthy and pastured raised. These are going to be your best fat, so at least 50 percent of our trans fats, we want to be saturated, high quality, because it guarantees them not being oxidized and we’re acidified.

Evan Brand: Yep! Well said. And so when you define hypercoagulability, this is a term that’s thrown around a lot now, or you could just call it increased coagulation. What they’re really talking about is some sort of a build up. Like, you know, you mentioned whether it’s inflammatory cytokines, or what’s cal fibrin things that are affecting the capillaries which as far as my research goes, it’s pretty interesting stuff. Capillaries, they’re so small but the red blood cells have to go in single file line to get to get through the capillaries. So if you have a build up of fibrin from some sort of inflammatory reaction, whether it’s to a mold, a virus, or some other pathogen that can affect those capillaries, which then creates some of the cold hands, cold feet. So let me just riff on symptoms for a minute and then we can go there. So, uh, symptoms wise, let’s say cold hands, cold feet, let’s say cold nose, I would say erectile dysfunction, could be a big one too for men. A lot of coagulation issues with men you see, uh, reduced blood flow and of course, side effects-erection. I would say brain fog would be big too. You mentioned, you got to have blood flow to get to the brain. So I would say, brain fog, maybe memory issues, fatigue, I would say muscle fatigue as well. So if you’re noticing that you’re having trouble lifting  weights or you’re having a lot of post-exertional malaise, it could be mitochondrial related. We’ve talked about that before but, I think the coagulation could be part be part of it too. So I’m a big fan of lumbrokinase which I think is one of the big remedies that’s really helped me. Lumrokinase is way stronger that nattokinase which is which is commonly sold. Lumbrokinase is like the big daddy, the big brother above natto. And I tell you, it’s been an absolute game changer. If I take that, not only does my brain work better but my hands and feet are warm. So just in terms of like, solutions, you know, you could run a coagulation panel, and I think it’s easiest, rather than trying to run through all the markers, like d-dimers and all that. Instead of running through all that. I think it’d be easier. We could just like, put a link in the show notes for like a coagulation panel app, like you could run through lab corp request, and if people want to dive into it, they can but, I think those…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So on some of those markers, what would some of the markers that you’d look at on the coagulation side?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I wish I had my lab in front of me. I could pull it up.

Dr. Justin Machegiani: I’ll give you c couple that. I give you a couple that. So we talked about inflammation; we talked about interleukinesand cytokines. Why does that matter? Because the more inflammation you have in your bloodstream, the more sticky cells get, okay. Cause think about it, right? From inflammation standpoint, why would your cells get more sticky from an inflammation standpoint, right. Let’s kind of look at what’s, you know. What are the, um, the intentional, like what’s the intention of our creator and making us and why would that happen, right? Because we have to look at the fact there’s an innate intelligence as to why our body does things. It doesn’t do it by accident. And I would say that most of our stress that we experience as we evolve as a species is through a cut, and injury, a fall, something very acute. So our body is trying to stick things, glue things back together, prevent us from bleeding out, right? Allow scar tissue to form to help heal and recover, whatever that damage area is, right? That kind of make sense now. The problem is, we have less acute damage like, falls, crashes, and these things. But we have this chronic, degenerative inflammation that’s happening. So, yeah. Starting to create many bits of scar tissue which again, that is going to be making cells, stick together, so you’re looking at things such as fibrin, increased platelet aggregation. Meaning, platelets are the little cells that flow through your bloodstream that help you create clots, right? Platelets then create fibrin so it creates these clots . And so then you’re having deceased blood flow because of clots, because cells are more sticky because of inflammation. And that’s there to help, help your body do better when it comes to stress or something acute; but we’re having this chronic degenerative stress and of course, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to make your cells more sticky, right? This is why we see in diabetes, right, when Evan talks about a lot of the capillaries when they go a single file, we see that a lot in the eyes, and so we see a lot of eye aneurysm stuff, a lot of eye issues in diabetics, a lot of limb issues because really poor blood flow in the capillaries going on to the finger and the hands. And so high levels of insulin from high levels of blood sugar that also creates the advanced glycation end products which are essentially the sugar coated proteins that are oxidized because the high blood sugar, and that oxidation depletes things like vitamin C and vitamin A, and vitamin E, And so we have less of these nutrients to help our eyes, to help our skin, to help our collagen, to help wound healing, and then you start to have very poor blood flow, decrease immune cells. Getting to the extremities, the hands, and feet; and then you develop a gangrenous lesion on your foot with all this inflammation and poor blood flow, and then you have have it chopped off because it starts to create and infection. So you can see how all these things start to spiral out of control and of course, blood sugar inflammation, um is kind of the hallmark of how all this starts. We’ll go more into things  that you can do. So Evan mentioned like the lumbrokinase. Excellent! Seropeptidase, the enzyme from that silkworm, excellent. Right? These are systemic enzymes taken away from food. Those enzymes come in kind of like a rato-rooter or a liquid plumber would for like, a clogged hair in your drain, in your toilet, right? So it breaks it down, okay? Now we have to make sure that we’re getting to the root cause but, in general, that’s helpful because it’s not going to be as inflammatory, it’ll break down scar tissue; it has a lot of anti-cancer immune benefits because when it hits all these cytokines, it kind of dissolves them and breaks them down so it does help reduce inflammation which is great.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point too about diabetics suffering from this issue quite a lot in the blood sugar component. That’s huge! And then, also, one thing to note too when you do start to dissolve some of the fibrin, you may, if it’s due to the infection, you may have some sort of a die off or like herxheimer reaction. So just keep that in mind, and obviously if you’re working with one of us, we’re going to coach you through that process but, if you have a practitioner that’s maybe not aware of that, then they may not know why your symptoms are flaring up if you start to dissolve some of this fibrin. So for example, when I first started ramping up lumbrokinase, I was also doing some biofilm busting nutrients, and some may argue that you’re busting biofilm with things like this and so I had a reaction. You know, I got some headaches, I got some anxiety, I had some heart palpitations and some other symptoms, indicating I was probably releasing something that was hiding within that fibrin. And so, if you have a reaction, you feel worse on something like the, uh, like you said, seropeptidase or maybe, nattokinase, or lumbrokinase. You could be on to something, and as you mentioned too, you don’t want to just live on this enzymes and not get to the root cause. So for me, I really do think babesia has been a big one for me because, when I’m taking herbs to address babesia, I find that the circulation is much better. For some people, it could be bartonella. They call it small vessel disease. If you look into pubmed, you could look up small vessel disease bartonella. This is an infection that can come from ticks but it can very very easily come from cats. Many many cats, like 90 percent of cats have bartonella and if they scratch you, you can get bartonella from your cat, you can get it from fleas, so there are other vectors that can transmit this. So some people say like, “ oh I never had a tick bite”, doesn’t matter. I’ve seen many many people with bertonella and likely from their cats. And so, you may want to come in with herbs and knock out bartonella while you’re working on the fibrin. And I know you and I use a product that’s a mixture serapeptadase, and ginger and boswella, and turmeric. So we kind of working on the inflammation piece and the fiber piece at the same time, and it’s a great one-two punch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, any of my patients listening know that I’m always using ginger tea, right? I’ve kind of taken the ginger tea recipe which Is I think it’s pretty famous in the gaps protocol and I’ve used that, and I’ve added in a lot of the, um. Manuka honey because it’s very soothing on the gut, and it has some mild antibacterial properties and anti-inflammatory for the gut. So I do that with a lot of my patients because it sues the tummy, it is an anti-biofilm, so it allows any of the herbs that I’m using with my patients to knock any bugs down. It helps make the herbs stronger, and it’s anti-inflammatory, um, which me, and it’s also an anticoagulant. So the anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, just allows one better blood flow, better flow allows those herbs to kind of work better and be transported throughout the body, and then it also prevents the lymph from being congested. So it just allows things to be kind of move around and excreted from the body. So you have to move things through the liver, through the kidneys, to the guts. So we need to have that good movement to allow things to work appropriately. So that’s, that’s really really important out of the gates; and also on working with a lot of lyme patients or co-infections; all that plays a major role. I would say other herbs you can use are things like bacopa, uh, gingko is also amazing, you can do things that have, um, uh, nitric oxide support in there like beetroot. These are all beets are excellent You can get beetroot powder, that’s very helpful at supporting blood flow. Things like resveretrol are also very good, right; antimicrobial but also really help with good blood flow, so um, that’s excellent as well. Uh, cat’s claw can be really good as well, because anytime it has antimicrobial, antioxidants, and then it reduces inflammation. That naturally tends to improve blood flow. So better blood flow is good. So we can one have good circulation to the hands and feet, we’re carrying nutrition better.; we’re carrying more of the herbs to help whatever the microbial imbalance is, and then we’re supporting lymphatic flow of all the dead debris out. Has to move out to the body, get circulated to the lymph, go back to the kidneys, and the, and the digestive tract to be excreted out. So those are some really good herbs that we’ll also use, skull caps also really good as well. Um, you mentioned turmeric  which is really good, and then outside of that, adaptogens can be really powerful too. Because, if we have lots of cortesol from inflammation and stress, cortisol is also going to cause things to not move as well because, it’s there; it’s responding to inflammation but it’s also going to slow down a lot of blood flow. So if we can, and this is kind of more in a chronic um, scenario, right, not talking acute, talking more chronic. Because acute, there is acute blood flow to an injury, because that’s how the body is trying to heal stuff. Let’s try to drive level that’s why when you bump your elbow, it gets swollen right, there’s increased blood flow. We’re talking about more cortisol chronically, and so we’ll use things like adaptogens, whether it’s thodiola or ashwagandha to really calm down that chronic stress response and really get it kind of modulated to help improve cortisol which then helps with blood flow long term.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point like the bacopa, the gingko. I mean, there’s a reason all all these herbs that we’re talking about are inside of brain formulas. Look at any professional companies, whether it’s ours or any other companies that are using nutrients to support the brain health, guess what? Gingko is always in there so it’s cool because it helps systemically and that of course, improves the brain function. There’s a lot of cool studies about gingko with micro-circulation in the brain. I love gingko. I take it, I take phosphatidylserine, I do choline, acetylcholine, I do acetol cermitine, I do like a blend of all these things and I tell you, it really makes a difference. Do you want to hit on a couple more of the foods you mentioned? The beets…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, that’s important.

Evan Brand: Okay. I love beats. Like, I’ll do beet powder and I mix it with my vitamin C powder. It’s so delicious that combo, and I’m not joking like, 10 minutes after I drink a scoop of beet powder with vitamin C, my hands are so warm, like they’re alsmost flushed because there’s so much blood flow there. I mean, I feel it instantly. And then, that really helps in the sauna too. So if you’re having issues with sweating, that could be due to poor blood flow, poor nitrate oxide. So my personal advice because I’m historically not a good sweater, I will do beet powder and then do a few minutes of a rebounder, and then  I’ll jump the rebounder most folks know what that is kind like a mini trampoline. I’ll jump into the sauna after that, and with the beet powder rebounder combo, I sweat like 50 % faster.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, I’d say like from a foundation of people listening like, we’re throwing a lot of stuff out there, right? So what’s the order of operations and how you try things. So the first thing is, get your diet under control. So the first thing is, control dysglycemia, control blood sugar swings, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to cause things to get really sticky when they flow. The second thing is really improve the nutrient density; lot of good antioxidants, so a lot of good green vegetables, uh cutting out food allergens from dairy and from gluten and of course, refined sugar and inflammatory junk foods, really improve the nutrient density in the vegetables if you’re going to choose fruit, choose nutrient-dense fruits are not overly high for what you can handle metabolically of course, really good healthy fats; remember omega-3 fatty acids are natural blood thinner. Quite before surgery, they’ll say like you know, no fish oil or systemic enzymes taken away from you know, taken within the couple of days of surgery because, they don’t want you to bleed out, right. So especially high quality, god healthy, you know, local like maybe while the last guy kind of frozens you know, salmon or a really good clean tuna, just try to choose wild farm type of fish; these are going to have excellent omega-3 fatty acids, and then of course, choosing grass-fed meat, excellent. Because you’re going to get a lot of GLA fat, you’re going to get a lot of good clean fats from the cow eating grass which is super helpful. So fats are really important, they’re natural anticoagulants and then they help make a good healthy cell membrane so your cells can communicate and function optimally.

Evan Brand: Let me make one note about the lumbrokinse because, you see that warning label and you and I kind of heed that warning but, I saw a podcast interview that Dr. Jill Carnahan did with a lady named Dr. Ann Courson. She’s been kind of the bog voice about coagulation and talking about lumbrokines. She said it’s really non-issue and while she still may, and this not verbatim but, while she may pull these things out temporarily, she’s had people that like went into emergency on high-dose fish oil and high-dose lumbrokinase and they had no bleeding issues at all. So this is not heparin or crazy intense blood thinners from pharmaceutical industry. These natural blood thinners even though they may be potent, she said, she’s never seen a single case of anyone bleeding out so that there’s probably too much warning and too much fear about the fish-oil and these enzymes thinning the blood. She’s never seen it cause any major problem.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, heparin, warfarin, they have anew one the plavix one, right? These are different blood thinners that are  out there. Yeah, I mean you definitely want to talk to your anesthesiologist last surgeon follow their instructions on these things. I think it’s safe just to be off it, uh, during a procedure and let your doctor know about it.

