The Thyroid, Adrenal and Microbiome Connection | Podcast #255

Together with Evan Brand, Dr. Justin talks about the adrenal, thyroid, gut, microbiome, brain connection and a lot more. Go through this podcast to discover more about functional medicine world. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

4:13 Potential probiotics to treat thyroid nodule

9:06 Microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior

15:02 Stress in gut

20:16 Chemicals in water

23:10 Eating organic

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Getting ready to go live now go get it live this week. And we are live. It’s Dr. J here with Evan brand. Evan, how are you doing today? Man? I know in the pre show. We’re gonna we’re going deep, deep into the adrenal thyroid gut microbiome connection. How are we doing, man?

Evan Brand: I’m doing really good. Yeah, this is trippy. You know, people talk about the gut brain connection. But when you actually look into the papers on this, you actually just found a paper that was from just a few months ago, that will have to dive into on gut brain, adrenal connection, thyroid cancer, all being tied into the gut. So where do you want to? Where do you want to start?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so this one article, I just want to read the summary of his articles. I think this really shows you the connection of the microbiome with the thyroid and of course, we have some scientific articles looking at the microbiome with the HPA access and connecting to the adrenal, so this is really, really powerful. I just thought this one conclusion here, and I really wanted to highlight it because I just think medicine is just really going in a totally different direction. So the title of this article here, I’ll read it all for you all here is dis bios of the gut microbiome is associated with thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules. And there are correlated with thyroid function. And essentially, we know that autoimmunity which is the number one cause of thyroid issues with almost all people, right, that is a major association with cancer and with nodules, of course, the major cause of thyroid nodules are going to be autoimmunity. But the conclusion of this study was interesting they found our results indicate that both thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules are associated with the composition of the gut microbiome. These results may further support a clinical diagnosis to a great extent, and helping in developing potential probiotics to facilitate the tree Men have thyroid cancer and nodules. So conventional medicine in the Journal of endocrinology starting to come to the conclusion that, hey, we need to have probiotics to treat thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules. That’s pretty amazing.

Evan Brand: That’s a trip trip. Well, I’ve got another paper I was looking at here that was about babies. So let me read this one because this is pretty interesting and, and kind of up the same vein here that this was looking at 78 infants who were premature and were in the queue. And it was found that the infants that had despite AOSIS, which I just call an abnormal gut microbiome. They had more gut issues, even at age four of age, they followed these kids for four years. And if their gut was screwed from day one, even four years later, they still had gut issues. So not related to thyroid but just crazy how much the stress of the mom The diet of the mom the microbiome of the mom, if the mom doesn’t have enough good bacteria, not giving good bacteria to baby, this is crazy. I don’t want to get too off topic from from thyroid to babies, but there’s countless papers coming out on even there was another one I looked at two, which was about sun exposure, right. And the sun exposure paper was looking at people getting UVB as in Bob UVB light exposure. And they had significant changes with their gut microbiome but it only worked in the patients that were deficient in vitamin D. So there’s this you know, our mutual friend jack crews, he’s always talking about Sunlight, sunlight, sunlight, everybody gets sunrise get your skin exposed to the sun. It turns out Yes, that is totally true because in various studies, living in higher altitudes means there’s a higher risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease and Ms because at a higher latitude and higher altitude both you get less UV light. So now There’s this gut flora, sunlight link as well, but it only was in vitamin D insufficient patients. If the vitamin D levels were normal, the sunshine didn’t do as much to boost the gut bacteria.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, very good. So I want to just kind of connect the dots here with some of the more valuable Intel. So in the study that I just looked at, where they’re talking about potential probiotics to treat thyroid nodule, and of course thyroid function issues and thyroid cancer, the couple of things to highlight is what does that mean? So despite doses typically means a higher amount of bad bacteria in relationship to good bacteria. Now in this one study, just kind of giving people to take home is the bad bacteria they were looking at that they were looking at they were higher in these cancer patients was the streptococcus and the nice Syria bacteria, and the beneficial bacteria was the lactobacillus and they also looked at the beautiful record bonus and beautiful components. I think it’s just bacteria that helps make beautiful Beauty rate is the same fat that’s in butter. Okay, so eating healthy butter and things that help improve beauty rate bacteria could be very beneficial. Also, anything that’s going to be fermented is going to give you healthy levels of lactobacillus and support puter rate is great. So those are the big bacteria that we’re looking. So I mean, these studies are limited because you’re not looking at a whole suite of bacteria, right, or a whole suite of positive probiotics. So these studies are still a little bit myopic, and their focus, but I think it still gives us a little bit of insight that probiotics, beneficial bacteria important and some of the despotic bacteria can have negative implications even affecting your immune system and even cancer. So I think it’s good to keep that in the back of our head. So when we’re seeing patients, we’re recommending comprehensive gut testing, that’s DNA based, it’s looking at all kinds of normal Flora imbalances, despotic balances, we’re measuring it to, you know, the umpteenth degree because the DNA testing is about two to 3000 times more sensitive than your typical stool testing, and then we’re also looking at infections because the bigger thing here I think is we could have an H. pylori issue or a fungal overgrowth, or we could have a, a major parasitic infection that could be thrown off the bacteria too. So sometimes the bacterial issue isn’t necessarily the root cause. It’s an effect of something deeper in the gut. That’s kind of going wrong. And then also, we have to look at the fact that gut stressing gut inflammation can throw off digestion and when our digestion is poor, we’re not ionizing minerals. We’re not breaking down our Selenium and zinc and magnesium. We’re not breaking down protein as well. We’re not absorbing all the the hormonal building blocks like cholesterol and fatty acids and protein and fats to make our hormones and our neurotransmitters. So you can see this isn’t just an isolated issue, it spirals off into other systems not working well. That’s why you need some more the clinical picture clinical, I’m for this like me and you to dive in deep and kind of spiral off the intimate connection. And how and how and why this is a big deal.

Evan Brand: Well, I love that this paper exists because between you and I both we’ve put a combined 15 plus years of education and content about gut and how important it is and how it affects every other body system. But you still have people that go to their conventional doctor and they’ll say, hey, my guy and work with Dr. Justin told me that my gut is affecting the thyroid. And the endocrinologist says, No, it doesn’t know your hormone levels are just low. We’re going to bump up your your Synthroid, we’re going to give you extra t three and supplemental form and blah, blah, blah, and they never bring up the gut. Well, now here’s the proof in the pudding. Here’s the paper that proves what we’ve been saying the whole time. So it’s good. I like I didn’t need the validation, but I guess for maybe for our ego sake a little bit when you get good results with people. And we’ve seen countless time and time again that the thyroid antibodies and Hashimoto is go down when we fix the gut. I’ve always loved seeing that. But now we have the proof to be able to show why this is working.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and I saw a patient just from a few years back, her antibodies were well over 2000 2000 regarding feral globulin and they were around 30. Now, so I mean, you’re looking at a 99% reduction with thyroid antibodies. And I’ve seen that quite frequently, and people listening and may not be practical to get your antibodies down, even below the reference range or even negative or to zero. That may not happen. But if we can have a 50 to 90% reduction regarding those antibodies, that’s going to be huge.

Evan Brand: Let’s Let’s move on. Let’s go into this other paper that you had sent me this was the one that was from frontiers and cellular and infection. microbiology. This was a 2017 paper. It was called microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior and endurance abnormalities and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. Let’s go into this because this is another frickin awesome paper that proves what we’ve seen with regarding mood and the whole adrenal connection type into the gut.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So if we go into the what’s that again?

