The Root Causes of Anxiety – A Functional Medicine Approach | Podcast #370
Conventional medicine labels anxiety as a neurotransmitter imbalance and relies on pharmaceutical drugs to dampen the symptoms. Although, prescription medications can be a helpful and even necessary tool in periods of overwhelming anxiety. But we have so many more tools at our disposal than just medications!
Dr. J and Evan explain that they recognize that anxiety is often the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” in functional medicine. It’s the clear and present warning that something is going on below the surface that needs our attention. Our current circumstances may have been the breaking point, but the anxiety manifests in underlying issues. That’s why rectifying these issues is necessary to make anxiety more manageable or even eliminate it!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
2:06 – Acute and Chronic Stress
4:06 – Amino Acids and Herbs
11:24 – Gut Issues
16:26 – Functional Medicine Approach
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the root causes of anxiety, a functional medicine approach, and how to get to the root cause. Really excited about this topic. We see many functional medicine patients with these exact issues and we always want to get to the root cause of why that is so. Evan, how are we doing man?
Evan Brand: I’m doing good. You know the anxiety story for you and I talking about anxiety goes back literally eight years. It would have been late 2014 when I was in my luxury apartment in Austin and I was calling you and I was saying, “dude, I can’t stop this”. My heart is pounding. I’m freaking out. What the heck is going on and you said, “man, if you go to the emergency room, all they’re gonna do is they’re gonna give you some sort of anxiety medication. So why don’t you go and take about a gram of magnesium and see what happens.” And so, that’s what I did. I think I might have had some pharma GABA or some other tools on hand, maybe some passion flower and luckily, I calmed it down but little did I know back then that I had some of the big root causes of anxiety that were unresolved which included mold toxicity, Lyme, Bartonella, some of these tick-borne infections that drive up the nervous system, unfortunately. Now, knock on wood, anxiety’s been a minimal to non-existent part of my life and It’s incredibly freeing because anxiety can be so debilitating that people become housebound or they become afraid to travel, they become afraid to go on planes. They become afraid to seek the raise at their job. They just want to live in this little cocoon because they’re so afraid and anxiety is also very debilitating for children too. It affects their confidence and their self-esteem and their motivation for school and how they get bullied and so, I mean, we could do an hour on this but think just to open this thing up with a bang, I would say that infections are a big driver of anxiety so whatever that is a tick-borne infection like a Bartonella, Babesia, Lyme situation or gut infections like we’ve talked about a thousand times in the last 10 years together which is parasites, bacterial overgrowth, worms, Candida, anything that’s gonna release a toxin or aggravate the immune system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. So anytime you look at anxiety, you always have to get to the root cause, right? Obviously, if it’s unresolved emotional stress, your body is designed to create anxiety for a certain situation, like if you, I don’t know, if you have lived in a forest across the street and there are bears, there should be a healthy amount of anxiety so you know, don’t leave food out and you’re just a little bit more careful with your habits so you don’t get attacked by a bear, right? There’s a healthy bit of anxiety there which is good to kind of keep you on edge so you are alert and you make good decisions. We’re talking about things that are, you know, unhealthy amounts of anxiety where you don’t have those types of emotional stressors, right? Obviously, if those emotional stressors are there, kind of take inventory of them and figure out what that corrective action is you need to kind of close the anxiety loop. I always say close the anxiety loop. What is that action? You have to take that allows you to feel confident that you are not ignoring the reason why there is anxiety there. If you did that, great, awesome. Check that off your list. The next thing is like you mentioned, obviously, any type of chronic stress or acute stress can create anxiety, right? And so, chronic and acute stressors do different things to your body. They’re going to cause B vitamins to get recycled and used up at a higher rate. They’re gonna cause magnesium to get used up at a higher rate. They’re gonna put you in a fight or flight position, where your body goes into fight or flight and then that’s gonna cause increases of cortisol, increases of adrenaline and it’s gonna cause your brain to get hyperactive and obviously at the same time it’s gonna affect digestion too when you’re in fight or flight. It’s gonna decrease your body’s ability to make stomach acid and enzymes and it makes it harder for you to break down your food. And so, and then of course, the more stressed you are, now you’re gonna start craving more processed foods that increase dopamine and increase a lot of those, uh, feel-good brain chemicals to buffer that but so, I always look at like what’s the constructive vehicle to fix this, what’s the destructive vehicle. Destructive vehicle feels good at the moment but creates problems down the road. Constructive helps at the moment. May not, maybe not quite as fast but then actually gets to the root cause over time. And so, some of our constructive vehicles like you already mentioned, magnesium, right? Theanine, right? B6, B5, right? And I always look at nutrients first, like nutrients are in the hierarchy before herbs so nutrients first and then, in the hierarchy coming down would be herbs, Ashwagandha, passion flower, Valerian. Those things are nice herbs that kind of activate and stimulate GABA. So, GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So, it’s the brake pedal on the nervous system. So, think of the gas pedal as adrenaline, as cortisol. That’s the fight or flight nervous system response and the gas pedal is gonna be GABA and the things that are gonna help with GABA are gonna be Taurine, Theanine, GABA in and of itself. And then on the herbal side, things like Ashwagandha have multi-adaptogenic effects. They can increase cortisol and increase stimulation when things are too low but they can also tamp it down when it’s too high. I like my wife. She was really stressed the other day. We are getting our kids out for an easter party and she’s like, “you have something to give me? I am so stressed.” And I’m like, “here you go”. And I gave her a bunch of GABA, Taurine, and Theanine and magnesium, some B5 and vitamin C and some Ashwagandha and she looked at me like two hours later, she’s like, “what the heck did you give me. I’m on cloud 9.” I’m like, yeah, you know that, the better living through chemistry right there.
Evan Brand: That’s great. Yeah, and motherwort. I love motherwort too. It’s great for the anxiety when you’re having, like, heart palpitations, blood pressure type issues as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hyperthyroid too. They use it on hyperthyroid, as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. That makes sense.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Too high thyroid, it can also be. It can help dampen that down, as well, which is nice.
Evan Brand: It’s great for grief too so like the cool thing about certain herbs is they can be an emotionally calming tool but they can be a nervous system calming tool too. So, like, as you mentioned, there could be an emotional thing like a bad boss, a bad spouse, a bully. You know that type of emotional anxiety driver but it could be a chemical driver too, meaning like a toxin driving the nervous system to be ramped up. Also, we should talk about blood sugar. I know we’ve done podcasts on this before but you know there’s a big impact on issues with blood sugar. Thank the Lord, my blood sugar is so good now, I could eat dinner at five and not eat till 1pm the next day and I’m stable, like, I can fast for extended periods of time as needed and I don’t have any issue but however when my gut was a wreck which I want people to pay special attention to, if your digestive system is compromised, you’re not gonna be tolerating fasting that well because you’re already so likely nutrient deprived because of the malabsorption due to the infection. So, years ago when I tried doing this type of fast, I would have major anxiety and that’s low hanging fruit so do what you got to do but you got to get your gut tested and then fix the infection first.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, just kind of looking at a bunch of different things. So, on the emotional side, right? If it’s unresolved emotional trauma that’s creating anxiety, you know, someone wrote about DNRS, that’s great. You know, this NLP, where you kind of visualize a stop sign or something to kind of do a pattern interrupt. That’s excellent. EFT, EMDR with eye movement or different tapping on meridian points to kind of dampen down that sympathetic nervous system response. And again, these are gonna be good, you know, uh, more chronic issues. Yeah. If it is an acute issue, you know, a lot of times, just get to the root underlying issue where that issue is acute.
Evan Brand: I was on a plane one time and the turbulence was so bad and I started tapping on the plane. That really helped. I’m like okay. Even though it feels like this plane is about to crash, I love and accept myself and I’m like okay that’s fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Especially things like that. You don’t have control, right? There’s nothing you can do outside of just sitting there and getting through it. And so, it’s better when those things are kind of the case but you know, it’s kind of like, I’m just trying to think of you know an example, it’s kind of like, you go upstairs and don’t turn the alarm on for the house or like maybe did I leave the front door unlocked, right? And so, there’s a natural bit of anxiety. You start going down to bed and that little bit of anxiety kind of creeps in, you’re like, I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep fast if I don’t at least just check on the front door, right? So, let me make, oh good, it’s locked. Oh good, the alarm is on. Good. Now, that anxiety can go down because it’s there for a reason, right? So, if there’s a root cause, act on it, right? If there’s isn’t a root cause, right, but it’s more emotional, you can do some of the tapping and you can work with a practitioner to get to the root cause on that and then of course having better biochemistry will get will make every bit of anxiety better because you’ll be able to adapt to it and deal with it better. And so, of course, like we already talked about with cortisol, chronically high levels of cortisol and adrenaline are gonna be big so you have to get to the reason, the root cause why. And again, foods could be a reason why like gluten, too much processed sugar that can drive up that anxiety. Again, you already mentioned blood sugar fluctuations. If you’re on this reactive hypoglycemia roller coaster ride where blood sugar goes up because you ate too much processed carbohydrate, refined foods, junkie, vegetable oil, omega-6 fats. Blood sugars up and then it can crash right back down. The crashing is where you tend to get a lot of adrenaline cortisol stimulation and on the way up, you get lots of insulin so you get this insulin-cortisol-adrenaline kind of tug of war happening and that can be very stressful on the body. And then, of course, if your blood sugar is chronically high and you’re making tons of insulin that can also be a problem too. High levels of insulin can cause all kinds of problems with hormones, especially in women, it can cause issues with ovarian cysts and testosterone problems. And then, high levels of blood sugar deplete a lot of your B vitamins and magnesium. And so, if we have poor levels of B vitamin and B6 and B5 and B1 and B2 and B3 and folate and B12 and magnesium is depleted, that’s gonna cause more stress and more cortisol issues and it’ll be harder for you to deal with and adapt to that.
