Enzyme Therapy and Cancer – Getting To The Root Cause of Cancer – Dr. Linda Isaacs | Podcast #383
In this video, Dr. Justin and Dr. Linda discuss an educational and informative discussion about enzyme therapy and its relationship to cancer. In addition, she highlights her close connection to the late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a former doctor in New York City and a follower of Dr. William Donald Kelly’s work.
The podcast covers various essential topics related to cancer and alternative therapies. Dr. Isaacs delves into metabolic types and how different individuals may require other treatment approaches. She also touches upon the impact of processed sugar, processed foods, pesticides, and xenoestrogens on cancer growth. Dr. Isaacs emphasizes the need to treat cancer holistically and believes that these environmental elements might substantially impact the development of cancer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
04:08 – Views on Carbs and Fats Leading to Cancer
08:32 – Type of Enzymes for Cancer Treatment
14:02 – Potential Root Causes for Cancer
19:51 – When to check if it is a Gut Problem
22:52 – Preventing the Side Effects of Chemotherapy
33:11 – Chemotherapy Standard Care and Managing Side Effects
39:15 – Antioxidants Support
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, excited for today’s podcast. I have Dr. Linda Isaacs here, really excited to chat with her today. She’s from Austin as well, and we’re going to be diving into the topic of cancer and enzyme therapy. Dr. Linda, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I’m doing good! Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really glad to be here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent! Very nice to have you! So, I know your background is you specialize in cancer, natural cancer therapies. I know you can be connected for, I think, at least 10 or 20 years with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, the former late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, in the New York City area. I know he passed, what 2017? It’s been that long ago?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: 2015 actually.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ‘15? It was a heart issue wasn’t it?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, we don’t really know what happened, but he’s, he did a full day’s, day of work and then went home and passed away suddenly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my gosh!
Dr. Linda Isaacs: But it’s not really clear what exactly happened. But yes, he and I worked together for many years. In fact, I met him when I was in medical school when I was a third-year medical student. I was assigned to an internal medicine team for my clinical rotation and he was the intern. And he was actually engaged in doing research at the same time. Just goes to show how devoted he was because most people aren’t trying to do research when they’re medical intern.
But he was looking into the work of William Donald Kelly our predecessor, with this type of treatment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wasn’t he a dentist as well, Kelly?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, Dr. Kelly was a dentist, an orthodontist by training and he had kind of an academic interest in nutrition. In other words, he thought about it, read about it, didn’t do it, until he himself got sick. And then, he put together a treatment protocol for himself and when he got better people started coming to him, to not to get their teeth straightened but to get their cancer straightened out.
And so he wound up, in effect, turning into an alternative cancer practitioner and then Nick went, and went through his files and found a lot of amazing cases told me about it that’s how I wound up getting into this line of work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow and then were you working with Dr. Gonzalez’s last day?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I’m sorry?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You said he was working that day and then he went home and he passed away. Were you able to work with him that last day he was there too?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I was not physically in the office that day because I had just moved into a new apartment but the last communication I had with him was actually him congratulating me about an article that I got published and you know it, I obviously treasured that email. But it was totally sudden you know, he was at work that day, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow yeah, the first, I think, at first I came across Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, was in a Gary Knoll documentary in the in the early 2000s. He was talking about enzyme therapy there and I think he was also interviewed in Suzanne Summer’s book Knockout, which was really interesting and that’s where kind of the enzyme therapies were really brought to my forefront.
Also, I think he was connected, I think Dr William Kelly may have gotten him into the metabolic-typing diet and he was doing a lot of metabolic typing on patients as well. Does that ring a bell?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Oh, absolutely! That’s a big part of the work that we do as well. I still use that general concept, so yes. Dr. Kelly had, you know, through clinical observation, noticed that not all of his patients needed the same thing, and that’s something that I continue to use as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so with metabolic typing, you kind of have your slow oxidizer, your mix, and your fast oxidizer, right? Essentially, a protein-type in between, kind of like, zone-type and like more of a carb-type, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: That’s correct, I tend to use more about autonomic physiology and oxidizing concept, but yes, that’s the general idea that different people need different things, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you find more of the cancer patients tend to be more like protein types, where there are, maybe too much carbohydrate, maybe the glucose is converting and maybe as a fuel source for cancer? Do you see that more in today’s society? Not enough protein and good fats?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I certainly think fats, you know, good fats are important for a lot of people. You know, there’s been this whole craze for the last 30 to 40 years of using all kinds of junk fats, which is not good for anybody. But most types of cancers actually go more on the vegetarian side, and the carcinomas, which would fit into, you know, breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic, prostate, the major cancers.
The ones that we feel are more carnivorous are the blood disorders like Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma those types. Those are the ones that I’m more likely to put on a meat diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, interesting, because you see a lot of the pet scans, right? The visual imagery where you’re giving radioactive glucose, so it seems like, even conventional medicine kind of has an idea that, “Hey, we’re going to give this radioactive solution and we’re going to see where it goes.” And so, if you were to look at the big foods today, I mean do you feel like processed sugar is an issue? Do you feel like pesticides and a lot of the GMO in the foods are also driving cancer growth? What other aspects in the food do you think are factors?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I certainly think that processed sugar and processed foods in general are not good for anybody. And pesticides, you all of those xenoestrogens as they’re called, the molecules in the environment that function like estrogens, all of those things are not at all good for us. I think they can cause one type of problem in one person in a different type of problem in another, but they’re not good for anybody.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, if I have someone like, on a diet, they’re eating like let’s say some grass-fed meat and they’re eating some good healthy fat within the meat, maybe coconut oil, things like that, good health and they’re avoiding the excess omega-6. How important is that little bit of extra carbohydrate for some like, could they do some squash or sweet potato? Or for some cancers, is that even too much and could set them over the edge? How strict do you have to be with some of these recommendations if their overall diet is really clean?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, see the the issue for me is that, I don’t think that sugar or natural sugars are going to be, or natural starches, are going to be the make a root issue for cancer. You know, again, it just sort of depends on how metabolically unhealthy somebody is but I personally believe that the real root issue is a lack of pancreatic enzymes and so that’s where I give people a lot of enzymes.
You know I have people that are alive and well and doing great years out who were eating natural sugars and natural carbs and drinking carrot juice and you know all of the things that somebody that’s a real advocate of the ketogenic diet would say is not a good idea. And so, it’s just not really my focus. I don’t put anybody on a diet that’s restrictive. It starts to get really difficult to know what what to eat, especially if you’re talking about somebody that shouldn’t be on a lot of protein. Well then, if they’re not going to eat protein and they’re not going to eat carbs, well then, what are they going to eat?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that’s, in fact right.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: A buttered avocado? You know, I just don’t see
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right! Exactly!
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Not feasible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I remember an interview that Dr. Gonzalez did, I think it was in 2010, with Dr. Mercola, and it was right after the passing of Steve Jobs. And I remember vaguely he was making the connection because I think Jobs was a known fruititarian. He was in the in the 80s, it was very culty at Apple where like, “If you weren’t a fruititarian, you weren’t accepted!”, right?
And so, he was kind of making the connection of, “Hey, the beta cells of the pancreas are really important for making insulin”, but I think is it the out, no? I think, it’s the, that’s also could wear down potentially the exocrine function of the pancreas, making enzymes as well. Any connection with the excess insulin from the carbs could impact negatively the exocrine pancreatic enzyme output?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I don’t know, maybe, it’s not something I’ve really thought about. I suppose that could be possible. You know, I do believe that something happens for some people that they’re not making enough of the pancreatic enzymes whether that’s just getting older or whether that’s, you know, some of the like a byproduct of all the metabolic consequences that come with being overweight and Insulin resistant. Not really sure, it’s a good question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, let’s dive into some of the enzymes. So, I mean, obviously, there’s different kinds that are out there. We have, you know, your proteolytic, your amylase, your carbohydrate base, your lipase. Obviously, there’s some that are enteric coated, you have like your lumbrokinase, your sera peptidase. What type of enzymes do you like, and what levels?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The enzymes that I use with cancer patients are actually just bottom line freeze-dried pancreas in a capsule. They’re not and there is a little bit of an activation process that’s done but there’s some debate as to whether the truly active thing with cancer is the proteolytic, that means, protein dissolving, proteolytic enzymes or whether it’s actually the precursor form for those proteolytic enzymes.
Because when the enzymes are sitting there in the pancreas, they’re actually what are called pro-enzymes they’re not quite active because if they were active they would chew up the pancreas and that’s no good. That’s actually very bad if that happens. And so, they come as this packaged form, a precursor form, but there are some scientific studies that would suggest that that’s actually what’s active against cancer and not the truly activated enzymes. So, by just using freeze-dried pancreas, we’re getting quite a lot of the enzymes that are available actually in the precursor form, that’s what we did.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, so you do like a pancreatic, like a proto morphogen type of thing? Like a glandular extract?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: No, it’s just freeze-dried meat in effect. It’s with everything intact, fat and everything. You know, there’s some reasons to believe that the fat may actually stabilize the enzymes. Those proto morphogens, I must admit, I’m not completely familiar with exactly how they’re processed, but I believe that it’s a salt precipitate, which means that they mince up the organ and then they mix it into a salt solution and then see what settles out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: …removed some of the fats, yeah. This, what we’re using is a lot simpler, and it’s, you know, everything in the organ is, in effect, in the glandular.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great, so you’re getting like a full ancestral type of support, and is there a certain supplement company do you like for the glandular, specifically? I know Dr Gonzalez, I think has mentioned Standard Process, there’s other ones out there.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The product that I use, the closest thing that’s commercially available is made by Allergy Research Group, which also sells under the label Nutricology. And it’s called Pancreas, so that’s, there’s a small company that only sells to my patients that I mainly use by the Allergy Research Group product is available commercially.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great and then what kind of doses are you using? Are you spreading it throughout the day and does it matter if it’s empty stomach when you dose it specifically?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, well, I mean to some extent I don’t really like to get into a lot of details because I don’t think it would be very responsible of me to encourage people to try to treat themselves with something as serious as cancer. You know, and also, the doses vary depending on the person, depending on the type of cancer, but it’s very important that it be away from food. These are digestive enzymes and the goal with what I’m trying to do is give them to people to get into their system and work systemically, not just to thoroughly digest whatever they had for lunch.
So, I do recommend a few enzymes with meals, and for that matter, I recommend that for anybody. But for patients that are fighting a cancer, or have a strong family history, you know, whatever the concern might be. That would be when you would take them away from food.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it and so obviously, you’re going to be working with the patient, you’re going to be looking at their overall health, how aggressive the cancer is, maybe there’s some objective and subjective markers you’re looking at. So then, you’re going to work with that patient and then dial it in specifically for their needs. Is that correct?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you ever plug in, like you hear these other enzymes are out in the markets. I use them, you know, for blood flow or even you can see them, you use for like breaking down fibroid tissue things, like that, like Serapeptidase or Lumbrokinase or Nattokinase. Do you have any opinion on those or any therapeutic rationale to use those in your practice?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I use a few plant-based enzymes as a digestive aid. So, for example, the Standard Process product “Multizyme”, I use some of that as just as a digestive aid. And, there’s some reason to believe that amylase, specifically, one of the other enzymes that breaks down starches and that’s in a lot of both plant-based enzymes, a word in the pancreatic enzymes for that matter.
But there’s reason to believe that a little extra of that can help with some of the waste materials that can form as the enzymes do their thing. So, I use some enzymes for that otherwise it would be more about specific circumstances. So, you just mentioned some of the things that, some of those other enzymes are good for, and I might well, use them for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, yeah. When you work up a patient, how do you like, when you look at there’s obviously a lot of potential root causes for cancer, right? There’s different therapies that you’re adding in I mean, I talk to patients, they’re like, “Well, when’s there going to be a cure for cancer?” And my general take is, well there’s a lot of different potential causes.
You could have low vitamin D, you can have insulin resistance, you can have exposure to different toxins in the environment, chemicals Plastics, pesticides, beyond hormonal compounds that are driving. There’s a lot of different root causes. So, when you’re looking at a patient, you one, do you obscribe to that similar belief? And then, two, are you working patients up and looking at all of the potential root causes and trying to address those while you’re doing these other therapies at the same time? How do you frame that out? How do you assess that ?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, that’s an interesting question. I think, you know, on the one hand I could certainly say that, you know, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of different things that can contribute to somebody developing a cancer. On the other hand, on a practical level, I find that, you know, whether somebody’s cancer developed, primarily because of toxic exposures, or whether it didn’t, I’m still going to be focusing a lot on detoxification because, for one thing, we live in a polluted world, for another, the process of getting rid of the cancer, you know, you got to think, “Where does it go?”
You know, it’s, in other words, you kill it, but you’ve still got to get rid of the pieces. Something’s got to be removed. And so, they’re all going to need to address detoxification no matter whether, the cause of their cancer or, per se, was toxins or not. And the same thing would go for vitamin D, you know? Even if vitamin D deficiency wasn’t the fundamental cause, they still need to have their vitamin D optimized. So, in a way, some of the “Why” questions, from my point, of view kind of come out in the wash, in the sense that, I’m going to be doing or trying to address the same considerations whether that was the bottom line issue or not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, that makes sense. Makes sense. And so, when you’re working with a patient, you’re working them up, are there any specific lab markers that you’d like to look at? I mean, are you running, imagine you’re probably running vitamin D, you can tell me, are you looking at things like C-reactive protein? Are you looking at fasting insulin? Do you run any like cancer-antigen markers? Like, what are your favorite kind of go-to’s to kind of get a assess the playing field, so to speak?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Right. Yeah, I may, well, wind up expanding that at some point but you know, to a large extent we learned what we did. Dr. Gonzalez and I, from Dr. William Donald Kelly. And a lot of the tests were not available in his area. And for that matter, you know, I started doing this work in the early 90s and a lot of these tests were only barely becoming into existence at that point. So, I’ve really learned to do a lot just with my clinical impression of situations.
And a lot of the standard markers, or the markers that you just mentioned, can actually be very confusing. For example, C-reactive protein, that might go up before it goes down. Why? Because, breaking up cancer is an inflammatory situation. The white cells and the macrophages and things that chew up and get rid of stuff require inflammation to do their thing. So, just like, it would be, I would think counterproductive if somebody had pneumonia to completely try to squelch their inflammation because that inflammation is fighting the pathogen that’s causing the problem.
So, I don’t necessarily want to squelch inflammation altogether. And so, it makes me a little wary because, you know, people kind of have this mindset, “Oh! Inflammation! That’s bad!”, “Inflammation causes cancer.” Well, and chronic inflammation can cause cancer but to get rid of it, you may need an inflammatory process for a while. So, it’s complicated, bottom line.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, your body has to, basically, start to break down these cancer cells and that can be a little bit inflammatory. Just like exercising can be a little bit inflammatory. But it’s enough where your body can be on top of it. And you’re keeping your detoxification pathways open to be able to process all that as well.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Exactly, right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And typically, your body does apoptosis, right? That’s like programmed cell death. Like, if you look at the average person, what do you think the big barrier to the body starting to not be able to keep track of this apoptosis and not be able to continue to monitor cells so they don’t overgrow? What’s the first thing that goes wrong?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Gosh, I don’t know. I think I might be able to win a Nobel Prize if I answered that one. But I, you know, again, our, the underlying theme in our work is pancreatic enzymes. You know, a shortage of the proteolytic enzymes, and you know, bear in mind that in the regular medical literature, the idea that proteolytic enzymes did more than digest food, is relatively new.
We’re just talking about, you know, the last 15, 20 years that there’s been more and more research about what proteolytic enzymes do systemically, as opposed to just like digesting food. So yeah, I, there’s an 80-page article about proteases that I referenced into something I recently wrote up about pancreatic enzymes, and you know, among the things that’s talked about is the immune system, and you know, some of the autophagy and etc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting! And where does the microbiome plug-in? Because obviously, we have to have good digestion. Now you mentioned, protease for breaking down cancer and then protease for just being able to break down protein and fat. Where does looking at the microbiome and seeing, you know, “Hey, I have an infection I may have some bacterial overgrowth. I may have some bugs that can be creating some stress with me absorbing my nutrition. Maybe I have some bugs and some food allergens kind of creating some gut permeability, some leaky gut. Maybe that’s stressing out my immune system.” Where does looking at the gut kind of come in here?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well again, if somebody is short on pancreatic enzymes then they’re digestion, you know, whether they’re having symptoms or not, their digestion is going to be a bit of a mess. Simply because, you know, if you think about it what’s more important to the body on an immediate sense, certain cancer surveillance or digestion? Digestion, of course. That’s the thing you need to do first. And so, if somebody isn’t making enough enzymes to keep cancer cells under control, then they’re surely not making enough for digestion. So that can that can lead to various microbiome issues that, I think, can certainly play a role, sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, what else do you think is important? The average person that comes into you? The average listener right now? Okay, so we have these enzymes, we’re going to use these. This is going to be a very important palliative kind of root cause tool to get these, get that cancer low down, what do you think the next big thing? Is it working on the drainage and the detoxification? What’s the next big step here?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I typically, will address multiple things at once. My patients frequently look like they’ve been run over by a truck by the time I finish my recommendations, although I do try to warn them before we start, you know, “This is going to be a lot.” And the things that I have them address, first of all, they are taking a lot of enzymes, they’re also taking other supplements that just help give the body what it needs for repair and then, they need to clean up their diet for sure.
You know, you can’t keep eating the way that got you into trouble. In order to get out of trouble, you’ve really got to clean it up. And then, there’s also detoxification, that’s a huge part of it because if people faithfully take all of their enzymes but don’t do the detoxification, and they’ll wind up feeling like they’ve got the flu. So the detox part is extremely important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And where does conventional therapy come in? I mean, obviously the big concern with conventional therapy is, number one, you don’t really get to the root cause, and two, yeah you can knock down the cancer load but then you’ve beaten up the immune system, so then now, this cancer can grow back because your immune system isn’t able to keep the cancer cells in check.
So, when is the conventional modality for cancer good and acceptable and then how do you work with that if someone’s doing cancer? Do you say “No, we got to do this. Do your programs first this second.” What’s the order of operations and how do you prevent the side effects of chemo from devastating the immune system in general?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, okay, well before I take on a case, I ask people to send in some information about their situation and I do that partly because there are some situations where orthodox therapy is the way to go, or the way to go initially. And so, I will let people know that. I myself do not work with people that are getting chemotherapy at the same time, and there’s plenty of other practitioners that do that kind of work but I, that’s not what I choose to do.
You know, I think that in situations where surgery is possible and makes sense, in other words, the cancer hasn’t spread elsewhere, I would argue that people should go ahead and do it. So that’s, you know, one consideration. And there are times that people will send me information about a cancer.
You know, like just the other day, I got an application from somebody with a particular type of lymphoma, and that type of lymphoma, chemotherapy actually works for. So, you know, it would be irresponsible of me to tell him to do something else when chemotherapy can actually work now. I also, you know, I wind up seeing people that got the chemo and then come to me afterwards, to kind of get get their system working better. You know, I’m certainly open to doing that but I I don’t see people that are simultaneously getting chemo.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. I think it’s the big three, it’s the lymphoma, leukemia, and testicular cancer. I think those are the big ones that chemo and conventional care tend to work well with, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, there’s a few others but that’s, those are the big ones
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you remember the other ones?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Oh gosh
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s off top of your head
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, I’m totally blanking out on that one. I know there are a few but I don’t remember.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll ask you the opposite. Are there any cancers out of the gate, that chemo just does not do well with, or conventional care doesn’t do well with?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, pancreatic cancer is probably the biggest one, and that’s been the thorn in the side of the medical community for many, many years. You know, there’s a few people that can be cured by surgery, but even when the surgeon walks out and says, “I got it all.” 75% of them will recur within five years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, yeah. And aren’t there, how many types of pancreatic cancer are there? And isn’t there one more than another that’s more serious, or are they all equally the same?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, the pancreas is almost like two organs in one. You’ve got the cells that make enzymes and when you develop a cancer in those cells, that’s the nasty type of pancreatic cancer. The other type, it develops in the beta cells, are called and that’s a group of cells that mainly make hormones like insulin or glucagon or gastrin. You know, there’s a different enzymes at those cell us make. And those cancers, when when a cancer develops there, it is typically slower growing, and so it’s not as immediate, a threat to life.