Evan Brand: This is the one I’ll I’ll put it back in the chat for you here. This is the pub man one, go check your chat I just put it in your chat on on zoom. This is the one that’s called microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior. And so I’m going to go into Yes, kind of the bottom section of this, where it’s showing all the pictures here about the connection between you’ve got your cortical, yes, hormone, your AC TH you’ve got the metabolic effect picture here. And what we’re finding is the microbiome, the gut, your microbes, your intestinal microbes, they are changing this whole brain gut access activity, and all of your gut microbes are responsible for your dopa mean, your Gabba, you’ve got histamine, you’ve got acetylcholine And regulating the function of the CNS, which is your central nervous system and the stability of the HPA axis. This is the crazy part to me, this last part of the sentence that the intestinal microbes regulate the stability of the HPA axis. Because when we talk about the kind of this brain adrenal connection, we just talked about, like adaptogenic herbs and you know, I meditate and and deep breathing and extra Asheville, ganda and all that and maybe you need some l theanine, which is all cool. But if you’re just doing that you’re missing the boat, you’re missing the fact that the gut is going to overpower any effort on your brain. It’s like, Oh, I’m going to go do yoga to calm my nervous system. You can’t if your gut microbes are screwed.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I want to highlight one sentence in this study conclusion. I think it’s vitally important. They say here imbalances of the HPA access can’t cause by intestinal microbes. So now this study is kind of submitting to the fact that the microbes are calling HPA access imbalances could affect the neuro endocrine system in the brain. That’s the brain talking to the hormonal system primarily through the adrenal and the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic result in anxiety like behavior. And the study suggests that intervention into intestinal micro Flora may provide a new approach for treating stress like diseases that is profound. They’re talking about altering the microbiome typically. And that’s going to be done in two ways. It’s going to be done by killing or knocking down this biotic bad bacteria or supporting beneficial good bacteria. Those are the two modulatory ways to do it. So that’s amazing. The fact that conventional research at no one even talks about this on the conventional medical side, partly because it’s about a 20 to 30 year lag between stuff and the literature making its way into conventional medicine and there needs to be a profit motive. So if a big pharma company cannot patent what’s happening here, and we probably won’t see this be applied, because there’s gotta be a reason to spend billions of dollars in research and get patents. And if we can’t patent it, what are you going to do?

Evan Brand: Yeah, so like the $30 bottle of probiotics that we sell after we do some type of a gut killing protocol, I mean, 30 bucks, is it your profit margins, not going to be like some of these cancer drugs, for example, they’re like 1000 to 10,000% markup, you know, you’ll have like, one vial of chemotherapy, that’s 10,000 bucks.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And it’s not just a, it’s not just the the money you make on it, it’s the ability to guarantee that you’re the only one that can produce it. So if you get the patent, that you’re the only one that can produce it, then you can artificially make the price higher, right. So that’s kind of how it works. It’s not that there’s not a natural profit, you know, like a 50% markup or something like in a lot of stores that you see is going to be thousands of percent markup, and it’s going to be artificial, did a patent law.

Evan Brand: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, you’re talking rather than 20 companies all making the same thing and charging 100 bucks if you’re the only soul guy, then you’re allowed to charge 10,000.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you can charge a lot of money for it. Yeah, that’s how it works. That’s how you saw that with the, the epi pen when the patents went out. Only one company had it and they jacked it up. And that’s kind of that’s how it happens. So the more we can use things that are natural, that can’t be patented, you know, then you have a little bit more market force keeping the prices down. So that’s nice. So interesting. In this study, they also talked about however, the precise mechanism of action and how intestinal micro Flora means unclear. So it’s really interesting they have there’s some unknown pathogenic mechanisms I think with a lot of the the infections causing problems, my gas, all right, my into intuition really comes at it from the perspective of intestinal permeability. I think the intestinal permeability aspect is a big one. I also think a lot of the good bacteria has a modular Tory effect on your immune system, because we know your immune system is in the gut. So if your immune system is hyper regulate or hyper stimulated, that can do a lot of different things from increasing gut permeability, to just sucking up a lot of resources for energy. And I think it also has a negative impact on your mitochondrial function as well. And then I think the low hanging fruit is you may not be digesting, absorbing and assimilating a lot of the key nutrients in your diet, which go to make other systems work like your mitochondria, like your thyroid, like your adrenal, is we not getting enough selenium, we may have thyroid issues not getting enough. Magnesium, we may have issue with our mitochondria. So we need a lot of these nutrients. And if we have stress or interplay with the HPA axis and our gut, there could be some absorption issues for sure.

Evan Brand: We should almost just title this podcast which we already came up with a better title that you’re that you’re seeing or you already clicked on to download this, which was like the microbiome adrenal thyroid link, but really, we should call it yoga ain’t gonna fix you. gut. I mean, that’s basically the summary here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And again, there’s a lot of data on this where the stress in the gut and stress in the brain is bi directional. In other words, Stretton the stress in the gut can create brain stress, but stress in the brain can create gut stress. And we know this because high levels of cortisol stress in the brain that makes a CTH adrenal cortical tropic releasing hormone that stimulates the adrenal to make cortisol that can create gut permeability at high levels, it can break down the gut barrier, and we know stress in the gut through number one is gluten is a big one can easily create gut permeability, which can then also create gut stress. So these are important things. Quick Study I want to pull up here. I did not show it to you but this is called dietary gluten induced dysbiosis can create issues with the tight junctions. And that’s the summary of the title. The title is really convoluted, but