Evan Brand: And I’m saying just, and by the way, I’m saying just the natural stuff, the drugs, I have no clue about them, I’m not a pharmacist, but like fish oil. Should you take a few days off? Yeah. You probably should but, just foe anybody’s fearing but for anybody that’s afraid like oh my God, I had to go to ER and I had to get this emergency surgery, am I going to bleed to death because I’m on fish oil, the answer looking at her perspective was no, not at all.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah. Probably not. I mean, I am far more worried about someone going into surgery being totally inflamed and developing clots, um, or having a polmunary embolism or a stroke or something like that. The bleeing out, right? You know but, in general, don’t be on high doses of blood thinners that we’re talking about. The natural ones, if you know you have a plan surgery just in general. In general, I mean, consuming fish, eating fish, I don’t see a problem with a lot of these things. And outside of that you know, what other markers we can look at. So of course, we mentioned, um, fibrin or fibrinogen which is a marker. So fibrinogen is the inactive form of fibrin, and so high levels of fibrinogen mean you have a lot of clotting building blocks. Higher levels of platelets could be something to look at. I would say, elevations and inflammatory compounds like homocysteine, ESR-Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate. CRP C-Rective Protein. These are all inflammatory markers that tell us, okay, inflammation is present, the more chances their inflammation is up, cells are going to stick together, the more cells stick together, it’s like trying to walk out double doors, three or four people side by side. It’s just gonna clog up the flow, right? And so that’s gonna help give you an indication that some things are not flowing well, and then you can try different strategies, the ones we’re talking about go back and retest those markers, and that’s helpful. I would say the one marker that’s a little bit different, the homocycteine, that’s going to happen typically due to inactive or not enough high quality methylated B vitamins. Usually folate, usually B6,  B12 – these are important vitamins. If you don’t get them, in methylated or more active forms, this metabolite of homocysteine can accumulate and these B vitamins decrease homocysteine. So how it works is, it goes methionine, a dental homocysteine, homocysteine, to cycteine. This is kind of metabolism, a breakdown of methionine into cysteine, and cysteine goes into glutathione. This healthy metabolism requires these B vitamins, right? Folate, methylated B12, right? Um, B6, right. These are important nutrients need to be there so we can take that homocysteine and brign it through all the way down to cysteine and metabolize optimally. If not, it can be inflammatory and affect the arteries and the area where the blood’s flowing and create inflammation and plaquing.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And just to take it a step further just so people are like what the heck is he saying? So when you’re looking at this one blood, you’re saying when you see the elevated homocysteine, or we can even look at some of these metabolism markers on the organics acids. When you see this elevated, you know that there’s usually a B vitamin deficiency, correct? That’s what you’re saying, elevated homocysteine on the blood.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, D vitamin deficiency or you’re just getting a lot of crappy B vitamins right? You’re getting a lot of folic acid, you’re getting a lot of B12 that you may not be methylated. You’re getting a lot of B6 that may not be activated. So we want to make sure you’re getting lots of activated B vitamins, high quality. In my line we use one called B vitamin synergy, we’ll put the link for that below. Of course like your best natural source for these type of vitamins are going to be green leafy vegetables, and high quality grass-fed organic meats right? So sometimes people have an mthfr issue and they need more of those B vitamins and so that’s want to make sure the supplements are great. And if you’re consuming a lot of like processed crappy orange juices and grains, you may get a lot of folic acid and crappy B vitamins there. That’s the case you want to cut those out. You want to get lots of good natural B vitamins from the source I just mentioned. And you want to take a really goof clean B vitamin supplement that’s going to have those in methylated activated forms, and if we’re doing testing on like a um, mthfr blood test. We would look at those phenotypes and see what’s present but organic acids are wonderful too because, we can look at markers like kind of urinate, xantharinate to look at B6. We can look at markers like fig glue or four amino glutamate to look at folate. We can look at markers like methylmalonic acid to look at B12. So there’s different markers. We can look at betahydroxy isovalerate, right? These are all good markers for B vitamins to look at. So we can see if these things are, if we have metabolic demand issues, we can go and tweak those accordingly.

Evan Brand: And most people are depleted and have issues. I mean, obviously we’re a little bit biased because we’re working with  people that don’t feel well but, we know that even the people that work with us, they’re doing a hell of a lot better than the average American in terms of diet and lifestyle, and stress, and sleep, and hopefully all of those factors. And so if we see they’re deficient the way we see often, then we know the average American’s deficient too because, you’re burning up these bees when you’re stressed. That’s a whole other  podcast but, you did a great job on, on hitting on the markers. There’s a couple more like new ones. Like ther was like anti-thrombin that was on this panel.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. That’s another one. That’s kind of like fibrin. It’s another type of clothing factor.

Evan Brand: You had the d-dimer which is really tough to get a doctor to actually run d-dimer. That’s why you and I luckily, we run our own blood work but, if you just went to your regular doctor and said I want a d-dimer. Unless they think you’ve got an active blood clot, they’re probably not going to run this for investigative purposes. I don’t know why but even vitamin D, some clients have to beg just get vitamin D so…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. With d-dimer, that’s typically run if someone’s on a blood thinner. I don’t think plavix requires it now but, if you’re on like, one of the older blood thinners that requires you to make sure d-dime are stable. They’ll run that because they’re worried about like, oh my god you eat more green vegetables that is vitamin K, vitamin k increases clotting factors. They’ll want you to want to adjust your d-dimer accordingly. Or they want to adjust your dosage of your medication according to the dimer. So my whole thing is if you’re not eating a whole bunch of green vegetables because, your doctor is worried about it, well I would just say eat some green vegetables, tell them you want to have good, green vegetables but then have them run a d-dimer and adjust your clotting, your medication according to you eating a good, healthy diet. I see people that are scared of green vegetables because their doctors are too lazy to re-test their d-dimer and adjust their medications.

Evan Brand: Oh wow. Yeah. I understand that but yeah. That was most of it, that was most of the stuff there. So you did a good job hitting on it and like you mentioned a lot. We’re throwing a lot at you here supplements and foods, and beets, and talked about nitric oxide. I mean, really I think you’ve hit the messages. Getting the inflammation out of the diet and then looking into the testing because, some of the functional medicine testing we run outside of blood work can provide data on what’s going on. And then obviously, mycotoxins are huge. So for me, when I get exposed to mold, if I stay in the moldy hotel for a weekend, guess what? My hands and feet go cold. I mean it’s almost a direct impact. So I’m not saying that’s everyone’s smoking gun but, it’s a big factor that’s not really talked about.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right. So I always try to boil things down to a process, right? What’s the concept, what’s the process? A process is something we can consistently repeat. It’s kind of like in fourth grade, you learn pemdas, right? Remember pemdas? It’s the way you do a math problem. That there’s addition, subtraction, division, all these different things in one line. What’s the process, pemdas right? Well today, what’s the process here? The first thing is one, make sure the food you eat is anti-inflammatory nutrient dense low toxin. That’s the first thing. Second thing is get your blood sugar under control because yes, you can eat really good foods but, your glycemia, your blood sugar can be out of control and that can increase insulin, coagulation, clotting, right? So first thing is nutrient density anti-inflammatory diet. Second thing is get your macronutrients under control. Third thing is get lifestyle strategies under control. Don’t exercise too much. Exercise enough, start making sure sleep is under control. Sight? Start making sure you’re drinking good clean, filtered water with extra minerals. Make sure there’s enough minerals in there. If you can add in different strategies like, rebounding or whole body vibration, or sauna therapy, excellent. Then maybe at that next level, we can start going into, um, supplements, right? What are the easiest supplements to add in? Well, good healthy fats, good healthy fish oils. Maybe some some extra ginger, maybe some systemic enzymes right? You don’t have to start with everything. There’s a lot of things we put out there. It’s like a poople platter. We don’t got to do it all. Just try to start with one or two things but, start with that order of operations. Follow the process; don’t get overwhelmed by everything; just follow the process. And the next thing after that is you know, if you have inflammatory conditions, autoimmune issues, thyroid issues, crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, colitis, uh, lime, co-infections, autoimmune issues, and you have chronic inflammation chronically cold hands, cold feet blood flow issues, you have to look at thyroid, you have to look at your hormones, you have to look at the gut; and this is where it’s good to bring on a good functional medicine practitioner like us. So if you want to reach out to Evan, evanbrand.com or myself, Dr. J – justinehealth.com. That’s kind of where your next step to kind of go a little bit deeper, to kind of you know, hire that trail guys that’s been to the top of mount Everest hundreds of times. So you can have the confidence that we’re going the right way and not taking a shortcut off a cliff so to speak.

Evan Brand: Yeah. It’s great. Well said. It’s just so great to be able to reverse some of these stuff. I mean, I just assumed that was me. I just had cold hands, cold feet, and I thought, okay. That’s just me for some reason, I just don’t have good blood flow here, and I just kind of like owned it, and I think a lot of people are listening. They own these symptoms and they get used to their way of life, and like nope that’s just the way I am. I’m just a depressed person. It’s like no, there’s a reason for that. I do believe that we truly have a baseline of being healthy and optimal, and good blood flow, and good brain function, and good sex drive, and good sleep. If you look at like tribal societies, they don’t have these type of issues. They don’t have these chronic issues with blood pressure and mood issues. Some of these like ancestral people, they don’t even have a word for depression. It’s not even in their language. So I just encourage you if you’re listening, and you’re just owning your symptoms, and you’re like that’s just me, don’t own it anymore. Just know that that’s okay that something’s wrong, there’s a dysfunction going on. There’s likely a cause of it and we’re investigators at heart. I mean, we love this stuff so like you mentioned, if you want to reach out, justinhealth.com for Dr. J, evanbrand.com for me. We’d love to help you, and help you get to the next level of health. It’s totally possible.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I would say don’t own it form the perspective of like, hey this is just me, this is how it it is but, own the process. Like you know, one of the root things that I can be working on to get these things under wraps. I think that’s a really important kind of uh, step to be looking at, okay? Anything else guys, feel free and let us know, comments down below. We’re really happy to help you and kind of get to the next step with you all. Feel free, evanbrand.com, justinhealth.com and we’re happy to help. Anything else you want to add Evan?

Evan Brand: No, that’s it. Just keep moving forward. That’s the goal. There’s not a finish line so just keep, getting to the next level, you know, It’s not like, my life’s going to be perfect when I get cold hands and cold feet resolved. No, you could do that and still be miserable. So you gotta just chipping away, okay? Don’t give up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. And then also, kind of one thing. People in the comments asking about couple different questions here. Um, just want everyone to know in our climate today, there’s some off-limit topics that you know, we’re not touching, and people kind of read between the lines on this, and we’ve made a decision that there’s a lot of other information that is so important to um, put out there to everyone. So we’re staying away from some health topics not for the goal of censorship but because, we want to be able to put other health topics like we’re talking about today out there so everyone can take action. So just know uh, you know we’re making kind of a strategic decision to really put more focus on functional medicine. Areas and nutrition people can take action on versus other things that are out in the zeitgeist to the world today.

Evan Brand: I think there’s a time and a place for it and there may be a better place for it. But a lot of those places right now are super dicey in terms of service and stuff. I mean, who knows what can happen to you. So yeah, we’re we’re investigating options though.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So anyone listening, we’re putting really our focus on all of the functional medicine; all the things that people can take form an actionable standpoint. And so, just that’s kind of the direction because we feel like we can help more at that area. And um, that’s kind of it on that. Any comments, feel free to let us know below and we’re here to help you all.

Evan Brand: Alright. Take it easy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care, guys! Bye now.

Evan Brand: Bye-bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-way-to-increase-blood-flow-and-decrease-inflammation-podcast-343

Recommended products:

Organic Grass Fed Meat

B-Vitamin Synergy

Antioxidant Supreme

Genova Organix® Comprehensive Profile

Genova NutrEval® FMV

Does Eating Healthy When Stressed Make You Feel Better? | Podcast #315

Eating a healthy diet can reduce the negative effects of stress on your body and a healthy diet builds a solid, more enduring foundation for your body by reducing oxidation and inflammation and by helping to reduce weight gain.  So in this video, we have Dr. J and Evan talking about how we can handle stress while trying to stay fit and healthy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:30     Why is it hard to eat healthy?

7:01     Eating unhealthy junk

17:19    Avoid stressing out on eating healthy

25:51    We all have different journey

29:11    Get the momentum

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here today’s podcast is going to be all about is your health making you stressed and anxious? Again, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy to be healthy. And we want to make sure that those goals are not making you sick and stress at the same time, Evan, how are we doing today man? 

