The Best Bone Broth for Gut Health
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Bone broth seems to be all the rage these days, but what exactly is it about this bone juice that has everyone obsessed? Bone broth is so much more than a trendy drink: it has the power to aid in healing many modern issues, from leaky gut to wrinkles!
The Power of Bone Broth
What is Bone Broth?
Bone broth is made from animal bones, tendons, ligaments, marrow, skin, and other flexible connective tissues. In modern times these parts are usually discarded as they aren’t easily eaten on their own. However, when simmered in water for long periods of time, animal bones and tissues make a healing nutrient-dense elixir. The best bone broths are made from the parts of organic, grass-fed animals. To pack even more nutrient density, you can also add organic vegetables to turn bone broth into a flavor-packed sipping broth or use it as the base for a soup.
Bone Broth’s Secret Weapons: Collagen and Gelatin
The protein providing strength to animals’ (including humans!) bones, cartilage, and tendons is called collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin, a jello-like substance.
The best bone broths contain collagen and gelatin which provide your body with a host of immune-boosting properties, amino acids, and gut lining support to aid and heal many modern ailments.
Healing Benefits:
Bone broth is easily digested, unlike many other foods which can be hard to break down. But the real power of bone broth is that it is actually healing to the digestive system. It has been found to aid in cases of leaky gut, IBS, food allergies and sensitivities, and much more.
Collagen is a protein that forms the GI tract lining. Consuming the collagen and gelatin in bone broth helps heal the walls of the gut lining, preventing food and toxins from escaping and causing inflammation and other damage outside of the tract. This is major good news for those suffering from poor digestion and gut-related health issues (leaky gut, IBS, Crohn’s).
The collagen and gelatin from bone broth are also great for anti-aging effects. They keep the skin youthful by reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, aid the growth of hair and nails, and strengthen your bones! Collagen also helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite over time.
Essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, and silica are all electrolytes in bone broth which keep you hydrated, help with bone health, and can reduce brain fog and fatigue.
The amino acids found in bone broth include glutamine, arginine, glycine, and cysteine, and proline. Together these amino acids offer a wide range of benefits, including:
- Skin elasticity
- Build up the walls of the intestines
- Aid in proper bile and stomach acid production
- Enhance the immune system
- Anti-inflammatory, reducing oxidative stress and autoimmunity
- Promote human growth hormone
- Liver detoxification support
- Generate glutathione
Where to Find Bone Broth
You can make bone broth yourself, at home! Below is my favorite recipe for cooking up a big batch of anti-aging bone broth. If you are someone who would prefer to purchase bone broth, or are looking for something easy to take on-the-go, I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. Kettle & Fire is the best bone broth I have found, and they use premium ingredients like 100% grass-fed bones, organic produce, and apple cider vinegar to create a delicious and nutritious product that is easy to heat up and sip, or use as a base for soups and other recipes! Bonus: it’s also paleo and keto friendly! You can check out Kettle & Fire bone broth here.
Takeaway
Bone broth is incredibly simple to make, especially when looking at the benefits reaped from consuming this healthy elixir. The collagen, gelatin, amino acids and minerals in collagen make bone broth an incredibly simple and powerful solution to create healthier joints, skin, bones, and gut. If you’re looking to try my favorite bone broth for both flavor and health benefits, click here.
Sources:
https://blog.kettleandfire.com/4-amazing-ways-collagen-bone-broth-heal-your-gut/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949208
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358810/
Scaldaferri F1, Pizzoferrato M, Gerardi V, Lopetuso L, Gasbarrini A. The gut barrier: new acquisitions and therapeutic approaches. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;46 Suppl:S12-7.
Leaky Gut and Autoimmunity – Dr. J. Podcast #161
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand dive into a discussion about the link between gut infections and autoimmunity. Gain knowledge about leaky gut, how it occurs in the body and it’s connection to Hashimoto’s.
Explore the different stressors which affect gut health and contribute to a weakened immune system. Learn about Dr. Justin’s 6-hour template, which includes his expert recommendation regarding healing, nutrient and supplements.
In this episode, we cover:
00:34 Leaky Gut and Autoimmunity Connection
04:05 GABA and the Blood Brain Barrier
06:48 Hashimoto’s and Gut Health
12:23 6-hour Template
22:40 Thyroid Health: T3, T4
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hello, ladies and germs! Dr. J in the house. Evan, how we doing, man? How was your Holidays? How’s your Thanksgiving?
Evan Brand: Holidays were great. Let’s dive in. I know we’ve got a short limited of time. But we’re doing this on the fly because this conversation of gut health and gut infections and autoimmunity is huge and hardly anyone is talking about this. Conventional doctors don’t have a clue about the link between gut infections and autoimmunity, so dude, let’s dive right in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That sounds phenomenal. So we talked about in the show, kinda chatting about leaky gut and autoimmunity, which is really important because leaky gut is kind of like one of the primary mechanisms of autoimmunity kinda starting, which is kind of gastrointestinal permeability cells in the gut called the tight junctions. They start to unzip, kinda like you unzip your coat on a hot day and undigested food particles can get in there in this kind of creates this uhm— cascade of reactions call molecular mimicry, where certain food proteins— the surface proteins on these foods are similar to surface proteins of the thyroid or the brain or the pancreas, the beta—the beta cells of the pancreas, whatever. So you have this kind of immune system getting primed to similar proteins in foods which then prime the immune reaction for the immune system. It starts attacking these tissues in the body. So that’s kinda one of the first defenses is this autoimmunity leaky gut, molecular mimicry and that while they gut’s leaky, you have undigested bacterial compounds also getting in there, too. And then kinda just perpetuate and windup that immune system. And then also make it prime to—for other infections that kind of slip in there because the immune system now has weaken. Other infections can slip in. And typically, we’re gonna have a lower stomach acid environment so you’re gonna have less sterility in the stomach coz that low pH really prevents a lot of bacterial and critters from growing. But now that pH is like, you know, it’s like walking over to the dirty picnic tables and normally you spray it down with maybe some bleach. Or let’s say in a healthy version, maybe a really good antimicrobial essential oil. But now, we don’t have that because of the stress from the gut.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Now, Hashimoto’s for example, is probably most common autoimmune condition that we’re going to see and deal with and that probably you guys listening are aware of. Leaky gut has to take place for Hashimoto’s to happen. That’s one of the dominoes that happens. So you’ve got the leaky gut situation. You possibly got the gluten in the diet. You got the immune stress, which could be internal or external. So bad boss, bad spouse, bad relationships, bad job— those are kind of the big dominoes we see. And when you all those up together, that’s how you get autoimmune disease. It’s really just that simple.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And then we have people on the live chat here. And again, this is a great reason why you should subscribe to our YouTube channel—justinhealth. Uhm because we have these podcast going live as well and we’ve also incorporated other technology in the background to get a higher quality audio versions. So if you want better audio, you can subscribe to Youtube, but also check out our podcast uhm—Evan Brand, notjustpaleo and then beyond wellness radio myself. So just keep that in the back of your head. And then your question was—I just missed it. We talked about—Oh, yeah! Leaky brain. Leaky brain is connected as well coz we have these live questions coming in. And so we are multitasking like it’s no tomorrow. So leaky brain’s important because we have these called astrocytes or the brain blood or the blood brain barrier which is kind of the interplay between systemic blood and then the passing over to the brain. And we have the cells called astrocytes. And again, same thing, when we have gut lining integrity, it tends to affect integrity of the lungs, integrity of the sinuses, integrity of you know, vaginal wall area, urinary tract. So you have people that have gut issues—gut integrity issues. It almost always can cause sinus issues, brain fog, brain issues, UTI issues, bladder issues, right? So you have all of that mucous membrane barrier, it’s gonna be compromised throughout the body not just the gut. But the guts kind of that first major domino that falls and then everything else tends to follow along with it.
Evan Brand: What you think about the GABA test for the blood brain barrier, where you take like a 500 mg GABA and if it works and you get relaxed, that says you have a leaky brain. Do you agree with that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m not sure I buy that because I’ve seen people that do—that are really healthy and that do well with GABA.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they, you know, symptomatically, they’re doing pretty good. They’re eating well. Again, certain supplement companies have kinda put that out where they have a GABA challenge. They say, “Hey, GABA is this really big amino acid compound and it shouldn’t go through that blood brain barrier; therefore if it does, that means your major blood brain barrier is permeable.” I’m not sure I buy that. I think it’s something to keep in mind, something to try. I have a lot of patient that have gut issues and they’re sick and that use GABA or will only give them GABA and they don’t notice much benefit either.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you know, how do you sparse that? That’s hard.