Evan Brand: I want to have that link from book market myself.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’ll send this to you right now. So you have it. But this is fascinating. And basically they’re talking about gluten having a major impact on the gut bacteria and creating this bio system. And we know with this by osmosis, that can affect the whole neuro endocrine HPA axis cascade of things. And they talked about dietary gluten had effects on the streptococcus family, the lactobacillus family, the Koryo bacteria family, really, really, really interesting and how it affects different things. It Down regulated, the guts, absorption and a lot of different ways created inflammation. So there’s a lot of different potential cascades that happen when gluten comes into the equation. So the low hanging fruit that we talked about is kind of getting patients on a paleo template which is a grain free, grain free, dairy free legume free template. And then potentially even moving towards a paleo template where we’re going grain free, legume free dairy free, no nuts, seeds, nitrates and eggs.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you may have the autoimmune. So here’s the point that we’re trying to make is that the people who say, Oh, I eat gluten and I feel fine. It’s not about whether you feel fine. It’s about that internal biochemistry that’s changing. It’s about those microbes that are changing. Also, in that study that you just sent me here. It was talking about Prevotella being affected too. We know there’s a huge link between Prevotella and joint pain. We did a whole podcast on joint pain, you know, functional medicine. And so it’s not that like, Hey, you have to get a rash or you have to break out an acne after you eat gluten. That’s not it’s a lot more subtle, but the subtle changes over time, change the whole system.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: As a lot of people out there that I hear I won’t mention their names but their podcasts out there and say, Hey, you know, you can have gluten if you haven’t, you don’t have any symptoms. You know, you’re fine. The problem is the inflammation that’s happening here. may not create a symptom, there may be a delay in the symptoms that occur. And that that’s kind of the myopic level of thinking. You can’t just you can’t go to that conclusion, well, if you don’t have symptoms, you’re fine. In this one study, they’re looking at inflammation associated with the micro RNA. So they’re looking at inflammation at the RNA level. I mean, that is a very myopic level, very, very microscopic level, I should say. And in this study, they had some people on a gluten free diet and some eating gluten. And they saw on the gluten diet, they saw this increase in inflammation at the micro RNA level, which is pretty profound. So it may take time to manifest into actual symptoms. And we know there’s data on the fact that there are people that even if they aren’t celiac, or even really gluten sensitive symptomatic Lee, they still saw permeability with their gut when exposed to gluten. So kind of my general recommendation is try to be grain free all the time, especially if you have an autoimmune condition. And if you’re going to cheat, try to choose gluten free cheat, if you can. Now, if you don’t have a known autoimmunity, then maybe you choose a little bit of gluten here or there but be very careful with it. Try to do things like extra enzymes, extra enzymes with DPP for maybe some extra activated charcoal include a bio and to kind of deal with the stress and the inflammation associated with that you can also add in some extra glutamine and things help with the gut lining. So these are some ways that we can mitigate it. So I kind of I tear things a known autoimmunity, no gluten ever, and if you’re going to cheat, try to make sure it’s gluten free. If you’re relatively healthy and no autoimmunity, then maybe you cheat a little bit with gluten but try to make it a special occasion holidays, birthday, etc. and then try to use things to blunt the negative consequences that may occur.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said people aren’t even aware of that. We have some little cheats in our pocket, especially that will give to people around the holiday season, different enzyme formulations that can actually sort of break up or reduce the effect of some of those food allergens. Your dairy, your corn, your egg or soy, you know, you can use enzymes to help break those apart. But we don’t want people to get hooked on those or use that as a long term solution, because then you’re still cheating and it’s not going to be reducing the the impact 100% it’s just going to blunt it, as you said.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And one thing I wanted to highlight, I saw this article come across my desk too. It’s a compound called Tributyltin, is in the chemical paint that they paint on the underside of the hall of the boats, and this compounds getting in the water, and they’re finding that this compounds actually an obese engine, and it negatively impacts the gut microbiome and then you’re getting exposed to this in the waters. So I think this is really important, why we need to be filtering our water because it’s possible that these compounds may not be filtered out with conventional filtration processes. And this compounds Aaron obesogenic and they affect your microbiome. So another great reason why you should head over our sites get a good high quality Water Filter that we personally use EvanBrand.com or JustinHealth.com slash water. I’ll put the link in the description. Waters a big component is a lot of chemicals and toxins and tributyltin and it’s just one compound that could negatively impact your gut microbiome.

Evan Brand: Oh man, that’s amazing. Well, there’s countless like that I just got the Environmental Working Groups report on local Kentucky’s tap water. And you know, people say oh, we got voted the best tap water in the US because we’ve got a lot of limestone here naturally that kind of filters out our water. It was still garbage man. There was still tons of flame retardant chemicals that PFOA which is like the Teflon nonstick chemicals, foams, heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides. I mean, we had countless pollutants in our tap water here, even though it was voted best and it does taste good. But you might you’re not going to taste these part per million chemicals that like you said can be an obese adyen or disrupt hormones. So yes, drinking tap water can make you fat and sick. Absolutely.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course and then the number One thing you can do, this is a no brainer. Most of our audience and listeners know this is avoid glyphosate. So you really want to eat 100% organic because glyphosate, many, many studies are shown to affect the microbiome couple of rat studies, looked at different rats and microbiome and saw significant, you know, impact on the microbiome of these rats when exposed to glyphosate. So you really just got to be careful, make sure you eat organic as glyphosate, which is the major pesticide Roundup. And again, one of the studies I have up here now 13 weeks study, guess what bacteria were knocked down with Roundup. I mean, I’m going to guess all of them but probably lactobacillus. lactobacillus was the major one. It was reduced in the roundup study. And we know that the thyroid cancer study showed what that the cancer group had lower amounts of lactobacillus and then when we improved it, you know, we saw an improvement in the cancer. So we know lactobacillus is beneficial and glyphosate, roundup same name is going to negatively impact that.

Evan Brand: That’s a trip well, so people say, Oh, I haven’t done antibiotics doesn’t matter. You did an antibiotic and the glyphosate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, exactly. So you really want to be careful. This is another reason why you want to eat organic. There’s two reasons right? Number one, you’re avoiding toxicity, which is going to affect your microbiome and your immune system. Number two, increased nutrient density. Typically, organic farming will have higher level of nutrient density because the soil microbiome will be more healthy and the microbiome and the topsoil produce help the plants produce more nutrition. So we’re nutrition on one side, less toxic than the other side. And even if, let’s say you don’t buy what I’m saying about nutrition, just the fact that you’re getting less toxins, right? Because for it to be organic, USDA Organic, it has to have no pesticides in that soil for three years. You are definitely getting less toxins, for sure.

Evan Brand: Yep. Well, this has beenfun. I mean, we could do Part 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 on this because this is like one of my favorite favorite things ever. So we’ll be back to talk more about I’ve got so so I’m just giving you I’ve been told you this, but this is what we’re going to cover. Next we need to cover the gut microbiome in the issue with pans, which is the pediatric acute onset neuro psychiatric syndrome and kids. I just sent you a paper on this one. Let’s Let’s hit this next time though, because it’s a whole nother can of worms, but it’s about all these children that are having behavioral issues and anxiety and different problems. And it’s related to certain species in the gut. And if you can shift the gut out of this pro inflammatory state, you can calm the brain down. I mean, we basically already hit on that but it’s a little different for kids and I’ve seen it personally and clinically, you have to So I do want to get into this and also, there’s talk about the specific bacteria this or ODR bacteria and the link to autism. And alzheimers. So Wow, this is I mean, it goes deep.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it totally, what I’ll do is I’ll put all the links of all the studies that we talked about today in the description so you guys can go take a look at it so you can see it for yourself. It’s amazing. Your conventional medical doctors aren’t going to know about this stuff. And it’s because of the 23rd 20 to 30 year gap between the literature and going into effect in the curriculum. And also there’s just has to have a profit incentive for the big pharma if if they can’t patent it, then you’re not really going to use it as a modality. And guess what, as functional medicine docs, we take that up and we put that in our metabolic toolbox. TV’s healing get better. So I love it. Is there anything else you want to highlight today? Evan?

Evan Brand: We’re going to be looking into your gut if you’re working with us, so if you’re like, Okay, what do I do? How do I investigate this? How do I fix it? I mean, we live and breathe and look at labs all day every day. So we’d be happy to run some panels on you and take a look at your gut and see how is your thyroid function affected by your gut? I guarantee it is how much is it affected. I don’t don’t know yet, but we can run some labs and figure it out. So if you do want to reach out clinically, you can do so at Justin’s website, which is JustinHealth.com he works with people all around the world. So do I, my website is EvanBrand.com, and we don’t care who you work with as long as you get better. So please reach out if you need help. That’s what we’re here for. Don’t wait till you’re super miserable. We got tons of people that like buy supplements and listen to podcasts and listen to summits and they buy 50 to 100 supplements and they don’t know what the heck they’re doing. You’re spending a lot more money in wasting time and maybe getting sicker by doing that. So it’d be much better to have somebody that can help walk you through the process rather than you buying this probiotic and it didn’t work and then you bought that gut healing supplement and didn’t work and then you bought this detox supplement, you felt like crap, Okay, stop doing that. You know, let us help you through what we found to work clinically.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% also we can get a window into the HPA access as well using cortisol rhythm testing. So we’ll measure your cortisol which is your major stress hormone. That’s the hormone that Made by or that stimulated by ACTA, that’s that brain chemical. That’s the neuroendocrine connection, the brain, the ACTH, the cortisol, we can look at that rhythm. And that gives us a pretty good interplay into HPA access functioning, because the data says that, you know, as that cortisol starts to get this regulator rhythmically, that’s a big sign that the HPA access is out of balance. And so we can use specific herbs, we can use protocols, we can work on fixing the microbiome, we can look at getting rid of some of the chemicals like we talked about, we only mentioned to today, the cyberbullying and the glyphosate, mold, and others toxins and metals could be another factor as well. That’s another podcast of the day. So there’s a big is a big net that we’re kind of looking into and trying to connect everything here because everything’s intimately connected. And I hope you guys are enjoying the Intel. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just feel free to reach out to us we can help break it down. The big connection here today is stress, brain stress, HPA access. That’s the communication all feedback loop brain to the adrenal brain to the thyroid. Think of that as the thermostat to the heater thermostat to the air condition, right? Imagine you having that thermostat not talking appropriately to the heater when you want it to get hot, or the air conditioner when you want it to get cool. And that’s a big big connection. So when we talk brain stress, or HPA access, pretend like your thermostat in your house is not working or probably that’s kind of the equivalent here.

