Gluten Sensitivity: Understanding the Condition, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment
Gluten sensitivity is a common issue affecting millions worldwide. As a gluten-sensitive and vegan person, it’s essential to understand how gluten affects your body and how you can manage your condition effectively. This blog post aims to provide a comprehensive overview of gluten sensitivity, its comparison to celiac disease, symptoms, causes, and potential treatment segments. We’ll also delve deeper into more possible treatment segments and lifestyle changes.
What is Gluten Sensitivity?
Gluten sensitivity is when the body reacts negatively to gluten, wheat, rye, and barley protein. It is often confused with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks itself when gluten is consumed. However, gluten sensitivity does not cause the same intestinal damage as celiac disease but can still cause digestive issues and other symptoms.
Comparison between Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity
Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity share common symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. However, there are significant differences between the two conditions. The primary difference is the level of damage caused to the small intestine. In celiac disease, gluten consumption triggers an immune response that damages the small intestine lining, leading to various health problems.
In gluten sensitivity, gluten consumption triggers symptoms, but the small intestine’s lining is not damaged. Celiac disease can also be diagnosed through blood tests and biopsies, while gluten sensitivity does not have a specific diagnostic test.
Another critical difference between the two conditions is the severity of the health implications. While gluten sensitivity can cause discomfort and affect the quality of life, celiac disease can be life-threatening if left untreated. Celiac disease can lead to malabsorption of nutrients, anemia, osteoporosis, infertility, and an increased risk of certain cancers if left untreated.
It is essential to note that gluten sensitivity differs from a wheat allergy, a severe and potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to wheat proteins. In contrast, gluten sensitivity is not an allergic reaction but an immune response to gluten proteins.
Symptoms of Gluten Sensitivity
Gluten sensitivity is a condition that can manifest itself in various ways, with symptoms ranging from mild to severe. Here’s a closer look at the most common symptoms:
- Bloating, gas, and abdominal pain – Gluten sensitivity can cause inflammation in the gut, leading to digestive issues such as bloating, gas, and abdominal pain.
- Diarrhea or constipation – Gluten sensitivity can cause changes in bowel movements, leading to diarrhea or constipation. The changes may be sudden, and they may be accompanied by discomfort and pain.
- Nausea or vomiting – Some individuals with gluten sensitivity may experience nausea or vomiting after consuming gluten-containing foods.
- Headaches and migraines – Gluten sensitivity has been associated with headaches and migraines. While the exact mechanisms behind this link are not yet fully understood, it’s believed that inflammation in the gut can trigger headaches and migraines.
- Joint pain and muscle stiffness – In some cases, gluten sensitivity can cause joint pain and muscle stiffness, debilitating and affecting an individual’s quality of life.
- Fatigue and brain fog – Gluten sensitivity can also cause fatigue and brain fog, making it challenging to concentrate and perform daily tasks.
- Skin rashes and itching – Gluten sensitivity can cause skin rashes and itching, such as dermatitis herpetiformis, a skin condition characterized by itchy, blistering rashes.
It’s worth noting that not everyone with gluten sensitivity experiences all of these symptoms. Some individuals experience only a few, while others experience more severe symptoms.
Causes of Gluten Sensitivity
The cause of gluten sensitivity is unknown, but research suggests that it may be related to the gut microbiome and intestinal permeability. In people with gluten sensitivity, the gut lining may be more permeable than usual, allowing the gluten to pass through and trigger an immune response. Additionally, some research suggests that gluten sensitivity may be related to other food sensitivities and allergies.
One of the leading theories about the cause of gluten sensitivity is related to the gut microbiome and intestinal permeability. The gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem of microorganisms that live in the gut and play a critical role in digestion and immune function. Studies have shown that individuals with gluten sensitivity have altered gut microbiota compared to healthy individuals, which may contribute to the development of gluten sensitivity.
Furthermore, gluten has been shown to increase gut permeability, which can lead to the release of inflammatory substances into the bloodstream. This inflammatory response can trigger symptoms associated with gluten sensitivity.
Another theory behind the development of gluten sensitivity relates to other food sensitivities and allergies. Individuals with gluten sensitivity may also be sensitive to other foods, such as dairy or soy. In one study, researchers found that individuals with gluten sensitivity were more likely to have antibodies against multiple food antigens, suggesting that the condition may be related to a broader immune response to food.
It’s essential to note that while these theories provide some insight into the potential causes of gluten sensitivity, further research is needed to fully understand the condition’s underlying mechanisms.
Possible Treatments for Gluten Sensitivity
To diagnose gluten sensitivity, doctors start by ruling out Celiac disease and wheat allergy. If those tests come back negative, they may recommend an elimination diet. An elimination diet involves removing all sources of gluten from the diet for several weeks and then reintroducing them one at a time to see if symptoms return. If symptoms return with the reintroduction of gluten, it is likely that the person has gluten sensitivity.
The treatment for gluten sensitivity is to follow a gluten-free diet. This involves avoiding all foods that contain gluten, such as wheat, barley, rye, and some oats. Following a gluten-free diet can be challenging, as gluten is found in many processed and packaged foods. It is essential to read labels carefully and be aware of hidden sources of gluten, such as sauces, dressings, and soups.
Following a gluten-free diet can be more complicated for vegans with gluten sensitivity, as many vegan foods contain gluten. However, following a vegan and gluten-free diet is possible with careful planning and attention to food choices. Some vegan, gluten-free foods include fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, quinoa, and gluten-free grains like rice, corn, and millet.
In conclusion, gluten sensitivity is a common condition that affects many people, especially those with autoimmune disorders. The symptoms of gluten sensitivity can vary, but they typically include gastrointestinal discomfort, headaches, joint pain, and fatigue. While the exact cause of gluten sensitivity is unknown, research suggests that it may be related to the gut microbiome and intestinal permeability.
The treatment for gluten sensitivity is to follow a gluten-free diet, which can be challenging but is essential for managing symptoms and maintaining overall health. For those following a vegan diet, it is important to be mindful of hidden sources of gluten and to focus on whole foods and gluten-free grains.
However, many gluten-free alternatives, such as quinoa, buckwheat, and amaranth, are available. Additionally, it’s important to address any underlying gut health issues contributing to gluten sensitivity.
Dietary Changes
A gluten-free and plant-based diet can help manage gluten sensitivity symptoms and improve overall health. These foods contain nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that help support the immune system, reduce inflammation, and improve gut health.
Fruits and vegetables are rich in fiber, antioxidants, and phytonutrients that help maintain a healthy gut microbiome and prevent inflammation. Legumes and beans are also excellent sources of fiber and protein and contain essential vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc. Nuts and seeds provide healthy fats, protein, and fiber, which help reduce inflammation and maintain healthy cholesterol levels.
Gluten-free grains like quinoa, buckwheat, and amaranth are excellent sources of fiber, protein, and essential vitamins and minerals like magnesium and iron. These grains are also easy to digest and have a low glycemic index, making them ideal for people with gluten sensitivity.
Gluten-free flours like almond, coconut, and rice flour can be used instead of wheat flour in baking and cooking. These flours are naturally gluten-free and provide healthy fats, fiber, and essential vitamins and minerals.
Adapting to a gluten-free and plant-based diet can be challenging, but many resources are available to help people make the transition. Some helpful tips include:
Reading labels carefully – it’s essential to read labels carefully and avoid gluten-containing foods.
Experimenting with new recipes – many gluten-free and plant-based recipes are available online, in cookbooks, and on social media.
Stocking up on gluten-free pantry staples – keeping a well-stocked pantry with gluten-free grains, flours, and other ingredients can make it easier to cook and bake gluten-free.
Consulting with a registered dietitian – a registered dietitian can provide personalized advice and support for people with gluten sensitivity.
By making these dietary changes, people with gluten sensitivity can manage their symptoms, improve gut health, and support overall health and well-being.
Supplements
Supplements can help manage gluten sensitivity by supporting the gut and immune system. Some supplements that may be beneficial include:
Probiotics: Probiotics can help support the gut microbiome, which is essential for maintaining a healthy digestive system. Look for a probiotic supplement with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria.
Digestive Enzymes: Digestive enzymes can help break down food more effectively, which may reduce digestive issues caused by gluten sensitivity.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties and may help reduce inflammation in the gut caused by gluten sensitivity.
Probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega-3 fatty acids have all been shown to help reduce inflammation in the gut and support overall digestive health. However, consulting with a healthcare provider before starting any supplements is essential.
Lifestyle Changes
Lifestyle changes can also help manage gluten sensitivity symptoms. Some changes to consider include
Stress Reduction: Stress can exacerbate digestive issues, so finding ways to reduce stress levels can be helpful. Activities like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing can help reduce stress.
Exercise: Exercise can help improve digestion and reduce inflammation in the body. Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week.
Sleep: Getting enough sleep is essential for overall digestive health. Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night.
Gluten sensitivity can be challenging, particularly for those who follow a vegan diet. However, understanding the condition, symptoms, causes, and treatment options makes it possible to manage gluten sensitivity effectively. Avoiding gluten-containing foods, making dietary changes, taking supplements, and making lifestyle changes can help manage gluten sensitivity symptoms. If you suspect you may have gluten sensitivity, it’s essential to work with a functional medicine doctor with expertise in nutrition to develop an individualized treatment plan that addresses your unique needs.
If you’re struggling with gluten sensitivity, contact us to schedule a complimentary consultation. We can help you develop an individualized treatment plan that addresses your unique needs and helps you manage your gluten sensitivity effectively. Don’t let gluten sensitivity control your life – take the first step towards optimal health today.
References:
- De Palma G, Nadal I, Medina M, Donat E, Ribes-Koninckx C, Calabuig M, Sanz Y. Intestinal dysbiosis and reduced immunoglobulin-coated bacteria associated with coeliac disease in children. BMC Microbiol. 2010 Oct 26;10:63. doi: 10.1186/1471-2180-10-63. PMID: 20977738; PMCID: PMC2988723.
- Fasano A. Zonulin and its regulation of intestinal barrier function: the biological door to inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer. Physiol Rev. 2011 Jan;91(1):151-75. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00003.2008. PMID: 21248165; PMCID: PMC3277000.
Collagen & Inflammation Reduction, Sunlight, Epigenetic & Anti-aging Strategies – Dr. Bernd Friedlander | Podcast #377
Collagen supplements are associated with several health benefits and very few known risks. It may increase muscle mass, prevent bone loss, relieve joint pain, and improve skin health by reducing wrinkles and dryness. And since your body naturally produces collagen from amino acids, you can support collagen production by ensuring that you’re eating adequate amounts of protein from foods like animals, poultry, fish, beans, and eggs.
Lastly, Dr. J and Dr. Bernd share that collagen promotes gut healing in inflammatory digestive conditions, such as irritable bowel disease (IBD). By taking collagen, you would help correct a deficiency and potential injury.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
5:13 – Diet Modifications
12:10 – Collagen and mTOR
37:35 – Protein
1:00:37 – Take aways
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! Doctor Justin Marchegiani here. Really excited we got a guest back on the show. High demand doctor Bernd Friedlander, a great guy, known him for many years. He is a fountain of knowledge on many different health topics. We’re going to dive in, let’s see what we hit. I know we’re going to be coming out of the gate.Talking about collagen, reducing inflammation, sunlight, 5G, epigenetics. We’ll dive in and see where the conversation goes. Doctor Bernd, how we doing, man? What’s cooking?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: How are you, Justin? I’m doing great. You’re wonderful. Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good, excellent. So let’s start off. We were talking kind of pre show, let’s kind of take that here. You were a chiropractor for the 1984 I think was it the the summer or Winter Olympics?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It was. No, it’s the Summer Olympics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was in LA, right?.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In LA. Yeah. And matter of fact, I got selected for the 1980 Olympics, but there was a boycott in Russia, so we never went there. So what we did is we took over from 80 and get and training the athletes from 78 to 80 while I was going through chiropractic school and I also had a degree in physical therapy and exercise physiologies in a strong nutritional bracket background. So that helped me with uh, you know, working with athletes and now it myself played professional soccer. I ran track in college, I swam in college, so I did a lot of sports. I was into the sports arena quite a bit. And having six, eight years of physical therapy training from 72 to 78, that seemed to have helped me the most, you know, in preparing myself for training and rehab and nutrition and getting into Chiropractic work, all of that help and so in 19.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you had to have had a connection to get picked for the beat of the Doctor of the 1980 and 84 Olympic Games. So how did that happen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Boy, it’s karma. What happened was I was finishing up my degree in.Glendale getting my LACC chiropractic license. And I was, I didn’t like. I wanted to be closer to the ocean, to the beach, because I grew up there and I moved down to Santa Monica. And had bought a house down there and I was going to UCLA and working out every day, and then I devote relationships with coaches and athletes there.They started realizing that I had some knowledge about training and rehab and and also injuries because of my physical therapy and they found out I was going through chiropractic school and I was getting my degree there.One of the coaches, Bob Bush, they named the stadium after him at UCLA. He asked me to work with him and many of his athletes. He and they were training for the 84 Olympics because the 80 got boycotted and we were working for the 80 at that time with Bob Bush, but we got, you know, cancelled. So we started the program again at UCLA and then I get, I gravitated to Patrick Connolly, who was training Evelyn Ashford, the fastest 102 hundred meter women athlete in the world at that time? And then I was working with Bob Kersee, who was, who took over for Bob Buesch as the head of the UCLA track and field coach. And he started using me for all of his athletes and training them and rehabbing them and giving them exercise programs and then work on nutrition as an alternative to steroids because that was my background there at UCLA, was working on alternative steroid programs for the athletes, and then I started to gravitate with him and all these athletes were coming down to train at the 84. Olympics at UCLA. So many countries came, you know, England, Russia, Germany, East Germany, all these countries came down to train with us. And then I became very good friends with John Wooden and the president of UCLA, and he saw what I was doing and he came up to me and I treated him on a couple injuries that he had and he says you, you know, I couldn’t even walk the other day. Now I’m walking today. You know it’s amazing. So he asked me to come in and he gave me a position, Durham and honorary molecular biology degree that he gave me and he asked me to head up the Sports Medicine Research Center at UCLA. And that’s how I got involved with everything. And then the coaches that I was working with, they asked the US Olympic to have me on the team and that’s how I got involved with it. And I also had my own athletes that was trained.The 84 Olympics, like Ron Brown and I was working with Carl Lewis and other people like that. So I had quite a few people. Bob Kersee had all the female athletes that I was training with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when you look at a lot of the athletes that you’ve had insight to how deal with their diets back then when they pretty crappy and they just were relying on good trading in genetics or were they dialed in back then?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, Twinkies was their popular dish. Can you believe it? Peanut butter. Yeah. Peanut butter. Reeses cups. That’s what they ate. And that’s why they were always inflamed and injured. And then when I worked in 85, 86 with the Raiders and Rams and Lakers, their diet was mostly pasta and bread and carbs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean you know you’re you’re exercising so much so from a caloric standpoint an insulin wise you’re going to be able to burn that off but your fatty acid profiles so inflamed. So you’re if you get injured, it’s gonna be hard to heal, plus you don’t have any connective tissue building blocks coming in. So as you get injured, the pliability of that tissues and then we just, uh, you get less pliable tissue, less ability to absorb force over time with injuries, it’s crazy.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. So what we did was we worked on nutrition with them protein, eggs, fish, you know meat and cut down the carbs like pasta and breads and less, uh, rice and potatoes. So we increase almost like a carnivore diet with these people. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You do healthy. I mean, obviously they’re burning a lot of carbs. Could you do starches like sweet potato and squash or even white potato? Would you?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you consider those still more anti-inflammatory type of starches?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you were trying to grain and gluten back then, the out in the early 80s too.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we knew it was leading to a lot of information. I was very fortunate at UCLA that I was involved with so many great minds, you know. One of my patients was Roy Walford, who was the father of caloric restriction diet. So I learned everything about restriction diet and what it contributes to and how it works on the body and he took it too fa into it. I did not. I kind of realized that we can’t do a strict diet like that because we need calories or we’re gonna have oxidative damage and stress and the athletes need to eat. They need 6-7 meals a day. OK. And they needed small protein and they needed the route, right? Amount of carbs from vegetables they have to be cooked and potatoes, they have to be mashed potatoes or rice, they have to be white and they have to be. And we added butter with it. Not Gee at that time because we didn’t have Gee, but it was mostly butter that we used. We use butter for all our training sessions with the athletes. And then fortunately I got a mini companies donating uh research to us, you know, like supplements like Co-Q10 came from Japan, didn’t know anything about Co-Q 10, we started using it, so amazing results. We started using pycnogenol from France. And started giving that to the athletes and saw an increase in oxygen levels. It was amazing. And then knocks gelatin came over and supplementing us with Knox gelatin powder, which then that’s how I got into the collagen. Before I I didn’t know anything about it. And I started talking to the Knox gelatin chemist at that time and they, they were explaining to me how important, you know, it was in rebuilding and rehabbing, you know. It was more for rebuilding, regenerating and and and helping with injuries, recovering it faster and that’s what we use at that time. We use a packet of Knox gelatin with vitamin C at three times a day. And the increased results were amazing with that, wow. And that’s when
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll talk about the amino acid difference with gelatin or collagen, obviously collagen peptides are probably even better because those long chain peptides are broken down, so they’re better absorbed, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Gelatin is a great product, but it has to still be broken down by the stomach. OK, you need hydrochloric acid, you need pepsin, and you need B6. Collagen is already broken down into peptides. I just knew how to do it even faster and better by eliminating uh by doing a certain enzymatic process to make collagen which made it into a signaling peptide. So you have what’s known as signaling peptide collagen in your product. And that’s what
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With that. So, so what’s the signaling peptide? What does that mean?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, what it does, it actually turns, it turns on the signaling effects of the peptides in the collagen. That’s what it does. So you’re going to get better utilization from it, that’s all you know, uh, you know, I started it in an 84 collagen. I was probably the only person out there that knew a little bit about it and was trying to find researchers.Out there, and there weren’t that many companies making collagen. There was only a few companies. And then I started in the 90s, I started meeting a guy, Bob Buesch, I mean Bob Buescher from Great lakes. He was the only other fellow that I knew was into gelatin and collagen at that time. He was more into gelatin, so Great Lakes was more of a gelatin thing. And then as I, you know, got into it, I realized that you as a chiropractor, your patients coming in are all cartilage damage, are ligaments, tendons, muscles and bone. And so I realized one of the most important foods we can supplement people with is collagen, and that’s how I got into the collagen business in the late in the Twenties, 2000s, you know, because at that time I was just using whatever I could from anybody, you know, it wasn’t abundant at that time. Today, everybody’s using it, you know, I got David Asprey bulletproof involved with it. He didn’t know anything about it. I got vital proteins involved with when they came to my lecture at Expo West in Anaheim and they were listening to my lecture and that’s how everybody got involved. They realized the importance of collagen and one of the key importance of collagen is, it’s devoid of three amino amino acids. It’s the only protein on the planet that’s devoid of these three amino methionine, yes, and they’re leaders of mtor, which are inflammatory compounds. They cause oxidative damage, they can lead to thyroid oxidation, thyroid damage. So it affects mitochondrial function. And that’s the molecule that we all live on. It’s mitochondria. That’s the key. That’s what I studied over 30 years ago, was how athletes train and why do they train differently in different countries. And what makes a good athlete versus a bad why I sold the Kenyans and Jamaicans and all these other athletes being so good at, in track and field, it’s because sunlight and mitochondria was the predominant thing in the 80s that I didn’t even realize then yet that I discovered later on was the key to everything and the type of food stage, which was very gelatinous foods, you know, collagen derived foods. That’s where we ate you know many hundreds of years ago and maybe 30-60 years ago, 1000 years ago we were more gelatinous people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to dive a little bit deeper in there. We can go then we can move on. But collagen is so important for me because, one like you said, we eat a lot more muscle meat which is going to be more methionine, Cysteine rich right, not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re missing the connective tissue because we always talk about old foods don’t cause new disease, one of the biggest, oldest foods they’re there was, was, was soups and bone broths putting the bones in, in the pressure cooker or in the pot and really extracting those amino acids. So collagen is really high in hydroxyproline, proline, glycine, both of those. One are really high and connective tissue, glycine so important for gut health that’s I think part of the the guts diet is a lot of these bone broths which really what’s that healing property, it’s that glycine to help with those enterocytes. So you have connective tissue you have gut health, right. And they’re also good precursors, especially glycine. That’s a backbone for glutathione too, because you comment a little more on that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, well, we know collagen is a perfect food, almost. You know, as you get older. What did they give you in the hospital? Gello, right? Yeah. Besides the other things. Yeah. But you’re getting a sort of a good protein that helps with recovery and rebuilding. One of the things is we’re eating a very inflammatory diet today you know we’re eating fried foods. The worst foods on the planet Earth for the last 30-40-50 years has been fried foods. Anything that is seed oil made with canola or even Avocado oil, olive oil, any of these oils, they’re very lipid, oxidative. They cause mitochondrial damage and thyroid damage, and causes
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t avocado a little bit higher smoke point though, I know it’s you.You always want to use a saturated fat. It’s better your tallow your coconut oil, but isn’t it a little bit higher of a smoked point than the other ones though?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, but in the body the oxidative chain of the these fats, fatty acid composition are very long. And so they’re more exposed to oxidative damage. And the smaller the chain is, the less oxidative power damage we’re gonna have, you know, and that’s the key. I mean that’s, yeah, that’s why get everything from ghee and butter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they did it, beef tile. They had a beef tile up to 89 and then went to soybean oil. So yeah, having it low or some kind of saturated fat that that has the doesn’t have all the double bonds between the carbons. They’re going to be a lot less prone for oxidation.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. So you want less of these little acids, Omega 6, which is the most conducive problems we have today to every disease we know of. An aging is number one. You know, my background was at UCLA was studying aging you know, and athletic performance and and so I got into everything what causes aging, it’s a pathway that we take. And we take the right pathway and don’t make the wrong turns. We live longer and and also we survive longer and we feel better and healthier if we take the wrong pathways and eat fried foods and starches and carbs and you know, in and out burgers, everything out there is conducive to medical medication, that’s what they want. They want the medications, you know, and the more you get.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we choose good fatty acids, ideally we want to be choosing more saturated fats, probably more animal fats, or exactly and if we choose. Probably on the more dressing side, avocado oil may be addressing olive oil. Olive oil may be more of a dressing. And then obviously you probably like cooking with ghee over butter just because it has that lactose and casein kind of more pulled out, right? Would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I love ghee. Ghee is my predominant, uh, butter that I use right now for everything. It has a higher point. It’s very high in the antioxidant vitamin E, and it’s very high in Gerald Pollack’s book on 4th phase of water. You know, and how to keep, you know, we gotta maintain that water in the cells. That cells and gels the engine of life. And I was very fortunate to meet the Gilbert Ling on the phone and Gilbert is probably the greatest scientist of our time who discovered how cells function and how energy works in the in the cells in the cytoplasm of the mitochondria and the MRI device was developed by Raymond Amanian, who we just lost recently, and so sad, he was a genius and it was because of the water structure and the protein of the cells, that was the basis for the foundation of how cells work and that’s how the MRI came up to play because of Gilbert Ling work and that’s how Gerald Pollack discovered the cells and gels the engine of life and then the fourth phase of water, it all came around, it accumulated because of the knowledge of all these great minds we have today and going back to college, and one of the key things I think is that collagen is on the nitrogen utilization. Uh, you know, chart. Egg is maybe number one and collagens #2 and then meat. So, also the other thing with collagen does it, it protects us from mtor pathways, inflammatory pathways, oxidative pathways. It the nutrients in the peptides and proteins in the collagen balances us from getting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What mTOR is? Just so people have a little background.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: mTOR is a, it’s a wrap on myosin compound which helps to what it does when we’re young, OK, like we’re growing up in that early, uh two to five, 10,18 years old, we are growing. We need muscles, we need the growth and repair, and we need cell growth. mTOR is part of that pathway. So that’s what helps in helping cells replicate faster. So we get bones, we get muscles, we get organs we get. But as we get to about 30 years old, these things can lead to damaging uh cells like senescence, they can lead to cancer cells, they can lead to diabetes, heart disease. They can overdo too much and we don’t want that extra growth at that period of time, we already fully develop. We don’t need it, so we need to keep it down. And it’s the same thing with the deuterium, the water deuterium is the same thing. We need it when we’re young.The deuterium is a heavy hydrogen nuclear um, you know, that’s found in all the water and foods all over the world. We need it when we’re young. As we get older, it can disrupt the mitochondria from functioning and making ATP correctly so it can damage it. There’s a spin in the ATP process of the cytochrome 5 which makes all the electrons takes the electron, protons and protons. Protons from our foot. With oxygen and sunlight to make every single component of energy that’s made in the ATP chain, and if we have too much deuterium in there, it slows down the spin cycle so the batteries are not working as well, so the body has
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break a couple things down. You’re saying a lot of good things. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. So First off on the collagen because you really went into that right now talk about collagen and mTOR is it because it’s missing some of those big free amino acids it keeps you need low. So essentially mTOR good when you’re younger, anabolic protein bone, but at some point having it too high as you get older it can cause this cancer growth so. Collagen amino acids are in a profile that is gonna limit mTOR. What else is? Is that correct? And then what else can we do to also limit mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It’s cutting down, well collagen has the best safety factors because it’s so it has zero, um, of these three amino acids. So if you have a certain level of these amino acids, let’s say leucine is a mTOR pathway. It’s in a branch chain amino acid, right? But leucine has to be over 2000 grams of, 2000 grams of leucine a day. If you keep it under 2000 grams like 1000, you’re not going to get into our pathway because there’s not enough of those amino acids to switch it to it. And that’s why collagen doesn’t have these tryp thing, methionine, cysteine foods. So it’s not going to promote it, but certain foods in nature like you know organ meats and meats in general can do that. You know, if you’re eating a lot of it, it will produce mTOR pathways and this research the only known true research today is that was a extension of lifespan by 40% was by the reduction of mTOR. By lowering methionine and tryptophan, specially methionine in the diet. Low methionine diet. Richard Miller, MD, PhD published this work and now it’s well known out there in publication that you know, Life extension is really by lowering methionine and then cysteine and tryptophan.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what else you mentioned the Omega-6 especially the processed Omega-6is it’s really the Omega-6 that’s gonna be from processing that’s going to get oxidized and damaged and rancidity we have that, does that affect mTOR, what about carbs, what about insulin resistance, what else on your diet and lifestyle can Jack up mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Anything that is rich foods that are in tryptophan, methionine, those cysteine. So if you have a lot of high cysteine foods, high methionine foods, like you know you will, I mean if you over process too much of these type of foods and a lot of fruits and a lot of vegetables have high methionine and tryptophan.Think of this yogurt. OK, yogurt whey protein is very high in tryptophan and methionine, especially methionine. So any of the whey protein that people are using today that are above 25 years old, 28 years old, 30 years old. There’s so many people using it in their milkshakes, in their athletic performing drinks. Whey protein has the highest form, methionine, so it you keep constantly taking that you will get a mTOR and I have seen that with professional lifters, they got increased heart disease, enlarged heart, they had cardiovascular damage, they had kidney failures. So I seen it that these athletes, so if you’re going to have yogurt, have Greek yogurt because the way protein is totally removed from that. So you’re not getting any of the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of these amino acids like cysteine for instance, a lot of studies on and N-acetylcysteine with all kinds of different things from lung health to glutathione levels to to helping with virus stuff and and viral replication and immune function, a lot of data on that being beneficial, how does that, how does that connect? Because we see a lot of data on some of these things being beneficial, also tryptophan, you know, that could be really helpful for serotonin, sleep and all that. How do those connect?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK glutathione is a very controversial thing. I never use it, never have, never will. I’ve been doing Cancer Research for almost 40 years, 50 years now, and one thing I learned from the Germans, they were the best in this field. In the 80s when they were visiting me. In the 90s when I went to Mexico and worked with clinics. Glutathione is an antioxidant that protects cancer cells from chemoradiation surgery. They know how to protect themselves, they know how to build the defense systems, and glutathione is one of the key defense systems that cancer cells use to protect themselves from oxidative damage, from death, or whatever. There’s another thing that we need to know is oxidation reduction. OK. Oxidation is how everything is electron flow into the chamber to make energy. In the end of all this is the reduction state. All the electrons are received and they need to be converted back to donation instead of receiving, only if we only receive electrons and don’t know how to donate back. That’s how we end up dying, and that’s how we end up being sick. And that’s how we start aging. It’s called oxidation reduction NAD NADH. And there’s one other thing that people don’t understand is called glutathione, oxidative glutathione and reduction glutathione and everybody today is in that reductive state of glutathione which is only grabbing electrons but is not converting it back to energy. And that’s what we need to do as a living system. We need to have those things functioning. Oxidative reduction states low. NAD High, NADH low. Then we have the glutathione stage, the oxidative stage and the reductive state and oxidative.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break some of it down for the listeners to make sure we’re on the same page, so when you’re talking reduction, reduction is nothing more than a gain of electrons. You have an extra electron and we’re talking oxidation, we’ve lost an electron. And so the goal with a lot of antioxidants, they’re trying to come in there when they’re in an oxidized state, they’re trying to give off that electron to bring that electron back up to a stable place, is that correct?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Right. But then a lot of that, yeah, a lot of the antioxidants are in the reduced state. Think of vitamin C. What does vitamin C? Vitamin C is an antioxidant, but in the cell, It’s ,uh, we oxidative state. In the normal chemistry of this cell or vitamin C supplements, they’re in the reduced state, so they need to be converted inside the cell to dehydroxy C ascorbic acid, which is a oxidative state of vitamin C. Vitamin E is one of the few other ones that really is a very strong antioxidant that can be used as an anti-inflammatory, as an oxidative state. Umm, vitamin and not too many. You know a lot of your polyphenolic, so you know all your fruits and vegetables, especially your juices. They have a lot of flavonoids. And flavonoids are very important in reducing inflammation. But also, they’re also reducing oxidative stress. And promoting electron flow in the electron chamber because they can produce an increase electrons in oxygen and that’s what we need.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How does sodium potassium pump come into play because we know sodium potassium really important and we know a lot of these vegetables have a lot of potassium. Many large percent of the population deficient potassium. Where do those electrolytes come into play here?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK, that’s Gilbert Ling has shown that these cells do not have sodium potassium pumps. They don’t work that way. That’s Gilbert Ling. Read cells the engine life. Ray Peat is one of the best in the field in understanding sodium pumps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We need these potassium and we need these electrolytes though, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, we don’t really need it. We get enough of those in the cell. It, uh, here’s what it is. If you studied the electron mitochondria. Douglas Wallace, he’s the father of mitochondria by far, you know, and there’s many others. Every disease, 99% of all disease is based on what we call mitochondria decay. OK. And it’s the damaging effects of mitochondria, OK. And that’s all the diseases out there, you know and can. So what we’re seeing is that in nature, there is no, energy is required by the cytoplasm of the cell, and that’s where the mitochondrion takes electrons and makes energy ATP, and that’s how the cell survives. And water is key in structuring the cells, the gels of the cells and so is protein and that’s why it looks like a jello and having that, that’s the key to everything out there. And so if you read the book Cells and Gels, you read Gilbert Ling work, you leave Tom. Do you know Thomas Cohen? The MD. Yeah, he is very controversial because he was against the vaccine and all that and the virus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He was up in San Francisco, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: He was in San Francisco and he’s in New York now. And he has now. Yeah, yeah, he’s doing consultation and he’s 100% right about the cells and gels of how the cells exist today. They don’t have any sodium-Potassium, you need sodium and you need potassium as an electrolyte for nerve function, for electricity to occur in the body because we’re a DC current, we’re not an AC we’re DC current. That’s Robert Becker’s book on body electric, and I had a chance to work with him when I was at UCLA and the guy was a brilliant scientist. And that we’re all a DC electrical system. Everything works on that. And it’s all on low frequencies and low, uh, hertz. And everything is low gas. We’re a very extreme low gas human being and when we’re under a lot of high gas, we get damage. And so, uh it if you have a chance, read the Cells and gels by Gerald Pollack, Read Gilbert Ling book, Ray Peat. He’s got millions of articles on sodium pump and then Thomas Cohen’s work and Jack Cruz on who’s a neurosurgeon on biohacking the mitochondria with sunlight. They all know about the cells now they understand, and that’s how they know how to work with the cells and fix it again. And that’s what I’m doing today, is understanding chemistry and how it started 303 billion years ago, how it all came into play.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, so we put a lot of things out here, but in regards to it like the average person listening, they’re like OK, like what am I gonna do? What’s the action item? So give him one or two things that they can do to help improve the cells and gels, the mitochondria, I mean outside of we already talked about a couple of things with processed food, we already talked about sunlight, collagen, you know, having the mTOR, the Omega-6, what else can be done kind of low hanging fruit wise?