Evan Brand: Doing awesome. Let’s dive in. First of all, when you say that, why, why does it take so much effort to be healthy? Is it just the modern world, the circumstances, the toxins? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my first step out of the gates, it’s all about habits, right? It takes no more effort to get what you want than what it does to get what you don’t want. It’s all about pattern of behavior. And so I always tell patients, the first month is typically the hardest because you’re creating new patterns of behavior. So there’s like, there’s four levels of competence, right? There’s the conscious or unconsciously unconfident, meaning you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re just totally clueless right? And then you’re unconsciously or then you’re, you’re, you’re basically unconsciously competent, where you kind of know that you don’t know something, right, you kind of know that you don’t know something. And then you’re consciously competent, where you know it. But you really have to be focused on the habits, choosing the right things, doing the right things. So usually, it’s the unconscious incompetence, these are people we’re not able to help, because they don’t even know there’s a problem. Once they go from unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent, they know that they don’t quite have the skills, that’s where we’re able to help them in stage two. And stage two to stage three is the hardest because this is where we go from, you’re consciously competent, you have to focus, you have to think about every little thing you’re doing right. What’s my analogy, anyone that’s driven a standard transmission car, it’s tough, like you’re driving a car, now you’re putting your left foot on the train on the on the clutch, you’re shifting gears, maybe you’re looking down and make sure you don’t go from first to third, right. But at the same time, you still got to fear and keep your eyes on the road. So it becomes this, you may be able to do what you’re grinding the gears, but it’s a lot of stress and you’re consciously competent, that’s kind of where most people are at with their health changes. And then there’s unconscious competence. That’s where we’re at, where we’re literally on cruise control, because we’ve done things thousands of times in regards to the clean filtered water that we’re drinking, eating good healthy proteins and fats, taking supplements, avoiding toxins, using health devices that help improve air quality and water quality and EMF and all the things that we’re doing. It’s unconscious, there’s literally no effort for us to continue to do or very little effort, right? Kind of like driving once you have a stick. It’s like no big deal. You’re like shifting gears, your eyes are on the road, you’re down shifting No problem, right? Is that a good analogy? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, that makes sense. And a lot of people, they get overwhelmed, and then they just give up or they get pressured by their family members or their friends like you and I were talking about before we hit record, oh, just have some gluten. It’s not going to hurt you. You know, I’ve had family members joke like when we’re giving them the salt shaker at the dinner table. They’ll say, Oh, can you pass me some gluten? And they’ll try to like joke, like they’re pouring gluten on their meal. It’s like, Oh, come on. So you know, you get people like that that will try to influence you. And it may be a joke, but sometimes, I want to say weak people. But when I say weak, I mean people that are symptomatic people that are ill. They’ve been trapped in those habits for so long, they may actually fall off the wagon, from Aunt Betty saying, hey, try one of my famous cookies that are loaded with sugar and gluten, they may go for it Betty’s cookie when they know they shouldn’t. But I think number one, I think you have to suffer enough to be able to be more compliant. I don’t know if you agree with that or not. But like for me, I’ve suffered enough to where I don’t feel that I want to make those choices anymore. Like, I know that that case would be so friggin delicious. But I don’t want to pay the price with my skin. I don’t want to pay the price with my gut. So for me, I’ve suffered enough to be able to make the choices easier. But if you’re trying to just convince people just to convince them, I don’t think it’s as powerful.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on those are all valid points Evan. So off the bat, it all depends where you’re starting, right? The healthier you are, the more adaptable you are, right? So the healthier you are, the more adaptation you are, more adaptable you are, the more you can deal with a stress like gluten like sugar, like being off on your diet, like being off on your sleep. So the healthier you are, you may have a little bit more resilience. And then the question comes down to how do you feel after you eat some crappy food? Right? How do you feel? How long does it take you to get back on track the next day? Is it just you’re okay? And that next day? Maybe you’re a little bit of a slow startup but then you’re good? Or does it take a couple of days or a whole week to kind of get back on track, right? So the healthier you are, the more adaptation your body has, the more you could cheat a little bit. Now there’s different levels of cheating is eating a lots of processed sugar and lots of gluten and lots of food allergens that you know you can handle. Now if you don’t have an autoimmune condition, and you aren’t as sensitive in regards to how you feel afterwards, you may be able They get away with that every now and then not that big of a deal. If you have a diagnosed autoimmune condition like myself, I have hashimotos that I’ve totally manage under control, I always try to choose the healthy alternative, you know, I’m always going to go grain free or gluten free, I’m always going to go gluten free over gluten full, if you will, right. So like for we had Thanksgiving last week, we got some squash pies from trophy, true food kitchen that were 100% grain free and like lower sugar, they were great, right? Good, better best. So I always try to make the best quality decision I possibly can. Because I know I have I have immune issues. And I want to prevent my immune system from attacking my body. Now if someone doesn’t have any diagnosed conditions, and they feel great, they may be able to do more of an 80 20 kind of 90 10. I do an 80 20 90 10. But I still keep it to ideally grain free processed foods or at least gluten free processed foods. And if someone isn’t at a stable place in their health or coming to see us during the middle of their functional medicine kind of onramp well, then we got to be a little bit more puritanical. Off, kind of off the the back. So it all depends where you’re at, in the plan that you’re on. 

Evan Brand: Yeah. And even though I’m feeling better, and I could probably get away with more stuff, I just don’t go there. Because I know that I don’t want to say it’s a slippery slope. But I know that if I’m like, Okay, I got away with it once the next week, I may go for it again. And then boom. And then now I’ve got the skin issue again, or now I’ve got the gut issue again. So for me, it’s very easy to stay on track. I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I don’t feel deprived. I think one part of this conversation you you’re titling this, this talk is, you know, being healthy making you anxious or stressed. And I think where people get caught up in it is because they feel like they’re deprived. They look at these other people eating the pizza, and they’re like, well, I want pizza, I’m deprived. This is bullcrap. And then they get stressed that they have to eat their their grass fed steak and sweet potato. But for me, once you feel so good, it’s not a diet of deprivation. Would you agree? This is not a diet where you feel like you’re missing out? I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, anytime you’re dealing with, you know, eating a bunch of crappy food, you have to look at why. Okay? So in general, a lot of times neurotransmitters play a big role. So a lot of people use a big big whack of sugar to artificially boost serotonin and dopamine. And that we call that emotional eating, they’re using a lot of the sugar to get that under control. So with myself, um, if I cheat on anything, it’s going to be like the Unreal, coconut dark chocolate, it’s going to be my keto cups, like, Is it really a cheat? Probably not. There’s barely any sugar in it. But it still gives me that mouthfeel. And not that sense of cheating. Like, like, I’m really eating a whole bunch of bad foods, but it feels good. It feels like a cheat, it feels like a treat, so to speak. So we always try to choose the highest quality one, we try to choose the lowest quality or the highest quality nutrition like good fats, right, avoiding the trans fats good, lower sugar amounts, I try to do more of the organic coconut palm versus, you know, the high fructose corn syrup, maybe with some mercury in there. So we try to choose the better quality types. And how do you feel afterwards, a lot of people, they don’t really look at how they’re going to feel afterwards. So if you’re really bloating, you’re gassy and your skin breaks out and it lasts a week. Like if I have a skin breakout that lasts a week, I am like heck no not worth it. So I’m always gonna, you’re always playing damage control, you’re always making calculated assessments. So when you make a decision to engage in desserts and treats for the holidays, we’re going to be choosing the healthiest quality, the lowest sugar, but still have a great time like Well, my kids, we went trick or treating, what happened afterwards? Well, trick or treating bad with all the candy went away, we actually gave it to the fire station. And then we I got some of the Justin’s high quality dark chocolate peanut butter cups and some of the Unreal, dark chocolate with a little bit of coconut in there. And that was their substitute. And so they got one or one or two every now and then. And it was low sugar, good fats, the fats are important because it stabilizes blood sugar, prevents cravings and swings and actually makes them a little bit satiated afterwards. And we’ll give it to them after a dinner. So we’re not creating this blood sugar rollercoaster of eating sugar by itself. And so we’d always just make these really good calculated substitute because I want to give my kids and myself a chance to enjoy life or have a childhood or do things that are really, you know, they’re like special, but with that with kind of mitigating the the side effects, if you will. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think it’s easier if the whole family can get on board, like you mentioned, you’re doing this with your kids. So if you got the husband or the wife that’s not on board, that’s going to be really tough. I don’t know if I have many other solutions besides wait until that person is symptomatic enough to get to get on board because they’re really not going to do it just out of choice unless they’re just a very, very supportive spouse and Wow, good job, you’ve got a keeper. But in most cases, like I said, it’s the husband or the wife making fun of the other one, like I’m going to drink the beer, eat the pizza and do the wine or whatever. And you’re going to just go eat your your AIP diet. So try to get family members on board. That’s the best advice I can do because Then it gets exhausting man, you’ve got the husband and the wife cooking double meals, right? They’re making the unhealthy meal, and then they’re making the healthy meal. And then you got double the cleanup. So just from a sustainability standpoint, it’s just really best if you can get everyone the kids on board too, because you don’t want Mom, I had one lady, this is gonna sound crazy, maybe not to you, but maybe to others. We had a lady with hashimotos, where we had determined that the reason that she was having flares is because she was touching the bread making her children sandwiches every day, and that she was basically holding it and there was some kind of like a gluten skin reaction, transdermal kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And so we got her Ah, well, they hit well just quit making sandwiches, or at least go like a grain free bread, if you can find it. And luckily, the antibodies went down just by changing that, because she was already AIP with her diet. And we’re like, Well, why are the antibodies continuing to rise? The thyroid, we worked on the gut. And typically that would help but it didn’t help and then boom, we figured out it was lady making sandwiches. So in her case, it actually benefited her to help her kids as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, most of my patients is the women are tend to be on point, they tend to be 100% on point and to be a little bit more in tune with their health. Also, I think they tend to be a little bit more, let’s just say not supported by conventional medicine, right? Women have hormonal issues, what are they given me, if they’re cycling ages, birth control pills, right, the people are getting a little bit more cutting edge with hormones as they get into menopausal age, but they were doing horse hormones for the longest time and they weren’t fixing any of these underlying issues. And they were just throwing medications that are antidepressants at it. And they kind of most women intuitively knew that something was wrong. Now my other kinds of patients are like my, my, my my guys that are great. They’re like the biohackers. They’re like the guys that are like optimizing cell performance. They’re trying to really get their their level their RPM or performance to a higher level. Those are my two like great patient, my women patients that are really know something’s up and want to dive in deeper, and that my guys that are more on the biohacking side and kind of optimizing performance, they kind of know something is up. Now, when I make recommendations for patients, you got to really get focused on the performance aspect. Like you got to feel that people have this satisfaction, feeling of like their mouth and their taste and all that stuff. That’s a hard feeling to overcome, right? It’s always pain versus pleasure. So you really have to link up a lot of pleasure from the performance that you get from eating great food, whether that is clean skin, whether it’s all day energy, whether it’s good sleep, whether it’s good libido and mood, you really have to internalize the performance enhancements that you get. Now, the more adaptable you get, you can still keep those benefits while you cheat a little bit. Now we just choose the healthiest cheat possible, I already gave you a couple of options. What I do, you can do it going out to eat, you can do it going to steak houses, all kinds of good things you can do when you go to a nice restaurant with steak and vegetables, or if he goes to sushi will avoid the soy sauce. And we’ll do MCT oil and coconut aminos. Right. There’s a lot of substitutes we’re always doing. And it’s hard out of the gates because it’s stressful. But once you kind of make a habit out of it, you kind of have all of those go to substitutes there at your fingertips. Do you have any things that you do, Evan that, you know, maybe a treat for you, but it’s you know, a really good go to? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, well in terms of drinks, you know, I think that’s a big one, right? Just getting people off of sugary drinks. So Suja I think’s done a great job with all of their green juices. They have one I want to say it’s called like skin beauty or something. I don’t have the label in front of me. But for me in terms of beverages, I mean, I’m typically doing herbal teas, chamomile, ginger, peppermint tea, and then good clean filtered water. That’s about it. I know you’re super into the total Chico’s and some of the other mineral waters, carbonated waters. Those are great. But for me, I think it’s called beauty scan or scan beauty something anyway. Suja makes it it’s a whole foods. It’s like maybe four grams of sugar, but it’s like lychee juice and blueberry juice. Man, if I just get something like that. It’s a treat for me. And it may have a little bit of stevia or monk fruit in there. Something like that is great for my wife. You know, she had previously used like, you know, we’re talking 10 years ago, she had previously use some of the coffee creamers. I know people really do a lot of sugar in those. They’ll say oh, I only you know this coffee creamer is only two grams of sugar but it’s a gap but you’re putting like frickin five tablespoons. You’re just pouring it in. So for her. She really loves the rebel like the mushroom. Coffee blend.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like that one.