Evan Brand: Makes sense. Makes sense. Well said.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Well, if you guys enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up give us hit the bell as well. So you subscribe. We appreciate great reviews, JustinHealth.com/iTunes EvanBrand.com/iTunes for reviews. And let us know your comments down below things that have helped you things that have hurt you in regards to the HPA access and your gut microbiome. We appreciate it. Evan, it was great chatting today man you have a phenomenal day.

Evan Brand: Yeah likewise you too see you. Take care. Bye bye.

Insomnia – Mold Toxicity and Detox Can Affect Your Sleep | Podcast #254

A healthy sleep makes a big difference in our overall health. With a good sleep, we help our body recover from all the stress as well as rejuvenate all the lost energy and repair cells.

Today’s podcast talks about insomnia and natural functional medicine strategies to get to the root cause. Dr. Justin and Evan Brand gives out information on how insomnia occurs and how we could treat it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

01:46 Sleep theories

07:30 Why sleep is important

14:09 Toxic Exposure

16:36 Sleep lights, blue or red lights

22:18 Organic medicines and sleeping tips

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani I’m here with Evan brand Today we are going to be chatting about insomnia and natural functional medicine strategies to get to the root cause. We’re also going to connect in mold and insomnia to that’s a common theme that Evan is seeing. And his patients and also with himself, Evan, what’s going on man? How are we doing?

Evan Brand: Hey, not too much. You know, I’m sleeping better now that I figured out the connection. My sleep was terrible. Like a year ago, I was up 2 3 4 times a night. And of course, my daughter was young too and she was still waking up in the middle of the night. So at first I thought it was that but then I noticed is really, really interesting connection between activated charcoal and improve sleep quality. And so I had the aura ring.I don’t know what to do with I think I lost it. But I had the order ring and I was wearing it and I would notice that my deep sleep I would get 20 to 30 minutes extra of deep sleep when I would take high dose activated charcoal. So I thought okay, charcoal equals exciting to toxins equals improve sleep. What the heck is going on there? So, my, my thought is and there’s talk about mycotoxins, which are mold toxins. There’s talk about mycotoxins, impairing your sleep quality, and specifically down regulating melatonin because mycotoxins are affecting the HPA axis. So that makes sense. But to me, I think there’s probably the cortisol connection part of that HPA axis that the toxin stimulates the nervous system. Same thing with heavy metals, maybe we should tie heavy metals into because charcoal can help arguably reduce metals and we know people with heavy metals. They also have bad sleep

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% we talked about or there’s new theories. This is a sleep specialist out of university of Berkeley at Matthew Walker. He’s done a couple of podcast Joe Rogan I think Nicole was interviewed him, but he talks about the lymphatic system which is kind of this glial cell immune cell in the brain, and lymph. And this lymphatic system is really important for removing toxins and a lot of these neurotoxins, they’re going to be cleared out during sleep. So whether it’s various beta amyloid plaques or whether it’s glyphosate or various heavy metals, this lymphatic system is really ramping up during sleep. That’s part of the reason why you have this neurological neuro emotional repair because we’re getting a lot of these toxins out via the lymphatic Leo cell lymphatic system in the brain, which is really interesting.

Evan Brand: Brand new study just came out like a few days ago, October 31. I’m going to give you the link so you can have it here. It’s titled waves of fluid babe, the sleeping brain perhaps to clear waste. And basically what was done. I believe it was an fMRI or an E. Yeah, it was both so it looked like it was an eg to measure the brain. electrical activity, and then also f which is a functional MRI. And they, these researchers recorded these people while they slept in an MRI scanner, which I wouldn’t want to be exposed to that amount of magnetic fields for study but luckily somebody did that for us. And what they found was that the cerebral spinal fluid was pumping every 20 seconds, just bone and it would just pump pump pump and so of course nobody knows 100% what that means yet but the thought is that this pumping of the fluid maybe that is it lymphatic system and now we’re just now finally able to visualize it, but the pumping of that fluid they think is draining out toxins at night.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s very, very powerful. I know a lot of people that have done really good increasing lithium ion at night taking life as normal go to die am also taking glycine has been very, very helpful at night and part of I think is number one glycine is a precursor to go to file right? And also lithium is its own building block itself, which I think is going to really help up regulate this lymphatic detoxification system is the glial, the lymphatic of glial cells, and the limp interacting in the brain. And then all of these toxins that are removed via the lymphatic system, eventually reach your liver, they are going to go back to the hepatic portal vein, which is going to go back to that big filter in the liver, and then we’ll all be dumped out a lot of it will be dumped out in the kidneys, and then a lot in the stool. So that’s where a lot of my common recommendations for detox kind of go outside what most people think of as detox, meaning you need good digestion. If we have any gut issues or SIBO or slow motility or poor digestion, you may be reabsorbing some of those toxins, especially if you have slow transit time.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said so that they call it intro hepatic recirculation, basically, it’s really energy intensive to create and manufacture new bile. So I don’t know Know what paper I looked at that said this, but it was talking about 95% of your bile being reabsorbed and 5% of your bile being freshly made. And so when you use binders, especially if you’re using like a prescription cola star mean, like I’m using that attaches to the bile to bile acid sequestering, and that’s how it works lower cholesterol, but the lot of the toxins are in the bile. So I can tell you 100% if I take binders closer to bedtime, I don’t wake up as much in the sleep is more restful, and I dream more. So I’ve noticed a lot of that with clients to using a lot of chlorella and different liver support. A lot of people will say, Hey, I haven’t been dreaming for 510 years, and now I’m dreaming again. So to me, I think dreaming is a good sign that you must be clearing out some brainwaves. What do you think?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think it definitely is make your processing a lot of the emotional stress for the day. That makes a lot of sense to me. So we’re removing toxins via the lymphatic system. We talked about glycine and we talked about you already mentioned Some of the binders, like with mold, mold could be a stressor that enters the lymphatic system. Some of these mycotoxins could cross the blood brain barrier and stress out the glial cells, and that lymphatic system may be stressed as well. And of course, we’re trying to filter all these things out, get it back to the liver and flush it out via the stool as well, hence, where the coolest ironing comes in, which is a bile salt sequestering agent, like you mentioned, 5% is new. So if you can decrease that amount down, maybe only maybe 50% new and now you’re reading, you know, your research, writing and re filtering out and making fresh file while that old files getting flushed out into the stool, which is really good. And then of course, better sleep is going to promote better memory, right? Because if we have less brain fog via the activation of the immune cells in the brain, cognitive wise, we’re going to be able to have better recall will be faster on our feet, you’ll be able to think more clearer because one of the big things in regards to brain inflammation is going to be cognitive and brain fog issues. Anything else you want to highlight there?