Evan Brand: And I would say, if you have anxiety longer than the week, I would almost consider that chronic. I mean, it’s crazy to me, how many people you have and I’ve talked to over the years who’ve had anxiety for a decade or longer and sometimes as one person commented that anxiety and OCD together is terrible. A lot of times OCD does come hand in hand with anxiety. We’ve done podcasts specifically about amino acid therapy and we use amino acid therapy in our clinics but if you have OCD, anxiety, low self-esteem, worry, negativity, depression, disturbed sleep, those are all symptoms of low serotonin. So, what you need to do is to get an organic acid test so we can measure this and look at the brain chemistry because if you’re not testing, you’re guessing. So, when you’re listening to this conversation about anxiety, I swear to you, you’re never gonna find a psychiatrist that’s gonna say, “hey, maybe we need to run an organic acids test, maybe you have low brain chemistry because you have bacterial overgrowth. So, we’re also gonna run a stool test. If they’re out there, send them our way, we’ll do a podcast with them but I doubt your psychiatrist is ever gonna consider running functional medicine testing on you to investigate this. I don’t care if you do lorazepam or the klonopin or whatever. It’s not the root cause and it’s gonna dig you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any benzo
Evan Brand: Yeah. Any benzo is gonna dig you further in the hole because now you’ve got this dependency issue and now you’ve got his issue of withdrawal and I don’t know if you’ve read some of the stories on this but my God if people try to acutely stop those benzodiazepines, there’s major major major side effects. So, it’s just not around
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Especially, if you’re on doses, you know, above one milligram or so on a benzo, it can be harder to get off and sometimes the taper can be, you know, six months to a year coming off of it. If you’ve been on it for a while or been on a higher dose. Yeah, you need to kind of do a slower type of taper for sure.
Evan Brand: And there’s so much, I mean, just think of how many millions. I didn’t look at the numbers here but how many millions of people are on prescription anxiety medication and they never ever get to the root cause. It’s so sad to think about someone that’s been on like a Lorazepam or another benzo for 20 years and they’ve never once asked about the gut. The question came in, how does dysbiosis cause anxiety. What are the mechanisms? Well, I think, one, right out of the gates is gut inflammation. Number two would be nutrient malabsorption because as you mentioned, a lot of these B vitamins are necessary for many processes in the body including energy production so sometimes you have anxiety and chronic fatigue and that sucks too because now you’re too tired but you’re anxious so that’s not a fun recipe either. What else would you say about the gut anxiety connection?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, so anytime you have chronic gut inflammation whether it’s from food, whether it’s antibiotics. Antibiotics are creating rebound yeast or bacterial overgrowth. We could put H. pylori in that category, and other infections, as well. That’s a one you and I already mentioned, creates malabsorption just from indigestion, right? Not enough enzymes, not enough acids, not absorbing things well. Two, you’re gonna have exogenous production of lipopolysaccharides which in and of itself are a toxin, right? They’re produced, they’re part of the gram-negative bacteria in the gut and they’re stressful on the liver and there’s also can go to the blood-brain barrier. And when they’re in the brain, they can create mood and anxiety issues as well. So yeah, lipopolysaccharides, you could have acetaldehyde and mycotoxins from fungus. You could have issues with the parasites producing their own type of internal toxins for sure. Of course, your body also produces through healthy gut bacteria, a fermentation process to make its own B vitamins, vitamin K. Those kinds of things. So, if we have dysbiosis, we typically are gonna have low levels of beneficial bacteria so we don’t have that good endogenous production behind it. And then, of course, that’s gonna over activate our immune system. So now, we have all these toxins kind of slipping through our bloodstream. We have undigested food particles, getting through our bloodstream. Now, our immune system starts becoming hyperactive and that can suck up energy. That can suck up resources. So, there’s studies on for instance H. pylori creating mental health issues, mental, emotional issues, depression and anxiety partly because of the lipopolysaccharides and endotoxins are the same thing by the way. LPS or endotoxins and obviously nutrient absorption problems too.
Evan Brand: Man, when I had H. pylori, I was super anxious. I don’t know if I was depressed as much but I was definitely anxious and you remember how skinny I got, I mean, I lost so much weight too. So, a lot of people, you know, they look at anxiety on the surface right. And everyone looks anxiety is just like this mental thing and you just need to watch some hoorah motivational video and just get over your fears and that I was like no anxiety goes way deeper than that. You just eloquently illustrated this, the aldehydes from the yeast and the fungus toxins and the bacterial toxins and the parasitic toxins and the mycotoxins. You guys, this anxiety is not in your freaking head. It’s not. It may manifest in your head but the root cause is not in your head unless you’re describing like, this toxin getting across the blood-brain-barrier but beyond that, the gut I would say is the biggest driver of anxiety. I’d say, if I had to pick one place to look, it would be the gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, when we look at this, what’s kind of the hierarchy of addressing this? So, of course, you fix the foods, right? Because the foods are one. You’re gonna decrease inflammation from the foods. And the inflammation in the foods is gonna cause gut permeability so you cut out the gluten, the dairy, the processed refined sugars and flours, the junky omega-6. You focus on good high-quality animal-based fats, good healthy proteins, you know, more carbohydrate from fruit and starch, especially if there’s blood sugar issues and then from there, then you work on digesting it. So, make sure enzymes and acids and good digestion are there. Get your gut looked at especially if there’s any type of chronic bloating or motility issues or indigestion, unadjusted food in your stool, diarrhea, then you get your gut looked at and of course if this issue is more chronic, you want to look at your stress handling system so the interplay sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system in your body and your nervous system is your adrenals and so you can get your adrenals looked at cortisol rhythm wise, you can do a cortisol panel. Look at your cortisol in the morning and throughout the day. Make sure it’s not too high or it’s reversed. On a good organic acid test, we can look at neurotransmitters like Vanilmandelate which looks at adrenaline. We can get Homovanillate which looks at dopamine, right? We can get the DOPA which looks at dopamine. We could also get 5-hydroxyindoleacytate to look at serotonin and then of course we can look at B6 like a kind of urenate or xanthurenate, right? We can look at brain inflammation markers like picolinate and quinolinate so there’s inflammation in the brain that gives us more indications. We can look at oxidative stress markers like 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine. There are good markers out there to look at these different things to give us a window of what’s happening so you know, we work on the food, work on the lifestyle, sleep. Make sure we’re digesting and breaking things down. Look at the nutrient deficiencies, look at the gut, look at the infection, look at the digestion and then of course, you know, we can always branch out and look at mold or mycotoxins or heavy metals or more toxic burdens down the road. That’s the foundation first and then I would say on top of that, if there’s any type of chronic pattern where there’s an emotional trauma involved that’s more unresolved definitely bring in a good practitioner, you know with some tools in their tool bag of NLP or EFT or EMDR or hypnosis. Anything that you want techniques to get into the subconscious but again the healthier you are the better the emotional stuff is to resolve so if you’re doing EMDR and EFT and NLP and you’re eating processed food and crap, it can still work, but it’s gonna be better when your brain chemistry is healthier.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. Amen. Well, think about all the people that are in talk therapy and then they go and they go eat a subway sandwich for lunch, thinking that they’re doing themselves a good favor by eating turkey on wheat bread with processed cheese and then they get mayonnaise or sweet and sour sauce on it or whatever the heck they’re doing and then they feel like crap, I mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m not a big fan of talk therapy in the long term. I think, talk therapy is good did you kind of just consciously process something like how did this happen maybe you’re learning some tools to enter into your life from a habit standpoint to fix whatever that issue was but then most of that trauma sits in the subconscious area of the brain which is where 90% of all your thoughts are subconscious and so that’s where you want some of these techniques like we talked about but I think talk therapy is good to acutely process what you’ve observed whatever your experiences are and then talk about, hey what can you do, you know, as a person today as an adult today, um, you know, from a habit standpoint to address it but then after that then you gotta, you know, if you’re in talk therapy months and months later and you’re still just ruminating over the same thing then it’s a subconscious thing you got to work on next.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and look, don’t let me talk people out of doing it. I’m not trying to do that but what I’m saying is I’ve had people that said, “oh yeah, I’ve been with this therapist for 3 years and I meet with them every week or every other week”. And I’m like, “okay and what do you do with this therapist?” “We talked.”, “Okay and what else do you do?” That’s it. It’s talk therapy and I go, okay, you’ve been doing talk therapy every week or every two weeks for 3 years and you still have anxiety that’s this bad. We got to dig deeper. So, like I said, there’s a role for that but it’s not gonna get you out of the woods. The person who commented about the dysbiosis and anxiety question, they also commented in here said they did have a stool test that showed H. pylori. They have extremely high Morganella which is one of those bacteria we’ve talked about and calprotectin which is gut inflammation over a thousand. Fatigue and anxiety were the main symptoms. We see this everyday all day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. Exactly. I’m familiar with that case for sure. And inflammation in the gut can definitely create those types of issues and get to the root cause of it too. And then, someone writes in, about Accutane too, I mean, this is super common if you get into the dermatology world. I mean, dermatologists, they either cut something. They burn it off with a laser. They freeze it off or they use some type of antibiotic, topical or internal or they use some kind of like, synthetic vitamin A. That’s it. That’s the dermatology world you know in a nutshell and they tend to not get to the root, you know, we’re talking like more chronic acne, chronic skin stuff. They tend to not ever get to the root cause of how or why that’s even there. Diet, sugars, junky, omega-6, poor digestion, poor fats, poor proteins. They don’t really get to the root cause of what that is and so, they recommend synthetic vitamin A, which is Accutane, which again, will decrease the amount of oil produced by your sebaceous glands which can be helpful in the short run if they’re producing too much oil but they can create chronic skin and eye dryness in the long term and they’re not even getting to the reason why your skin’s producing too much oil to begin with. Usually, it’s too much insulin. Insulin is a huge driving factor of excess oil and then of course, you have different food allergens, gluten, dairy, too much sugar. That can also cause a lot of problems with the skin cells.