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, I think, I think going back to how we were created OK and who we are OK and what chemistry of life created us? 600 Billion, uhh, million years ago, sunlight was starting to develop and just going back to little history so you understand who we are. The sunlight was developing and was maturing and chlorophyll was present 600 millions years ago. But it was needed by plants. And then 500 million years ago, the Sun developed even stronger and UV light, A, B and C was the foundation of the sunlight. That’s the strength of the sunlight. And it was maturing 500 million years ago. And guess what, that’s what helped to create the hemoglobin, which was the iron part of the blood, not the magnesium is part of the plant. But then the mitochondria was developing because at that period of time, the UV came through the ozone layer and tripled the lay amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and that’s what created life. All of us. So that’s what helped with us was the sunlight. And the sunlight and the mitochondria was perfect. The oxygen levels was perfect. Thermodynamic temp, Temperatures of the ocean and the land was perfect. And that’s why things started developing humans and everything. So going back today, we live in an indoor world. OK. All the food we can eat today, it doesn’t make a difference because what we need is the function of the mitochondria and that is stimulated by the whole spectrum of the sun’s, not just the portion of the spectrum. The ATP cycles this cell electron transport C1,C2,C3,C4 and C5 requires photosynthesis to occur in order to make energy in the food. So we need to be exposed in the sun more early in the morning. So we get our circadian going, our pineal gland and thyroid going. That’s how we get a stimuli. Then at lunchtime, we need to expose ourselves 30 to 60 minutes of with no shirt to get vitamin D and unique cholesterol to make vitamin D so you cannot deprive yourself of the cholesterol foods. That’s how you’re going to get sick. And then again, you need that they are reduction of blue light at night, so you need to escape blue light and that’s where you try to get some sunlight in the evening because a different spectrum of light, so we’re exposed to blue light damage, artificial lighting, and it was all discovered by a guy named Kessler. We need to develop the AC current. Remember that? And what did they operate in the 1800s? Kerosene in the street. So we were using artificial lighting then, and that’s what started the decay of the human population since then. And then the other thing is realized, we need good food. We need to get good water, Not fluoride, fluoride, you know fluoride is a damaging effect in water. We need to get non fluoridated water. We need to ,Um, We need to eat a higher amount of protein and less, Uh, starches and carbs and not. So we don’t, you know, vegetables are good, but they’re not because they can cause a lot of oxalates and oxidative damage to the thyroids. Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogenic foods in nature.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So can you get protein from animal products? Can can you be making vegetarian in your mind and be healthy and get your protein from animal products strictly?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You have to be from animal products only. That’s how we do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And why though? Why?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well. Did I lose you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I’m here.You’re going. Alright. Well you’re well you’re kind of getting your stuff here. I’ll kind of riff on a little bit. I mean the reason why I think Dr Bernd may be a big fan of animal protein and they I am as well obviously is going to be just the amino acid profile you’re going to get essential all your top eight or nine essential amino acids with a lot of vegetarian proteins. You gotta combine them, and when you combine them, usually you’re missing either methionine or lysine or protein. You get to combine them. The problem is when you combine them, you get a lot of extra carbohydrates. You know when you typically combine animal or or vegetarian proteins? Rice, beans, whatever, quinoa. Usually it’s about a 60 to 70% starch.To your 15 or 20 grams of protein. So you end up getting a lot of carbohydrate. So people attend to do OK on the vegetarian, vegan type, they tend to be more ectomorphs, tend to be people that do well on high carb foods if you’re more prone to insulin resistance like I am, or most of the population.You you’re gonna get too much carbohydrates for you and for your activity level and so you really gotta choose good animal proteins where you get the proteins, you get the fats obviously. You’re also getting less Omega 6 less to the inflammatory foods that are going to be in those vegetarian protein, so it’s good to get it from animal sources that are pasture fed, um, naturally raised, grass fed, whether it’s eggs, chickens eating bugs, whether it’s whether it’s beef and grass and cows and grass, whether it’s chickens, whether it’s Lamb pasture fed diets going to shift that fatty acid profile and that fatty acid is more in the natural state, it’s in any more anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and you’re going to get a lot more nutrition in in the animal product. So we lost Dr Bernd here. So I’m going to just keep on riffing unless he can jump back on here and just try to provide a lot of value for y’all and if you want to kind of chum it, come in here in the chat guys and just put some questions in. Feel free and rip off some of that. So just summarize, collagen, really helpful, really good building blocks, connective tissue for your joints, ligaments, tendons, you’re not going to get that animal protein. So, love collagen, again, I worked out to Dr. Bernd to kind of formulate my own collagen that has the the peptide form. We’ll put links down below where you guys can get it. Um, the problem with a lot of collagen on the market, they’re made with sulfuric acid, so when you blend it in coffees and teas, you taste it. It’s got this really not so good after taste. So when you use proteolytic enzymes, it’s gonna blend better, it’s not gonna have the after taste and then you get these signaling, uh proteins in there which are which are really important. So if you have joint issues, especially as you get older and you started to see your gaps and your X-ray start to drop a little bit. That the hip or the knee and you started to go bone on, bone in knee, the connective tissue building blocks to build back up that joint base. Very important. If you don’t bring the raw material in, you’re gonna have a problem. Next big thing, you should need the Omega. You know, good quality fatty acids, more from animal. If you’re gonna do more of the vegetable, make sure it’s keeping on the the low temperature side. Very important. I’m a big fan. Doctor Bernd, is more of a carb guy, but you can see him. He’s a leaner, he’s a leaner kind of wiry guy, right. He’s going to do really good with more carbohydrates, those kind of things. You gotta adjust your carbohydrates for your body type. So if you’re kind of a an ectomorph, think of that as the the dancer, the basketball player, leaner, taller person, then you need to adjust. You could probably handle more carbs, if you’re the mesomorph, that’s the in between. I’m kind of the mesomorph. I’m kind of like the, the linebacker, right. You can be lean, but you can also get big too. And then then you have the endomorph. That’s the the lineman, right? That’s the the person that’s more prone to just to be big. And gain weight with carbohydrate, yet to figure out where you sit. And then you also have to look at your activity level. If you’re walking ten, 15,000 steps today, doing a little bit of lifting, you can always get away with more carbs. The more active you are, the less active you are, you got to adjust that.Well, get that to Dr. Bernd back on here. Let’s see if I can plug them back in. Alright. Bernd. We were just kind of riffing that. I was riffing a little bit here on collagen and fatty acids and we had a little collagen. Yeah, no big deal, we’re just kind of roll with it. Can you go back and just talk about joint issues? Umm, have you seen a lot of case studies your experience people with bone on bone or serious joint issues. Have you found they’ve been able to build that joint back up with collagen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know what, in combination with your, uh, the work that we do and using red light in infrared light. Heat lamps. I think the combination we definitely need collagen for the recovery, I found an interesting study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have you seen clinically though, you can build that joint back up when it’s already worn down, when you’re like, hey, I may need a knee or hip replacement in a couple of years. Can you avoid that? Can you build it back?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: If you still have cartilage left, OK. And I think, you know, most of us do.If we use a certain, I found that if we go from 60 grams to 100 grams of collagen.There’s a greater chance of recovery and rebuilding and restructuring the cells, yes, if we get you know. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We lost some folks. I’m gonna keep riffing here. So yeah, Bernd’s talking about bringing that collagen up to 100 grams or so. Again, usually you get about 10 to 15 grams per scoop. I do about 20 or 30 grams a day. I put it in my coffee. My collagen, it blends well, it just acts like a Creamer. It just thickens it up and then I’ll throw a little bit of butter and MCT oil and blend it up. I try to get good fats cause you gotta think of eating good healthy fats. That’s support for your cell membranes, right? Cell membrane health is so important because that’s how your cells communicate. And the more you consume fatty acids that are going to be more on the oxidized side, that’s going to create oxidative stress that’s going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. It’s also going to make your cell membrane stiff and inflexible. We’re just talking about cell membrane stiffness with all the excess fatty acids here, but go ahead with the collagen and the joy of recovery.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So I feel if we, uh, use a combination of.Vitamin D calcium and a good gym diet and keep the collagen up about 45 to 60 grams a day, which is, you know, and I’ve had 100 grams a day with many of my athletes. I seen faster results from college and you know, I’ve seen better results with the higher level of you know collagen in the grams, adding calcium, vitamin D and light therapy and as much as he, If we can generate into that area. So we can get
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: better more articulation over like chicken or fish multi collagen, is there a reason why you like the beef better versus the other?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: The reason I like better and I you know I’ve used it only if pretty much in my whole career going back to the 80s, maybe a little pork at that time because of Jello. Gelatin.Yeah. Um, At least I today I know I’m getting quality I would would beef. I know I can get grass fed beef. Chicken. There’s no way of getting grass fed chicken. They’re mostly using, uh, soy and corn, right? And so you’re getting hormones in there, you’re getting estrogen. And then in the no control of the environment that then because there’s so much contamination today in the water. And what they’re feeding them. So I don’t really use that either. It’s all because of the process of how they’re made. If I can get collagen and I get beef that’s grass fed 100% all the way to the end, I know I’m getting quality and I’m getting, you know, consistent results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So that’s very good And how does, how does the? What? What the animal eats? Whether it’s cows eating grass or chickens eating bugs, how does that affect the amino acids? Do you notice like collagen from let’s say factory farm chickens or factory farm carbs? Does the amino acid spectrum in that collagen change? Which shifts?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In collagen, you know, the only thing I notice is the quality of the collagen comes from a good source of grass fed cows, OK? Umm. So I can tell the difference with my clients and patients for years, their response, their results are better. I’m getting you know, yeah and I’m not getting any of the inflammatory conditions and I don’t have to worry about any of the hormonal factors that may be found in residues and really low residues in these things. You know and then the vitamin E level and collagen is a little bit higher in grass fed animals than and they’re lowering in you know the polyunsaturated fats. So I’m getting almost none of that in my grass fed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s good. So someone else listening here, we talked about sunlight, that’s easy. Obviously we don’t want to get a sunburn. We talked about mTOR and insulin and fasting and fatty acids. What else can someone do to kind of help put their kind of start signaling those healthy anti-aging Epigenetics, right, the genetics are just kind of what’s there that’s that’s the hardware that’s already written. We’re talking about the epigenetics which is the software to help maximize that hardware use. What else can we do to optimize our epigenetics to be in that anti aging, healthy aging kind of path?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know, eating a good meal, right? Having the right proteins, almost reducing the levels of polyunsaturated oils from seed oils. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any other thing, is anything else more nuance and anything that yeah, my life reducing, they got anything else that’s more nuanced that they may not have heard before?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Reducing stress. Go for walks, get in the sun more often. Eliminate the amount of exposure indoors with blue light technology, you know, uh, put, if you’re going to bed here is the most important thing you can do at a certain time in the evening, do not look at your video or cell phone after 5,6,7 in the evening, OK? Get your body and mind ready for sleep and regeneration and anabolic steroids and all the stem cells that comes at night.That grows back. Get rid of all the Wi-Fi. Turn it off. Do not have your cell phone in the bedroom. Put it on airport mode or.I turned the whole phone off and I never have my Wi-Fi on during the days. Most of the days I’m inside and I’m very rarely inside and so I try to keep my bedroom free of any EMF electrical magnetic or radiation and I have a meter and I use that meter to give me sort of an idea what’s going on and I like, I like to try feel that’s the one I use because, Yeah, and that’s one I use every day for everything. You know, I go in the people’s home and I see what’s going on and I can say here’s your EMF levels, you need to reduce that and the only way to do that is unplug most of the electrical keep your refrigerator yeah and you know certain things on but you can pretty much turn everything off and if you can the, best thing is get a Ley line you know i know we’re out of it people don’t even know there’s Ley lines anymore. But you know we don’t lay line is where you you plugged in everything you know
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: a landline.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. I’m sorry, landline. I meant landline. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some of my patients that they’re. It you, you can also just try killing your breaker box to your house. Just kill the power for the night. Again, may not work. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, fridge come. But you can at least kill your room if you want. Again, it just depends upon how chronically sick you are too. You know the more sick you’re right, the more you can decrease that electromagnetic stress if you’re pretty healthy you could probably. That’s probably something you can adapt to. How do you manage the 5G stuff? Because that’s kind of everywhere now and these things are harder to avoid.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go in the sun pretty much every morning, every afternoon I’m 2-3 hours in the sun. If I’m exercising, I’m exercising outdoors totally. I’m walking. I’m grounding myself. I walk in concrete. Or the best ideal place to walk is is in the beach. You know, being by the beach is ideal. That means there’s no 5G’s there and you’re grounding your body and you know, uh, getting back to nature, that’s really who we are. And try to limit the out indoor as much as you can unless, you know, get John Ott’s lamaran or any of those full spectrum lightings. Start using natural lighting back in the inside you know no LED’s and you know try to avoid that and get more of a full spectrum light. Where the it almost gives you the same resonance of a sunlight you know and that’s what you want to do and eliminate as much as you can 5G just don’t be near it and the like I said don’t be on the phone, don’t be on a video and avoid it. And I wear blue light glasses for last 10 15 years anyway at night, so if I’m exposing myself to anything I always wear my blue lights. And I have it all over my house now, blue light lamps. You know where they produce red lamps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Dr. Bernd, very good. Well, anything else you want to highlight and leave with the listeners? I think you kind of put some really good information out there, fatty acids, collagen, the right types of collagen. We talked about sleep, we talked about light. Obviously with light you don’t want to get burned.Right. You want that minimal erythemal dose, morning hours, yeah, 8-9 or so. Later on. But just don’t get burned, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, here’s how you do it. Your body is exposed. The uh, you know, exposing yourself to UV light is how life started. OK, that’s the creation of every living system in our planet, OK, and UV is part of the importance of the mitochondria and building the mitochondria and all that. So what I’m thinking and what we need to do is, you know, don’t if you expose yourself slowly every day a little bit to sunlight.you’re not going to get burned OK. Burn only happens when you have a bad diet. If you eat a lot of polyunsaturated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: mornings exposure, you haven’t acclimated your skin to it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, I have no problems because I’m in the sun all the time, so if you go out in the sun. And you expose yourself, uh, 30 minutes, 15, 20 minutes in the morning. You’re protecting yourself already by doing that. Then at lunchtime 12 to 3, where UV is the highest, you’re not going to be damaged by it so much because you’re already developed a defense mechanism against that through the early sunlight, right? And if you’re worried about it, take an aspirin. And if you take an aspirin before you go out in the sun, you won’t get burned. And this was a study done in Israel, in Australia, about 1990s, that sunlight, taking an aspirin before going out on the sun doesn’t cost any inflammation or sunburn. And that was one of the two studies that they’ve done in Australia, the papers I read. It was phenomenal. So I take aspirin every day, especially at night, to protect myself against clotting mechanisms and strokes and cardiovascular things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So why you choose an aspirin over ginger or some kind of something a little bit more natural? Because there’s an aspirin have other type of potential side effects though. Gastrointestinal upset or maybe a liver stress?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: when I attended.The anti aging conference in Las Vegas. One of the people I met at the one of the speakers was the head of Bayer aspirin researcher. Yeah, and his whole speaking assignment that day was on Fox 2 Gene. It’s an anti aging gene that’s seen to be found in certain animals like you know worms and mice and now it’s shown to be in humans, aspirin actually extended the Fox 2 gene. So you’re not going to get diseases and aging and aspirin has probably more clinical studies than any other nutrient on the planet today. For anti-inflammatory condition for it’s mitochondria function I used to give my athletes coffee and aspirin to increase uncoupling mechanism which increases mitochondria function in the cells. So it has so many potentials, you know it, it is a truly, instead of causing reduction state in the cells, which we were talking about how oxidative states is the key and keeping electron flow going into the mitochondria and keeping our Redox cycling function going. So we’re donating electrons back to the energy chamber. Aspirin does that and and when you take with coffee in the morning, it doubles the uncoupling mechanism. So our athletes is so much like a steroid for them they can see a difference. And I’ve had people say this is worse than a steroid. I’ve never seen anything so good as aspirin and coffee and if you take it at night, it lowers the inflammatory condition. And one thing I learned from a cardiologist at Harvard was that it protects us from ever getting a stroke. When we get up in the morning, our cortisol levels are high.The potential for a blood clot to occur is greater at 4, 5, 6, 7 in the morning then any other time of the day. It’s because we’re just getting up and the blood is getting very stagnated and there’s a clotting mechanism and aspirin protects that. It prevents the platelet aggregation so it doesn’t happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What about curcumin though? I’ve seen a lot of drug companies kind of focusing on the research of curcumin with anti cancer. It’s everywhere plus we know curcumin is really good for that platelet aggregation reduction that blood thinning effects. What about using that too, what do you think about other natural compounds?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, it’s interesting. Um, I work with Elizabeth Dimarzio, University of Florida AMM. OK. She’s the leading world expert in inflammatory compounds from herbs from all over the world, OK? And I’ve been involved with her for over 10 years now, and I’m on her board. And curcumin was not even close to being the highest in the anti-inflammatory or anti tumor cancer things, there were so many other compounds like Boswellia. If you’re gonna take anything Boswellia would be my second choice from aspirin because it has a Cox 1 and Cox 2 inhibitor. Yeah. And so there are many other herbs she found that a lot of the Chinese 1000 year old herbs, 2000 euro have tremendous medicinal benefits in anti-inflammatory and antitumor and frankincense is one of the big ones and Boswellia and ashwagandha.Those yeah, ashwagandha is very good. I would pick those over curcumin and turmeric would be on my second choice. My down the line 10th, 11th, 12th, because turmeric is the whole plant and has much more medicinal purposes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you had to choose like whether a drug like aspirin or ibuprofen, you would choose the aspirin any day?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Every day because it also has a key molecule in there that we discovered in one of the research at Ohio State University Medical Center and at the Florida AM. It promotes ATP production, Mitochondria. Ibuprofen, Tylenol has a reductive state. Aspirin is an oxidizing state.It helps with oxidation. So that’s why I would choose that, because of the oxidative state. The oxidation of aspirin is very high, so it helps with mitochondria uncoupling. So we’re getting more ATP production, where Tylenol and all the other ones do not have that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aspirin profound effects on mitochondria is it uncouples mitochondria oxidation and induces mitochondrial permeability transition. Interesting. That’s cool. Yeah. Take a look at that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I have hundreds of papers on aspirin, so we can move on that anytime. Absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s very good. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that, Doctor Bernd, very cool. OK, anything else you want to leave the listeners with, drberndfriedlander.com We’ll put links down below and we’ll put some reference links to the collagen that we’re talking about and they’ll be show notes.Up with everything. Kind of transcribed for y’all. So you wanna go through. They actually read the transcription. That may be easier for you all. Anything else you wanna leave, listen with Dr. Bernd?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, starting out the day. Get some sunlight, have a good breakfast. Don’t skip on protein. Protein is just so crucial. That again in the, uh, utilization of nitrogen.There was no plant protein on the top list. This is scientific studies that were done. And so you wanna stay on a good protein diet. You wanna make sure you get plenty of sunlight, you do the right exercise. Don’t overdo it. Don’t get into oxidative stress. Um, you know, casually. Uh. Be careful with fasting too, because fasting is a stressor. The body goes under stress, so you don’t want to go on too much. People are doing too much. Uh, fasting and not getting enough protein. And so the quality of repair, regeneration is reducing itself. So we’re seeing more injuries, we’re seeing more carless from like you probably have everybody’s talking to me in the gym say, well, you know I gotta get knee replacement this replacement that replacement because you know they’re stressing the joints out and not eating the right foods and like you said, collagen is necessary in keeping our cartilage up and ligaments and tendons and muscles up, but it lowers the inflammatory mechanism that is produced by majority of all the foods we eat today. And that’s all the fried foods and all the carbs and starches and wheats and grains. And we got Roundup in all our foods anyway. So that’s another problem. We haven’t even talked about Roundup, you know, and how it’s damaging mitochondria. It’s literally damaging the mitochondria. It’s costing ATP damage. And that’s another study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have a question I wanted to hit you with. So we talked about kind of cardiovascular exercise, right? There’s a lot of different types of cardio you can do. There’s some data on just kind of that long term steady state type of exercise being harder on your adrenals, more catabolic, but there’s data out there on Tabata, our interval type training is also I think it’s couple of people out there. Peter Attia kind of brought it to light the zone two type of cardio. Uh, where you’re keeping your heart rate and that you know mid to low one hundreds, you’re, you’re, you’re you’re still able to talk while you’re doing some exercise, whether it’s rolling or an elliptical. What’s your take on different types of cardio and their application, whether it’s an interval, Tabata, zone two? What do you like? What do you recommend for the average people?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, being an athlete specialist, exercise physiologist, I have changed my attitude to a lot of these things from the beginning, when we were excessively training people. I’ve learned more in the last 20 years about how to preserve the mitochondria. How not to damage it. OK, so if I do anything, I like walking. I don’t wanna stress my body out anymore, OK? I’ve done. I’ve been an Olympic athlete. I’ve been a professional athlete and I’ve seen the injuries that come with that, I’m very fortunate that I never had an injury in my young life, you know, until about 60 when I had to replace my hip because of the excessive wear and tear of my body as an Olympic athlete.Training five different professional teams. Coaching 3 Olympic teams, you know, 80, 84 and 88, it was too much. So I find that it is best to do some walking and some concentric workout. What’s a concentric workout? Short centric shortening the muscle, but on your way back down you still wanna show use resistance so you’re using resistance in both direction like slow push up 10 second push-ups, where you only count to 10 seconds going up, going down, 10 seconds holding in
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Holding it the whole way. That’s a long contraction.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That was our studies in the 80s at UCLA, was concentric and short 10 second uh, workout so when you’re doing a curl. You take uh, I’m trying to show you it’s the curl is goes. You going like the bicep and you code down. Slow, slow, slow. Yeah. And you do 10 seconds up
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 10 seconds.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, same thing. You get a better workout in the shorter reps than you need. You don’t need that many reps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I’m a big fan of slower eccentric because the problem is that prevents you from lifting too heavy weights and it’s lifting too heavy with crappy form that bounced the weight or that hurt their back and the deadlift or squat. So when you have that slow eccentric, it’s really hard to hurt yourself on the end. Also, I just, I was thinking about this here. You got guys like Tom Brady who are just playing forever, is he consuming collagen? What do you think he’s doing? Obviously we got the book. He’s kind of autoimmune paleo guy. What’s he doing then to kind of keep himself longevity wise with his joints and everything else. You have any inside game on that?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know when I was in a starting to work with a lot of the athletes we were introducing.Uh, hyperbaric chambers. We were introducing infrared saunas in the 80s. You know, nobody knew about it. Today, most of your athletes are using, you know, some many different forms. They’re using infrared saunas.They’re using red Infrared light therapy, they’re using heat. They’re using vibrational things, Shockwave. A lot of them are getting PRP. They’re getting uh, ozone therapy. I can tell you a lot of these are professional athletes and are becoming more aware of what’s going on. I used, I knew Tom Brady. I played basketball with him when he was in high school in Sierra High.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is he in San Mateo, because you’re, you want right down the street from him at San Mateo.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I gave him a couple adjustments, you know, quietly at the gym. I knew he was a very bright individual and you have to be very bright. Like Howie Long was my favorite athlete overall. OK, here’s my really first really favorite athlete that I work with at the Raiders. And at that period of time he was very bright. He understood diet and he understood, you needed to do a lot of flexibility, like Pilates, yoga or stretching. Jerry Rice is like that. Jerry was very much into stretching. Tom is much more into that as well because
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pliability work. He talks about it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, it doesn’t do a lot of weight training. And when Howie Long started working out with Lyle Alzado, his, you know. He started getting disc herniation and hamstring and calf damage and that’s How I Met him. And I think was you don’t want to do too much weight training. You do just enough. But you gotta do flexibility and if you don’t do that, your career is not gonna be long.You need to elongate the body, you need to do it alright. And I think people becoming smarter, you know, and I think nutrition is very important. I can only tell you the athletes I work with. I cut down their carbs, I increased their proteins and fruits and et cetera so that they have a better quality of health. As they’re working out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Doctor Byrne. Well, let’s put a book in on this. Let’s bring this conversation back up. I’ll get you back on in a few months. We can continue the dialogue. I appreciate it. We’ll put links to find you. drberndfriedlander.com. Anything else you want to leave the listeners, Doc?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, just enjoy life. Don’t get into everything you know. Stay away. Medicine really is your, you know, eating right, getting sunlight.Little exercise. That’s the medicine. That’s all you need. You don’t need anything else. You can live without taking any blood pressure medication or other medications because nature was there. That’s where we started. That’s what we need to get back to is live outside, eat, right and get plenty of natural lighting and enjoyment in your life. Just let food be your nature, but now your sunlight too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Bernd, I Appreciate it. You’re the man. Great chatting with you. We’ll talk soon. You take care.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Alright. Thanks. Bye. Talk to you then.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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Hair Loss Restoration, Improve Testosterone, Inflamm-aging & Inflammation – Jay Campbell Podcast #373
Having a lush and full head of hair is a treasure we all want to enjoy. Having thick hair is seen as a sign of being youthful and having vitality — even being sexy. Millions of people find that they’re suffering from thinning hair or hair loss, called “alopecia” in medical terms. It’s a common problem that affects both men and women. Medical hair restoration is the only way back from thinning hair for many people. For a select number, though, their thinning hair is due to inflammation.
Dr J and Jay Campbell discuss that the good news is you can help your body control the amount of inflammation you’re experiencing by making simple changes in your diet and managing your stress levels. You can take a proactive approach to your hair restoration by eating a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods. Try anti-inflammatory beverages and foods. While hair restoration is not an overnight process, making these small changes in your diet can support your body’s efforts to heal itself.
Reducing your inflammation can give your hair a chance to regrow. Be sure to reduce your intake of foods that promote inflammation and approach your doctor for a professional and safe course of action.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
3:35 – Hormones
49:27 – Insulin Resistance
55:17 – Peptides
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani in the house with Jay Campbell. Really excited for today’s podcast. We’re gonna be talking about a whole host of things from hair loss to improving testosterone, inflammation versus inflammation as well as just increasing consciousness. Jay, welcome to the podcast, man. How you doing?
Jay Campbell: Doc, man, it’s an honor to be here always when I got a chance to speak with people in our profession who are knowledgeable. I’m privileged and humbled to be here. So, man, let’s make this amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very good. Well, in the functional medicine community kind of where I work, there’s a lot of people that complain about hair loss especially kind of people coming post-Covid, right? We’re doing a lot of nutritional things, diet things, improving digestion, absorption, trying to get inflammation down. But I kind of found you because you have a couple of products out there that I’ve heard some really good things about that kind of improve hair loss, improve hair restoration, outside of like you know your typical like Propecia, Rogaine, Minoxidil type of medications. I want to talk a little bit more about that just kind of out of the gates. Go ahead.
Jay Campbell: Yeah. So, it’s, uh, again, thanks for being here. It’s an honor to be here with you today. I’m very excited always whenever I get the opportunity or the chance to talk about hair loss, um, when I speak about hair loss, I usually, for people that aren’t really up to speed, um, I kind of like dropped the hammer because as you know from reading my articles but you’re one of the few that actually wants to drill down to that rabbit hole because you know that article that was on ben greenfield’s website last summer that was three parts is over 10 000 words right? So, most people today don’t read in that depth but there’s a lot of science now out there that teaches us the real definition and cause of hair loss and drum roll please. Hair loss is caused by blood flow restriction to the scalp. There’s nothing else that causes hair loss but blood flow restriction to the scalp and blood flow restriction to the scalp is actually caused by a myriad, you know, number of things. I mean, there’s probably, I could give you a hundred answers as to what causes hair loss and you know that obviously is covered, uh, that is micro irritants that is you know heavy lead poisoning that is overexposure to the sun, that is stress, that is lack of sleep, that is hormonal related hair loss, right? So, DHT inhibition, uh, you know, women that have autoimmune disorders lack of sleep again causing cortisol spikes and you know over increases of prolactin, I mean, again, there’s so many different answers IGF-1, you know, insufficiencies and overproduction, so there’s so many different things that can cause hair loss but we definitely at least now know that if we can control for the loss or the blood flow restriction to the scalp and do things to increase blood to the scalp, we can actually regrow hair and Justin what’s so cool is you know my product um you know without being a show or sounding like a shill. If you are suffering from a genetic predisposition which is you know androgenic alopecia or androgenic alloresia, there’s other ones you can actually minimize that by doing again the things that you need to remove inflammation from the scalp and increase what you would call angiogenesis to the scalp which is again increasing red blood cells and at some point, you know, as we get deeper into this you know, I’m happy to give people a lot of different things you can do, I have like a really cool meme that I can send you and you can post you know after the fact of like my and my business partner obviously nick with our company but like our inner circle hacks of what you can do to massively increase hair loss as your hair regrowth as you age.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and I saw this article, I had it up here on the screen as we were kind of chatting. This was a phenomenal article I saw earlier in the year because it talked about DHT, we kind of know DHT is this like testosterone metabolite and so, as you get older, essentially you have these hairs that are naturally prone to be DHT sensitive and we know there’s different medications are out there to block that so just kind of for the average person you have your finasteride medications, you could do oral or topical thing that kind of block that which can be helpful for some people but then you kind of and I always intuitively knew there was an inflammation component because I’ve worked that many patients over the last decade where we improved their diet, we got their gut working better, we modulated cortisol, we did things to help kind of the immune response, glutathione, NAC, things to help with the oxidative stress around the scalp and I saw hair improvements significantly so I know there had to be something more than just DHT in and of itself and then you kind of posted a couple of articles talking about that so just to kind of you know we have like one major track in conventional medicine which is like you finasterides which are you’re like 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, then you have like Rogaine minoxidil which are your vasodilators. Those are your two major paths but then you kind of come in so just kind of talk about how you took the two major paths and how you kind of had this little side detour that you find to be better.
Jay Campbell: Man, I’m so glad to talk to you today man because I haven’t had a chance to go this deep but this is you know really what we have been attempting to expound and obviously we did a pretty good job myself Nick and Ben and we did Ben’s podcast and you know again, the article was three parts and Ben did a lot of stuff into this but to your questions. Let’s go really big pictures. So, the conventional medicine route was always about inhibiting DHT. But anyone who’s ever inhibited DHT whether it was from the script which is you’ve already mentioned Propecia finasteride or dutasteride, yep, you know topically they realized that those, you know, medications actually attached to the follicular root in the scalp somewhat I always say someone and again you know read the articles that we’ve written if you want to understand the true science but they will prevent further miniaturization but here’s the big gotcha, the big gotcha is that 90% of people who use any of those products to again further miniature or reduce miniaturization. If you stop, all the hair falls out, because they have attached to those follicles in the scalp blocking that conversion so once you stop the you know the actual taking of again the drug or the vasodilator because this also applies to minoxidil and Rogaine, uh, the hair falls out and again anyone who’s used these things has experienced this the other big issue is that there’s a very large percentage. There’s really no number, uh, of men and women sadly because don’t report this like men do but who suffer all sorts of dysfunction. Sexual dysfunction, brain dysfunction, uh, bone mineral density dysfunction from these drugs and again as you know because you’ve read them and you just brought them up but you know we wrote an article about DHT inhibition causing cellular dysfunction over time and the problem and again, I don’t want to worry people and this is a big rabbit hole but again you know happy to point people and you will obviously and you’re doing it now to the articles on our site that provides the science on this but over time DHT, inhibiting DHT, which is again a natural biological pathway causes cellular damage and this can be seen if you do genetic testing, if you do methylated genetic testing, if you go to trudiagnostic.com it’s T-R-U , you know it’s Ryan Smith’s company or if you use the Glycan age test. Any of these people now that are doing this kind of DNA at the cellular level tests can see people who have been using DHT inhibitors and by the way this also extends into testosterone optimization. If you’re using an AI an aromatase inhibitor medication because again, you’re blocking from an x. Yes. Exactly. You’re blocking very powerful and profound biological pathways that should never be inhibited. Now, remember most of DHT medications and AI medications were originally created for people that we’re suffering from cancer, right? And then these medications were extrapolated and one of my good friends in medicine always like says extrapolation does not correlate to causation, right, you know, they’re putting them over into these other fields like hair replacement or hair restoration and of course suppressing estrogen and people using therapeutic hormones, uh, it was bad thing all together and now we have you know five seven 10 15 years of observation and we can see the harm that it’s causing but Justin, a lot of people will come out, you know, who and they’ll listen to this podcast and they’ll say but J I’ve been using a DHT inhibitor, it’s stopped my hair loss, I get my blood work done twice a year, I have absolutely no issues right. Like, I’m low body fat. I’m low inflammation, I take care of myself, I have clean diet and I will say that’s absolutely true but what do your telomeres look like. And so, this is a whole big thing and I would say that like over the next three to five years as more and more people start doing these DNA based tests and they can really look at the end caps and they can see what these DHT inhibitors and AI drugs or medications are doing. It’s gonna be a major reveal and I will just one throw one other thing I there just to like drop the hammer. The majority of men who have died in the last three years, uh, you know pro-body-builders physique athletes, performance athletes, competitors, even strong men of quote unquote heart attacks or sudden death because again, they’re using God knows, what you know in the kitchen sink, those guys actually died of what are called micro fissures in their vascular networks from using AIs. The AI’s literally are causing fissures.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh wow! That’s the reason why, huh? Yeah, I know, they’re doing a whole bunch of medications.
Jay Campbell: I have. I’m the only guy that’s brave enough to come out and say this. And again, there’s nobody doing autopsies on these people and I’m not gonna mention names. I am very connected to people who worked with these guys or work with these guys, previous to them dying and we know what they’re using and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re not hearing this from the heart, the heart issues, the heart hypertrophy due to the steroids. Is there any component in that too?
Jay Campbell: Absolutely. Dude, there isn’t a single bit of research in the entire world that shows that testosterone causes anything.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I imagine these guys probably aren’t just on bioidenticals, they’re probably.