Although the ones that make hormones, if the hormone is causing trouble, well, that can get can be pretty touchy. But Steve Jobs, for example, he had the neuroendocrine, that’s another word for that. He had the slower growing type, as opposed to the exocrine pancreas, that’s the ones for the end, will make the enzymes, and that’s the truly nasty one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, exactly. So the exocrine one, is the one from the insulin side?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: No, exocrine is the one that makes the enzymes that digest food.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Enzymes, got it. Exocrine is the enzymes and the beta cell one, that’s the insulin one, correct?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, kind of confusing because there’s many different words to describe the same thing. So, you know, exocrine is talking about enzyme secretes and endocrine is another word for the beta cells that secrete hormones into the blood.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, and then if you have a pancreatic adenocarcinoma, is that going to be a exocrine one?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Strictly speaking, adenocarcinoma is the label you would apply to either type
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, okay.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, but most of the time if somebody says pancreatic adenocarcinoma, that’s usually referring to the exocrine, the nasty one. There’s other labels, I know this is confusing, but you know, it’s just the way it is. Adenocarcinoma is actually a label that can be applied to some types of lung cancer, to stomach cancer, to colon cancer, to breast cancer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, in other words, we have this adenocarcinoma is kind of the umbrella, and then we have the exocrine, which is more the enzyme side, that’s the nasty one, and then we have the endocrine, which is the insulin part. and that’s the lesser one. And you said Jobs had the lesser one.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah. He had the lesser one. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, good okay. I try to boil everything down and make it as simple as possible. I want to be able to tell it to my five-year-old son, we can get it, good.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I hope your five-year-old son is not interested, you know?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, right right, no, I get it. Okay, so that’s cool, so we have these different types, and then, so what are the types of chemo that just, or types of cancer that just are not helpful at all? So we hit the pancreas, what else? Are there any brain parts, I think the medulloblastoma is another one. Any other takes on other types of cancer besides just the pancreas?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, there’s a there’s a number of other situations where chemotherapy may be helpful for a short period of time, but it’s not going to fix, you know, not going to be a permanent solution. So, just about any of the metastatic cancers, meaning that it’s spread outside the original location, you know, chemotherapy may shrink tumors, it might prolong life, but it’s not going to be a cure.
And this, you know, is where people, you know, the terminology that’s frequently used in oncology, can be very confusing like for instance, people will hear a response you know the chemotherapy will give a response, and you know, 75 percent of patients, and they think, “Oh great! That means cure!” It doesn’t mean cure. it means tumor shrinkage. You know, so you have to kind of ask what words mean if you really want to know what orthodox therapy can do for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good, and so obviously, if someone has cancer it’s always good to put someone like you, in their corner no matter what, whether they’re going to go the conventional route or the natural route or both. If someone’s going to their oncologist, I find a lot of conventional oncologists, they’re totally clueless when it comes to nutrition.
Like it’s just unbelievable, why the patients with brain cancer, they’ve asked their oncologist, “What kind of, you know, diet nutrition I should be on?” They said, “Diet has nothing to do with the cancer.” And I’m just like, “Wow!” You know, Harvard-trained physicians, it’s unbelievable. If someone’s going to see their oncologist, what are the top two or three questions that they should ask to see if they’re a good fit? Or just to run by their oncologist?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Okay, well, I mean, first of all, I think the oncology world is starting to change a little bit. There have been a few studies recently where, it was shown that diet and exercise did make a difference, and so, I think that bit by bit, the oncologists will start to, at least, not be quite so dismissive, or say things like “Diet doesn’t matter.” So I’m hoping that will be the case.
I personally think it’s kind of a waste of time, though, to try to talk to an oncologist about diet because most of them really don’t know that much. You know, in terms of talking to an oncologist about the treatments they’re offering, some of the things you have to think about, you know, is listen to the way they explain things.
So, for instance, you know, this “X treatment” is going to reduce your risk by, you know, and they’ll say some big number, and you say, “Okay, if 100 people like me came in and got this treatment, how many of them would it help?” You know, you have to ask questions in questions like that because, for instance, supposing that you had, you know, a five out of ten people like you were going to have a recurrence, and the chemotherapy could reduce it to two and a half, well that sounds pretty good.
But what if a thousand people were going to have a recur, I mean, there was out of a thousand people, two of them were going to have a recurrence, and the treatment could reduce it to one in a thousand. That’s still a fifty percent reduction. Do you see what I’m saying? You have to you know because, unfortunately, the statistics are expressed in whatever way makes them sound the best.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Essentially, they’re gonna create a fog over relative risk versus absolute risk. Relative is the percentage, two out of a thousand to one out of a thousand, “Oh, it’s a 50% reduction!” But in the end, you know, is it really, you know, I get it. I understand it. Yeah, the relative versus the absolute. Also too, how they kind of, do a little pivoting when it comes to cures, right?
Because usually, a cure is talked about within a five-year time frame. If you had a cancer and you survived five years, they kind of lump you into a cure rate, yet you could die in year six and technically, you’re cured from that cancer. Maybe this is a new thing. So there’s also some fog around that too.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah there can definitely be some fog around things so you just have to ask questions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also too, it seems like the wheels have changed when it comes to chemotherapy. It takes a while once you have a standard of care, it’s hard to get a new standard of care above that and then, you have to look at the side effects. I mean, the standard care for pancreatic cancer as you know, it tends to be really powerful chemo that has terrible side effects. I mean, can you talk about like the standard of care treatment on the chemo side and what that looks like from a side effects standpoint?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, your typical side effects of any chemotherapy or things like fatigue and nausea and, you know, the potential for infections, neuropathies. A lot of these different things can happen certainly, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then the nausea and all that is just terrible from a quality of life standpoint. I mean, I think it’s really important anyone that if you know anyone that has pancreatic cancer or has themselves it’s really important whether you go conventional or not, you want someone like Dr Linda in your quarter, that’s powerful.
You talked about detoxification. So, that’s kind of a big buzzword, right? Because there’s a lot of things that help enhance detoxification. When you say that, is that including water, sauna therapy? I know, you have the Gerson Institute that will do coffee enemas. There’s also things like glutathione and vitamin C and herbs like milk thistle. Which one do you kind of plug into your corner, or you like?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The day-to-day detoxification routine that I recommend for everybody is coffee enemas. And that’s something Dr. Kelly used. It turns out, you know, coffee enemas go back in the literature for easily 150 years. The oldest reference I think I found for them was in a book, that was Google books, it has a lot of really old medical textbooks, so it’s a great place to look around, and I found something from the 1850s or 1860s, it actually described coffee enemas as if it was something everybody knew about.
You know, so they’ve obviously been around for a long, long time. They were used for poisoning or, you know, people that were really sick with infections, they would use it. They were also routinely used in post-operative care. And it’s one of those things that kind of got lost in the shuffle as pharmaceuticals came into wide use.
But you know, I think they’re very effective. Most of my patients absolutely love them. Nobody believes that when they first hear it. I didn’t believe it myself. But most of the patients love them. They feel better with them, and they are rapidly sold on the benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, the mechanism essentially, you’re getting, you know, lukewarm or, I should say, room temperature or, I should say, body temperature type of coffee, right in regards to the temperature you’re using, do you use the Gerson, I think, is it a medium dark roast or medium roast for the type of coffee?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, I don’t think it makes all that much difference what the roast you use.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Organic, though, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, it should be organic. And yeah, so it’s a coffee solution. It’s weaker than your typical drinking coffee. There’s a lot of different variants on how strong to make it out there, but you know, it’s introduced into the rectum, held for 10 minutes, I tell people, and expelled. And like I said, most of the patients really come to love it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now, what’s the mechanism? I’ve seen that it’s going to go up, to the gallbladder, and to the liver, and it’s going to increase glutathiones, that this is 600% – 800%, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen this also an expelling of toxins from the liver and gallbladder back into the coffee, so then when you go and jump on the toilet afterward, you’re going to release a lot of toxins plus stimulate the liver to make more glutathione. Are those the big mechanisms or is there more?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, unfortunately, I can’t claim that this has been thoroughly researched. The coffee enemas definitely moved bile from the liver and gallbladder. And there was actually some folks in Korea that did an experiment, to document this. They were looking to, they were they had patients that were getting what’s called “capsule endoscopy” which is where you swallow a little camera and what would happen is that, people would swallow this little capsule and that would stimulate bile flow and then the bile would be in the area where the camera was and so you couldn’t see anything because it was all clogged, clouded up.
So what they had people do was to do a coffee enema right before they swallowed the capsule and there was no bile to be released so they in effect showed that the coffee enemas stimulate bile flow. I wrote a whole article a couple of years ago about coffee enemas and it turns out that whole thing about glutathione, I traced back you know, this to the source that comment about the explosion of glutathione.
And it’s unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a valid. It doesn’t mean the coffee enemas, they might be working that way, but the thing, the paper that’s quoted as proof for that, doesn’t prove that. So I don’t throw around the concept that it’s stimulating glutathione but I can tell you, it’s making people feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you feel like, the bile is, kind of like, wringing that sponge out, getting all that bile in there and there’s probably some kind of toxins in the bile that you’re able to pull out?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Right, that’s what I think. Bile is where the liver gets rid of waste material so it makes sense and you know, I on a practical level, it’s not that easy to prove it though because nobody really wants to be doing laboratory tests on stool, to see if there’s toxins in there, they just you know, it’s not good. So, it’s not that easy to figure out how to prove it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, that makes sense but clinically there’s data there. I mean, from your practice of empirical data that you see patients getting better, feeling better, that’s excellent. And then, we talked about glutathione within the coffee enema, right? That’s kind of a controversial aspect of it but are you working on increasing patience glutathione? Are you giving amino acids to make it? Do you give extra exogenous antioxidant support or give the amino acids to make it? Where does that plug in or does it?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I use like an acetylcysteine, alkylic acid. I definitely think those are helpful, and that’s one of the standard things that I give people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Now, if you talk to like conventional oncologists, I see this a lot, where they’re afraid to give antioxidants during killing therapy or during chemotherapy? It’s just as they, the chemo is going to create a level of oxidative stress that will go after the cancer and if you’re giving antioxidants that it may neutralize the ability of the chemo to kill cancer. And that was kind of a thing that people were told to not be on supplements. Maybe eat a super healthy antioxidant-rich diet of leafy green vegetables, whatever. Where do you sit on that? Is that kind of old thinking? Or are they thinking these nutrients would still be helpful? Or should you still avoid a lot of these antioxidants if you’re going that conventional route?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: What I’d say there is that, I don’t do this kind of work myself. I’m not treating people that are simultaneously getting chemotherapy, so that question would be better directed towards somebody that is doing that. I’ve read conflicting information on that and so I don’t really have an opinion on that one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, see, some of the studies I’ve seen, it seems to be like survey data and they look at like patient outcomes like after the fact, which you know, that’s probably not the best. They probably should put people in a medical lab and monitor it as they go. So yeah, I kind of feel the same. And so, when you see patients, do you prefer to see them after chemo?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yes, if somebody’s in the middle of chemo I prefer that they’ve finished that before I would consider taking them on, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, excellent. We’re going to put your links here to get a hold of Dr. Linda, doctorlindai.com, doctorlindai.com, we’ll put your coordinates down below. Anywhere else, potential patients or listeners could find out more about you?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, that’s really the best place is my website and I would also encourage them to sign up for my email list and what they’ll get if they do that is a little introductory series and then just a little email once every couple of weeks. I won’t drown them in information but I try to you know, break it up so it’s a little more manageable. There’s a lot of information on my website, so I’d say that’s the place to start. so that’s d-r-l-i-n-d-a-i.com.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the link down below if anyone’s driving they can go check it out. I’m gonna subscribe right now. All right, look at that. So outside of that, anything else you want to leave the listeners with so? I think we hit a lot of like conceptions, myths, you know, how to approach this naturally root cause. Any other questions that I didn’t ask that would be powerful to review briefly.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I think you did a great job of covering all the bases, really. So I can’t think of anything to add.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I really appreciate you doc, taking Dr. Gonzalez’s torch and keeping it going for decades to come. it’s great that patients have natural options out there that have an integrative approach using the enzymes, diet, all the different tools so I love it. I think it’s great. I’m going to definitely use you as a resource for a lot of patients that I see that have cancer or need additional support above and beyond. So thank you for doing what you do. I appreciate it Dr. Linda.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Okay, well thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Thank you. Take care.
References:
Coffee Enemas: A Narrative Review
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bY6AvGT4cNVvBx1CypSee-PD4m9Jo462/view?usp=sharing
Audio Podcast:
Post Viral Immune Support To Improve Energy | Podcast #363
What you eat after a viral infection, when symptoms of fatigue persist, can have a marked impact on your speed of recovery. Dr. J and Evan discuss that specific foods need to be avoided or included in your diet to improve your immune system. So what are the truth and the evidence about diet and post-viral immune support?
The good news is that most people will benefit from some considerations when recovering from illness or infection. Having post-viral fatigue means that you will not have your usual energy to think, shop, prepare or eat as before. Be very practical and kind to yourself. Dr. J and Evan added that diet modification is vital in your recovery.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
1:57 – The role of acid-pH level in the digestive system
5:01 – The link of depression and anxiety to bloating
10:02 – The benefits of probiotics and effects of stress to digestive health
18:17 – Functional medicine strategies and testing to find the root cause of bloating
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, how you doing man? How are your holidays? How’s everything going brother?
Evan Brand: Everything’s going pretty good. I’m trying to start 2022 off with a bang. I suspect it’s gonna be a better year than 2021. People are becoming smarter. They’re becoming more educated. They’re becoming more resourceful. People are waking up. There’s a lot of, we’re in the great awakening and so I think, this is an important time to be alive and an important time if you’re a parent, if you’re a husband, a wife, if you’ve got kids, if you’re a teacher. It’s important time to keep your eyes open and keep your ears to the ground because stuff changes quickly and you got to be like a little speedboot. You got to be able to take turns quick, you don’t want to be the titanic right now, you don’t wanna be slow in taking big turns, you gotta be nimble in these times and so what I’m alluding to is just you got to be able to navigate the world of health which is quickly evolving and that’s true. What we’re trying to talk about today is post viral fatigue and really that’s just the title but this really could apply to bacterial infections and parasites and mold exposure but we just wanted to try to zoom in a little bit specifically on post viral fatigue and things like Epstein Barr virus, many people are familiar with and there’s a lot of people that report their chronic fatigue, picking up after something like EBV, we’ve seen it a lot with the virus going around now which would probably get flagged and censored so we won’t say it but you know what it is and there’s a lot of post, uh, viral fatigue going on from that and so you and I have dealt with some of that, you’re still going through the thick of it right now but I think you’re coming through pretty well, you’re still working and obviously you’re on your feet right now literally standing so that’s exciting and yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For the listeners, I had COVID last week, actually symptoms started on Wednesday. Really two hard days of symptoms, I was able to work the whole time though, I mean I think that the symptoms for my COVID that were, um, tough was I would say achiness and then like sensitivity to cold like it was like 45 degrees out and it felt like it was minus 10. So, I would say sensitivity to cold and then also getting really hot at some points, getting out where I would sweat through my shirt. So hot and cold, achiness/ headaches and then like easily out of breath but I mean for me I mean, it was still fine where I could work and still do the things I had to do. So it wasn’t that bad, I mean, I had a flu in 2013 where I was literally laid up for over two days and I couldn’t do anything so I know laid up feels like it wasn’t even close to the flu of 2013 for me, that was really hard. So, definitely, um, not as bad, I actually was my own worst enemy because on Friday I was feeling like really good like 80-90% better and did like 2-3 hours of housework like cleaning my house like doing all this different stuff because it was a beautiful day and I’m like all right let me get on top of some work, work 3 hours probably walk like 15,000 steps and that next day there was a major relapse in how I felt. It was probably like I went backwards 30-40%. Here I was at 80% probably going backwards to 50. I was like whoa what happened and so then I just kind of got in the straight and narrow and just said okay I gotta really make sure I kind of make sure I kind of keep it easy until I get back to 100% because, you know, um, it just you didn’t realize how much, uh, things could go backwards so fast so you really gotta wait till you get a 100% on things and so overall I mean the only thing lingering for me right now is a slight bit of um out of breathiness and, uh, this little lingering deep tickle cough like right now you can feel it like someone’s tickling the back of your throat with your finger and you want to cough to scratch it, kind of like that and so that’s where I’m at now. That’s like kind of makes it feel like I scratch it right there, right. So, I’m doing some ginger tea, I’m doing with the Manuka honey that soothes it like that helps with the irritation. It’s not knocking the cough down. Doing some, Elderberry, um, doing some thieves, uh, natural cough drops with essential oils, um, also doing some nebulizer so I’m doing some glutathione nebulization so those are couple of things I’m doing and then obviously sinus flushes, the amount of mucus that is coming out of me is out of control so sinus flushes are really, really important because if you do not flush your sinuses, the amount of stuff that stays inside of you, oh my God. So, flushing my sinuses out 3-4 times a day, you know, really good saline reverse osmosis with a little bit of silver in there to kind of keep things flushed out is helping a lot. So, that’s kind of where I’m at but honestly feeling pretty good, um, the whole family got it purposefully, my wife had it and I’m like come over here honey gave her a big kiss and then I kissed all my kids, I’m like we’re done. We’re gonna get this thing all together, be done with it all that way we’re not, you know, I get it next month and then I’m isolating for two weeks and then my kids get no we’re gonna get it all at the same time and surprisingly my kids’ symptoms were 80% less than the adults, super, super minor. I couldn’t believe how minor it was for the kids, so very interesting. So, that was kind of my experience with, uh, with the big C, uh, so to speak. And also, the big correlation I was listening to someone talk about this, the, a lot of the post C symptoms that we see after, right, people that have dysglycemia, and blood sugar issues tend to be a big driving factor of a lot of these post viral symptoms afterwards. Talking about post-viral fatigue, one of the big things is make sure you manage your glycemia, meaning you’re having good protein, you’re having good fats, you’re not eating a bunch of refined sugar, grains, those kinds of things. Make sure you put good metaphorical logs on the fire, good proteins, good fats to really work on blood sugar stability.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll I’m glad that you’re coming through it. Regarding the shortness of breath, I would kind of put that in the same category as the post viral fatigue because that shortness of breath can create fatigue and the best thing that’s helped me and has helped many clients is doing the color oxygen. So, ChlorOxygen, you can get that on amazon, it’s readily available. And it’s just a, it’s a liquid chlorophyll extract. So, when you do that within probably 5-10 minutes, you can feel a difference, so it’s like C-h-l-o-r-Oxygen, ChlorOxygen. I would probably do 10-20 drops up to 3 times per day. That thing is absolutely incredible. You can go as high as one tablespoon in 20 ounces of water and just sip on that throughout the day. I had one guy in New York, major, major issues with shortness of breath in the acute and the long term and that ChlorOxygen literally just turned his situation around. So, I’d get some of that stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, it’s C-h-l-o-r Oxygen?
Evan Brand: Yeah, ChlorOxygen. Yeah, and it comes in a little bottle tincture and it’s incredible. Also, something I’ve used personally, I’ve used with several clients too is Ailanthus. Ailanthus is three of heaven which is an invasive tree. I see a lot of it in Kentucky but you can buy Ailanthus tincture and that one is also really, really good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Is this the one, right here, Is the ChlorOxygen?
Evan Brand: Yeah. That’s the one. Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Cool.
Evan Brand: Get you some of that but should help because that’s the problem is, you know, the shortness of breath was pretty bad for me and I felt better, you know, I got infected a long time ago. It was like August 2020 and then six months later that’s when I started to have some shortness of breath which I was like, holy crap and so luckily, I was able to knock it out, uh, with Demectin and uh, yeah, Demectin really helped me and then the nebulizer and the ChlorOxygen, I would say that combination was an absolute game changer, luckily, I haven’t had any issues since then. But what we are seeing is that the mitochondria have a role in this and some of this post-viral fatigue we’re seeing is due to mitochondrial damage so I’ve been fortunate enough to see a few dozen people now. And in terms of organic acids testing after the virus, and we are seeing that the mitochondria definitely showed dysfunction. You and I talked about this many times on other podcast about the mitochondria. We can measure the dysfunction and so what we’re doing is we’re coming in with mitochondrial support nutrients so CoQ10, we’re coming in with carnitine, ribose, a lot of these amino acids and B vitamins like riboflavin which can help fuel the krebs cycle and then also we can use things like PQQ to help get the mitochondrial biogenesis going, meaning we’re literally making new mitochondria so we can measure this on paper. So, if you guys are suffering, you know, one of us can reach out or you reach out to us rather and then we can get the urine looked at because we can measure this. You don’t have to guess where is this fatigue coming from. If it’s a mitochondrial induced problem, we can measure that. Now, you have permission to have multiple things wrong with you so there could be a dopamine problem, there could be a mitochondrial problem, there could be toxin problem. So, rarely is there one issue causing this fatigue but the goal is for us to try to get as many puzzle pieces laid out in front of us and then make an appropriate protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. I’d say, the worst thing about COVID for me right now, coffee tastes bitter like it tastes bitter, almost a little bit sour, does not taste like coffee. I’ve almost been like I’m not even gonna drink it right now until this thing gets better because it does not taste that good but for me I’m just alright, I got, you know, 20 grams of collagen in there, I got some good fats, I kind of look at it as like a meal replacement for me. So, that’s probably the worst thing the whole time. For me, it kind of felt like a cold. I’d say a mild, mild to middle of the road cold. The only thing that really surprised me was that, that back swing where I was like 80% better and then went backwards that was the hardest thing.
Evan Brand: And, it could have been you overdoing it for sure, I mean,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: oh, you totally did.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean I did have a little bit of that too where I kind of felt like I was better, overdid it and then I heard it again, so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. So, excuse me, anything else you wanted to highlight on that so far? I would say post-viral stuff, the things that I’m doing right now and I recommend people do, in general, are gonna be Adaptogens and I like medicinal mushrooms. So, Shiitake, Maitake, Reishi. Reishi is great. I love it because it does deactivate viruses. It does build up and support the natural killer immune cells so I do like that, uh, any type of ginseng, Ashwagandha, these are things that help support energy production, support the adrenals, help buffer the HPA excess. So, any of these types of things are gonna be, uh, helpful too.