Evan Brand: And not to mention, the connection between people that have anxiety and acne. Guess what, they’re both linked to the gut. So, if you have acne and anxiety, you gotta investigate your gut. Please. Please. Please.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100%. And again, you know, outside of that, you know, we look at different toxins down the road. If we look at heavy metals, there’s different tests. We can look at, to do a challenge test on your metals with a DMPS or some kind of a challenge agent. We can definitely look at mold if there’s mold in the environment that’s important to look at. And again, if you’re in an environment where you feel better leaving that environment then there could be some mold in there, especially, if a history of water damage that was unresolved, definitely want to get your mold looked at or just your home looked at too, especially if it’s something that the whole family is dealing with just get the home looked at to start. It’s usually cheaper and more effective out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yeah. well said. And, heavy metals too. I’m glad you brought that up. You know, mercury and other heavy metals that can stimulate the nervous system and cause issues. So, if you have a bunch of silver fillings in your mouth, you’ve got to consider that. May not be your number one smoking gun, sometimes it is but heavy metals are a big problem and even detox too can make people feel too sick. I mean, you and I have seen this many times. Other practitioners that have handled people before they come to us or they’ve done something too aggressively with chelation or other detox methods and then they’ve ended up worse. So, there’s like a tight rope and that’s where the art of medicine comes in. Everything is not just like cookie cutters. So, too much is a problem. Too little is a problem and that depends on gut and detox and beta glucuronidase and liver and all of it. So, like if your friend got better and you tried what your friend did and you didn’t do well, that might not be your right protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Exactly. And then, just to kind of highlight the nutrients in, compared to talk therapy, Julia Ross is out there. She’s like a family therapist person but she’s done a lot of books on amino acids and diet and she had different clients that she used to use talk therapy for years and years and years and said, “hey, let me just try adding in some amino acid therapy to their protocol and let’s see how they do with their talk therapy when we add in the amino acids”. She started to do that and then these patients would come the next week and they’d be like, “Yeah, just, I’m just good. I just don’t even feel the need to talk about it. I’m over it”. And it’s like wow so it’s like it gives people the equipment to kind of, like, process these issues and again I think talk therapy acutely may be fine. It’s just when you’re talking about the same thing for years and years and years, you’re probably not getting to the root cause, right? This is probably just covering up something else, you know. Now, I think it’s better than being on a drug, right? So, if it’s helpful and you don’t need a drug that’s great but, in the end, you know, if you can do some of these nutritional things along with it, you may find that you can just deal with the issues better you know I, the analogy I get patients is, try dealing with difficult problems around the home and not having slept for a couple nights. You’re gonna lose your patience with your wife with your kids. You’re not gonna be able to think right, you’ll be foggy, get some good night sleep and then wake up and deal with the problem. It’s like you’re gonna be way more equipped to deal with it. I think that’s kind of how brain chemistry works when you’re dealing with these stressors.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I remember in that book too, talking about how, like, amino acids were administered, right? At the beginning of a session and then the people would just immediately like, smile or loosen up or relax and so it’s amazing no matter how much you talk. Long story short, I know we’ve beat the drum on this for a minute but last thing, no matter how much you talk. It’s never gonna change your levels of serotonin just by talking it out. If you have a gut problem that’s affecting your nutrient absorption which is affecting the tryptophan and the conversion with the B6 over to 5HTP and then over to serotonin and then to melatonin so sleep issues too. So skin, sleep, anxiety, they’re all connected depression. We’ve already talked about that. This person here’s putting a bunch of question marks like they’re mad at us. What is the connection between Accutane and depression?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s just a side effect. It’s a side effect of the drug.
Evan Brand: It could be a side effect. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Just the side effects of the drug. That’s all it is. Yeah. So certain drugs, you know, are gonna have side effects. Ibuprofen can cause ulcers and liver issues, right? Just a drug side effect.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well, we got to wrap this thing up. But if you need help clinically, you can feel free to reach out. We work with people around the world. We send these functional medicine labs to your door. We have an incredible logistical team on both sides where it’s incredible. We can help people in literally every part of the globe where people like us don’t exist or maybe they do but we’re better. So, if you need help, you can reach out directly to Dr. J, that’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani at justinhealth.com for consults or me, Evan Brand at evanbrand.com. We’re happy to help. You guys, don’t give up. We’ve been through it. We are warriors ourselves and we’ve worked on our health for years and we love what we do and we love helping people and there’s so much possibility when you can beat an issue like anxiety. So, like I said in the beginning, whether it’s seeking that raise, that new promotion, that new job, that new spouse, you know, that partner, that relationship that you want to grow but you can’t because you’re held back by anxiety. This is a huge huge problem and you can overcome this. So please don’t give up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If you guys enjoyed it too, look down below, you’ll see a little link where you can write us a review. We appreciate the review and if, also, it’s benefiting you, feel free to share with family and friends and there’ll be links where you can reach out to us directly to get that extra bit of help. All right guys, have a phenomenal day. Take care. Bye everyone.
Evan Brand: Bye-bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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23:23 Water Plunge, Saunas
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan, Evan, how we doing today, my friend? Really excited to chat with you.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Likewise, and this is a big topic. So Huh, you got hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate being sprayed on our beautiful Mother Earth every year. It’s terrible, how much is being sprayed. If you look at the stats, they just go up and up and up and up and up. And we have GMO corn and soybean accounting for the major places that people are being sprayed. So if you’re simply just cutting out, yep, those foods from your diet, and you’re eating animals that don’t feed on the soybean and corn, you’ve already done a great job. But but that’s not enough, because I recently spoke with Stephanie senath, who’s been educating and researching about glyphosate. And she’s talked about which you and I’ve known for a long time, but it’s good to hear somebody else validate the research is, it’s in the water supply, it’s in the food, it’s in the air, it’s everywhere. So you really have to put in a detox protocol on going to be able to deal with this because even parts per billion levels of glyphosate act as an antibiotic and will kill beneficial bacteria in the gut. And you and I, we don’t necessarily call ourselves gi specialist, but we are when it comes to naturally approaching gut infections and restoring gut integrity and gut health. And part of that is getting the glyphosate out of the system. So we can truly allow our beneficial bacteria to thrive. So that’s kind of the setting the stage of where we’re where we’re going today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So glyphosate is essentially roundup. Right? It’s essentially Roundup, it’s a pesticide. And so essentially how it works, it’s a mineral key later. So what it does is it basically thrips away or, or kind of as a magnet of all the key lay of all the minerals away from the plant. And so essentially by robbing the plan of all those minerals that essentially kills it is that the major mechanism and how that works.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it inhibits the photosynthesis, I don’t know the full chemistry behind it. But yeah, basically it starves the plant to death, and then the the byproduct, the byproduct or the the process of doing that, you’re robbing and basically cleaving off these amino acids. And that’s the problem. And that’s why it’s going to end up in joints and everywhere else in the body. Because the body’s trying to basically absorb the minerals, if you will, but by accident, it’s absorbing the glyphosate. So it’s number one thing is you got to go organic to get away from it. But the problem is, if you’re not filtering your water, if you’re not filtering your air, you’re probably still getting exposure there. Or if you eat out at restaurants, which even I and you and I, we try to do the best we can if we eat out, but we may get exposed to trace amounts there. And kids too. I mean, you send the kid with a school lunch, that’s organic, but if you don’t, they’re probably getting exposed to it there. And this stuff accumulates over time. And as Stephanie was talking about with me, the individual parts meaning like a little bit of glyphosate here, it’s a problem. But when you mix it with the dicamba and the 24D and all these other chemicals and the xylene and the gasoline additive chemicals and the plastics and the Falaise in the BPA and the other endocrine disruptors, that’s when you really get into trouble. So it’s important to hyper focus on one chemical like this, but I want people to just know, it’s the sum that really creates the problem. And you and I measure for this on the urine. So if people listening like, Well, what do I do? How do I investigate this problem, you simply do a urine urine sample. And we can measure this. And the fun part is when we get people on a detox protocol, and we retest, you can see the levels go down. And a lot of cases, we get the levels to nd non detected non detectable limits, that is the most exciting part. So I want to inspire hope with this too some of the stats are really depressing on it. But there is hope that you can get this stuff out of your body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And so the mechanism how it works is it’s a key later pulls that away, and also affects the protein synthesis of the plants. There’s a pathway there, it’s called the shikimic. It’s kind of a funny name, the shikimic pathway that affects you know, essentially the the protein synthesis of these plants. So it disrupts that it does it by disrupting protein synthesis. And it does it by collating away a lot of these important minerals. And I think that’s part of the reason why a lot of foods that are grown in Roundup, or glyphosate is used on them, I think you’re gonna also see a decrease in nutrient levels. Part of the means why is because it’s creating a lot of those minerals away from the plants. And the plants don’t have adequate minerals in the soil. And others there’s data on it like when there’s less manganese in the soil, the vitamin C production in that plant is less for instance. So we do know there’s a disruption, there’s a correlation with low minerals in the soil can have a major impact on the nutrient production by that plan as well. And so there’s a nutrient issue on one side, and then there’s also a toxicity issue. And we can go deeper into that. Any questions on that?