Jay Campbell: Exactly, kind of, I mean. Exactly, so we’re talking about that’s exactly right. So, we’re talking about when you’re taking super physiologic levels of all sorts of things, right? And all sorts of things are going wrong and all sorts of harm is being caused but what we definitely do know is it’s the Ais that are causing the blockage in the vascular network and look let me explain the science behind this because this needs to get out there more. You never inhibit estrogen, ever. Most doctors out there today still do not understand that there’s no such thing as estrogen or high estrogen symptoms or side effects. These side effects that are being caused are due to inflammation. People have too much visceral body fat. They’re on, you know, therapeutic hormones. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or woman and the exogenous hormones are causing an inflammatory response. Their inflammasomes being released from the visceral fat, normally that causes the quote unquote side effects of like you know water retention or you know irritability or mood disablement. All these people literally extrapolate that to high estrogen symptoms it’s completely a falsehood. All the science and evidence shows that you need healthy levels of estrogen to confer protection to biological systems so whenever you use testosterone whether you’re a man or woman you should never block estrogen, you know, again, through aromatization because that is what is going to convert protection to the vascular network to the brain to bone mineral I mean all of these things need estrogen and I dude, I go on Instagram yesterday. And I’m looking at, I won’t name names because they’ll name names but very very well-respected people with massive audiences way bigger than me who do not understand this still who are still recommending to their patients about preventing or miniaturizing or blocking aromatization. I know, we rabbit whole from hair loos but all of this stuff relates yeah and I’ll take it back very simplistically, you cannot block a God-created or biologically-created system in the body and not think that you’re gonna have if you’re, basically, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, right? They’re going to have downstream issues and effects that are going to show up within time, you know my business partner Nick love to call you know he’s a dork. Third order effects, right? But, like, the reality is you’re going to see nasty things happen when you do this and unfortunately medicine, conventional, not you and me, conventional loves to use these drugs to screw around with the biological cascade that was again created, you know in these perfect bodies that we have, not realizing that doing that is going to have long-term damage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. So, what about using natural compounds because you’re talking about like you know the Aromatase inhibitors, right? You’re talking about some of the pharmaceuticals but just by keeping inflammation down by avoiding processed grains and excess omega-6 oils. That may also have an improvement on things just selenium and zinc and nutrients may have some mild DHT, estrogen metabolizing effects. Eating cruciferous vegetables and some of the sulfur-rich compounds may help with some of that too. So, we kind of draw a line between natural things that may have a more modulating effect versus drugs that may kidn of be in discretionary and kind of go too over the top too high or low on that.
Jay Campbell: So, yeah. So, it’s a great question, so like I get this question a lot all the time, you know, people will ask me well what about natural stuff you know, like doctor, I got one, a question like to days ago Dr. Berg recommends, you know natural, you know using things to naturally suppress estrogen. Okay, so again, let’s go back. We do not want to suppress estrogen. What we do want and you already said it is, we want less inflammation. How we suppress inflammation is not being fat and obviously one of the talking points that we have on this call is what is the greatest strategy for a human being to minimize disease as they age. The greatest strategy and by the way, if you ask a hundred doctors that question one will get it right, the greatest strategy to minimize disease as we age is building muscle because muscle is the greatest deterrent to the disease of aging because muscle is the most metabolically active tissue and muscle does not allow for inflammation. Now, I’m not talking about becoming a huge body builder but I’m talking about being functionally lean as we age when you build muscle you have less fat, the more muscle you have, the less chance you have, the disease, again the less inflammation, the more bone mineral density you have, the more functional strength you have on and on it goes so I mean like the reality is all those things you said are great adjuvants you know cruciferous vegetables, uh, you know minimizing seed oil consumption, living insulin control, I love talking about this kind of stuff but at the end of the day, you have to build muscle and you know, I’m not one of those guys that says oh, you shouldn’t do cardio and you only build muscle, you have to have a holistic viewpoint. You know, if you’re a man, I mean I just got into this yesterday with a very, very big influencer, I won’t name her name, she’s very, very well, now we talk all the time and she’s like not doing cardio and she’s almost 50 and I’m like what, you know, I’m starting to get belly fat, I won’t do cardio, well then that belly fat’s gonna keep coming like there’s no amount of growth hormone or testosterone or peptides or anything that you’re gonna take, if you don’t increase movement patterning, right? So, I mean, at the end of the day, all those things are amazing but build muscle, be functionally strong, you know, we can talk mindfulness and yoga and meditation and doing all that stuff and being pliable but you got to build muscle because the more sick you get it’s not okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let me kind of go rapid fire, you hit a bunch of avenues I want to go down, so from a movement, um, muscle building standpoint are we just talking about functional movements, push pull band, squat kind of lunge type of patterns. Anything more like super slow, certain periodization bands, cables, I mean, kind of what does your routine look like, just you know, what would be that they, if you look at your routine kind of from a thousand-yard view, what would be the key core things you’d want to distill to other people that they can apply to theirs?
Jay Campbell: Dude, man, I love your questions dude. You’re the best. You’re the best interviewer I’ve been on in a long time. Very, very knowledgeable man, so great credit to you. Um, that’s a very open-ended question, and I would say that, the answer is I’ll definitely give my, you know, regimen, my wife and its regiment and I’m 51 you know and I look literally a lot better than most people look at 20. Okay, and obviously grow. Everything but the kitchen sink at my body, you know, I use therapeutic testosterone, I use therapeutic growth hormone, uh, when I’m not using therapeutic growth hormone, I use peptides, uh, I take all sorts of insulin suppressing medications and supplements. I use metformin, I use you know, dihydro berberine. I mean, like I said man, I throw the kitchen sink in my body but I’m also very you know scientifically efficient, I use very precise dosages, I go by the research and of course the research for me is empirical, right? I got 30 years of doing this. I mean, I’ve been treating my body like a raprap for 30 years but to answer your question specifically because it is important, it’s an amazing question is, it’s gonna be relevant to the person’s age. A 25-year-old man or woman can train much more intensely and recover much better than a guy at 51 can, right? No matter, how well I take care of myself and how injury-proofed I am and all the shit that I take to recover and how good my sleep is, I still do not have the synovial fluid in my joint capsules as that 25-year-old does, right, so I have to modulate the intensity and the recovery from that age to a 50-year-old but you know to answer your question I think the answer is yes. You know, I would say all of the above, you know, weight training obvious bone bearing resistance training, you know, a lot of people that don’t have access to a gym with all the bullshit that’s happened in the last two and a half years then yeah, you got to do push-pull, push-ups, you know free standing squats, uh, you know if you have a pull-up bar hopefully if you have bands, I mean again, everything is good. My personal pet belief is it’s really not a belief it’s more of a knowing because I’ve been doing it for so long is, as you age rep range is more important that it when you’re in your 20s in your, let’s say like your early 30s because it’s all about taking the muscle to positive muscle failure, right, not eccentric, not negative but to a place where literally, your fibers cannot do another rep so like I have a formulation of training again I’ve created myself and I call it positive muscle fiber training. It’s PMF training. It’s a system that I sell it’s a video and I’m not here to sell my course or anything like that but I don’t even know about that wow, yeah, I mean I’ll do, I’ll send it to you after this and you can go through it. It’s pretty epic. I got a lot of people on it but and honestly I’m stepping on the shoulders of giants because you know I learned from Charles Poliquin, I learned from Jim Brown, you know, I learned from genius guys but the end of the day, the older you are the more you have to push your body’s ligament you know ligaments tendons and muscle fibers to a place where they reach exhaustion pretty quickly and so for me a couple of warm-up sets, two work sets each work set goes to positive muscle failure, again, I’m not doing eccentrics, I don’t have somebody spotting me and then I move, right and I train my body over usually six weeks, uh, you know, periodized, uh, rotations and it’s either full body Monday Wednesday Friday or it’s um kind of a push-pull split. It’s basically a split, you know, chest, back, leg, biceps and then delts, triceps, always finishing with core depending on where I’m at in the year, you know, I always foam roll before and after yeah. Sometimes, I do some pretty static stretching.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How long is your workout typically?
Jay Campbell: Uh, my wife and I train together and my 14 years old daughter trains with us because she’s like a Mary Lou from Mary Lou Retton and Jim Freeze. So if it’s al three of us probably 50 minutes but today my, she’s actually a cheer camp at woodward academy up in central California so my wife and I trained together this morning and we were like 36 minutes I think.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice, nice and in regards to the cardio aspect are you kind of doing more of a tabata interval sprint stuff. There’s a lot og stuff on my twitter feed about people really more into like the zone two type of thing getting your heart rate around 120 for like 30 minutes and just kind of holding a steady state. What’s your thought process on both of those. What do you like?
Jay Campbell: Amazing question, so I’m probably gonna be a little bit different here and you know take it a different direction and you know my background from a research standpoint is low-carb ketogenic dieting 20-plus years ago so I have a lot of experience with energy systems at one time, one time I worked with Lyle Mcdonald, I was kind of his research assistant before he wrote the first book on ketogenic dieting and exercise so you know all the science but at the end of the day a person’s cardio training should be relevant to their diet and the reason I say that is if you’re a faster okay or a very low carbohydrate person and that might be what paleo that could be carnivore keto, you have to use your training, you’re not your lifting but your cardio training should be relevant to your energy demand, right? So, if you’re somebody like me and by way I have a program that I’ve been following since 2010, it’s you know, one of the programs in my book which is called the metabolic blowtorch diet but it’s an every alternate day fasting. So, I fast on the non-lifting days and I eat on my lifting days, right? So, I eat, I train, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, normally and those are the days I eat and then Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, I fast and my fastening intervals are anywhere from 18 sometimes just full 24 hours, wake up early the next day and you know glycogen load before I train and that’s how I do it but in truth your cardio or the people watching this shows cardio should again be relevant to the energy that they have while they’re doing the cardio so that zone one, zone two is it’s great advice, I mean I normally I’m doing my cardio, fasted I’m normally in steady state and my heart rate is somewhere between 150 and 135, okay? Now, if I wanted to do a Fartlek, Tabata interval session, I would do it on my lifting day because I have glycogen and I would do 30, yeah, it depends 25 to 35 minutes of some form of an interval right and I would do that because I know that I have glycogen to fuel and not I’m in a place where I have, you know glycolytic deprivation and I could burn my muscles so here’s the big mistake, the big mistake that people make is they’re fasting and they do intervals and you don’t want to do that especially if you just fasted for 16 hours because your body is very prone tapping, uh, you know through what is it the enzyme muscle creatine kinase, yeah, muscle protein and any more catabolism. Yeah, exactly as soon as you do that, you’re now breaking down muscle tissue and fueling your body’s energy demand from the protein and so I always tell people like you just got to be cognizant where you are from an energy system so you know again if you’re a hardcore carnivore keto person then you should never be beyond zone two it should be always be steady state moderate intensity and let’s not forget depending on your age, low impact, do you know how many people who are 40, who like you know, take up crossfitting and go right into this like high impact ballistic shit and destroy themselves, I always used to I always used to make jokes I was like man if I was an Orthopade, I would put all my centers next to crossfit gyms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean for my whole cardio approach, like doing rowing because just because most cardio things, you’re in flexion state.
Jay Campbell: Rowing’s amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s the only thing that opens you up and puts you in that extension.
Jay Campbell: Rowing and swimming. Same thing. If you can do broad smoke swimming but I mean how many people have a lot, have access to a lap pool but dude, rowing is amazing. If you have one of those in your house, that’s the best form of cardio.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, you recommend most people. Do you like it empty stomach doing your cardio, keep it more zoned too for most.
Jay Campbell: Yes. Yeah. So, like I mean again, it depends because there’s days when I train, I mean again, um, everything is relevant to what that person’s goal is right so like if you’re a 45-year-old person. Yeah. Exactly like you don’t give a shit about being ripped or you’re not in a you know a triathlete or some sort of like crazy weekend competition. It’s how do I look better with my shirt off, you know, how do I have good self-confidence in my job, you know, and then ultimately like as I age like can I bend over and I pick up my grandkids or my children’s kids you know what I’m saying without suffering without pulling something in my spine, um, you know, my wife and I are like really into looking good like we enjoy traveling, you know to exotic vacations so there’s like, you know, usually like three months out of the year sometimes four, we want to look amazing in a bathing suit, you know, I mean, to be an empty nester you know, so it’s like I want to like travel the world with my shirt off and be like, yeah. I feel good about the way I look, right? It’s always about as you know Doc, functional strength as we age and the self confidence to that comes from being lean. I mean you know you look better in cloths you know, you don’t have to worry about like throwing your cloths away, you know, because you’re going down and up and all that stuff so again, inflammation will stay ay bay by maintaining strength, maintaining leanness and obviously you know preparing, you know, again, depending on your diet, the form of training.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. I think it was Charles Paulken, that said that most people’s health goals just revolve around wanting to look good naked right? That’s pretty
Jay Campbell: much honestly, that’s probably the best way you could say it and you know there’s another thing though to do that too is like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: At a functional aspect
Jay Campbell: Look for the opposite, most people don’t even give a shit not your watchers or mine but most people don’t give a shit about their health until they don’t have their health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s true.
Jay Campbell: And then they throw everything, you know, including the kitchen sink at it and it’s like dude, you took 35, 45 years to get to this poor level. You think it’s gonna be fixed in a six week or nine-week program or boot camp. No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Right. So, I want to crystallize. It so your workout, you’re working out for 30 to 45 minutes. What are you picking six to eight movement patterns your foam rollies are working on soft tissue quality and pliability, you know probably during the workout and so is that kind of you want to add a little more detail to that. Does that ring a bell.
Jay Campbell: Absolutely. Let me add more detail I mean I just came from the chiropractor before I got on your show, okay so I mean I see my chiropractor at least once a week. You know my wife and I usually go together, he’s pretty advanced dude, uh, once a month I see my deep tissue lady who does cranial sacral and I did a five and a half hour session on Saturday and you know she clears out all the negative juju. Yeah and then I also have a body worker that I see every other week on Tuesdays which I will be seeing him tomorrow and you know he does the cupping and you know ART and you know just literally just realigning me and stuff so I mean we’re very hardcore, I would say you now most, more than most people and really like making sure that we maintain these physical avatar bodies as we age and as you know dude, it gets it doesn’t get easier, that’s all you can say.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I can imagine so your cardio routine, what does that look like now, give me that
Jay Campbell: That’s another great question, um, so I’m a big biker, I have, I don’t have a Peloton, I have a really nice life cycle. It’s literally, right over to the right of me in my studio. We also have in my house, we have the newest, the latest and greatest, uh, what is it, um, shit, the treadmill that goes up to 40-degree incline. I can’t even think of what it’s called. It’s insane. Like, if you, so we’re going to Peru at the end of July, I’m filming a television series there and it’s my second trip to Peru but I mean, you know, there’s 18-19,000 feet, uh peeks in Peru you know mount humane day is like 19,500 feet. So, you know, I wanna be ready and I mean I’m pretty good I you know, cardiovascular but I’m like, no, I’m gonna buy this. It’s a NordicTrack. I couldn’t think of this, the x32i.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve seen that.
Jay Campbell: The x32i, it’s like the, you know, the bee’s knees and we just got it like two months ago and it’s amazing, dude. Like, I mean, it’s the most amazing treadmill I’ve ever got, I mean there you have to be an absolute freak to walk for 30minutes at 40-degree incline at like 2.5 miles an hour. I mean, it’ll burn. I’m not exaggerating. It’ll burn 1500 calories in 30 minutes, that’s how insane. But it’s uh, it’s you know, we got it for that purpose but I normally do bike because I like to breed on my bike, okay, and my masseuse, my cranial sacral lady told me on Saturday, she’s like dude you got over patterning in your right, you know, lower quadrant, uh, you know, inside where your, uh, you know, your connective tissue is, uh, your psoas and all this stuff, you just got over patterning, you’ve been biking for so long and doing it so consistently I want you to move to the treadmill and she’s like don’t walk fast, you know, she’s like walk at a wide pace, so I mean I moved to that to do that but normally I’m a biker man, I mean, I should get an ergometer, you know, when you said that you’re like here’s another guy telling me that’s I got to get that in my house but uh, my wife is a treadmill walker on an incline and I’m mostly a bike guy but I mean again, you know, back to the heart rate stuff, I usually ride, at 15 intensity on my life cycle and my heart rate goes from you know, anywhere from at the highest like 142.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How are you measuring your heart rate? Do you have a wearable?
Jay Campbell: I do have, uh, the amazon, uh, whatever the 60 little amazon thing is because that thing actually works with that new treadmill too. So, I got that like two months ago but besides that I mean my life cycle is you know just a hand meter, but it’s pretty accurate, you know, I’ve been using it for like six years now, I need to get a new bike by the way too because it’s just worn down but, uh
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you’re lifting three to four times a week, three to four times a week you’re lifting, cardio three to four as well?
Jay Campbell: So, lifting three times, cardio is really just dependent on how much time I have in the day and how lean I want to be like, if I want to be absolutely shredded, I will probably do a second session of cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays but again it’s just depending on whether I’m at if I’m home if I have access to cardio equipment if I’m on the road and I’m traveling, I’ll never do two sessions usually because you just don’t have access
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Alright. I gotta, I gotta bunch of questions. I’m gonna go rapid fire at you so I’m really interested, I know you’ve done a lot of stuff on testosterone bioidentical supplementation. I want to know how you dose it, I see lots of patients that come into me that are using creams that are using extended release formulas typically if I recommend testosterone supplementation. I’m trying to keep my patients in that top 25% of the reference range. I’ve seen too many patients come way outside of the reference range then you get this receptor site down regulation, I like to keep the injections you know between two or four days, I feel like you can keep the dose more steady on that versus doing every seven days or ten days, I feel like you get this big kind of like you know have the steady levels.
Jay Campbell: You got it right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna know your, you know, what’s your best dosing gels, injectables frequency? Where do you like people to be in the reference range? Go ahead.
Jay Campbell: Okay. All great questions. Let’s start off with what you can’t do. Okay, and again, this is sad because there’s still so many endocrinologists and urologists that have no idea what they’re doing, giving patients this but you cannot give a bolus of testosterone at 7 or 10 or even 14-day interval and expect it to work because as you know Justin and they don’t and they should know because they went to school for this. The way the half life works of these medications, you cannot put it into somebody’s system, shut down their endogenous, again, with this exogenous supply and then understanding the bio or the half cycle life of that bioidentical hormone thinking that you’re gonna have any kind of efficacy after six days, I mean you’re not. I mean in fact you’re gonna have to crash and you’re gonna have all sorts of again you know perturbations of estrogen going sideways, testosterone crashing, I mean, there’s, it’s just a horrible situation, so two delivery systems that work. What you said is accurate. Now, what we want to understand and again for the people watching the show are not familiar with my work, I mean, this is like you know, my quote-unquote claim to fame and like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll put links below for everything so people can see
Jay Campbell: Yeah. So, from the internet standpoint like you know I wrote a book in 2015 called the definitive TRT manual, it became the number one selling book of all time on testosterone, four years later, I wrote a book called the testosterone optimization therapy bible and it is the number one selling book of all time on testosterone so I work with the top docs, the top researchers, the top endos, the top epidemiologists, like all the people that really are the who’s who in this industry is the people that I work with in this so just to give you guys that clarification and that justification but at the end of the day what we wanna do when we use therapeutic hormones and this goes for by the way women or men is we want to mimic the body’s endogenous postal tool release as closely as we can. Now, you’re going to do that based on using a delivery system that is not spasmodic, right. It’s not a giant bolus, there’s a lot of testosterone delivery systems out there that are absolutely worthless. The only value that they provide is lining the pocket of the doctor who gives it to the patient, okay. I don’t have to mention some of those but at the end of the day you know I have doctors that will argue with me and they’ll be like, that may be true J but some testosterone is better than not been better than none and I can’t dispute that but I definitely argue that you know some delivery systems cause way more side effects than others and should be avoided but back to what you were saying, the best way to imitate or mimic the body’s natural pulsatile and usually diurnal release of testosterone is through every other day or daily uh, delivery systems so if it’s injections, uh, you know, it would be really nice if you were injecting with an insulin needle early in the morning with a bolus of like 25 to 35 milligrams or 15 to 20 milligrams again if you’re going daily and if you’re every other day then you’re looking at again depending on that person, uh, you know I’m mostly speaking about men for right now but you know somewhere between 40 and 60 milligrams every other day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. What place in the reference range do you like people to be, I mean, it’s are you gonna recommend testosterone if they’re in the bottom 25% and then is there a goal that you want to fall within the range?
Jay Campbell: Okay. So, this is you know very unique stuff here. I’m not a physician. Okay, right? So, I’m not prescribing to men and I’m not also you know governed by state medical licensing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re speaking from your personal experience and people reporting back to you, where they feel about.
Jay Campbell: Well, look, I understand your business very well okay. I’ve not been in the business but I could easily be in the business if I choose to be in business. I’m not in the business but I also with obviously literally hundreds of doctors, I understand this I’ve sat there and listened to the top teachers in the world and you know what happens to guys that are attempting to prescribe and you know again what can happen negatively if you know people are at one low end of the range and they prescribe and then they get audited and blah blah blah so this is what we know again from like a general universal conduct, the only thing that matters when you’re optimizing two people any person’s hormones males or females is if they’re asymptomatic and they feel good. Now, levels are again just a measurement, a qualifier so to speak of you know again various lab corp companies, right? So, what we have to understand Justin and this is big picture for people watching this is that whoever is behind the lab companies have been suppressing the standard mean deviations, right? So, the top and the low are pushing and being compressed and I think you know this. Five years ago, the high end of the range for both companies was between 1240 and 1400s and now between lab corp and quest and you know fact check me if you guys have to on this because they’re lowering them all the time now,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 800 to 1000 typically
Jay Campbell: Dude, it’s insane. It’s so much lower and if you ask people in the endocrine society or whatever the urology you know uh deal is, they’ll say oh well it’s not conspiracy theory J, it’s fat people are getting fatter and we’re just deviating for the compression of like lower testosterone due to metabolic disorder and dysregulation and blah blah blah but again if you ask the smart people who go to the endocrine society meetings every year and I know somebody who just went and you asked the smart people there like Abraham Morgan Tower who I love and has done more testosterone optimization than anyone he’ll tell you that is doesn’t make sense so in my opinion if you know we want to go full blown put tin foil hats on conspiratorial, they are making men fatter softer, weaker, I mean this is where, this is going, right, so it’s like to answer your question in a long convoluted way I would personally like to see men that have free testosterone levels and again depending on the measuring criteria of somewhere between 35 and 50, okay? and they feel good like they’re energetic, they have dopamine signaling, you know, increased cognition, there’s no brain fog, they’re obviously really goof sexually and have you know, erection, thick you know, firmer erections, morning wood, all that stuff that’s where you want to be from a free standard uh measurement you know is there a total number that’s great? No, but if you talk to the best docs, they’re going to tell you that like depending on when you test them, you know, at the peak or the nadir, you know, you want to see them somewhere between a thousand and 1500 now that’s not to say that somebody who’s at 2000 for you know an hour who’s now gonna function probably between 750 and a thousand during the week is bad. So, it really just comes down to like are they not having symptoms and do they feel good and that’s a shitty answer for you because like you know you want to like be like, okay well when they get tested I want them to be here or here or here but it’s kind of hard to say that because ultimately it depends on when you test them what the delivery system is now let me just also answer that there’s two forms of delivery system that are best okay. Now, I know there’s now oral products on the market and we can go deep down that rabbit hole if you want and talk about that in a second, I feel that they do have promise but they’re not there yet but the other one is trans-scrotal, right? So, a transdermal obviously is on the skin but what we now know scientifically is that the membrane of the base of the scrotum is eight times more permeable than any other skin location so if you’re gonna prescribe transdermal for a man and by the way this goes for women too trans labia right so right in the area of the clitoris and the vaginal lips is where you want to put testosterone cream and obviously with women that’s a little bit more complex you know you might have progesterone cream in there with them too whatever it’s a hold of the thing but at the end of the day the places where they can get the best absorption for the trans nerves is the best and so uh I’ve now been on testosterone therapeutic testosterone for almost 22 years, I was on injectable for close to 17 and a half and since then I’ve been on trans-scrotal and Justin I will never go back to injectable for a couple of reasons. Well, I travel the world a lot and I don’t like carrying needles in my hygiene bag because you never know when you’re going to run into some asshole at international airport who says what the hell is this, right? But then the other person reason is it’s just a lot easier to carry a transdermal cream you know in your hygiene bag as you travel around the word and obviously on the side of it you know it has your script and your doctor’s information and the codes and stuff like that versus like you know you’re going through a what you call it you know a screen point and they pull it out they see needles and they’re like ah I mean you know you’ve heard of stories of like you know just alone and all these guys getting pulled over but at the end of the day that’s why I changed you know there is some biological reasons uh cream on the scrotum increases DHT uh a little bit higher from a standpoint and obviously as you know DHT is the primary anabolic cascade so men will have better uh erections uh you know and but as far as anything else it’s equal, you’re not gonna have better energy or better muscle growth or better stamina or cognition or any of those things. They’re equal. But those are the only two delivery systems in my opinion that are worth the shit uh you know I know that the number one delivery system is pellets and I’ve done videos about pellets. I’ve brought on the best experts in the world about pellets this is what I’ll say about pellets because people need to hear this. This is how you know pellets are worthless delivery system and I know I’m gonna offend people. There has never been a single scientific study on testosterone ever done using pellets. Now, if you knew that why in the hell would you ever consider using pellets for therapy and look I know there are thousands of people in north America right now using pellets especially women and they get great results and the doctors that use them and prescribe them and it might be you if you prescribe them you know, they’ll say hey dude some of these people are in the military and they’re in active duty and they’re in the field and they don’t have an option, they can’t inject you know, they’re being scrutinized they’re you know blah blah they can only get this like every six or eight weeks I get it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. That makes sense.
Jay Campbell: That’s, most cases that’s cool but pellets are bad news from a delivery system because of the way they cleave as an ester in people’s body. Everybody’s biochemically unique Justin. We’re all end of one and a lot of people are hyper excretors and you can put in a pellet that’s supposed to be an eight week life cycle and they have four weeks
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they’re the last half I always see them just drop out a ton.
Jay Campbell: It’s horrible, dude.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Frequently.
Jay Campbell: It’s horrible. But again, I’m not against it if it’s the only most efficacious path and it’s that person’s only option because again some is better than none.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Now, when do you recommend doing testosterone because my philosophy naturally is all right someone comes in they’re overweight, they’re tired, they’re fatigue, my first thing is get the inflammation down, let’s improve your nutrient density, get your cortisol and insulin resistance in check. Let’s get you moving some cardio some resistance training. Let’s get everything fixed metabolically and then just kind of see where you fit and if you continue to improve excellent we can use some herbs maybe some Tribulus, different you know horny goat weed Epimedium, there’s different herbs you can use kind of when do you transition from herbal diets to going a hormone route and then do you ever use like things like hCG in between. How does that progression look for you?
Jay Campbell: All amazing questions, uh, these are not easy answers and obviously I’m injecting a lot of my opinion on this, um, I’ve done a lot of research on herbs, testosterone boosters. Well, let me just first talk about testosterone boosters and by the way for the people that are new to me that watch this, this is live right? And then you gotta be on your youtube channel, okay, so the people that are new to me are watching this right now and I’m gonna be a chill but I highly recommend you go to my youtube channel and you watch the video that was part one last week with Dr. Keith Nichols and part two today in about two and a half hours and they are I’m telling you guys right now this is the state of the science on hormonal optimization for not just men but for women too today’s video is about 90 mins last week’s was like 48 minutes but I broke up the whole conversation 82 because I was like I want people to digest this we talk about prostate cancer we talk about vascular illness, I mean it is the state of the science, Keith is going to be, Dr. Keith Nichols, who’s interviewed with me, he’s going to probably at some point be the guy that replaces Dr. Neil Roger who’s the number one trainer on the planet for testosterone optimization or just hormone optimization in general and it’s just brilliant. I mean anyone can learn what he is talking about in there but you know to those questions there isn’t a single testosterone boosting herb or supplement on the planet that’s proven to work now as you know because we’re going to talk about consciousness at some point, the placebo effect is very real if a human being takes something and puts their energy and their intention into it that it’s going to work, they probably will create that reality, it’s absolutely possible but from a scientific standpoint if you analyze all of these different supplements and these again Tongkat Ali and Horny goat weed and mocha these things, they don’t do jack shit. Okay? So, are the gonna work if the person believes in them, yes. But if that person that you’re working with and you said all the things decides that they want to stop being fat and stop being inflamed and exercise and eat better and control for insulin that’s gonna do just as much as any of those other things. Now, I’m not saying that adding those things in as you know additional adjuncts won’t help but I would say that you know before you go and we’ll get there a second but before you go the therapeutic adjuvant route like you just said do what you just said. Do what you just said, lower inflammation, lower belly fat, get them exercising blah blah blah but here’s where you know the really smart people in this industry will come in and say that’s great J. And Justin, but how are you gonna get a 50-year-old guy who’s got 30 pounds or 20 to 30 pounds of belly fat and a 135 total testosterone level with no free testosterone. How are you gonna get them the energy to do any of that shit without concomitantly optimizing their testosterone? So, for those people that I’m like well you know what dude like you’re probably gonna have to put them on a mild dose hoping and again this is where you as a physician really has to have discernment to decide whether this person’s committed because like if I’m you and again I’m not you but if I’m you, I’m not putting a fat person who comes in my office who’s a lazy pile of no way on testosterone because it’s not gonna do shitboard. If anything it’s gonna cause inflammation and again look man I want to say this because I’ve never had a chance to say this and someone so educated is you show uh I see a lot of fat guys and when I see fat guys, I mean they got big bellies, right? They got beer drinking bellies and they go on testosterone and it doesn’t work you know quote-unquote and it doesn’t work because they’re inflamed and they’re injecting testosterone into their fat visceral body in their stomach and that out of center adiposity right there and they get supreme inflammatory responses.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably aromatizing as well.
Jay Campbell: Well. Okay. It’s aromatizing that’s what you think it’s doing. What’s happening is just okay so let’s go to that because I want to address that so when we inject testosterone and it doesn’t matter the testosterone delivery system. Let’s just say for now when we’re injecting it. We want the estrogen to fall to the level that the testosterone is going to allow it to aromatize so yes we want to aromatize but the aromatization is not bad. The aromatization is providing the benefits. We want healthy levels of estrogen to provide protection to vascular networks to the brain networks to the bone mineral density into the skin. There’s a lot of all these amazing things so the problem is not in the aromatization, the problem is in the visceral fat which is causing inflammation so the inflammatory cascade which is happening for these people that have too much fat is absolutely causing the side effects but 90% of physicians and I’m not saying it’s you. They miss this and they think it’s high estrogen symptoms and side effects. It has nothing to do with high estrogen. It has everything to do with inflammation and the cascade of inflammation and so I’m telling you I’ve seen tons of men who literally quit because they’re like I can’t handle the side effects and their doctors tells them it’s high estrogen side effects. You know, water retention, itchy nipples, I could go on, no, it’s inflammation that you have systemically that the testosterone is adding to because the testosterone is an exogenous chemical that the body is like saying oh great another one. Top of the beer and the pizza, and the cheese and all the peanut butter and ice cream that you’re pounding in, I mean that’s causing the inflammation so ultimately it’s tough dude the people in America today because as you know we have what I mean saw a stat two days ago that says that is insane by the way. Seventy percent of men and women over the age of 40 in the united states are obese. 70%!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s insane!
Jay Campbell: 70% over the age of 40. I don’t want you know people to get confused that but that’s I mean dude we don’t have to worry about like the v or the c I mean that’s diabetes and you know what comes after diabetes I mean right, so I mean at the end of the day man if you’re a fat person and you know this is for you for a physician, if a really fat person comes in man, you got to do a psychological analysis like dude, are you sick and tired of being sick and tired like. Are you truly gonna change like are you gonna fight through this because I’m not giving a really fat person testosterone bro if I don’t think they’re gonna actually do the work because testosterone is just a it’s not a magic bullet as you know, its imagined.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. 100%. It makes sense. Very good. Yeah. I wouldn’t argue I would just say things like insulin resistance are primarily gonna be driven through inflammation and internal resistance would it’s kind of all connected right. Excess carbohydrates, grains process, it’s all connected.
Jay Campbell: So, you know, what, I’m glad you said that because I screwed up and missed that. So, all, so high estrogen symptoms is insulin resistance. That’s 100% the answer and again most people miss this so if you are again fat and inflamed it’s 98.9% likely that you have severe insulin resistance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think that’s great and you mentioned a bunch of things that you were doing for that obviously all the exercise things, you mentioned the berberine right you might think you mentioned metformin as well I imagine you’re probably doing some B12 with that because they know that.
Jay Campbell: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I take a very, a very, very complex uh I take uh B right from Gyro formulas. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, let’s talk about bounce. So, yeah, let’s talk about that so if you’re gonna go on therapeutic hormones, what we now know and this is very cutting edge tip of the spear stuff is you cannot optimize the endocrine system without also optimizing the thyroid, the pancreas and the pituitary. Now, you already know these because you’re a functional medicine freak and you know all these things but the average guy prescribing this shit doesn’t know this especially for women. I mean do you have any idea how many people go on, you know, again, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, you know depending on age, you know, perimenopausal, post-menopausal whatever and they’re not optimizing the thyroid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah. Especially on the hair loss side for sure.