Evan Brand: Well, yeah, I’m going to take what you said take it a step further and people will ask us about, well, what brain supplement Can I take? What can I do to get more focus? What can I do to get more concentration? And part of that answer is to improve your sleep quality think people think about what supplement what herb, you know, what drug what stimulant, am I missing, to help increase my brain? It’s like maybe some things but if you’re not sleeping, I don’t care how much caffeine or whatever else you do, you’re not going to be optimal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So of course, getting enough sleep is number one, trying to get sleep at the right time is important because we want to sleep within our natural circadian rhythm. So cortisol naturally drops you know, at that 10am time, and then when the cortisol drops, melatonin increases. So this is natural inverse relationship between cortisol and melatonin. And Melatonin is a very powerful antioxidant help stimulate that really good deep sleep. So you want to tap into it during that natural cortisol rhythm of the dropping cortisol. Followed by the rise in melatonin. That’s very, very important as the reason why shift workers have the highest rate of cancer, World Health Organization, put shift work in the same category as substance carcinogens as non sub OS substance carcinogens like smoking and assesses. So it’s definitely toxic to your body even though it’s a non substance, right? I mean, shift work is in the substances. It’s a it’s a lifestyle tactic, so we can shift that, that’s going to be big. And then of course, some amino acids are going to be what you use to make a lot of your sleep hormone. So the first thing I look at is how is your digestion? Are you eating enough protein? Are you vegan? vegetarian? Are you getting enough protein number one, number two, are you digesting it? Are you assimilating it? How your stools looking? Are they floating it all too? Are you processing your fat soluble vitamins as well? These are really really, really important things we want to look at when it comes to sleep. Because all of our neuro chemicals most are going to be made from amino acids, amino acid peptides, right? serotonin is going to be made from tryptophan or five HTTP, dopamine and adrenaline getting made from phenylalanine entire scene. GABAs you know itself it’s got gamma amino acid l theanine plays a big role in GABA. I’m trying to think Melatonin is also made from serotonin, which is made from five HTTP and trip the fan. Anything else you wanted to highlight on the protein connection there?

Evan Brand: Yeah, you need to B6 to–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: B6 is a very important cofactor that’s involved in the synthesis that you have. If you have a lot of these amino acids there, but not enough B6, you’re not going to have this synthesis happens. It’s like having a whole bunch of wood. And it’s like having a whole bunch of wood that’s wet. And then you have the flame will you need dry wood, right? So it’s really important cofactor to that equation. So that spark takes.

Evan Brand: And will and we’ll ask people that too. So when we look at the urinary organic acid test, we can measure the B six levels. And I’ll ask people Hey, look, your be six is really low. How’s your sleep? And I would say nine times out of 10 people say my sleep is not good and the other brain cancers You markers may look okay, like serotonin may look adequate. But if you’re not having that cofactor I think of it like the spark plug. Really, if you don’t have the spark plug to make melatonin, then adequate serotonin may be helpful for mood but your sleep could still suffer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yep. 100% So we talked about the amino acids, I would say blood sugar is a really important thing. Now, there’s a lot of people doing a whole bunch of fasting, which I think is had can have some good benefits as long as we’re getting enough nutrition. Right. There’s a fine line between fasting anorexia. I mean, you tell me, what’s the definition of anorexia? It’s essentially starving, right getting an adequate amount of calories, right? Eating Disorder? Well, if you’re fasting to the point where you’re getting an adequate amount of calories, well, that means you’re automatically getting an adequate amount of nutrition. If your calories are cut in half, how do you get enough nutrition? I think it’s impossible. Now if you’re doing lots of organ meat and lots of nutrient dense foods and bone broth and green juice, you know, really good organic green You know, you have at least a head start there, but your body still needs enough overall calories, calories or energy. And if we’re eating whole food, nutrient dense calories, calories are attached to nutrients. And this day and age though it’s possible especially with Halloween, we got a whole bunch of calories and very low amount of nutrition. So you could have a lot of calories and low nutrition. But if you don’t get enough calories, it’s going to always be difficult to have adequate amount of nutrition. That makes sense.

Evan Brand: It does. Yeah, well, you’re pointing out the fact people will just when they go into a fasting protocol for cognitive benefits or try to lose weight, they may just pull a meal completely out so they’ll just not eat breakfast. Now they’re only eating two meals a day but they did nothing to replace those nutrients they lost at breakfast.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And especially if they’ve added in some exercise or they’re doing some resistance training, that could be an extra stressor on top of that. So you really have to look at your nutrition, run it through chronometer, just double check to make sure you’re getting enough because if you aren’t getting enough, that’s also a stressor. So you’re now trying to make your body less stressed by fasting and giving your tummy a chance to rest while at the same time you’re adding more stress. And that could create some cortisol surges at the wrong times. It may even create a little bit of a hypoglycemic drop at night. And those hypoglycemic drops can stimulate cortisol and adrenaline to pick up that low blood sugar. So that’s always a possibility. If you’re waking up in the middle of the night, so you have going to sleep and then you have waking up in the middle of the night. And so waking up the middle of night a lot of times could be a blood sugar thing. It could also be a gut or liver thing, right that liver hours between one and three it could possibly be connected with that as well.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve had people do this experiment where we’ll give them a liver tincture, like milk thistle Shonda berry combo or will do some encapsulated liver support before bed. And a lot of times that will improve that 1-3 am wake up time. So yeah, Chinese medicines, right Chinese medicines who said Oh, it’s got to be the liver. It has a circadian rhythm and it’s true

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean taking some activated charcoal and that liver and gallbladder pump stuff out that activated charcoal sitting in your tummy and it’s kind of soak it up. It also gives some good of iron and glycine before bed if that helps, you know, and like you mentioned giving some liver tone defying herbs like whether it should just Sondra milk thistle or artichoke or dandelion just things to naturally support the liver gallbladder that’s a good sign that there could be a toxicity issue as well.

Evan Brand: Yeah. So the blood sugar piece is great. I love how you tied it into the adrenal. So I mentioned the organic acids help. We’re looking at some brain chemistry markers there that could affect sleep. But in terms of saliva and your urine testing, we may be looking at that to measure that cortisol. Yeah, a lot of times we’ll see that inverse pattern where you’ve got that spike of cortisol at night and then it’s always up to us as practitioners to try to tease that out and determine what caused this evening spike was this someone who was looking at a bright blue iPhone screen before they collected the urine, where they you know, because the lab will tell you on the instructions if you read them correctly. It says Don’t be around a lot of bright lights at night because we want to try to get an accurate picture of whether the body’s doing this or was it some type of environmental exposure that caused the cortisol spike?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. We talked about how important the toxic exposure is. So this heavy metals are mold issues or the mycotoxins which them offer mold and there’s hundreds of mycotoxins, right. So if you have a mold issue is, it’s always pretty safe to assume it’s probably some kind of a micro toxin exposure.