Evan Brand: So the the big, the big problem with people is, here’s one of the mechanisms and people can check out the podcast. I mean, we don’t have to get into the the advanced chemistry. I mean, some of the stuff even goes over my head. But basically, one of the big problems is glyphosate is pretending to be glycine. And that’s what she talked about. Basically, it’s your body-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: it’s just an amino acid.
Evan Brand: Right? So it’s looking for glycine, but then it sucks up glyphosate in place of it, right? That’s where you get into trouble.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you kind of similar to what may happen in your body with iodine, and fluoride, for instance, or bromine, right, it’ll it’ll suck up your thyroid will suck up a lot of those nutrients which can impact its function because it’s not the primary nutrient it’s looking for.
Evan Brand: And then here’s what it says advocates claim that glyphosate is not harmful to humans, as the shikimate pathway does not occur in humans. But the truth is, glyphosate enters our gut and primarily targets the good bacteria, and then that’s when you get the bacterial overgrowth. So that’s kind of what the industry will will counteract on let’s say, well, humans don’t have chicken meat pathways. That’s why it’s not dangerous. But the mechanism is that it’s killing the good bacteria in the gut. And it’s really an antibiotic that, you know, disguised as an herbicide. And so that’s the problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think the big thing that if you look at some of the studies on the topic, where they look at glyphosates impact on the gut lining and the brush border, in the small intestine, the brush borders, what secretes a lot of enzymes and aids in digestion. And if you just look at the thinning out of the gut lining in the small intestine, and you look at the increase in gut permeability that can happen from that. All of those type of mechanisms are part of what’s driving a lot of autoimmunity. So when you have increased gut permeability, weaken gut lining, you have a imbalance in the healthy bacteria in the guts all of those tilts your immune system in the direction of autoimmunity, it tilts your immune system in the direction of lack of nutrient absorption, which then affects the immune system as well. So all of these things compound right gut in bad gut bacteria and balanced dysbiosis. Right, more bad bacteria than good gut permeability, increased autoimmunity, increased food allergens, less nutrient density, obviously, you’re eating plants that have a lot of Roundup, there may be less nutrients in those plants, right. So all of those things just kind of spiral out of control. And, and typically, if you’re consuming the big foods that are going to have the highest residue, they’re going to be a lot of your grains, right grains, and soy and corn and wheat and all those things. So if you’re eating a lot of those foods, that’s a lot of processed food anyway.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And that’s why you and I talked about, a lot of people feel so much better on like grain free or more paleo template, because not only are they getting rid of the allergenic foods, but they’re getting rid of the chemicals too, because everything is so heavily sprayed. Now one of Stephanie’s arguments, which was interesting was that the people are having so much gluten sensitivity is because of the glyphosate. And so she told me she actually eats organic wheat, and she feels totally fine. And I said, Well, what about gluten and zonulin? And all that? And she goes, I don’t know if that’s the full story because I feel fine. But feeling fine. I don’t know. I’d like to see like a stool test, right? And look at gut inflammation and all that and try to confirm because and look at gluten antibodies, because I still even if it’s organic You and I are still not going to recommend people going into the grains.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And then also the other element of this whole thing is what about glyphosate, when it’s heated up? What if you have glyphosate residue on certain foods, and then you’re cooking, you’re heating those foods up? What does that do to it? Because I know, there’s some data out there showing that a lot of these pesticides become more toxic when they’re heated. So that’s another area another avenue of discussion, probably not a lot of data on it, but definitely a lot of theoretical, what well, you know, what if that does make it worse, and so that’s definitely a concern. So, you know, out of the gates, I think the big thing people can control is going to be water and runoff. So everyone should have at least a reverse osmosis water filter to filter a lot of the roundup glyphosate out of that, so you’re not getting exposed via water. And then number two is do your best to eat organic or if you’re on a budget, try to do at least clean 15 these are going to be the foods that are going to have a relative peel over it right avocado, banana, those kind of things that will decrease the amount of residue because as a peel, and they just going to have less of the glyphosate anyway, and so try to do at least clean the clean 15 and then avoid the Dirty Dozen if you will, but try to go organic free range as much as you possibly can. Because it’s not just the nutrient density that’s important with organic it’s the decrease in toxic load. There’s both you win twice you you win with nutrient density, and you decrease toxic load. I think it was um, I had Joel Salatin on my podcast last year. And he talked about his eggs that are pasture fed, and he sent a bunch of conventional eggs to the grocery store. And to a lab Actually, I’m sorry, to a lab. So conventional eggs he bought at the grocery store to his own pasture eggs in his backyard, his farm, right. And he compared the nutrient levels of it. And so he just compared one nutrient full eight. And he found that his eggs had 19 times more full light than the conventional x 19 times. So if you look at it, it’s like wow, I’m getting 19 times a day. An important nutrient. And maybe the eggs cost twice as much. What’s kind of a pretty good deal? That’s a pretty good ROI on your investment there.
Evan Brand: It is. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I need to interview him. He’s awesome. And I love his books and love seeing the farming videos. A lot of people I know he has like students, though, they’ll do all the work for him. He’s got an amazing setup, because he pays like zero labor costs, because everybody wants to learn. So he’s got all these people like harvesting his chickens for him.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet gig. So yeah, it’s really interesting. I think it’s good for everyone to understand that to know about it to be on top of that, and to look at your food differently, right? You got to look at it like, Alright, I’m decreasing the toxic load. So that’s one important big vector. And then I’m increasing the nutrient density side. And if you look at it like that, I think you go into the grocery store and you make different food choices. I think it was Michael Pollan talked about this in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma, as a society today, we allocate way less of our income towards food, I think it’s today, it’s like 9% of our income goes towards food. As a society, I think about I think it was 50 to 100 years ago, it was twice that was 18%. And so people prioritize food a lot more. From an income standpoint, you know, they’re willing to put more of their money where it counts. And today, that’s not the case. And so I just think it’s really important that people really look at allocating their money towards food, because that’s the foundation of everything, especially once you get sick, you’re going to really wish you did.
Evan Brand: Well, let’s take it a step further to so you got the glyphosate in or out of the picture in your diet. And now, not only are you getting, as you mentioned, potentially 19 times more folate and who knows a lot more B vitamins and other nutrients. But now you’re also getting all these different amino acids, which are going to fuel your neurotransmitters. So you’re going to be happier, yep, you’re going to be able to tolerate stress better, you’re going to be less depressed, you’re possibly going to have better sleep, you’re going to feel better, you’re going to have more energy, so you’re going to perform better at work, you’re going to be a better parent, because you have enough nutrients to stabilize your blood sugar. So you’re not hangry. So I love how you kind of illustrated that you’re not just getting less toxin, more nutrition, you’re really getting a whole better human. And that’s going to extrapolate that out to your friends, your family, your boss, your spouse, everything gets better. So it’s tough when you see people that like even the other day we drove past a Popeye’s chicken. And that’s probably like the lowest quality fast food you could get. Maybe there’s something worse McDonald’s or something. But we’ll see like a brand new Range Rover, you know, $100,000 vehicle, and they’re in the drive thru parking lot getting like a $2 lunch, but they’ve got $100,000 car, it’s like, you got to just focus on the good good stuff. I’d rather drive. You know, like I did for years, a 1990. When I had my 1992 Honda Accord, I was still buying the pastured bison, grass fed beef, steaks, all organic vegetables, you know, even though I had a $4,000 car, I probably spent 4000 a year on high quality groceries.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a lot of it is an education thing, getting people to reprioritize kind of where they’re at and it gets number one out of the gates. And then two is just really educating people on the benefits, right? It’s like it’s all about value. So the big thing today that we’re kind of hammering on is the glyphosate component, how that affects your gut lining how that affects dysbiosis, how that affects nutrient absorption, how that affects your immune system, because 80% of your immune systems in the golf and the malt in the stomach and the small intestine. So all these play a major role. And we know that autoimmune conditions are on the rise right there massive amount of increased, not all immune conditions, 150 least different conditions that are out there now. And we know gut permeability plays a major role. We know gluten, we know Roundup, we know gut bacterial imbalance plays a major role. So if we know the mechanisms, then we can work on creating an execution plan to help believe that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, there are several charts online, you could just look this up yourself. You could type in autism, glyphosate, and you can see some of the correlation not necessarily causation. But definitely the correlation charts, where you’ll see the autism rates skyrocket exponentially, along with the exponential use of glyphosate. And, you know, Stephanie’s talked about this many times. Dr. Kurt Waller, he’s hit on this. He’s done many great presentations on autism, and has some courses all about that one of the integral pieces of his protocols I know is detox. So let’s talk about that. What do you actually do? You and I have many, many before and after on ourselves personally, but also clinical case studies where I’ve seen literally 1000s of percent off the chart, I mean levels so high that the lab can even give you a range for it. And we’ve been able to take those people and significantly reduce it, especially in children. I’ve seen kids that are four or five, six years old, off the charts with two four D glyphosate and many other of the organophosphate pesticides and holy crap, it’s scary when you first look at it. You look at the symptoms, you look at the gut, you look at the skin, you look at the behavioral problems, but man within six months to a year I’m confident most people listening could clear out 90 plus percent of their chemical load.