Evan Brand: I know. Who knows, man. That’s a good question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Everyone tries to be a little bit trendy and nuance in this functional medicine field.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because they wanna make a name for themselves.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I get that from a marketing perspective, but just looking at the clinical application, I’m not sure there’s ton. But, heck, if you have GABA and you want to try it and you get uh—benefits, that’s great. I notice a little bit of improvement with GABA. Like when I take it, I feel little but relax. I also do that with Ashwagandha as well. I feel it with magnesium. Someone chimed in and asked if magnesium can be taken with Ashwagandha. Yeah, sure. I’ve no problem with that.
Evan Brand: Works great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hope everyone’s listening had a great Thanksgiving, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Tesa wants to know, “Have you reversed your Hashimoto’s, Dr. J, by healing the gut?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, so we have to be careful when we say reversed, right? So have we decrease the inflammation? Have we address underlying issues that made people susceptible to having autoimmune attack? And we—can we lessen those and decrease them to the point where we are no longer symptomatic because we have the inflammation down or quench enough? Yes. I’m just very careful because you know, eyes in the skies and people listening in they’re— they’re looking for that the cure the cure-all word, right? We just got to be careful. We don’t cure anything. We support the body’s ability to—we support the underlying stressors that cause the issue to begin with. And we support the underlying systems that weren’t functioning well. And then the body can start to get these symptoms under control because the symptoms are just a manifestation of the symptoms— the systems not working. Symptoms occur because systems aren’t working. Systems breakdown because of underlying stressors. As functional medicine doctors, we come in, we fixed the underlying stressors, we support the systems that aren’t working and then the body starts to heal itself, right? The body’s on autopilot. We just got to get the stressors in the systems work. If the system’s working, then get the stressors out of the way.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. So you had some— you had some gut bugs and things going on, do you care to talk about your story for a minute with the – Hashimoto’s?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I have—I have a low level of Hashimoto’s kinda in the background, I had elevation antibodies TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies and you know, I had some adrenal stress going on. And I just really worked on fixing the gut issues, which I had a handful parasites—Blasto, uhm— yeast, significant yeast overgrowth and H. pylori. Addressing those, fixing nutrient issues to help with the antibodies, fixing the digestion, fixing gut bacteria balance is of course working on stress reduction, sleep, all those important diet and lifestyle things. And again, the antibodies for me are just still slightly elevated, but there they’re in a range where you know, functionally my thyroid is not beaten up to the point where I need any thyroid hormone. My TSH is in a pretty good place and my T3 levels are pretty good. I actually have to go on for test real soon. So, yeah, I mean it’s possible to—to address the stressors and the system dysfunction to the point where you may not— you can call yourself cure. We just won’t call you cure for me, a functional medicine perspective.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Agreed. I need to get my thyroid panel run to. You’ve been pushing me to do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You should.
Evan Brand: I need to do it. I mean you and I both have had these infections. I had H. pylori as well. I had a Crypto, Giardia and yeast and Pseudomonas Aeruginosa. So, you know, that’s a fun thing about Justin and I. We both had all the things that we deal with in the clinic. So when you guys are looking to work with somebody, it’s— to me it’s a lot more honorable if you’ve had somebody that’s been in the trenches themselves, where we had to fix us to keep going to help other people. I think that’s always pretty cool. Uhm— what else I know we would have limited time, but what else should we mention here about kinda this autoimmunity piece, the gut piece. We mentioned the leaky gut, we mentioned some of the triggers just in a roundabout way. So Candida, bacterial infections, parasites, H. pylori, low stomach acid, gluten in the diet, dairy, possibly eggs, other food sensitivities. These could all contribute to that permeation of the gut barrier; therefore, causing the situation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred Percent. So, let me just kind of answer some of the things that you’re talking about while injecting some of the live questions we get. That’s the reason why the show is so unique compared to other shows coz we are off-the-cuff. This is the real deal here. So some patients are talking about having a lot of mucusy stools, right? And uhm— wanting to know where they should go for help, right? Of course, I recommend coming to see either myself or Evan, but typically one, we want to make sure food allergens aren’t driving this, right? Number two, we want to make sure we have enough digestive support on board to help those foods be broken down enough. So if there’s fat maldigestion issues, of course, adding in more bile salts or more lipolytic enzyme, right? Lipase— things like that. Uh— protease—proteolytic enzymes, right? These are all really important. And then, of course, once we can have the deck kinda dialed in, if foods are still a problem even with that, we may make them more palatable. We may go with more crockpot kinda GAP specific carbohydrate kind of eating template, where the foods are just easy—more processed via cooking, they aren’t raw, they are peeled or mashed. We’re decreasing salicylates and phenols and potential gut irritants so those foods can be consumed better. And then, of course, we’re gonna look deeper at the hormones because hormones have a major effect on inflammation and energy. And a lot of people that have gut issues, their guts are inflamed, we have to support the inflammation of the gut lining. And then, the big one is getting rid of the infections.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s where you know, we’re probably go next.
Evan Brand: (laughs) Yes. You’re right. So uh—Cent50 here, who asked the question. Yeah, the loose, mushy stools, I mean that was me. I had Cryptosporidium, I had Giardia, I had H. Pylori, I had bacterial overgrowth. Until my gut issues were addressed, just FYI, I had IBS for 10 or 15 years of my life and conventional doctors had no solutions for my—my stools. And it wasn’t until actually cleared out the infections that my bowels and my stools became normal again. And so, yeah, you got to get yourself tested. Justin and I run several different companies. Uh—stool testing just depending on you know what—what we’re looking at. But, yeah, get a comprehensive stool test. Your conventional doctor may be able to order through your insurance, if you tell them you want diagnostic solutions Lab, it’s unlikely. You probably have a functional medicine guy like us to run it for you. But either way, once you get the diagnostic tool, you can fix this pretty quick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s a lot of healing nutrients. So like, when we work with the patient, we kinda follow that 6-hour template— template that I’ve created over the last decade or so. There’s a lot of ones that are out there— three hours, four hours. In my opinion, a lot of them stink and they’re the wrong order. So the six that I’ve created and began to follow as well, in my opinion, is the exact clinical order which I follow things. So the first hour is removing the bad foods. And again, it’s not cookie-cutter because that maybe just getting someone from a standard American diet to a Paleo template. That may be taking someone from a Paleo template to an autoimmune template. Maybe someone on an autoimmune template and the Paleo template taking them to a GAPs or specific carbohydrate diet or low FODMAP template. I had patient last week who’s been Paleo for three or four years—chronic pain, chronic issues, chronic mood issues, chronic sleep issues. We took him from a Paleo template to an autoimmune-Paleo template and all of the symptoms went away in one week.
Evan Brand: That’s it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This is someone that’s like already been on point for a long time and we just pulled out a few foods. So we have those— that kind of progression because you’d be surprised, the smallest things that we do have a huge effect. And it’s like, whoa! you would’ve thought I would have created the awesomeness protocol ever and found a you know, this hidden infection that everyone missed and got rid of it for that kind of improvement to happen. But sometimes it happens, we’re just removing some food. So, first, I remove the foods, second, I replace enzymes, acids, digestive support, bile salts, too. Third hour is gonna be repairing the gut lining. It could be also repairing the thyroid and adrenals and sex hormones, too. Fourth hour is removing infections. That’s where we go after— bacteria, parasites, uhm—fungal overgrowth. Those kinda things. We may even go after co-infections future podcast on that soon enough. Fifth hour, repopulating or reinoculating probotics. Some of these nice and beneficial bacteria. They’re transient. They only hang out for a month or so and pass on. So, getting some of that it in there periodically is helpful. Sixth hour is retest. We want to make sure infections are gone. And maybe even address family members too to make sure they are not being passed back and forth you know, playing hot potato.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Riley asked a question about—he said, “Evan is your IBS completely healed now after addressing anything?” Uhmm—kind of a confusing question about addressing anything. Yeah, I don’t have IBS anymore. I’m infection free, no more H. pylori, no more parasites, no more bacterial overgrowth, no more yeast overgrowth and I feel good and feel completely normal, which was an amazing thing because after so long, you know, it took me to be so long to get here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And with your situation, right? Like if you start eating bad foods again and your immune system got compromised, you may have another critter or two that pops back. You may have some inflammation from the food and such. And then those symptoms, they start coming back, right? So it’s not like a cure, like, “Hey, you have scurvy. Here’s vitamin C.” And then as long as the vitamin C is there, you’re good forever, right? It’s like, “Hey, there may be other stressors that may cause the systems to weaken again and those IBS symptoms start to occur, right?”