Evan Brand: Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then we have just, you know, lifestyle strategies, like, for instance, if my son uses the iPad, we try to let him use it in the first half of the day, what we do is we put the blue light filter on, so there’s no blue light, and then we cut down the screen intensity by about 80 to 85%. So it’s like it’s really faint. You could barely see it. He doesn’t notice it. That way, if he has it a little bit closer, I don’t have to fight with him. It’s like, all right, the intensity is down. 90% we filled it out, you know, most of the blue light and it’s at least a good strategy in the meantime, while we put a timer on it. Do you have any strategies like that that you use for your kids?

Evan Brand: Yeah, so my daughter, like To watch a show that’s called Daniel Tiger, which is like a PV, my son watches that too. So, luckily, when I made a custom manufacturer of some blue light glasses, my buddy Matt, who made those, he also had access to some kids frames. So we got him to make some kids frames, kind of like hipster looking blue blockers for my daughter that fit her perfectly like toddler size. So that’s what she wears, if it’s anytime, anywhere even close to the sun going down. She’s got the glasses on, while she watches that they have TV filters that you combine. So Richard handler, the PhD guy, he’s in his 90s. Now who makes like the low blue light bulbs, they make TV filters that you can put over the screen, but our TVs like a 52 inch and they only go up to like a 45 inch or something so it just wouldn’t work and it’d be-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. Just wear glasses. It’s like you can fit these screens or you can fit these screens. Exactly. You know, with my son. There’s no way I’d ever get Keep glasses on like that would be like an absolute that’d be futile.

Evan Brand: But like my like him though he might want it

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Maybe he’s a little older-

Evan Brand: There was a little battle at first, but we just told her Hey look, if you want to watch this, you got to have these on and she was like, okay, and she was pretty compliant. But so you’re asking other strategies. We basically either use Edison bulbs like the little old school Edison-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One like an incandescent one.

Evan Brand: Yeah, where it’s really warm, really warm color and-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: More orange color at night. Yep.

Evan Brand: Or just the salt lamps will just use salt lamps. So the real lamps again?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so for us, same thing, I just find it’s easier to put an app on your phone, you mean with an iPhone, you have night shift, right? And I just have night shift on all the time and then I just cut the intensity, right? Because if you have a little bit of blue light there, but then I cut the intensity down 80% Well, whatever blue light is left is now down. 80%. So I just cut the intensity down, put keep night shift on all the time. And that’s like an easy Good strategy there are other apps that you can download that would you know even knock out even more blue light like with my iPhone here I have the new iPhone 11 Pro and at nighttime if I really want I have it set up so I hit the side button now three times boom boom boom. Now I every ounce of blue light is knocked out.

Evan Brand: Yeah, people that are listening on audio they can’t see but his screen is like blood red blood red

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now is that Yeah,

Evan Brand: Is that a special app to do that little bump bump bump and then red? Is that an app or is that something built in that you can do

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s in the settings and then you can go in there and this used to be the home button down here. So the new iPhone 11 I’m not loving it yet, but there’s no home button. So the side button is the new home button essentially or it replaces it and there’s a way where you can say okay, if you triple tap the home button or the side button, then you can make the screen change colors. And I’ll try to find the article of how to do that will put it in the description. So this is nice at night. So if I’m looking at something right before bed, or if I want a nightlight for my son, right or if We’re looking at something, you know, on the on the phone, my son pictures, I can just knock out every ounce of red light. So I have a blue light. So that’s pure red light. So that’s a really nice feature. And then I want to back Boom, boom, boom, that’s back.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve replaced the, you know, you shouldn’t be really eating before bed, but sometimes I have to go and get some type of drink out of the fridge at night. So I actually took the LEDs that were super, super blue and replace those with incandescent bulbs in the in the fridge and freezer. Our friend Luke story, he went like, above and beyond, he’s like, got red lights and everything like red lights in his oven, then red lights in its fridge. It’s like, Man, you shouldn’t be up that late at night anyway, so to me, I don’t care about doing that because I’m going to bed when it’s dark.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it just depends. It just depends how bad you’re in or how stressed your nervous system is. So like for me, if I get exposed to a little bit of light before bed, it doesn’t affect me whatsoever. Now I try to keep everything down. So we’ll have a fireplace on at night for most of our light. If US lights I have dimmer switches on all key rooms at night so I can knock down the light at least 80%. So at least have 20% I’ve stubbed my toe a couple times not fun. I do have the low blue light night bulbs and all of my kids rooms and our rooms. I will use that for like the bathroom. And I do have that and then my son does have a nightlight on we put it on a little bit because we have this little Baby Einstein thing, which makes pure blue light by the way. Yeah, so he loves it. But we find that if we put a nightlight in there and he’ll whack the Einstein much less than there’s less blue light coming out because it’s just a pure orange light. So we use the low Blue light.com nightlight and all the rooms and that’s just absolutely amazing. So for parents listening low Blue lights.com is going to be excellent. Get the light bulb, try to have good dimmer switches on all key rooms. And then the easiest thing is if you’re really that sensitive, just wear glasses because when you have the glasses and you’re pretty, you’re pretty dialed in now I get it there’s research showing that if it hits your skin to it could definitely you know, create some stress response, but it just depends upon how bad or how stressed your nervous system is. your nervous system is designed to adapt to stress. So if you’re really stressed, okay, fine. If you’re kind of in between, you may not need to go to all those extremes. So just do your best.

Evan Brand: Yes. And for moms listening, it’s been shown that the melatonin goes through the breast milk. So young children, they can’t manufacture their own melatonin. So they’re getting melatonin, through through through your breast if you’re breastfeeding, which hopefully you are, if you’re able to, and so I’m trying to pull it up now. But Richard handler, who we spoke about, he’s a low blue lights guy. He’s done some books on this. And he and this has been like, five, six years since I spoke with him. But he’s got books about the blue light connection to autism, bipolar disorder, reduction in cancer. We’ve already talked about that. Yeah, he just he calls it the silent killer, you know, concussions and how Avoiding blue light is super important when you’re trying to recover from concussions as well. So it’s a it’s an important topic. And this is not something that was around a long time ago like, you know, 50 years ago even there weren’t LED bulbs. He had incandescence where the blue was much, much less. I bought, you’re talking about a nightlight, I bought the little mini amber flashlight, it hooks up to a nine volt battery. So for live, I feel fine. So for trying to find a pacifier in the middle of the night, we could just turn that on instead.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I have that too. But for the most part with the iPhone doing this going all read that kind of replaces it. So I’m like, Okay, this is just really easy. That is not going to read out. So that’s not going all the blue out. So I like that. So we talked about the diet and lifestyle strategies. I think that’s really important, especially when it comes to your kids. I think some of the apps on the phones can be helpful, obviously big things like when I give my son, his iPad to watch so I can have a little bit of sanity and watch a show with my wife. We put it on airplane mode. We turn Bluetooth off, right? We try to keep a lot of the EMF out. All those things can be helpful. I try to put it on top of a pillow. So I’ll put a pillow on his lap. Yeah, then put up the iPad on top of the pillow that way, it’s not up against you know, any any private areas, you don’t want that. Those are all good, helpful strategies. Anything else you want to say about that?