Evan Brand: You need to get on some Lion’s Mane too for your taste because what I’m finding is that the nerves are damaged and that’s affecting the sinus. So, the sense of smell, sense of taste, some of that is related to nerve damage. So, I would probably hit Lion’s Mane, maybe like two caps twice a day. That’s been helpful to restore the sense of smell and taste in some people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably not damaged. It’s probably just more inflammation, right?
Evan Brand: Well, the long-term stuff, I’m talking to people just long-term. I’m talking to people that you know 6-8 months later say, I still can’t taste or smell. Bringing in Lion’s Mane, like 2 caps twice a day. It takes a few months but you know it does increase nerve growth factor and so I think that’s the mechanism.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s interesting. Yeah. I do have some Lion’s Mane. I’ll definitely add that in. I mean, I think medicinal mushrooms are gonna be really good to, um, be on top of, uh, just supporting your immune system and like helping with, um, the body regenerate and heal better.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Gabe was asking a question in the live chat on YouTube. How did you guys catch it? I don’t know, I mean I work from home. You know, I’ve got a home office, uh, Justin has a home office as well, you know, I do go out, uh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Personally, it’s the new variant. The new variant has an R-naught of seven, which is that’s equal to, uh, measles so the delta variant had an R-naught of 2 or 3 so that means for every one person that gets it, it can be passed to 2-3 on average, right. The new omicron variant, it’s seven, so you can literally pass it to seven people so I think my wife was in a yoga class with three people and they were like spread out across that broom like they were like way you know spaced apart, you know, for just all the safety reasons and it was still able to get it so my whole take on omicron, it’s very, um, I think the symptoms are milder than delta for sure. That’s what everything’s been reported but, um, it’s way more contagious. Everyone’s gonna get it at this point, you just gotta have your plan and, um, be ready ahead of time, right? People don’t have a plan and then when they get it then they get stuck and they feel like they have to go to the hospital and you don’t have as many options there so try to have a, um, outpatient plan ready to rock and roll but yeah, you’re gonna get it because the, um, our knot on this thing, right, is that seven which is at a level close to measles so it’s right there. So, if you haven’t got it yet, you will. Anything else you wanna highlight on the immune side, on the post-viral stuff obviously I’m a big fan of ginger, I think ginger is nice because it’s anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, uh, helps with lymphatic. So, if your kind of like have a lot of like stagnant lymph in the chest area or in the neck I really keeps the lymph moving all that’s very helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah. There was, uh, one person that commented if you’ve had delta you should have some memory T cells that will help if you get infected. Yes supposedly. Supposedly, um.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You definitely should have memory T cells as well as memory B cells, right? So, even if you were to get sick again, um, you’re gonna be able to recruit antibodies way faster, right? Normally when you get sick if you’re first time getting exposed to an infection it takes about a week or so to really get those antibodies ramped up and so even if you were to get sick twice, you’re gonna be able to make those antibodies inside of, you know, 24 hours or so. So, you’re gonna be able to bring those antibodies to the table a lot faster and so that’s, um, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Other strategies, uh, post-viral fatigue hyperbaric oxygen has been helpful. I’ve seen several clients that luckily have lived in a city where they’ve had access to do hyperbaric oxygen. Essentially, what it is, is it’s replicating being under water under water about 10 to 12 feet so that pressure is helping to get oxygen deeper inside of you. So, some of these tissues may have been starved of oxygen. This sort of mild hypoxia or hypoxemia, you know, you can basically reverse that by getting the hyperbaric oxygen. There are some people that can do there’s oxygen cans, little portable oxygen shots, if you will but it’s nothing compared to an oxygen concentrator with the hyperbaric oxygen so that’s good ongoing, I mean, I’ve had clients with Lyme that have done hyperbaric we know that’s incredible for traumatic brain injuries and concussions and that sort of thing. So, even if this is just a long-term fatigue problem, not related to viral issues at all, you know, hyperbaric is another good tool, you’re looking at probably around 100 a session but, you know, what, what’s your health? What is your health worth? So.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. One thing I did was very helpful was use my infrared sauna the last couple of days. That was helpful, just getting a really good sweat in felt very good, you know, raising that body temperature up can be very helpful just at um at your body knocking down viruses. That’s part of the reason why you get, um, chill while you get the nutshells but, uh, why you get a fever right. It’s part of the reason your immune system is actually knocking down some of that bacteria and or viruses by doing it that way so using an infrared sauna can be helpful too.
Evan Brand: So, look at your mitochondria, get your organic acids test done, we can measure that and look at mitochondrial function come in with specific support whether it’s B vitamins, adaptogenic herbs like Rhodiola, you mentioned, Siberian ginseng or Eleuthero. There’s medicinal mushrooms like cordyceps which there is some benefits. There are some papers on cordyceps and athletes and improving blood flow. There may be some level of oxygenation that happens with cordyceps too. So, cordyceps, reishi mushroom, I think the Lion’s mane for the brain and for the nerves would be beneficial, the ChlorOxygen for any of the shortness of breath along with the fatigue, rest, I mean just getting good quality sleep, making sure you got to do whatever you can to get good quality sleep. So, all the same sleep hygiene habits we’ve talked about for a decade together apply in regards to candling down at night if you need some passion flower. Even melatonin, there’s some really cool studies on melatonin. We know, it’s a very powerful antioxidant and we are seeing higher doses of melatonin be beneficial. So, in general, somewhere around 5 milligrams but there are some papers going wat up 30 – 40 – 50 milligrams and beyond. I don’t know a ton about the high dose so I’ll just tell you that the regular dose standard dosing is better than nothing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was that melatonin?
Evan Brand: Melatonin. Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Usually, it’s like the higher dose is like 10 milligrams and that’s gonna help with the oxygenation and then 30 – 500 milligrams for the arginine that’s to really increase the oxygenation.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The arginine for like nitric oxide production. Beet powder, you know, beet powder would be good too. So, anything you could do to create some vasodilation is gonna be smart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Anything else you wanna add, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. If you need help, reach out, get tested, hopefully you get back on the full mend here so, keep, keep rolling. You’re doing a great job and hope everybody is doing well and we’ll be in touch next week. If you need help clinically, please reach out. You can reach out to Dr. J at justinhealth.com or me, Evan Brand, at evanbrand.com. We’re happy to help you guys. Keep your head up. keep moving forward.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think the big thing out of the gates is to make sure you have time to sleep, rest. Don’t overdo it. Just know your body still needs more time even when you, when you’ve gotten through the whole thing to recover. Don’t overdo it. That’s really important. Keep the foundational nutrients dialed in so that would be like zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, you know, you can keep those things in there. You may not have to use them at such a high level that you did with the infection but keep some of those nutrients. Don’t go from something to nothing. Keep something in there the whole time, find a medicinal mushroom that you like, find an adaptogen that you like. Maybe keep a little bit of ginger tea going. Something that has some antiviral support and um, you know, try to get a little bit of movement but if it’s making you feel winded then just try to do just enough where you can feel like you’re doing something but not where it’s overly taxing you. I think it’s really important to kind of meet that right in the middle.
Evan Brand: Last thing, two last things, a low histamine diet is generally pretty helpful because there are a lot of issues with mast cell activation being triggered from this. So, a lower histamine diet, fresh meat, and no leftovers is very important. And then, histamine support. I’ve got a product called histamine support but essentially it’s quercetin plus some other nutrients so anything, you can do to stabilize your mast cells that’s gonna be helpful because muscle activation can cause fatigue, meaning, after the viral issue was over, the immune system can sort of have PTSD for lack of a better terminology and the immune system will go into this crazy state where it will shut you down so that fatigue trying to rebuild that energy back up is re-regulating the immune system so like the quercetin, other mast cell stabilizers are very helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Love it. Love it. Makes total sense and again not everyone’s gonna have that issue but you know, it’s kind of good to know if you fit into that camp. Those are a couple of strategies out of the gates. Anything else, Evan?
Evan Brand: No, that’s it. Take it easy. If people need help, reach out justinhealth.com and evanbrand.com will be available.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’re here to help you guys. I’ll probably be back later on today here. So, keep a lookout, comments down below. Let us know your thoughts on the topic, we appreciate a review. We appreciate shares to friends and family. Really helps us get the word out. You guys have a phenomenal day. We’ll talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take it easy. Bye-bye
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye you all.
References:
Recommended Products:
NeilMed Sinus Rinse Complete Kit
Genova Organix® Comprehensive Profile
Genova Organix® Dysbiosis Profile
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/post-viral-immune-support-to-improve-energy-podcast-363
Dr Bernd Friedlander – Immune Support, Extend Life Span, Best Supplement, Perfect Diet- Podcast #353
In this video, Dr. J and Dr Bernd Friedlander talk about immune system in general. Immune system is the natural defense and it’s an complex network of cells, tissues, and organs that band together to defend your body against invaders. Those invaders can include viruses, bacteria, parasites, even fungus, all with the potential to make us sick. They are everywhere – in our offices, homes, and backyards. A good immune system protects us by first creating a barrier that stops those invaders, or antigens, from entering the body.
The immune system can acknowledge millions of contrasting antigens. And it can make what it needs to eliminate nearly all of them. This detailed defense system can keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay when it’s working correctly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
2:20 – The issue behind immune stress
6:25 – Things to know about natural light
17:04 – Who are good candidate for extra glucose?
26:37 – How and when does adding sugar good?
46:46 – The important role of full spectrum light
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Dr. Bernd Friedlander. Dr. Bernd Friedlander has been around, uh, the health space for I’d say more than 50 years. He’s been a health consultant to many professional sports teams and he’s a, let’s just say a quite a figure in the health expansion national health community in the Silicon Valley area for many many decades. Bernd, how are you doing? Welcome to today’s show.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, tell us a little bit more about yourself. You’ve been around the block, I mean professional sports, natural health kind of life extension community for quite a long time. How long has it been and how did you get into the space?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, I’ve been sort of like when I graduated from college, I got into physical therapy and I was an assistant physical therapist for about ’72 – ‘78 and I worked with, you know, clients with structural injuries and back problems, neck problems, and physical therapy and rehab and recovery from ‘72-‘78. And then I went back to chiropractic school in ’78 and graduated in ’81 and I started working out at UCLA and I was asked by a number of coaches and athletes to work with them since they found out that I was, my background was physical therapy nutrition, which I picked up in 1972 and my other background was chiropractic. So, it, you know, marriage was perfect and I was also a track and field runner in college and I also played, um, semi-professional soccer. So, I had a very good foundation and tool and so, because of that, I started working with UCLA athletes and then later on, they asked me to come in and start working with the Olympic team and develop them for the ’80 – ’84 and ’88 Olympics and we have people from all over the world coming to us at UCLA to work out with us and to perform with us and to learn about that we have and nutrition and all that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Very cool. So, you’ve been even in this space for 40 – 50 plus years. That’s amazing. Let’s kind of dive in, we have a couple of topics that we chatted about ahead of time that we really wanna dive into. So, immune stress is a big issue that we have today. A lot of immune stressors from our environment from food to different infections, etc. You know, one of the top things you are doing to help improve your immune system, like you know, let’s forget about hydration obviously getting some sunlight, you know, good whole food diet, you know, just kind of all the foundational things. What things that people talk about, um, that you want to add here, people that haven’t, different things, people haven’t talked about enough that you wanna add in that really would help improve people’s immune function and stress?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. Well, the first thing I look at is quality of life they have, how do they sleep at night, how do they get up in the morning, how much indoor activity are they getting in front of a computer, a cellphone, all these EMF is affecting our own system, our immune system. It’s, um, not able to function as well as we want to so I just tell them to get out in the sun in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening, go for walks, just be in outdoor not indoor. You know, we were trained to be outdoor most of our lives. Our ancestors are outdoor. We developed from, uh, from the sun and from nature and from the ocean. And that’s why we got here. And by ruining us by being indoor, we’ve changed the attitude of our DNA and RNA and how it functions and that’s why we’re seeing a lot of people getting sick today. It’s not getting out in the sunshine, not developing natural vitamin D. So, I have to tell them to take additional vitamin D everyday and some vitamin A and E and I always include aspirin at night because that promotes many anti-inflammatory mechanisms and it has a tremendous benefit in our blood, in our circulation, in our mitochondria. And first thing I do, because of my background, I wanted to know who we were, how we did get to this stage, where we are today as humans, how did our brain develop and that’s important and it was all related to four billion years ago. Our mitochondria, an organelle bacterial mitochondrion that created everything and started the living systems life in on the planet earth and plants. Everything is developed through these mitochondria and so I went into it and I wanted to research it so much as I can become a sponge for this one organelle, how it works and how important it is. And there’s a fellow named Douglas Wallace, who wrote many articles and is like the father of mitochondria. So, by researching him and reading about him and also about repeating his work in mitochondria, I started learning that everything is based on this one organelle, how do we improve that organelle that mitochondria efficient energy that’s what gives us energy to every cell in our body. And I wanted to learn everything I can about what makes these mitochondria efficiently. An immune system functions on mitochondria, stem cells function on mitochondria repair, regeneration and all disease and aging is a factor due to this efficient mitochondrial function. And cancer cells also are involved because of the mitochondria, how effective is the mitochondria is producing energy, it’s oxidative metabolism and that’s the foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. So, you get put a couple of things out there, I want to just break them up one by one. Some people maybe listening to this saying, “hey I can’t get outside that many times a day, what can I do to improve, uh, healthier monitors, low blue light, low flicker light, full of spectrum lightning”. What can people do to kind of change their office and their house where they’re out all day to improve light, um, um, uh, light activation via says, um, say like I have full light spectrum on now? What can people do inside their home to improve light, if they can’t get outside as much?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Good question, Justin. I see a lot of patients, uh, there are in cubicles, you know, in dark rooms working. The first thing, I tell them is get close to a window or get enough natural from the sun by being exposed to, uh, somewhere that has windows or in condensing lights that are natural lights, you know. We want to bring back the natural state of light closes to the sun, so we can bring. All these LED lights are not natural. We’re not getting the natural lightning and like you said blue light is dangerous and that’s where the computers and cellphones and nighttime television and nighttime to, you know, working on texting or using cellphones for, you know, um, you know, being on it too much is creating problems and neurological problems as well and that’s why people can’t sleep well because they’re bombarded by blue light which is dangerous to our brain.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There are some good monitors out there that are eye care monitors that are low flicker, low blue light monitors. Those are great, I have three big ones in front of me that will help decrease the flicker and the blue light, the lighting I have here are full spectrum, so you can look at investing some full spectrum light bulbs to plug into those sources where you have lighting in your office. That helps a lot. Anything else that you personally, um, apply or do in your home or office?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, I also to get them out for several minutes at a time. So, if they’re indoors, just go outside for about 5 – 10 minutes, at least expose yourself to some light and then you can go back to work. Don’t stay indoors all day long without exposing yourself to natural light. Because that what creates mitochondrial function, that’s what creates, um, all that natural biochemical process that we need to perform better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. That’s great. Let’s talk about the mitochondria. You kind of already hit it right? The mitochondria are essentially the powerhouse of our cells. They generate ATP, which is like the cellular currency of our body. Vitamin D or I should say sunlight helps charge it. What about diet? There’s a lot of, I should say, a lot of, um, conflicting ideas about it right? I’ve seen many places where the mitochondria runs off of glucose and creates dirty fuel that we really wanna be using the carnitine shuttle and using fatty acids and being a little bit more ketogenic to run the mitochondria and not fueling up with too much carbs. I know guys like Ray Peat talk about more using orange juice and more refined juices. What’s your take on that? I know you’re a little bit more controversial on some of the carb stuff but go ahead.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, well, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been following Ray Peat but I’ve also had a chance to meet and work with, um, Linus Pauling and he was a big advocate of orange juice and he explained to me the importance of orange juice with the flavonoids, the vitamin C is natural in orange juice. And the flavonoids, like Apigenin, Arginine and Naringin and Fisetin. These are very important compounds that increase the electron flow into the mitochondria so there’s efficient ATP production and CO2 is the byproduct of efficient ATP. Lactic acid is inflammatory. It becomes an inflammatory nature, and that’s how cancer cells derived themselves by lactic acid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is lactic acid a powerful stimulator for growth hormone too? Don’t we make that when we exercise as well.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, we do but lactic acid causes inflammation in our body and we get cramps and deterioration and joint problems and we break down cartilage and ligaments and tendons. And just simply I used to do with my athletes, I used to give them baking soda, a quarter of a teaspoon to a teaspoon every day, twice a day to help them recover from lactic acid so they have more energy and their recovery is much faster and they don’t break down as fast and then I started adding the collagen bases, the vitamin D, the calcium, and the vitamin C from orange juice. That all helped. So, what I wanted to look at is how do we increase the oxidative metabolism and reduce the reduction state. So, you have oxidation and you have reduction state. And the reduction state is the byproduct of ATP burning in our body for fuel and energy and we wanna be able to bring back the oxidative state so we have the electron flow that breaks the food that we eat into energy which is glucose and that glucose is the metabolism of the gasoline of our body that fuels us and allows us to produce and function and be able to repair ourselves.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, what kind of glucose sources are we talking in, um, from fruit which is gonna be mostly fructose but some glucose or starch which will be more glucose. I mean we’re not advocating lots of refined sugar or processed grains right. What kind of sources and then would this still be a good idea if someone’s maybe more sedentary and insulin resistant? Are these people from who are more flexible, metabolically flexible and more active, how do you make that prescription?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, myself in working with many patients, many athletes, I found that one of the best things I did in the morning for my athletes to perform better and I work with the Rams, Raiders, Lakers, uh, you know, all these, um, Kansas City Chiefs as you can sees in the background, I have Howie Long back there, who was one of my patients, is I found that if I can increase uncoupling protein, increase mitochondria, what increases mitochondria, it’s what we eat and the supplements we take like anything that we, uh, if we have coffee. We did a study and we found out that coffee with sugar and cream, actually the athletes perform better and we saw an increase in mitochondrial function. And if we, did it with tea, we found that if we put sugar and cream of milk, we found the same result. So, it’s that, process of in the morning, have the orange juice, have your coffee with sugar and cream and the same thing with tea, we need sugar to operate on glucose metabolism.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is these for every person, I mean obviously you’re a lean kind of more ectomorphic kind of body type, you’re active. So, for you, is that makes sense but that makes sense if you’re overweight though as well? And you’re more insulin resistant, would that be a good recommendation for them or should we allow some of these people to go off of gluconeogenesis to help convert maybe glucose in their body via protein, which is more time released? How do you make that more specific?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Working with, you know, going back to this ‘80s, ’81, ’82, I wanted to study on performance and recovery. That was my job at UCLA. That was what given a job and I worked n caloric restriction diet, I worked on you know mitochondria performance, uh, with the university. And what I found is that, since we start consuming too much carbs, you know pastas and breads and flours and iron rich foods, we have caused more obesity and diabetes and heart attacks. When the oils came into play, all the seed oils from canola to sunflowers, pollock, cotton, all those, we had an increase in heart disease and diabetes and cancer. So, the two things we saw was, when we start producing grains and pastas and breads and flowers, this is a new part of our diet, you know, it wasn’t in a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, we were a gatherer and a hunter and we ate from the roots and we ate fruits. So, when we changed our diet, we saw a difference in disease stages increasing. And so, people who are, uh, overweight, it has nothing to do with sugar. Its people are not getting enough calcium and vitamin D in their diet, they’re consuming too much phosphorus and there’s a gene called Klotho, k-l-o-t-h-o, and that gene regulates kidney function, biologically all our function is controlled by that one gene, uh, upregulating calcium into our bone. Osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease, cancer, if we have too much phosphorus, we’re removing calcium out from the bone, and we’re generating as an inflammatory condition in the body and that’s why we have osteoporosis, arthritis, and cancer and heart disease. But if have more calcium in our diet from dairy products, from eggs, from cheeses and predominantly those kinds of foods and they’re higher in amino acids utilization foods. You know, we found that eggs and milk are the two highest in AAU, amino acids utilization, in our body and by consuming those kinds of foods, we found that people are healthier.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, what about, so, you’re talking about, um, calcium is good, we need more of that. What about magnesium? Where does magnesium sits on that hierarchy?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It is essential. There’s no doubt because of cardiovascular disease and also it helps calcium absorption into the cells, into the bones, into our bone marrow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And other patients that you would say, you shouldn’t be doing these orange juice, you shouldn’t be doing the extra sugar, who are these people? You’re dealing with a lot of athletes, someone who’s 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight and more insulin resistant, would you say hey maybe be careful on that stuff?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I’ve taken on a lot of patients, uh, since I retired from chiropractic and I have a group of people that I work with and I have a friend at Ohio State University food and science department and he and his mother have diabetes. They’re not active, you gotta understand, so when I started giving them more sugar fructose or sucrose in their diet, I was able to completely reverse their diabetic problems.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I would, I’d wanna know what was their diet before. Are you reducing the amount of glucose because, we know diabetes has to do with high amounts of, um, glucose in the bloodstream, so there tends to be a resistance to the insulin right and so we have glucose accumulating, so how does giving more of that actually lower your glucose level? Physiologically that doesn’t make sense to me.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. I had a chance, there was a fellow at UCSF and he and I spoke about two years ago right before the COVID came on, we met at, uh, we met and he was doing stem cells for, uh, the pancreas, how to improve, uh, insulin function again, how we repair the body back to natural state where we don’t have to give them diabetes medication and I had, uh, I asked them one thing, would you do me a favor when you do a stem cells, would you do me a favor, increase the sugar intake in the patient. He reported back to me that he double the effects of the stem cells in diabetic patients and we came into conclusion that glucose and fructose improve the mitochondrial function and produces insulin more efficiently. And he was, he didn’t even thought about that, he didn’t even think that glucose was that essential and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s in the presence of stem cells, right? What if you don’t have stem cells because I mean we know that, we know that, um, type 2 diabetes over 20,30 years, we know beta cell function of the pancreas and insulin production actually drop and they become insulin dependent over a long period of time. So, if that theory were to make sense, why are people becoming insulin dependent over decades later.