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100% I think it’s, it’s super important to be empowered like that. So, so you hit a couple of the big mechanisms there. So I think one of the first things people have to look at is when there’s stress, there’s going to be indigestion, right, there’s going to be some level of bloating or gas, we’re just not breaking a lot of the nutrients down. And we have to look at what are the nutrients, we need to run a lot of these pathways, you kind of hit some right there. But we need amino acids, we need a lot of sulfur, we need a lot of the sulfur rich cruciferous vegetables, we need a lot of B vitamins, we need a lot of antioxidants. So for eating nutrient poor food, we’re not going to get those we also need a lot of good high quality sulfur based amino acids. And when you know from our healthy pasture fed eggs and animal products, and if we’re not eating those things and breaking them down optimally, then we’re gonna have problems, we’re not gonna be able to get the amino acids to make our powerful glutathione to help with our B vitamins, and our methylation and acetylation glucuronidation are phase one cytochrome p 450. Or phase two cytochrome p 450. oxide pathways that require on the phase one B vitamins and antioxidants, phase two, all the sulfur amino acids to run those pathways.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and the glyphosate messes up that P 450 cytochrome p 450 pathway too, so that was another mechanism that gets screwed up. And even if you have the nutrients and to fuel that pathway, if you’ve got a big Roadblock, there are you mentioned the glucuronidation pathway. That’s another issue. We’ve done podcast on this but the the spark notes the long story short for people listening is when you have bacterial overgrowth in your gut, which could be traced back to glyphosate exposure, damaging your good bacteria, therefore allowing the dysbiosis to happen. That then messes up this enzyme, which is the beta glucuronidation enzyme which we test for via stool now your re circulating hormones and recirculating toxin. So, like, you know, Justin and I will do protocols where we may throw in something like calcium D glue gray to inhibit that enzyme, but we have to work backwards and fixing the gut. So all this could be traced back to your glyphosate exposure sounds get reference. Sounds crazy to think like, wow, me eating conventionally sprayed toxic strawberries lead to my depression and my anxiety, but there’s the link of how it can all go down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So we talked about a lot of the key nutrients, right, we talked about the gluten, and we talked about the antioxidants. Also, if we have a lot of inflammation happening in the brain, what do we do? So of course, we have powerful antioxidants like glutathione we have, which is it’s twofold, right? Because it also helps with the pathways of elimination, but it’s also a powerful antioxidant. So it deals with a lot of the oxidative stress that happens from these toxins. We also have things like vitamin D, we have things like curcumin, curcumin, like compounds, or is bare trawl gingko bacopa things that have anti inflammatory cognitive enhancement benefits. Because a lot of times what we have is we have this immune response that’s over reactive that’s stimulated in the brain, we have our immune cells called microglial cells in the brain that are overstimulated. And so a lot of times, we have to attenuate that and get that kind of calm down and relax because it’s in this positive feedback loop is once it starts getting ramped up and ramped up and ramped up and ramped up, it’s kind of at this arching level of it’s just it’s continuing to increase, increase, increase. And if we can calm that down what’s powerful antioxidant compounds, while we also stop adding fuel to the fire with a lot of these toxins and pesticides, that’s going to help us a lot.
Evan Brand: Yeah, absolutely. And the big heavy lifters, we won’t say the names because who knows in the future, our ideas and thoughts may change. So we’ll be putting some links in the show notes on your app to where you can view these products. But let’s break down some of the nutrients at least in the products in case we come out with our own or we come out with better versions in the future something the biggest heavy lift or I would say is definitely going to be chlorella. And specifically, as opposed to the conventionally sold mass marketed what’s called broken cell wall chlorella, which is decent, we like to use one that’s called a micronized chlorella, which is extremely small molecules of chlorella, that is able to get across the blood brain barrier. That’s the magic sauce that most chlorella products fall short. And I literally have 100 case studies where I could show you a before and after of getting children and adults on these products. And we’ve been able to massively reduce the levels at a woman in Canada just last week, she was off the chart with nearly every chemical gasoline xylene validates pesticides, herbicides, two, four D glyphosate, the whole nine yards. And within six months to a year of doing some of this stuff. Her levels are now non detected in a lot of categories. She’s not fully out of the woods, if we could get her in a sauna, which is another way to help with glyphosate. I think she would speed it up but just the chemical detox alone using nutrients massive success.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love that. I love it. Yeah, like you mentioned binders we have different chlorella we have different maybe activated charcoal or bentonite clay compounds we have a kind of our own formulated products that we love. We’ll put the links down below, we have a lot of the glue defi on or solidify on sulfur amino acid precursor building blocks, those are really powerful. We have a lot of liver tonifying and supporting herbs to help the liver and gallbladder whether it’s milk thistle or, or, or dandelion or phosphatidylcholine. We have a lot of those nutrients that we’ve kind of formulated up. And I think that outside of that would be we get some of the B vitamins, the binders we hit some of the tonifying herbs. cloudify owns sulfur amino acid, I think we hit all the major ones out of the gates, I would just say there’s some different lipidsoma curcumin, and resveratrol and anti inflammatory compounds that the we’re looking at that really have great clinical benefits. Also binders on the activated charcoal a zeolite, citrus pectin side. So we’ll put some of our links to products that we’re personally using with ourselves, patients and family and clinically every day. And we’re kind of looking at the results that we’re getting and trying to always adjust it. So it’s the best. We’ll put those down below. Anything else Evan, you want to add today?
Evan Brand: Yeah, so the MCP, the modified citrus, pectin, that’s something we can use, we’ll often use that in a blend, and then fulvic and humic acids, those tend to do really, really good too. I don’t like those in isolation. So a lot of people have really jumped on kind of the fulvic acid train, I think it’s smart. I think they’re great. But I’ve seen, you know, before and after test results, and I haven’t been super impressed in isolation. So we might use those foam fulvic and humic acids quite a bit. But it’s going to be in a blend, it’s not going to be by itself. We’re gonna have the chlorella, maybe the cilantro. As you mentioned, milk, this whole other liver support, maybe lymphatic support thrown in there to infrared, sauna, rebounding, anything you can do to sweat hot baths, Epsom salt, where you can boost that sulfur pathway, fixing the gut getting the gut infections address, so you can get that glucuronidation pathway working better, doing the testing on your stool to see where your gut is, if your systems even working properly, to do the detox, and then obviously doing the before and after chemical testing. And I will tell you, there’s not a single non toxic human on the planet unless they’ve done a really great job with chemical detox. But just coming in your average person coming into us with complaints doing the testing, you’re going to have chemical levels off the chart, I only had one guy who came to me over hundreds and hundreds of chemical profiles who didn’t have much of anything. And this was a guy who was doing a sauna for almost an hour, five times a week. And I was like, Whoa, you’re proof that Asana excretes a lot. So everyone else they were pretty much off the chart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I had a patient just recently to did a sauna session. And this person had eye level of mercury. And the kind of one of the biggest things I preach is you have a good sulphur soap, that’s going to decrease that lipid barrier and get a quick shower right afterwards. So you can get all the chemicals and stuff off your skin that are fat soluble metals and such toxins, make sure you do that as soon as possible. This person waited think 10 to 15 minutes. And during that timeframe that next day, they had a major herxheimer or issue. And my concern is if you don’t get those toxins off your skin fast, there’s a great chance you’re going to reabsorb them, and then you’re going to reabsorb met a very high level. And that can create a lot of herxheimer. So you got to be very careful. If you’re using an infrared sauna, you won’t want to flush those toxins off your skin fast and make sure you’re really hydrating well, and you may even want to go into that sauna session with binders and solidify them before and during just in case you reabsorb some of those toxins.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s great advice. And that’s why a lot of people recommend like a cold like water plunge or a cold shower afterwards. So you can really just seal up get those goosebumps get your pores sealed up to where everything is off. I know for me, it was crazy, because I was kind of skeptical. I thought is that really are you really reabsorbing stuff. So I did kind of a warm shower. It was soap and then I did a cold shower. And who knows maybe it was all the benefits of cold in general. But I tell you I feel so much better with a cold shower after the sauna. as brutal as it is to put that thing all the way on cold, especially in the winter. It’s cold, but man, I feel like a million bucks after that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, no, I think that’s that’s smart. So I urge patients if you’re going to do an infrared sauna, which I think is powerful, just kind of start with five or 10 minutes, do a quick shower afterwards have a good soap ready that can kind of cut that lipid by layer. Because remember, a lot of these toxins are going to be they’re going to be fat based. They’re going to be what fat soluble toxins. So it’s like imagine cleaning a pan that you just had bacon in right? With just water. You need that emulsifying dawn soap or whatever organic soap to kind of cut that friction off the pan and allow that grease to kind of come off you right? If you don’t, you’ll feel that greasiness afterwards. Well, it’s the same thing with these fat soluble toxins. You really want to use that soap emulsify what’s on your skin so it’s flushed off so you don’t reabsorb it later.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and you made a good point. I’ll just take a step further on the hydration piece and the mineral balance piece. If you’ve got adrenal issues, mineral imbalances, electrolyte problems, you know, thyroid issues, sleep issues, you’re chronically sleep deprived, you know, you’re just kind of a weak constitution. You got to be careful and go slow and steady with the sauna. If you get woozy, you get lightheaded, if you do pass out or you feel like you’re gonna pass out your heart’s racing uncontrollably, you’re getting heart palpitations, you’re gonna know you’re mobilizing too much. So when your body’s saying stop, stop, don’t push through. I made the mistake of pushing through one time. It took me like two to three days to recover. So don’t don’t do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100% Well, I like it. Guys. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please feel free put it down in the comments. Let us know what you liked about it. Let us know your own experiences dealing with chemical detoxification. And a lot of the pesticides and chemicals we chatted about today, we’ll put links down to our favorite products, detoxification, support water filters, things that are going to decrease toxin load in your body and things that are going to help your body expel toxins better. And it guys if you enjoy today’s podcast, feel free head over to EvanBrand.com or JustinHealth.com. We are available worldwide to help you all out if you need that extra functional medicine, nutrition support. We are here as well. Anything else?