Evan Brand: Just the testing piece, we hit on like organic acids, where we’re measuring brain chemistry to try to help people resolve this issue that talked about cortisol, either saliva, or urine. And then you mentioned the gut. So gut infections playing a role. I know when I had parasite infections, people say that parasites are more active at night and parasites are more active on a full moon. So if you notice that you or your kids are getting worse sleep around a full moon, it’s possible that it’s related to the gut. So we would be looking at some functional stool testing to try to investigate this problem.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, functional medicine where you’re going to plug in some of the organic acids or some of the intracellular nutrient test to assess nutrients. We’re going to look at infections that can be overly stimulating. We’re going to look at either some of the Dutch hormone testing or some of the salivary hormone testing to assess cortisol and then also women if you’re having issues especially where it’s more cyclical progesterone is a big part of Gabba Gabba really helps you shut down and relax your nervous system. So if you have a lot of stress going on there, your progesterone could be part of the problem. And part of that is progesterone is a precursor to cortisol. So if you’re under a lot of stress, your progesterone will drop and estrogen dominance is a natural side effects. So that’s a big part of the hormones and then blood sugar could be a stressor. So you mentioned not eating before bed. Some people that have blood sugar issues, they may do better eating before bed, they may do better having more carbs at night. Also, blood sugar stress can lower magnesium. Magnesium is a really important cofactor for blood sugar. So if you have a lot of up and down blood sugar fluctuations, and we’re constantly kind of react reactive hypoglycemic, that means eat some carbs, blood sugar goes up and then it crashes down with too much insulin because of the blood sugar being off with the carbs. You’re going to deplete some of your magnesium too. And magnesium is really important for promoting relaxation before bed. And during the day in general,

Evan Brand: Yeah, good point on the mineral depletion, because that’s a stress you mentioned, it’s a stress, you’re going to get to burn up those reserves because of that crisis of blood sugar getting too low. So what’s the remedy? Well, I mean, hopefully, your dreams are strong enough to handle going from say 6pm dinner to 8am breakfast, but if you’re not, then you may need to do some type of bedtime snack, a little piece of grass fed jerky, or maybe a scoop of almond butter or something like that. It’s relatively easy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, a lot of times I’ll do some vitamin C, some powdered vitamin C and some collagen. And then I’ve been doing a little bit of brain glandular tissue. before bed. We talked about that that’s really kind of helped with dreams. That’s kind of interesting. I think dreams do have a kind of a way of processing a lot of the emotional stress throughout the day. So we’ll do some brain glandular tissue. I’ll do vitamin C in collagen before bed, sometimes they’ll take some probiotics before bed too. So I like that That’s kind of nice little cocktail for me.

Evan Brand: That’s a good idea. That’s a good idea. I usually do my brain in the morning, but I might need to try it at night because you are getting some of that pineal gland in there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yep. I think that’s really good. And there’s some really good. There’s some really good CDs and music you can listen to before bed too. I’m pretty sure it’s either Delta or theta. I forget which ones is the Big Sleep wavelength.

Evan Brand: I believe the delta is your deep phases where people meditate. I believe delta is like your super deep wave, not 100% Sure.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll figure it out here. But there’s lots of ways that you can download specific music even just on YouTube. And that will help promote that frequency. I’ll pull it up here in just a second. Yeah, so delta or slow wave sleep. So delta is gonna be the big one. Yeah, so delta is gonna be the sleep so you can easily go on YouTube or just go online and you can get delta wavelength is also bionic. beats you can get different bionic beats as well, which are very, very helpful for promoting relaxation. So if you’re more stressed, you can go and download some Delta type music or bionic beats that may even incorporate Delta type me that’s very helpful to promote good, parasympathetic nervous system response. And if you have a hard time going parasympathetic, be very careful with exercise to close the bed, because that will ramp up your sympathetic response. And it may take you a while to turn off so you may be too revved up with that sympathetic response. So things that I’ll do to help kind of calm down as Gabba I’ll do higher dose actual ganda higher dose phosphor, let it serene higher dose magnesium, it to accelerate it you could do a magnesium footpath like Epsom salt, which is magnesium sulfate. Then you could also do it with a foot bath or a full bath, magnesium sulfate to really stimulate magnesium absorption.

Evan Brand: Good. Yeah, I’m also a big fan of lemon balm. We’ll throw that into the mixture you can use your passion flower, you could use hops, you could use catnip you can You skullcap. Valerian is great for some not good for others. Mother Ward is my favorite I love mother work for harp helps, especially if you’ve got that kind of worried anxious mind You’re overthinking and ruminating mother Ward will settle that down, I’ve actually measured put my heart rate monitor on and measure my heart rate variability and increased about five minutes after I took a shot a mother work. So that’s they call it like bypass in a bottle because it helps so much with the heart issues and circulation problems. So that’s another side benefit and I’m glad you brought up the brainwaves because some people may benefit and they may need if the nervous system is screwed, and herbs can’t fix it alone, meditation etc. Can’t help nature walks, they may need some brain training, you know like some neurofeedback can be very helpful to try to get you more in those theta like tranquil state or more the deep Delta State.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and easy for that as you can get the inner balance the new m wave plug and then you can plug it right into your phone and that kind of gives you almost an HIV. Then you can do five seconds in, five seconds out breathing wise all to the nose can be very helpful. And you could put it on and you could just pitch it to your ear type

Evan Brand: Have you have you tried different types of breathing strategies and see which increases your HRV score the best?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just do five in five out there are some different ones using box breathing where you do for in so it’s.. and then you hold for seven.. and then operate. So it’s a 478 and that’s been very helpful for just kind of relaxing and tranquilizing the nervous system and again, that’s seven, that’s seven hold. It does something with increasing co2. The hold is what’s increasing the co2 and then followed by the out and you try to make almost all of that you know through the nose on the outside it’s going to be probably okay going to the mall but try to go as much of the nose as possible.

Evan Brand: Yeah, tapping is good to you know, you could do some herbs, take a shot of some herbs and then tap, tap, tap calm the nervous system down, we know you can shift in a person. But the trick that way too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, the big thing with tapping is if there’s things on your mind that are just bugging you, and you’re just you’re kind of ruminating on it, this is where tapping is the best. So I just take our I’m going to take three to five minutes, and I’m going to just think about, and maybe I’m just going to have a conversation about all the things that are bothering me. And I’m going to just talk about the emotion, hey, this conversation I had with this person today really, really pissed me off, right, I felt very irritated. I felt very anxious. And you may just talk about what happened and just talk about the emotion and then just kind of go through and tap all the major points. I double tap it because I just feel like it’s really effective. And then once I have, you know, once I have that, like, let’s say I’m at a seven once I drop a little five or four, or ideally two or three. Once I had that big drop in my emotions, and I just don’t care. It’s like, okay, whatever. That’s where I’ll kind of, you know, go into prayer, go more into meditation or go more into just gratitude and thankfulness. It’s hard It’s hard to be thankful and focus on what you want when you’re pissed off. So these are good strategies to kind of just calm down once you’re calm, then you can focus on, you know, the things you got to do tomorrow, which I’m not a huge fan of doing that too much. I think what you’re better off doing is before you go to bed, have like your little app on your phone or some paper and write down the top three things, right? Boom, than hates there, you downloaded it, it’s there. And then you can come to it tomorrow, you don’t have to worry about it. And then you go into a kind of appreciation, gratitude, and focus on what you want to manifest those kinds of things. So the more you can kind of create parasympathetic is better. So I use the tapping to decrease the stress first, and then go into what I want to manifest. If you’re too stressed. It’s too hard to do that.