Jay Campbell: Dude. It’s crazy. Though how often you see this so you know I like to say this it’s a triune, if you’re gonna go on hormonal optimization and again for me if you’re 45 and you’re in America with this and we haven’t talked about this before, you know we end the show but at the end of the day we are being bombarded bro. I mean you can’t from the blue light from the plastic in the water I mean this is the best water on the planet it’s still in a plastic bottle I mean I could pour it in metal if I wanted to right but it just will work but I mean we have to be so overly proactive in type a to you know intervene if not avoid this horrific biochemical onslaught to us so at the end of the day if you’re going to look to hormonal optimization in my opinion you have to at 40 to 45 again depending on your level of leanness and your inflammation uh I’m saying the way it’s done right is again depending on your woman or man age it’s looking at free testosterone to see if you’re eligible to start you know obviously therapeutic route it’s supplementing with uh desiccated slash porcine thyroid again relative to your you know relative to your metabolic issues and insulin resistance and then of course you have to control for insulin and you know again I obviously I’m the biggest metformin homer in the world I’ve written an article that’s you know cited on the Harvard education review you know it’s ten thousand words I met Mormon but I am a big metformin advocate because of all the things it doesn’t do outside of the great stuff. It does for insulin suppression right it’s can stop tumor formation and increases aqua Mancy I mean it does so many amazing things but at the end of the day if you don’t want to get metformin you’re afraid of metformin you know you’ve read all the bullshit on the internet about metformin then at least use dihydro berberine because again you’ve got to control for insulin and I know there’s new drugs you know there’s what is semaglutide and literally there’s a new one and they’re coming out all the time now all these things that suppress blood glucose and that’s cool but you know metformin is a plant and dihydro berberine is a supplement so you know I’m all about natural adjuvants but you know between desiccated uh you know therapeutic testosterone maybe some progesterone maybe a little of estrogen depending on your if you’re a woman or a man you know in your age uh and then uh suppressing and controlling for insulin I mean that’s the holy triune for me that’s the three long you know deal you if you do one or two without the other you’re eventually going to throw the balance of the other one off.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. That makes sense, you said metformin is natural yes from the French lilac flower so for sure a lot of good natural things there I love it. I just want to pivot here one sec before we kind of wrap things up. I want you to kind of five a little bit into the genesis of your hair formulation. We talked about well I’m going to kind of go through a couple of the ingredients, I just kind of want to pick your brain and kind of have you walk us through your thinking of why you put those in there so obviously you chose the grapeseed oil, I’ve heard some really good benefits of grape seed oil blends really well um what why is it you chose that fat I’m just curious
Jay Campbell: Yeah I know so great questions and I’m happy to go through and break them all down you know as much for whatever relative time we have left um so the grape seed so so version one of Auxana was MCT oil and again you know we’re just going and learning as we go and MCT oil as a carrier molecule uh pretty much the same but messy thicker constitution so we changed the grapeseed oil and we then put it in a spray bottle, we originally had a dropper but then all those bottles broke and that’s you know the story that we gave on Ben’s podcast last year but at the end of the day uh grapeseed oil is very texturized, it’s a very thin constituent and so as the carrier oil for you know the primary uh active ingredient which is carbon 60 uh it just settles in the hair as a spray and you can massage into the scalp a lot easier uh obviously grapeseed oil is very inert and there is you know some data in the world as you know kind of it’s like an essential fatty acid that it also helps neutral, it helps from a nutrient density standpoint in scalp but we’re really just using it as a carrier oil for carbon 60.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Got it. Excellent. I put on screen here just so you can see as well all the ingredients there and then can you talk about a couple other you know more keystone ingredients. How about the peptides you chose?
Jay Campbell: Yeah. Let’s talk about the product. So, the product for everybody is called Auxana Grow uh and by the way you have an affiliate code in that so just make sure you put it in here but um and if you don’t um I think your assistant has it but if not just email me and I’ll give it to you but uh so Auxana Grow is developed or created for people um who do not want to use DHT inhibitor medications, you know, ever or if they’re on it now like how to wean yourself off I just did which is a very long time coming a video on how to wean yourself off of a DHT inhibitor medication while utilizing the natural uh peptide based product of us but so it’s two phase of Zara product, there’s um B and A okay um formula a or formula b. Formula a is the peptide uh copper peptide GHK-Cu, copperpeptide GHK-Cu is what we call the shamwow of peptides. It has so many uh you know modalities to help skin hair um the primary effectiveness of that peptide is that increases angiogenesis which is again uh the simulation or the stimulation of red blood cell formation so when you put it in the scalp and you massage it into the scalp it will increase again angiogenesis so it will bring more red blood flow blood cells to the scalp now as I told you off air I’m not allowed to talk about invasive procedures but if you are a smart person and you ask does microneedling or does uh derma rolling help, well do the math. Right. So,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Got it.
Jay Campbell: What would be, you put serum a on first massage it into your scalp and if you want to then add red light, okay, if you have a red light technology in your home
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LED laser on top. Yeah.
Jay Campbell: Absolutely, uh, infrared and LED together for three to five minutes and then you would put serum b which is the carbon 60 and just let me explain the serum b so obviously you already talked about um the grapeseed oil extract but the carbon 60 does two things. Carbon 60 is a very powerful antioxidant okay but for our purposes it acts as a molecular sponge and it actually will attempt to pull in the serum a which again is the copper peptide but it also as a molecular sponge or as a superoxidative dismutase it’s going to help remove all of the micro inflammatory agents in your scalp so it’s like a two full process so the way it works just is two sprays of serum a, massage it if you want to do something you know quote-unquote with an INV to you know in uh and you know further stimulate you know absorption do that then hit it with red light then put serum b on you know 30 to 40 seconds and by the way for everyday less is more is not better for our product. Less is more because again this is not about spraying it into your hair especially if you’re a woman and you have a long hair. It’s about getting it into your scalp and then massaging it into your scalp and again scalp massage can be 30 seconds it could be three minutes. It’s totally up to you. Scout massage has proven scientifically without formulation without essential fatty acids or you know minerals you can just massage your scalp every day and you increase red blood cell formation it’s a fact right? So, obviously if you wanna massage your scalp after you apply the products it’s a good thing but uh for people that have aggressive hair loss and by the way you mentioned it earlier and this is important that we talked about this uh autoimmune dysregulation and you know hair loss cause which again this the big c causes hair loss we now know that people have c hair. This product dramatically improves covalent related hair loss I shouldn’t have said cova but I apologize but it definitely it definitely improves it again because this is as you said um you know oxidative related hair loss this is caused by you know whatever the big c is and your putting this into your scalp especially for women because a lot of women are reporting you know c-related hair loss more than men it dramatically will improve that hair loss and again we have you know hundreds of reviews on our website from women that have had that issue and they’re like oh my God it’s a miracle you know there’s a doctor you might know her in uh Pennsylvania um Dr. Amy Horman, she’s like the thyroid fixer. She’s got literally thousands of women you know using Auxana now because it’s the only thing that we found that actually will work against autoimmune disorder or dysregulated hair loss.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. I imagine also too with the oxidative stress that also is what causes the hair to lose. The melanin and become premature gray.
Jay Campbell: So, you know, so the fact that you say that I wasn’t gonna say that but a lot of women and men report that a natural positive side effect of using it is the darkening of the hair and by the way I mean. That’s me too. Okay. Because like I would be and I’m not using Auxana aggressively as I normally would because it is true even though this is crazy when I say this, you can get to a level with regrowth that you don’t need to keep using it although uh a very big influencer and I just did a podcast about this because he’s like hey man I stopped using it for a year and my hair is coming out again. I’m like well yeah, dude, you’re 47. So, at the end of the day age-related hair loss. There really is nothing that can you know completely stop it. Even a great lifestyle even our product uh you’re still gonna have to deal with that so you know the reality is it’s like you know use it every now and then we are going to be coming out with a maintenance product Justin because again so many people are asking for it you know kind of like a uh you know Jay Paul Mitchell pump the sponsor put in your hair when you get out of the shower at night you know go to bed with it or whatever but uh most people who get results and again this is not gonna work for everybody. Some people have really bad genetic hair loss. Some people are stressed you know some people have really severe trauma and inflammation that they just cant overcome but I’d say somewhere between 68 and 75% of men or women who live a clean healthy lifestyle as our uh as a person that runs our influence or marketing likes to say people who are serious about their health you know are going to get really positive results I mean anybody who knows me can just go back two years uh before this product came into the marketplace and I was nearly bold in fact I actually did the Vantis Procedure on top of my scalp which is like a henna tattoo you know to keep me with like the five o’clock shadow hair and you know people see me now in public yesterday I was out and saw hadn’t seen a guy in three years, he’s like bro do you have a hair transplant. I’m like no dude this is my product. So, you know people can regrow their hair with this product you were asking about is it a maintenance product because you have a lot of hair right now it absolutely is for someone like you, you know you would spray it into your scalp like once or twice a week massage it in and it’s an absolutely amazing. Yeah. It’s a very really strong maintenance product. You can also use it on beards we are gonna eventually have a beard problem really probably oh yeah. You can absolutely use on beard. It’s amazing on beard so the serum a is uh you know a water-based formulation so you can absolutely massage it into your scalp, you’re not gonna have any residue it’s gonna grow it’s gonna feel amazing but the serum b again with the grapeseed oil extract, it is slightly oily. It’s not oily oily but it definitely feels noticeable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is it better at night to do it so it can absorb?
Jay Campbell: Uh, I mean it depends on I think you know the length of your hair like if you were you know something not you but somewhat balding man with patches you’re not gonna notice it. But for a longer hair person like you or a woman and you spray a couple of sprays and you don’t get into the scalp and some of it sits in the hair you will definitely probably notice a little bit of residual. A lot of our patients slash patients a lot of our customers report back that they like it as a texturizer and they don’t have to use quote-unquote product to mess their hair or mousse their hair or anything like that so it doesn’t
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Probably get that benefit going from MCT to the grapeseed I imagine right now
Jay Campbell: Now, yeah 100% on that and that’s why Nick actually did that um the other thing I would say is um the beard product is that’s coming will be similar to serum a now because you’ll see it because it’s harder to use unless you got a big long you know beard which I know a lot of guys have that now the neckbeard people. It’s harder to get to the base because remember again it is a health of the skin product. It’s copper peptides so the longer your beard it’s going to be harder but when we have um the product for beards it’ll be more of like a balm roll on versus the spray now which is for the scalp so but you can definitely use it in the beard now we have tons of people have been using it in their beard for over a year and they’re like it’s the best product to have.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, serum a first and then if you do any laser stuff and then serum b will be the last component.
Jay Campbell: Yeah and you know it goes to mention because I know you have a lot of different patients I mean our skin products which is royal blue serum and sky blue cream are the best on earth. In fact again don’t leave the guy who’s the hype man for the company. Go read the reviews you know we have women who are very well to do affluent sophisticated ladies that use Lemur and Rhode island fields and all the high-end shit and they’re like we threw it all in the trash and we buy the bundle of your guys product every month.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, is the hallmark ingredient in the um royal blue is that gonna be at the peptide as well?
Jay Campbell: Same thing, so GHK-Cu is the shamwow of peptides. It’s the number one skin peptide uh and by the way just so you know so people understand this you can absolutely buy GHK-Cu and inject it in your scalp, I mean if you’re insane enough to inject it into the skin on the top of your hair you know which is gonna hurt like shit but it works I mean I have hundreds of people you know who have messaged me about that and saying man I use your product as like the base and then I inject GHK but yeah it regrows your hair better than anything man
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how long to get results because like the data on like Medoxomil or um uh with Rogaine or Minoxidil or Propecia usually nine to twelve months, right?
Jay Campbell: You see results, okay so let me temper my enthusiasm. It depends on the cellular health of the end user right so someone like me who’s no inflammation you’re gonna see results in literally three to five weeks. Okay, we have women that see results in 10 days. Women that have covid-related hair loss start regrowth their hair back immediately. Now, as far as like when is the dosing of this we’d never tell anyone to dose more than twice a day and personally and again this is my opinion I already said less is more uh it’s more important that you massage it into your scalp than it is spraying it in twice a day because again so many people think that if I spray two sprays and I get great results then three spray it’s gonna be better it’s not that way it doesn’t work that way so when we sell the bottle we say up to a 90-day supply because it is expensive it’s not cheap to manufacture the stuff. It’s really really high-level GHK-Cu product it’s not coming from China. It’s all USA made It’s expensive um we do not tell people to over apply it and I swear to God Justin it doesn’t matter, you know, we live in a super size. More is better economy. They always want to put more in but like if you’re a guy and you’re hair you’re watching this in the rerun or now or whatever and you have hair like mine literally just do it once a day for a month, see what happens. It’s gonna still last you for three months. I mean, my hair, two bottles which is one order is gonna last 90 days but if you have longer hair and you don’t like you know it’s harder I mean let’s be honest it’s harder to massage in the scalp with longer hair so
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Maybe after a shower when your hair is a little bit wet and you make it more visible
Jay Campbell: Yeah. I mean yes and no I mean it really depends right if you’re a woman and you have a mop on your head like my wife’s got long curly hair you know, it’s still not gonna get into the scalp like it would for somebody like me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, right.
Jay Campbell: It’s just gonna get absorbed by the hair so no matter how good you are massaging into the scalp it’s still gonna be more difficult but that’s why we say up to 90 days because longer hair people are not gonna get so much out of the two bottles as a short hair person is. It’s just not gonna happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and one other question too I’ve noticed this with a couple of patients where they have DHT patterns of hair loss. Yet we, they’re we working on all the core foundational things. Their DHT levels look really good on the blood test, right? Can you have DHT issues at the scalp level but have it not show systemically in the blood.
Jay Campbell: So, I’m gonna blow your mind with this, if you prescribe this is where it really gets crazy about DHT. If you prescribe them a DHT cream they will grow their hair back on their scalp like a wolf man. So, DHT in that article as we said, is secondary and most likely tertiary effector and causal agent of hair loss. It’s not anything to do with dihydrotestosterone and again that’s how we know that in the article that if you write somebody a script for a DHT cream, and they put it all over their scalp, their hair grows back now the only thing to answer that question though that’s important is um you cannot put our product on a bald patch that does not have active hair follicles. You know, that’s and again we’ve been very transparent from the very beginning that where our formulation is now and you know I’ll shed some light on this in a second it won’t work that way. You know, but as my the genius formulator brainiac Nick Andrews, my partner Nasir says he goes oh eventually I’ll be able to grow hair on a cue ball. And that’s where it’s coming so that’s where we’ll eventually go I’d say we’re integrating stem cells and such exactly we’re that exactly right we’re like two phases away so we’re in V2, V3 is coming and V3 will be a one phase liposomal system so it will literally be bottled squirt it into your hand massage it the oil based carbon 60 will be in a nanomolecule you know incased in the water-based formula and it’ll break open when you massage it into the skin and then version three four will have what you just said it’ll have all sorts of other peptides like micro agents and abrasions and it’ll be like uh it’ll essentially be a derma roller uh you know uh what do you call it uh invasive product just by yourself. Yeah, that’s excellent. yeah awesome. It’s coming. The technology’s amazing but you know we’re not there yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:I love it. Well, it was amazing you have a new on today’s podcast. I really appreciate all the significant knowledge. Any last points you want to make before we end the show.
Jay Campbell: No man. I mean I want you to come on my podcast because I know It’ll be just as awesome um you know for anybody that wants to connect with me uh I actually have a link I always do for everyone I go on podcast you can go to Jay C middle initial jaycampbell.com/freebooks and you can download should I think maybe all my books are free now but I know there’s at least three books up there, the testosterone bible is up there for free uh my book on the fasting the blowtorch diet is up there for free and then I have a book on consciousness which the next time you and I talk we’ll go deeper on that. The only other thing, it’ll say is that uh this week, I finally acquired my domain and jaycampbell.com is gonna be my website so I’ve had a guy cyber squad for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny story, he asked me for a lot of money and I usually delete him and ignore him and I finally wrote him back and I said you know what man this would be the last time I ever responded to you. I will offer you blank and it was a lot less than what he was asking for and if you don’t say yes off and I’ll you’ll never here from me again and I can assure you no one will ever offer you that amount of money again for jaycampbell.com so you actually said yes so anyway I will be on yeah I will be on jaycampbell.com effectively Thursday of this week the transmission or the domain transfer is starting on Wednesday so it’s totally cool for me because whatever I tell people go to jaycampbell.com they’re like jaycampbell or they do j-a-y and then put campbell I mean it’s just a nightmare man so I’m like really grateful that that’s going away but uh no man I mean I’m so blessed to be here today you got me going a million miles an hour because you asked the most amazing questions I wish people could ask questions at the level you could man because then I can actually like talk about things in greater depth but uh I can’t wait for you to have you to come on my podcast brother I appreciate it man, we’ll work that out I really appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m gonna put all the links down below people can get access to my favorite articles some of the products you mentioned as well as the uh the free books to look. Thank you so much Jay for everything. Look forward to connecting with you real soon man.
Jay Campbell: Yeah for sure Justin. Just uh you know let them know it’s you know if they buy it you know if with your affiliate link or uh code, you’ll have a link and a code. It’s 15% off so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, that’s great. That’s awesome. Well thank you so much man. It was great chatting with you we’ll talk again soon.
Jay Campbell: For sure my brother. Thank you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye.
References:
Recommended Products:
GHK-Cu Sky Blue Cream & Royal Blue Serum Bundle
Auxano Grow V2 Hair Growth Formula
Audio Podcast:
The Top 7 Root Causes of Inflammation with Dr. Jockers | Podcast #372
When your body activates your immune system, it sends out inflammatory cells. These cells attack bacteria or heal damaged tissue. If your body sends out inflammatory cells when you are not sick or injured, you may have chronic inflammation or other underlying issues.
Dr. J and Dr. Jockers suggest checking in with your healthcare provider if you experience a problematic injury or health issues. Also, talk with your functional doctor if you have ongoing pain, swelling, stiffness, or other symptoms. They can narrow down the cause and find ways to help you feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
0:36 – Inflammation
4:41 – Acute Inflammation
5:21 – Root Causes
10:30 – Food Recommendations
18:22 – Herbs and Compounds
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today, we have an awesome podcast in the queue, the top seven root causes of inflammation. I am here with Dr. David Jockers. Really excited to have him today to chat with David. How are we doing man?
Dr. David Jockers: I’m doing great, Justin. Always great to connect with you. You’re one of the leading minds in functional health, functional medicine and so always great to collaborate and discuss really important topics that are affecting so many people around the world.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh. Excellent man. I’m really excited to chat with you. I mean, you could just pull up one of your blog posts and just have the infographic run the whole entire podcast, right? So, uh, I’m really stoked to chat about it. So, first off out of the gate, I think we should just kind of define inflammation for listeners. How would you define it pretty simply?
Dr. David Jockers: Inflammation is an immune response that’s actually designed to help protect your body. See our body is hardwired to protect us from dying from an infection so you know our ancestors when you know they would go out hunting or let’s say they were in war or something like that, it would be attacked, they would have some sort of a flesh wound and then bacteria could get into that flesh mood into their bloodstream and then spread throughout their body and get into their lungs cause pneumonia, get into their nervous system cause meningitis and kill them. This is really the leading cause of death throughout the history of mankind. Even when people were in war, they really, they tended not to die like it was they were more commonly were dying from an infection they got from a wound than the actual wound itself and so the body is adapted to create this inflammatory response whenever you have an injury, right, and when we think about injuries we think about, okay, a sprained ankle. Let’s say what happens? You end up with a lot of inflammation in that joint and that inflammation is there to help protect against any pathogens getting in. It also helps break down damaged, uh, ligaments, tendons, different structures that are in there that are involved and it’s all part of the healing and remodeling process and so inflammation itself is actually very therapeutic, very healing and it’s designed to keep you alive. The problem is that most people in our society now are dealing with chronic inflammation because their main injury is actually in their gut. It’s in their digestive system. So, the gut when that becomes damaged, the body responds just like if we sprained an ankle or if we got a cut or a burn it creates this inflammatory response. You just don’t see it. So, you don’t actually see it and oftentimes, you don’t even feel it at least not in your gut like a lot of people are not feeling gut pain or even you know just like a stabbing pain even though the gut is damaged but when that happens when the gut becomes damaged, now proteins are seeping into the bloodstream and the body says okay these are abnormal proteins, abnormal bacteria in here. Let’s turn up inflammation throughout the body so that person may experience eczema or some sort of skin inflammation, acne, rashes. Another person may experience joint pain so when they have a leaky gut and their body’s ramping up inflammation, they notice it in their joints. Different joints are hurting. Another person may have a lot of brain fog and fatigue so it can impact us in different ways but in our society today, the inflammation is less so coming from like a physical injury and more so coming from injury in the gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, kind of my simple kind of metaphor to understand inflammation is you have breakdown and build up catabolic anabolic. Anabolic builds you up. Catabolic breaks you down. Things that are responsible for the breakdown like cortisol, stress hormone, interleukin, cytokines, right? Inflammation, in general, is a good thing. When you go to the exit, when you go to the gym and you lift weights and you do push-ups, you’re creating an inflammatory response in the pec area but then you have this anabolic build up of remodeling proteins so your chest gets stronger and bigger but there’s a healthy balance, right? And so, what we’re talking about here is the inflammation causing a little bit more of a breakdown than you’re able to build up and so over time, whether it’s your brain, connective tissue, joints, cartilage, gut lining, all of this inflammation is causing the body to break down and depending on where that tissue breaks down is where the symptoms occur if it breaks down on the cartilage, arthritis. It breaks down on the blood brain barrier, brain fog, mood issues. If it breaks down the gut, you can have more autoimmune issues, you can have digestive issues, it breaks down, let’s just say in other tissues in the body it could be MS or type 1 diabetes. And so, yeah, so, depending on where the tissue is, is where conventional medicine puts that ICD-10 code but we’re looking deeper under the hood and we’re trying to get to the underlying mechanism. So, first off, we kind of define terms and then now we can go into, you know, other, um, other root causes and root palliatives to kind of support it. Any thoughts?
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. For sure. And you have, you know, that acute inflammation which again is very therapeutic and healing and then you’ve got chronic inflammation. The big difference there is, the body when it’s in this breakdown, build up cycle. That is normal and healthy but when that never gets turned off and the body is continuously in this sort of healing cycle and it never gets turned off, that’s when we end up causing a lot of long-term problems that are happening in our society.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Inflammation is a good thing because of the remodeling that takes place. It’s the out-of-control chronic-ness and especially when we look deeper at the hormones like cortisol, adrenalines if that’s kind of chronically high or even chronically depleted that’s where we’re gonna start to have big symptoms. What would you say are the next big root causes?
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. So, you know, at the root a leaky gut is a huge factor with all of this, right? Because, again, if the gut is damaged now we’ve got proteins, we’ve got bacteria, yeast, different things like that seeping into that bloodstream and that tells the body, okay wow we need to signal the alarm because these things, we shouldn’t have abnormal proteins or bacteria going around in our bloodstream that puts at risk for pneumonia, for meningitis for something like that so we’ve gotta turn up and ramp up inflammation and the body kind of has this threshold level for how much abnormal protein and bacteria should be in the bloodstream and once we get over that threshold, it’s like a massive alarm throughout the whole body and then we’re releasing a lot of cortisol, right? We’re releasing a lot of hormones that are associated with fight-or-flight and that suppresses the hormones that have to do with healing and repairing, sexual reproduction, you know, our anabolic, our testosterone, our estrogen, our progesterone because we’re putting all of our energy into fight or flight cortisol and epinephrine and this is why leaky gut can cause issues with sleep for example. A lot of times people have insomnia. It’s really related to leaky gut and damage in their gut. So, that’s always the first thing that I look at and then kind of building off of that is just we have to look at their diet, right? Inflammatory foods are one of the main triggers for leaky gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100%. So, of course, like the big, you talked about proteins, right? So, the big proteins I think, you agree, would be your glutinous proteins from grains and it could even be gluten free grains too. Sometimes rice can be a problem, corn can be a problem, especially if there’s GMO residue on that, right? Like, uh, the pesticides that are used, right? Round-up, etc. and then of course high fructose corn syrup can have a lot of different corn residue as well. Casein and a lot of dairies especially if it’s more conventional based dairy with a lot of the hormones and things in there. So, all those things can be a problem and then of course, the more our digestion is optimal. So, if you don’t have enough acid and enzyme and bile salts, we got to break these proteins down into smaller units called peptides and amino acids when these globules are just too big, that can create more food allergies because our bodies have these big proteins, they’re seeing in the bloodstream and that can create more stress so we got to break things down and if that fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system is going, those enzymes and acids and bile salts may be really um, and at non-optimal levels and we have these bigger food globules in our intestines.
Dr. David Jockers: For sure we weren’t meant to eat on the go, right? So, we really need to be in a more relaxed state. Take a few deep breaths, you know, always pray before we eat, right? That puts us in a state of gratitude, activates that parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve which travels from your brain down into the stomach into the gut and activates the production of those key digestive juices so you can really break down the foods effectively. So, yeah, we definitely need to eat with the you know we have to have mindful eating habits and eat foods that are nutrient dense and not foods that are higher on the inflammatory spectrum like you talked about. So, yeah. That’s huge. And then, we got numbers, you know, the third big thing is keeping our blood sugar stable, right? So, blood sugar stability is super important. So like, if you’re eating breakfast and your breakfast consists of let’s say, you know an apple or a banana or something like that and you’re only eating let’s say fruit even though it’s a healthier you know, more nutrient dense food basically all it is is sugar and so what happens then your blood sugar goes up, insulin comes out, brings that sugar down and now your blood sugar is down and now your body says okay blood sugar’s down and if you’re not metabolically flexible, your body’s not very good at burning fat for fuel that becomes, you know, again, the alarm gets signaled because it says okay wow we don’t have enough sugar to fuel the brain so we’re hypoglycemic now. So now, we need to pump out more cortisol, more epinephrine to get the blood sugar up because cortisol is a glucocorticoid meaning that it activates, uh, blood sugar released from the liver from the muscles into the bloodstream to get the sugar back up but with that we also kind of get this effect on our brain, this high cortisol, epinephrine, where it can cause us to have cravings, it can cause us to have mood swings, irritability, anxiety a lot of different issues like that and that just drives up inflammation in our body as well. For sure we weren’t meant to eat on the go, right? So, we really need to be in a more relaxed state. Take a few deep breaths, you know, always pray before we eat, right? That puts us in a state of gratitude, activates that parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve which travels from your brain down into the stomach into the gut and activates the production of those key digestive juices so you can really break down the foods effectively. So, yeah, we definitely need to eat with the you know we have to have mindful eating habits and eat foods that are nutrient dense and not foods that are higher on the inflammatory spectrum like you talked about. So, yeah. That’s huge. And then, we got numbers, you know, the third big thing is keeping our blood sugar stable, right? So, blood sugar stability is super important. So like, if you’re eating breakfast and your breakfast consists of let’s say, you know an apple or a banana or something like that and you’re only eating let’s say fruit even though it’s a healthier you know, more nutrient dense food basically all it is is sugar and so what happens then your blood sugar goes up, insulin comes out, brings that sugar down and now your blood sugar is down and now your body says okay blood sugar’s down and if you’re not metabolically flexible, your body’s not very good at burning fat for fuel that becomes, you know, again, the alarm gets signaled because it says okay wow we don’t have enough sugar to fuel the brain so we’re hypoglycemic now. So now, we need to pump out more cortisol, more epinephrine to get the blood sugar up because cortisol is a glucocorticoid meaning that it activates, uh, blood sugar released from the liver from the muscles into the bloodstream to get the sugar back up but with that we also kind of get this effect on our brain, this high cortisol, epinephrine, where it can cause us to have cravings, it can cause us to have mood swings, irritability, anxiety a lot of different issues like that and that just drives up inflammation in our body as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100%. And also, just having blood sugar go up and down, up and down, if you’re relying on lots of glucose to be your fuel source unless you’re doing lots of exercise and burning it up and you kind of have that ectomorph body type. These are the people that are kind of your basketball players, your marathon runners. These are the ones that when they eat a bunch of carbs, they just have to go right around the block because their glucose just triggers their bodies. They need to move. If you’re not, you know keto adapted, right? Glucose is a dirty fuel in your body, and tends to cause a lot of oxidative stress. This is why diabetics with high blood sugar that kind of oxidation is gonna create problems with the eyes the vasculature, peripheral nerves and so it’s good especially if you’re not super active to be doing a lot more to be more keto adapted and to kind of really switch your fuel source to be more kind of fat based which creates less oxidative stress.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. So, you really wanna build your diet around protein and healthy fats, right? I recommend typically when you eat, you want to eat roughly about 30 maybe 40 grams of protein if you’re trying to put on muscle mass, let’s say your weight lifting or something like that, you may even need more but when you sit down and eat a meal you should be looking at somewhere around 30 to 40 grams of protein in there. You know, roughly around 30 grams or so of fat in there, um, somewhere in that range is usually a good range depends you know can obviously range a little bit depending on the individuals body size or gender their activity level but somewhere in that range where you’re getting the fat, you’re getting the protein and then you know, you might have a little bit of carbs and some vegetables or maybe some berries, some low glycemic fruit but you know, you don’t want a tremendous amount, you don’t, you really want to minimize the amount of starch that you’re consuming throughout the day. Starch and sugars and just get them from real foods after you have your protein and your fat levels, your macros right on your protein and fat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And kind of my philosophy is anywhere between a palm to a full hand of protein, that’s usually three to six ounces again if you’re bigger and may go higher to eight ounces, if you’re done doing a lot of lifting of weights, you know, you may be able to shift that and then usually carbohydrate-wise, I kind of say between two fish the two full hands and I would say mostly vegetables is pretty good. And if you’re gonna throw some starch in there, you know, there are some theories, I tend to go later in the day because of the carb backloading theory of just being more insulin sensitive later in the day and I try to stack in the fast at night with really lower carb throughout lunch to really tap into more being able to utilize ketones and fat for fuel. What’s your thoughts on that?
Dr. David Jockers: I completely agree about that. In fact, that’s what I talked about in my book keto metabolic breakthrough when I talked about carb cycling and even getting keto adapted in the beginning is really trying to push those carbs into the later in the day. Even a lot of people say well then you’re gonna store them as fat it’s not necessarily true because if you go low carb throughout the day, your body’s actually gonna burn up all your sugar stores in your liver and your muscles and so now you’re gonna have this wide open available storage for those carbs when you consume them to put it right back into the liver, right back into the muscle in the form of glycogen so you’re not just gonna turn it right into fat and I think that’s a much much better strategy and what I’ve noticed is that when people go lower carbs throughout the day. They have less cravings throughout the day. The earlier you eat more carbs earlier in the day, cravings go up and your overall, the amount of calories and the amount of carbs that you’re gonna consume throughout the day goes up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So yeah. A part of the big reason why exercise, especially lifting or interval training is so beneficial is one it makes your muscles a little bit bigger and then muscles are like a sponge for glucose and so one you’re wringing out the sponge when you exercise so you’re burning the glucose but then you’re also hypertrophy in the muscle making it bigger so it’s like taking a big sponge and cleaning up that messy table I had a patient just do this as an experiment, he tested his blood sugar after meal, it was 140, 140, right, mg/dL and I tell patients, if you, you know, make a mistake with your carbohydrate or just too much junk after meal just do a five or ten minute walk. Well, he did an elliptical, a ten-minute kind of like interval on the elliptical that measured his blood sugar. 10 minutes later it went from 140 to 85.
Dr. David Jockers: He was activating that skeletal muscle. And another quick tip there too is you could even just do, if you know, you’re gonna have a higher carb meal, do 50 air squats right or 20 air squats or whatever you’re able to do, just do that. Get yourself kind of in a state where you’re breathing heavily. Give yourself a few minutes just kind of calm down, take some deep breaths and then eat your meal. Now, you’ve activated the Glut-4 receptor, right? So, the Glut-4 receptor, right? So, the Glut4 transporter protein that actually acts like insulin to pull the sugar into the cell and again you gotta get that sugar out of that cell because the sugar will create more oxidation and will create a process called glycation or browning inside of your body. If it’s stuck in the bloodstream at a high level like that 140 like your client there. So, we want to pull that out and we don’t wanna do it with a lot of insulin, right? So, we want to be able to get the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells with the least amount of insulin production and that’s what the exercise will help with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and that’s why I recommend like during the day I have a stand desk here so I have a treadmill over here that I can control with the remote so I’ll move my desk over there like yesterday on my fitbit here, I walked 18 to 19000 steps yesterday. So, I moved it over my treadmill. I’m working with patients and then I have my little Cubii stepper over here so I lower my desk and now I’m able to pedal so I’ll go from pedaling to just standing and then doing actual walking at three to four miles per hour. I can go one or two miles per hour if I want. If I’m really focused, I don’t want to put a lot of energy out and put more brain energy. So, it’s good if you’re in those work environments. Start with just the Cubii where you just get the little pedals, put them onto your desk and just try to get an extra 5000 steps a day with just that alone. That makes a huge difference.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. That’s great. And I can tell, you know, from the last time I talked to you, you actually look more muscular and trimmer as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Dr. David Jockers: It’s working.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You got it. You got it. Uh, What’s number four?