Evan Brand: No, that’s it, you covered it all. And thanks for listening.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/glyphosate-and-chemical-detox-podcast-334
Recommended products:
Natural Herbal Support to Help Reduce Inflammation | Podcast #323
Inflammation is our bodies’ natural response against infection, injuries, wounds, and other forms of harm. However, inflammation can cause problems too. It is when some conditions are causing continuous inflammation resulting in tissue injuries along the way.
In this podcast, Dr. J and Evan Brand talk about some herbal remedies that might help you deal with yours or gear you to avoid unnecessary inflammation. Although there are anti-inflammatory drugs available in the market, some of these lead to unwanted side-effects or, perhaps, not useful.
For people with inflammatory issues, it’s also good to consider natural herbs to manage it. Some natural herbs you can try are turmeric, ginger, and green tea since some evidence claims its effectiveness. These are generally safe, but it’s still good to consult or discuss this with your physician to make sure that it fits you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:27 Natural Herbal Support for Inflammation
4:09 Key Ingredients for Reducing Inflammation
11:08 TNF Alpha Pathway, Cox Pathways
16:54 “You are what you digest from what you eat”
18:03 Natural Cortisone & Natural Anti Inflammatory
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, how are we doing today man? What’s going on?
Evan Brand: I’m doing good. I’m feeling better. I don’t think I even told you about this off the air. But I had a bat house on the side of my house.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A bat house?
Evan Brand: Yeah, bat house. Yeah, to try to get to try to get some bats to basically, you know, take take residents there. So they would eat all of our mosquitoes. And they never came. And I was up on the ladder. I don’t know, this may be two months ago now. And I was up on the ladder. And I was unscrewing the bat house from the house. And as soon as I did that, I noticed it was a wasp nest in there. And as soon as the, as soon as I saw that, a wasp landed on my hand. And last time I got stung, it hurts super bad. And so I wasn’t thinking straight, I thought, okay, there’s a wasp on my hand, I’m gonna get stung, it’s gonna hurt, I might shake my hand and fall backwards off the ladder, this is really bad. So I just turned around and just jumped. And it was probably not crazy high, but maybe eight feet up. And I just jumped and just tried to like, you know, cushion my fall as much as I could and kind of roll after I landed on the grass. But ever since then, man, I’ve had a little bit of some cervical, I probably need to see a chiropractor. I haven’t yet but I’ve had like some cervical tightness. And if I sleep the wrong way, it like flares up the cervical tightness. And so I’ve been using some herbal anti inflammatories and nutrients that we can dive into to help me. But I wanted to tell you that and see if you had any other suggestions of things I should be doing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really great. Yeah, so we’re going to be talking all about inflammation. And we’ll be talking about natural herbal support to kind of help her natural functional medicine support to help kind of reduce that inflammation. Now, structurally, in your situation, there’s probably some level of inflammation directly to that area. So some level of soft tissue, whether it’s active release technique, or myofascial just to kind of help with that tissue. Because when it gets strained or damaged or inflamed like that, it can get a little bit fibrotic, you can get some scar tissue, it can maybe lose some blood supply and oxygenation. So getting some good movement in that tissue to kind of help with oxygenation, make it more pliable, helps making sure those joints are moving well. So really good chiropractic adjustments through there to make sure everything is moving well, alignments, good. So those are the first things out of the gates that I’d be pursuing. Outside of, you know, just some good soft tissue support in your own like a good massage guns helpful just kind of day in day out. And then seeing good massage therapists, maybe some red light to kind of reduce inflammation, too. I think that’s great out of the gates. And of course, you know, we can kind of go into all of the different natural anti inflammatory, inflammatory support that we use typically in practice, and we’ll talk about what what you’re using already as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I appreciate it. I need to get back in touch with my myofascial lady. I just haven’t reached out to her yet. But I think she left town for a while. So she’s still around. I should probably try. I just got fearful I thought, Oh, god, what did I do to my spine? Am I screwed forever? You know, you hear about these people having like car wrecks. And you know, my wife used to work in a chiropractor’s office, and she would see people that were injured from 20 years ago. And I’m like, ah, why, like, surely it doesn’t have to be that way. And I think we have some good strategies that can definitely shorten the recovery timeline. Let me just talk about the topical aspect first. This one thing’s been very beneficial. It is a company called Ned. Hello, Ned is their company. And they actually just send it to me like a year ago, just as like a free Hey, we want you to sell our products. Here’s some free stuff to try out kind of thing. But I loved it so much. I bought more of it, but it’s called a body butter. And it’s just loaded with CBD oil and frankincense and a bunch of other essential oils. It has Arnica in there. So this is just a topical body butter. And I tell you, if I put that stuff on, it’s a significantly reduced pain. And my range of motion is almost 100% if I’m using that topically, so CBD Arnica frankincense, you know, something like that a good blend, or if you like by that body butter, that might be a good option topically.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So out of the gates, what’s the first thing so more than likely you get some kind of a mini whiplash? I’m guessing you kind of fell more into flexion. Right?
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you probably had a little whiplash because you probably went forward and then your body had to like kind of seize up to kind of stuff that forward flexion and so it probably just strained you probably had a little spray sprain strain in those back ligaments in the neck. And so getting some good soft tissue out back there will help making sure that joints are moving appropriately will help the problem with like ligamentous tissue, it’s more a vascular, right, you don’t get great blood supply. Or like if you strain your muscle like a muscle belly issue, right, it’s going to heal a lot faster because that tissue is just more vascular, it’s got a lot more blood flow. So anytime you have a vascular tissue, you really need good soft tissue support to really help break down and break down fiber optic tissue, scar tissue and then help that will improve oxygenation and that will improve blood flow. And of course, you know, soft tissue and or red light therapy are all going to be amazing things to really work on the on the blood flow and the inflammation reduction aspects. So that’s good out of the gates. And of course like my good thing in my line, we use something called curcumin supreme. Which is a liposomal curcumin, I like that. I think that’s excellent because it has natural anti inflammatory pathway. So like the big inflammatory pathways that you’re going to see a lot of the medication use are going to be the Cox pathways right cyclo oxygenase pathways. And so like cyclooxygenase, two and cyclooxygenase one are going to be some of the big ones right? Now we can do natural herbs to kind of help produce Cox one and Cox two. So Cox one typically will be reduced by things like aspirin or n sets the problem with these things that can be a little bit more irritating to the liver into the gut. So maybe acutely, it’s okay, but chronically not the best, right? And then we have Cox two as well which these were like the old fashioned, like Vioxx drugs, remember, those, like 15 years ago, caused a lot of stroke and heart issues. Those are like our Cox two pathways. So Cox one and Cox two are some pretty good ones, that major pathways. And of course, we have like our prostaglandin e two, which is an inflammatory pathway as well. And prostaglandin e two is what drives constriction. And it’s what causes more platelets and more stickiness to happen. And so we want to work on reducing some of those pathway. So we want to knock down prostaglandin e two, what’s the best way to do that? Well, high dose fish oil or fish oil in general, of course up a really good whole food, pasture fed kind of paleo templates, it’d be great. And you’re going to reduce a lot of inflammation coming from conventional meats. Again, healthy grass fed pasture fed meats better, right? Less arachidonic acid, which feeds that PG net prostaglandin to pathway, of course, keeping the insulin and the grains and the refined sugar, all that crap in check, all of that inflammation feeds these Cox two and Cox one. pathways, right. And so we want to inhibit those pathways, we want to block them. So more Cox one, Cox two, the more inflammation is going down those pathways. So all the dietary crap sets the table, like my analogy is, imagine you walk into a kitchen and the gas is on the burner. Okay, let’s say it’s been on for a couple hours you smell it? Well, let’s say you pull out your lighter, right? Just a little spark, boom, how’s it gonna explode? Okay, but if you did it without the gas there, no explosion? Well, it’s the same thing. If you have the gasoline going, that’s a systemic inflammation from all of these things we chatted about, that allows the little spark of an injury like that, to set off this whole inflammatory cascade, that’s going to be a lot more, let’s just say amplified in the wrong direction, if you will.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great analogy. So let’s kind of spotlight some of the the key ingredients that we use here. Now some of these we can provide to our clients and to me personally in blends, and then some of them we can do in isolation. So I think the the best one or kind of the best combo for me is really some of the enzymes and then plus tumeric and the boswellia I think that’s been kind of my game changer because I noticed that when I added some extra serapeptodase into my system, I have a blend, I’m using the has some in there, but when I added extra serapeptodase, and also some lambro kinase, my issues, definitely, I would say I felt definitely more mobile, like I have more blood flow. And then of course, my hands and feet were warming up too. So I just know from like a circulation standpoint, that that’s also helping and then we know that tumeric has like an anti coagulating ability. So whether it’s like a tumeric tea or like you mentioned a life was almost a product or even just like a standardized curcuminoid product, something like that is going to be awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I like it. So if we kind of break things down by Cox one, Cox two, there’s also the locks pathway that’s like the the leuco trying pathway or the light bo oxygenase pathway. Alright, so lipo oxygenase versus cyclo oxygenase. These are both going to be inflammatory pathways. So if we start with like the Cox, one pathways, things like ginger are also going to be very helpful in that. So ginger is really good. Excellent. You can also do things like you mentioned lumberg kinase, or serrapeptase, that’s gonna just sit in your bloodstream, you’re taking it away from food, it’s not like a digestive enzyme. And that’s going to help hit all these inflammatory chemicals that are in the bloodstream, it’s going to start breaking them down and digesting them. And we already talked about the fact that we have a lot of platelet aggregation. So what that means is over time, those platelets are going to increase scar tissue and in decreased blood flow. So what are the enzymes are going to do is they’re going to break up those platelets isn’t help improve blood flow, improve oxygenation and improve nutrition. So and it’s also going to decrease scar tissue formation. So part of the enzymes are helping blood flow. They’re reducing. They’re increasing oxygenation, and they’re reducing scar tissue so then it helps a lot of the other nutrients also work better. So we already talked about like, some of the Cox one stuff is going to be ginger. We talked about that already. Some of the Cox two things are going to be things like curcumin, lipids, omo curcumin, and my line I have one called Curcumin Supreme, which is a really good one. And then you already mentioned a couple things earlier like Frankincense or boswellia. That’s also going to be another cyclo oxygenase ACE inhibitor and the thing I like about boswellia or frankincense, it’s the same thing. By the way, guys, frankincense is the essential oil version of that frankincense, you can kind of put topically on it. And then you can also take boswellia internally, so you can kind of hit it from both ends, which is really good.