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I want you to go back and study a guy named Peori and Bronk, B-r-o-n-k and Peori is another fellow. One from France and one from England. Ray Peat has it in his newsletters, I reviewed their studies. They gave 16 ounces of sugar to diabetic patients and they give a collagen type of diet with, you know, oxtail soup or a lamb shank, things that were high in collagen. They completely reverse all diabetic patients. I have taken retired athletes, you know, had diabetes and heart issues, okay. I studied their diet, I looked at them and these guys are not like active anymore. They’re not like football players or athletes that they were when they were young. They had all these issues with, uh, diabetes and heart disease and I look at their diet and I stopped them having them have breakfast with just toast and peanut butter or oatmeal or you know, without protein. I asked them to start using orange juice, apple juice, grape juice and sugar in their coffee and tea. I monitored them. I was able to get them off any diabetic medication completely and these about 30 to 40 people I monitored and I have so many people that are, uh, one person came to me, um, that was, uh, a fellow who started, was involved in a company that got the solar technology going especially in one of the ballparks that the 49ers played and he was a retired football player as well and he had diabetic problems and he was gonna be put on insulin and he asked me if I would work with him and I said, absolutely. He trusted me enough because of other people in the family that use, uh, were, you know, using me for nutritional consultation all recovered and one of them was a lung cancer patient who recovered 100 percent. And I put them on this higher sugar diet meaning fruits, orange juice, coffee and sugar and all that and his doctor in San Jose says, a month later, two months he came back and he says all your blood report came back perfect. He’s never seen anybody recover that fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, it’s interesting because I have, I have hundreds of, you know, observations the opposite right? Restricting a lot of those sugars and allowing the body to start burning more fat and then the cells become more sensitive. I guess, the question I would ask is, what was their diet like ahead of time because if someone’s diet’s worse and even though you’re adding all this sugar it could be less sugar and then three would be, how much activity are they getting? Are they burning it all up with their muscles and mitochondria right after they consuming it? Are they sitting all day doing an office job and still, um, maintaining insulin sensitivity while being sedentary?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. No, I got it. I understand, you, uh, nutrition and diet is very important. What I look at, I look at things that causes oxidative damage to the thyroid and to the mitochondria. What are they? High phosphorus foods, unsaturated fats, okay, those and, and overload with iron. Too much iron, causes damage to our blood cells okay. And so, I’m looking at increasing cytochrome oxidase enzymes by increasing copper, by increasing NAD output, so that’s your B3 niacinamide, your B1, B2. All of these are important. Vitamin D and vitamin A and breaking, and having them eat more of high protein, high cholesterol diet. In my study, I did a lot of research in longevity, and the people that I’ve study and I just lost one patient, three months four months ago, it was on national television. She was 114 years old. Her diet was very high in dairy. That’s how I had her on since ’92 and she was eating that before. Her diet was basically milk, cheeses and a piece of bread. That was her diet pretty much and her coffee and sugar and that’s it. And so, I’ve been looking that for a long time, is studying people that live the longest like in Bolivia, in the area of Georgia and Turkey, and what do they consume is they consume mostly dairy products and they consume things that are natural. They don’t eat much of the pastas and breads and grains and oat meals because that’s not their diet. So, I look at their diet, I wanna make sure if I can raise the NAD+ levels, you know, the oxidative metabolism, that’s the secret. How did I do that? I studies with Douglas, uh, I studied with so many of the great minds out their in mitochondrial research and Klotho research, and I found out that glucose metabolism is a secret, how do we increase that and how do we bring down unsaturated fats, increase saturated fats because high cholesterol actually increases longevity and most of my..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s an antioxidant
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yep. It’s an antioxidant. It helps with brain development. It helps with libido and hormones. And I put everybody at not to worry about high cholesterol, I put them in a diet that’s rich in cholesterol, saturated fats, steric acid, all these things that we need to develop with. And I found by doing all of these with my patients and increasing the glucose metabolism and giving them sugar because most of my patients are very fatigued, they’re tired, they’re depressed, they have anxiety issues, and by just changing them, increases some sugar in their body, I’ve been able to see a difference in all of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I would imagine though, these people that are already sick though, probably have a lot of sugar in their body already. They’re probably eating lots of processed grains and flowers and sodas. So, my chole rationale on this whole thing, how does adding more of what’s already there, how does that fix anything because they’re already eating a lot of processed grains and processed sugars, how does adding that in a different form fix it?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. You set the magic work. We’re eating too much grains, pastas breads, what is, those are very high of what? Phosphorus foods.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But they’re also going to break down the sugar in the body, they still break down the sugar.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. They break it down differently than if I eat a fruit, okay. If I eat a fruit. What is around that fruit? Minerals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Potato fiber. Fiber as well. Some vitamin C and bioflavonoids.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. So, If I’m eating that, I have sugar from a natural source that is not converted, doesn’t have anything to do with phosphorus. Phosphorus is one of the leading causes of diseases today and I’ve studies the Klotho gene from universities, from Stanford, from UCSF, from UCLA and I’ve learned that most of the grains and pastas and breads and processed foods are very rich and high in phosphorus and we’re losing vitamin K, we’re losing calcium in our body and it’s affecting vitamin D levels. And that’s why I agree with you, these processed foods are not our, uh, the foods that we should be eating and they’re not nature, you know, they’re not coming from nature.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t there a natural ratio too with calcium, phosphorus. So, is it the fact that phosphorus is a problem or is it more that we’re not getting enough calcium to combat the phosphorus?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Both. You hit it both.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, if you’re getting phosphor, because you’re going to get phosphorus in animal products too, right? You’ll be getting in meat so, we’re not saying meat ‘s bad, you’re just saying make sure you get enough calcium to balance it off is that what you’re saying?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I don’t eat much meat anymore. Okay. I’m learning..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How much meat are you consuming but you’re still doing a lot of collagens though, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I do collagen but my predominant diet is now shellfish
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. So, you’re still doing animal protein, you’re just choosing on the crustacean side. You’ve got it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I’m using more copper rich foods in my diet because cytochrome oxidase enzyme, a complex for, is essential for mitochondrial function and we’re not getting enough copper rich foods anymore. We’re getting too much iron, we’re getting too much phosphorus, we’re not getting enough copper in our diet. So, I’m choosing foods that are higher in copper and less in iron and less in phosphorus and I see a difference in myself. You know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I know for a long time, you were a big fan of grass-fed meat. Are you still a fan of grass-fed meat?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No. I think, grass-fed beef, if you’re gonna go for meat, grass-fed is the only one because, it is higher in vitamin E and less in unsaturated fats than the hormone or the estrogenic meats that we’re seeing today because of the hormones and they [inaudible]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The hormones. And then also you’re getting a lot of goof fatty acids because these grass-fed cows, they’re essentially bioaccumulating the GLA fats from the grass, correct? So, you’re getting a really good high quality, um, uh, I think saturated fat from a lot the, um, fats that are concentrated from the grass. Is that correct?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Exactly!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you talked about these polyunsaturated. Why are these fats so bad, obviously, the processing of a lot of these fats whether it’s canola or soy, etc., damages a lot of them, right? And so, once they’re damaged and oxidized, they essentially create our building blocks for our membrane. So now, we have a really crappy cell membrane it’s depleting our antioxidant reserves. So, it’s depleting vitamin E, vitamin C. Is that correct? And these fats stay in our cells for a long time. Can you talk more about that?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. In lipid chemistry at Stanford. I had a chance to meet several people there and at the Back institute. And I was asking them questions about cell membrane and mitochondria, and Linus Pauling Institute. They told me in their research that if it’s not saturated fats, if it’s not mono or medium chain triglycerides, anything that is high in unsaturated fats causes cell membrane oxidative damage to the mitochondria, uh, lipids okay, and they become oxidize and become damage, the RNA and DNA of the mitochondria gets damaged. And so, all unsaturated fats will do that to the, um, mitochondrial lipids, okay? And, um, I read several, major published articles on it and also not only does it damage our mitochondria. It also damages our cells in all other parts of the body and parts of the brain as well. And it causes oxidative damage to the thyroid. The thyroid is so important. It’s the organ that controls metabolic function, hormonal function, metabolism, everything. Polyunsaturated oils damage the T4 – T3 conversion. Okay?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Yeah. Make sense.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: And so, every..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Probably effects the autoimmunity, right? Because most thyroid issues have autoimmune component. So, if you drive these polyunsaturated that are damaged, you’re probably just driving more inflammation, right, and you’re depleting a lor of these antioxidants which are anti-inflammatory as well.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You’re absolutely right, Justin, that we’re seeing an increase in inflammation due to these fats. In nature, we weren’t using oils from seeds. That’s something else. Seeds were made to grow things. They weren’t made to eat and..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or if we ate them, we soaked them. There was a way that we try to deactivate a lot of these anti-nutrients and lectins via certain methods.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. You mean sprouting?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Exactly. Yep.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So, that’s the other problem with the, um, with the unsaturated fats and there was a lot of, uh, Gilbert Ling showed that it was causing a lot of, uh, cell membrane issues to and, um, the other thing also not only that but it can, it raises estrogen in our body and estrogen is a promoter of growth of cancer and it’s also an inflammatory marker and lowers oxidative metabolism in the mitochondria. Vernon Stevens at Ohio State university and Cleveland, um, cancer clinic showed that estrogen is a predominant marker of all cancer cells. It’s in the cell membrane of all cancer cells and he showed that in his studies that estrogen leads to all these processes and by reducing unsaturated fats, therefore reduce some of the estrogen. By increasing progesterone and DHEA in our diet, we also lower estrogen. And estrogen can cause many oxidative damages, inflammation and raises serotonin and histamine and we have autoimmune disease from that as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Makes sense. Now, with estrogens, are you also worried about aromatase in men for instance high levels of insulin primarily driven by too much sugar. Are you worried about aromatase causing that high level of estrogen and thus increasing cancer risk n men for instance?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Can we put a hole for a second? I have the people here. Hold on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sure, no problem, we’ll pause it really quick here. Or actually, I’ll just, I’ll keep chatting here while you, uh, jump over. So, it’s a couple of things that we want to highlight here, mitochondria, very important, I mean, I guess some of the things that Dr. Bernd and I may disagree on is about how much glucose a person needs. I would say out of the gates, um, glucose you can get away with more processed glucose and more refined sugars, the more active you are and the more genetically you ten to be more towards an ectomorph, right. Look at Michael Phelps back and I think it was maybe, two Olympics ago, they showed his breakfast or what he ate during the day. It was like pancakes and junk. I’m just saying, it was 10,000 calories, I was thinking, I’m like man, if that guy actually ate 10,000 calories of food that was more nutrient dense imagine how much better he performed. But again, when someone’s that active, they can deal with all the refined carbohydrates and sugars and they can handle it. Now, again, if someone has a gluten sensitivity and, uh, other food allergens such as dairy and cheeses that maybe problematic and that may cause IBS and other types of issues. So, I would say carbohydrate loads should really be dependent upon on how active someone is, um, their genetic predisposition to be able to handle that high level of carbohydrate and also with their what their activity level is. Some people they consume a bunch of carbohydrates bunch of pasta. They are prone to getting tired. Some eat a bunch of glucose and pasta and they actually get more active. Now, I would say also better to do things that are more starchy, squash, sweet potato, an anti-inflammatory because gluten sensitivity is a big deal, uh, the more gluten that you’re consuming and the more sensitive you are to it, the more that may drive inflammation, uh, create gut permeability issues and also, um, increase chance of autoimmunity and so we want to choose safe starches that are gonna be anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and low toxin. All right, he’s back. I was just chatting with everyone here as we go. So, let’s just kind of dive into the mitochondria, you mentioned aspirin. Now, are you worried about any of the side effects of the acetylsalicylic acid which is essentially is aspirin and then could people also do white willow bark as well if they wanted to avoid the actual pharmaceutical maybe due to the actual bark it said? And are you worried about those side effects?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Not at all. I’ve been using aspirin for I’ve got 40 years for now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For listeners, aspirin is derived from white willow bark. So, if you want to try it, you can also get the actual whole herb, the whole bark, can do it that way too. Go ahead.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So, about 1984, when I was working with, uh, Olympic athletes then I became, uh, I worked with the Raiders and Rams that year and then Lakers, the following year. I studied from a cell physiologist at UCLA. How to improve, you know, mitochondria, uncoupling protein, energy into the, uh, individual performance. And there was a study that somebody showed me that, um, aspirin helps with coffee in raising uncoupling proteins. So, when I gave people aspirin with coffee, with sugar and cream, they doubled their performance level. It was almost like a steroid they said. It was so much they couldn’t believe it. Not only that, we saw, uh, less injuries in our athletes. Our injuries levels were going down dramatically. So, we knew it had to be what the aspirin as well because weren’t getting the strains and strains of calves and ankles, that you know, in athletes that were performing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, hold on. One second, what does that mean uncoupling proteins. Can you kind of break that down what that means?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That means your improving the electron flow into the mitochondria. You’re getting more, new, uh, ability to take electrons and oxygen and there’s a chemical reaction in the mitochondria, there’s a spin there that goes on. The ATP spin, you know, that gives us that spin to make energy in the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what’s the mechanism is that from aspirin decreasing inflammation and improving just the flow, it’s improving the blood flow of these nutrients? What’s the mechanism?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It has to be the combination of the coffee, the caffeine,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The alkaloids
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: the high magnesium and the anti-inflammatory mechanism of the coffee and the aspirin that increased that electron flow through the cell membrane and it created a faster spin, so you’re getting more efficient ATP production. And you know, aspirin is also can lower fatty acid sequences which is a major factor in all cancer cells. It’s Otto Warburg says, if you don’t have sufficient oxygen to, uh, as a respiratory function in a cell, then you’re not gonna have efficient energy and cancer cells don’t have efficient energy. They break down to lactic acid and that’s the problem. Well. Aspirin protects us from the lactic acid production, that’s another factor and helps with raising CO2, carbon dioxide, which is the byproduct of energy and why we train in high altitude is because we want more CO2 which helps us in energy and metabolism and this improvement and quality of endurance because of steel too and so we found that aspirin also helps with raising CO2 levels which is essential form more energy and recovery from injuries and all that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Well, anything else you want to leave the listeners with? And by the way would you recommend just any day generic baby aspirin or do you have any brands that have less fillers or dyes or preservatives in there?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go and I want you to have. I just get Walgreens brand. Their brand, it’s aspirin Walgreens or any brand that’s not, you know, like bears it’s I see less recipients.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. And if people wanna still get that benefit, they could still try to find some White Willow bark which is what aspirin is made from. So that’s another option natural alternative. If someone wants it to be a little bit more natural in their approach that’s a good option as well.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: About 13 years ago, I was lecturing at an anti-aging conference in Las Vegas and San Jose, and one of the cardiologists, who was also lecturing, we started talking about the importance, there was a lecture on aspirin at the same conference by one of the scientists at Bayer. He showed that aspirin increases a gene called Foxo, f-o-x-o, which is a longevity gene that’s found in longevity people. And aspirin increases this function of Foxo gene to be more efficient and to keep it from burning down or help to over express it. So, we found that it works phenomenally well. And we went to that conference and we saw all the values of aspirin. It helps with bone growth and bone development and cartilage repair and lowers inflammation, increases CO2 levels. The cardiologists, I asked them, how does this work in your sense of understanding of the heart and the blood flow. He says that aspirin protects us, if we take it every night, from developing a clot, from developing a stroke, from platelets aggregating each other, from oxidative damage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But, what would you recommend other things like systemic enzymes or higher dose fish oil, would you recommend other natural things or curcumin or ginger first or do you really think aspirin is just as good or if not better than those natural compounds too?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I have studied every herb out there with Elizabeth Mazzeo. She’s the world leading expert in inflammatory plants. Aspirin was by was far, the only plant, the only natural thing that has prostaglandin 1, prostaglandin 2, which is COX1 and 2 inhibitors. There’s not a compound out there that inhibits both prostaglandins 1 and 2 and many do 1, many do 2, but nothing comes close to doing 1 and 2. Boswellia was the second most powerful under aspirin, Boswellia.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Boswellia, okay, which is essentially Frankincense. And were not putting things like Ibuprofen or NSAIDs in the same category that increased chance of ulcers and liver damage, right? I mean those kill about 20 thousand people taking a year. Taking correctly, they work great but they have some side effects. You wouldn’t put aspirin in that same camp, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, aspirin by far so much better because it doesn’t cost liver damage and the other, you said something very interesting, all these other ones, they have a problem, they cause a hypometabolic function. They don’t improve mitochondrial function. That was the second thing that we did a study with. In lipid chemistry is what increases mitochondrial function and aspirin seems to be the only one besides Fisetin, which is gonna be the next future, that increases electron flow into the mitochondria. And that’s what we’re seeing and I take 325 milligrams every night before I go to bed. That’s what the cardiologist told me that protects us against strokes, blood clots by, uh, you know, anything that causes platelet damage or anything like that, 325. 81 did not do much at all in that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Okay.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: And then, I have many athletes still that I work with, I haven’t taken aspirin in the morning as a protective mechanism against injury, inflammation and at night and they seem to do better when they’re doing that then their recovery is better, the less injuries. And again, anything that I can raise the oxidative function of our metabolism, our mitochondria is what I consume in foods and also what I do with nutrients like B1, B2 and niacinamide and vitamin D and vitamin K. All the quinones are very powerful that’s what William Coker came up with his cancer treatment. How to increase quinones in our body and it was basically oxidative metabolism improvement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what was the dose of aspirin again? Was it 350 milligrams?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I take 325. I’ll share with you, there’s a doctor in San Diego who called me up 15 – 20 years ago. I did an article, I did a lecture podcast on Methylene blue, which also helps with increasing oxidative metabolism and increases mitochondria. I got a call from this doctor, he’s very well known in San Diego, very alternative of thinking, you know, he’s not your conservative doctor, but he thinks above the outside the box. And he wanted, he had a patient that had Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. I forgot, I think, it was Alzheimer’s and he saw my, uh, video on podcast from Silicon Valley, and he asked me about methylene blue dosage. He wants to try it on his patient and I told him what to do, how much milligrams per day and all that. Then he asked me, I got a question for you, my father has stomach cancer. So, he asked me what can he do. So, I gave him a hope program and everything and I told him to do a thousand milligrams of aspirin to 2,000 because I saw the research that aspirin and vitamin D3 can reverse cancer. Okay. So, I told him about the D3 and I told him about the aspirin. Six months later, he calls me up wants to know about Parkinson’s and methylene blue and then I realized I was, I realized who he was, I said how’s your father with the cancer? He said, he’s completely cured. I said, “how long did it take him”. “Six months”. “Wow. What did you do with him, I said, “What did I tell you because I forgot it was six-seven months ago”? Yeah. He took a thousand milligrams of aspirin every day, 3 aspirins, morning, afternoon, evening with vitamin K and also baking soda, so he didn’t have an upset stomach. He’s one of the third people that I talked to with colon or stomach cancer that reversed it just by using aspirin. I was amazed, you know, that it just took aspirin to do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow. That’s great.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Many reports and I went to PubMed and Medline and PLOS and I read of Ray Peat’s articles. Aspirin is a wonder drug and I didn’t realize until that study that we went to the anti-aging conference in Las Vegas, where the fellow from Bayer spoke about the importance of aspirin, not only inflammation but prolonging longevity and other factors that are necessary.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Very cool. I mean, I think anyone listening here, if they’re on the fence that’s an option. They can also jump on the herb, I think also keeping inflammation down be your diet’s probably, you know, probably the best thing out of the gates like you mentioned like vitamin D. Anything else you want to leave the listeners with here, Bernd, that you we didn’t have enough time to get but you wanna highlight it before we go here?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, again, like I said, I think the most important is reduce the indoor, you know, climate, uh, get more sunlight, get natural lighting like you said in condensing, full spectrum lighting is important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct, full spectrum, that makes sense
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, and make sure the most important thing here is what I found in people with weight problems and anybody. I try to get them to have a good breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal. If you’re gonna have it at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, it is the most important meal and it should be 50 grams, 25 to 50 grams of protein. Don’t have a starch, don’t have a croissant, don’t have a peanut butter sandwich, don’t have an oat meal. Worst thing to do in the morning, you wanna build that thyroid function and you wanna increase mitochondrial function. So, good protein, I love pasteurized, uh, pasture eggs, I love cheeses like Manchego, anybody know or Feta cheese or goat cheese and cottage cheese and I have my orange juice and my coffee every single day. Never have any problems with weight problems or tiredness or fatigue and I sleep like a log every day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good. Excellent. Well, I appreciate the really good feedback here, Bernd, I mean your wealth of knowledge. You’ve been in this field for nearly 50 years, so I appreciate it the clinical information. Hopefully listeners can take one thing out of this here. I think it’s great, um, again, Bernd website, is it berndfriedlander.com?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. berndfriedlander.com
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: berndfriedlander.com. We’ll put the link down below here for you all. Bernd is a great friend and a wealthy of knowledge. Bernd, thanks for everything. Thanks for chatting here today.