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. So, number four is gonna be infections. So sometimes, you can eat a great diet, right? You can really try to put your body in the right mindset, right, and in parasympathetic mode so you’re able to produce the right amount of digestive juices but you’ve got infections particularly gut infections that are driving up inflammation in your gut, driving up inflammation, driving up cortisol levels and these bad gut microbes which could be Candida, right, or some sort of a yeast or fungal overgrowth. It could be bacteria like Klebsiella for example, it could be parasites, it could be worms, it could be, um, you know, Blastocystis hominis and different Amoeba and different things like that. These things are gonna eat the nutrients that you’re consuming. They’re going to poop out toxins, right? Toxins are gonna drive up inflammation in your system. So, sometimes, we need to use some herbs and different compounds to help remove these infections and follow specific protocols, uh, to get rid of these infections. That’s really the next thing that we got to focus on there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100%. So, first off, just being in a really healthy parasympathetic state with good acid and enzyme and bio levels. Those actually provide like almost like natural bleach for like the dirty picnic table so it makes it harder for microbes to grow when there’s good acids there, a good bile, these things have a natural antimicrobial effect, number one and then typically good beneficial bacteria in the gut it’s also gonna produce some level of acids whether it’s glucuronic acid or different acids that are very helpful for keeping bugs in check but then when you’ve eaten too much sugar or been exposed to antibiotics or your sympathetic fight-or-flight’s off, these microbes start to overgrow and then you’re in this then it starts to shift the whole milieu so then you kind of have to fix everything. You have to fix the digestion, fix the diet, use the herbs to knock down whatever microbes are going on. There can be different microbes and sometimes when those microbes are in there, you can’t just go back to doing lifestyle things changing your diet and digestion that may not be enough and sometimes the herbs are really necessary to kind of knock things down.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. Absolutely. So, just like you said, I mean, naturally if you’re producing enough stomach acid, bile, stomach acid really helps to sterilize the stomach and then bile is very alkaline, stomach acid is very acidic, bile goes in, really helps clean out the small intestine, you know, a lot of people are developing bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. Sometimes, these are good bacteria but they’ve translocated from the large intestine into the small intestine and now they’re fermenting foods, you know, they’re eating foods before they should be creating a lot of extra gas causing poor nutrient absorption and this is oftentimes related to poor stomach acid, poor bile flow, not really creating the right environment and now these bacteria are translocating up there. So, yeah, these are all things that we need to get rid of. We need to really optimize stomach acid bile flow. So that’s key. And then sometimes, some different herbs, different compounds can be really helpful. Things like garlic, um, let’s see Berberine, can really, really be helpful here. Olive leaves can be a great one. Black walnut, right? What are some of your other favorite antimicrobials?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’d say, the oil of Oregano’s wonderful. Ginger, um, silver, I like wormwood a lot too. These are all excellent compounds that are very helpful. And then, typically, when we do a lot of killing, we may even throw some biofilm boosters in there whether it’s ginger or silver or an acetylcysteine can work wonderfully to help the herbs work even better, kind of disarm the bug so to speak.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. Super important. And I know we’re running low on time so the next two I’m gonna put together. Chronic stress and poor sleep habits. So, these kind of go hand in hand, obviously, if you’re under a lot og stress, it’s gonna cause higher cortisol levels, higher epinephrine levels, which is gonna cause more laxity in that gut so when you have high cortisol, the tight junctions that keep the gut, uh, connected and with a lot of integrity become loose also high cortisol will cause a reduction in the mucous membrane which is kind of like the first line of defense in your gut before you get to the gut lining so you’ll have less mucus production, lower levels of secretory IgA which is your key immune component that helps protect your gut lining, it helps protect against pathogen buildup in your gut and then the gut junction will become more leaky or more loose and will tear more easily so it predisposes you to leaky gut and of course we know chronic stress will also impact your sleep quality and then if you’re not sleeping well that also is gonna cause more issues with stress with higher cortisol, higher adrenaline and you know, obviously, that’s gonna compound your gut health and your ability to just heal and repair and produce the right amount of anabolic sex hormones in order to repair and really thrive.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. We talked about anabolic building up and catabolic breaking down. Well, cortisol, our stress hormone, the glucocorticosteroid, you mentioned, is on a circadian cycle so it’s higher in the morning and lower at night. Now, the problem is it goes down at night which allows melatonin, the sleep to come up but the problem is when we start to have overstimulation sympathetic nervous system stress, that rhythm can start to almost, it can actually pick up at night which then throws off our ability to make melatonin which throws off the parasympathetic restoration that happens when you sleep and growth hormone going up and all of your neurotransmitter turning over so like you kind of mentioned that sleep, it’s so important because when that throws off that prevents the healing and recovering and so it’s almost like a double whammy so to speak.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. You really can’t recover if you’re not sleeping well. That’s actually, it’s one of the most foundational things. I know I can help somebody if we can get them sleeping well. The faster we get them sleeping well, the faster their body is gonna heal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You can get like, um, like a fitbit where they have an HRV function or like the whoop or the aura ring and you can test kind of your HRV and your sleep depth and I’ll do different things, I’ll like take extra GABA or Athenian or Magnesium or avoiding alcohol like I’ll just have one like night alcoholic drink like two to three hours for bed and my HRV score will be way lower that next morning so get a device where you kind of test and see the different inputs and outputs in regards to healthy supplements and lifestyle strategy and see how that moves the needle. You may see it with blue blocking glasses or prayer or meditation or breathing or cold showers. These are all important inputs and then you can see how your body responds as a result.
Dr. David Jockers: Yeah. Totally. Totally. And the last thing is just environmental toxins. So, we’re being exposed to pesticides, herbicides, mold, you may have mold in your home that you’re being exposed to or in your office or something along those lines. Heavy metals, let’s say you’ve got Amalgam fillings in your mouth, um, you know, you can obviously get, get, get toxins from that, um, lead, let’s say you’re in an old home and there’s lead paint or something along those lines or you’re using conventional lipstick which actually has lead and you’re putting that on every single day. So, there’s a lot of different exposures to environmental toxins that you know may be causing you not to be able to heal effectively and drive up inflammation in your body. So, we gotta do the best we can so I always recommend trying to go as organic as possible with food at least trying to get non-GMO for sure and organic as possible with your food. That eliminates one of the major causes of you know toxicity and just a build up of toxins in your body. It’s like, we all have this bucket of toxins we can handle, we have a certain threshold that we can handle and our body will eliminate those things. And so, when we build it up though once that bucket gets to the point where it’s overflowing, that’s when we start to have the major symptoms. All our systems start to shut down so the more that we can reduce the amount that we are going into this bucket the better off we’re gonna be at eliminating them and so you know just trying to reduce exposure is key. Get natural household cleaning products. You know, try to get outside a lot, breathe fresh air as much as you can and uh and exercise, right? So, trying to exercise, you can obviously get in a sauna and try to sweat, try to open up all the drainage pathways and try to minimize your exposure to these toxins. That’s really the key.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And, each one of those seven could be a podcast in and of itself and of course we got lots of recommended supplements as well. We’ll put maybe a link below and you can put some of your favorite products and uh below. So listeners that are wanting to understand. Hey, what can I do to sleep? What can I do for inflammation? Like, I will put our favorite ones below and you guys can take a look at that, um, and then also feel free to reach to Dr. Jockers. J-o-c-k-e-r-s dot com. David’s got all kinds of supplements and tools and great information there and I’m Dr. J, justinhealth.com, you can reach out to podcast videos and functional medicine consult worldwide there. Dr. David, anything else you want to add?
Dr. David Jockers: You know, I just want to inspire you guys to know that you can heal if we can find the root causes and move those right and eliminate and reduce those. Your body has this natural built-in mechanism to heal, right? It’s the innate intelligence that runs you that God designed you with. And, you can heal and you can repair and can get inflammation under control. Inflammation is there to support you, you’ve got to just find out what’s causing it to be chronic, what’s causing it to be turned on all the time, start reducing that and now your body is going to be back into a mode where it can heal repair and you can really thrive in life even if you’ve tried these things we’ve talked about and you’re not getting results, reach out somebody like Dr. J here or my health coaching team. You’re gonna need a professional to help, walk you through the process, put you on protocol and get you the results that you want.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it and there’s a lot of foundational information out of the gates. People can kind of take and turn with and then kind of get that extra, you know, uh, that extra guide or that Sherpa helps that kind of get to the top of the mountain so to speak. So, Dr. Jockers, I really appreciate today’s podcast. Great intel, great information. Awesome man, you have a great day. Good chatting with you.
Dr. David Jockers: Awesome. You too Dr. J. You’re blessed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks Doc.
References:
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https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-7-root-causes-of-inflammation-with-dr-jockers-podcast-372
How to Reduce Inflammation and Improve Joint Mobility | Podcast #359
When you think of joint mobility issues, you’re probably thinking of inflammation. Inflammation is a process in which your body’s white blood cells and immune proteins help protect you from infection and things like bacteria and viruses.
In this video, Dr. J and Evan Brand discuss that your immune system triggers an inflammatory response when there isn’t anything to fight off in some diseases. With these diseases, called autoimmune diseases, your body’s immune system damages its tissues. Your body responds as if normal tissues need to be fought off. These are all linked to diet modification and testing that needs to be done to make you health better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – The benefits of movements to joint mobility
5:23 – The benefits of ergonomic chairs and tables for your back
18:56 – The vital role of proper diet for better joint mobility of reduction of inflammation
30:04 – The anti-inflammatory benefits of ginger for joint health
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With Evan Brand, we’re gonna be going into reducing inflammation in the joints and how to improve joint mobility. We’re gonna be talking about it more from a biochemical kind of metabolic inflammation standpoint. So excited to dive in on that topic. Evan, how are we doing today man? What’s cooking?
Evan Brand: I’m doing pretty good. I was telling you about my shoulder. I was lifting some heavy things over the weekend and my shoulder got a little tight on me. I thought, oh oh. So, uh, that spurred the idea of this conversation and I hit some arnica homeopathic 30c which worked very well. It’s not necessarily the root cause but it has been helpful and you know I wasn’t trained on homeopathy so this is something you and I have kind of dove into in our personal lives with our kids and such and it’s been a game changer. So, I mean, out of the gate, I think that’s something to have on hand even if you don’t know biochemically your root cause, what’s going on, at least you could remedy your situation, feel a little bit better well and buy some time while you’re investigating.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% So, when I look at joint issues right, you have physical inflammation that’s being caused by physical things, right? The most common things are going to be either over exercising too much, probably less common on that and the other one is just very poor posture, right? So, the easiest thing out of the gates is you’re either sitting in a really poor chair that has very poor lumbar support, right, lower back curve support or cervical curve support. So, the easiest thing is just getting a really high good quality rated ergonomic chair especially if you’re sitting a lot, right, that has cervical support and lumbar support, that’s super helpful. In that way that part of the spine is supported. Ideally, being able to stand a portion of your day. I mean, right now, I’m standing. I don’t think you are. So, I stand at least half of my day. I have a treadmill that I’ll slide it under there. I have a Cubbi stepper. So, I’m always trying to keep some movement in there. I get about 15,000 steps a day so it’s very helpful to be able to move, get some steps. That’s helpful for the joints. The disc in the joint get hydration through inhibition. So, the joint has to pump and move to get hydration into the joints. So, movement through the joint is super helpful. So, being able to stand for a portion of the day, sit a little bit with good support, getting some movement, super helpful. And then depending on the kind of where you’re at, if you have inflammation, if you have pain, I mean, you can do some simple core kind of postural functional movements to strengthen that area. I mean, one of the things I like, uh, is a book by Eric Goodman called Foundation Training, where he just does some simple posterior chain work like a standing prone cobra with the chin pull back, right, that activates the deep cervical flexors here. I mean, you can bend down to a 45-degree angle like this for 30 seconds. You can also bring it up like this and get the whole posterior chain activated and then you can also reach down and then create traction with the spine so go look at Eric Goodman’s work. He is a, just that these three or four movements called the founder that, those are really good movements to get the posterior chain like this, like this. Simple stuff out of the gates. And so, I like that to get the posterior chain, good stability with your chain, investing good money on your desk chair. Get sine ability like a stand desk to be able to stand up throughout the day even if you’re just kind of moving going back and forth. These are super easy ways to kind of get simple movement through your spine during this, you’re not sitting all day. And if you’re sitting all day, at least invest in a really good chair and try to get some of the stand desk where you can go up and down.
Evan Brand: I do this little bar stool too and that way I could just lean my butt on it. So, I’ll just put my butt on that but I’m still standing. I’m just kind of leaning back on it. I know there was some really expensive thing, I can’t remember the name of it, a few years, I think Marxism was promoting it but it had like rocks. It has this thing that he learned. It was almost like a pogo stick with a seat and so it was like this imbalanced chair. You’re sitting but you’re standing but there’s some like rocks on the floor and so he’d put his bare foot on the rocks. I don’t remember what it was but this is kind of my homemade version of it, this little bar stool that It’ll just kind of leave off kilter. In that way my butt’s just taking a little bit of load off because if I just try to stand all day, my back hurts. So, standing all day just doesn’t work for me but with a little bit of lean, it helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. They have these, um, these little, they’re called like wobble board chairs. There’s one called the Luna standing desk tool. It’s kind of like that, it’s kind like a pogo stick, right, but it’s got a flat surface, that’s kind of oblong so then you’re kind of sitting on that. You kind of have balance so then it activates the core but then you can kind of move around, kind of get some movement in your hips which is good for your spine. You can also just get like a Swiss ball, right? Just sit on one of those in that way, you can get some movement. And you won’t have so much support in the back so you really have to activate your core, activate your back so you can sit up there straight. That’s good, nothing wrong with that so that’s helpful. You probably wouldn’t want to do it all day because you’d be really keeping these muscles active all day but it’s nice if you’re at a desk, you can at least bring that in and bring the wobble board stool type of chair in there. These are a couple options, you know, minimal cost to bring in some good core activation. And when I say core, core is everything. It’s like the whole core thing is your back, it’s multifidus, it’s your iliocostalis muscles, right? It’s your longissimus muscles, it’s obviously your TVA, it’s your rectus abdominis, it’s your oblique, transverse, external, internal oblique, right? It’s everything around your back and front abdominal area.
Evan Brand: People may be listening and go ‘God, why does that be so complex, I gotta get to this fancy chair or this or that’. Because, we didn’t really evolve if we were sitting like this all day staring at a screen. I mean, we’re just not really built for this, so it’s no surprise that we see so many people with mobility problems. I mean, I’ve been to several different physical therapy people over the years, just for random injuries and aches and pains and they all tell me that in their careers, these are people that have worked 20, 30, 40 years. They’ve seen just the rise of younger and younger people having worse mobility because they’re just sitting at a desk all day and how it’s shortening the muscles. I think it’s the hamstrings, right? It’s shortening the hamstrings when you sit all day?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would say it’s probably shortening the hip flexor muscles, right? Because the hip flexors, right, when you flex the hip, you’re shortening that muscle so you’re creating that muscle shortens and that muscle, its insertion is on the lesser trochanter in the hip flexor in the femur muscle, in the femur, uh, bone so the lesser greater trochanter muscle, the top part of the femur but then it inserts, no, that’s where it inserts. Its origin is I think from L1 to L5 on the spine. And so, when you have tighter hip flexors, it pulls super tight on the origin which is going to be L1 to L5, I think, transverse process, and even the ribs. So, it’ll pull really really hard on that back and so a lot of times, your chronic lower back pain is gonna be from the shearing force from really tight hip flexors, that’s part of how lower crossed syndrome happens, right? Lower crossed syndrome is nothing more than super tight hip flexors on one side and on the other side weaker glutes and weaker lower abdominal muscles. Weaker abdominal muscles, weaker glutes because you’re not using glutes to step up or squat or lodge and then you’re getting these shorter, tighter hip flexor muscles and that’s the lower crossed syndrome, right? One cross is weak and loose or weak and tight, that’s your hip flexors, the other one is, um, weaker, that’s the glutes and that is the lower abdominals. And so, this is common and so people talk about investing a lot of money in beds, right? I have a nice Tempur-Pedic bed, that’s pretty expensive. I know you have a nice bed as well but we spend just as much time in bed as we do sitting in our chairs all day, so I think, you should, people should have, you know, enough money invested in a really good chair that has good postural support. You can go to like different ergonomic stores. There’s one in Austin called Human Solution on Anderson Lane. They have a lot of great options. I got my stand desk from them. They have some really good ergonomically certified chairs that are excellent, that have the cervical support as well as the lumbar support. These are really good options to kind of start out of the gates. So, kind of my thing is start with like, you know, the easiest buy-in, right? The easiest buy-in out of the gates is upgrade your chair, maybe get some swiss ball that you can sit on, maybe get your desk, get your stand desk so you can go up and down throughout. These are just some simple, easy investments. And if you already have these things and you wanna get more kind of biohackerish-like we are, I have a Cubbi, little pedals here so I can pedal. I have my little, um, I actually got a new treadmill desk that’s under my desk that’s lighter and it goes four and a half miles per hour and I have a remote, I can just hit it.
Evan Brand: Spell Cubbi.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: C-u-b-b-i. And then my other treadmill, hold on, let me go look at real fast. And my new treadmill desk is Rhythm Fun. I’ll put the links down for Amazon below. Take a peek at. But the cool thing is the remote because you can just kill it, turn it off, turn it on. Without having to go touch it.
Evan Brand: Now, if you don’t sit at a desk all day, congratulations. Hopefully, you’re out working in the field or something like that, you know, years ago, I was working in the woods and building hiking trails and restoring different natural, you know, natural areas, nature parks and stuff but man, it killed my back. I mean, it was a lot of work, a lot of labor and not much pay at all, could raise a family on that wage. So, if you are out and you’re physically great, that’s awesome or if maybe you’re just doing that in your free time, maybe that’s counteracting your desk work. I mean, that’s what I try to do, it’s even in the middle of the day for lunch, I’ll just try to go out and walk around even if I just like hiking up and down my driveway. Just something simple, just to break it up. And I forgot what her name was, it was, uh, Joan Vernikos. I had her on my podcast probably almost like 10 years ago. I think she worked with NASA or for NASA, but anyway, she talked about the importance of just standing up and sitting down and just the change in posture was more important than anything. She said, it wasn’t necessarily the actual exercise, it was just breaking up you’re sitting. So, if you’re sitting for 20 minutes and then you can stand for 10 seconds, that was enough she said to, you know, positively impact your mobility.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, adding another 90 degrees of extension onto my hip flexors, right? If your hip flexors right at your leg to your hip you’re at 90 if you’re sitting. Well, if you’re standing you go to about 180, 160 – 180 right? So, I create more length to my hip flexor which means it’s less likely to get tighter and shorter and create lower back pain. And so, that’s the easiest thing, so there’s a lot of different buy-ins, right, so like we’re not trying to give a one-size-fits-all, we’re trying to say okay if you already have a good desk or already have a really good ergonomically supported chair, maybe upgrade into a stand desk or just get a simple physio ball. Ideally going from sitting to standing is ideal. So, I would say good chair, then go to a good desk and then if you wanna add a physio ball or a wobble chair, that’s great. And then, if you wanna go to the next level and get a treadmill that slides underneath, I think mine was 500 bucks which is great though. My other one was a Rebel Desk treadmill that I used for five years, I just got rid of it because of the belt, just like almost I wore though and I’m like doing the math. I’m like all right it’s about the same cost to repair it as to get a new one. That goes a little bit faster and I get the remote. So, that’s kind of where I’m at. So, there’s a lot of different buy-ins. Now, that’s kind of like the lifestyle exercise movement standpoint and remember, I’m not saying crazy exercise. I think the more you can get movement throughout the day that’s non structured is better. Meaning, if you can get 10, 15 thousand steps throughout the day where it’s non-structured throughout a 10-hour, 12-hour a day that’s good because if you just exercise for 30 minutes and you sit on your butt for 10 hours, is that really that good? You’re still sitting down not moving for 10 hours, that’s still not great. So, if you can get a little bit of movement in and you can also have a lot of unstructured movement, that’s even better, I think overall.
Evan Brand: I would say so, I mean, I certainly can tell you the days that I exercise and then sit for too long, I’m just as stiff as if I did an exercise compared to times where I’m moving around throughout the day. So, yeah, I think throughout the day is better. Let’s get into some of the chemical stuff too, some of the infection stuff, I mean, I’ll tell you personally with some of the stuff I’ve had from tick bites. whether it’s Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia different things that create inflammation and affect blood flow, I would tell you that there are some waxing and waning periods like where hands, feet, knees, hips, that kind of thing can get tight and so I think, ultimately, you gotta test not test. So, you and I have talked about this before. Not all testing is a hundred percent accurate but we do feel that the DNA connections report does give us a pretty good read for different types of Borrelia that we can look into Lyme then some of the co-infections which the name co-infection kind of sounds like it always comes with Lyme, I do believe some people just have Bartonella or Babesia. And those things can really affect people in terms of mobility so for me, things like Japanese knotweed are very helpful and I take a tincture of Japanese Knotweed and of course we’ll mix that into some of the other stuff we’re gonna dive into but you have to investigate this. So, if you’ve got mobility stuff or if you sit for a while and you get stiff or if you’re having issues just making a full fist, you can’t fully get those fingers in, make a full fist, there’s probably something there, infection-wise.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, anytime you create chemical, so I kind of look at like, all right, we have structural inflammation and we kind of just talked about postural things like things that you’re gonna be doing sitting, standing kind of lifestyle habits, so not like going to the gym like, right? That’s kid of like our physical but you know more lifestyle. Now, we have our chemical and the more inflammation we put in our body, the more it decreases blood flow to tissues, the more it exacerbates prostaglandin 2 and arachidonic acid which are more pro-inflammatory. It’s gonna decrease inflammation, decrease blood flow and then we, when we, sorry, increase inflammation and decrease blood flow, decrease oxygen, so when we do that, the tissue starts to become less pliable, right? So, think of like beef jerky, very like not pliable, like you have to rip and tear it. The more inflamed you become, the lack of blood flow that you have, right, the lack of nutrition to the muscles, the more your muscles become less pliable, less like a nice raw beef tenderloin and more like beef jerky. That’s not good. So, when you do movements, you’re more likely to tear and injure tissue. And obviously, if you tear muscle, that’s more vascular tissue, it has good blood flow so it can heal better. But as soon as you start affecting cartilage and tendons and ligaments, that tissue is very avascular, very poor blood flow so it’s gonna be very difficult for that to heal. So, big things that we can do is, you know, more vegetables less fruit and carbs so keep your carbs in check. Again, if you’re more active, you can do more carbs, be very careful of your Omega-6 vegetable oils, ideally, you know, two to one on your high-quality saturated fats, really important and then you can do on your vegetable side, you’re better off doing your mannose, right? Avocado, olive oil, be very careful of your nut and seed-based oil and your omega-6 like sunflower, corn, soy, canola, very inflammatory and of course things like gluten, processed dairy, processed grains, sugar, these things are gonna drive more inflammation, they’re gonna decrease blood flow and just when the more inflamed you are, it just, it can create a lot of inflammatory molecules going through the body and they just make your body more stiff, more inflamed. The more stiff you are, you can’t get full range of motion, your tissues start becoming less pliable and easy to tear and injure and you feel just more stiff throughout your movements.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. And then on the conversation of Lyme, for example, I mean, we know that Borrelia, in general, likes to eat up your collagen, I mean, it’ll really try to hid out in joints and such, so I think, collagen supplementation may be helpful too, just trying to replenish some of what’s eating up. But then, you just got to clear some of the infections, I mean, I’ll tell you, if I’m doing some of the anti-Borrelia formulations whether personally or clinically, people can move better. So, if you’ve had tick bites if you grew up anywhere, almost anywhere in the U.S. except for maybe Nevada or New Mexico, supposedly there’s not many ticks there. But beyond that, if you have tick bites from childhood, I mean that could be a factor to look into. This could be a dormant infection that’s left you alone for 30 years and then all of a sudden, you got exposed to mold or you had a death or a divorce or a move or a major job stress or even just the pandemic that’s been going on. And some of that stress people out of the sudden, boom, they have these major joint problems so who knows, there could be a trigger but like you said, it could just be, over time lack of blood, inflammation together. So, what about, like..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All these things modulate the immune system, right? And so, like, what you’re gonna see is you’re gonna see an increase in arachidonic acid, which a lot of these things are come from meat, so it’s not bad to have too much arachidonic acid but if we increase prostaglandin 2, that’s a more proinflammatory pathway. So, vegetable seed oils, omega-6, too much arachidonic acid but if you balance it with omega-3, high quality grass-fed meat which is very high in GLA. It’s not necessarily the fact that you’re getting it, it’s more of the ratio of where you at with the others and so that’s why, really what’s gonna tip you over is the processed sugar, the hydrogenated oils, the trans fats, the soy, the canola, the sunflower, too much nuts, too much seeds, that’s gonna tip you over and put you into a more proinflammatory state. And then the more sugar you eat, the more grains you eat, the more your tissue starts to become less pliable. Now, I have a history, like, doing applied kinesiology work and using percussion work, and um, chiropractic work. I remember working on a patient and they literally, their tissues literally felt like a bag of cement and this person, like, couldn’t like, so we would use a percussor, we’d do some soft tissue but we, I noticed that when we got gluten out of that person’s diet and grains out of that person’s diet and sugar out, the tissue quality totally changed and it’s like if you’re inflamed and you have such poor movement, you’re not gonna want to move but then if you don’t move the tissue gets tighter and if it gets tighter then now you restrict your range of motion and you’re, it’s a vicious cycle, right? So, you kind of have to get some movement in there, you have to loosen up the tissue, you have to make the diet changes so you get better blood flow but you got to work into it because if someone’s coming in, really inflamed and they go too over the top, they may create so much inflammation that they have a paradoxical reaction to feel worse, so you really wanna ease into it. And so, if you’re not used to walking, just walk a little but try to exercise just enough where you repeat it. That next day, you may feel a little bit sore but you can still function, you can still do all the things you do. If you feel too sore the next day, where you can’t do what you have to do, you probably did too much. So, just enough to feel it and know you did something but not enough where it affects your you being able to function.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I got a few physical therapists clients and they tell me straight up that they know they’re never fully gonna get their patients better because of their diets and these people are coming in, you know, they’re eating like a subway sandwiches as they walk into the physical therapy office, so the physical therapist doing the best they can but they know just listening to us that they’re never fully gonna get them better without the diet changes and then they’re like well that’s out of my scope of practice. I can’t, you know, educate them much on diet so I’ll try to hint at it but yeah. It’s sad because you see billions and billions of dollars being spent per year on physical therapy, occupational therapy, physical rehab, that kind of stuff, people maybe had car injuries, for example, where there was a traumatic event that led to this mobility problem but then they never fully recover because they go right back eating the RB sandwich, you know, the roast beef and the bread and the ketchup and they never fully get better. So, I think, there’s a place, hopefully, people pick up on this, you pass this information onto maybe a physical therapist, get people off of grains, get people off of dairy, at least temporarily of dairy. I think butter, there’s maybe a place for that in most people’s diets. But I will tell you personally, I’ve seen the changes in my own family members if we can get them off gluten or off grains even for a month, we see improvement and so it’s just this doesn’t make money for people, I mean, there’s so many pharmaceuticals that people are taking instead, right? What’s the conventional approach for these issues like Aspirin, Tylenol, maybe Aleve and maybe some anti-inflammatory steroid drugs, right, I would say in severe cases, those are being useful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, you have your, like NSAIDs, which are gonna be like your Ibuprofen, your Advil, your Aleve, right, I think your Aleve’s kind of your time-release Ibuprofen, right. These are gonna help with the prostaglandin 2. And then acutely, you know, for a couple of days, if something happened that may not be a bad idea. The problem is if you’re chronically needing these medications that’s the problem. And then you have your acetylsalicylic acid, that’s your aspirin and then you have your acetaminophen, which is Tylenol, again Tylenol blocks the pain receptors so it’s not an anti-inflammatory. Aspirin is a mild anti-inflammatory. Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory. And then you keep on going up into the steroids where you actually get an injection, the problem with that is after one or two injections, your anesthesiologist or your pain doctor will tell you, yeah, we’re gonna start to break down tissues and cartilage and tendons, that’s not good either. And so, I tell patients, you know, one, you don’t wanna jump on injections right away because you want there to be some pain signal to tell you you’re doing too much when you’re rehabbing. So, it’s good to have some pain signals that will tell you, ‘hey I’m doing too much because the problem with this medication is it covers up the pain and then you may be doing things in your life movement wise, it’s actually creating more pain but you can’t feel it right. So, then of course, you go up the ladder and you’ll eventually be on opiates and that’s the problem and that opiates are very addicting, it’s just basically telling it’s blocking the brain’s ability to perceive pain and then essentially the longer your on an opiate, um, you know Suboxone, of course, you have the incredible, your morphine post-surgery, you have Fentanyl which is like incredibly higher version above your oxytocin which is like time-released opiate, it rewires the brain and you start to need more of it to then block that pain signal and then that creates more addiction right. So, you really wanna not be on these pain medications. Now, my problem with physical therapy and chiropractors is that a lot of times they can apply therapy that does not fix the underlying issue. So, chiropractors are very notorious for just, you know, adjusting a segment of the spine and creating some movement on that spine and calling it a day, right? But, if the person’s inflamed from their diet and lifestyle, that’s not helping it and also the soft tissue component should be addressed. So, when I was a chiropractor doing these kind of work, we would do like, percussion, I’d have a percussion instrument, just a couple of minutes to get the tissue warmed up and that way when I would adjust, I wasn’t having to adjust through all this soft tissue that was so hard, the soft tissue was more loose and I could move that segment and I’d always talk about how we get some better movement in the spine with exercise too because you wanna, you don’t want only movement in that spine to be through adjustment right? And so, getting these soft tissues under control using some active release techniques to help lengthen the muscle, help break up fascial adhesions, super, super helpful and so physical therapy, they’re notorious, oh I have knee pain, let’s just focus on that knee, maybe they do like an anti-inflammatory you know, uh, Russian stim or microcurrent or ultrasound, that’s good from an anti-inflammatory standpoint but physical therapy is common, we just only exercise that joint, we only stretch that joint, that’s it. They don’t look at the instability above and below the joints. Joints are very rarely just become unstable at that joint unless it’s an acute injury, someone took out your knee, it’s usually there’s instability either above and below so a good chiropractor, PT person will make sure the joint above and below is doing well. If I see knee issues, I’m gonna make sure there’s good glute activation, I’m gonna make sure that the hip flexors are facilitated, they’re not overly tight, I’m gonna make sure glute mi, glute max, all the adductor muscles in the middle are doing good. I’m gonna make sure the tip fib joint at the ankle has good stability. I’m gonna look at everything above because if there’s instability above and below that knee can compensate and have to work harder. So, I’m gonna make sure all the muscles around the knee, the glutes that stabilize the hips, the hamstrings that go to the glute that go up to the hips and also help stabilize the knee, the sartorius, the gracilis, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus, make sure everything is stabilized.
Evan Brand: Yeah. You and I have coached many different, uh practitioners, a lot of them chiropractors and so many of them tell me, I’m just straight up sick of cracking backs for a living because they know they’re gonna have to come back every week, they’re gonna crack the back again and then they’re gonna send the patient on their patient on their way and they’re never gonna get better and when I was working out of that brick and mortar practice and I started doing functional medicine consults, doing lab testing, getting all of the existing patients in the clinic, simply to make diet changes, it was funny but I guess not so funny for his bottom line, the chiropractor I was working for because, now instead of Betty needing to come in every week, she’s like no I’m fine doctor, I’m gonna come in in two weeks or three weeks or four weeks and it’s because the underlying inflammation was improving based on me fixing the gut, getting the diet improved. So, it’s kind of funny because people got in this routine of like, I’ll see you next Friday. It’s like, she shouldn’t need to be cracked again next Friday, you’re cracking her today, like what the heck.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It just depends how acute. If it’s an acute episode, you know, you’re gonna need to do it more frequently the first couple of weeks but if it’s more of a chronic thing, yeah you gotta get the soft tissue under control, or you gotta get the systemic inflammation in the body to the diet under control. And if you’re a chiropractor, you definitely wanna look at upper cervical, right, C1, C2, malalignments can create a lot of problems so that you definitely want to make sure that’s kind of crossed off your list because that can really cause a lot of issues and that could be a root cause as well but most people, it’s like poor posture, poor sitting, not enough movement, crappy diet, lots of inflammation and then of course, you know, muscles can also pull joints out of alignment too and cause them to feel sticky too. So like, I find the best chiropractor are like the applied kinesiology chiropractors because they would like use a percussion instrument even just for a minute or two is huge or they would do like origin insertion work, they would do like SOT technique, which uses blocks to get the hip alignment better I found those techniques were really helpful for chronic back issues and then when you have disc issues too, like you need to pump that back whether it’s a flexion distraction technique to help open up that disc, whether it’s an inversion table or whether it’s an inversion table or an inversion device for the neck that goes over the door or cuff to kind of create that negative pressure to pull that disc in off the nerve roots can be super helpful but then you got to get the muscles train down the road so a good PT or a good postural program like you can start with Eric Goodman’s foundation training. There are a couple of really good PTs online that are excellent, Bob and Brad, they go, they do a lot of nice postural videos at home stuff that are very helpful to people that are in pain. So, those are good guys, I’ll give them a, you know, a hot tip. Anything else you wanna highlight on the structural stuff we can go talk about the supplements next. I think that’s a good kind of ending point. Anything else, Evan?
Evan Brand: Now, let’s move into the supplements, I had already mentioned like some of the enzymes, so I mean, we’ll use some of those and we often use these in combination, I mean sometimes people are taking so serratiopeptidase or I’m even personally doing lumbrokinase, I do a lot of lumbrokinase too because that’s like way more potent than serratiopeptidase and so we use that for blood flow problems with some sort of coagulation issue so whether it is an infection or mold toxin, Lumbrokinase, it’s a game changer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I want to hit that one. I wanna just hammer that one spot for a second. If you have poor blood flow which diet and infection can drive poor blood flow, if we can’t get the blood flow improve, we’re not gonna get the inflammation out and nutrition and oxygen in so ginger, the enzymes getting your diet under control, one of the biggest things that helps coagulation, if we decrease coagulation, we improve blood flow, we improve blood flow, we improve oxygen, we improve nutrition, we work on pulling inflammation out, that’s like a foundational mechanism to getting pain under control.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. And there’s a lot of issues we’re seeing with post-viral coagulation issues or even acute coagulation issues, so make sure if you get some viral stuff going on, you gotta be knocking some if that too and we’ve seen people that are having chronic issues months and months later. So, to be honest in the time that we’re under I am personally staying on and recommending a lot of clients stay on some sort of enzyme just as an ongoing coagulation support, I think it’s a very, very smart insurance policy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. And when we talked about these enzymes, for people that are listening at home, these are enzymes you take with food, we’re talking about enzymes we take an hour away from food on an empty stomach, you know, some of the best ones are gonna be the Lumbrokinase the nattokinase, the serratiopeptidase. Some are really good at taking them, um, enterically coated so they break down in the small intestine away from food so they get into the bloodstream. These enzymes can one break up scar tissue, they improve blood flow and they also can decrease a lot of interleukins and cytokines that are flowing in the bloodstream. So, if you’re chronically inflamed and you have a lot of these cytokines and interleukins in the bloodstream, these chemical messengers from inflammation, it can actually start to break them down a little bit, which is good. So, that starts to relieve pain. Now, if you get to the root cause, where you’re getting some movement, you’re working on your posture, you’re working on sleep and diet. This is powerful because now that starts to accelerate healing even better faster.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And these are proteolytics so when you’re like researching these proteolytic enzymes as opposed you said the ones you’re taking with food are digestive, so they’re still called enzymes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Two different things and they cost a lot more too than digestive enzymes. They’re not the same price.