Evan Brand: Yeah, like the coffee with the mushrooms and I think it has coconut milk and stevia. So it’s basically a no sugar. So for us. Those are kind of our treats that make her feel like she’s still getting a good creamy sweet coffee without sugar. And then for me, you know, I used to love as a kid and a teenager man. I love soda. I mean Sunkist and Mountain Dew. I mean, I was into all the garbage for me now if I have that lychee juice, man, it tastes like candy. But it’s Yeah, my palates change. That’s the thing. The palate has evolved for us. So like you mentioned the treats your level of treat like you I think you and I’ve talked about blueberries you’ve done I think you said you’ve done frozen blueberries with like whipped cream and that’s a treat for you. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s like a dessert and a cream is great is awesome. Do it, it’s a coconut yogurt, it’s all about, okay, you know, try to do the right thing 80% of the time, right. And then a lot of the treats that we do is, it may still be part of the right thing, right? If we’re doing some almond butter, if you can tolerate knots and Granny Smith, apple and cinnamon, or if you can do some, some blueberries and some coconut cream, those still may be healthy things, right. So the cool thing is if we can choose healthy treats, that that feel like a treat tastes like a treat, but still healthy. That’s a win win, because then you can do that more frequently. And that’s kind of a it mixes up the monotony of your routine. And then of course, if we’re going to go and cheat a little bit, you know, when I go to a restaurant, what’s my go to? Well, I’ll get like a really nice, homemade, though a couple of restaurants, I go to their steak houses, they’ll make a nice ice cream that’s kind of a sorbet. Or it’s kind of coconut base, that those are really wonderful and tasty. Or I went to Truffaut kitchen and got a squash pie, which was wonderful. Or like a coconut, like is a restaurant down in Austin called Picnic. They have some wonderful autoimmune dessert recipes that are excellent. So you can try to always mitigate a little bit. And then if you something that’s really special, I don’t know your grandmother makes up especially around the holidays, and it’s worth the treat. Well, that’s fine. You’ve earned it, as long as you can deal with the side effects afterwards. And ideally, we don’t have an autoimmune condition with active antibodies that could be attacking your body. And it’s probably okay. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, very, very good. And then of course, we’ve mentioned the enzymes before too. So you’re gonna go get your grandma’s secret recipe, you know, there’s probably wheat and other crap in there, you may just want to do your enzyme, right? So like you and I both manufacture professional enzymes. So if you’re working with us, you’re probably already taking those but that’d be a good, that’d be a good strategy. Oh, you know, another treat for us I just started making these recently, is to take the CFA, the soft tortillas, and make like a [inaudible] out of it. So you do like a little bit of coconut oil, or you could just do butter if you want. And then just kind of put it in a pan for 1015 seconds, heat up the tortilla, and then just a little bit of coconut sugar and cinnamon on it. Oh my god. It tastes like when I was a kid, I’d go to the county fair and go eat the what was it the funnel cake or the elephant ear? Like that wheat Yep, thing with a bunch of powdered sugar on it. Oh my god, I love that I know. But this little, you know, the grain free tortilla with the coconut sugar and sentiment, man things delicious. That’s a treat. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and so you can mitigate. So number one, don’t feel stressed about being healthy. Just kind of know that first month, the two months is the hardest. If you’re coming in to, you know, this new healthy lifestyle and habits with a lot of symptoms. Don’t worry about cheating, worried put your focus on developing habits, right? Many people, they go into this place in their head of like, Oh my god, like, I’m not going to ever be able to eat this again. It’s like a divorce. It’s like a breakup, it’s like they’re literally grieving the loss of this food I’ll never eat again, don’t go into it like that go into it with the mindset of Hey, I’m going to focus on eating nutrient dense anti inflammatory, low toxin foods, so I can decrease inflammation in my body, accelerate healing and feel awesome. And then once you’re at a good level where you’ve kind of plateaued, and you work through some of the programs that we’re on with hormones and gut and your digestion is better, then we can start adding foods back in. And we’re always going to choose the healthiest treat options and the healthiest foods first. And then if your optimal health stays at that great level, then we can you know, if you want to go off the beaten path, here or there, you know, 80 20, 90 10, 95 5, and you’re able to maintain your benefits and it doesn’t take you too long to get back on track. That’s fine as the book out there called the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. And Tim Ferriss talks about a cheat day eating, we’re at whatever you want for a whole day. That is I’m sorry for most people, it’s a terrible idea. Because they go have a cheat day on Sunday, and they’re so inflamed. It takes till Thursday, the next week to get back into homeostasis. That’s a problem. – go ahead and go ahead. 

Evan Brand: Let me interject because I think that you may even be underplaying how bad of an idea that is because you and I’ve seen just by looking at thousands of people on test results, we’ve seen you know, gluten antibodies and other antibodies go up for potentially months after certain exposures like that. So you’re mentioning possibly a week to reset it could even be months. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have an active autoimmune thyroid issue or active autoimmune issue it could be now you can get your thyroid looked at, you could always do an Array Phi by Cyrax, to look at other silent antibodies that could be there. But if your health is great, and you feel great, and you know you can kind of get back on track the next day, all right, fine, but try to always choose a grain free option for most of your stuff, at least gluten free for most of it. But yeah, so my whole thing is how do you know something’s worth it? You should be able to get back on track that next day, if you’re not back on track the next day, that’s a problem. Now, Evan, you already alluded to what what if those antibodies popped up and we don’t know about it, so if you have an active thyroid autoimmune issue, you really Really want to be testing those antibodies or that ANA, or those autoimmune markers? If you have lupus or sjogren, or something kind of under the surface? I would say really choose the healthiest cheat possible. It’s just not worth it when tissues being destroyed. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Well said and, you know, for me, we’d like to leverage the lab testing and show like, look how good you’ve done. Look, we’ve got your dopamine back to normal. You mentioned neurotransmitters early on, look, we’ve got serotonin normalized. Now, doesn’t that feel good look at your calprotectin in your gut, we’ve got your inflammation down 1000 points, look at your Secretory IGA that’s starting to come back up because you’re removing the foods irritating the gut. Look at some of these infections, we’ve cleared out because you’re not using the sugar to feed the Candida and to feed the other pathogens. So when we use the functional medicine testing, plus just kind of our pep talks and motivation we give to people it’s a really good one two punch that keeps people on a sustainable path forever. And it really is a lifestyle. You know, we talked about, oh, this is a lifestyle. It’s easy to embrace once you feel good. So I agree with you, you got to focus on Hey, do you want to feel amazing? And then some people will ask the same thing with supplements, right? They’ll ask the same question about diet as they do supplements. How long do I have to do this? on their diet? And I’m like, well, and this might always punch back with as well. Do you want to survive? Or do you want to thrive? Well, obviously I want to thrive. Okay, well then do it forever. Okay, that was easy. So for me, that’s the that’s the default answer. Like when someone’s like, well, how long do I need to dial in my diet? I mean, as long as you want to feel amazing is the answer. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, tell patients out of the gates, you may have to be more puritanical. Because you’re trying to make up for lost time. It’s kind of like, if you’re in debt, from decades of poor spending habits, well, we’re gonna have to kind of get you on a really lean budget, and you’re gonna have to be investing and saving a large percent of what you make. Now as you get on top of that, and you’re debt free. And, and you’re feeling great. And now you’re making investments. And now you’re on your way to financial freedom, you can be a little bit more loosey goosey with your spending, right, it’s kind of the same thing with your health, just change the the the money equation to health. And it’s the exact same thing. And so we always try to look at getting momentum getting you on top of your health, reaching the level of conscious competence to unconscious competence, where it’s automatic, because the stress that people feel in that first month or two is just the fact they haven’t made a habit yet. And so if you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you have to make you have to let your brain and your physiology shift into unconscious competence. If you’re quitting before you get there, you’re you’re doing yourself a disservice. Because the amount of energy if you’re thinking, well, it takes me too much energy to do these things. It’s because you’re not in unconscious competence yet, and you will be there just give it a little more time people project their energy is going to be on this conscious competence wavelength the whole life, meaning the amount of energy they have to focus in and project has that will be at that level, but it won’t, it’ll get easier once you make that shift to unconscious competence. Totally, totally. It’s so easy, it’s so much, it’s easy, it’s easier for me to stay on the rails than it is to go off the rails like I would have to be, it would take me effort to go off the rails, I’d have to like seek out bad things like what could I do to try to test myself or destroy myself so it’s a good place to be 100% so out of the gates, we kind of talked about it you know where you’re at, if you’re not a mean person, and you have active issues or active things going on that are significant. Do the right thing, do the right thing be on point get momentum, get your symptoms on hundred percent under control, look deeper under the hood regarding hormones regarding everything else that’s happening in your body. Work with a good functional medicine practitioner and get your blood sugar, get dysglycemia under control, get inflammation, nutrient density, get toxins under control. That means going organic, clean, filtered water, all that good stuff, hormone free, antibiotic free, get your hormone stabilized and worked on whether it’s blood sugar, thyroid, female or male hormones, and then get your gut looked at because the healthiest food. We’ve kind of alluded to it. If you can’t digest it or break it down or absorb it properly, because of stress in the gut, you’re going to have a problem. So of course the next thing is we’re assuming that because you’re eating good foods, you’re breaking it down. The next step is going to be working on the gut. And so we don’t want foods that are full of inflammatory food allergens affecting your gut if it’s not stable yet. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, my diet was great, but I had gut infection so my skin was crap. So for me, I put in all the work on the diet and I got frustrated because I thought well, I’ve got rid of gluten I’ve got rid of dairy What is wrong with me? And then luckily the functional medicine testing came in and kind of uncovered some stuff so if you’re more dialed in, you’re still struggling then you know look deeper. And so if you want to reach out to Justin you can do so clinically at his website, JustinHealth.com. That’s Dr. J at JustinHealth.com. Me Evan Brand at EvanBrand.com we work with people over the phone, Skype, Zoom FaceTime, however we need to connect we send the labs to your door. You send those back to the lab, we jump on a follow up call to discuss the results and make a protocol. It’s very, very awesome. And with everything that’s been going on, it’s funny that telemedicine has gotten, you know, 10 x more popular. So it’s really cool that we were actually ahead of this curve. We’ve been doing this this way the whole time. So feel free to reach out and we look forward to helping you. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So you guys know where to reach out. And just remember to start with one thing, like, if you’re coming into this journey, I find a lot of people who aren’t doing the right thing, if you’re around them, and you start, you know, being on point and making health changes, sometimes there’s this subconscious pull to pull you down, because you making the changes to improve your health sometimes magnifies their inability or lack thereof to make changes in their life. And sometimes they may sabotage you and pull you down. It’s a threat. Yeah. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, you’re saying that you’re saying that by you trying to better yourself, you may piss off other people, and then they’re going to try to come bring you down with them and their misery just eat the cookie. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and everyone’s on a different journey. So if you’re the autoimmune person, and you need to really be on point, because you’re starting this journey, and maybe they’re a little bit more stable, and healthy, you know, it may not even be something where they’re unhealthy and may just be there at a different place than you and they want to indulge this Saturday night, and you aren’t quite there. And that’s okay, you know, you just got to meet and support people where they’re at. And that’s, that’s a good thing to be at. So it’s good to have empathy. And it’s good to understand that we’re all in different places. And some people may not have even gotten out of the gate yet. They may be at that unconscious incompetence. They don’t know there’s even a problem yet. And so we just try to always meet people where they’re at, provide empathy, and understanding from where they’re at. 

Evan Brand: Very true. Very true. One last story. So I had a woman. Actually, though, the husband and wife were both working with me and the woman just love baking. I hear the story a lot. The woman loves baking. And so like every Friday, she would make brownies or cookies or cake or something, right? She’s always baking some sweet thing. And then she only wants to eat a piece of it. And then she leaves it left for her husband. And if he tries to throw it away, then she’s like, no, you’re wasting it. You’re wasting our money. You’re wasting it right. So then he feels up, which I don’t know, maybe this is his excuse, maybe not. I’m just sharing the story. I’m just the messenger boy. So he comes in and he goes, Well, she’ll get mad at me if I don’t eat the whole cake. I’m like, Oh, that’s what it is. So you have to eat the whole cake. So she doesn’t get mad at you. Okay, interesting. So now we’re trying to switch her over to, you know, almond flowers and coconut flowers and whatever. So we’re just working better option. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 

Evan Brand: So we’re just working with them on where they’re at. But it’s funny. He blames her right? Oh, she’ll get mad if I don’t eat the whole cake. It’s like that’s a good excuse right there. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we I mean, you got to take accountability. It’s not a valid excuse in the long run, right? You get two people in there and you got to get one to agree. All right, we got to stop this. That’s not good behavior. But yeah, I totally get it. And so outside of that there’s some really good autoimmune dessert recipes and treat recipes and my go to or some of the Unreal or Justin’s dark chocolate brands are pretty good. Or some of the endangered species dark chocolate or just some just some of the berries and coconut yogurt or maybe a hail mary tart, or I’ll just choose something that’s like a baked Apple, like my paleo apple crisp is a really good one. I just I have a couple of go twos. I tend to repeat that work pretty darn well. I know you did the waffles in the morning, which is kind of a nice treat. I’ll do that the keto birch benders waffles. Is there any other go twos that you do? They’re kind of a treat for you but still relatively healthy.

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned SWAPO Yeah, they’re swap foods is the brand of like a waffle but they’re Yuka those are delicious. And then you mentioned earlier the keto cups that’s evolved I think company and then I also like the keto bars there are keto bars that perfect keto makes. Yep. Anthony. He’s a Chiro who makes those are good. Those are like stevia, monk fruit, I believe. And those are like organic almonds or organic cashews. Those are good. I’ve done some of Dave’s bars, the bulletproof bars, with the MCT and organic cashews, those are pretty good depending on if you could do nuts or not. So those are some good treats that are easy and quick. And then also, bison. I like to do some of the epic bison meats like the bison bites, or Tonka makes really good bison meat. So I’ll do those or venison jerky or something like that. 