Evan Brand: Yes, it is. You’re exactly right. I had a client last week told me that her husband would always get mad when he would see her tapping, because he would assume that she was tapping because she was pissed at something he did. I’m like, that guy needs to get over himself. You’re just tapping to help yourself. And so she kinda like After that,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it could be something from work it could be. And who knows, it could have been like, maybe they had a little bit of a conversation before bed. And either way, it’s not a sign of whether you’re right or wrong and an argument because you could still be stressed, you know, and you’d have to decrease that stress from whatever that conversation was. Maybe it was just a really intense conversation about, you know, family, right. Okay, let’s, let’s calm it down and get into that parasympathetic. I think it’s a good rule is just, you know, no, no strenuous conversation within an hour or two before bed. Everybody go,

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, money and moving and travel and anything super intense. Yeah, I probably save you for waking hours.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s hard sometimes, though. Because if you’re waking up early, and you don’t see your wife to the next day, or vice versa. It’s like, well, you gotta put it out there because you need you know, you need to address it, but it’s tough. You try to do your best.

Evan Brand: It’s always a balance. It’d be interesting to hook ourselves up to like an EKG machine and see what our brain waves are doing while we’re doing a podcast together. I bet word and I’m sure we’re both probably in the beta state, like to fully alert awake Beta, but it’d be interesting.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I agree. Well, anything else you want to kind of dive into here I’m just trying to connect the functional medicine the nutrition, the blood sugar, trying to prime in some of the labs that we can do to dive in deeper if people are listening to this and they’re like, okay, I’ve tried some of these diet and lifestyle strategies I want to dig in deeper feel free to reach out to Evan, EvanBrand.com, reach out to me Dr. J at JustInHealth.com, feel free and schedule with us if you want to dive in deeper to address some of these root cause issues. Anything else you want to say Evan?

Evan Brand: Well, CBD since CBD so popular and trendy. I’ve used it I mean, I take CBD all the time just because I have access to a lot of different companies that have sent me stuff. I haven’t noticed a huge difference to be honest, you know, I’ve played with the dosing and and this and that, but I think if you’re just doing straight CBD without a tiny bit of THC is kind of the entourage effect which helps it work better. I just don’t think it’s a huge needle mover. If people may argue all CBD is a miracle. I mean, I’ve done a lot of high grade brands and higher doses and without the THC, I’ve just not noticed much benefits. So people that do report relief and like pain relief that allows him to sleep better, it’s always going to be more like an edible version versus like a sublingual version. So if you’re going to go for that, you know, you may want to do something that goes to the gut, as opposed to just doing like a like a soft gel versus vaping or smoking, soft gel under the tongue, those type things may work a little better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% so CBD I find it can be relaxing for me, but not any more than like magnesium or something nutritional so I rather just use a nutrient over time I can use a nutrient nutrient over like an herb that may not be a root cause kind of thing I always stick with the nutrient. I have found a really good success like if I have you know words with my wife or getting a stressful thing before bed. Actual ganda magnesium are just like they are my jam. They work really well. And tapping can be a little bit helpful. And then of course, white noise White noise is great. For the most part, I have my Austin air, crank it up on the highest setting that makes a really good bit of white noise. I have the white noise app on my phone. This is the one that I use. I’m going to hold it up so people can see it. If you’re driving, don’t worry, look at the link later.

Evan Brand: And what’s it titled?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s actually just called white noise. So I’m going to just pull up the picture of the app. So y’all can just see what it looks like. And then I’ve tried over the years, all kinds of different noises. So I’ll tell you exactly what I use.

Evan Brand: That’s a very that’s a very astute comment that you made that you would rather use a nutrient over an herb. I love that that makes total sense because yes, you’re not just like sedating yourself. You’re actually giving the body a nutrient to calm down. For example, this magnesium versus CBD. I think that’s just wonderful.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I totally agree, man. Glad that you appreciate that. So I do I do the paid one. The white noise here. There’s a you’ll see one in pink, red. Then one reddish pink and then one in blue. So I paid the $2. And it’s great. And that’s the one that I use. And I’ll show you the exact setting I use, I do brown noise. So the first couple of years I used it, I did white noise. Okay, here’s white, kind of a little hissy high pitch. And then I went to pink because I saw some data on pink for a while being very helpful for sleep waves, which is ok. Ok. And then I went to Brown, so just a little bit softer. So here’s Brown. The little bit softer. Like Brown. And then there’s also a violet, I think this is this is blue. Don’t do high pitch your hissy for me. And then violet was also very hissy.

Evan Brand: It didn’t really come through too good on the recording, so people have to just look up the app and check it out. That’s it. Oh, there you go. Yep. Okay.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s, that’s violet.

Evan Brand: And I think your microphone switched over to your, your headset instead of your big microphone to maybe it caught your Listen here and things. No, that’s still going good. Okay, good. No, I’m still good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s violet. That blue. That’s Brown.

Evan Brand: Yeah, like brown less horse than paint. I hear that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. So my favorite number ones Brown. number two Pink. There’s some data. There’s some data on pink being very beneficial for sleep waves probably brown as well. I haven’t looked at it. But browns, just the nice the most softest thing. And then also, if you want to have one fans are just really nice too. So they have a-

Evan Brand: Here’s the question.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Listen to a fan to like that. And so the nice thing is if you if you sleep with your wife or a partner, guess what? You just get the same app and you synchronize it so she’ll have her phone on and in the corner across the room on airplane mode. I’ll have mine as well. And then it’s synchronize But it becomes not that big of a deal because the Austin air that loud setting is so loud and it’s so nice, but that’s enough most of the time.

Evan Brand: Exactly. So I was going to ask this to you set a timer for that, like are you noticing any benefit on leaving that on I just was curious if you’re exposed to that noise all night versus just long enough to get you to sleep all night.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All night. I keep it in my bathroom. My wife sleeping in my son’s room just because the breastfeeding and you know having to wake up a couple of times that makes it easier on her and then also a nice I’m not getting disturbed. So she’ll have it she won’t have it now because she needs to hear my son. But when she comes back to the room, she’ll definitely synchronize it up but the Austin air has been pretty darn good but when we travel for sure it’s 100%

Evan Brand: Yeah, I love the Austin too and I sound the molecules to molecule for one, it’s you got the stupid blue light your light Turn off the light and the sound it sounds more like a vacuum on a low speed rather than the Austin is just a more comforting fan sound.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Austin is the best sounding air filter out there. It has no light on it, which is awesome. And the next thing is the little Turner guy. I wish they made out of metal, you know, and we talked about that as plastic a little switch. But the cool thing is you can put a setting on and then pull it off. So if you have kids that are monkeying with stuff, use pull it off, put it up high, and then they can’t touch it. So that’s kind of nice, too.

Evan Brand: Yep. Cool. All right, well, let’s wrap this thing up. But I put out and reach out clinically, Justin’s website is JustinHealth.com. And we can definitely help with sleep issues. But I’m going to tell you straight up your sleep issues are going to surprise you meaning what he or I uncovers, that’s going to surprise you because you’re going to come and you’re gonna think oh, I just have sleep issues and then we’re going to reveal you know, it’s it. Yeah, you do have sleep issues, but it’s because of XYZ and that’s the fun part is getting to the root cause of this stuff. So that’s what we do. Every day all day we live and breathe this stuff literally.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And if you guys are enjoying this information, give us a share a thumbs up, put your comments below. Let us know what What you guys have done regarding sleep regarding functional medicine and nutrition for your sleep what’s worked for you and then if you guys are really enjoying this give us the share and also write us a review JustinHealth.com/iTunes, EvanBrand.com/iTunes we appreciate your feedback and getting this out there so more people can help improve their health we really appreciate y’all

Evan Brand: Yep take care my website if you want to reach out to EvanBrand.com so JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com and we look forward to helping you so take care.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You guys have a phenomenal day. Take care y’all. Bye.

Evan Brand: Bye bye.