Evan Brand: Right. Yeah. Like Lumbrokinase, I mean a bottle of it, retail on the one we use which is the Bolouke from Canada RNA. It’s like the best one, as far as I know right now. It’s like 98 bucks a bottle retail. So, it is pricey but man it’s incredible stuff, I mean in terms of hands and feet, my blood flow is incredible. That plus beet powder, which is maybe another thing I’ll go ahead and mention now increasing blood flow, I do like beet powder and I will use some of that supplementally. Yeah. Arginine, citrulline, I’ll take some those in liquid form and I’ll mix those together and drink it all down. Those can be very, very helpful. You mentioned ginger too, let’s talk about ginger because you’ve talked a lot about ginger for like nausea and digestive benefits but you and I were looking at some of the papers on it and it does have a lot of really anti-inflammatory benefits too. So, that’s kind of cool, we’re saying that it’s a digestive aid but also a systemic inflammatory aid, correct?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I try to add things into protocols that just have a wide net so I love ginger because (1) it’s a natural bitter, so it will stimulate digestive juices, (2) it’s an anti-inflammatory so it’s very calming, (3) it’s a prokinetic so it helps the digestive tract empty because if your have like some kind of chronic inflammation or gastroparesis, food and acis can sit in there too long and create burning, (4) it helps with coagulability so it helps with coagulation so it decreases it, so there’s less clotting so you improve the blood flow, it also helps with blood pressure as well. So, a lot of and then also it’s an antibiofilm, so if we’re using ginger, um, to help with like, you know, killing it, it can actually help strip the biofilm, which are the protective shields that bacteria use to prevent themselves from being killed so it helps with the biofilms which allows the herbs we use to be even better and again the enzymes we use also help with biofilms too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. A cool study here was just saying that in rat models of liver cancer, ginger extract counteracted oxidative stress and inflammatory damage and it restored levels of superoxide dismutase catalase glutathione and prevented an increase in COX2, which is one of those pathways you and I were talking about that like some of the natural NSAIDs work on, ginger is basically a natural COX inhibitor.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It modulates, right? The problem with a lot of the COX inhibitor drugs of the early 2000s like Vioxx COX is called cyclooxygenase enzyme 2. That enzyme is also very important for repairing the gut lining and repairing the heart. So, if you block that all together like Vioxx did, you can destroy the heart and the gut lining, so with herbs it tends to more modulate not overdo it but bring it down in a modulatory kind of gentle way, kind of like an adaptogen works for adrenals and cortisol and stress. Shut it down but it pushes it in the right direction.
Evan Brand: That’s an awesome way to think about it. So, ginger is an anti-inflammatory adaptogen?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yep.
Evan Brand: Pretty cool. Okay. Let’s hit the others too because there’s others we use in blends, how about some of the polyphenols like the quercetin, the rutin, the resveratrol, the rosemary. I talked about Japanese Knotweed earlier, the main benefit of the knotweed is because of the resveratrol in it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s Japanese knotweed. That’s very helpful. Yep.
Evan Brand: It’s amazing for like rheumatoid arthritis, like I said Lyme type of arthritis, which a lot of RA probably is Lyme but it’s been not properly diagnosed. So, I love those. I personally take some sort of that all the time. You know, quercetin, I love too, it’s in the vitamin C family. I love it because it’s a great mast cell stabilizer. So, if you are dealing with mast cell activation in the case of mold toxin or Lyme or Bartonella, Babesia, Borrelia, Mycoplasma, any of these things, even viruses that are triggering mast cell problems and you have all this histamine out in your system, the quercetin is really gonna calm that down so that’s why I love it. And you can do too much of the good thing but in general something like 250 to 500 milligrams 3 times a day of course for me is a game changer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% I would say next, we could do curcumin much better off to take it liposomally that’s very important. So, liposomal curcumin also, you know, make sure you cut out nitrates, nitrates and of course grains and refined sugar can create joint issues, so you’d be surprised how many people that have many chronic issues just making those changes help. So, liposomal curcumin for better absorption.
Evan Brand: Why the nitrates? Will you riff on that for a minute because nitrates..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The alpha-Solanines, their compounds, their anti-nutrients in the nitrate family, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, these alpha-Solanine can get into the joints and they can kind of create a lot of inflammation similarly with people that have oxalate problems. Oxalates can get into the joints. These oxalate crystals and create a lot of pain issues in the joint tissues, in the muscle belly too. Now, again, I don’t go into oxalate restriction out of the gates because there’s a lot of healthy foods that have oxalates in them. Spinach and green vegetables. So, if someone’s coming off of a processed food diet, the last thing I want them to do is not to be worried about oxalate because that restricts a lot of vegetables. So, I don’t worry about oxalates out of the gates if someone’s diet’s crappy. So, I would just, I would work on their diet very clean and then potentially in some organic acid test that we do, we could see if oxalates are really high. If do they have a history of kidney stone problems, those kinds of things are helpful.
Evan Brand: Well, yeah, don’t forget to mention too, Candida, I mean we’ll see oxalate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A ton from a kid’s problem.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, I’ve seen people on like a low oxalate diet for years, they still show up off the charts and they’re having these joint pain issues, we simply just fix the yeast overgrowth or the fungal problems and then the oxalate markers go down and their joints are better. So, make sure that when you’re doing a work-up on these type of issues whether it’s mobility or pain or otherwise, make sure you’re looking for these fungal colonization markers, you’re looking at the Candida, you’re looking at some of the bacterial overgrowth because all of these things are gonna act as we’ll just say toxin in the bucket and if you get this infection plus that infection plus yeast then you really have much, much higher chance of having these problems and you go take the ibuprofen, you’re not knocking any of that stuff out. The yeast is still there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110%. So, the oxalates, maybe more of a yeast issue, not necessarily an oxalate problem. So, something we add to our list, we can use, uh, things like Boswellia or Frankincense, very, very helpful, very good. Again, these things, how they’re working is they’re primarily modulating interleukins, they’re primarily working on cytokines, reducing some of these inflammatory compounds they may be working on the COX enzyme C-O-X-2, they may be working on nuclear factor beta, right? These are different inflammatory signals or chemical messengers, uh, may be working on prostaglandin E2, so they may be helping a lot of these things. So, we have to make sure if we use supplements though we’re not just covering it up like a band-aid, we’re actually trying to get to the root cause. So again, herbs tend to be better than like an ibuprofen long term because these things kill tens of thousands of people a year, not in the right way. Go look at Wolf et. al., 1998. New England Journal of Medicine Ibuprofen kills 19,000 people a year taken incorrectly. So, using these medications like Ibuprofen or NSAIDs in the short term may be fine, it’s the long-term use because you’re not getting to the root underlying issue. The nice thing is if you use the herbs and the natural things, long-term, there’s virtually no negative impact using those but again we’re not still getting to the root so use the herbs and the natural stuff long term to get to the root, get to diet things, that’s your best kind of foundational things. We can also add in some CBD oil, which is very anti-inflammatory. Anything else you wanted to highlight supplement-wise?
Evan Brand: I would say magnesium would probably be one other one that’s located..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great muscle relaxer
Evan Brand: How about, also, some of the herbal muscle relaxers too, I mean like Valerian and Passion flower, there’s some benefit from these. There is kind of a dual purpose, right? You could use it for sleep. Yeah, poppy would be good too. You could blend all those as kind of a sleep but also like a pain remedy and then I like topical magnesium also I love the Epsom salt bath. I like it more in a float tank though. I mean, Epsom salt bath, you’re like what a couple of pounds at most whereas a float tank, you’re getting 800 pounds, so just not eating..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I still absorb a ton though; I just do my fit. Just like a scoop or two but I still feel a huge difference but I agree if you can do the float tank, great, but if not that’s still a good in-between at home. Try it out for sure.
Evan Brand: If I was like super stiff and I’m like my God, I can’t move, I’m going in a float tank because, I tell you I’m so flexible in there like when I first get in that so folks listening, this is basically like a large bathtub with 800 pounds of salt give or take. Super filtered water, it’s warm, it’s your body’s temperature, you take a shower, it’s usually at a spa setting, you get in there, you float on the surface of the water, you have your own little private float tank or float room usually and you’re just floating there and you’re there for an hour and your nervous system relaxes, they’ve used it for trauma and PTSD, so in terms of mental benefits, there’s incredible anti-anxiety benefits from it, but for physical too also, I tell you man, when I’m in there I fell, I mean, I feel like I’m made of jelly like, I mean I can just move so much better. One of my things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I would say, that, you know, from a nutrient standpoint amazing, a good myofascial release massage person, a good active release chiropractor, some kind of soft tissue technique, even if you’re doing, um, you know, foam rolling or get one of the hypervibe percussive tools at home. Just something to improve pliability, add in some of these nutrients that we mentioned CBD, curcumin, resveratrol, anti-inflammatory, I think also incredibly underrated collagen, I mean I do my true collagen 20-40 grams a day, um, collagen is a building block of your connective tissue that we don’t get a lot of because we’re not getting the knuckles and the bones unless you’re doing lots of soups with the whole carcass in there, we’re not getting these nutrients. So, adding extra collagen is essential for good building blocks or your joints and connective tissue.
Evan Brand: I would agree. I mean, a forgotten nutrient that we just don’t eat in our diet, you can’t get that at a steakhouse, I mean, you’re just getting lean muscle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unless, you’re getting bone marrow, unless they cut the long bone and they have all the marrow for you and eat that, that’s the only way you get it. Work in soup but most people aren’t getting it and so we’re getting more muscle meat, so that’s a good step out of the gates. I mean, I had my little coffee here, I had 30 grams of collagen this morning. People aren’t getting it.
Evan Brand: Sweet. So, regarding
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of anecdotes of patients, a lot of anticipations of just getting more collagen and changing their diet, huge chronic joint pain just shifting.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. And yeah the diets used. So, yeah, I mean, labs, I mean we’re gonna look at stool, we could look at urine, we could look at blood too but you know but this is part of a work-up that we do, so if you need help please reach out. I’m sure we could get to something that hasn’t been found, I mean, even the Prevotella infection we look for in the stool like 75% of cases of Rheumatoid Arthritis are linked to in certain studies this Prevotella infection, which is the bacterial we test for. So, you’ve gotta look for the microbiome type issue, you gotta look for the deeper stealth infection issues, intracellular parasite type issues. There’s a lot of stuff too but we just have an approach to it, you know, we kind of peel back the layers here and we get to the root of it so if you need help, you can reach out. We both work worldwide with people via video and phone calls so you can reach out to Dr. J, it’s Justin at justinhealth.com or me, Evan Brand, evanbrand.com and like I said we work online so we’re very blessed to be able to help people in every nook and cranny of the globe and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to help people find things that they never found in 20 years of suffering and we just love to provide that, I don’t know, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I suppose.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and you just mentioned some bacteria issues and different joint issues we know ankylosing spondylitis, which is an autoimmune issue that affects the lower back, your Klebsiella is a common bacterial imbalance, we’ll see affecting the lower back and causing AS that’s another issue, we kind of add to the list so very powerful. So, yeah, again evanbrand.com, justinhealth,com for me, we’ll put the list of recommended products and different herbs that we use in our practice clinically if you wanna support, uh, the podcast and support us, feel free click down below, look under the references and you can get all these things that we recommend for our patients and ourselves right down there. Anything else, put your comments below, we really appreciate you interacting, sharing with family and friends and most people that we interact with, we don’t even get a chance to see and they get benefit so we love to hear your stories and your success. Evan, anything else man?
Evan Brand: Yeah. If you’re on apple either on Justin’s podcast or mine since we will publish these episodes on each other, make sure you give us a review, we would really love it on the apple podcast, it helps to keep us up in the top of the charts of health and fitness so we can provide real root cause functional medicine strategies, there’s millions of people out there suffering and maybe a fraction are gonna get to hear this so please sharing is caring. Leave us a review, tell us what you think the show deserves and we’ll love you forever.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks guys. Have an awesome one. Take care. Bye.
Evan Brand: Take care.
References:
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https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-to-reduce-inflammation-and-improve-joint-mobility-podcast-359
Natural Way to Increase Blood Flow And Decrease Inflammation | Podcast #343
For starters, blood flow is why your body can get what nutrients it needs and how it can eliminate what it doesn’t. If you have reduced blood flow, your body will take longer to heal and recover. Reduced blood flow can often result in inflammation, pain, muscle cramps, fatigue, numbness or coldness in the hands and feet, digestive issues, and slower recovery time.
According to Dr. J and Evan, there are three primary concerns to address when looking at improving circulation by reducing inflammation, blood viscosity (blood’s stickiness or thickness), and supporting healthy arterial function (ensure the arteries can contract or dilate needed).
So, how can food help us to do that? While the healthy foods we eat can benefit our blood flow and circulation, some foods are to be aware of as part of a healthy diet. Often, the additives we add to our food through sugars, trans fats, and salt can be tasty but with a few adverse side effects.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:57: Inflammation and ways to reduce it
4:46: Signs and symptoms of hypercoagulability
11:07: Natural Herbs to improve blood circulation
16:47: Tips to improve blood circulation and reduce inflammation
20:06: Food template, tests, and supplements
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are are live! It’s Dr. Justine Marchegiani here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to chat about blood flow. How do we increase blood flow, decrease coagulation, decrease inflammation. All the natural strategies to get to the root cause. Blood flow is really important. We need blood flow to carry oxygen. We need to carry nutrition to our organs and our body systems. And if we have stress in our body, whether it’s infection, inflammation, diet issues, lifestyle issues, hormonal imbalances that affect circulation, that’s to impair our body’s ability to generate energy, generate heat; right healthy metabolism, feel good, feel energized. And we’re going to dive in on that topic today. Evan, how are we doing today man?
Evan Brand: Doing really well. You know, I had a few friends actually suggest that I had a hyper coagulation problem due to batonella and babesia, and mold toxin, and some other crap I’ve dealt with. And so I ran a coagulation panel. There’s some of these coagulation panels online that you can order and I went and run the blood on myself and my, my panels turned out perfectly. Even according to some of the functional ranges. Now, I don’t have a baseline. You know, several years ago, when I first got exposed to mold to compare to. But I will tell you just in terms of symptoms; my great coagulation blood work results correlates with my symptoms. Meaning, my hands and feet are perfectly warm these days. I told you years ago, my arms and feet are chronically cold . I mean, as long as I can even remember, even as a child, I remember my feet being freezing and having to use a little electric space heater in my grandma’s basement to keep my feet war. I remember that from years ago. So I’m just really happy that the blood showed fine and some of the strategies which we’re going to dive into today that those worked and those actually helped me because, on paper I look great and symptomatically doing much much better in the blood flow department.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Yeah, I love that. Makes a lot of sense. So of course, one of the first things that we look at when we’re trying to improve blood flow is reducing inflammation. So when you have lots of cytokines or in interleukines or inflammatory messengers, right? They’re there to kind of say, “hey we have inflammation”. And what is inflammation? Let’s define that. Everyone talks about it but, what is it? So, inflammation is essentially we have this increase in cytokines, interleukines, due to the fact that our body is breaking down faster than it is repairing, okay. There’s natural inflammation that is good. Like think of having a good workout, right? You naturally get a little sore afterwards and then a day or two later, you get stringer and your muscles get more, I don’t know, adaptable. And then you develop more strength, more tensile strength, more power, more output; because your muscles adapted to that inflammation. So there’s a little bit of inflammation but in the end, your body adapted to it and it built up just a little bit more than it broke down on average, right? That’s healthy inflammation. And so, inflammation that we’re talking about is inflammation out of balance. Were let’s say you work out a little bit too hard. And now that soreness is prolonging days later, and now you’re almost a little bit weaker than when you started because the breakdown is now greater than the build up. And so healthy inflammation is the build up is a little bit greater than the breakdown that’s healthy inflammation. Unhealthy inflammation is the breakdown’s a little bit higher than the build up, and that’s what we’re talking about today. And so, of course, too much exercise, too much inflammatory foods, especially in the way of foods that are nutrient poor, foods that are too high in refined vegetable oils, good healthy fats; they become your cell membranes. Every cell has a lipid bilayer in the body. The brain’s you know, 70 fat and cholesterol. So if you are eating junky fats, that’s going to cause your cell membranes to turn over to being very unhealthy. It’s also going to cause your brain to turn over to be very unhealthy and there’s some data showing that you’re going to have those cell membranes hung up to six years with the junky fats that you’re eating. So you’re really want to look at the fat. So, vegetable oil fats not good because they have to be processed in a way that damages those fats in the extraction process. And so you have a lot of oxidation happening, a lot of hydrogenated oils due to either oxidation or the trans fat process that occur. And again, you, why are fats made in the trans fats because they have a longer shelf life, right? And so, we want fats if they’re on the plant side, they’re not going to be denatured, so avocado oil may be okay, olive oil of cold press, and extra virgin and good quality and good brand’s okay. Of course our saturated fats are the best because they’re the most heat stable. So coconut animal fats, maybe some palm, of course like any of your tallows are really good, especially if the animals are healthy and pastured raised. These are going to be your best fat, so at least 50 percent of our trans fats, we want to be saturated, high quality, because it guarantees them not being oxidized and we’re acidified.
Evan Brand: Yep! Well said. And so when you define hypercoagulability, this is a term that’s thrown around a lot now, or you could just call it increased coagulation. What they’re really talking about is some sort of a build up. Like, you know, you mentioned whether it’s inflammatory cytokines, or what’s cal fibrin things that are affecting the capillaries which as far as my research goes, it’s pretty interesting stuff. Capillaries, they’re so small but the red blood cells have to go in single file line to get to get through the capillaries. So if you have a build up of fibrin from some sort of inflammatory reaction, whether it’s to a mold, a virus, or some other pathogen that can affect those capillaries, which then creates some of the cold hands, cold feet. So let me just riff on symptoms for a minute and then we can go there. So, uh, symptoms wise, let’s say cold hands, cold feet, let’s say cold nose, I would say erectile dysfunction, could be a big one too for men. A lot of coagulation issues with men you see, uh, reduced blood flow and of course, side effects-erection. I would say brain fog would be big too. You mentioned, you got to have blood flow to get to the brain. So I would say, brain fog, maybe memory issues, fatigue, I would say muscle fatigue as well. So if you’re noticing that you’re having trouble lifting weights or you’re having a lot of post-exertional malaise, it could be mitochondrial related. We’ve talked about that before but, I think the coagulation could be part be part of it too. So I’m a big fan of lumbrokinase which I think is one of the big remedies that’s really helped me. Lumrokinase is way stronger that nattokinase which is which is commonly sold. Lumbrokinase is like the big daddy, the big brother above natto. And I tell you, it’s been an absolute game changer. If I take that, not only does my brain work better but my hands and feet are warm. So just in terms of like, solutions, you know, you could run a coagulation panel, and I think it’s easiest, rather than trying to run through all the markers, like d-dimers and all that. Instead of running through all that. I think it’d be easier. We could just like, put a link in the show notes for like a coagulation panel app, like you could run through lab corp request, and if people want to dive into it, they can but, I think those…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So on some of those markers, what would some of the markers that you’d look at on the coagulation side?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I wish I had my lab in front of me. I could pull it up.
Dr. Justin Machegiani: I’ll give you c couple that. I give you a couple that. So we talked about inflammation; we talked about interleukinesand cytokines. Why does that matter? Because the more inflammation you have in your bloodstream, the more sticky cells get, okay. Cause think about it, right? From inflammation standpoint, why would your cells get more sticky from an inflammation standpoint, right. Let’s kind of look at what’s, you know. What are the, um, the intentional, like what’s the intention of our creator and making us and why would that happen, right? Because we have to look at the fact there’s an innate intelligence as to why our body does things. It doesn’t do it by accident. And I would say that most of our stress that we experience as we evolve as a species is through a cut, and injury, a fall, something very acute. So our body is trying to stick things, glue things back together, prevent us from bleeding out, right? Allow scar tissue to form to help heal and recover, whatever that damage area is, right? That kind of make sense now. The problem is, we have less acute damage like, falls, crashes, and these things. But we have this chronic, degenerative inflammation that’s happening. So, yeah. Starting to create many bits of scar tissue which again, that is going to be making cells, stick together, so you’re looking at things such as fibrin, increased platelet aggregation. Meaning, platelets are the little cells that flow through your bloodstream that help you create clots, right? Platelets then create fibrin so it creates these clots . And so then you’re having deceased blood flow because of clots, because cells are more sticky because of inflammation. And that’s there to help, help your body do better when it comes to stress or something acute; but we’re having this chronic degenerative stress and of course, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to make your cells more sticky, right? This is why we see in diabetes, right, when Evan talks about a lot of the capillaries when they go a single file, we see that a lot in the eyes, and so we see a lot of eye aneurysm stuff, a lot of eye issues in diabetics, a lot of limb issues because really poor blood flow in the capillaries going on to the finger and the hands. And so high levels of insulin from high levels of blood sugar that also creates the advanced glycation end products which are essentially the sugar coated proteins that are oxidized because the high blood sugar, and that oxidation depletes things like vitamin C and vitamin A, and vitamin E, And so we have less of these nutrients to help our eyes, to help our skin, to help our collagen, to help wound healing, and then you start to have very poor blood flow, decrease immune cells. Getting to the extremities, the hands, and feet; and then you develop a gangrenous lesion on your foot with all this inflammation and poor blood flow, and then you have have it chopped off because it starts to create and infection. So you can see how all these things start to spiral out of control and of course, blood sugar inflammation, um is kind of the hallmark of how all this starts. We’ll go more into things that you can do. So Evan mentioned like the lumbrokinase. Excellent! Seropeptidase, the enzyme from that silkworm, excellent. Right? These are systemic enzymes taken away from food. Those enzymes come in kind of like a rato-rooter or a liquid plumber would for like, a clogged hair in your drain, in your toilet, right? So it breaks it down, okay? Now we have to make sure that we’re getting to the root cause but, in general, that’s helpful because it’s not going to be as inflammatory, it’ll break down scar tissue; it has a lot of anti-cancer immune benefits because when it hits all these cytokines, it kind of dissolves them and breaks them down so it does help reduce inflammation which is great.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point too about diabetics suffering from this issue quite a lot in the blood sugar component. That’s huge! And then, also, one thing to note too when you do start to dissolve some of the fibrin, you may, if it’s due to the infection, you may have some sort of a die off or like herxheimer reaction. So just keep that in mind, and obviously if you’re working with one of us, we’re going to coach you through that process but, if you have a practitioner that’s maybe not aware of that, then they may not know why your symptoms are flaring up if you start to dissolve some of this fibrin. So for example, when I first started ramping up lumbrokinase, I was also doing some biofilm busting nutrients, and some may argue that you’re busting biofilm with things like this and so I had a reaction. You know, I got some headaches, I got some anxiety, I had some heart palpitations and some other symptoms, indicating I was probably releasing something that was hiding within that fibrin. And so, if you have a reaction, you feel worse on something like the, uh, like you said, seropeptidase or maybe, nattokinase, or lumbrokinase. You could be on to something, and as you mentioned too, you don’t want to just live on this enzymes and not get to the root cause. So for me, I really do think babesia has been a big one for me because, when I’m taking herbs to address babesia, I find that the circulation is much better. For some people, it could be bartonella. They call it small vessel disease. If you look into pubmed, you could look up small vessel disease bartonella. This is an infection that can come from ticks but it can very very easily come from cats. Many many cats, like 90 percent of cats have bartonella and if they scratch you, you can get bartonella from your cat, you can get it from fleas, so there are other vectors that can transmit this. So some people say like, “ oh I never had a tick bite”, doesn’t matter. I’ve seen many many people with bertonella and likely from their cats. And so, you may want to come in with herbs and knock out bartonella while you’re working on the fibrin. And I know you and I use a product that’s a mixture serapeptadase, and ginger and boswella, and turmeric. So we kind of working on the inflammation piece and the fiber piece at the same time, and it’s a great one-two punch.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, any of my patients listening know that I’m always using ginger tea, right? I’ve kind of taken the ginger tea recipe which Is I think it’s pretty famous in the gaps protocol and I’ve used that, and I’ve added in a lot of the, um. Manuka honey because it’s very soothing on the gut, and it has some mild antibacterial properties and anti-inflammatory for the gut. So I do that with a lot of my patients because it sues the tummy, it is an anti-biofilm, so it allows any of the herbs that I’m using with my patients to knock any bugs down. It helps make the herbs stronger, and it’s anti-inflammatory, um, which me, and it’s also an anticoagulant. So the anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, just allows one better blood flow, better flow allows those herbs to kind of work better and be transported throughout the body, and then it also prevents the lymph from being congested. So it just allows things to be kind of move around and excreted from the body. So you have to move things through the liver, through the kidneys, to the guts. So we need to have that good movement to allow things to work appropriately. So that’s, that’s really really important out of the gates; and also on working with a lot of lyme patients or co-infections; all that plays a major role. I would say other herbs you can use are things like bacopa, uh, gingko is also amazing, you can do things that have, um, uh, nitric oxide support in there like beetroot. These are all beets are excellent You can get beetroot powder, that’s very helpful at supporting blood flow. Things like resveretrol are also very good, right; antimicrobial but also really help with good blood flow, so um, that’s excellent as well. Uh, cat’s claw can be really good as well, because anytime it has antimicrobial, antioxidants, and then it reduces inflammation. That naturally tends to improve blood flow. So better blood flow is good. So we can one have good circulation to the hands and feet, we’re carrying nutrition better.; we’re carrying more of the herbs to help whatever the microbial imbalance is, and then we’re supporting lymphatic flow of all the dead debris out. Has to move out to the body, get circulated to the lymph, go back to the kidneys, and the, and the digestive tract to be excreted out. So those are some really good herbs that we’ll also use, skull caps also really good as well. Um, you mentioned turmeric which is really good, and then outside of that, adaptogens can be really powerful too. Because, if we have lots of cortesol from inflammation and stress, cortisol is also going to cause things to not move as well because, it’s there; it’s responding to inflammation but it’s also going to slow down a lot of blood flow. So if we can, and this is kind of more in a chronic um, scenario, right, not talking acute, talking more chronic. Because acute, there is acute blood flow to an injury, because that’s how the body is trying to heal stuff. Let’s try to drive level that’s why when you bump your elbow, it gets swollen right, there’s increased blood flow. We’re talking about more cortisol chronically, and so we’ll use things like adaptogens, whether it’s thodiola or ashwagandha to really calm down that chronic stress response and really get it kind of modulated to help improve cortisol which then helps with blood flow long term.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point like the bacopa, the gingko. I mean, there’s a reason all all these herbs that we’re talking about are inside of brain formulas. Look at any professional companies, whether it’s ours or any other companies that are using nutrients to support the brain health, guess what? Gingko is always in there so it’s cool because it helps systemically and that of course, improves the brain function. There’s a lot of cool studies about gingko with micro-circulation in the brain. I love gingko. I take it, I take phosphatidylserine, I do choline, acetylcholine, I do acetol cermitine, I do like a blend of all these things and I tell you, it really makes a difference. Do you want to hit on a couple more of the foods you mentioned? The beets…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, that’s important.
Evan Brand: Okay. I love beats. Like, I’ll do beet powder and I mix it with my vitamin C powder. It’s so delicious that combo, and I’m not joking like, 10 minutes after I drink a scoop of beet powder with vitamin C, my hands are so warm, like they’re alsmost flushed because there’s so much blood flow there. I mean, I feel it instantly. And then, that really helps in the sauna too. So if you’re having issues with sweating, that could be due to poor blood flow, poor nitrate oxide. So my personal advice because I’m historically not a good sweater, I will do beet powder and then do a few minutes of a rebounder, and then I’ll jump the rebounder most folks know what that is kind like a mini trampoline. I’ll jump into the sauna after that, and with the beet powder rebounder combo, I sweat like 50 % faster.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, I’d say like from a foundation of people listening like, we’re throwing a lot of stuff out there, right? So what’s the order of operations and how you try things. So the first thing is, get your diet under control. So the first thing is, control dysglycemia, control blood sugar swings, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to cause things to get really sticky when they flow. The second thing is really improve the nutrient density; lot of good antioxidants, so a lot of good green vegetables, uh cutting out food allergens from dairy and from gluten and of course, refined sugar and inflammatory junk foods, really improve the nutrient density in the vegetables if you’re going to choose fruit, choose nutrient-dense fruits are not overly high for what you can handle metabolically of course, really good healthy fats; remember omega-3 fatty acids are natural blood thinner. Quite before surgery, they’ll say like you know, no fish oil or systemic enzymes taken away from you know, taken within the couple of days of surgery because, they don’t want you to bleed out, right. So especially high quality, god healthy, you know, local like maybe while the last guy kind of frozens you know, salmon or a really good clean tuna, just try to choose wild farm type of fish; these are going to have excellent omega-3 fatty acids, and then of course, choosing grass-fed meat, excellent. Because you’re going to get a lot of GLA fat, you’re going to get a lot of good clean fats from the cow eating grass which is super helpful. So fats are really important, they’re natural anticoagulants and then they help make a good healthy cell membrane so your cells can communicate and function optimally.
Evan Brand: Let me make one note about the lumbrokinse because, you see that warning label and you and I kind of heed that warning but, I saw a podcast interview that Dr. Jill Carnahan did with a lady named Dr. Ann Courson. She’s been kind of the bog voice about coagulation and talking about lumbrokines. She said it’s really non-issue and while she still may, and this not verbatim but, while she may pull these things out temporarily, she’s had people that like went into emergency on high-dose fish oil and high-dose lumbrokinase and they had no bleeding issues at all. So this is not heparin or crazy intense blood thinners from pharmaceutical industry. These natural blood thinners even though they may be potent, she said, she’s never seen a single case of anyone bleeding out so that there’s probably too much warning and too much fear about the fish-oil and these enzymes thinning the blood. She’s never seen it cause any major problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, heparin, warfarin, they have anew one the plavix one, right? These are different blood thinners that are out there. Yeah, I mean you definitely want to talk to your anesthesiologist last surgeon follow their instructions on these things. I think it’s safe just to be off it, uh, during a procedure and let your doctor know about it.
Evan Brand: And I’m saying just, and by the way, I’m saying just the natural stuff, the drugs, I have no clue about them, I’m not a pharmacist, but like fish oil. Should you take a few days off? Yeah. You probably should but, just foe anybody’s fearing but for anybody that’s afraid like oh my God, I had to go to ER and I had to get this emergency surgery, am I going to bleed to death because I’m on fish oil, the answer looking at her perspective was no, not at all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah. Probably not. I mean, I am far more worried about someone going into surgery being totally inflamed and developing clots, um, or having a polmunary embolism or a stroke or something like that. The bleeing out, right? You know but, in general, don’t be on high doses of blood thinners that we’re talking about. The natural ones, if you know you have a plan surgery just in general. In general, I mean, consuming fish, eating fish, I don’t see a problem with a lot of these things. And outside of that you know, what other markers we can look at. So of course, we mentioned, um, fibrin or fibrinogen which is a marker. So fibrinogen is the inactive form of fibrin, and so high levels of fibrinogen mean you have a lot of clotting building blocks. Higher levels of platelets could be something to look at. I would say, elevations and inflammatory compounds like homocysteine, ESR-Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate. CRP C-Rective Protein. These are all inflammatory markers that tell us, okay, inflammation is present, the more chances their inflammation is up, cells are going to stick together, the more cells stick together, it’s like trying to walk out double doors, three or four people side by side. It’s just gonna clog up the flow, right? And so that’s gonna help give you an indication that some things are not flowing well, and then you can try different strategies, the ones we’re talking about go back and retest those markers, and that’s helpful. I would say the one marker that’s a little bit different, the homocycteine, that’s going to happen typically due to inactive or not enough high quality methylated B vitamins. Usually folate, usually B6, B12 – these are important vitamins. If you don’t get them, in methylated or more active forms, this metabolite of homocysteine can accumulate and these B vitamins decrease homocysteine. So how it works is, it goes methionine, a dental homocysteine, homocysteine, to cycteine. This is kind of metabolism, a breakdown of methionine into cysteine, and cysteine goes into glutathione. This healthy metabolism requires these B vitamins, right? Folate, methylated B12, right? Um, B6, right. These are important nutrients need to be there so we can take that homocysteine and brign it through all the way down to cysteine and metabolize optimally. If not, it can be inflammatory and affect the arteries and the area where the blood’s flowing and create inflammation and plaquing.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And just to take it a step further just so people are like what the heck is he saying? So when you’re looking at this one blood, you’re saying when you see the elevated homocysteine, or we can even look at some of these metabolism markers on the organics acids. When you see this elevated, you know that there’s usually a B vitamin deficiency, correct? That’s what you’re saying, elevated homocysteine on the blood.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, D vitamin deficiency or you’re just getting a lot of crappy B vitamins right? You’re getting a lot of folic acid, you’re getting a lot of B12 that you may not be methylated. You’re getting a lot of B6 that may not be activated. So we want to make sure you’re getting lots of activated B vitamins, high quality. In my line we use one called B vitamin synergy, we’ll put the link for that below. Of course like your best natural source for these type of vitamins are going to be green leafy vegetables, and high quality grass-fed organic meats right? So sometimes people have an mthfr issue and they need more of those B vitamins and so that’s want to make sure the supplements are great. And if you’re consuming a lot of like processed crappy orange juices and grains, you may get a lot of folic acid and crappy B vitamins there. That’s the case you want to cut those out. You want to get lots of good natural B vitamins from the source I just mentioned. And you want to take a really goof clean B vitamin supplement that’s going to have those in methylated activated forms, and if we’re doing testing on like a um, mthfr blood test. We would look at those phenotypes and see what’s present but organic acids are wonderful too because, we can look at markers like kind of urinate, xantharinate to look at B6. We can look at markers like fig glue or four amino glutamate to look at folate. We can look at markers like methylmalonic acid to look at B12. So there’s different markers. We can look at betahydroxy isovalerate, right? These are all good markers for B vitamins to look at. So we can see if these things are, if we have metabolic demand issues, we can go and tweak those accordingly.