Yeah, and one last thing is for patients or people listening, try to get momentum out of the gate. So really start your first two meals of the day solid, good protein, good fats get momentum. That makes a big difference. If you’re coming out of the gates with crappy food. In the morning, a Starbucks mocha frappuccino with a whole bunch of sugar, a crappy lunch, it’s hard to get on top of your day, from a physiological hormone, anti inflammatory support, it’s really hard. So get momentum out of the gate. It’s kind of like starting a race and you just kind of get out of the starting block at a walking speed that you got to sprint out of that walking out of that starting block. Right. Same thing with your health. So start your day with good habits, right whether it’s a cold shower, or whether it’s clean, filtered water or some minerals, some good protein, some good fat or if you’re healthy enough, maybe intermittent fasting again, people that aren’t healthy I think they need they need nutrition in the morning they don’t need nothing in the morning the healthier you are the more fasting I think provides a beneficial effect just like exercising really hard can be beneficial if you’re already fit right kind of like that. So that’s kind of where I’m at. I think you put some really good points out there EvanBrand.com for Evan reach out virtually worldwide for support JustinHealth.com for Dr. J myself. We are here for y’all. And you guys have a phenomenal day. Take care y’all.

References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/does-eating-healthy-when-stressed-make-you-feel-better-podcast-315

Immunity Boost Tips to Help You Stay Healthy Over the Holidays | Podcast #298

Your immune system likely needs a holiday boost, and you are the only one who can do it. (Things like stress, foods high in saturated fat, alcohol, and skipping exercise can all weaken this key part of the body that helps fight off infection and keep you healthy.) Let’s hear from Dr. J and Evan to help you put yourself at the top of your holiday checklist and give yourself this gift of health. 

Check out this podcast!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

2:28    Vitamins, Nutritional Mushrooms

11:31   Blended Formulas, Supreme, Monolaurin

18:00   Biofilms

21:07   Essential Oils, Nebulizers

22:49   Nebulizers

Evan Brand: And here, this is a time of the year where hopefully everybody’s getting together and having a good time. And we had some questions about immunity and what people should be doing. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, they’re all valid, valid questions. I mean, this is the time a year right, vitamin D level starts to drop. Usually, we got more viruses out there floating around all different kinds, we have obviously lower vitamin D as well, because the angle of the Sun is dropping a bit due to winter. And then obviously, more sugar consumption, more treats, more candy, more sweets, from Thanksgiving, and Christmas, etc. So all those things are going to have a major effect compromising the immune system, plus people get their end of the year deadlines with work. So a lot of emotional stress, buying gifts, all the family obligations. So all of these stressors summit and could have a major effect on compromising your immune system. So our goal today is kind of to talk about all these things and different strategies that you can work on.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, those old classic Christmas songs, they’ll say, this is the most wonderful time of the year. But in general, most people I would argue, are more stressed. And they’re not as happy this time of the year, which is kind of sad, it really should be a happy time. And so I think first I want to dive into the impact of stress and the immune system, if I may, and want to talk about the influence of stress, whether that’s related to sleep, blood, sugar, emotional, whatever, that is really going to impact a lot of things. But most importantly, it’s going to affect your immunity. And so we know, we’ve seen countless cases where people are going to go from a 40 Hour Workweek and they go 5060 hours, we work with a lot of attorneys, CEOs, we work with executives, we work with teachers, we work with real estate agents, and we always see there’s this kind of a, I call it like the hustle effect where someone will go go real hard, like you said, kind of the end of the quarter sales thing, you know, they really got to get their numbers, or we got to finish this before the semester ends if they’re like a college professor, and then all of a sudden they have a crash from it. Now, if we can kind of come in with some strategic adaptogenic herbs, those can be helpful for the immune system as well. So I think the easiest one, just right out of the gate is going to be Reishi or Reishi. Mushroom, I think that’s going to be your best adaptogen that I would argue has some good stress and blunting effects. But it’s going to be great for boosting up your natural killer cells, which are going to be really important for any type of illness that you may be exposed to.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So of course, like you kind of hit you kind of highlighted a couple things off the bat here, just all of the immune stress due to the holidays, all of the obligations, all of the food stressors. So I mean, of course, the first thing I think we can kind of look at is alright, don’t compromise on sleep, make sure you’re getting enough sleep. And then make sure your diet is at least reasonably well. And I kind of tell my patients, if you know you’re going to be eating a whole bunch of treats or some not so nice food, try to always find a good replacement, you know, try to find something that’s going to be more healthier on the on the sugar side on the dessert side on the treat side. So you have a healthier substitute, especially if you have kids, right? We know once your kids get sick, they tend to be like the little petri dish that carries viruses and bacteria throughout the family. Right. So you want to keep your kids healthy. So kids don’t know any different. Just try to choose a healthier cheat. So I’ll tell you what we’re doing for the holidays, I went to a local trophy, true food kitchen and we got some of their squash pies. And we get we’re getting them for some of the holiday dessert. So they’re going to be a healthier kind of paleo version, cassava type of cross lower sugar but clean ingredients. Now we also use a couple other pecan pie and pumpkin pies that are just really clean ingredients, very little added sugar. And then we try to make a lot of our sides are going to be paleo, right so good clean, heirloom, pasture fed Turkey, organic mashed potatoes, good quality kerrygold butter, like not too much on the carbohydrate side. And we know all that glucose, all that carbohydrate, right is going to convert to glucose in our bloodstream. And glucose tends to have a similar molecular structure as vitamin C so it can bind into that vitamin C receptor site and it can negatively impact our immune system can also abnormally affect cortisol. So if you can get your glucose levels and your glycaemia under control that has a huge impact on vitamin C and your immune system so first strategy is kind of look at the desserts in the in the treats that you’re going to have around for the family and just try to find a healthier substitute for all the core ones and try to look at it as you know 80-20 90-10 in regards to kind of you being on point versus you being off point.

Evan Brand: Yep, yep, good point and then beverages I mean, we do a lot of herbal teas I’m always just brewing some some tea so I think if you have somebody who’s not really entity or if you’re just not a tea person look at something like a hibiscus tea with a little bit of monkfruit or stevia I mean that’s delicious. You won’t know and your your your friends and family they’re not going to know if it’s not like a juice. I mean, some of the hibiscus blends I grew up I mean it almost tastes like juice. I mean the kids just absolutely love it. Even my 18 month old Drink hibiscus tea. So I think something like that would be smart, and just keeping you away from all the corn syrup. I mean, it’s crazy how, you know, you still look at the the table and it looks like we’re still in 1990 you’ll see the the coke and the Diet Coke and the Pepsi and the whatever it’s like, No, we don’t want that. That’s there’s definitely, definitely an impact on sleep, stress, blood sugar, sugar, it’s all connected. So it’s really easy to derail yourself, but it’s so easy to dial it in. So what I would be doing, I would be doing a gram a day of some reishi mushroom, I would be doing a gram a day of some quarter steps mushroom, which is going to be great for energy production, but also just as kind of an adrenal adaptogen. And then with some of the diet tweaks you’re mentioning, and going to bed, I mean, that’s the simple thing. Yeah, to be off to a good start. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s, that’s a big one. So I mean, I just say get the food right, keep the glucose under control. The next thing on top of that is you know, low hanging fruit is going to be things like vitamin D, vitamin D, for dog, vitamin C, for cat, these are all going to be super helpful things. Vitamin D has a major effect on modulating the immune system, right th one th two it affects the T regulatory cells, which can modulate your immune response. Also, vitamin D produces this antibacterial peptide called cathelicidin. And that can have a awesome impact on bacteria that you’re exposed to. So vitamin D is great vitamin C, like we chatted about, it’s wonderful. You can always do things like glutathione. Or if you want to save a little money, some n acetylcysteine. And that can have an effect on glutathione is wonderful at modulating the immune system as well. Especially NAC is very helpful for mucus production and post nasal drip stuff. And which can help with a lot of cough stuff as well. So and acetyl, cysteine and glutathione is wonderful. I’m taking some reishi mushroom here, right now, Reishi has a couple of compounds in there, it’s got the one three Beta Glucan in there, it’s got the various polysaccharides, it’s got things in there called triterpenes. And trader beans actually deactivate virus replication. And so it’s very nice because it can one enhance your immune system, your th one immune system, which is kind of the natural killer cell immune response. But it can also decrease virus replication. And so a virus works by getting into your cells, and they replicate things like zinc, decreased virus replication, things like glutathione, decrease it, and acetylcysteine decreases it. So these are all powerful nutrients that you can use to Reishi, the terpenes decrease it. So if you can do things that naturally decrease that replication, it gives your immune system a huge advantage.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And then with the vitamin D, I believe you and I have access to like an at home professional finger spot prick blood test, where you could check and confirm your levels of vitamin D. However, in most cases, we’re going to be running comprehensive blood panels on people. So if you’re listening, and you’re like, well, I don’t really know where I’m at, or what I should be doing dosing wise. In general, fall, winter time, to anywhere up up to six, maybe 8000, I use of d3 Plus, we have professional formulas we’re using where they have a little bit of K one and K two added as well. And then you could just confirm after two to three months of supplementation with your blood you want to be I would say somewhere 60 to 80, I think is smart, but at least a minimum of 30. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve seen initially where their vitamin D is in the single digits or in the low 20s. That’s a very, very common spot to be with that. I mean, look at people, they don’t spend much time outside anymore. And they’re, they’re covering too much of their skin. And now as you mentioned, this time of the year, when we’re talking in late November, you’ve got the angle of the sun, where if you’re farther north than basically Atlanta, Georgia, it’s almost impossible to get any vitamin D, except for maybe a couple of hours in the middle of the day, you know, but once we get into the deep winter, just the angle of the sun, you just can’t do it unless you’re in like South Florida, basically, South Texas.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, vitamin D kind of a good rule of thumb is you can take 1000 views per 25 pounds of body weight and then retest usually within one to two months. If you know you’re low out of the gates, I typically recommend doing whatever one 1000 iu per pound or 1000. I used for 25 pounds of body weight times two. So if you’re like 200 pounds, right, that’s going to be typically 8000 I use times two so like 16 to 20,000 I use for a month and then and then bring it back down to the general recommendation of like that five to 8000 right, you know, layer and again after that first month, you may want to retest that way you can kind of get your levels up fast tests, make sure you’re good. Make sure you’re not over 100 or so. Again, vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin so it accumulates over time, but when you pull it out, it also drops slowly over time. It’s not like a B vitamin or vitamin C. That’s water soluble It’s a fat fighter Wednesday. So while the kind of it can increase pretty fast, but then takes a while to decrease it, so sometimes getting it up to 100 or so, and then kind of pulling back a lot, even if the level that you’re at may not be enough to keep it there, you may be at 100 or so in December, and then the time March hits, you’re like at 70. That’s cool, too, because then the springs coming back, and then you’re going to be getting more sunlight. So that works, too.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s good advice. And then vitamin C. I mean, it really depends on where you’re at with your bowels. I mean, we use a lot of different blends of vitamin C, which kind of helped move the bowels too. So generally, I’m going to be two to three grams a day, I don’t see any issue with that dosing, sometimes we’ll go a little higher. And sometimes we’re at a gram a day. So I think I’d say one to three grams, on average would be about right for for vitamin C, and we’re going to do a mixed ascorbate, if possible. So we’re trying to avoid using just straight ascorbic acid, we find that, especially just that by itself, it doesn’t do much, we really like to see some of the citrus bioflavonoids in there, the course attend the route. And those are the things we use. So if you go to, I don’t know, Walgreens or just generic store and get vitamin C, probably just ascorbic acid by itself, probably not going to absorb much. And so we’ve tested thousands of people via urine organic acids testing, and we always see low vitamin C, it’s a very, very common occurrence. And so I would argue, a mixed ascorbate, like a professional formula that we carry is going to be much, much better. Exactly. So you like the ascorbate. And that’s the one that’s reduced. Correct. I like to do the mixed one. So like a sodium ascorbate, magnesium ascorbate, calcium ascorbate. Those three together work awesome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, like that. That makes a lot of sense. That’s cool. We talked about vitamin C, we talked about some medicinal mushrooms, I have a blend blended formula called immuno boost. And that is a really good one because that’s actually you know, Supreme, and that has some really, really good nutrients in there that are going to be amazingly helpful. And that’s going to have like akinesia in there to net akinesia, it’s going to have some astragulus, which are really good for modulating the immune system, they’ll have some mushrooms in there. So we’ll have some Reishi, it’ll have some pataky, it’ll have some cortiseps in there. Also some monolaurin monolaurin. Excellent, because that’s a very helpful at decreasing virus replication. monolaurin can kind of come in there and it can digest the virus envelope. And the virus envelope is like a cloaking device the virus uses to hide from the immune system. So as soon as the immune system can tag the virus, it’s easier for the body to now go after that virus and destroy it. And so by decreasing that virus envelope, its ability to hide it monolaurin can be used in a very helpful way to expose that to the immune system. 

Yeah, I love monolaurin. We both got animals. I hear my dog barking, I hear your cat meowing. It’s like the farm life over here, isn’t it? Yeah, no, totally. Absolutely. So we hit on the sleep, we hit the stress, we hit the mushrooms, we hit the vitamins. You know, I think just a good methylated multi is good. I manufacture one called True multi I believe you manufacture a professional multi as well. Just getting a lot of the bees, bees and Bravo are going to be important because with the stress of whether it’s just your day to day life, your work stress, the emotional stress, whatever is going on with you, you’re going to burn through your bees pretty quick. We’re going to measure those via urine. But your average person, if you’re just someone listening, you’re not actually running organic acids testing to confirm this, just trust us we’ve seen thousands of cases, I’ll tell you a B vitamins are going to burn up quick. So it’s okay to supplement those. And your pee may go highlighter yellow for a little bit. That doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money, you’re just going to pee out the excess and then your body’s going to get calibrated. And you should just have no relatively normal urine. It may always be a little more yellow with the bees. But that’s not an issue. And that, like I said, doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money.