Evan Brand: Oh, Totally! Yeah. I mean I could go— I could go out to a restaurant and get some type of contaminated food and all the sudden creates a leaky gut situation. Maybe I pick up a gut bug, maybe I was eating while stressed during a week and I didn’t chew my food good. And then I picked up a parasite and have to start all over again. So, yeah, definitely, you know, you could always backtrack. You’re—you’re never permanently in a good place.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And again, one thing I see out there on Facebook, and I see it marketed, and it’s– I have to call—I’m not gonna call anyone out directly—
Evan Brand: No, come on. Do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll call out the concept. But lots of people, they’re like, “You gotta heal leaky gut. Here’s a gut healing program.”
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you look at it, a lot of times, you know, it’s bone broth or just a lot of healing nutrients and a lot of probiotics, right? And maybe a little diet change. But if we go look at the six hours, what are they really doing? They’re doing the third hour, maybe a little bit of the first, maybe a little bit of the second, maybe a little bit of the fifth, right? They’re kinda skipping around. They don’t have a system and how it’s being integrated a lot of times. And I would say 99% of the time, it ignores going after and getting the infections fixed. Totally ignores it. Because you know, these people are recommending a general program to like thousand people at once in a huge kind of a webinar kind of style, right? Well, how do you get all the types of testing and customize everything in that format? You can’t. So it’s a very general kinda overview approach. And in my opinion, it’s going help some people, which I think is great. It’s admirable. But it’s also gonna a miss a lot of people and those people that don’t get help may lose faith in functional medicine or say, “This is not for me.” So I’m just kinda calling that out because think about it, right? If the root cause of what’s going on is an infection component and you’re doing let’s say the first, second, third, fifth alright but you’re not getting rid of the infection. Well that’s like me giving you this healing aloe, right? You get a sunburn, you come back from the beach, I give you this aloe, right? The underlying cause of the sunburn is the— is the sun. And then you go back out the next day and you get sunburned again and I just give you more aloe. That’s the equivalent of what a lot of these people are doing. Well, just have some more bone broth, have some more of glutamine, have some more of this healing compound for your gut lining. So we got to get to the root cause. A lot of people are just being very general out there. And you know, the listeners of our show will get it and say, “Hey, I see that the missing piece there.” And that’s why we have those six hours that way coz then you can look at it and you can say, “Hey, this is a really specific way we go about addressing things here.”
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said, man. And that’s the food is medicine, people. And we love the food as medicine people, but that’s why you know, we pursued functional medicine because the food is just the first step, right? It’s just one pillar of the house. It’s not gonna hold the house by itself as a single column. And also, I want to mention the order—the order of operations. If somebody just go straight to bone broth and probiotics and L-glutamine, that’s the wrong order. And sometimes people get worse. They’ll come to us and say, “Oh, Justin and Evan—“
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: “I took XYZ probiotics coz I heard it on a podcast or a blog and I felt terrible and I had a flare up of my condition. Can you explain what happened?” Yes, if things are just terrible in the gut,. sometimes you have to hit the reset button. You can’t immediately just add in all these probiotics and expect it to work. Sometimes we have to fix the balance first and eradicate the bad guys before the good guys can come back in. So that’s why the order of operation is just a second when Justin said it’s so important. And this may explain why you’re spinning your wheels even though you’re all—you’re doing everything about the Paleo gurus are saying to do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We just want to make sure everyone’s educated. I mean, we have some people out here, they’re chiming about, “Hey, I really want a functional medicine doctor but I don’t have the—the money for it.” Well, guess what? The best thing that you can do right now is be listening to our podcast coz all this information is free.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’re providing tens and thousands of dollars for free information off of people and I get messages all the time. “Hey, made a couple of these changes or recommendations and my autoimmune condition for 10 years is gone.” Right? I didn’t cure him. I promise. I didn’t cure him, right? The body just heals itself, right? We got to say that as our disclaimer. But that’s you know, what’s that worth. When someone is you know, seeing a rheumatologist for 20 years on lots of expensive medication that’s tearing up their gut and their body and creating more symptoms than they’re actually helping. What’s that worth? So just utilize the pickup as much of the free intel as much as possible. And then you know, allocate some savings or HSA or flex spending. So if you want to dig in deeper, that’s an option. But utilize as much of the free stuff as possible because the diet is the foundation.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 50% is gonna be the diet so work on that first. Once you max that out, and you’re seeing some decent results, then you’d want to go in deeper. You can reach out, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And you can contact likely so. You can contact your conventional doc and try to get some stuff run through insurance. But it’s likely that they don’t have accounts with these functional labs and they likely just aren’t going to do it. Fut if you’re really lucky, you’ve got a really good M.D., you may be able to push push push push at least get the lab so you have the data. Now what you do with the data? Well then maybe that’s where you come to a functional medicine guy that can help in terms of creating a protocol. But getting the data should not be impossible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And a lot of functional medicine docs that do a podcast or websites, I find that they take information, they wrap it up and they try to make people feel so confused where they walk away from the podcast or the video, being like, “What the hell just happened? What I do now ?” And they walk away feeling less certain. I want to make sure no one walks away from any podcast or video I do, gaining more certainty. And at least walking away with one action item that they can add into the repertoire of whether it’s a lifestyle or a supplement or just a different perspective on the6 hoir healing so they get better and they feel more confident.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I watch a couple of functional medicine videos like over the weekend and they were like hour-long videos I made it through 10 minutes. And I thought, “This is not gonna help me at all.” So I decided to turn it off. So let’s do it, let’s do our action steps and summary here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So of course, we have our six hours, right? So everyone listening kind of our general feedback is gonna be a Paleo autoimmune template to start. And again, depending on where you’re at, that maybe really a lot of— really overwhelming for you, cutting out grains, legumes, dairy and primarily having healthy fats, proteins, uhm more veggies and fruit instead of starch. And having healthy fats like you know, if we’re doing a Paleo, maybe a little butter or ghee. If we’re going fully AIP, no nuts, no seeds, no dairy. Just coconut, Olive oil, may be avocado oil, some healthy animal fats. And that will be a good starting point for people. And then again, an AIP or an SCD or autoimmune diet, again, I’m just kinda laying out the Paleo template to start coz that’s probably the easiest buy in without pre qualifying anyone. I would say that after that, at least getting some digestive support going there. And again, you know, the ones that we formulated, we recommend the most coz we’ve put our stamp of approval. High-quality HCl or enzymes. In my line, it’s HCl supreme or enzyme synergy or I’ll add in the liver supreme for extra bile support for digest energy. And Evans line—Evan has a similar products as well. Uhm— so that’s a good starting point there. And then seeing where you’re at, I think is the next step coz there may be infections, there may be other testing that has to go in deeper. So I think if you can get that, that’s number one. And then I think if you can just make sure the hydration component and the sleep component is dialed in next, that’s a good second step. And that gives most people of really good you know, path to go down and if people are listening, they’ve already done that and they’re like, “what’s next?” well, that’s where I think you’d want to reach out and do a little bit more testing because that’s what I think the infection component and/or the hormone component and/or the nutriend malabsorption component from the infection could be the next vector we’d really have to put up in our sites, so to speak.
Evan Brand: I’m gonna address one comment here and then I’ll bring up a question then we could uh—we could wrap it up. Leslie mentioned the diet’s the foundation which kinda sucks no more pigging out in the middle of the night. The good thing is that could be related to infections. I mean for me, for example, when I had parasites, I would get these food cravings that just didn’t make sense and it wasn’t me. It’s these bugs. They are stealing your nutrients, they want food so they’re cannibalizing your muscle tissue and when you’re eating, they’re messing up your ability to digest especially coz I had H. pylori. My stomach acid levels were lower. I was basically hungry all the time and I was losing weight. Getting to like a scary point of weight loss. So really, the diet is not too hard once you just address your gut bugs, that— the whole like binging type thing on food, it really doesn’t happen once your gut is healed, once your adrenals and your thyroid are helped out and your blood sugar’s more stable. It’s not an issue. I mean you could fasted for a long time and feel stable. You shouldn’t have to get hungry or go on a crisis stage. Justin, a question for you. Uh—some doctors say T3 doesn’t matter; they don’t test it on Thyroid labs. The person’s taking T3 now slowly increasing. Would you be lowering T4 when adding this?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would typically be adding more than likely a T4, T3 put together so there’s gonna be a combination of both. Most doctors don’t care about uhm—T3 because the major pharmaceutical companies, Abbott’s the big one, that has a patent on Synthroid is a synthetic T4. It’s easier to monitor uhm— giving a T4 the half-life’s five days, so it’s really easy. It’s not like a T3, which could potentially have more side effects. Uhm—and it’s patentable, right? It’s the basically tetraiodothyronine with the sodium salt on it. So that’s how they get the patent to it. Uhm—again, they don’t m__ it because that’s just not what they do. They give you the T4, they get the TSH back in range. All your thyroid symptoms could still be present. Cold hands, cold feet, anxiety, mood issues, hair thinning, you know, gut here fitting things you know, gut stuff, constipation all could still be there, but if the TSH is in range, they’re happy. They checked off the list, you’re gone. So that’s where you got a dig in deeper. You got a look at the T4, T3 conversion. You got to look at the autoimmunity. You got a look at the nutrients. You gotta look at the adrenal conversion, the gut conversion connection and the liver detox conversion connection, too.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Should you ignore TSH? No. It’s definitely worth factoring TSH in. You just don’t want to use that as the end-all be-all only marker. But you— but when you have the free T3 and the reverse T3, the TPO, the TG antibodies kinda all the stuff we run, the TSH makes a lot more sense when you got a full picture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We like to keep TSH in the equation and look at sometimes people come in with the TSH that’s perfect, but their T4 T3 conversion sucks. And then what do you do? You know when you’re treating the TSH or are you treating the actual patient? So we’ll try to increase thyroid hormones, see if symptoms change and we’ll try to support HPT access communication with specific herbs. And of course, stress modulation and getting infections— getting rid of infections coz that can really mess up the HPT access, the Hypothalamus Pituitary Thyroid connection.