References:
https://www.drberndfriedlander.com/
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Top 5 Ongoing Immune Supports | Podcast #341
Your first line of defense is to select a healthy lifestyle. Following general good-health guidelines is the best step you can take toward naturally keeping your immune system working correctly. Every part of the body, plus the immune system, functions better when protected from environmental strikes and bolstered by healthy-living strategies such as taking vitamins and some natural herbs that are evidence-based and fit you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:35 Benefits of Glutathione and NAC
7:31 Vitamin D Levels
9:14 Zinc and Quercetin
11:11 Vitamin C as an antioxidant
13:38 Herbal Compounds
15:41 Medicinal Mushrooms and Herbs;
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, guys! It’s Dr. Dr. Justin Marchegiani here today. I’m with Evan Brand and we’re going to talk about the top five ongoing immune supports. These are nutrient and or herbal compounds that we use to our patients to support a good, healthy, strong immune system. It’s obviously a couple of different areas and avenues we may use these preventively and as well as acute onset issues. So we’ll kind of talk about our experience clinically and how we use these in our practice. Excited. Evan, how are you doing today, man?
Evan Brand: Awesome! Doing really great and ready to dive in. So it’s going to start out with maybe that most important nutrient of all time, and certainly the most important nutrient for the past one to two years which is glutathione. And you and I did a podcast early on, I think it was last spring, all about glutathione and how we use oral acetylated glutathione. We’ll use liposomal glutathione, we’ll even used nebulized glutathione, and it’s been an absolute game changer for so many people. I would even go as far as to say I’ve saved lives using glutathione. I will just leave it at that but, it’s an amazing compound, probably the most important compound, and our our mentor, awesome guy, Dr. Kalish. He did a great talk very recently about glutathione, and he was showing how important glutathione is with the body, and the body will prioritize production even over methylation and how important it is to really get this system working properly, and everyone is focused so much on methylation and they’re ignoring glutathione production. Everyone gets so caught up in mthfr, and genetic defects, and all that but they’re totally missing the boat on glutathione and this is your master antioxidant that is depleted during times of stress and during toxin exposure. So that could be any type of pathogen that could be mycotoxin we know that moltoxin will deplete glutathione, and you and I measure this routinely on urine testing, and I see low glutathione all the time. If we see organic acids that are too low or too high, we know that there’s a dysfunction going on, and this is something that can easily be remedied and supplemented and we have very very high quality sources that we use for people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So glutathione is a tripeptide, right? So when we use glutathione, we’re going to kind of put glutathione and NAC in a similar camp. It’s good to have both, NAC helps with your, helps your body with endogenous production. Meaning, helps your body make it, as cystine tends to be the rate limiting amino acid in making glutathione. So glutathione is a tripeptide. So it’s got cysteine, glutamine, glycine. Glycine is really great in collagen and bone broth. Um, glutamine you’re going to just see in a lot of gut healing formulas because glutamine is needed for healthy gut function. So if you have healthy guts, or you have an unhealthy gut and inflamed gut, you can see how glutathione, one absorption, and um, of course stress is going to deplete a lot of those amino acids just in the stress process. And so then uh, you make glutathione via those three amino acids and then also you have exogenous glutathione that’s giving someone’s acetyl glutathione or liposomal, or some kind of a reduced glutathione which are all great. Um, those are all going to be exogenously you know, from the outside in. Endogenous is making it inside with the amino acid. So it’s good to help with both. We know the data on glutathione, it helps with inflammation, it has and effect on modulating the immune system, modulating the or t regulatory cells and balancing that th1, th2 immune response . Th2 is going to be the antibody response the, the th1 response is going to be the natural killers of the special forces of our immune system, and then of course, glutathione helps produce compounds like um, catabolic enzymes like catalase and a lot of good natural disinfectants like superoxidise mutase and things that help with lung, and inflammatory health inside the lungs. You’re going to make a lot of these compounds with glutathione which are very powerful on the immune side. Excuse me, I need some glutathione now. On the immune side and also on the anti-inflammatory side. So like for instance, with a lot of lung health issues or breathing issues, we may even give reduced gluathione and a nebulizer because, that is shown according to research, to help with inflammation, and help with vasodilation in the lungs. So very powerful anti-inflammatory, very powerful disinfectant because of the superoxide dismutase, and that catalase enzymes which is really important for inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. I mean every hospital, especially every ICU, especially when it with luncg issues, I mean, every ICU should be passing out glutathione nebulizers. It’s amazing that that’s not standard practice, that’s not standard procedure. We would see much, much, much healthier people faster recovery times if that were part of the protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s a patient with some serious lung issues who we nebulized some reduced glutathione and within a day, we saw a massive massive improvement. And we know things like NAC for instance is shown to reduce virus replication. So that’s very powerful. So when you’re, when a virus kind of gets into your cells, it replicates and that’s how it create symptoms. The viral load has to replicate and if you have nutrients in there like NAC , android glutathione that’s going to prevent the virus from replicating the higher number. So very very important there and of course, the higher the viral load is, the more you can spread it. If you keep the viral load down, the less chance of spreading and infection so that’s powerful there. Anything…
Evan Brand: An you and I take that ongoing. Yeah, you and I take that ongoing. We do depending on what’s going on. We’re not telling you to do this dose but, what you and I are doing, at least I know for me, I’ve got a combo product. So we’re using glutathione, give or take a couple of milligrams per day of an s-acetylated glutathione which in studies is just as good if not better than liposomal because with liposomal, we have some really sensitive people, me included. I don’t really do well with ethanol, and a lotof the alcohol that is in some of these liposomal formulas so I personally stay away from those. I like the acetylated, I fell great. It works really really well. Papers prove how well it works and then about a gram of give and take of NAC. So that’s kind of my on going protocol. And also for toxin exposure, that also helps protect against the oxidative stress that also helps to deal with mold tox and we know glutathione can help mobilize toxins. So that’s something we use in detox protocol too. Not just for immune and viral support .
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and virus replication, prevention, prevention, acute respiratory issues, all wonderful applications. I do about two grams a day of glutathione of and acetylcysteine, and one to two hundred milligrams of a glutathione whether it’s reduced as acetyl or liposomal. I’ll kind of rotate between the two. So that’s powerful out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Last call. Let me make one comment on the NAC and then we’ll move on. So at the time of this recording, uh, amazon has taken all NAC off of its marketplace. And there’s a lot of reasons that I could get into and probably and get deleted for but, we’ll just say that NAC is gone but, you and I, we work with professional healthcare companies. We do still have availability so we will put link in the show notes because this is something I would recommend you have on hand, and if amazon’s going to take it away, at least we have it. So I think that’s important to know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think so too. I like it, NAC. In my product detox aminos, we have reduced glutathione plus NAC in there as well. I know you have a product similar as well. We’ll put links below so you guys can see that. And we’re gonna kind of a lot of the compounds like five herbals slash immune compounds and then we’ll kind of look at the nutrients. And I always tell patients like focus on the nutrients first just because they’re nutrients. They have other roles in the body and it’s good there. So NAC and I think glutathione are going to be there. Low-hanging fruit, next is vitamin D. If you’re not getting enough sun, or you have darker skin, you’re going to need some vitamin D. Vitamin D plays a major role in th1 th2 balance. And also helps modulate t-regulatory cells which keep your immune system in balance. A lot of studies showing people that have lower, higher vitamin D levels are more resistant to different virus, infections. Our vitamin D also produce an antibacterial enzyme called cathelicidin which helps decrease bacterial load so there’s a lot of powerful benefits of vitamin D and of course, in the winter months, when colds and flues are at the highest. Guess what? That’s when the vitamin D is the lowest on average because of the sun. So vitamin D is very powerful there out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Man, I just got my blood work back. My vitamin D was like a 45 which is too low. And I was kind of putting a false sense of security I guess into my sun exposure. I mean, I’ll get my legs exposed, my chest, my back. I mean, I’ll be outside for sometimes, couple of hours few hours a day, during the peak hours and my vitamin D was still below optimal. We like poeple give or take, we want to be 60 to 80, and I was at a 45 so I’m back on supplementing 5000iu plus a k1 k2 formula just to try to make sure I get up to that peak where I need to be so if you’re like oh, I’m outside in the garden. Don’t use that as your reasoning for not supplementing. If you have to supplement, it’s okay. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. And I would just say 50-70 on an average is probably reasonable. If you have an autoimmune isse, or any cancer issues, you know. Being 70-100 is probably even better. But at least 50 I think is good. So you’re not too far away from that but yeah. If you’re like below 20s or 30s, or below that, you get problems for sure. So vitamin D is really good. Obviously, I think next low-hanging fruit is gonna be zinc. Zinc has major effects, zinc fingers have a major effect on your genetics and DNA activation. Zinc also plays a major role in hormones, making testosterone, making uh, stomach acid. So zinc helps with digestion. Zinc helps with on the hormone side, and zinc also plays a major role on helping viral loads. So lots of studies on zinc losses, zinc helps get into the cells, and it decreases virus replication, so we have natural zinc ionophores, right. Their medications that do it but there’s also some natural compounds like quescitin that actually help zinc get into the cells at higher level and zinc, zinc levels when higher can prevent the virus from replicating kind of like NAC. So zinc is a very important natural compound and so is quercitin as well. We could add quercetin and zinc together ro really help flood ourselves with good high quality zinc.
Evan Brand: And we don’t go too crazy. I mean, we’ve had people that are doing like 50-100 milligrams of zinc long term. That’s too much. Maybe on going for females, maybe 10-15 milligrams, males maybe a tiny bit higher but, I had one lady doing 100 milligrams of zinc and she was not feeling good. So that was too much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If your’re doing that much probably 50, it depends on the type, right? If you’re doing a crappy like zinc acetate or something, if you’re doing like a zinc biscynade or eally good zinc bound to an amino acid, probably 50-70 acute like an acute type of situation. But outside of that, probably 10 to 30 max kind of from an ongoing basis. You’re gonna get zinc in pumpkin seeds and a lot of your grass-fed organic meat and or high-quality animal products.
Evan Brand: yeah. That’s the question. I mean, if you’re eating the way we are, I mean, I’m doing a grass-fed steak for breakfast some mornings. I mean, I wonder if I even need extra. I guess it depends on the situation. I will throw a little in; I’ll sprinkle a little in but, it’s not a big one I take all the time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean it’s more going to be during stress and your immune system being more compromised, your nutrient levels are going to need to be higher and so that’s powerful there. I would say next out of the gates, vitamin C is important. Vitamin C are really important nutrients. Obviously, it has major role in oxidative stress; it’s an antioxidant. I would say the macrophages which are like the little pac-man, pac-woman that gobble up bacteria and viruses in the bloodstream. There’s a docking station for vitamin C on to that macrophage. And vitamin C can help potenciate the strengthof those little pacmen and pacwomen; very powerful. Now vitamin C has a molecular structure; very similar to glucose. Guess what happens if you consume too much glucose or I.e sugar. That glucose can dock on to that macrophase and actually weaken it. And so it’s important when you’re sick and your immune system is compromised, higher levels of glucose will mimic vitamin C and kind of dock on that receptor site and will make your immune system weaker. So keeping your immune system stronger by keeping the glucose under control is important. And then getting that good vitamin C in there is going to be important especially you know, acute right? You can always work on what I call a vitamin C callibration where you get your vitamin C levels up to just before, or just past the point where you have loose stools and then back up until they solidify, and you can do that during acute phase, if you’re sick, to keep your immune system nice and strong.
Evan Brand: I love my vitamin C but, I over did it because then, my iron was too high and I think I was doing like three grams of vitamin C for a long time and I was drinking my vitamin C powder with my grass-fed bison steak so that will increase iron absorption. So for anemic people, that’s a great strategy but, for males if you irons are really high, that’s one thing to consider and just track it with blood. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Retract your blood. You know, the natural solution for high iron if you’re a guy is gonna be therapeutic phlebotomy. So getting your blood tested, giving blood all those things are wonderful out of the gates. So we talked about zinc, we talked about vitamin C, we talked about NAC, glutathione, we talked about vitamin D… Is there anything else we missed there? We can add more nutrient. What would it be, Evan?
Evan Brand: Mm. I would say the B vitamins would be very important because, B vitamins are going to be helping mitochondria; we know that a lot of the toxins and things we’re exposed to damaged mitochondria. B vitamins can help support the kreb’s cycle. So in a roundabout way, I think that would be part of an ongoing protocol. If I wanted to keep myself up, keep myself feeling great, I think some Bs would be in the picture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think some B vitamins are always good. So I think we have vitamin C , D, zinc, NAC, and glutathione so we have five there and we’ll add a little bonus with um, with what you just said with the B complex. So that’s fine right there out of the gates. Why don’t we switch gears and talk about herbal slash compounds? So we have silver, colloidal silver or we use a nano silver so it’s better absorbed; you need less of it. Silver is very helpful because it can it moves through your body; it’s very small in its molecular structure; you’re not going to worry about algeria, or turning blue when you use a high quality silver because, the silver molecules are so small, they flush right by your body and go out through your kidneys, no problem. If you make silver, you have really big silver molecules, you know. Bigger than 20 part per million; like in the hundred per million plus then maybe that can get stuck in yous cells and turn you blue; but most of the archery are turning blue and turning blues and come from home made crappy silver. Uh, we use manufactures that have been around decades, and have never had a case of argyria or turning blue because one, we’re just using high quality silver and it’s going to be tested, so we know the exact ppm-part per million. And so silver is great. Natural antiviral, and it also um, actually an anti-biofilm; so it actually helps the body deal with bacteria better because it decreases bacterial biofilms, which are the little protective shields if you think of the movie 300, right? The spartans, they have their shield and their spear, right? Well biofilms on bacteria are like the shield, right? So imagine like in the movie 300, you pull away their shields, now they’re a lot more vulnerable to attack. Well that’s what silver does to a lot of these biofilms on bacteria; and so it can allow the herbs that you’re using to actually kill that bacteria better. So silver is really powerful. Conventional medicine is even using silver. They use a lot of silver cellophane now. So If they do a total joint or total hip, or total knee, they’ll actually take the joint and they’ll wrap the cellophane around the joint because they found that it prevents mersa or antibiotic resistant bacteria which is powerful.
Evan Brand: Wow! That’s cool. I didn’t know that. So it’s funny a lot of things we talked about eventually will be mainstreamed. Like we talked about, I think glutathione with nebulizers should be in every ICU especially for long and viral issues and it’s not. So maybe one day that will become true just like the silver.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So we have silver there, I will also hit some medicinal mushroom. There’s a couple that are out there. I mean, I like reishi. There’s some other ones that are really good but, reishi and a lot of these mushrooms one have an affect on in increasing the immune system. Whether it’s usually the th1 immune repsonse, uh some of them can actually deactivate viruses, right? A lot of the beta 1, 3 glucan, or the tritipines that are in there can deactivate viruses. That’s pretty powerful out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’d say turkey tail. I think turkey tail and reishi. Those would probably be my top two. I mean you and I do cycle in some mataki and chaga, and some lions maine. I really love lions main for cognitive issues or for helping with ngf which is called nerve growth factor. I had a woman who had chronic burning tongue for 20 years, and we’re able to completely reverse that using lion’s maine mushrooms. So we suspected it was a nerve injury because after a general procedure, her tongue was burning, and dealt with there for 20 years. Lion’s mane took care of it. So I just love lion’s mane but, for this conversation I think rishi, and I’d say turkey tail would be the best if you are having issues with oxygenation, and chronic fatigue, a lot of people having some post viral chronic fatigue, cordyceps, I love cordyceps mushrooms. I use that quite often as well. So those three would be awesome. Turkey tail mushroom, uh, rishi, and cordyceps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So rishi, cordyceps, I like other compound like golden seal’s wonderful. I had that on my Gi Clear four. That’s kind of in the berberine family. Um, that’s wonderful. I see a lot of berberines do amazing, working great, barbary. I like golden seal; it gets wonderful out of the gates.
Evan Brand: In what form? What are you referring to the berberine compounds for? What are you talking about?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well it’s an antibacterial. Berberines mix with wormwood. If you look at Stephen Buehner’s book, he talks about that having a very powerful anti-viral kind of synergist? So berberines with artemisia are very powerful there as well so I like that too. I would also say um, astragalus is also powerful. It’s a good blood cleanser, it helps with the spleen, it helps with B cell antibody production; helps clean out the blood a little bit. Any feedback on astragalus?
Evan Brand: Oh, love astragus. I’ve got tons of bottles of it and we made, we made astragalus for, for a long time. We had really good quality source, glass bottle, good stuff. I take astragalus all the time and especially for tick bites. If you’re listening and hey I want to improve my immune system and all of a sudden, I got a tick bite, uh per Stephen Buhner’s protocol, he recommends three grams of astragalus for the first 30 days to really ramp up the immune system. IF you have chronic lyme, though that would be a situation where you don’t do that because it can send the immune system the other direction. So that’s a one of my favorite herbs. I’m glad you brought it up and it’s often the root. Technically, we say the herb but astragalus root is what’s being used.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So we hit astragalus, we hit golden seal, we hit some of our medicinal mushrooms, we hit silver. Let’s hit one more out of the gates. Andrographis is another good one. And again, a lot of these herbs work by one, supporting or stimulating your immune response, and typically, a lot of them are going to work more on the th1 side, so they’re going to really help mobilize natural killer helper cell production and of course, that the also help support antibody production later in the game. And a lot of these herbs can also decrease the virus from being able to replicate. And so that’s helpful because the more replication of the virus we have, the more the symptoms increase. So we can decrease virus load while improving our immune response, then we kind of hit it in both angles. Now, people that are autoimmune, some of these herbs could make you feel worse right? But the way I look at it, as most people are going to be th2 dominant in a lot of these autoimmune issues and so naturally supporting th2 could be a good thing out of the gates. So I always say, work on supporting the nutrients first, and then you can kind of come in there with the herbals come in there one at a time and just see how you deal with them, and then add that to your medicine-functional medicine toolbox later on down the road. So if you get sick, you know different strategies that are going to help you.
Evan Brand: Yeah. It’s a good point. You’re hitting on the multiple mechanisms right? You’ve got vitamin D increasing the immunity, and reducing cytokines storms, you mentioned some of the antimicrobial benefits to it, you’ve got the biofilm support in there, you’ve got the intracellular support with the zinc and the quircetin, you’ve got just the standard immune support with your mushrooms, you’ve got your protection from glutathione and NAC. You know, last thing I’d like to mention on the herbal front, I would say some sort of adaptogen, we kind of talked about this off air.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah.
Evan Brand: Adaptogens in a roundabout way, would be very beneficial and that’s something you and I take every single day, as far as I know you do at least.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right here! Ashwagandha is one of my favorites. My ashwagandha supreme. Um, ashwagandha has been shown to be taken long-term, very helpful for immune function, immune modulation. Obviously, ashwagandha can help cortisol surges too. We know that high cortisol stress can decrease you immune function. So if you’re having high cortisol due to some kind of acute response, ashwagandha may be a good solution to help get that cortisol response under control.
Evan Brand: If I had to pick two, I I think ashwagandha is up there. Maybe number three for me. I’d say number one based on what’s going on, rhodiola because of the antifatigue effects, the anti-anxiety, the anti-depressive effects. Also, amazing for hypoxia. For athletes, for anybody struggling with oxygenation issues, rhodiola is amazing. Second, I gotta go with eluthero, I love siberian ginseng, that combo of eluthero, and rhodiola, oh man. Holy basil’s also awesome too! I mean, God! You know we love adaptogens. So I would just say that any or all of those could be worked into a protocol, would provide an extra support to keep you up on your feet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And also with vitamin D, yeah. Taking vitamin D with k2 is going to be helpful or at least vitamin k. Again, if you’re going to have a tablespoon or two of high quality grass-fed butter or ghee a day, that’s great. If you’re getting any sauerkraut or good greens, that’s gonna be more k1. So you have those good quality fat soluble vitamins in your diet, you’re probably going to be okay. But if you’re not, that’s where it’s good to just have a little bit of vitamin K2 in there as an insurance policy.