Evan Brand: And most people are depleted and have issues. I mean, obviously we’re a little bit biased because we’re working with people that don’t feel well but, we know that even the people that work with us, they’re doing a hell of a lot better than the average American in terms of diet and lifestyle, and stress, and sleep, and hopefully all of those factors. And so if we see they’re deficient the way we see often, then we know the average American’s deficient too because, you’re burning up these bees when you’re stressed. That’s a whole other podcast but, you did a great job on, on hitting on the markers. There’s a couple more like new ones. Like ther was like anti-thrombin that was on this panel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. That’s another one. That’s kind of like fibrin. It’s another type of clothing factor.
Evan Brand: You had the d-dimer which is really tough to get a doctor to actually run d-dimer. That’s why you and I luckily, we run our own blood work but, if you just went to your regular doctor and said I want a d-dimer. Unless they think you’ve got an active blood clot, they’re probably not going to run this for investigative purposes. I don’t know why but even vitamin D, some clients have to beg just get vitamin D so…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. With d-dimer, that’s typically run if someone’s on a blood thinner. I don’t think plavix requires it now but, if you’re on like, one of the older blood thinners that requires you to make sure d-dime are stable. They’ll run that because they’re worried about like, oh my god you eat more green vegetables that is vitamin K, vitamin k increases clotting factors. They’ll want you to want to adjust your d-dimer accordingly. Or they want to adjust your dosage of your medication according to the dimer. So my whole thing is if you’re not eating a whole bunch of green vegetables because, your doctor is worried about it, well I would just say eat some green vegetables, tell them you want to have good, green vegetables but then have them run a d-dimer and adjust your clotting, your medication according to you eating a good, healthy diet. I see people that are scared of green vegetables because their doctors are too lazy to re-test their d-dimer and adjust their medications.
Evan Brand: Oh wow. Yeah. I understand that but yeah. That was most of it, that was most of the stuff there. So you did a good job hitting on it and like you mentioned a lot. We’re throwing a lot at you here supplements and foods, and beets, and talked about nitric oxide. I mean, really I think you’ve hit the messages. Getting the inflammation out of the diet and then looking into the testing because, some of the functional medicine testing we run outside of blood work can provide data on what’s going on. And then obviously, mycotoxins are huge. So for me, when I get exposed to mold, if I stay in the moldy hotel for a weekend, guess what? My hands and feet go cold. I mean it’s almost a direct impact. So I’m not saying that’s everyone’s smoking gun but, it’s a big factor that’s not really talked about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right. So I always try to boil things down to a process, right? What’s the concept, what’s the process? A process is something we can consistently repeat. It’s kind of like in fourth grade, you learn pemdas, right? Remember pemdas? It’s the way you do a math problem. That there’s addition, subtraction, division, all these different things in one line. What’s the process, pemdas right? Well today, what’s the process here? The first thing is one, make sure the food you eat is anti-inflammatory nutrient dense low toxin. That’s the first thing. Second thing is get your blood sugar under control because yes, you can eat really good foods but, your glycemia, your blood sugar can be out of control and that can increase insulin, coagulation, clotting, right? So first thing is nutrient density anti-inflammatory diet. Second thing is get your macronutrients under control. Third thing is get lifestyle strategies under control. Don’t exercise too much. Exercise enough, start making sure sleep is under control. Sight? Start making sure you’re drinking good clean, filtered water with extra minerals. Make sure there’s enough minerals in there. If you can add in different strategies like, rebounding or whole body vibration, or sauna therapy, excellent. Then maybe at that next level, we can start going into, um, supplements, right? What are the easiest supplements to add in? Well, good healthy fats, good healthy fish oils. Maybe some some extra ginger, maybe some systemic enzymes right? You don’t have to start with everything. There’s a lot of things we put out there. It’s like a poople platter. We don’t got to do it all. Just try to start with one or two things but, start with that order of operations. Follow the process; don’t get overwhelmed by everything; just follow the process. And the next thing after that is you know, if you have inflammatory conditions, autoimmune issues, thyroid issues, crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, colitis, uh, lime, co-infections, autoimmune issues, and you have chronic inflammation chronically cold hands, cold feet blood flow issues, you have to look at thyroid, you have to look at your hormones, you have to look at the gut; and this is where it’s good to bring on a good functional medicine practitioner like us. So if you want to reach out to Evan, evanbrand.com or myself, Dr. J – justinehealth.com. That’s kind of where your next step to kind of go a little bit deeper, to kind of you know, hire that trail guys that’s been to the top of mount Everest hundreds of times. So you can have the confidence that we’re going the right way and not taking a shortcut off a cliff so to speak.
Evan Brand: Yeah. It’s great. Well said. It’s just so great to be able to reverse some of these stuff. I mean, I just assumed that was me. I just had cold hands, cold feet, and I thought, okay. That’s just me for some reason, I just don’t have good blood flow here, and I just kind of like owned it, and I think a lot of people are listening. They own these symptoms and they get used to their way of life, and like nope that’s just the way I am. I’m just a depressed person. It’s like no, there’s a reason for that. I do believe that we truly have a baseline of being healthy and optimal, and good blood flow, and good brain function, and good sex drive, and good sleep. If you look at like tribal societies, they don’t have these type of issues. They don’t have these chronic issues with blood pressure and mood issues. Some of these like ancestral people, they don’t even have a word for depression. It’s not even in their language. So I just encourage you if you’re listening, and you’re just owning your symptoms, and you’re like that’s just me, don’t own it anymore. Just know that that’s okay that something’s wrong, there’s a dysfunction going on. There’s likely a cause of it and we’re investigators at heart. I mean, we love this stuff so like you mentioned, if you want to reach out, justinhealth.com for Dr. J, evanbrand.com for me. We’d love to help you, and help you get to the next level of health. It’s totally possible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I would say don’t own it form the perspective of like, hey this is just me, this is how it it is but, own the process. Like you know, one of the root things that I can be working on to get these things under wraps. I think that’s a really important kind of uh, step to be looking at, okay? Anything else guys, feel free and let us know, comments down below. We’re really happy to help you and kind of get to the next step with you all. Feel free, evanbrand.com, justinhealth.com and we’re happy to help. Anything else you want to add Evan?
Evan Brand: No, that’s it. Just keep moving forward. That’s the goal. There’s not a finish line so just keep, getting to the next level, you know, It’s not like, my life’s going to be perfect when I get cold hands and cold feet resolved. No, you could do that and still be miserable. So you gotta just chipping away, okay? Don’t give up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. And then also, kind of one thing. People in the comments asking about couple different questions here. Um, just want everyone to know in our climate today, there’s some off-limit topics that you know, we’re not touching, and people kind of read between the lines on this, and we’ve made a decision that there’s a lot of other information that is so important to um, put out there to everyone. So we’re staying away from some health topics not for the goal of censorship but because, we want to be able to put other health topics like we’re talking about today out there so everyone can take action. So just know uh, you know we’re making kind of a strategic decision to really put more focus on functional medicine. Areas and nutrition people can take action on versus other things that are out in the zeitgeist to the world today.
Evan Brand: I think there’s a time and a place for it and there may be a better place for it. But a lot of those places right now are super dicey in terms of service and stuff. I mean, who knows what can happen to you. So yeah, we’re we’re investigating options though.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So anyone listening, we’re putting really our focus on all of the functional medicine; all the things that people can take form an actionable standpoint. And so, just that’s kind of the direction because we feel like we can help more at that area. And um, that’s kind of it on that. Any comments, feel free to let us know below and we’re here to help you all.
Evan Brand: Alright. Take it easy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care, guys! Bye now.
Evan Brand: Bye-bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
Recommended products:
Genova Organix® Comprehensive Profile
The Top 5 Nutrients to Address Gut Inflammation and Leaky Gut | Podcast #339
Whenever you are worried about your gut health and having inflammation, Dr. J and Evan are here to share five essentials that may help you.
Lessen your intake of highly processed foods, refined carbs, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and alcohol. Opt instead for anti-inflammatory foods like fruits, vegetables, spices, and healthy fats but, if you suspect that several foods are triggering inflammation in your gut, it might be worth giving an elimination diet a try.
It may require removing foods from your diet that you suspect are connected to your gut problems for roughly two to three weeks at a time. Inflammation in your gut may cause a host of harmful health symptoms, from fatigue to irregular periods and chronic constipation. However, a few changes to your diet and lifestyle might be vital to helping you control these symptoms and improve your gut health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this podcast, we cover:
0:48 Looking into the Gut Deeper
3:53 Good Foundations
6:26 Chewing is Important
8:22 Mushrooms as Anti-Inflammatory Properties
16:00 Probiotics
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today’s podcast is we’re going to be talking about the top five nutrients to address gut inflammation, and leaky gut or gut permeability. So this is a topic that’s pertinent to a lot of our patients as gut inflammation, there’s usually some component in why they’re not feeling good. So I’m really excited to address this today with Evan, we’re gonna dive into the things that we do clinically, the things that work with our patients, the things that actually get results, we’ll break it down, and we’ll kind of give you guys some action items for today as well. And what’s cooking man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: Hey, you’re doing really well. And you know, we always come up with a title. And then we over deliver on that title. So we’re calling this something along the lines of top five nutrients to help your gut or to heal your gut or support intestinal permeability, but maybe we end up going over five. So I’m just gonna go straight to my favorite because it’s so easy. It’s so broad spectrum in its use. And it’s so safe for people across the board to use it, whether it’s kids, adults, the elderly population, even people that don’t have testing, you know, our philosophy is test don’t guess we want to have the data, we want to have good stool testing, and good organic acids testing to look into the gut deeper and figure out what’s going on under the hood. But there is usually a three, sometimes four week timeline between talking with a client or a new patient and then getting the test results. So what do we do to help these people in that in between time before we can do the real work based on the data, I’d say my favorite is probably aloe, and specifically you and I use an aloe extract. It’s a 200 to one, so it’s 200 pounds of gel converted to one pound of extract, and then that’s encapsulated. We had a young boy, not super young, maybe 16 17. But he was diagnosed with autoimmune gut issues, Crohn’s all sort of colitis, actually pan colitis where the whole digestive tract was affected major bleeding in the store. We got him on simply a 200 to one extract of aloe. And within three weeks, we did a new gi map stool test, and we dropped his calprotectin levels, which is his gut inflammation by 1000 points, just by aloe alone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable. Yeah, it’s powerful what nutrients can do now I always tell patients, if you’re trying to come in and make some changes out of the gates, I mean, your best bang for your buck would be fixing the food, because the food is constantly getting your body getting your gut in flames. So the first thing we can do is look at the the the inflammatory food that could be coming in this could be gluten or other technically gluten free grains like corn, oat, rice, those kinds of things. So you want to really get the grains out, you want to really get a lot of the poly polyunsaturated omega six vegetable oils. And again, the reason why vegetable oils tend to be more, let’s say poor is because they’re highly processed to extract the fat. And the processing actually damages the fat and creates free radical stress within those fats. Because the more you take in damaged fats, your body has to utilize antioxidants to stabilize the fats. So they don’t create free radicals. And so it depletes a lot of your antioxidants. And then those fast take on and become part of your cell membrane. And to have healthy cells you have to have good membrane. Because the membrane essentially is the brain of your cell. It provides a lot of good cellular communication happens with the membrane. So if you have junky fats, whether it’s omega six junky fats, or trans fats like hydrogenated soybean oil, right, those kinds of things, canola, you know, safflower, those are going to be more junky omega six, and they’re going to really not make the healthiest cell membranes, they’re going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. And if they’re on the trans fat side, they’ll make your cell membranes very inflexible too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. And I apologize for skipping over the diet piece, you know, you think of the typical American person, they think, just give me the pill. Give me the magic remedy. So we’ll talk about some of those remedies. But yeah, you make a great point, you can’t go out to Pizza Hut for dinner, and then just take an aloe capsule, and everything’s going to be okay. Correct.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So that’s it’s good to look at the foundation out of the gates. I’d also say like, I’ll just kind of put this next category into a broad category and just say, amino acids. And these amino acids could be things like an acetylglucosamine, NaG that could be things like glycine, which are going to be very high in collagen or bone broth. And they could also be things like glutamine, so I kind of put these in the amino acid bucket, when they tend to be very good support for the entire sites of the gut lining, that can be used as fuel for the gut lining, they also can help with gut permeability. And, and glycine is a really good backbone for connective tissue. So it can be very helpful for that lot of that connective tissue healing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: So how about enzymes? When you hear nutrients to heal the gut or support the gut, you don’t necessarily think about enzymes, you think of more like you mentioned, the glutamine, Aloe, the kind of calming, soothing things, but I would argue enzymes have a role in helping with reducing gut inflammation simply by improving digestion and reducing the putrifying and fermenting of foods because I know my gut was Super inflamed. If I look back at some of my original stool tests, when I had gut infections, yes, I was doing things to soothe my gut, but simply just treated, the infections alone got the inflammation down. And part of that process of treating the infections was using enzymes, because my digestion was so terrible, I would get exhausted after a meal. And that was a sign that I had low stomach acid. So I would say the enzyme should be on our list here, because so many people do to age due to stress. Maybe you’re eating in a loud restaurant, like you’re on your lunch break for work, and you’re listening to us or there’s music, boom, boom, boom in the background, and you’re sympathetically stressed while you’re eating enzymes, to me would be a good insurance policy to help break down your foods and then therefore reduce inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, foods are not broken down properly, they’re going to sit, they’re going to ferment, they’re going to purify, they’re going to read certify also, those foods are more likely to create hydrogen and methane gases because they’re fermenting, and those gases can throw off your motility, motility and how you move the bowels. And if the bowels are one too short, or should take too fast on the diarrhea side, you may not absorb those nutrients well. And if they’re too long, on the conservation side, you may reabsorb fecal toxins. And so you know, long or short on the bowel motility can definitely affect absorption or create more toxins in the body. So I think that’s a big one. And then just kind of connecting the enzymes and we could throw HCl in there too, because HCl helps activate enzymes, I would say chewing, chewing and and really just the mastication and healthy eating habits because chewing your food up really fine, allows more surface area for those enzymes and acids to work. So you can have a good amount of enzymes or acids, you only have a couple of chews. you swallow your food, those enzymes and acids aren’t gonna work as good as you really chew it up, you know, 30 to choose one chew per tooth, you know, ideally like an oatmeal like consistencies and allow those enzymes and acids to work better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m 18th down. So I guess I get off the hook with 32. You know, I have my wisdom teeth and my 12 year molders out so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, there you go. I mean, I have my wisdom teeth out as well. So I’m kind of at 28 as well. So I get it. So let’s just say 30 plus or minus a couple.
Evan Brand: It’s hard. I’ve tried to do that I’ve tried to do that many choose, oh man, my jaw gets tired. So and that’s the that’s the problem too, that we have with our food is like you go to Chipotle, a for example. Everything’s really soft. Like if you get rice if you get like carnitas. Or if you get the chicken, you barely have to chew it. It’s almost like mush. So I try to personally seek out occasionally I will seek out whether it’s like beef jerky, or no bison jerky or even just a steak, you know, I try to really get something that works my job because I just feel like in America, our food is so soft and easily digestible, that we don’t have to really chew anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you have a nice steak or a nice whole chicken, just make sure you chew it up. Same thing goes with over hydrating, you know, try to get your first thing I do is and I get to go eat a meal, I kind of go to the reverse osmosis filter, get a nice big glass of water to add some minerals, one, two, and then I get my meal going that way it gives me 10 15 minutes or so for everything to absorb. And of course the colder the water you got to take a little bit longer because your body holds that water in your stomach, heats it up to about room temperature and then passes it through. So the colder that water is, the longer you should wait in between the meal
About mushrooms. This is something that you know, just doing a little bit of research before we hit record, that this is something that I don’t necessarily go to right out of the gate but I’ve been using mushrooms for a long time. I know you and I personally have been taking mushrooms for a long time. And it turns out that for example, Lion’s Mane mushroom has some really, I would say probably just as impressive as some of the other herbs you’re mentioning, whether it’s like dgl, licorice or marshmallow kind of the conventional gut healing ones. Lion’s Mane has some really awesome anti inflammatory properties. There were two papers that we had found here on Lion’s Mane mushroom being shown to protect from and shrink gastric ulcers. Also, Lion’s Mane was shown to significantly improve symptoms of two major inflammatory disorders of the digestive system. And so that’s cool, because normally we’re using Lion’s Mane for cognitive problems. I know for me, my brain is much more clear. I’ve got Lion’s Mane mushroom in my system right now. I took two capsules this morning, and I certainly feel it mentally. But I did not even think that I was feeling it in my gut. So that’s cool.
Totally. Yeah, that gets really important. Again, a lot of gut issues, the immune system can be a big player at it. And so of course, if you’re able to modulate the immune system with the medicinal mushrooms, or immunogenic compounds that are going to be in those mushrooms, whether it’s beta one, three, D glucan, whatever that is, it could have an effect on gut permeability and improving digestion. I think all that’s very, very important. Also, just kind of one pet peeve of mine. Someone in the comments was chatting about this. A lot of people when they talk about leaky gut, they talk about leaky gut like like it’s the cause of Problem. leaky gut is the effects of on what’s happening with the gut. So the more inflamed you are, the more you’re not breaking down your food. The more crappy The food is, the more inflammatory The food is, the more dysbiosis we have, the the lack of certain nutrients we have, the more stress we are right. All that then creates and increases the chance of gut permeability. Gut permeability isn’t the cause unto itself. It’s the effects of a lot of other issues happening. So when people talk about Oh, you gotta fix the leaky gut. It’s like, not necessarily, you know, it’s like, it’s like saying, Oh, we have to fix. Imagine you have a leak in your roof and the waters pulling on the carpet below you. So we got to fix that water on the floor. It’s like, No, no, you fix the hole in the roof. And again, it may be semantics, but we got to call a spade a spade. If the water’s coming into the roof, you talk to them, we got to fix the hole in the roof. You don’t say we fixed the the water on the ground, right? So I just want everyone I want to train everyone to kind of get thinking about things from a root cause standpoint, versus labeling the damage at the end result conventional medicines really good at labeling damage down here and not talking about the effects of top that should the cause up top there labeling the effects down here. So we want to go root cause?
Yeah, that’s great. And I’m sure we could come up with other analogies on it. But that makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of like, okay, we need to come in with the towel. Oh, no. Now we have this super absorbent towel, this towel is going to absorb 1000 times more water on your floor than any other towel. And then yes, this, this carpet is mold resistant. So if you use this carpet, that water in your carpet won’t create mold, but you’re still missing the frickin hole in the roof roof.
Exactly, exactly. So we just got to really be on top of that. Make sure everyone’s thinking root cause I think that’s really helpful.
Well, let’s call it out. Let’s call out why that happens, though. It’s simply money. And it’s the supplement industry. There’s a lot of money. Yeah, it’s marketing. There’s a lot of money made on leaky gut this and this leaky gut book and this leaky gut protocol and this leaky gut practitioner. The problem is you could take all these leaky gut support for a decade and never treat the infections like if you just went and did like you mentioned glutamine, and we hit the zinc carnosine and the dgl. And we did the aloe, like we talked about in the beginning, none of those are going to erase a blastocyst is hominis, parasite infection, none of those are going to get rid of Giardia. None of those are going to treat the H pylori, they may help. But they’re definitely not going to eradicate the issue causing the leaky gut in the first place. So that’s just marketing. It’s money involved in this. And, you know, as practitioners, I think it’s really smart of you to call it out like that, because it’s, it is frustrating for us because we’ll look on a new client or new patients intake form. And they’ll be taking all these quote leaky gut supplements. Yeah, I found this leaky gut protocol online, and I still have all these digestive problems. And it’s like, well, yeah, look at your stool test, you have all these issues. And you could do that for 20 years and never fix it. So I could rant on that all day.
Yeah, other thing I would just say out of the gates is it’s okay to palliative Li support the leaky gut, we just have to make sure when you’re palliative Li supporting something we’re also root cause supporting it as well root cause fixing it. Palliative support, totally fine, right. Nothing wrong with that we just got to call a spade a spade and and not pretend the palliative leaky gut support is root cause support. Yeah, long as we can do that, then I think we’re pretty good. Next thing I would highlight out of the gates and you see this herb being listed as being very helpful for the gut permeability, but it’s also very helpful on the adrenal. So that’s licorice. And so when we use licorice is a lot of licorice being used in leaky gut supports. That’s that’s d glycerides. And this is the glycerides component of the licorice is pulled out. And the glycerides component of a licorice is is the component that slows the breakdown of cortisol, I think it’s the 11 beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase to enzyme. The licorice inhibits that enzyme. That’s the enzyme that helps break down cortisol. So we know cortisol too low, we need healthy levels of cortisol to actually build up the gut lining. It helps with building up the gut lining. Of course, if our cortisol levels are too high, and we’re chronically stressed, right, that can also break down the gut lining. We know that with people that are chronically stressed getting ulcers, right, we know that as well. And so when we look at licorice, it really helps with cortisol improvement. So if we do a cortisol test, and we see chronically low cortisol, that can actually help with the gut lining with the mucosa with the stomach with the duodenum. And that can actually help with the cortisol bringing that back up. And that can help build back up that gut lining. And so we like licorice, that’s non diglycerides for the gut and Nanda glycerides licorice, we give it typically orally sublingually, to our patients, that will eventually trickle downstream to the gut as well. And so licorice can be a powerful thing. You just have to be careful if you’re giving a non diglycerides version that people that have already higher level of cortisol, that may make things worse. So we just got to make sure we’re testing that to know what kind of pattern we’re seeing.
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we could do a whole part two on that. If you want. Give us some feedback. Like maybe the gut hormone connection. And we could hit that in detail. But yeah, you highlighted a very important point, which is that cortisol is involved with this whole process. And it really is a Goldilocks zone. If you have too little cortisol, you’re exhausted. And you’re probably going to be dependent on stimulants and caffeine and sugar and things that are going to damage your gut. But then simply, you don’t have enough to build up the gut. And then if you have too much, now you’re catabolic, you’re breaking down your muscle tissue, and you’re breaking down your gut barrier. That’s probably part of the reason that I lost a lot of weight and a lot of muscle. When I first moved to Texas, I had gut infections, and I was incredibly stressed, just moving and leaving my family behind, you know, emotional stuff, homesickness gut infections, I had the perfect storm to tear up my gut. So I can tell you firsthand that adrenal supports did help. And that was probably because it was helping regulate the cortisol levels, which then in turn, took the load off my gut, so to speak.
100% Yeah, I like that. And so it’s good to really make sure that’s under control.
Evan Brand: How about probiotics? I think it’s worth mentioning. These are totally valuable tools that can help regulate histamine. Yeah, and regulate bacteria with it. So let’s dive into that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so you have to you I said you have three to four big families. Okay. So you typically have your lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, which are typically come together and usually a good high quality broad spectrum probiotic. So my line we have one called profile, Florida doesn’t have a lot of the different lactobacillus whether it’s kci acidophilus Bulgaria’s brevis, rhamnosus. And then of course, you have a lot of the bifidobacterium whether it’s bifidobacterium, bifidum, longum, brevis, right. So those are your broad spectrum lactobacillus or bifidobacterium. Probiotics, lots of good data, lots of good research anywhere from food poisoning for inflammation reduction, gut permeability reduction. nutrient absorption is all kinds of different studies connecting the dots on those so that’s kind of the bifidobacteria, lactobacillus Of course, we have more of our spore based or soil based probiotics. These are going to be a lot of your bacillus strains, right, whether it’s bacillus, subtlest class ei coagulans, like Informix, right. These are the bacillus strains. These are really good if you are very much cebo sensitive, fodmap sensitive, we may use some of these over a bifido lactobacillus species. And then of course, I’m a big fan of the probiotic that’s kind of more of a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii in my lammie, one called sacral flora, again, we’ll put the links below for for all y’all so if you want to see it, we’ll put the links below sacral Flora Saccharomyces boulardii is very helpful a lot of studies on it, helping to improve immunity in the gut IGA IGA levels going to get low and just gut inflammation or gut stress. Of course, it’s going to help with food poisoning a lot of studies on it helping with H. pylori, C. diff, Clostridium difficile, blastocystis hominess. It also helps crowd out yeast and Candida so there’s a lot of excellent benefits with saccharomyces we love it and it’s usually going to be a core part of my probiotic, my fifth r which is repopulation re inoculation on the good healthy probiotics, once the fourth hour is done right fourth hours and to be removing the gut bugs removing the gut infections. Fifth hour, we come in repopulate re inoculate with good bacteria. Most people kind of sweet they want to start probiotics sooner, and that may not be the best step. Not saying it may not help. But some people have just found one that’s just a lot of pills. And two, if they have a lot of bad bugs in there. It’s like going and getting a whole bunch of good fresh grass seeds throw down on a lawn full of weeds, right? You got to get the weeds done before we throw down the seeds right got to get the car washed or we get waxed.
Evan Brand: Kind of like that. Yeah, we had a lot of good feedback on the podcast we did remember we were talking about probiotics and how a lot of new research is showing probiotics are being used to help with getting out mycotoxins and we know that mold toxins damage the gut. So yes, so I have been I’ve honestly been working in probiotics into the protocol sooner and most people do well. There are some like you said that just don’t you got to pull the weeds before you throw the seeds. But there are a lot of people doing really good with throwing probiotics and sooner in the protocols now. So like you said, if they can handle the amount of pills, maybe we try to sneak one or two in or we could do like powdered versions, typically, it’s like a quarter teaspoon, we could throw in a blend like that sack be you could you could do powder and maybe throw it in a smoothie or something. So we are trying to integrate those a lot. And I’ve had amazing success personally with probiotics. So I think it’s interesting, there’s still a lot of people that poopoo probiotic probiotics I know you and I we kind of get, you know, so caught up in the clinical trenches that we may miss some things, but I do get a couple of emails, you know, here and there from from people, clients sending them like, hey, this guy like says probiotics are a waste of money, and you know, that they don’t work. And I would just say that’s not true. We have so much clinical data personally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about context, right? It’s like if someone comes in, they have chronic gut issues, and they’re just taking a probiotic thinking that that’s going to be the answer to their gut problems. It’s probably not right, and that’s where we’re trying to have a comprehensive functional medicine plan. That’s root cause and not just trying to Pro supplements at the wall thinking that that’s going to fix it. So yeah, I understand if that you know where that person is coming up with that, that bias that biases from not having a comprehensive root cause plan with a functional medicine practitioner, they’re just trying to throw stuff at them instead it hoping it will fix the symptoms, not fix the root cause.
Well, here’s Yeah, good, good point. Here’s the other thing, too, it’s even some probiotic companies will say that about other companies, it’s more of a marketing thing like, hey, their probiotic is crap, or it doesn’t work because of X, Y, or Z. But I will just say with what you and I use, clinically, we’re using professional supplement manufacturers exclusive only to health care providers. And a lot of the stuff we use, we have extended release technology. So when arguments like probiotics are going to die in the stomach, they’re not even going to make it to where they need to. But a lot of the new technology we use, they’re not even going to break open, they’re going to be resistant to the stomach acid. So that’s another problem too, when you hear these little like, super sometimes buzzworthy type articles. It’s not taking into consideration the quality, the quantity, the purity, the potency, the technology involved, it’s like probiotics, they get the label, and then that’s it. And that’s just not a fair classification.
Correct. And then also consumer reports that a study on probiotics a couple years back maybe 5 10 years ago. And what they found is most probiotics that they put a number on the outside of the bottle, hey, this is how many colony forming units. And what a lot of the cheap companies do is they say, Okay, this is how many should have been in this probiotic at manufacturing of this product. Let’s say it’s 20 billion. Now, what the professional companies do is, right, when you’re buying high quality, professional ingredients, they’re gonna say this is how many colony forming units should be in this capsule at expiration. And so you’re looking at something like two to three times the amount of those that species that CFU on the bottle colony forming units, is going to be typically in there. So when you see like, in my probiotic, I think it’s 40 billion per two capsules, right? That’s going to be what’s in there two years from now at expiration, right? And so obviously, it’s going to be two to three times the amount of that before. And so you want to use professional companies. So what you see on the label is always worst case, scenario, number one, and then also how products are stored by professional companies is very important. So like, where we have our warehouses, like everything is stored in an air conditioned or a refrigerated environment for a lot of our probiotics, some don’t necessarily need that. But which we value, the the scenario and how that store because that really increases potency, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the funny thing is, too, we’ve seen some papers on supposedly expiration dates, you know, this is something that you and I are forced to do with the professional companies we work with. But you know, we’ve seen some research on supplements from 2030 years ago, still being viable, meaning they still had some potency and purity to them. And obviously, they still had a biological effect. So to me, I would if I had to pick like a consumer shelf bought probiotic, or a suppose that expired professional product, I’m going to go for the supposedly expired product, I’d go for a five year old professional probiotic, then, you know, on the shelf today consumer level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And also a lot of the probiotics or supplements that require refrigeration on the warehousing side, a lot of times you’re just not going to get that on Amazon, you’re not going to get that level of specificity just because that’s not how their warehouses are set up. And so with ours, we make sure that that refrigeration components is there because we’re working with patients and we need we need that potency, because we’re trying to get clinical outcomes, right. We’re trying to sell and provide a clinical outcome for the patient. And if we’re just providing products that aren’t meeting that standard, we’re not going to win. And of course, we want to be successful on that front.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Well say Well, I think we covered a lot of it. So the mushrooms are beneficial Lion’s Mane the mushroom is amazing for the brain, but for the gut also Chaga mushroom would be great reishi mushroom could also deserve a good mention, you hit upon the amino acids. So the glutamine or the various types of glucose amines involved. We love amino acids, we use those all the time you mentioned like collagen also being you know, part of that makeup, we hit on some of the herbs like the the licorice, or the dgl version of it, the marshmallow, we like to use a lot, we hit upon the aloe, and then we hit the probiotics, I think those are the big categories. And then the enzymes we hit that too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think we did a really good job hitting a couple and I just I really want to plug in concepts, right? Like a lot of people, they just try to throw information at people and and try to memorize that. I think that’s not beneficial. But if you can just understand concepts, right? A concept is just something that sticks. You either get it or you don’t. And so we try to use a lot of analogies and understand we try to plug in a lot of the concepts of root cause versus palliative cause. We try to get you to think about, hey, if this helps, why does it help? is it just an anti inflammatory? is it helping just improve better digestion? is it helping your immune system? is it helping your adrenals and helping you that your body’s natural process to build back up that gut lining? What’s the underlying mechanisms if you understand that, then you see how it plugs into the greater matrix of healing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I agree 1,000%. So, I think the big concept of today is Yes, here are some things here are some nutrients you can use. However, we really want to make sure you’re testing, not guessing. So if you do need the aloe to calm the gut for now, you need the enzymes to help improve digestion. For now, you notice that HCl is helping with your heartburn or you notice that the enzymes are reducing your bloating, or your burping or your gas. Great, but what led to all that in the first place? What led you to need the aloe because you had gut inflammation, what led you to need the enzymes, that’s where somebody like us can come in and help you figure that out and plot it on paper. And, you know, we’ve been through the trenches personally. And clinically, we’re always improving upon herself. You know, I work on my children, I know you work on your children, we’re giving our kids things to help their guts, I mean, so this is like a, there’s no finish line, I don’t want people to think, Hey, I just do this aloe for a month, and then I’m done. You know, there’s not a finish line with the gut, we’re constantly being exposed to new toxins and new pathogens. We’ve even seen with the virus that’s been going around a lot of issues with the gut there, we’ve seen a lot of issue with tissue destruction in the intestinal tract. So who knows? Right now with the 5 10 year outlook of the GI health in the US is right now, our guts are notoriously bad, due to glyphosate and other things, damaging them. So just a quick note, you kind of started with the diet all and with the diet 100% organic is important, if you’re going to go buy all these probiotics, but yet, you’re going to eat strawberries with an average of 22 pesticides on them. If they’re not organic, you’re wasting your frickin time and your money because we know all those pesticides are just killing the beneficial bacteria in your gut that you’re trying to re inoculate or repopulate with. So please go organic, you know, before you spend money on probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then also how long do these probiotic strains last in your gut, I mean, a lot of times, you’re going to see the data show in about one month or so. So that they don’t stay forever. So when you take a probiotic, it’s not like it’s there forever. So it’ll it’ll hang around typically for a month, it’ll help with a nutrient synthesis, it’ll help with nutrient absorption, it’ll help with inflammation, modulating the immune system, there’s some data that maybe the spore based probiotics hang around a little bit longer, and they may help proliferate the growth of other beneficial species. So just think when you take a probiotic, it’s not forever. Now the goal is that we’re getting some level of fermentable foods in your diet, whether it’s from sauerkraut, or low sugar kombucha, or some kind of fermented pickle or something, or, you know, cultured coconut milk or potentially high quality raw milk if you can tolerate it. So you know, that’s typically how we’re getting exposed to probiotics more on a day in weekend kind of situation. If you’re someone that can’t get that level of exposure with fermented oils from food, then you probably want to be on a probiotic a little bit more frequently, if you’re not getting those fermentable. So we just got to plug and play where we’re at. I think our ancestors probably did more fermentable foods, which is ideal. But if we can’t we plug in a good quality probiotic, or at least throw in something every couple of months, just to kind of fill in the gap to make sure we’re getting exposed to those good for mandibles.