Evan Brand: Yup. For sure. Uh—Leslie and a couple other comments about you know, where to go next? Well, I mean, you know, if people may say, “Oh, we’re biased.” But the answer is get tested. Our philosophy is “Test, don’t guess.” So if you’re confused, you’ve got symptoms that don’t make sense, get tested. That’s the first step. You can look at adrenals, thyroid, gut, get all the puzzle pieces laid on the table. That way you’re not just buying random supplements that you might not actually need. We’ve seen so many people with 20 and 30 supplements that they’re taking and they still feel terrible. And we cut that down to five supplements because it’s based on labs and all of a sudden people get better. So you know, save up your money for that. Maybe you don’t go buy the next newest supplement you hear about. Maybe you— you focus on investing into some testing first.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: And you can check it out on Justin’s site. It’s Justinhealth.com You can look at the supplements, the labs on there. Same thing on my site, Evanbrand.com and we’re happy to help. So, feel free to reach out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And also, couple of people asked about Dr. Gundry’s The Low Lectin Protocol. I think it’s the plant paradox. Again, my thing is if you’re just going to a Paleo template, you’re gonna cut a lot of those lectins out. If you actually cook some of the plants, some of the starches, some of the vegetables and lower the lectins even more, if you still have a lot of gut issues, upgrading it to an autoimmune protocol, you decrease lectins more. If we still have issues and we can move to a specific carbohydrate or GAPS protocol and we decrease lectins even more. So it just depends on where you’re at cooking knocks a great chunk of that out and just going to a Paleo template, where we’re cutting out grains, legumes, dairy and focusing more on non-starchy veg, uhm— lower glycemic, low sugar fruits and safe starches that aren’t grain-based, you’re gonna have a huge effect and grains, where most of the lectins and irritants come from. So again, that— my opinion matches people making things a little bit more complicated than they have to be.
Evan Brand: Marketing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: I mean, he’s done a good job that book is spread.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It has gone viral. Everyone asked me about it all the time. I can’t get a go of a— one day without a patient asking me about it. So I have to follow it. I think I found it on fast reads on Amazon. So I got a—like uhm—abridged version of it that I’m siphoning through.
Evan Brand: Nice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve got a couple of services where they do these summaries. And it’a great. I mean I get 90% of the information.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Suck it up in a half hour and I’m like, “Oop, got it!” That’s it. On to the next one. Well, any other questions you wanted to answer here, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s everything. I think that’s all we can—we can chat on today and we’re gonna do a podcast soon on co-infections. We’re gonna talk about Lyme, Bartonella and Babesia Uh—Justin and I, I mean, we’ve literally got the books like right here that we’re—we’re diving into. We wanna make sure we’re the most educated and current up-to-date with our information before we broadcast to you guys. So make sure you hit subscribe on Justin’s YouTube channel while you’re at, hit subscribe. And uh—we’ll be back again soon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And one last thing. Patient asked here—person asked here on the chat list, uhm—“How do you—how do you choose your functional medicine doctor? How do you trust them?” He said, “I can’t trust them. How do I choose them?” Well, number one, I think they should have some kind of content out there whether its video, audio and/or blog post where you resonate with their information. Like their philosophy, their information, you should resonate. I find most patients are the biggest reason why they don’t get better is because, number one, compliance, and number two, they’ve been burnt and the past or they failed in the past and therefore they’re kind of priming their subconscious to fail again. So they don’t follow through and they’re off to the next one other, you know, they’re making a 180 move in can’t see someone else because some little thing happened. They’re not following through enough. So I think keeping—one, making sure you choose someone based on their philosophy and the information and making sure you resonate at an emotional level and just a logical level. Here’s the plan, generally speaking, right? And then number two, making sure you’ve given enough time and then follow through uh—for it to work.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. I’ll address— address this last question, then we’ll roll here. Uh—Is it common to have to go through a few rounds of infection killing protocols? Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It can.
Evan Brand: You can. It took me a couple of rounds to go through, some herbs to knockout things coz I have multiple infections. When you’re trying to kill five or six or seven things at once, yeah. I can’t take multiple rounds. Why is that? Depends on the person’s immune system health or stress levels, how long they’ve had infections, the amount of damage that’s there, how much inflammation is there, are they sleeping well, do they have a good diet. You know, there’s million factors to answer why that— why that could be. Hope that helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Evan Brand: Andrea is asking a question about his father’s prostate cancer. PSA levels are rising rapidly. Can we cast opinions or advice?
Evan Brand: I can’t. Justin?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s about thyroid, it’s about uhm— prostate issues?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Prostate. Prostate cancer this drug—Enzalutamide had been recommended for father’s prostate cancer PSA levels are rising rapidly. Can you cast opinions or advice?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, let me describe– I have one formula here that’s been helpful. Yeah. I have one compound here that I’ve been using here, just I had a couple of supplement companies reach out and I’m using it. It’s the pomegranate extract, and the flower pollen extract and its cranberry extract. So cranberry, pomegranate and flower pollen. This is an excellent support. Lot of research behind those extracts as well. Lycopene is phenomenal, getting adequate levels of selenium 200 mics a day is phenomenal, enough zinc as well is phenomenal saw palmetto’s great. These are excellent compounds that help. Lycopene is phenomenal as well. Again, the diet has to be in place. You want to get the lifestyle things going and again, these things don’t grow overnight. They probably taken decades to kind of move. So coffee and Coffee enemas may also be helpful to kind of early push detox in a faster more acute kind of way. But some couple of compounds that I mentioned are phenomenal and wouldn’t hurt getting them on board in the meantime.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And look at my podcast I did with the lady named Dr. Nasha Winters.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: She did a book that’s called, “The Metabolic Approach to Cancer” She— she had cancer herself and she’s been holistically supporting people with cancer for about 20 years. So uh— look up Nasha Winters and uh look up her book and you could implement some strategies there hopefully.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also, get the insulin levels under control. Make sure fasting insulin is five or below at least. That’s important because insulin is gonna cause a lot of cells to grow and then also making sure xenoestrogen exposure is mitigated, right? Don’t drink out of plastic bottles, avoid pesticides and GMO’s and glyphosate and Roundup. These are chemicals that you’re gonna get from conventional foods. Obviously, eat organic, right? Pasteur-fed meats. Again, these things— I shouldn’t have to repeat them, but I just can’t assume that everyone knows these stuff.
Evan Brand: They don’t. Not everyone does. So, yeah, keep repeating it and keep preaching. And I think that’s all the questions. So we did— we did really good. That was fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I heard a quote back. It’s a quote from the 1940s, where Joe DiMaggio was interviewed and they said that Joe said, “We noticed that you sprint on and off the field every single time at full speed no matter what.” And he said, “Well, there may be someone coming out to see me for the first time ever that seeing me play the way I’m playing and I wanna play at 100% every time.” And then maybe some people that are coming out for the first time seeing us play here, and we want to make sure that they get that information that we may assume that other people uh— may have, right? The equivalent will be like us jogging on the field, so to speak, if we just assume that.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well, reach out if you need help. Justinhealth.com You can schedule with Justin. Evanbrand.com if you’d like to schedule consults with us. We should have some availability in the next 3 to 6 weeks or so. So just take a look and we’re happy to help you soon as we can.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, by the way, I’m adding in the Mimosa Pudica as well. So I’ll be reporting back on that in the next couple weeks. I think you as well Evan. So we’ll chat about that. Again, I just got that in stock. That’s the Para-1 in my store. I think you have it in your store as well. So, we’ll put that in the show links, too. So that’s a cool new herb that we’re working on. We have a couple other herbal compounds in the mix that we’re using for different types of co-infections that we’re researching uhm—in the background, too.