Yes, 100%. So we talked about vitamin D, we talked about the Reishi. We talked about glutathione vitamin D as in dog, I talked about monolaurin and how that kind of helps digest and break down the viral envelope. Let’s talk about astragalus or akinesia or golden seal. These are wonderful herbs that have amazing immuno modulating effects. So I like astragalus as well. It can do a couple of things, they can decrease virus replication. Usually these herbs do kind of they have like two major mechanisms, they enhance the immune system, usually a combination of th one th two tends to support more th one but they also can help the th two side and where they make where they actually make antibodies. So you can help the natural killer side th one or you can help the antibody production side. Usually antibody production side comes in a little bit later in the game. So if you want to avoid getting sick, it’s going to make a bigger bigger difference if you’re if you’re enhancing the th one because that’s kind of the faster acting immune response. Now longer term supporting th two is very helpful because you can have what’s called cross reactive immunity. So your th one immune system may have seen previous viruses in the environment. And it can mobilize antibodies faster even though those antibodies may not already be there, you may be able to mobilize those antibodies faster because the th one immune system has seen similar viruses in the past. So you may get a faster mobilization of these different antibodies. And so yes, in my product is the amino supreme one and a couple of the ingredients, we have the akinesia in that one and the astragulus, which is wonderful. Also andrographis, very similar. Goldenseal, very similar monolaurin, we talked about monolaurin the different medicinal mushrooms, corticeps, shitake, mytaki, Reishi, these have effects on supporting the th one and also the triterpenes help deactivate the virus, right. So what does that mean? virus has to replicate to start creating symptoms, right. And if the virus cannot replicate, you deactivate the replication process. Now, not a big deal, your body can keep it under wraps. And then of course, things like zinc, are going to help with virus replication. So I’ll put a link down below to my product. Um, you know, Supreme, I know you have one similar to Evan, will make sure that’s down below. And these are things that we clinically use with our patients that work really, really, really well. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, berberine is a good one, too. I mean, there’s a lot of papers on anti influence activity of berberine. And viral clip, reducing viral replication, using berberine. So for those listening, if you’re doing any kind of anti microbial protocol with us, a lot of times we’re using blends, like in particular one that I have called microbiome support. Number one, I use that a lot for gut infection, so any kind of bacterial overgrowth issues, but guess what, the cool thing about herbs, unlike drugs is you have, you’re killing multiple birds with the same stone. So we could be coming in with the berberine addressing the bacterial overgrowth, but then we’re also reducing viral replication. So I think that’s a great one berberine in isolation would be fine. But something like the microbiome support as a broad spectrum. You know, that’d be smart, too. And for your gut, I’ve got some dgl in that product. So that’s going to be giving you a little bit of gut healing, if you’re eating some stuff that you may be irritating your gut by, you know, that’d be a good insurance policy. And then what about enzymes? Should we hit on enzymes at all? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I mean, you can do systemic enzymes, which can be helpful for just kind of breaking down viral envelope as well or helping with stagnant you know, coagulation, right? If you have increased coagulation, a lot of clotting, poor blood flow. Enzymes can be helpful for that perspective. Also, maybe with biofilms right resistant bacteria have biofilms. What other kind of what were you thinking of em enzymes for in regards to supporting the immune system out? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, I was I was thinking like, there’s a couple that we use, like there’s [inaudible]. There’s lumbered open- 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -about it from a biofilm perspective, or quagga bility thing? How are you thinking about it? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, good question. Probably the biofilm piece because I’ve had a lot of people with resistant infections where will come in with a biofilm support, and then that kind of gets them over the hump. So Lately, I’ve been using a lot of different ones. Beyond balance has done a great job making some particular biofilm products, you have to use us a professional to order it for you. But we’ve done we’ve done good with those. And then there are some other professional companies I’ve been personally experimenting with some lambro kinase. And that’s a much much stronger than something like a sarapeptidase and I’ve noticed a big increase in blood flow, like my hands are much much warmer using lambro kinase. So I know it’s doing something from a circulatory perspective. And I would argue that when you’re taking all these herbs and mushrooms, if you have good blood flow, good circulation, that’s going to deliver the nutrients everywhere. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the key. So when you get really inflamed, usually there’s a lot of poor coagulation, a lot of poor circulation, there’s increased coagulation, right? coagulation, when the platelets kind of stick together and they kind of clot and you get more fibrinogen hanging out right then more fibrin or fibrinogen, because he goes fibrinogen to fibrin, so fibrin, or like the clot, so to speak. The more fibrinogen fibrin you have the more clots you have the decreased blood flow you’re going to have. So a hallmark of inflammation is just a lot more sticky cells. And so if you can make those cells a lot more smooth and less sticky, you do that with a good anti inflammatory paleo template. You do that by keeping your blood sugar down. You do that by keeping inflammation down from grains and other inflammatory foods, hydrating adequate good fats like fish oil, right. Evan mentioned the enzymes also help also ginger ginger is amazing. Ginger actually has antiviral qualities. Go into PubMed, type in ginger or zinjibber, which is I think the technical term Zinjibber, and you’ll see all kinds of studies on inflammation reduction, you’ll see viral particle replication or viral particle adhesion, part of how viruses everywhere they have to stick to a cell receptor site to stick to it. And if that’s removed, Iris can’t stick to it as well right Were you able to flush it off with ginger are good antimicrobials are biofilms. All that can really, really help the virus from causing problems it can really prevent it from causing problems so gingers great good anti viral, helps decrease viruses from sticking to the receptor sites also is very anti inflammatory, supports good healthy digestion and motility as well and can really help with irritation in the throat so like coughing and things like that. Ginger has a natural Tustin quality to it right custom meaning it kind of helps with the coughing and so does you know, decreasing the mucus with like a good n acetylcysteine. And some good really good sinus flushes with xylitol and bicarb. And minerals can also decrease any bacteria or fungus junk up in the nose or even going down the throat via a post nasal drip issue. 

Evan Brand: Love it. Love it. Yeah, gingers amazing. I mean, we talked about it. You see it at the grocery store. You look at it, you’re like, is ginger really that special? Yeah, it really is. I actually had a double bag of ginger yesterday with a little bit of raw honey and it was absolutely just so delicious. So therapeutic.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, anything else you wanted to highlight off the bat, I mean, a couple things you can do. There’s some good essential oils that are out there that you can kind of drip into your water and just kind of get a homeopathic dose in your water throughout the day. It’s helpful. I know there’s a couple brands doterra has one called ’On Guard’. And then I think Young Living has one called ‘Thieves’. You know the common theme and a lot of these usually some kind of clove or cinnamon or some kind of like an orange peel s kind of thing. And these are very antimicrobial, very immune supporting and you can always kind of put a low dose in if you have a little throat issue going on. You can always kind of gargle with it too. Or if you’re doing some oil pulling, you know, put a couple of drops in the oil in your mouth and kind of swish that around and give it five or 10 minutes and they can kind of hit the back of your throat and clean out any nasty bacteria or biofilms that are hanging way back in your throat can be very helpful. Just make sure you spit it out afterwards.

Evan Brand: I think diffusing would be smart too, right, why not? You could defuse put some of the oils into the air Just be aware of your pets. I don’t remember what particular oils that were but I did have a client who was getting super into the oils and she was diffusing something and her dog got super lethargic had to take the dog to the emergency vet. I can’t remember so just do a little research essential oil dogs diffuser, there was a couple of stories about you know particular one so don’t go too crazy pumping your whole house full of it and making your dog pass out or something like that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s smart. The only other thing I would say besides the essential oil I think we Oh, I think we could also talk about diffuse including ion there are some really good reduced kind of soluble glutathione compounds out there. I’ve one called by third naturals is really good. I’ll put a link down below if you guys want to see I think you have a link as well to it. 

Evan Brand: You mean, nebulize? You said diffuse you mean? nebulize? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, I meant Yeah, well, kind of the same thing. But yeah, in general, we basically a diffuser is kind of for the systemic environment. a nebulizer is something like this, that you put in devices device like this, don’t you love that is that i mean is that nebulizer not the best one I’m telling ya, man, it’s great. I gotta clean I gotta clean it out a little bit. But you have the battery here you have the facemask here, you just connect it in like this. Yeah, the one he’s showing for people listening on audio, this is a one by Philips, it’s called inspire in a spire. And then you basically just take the five milliliters of a salient solution, you put right in the top here, and you add your 200 milligram glutathione reduced. And it’s it’s you can’t do it for any glow to find on the one that we’re talking about. It’s by a company called Therm Naturals, we’ll put the link below. And that is a glutathione that’s reduced, that’s mixed with sodium bicarb. So then when you add the saline solution to it, it actually becomes soluble. It’s just total it diffuses into the water 100%. And then you close the cap attached to the battery pack. And then you can do a five minute session or so breathing right in. And that’s helpful. If you have active lung issues, it may not be necessary. If you are already are in good shape, you may just be able to take some oral glutathione or oral NAC. But if you start to have active issues, it can be helpful because you can really increase the saturation right into the lung area to the alveoli. And right into that respiratory tree. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve used it with several clients who’ve had lung issues. And it’s been it’s been great COPD and other issues. It’s been wonderful. So it’s a great, great tool to have, like you said, you probably don’t need it if you’re super healthy. But if you got some going on, you may want that out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s active. And you may want to even look at it using it for a really good silver as well. You could do a silver maybe 10 pm or less on there. It’s very controversial. So kind of do a little research on that. I don’t just recommend that because a lot of conventional doctors don’t like it. But if you’re doing a silver that’s very, very small. It can be helpful if you have an active viral infection in the lungs. But But do your homework on that first, because you don’t want to be nebulizing silver that is a large molecule sighs we want to make sure it can move to the sell adequately.

Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Good advice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you triend nebulizing silver by the way? 

Evan Brand: I’ve done it, I haven’t, I wouldn’t say I would, I would notice a ton from it, you know, it’s not one of those things where it’s like, whoa, I feel incredible. But I’ve done it, I’ve mixed it. I’ve done the glutathione on silver combo, you know, but I wasn’t in too bad of shape. So I, you know, I can’t say that silver was necessarily a magic remedy for me or not, but I have done the silver up the nose. And I do believe that has helped as well for some of the sinus colonization that can happen.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can do silver up the nose, you can also do silver orally, you know, any of the side effects that you see about silver, like the argyria turning blue, that has to do with very large silver molecules and usually kind of a homebrew. If you’re dealing with a high quality silver brand made by like, you know, a tier one supplement company like the one that I make in my GI33 or like a sovereign silver or like some kind of a silver soul or some kind of a nano silver. That particular is very, very small, and your body’s gonna have no problem excluding it. It’s a very, very large silver molecules that are going to be problematic.

Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Well said. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else Evan? 

Evan Brand: I don’t think so. If people need help clinically, please reach out. We’re available worldwide if you want to get a hold of Dr. J. JustinHealth.com, worldwide consult. So even if you just need a call, hey, I need help. I’m concerned I need help to boost myself up. What do I do? You know, we’re here for that. But we love helping people get to the bottom of their issues, using functional lab testing to find and fix the root causes of your issue. So rather than coming in and doing the spot treatment, have a little bit of this a little bit of that. The reality is, hey, here’s what’s going on under the hood, this is what’s putting you at a disadvantage. So we’re going to help fix you. So JustinHealth.com. And for me, Evan Brand, EvanBrand.com and we’ll be back. So stay tuned.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Put your comments down below everyone. We really appreciate it comments below, give us a like give us a thumbs up. And if you want to dive in deeper, we’ll put the links for you guys to make it accessible. Hope you guys have an amazing holiday season coming up. We’ll be in touch. Take care y’all. Bye now. 

Evan Brand: Take care.

References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/immunity-boost-tips-to-help-you-stay-healthy-over-the-holidays-podcast-298

How Sugar Feeds Illness

How Sugar Feeds Illness

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

America takes first place… as the top consumer of dietary sugar in the world. Our sugar consumption is a major player behind the skyrocketing rates of chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and cancer. The average American now consumes an average of 130 grams of sugar per day—for reference, the daily recommendation for women is a maximum of 20 grams a day! This is more than just sad: it’s dangerous. Today we are going to outline some of the effects of sugar on our immediate and long-term health.

What is Sugar?

This might seem obvious, but food producers are getting craftier with their labeling as they realize more and more people are making the choice to eat healthier. Sugar goes by many names, with new ones popping up all the time. Some sugars are natural, most are processed, and more and more are being created in labs. Here are just a few names to look out for on product labels:

• Agave
• Brown sugar
• Corn sweetener
• Corn syrup
• Fruit juice concentrates
• High fructose corn syrup
• Honey (raw, pasteurized)
• Invert sugar
• Malt sugar
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Sugar
• Sugar molecules ending in “-ose” (dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose)
• Syrup

Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor and discuss underlying health issues preventing you from living your best life!

What About Fruit?

Yes, fruit technically contains sugar, in the form of fructose. However, there is a big difference between enjoying a piece of fruit as an after-dinner treat, versus having orange juice with breakfast and fruit juices as your beverage of choice throughout the day. Studies have shown that eating fruit whole can lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, drinking fruit actually increases your risk! The fiber you get from eating fruit whole slows the absorption of the sugar and keeps the glycemic index low. Plus, it takes a lot more squeezed fruit to fill a glass than you could possibly eat in a serving, meaning you’re consuming way more sugar than you realize!