Evan Brand: Yeah, also omegas, I am boosting up my omegas, I’m doing about five grams per day of pure omega, that’s my formula. It’s a triglyceride form of omega as it works amazing. And then also, I’m doing extra course attend, just to really help you know, I’ve had some histamine issues after getting exposed to mold. So for me, I do course attend with an enzyme, there’s a special enzyme we use, it’s a course it’s an enzyme blend that I love. And I actually may start manufacturing it soon. But for now, I’m just mixing these. And the course attend for me is a mast cell stabilizer. Now I don’t know about like trauma, necessarily physical trauma, aggravating mast cells and creating a histamine release. But it would make sense if there’s a stress response from the body, you may be pulling out more histamine, I’m thinking of like a, I don’t know, a car crash or some sort of immediate trauma, you’re probably going to have some histamine to really help increase inflammation, but overall, you don’t want that long term.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. So there’s other pathways you mentioned, right? So the course attend, like you mentioned earlier, that’s going to help with the TNF alpha pathway. So TNF alpha is another inflammatory cytokine. So think of a lot of these cytokines are like inflammatory chemical messengers, we have cytokines, we have interleukins, we have nuclear factor, Kappa beta, we have TNF alpha, these are all these chemicals, signalers. And so when we have inflammation happen, these type of chemical messengers can amplify inflammation, the effects of inflammation, systemically. And the problem with inflammation is it’s helpful in the short run, because it helps drive blood flow and helps the healing repair process. The problem is, is when it hangs around too long, right? So for like an acute injury, it’s probably good. I think part of the reason why that pain and inflammation is there is to keep you on your butt, so you’re not continuing to damage that area. So I think part of it is, it’s Hey, you hurt yourself, let’s kind of like rest a little bit right part of its that it’s also going to aggregate a lot of immune cells to help heal the injury, preventing infection, it’s also there to help with healing the body up, right, because the body is not about performance when it’s injured, it’s about band aiding the crap out of that area. So the problem with that is the body doesn’t care if it laid down a whole bunch of scar tissue. And that area is now going to be less flex, less flexible, and less mobile. It just wants the body to heal. So now you have to say, Well, I’m also interested in performance too, right? So then you have to look at the fact that like, Okay, I’m going to reduce inflammation, I probably should still be more mobile, I’m sorry, less mobile moving less, because my body wants me to move around less. I’m reducing the inflammation, pain naturally. But I still have to make sure I don’t overdo it. So you have to make sure if you reduce the inflammation, you still don’t overdo it because your body’s creating that pain to keep you from not moving as much. You probably want some movement, but not as much to hurt yourself. And then number two, you really want to remodel that inflammatory scar tissue. And that’s where you know, massage, soft tissue work, adjusting, maybe some some rolling, some foam rolling, gentle things like that to kind of help realign that soft tissue. So it’s more functional and structurally stable. That’s better in the long run.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. Good point. I forgot to mention that. It’s not called the Theracane but it’s similar. I’ve got this wooden like cane from like a physical therapy office like it’s a, it’s a wooden cane basically, and it’s got the wheels on it. I’ve been kind of digging that into my upper mid back area kind of work in my traps. I’ve been just doing some light stretches. I’ve been doing some lateral pull downs, I love lat pull downs, I’ve been doing some seated rows. I’ve been doing my roll machine. So just gently trying to work the area. And I do that after I take these enzymes. And I do notice that it definitely warms up the area and I do feel more loose. So I’m trying to think of you like you and I always talk about you have this stacking effect, right you’ve got the anti inflammatory diet as the foundation, you’ve got the omegas coming in to hopefully help lubricate reduce inflammation. We’ve got the anti histamine anti mast cell course attend. We’ve got the ginger working on the Cox pathway, you’ve got the tumeric you’ve got the boswellia. I mean, that’s just really the synergistic thing here. And I’m not I haven’t taken a single aspirin. So I’m not actually in pain anymore. But like I said, if I sleep wrong, it might kind of flare me up. So I don’t think I’m fully out of the woods yet, but I think I’m 95% there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. That’s good. So in general, we kind of have our Cox pathways right. Now, arachidonic acid can feed those pathways. So a lot of excess omega six junkie, refined omega six excess junkie animal products can definitely feed those pathways that sets the table like I mentioned gas in the kitchen right below spark and can take it off. And then we have our natural herbals like like ginger can help with Cox one. Fish Oil is actually For Cox two at high doses now if you do high doses of fish oil, you can increase what’s called lipid peroxidation. Because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid, it’s more unstable, right? It’s got a lot of these. It’s got more double bonds in it, right? omega three means three double bonds, the more double bonds that are there, the more unstable the fatty acid is to heat and things like that, the more let’s say it can be oxidized. So having extra vitamin C, or extra vitamin E on board when you’re taking extra fish oil, just to make sure you don’t have oxidation is great. And we already talked about things like systemic enzymes talked about, like, you know, curcumin, liposomal curcumin is better due to the absorption, or something with black pepper in it helps with absorption to already talked about things like Frankincense or boswellia is great, you could always do some white willow bark, which is kind of how aspirin is naturally made, right? aspirin works more on Cox one. So aspirin is going to be your other natural source. And you can do white willow bark, which is the natural form of aspirin, which is great. There are things like Tylenol, but Tylenol works more on the central nervous system perception, right? So it decreases the nervous systems, perception of pain. And then of course, at the extreme example, we have opiates, which block the pain receptors in the brain, the the opiate receptors in the brain, not the best thing because you’re just decreasing perception of pain. Obviously, the opiates are way more addictive, right. But we can block some of these natural pain perceptions with CBD oil. So CBD is another great way to reduce perception of pain. But we got to be careful of, you know, Tylenol, or things like opiates, you know, opiates due to their addictive qualities. And Tylenol actually chronically can reduce gluta file and you can just type in Tylenol and low glutathione level. So if you’re taking Tylenol longer term, you definitely want to take it with NAC and or some cloudify and just to be on the safe side. But in general, we want you to try to do more of the herbals and more of the natural stuff out of the gates because that really, really, really can help reduce inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. Yeah, and the acetaminophen glutathione yeah, it’s a big problem. So that’s why I stayed away. So people listening, if you’re didn’t jump off a ladder like me, and you’ve got osteo arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, or sports injury, or you’re just trying to heal up maybe post operation, these things we talked about today may be something to implement. And then obviously, working on all the other root causes too, because you are not just what you eat, you are what you digest from what you eat. So if you’re doing all these good nutrients, but you’ve got some type of malabsorption issue in the gut, you’ve got ridges on your fingernails, you’ve got thinning hair falling out here, you may need to look deeper at the gut and try to find some of these more root cause issues that led you to that amount of inflammation or slow recovery in the first place. So if you need to reach out, please do so. Our websites are JustinHealth.com. That’s for Dr. J. He works worldwide via phone, FaceTime, Skype, zoom, whatever. And then me Evan Brand, EvanBrand.com. So JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com please reach out if you need help. We love helping you guys. This is just a wonderful situation that we’re in to be able to help people across the globe get solutions to their health issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And one last thing to comment is people talk about what we know about cortisone and prednisone injections, right for chronic pain, right? This is a common thing. Well, what’s our natural cortisone? What’s our natural anti inflammatory? Well, our adrenals. So if you have weaker adrenal is going into this stuff, you may not be able to make good amounts of our natural kind of anti inflammatory hormones like cortisol or cortisone, right? This is important. Now I had a family friend come up to me recently, they had chronic pain issues. And it was asking me some questions about things. And they were telling me Oh, I just got a cortisone injection. It’s doing really great right now I said, Well, number one, that’s that’s a really big mistake. I said, you can do a cortisone injection only, only one if it’s really debilitating, and you need that to buy you time to fix the underlying issue. The problem with any injections of steroids is they start breaking down the tissue and the cartilage and the ligaments and the bone in the joint. And actually, over time, they’ll stop giving you cortisone injections in an area after two or three injections sometimes, so then now what now you’re kind of stuck. So the only way ever support a cortisone injection, is if that’s buying you time to do all the other stuff and the pain is so debilitating, you’re just doing that to buy you time because if you’re not figuring out and doing all the other stuff, while that quarter zones working, you’re just going to just repeat its pattern over again three to six months later. And that’s not a good situation. So ideally, you maximize the low hanging fruit, hopefully you won’t have to go to that. And then if you have to go to it, you at least use that time to do more of the right things regarding soft tissue chiropractic work anti inflammatory, there’s another device we we use here we’ll put a link below for the newbie device which is a bio electric device that I have and I use that helps reduce inflammation with special bio electric wavelengths. Electricity wise that reduce inflammation, improve blood flow, help improve the muscle integrity in that area. So the muscles take over the stress the joints and the ligaments and that’s cartilage would normally absorb right we want our we want our shocks to absorb The force not the sensitive material in the in the vehicle so to speak, right we have shocks for a reason. Think of shocks in your body as like muscles. Think of the sensitive tissue as ligaments and cartilage, right? Those are going to be more a vascular right poor blood flow the muscles more vascular. So what’s good let the vascular shocks absorb most of that issue most of the inflammation and for so I’ll put the link down below for that too. So you guys have that for references. Anything else, man?