Evan Brand: Awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, Evan, great chatting with you, man. You have an awesome day. We’ll chat soon.
Evan Brand: You too. Take care
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/para-1/
https://justinhealth.com/products/betaine-hcl-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/liver-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/enzyme-synergy/
https://www.mykidcurescancer.com/nasha-winters/
Immune System, Tapping Technique and GI infections – Podcast Live with Dr. J and Evan | Podcast #131
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand engage in a lively and informative discussion about their recent clinical successes with their patients using the functional medicine approach. Listen to them as they dig into the root cause of their patients’ issues and turn chronic and seemingly complicated problems into success stories.
Know about the tapping technique which involves turning something negative into a better, positive thought. Learn more about GI infections, the bacteria or parasite that may be involved, as well as the tests and treatment options that are proven successful in the functional medicine world.
In this episode, we cover:
03:50 Immune System, bacteria, and infection relationship
15:50 Tapping Technique
19:17 Treating Hypochloridia
24:10 GI infections
28:34 Enzyme Tests
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live on YouTube here. Podcast live on demand. Also, live here on Facebook. Evan, how are you doing, man?
And again, Facebook people you gotta click on the link here uhm—I’ll put in the comments to see Evan’s pretty face and go back and forth on this. How we doing, man?
Evan Brand: What’s going on? I’m feeling really good today. We’ve got a blue skies, the trees are blooming which they probably—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome.
Evan Brand: a year ago in Austin. So I’m enjoying myself.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. So we got podcast on demand. So anyone wants to write in some suggestions as we chit chat here, we’ll figure out what exactly we want to talk about moving forward.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I might as well post a link over here to my Twitter page and see if uh—people are paying attention over there. That way, if they’ve got questions, they can get them answered here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Totally makes sense. Same thing, anyone on Facebook, too, every chimes in first we can get this thing moving. But let’s uh—just talk about some clinical successes in the last week with patients. Any updates from you, man?
Evan Brand: Yes. So interesting update is uh—there’s a female client that comes to mind and she had seven, I believe, I have to go back at here stool test and count. But I believe it was seven infections and this is a combination of two parasites which—let me just pull it up, that way, I’m not just shooting into the dark here, but—Uhm— with these infections, we started a gut protocol and symptom improvement was seen. She was having a lot of irritable bowel symptoms uhm— running to the bathroom. So she showed up with H. pylori, Blastocystis Hominis, Entamoeba and Fragilis and Proteas and Citrobacter. Somehow, cal protectin level was still low which is intestinal inflammation where—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: –I look at but I was surprised. And so anyhow, we put her on this protocol. And this is like 8 weeks. And the H. pylori while it’s still positive, instead of two viral factors, now she’s got one viral factor. The level of H.Pylori has dropped. The Citrobacter is completely gone. The Proteus completely gone. The Blasto is completely gone. But we still got Entamoeba. So there’s still the parasite and there is still the H. pylori there. So we’ve got work to do but yet, we’ve seen 3 or 4 things disappearing. So I think what the takeaway message is from me is that the bodies gonna heal in an interesting way. It may not heal everything at the same time. Some things may be easier to kill. Some things may disappear first, but you gotta heal yourself especially your gut, your microbiome. You gotta heal these things in layers. And that’s what we’re seeing here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So typically with a lot of patients that have chronic issues is there are some underlying stress, right? Emotional, physical, chemical stress but even deeper above and beyond that, there is some level – there’s some level of infection that’s deeper that creating inflammation even though it didn’t show via calprotectin or it’s just creating leaky gut. And the whole leaky gut mechanism is getting the immune system fired up. The more the immune system is fired up, it’s just an energy suck for your body. It’s like uhm—let’s say guests in you guest bathroom that you never go into your house. And they just leave the water on. Just a little bit—little drip, drip, drip. And then you get your water bill at the end of the month, and you’re like, “Where the heck did that bill come from?” And you’re like, “Oh, yeah. The faucet’s on.” But it’s like that with your energy resources. When got these bugs, it really—when the immune system is overactive. And even just a leaky gut, right? The more your immune system is overactive, the more it’s gonna suck your energy dry. That’s why when you get sick, the first symptom you get when you get sick is what? You get a lot of fatigue and malaise coz the immune system is sucking resources. Go ahead—
Evan Brand: I wanna hear uh—a recent case from you, but first I wanna ask you the question that I get asked all the time. And the answer really doesn’t matter because we need to fix the root cause no matter what. But people often ask well– chicken or egg? Was it that ma—my immune system got taxed first? And then I picked up these bacterial pathogens or these parasites? Or did I pick up the parasite and the bacterial pathogens and then that that set my immune system? What’s your take? Can it go either way?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So typically it’s one of two scenarios, right? Typically someone gets exposed to a very high amount of infectious debris, right? Parasitic—parasites. So you drink some really bad water, you to go Mexico, you have really bad meal or at a foreign country, you get the Bali belly, so to speak. And then you’re overwhelmed with all of that infectious debris and then there’s so much of it that it compromises your immune system, you get diarrhea, you have a lot of gut inflammation that creates malabsorption. That malabsorption puts stress on all of your glandular systems and then you spiral downhill. That’s scenario number one. So just the infectious—the infection was so overwhelming, it just threw everything else downhill. Scenario number two is there some type of immune compromisation that’s happening. Meaning adrenal stress, poor diet, poor sleep, or poor diet and lifestyle habits, low nutrient density. The immune system’s kinda a little bit weaker underneath the surface then you get exposed to some of these infectious debris at smaller micro levels that are in the food. And eventually makes its way to the system and creates inflammation.
Evan Brand: So yeah—so let me—let me clarify there. If we’ve—If we’ve got diet, lifestyle mostly dialed in, but let’s say people are cheating with gluten, for example. They still got intestinal permeability going on. You can still have good class, good sleep, blah, blah, blah. But if you’ve got just a simple thing like leaky gut, for example, you could potentially be more susceptible to pick up these infections regardless of whatever else is dialed in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean—here’s the deal with leaky gut, too. If you’re creating leaky gut, and then there’s some research, you know, on the non-celiac, gluten sensitivity side of the fence, that looks at these foods. Even if you’re not like reacting to a it, like symptomatically, and even if you’re not like having like IBS -like symptoms, bloating, you know, gas constipation, diarrhea, that gluten can still create leaky gut. Where the undigested food particles in the gut can make their way into the bloodstream and create stress. And then the LPS that comes in there along with that, that’s the— the bacterial debris can get into bloodstream and create a lot of mood issues as well. So you can still have leaky gut and not risk from gluten— and still not respond to gluten in general.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. I just posted a post on uh—Facebook which I think might be a slightly controversial which was I wrote this little bit of a letter and I put kind of like these five things that have happened over the last year or so where people have said, “Evan, I’ve ditched psychiatrist or I’ve ditched my psychologist or my marriage counselor, or my conventional doctor because of functional medicine.” I kinda wrote the reasons why of how if you lower inflammation, you may need less adjustments at the chiropractor, for example. If you heal the gut, you start producing your neurotransmitters optimally, you might not you’re your antidepressants anymore, so you might not need your psychiatrist. Or if you heal your adrenals, you’re not gonna snap at your children anymore, so therefore you’re not gonna need the marriage counselor that is telling you need to stop yelling at your kids. And how basically how functional medicine can literally, not intentionally, but it’s just a side effect is that we can replace these other industries. I’m not saying these other industries are bad for mental health care or anything like that. But a lot of times, this is not root cause medicine. And my wife and I went out you with a friend of ours yesterday and she said she had a lot of stress, she had to put her dog down and she called up her psychiatrist and said, “Hey I need help, I’m freaking out.” What does he do? He prescribed her 60 Xanax and says, “Here’s your Xanax bars and take these.” And I told her, I said, “Listen, your anxiety and your stress from this issue is not a Xanax deficiency.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: How about we do some emotional freedom technique. We start tapping. How about we cleanup the diet? And then before we left, out the parking lot, I had her do the quick coherence technique, the Heartmath, like the heart focus breathing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And focusing on someone that she loved and we got done with it, and she said, “That was weird.” I said, “What happened?” And she said, “I got tingly and warm.” I said, “Oh, it worked.” And she said, “What happened?” I said, “Well, you just took yourself out of fight or flight that you’re probably stocked in which is causing you to be dependent on Xanax and now we’ve pushed you into that parasympathetic rest and digest mode.” And she feels better. And this is what this is all about. Uh—a little bit of uh—off-subject uh—, but I just wanted to mention to people, check on my Facebook post and you’ll read about what I’m saying. I’m not saying these other uh— practitioners out there are garbage. What I am saying is that if you’re not getting a practitioner to focus on root cause, even if they are psychiatrist, if they’re not a root cause psychiatrist, then what the hell are they doing?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about resources, right? And in functional medicine world, we’re trying to help enhance your resources. So just like someone with more money in their bank account can buy more things, well if we enhance our mental, emotional bank account via healthy and diet and lifestyle functional medicine principles, we have more resources to deal with stress in our life. Whether it’s family, friends, being a parent, being present for our partner, just being able to do the hobbies of a hobbit—hobbits—uh—
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The hobbies and the habits that we have going on in our life. I got uh—I guess I’m missing my uh – Lord of the Rings movies there. Yeah. So—It ‘s all about resources, right? So we have to make sure that we have enough resources in our system so we can allocate them toward these stressors. And I always tell my patients, “Have you ever tried dealing with stress on 0 night sleep? or “Try doing your taxes the next day when you’re getting like three hours of sleep?” You’re just not gonna be able to handle it. You don’t have the resources. So everything we’re trying to do is let’s test the resources of our body systems, let’s look where the hormone’s at, let’s look at where the gut resources are at, let’s look at detox and nutrient resources are at, let’s support them and let’s work on fixing them.