Evan Brand: Cool! I think we covered it unless you want to throw any other herbs? And I think that’s a good, good stack though.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, yeah. We hit a good amount, you know. Now regards to the amounts, I mean typically we may double or triple that the typical recommended dose on the back of the bottle if it’s an acute type of phase depending on what’s happening. And so that’s kind of a goo I think rule of thumb out of the gates, is at least double or triple for the first few days to a week during an immune response. Evan Brand: Yeah. On going though, for me rhodiola a couple hundred milligrams is plenty for me too much. I get over stimulated, same thing with elutheral couple hundred milligrams typically per day, early in the morning. And ashwagandha, I mean, you could go up to 500 milligrams or so would be I think a great ongoing dose for actually.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think, I think 500 to a 1000. You can go up to 2 grams on that, and again, it matters if it’s like, this is a whole herb right. Some are like a standardized extract but much smaller that could be more concentrated but, if it’s a whole herb you know. A gram to 2 grams is usually going to be fine, a gram on the lower one’s fine.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and we’re not. Yeah, and we’re not making your protocol here, so like if you go and you look at the bottle, and like well this is 80 milligrams of ashwagandha, so I’m gonna go take freaking 40 to get to what he recommended, no. You gotta pay attention like you mentioned to the label. Because like you said, standardized extracts , 80 milligrams could be equivalent to 800 milligrams if you’ve got like a 10 to 1 extract. So you gotta pay attention to your labels and know what you’re getting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also if you’re really night shade sensitive, and you have a lot of autoimmunity, be careful because ashwagandha is a night shade. But again, if you’re really sensitive to nightshades and via tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, then be careful with that. Do it one at a time.
Evan Brand: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So outside of that, today was a great chat. I’m just, for the listeners here, if you guys want to reach out and get specific functional nutrition, functional medicine care, by either Evan of Dr. J myself, feel free to head over evanbrand.com, you can reach out to Evan there; there will be a link for you, as well as my site, justinehealth.com. We are available worldwide via phone, zoom, facetime, we’re here to provide all your natural health services if you need that. Also, click down below, send us a review, give us a little comment on today’s podcast if you enjoyed us. Let us know, kind of put down what immune support is your favourite and what’s been helpful for you in the past. We’d love having clinical experiences shared. That’s how you learn a lot. Anything else, Evan?
Evan Brand: Absolutely. I think it’s, I think you covered it all. Just keep your head up. Keep moving forward. That’s all you can do. So I hope these tools will help people.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/top-5-ongoing-immune-supports-podcast-341
Recommended products:
Vitamin D Benefits You Should Know
Vitamin D has a couple of different benefits. Let’s go over some of the benefits. We’ve talked about the natural antibiotic that’s being produced by vitamin D, which is called cathelicidin, a kind of antibacterial enzyme. It is super helpful at being able to knock down bacteria. It also has antiviral mechanisms, as well as antimicrobial peptides and antiviral mechanisms.
Part of that is it stimulates and it can modulate the Th1 immune response in the Th1 immune system where you’re making a lot of your natural killer cells and your helper cells. Good helper cells can also help your antigen-presenting cell and it can help make antibodies more efficiently. So, you’re also going to have a better Th2 immune response. You’re going to make antibodies to whatever that infection is. Those tend to come a little bit later in the game, but good signaling to make your antibodies is super helpful as well.
There is a couple of other studies here that are talking about different things. We have a reduction in our MMP-9 concentrations. We have a reduction in bradykinin storms and reduction in our cytokine storm. So, basically we have a lot of inflammatory molecules that get produced such as bradykinin, cytokines, interleukins MMP-9. These are inflammatory types of chemical messengers. Vitamin D can help modulate that and prevent that from being overproduced. The more we overproduce those, the more our immune system responds. So, we can create more cytokine storm issues because our immune system will be on this positive feedback loop, responding and creating more issues with the cytokines. When there are less cytokines, there’s less chance of a cytokine storm, which is basically our immune system responding.
Imagine a fight between two people where one person yells out first and the other person yells back. Then they’re pushing, shoving, and hitting and the violence escalates. That’s what happens with the cytokine storm with your immune system and all the different cytokines and immune chemical signal. So, we can keep that modulated a bit which is very helpful. Vitamin D plays a really important role in that.
Recommendation
Get vitamin D supplementation from Thanksgiving to spring. At least, make that investment. If you want to come off the rest of the year, as long as you’re getting some sunlight, it’s fine. At least do that vitamin D supplementation to give you a good bump and the fat-soluble nutrients you’ll get over those four or five months will hang around months afterward because it takes a while for that vitamin D level to build up.
If you want to learn more about Vitamin D, click this link where you can schedule a chat with me!
Effective Ways to Increase Your Vitamin D Levels
Back in the 1980s, a guy named Edgar Hope-Simpson proposed that a seasonal stimulus was intimately associated with seasonal epidemic influenza. Long story short, winter comes and then all of the sudden viruses become more of a prevalent issue. There was this whole interventional study that showed vitamin D is reducing the incidence of respiratory infections in children. So, this was specifically talking about kids but there are countless of these for adults.
What’s happening when the vitamin D levels are sufficient are a multitude of things but in particular, it’s helping to reduce Interleukin 6 (IL-6), which is one of those inflammatory cytokines that get people in trouble. So, if you can reduce your cytokines, that’s going to be beneficial. Also, another cool benefit is not only a sort of an antiviral but there’s some antimicrobial benefit. It can actually activate your immune cells to produce some antimicrobial like a natural antibiotic if you will by upping vitamin D concentration.
How do you take Vitamin D?
Is it just an ongoing thing? If you think you’re getting into trouble with illness, do you go high dose of it? It depends on what your levels are.
So, get a baseline first. I would say the lighter or more fair your skin is, probably the more efficient you are gonna be in converting vitamin D from the sun. The darker your skin is, the more melanin you have. You’ve got different spectrums and for example, a full-on African-American has the highest amount of melanin.
What is Melanin?
Melanin is like your natural UV block and it helps block your skin from the sun’s rays. So, due to evolution and where we evolved, there are people who live closer to the equator and there’s more UV light based on the angle of the sun hitting it. These people naturally evolve with more melanin in the skin. People that evolve further away from the equator get less direct UV light, so there’s less melanin in the skin because it’s all about making vitamin D.
So, the more efficient you are at making vitamin D, you probably will be able to get away with not supplementing as much or as frequently. The more melanin in your skin, the more you have to be on top of your vitamin D because unless you’re going to be outside 6 to 8 hours a day and you’re at a mid to low 30 latitude, you’re probably just not going to be able to ever make enough vitamin D. Therefore, you really have to be on top of everything in your testing.
Vitamin D Dosage, Testing, and Recommendation
For lighter skin, in general, a good rule of thumb is 1000 IUs per 25 pounds of body weight, especially in the fall and winter months. If you want to take a break in the summer, that’s fine. Just make sure you get a test here there to confirm it. The darker your skin is, you may even want to double that in the winter months. Then you may want to follow-up and retest in the early spring to see and to monitor where you’re at. If you’re someone who works outside, you have to make that adjustment. If you’re an office person and you’re inside all day, you also have to make that adjustment, too. So, in general, 1000 IUs per 25 pounds of body weight.
If you have darker skin, you may want to double that for the winter months, and then it’s always good to confirm some time in the winter and some time coming off the winter or early spring-summer to see where you’re at. We can always adjust accordingly and if there is any risk of autoimmunity or cancer, we probably want to be testing just a little bit more frequently. Once you know where you’re at, you can guess based on how well you’re doing.
The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Estrogen Levels are High – Men & Women!
Let’s talk about the top 5 reasons why your estrogen levels are high. We’re going to break them down today.
WHAT ARE ESTROGENS?
First, let’s look at the 3 major kinds of estrogens: E1 or estrone, E2 or estradiol, and E3 or estriol. In a woman’s regular cycle, it’s usually estradiol we’re talking about. When you start shifting to more menopausal and the ovary stops working, you start getting more estriol. The adrenals help in kick in a lot of DHEA and you make more estriol. Estradiol is more of the growth factor type of estrogen and estriol is a weaker estrogen.
WHERE CAN WE FIND ESTROGENS?
- PLASTICS. You’ll get it when the plastic is warm like in a microwave or out of a plastic water bottle especially if it’s in the car and the sun is hitting it or it’s outside. That’s why you want a good stainless steel or glass water bottle if you’re going to go outside or leaving it in the sun. The microwave heat and the radiation is going to cause a big release of plastic chemicals there, the xenoestrogens. One of the big ones are the phthalates but also BPA. There are other types of BPAs that are new which are supposedly safe but there are still estrogen-like compounds there as well. These plastics can affect women and men as well. Men are actually going to be more affected by them because men aren’t used to having estrogen in their environment and getting a whole bunch is going to be a problem.
- PESTICIDES. These tend to have an estrogenic quality to them and if you’re eating foods that are not organic, you’re definitely going to be getting organochlorines and various pesticides in your environment.
- PHYTOESTROGENS. These are found in soy. For example, I had a vegan-vegetarian patient. We ran a Dutch sex hormone panel on her and her estradiol was through the roof and really high. Phytoestrogens can be a big one, so soy may be a problem. With vegan-vegetarian, there’s a lot of phony protein consumption like fake meat kind of stuff such as the Beyond burger where there are a lot of soy and estrogen-like compounds in there. There are also hormones in meat. You have to make sure you get antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and ideally organic and pasture-fed or if you’re on the Whole Foods scale, step 4 or step 5 is ideal. Step 2 is at least pretty good. Organic means no pesticides, no hormones, and also the food they’re eating has no pesticides or hormones, too.
- HIGH LEVELS OF INSULIN. Too much carbs drive high levels of insulin because insulin responds to a high level of blood sugar. The blood sugars in your bloodstream go up and your pancreas comes in. The beta cells make a bunch of insulin to bring it down and bring it into the cellar and converted to fat. So, high levels of insulin upregulate an enzyme in men called aromatase that converts testosterone, the male hormones, to estrogen which becomes a problem. Now, in women, a similar thing happens but it’s the exact opposite or the big switch. Their estrogen is converted to testosterone. So, women can actually get more androgen-like issues which results in weight gain, acne, hair growth, and sometimes you can see some libido enhancements on that. So, that’s the difference between men and women.
- POOR GUT HEALTH. In the gut, we make healthy good bacteria in our gut that help us absorb a lot of nutrients. A good healthy gut function helps us break down protein for good HDL levels and good enzyme levels. We need these to break down protein into amino acids which are really important for helping us to detoxify. So, detoxification helps us to excrete estrogens that we’re getting exposed to in our environments such as the pesticides, plastic, or something that you don’t even know you’re getting exposed to. Good healthy detoxification will help your body eliminate that, so that’s a good backup plan.Also, if we have a lot of dysbiosis, SIBO and bacterial overgrowth, we can make a lot of what’s called beta-glucuronidase. This is an enzyme that’s made by bad bacteria and it makes it harder to detoxify estrogen. The beta-glucuronidase takes conjugated estrogens and binds it to a protein that helps us excrete it out the body. It takes that protein and it pulls it apart. It takes the handcuffs off that protein, so that allows that estrogen that’s been deconjugated to go back into the body in the general circulation. So, if we have gut issues, that could be a major concern.
HOW DO WE ADDRESS THE PROBLEM?
We need things like cysteine, glycine, glutamine, sulfur amino acids, and things that help us methylate like B12, B6, and folate. So, these nutrients we have to get them in our diet via a good diet. We need to be able to break down and absorb those nutrients, so we need good digestion to get those things in there.
So, in general, we’ve got to make sure we have a good gut bacteria balance. Even fungal overgrowth can cause problems and H. pylori that can lower stomach acid and make it harder to break down nutrition on one side and then it can create this bacterial overgrowth enzyme that makes it hard to detoxify estrogen. These are really important components. If you have any issues with estrogen, you’ve got to look there.
Now, we may want to do things to help detoxify like make lifestyle changes, food changes, pesticide changes, make the changes in regards to plastics, and make in in regards to your diet, your glycemic load, and your gut. That’s a good first step to get to the bottom. There are also different things we may do to help upregulate detoxification to help get that estrogen. It may be activated charcoal or various soluble fibers. It could be things like bentonite clay. We could use things like DIM or Calcium D-Glucarate or glutathione, sulfur amino acids, and vitamin C. They’re all helpful in different situations. We would recommend them based on what’s happening but at least make the diet and lifestyle changes out of the gates.
Enhancing Your Immune System With Vitamin D This Winter | Podcast #321
Getting enough vitamin D is essential to your long-term health. It’s relatively easy to get vitamin D through sun exposure most of the year, but that changes come wintertime. So here is Dr. J and Evan discussing why vitamin D matters and how to keep your levels up, even when the days are short and the skies are snowy and gray.
Vitamin D absorbs calcium and helps you maintain healthy bones. It also contributes to the health of your muscles, nerves, and immune system. So if you don’t get enough vitamin D, you may be at risk of developing rickets, osteoporosis, other bone disorders, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. Older adults, people with dark skin, and obesity are more likely to have a vitamin D deficiency.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:49 The Importance of Vitamin D in Winter
5:15 Viruses in Winter Season
11:20 Vitamin D Supplements and Benefits
14:03 Vegan Vitamin D
19:01 Vitamin D as Epigenetic Regulator
22:55 Respiration Issues and Blood Pressure Issues
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live is Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to be talking about vitamin D to help enhance your immune system is such a good topic because in the winter months, we’re exposed to all kinds of viruses and bacteria out there and immune stressors. There’s less sunlight, more cold, more sugar, more sweets, more holiday stress. And we really want to make sure that you guys have a strong immune system to be resistant to what’s happening in today’s environment. Evan, how are we doing today, my man?
Evan Brand: Doing really well. I’m ready for the sunshine to come back. You know, I was looking at my D minder app the other day, and the vitamin D window just opened back up. So and the which, technically, according to the way the earth is tilting, we’re actually past the deepest, darkest parts of winter. But you know, late December, because of Northern latitude, and the angle of the sun and all that you literally cannot make vitamin D, even if you’re outside, but naked, you just can’t. But luckily, according to my app, the vitamin D Window, at least from my latitude, just opened up about six days ago. So if there is Sunshine out from about 12 to one or two, there’s a good like two hours a day right now based on my latitude, where I can get adequate vitamin D with enough skin exposure. But the problem is, most people in the middle of the day there may be on their lunch break at their office, you probably can’t get outside enough to get the sun. And if it’s cloudy, of course that cancels it out? And can you undress enough at your office building to get enough sunshine to get enough vitamin D? So, in general, the answer is no. And this is why I would say 90% of people that we’ve tested via blood, we’re going to see vitamin D deficiency. And this is just something you cannot afford to be deficient in
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110%. So in today’s environment, with the winter being where it’s at, and depending on your latitude and longitude and, and your ability to be outside and expose yourself, getting vitamin D naturally to the sun, and it’s forming kind of these pre cholesterol d3, and that d3 being absorbed into your kidneys and liver, right, it’s odds are going to be pretty low. So we’re gonna have to supplement this time of year, that’s going to be without a doubt. And we got to get our vitamin D levels up to an optimal range as well, because we need to be at least above 50 on the United States metric for vitamin D, that’s important. If you have an autoimmune issue, if you have any cancer predispositions, you probably want to be even as high as 70, to 100, but at least 50 on the vitamin D side to really maintain optimal immune function.
Evan Brand: And this is something you can actually test at home now, which is pretty cool. So there are some labs that you and I can work with, where we can get people some dried blood spot testing. But if you’re working with us clinically, we might as well just run a full blood panel looking into thyroid and everything else. Because if you have other symptoms, you could take vitamin D and not fix yourself, meaning it’s great to optimize that. But you could still have other issues. So you could just do the at home blood panel or if we’re going to get you to the lab, we might as well look at everything else. And you’re not looking at an expensive test. It’s kind of hard to believe that this is not standard practice. But you go to your conventional doctor down the road, and they run basic blood work on you, they’re not going to run vitamin D, unless you ask for it. And even then they may say, Oh, it’s not covered by insurance. So what is your reply? Because it’s generally only going to be maybe 20, maybe $50. US max to test this is not an expensive test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, no, it’s definitely not an expensive test. Now in general, and give you guys a couple of markers here in regards to the ranges. So off the bat, I already mentioned 50 to 70 is a pretty good range to be in I think for most people, right? If we have cancer, heart issues, autoimmune stuff, we can go 70 to 100. And the metric we want to look for is going to be nanograms per milliliter nanograms per milliliter. In Europe they do or Canada they do nano moles per liter. And the conversion on that I want to say is about two, you multiply whatever the level is here and you multiply it by about 2.25. And that gives you that conversion, right? So for at about 50 or so on the vitamin D here is sufficient, right? That’s the nanogram per milliliter multiply it by 2.25. That’s about 125 nano moles per liter if we’re talking Europe or Canada so you guys can make the conversion 2.25 All right, so 50 to 70 is ideal 70 to 100 is going to be you know if we have cancer, heart disease, immune issues. Now when we supplement with vitamin D, we want to make sure we’re taking d3 if your diets really great, lots of green vegetables, high quality gi butterfat, good kaitou then you’re probably fine. You don’t need k two if your diets not awesome or not great or you want that extra bit of insurance, you can always do vitamin K to with your vitamin D, just to make sure there’s an adequate balance there. A lot of your fat soluble vitamins tend to come and work together vitamin D vitamin K work importantly well because k helps calcium get into the bone D helps calcium be absorbed. From the gut as well, so it’s nice to have some k there. So we’re really helping to put all that calcium back into the bone that we’re now absorbing better in our gut from vitamin D. So it’s nice to have that as an insurance policy to make sure we’re putting and telling that calcium where it needs to go.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said, I just put another paper in the chat for you if you want it. This was from 2006. And it was just talking about how there was back in the 1980s, a guy Edgar hope Simpson proposed that a seasonal stimulus was intimately associated with seasonal epidemic, influenza. And long story short, the fancy way of saying, hey, winter comes and then boom, all of a sudden, you know, viruses become more of a prevalent issue. And then long story short, there was this whole interventional study, which there’s many, many, many, many on this long story short, vitamin D is reducing the incidence of respiratory infections in children. So this is specifically talking about kids. But there are countless of these for adults. And so what’s happening when the vitamin D levels are sufficient, are a multitude of things. But in particular, it’s helping to reduce interleukin six, which is one of those inflammatory cytokines that we’re seeing get people in trouble. So if you can reduce your cytokines, that’s going to be beneficial. And then also another cool benefit is not only as sort of an anti viral, but there’s some anti microbial benefit, which I honestly didn’t know much about this and start till I started reading these papers here that it can actually activate your immune cells to produce some anti microbials. So sort of like a natural antibiotic, if you will, by upping vitamin D concentration. Now, the question is, well, how do people take it? Is it just an ongoing thing, if you think you’re getting into trouble with the illness, do you go high dose of it, I think it depends on what your levels are. So would you say you probably want to get a baseline first to know where you’re at and how you should address it or-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Baseline first, I mean, I would say the wider your skin is, the more fair your skin is. Probably the more efficient you are going to be at converting vitamin D from the sun, right? The darker your skin is think of your your the darkness in your skin, that’s melanin, right, the more melanin you have, so you have kind of different spectrums full on African American, that’s the highest amount of melanin, melanin is like your natural UV block, right, it helps block your skin from the sun’s rays. So due to evolution, and where we evolved, people that evolved closer to the equator, more UV light based on the angle of the Sun hitting it, they naturally evolved with more melanin in the skin, people that have all further away from the equator, less direct UV light, less melanin in the skin, because it’s all about making vitamin D. So the more efficient you are at making vitamin D, you probably are going to be, you’ll probably be able to get away with not supplementing as much or as frequent. The more melanin in your skin, the more you have to be on top of your vitamin D, because unless you’re going to be outside six to eight hours a day, and you’re at a, you know, mid to low 30 latitude, you’re probably just not going to be able to ever make enough vitamin D, therefore, you really have to be on top of everything. And you’re testing. So lighter skin, I think in general, a good rule of thumb is 1000, I use per 25 pounds of body weight, especially in the fall and winter months. And then if you want to take a break in the summer, that’s fine, just make sure you get a test here there to confirm it, the darker your skin is, you may even want to double that in the winter months. And then you may want to follow up and retest come the early spring and see where you’re at kind of monitor where you’re at. If you’re someone that works outside, that’s you have to make that adjustment. If you’re an office person you’re inside all day, you also have to make that adjustment to so in general 1000, I use per 25 pounds of body weight. And then if you have darker skin, you may want to double that for the winter months. And then it’s always good to confirm in the summertime in the winter, and sometime coming off the winter, early spring summer to see where you’re at. And then we can always adjust accordingly. And if there’s any risk of autoimmunity or cancer, we probably want to be testing just a little bit more frequently. Once you kind of know where you’re at, you can kind of guess based on how well you’re doing. And then in regards to vitamin D, you know, I mean, vitamin K, K2, you probably want anywhere between 100 150 micrograms of K2 is kind of where you want where you’re going to be at per day on average. And so if you’re doing lots of green vegetables, if you’re doing sauerkraut fermented foods, you’re doing kaitou from grass fed butter or ghee, you’ll probably be fine. And then if you want that insurance policy of about 150 micrograms, you can always just find a good vitamin d3 with that in there. And then that gives you that extra assurance that you’re okay there.