The Effects of Sugar

Consuming large quantities of sugar has been linked to an increased risk of a variety of chronic diseases including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) as well as cognitive decline and even some cancers!

There are also many health issues caused by sugar that aren’t as talked about:

Sugar depletes the body of critical electrolytes, antioxidants, and minerals, which leads to cell death, muscle spasms, insulin resistance, and other health defects. Its effects on the immune system leave you prone to getting sick more often and more severely.

Sugar feeds bacteria and parasites, like yeast and Candida. It also depletes the body of good gut bacteria, promoting Leaky Gut and other gut infections. Chronic pain, vision problems, and even wrinkles can be worsened by sugar!

Sugar causes chronic inflammation in the body, and inflammation is said to be the root cause of almost all disease.

How Sugar Feeds Cancer

Sugar consumption has been proved to feed cancer cells and speed up the growth of tumors. Too much sugar consumption causes insulin resistance, as well as a specific protein to be released from your pancreas. This protein causes your cells to replicate and become immortal, which is how pre-cancerous cells can begin to take over.

Cancer cells prefer glucose over oxygen, but our mitochondria can’t use the glucose as energy. White blood cells are our immune system’s soldiers, and need vitamin C to function properly. A cancer patient needs lots of healthy white blood cells to fight the disease, however, sugar blocks the absorption of vitamin C in our bloodstream, weakening our immune system.

In summary, sugar causes cancer cells to reproduce and thrive, and blocks the mechanisms that would slow down or kill cancer cells and tumors.

Takeaway

Sugar addiction runs deep, and can be hard to kick. Stay tuned for Dr. J’s thoughts on artificial sweeteners, approaches to beating sugar addiction, and healthy alternatives for sugar.

Click here to talk to a functional medicine doctor about staying healthy this holiday season!

5 steps to transition to a Paleo diet – Podcast #68

Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand give us 5 helpful steps to transition to a Paleo diet or template in order to get on the right track to nutrition and healthy lifestyle. This podcast is basically for anyone who’s trying to make a transition to a healthier diet. Find out how you can get the foundation laid from diet into functional medicine.

Learn about Paleo and how it isn’t just a meat diet. Dr. J busts out the myth about not cooking your vegetables and discover why it’s actually good to cook some of them. Dr. Justin and Evan advise to be wary of how much sugar content are found in drinks, even the pseudo healthy ones. Find out why it is a good idea to upgrade your meat quality and how important it is not to skip your meals.

In this episode, topics include:

3:53   Paleo diet

5:28   Cooking your food

8:20   Soda to water

13:19   Upgrade your meat quality

15:33   Skipping meals

Podcast: Play in New Window|Download

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Hey, Evan, it’s Dr. J.  What’s going on, man?

Evan Brand:  Hey, well, I’m excited.  I got the memo to wear Polo shirts today.  So looks like we’re off to a good start.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I like it.  You’re styling, man.  Well, I’m back from vacation feeling a lil–a little more refreshed than I normally am so feeling pretty extra energized today.  How are you doing?

Evan Brand:  Oh, I’m feeling good.  Feeling really good.  I mean that it’s cloudy and we’re headed into the dark gloomy winter here but I’m still pretty upbeat about it.  So–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Does it get cold down in Louisville there?

Evan Brand:  Oh, it gets freezing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Does it really?

Evan Brand: Oh yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  You get a lot of snow.

Evan Brand:  We got about a foot when we–when Hannah and I first moved back in March.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, wow.

Evan Brand:  The day after we moved back, we had a foot of snow.  So some years yes, some years no.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Got it, that makes sense.  Well, we talked about in the pre-show that we wanted to do a podcast on transitioning to Paleo.  So this may be elementary for some people.  For anyone that’s trying to get their spouse or family member to switch over or try to make a transition to a healthier diet, this is gonna be in my opinion the podcast for you.  And we’ll kinda lay the foundation from diet into functional medicine because there are people that diet changes a lot of times will fix a lot of their issues depending on how long they’ve been sick, you know tending to be the–the less long you’ve been sick, the shorter time period you’ve been sick, diet changes can be enough sometimes.  But if it’s been longer, more prolonged or if it’s more serious, you’re gonna have to go or transition into the functional medicine world and the diet is the foundational piece to go into that functional medicine world.  The sicker you are, it’s like building a skyscraper, right?  The taller that skyscraper is, meaning the sicker you are, well, the–the deeper you have to build that foundation and a lot of functional medicine doctors and practitioners, they really skim on the foundational info and we’re gonna make sure we lay that down and we’re laying it down kind of in a Paleo template format, and that’s kind of a very loaded term because a lot of people like I just look at my YouTube comments–I try not to look at them too much because they’re all over the map, but I get a lot of feedback on Paleo as just a meat diet.  And that is totally, you know, you know couldn’t be farther from the truth and for some people it may be more meat than others, some it’s less meat.  But again, like my plate for instance, that my food goes on, it’s 50% or more vegetables.  So to say that it’s an all-meat diet, I see more vegetables on my plate that most vegans and vegetarians.  So go figure.  It’s not just a meat diet, it’s a diet that is kind of geared to how we evolve.  The foods that we have eaten.  Foods that are nutrient-dense.  Foods that are low in toxins.  Foods that are anit-inflammatory, cutting out a lot of the refined vegetable oils and extra omega-6 fats.  Foods that are sustaining for life and that are gonna help give us the nutrients we need and we can dial in the macro-nutrients, the protein, fat and carbs just like we dial up the temperature up or down in our house depending on what’s happening outside.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and I find for some reason, you can give somebody a nutrition plan to go with, they may stick with their supplements, there may be some symptoms that pop up; for example, this happened last week with a client where her skin was reacting.  She was having all of these crazy rashes and so I said, “Well, let’s dig in to the diet.  Are you still consuming pasteurized dairy and grains?”  “Well, yeah.”  And that–and then we found it immediately.  So sometimes I feel like people get loose with the diet, like they dial in Paleo really strict, and then they’re like, “I’m gonna kinda like open the boundaries a little bit.”  But then symptoms pop back up and you can’t out-supplement nutrition some of the time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  You can’t.  So if we start kind of foundational here.  The foundational template for me in a Paleo diet or a Paleo template.  I like template better because we give ourselves wiggle room is cutting out the grains.  So I like the old analogy going from grains to greens.  So any amount of grains that were in or are in your diet, we wanna shift them over to greens–green vegetables, broccoli, spinach, asparagus.  You know, all of these good things.  And of course, like we can make an exception for cauliflower and other vegetables that may not necessarily be green, right?  These are our non-starchy vegetables.  We’re not gonna get in trouble with these causing blood sugar swings because they don’t convert to carbohydrate, sugar that fast.  There’s a very low amount of carbohydrate in it so they don’t convert to sugar that fast so it’s not gonna cause a rollercoaster ride.  They’re nutrient-dense.  They’re anti-inflammatory and there’s a lot of fiber which can make us feel very satiated.  So the first tip I would say is going from grains to greens.  You wanna comment on that, Evan?

Evan Brand:  Yeah, that’s a good step and definitely organic greens are very easy to find.  So there’s almost no excuse now to–to be able to have to access to good quality greens.  Generally speaking, the darker and more colorful, the better.  Iceberg lettuce obviously is not a green.  That’s really–doesn’t really count.  So definitely focus on your good spinaches, your kales, all of the chards and cool-looking things that you can find at your Farmer’s Market or even at the grocery now.  They have a lot of variety now at the grocery compared to 5-10 years ago.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  When you add these greens in or add these extra non-starchy vegetables in, a good things to kinda keep in mind if you’re already having digestive issues, you may wanna cook some of these things down.  You may wanna steam it or sautee it, just because of the fact that a lot of these foods have extra fiber that may make it hard for you to access the nutrients or may make it harder on your GI tract to break things down.  So if you’re adding in these vegetables and you’re getting gassy or bloaty or more constipated, a good next step would be to steam or sautee some of these things either which is with a steamer or cook in a little bit of grass-fed butter, ghee or coconut oil, because cooking is pre-digestion, right?  A lot of people in the vegan-vegetarian area will say, “Well, cooking destroys all the enzymes and depletes all the nutrients.”  Well, it really depends, right?  Because it’s not that black and white.  Cooking actually can make nutrients more bio-available.  If you look at the nutrients in raw broccoli to steamed broccoli, there’s actually more nutrients in steamed broccoli because you’re breaking down the fiber, giving your body more access to the nutrients that are actually present in it.  So a little bit of steaming, a little bit of sauteeing these things as long as you’re not really cooking them to death or boiling the crap out of them, right?  If we’re doing something reasonable and we’re not going overboard, we’re actually gonna create more nutrition and more bio-availability.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, not that it matters, but I would say for me personally, I’m about 80% cooked or steamed and 20% raw.  I just find I feel so much better like last night we had this huge head of broccoli that we cut up and put in the pan with some butter and some pink salt.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Oh, God, it was so good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And there are certain vegetables are more intuitive–more intuitively eaten raw like spinach, right?  That’s gonna be more raw.  A carrot, maybe more raw.  Cucumbers, more raw.  These are kinda natural intuitive vegetables that will be eaten raw, but then things like cauliflower or broccoli or cabbage, things like that will do better cooked or steamed or even fermented, you know, in the form of sauerkraut or cabbage.

Evan Brand:  Uh-hmm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s kind of our first step there.  Anything else on that that you wanna mention?

Evan Brand:  I think that’s pretty good coverage.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Alright, so we have step one in and I think step two, I–I would add would be the cooking element, because can make a big difference.  People go from eating a lot more vegetables now there are more fiber there, and then they start feeling more gassy or bloating and that’s the first step to take when you’re feeling more gassy and bloated.

Evan Brand:  I actually do have one last thing to say on that, just because I was doing some reading yesterday and a study found that up to 7 servings of vegetables per day was the optimal amount for happiness.  So if you need a reason to eat more veggies, then maybe that’s it.  Now they went up past 7 and they didn’t find any more happiness, but every serving up to 7 servings per day of veggies improve happiness.  So there you go.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s great.  Very good.  Awesome.  Next.

Evan Brand:  Soda to water.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Soda to water.

Evan Brand:  It’s amazing how many people still drink soda.  Like we’re in 2015 and I’m not judging, but when I look at some food journals and you as well, it’s like, “Whoa! Really?”

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  Still 5-6 Diet Pepsis or Diet Cokes, I thought we were done with those.  But it’s a big deal.  It’s a big addiction.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And it may not even be soda, it may be vitamin water.  Oh, my gosh.  I mean, I’m drinking vitamins and getting some crystalline fructose at 45 grams per bottle.  Actually more sugar in these vitamin waters than actually in a Coke.  It’s terrible or even some of the Kombuchas, right?  There’s a couple brands down here in Austin, Texas.  I won’t name them but they have almost as much sugar as a soda.  So if you’re gonna do Kombucha, my favorite brand is GT Dave’s.  I like the Trilogy or the–the ginger.  There’s a lot of them.  Citrus and cranberry are great, too.  But they’re at about 2 grams of sugar per serving.  Much, much better than some of the ones that are at 12, 15, 24.  Remember that’s you know, per 8 ounces so you gotta multiply it by 1-1/2 to get the true ratios.  So there’s 20 grams of sugar per serving which a lot of them have.  That’s really 30 grams of sugar per bottle.  You’re sitting right at a level of a Coke almost.

Evan Brand:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Really gross.