Evan Brand: Well, the analogy I like to use is we’re just using a big spotlight. Because a lot of different industries and health care, what they do is they use like a little laser pointer or like one of those tiny little keychain flashlight. And they shine something real dimly into one corner. And you’re like, “Oh, Justin looks like we found something. We found some anxiety issues, here’s the Xanax.” But instead, we come in with a giant spotlight and we’re like, “Whoa, look at the left corner of this microbiome. We got parasitic and bacterial infections, which can steal your nutrients, can mess up your blood sugar and cause anxiety. Look over here, we’ve got some adrenal issues. You got spiking of cortisol that’s gonna need to be addressed.” And then we shine the spotlight over here, “Oh, take a look at our detox pathways on the organic acids, you’ve got trouble over here.” And “Oopp, we shine the spotlight behind us, here’s mitochondrial issues. This is why you’re so fatigued.” And that’s the—I think that’s the greatest analogy. It’s a little laser pointer or a little small keychain flashlight, which is just pinpointing one industry of psychiatry or psychology or whatever versus exploring everything. Which is why for you and I, it’s tough for us to become the blank guy. You know people out there, “the thyroid guy” “ the detox chick” “ the bone broth chick” You know what I mean? It’s really gonna be tough for you and I to just say we’re the blank person because I don’t want to limit myself. I wanna let everyone know it is all encompassing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And if rest and niche yourself down, I think it’s a bad thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Like from a marketing standpoint, right? Marketing is just telling the truth attractively. You know it’s good to have the niche because you wanna reach the people that have special conditions. Because if like, my specialty is thyroid. Number one, I have—I have or had a thyroid issue. It’s under control. Autoimmune thyroid issue. So I’m more passionate about that issue. But again, to treat a thyroid issue, you have to be able to treat all of the systems. So it’s kind of a mythology, like you don’t just ever treat thyroid, you treat the whole thing. But you may mark and put information out there that’s gonna resonate and speak to someone with a thyroid issue more. But again, the underlying issue is from education and clinical standpoint. We’re addressing the key underlying surface issues and the deep root issues as well. So we’re never ignoring it. We may speak to someone uhm—more specifically and get into the more nuances of that condition, but it all comes back down to the foundational stuff that we always talk about.
Evan Brand: Right. I would say my specialties would be— it’s become parasites really. I mean, I’m seeing so many each week and it’s just so fun. I guess because I had parasites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You had a parasite, you.
Evan Brand: Uh—Yeah. And also depression, I mean because depression is what got me into this whole thing. IBS and depression in college, I mean, like I told you before, I had to figure out when I went into a college class, where’s the bathroom. Coz I have to get out in the middle of the class to run to the bathroom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And so for me, depression, IBS, parasites, you know, those are all linked together—the whole gut-brain connection. And I really am empathetic for people that have struggled with that because it’s so common and if you diagnosed with IBS, that’s a pretty generic diagnosis. And unless you’re with functional medicine practitioners, you’re gonna get an acid blocker, an antispasmodic—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely.
Evan Brand: — or some other drug and—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well actually, you were diagnosed with IBS, right?
Evan Brand: I was.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you use the antispasmodic, you used the medications that helps with the gastroparesis. You know—
Evan Brand: Well, they never –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They even do that—
Evan Brand: Well they never got to use it. They try. They wrote me the prescription pad but I denied all three of the drugs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the thing is, too, we can also use natural medicines for a lot of those things. That may not fix the root cause, right? There’s root cause medicine and there is using natural medicine in a way that’s gonna help alleviate the symptoms that’s gonna up regulate physiology so things work better. But we have to still be investigating and digging to the root cause, right? So we’re dealing with someone with gastroparesis or low motility, we may add in things like ginger. We may add in things like carnitine. We may add, you know, higher amounts of mag citrate to keep that uhm—migrating motor complex moving. But we are still digging in deep. We’re still making the diet, the lifestyle. We’re still enhancing digestive nutrients, uh—hydrochloric acid enzymes. And then we’re digging deep for the infections. And we’re trying to lock in those diet and lifestyle habits, right? The supplements are great because they can give us that symptomatic relief while we continue to dig over here to the root cause. So as long as you have, you know, that four pace envision that addresses some of the symptoms without the side effects, you know of some of the drugs, which may have more side effects than what you’re treating, and then working on the functional medicine plan, I think we’re in a really good place.
Evan Brand: I agree. Yeah. I actually got a good—good success with that IB Synergy product from designs which get Bonigut in there. It’s got the 5-HTP. I had a guy with just super bad IBS and I said, “Man” I mean he was critically, critically stricken with both diarrhea and constipation just alternating every other day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So I have him going with that 5-HTP Bonigut blend. And he got better. Now we start to wait for lab results but yeah—I mean sometimes we will do some of the quick fix of band-aid situations to fix things, but we still got to work backwards. I guess to answer these questions uh—should we answer the question about the cancer question here or shall we just make a whole show on the future?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’ll do a whole show on that. I’ll get some experts on. I got Dr. David Jocker is coming next month as well. He was in the truth about cancer series. And we’ll go on ketogenic diets and we’ll talk more about therapeutic ways to address cancer outside of just the natural chemotherapy. So we’ll hold that one that—we need more time for that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Agreed. Uh—Samuel asked, “What is the tapping technique? Can you show us? Well since most of our audiences are gonna be audio listeners we’re not gonna take up the air time to show you the technique, but the best resources—EFT (Evan-Frank-Tom) EFT.mercola.com and you can just view the different acupressure meridians that you’re gonna tap. But then also, you’re gonna learn about the affirmations that you can use for emotional freedom technique and that’s something Justin and I use all the time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s helpful. I’m—I’m gonna just give it 15 seconds of airtime here, so—just—I do two hands coz it’s adding it’s more efficient. But you just tap the inners part of the eyebrow, the outer parts of the eyebrow, under the eyes, I do under the nose, and the bottom part of the chin the same time. And then I do both collarbones. So I do this, and you can go top of the head and tap midline. So I do two hands coz I just feel like you get more stimulation. So I go here, and I’m just thinking about whatever is pissing me off, my wife, I just think about it.
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I kinda give it a number. So if I’m a t like 6/10 regarding irritation, I just think about it. Whatever that issue is, whether it’s like, you know, the person driving in front of me is so slow or whatever. And I try to knock that 6 out of 10 so that 10 is the worst. 6 is like 60% to being at the worst. I try to knock it down to a4 to a 3. And so every round—every 2 rounds or so, you kinda just check back in and see if you knock it down. And you go as you kinda knock everything down to a 3.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And we have—I—I start at the top of the crown which I usually like—many ways—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can do that. You can start there, you can end there.
Evan Brand: Now do you do the sides? I know Mercola, he’s big on the side of rib cage under the armpit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I do that, too, sometimes. It’s just wasn’t good for a video.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So you criss cross?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I do two at the same time just coz it’s stimulation.