Evan Brand: Yeah, the sauna. The sauna has been helping me too. I love sitting in there. Yeah, that obviously warms me up to so I have the infrared heaters in the front and then the ceramic around the edges. So I do try to rotate make sure that the infrared does hit my back and it does help me quite a bit. So that’s also another beneficial thing. Epsom salt baths are very helpful potentially using a floatation tank, a float tank with just tons of Epsom salt and their magnesium and that’s that’s also another great strategy. So hope this helps people and take care yourself. Like I said, if you need to reach out please do JustinHealth.com or EvanBrand.com look forward to helping you soon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll be right over recommended products down below so you guys can see that and take advantage of the things that we use clinically for our family, ourselves and our patients worldwide.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-herbal-support-to-help-reduce-inflammation-podcast-323
Recommended product:
To access or learn more about the Neubie
Best Herbs for Lung Health
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
There are many contributing factors in the health of your respiratory system, such as the lungs. These factors include diet, genetics, environmental factors, physical activity level, allergies, and more. Today I want to share some of the top herbs for respiratory health which have been used over centuries to treat sore throats, wet and dry coughs, the immune system, and more!
Best Herbs for Your Lungs
Astragalus Root
Astragalus Root is a great herb for those who have a weakened immune system or can’t seem to stop catching colds. People who suffer from chronic illnesses, particularly relating to the respiratory system, can try incorporating this medicinal herb into soups and teas to help improve immune system function.
Raw Garlic
Raw garlic is a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and should be a household staple! One study done in 2013 found that participants who consumed raw garlic at least twice per week had a 44% lower risk of developing lung cancer than those who consumed raw garlic less than twice per week. To activate raw garlic, you should lightly crush or chop the cloves and allow them to sit for 10-30 minutes, during which time important enzyme reactions take place to ‘activate’ medicinal properties. You can sprinkle raw garlic over foods like steak or salad.
Ginger Root
Ginger root warms the lungs and increases circulation and blood to the lungs which can help with respiratory ailments. Ginger has been shown to be effective at protecting the lungs from inflammation, mediates the immune and allergic response, and is great for the immune system!
Green Tea
Research shows a possible link between green tea and a lower risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), progressive lung diseases that can cause troubled breathing, coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath. Green tea is full of antioxidants and polyphenols which benefit lung function, such as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which studies show can help suppress lung cancer cell growth, and theophylline, a ‘bronchodilator’ type of compound which can improve airway function.
Licorice Root
Licorice Root is a demulcent herb–meaning it relieves mucous membrane irritation. It has traditionally been used to soothe a cough, heal the mucus immune barrier in the respiratory tracts, and also to prevent and treat bacterial and viral infections. There is even evidence that licorice root may be beneficial to those with COPD by slowing the progression of chronic bronchitis.
Concerned about your lung health? Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor.
Mullein
Mullein helps unblock the lungs by opening constricted airways, moistening the lungs, removing mucus, and lowering inflammation and irritation. Traditionally, mullein has been used for thousands of years to treat bronchitis, asthma, coughs, tuberculosis, and infections.
Slippery Elm Bark
Slippery elm contains something called mucilage, which coats the throat, and is another good demulcent. It is commonly used in natural lozenges to soothe a cough or sore throat. The mucilage in slippery elm traps and absorbs water, forming a gel-like substance which coats mucous membranes and can provide pain and irritation relief.
Thyme Herb
Thyme is antimicrobial and works particularly well for treating the throat and lungs. Thyme is used to fight respiratory infections, and treats a sore throat with its antiseptic properties and ability to dislodge mucus. Thyme is a go-to for coughs and nasal congestion.
Wild Cherry Bark
Wild cherry is anti-inflammatory with a mild sedative property which makes it useful for treating irritating coughs, like those that keep you up at night.
More Tips for Health Lungs
Remember, preventative health is the key here. Herbal remedies work best when you are doing your best to live a healthy lifestyle in all aspects of your life. To set your lungs up for respiratory success, you will want to avoid drinking, smoking, toxic fragrances, and inflammatory foods. Get outside and breathe the fresh air, and partake in some sort of physical activity each day to keep your lungs healthy, clear, and strong!
Want to build up your immune system? Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor.
References:
Herbs to Support Digestion
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Digestive issues are so common that many people don’t know that the way they are feeling isn’t normal. Time and time again, patients will come back to tell me that they can’t believe they aren’t bloated and gassy every time they eat!
Bloating, gas, abdominal pain, fatigue, diarrhea, and constipation all indicate your digestive system is not working properly. We all would benefit from replacing processed foods, refined sugar, and gluten with organic, whole, fresh meat and vegetables. If you have already been eating a paleo-type of diet and are still having digestive issues, you might consider working with a functional medicine doctor who can help you identify which foods are your specific triggers.
Digestive Health, Herbs and Functional Medicine
There are many beneficial herbs for digestive support. Whether you’re supporting your long-term digestive health, or in need or a quick fix for a tummy ache, there are herbs that can help. Today we’re going to look at some of the best herbs to boost the production of digestive enzymes, and soothe your digestive system.
Dandelion is an all-encompassing medicinal herb. Dandelion is bitter, which catalyzes intestinal enzymes and stimulates the manufacture of bile. This delightful garden plant also supports the liver by filtering waste from the bloodstream.
Dandelion leaves can be cut into pieces and included in salads, or used in juices, to get your digestive juices running smoothly. Dried Dandelion root from trustworthy herbal manufacturers makes for an excellent tea.
Chamomile acts on the gut’s enteric nervous system, which is very sensitive to changes in the environment. Chamomile is soothing to the stomach & intestine and acts as a calming antispasmodic herb. This herb is your go-to for calming a nervous stomach, treating gas, diarrhea, and indigestion.
Chamomile tea is an extremely common (and delicious) way to reap the benefits of this herb. Kids love it too!
Marshmallow, or Althaea, is a great herb for soothing any inflammation along the digestive tract. Marshmallow root is actually sweet- making this a tasty way to calm your tummy! Marshmallow root is perfect for gastritis, ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.
This herb actually provides the most benefits when you have it cold! Add 1-2 tbsp of Althaea root to 1 cup of cold water and allow it to soak for a couple of hours so that it becomes a thick liquid. You can also use this plant as a powder.
Licorice This wonderful herb is regarded as a soothing tonic and is used as a calming demulcent to protect and soothe the mucous membranes of the digestive tract. Licorice also protects the gut lining from stomach acid that can cause queasiness and indigestion. The herb has both anti-inflammatories as well as has antispasmodic properties. The active nature of this herb provides a calm laxative effect and also works well against diarrhea.
Licorice is a powerful synergist; when combined with other herbs, the benefits of all herbs are boosted. Try taking licorice with fennel, ginger, or chamomile for a comprehensive digestive tonic!
Angelica is a wonderfully aromatic herb, and conventionally, it is the root that is most preferred. A tea infusion of the roots relieves gas, bloating, flatulence, and aids kidney function. This herb is carminative in nature- meaning it will help prevent gas or help relieve gas if you’re already bloated.
The volatile oils that exist within Angelica have antispasmodic effects, helping to alleviate intestinal spasms, gastric ulcers, diarrhea, and indigestion. The herb is full of antioxidants that check free radical damage to the tissues and alleviate gut inflammation.
Calendula This bright flower produces a calming and gentle anti-inflammatory effect along the digestive tract and further protects it from future damage. Calendula helps regulate bacterial growth inside the intestine.
These natural remedies have stood the test of time; herbal tonics have been used all over the world for centuries. So next time you’re feeling bloated, try making yourself a mug of herbal tea and experience the natural relief for yourself!
References:
1. Functional Wellness, Part 3: Digestive Health: https://experiencelife.com/article/functional-wellness-part-3-digestive-health/
2. Dandelion: the key herb for liver health, better digestion and beautiful skin: https://www.naturimedica.com/dandelion-the-key-herb-for-liver-health-better-digestion-and-beautiful-skin/
3. Chamomile: More than calming: https://herbalelement.com/blogs/news/chamomile-more-than-calming
4. Healing the Gut with Marshmallow Root: https://journeyofhealth.org/healing-the-gut-with-marshmallow-root/
5. Licorice Root: A Digestive Friend: http://www.medicinehunter.com/page/licorice-root-digestive-friend
6. ANGELICA ROOT, Angelica archangelica: https://www.gardenoflife.com/content/Herb/angelica-root/
7. Calendula: 30 Amazing Benefits and Uses: https://thefreerangelife.com/30-uses-for-calendula/
8. Herbs to Improve Digestion: http://www.medicinehunter.com/herbs-improve-digestion