Evan Brand:  There–there are a lot of pseudo-health drinks that are promoted as healthy.  One that I drank for a while admittedly several years ago was one called Neuro and it was primarily crystalline fructose.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Evan Brand:  But then they added in some L-theanine and some other things.  I wanted to just feel the effects because it was like a liquid calming drink.  That crystalline fructose is worse than regular fructose for you in terms of glycation.  So–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  I stay away from it now but it’s–it’s more common than you think to have compounds like that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Absolutely.  And also even people that go to Whole Foods and think well, I’m gonna go to the juice bar and get a–a green juice made.  And then what happens is half of the vegetables are carrots which have a ton of sugar if you juice them and then if they start adding in fruit in there, my gosh, you can add a ton of sugar by just using too much fruit.  So if you’re gonna do a green drink, you wanna make sure 90%+ of it is green vegetables and ideally not much of a carrot unless you’re doing, you know, maybe a quarter of one carrot and then maybe you want a little bit of a berry or you wanna sweeten it with a–a half green apple or maybe a little bit of pineapple at the very end.  But 90% or so at least should be your green veggies not including the carrot because you wanna make sure you’re not creating too much sugar.  Because when you pull that fiber out, that sugar goes into your body very fast and even there’s a whole of nutrients along with it, your body will still see 20 or 30 grams of sugar, the same as that Coke regarding the sugar.  Yes, there’s vitamins and minerals but the sugar is still there.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, I’m a bigger of fan of just blending all of the greens with some berries as opposed to juicing.  I much prefer that for people and you’re getting the whole plant.  You’re not just taking out the–the sugar from the–the sugar bag and–and leaving everything else behind.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.  I like using a Vitamix and doing that as well.  Again, there’s benefits from–for each, you get a lot more fiber.  But some people, the fiber’s, you know, creating extra fermentation and bloating and–and gut issues which would cause me to want to look deeper.  But yeah, so you gotta pick your poison and if you’re gonna do it, you gotta make sure you’re doing it the right way so you’re not driving up too much sugar.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and if you buy bottled green drinks, I guess since we’re on the topic of this, watching out for pseudo-health drinks, a lot of the green drinks out there I’ve seen 40, 50, even close to 60 grams of sugar for some of these cold pre-bottled green drinks, so the one I do is the Suja, the Midday Thrive, that’s the lowest sugar I could find.  It’s all organic and it’s about 19 grams per bottle, which is still pretty hefty, but–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  It’s just one of those go-to pick-me-ups.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, and if you’re trying to figure out, you know, the green drink, obviously look at the sugar label.  In Austin, we have a couple really good ones that are at 6 or 7 grams for the whole bottle.  But look at the sugar label.  You see over, you know, 15 or so, it’s definitely too high, even if it’s at the amount that you mentioned, probably better post-workout, right?  Probably better post-workout and then look at the ingredients.  The ingredients are written in ascending to descending regarding how much of that product or that compound’s in the drink.  So if it’s pineapple or a fruit first, you know the majority of that is gonna be that fruit.  So if you’re looking at a fruit one and there’s maybe a little bit of green apple or pineapple in it, make sure it’s that last ingredient or so because that way you know that that was used the least and the other veggies were used the most.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, the–it’s actually–it’s opposite most of the time.  It’s like water, apple juice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Evan Brand:  Then a little greens.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes, exactly.  And you want whole food, you don’t want concentrate crap.  So just–if you can read the ingredients, you’re gonna be able to be–you know, you’ll be able to make better choices, smarter choices.

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Alright, next step here is upgrade your meat quality.  Meat can be toxic.  It can be if you’re eating a whole bunch of conventional junky meats, animals that have been fed corn and grains and unnatural diet, step one.  Two, those are heavily–heavily genetically modified.  So what that means, they have been spliced with other genes.  They tend to produce pesticides like BT toxin, so then when you consume them, they’re still in your gut producing toxins of some sort.  And they are also heavily sprayed with a pesticide known as Roundup or glyphosate.  You know, what that means is that the heavy amount of spraying, glyphosate works by killing weeds around it via chelating out minerals.  So if it’s chelating out minerals, that means there’s less nutrients in the foods themselves.  Therefore, the animals get less nutrients, you get less nutrients.  So GMOs are bad because of a couple reasons, toxins, pesticides, mold.  Also bad because they are heavily sprayed with Roundup, which pulls out more nutrients; therefore, there’s less nutrients to you and its unnatural diet.  So if you can just go from conventional to pasture-fed, there’s automatically an improvement there.  If you can go up from pasture-fed to organic, there’s an improvement there because the foods are gonna have less pesticides and not be sprayed by Roundup and no GMO, and then if you can go to pasture-fed and local where they getting being fed grass and a natural diet then you’re way ahead of yourself.  So if you can just make sure the meat quality is better and wherever you are in that ladders, if it’s conventional, we’ll go to free-range.  If you’re at free-range, go to organic.  If you’re at organic, go to organic pasture-fed and then even local.  So that’s kind of the–the ladder in which you can just reach one rung up where you’re currently up.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and I would squeeze wild meat in there in that ladder somewhere, too.  I’ve been buying elk at the store.  I’m not out hunting elk but it’s still wild meat that tastes amazing and you can know that it’s good quality so I love–love getting meats.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, that’s great.  Anything else you want to about the meat?

Evan Brand:  I think that’s good.  I think we can spend a lot more time blah-blah-ing about it but that’s pretty good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Good. Next I would say skipping meals, right?  A lot of people are notorious for skipping breakfast.  “I’m not hungry in the morning.”  Well, there’s a great deal of evidence in the research but even just clinically that if you have good amount of protein and fat at breakfast, you really supercharge your metabolism but you also balance out your cravings during the day.  Now this is important because if you’re making a dietary shift, right?  Where on this Paleo template, well, if we can create a satiated appetite during the day, we’re less likely to create other crap and sugar and drinks and candies that may derail us.  So if we can set our metabolism early in the day, put the right amount of protein and fat in our body, then we’re more likely to make better choices throughout the day because we stabilize our blood sugar, stabilize our brain chemistry and we’re gonna be more in-charge of our ships so to speak.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, a lot of people eat, which I talked with a lady this morning, she said, “Man, I just love eating cereal in the morning.”  And she eats nothing else with it, so that insulin has to get secreted and now you have high insulin and now you can’t burn fat all day.  So her main goal is weight loss.  Obviously, I like to say, weight loss is a side-effect of getting healthy.  But if you’re just doing a carb-rich breakfast like that, that blood sugar goes sky high, now you’re probably gonna come down an hour or two later and have even more cravings for more cereal or candy bars or pretzels or something silly like that.  You’re gonna feel like crap.  You’re not gonna be able to focus and you’re gonna gain weight that way, so definitely do some coconut oil on that shake or do the bacon and eggs.  Did I have breakfast this morning?  I can’t remember.  What did you have?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I’m actually sipping on a shake right now.  I had some–some high quality coffee with some MCT and butter this morning to start my day and then I’m sipping on a protein shake with collagen and beef protein.  That’s the next step right here, right?  Because 90% of my patients, because when you’ve had thousands of interactions with patients you kind of know, you know, what they’re gonna say ahead of time.  It’s like a–a good attorney is always told in court, “Never a question you don’t already know the answer to.”  And it’s kinda like that with patients.  So I say, “Don’t ever skip breakfast.  Don’t skip these meals.”  And they’re response is, I’ll see if you can guess it.

Evan Brand:  They’ll say, “Okay,” sometimes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, the main response I get is, “I’m not hungry in the morning.  I wake up, I have no appetite.  I’m not hungry.”  So I say, “Okay, the reason why you’re not hungry in the morning is because you’re waking up in a strong sympathetic state.  Your nervous system is so shifted toward the Fight or Flight sympathetic branch of the nervous system and that turns off the appetite because if you’re in Fight or Flight, you don’t wanna be running from a tiger thinking about how much food you wanna eat because you’re starving, right?  You are focused on getting away so you can survive, and then once you shift from the sympathetics to the parasympathetics that’s the Rest and Digest, that allows blood flow to go away from the arms and legs.  Why is it in the arms and legs?  Because you need it to fight.  You need them to fight, right?  So now it’s going back to the core where it’s mobilizing hydrochloric acid secretions, enzyme secretions, and the–and motility so you can start moving things through your digestive tract.  That’s why if–if a really stressful event happens, I mean, you can even wet yourself or, you know, release bowels if it’s an incredibly stressful event.  Someone puts a gun to your head, boom, you may wet your pants right there on the spot.  That’s because the sympathetic nervous system was turned on so fast.  Now a lot of people aren’t gonna have that level of stress with a gun to your head, but you’re in traffic, you didn’t get good night’s sleep, you’re eating gluten, you’re blood sugar is all over the place.  You may be favoring that sympathetic side of the–of the see-saw.  So the first thing you can do is just get a bite or two of food in the morning.  Just say “I’m gonna get a bite or two,” because that can kind of get things moving in the right direction.  Even beyond that, if your digestion isn’t that good, getting a high-quality protein shake in there is excellent.  So if you go to my store, I have a couple that I like and recommend.  I think you have some, too.  Http://justinhealth.com/shop.  I have some good quality pea, good clean grass-fed whey protein, as well as a high-quality beef protein.  Now if you’re more allergenic, I typically go with the beef or pea if there’s more food allergies and such.  If you’re really autoimmune.  I would just go to the more unflavored pea protein because there’s nothing in it and we don’t typically get exposed to that much pea.  So pea and beef can be a really good starting point if you’re more allergenic.  If you’re doing pretty good with food allergies, then you can even add in a good grass-fed whey protein, mix it maybe with a few berries, a scoop of coconut or coconut milk like Evan mentioned and you get a really good protein, fats, carbohydrate macronutrient ratio there, concoction, but its’ easy to break down, digest, and assimilate.

Evan Brand:  Yup, you’ve already talked about the last key here which is smart supplementation, so protein shakes are definitely a smart choice for people that are in a rush.  I’d rather somebody take a protein shake any day than just skipping a meal and just rushing to work and not eating until 10 or 11 because now they’re hangry and they feel like killing somebody if they don’t get something in.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I mean foods are ideal first choice, but a protein shake if it’s high-quality which you’re gonna pay a little more for because a lot of the stuff on the market’s crap.  We try to only provide the super high-quality ones and then even mixing in some good quality collagen with it and then you can even throw in, put some greens if you wanted or some low glycemic fruit, then you got a really good macronutrient compound but you’re also giving your tummy a rest in the morning because if you’re waking up in the sympathetic state and you’re not in that–you’re not in that state of being able to digest, it puts food in your tummy that’s easy for your body to handle.

Evan Brand:  That’s true.  Yeah, I think that’s another piece of the puzzle, too, where people just don’t wanna eat because they feel better if they skip a meal because they are so Fight or Flight mode.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.  I’d say the next thing after that would be if you made a lot of these changes, great.  You’re on the right track.  I would say the next thing is if you’re still dealing with fatigue, energy, brain fog, cold hands, cold feet, digestive issues, joint pain, we may have to dig in a little bit deeper.  We may have to talk about cutting out FODMAPs.  We may have to talk about an autoimmune diet.  We may have to talk about getting your adrenals, thyroid or your digestive system and looking for infections tested.  That’s where functional medicine comes in, so the first five steps we talked about are great transition point, and the next would be the functional medicine and that’s where seeking out a practitioner like yourself, Evan, or a doctor like myself here to help figure out what those next steps are.  But these are the foundational things that we work with, you work with, I work with and I–I’d see with a lot of patients that have come to me from other practitioners, even well-known ones that people would know on TV, and they miss these simple foundational things.  And again, these things are virtually free so we’re putting it out there so everyone has access to the foundation because the higher you’re building your health hotel if you will, right?  The deeper that foundation has to be and these things we’re talking about are key foundational things that you can never ignore.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and I was just actually watching a presentation by Kalish last night and he was talking about how even some of these big name doctors out there, they’re so good at getting people in the door and they sell them, you know, these thousands of dollars’ worth of supplements and products and things like that but they have absolutely no follow-up and no system in place that helps people get better so they just–they basically put them up to the chopping block and then send them on their way, and you and I are about creating a sustainable future for somebody because you’re not just going to instantly snap everything into a place and we’re gonna wave our magic wands and you get better.  It’s gonna take time to pull yourself in the right direction from several different categories.  So the nutrition side of things, getting minerals back in, optimizing hydrochloric acid production, getting rid of infections, supporting the adrenals, balancing the hormones.  There’s so many other things that take time that if someone, if you’re–you’ve dealt with a practitioner or someone’s telling you, “Look, this is it. You buy all this crap and you’re good.”  Then I would be a little bit wary because, you know, I tell people, “Look, I’m not ever gonna sign in blood we’re gonna fix you overnight.”  So you have to have patience.  It may have taken you 40 years to get that sick or to finally reach out, but now it’s gonna take at least some time to get better.  You can’t reverse all that overnight.  So that’s my little rant of the day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Absolutely and remember supplements are called supplements for a reason, right?  They are supplementing a good diet, a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle.  They aren’t called replacements, right?  Alright, they’re not called replacements because we’re not replacing the foods, so foundation is the diet.  Also the timing of our food and then also things like water–hydration in between meals, drinking half your body in ounces, and getting to bed on time before 11 o’clock.  All these things are super helpful to getting us dialed in and if we’re still having issues, you’re eating meat, you’re feeling bloaty, you’re feeling burpy, you’re still tired.  It’s not in the diet, okay?  It’s not.  There may be some fine tuning we have to do with FODMAP or maybe nuts or seeds or eggs that may be a key component.  But there’s probably something deeper and if there is, you want to reach out to get those other pieces fine tuned.  It’s like a puzzle and if we can put everything together that’s gonna help us get your health to the next level.

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Any last closing comments here, Evan?

Evan Brand:  I think that’s it.  That was a great concise episode.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So just to kind of reiterate because we talk fast or I–I definitely talk fast and it can be overwhelming so I always like to say things at least 3 times.  So first step is grains to greens.  Second step, cook your vegetables to improve bio-availability, okay?  Soda to water or high sugar drinks to water is a big improvement, or it can even be the Pellegrino or La Croix or even carbonated things that are naturally carbonated that don’t have extra sugar in, right?  That’s great.  Meat quality, go up one ladder where your meat quality is, right?  If you’re at conventional, go to pasture-fed or go to a free range.  If you’re at free range, go to organic.  If you’re at organic, go to–to pasture-fed and then like you said, you can even go to wild.  And then last but not the least is skipping the meals.  Don’t skip the meals.  If you’re–give me the excuse which I get a thousand times, “I’m not hungry in the morning.”  I can hear it now.  Get a good shake, get–get that dialed in, and then if you’re still having issues, again reach out to Evan’s site or to me, and we can help you get that dialed in.

Evan Brand:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Evan, great show today, man.

Evan Brand:  Good stuff.  Likewise.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Have a good one.

Evan Brand:  You, too.  Bye.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Bye.

[retweet]