Evan Brand: No. I mean you criss cross your arms so the underarm’s like this. I do like a monkey.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Haha
Evan Brand: And then—and then finish with the wrist. I typically finished by tapping the insides of the wrist together then doing the affirmations. So even though I’m angry, or even though I’m anxious, I deeply love and accept myself. But you gotta say the affirmation verbally. I tell people if you can, if you’re just embarrassed, then don’t do it. But why be embarrassed? Nobody—nobody is paying that much attention to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That depends, too. Like you can do this stuff, and you can kinda say like if you’re at—let’s say, if you’re lying in bed and you’re just really stewing on something and your wife’s next to you and you don’t wanna wake her up, then you can just kinda think it in your head. And then you can just, you know, do the affirmations, tap like this. And then you can tap here, and think about the issues.
I like them to end, though, with a positive thing. So you can end with something positive. So then I just go into like, “What is it that I want to manifest?” So I’m going into right there. I’m thinking about whatever I’m gonna try to create or produce in my life, I just tap it while I’m thinking about it. And the whole idea of tapping is you’re just stimulating various meridian systems that have been mapped out via acupuncture system for thousands of years. And really what it’s doing is it’s neutralizing the negative response that’s stored in the limbic system or in that subconscious of your—more in the psychological side of it. And you’re trying to kinda rewire it so you can get a good pattern there instead. So then, naturally that reflux is to go back to the better thing and not to the negative thing.
Evan Brand: So if you do affirmation about the bad part, would you do like an affirmation about the bad part and an affirmation for a positive?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So I start off with the negative and just try to lessen—lessen it first.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz if you’re—feeling negative, it’s really hard to be positive when you’re negative so I try to decrease the negative to about a three. And then I go into the positive because then, you are in a better place to deal with the positive, right? It’s kinda like when someone tells you to relax and you’re pissed off, like relax, calm down. You just wanna punch him, right? Like, “No, I’m too wound up, come on.”
So I wanna get that dialed in and then now I’m relaxed, now I can rewire it and create some positive things.
Evan Brand: I like it. I like it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So calm down first, and then work on manifestation.
Evan Brand: Should we answer a couple of more questions here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Let’s hit it, man. Let’s hit it.
Evan Brand: Solam asked, “How long does it take to heal hypochloridia?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It totally depends, right? If you have emotional stressors that are unresolved ore you’re eating foods that are incredibly inflammatory, maybe never. But if you’re making the root causal changes and your managing your stress, and you’re fixing the underlying gut stuff, I would say within 3 to 6 months, you have a really good chance of not needing hydrochloric acid to digest your food. But again, everyone is different. A longer—the longer the issues been going on, the more severe the infections, and the more infections that are layered in there, I’d say longer, up to a year, at least.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ll just have my two cents to that, too. If you had a previous history of a prescription, as a blocker’s proton pump inher—inhibitors are now it’s open to counter like the Xanax or the Toms, or anything like that, or—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: Or if you’ve had H. pylori which we’ve chatted about many times, then I would say it may lengthen that time, too, to fix that stomach acid issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The longer that gut’s has been worn down, the more the immune system is revved up like you get patients are just supersensitive to every little thing. Like I can’t even put in an enzyme, I can’t even put in our apple cider vinegar or lemon juice or the smallest fermented food sets them off. It’s really hard and you’re looking at a couple of years to really dive into it because the immune system is so revved up and it’s so ready to attack the smallest invader that it’s so hard to put things into help and heal it because it’s looking at everything as a foe not a friend.
Evan Brand: Right. We really, really have the baby step in those cases so that’s why—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yeah. I mean, just like you heal, with you know, food is medicine there, you go really slow and you do lots of things in broth form, in soup form so it’s – so it is so palatable. There is very little digestion that has to happen. And typically one supplement at a time and one nutrient at a time, titrate up from low to high. Even if it’s something that they can handle, if they go high dose, off the bat, their immune system just freaks out.
Evan Brand: Well I wanna hit on something you just mentioned which is if we’re talking 1 to 2 years, it takes extreme patient—extreme patience for patients and clinicians because for us, that is a very intensive case for us to take on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: And you know, maybe this is to toot our own horns, maybe it’s just calling out the obvious that we do take the time, you know, with people we’re working with. Sometimes it maybe 30-45 even an hour-long call for a follow-up just to take these baby steps. Whereas, let’s jus say some of the clinicians that we’ve seen out there, it’s too cookie-cutter approach and they don’t have the mental bandwidth or capacity for empathy to baby step this people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So it’s here’s your cookie-cutter protocol, good luck.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Where with us, we’ve really, really, really gonna get super details.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And so this is why if you go and you buy like a leaky gut online program or some other type of program, and you get limited results and you get to us, we’re not gonna be surprised if you suffered through that, and you didn’t get a good result. Because at the end of the day, that’s why Justin and I haven’t created online courses at this point because it’s—it’s hard for us to sleep at night thinking that we’ve created a program that’s too cookie-cutter. We’ve really got to figure out a way that we’re gonna be able to work in all the minutiae and the small details and the variations—variation A, B and C, D for different people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So if someone uh—packages something up all beautiful and says, “Oh, it’s $297 and all your problems are gonna be healed.” Uh—please be a little bit skeptical of that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree. And I’ve talked to you about a patient that I had today that email in that was dropping out of care. And we try to always set realistic expectations. This person just had her labs reviewed a month or two ago, and had multiple parasitic infections, severe adrenal dysfunction, HPA axis dysfunction, and then a lot of issues on her organic tests. Uh— detoxification issues, mitochondrial issues, and we just started with simple adrenal support, made diet and lifestyle changes and she had some— some side-effects so we try to cut things down, go slower. And we’re gonna kinda reconvene and work on supporting detoxification, but person had dropped out. Now, the problem is, to have expectations that things will work off the bat when so many things are wrong like that, expectations are incorrect. So a lot of people they have preconceived notions even if you spell it out to them and you let them know, “Here’s where we’re at now, here’s where we’re going.” They forget because they—they want it done now. And they think because things didn’t work in that initial uhm—in that initial experience, that there is no way to fix it. So continuing to harp on patients in managing their expectations, even though they have a lot of stuff they’re projecting from past failures, we kinda have to get through it. Make sure expectations are real and that make sure they know, “Hey, here’s where we’re going now. Here’s where we’re going next.” These things ahead that may have to be dealt with for us to really see great changes.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. We got another question here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s hit ‘em.
Evan Brand: Let’s hit Steve’s question. After all GI infections are eradicated, how long does it take the gut to fully heal? All my infections are gone, but I’m still dealing with IBS, leaky gut and issues after H. pylori.” I’m gonna hit on this first Dr. Justin Marchegiani, if you don’t mind.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. I know you’re gonna say it, by the way.
Evan Brand: Okay. So – haha if—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you say it—If you say it, I’ll—I’ll tell you that.
Evan Brand: Okay. Alright. Please. Alright. So here’s what I’m gonna say. You say all your infections are gone, but you’re still dealing with IBS, leaky gut, and issues, I would like to know what test was this that says all your infections are gone because I bet all of your infections are not gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes! Whoo! I knew it. Yeah. You’re totally right.
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You’re totally right. And then also, just making sure that you have the digestive nutrients on board to help heal the gut lining and the digestive support to break down the food and then I would make the food more—more palatable right now. I’d be looking more at the GAPS or an SCD or more of a soup or broth approach that makes the food really easy to take in. No raw veggies, uhm—try to keep it really palatable so the body can access it without much stress.
Evan Brand: Alright. So the beauty of the Internet, Stevie says—Stevie replied and he says, “DRG” Well, uhm— Justin–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s missing a lot of them. It’s missing a lot. You gotta do the DRG with the GI map. I a—I never do the DRG by itself for the most part—always both. You gotta do both.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if there’s still an issue with the DRG and the GI MAP, I want them go for the 41 side-by-side.