Evan Brand: Yep. And the other cool thing about this I mean, in terms of how big of a game changer This is for your health for your immunity, we’re talking minor dollars for testing. We’re talking minor dollars for actually buying something now, we’re still going to advise you to go with the more professional product just because that’s what we’re going to use clinically. That’s what we’re going to sell to people so we still do Want you to get a good quality product, but in a pinch, could you get away with something just a typical store brought brand, probably. So we just have a lot of sensitive people. So we’re going to want to avoid a lot of the fillers, you’ll see soybean oil, sometimes you’ll see other things that we don’t like, and some of the cheap brands. So we’re going to try to get you just like a straight d3, possibly with a little bit of gelatin. But even sometimes we’re gonna do like a veggie cap, when you’ve got maybe a little bit of cellulose but-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: MCT oil or olive oil, some kind of a healthier fat versus like you mentioned a soy or something more junky or more like polyunsaturated.
Evan Brand: Yeah, but once again, I mean, you’re looking at, in general, I know some of the professional brains, you and I use, cost wise, you’re looking at, like 50 to 60 bucks for six months. So I mean, you’re talking maybe 10 bucks a month, and that’s for like professional quality. And there are liquid versions that you can use for children as well. I’ve got both of my kids taking vitamin D. Now we do give them some different cod liver oils and omega. So you can get some vitamin D naturally from some of the cod liver oils, you can get a few 1000 iu, but we are still doing a little bit of extra K1, K2 and D3 for the kids. And that’s easy. And my daughter calls it Hummingbird food, because it’s clear just like our Hummingbird food and it tastes a little sweet. So she loves it. It’s like her favorite part of the day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, cuz it’s got a tiny bit of stevia in there. Right. And then you also have, you know, it’s clear liquid vitamin like the MCT oil in there. That’s Yeah, good. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. So 100% on that, I would say supplementally. Like you mentioned cod liver oil, very good. You can also look at other fat soluble vitamins, the other ones may be vitamin A, right. So if you’re doing high quality, ghee or grass fed butter, you’re probably getting a good amount of vitamin A in there, especially if you’re doing something your tea or coffee in the morning. If you’re eating good grass fed grass fed beef and you’re doing good quality pasture egg fed egg yolks, then you’re going to be set on a lot of that, if you want some additional insurance, you can do some cod liver oil, like I mentioned, you can get a vitamin D that has some vitamin A in it, or just use some of the extra cod liver oil and get some good egg yolks in and you’ll probably be totally fine with that. Anything else you want to add?
Evan Brand: Yep. I would just encourage people not to do. Yeah, I would say I just encourage people not to do the conventional D2 supplement that you’re going to get from a local doctor. For example, if you ask your neighbor down the road to give you some vitamin D, they’re probably going to give you D2. They may give you like a 50,000 iu or possibly even like 100,000 iu that you’re going to get from a pharmacy, it’s going to be loaded with a bunch of binders and fillers. And we find that just those really high doses for a few days don’t really do as much as a lower dose over a longer period of time. So it’s not where you just come in and do 100,000 for a week and you’re cured. Now you really need to just optimize it over a slower period of time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, like myself, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll do sometimes 40 or 50, once a week, to kind of keep my levels pretty good. But I think it just kind of depends on where you’re at. Right. So if if for some reason, you know, you forget to do your vitamin D, I’d rather have people do it like at least once a week. So it’s there because it is a fat soluble vitamin. So it will kind of build up in your system. It’s not like a B vitamin where you just pee it out. But ideally, every day is good, especially in the morning time because think about it, you wouldn’t naturally make vitamin D in the middle of the night or at nighttime, if you’re taking it right, you’d make it more in the morning to afternoon. So take it more in the morning and afternoon. Right, that makes more sense to me from a kind of day in day out how vitamin D will be made in general. And then the other thing is, if you miss it or you forget it, I think doing it at least getting it in there once a week as a fat soluble vitamin, just make sure you test make sure you’re doing well on that. And like you said having d3 is in the B that’s more of the animal version, I think is a lanolin more of a plant version on the D two side. And the thing with it’s more synthetic and it doesn’t equate to improving your vitamin D levels because as to get converted in the body. So there’s a conversion issue that tends to get lapsed on and it won’t move your vitamin D levels is good.
Evan Brand: I have seen some like vegan D3, I want to say they’re like an algae based product. Yeah, I haven’t looked too much into them. I mean, I have had some vegan clients who were like, Hey, I’m just really opposed to any other source of vitamin D. I’m like, okay, fine, we’ll get you some of the vegan ones. I think it’s a lichen. Maybe a lichen or an algae. I mean, I’m okay with it. But I don’t have enough long term evidence to say where I’ve looked at people and regards to their test results to confirm that their levels we’re getting up from the algae or the like and based one, I’m sure if it’s D3, and it says 5000. I mean, in theory, it’s good enough, but I just haven’t I don’t have enough data to say whether you should go for that or not. I would just go with your typical D3
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Now vitamin D has a couple of different benefits. You already mentioned a couple things, let’s kind of go over some of the benefits for the listeners. So we already chatted about the the natural antibiotic that’s being produced by vitamin D. It’s called cathelicidin. It’s a kind of an antibacterial enzyme. That’s super helpful at being able to knock down bacteria, okay? It also has antiviral mechanisms as well. It has the antimicrobial peptides, like I mentioned, it also has some antiviral mechanisms. Part of that is it stimulates and can modulate the th one immune response and the th one immune system, that’s where you’re making a lot of your natural killer cells and your helper cells, which are really good. And then also good helper cell can also help you know that your antigen presenting cell can help make antibodies more efficiently. So you’re also going to have better TH2 immune response. So you’re going to make antibodies to whatever that infection is, those tend to come a little bit later in the game, but good signaling to make your antibodies is super helpful as well. I would also say as a couple other studies here that we’re talking about different things, so we have a reduce in our MMP 9 concentrations, we have a reduction in Brady Keinen storm, and our original reduction in our cytokine storm. So basically, we have a lot of inflammatory molecules that get produced, right, Brady keinen cytokines interleukins, MMP9. And basically these are inflammatory type of chemical messengers. And vitamin D can help modulate that and prevent that from being overproduced, which because the more we over produce those, the more our immune system responds, right, and we can create more cytokine storm issues because our immune system kind of is on this positive feedback loop, responding and creating more issues with these cytokines. So we can kind of modulate and bring these cytokines down a bit. And when there’s less cytokines, there’s less chance of a cytokine storm, which is basically our immune system responding. And imagine a fight between two people, you know, one person yells, the other person, that person yells back down, then we’re pushing them we’re shoving, then we’re hitting, and the violence escalates. That’s kind of what happens with the cytokine storm, with your immune system and all the different cytokines and immune chemical signals, so we can keep that modulating a bit, which is very helpful. And vitamin D plays a really important role in that.
Evan Brand: Awesome. I don’t think there’s really, really any other mechanisms that are important for this. I mean, I’m sure there’s other stuff that we could, we could pick out. But, you know, I would argue that, you know, if you’re darker skin in Canada, you’re in trouble. If you’re in New York, you’re in Michigan, you’re in Montana, you’re in Seattle, Washington, I mean, even, you know extremely fair skinned people, Irish people like me, if you’re that far north, and you’re not supplementing, I’ll bet you $1,000 you’re deficient. So it’s pretty easy. It’s pretty easy. This is so easy. But such a game changer. I wish it were the front headlines everywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would at least kind of convince people here just get on vitamin D, from thanksgiving to spring. Yeah, at least do that right, at least make that investment get on vitamin D supplementation from thanksgiving to spring. Or if you want to come off the rest of the year, as long as you’re getting some sunlight, fine, but at least do that that’s gonna give you a good bump. And the fat soluble nutrients, you’ll get over those four or five months, we’ll hang around months afterwards, too, because it takes a while for that for that vitamin D level to build up. Now, what are some symptoms of vitamin D excess. So if you’re not testing and you’re just doing a lot of vitamin D, well, you may have high levels of calcium, you may notice hypercalcemia hyper calcium iya. So if you run a comprehensive metabolic panel, you may see high levels of calcium. You may also notice you’re more nauseous, you’re vomiting, you’re weak, a lot of urination, bone pain, kidney issues, calcium stones, if you’re having any of those symptoms, and you’re not really monitoring your vitamin D, you may want to just double check on that. I’ve also seen clinically that vitamin D toxicity happens less when you have other fat soluble vitamins present. So if you’re noticing that you may want to back off a bit, you may want to really focus on getting good vitamin A and good vitamin K in there, as well, just to make sure you’re not creating a fat soluble vitamin imbalance, I think is a really good kind of thing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s pretty easy. Oh, a couple other things I wanted to mention, this is at the top of the the paper you and I were looking at, you already mentioned like benefits for autoimmune diseases like MS. But also in regards to just helping with epigenetic switching. So you know, all this reading here, because it’s pretty simple. Vitamin D is a powerful epigenetic regulator influencing more than 2500 genes. So what that tells me is you and I seriously, we don’t even fully understand what all this benefits. I mean, we have a clue based on knowing how many genes that can positively influence but who knows, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. So how many other beneficial things are we doing? That science hasn’t even uncovered yet? Probably a ton.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% right. So when you talk about the different epigenetic signaling that can happen, that’s pretty powerful, right? Because we know that I think 800 900 It’s a bunch of different DNA, a bunch of different genes are being affected, and so on. It’s important. We don’t know all the things that could be affected. But we do know that if you get your vitamin D levels up, you don’t really have to worry about everything that you’re doing. That’s kind of the, that’s kind of the important component there, you don’t really have to worry about it, you just got to make sure that you’re doing the right thing. And you’re set. And you’re pretty much good to go.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve got my grandfather testing his now I- Well, I’ve got my grandfather, he’s been on vitamin D for several years now. And I’ve got his doctor to the point where he doesn’t question it anymore. He just runs it. So we’ve got him up, we just got his blood work back. He’s up around 60. And he’s doing 5000 units a day, and he’s hanging out around 60. It took a little while to get up there. So we did 10 for a while. And then now we’re just staying at a baseline of five a day. And he’s doing great with it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. So can you repeat the dose again?
Evan Brand: Yeah, we had him at 5000 a day. For a while we went up to 10, because he was only at around a 30 or 40. So we went up to 10 for a little while. And then we backed him down. So now he’s at a five. So we went five, up to 10 for a while now he’s at a 60. So now we’re just going back down sticking with a baseline of 5000 a day with K and it’s working really well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my kids, they get some vitamin D out of the gates every single day, which is helpful. And then we make sure they get some cod liver oil. And then they’re also getting some really good fat soluble vitamins via gi and such like that. And so out of the gates here, you know anyone that’s supplementing their kids or their family or friends, just make sure you’re getting other good fat soluble vitamins along with the vitamin D, and you’re going to be pretty darn safe out of the gates. And I would say at least try to do some kind of testing going into the winter and or coming off the winter just to make sure you’re on track.
Evan Brand: Yep, and we’ll put some links below I believe you’ve got a professional vitamin D that you use. I’ve got one that I use, there’s liquid, there are different soft gel capsule versions. So we’ll put a couple links for people if you want to check them out. Once again, this is one of the most cost effective but most health impacting supplements to be using it this time. And I think it should be in your pantry and your cabinet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thinks so too. So out of the gates, we talked about all of the immune benefits the immune modulating benefits, we talked about the natural antiviral antibacterial mechanisms. We talked about how they modulate cytokines, decreased chance of a cytokine storm. We talked about the the modulating of all these different chemical messengers. Also important benefits in regarding breathing, right, because we talked about vitamin D can help modulate high levels of angiotensin right. So we have a lot of blood pressure medications, angiotensin converting enzyme medications, right, or ARB right angiotensin receptor site blockers, vitamin D modulates angiotensin two rennen right it modulates it, and that can help with blood pressure. And blood pressure is important, right? Anytime we have respiration issues or breathing issues or blood pressure issues, modulating NAC can help. Alright, I would say the only other thing I really like adding in, especially if I’m having breathing issues outside of vitamin D is throwing either in some Bluetooth ion or some NAC and or both because that can one help reduce mucus when you have less mucus, you have better transfer of oxygen from the alveoli to the bloodstream, right? So you can take oxygen, deoxygenated blood, bring it back in get oxygen, so you just have better transfer of oxygen back into the bloodstream, which is important. And that’s going to help you help you breathe better and it’s gonna help keep your oxygen levels up. If oxygen levels dropped too much, you’re gonna be really fatigued and tired. So the only other thing I would throw in with vitamin D is maybe some NAC and or some glutathione.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said yeah, oral and or in bigger situations, more problematic situations. nebulised bluetooth ion, we had one client who had a brother who had a lot of issues, got him on the nebulizer with the Bluetooth ion and he was stellar within just a few hours. So I think that is another essential supplement to keep in your pantry.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I had a patient just last week she’ll probably listen to this podcast, but she had some breathing issues due to a winter cold, some significant breathing issues and she had seen my podcasts and video on using lipids omo or shoot using nebulised bluetooth ion and I my little nebulizer right over here. Right under there. And I use the nebulizer to fire on with some saline solution. And she said right away her ability to breathe and respirate improve right right out of the gates. Oh yeah shows that you know getting really good glutathione obviously orally into your body is low hanging fruit. But if you need to get it internally right to your lungs, there’s a lot of studies on showing how beneficial that is in helping your breathing and just helping to reduce inflammation in your lungs.
Evan Brand: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. My mother in law she had diagnosis of COPD even though she’s never smoked. We think it was due to chemical exposures probably virally. bacterial issues as well. Same thing got her on the nebulizer. She said it’s a game changer she got off of her inhaler completely after using the nebulizer so it’s pretty unreal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So what we’ll do is we’ll put some links here we have some vitamin D products and glutathione products that we like and we personally recommend, we’ll put some links here below so if you guys are interested and you want to take a peek and you want to support the podcast, that’s one way to do so. And again we only we only recommend products that we personally use with our family, ourselves and our patients and because we’re in the thick of it rolling up our sleeves dealing with patients clinically every week it’s it’s into our it’s let’s say it’s part of our best interest to have the highest quality product so we can get the highest clinical outcome.
Evan Brand: Totally, totally well if you need help clinically as well if you need advice, we work around the world with people via FaceTime, Skype, phone etc. You can reach out to Dr. J at Justin Health. JustinHealth.com for Dr. J. Me, Evan Brand at EvanBrand.com and we’re available worldwide. So you can use the scheduling links you can book intro calls you can book new client calls, but we are here so please reach out if you need help.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Hey Evan excellent chatting with you my man. JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com. Sharing is caring if you guys enjoy it please send us a review we really appreciate it. JustinHealth.com/iTunes, EvanBrand.com/iTunes we’ll put a review link below. We really appreciate you guys. Alright, you guys have a phenomenal day. Take control of your health. Keep your immune system strong during the winter months. Take care y’all. Bye now.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/enhancing-your-immune-system-with-vitamin-d-podcast-321
Recommended products:
Immunity Boost Tips to Help You Stay Healthy Over the Holidays | Podcast #298
Your immune system likely needs a holiday boost, and you are the only one who can do it. (Things like stress, foods high in saturated fat, alcohol, and skipping exercise can all weaken this key part of the body that helps fight off infection and keep you healthy.) Let’s hear from Dr. J and Evan to help you put yourself at the top of your holiday checklist and give yourself this gift of health.
Check out this podcast!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
2:28 Vitamins, Nutritional Mushrooms
11:31 Blended Formulas, Supreme, Monolaurin
18:00 Biofilms
21:07 Essential Oils, Nebulizers
22:49 Nebulizers
Evan Brand: And here, this is a time of the year where hopefully everybody’s getting together and having a good time. And we had some questions about immunity and what people should be doing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, they’re all valid, valid questions. I mean, this is the time a year right, vitamin D level starts to drop. Usually, we got more viruses out there floating around all different kinds, we have obviously lower vitamin D as well, because the angle of the Sun is dropping a bit due to winter. And then obviously, more sugar consumption, more treats, more candy, more sweets, from Thanksgiving, and Christmas, etc. So all those things are going to have a major effect compromising the immune system, plus people get their end of the year deadlines with work. So a lot of emotional stress, buying gifts, all the family obligations. So all of these stressors summit and could have a major effect on compromising your immune system. So our goal today is kind of to talk about all these things and different strategies that you can work on.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, those old classic Christmas songs, they’ll say, this is the most wonderful time of the year. But in general, most people I would argue, are more stressed. And they’re not as happy this time of the year, which is kind of sad, it really should be a happy time. And so I think first I want to dive into the impact of stress and the immune system, if I may, and want to talk about the influence of stress, whether that’s related to sleep, blood, sugar, emotional, whatever, that is really going to impact a lot of things. But most importantly, it’s going to affect your immunity. And so we know, we’ve seen countless cases where people are going to go from a 40 Hour Workweek and they go 5060 hours, we work with a lot of attorneys, CEOs, we work with executives, we work with teachers, we work with real estate agents, and we always see there’s this kind of a, I call it like the hustle effect where someone will go go real hard, like you said, kind of the end of the quarter sales thing, you know, they really got to get their numbers, or we got to finish this before the semester ends if they’re like a college professor, and then all of a sudden they have a crash from it. Now, if we can kind of come in with some strategic adaptogenic herbs, those can be helpful for the immune system as well. So I think the easiest one, just right out of the gate is going to be Reishi or Reishi. Mushroom, I think that’s going to be your best adaptogen that I would argue has some good stress and blunting effects. But it’s going to be great for boosting up your natural killer cells, which are going to be really important for any type of illness that you may be exposed to.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So of course, like you kind of hit you kind of highlighted a couple things off the bat here, just all of the immune stress due to the holidays, all of the obligations, all of the food stressors. So I mean, of course, the first thing I think we can kind of look at is alright, don’t compromise on sleep, make sure you’re getting enough sleep. And then make sure your diet is at least reasonably well. And I kind of tell my patients, if you know you’re going to be eating a whole bunch of treats or some not so nice food, try to always find a good replacement, you know, try to find something that’s going to be more healthier on the on the sugar side on the dessert side on the treat side. So you have a healthier substitute, especially if you have kids, right? We know once your kids get sick, they tend to be like the little petri dish that carries viruses and bacteria throughout the family. Right. So you want to keep your kids healthy. So kids don’t know any different. Just try to choose a healthier cheat. So I’ll tell you what we’re doing for the holidays, I went to a local trophy, true food kitchen and we got some of their squash pies. And we get we’re getting them for some of the holiday dessert. So they’re going to be a healthier kind of paleo version, cassava type of cross lower sugar but clean ingredients. Now we also use a couple other pecan pie and pumpkin pies that are just really clean ingredients, very little added sugar. And then we try to make a lot of our sides are going to be paleo, right so good clean, heirloom, pasture fed Turkey, organic mashed potatoes, good quality kerrygold butter, like not too much on the carbohydrate side. And we know all that glucose, all that carbohydrate, right is going to convert to glucose in our bloodstream. And glucose tends to have a similar molecular structure as vitamin C so it can bind into that vitamin C receptor site and it can negatively impact our immune system can also abnormally affect cortisol. So if you can get your glucose levels and your glycaemia under control that has a huge impact on vitamin C and your immune system so first strategy is kind of look at the desserts in the in the treats that you’re going to have around for the family and just try to find a healthier substitute for all the core ones and try to look at it as you know 80-20 90-10 in regards to kind of you being on point versus you being off point.