Evan Brand: Yeah, great point, I just want to highlight what you said too, which is like your gut bacteria are actually going to help you with your health in other ways. So once gut bacteria optimize your healing the gut, you’re making neurotransmitters the way you should you’re making serotonin, you’re making things to improve yourself, you’re making B vitamins to help your energy and your mitochondria. So this is why I really the gut, I mean, we just we can’t stop talking about it because it literally is the foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of want to make sure that is understood. And that makes sense for everyone. We’ll put a list of recommended products down below. So you guys have access to those you want to support us support the show, we appreciate it put those down below. Also, if you guys want to reach out to Evan brand, head over to EvanBrand.com, Evan is there for you guys worldwide. And again, I’m there for you as well, justinhealth.com, Dr. J myself, there’ll be a little link button, you guys can click and reach out to us we are available worldwide to help you guys help you help support y’all. We want to make sure they have the support you need. And you have a good comprehensive plan to get what’s going in the right direction if you’re not having success. And then also just try to apply one thing today as well. If you’re having if you’re overwhelmed, and you’re having a sticking point great to reach out, if not just try applying this information, we want to really help as many people as possible. And we know we’re going to help many more people than we actually see in person with this information. So just make sure you’re applying it. And if you are enjoying it, share it with family and friends that could also benefit put your comments down below. Let me know the best part that you liked about this what resonate with you the most. And give us a like and share as well. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you’re on the apple listening, if you’re on your Apple podcast app or Stitcher or wherever else, give us some stars, let us know what you think the show deserves between us both we have I lost count, but it was somewhere over 705 star reviews for our podcast in between our various feeds. So please give us some stars. Give us some sentences give us a blurb on whether you still call it iTunes or Apple podcast. We’d love to beat out people that are not clinically oriented. There’s still like top health podcast out there that it’s just theory theory theory theory. And then we have to like recalibrate people’s theories because they’re not clinically based. So we would love to beat those people. How do we beat those Before we go higher in the charts, how do we do that? With your reviews! So we have a some stars.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks to all you guys have a phenomenal day. Take careDr. Justin Marchegiani
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today’s podcast is we’re going to be talking about the top five nutrients to address gut inflammation, and leaky gut or gut permeability. So this is a topic that’s pertinent to a lot of our patients as gut inflammation, there’s usually some component in why they’re not feeling good. So I’m really excited to address this today with Evan, we’re gonna dive into the things that we do clinically, the things that work with our patients, the things that actually get results, we’ll break it down, and we’ll kind of give you guys some action items for today as well. And what’s cooking man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: Hey, you’re doing really well. And you know, we always come up with a title. And then we over deliver on that title. So we’re calling this something along the lines of top five nutrients to help your gut or to heal your gut or support intestinal permeability, but maybe we end up going over five. So I’m just gonna go straight to my favorite because it’s so easy. It’s so broad spectrum in its use. And it’s so safe for people across the board to use it, whether it’s kids, adults, the elderly population, even people that don’t have testing, you know, our philosophy is test don’t guess we want to have the data, we want to have good stool testing, and good organic acids testing to look into the gut deeper and figure out what’s going on under the hood. But there is usually a three, sometimes four week timeline between talking with a client or a new patient and then getting the test results. So what do we do to help these people in that in between time before we can do the real work based on the data, I’d say my favorite is probably aloe, and specifically you and I use an aloe extract. It’s a 200 to one, so it’s 200 pounds of gel converted to one pound of extract, and then that’s encapsulated. We had a young boy, not super young, maybe 16 17. But he was diagnosed with autoimmune gut issues, Crohn’s all sort of colitis, actually pan colitis where the whole digestive tract was affected major bleeding in the store. We got him on simply a 200 to one extract of aloe. And within three weeks, we did a new gi map stool test, and we dropped his calprotectin levels, which is his gut inflammation by 1000 points, just by aloe alone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable. Yeah, it’s powerful what nutrients can do now I always tell patients, if you’re trying to come in and make some changes out of the gates, I mean, your best bang for your buck would be fixing the food, because the food is constantly getting your body getting your gut in flames. So the first thing we can do is look at the the the inflammatory food that could be coming in this could be gluten or other technically gluten free grains like corn, oat, rice, those kinds of things. So you want to really get the grains out, you want to really get a lot of the poly polyunsaturated omega six vegetable oils. And again, the reason why vegetable oils tend to be more, let’s say poor is because they’re highly processed to extract the fat. And the processing actually damages the fat and creates free radical stress within those fats. Because the more you take in damaged fats, your body has to utilize antioxidants to stabilize the fats. So they don’t create free radicals. And so it depletes a lot of your antioxidants. And then those fast take on and become part of your cell membrane. And to have healthy cells you have to have good membrane. Because the membrane essentially is the brain of your cell. It provides a lot of good cellular communication happens with the membrane. So if you have junky fats, whether it’s omega six junky fats, or trans fats like hydrogenated soybean oil, right, those kinds of things, canola, you know, safflower, those are going to be more junky omega six, and they’re going to really not make the healthiest cell membranes, they’re going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. And if they’re on the trans fat side, they’ll make your cell membranes very inflexible too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good point. And I apologize for skipping over the diet piece, you know, you think of the typical American person, they think, just give me the pill. Give me the magic remedy. So we’ll talk about some of those remedies. But yeah, you make a great point, you can’t go out to Pizza Hut for dinner, and then just take an aloe capsule, and everything’s going to be okay. Correct.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So that’s it’s good to look at the foundation out of the gates. I’d also say like, I’ll just kind of put this next category into a broad category and just say, amino acids. And these amino acids could be things like an acetylglucosamine, NaG that could be things like glycine, which are going to be very high in collagen or bone broth. And they could also be things like glutamine, so I kind of put these in the amino acid bucket, when they tend to be very good support for the entire sites of the gut lining, that can be used as fuel for the gut lining, they also can help with gut permeability. And, and glycine is a really good backbone for connective tissue. So it can be very helpful for that lot of that connective tissue healing out of the gates.
Evan Brand: So how about enzymes? When you hear nutrients to heal the gut or support the gut, you don’t necessarily think about enzymes, you think of more like you mentioned, the glutamine, Aloe, the kind of calming, soothing things, but I would argue enzymes have a role in helping with reducing gut inflammation simply by improving digestion and reducing the putrifying and fermenting of foods because I know my gut was Super inflamed. If I look back at some of my original stool tests, when I had gut infections, yes, I was doing things to soothe my gut, but simply just treated, the infections alone got the inflammation down. And part of that process of treating the infections was using enzymes, because my digestion was so terrible, I would get exhausted after a meal. And that was a sign that I had low stomach acid. So I would say the enzyme should be on our list here, because so many people do to age due to stress. Maybe you’re eating in a loud restaurant, like you’re on your lunch break for work, and you’re listening to us or there’s music, boom, boom, boom in the background, and you’re sympathetically stressed while you’re eating enzymes, to me would be a good insurance policy to help break down your foods and then therefore reduce inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, foods are not broken down properly, they’re going to sit, they’re going to ferment, they’re going to purify, they’re going to read certify also, those foods are more likely to create hydrogen and methane gases because they’re fermenting, and those gases can throw off your motility, motility and how you move the bowels. And if the bowels are one too short, or should take too fast on the diarrhea side, you may not absorb those nutrients well. And if they’re too long, on the conservation side, you may reabsorb fecal toxins. And so you know, long or short on the bowel motility can definitely affect absorption or create more toxins in the body. So I think that’s a big one. And then just kind of connecting the enzymes and we could throw HCl in there too, because HCl helps activate enzymes, I would say chewing, chewing and and really just the mastication and healthy eating habits because chewing your food up really fine, allows more surface area for those enzymes and acids to work. So you can have a good amount of enzymes or acids, you only have a couple of chews. you swallow your food, those enzymes and acids aren’t gonna work as good as you really chew it up, you know, 30 to choose one chew per tooth, you know, ideally like an oatmeal like consistencies and allow those enzymes and acids to work better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m 18th down. So I guess I get off the hook with 32. You know, I have my wisdom teeth and my 12 year molders out so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, there you go. I mean, I have my wisdom teeth out as well. So I’m kind of at 28 as well. So I get it. So let’s just say 30 plus or minus a couple.
Evan Brand: It’s hard. I’ve tried to do that I’ve tried to do that many choose, oh man, my jaw gets tired. So and that’s the that’s the problem too, that we have with our food is like you go to Chipotle, a for example. Everything’s really soft. Like if you get rice if you get like carnitas. Or if you get the chicken, you barely have to chew it. It’s almost like mush. So I try to personally seek out occasionally I will seek out whether it’s like beef jerky, or no bison jerky or even just a steak, you know, I try to really get something that works my job because I just feel like in America, our food is so soft and easily digestible, that we don’t have to really chew anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you have a nice steak or a nice whole chicken, just make sure you chew it up. Same thing goes with over hydrating, you know, try to get your first thing I do is and I get to go eat a meal, I kind of go to the reverse osmosis filter, get a nice big glass of water to add some minerals, one, two, and then I get my meal going that way it gives me 10 15 minutes or so for everything to absorb. And of course the colder the water you got to take a little bit longer because your body holds that water in your stomach, heats it up to about room temperature and then passes it through. So the colder that water is, the longer you should wait in between the meal
About mushrooms. This is something that you know, just doing a little bit of research before we hit record, that this is something that I don’t necessarily go to right out of the gate but I’ve been using mushrooms for a long time. I know you and I personally have been taking mushrooms for a long time. And it turns out that for example, Lion’s Mane mushroom has some really, I would say probably just as impressive as some of the other herbs you’re mentioning, whether it’s like dgl, licorice or marshmallow kind of the conventional gut healing ones. Lion’s Mane has some really awesome anti inflammatory properties. There were two papers that we had found here on Lion’s Mane mushroom being shown to protect from and shrink gastric ulcers. Also, Lion’s Mane was shown to significantly improve symptoms of two major inflammatory disorders of the digestive system. And so that’s cool, because normally we’re using Lion’s Mane for cognitive problems. I know for me, my brain is much more clear. I’ve got Lion’s Mane mushroom in my system right now. I took two capsules this morning, and I certainly feel it mentally. But I did not even think that I was feeling it in my gut. So that’s cool.
Totally. Yeah, that gets really important. Again, a lot of gut issues, the immune system can be a big player at it. And so of course, if you’re able to modulate the immune system with the medicinal mushrooms, or immunogenic compounds that are going to be in those mushrooms, whether it’s beta one, three, D glucan, whatever that is, it could have an effect on gut permeability and improving digestion. I think all that’s very, very important. Also, just kind of one pet peeve of mine. Someone in the comments was chatting about this. A lot of people when they talk about leaky gut, they talk about leaky gut like like it’s the cause of Problem. leaky gut is the effects of on what’s happening with the gut. So the more inflamed you are, the more you’re not breaking down your food. The more crappy The food is, the more inflammatory The food is, the more dysbiosis we have, the the lack of certain nutrients we have, the more stress we are right. All that then creates and increases the chance of gut permeability. Gut permeability isn’t the cause unto itself. It’s the effects of a lot of other issues happening. So when people talk about Oh, you gotta fix the leaky gut. It’s like, not necessarily, you know, it’s like, it’s like saying, Oh, we have to fix. Imagine you have a leak in your roof and the waters pulling on the carpet below you. So we got to fix that water on the floor. It’s like, No, no, you fix the hole in the roof. And again, it may be semantics, but we got to call a spade a spade. If the water’s coming into the roof, you talk to them, we got to fix the hole in the roof. You don’t say we fixed the the water on the ground, right? So I just want everyone I want to train everyone to kind of get thinking about things from a root cause standpoint, versus labeling the damage at the end result conventional medicines really good at labeling damage down here and not talking about the effects of top that should the cause up top there labeling the effects down here. So we want to go root cause?
Yeah, that’s great. And I’m sure we could come up with other analogies on it. But that makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of like, okay, we need to come in with the towel. Oh, no. Now we have this super absorbent towel, this towel is going to absorb 1000 times more water on your floor than any other towel. And then yes, this, this carpet is mold resistant. So if you use this carpet, that water in your carpet won’t create mold, but you’re still missing the frickin hole in the roof roof.
Exactly, exactly. So we just got to really be on top of that. Make sure everyone’s thinking root cause I think that’s really helpful.
Well, let’s call it out. Let’s call out why that happens, though. It’s simply money. And it’s the supplement industry. There’s a lot of money. Yeah, it’s marketing. There’s a lot of money made on leaky gut this and this leaky gut book and this leaky gut protocol and this leaky gut practitioner. The problem is you could take all these leaky gut support for a decade and never treat the infections like if you just went and did like you mentioned glutamine, and we hit the zinc carnosine and the dgl. And we did the aloe, like we talked about in the beginning, none of those are going to erase a blastocyst is hominis, parasite infection, none of those are going to get rid of Giardia. None of those are going to treat the H pylori, they may help. But they’re definitely not going to eradicate the issue causing the leaky gut in the first place. So that’s just marketing. It’s money involved in this. And, you know, as practitioners, I think it’s really smart of you to call it out like that, because it’s, it is frustrating for us because we’ll look on a new client or new patients intake form. And they’ll be taking all these quote leaky gut supplements. Yeah, I found this leaky gut protocol online, and I still have all these digestive problems. And it’s like, well, yeah, look at your stool test, you have all these issues. And you could do that for 20 years and never fix it. So I could rant on that all day.
Yeah, other thing I would just say out of the gates is it’s okay to palliative Li support the leaky gut, we just have to make sure when you’re palliative Li supporting something we’re also root cause supporting it as well root cause fixing it. Palliative support, totally fine, right. Nothing wrong with that we just got to call a spade a spade and and not pretend the palliative leaky gut support is root cause support. Yeah, long as we can do that, then I think we’re pretty good. Next thing I would highlight out of the gates and you see this herb being listed as being very helpful for the gut permeability, but it’s also very helpful on the adrenal. So that’s licorice. And so when we use licorice is a lot of licorice being used in leaky gut supports. That’s that’s d glycerides. And this is the glycerides component of the licorice is pulled out. And the glycerides component of a licorice is is the component that slows the breakdown of cortisol, I think it’s the 11 beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase to enzyme. The licorice inhibits that enzyme. That’s the enzyme that helps break down cortisol. So we know cortisol too low, we need healthy levels of cortisol to actually build up the gut lining. It helps with building up the gut lining. Of course, if our cortisol levels are too high, and we’re chronically stressed, right, that can also break down the gut lining. We know that with people that are chronically stressed getting ulcers, right, we know that as well. And so when we look at licorice, it really helps with cortisol improvement. So if we do a cortisol test, and we see chronically low cortisol, that can actually help with the gut lining with the mucosa with the stomach with the duodenum. And that can actually help with the cortisol bringing that back up. And that can help build back up that gut lining. And so we like licorice, that’s non diglycerides for the gut and Nanda glycerides licorice, we give it typically orally sublingually, to our patients, that will eventually trickle downstream to the gut as well. And so licorice can be a powerful thing. You just have to be careful if you’re giving a non diglycerides version that people that have already higher level of cortisol, that may make things worse. So we just got to make sure we’re testing that to know what kind of pattern we’re seeing.
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we could do a whole part two on that. If you want. Give us some feedback. Like maybe the gut hormone connection. And we could hit that in detail. But yeah, you highlighted a very important point, which is that cortisol is involved with this whole process. And it really is a Goldilocks zone. If you have too little cortisol, you’re exhausted. And you’re probably going to be dependent on stimulants and caffeine and sugar and things that are going to damage your gut. But then simply, you don’t have enough to build up the gut. And then if you have too much, now you’re catabolic, you’re breaking down your muscle tissue, and you’re breaking down your gut barrier. That’s probably part of the reason that I lost a lot of weight and a lot of muscle. When I first moved to Texas, I had gut infections, and I was incredibly stressed, just moving and leaving my family behind, you know, emotional stuff, homesickness gut infections, I had the perfect storm to tear up my gut. So I can tell you firsthand that adrenal supports did help. And that was probably because it was helping regulate the cortisol levels, which then in turn, took the load off my gut, so to speak.
100% Yeah, I like that. And so it’s good to really make sure that’s under control.
Evan Brand: How about probiotics? I think it’s worth mentioning. These are totally valuable tools that can help regulate histamine. Yeah, and regulate bacteria with it. So let’s dive into that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so you have to you I said you have three to four big families. Okay. So you typically have your lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, which are typically come together and usually a good high quality broad spectrum probiotic. So my line we have one called profile, Florida doesn’t have a lot of the different lactobacillus whether it’s kci acidophilus Bulgaria’s brevis, rhamnosus. And then of course, you have a lot of the bifidobacterium whether it’s bifidobacterium, bifidum, longum, brevis, right. So those are your broad spectrum lactobacillus or bifidobacterium. Probiotics, lots of good data, lots of good research anywhere from food poisoning for inflammation reduction, gut permeability reduction. nutrient absorption is all kinds of different studies connecting the dots on those so that’s kind of the bifidobacteria, lactobacillus Of course, we have more of our spore based or soil based probiotics. These are going to be a lot of your bacillus strains, right, whether it’s bacillus, subtlest class ei coagulans, like Informix, right. These are the bacillus strains. These are really good if you are very much cebo sensitive, fodmap sensitive, we may use some of these over a bifido lactobacillus species. And then of course, I’m a big fan of the probiotic that’s kind of more of a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii in my lammie, one called sacral flora, again, we’ll put the links below for for all y’all so if you want to see it, we’ll put the links below sacral Flora Saccharomyces boulardii is very helpful a lot of studies on it, helping to improve immunity in the gut IGA IGA levels going to get low and just gut inflammation or gut stress. Of course, it’s going to help with food poisoning a lot of studies on it helping with H. pylori, C. diff, Clostridium difficile, blastocystis hominess. It also helps crowd out yeast and Candida so there’s a lot of excellent benefits with saccharomyces we love it and it’s usually going to be a core part of my probiotic, my fifth r which is repopulation re inoculation on the good healthy probiotics, once the fourth hour is done right fourth hours and to be removing the gut bugs removing the gut infections. Fifth hour, we come in repopulate re inoculate with good bacteria. Most people kind of sweet they want to start probiotics sooner, and that may not be the best step. Not saying it may not help. But some people have just found one that’s just a lot of pills. And two, if they have a lot of bad bugs in there. It’s like going and getting a whole bunch of good fresh grass seeds throw down on a lawn full of weeds, right? You got to get the weeds done before we throw down the seeds right got to get the car washed or we get waxed.
Evan Brand: Kind of like that. Yeah, we had a lot of good feedback on the podcast we did remember we were talking about probiotics and how a lot of new research is showing probiotics are being used to help with getting out mycotoxins and we know that mold toxins damage the gut. So yes, so I have been I’ve honestly been working in probiotics into the protocol sooner and most people do well. There are some like you said that just don’t you got to pull the weeds before you throw the seeds. But there are a lot of people doing really good with throwing probiotics and sooner in the protocols now. So like you said, if they can handle the amount of pills, maybe we try to sneak one or two in or we could do like powdered versions, typically, it’s like a quarter teaspoon, we could throw in a blend like that sack be you could you could do powder and maybe throw it in a smoothie or something. So we are trying to integrate those a lot. And I’ve had amazing success personally with probiotics. So I think it’s interesting, there’s still a lot of people that poopoo probiotic probiotics I know you and I we kind of get, you know, so caught up in the clinical trenches that we may miss some things, but I do get a couple of emails, you know, here and there from from people, clients sending them like, hey, this guy like says probiotics are a waste of money, and you know, that they don’t work. And I would just say that’s not true. We have so much clinical data personally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about context, right? It’s like if someone comes in, they have chronic gut issues, and they’re just taking a probiotic thinking that that’s going to be the answer to their gut problems. It’s probably not right, and that’s where we’re trying to have a comprehensive functional medicine plan. That’s root cause and not just trying to Pro supplements at the wall thinking that that’s going to fix it. So yeah, I understand if that you know where that person is coming up with that, that bias that biases from not having a comprehensive root cause plan with a functional medicine practitioner, they’re just trying to throw stuff at them instead it hoping it will fix the symptoms, not fix the root cause.
Well, here’s Yeah, good, good point. Here’s the other thing, too, it’s even some probiotic companies will say that about other companies, it’s more of a marketing thing like, hey, their probiotic is crap, or it doesn’t work because of X, Y, or Z. But I will just say with what you and I use, clinically, we’re using professional supplement manufacturers exclusive only to health care providers. And a lot of the stuff we use, we have extended release technology. So when arguments like probiotics are going to die in the stomach, they’re not even going to make it to where they need to. But a lot of the new technology we use, they’re not even going to break open, they’re going to be resistant to the stomach acid. So that’s another problem too, when you hear these little like, super sometimes buzzworthy type articles. It’s not taking into consideration the quality, the quantity, the purity, the potency, the technology involved, it’s like probiotics, they get the label, and then that’s it. And that’s just not a fair classification.
Correct. And then also consumer reports that a study on probiotics a couple years back maybe 5 10 years ago. And what they found is most probiotics that they put a number on the outside of the bottle, hey, this is how many colony forming units. And what a lot of the cheap companies do is they say, Okay, this is how many should have been in this probiotic at manufacturing of this product. Let’s say it’s 20 billion. Now, what the professional companies do is, right, when you’re buying high quality, professional ingredients, they’re gonna say this is how many colony forming units should be in this capsule at expiration. And so you’re looking at something like two to three times the amount of those that species that CFU on the bottle colony forming units, is going to be typically in there. So when you see like, in my probiotic, I think it’s 40 billion per two capsules, right? That’s going to be what’s in there two years from now at expiration, right? And so obviously, it’s going to be two to three times the amount of that before. And so you want to use professional companies. So what you see on the label is always worst case, scenario, number one, and then also how products are stored by professional companies is very important. So like, where we have our warehouses, like everything is stored in an air conditioned or a refrigerated environment for a lot of our probiotics, some don’t necessarily need that. But which we value, the the scenario and how that store because that really increases potency, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the funny thing is, too, we’ve seen some papers on supposedly expiration dates, you know, this is something that you and I are forced to do with the professional companies we work with. But you know, we’ve seen some research on supplements from 2030 years ago, still being viable, meaning they still had some potency and purity to them. And obviously, they still had a biological effect. So to me, I would if I had to pick like a consumer shelf bought probiotic, or a suppose that expired professional product, I’m going to go for the supposedly expired product, I’d go for a five year old professional probiotic, then, you know, on the shelf today consumer level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And also a lot of the probiotics or supplements that require refrigeration on the warehousing side, a lot of times you’re just not going to get that on Amazon, you’re not going to get that level of specificity just because that’s not how their warehouses are set up. And so with ours, we make sure that that refrigeration components is there because we’re working with patients and we need we need that potency, because we’re trying to get clinical outcomes, right. We’re trying to sell and provide a clinical outcome for the patient. And if we’re just providing products that aren’t meeting that standard, we’re not going to win. And of course, we want to be successful on that front.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Well say Well, I think we covered a lot of it. So the mushrooms are beneficial Lion’s Mane the mushroom is amazing for the brain, but for the gut also Chaga mushroom would be great reishi mushroom could also deserve a good mention, you hit upon the amino acids. So the glutamine or the various types of glucose amines involved. We love amino acids, we use those all the time you mentioned like collagen also being you know, part of that makeup, we hit on some of the herbs like the the licorice, or the dgl version of it, the marshmallow, we like to use a lot, we hit upon the aloe, and then we hit the probiotics, I think those are the big categories. And then the enzymes we hit that too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think we did a really good job hitting a couple and I just I really want to plug in concepts, right? Like a lot of people, they just try to throw information at people and and try to memorize that. I think that’s not beneficial. But if you can just understand concepts, right? A concept is just something that sticks. You either get it or you don’t. And so we try to use a lot of analogies and understand we try to plug in a lot of the concepts of root cause versus palliative cause. We try to get you to think about, hey, if this helps, why does it help? is it just an anti inflammatory? is it helping just improve better digestion? is it helping your immune system? is it helping your adrenals and helping you that your body’s natural process to build back up that gut lining? What’s the underlying mechanisms if you understand that, then you see how it plugs into the greater matrix of healing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I agree 1,000%. So, I think the big concept of today is Yes, here are some things here are some nutrients you can use. However, we really want to make sure you’re testing, not guessing. So if you do need the aloe to calm the gut for now, you need the enzymes to help improve digestion. For now, you notice that HCl is helping with your heartburn or you notice that the enzymes are reducing your bloating, or your burping or your gas. Great, but what led to all that in the first place? What led you to need the aloe because you had gut inflammation, what led you to need the enzymes, that’s where somebody like us can come in and help you figure that out and plot it on paper. And, you know, we’ve been through the trenches personally. And clinically, we’re always improving upon herself. You know, I work on my children, I know you work on your children, we’re giving our kids things to help their guts, I mean, so this is like a, there’s no finish line, I don’t want people to think, Hey, I just do this aloe for a month, and then I’m done. You know, there’s not a finish line with the gut, we’re constantly being exposed to new toxins and new pathogens. We’ve even seen with the virus that’s been going around a lot of issues with the gut there, we’ve seen a lot of issue with tissue destruction in the intestinal tract. So who knows? Right now with the 5 10 year outlook of the GI health in the US is right now, our guts are notoriously bad, due to glyphosate and other things, damaging them. So just a quick note, you kind of started with the diet all and with the diet 100% organic is important, if you’re going to go buy all these probiotics, but yet, you’re going to eat strawberries with an average of 22 pesticides on them. If they’re not organic, you’re wasting your frickin time and your money because we know all those pesticides are just killing the beneficial bacteria in your gut that you’re trying to re inoculate or repopulate with. So please go organic, you know, before you spend money on probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then also how long do these probiotic strains last in your gut, I mean, a lot of times, you’re going to see the data show in about one month or so. So that they don’t stay forever. So when you take a probiotic, it’s not like it’s there forever. So it’ll it’ll hang around typically for a month, it’ll help with a nutrient synthesis, it’ll help with nutrient absorption, it’ll help with inflammation, modulating the immune system, there’s some data that maybe the spore based probiotics hang around a little bit longer, and they may help proliferate the growth of other beneficial species. So just think when you take a probiotic, it’s not forever. Now the goal is that we’re getting some level of fermentable foods in your diet, whether it’s from sauerkraut, or low sugar kombucha, or some kind of fermented pickle or something, or, you know, cultured coconut milk or potentially high quality raw milk if you can tolerate it. So you know, that’s typically how we’re getting exposed to probiotics more on a day in weekend kind of situation. If you’re someone that can’t get that level of exposure with fermented oils from food, then you probably want to be on a probiotic a little bit more frequently, if you’re not getting those fermentable. So we just got to plug and play where we’re at. I think our ancestors probably did more fermentable foods, which is ideal. But if we can’t we plug in a good quality probiotic, or at least throw in something every couple of months, just to kind of fill in the gap to make sure we’re getting exposed to those good for mandibles.
Evan Brand: Yeah, great point, I just want to highlight what you said too, which is like your gut bacteria are actually going to help you with your health in other ways. So once gut bacteria optimize your healing the gut, you’re making neurotransmitters the way you should you’re making serotonin, you’re making things to improve yourself, you’re making B vitamins to help your energy and your mitochondria. So this is why I really the gut, I mean, we just we can’t stop talking about it because it literally is the foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of want to make sure that is understood. And that makes sense for everyone. We’ll put a list of recommended products down below. So you guys have access to those you want to support us support the show, we appreciate it put those down below. Also, if you guys want to reach out to Evan brand, head over to EvanBrand.com, Evan is there for you guys worldwide. And again, I’m there for you as well, justinhealth.com, Dr. J myself, there’ll be a little link button, you guys can click and reach out to us we are available worldwide to help you guys help you help support y’all. We want to make sure they have the support you need. And you have a good comprehensive plan to get what’s going in the right direction if you’re not having success. And then also just try to apply one thing today as well. If you’re having if you’re overwhelmed, and you’re having a sticking point great to reach out, if not just try applying this information, we want to really help as many people as possible. And we know we’re going to help many more people than we actually see in person with this information. So just make sure you’re applying it. And if you are enjoying it, share it with family and friends that could also benefit put your comments down below. Let me know the best part that you liked about this what resonate with you the most. And give us a like and share as well. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you’re on the apple listening, if you’re on your Apple podcast app or Stitcher or wherever else, give us some stars, let us know what you think the show deserves between us both we have I lost count, but it was somewhere over 705 star reviews for our podcast in between our various feeds. So please give us some stars. Give us some sentences give us a blurb on whether you still call it iTunes or Apple podcast. We’d love to beat out people that are not clinically oriented. There’s still like top health podcast out there that it’s just theory theory theory theory. And then we have to like recalibrate people’s theories because they’re not clinically based. So we would love to beat those people. How do we beat those Before we go higher in the charts, how do we do that? With your reviews! So we have a some stars.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks to all you guys have a phenomenal day. Take care.
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What are the Natural Anti-Inflammatory Agents for Pain Relief
In general, we have our COX pathways. Now, Arachidonic acid can feed those pathways. A lot of excess, junky, refined Omega-6 from animal products can definitely feed those pathways. That sets the table like gas in the kitchen where a little spark can take it off.
Where to find anti-inflammatory agents:
- Natural herbs like ginger can help with COX-1.
- Fish oil is excellent for COX-2 at high doses. If you do high doses of fish oil, you can increase what’s called lipid peroxidation because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. It’s more unstable. It’s got more double bonds in it. Omega-3 means three double bonds. The more double bonds that are they are, the more unstable the fatty acid is to heat things like that and the more, let’s say it can be oxidized. So, having extra vitamin C or extra vitamin D on board when you’re taking extra fish oil just to make sure you don’t have oxidation is great, and we already talked about things like systemic enzymes.
- There is also curcumin but liposomal curcumin is better due to the absorption or something with black pepper in it helps with absorption, too.
- Frankincense or Boswellia.
- White willow bark which is kind of how aspirin is naturally made though aspirin works more on COX-1. So, aspirin can be your other natural source and you can do white willow bark which is the natural form of aspirin.
- There are things like Tylenol but Tylenol works more on the central nervous system perception. So, it decreases the nervous systems’ perception of pain. Note: We have to be careful of Tylenol as it can actually chronically reduce glutathione. So, if you’re taking Tylenol longer-term, you definitely want to take it with NAC and/or some glutathione, just to be on the safe side.
- At the extreme example, we have opiates which block pain receptors in the brain, the opiate perception of the brain. It’s not the best thing because you’re just decreasing perception of pain. Obviously, the opiates are way more addictive.
- We can block some of these natural pain perceptions with CBD oil. So, CBD is another great way to reduce the perception of pain.
In general, we want you to try to do more of the herbals and more of the natural stuff out of the gates because that really, really, really can help reduce inflammation.
If you have osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, sports injury, or you’re just trying to heal maybe postoperation, these things may be something to implement and then obviously work in all the other root causes, too. You are not just what you eat. You are what you digest from what you eat.
So, if you’re doing all these good nutrients, but you’ve got some type of malabsorption issue in the gut, you’ve got ridges on your fingernails, you’ve got thinning hair or falling out here, you may need to look deeper at the gut and try to find some of these more root cause issues that led you to that amount of inflammation or slow recovery in the first place.
Natural Herbs and Foods to Help Fight Stress
When you’re stressed, what are the important things? Blood sugar stability is really important because most people get on a roller coaster when they get stressed, meaning they’re overly gravitating towards alcohol and towards refined sugar. Their blood sugar goes up and then it crashes down, and then it creates more nervous system stimulation via adrenaline, epinephrine, and cortisol being stimulated to bring the blood sugar back up.
So, I find just keeping it really simple and really easy with your meals. You may be more nauseous when you’re overly stressed because stress hormone does cause you to feel nauseous. So, this is where you may want to do a soup or a simple smoothie, something really easy where there’s not a lot of digestion but you’re still getting some proteins and fat in there, whether it’s some collagen and some coconut milk or just sipping on some bone broth. Something like that’s going to have some good fat and good protein, and it won’t be hard to digest. So, if you feel nauseous, just still know you should probably be eating but just try to make it something very easy on your tummy.
Then think what are some of the nutrients your nervous system is going to need when you’re more stressed. So, the low hanging fruit, B vitamins. B complex is going to be very essential. Magnesium is going to be excellent. GABA and L-theanine are good things that are going to help you relax and wind down. Valerian root or passionflower, which are all connected to GABA and that inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps you just relax a little bit. It kind of puts the clutching gear and disengages the gearbox, so you can downshift so to speak.
I always go to nutrients first and then I go to my favorite adaptogenic herbs second. So, Ashwagandha is one of my favorites. Rhodiola is excellent and there’s holy basil, which are my favorite very relaxing and tonifying herbs.
If you want to learn more about herbs for stress relief, click this link to schedule a chat with me!
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!