Evan Brand: Yup. Agreed. So, Stevie, not that—you know, we’re not diagnosing you. That’s not what these calls are for. But, hey, Justin and I have seen a lot of false negatives with DRG and some other test out there. So potentially some stuff going on. And I would like to add a couple of points about like the—the issues, the leaky gut type stuff. You know, make sure you are doing some of the easy supports, too. You know, chamomile is great. You can do chamomile in a supplemental form. You’ve got chamomile teas, uhm—you’ve got L- glutamine. So there are some leaky gut supplements that why your til—still trying to figure stuff out, you can still be taking support of nutrients in the meantime while waiting for retest.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Totally. Let’s hit the uh—last question there by—E Center Riley. See here, just diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, TPO and TGB bodies, 465 is that high? Eliminated the foods, gluten, dairy, soy, balance in blood sugar, hard with 5 kids. What should I focus on next? So 465 is definitely high. The LabCorp reference range for TPO is 34. Anything 34 above is considered positive—I think it’s above 34. 34 below is considered positive. And anything about 20, for me, I considered to be subclinical. So that is high. Anything above or around 500 is definitely high. I’ve seen patients at 2000, though. I’ve seen patients that go from 2000 to below a 100. Now, my goal is to get people—If I were you, I’d like to see a 70 to 80% reduction in that. Again, maybe you were higher before you made those changes. So I’m not sure if it was gluten, dairy, soy. That stuff was cut out and then you saw the drop. But either way, uhm—getting enough selenium in there, 400 micrograms of selenium, addressing the underlying infections, things like H. pylori, Blasto and Yersinia can be coming to increase the antibodies. And then making sure the adrenals are looked at. There’s a strong adrenal-thyroid connection and a lot of people who have thyroid issues also have adrenal issues. And remember, TPO is a microsomal or essentially it’s uh—intracellular microsomal antibody that helps bind the thyroid hormone together. So if you’re making antibodies to that, it’s gonna prevent that thyroid hormone that I—Iodination process from occurring. So making sure we have the adrenal support there because the adrenals help produce cortisol. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory that’s gonna help with the inflammation. And with the TPO there uhm—you could potentially have increase in hydrogen peroxide, especially if there’s small amounts of iodine getting in there. So get them the selenium will help neutralize that hydrogen peroxide into H20. High quality H20 which is uh—not gonna be as inflammatory.
Evan Brand: Well said. Yeah. And so uhm—Isabella Wentz, I just did podcast with her a couple of weeks ago. Actually that was my last uploaded episode. And uhm—we’re talking about bacterial infections, too. So you mentioned some of the parasites and she’s seen the same thing the parasite but also the bacteria. The Klebsiella, the Citrobacter, and all these autoimmune triggers has been bad guys for uh—these Hashimoto’s situations and these antibodies, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, look for the bacteria, too, and you can definitely fix this stuff and you can make significant progress.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I mean one person here, wildlab access, “How do you test for various enzymes?”Number one, if you have gut stress, you probably have low hydrochloric acid. And if you have low hydrochloric acid, you probably have low enzymes. Why? Because hydrochloric acid is important for acts of—for converting pepsinogen to pepsin which is the proteolytic enzyme. Hydrochloric acid lowers the acidity of the chyme, which is the mixed up food in the intestine. That inten—that food that chyme that goes into the small intestine which the acidity then triggers the pancreas to make bicarbonate, it also triggers CCK that then caused that the gallbladder to produce bile that also stimulates the pancreas to make light based trypsin and chymotrypsin and all the enzymes that come down. So if you have enzyme issues, you also have hydrochloric acid issues, but we can also assess it by looking at enzyme markers, like elastase, too, which will uhm—look at that in the DRG or the GI MAP test.
Evan Brand: You better get that frog out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Frog out. It just attacked me, man. I’m like, Ugh—
Evan Brand: Alright.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My water—so uh—yeah. Elastase, I think it’s elastase 1 is the enzyme marker we typically look at for uhm— low enzymes. But typically, just assuming that we have digestive stress, let’s assume it for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean that’s the same—the same answer that I would say for the leaky gut. I had people say, “Oh, can you test me for leaky gut?” It’s like, “Yeah. We can go to Cyrex and spend 500 bucks if you want to, but based on your symptoms, I guarantee there’s intestinal permeability. You’ve got XYZ. And we can—we don’t need to spend the 500 bucks on that test. Save your money for the organic acids, your comprehensive stool panels, the GPL-TOX, maybe heavy metal testing. Save your money for that stuff that you can’t really guess on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely. I agree, man. Well, anything else you wanna hit off the bat here? I mean I think—I had some really good successes last week, too, with some patients that had chronic pain, chronic mood, chronic energy, hair loss. And I mean—just really simple things. We—we fix their hormones, this person has autoimmune thyroid, uhm—hypothyroid as well. T3 was super low, it was uh– T4 to T3 conversion issue, dysregulated cortisol. They had a lot of malabsorption and they had a couple of infections and we just—we just took them down the map. An then just everything first time around, uhm—just knocked in place. I mean it’s like you swing the bat once and it’s connected. It’s gone. Those were the patients where its like, “It’s just so rewarding coz it’s just—it’s easy” And then you have some patients where it’s a lot more trial and error and digging in. So it’s nice to have those home runs every now and then.
Evan Brand: Oh, man. I—so I had a home run earlier with this guy that I got off the phone with name Dion. And he was on an inhaler. An asthma inhaler.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And also I believe he was taking uh—allergy medication, like a prescription allergy medication.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Maybe it was one or the other. He alternated or he was on the inhaler something. But he was on prescriptions for allergies. And all we did is we cleaned up the diet, we’ve addressed some gut infections. He had candida and I believe a couple bacterial infections. I don’t believe he had parasites. I have to look back. But I remember a couple of infections, fix the gut, uh—supported adrenal’s basic adrenal support, some adaptogens. And I talked with him today and he said, “Evan, I’ve not used my medication in the last six weeks. And everything is blooming here right now. All the trees and plants and everything are blooming and normally, I’m debilitated. He said, “I’m completely fine.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t that awesome?
Evan Brand: How in the world just by working on the gut and adrenals am I not allergic to the environment anymore? It’s just like, “Oh, it makes me feel so good.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see that all the time, too. And hydrochloric acid is one of those things that’s really great with allergies, too. You notice that?
Evan Brand: Ain’t that weird? I mean since digestive enzymes, I told him, I said, “Man, we’ve gotta keep up digestive enzymes.” And then actually I am gonna send him a bottle of some of the like natural herbal anti-histamines, just in case. Because he started sneezing on the phone. I’m like, “Whoa, maybe you’re not all the way out of the water yet. Have this on hand, in case you need it.” So the coresatin in, the rutin, some of those–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hesperetin
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The things I love for allergies: number one, just really get a good air filter. I used one by Advanced Air. You can see that at justinhealth.com/shop Look at the approved products. I like it. It’s good. Uhm—and then your natural anti-histamine degranulating compounds. In my product, Aller Clear. Stinging Nettle, coresatin, and then you’re gonna have like some vitamin C in that, some potassium bicarb as well. So those are really good. And you can go up to eat. The nice thing about it, just not gonna be drowsy. So you can get that allergy support without getting the drowsiness and then really make sure the diet is anti-inflammatory. Up the hydrochloric acid because HDL is really important with low—with allergy. It’s gonna make a big difference.
Evan Brand: Yup, Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ginger. Ginger is phenomenal, too, for allergies. Really good.
Evan Brand: I love ginger. So it’s a great nutrient. I’d do teas, ginger kombucha, there’s so much you can do with ginger.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. By the way, right after this, I’ve got a new grill. So I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna grill some grass-fed hotdogs, right? And then I’ve got some sauerkraut with mustard. And I’ve got a nice ginger kombucha, I’m gonna open up. So I’m really excited for my lunch break today.
Evan Brand: Nice. What kind of grill? Is that one of those pellet jobs?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I actually—I got a new Webber just because it’s—it’s—my other one was 10 years old. And then the knobs are starting to go. So I got a nice, little Webber Spirit. So it’s great. It’s got three burners. Love it. And uhm—I got a smoker that I use sometimes for ribs on the weekend just like a 4-hour job. So it’s good to have a day or an afternoon to kinda be at home to enjoy that one but—Yeah. So love my grilling. Try not to get things charred. Try to keep the heterocyclic amines and the polyaromatic hydrocarbons to a minimum.
Evan Brand: Agreed. Agreed, man. Cool. Well I don’t have one on my end.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You wanna have a share?
Evan Brand: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hope you guys are liking these calls here. We wanna do more. We wanna connect with the listeners. Our purpose really is to serve and help people get their health back. If people want more feedback, or want more kinda like rolling up the sleeves and specifically diving into your case, go to notjustpaleo.com or justinhealth.com, click on the schedule buttons. And we are here to help you out. Evan, anything else, man?
Evan Brand: That’s it. Have a great day people, drink clean water, get rest, reduce stress, be grateful. It’s gonna go a long way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And people on Facebook, I’m hoping we can get Evan on here soon. We gotta just figure that out. So hopefully, soon we’ll do that. So Evan, great chatting with you, man. We’ll talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take Care. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/aller-clear/
https://justinhealth.com/products/advanced-pure-air/
http://catalog.designsforhealth.com/IB-Synergy-60
http://notjustpaleo.com/227-dr-izabella-wentz-hashimotos-protocol/