Evan Brand: Yep, yep, good point and then beverages I mean, we do a lot of herbal teas I’m always just brewing some some tea so I think if you have somebody who’s not really entity or if you’re just not a tea person look at something like a hibiscus tea with a little bit of monkfruit or stevia I mean that’s delicious. You won’t know and your your your friends and family they’re not going to know if it’s not like a juice. I mean, some of the hibiscus blends I grew up I mean it almost tastes like juice. I mean the kids just absolutely love it. Even my 18 month old Drink hibiscus tea. So I think something like that would be smart, and just keeping you away from all the corn syrup. I mean, it’s crazy how, you know, you still look at the the table and it looks like we’re still in 1990 you’ll see the the coke and the Diet Coke and the Pepsi and the whatever it’s like, No, we don’t want that. That’s there’s definitely, definitely an impact on sleep, stress, blood sugar, sugar, it’s all connected. So it’s really easy to derail yourself, but it’s so easy to dial it in. So what I would be doing, I would be doing a gram a day of some reishi mushroom, I would be doing a gram a day of some quarter steps mushroom, which is going to be great for energy production, but also just as kind of an adrenal adaptogen. And then with some of the diet tweaks you’re mentioning, and going to bed, I mean, that’s the simple thing. Yeah, to be off to a good start.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s, that’s a big one. So I mean, I just say get the food right, keep the glucose under control. The next thing on top of that is you know, low hanging fruit is going to be things like vitamin D, vitamin D, for dog, vitamin C, for cat, these are all going to be super helpful things. Vitamin D has a major effect on modulating the immune system, right th one th two it affects the T regulatory cells, which can modulate your immune response. Also, vitamin D produces this antibacterial peptide called cathelicidin. And that can have a awesome impact on bacteria that you’re exposed to. So vitamin D is great vitamin C, like we chatted about, it’s wonderful. You can always do things like glutathione. Or if you want to save a little money, some n acetylcysteine. And that can have an effect on glutathione is wonderful at modulating the immune system as well. Especially NAC is very helpful for mucus production and post nasal drip stuff. And which can help with a lot of cough stuff as well. So and acetyl, cysteine and glutathione is wonderful. I’m taking some reishi mushroom here, right now, Reishi has a couple of compounds in there, it’s got the one three Beta Glucan in there, it’s got the various polysaccharides, it’s got things in there called triterpenes. And trader beans actually deactivate virus replication. And so it’s very nice because it can one enhance your immune system, your th one immune system, which is kind of the natural killer cell immune response. But it can also decrease virus replication. And so a virus works by getting into your cells, and they replicate things like zinc, decreased virus replication, things like glutathione, decrease it, and acetylcysteine decreases it. So these are all powerful nutrients that you can use to Reishi, the terpenes decrease it. So if you can do things that naturally decrease that replication, it gives your immune system a huge advantage.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And then with the vitamin D, I believe you and I have access to like an at home professional finger spot prick blood test, where you could check and confirm your levels of vitamin D. However, in most cases, we’re going to be running comprehensive blood panels on people. So if you’re listening, and you’re like, well, I don’t really know where I’m at, or what I should be doing dosing wise. In general, fall, winter time, to anywhere up up to six, maybe 8000, I use of d3 Plus, we have professional formulas we’re using where they have a little bit of K one and K two added as well. And then you could just confirm after two to three months of supplementation with your blood you want to be I would say somewhere 60 to 80, I think is smart, but at least a minimum of 30. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve seen initially where their vitamin D is in the single digits or in the low 20s. That’s a very, very common spot to be with that. I mean, look at people, they don’t spend much time outside anymore. And they’re, they’re covering too much of their skin. And now as you mentioned, this time of the year, when we’re talking in late November, you’ve got the angle of the sun, where if you’re farther north than basically Atlanta, Georgia, it’s almost impossible to get any vitamin D, except for maybe a couple of hours in the middle of the day, you know, but once we get into the deep winter, just the angle of the sun, you just can’t do it unless you’re in like South Florida, basically, South Texas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, vitamin D kind of a good rule of thumb is you can take 1000 views per 25 pounds of body weight and then retest usually within one to two months. If you know you’re low out of the gates, I typically recommend doing whatever one 1000 iu per pound or 1000. I used for 25 pounds of body weight times two. So if you’re like 200 pounds, right, that’s going to be typically 8000 I use times two so like 16 to 20,000 I use for a month and then and then bring it back down to the general recommendation of like that five to 8000 right, you know, layer and again after that first month, you may want to retest that way you can kind of get your levels up fast tests, make sure you’re good. Make sure you’re not over 100 or so. Again, vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin so it accumulates over time, but when you pull it out, it also drops slowly over time. It’s not like a B vitamin or vitamin C. That’s water soluble It’s a fat fighter Wednesday. So while the kind of it can increase pretty fast, but then takes a while to decrease it, so sometimes getting it up to 100 or so, and then kind of pulling back a lot, even if the level that you’re at may not be enough to keep it there, you may be at 100 or so in December, and then the time March hits, you’re like at 70. That’s cool, too, because then the springs coming back, and then you’re going to be getting more sunlight. So that works, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s good advice. And then vitamin C. I mean, it really depends on where you’re at with your bowels. I mean, we use a lot of different blends of vitamin C, which kind of helped move the bowels too. So generally, I’m going to be two to three grams a day, I don’t see any issue with that dosing, sometimes we’ll go a little higher. And sometimes we’re at a gram a day. So I think I’d say one to three grams, on average would be about right for for vitamin C, and we’re going to do a mixed ascorbate, if possible. So we’re trying to avoid using just straight ascorbic acid, we find that, especially just that by itself, it doesn’t do much, we really like to see some of the citrus bioflavonoids in there, the course attend the route. And those are the things we use. So if you go to, I don’t know, Walgreens or just generic store and get vitamin C, probably just ascorbic acid by itself, probably not going to absorb much. And so we’ve tested thousands of people via urine organic acids testing, and we always see low vitamin C, it’s a very, very common occurrence. And so I would argue, a mixed ascorbate, like a professional formula that we carry is going to be much, much better. Exactly. So you like the ascorbate. And that’s the one that’s reduced. Correct. I like to do the mixed one. So like a sodium ascorbate, magnesium ascorbate, calcium ascorbate. Those three together work awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, like that. That makes a lot of sense. That’s cool. We talked about vitamin C, we talked about some medicinal mushrooms, I have a blend blended formula called immuno boost. And that is a really good one because that’s actually you know, Supreme, and that has some really, really good nutrients in there that are going to be amazingly helpful. And that’s going to have like akinesia in there to net akinesia, it’s going to have some astragulus, which are really good for modulating the immune system, they’ll have some mushrooms in there. So we’ll have some Reishi, it’ll have some pataky, it’ll have some cortiseps in there. Also some monolaurin monolaurin. Excellent, because that’s a very helpful at decreasing virus replication. monolaurin can kind of come in there and it can digest the virus envelope. And the virus envelope is like a cloaking device the virus uses to hide from the immune system. So as soon as the immune system can tag the virus, it’s easier for the body to now go after that virus and destroy it. And so by decreasing that virus envelope, its ability to hide it monolaurin can be used in a very helpful way to expose that to the immune system.
Yeah, I love monolaurin. We both got animals. I hear my dog barking, I hear your cat meowing. It’s like the farm life over here, isn’t it? Yeah, no, totally. Absolutely. So we hit on the sleep, we hit the stress, we hit the mushrooms, we hit the vitamins. You know, I think just a good methylated multi is good. I manufacture one called True multi I believe you manufacture a professional multi as well. Just getting a lot of the bees, bees and Bravo are going to be important because with the stress of whether it’s just your day to day life, your work stress, the emotional stress, whatever is going on with you, you’re going to burn through your bees pretty quick. We’re going to measure those via urine. But your average person, if you’re just someone listening, you’re not actually running organic acids testing to confirm this, just trust us we’ve seen thousands of cases, I’ll tell you a B vitamins are going to burn up quick. So it’s okay to supplement those. And your pee may go highlighter yellow for a little bit. That doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money, you’re just going to pee out the excess and then your body’s going to get calibrated. And you should just have no relatively normal urine. It may always be a little more yellow with the bees. But that’s not an issue. And that, like I said, doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money.
Yes, 100%. So we talked about vitamin D, we talked about the Reishi. We talked about glutathione vitamin D as in dog, I talked about monolaurin and how that kind of helps digest and break down the viral envelope. Let’s talk about astragalus or akinesia or golden seal. These are wonderful herbs that have amazing immuno modulating effects. So I like astragalus as well. It can do a couple of things, they can decrease virus replication. Usually these herbs do kind of they have like two major mechanisms, they enhance the immune system, usually a combination of th one th two tends to support more th one but they also can help the th two side and where they make where they actually make antibodies. So you can help the natural killer side th one or you can help the antibody production side. Usually antibody production side comes in a little bit later in the game. So if you want to avoid getting sick, it’s going to make a bigger bigger difference if you’re if you’re enhancing the th one because that’s kind of the faster acting immune response. Now longer term supporting th two is very helpful because you can have what’s called cross reactive immunity. So your th one immune system may have seen previous viruses in the environment. And it can mobilize antibodies faster even though those antibodies may not already be there, you may be able to mobilize those antibodies faster because the th one immune system has seen similar viruses in the past. So you may get a faster mobilization of these different antibodies. And so yes, in my product is the amino supreme one and a couple of the ingredients, we have the akinesia in that one and the astragulus, which is wonderful. Also andrographis, very similar. Goldenseal, very similar monolaurin, we talked about monolaurin the different medicinal mushrooms, corticeps, shitake, mytaki, Reishi, these have effects on supporting the th one and also the triterpenes help deactivate the virus, right. So what does that mean? virus has to replicate to start creating symptoms, right. And if the virus cannot replicate, you deactivate the replication process. Now, not a big deal, your body can keep it under wraps. And then of course, things like zinc, are going to help with virus replication. So I’ll put a link down below to my product. Um, you know, Supreme, I know you have one similar to Evan, will make sure that’s down below. And these are things that we clinically use with our patients that work really, really, really well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, berberine is a good one, too. I mean, there’s a lot of papers on anti influence activity of berberine. And viral clip, reducing viral replication, using berberine. So for those listening, if you’re doing any kind of anti microbial protocol with us, a lot of times we’re using blends, like in particular one that I have called microbiome support. Number one, I use that a lot for gut infection, so any kind of bacterial overgrowth issues, but guess what, the cool thing about herbs, unlike drugs is you have, you’re killing multiple birds with the same stone. So we could be coming in with the berberine addressing the bacterial overgrowth, but then we’re also reducing viral replication. So I think that’s a great one berberine in isolation would be fine. But something like the microbiome support as a broad spectrum. You know, that’d be smart, too. And for your gut, I’ve got some dgl in that product. So that’s going to be giving you a little bit of gut healing, if you’re eating some stuff that you may be irritating your gut by, you know, that’d be a good insurance policy. And then what about enzymes? Should we hit on enzymes at all?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I mean, you can do systemic enzymes, which can be helpful for just kind of breaking down viral envelope as well or helping with stagnant you know, coagulation, right? If you have increased coagulation, a lot of clotting, poor blood flow. Enzymes can be helpful for that perspective. Also, maybe with biofilms right resistant bacteria have biofilms. What other kind of what were you thinking of em enzymes for in regards to supporting the immune system out?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I was I was thinking like, there’s a couple that we use, like there’s [inaudible]. There’s lumbered open-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -about it from a biofilm perspective, or quagga bility thing? How are you thinking about it?
Evan Brand: Yeah, good question. Probably the biofilm piece because I’ve had a lot of people with resistant infections where will come in with a biofilm support, and then that kind of gets them over the hump. So Lately, I’ve been using a lot of different ones. Beyond balance has done a great job making some particular biofilm products, you have to use us a professional to order it for you. But we’ve done we’ve done good with those. And then there are some other professional companies I’ve been personally experimenting with some lambro kinase. And that’s a much much stronger than something like a sarapeptidase and I’ve noticed a big increase in blood flow, like my hands are much much warmer using lambro kinase. So I know it’s doing something from a circulatory perspective. And I would argue that when you’re taking all these herbs and mushrooms, if you have good blood flow, good circulation, that’s going to deliver the nutrients everywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the key. So when you get really inflamed, usually there’s a lot of poor coagulation, a lot of poor circulation, there’s increased coagulation, right? coagulation, when the platelets kind of stick together and they kind of clot and you get more fibrinogen hanging out right then more fibrin or fibrinogen, because he goes fibrinogen to fibrin, so fibrin, or like the clot, so to speak. The more fibrinogen fibrin you have the more clots you have the decreased blood flow you’re going to have. So a hallmark of inflammation is just a lot more sticky cells. And so if you can make those cells a lot more smooth and less sticky, you do that with a good anti inflammatory paleo template. You do that by keeping your blood sugar down. You do that by keeping inflammation down from grains and other inflammatory foods, hydrating adequate good fats like fish oil, right. Evan mentioned the enzymes also help also ginger ginger is amazing. Ginger actually has antiviral qualities. Go into PubMed, type in ginger or zinjibber, which is I think the technical term Zinjibber, and you’ll see all kinds of studies on inflammation reduction, you’ll see viral particle replication or viral particle adhesion, part of how viruses everywhere they have to stick to a cell receptor site to stick to it. And if that’s removed, Iris can’t stick to it as well right Were you able to flush it off with ginger are good antimicrobials are biofilms. All that can really, really help the virus from causing problems it can really prevent it from causing problems so gingers great good anti viral, helps decrease viruses from sticking to the receptor sites also is very anti inflammatory, supports good healthy digestion and motility as well and can really help with irritation in the throat so like coughing and things like that. Ginger has a natural Tustin quality to it right custom meaning it kind of helps with the coughing and so does you know, decreasing the mucus with like a good n acetylcysteine. And some good really good sinus flushes with xylitol and bicarb. And minerals can also decrease any bacteria or fungus junk up in the nose or even going down the throat via a post nasal drip issue.
Evan Brand: Love it. Love it. Yeah, gingers amazing. I mean, we talked about it. You see it at the grocery store. You look at it, you’re like, is ginger really that special? Yeah, it really is. I actually had a double bag of ginger yesterday with a little bit of raw honey and it was absolutely just so delicious. So therapeutic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, anything else you wanted to highlight off the bat, I mean, a couple things you can do. There’s some good essential oils that are out there that you can kind of drip into your water and just kind of get a homeopathic dose in your water throughout the day. It’s helpful. I know there’s a couple brands doterra has one called ’On Guard’. And then I think Young Living has one called ‘Thieves’. You know the common theme and a lot of these usually some kind of clove or cinnamon or some kind of like an orange peel s kind of thing. And these are very antimicrobial, very immune supporting and you can always kind of put a low dose in if you have a little throat issue going on. You can always kind of gargle with it too. Or if you’re doing some oil pulling, you know, put a couple of drops in the oil in your mouth and kind of swish that around and give it five or 10 minutes and they can kind of hit the back of your throat and clean out any nasty bacteria or biofilms that are hanging way back in your throat can be very helpful. Just make sure you spit it out afterwards.
Evan Brand: I think diffusing would be smart too, right, why not? You could defuse put some of the oils into the air Just be aware of your pets. I don’t remember what particular oils that were but I did have a client who was getting super into the oils and she was diffusing something and her dog got super lethargic had to take the dog to the emergency vet. I can’t remember so just do a little research essential oil dogs diffuser, there was a couple of stories about you know particular one so don’t go too crazy pumping your whole house full of it and making your dog pass out or something like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s smart. The only other thing I would say besides the essential oil I think we Oh, I think we could also talk about diffuse including ion there are some really good reduced kind of soluble glutathione compounds out there. I’ve one called by third naturals is really good. I’ll put a link down below if you guys want to see I think you have a link as well to it.
Evan Brand: You mean, nebulize? You said diffuse you mean? nebulize?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, I meant Yeah, well, kind of the same thing. But yeah, in general, we basically a diffuser is kind of for the systemic environment. a nebulizer is something like this, that you put in devices device like this, don’t you love that is that i mean is that nebulizer not the best one I’m telling ya, man, it’s great. I gotta clean I gotta clean it out a little bit. But you have the battery here you have the facemask here, you just connect it in like this. Yeah, the one he’s showing for people listening on audio, this is a one by Philips, it’s called inspire in a spire. And then you basically just take the five milliliters of a salient solution, you put right in the top here, and you add your 200 milligram glutathione reduced. And it’s it’s you can’t do it for any glow to find on the one that we’re talking about. It’s by a company called Therm Naturals, we’ll put the link below. And that is a glutathione that’s reduced, that’s mixed with sodium bicarb. So then when you add the saline solution to it, it actually becomes soluble. It’s just total it diffuses into the water 100%. And then you close the cap attached to the battery pack. And then you can do a five minute session or so breathing right in. And that’s helpful. If you have active lung issues, it may not be necessary. If you are already are in good shape, you may just be able to take some oral glutathione or oral NAC. But if you start to have active issues, it can be helpful because you can really increase the saturation right into the lung area to the alveoli. And right into that respiratory tree.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve used it with several clients who’ve had lung issues. And it’s been it’s been great COPD and other issues. It’s been wonderful. So it’s a great, great tool to have, like you said, you probably don’t need it if you’re super healthy. But if you got some going on, you may want that out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s active. And you may want to even look at it using it for a really good silver as well. You could do a silver maybe 10 pm or less on there. It’s very controversial. So kind of do a little research on that. I don’t just recommend that because a lot of conventional doctors don’t like it. But if you’re doing a silver that’s very, very small. It can be helpful if you have an active viral infection in the lungs. But But do your homework on that first, because you don’t want to be nebulizing silver that is a large molecule sighs we want to make sure it can move to the sell adequately.
Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Good advice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you triend nebulizing silver by the way?
Evan Brand: I’ve done it, I haven’t, I wouldn’t say I would, I would notice a ton from it, you know, it’s not one of those things where it’s like, whoa, I feel incredible. But I’ve done it, I’ve mixed it. I’ve done the glutathione on silver combo, you know, but I wasn’t in too bad of shape. So I, you know, I can’t say that silver was necessarily a magic remedy for me or not, but I have done the silver up the nose. And I do believe that has helped as well for some of the sinus colonization that can happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can do silver up the nose, you can also do silver orally, you know, any of the side effects that you see about silver, like the argyria turning blue, that has to do with very large silver molecules and usually kind of a homebrew. If you’re dealing with a high quality silver brand made by like, you know, a tier one supplement company like the one that I make in my GI33 or like a sovereign silver or like some kind of a silver soul or some kind of a nano silver. That particular is very, very small, and your body’s gonna have no problem excluding it. It’s a very, very large silver molecules that are going to be problematic.
Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else Evan?
Evan Brand: I don’t think so. If people need help clinically, please reach out. We’re available worldwide if you want to get a hold of Dr. J. JustinHealth.com, worldwide consult. So even if you just need a call, hey, I need help. I’m concerned I need help to boost myself up. What do I do? You know, we’re here for that. But we love helping people get to the bottom of their issues, using functional lab testing to find and fix the root causes of your issue. So rather than coming in and doing the spot treatment, have a little bit of this a little bit of that. The reality is, hey, here’s what’s going on under the hood, this is what’s putting you at a disadvantage. So we’re going to help fix you. So JustinHealth.com. And for me, Evan Brand, EvanBrand.com and we’ll be back. So stay tuned.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Put your comments down below everyone. We really appreciate it comments below, give us a like give us a thumbs up. And if you want to dive in deeper, we’ll put the links for you guys to make it accessible. Hope you guys have an amazing holiday season coming up. We’ll be in touch. Take care y’all. Bye now.
Evan Brand: Take care.
References:
Audio Podcast:
The Top 5 Causes of Chronic Headaches
Today we are going to be talking about the top underlying reasons why you may be having a chronic headache. I had a patient come in today who had headaches for 25 years, monthly and chronically, and we were able to get to the root cause and there are many different root causes for every person. Let me lay out the common ones that I find to be a major vector of my patients.
So we have headaches and head pain or migraines where you kind of have that aura and sound sensitivity. There are a couple of different major reasons why headaches may happen.
1. Food Allergens
Most common food allergy is gluten and dairy. There are some studies on gluten affecting blood flow up to the brain. We have these garden hoses on the side of our neck called our carotid arteries. When we have inflammation especially caused by gluten that can decrease blood flow and blood profusion to the frontal cortex, and when you have less blood, you’re going to have decreased performance of the brain. You can see that manifesting in a headache. People don’t know but headaches are actually an issue with vasodilation in the brain. Caffeine can help as caffeine actually causes constriction and brain’s typical headache signal is caused by vasodilation.
2. Food Additives.
These could be things like MSG, aspartame, Splenda or various artificial colors and dyes.
3. Blood Sugar Fluctuation.
We want to have healthy proteins and healthy fats with every meal. If we skip meals or we eat foods that are too high in carbohydrates and refined “crapohydrates” and sugar, and not enough fats and proteins, our blood sugar can go up and then drop. This is called reactive hypoglycemia. We react by putting a whole bunch of sugar in our bloodstream because all of these carbohydrate sources break down into sugar — processed sugar, grains, flours and acellular carbohydrates. These type of flours and refined processed carbs get converted to glucose in our bloodstream. When glucose goes up, our pancreas goes, “Holy smokes! We got a lot of glucose there. We got to pull it into the cell.” It spits out a whole bunch of insulin and pulls that glucose right down, and we have his blood sugar going up with a lot of insulin driving that blood sugar back down. When that blood sugar goes back down, this is where we have cravings. This is where we have addictions, mood issues, energy issues, jitteriness, and cognitive issues. Our body makes adrenaline and cortisol to bring that blood sugar back up. Most people literally live on this high insulin where they are making fat, storing fat and engaging in lipogenesis which makes us tired. Then blood sugar crashes which makes people jittery, anxious, and moody. Most people live on this reactive hypoglycemia rollercoaster and that can drive headaches.
4. Gut Infections.
Patients with a lot of gut inflammation, gut permeability, and infections whether it’s H. pylori, SIBO (small intestinal, bacterial overgrowth) or fungal overgrowth have gut stressors can create inflammation in the gut. When we have inflammation in the gut, we have gut permeability. So our tight junctions in our intestines start to open up and undigested bacteria, lipopolysaccharides, food particles can slip through and create an immune response. You can see histamine along with that immune response and histamine can create headache issues.
5. Hormonal Issue.
A woman’s cycle is about 28 days and in the middle is ovulation. Some women have it during ovulation and most have it right at the end just before they menstruate. This is called premenstrual syndrome that is right before menstruation. A lot of women may also have it during menstruation, too. What happens is progesterone can drop out early and that drop in progesterone can actually cause headache manifestations and also the aberrations in estrogen can also cause headaches as well. We may also see it with excessive bleeding too. So if you’re bleeding a lot or too much, what may happen is you may lose iron and that low iron may cause oxygenation issues. That low level of oxygen may also cause some headache issues as well. Because if you can’t carry oxygen, that is going to be a stressed-out situation for your mitochondria and your metabolism. For menopausal women who have chronically low hormones and they’re not in an optimal place, that can create issues. Progesterone and estrogen can be very anti-inflammatory. So if there is inflammation in the brain, progesterone is a powerful anti-inflammatory and that can really help a lot of inflammation in the brain.