Post Viral Immune Support To Improve Energy | Podcast #363
What you eat after a viral infection, when symptoms of fatigue persist, can have a marked impact on your speed of recovery. Dr. J and Evan discuss that specific foods need to be avoided or included in your diet to improve your immune system. So what are the truth and the evidence about diet and post-viral immune support?
The good news is that most people will benefit from some considerations when recovering from illness or infection. Having post-viral fatigue means that you will not have your usual energy to think, shop, prepare or eat as before. Be very practical and kind to yourself. Dr. J and Evan added that diet modification is vital in your recovery.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
1:57 – The role of acid-pH level in the digestive system
5:01 – The link of depression and anxiety to bloating
10:02 – The benefits of probiotics and effects of stress to digestive health
18:17 – Functional medicine strategies and testing to find the root cause of bloating
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, how you doing man? How are your holidays? How’s everything going brother?
Evan Brand: Everything’s going pretty good. I’m trying to start 2022 off with a bang. I suspect it’s gonna be a better year than 2021. People are becoming smarter. They’re becoming more educated. They’re becoming more resourceful. People are waking up. There’s a lot of, we’re in the great awakening and so I think, this is an important time to be alive and an important time if you’re a parent, if you’re a husband, a wife, if you’ve got kids, if you’re a teacher. It’s important time to keep your eyes open and keep your ears to the ground because stuff changes quickly and you got to be like a little speedboot. You got to be able to take turns quick, you don’t want to be the titanic right now, you don’t wanna be slow in taking big turns, you gotta be nimble in these times and so what I’m alluding to is just you got to be able to navigate the world of health which is quickly evolving and that’s true. What we’re trying to talk about today is post viral fatigue and really that’s just the title but this really could apply to bacterial infections and parasites and mold exposure but we just wanted to try to zoom in a little bit specifically on post viral fatigue and things like Epstein Barr virus, many people are familiar with and there’s a lot of people that report their chronic fatigue, picking up after something like EBV, we’ve seen it a lot with the virus going around now which would probably get flagged and censored so we won’t say it but you know what it is and there’s a lot of post, uh, viral fatigue going on from that and so you and I have dealt with some of that, you’re still going through the thick of it right now but I think you’re coming through pretty well, you’re still working and obviously you’re on your feet right now literally standing so that’s exciting and yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For the listeners, I had COVID last week, actually symptoms started on Wednesday. Really two hard days of symptoms, I was able to work the whole time though, I mean I think that the symptoms for my COVID that were, um, tough was I would say achiness and then like sensitivity to cold like it was like 45 degrees out and it felt like it was minus 10. So, I would say sensitivity to cold and then also getting really hot at some points, getting out where I would sweat through my shirt. So hot and cold, achiness/ headaches and then like easily out of breath but I mean for me I mean, it was still fine where I could work and still do the things I had to do. So it wasn’t that bad, I mean, I had a flu in 2013 where I was literally laid up for over two days and I couldn’t do anything so I know laid up feels like it wasn’t even close to the flu of 2013 for me, that was really hard. So, definitely, um, not as bad, I actually was my own worst enemy because on Friday I was feeling like really good like 80-90% better and did like 2-3 hours of housework like cleaning my house like doing all this different stuff because it was a beautiful day and I’m like all right let me get on top of some work, work 3 hours probably walk like 15,000 steps and that next day there was a major relapse in how I felt. It was probably like I went backwards 30-40%. Here I was at 80% probably going backwards to 50. I was like whoa what happened and so then I just kind of got in the straight and narrow and just said okay I gotta really make sure I kind of make sure I kind of keep it easy until I get back to 100% because, you know, um, it just you didn’t realize how much, uh, things could go backwards so fast so you really gotta wait till you get a 100% on things and so overall I mean the only thing lingering for me right now is a slight bit of um out of breathiness and, uh, this little lingering deep tickle cough like right now you can feel it like someone’s tickling the back of your throat with your finger and you want to cough to scratch it, kind of like that and so that’s where I’m at now. That’s like kind of makes it feel like I scratch it right there, right. So, I’m doing some ginger tea, I’m doing with the Manuka honey that soothes it like that helps with the irritation. It’s not knocking the cough down. Doing some, Elderberry, um, doing some thieves, uh, natural cough drops with essential oils, um, also doing some nebulizer so I’m doing some glutathione nebulization so those are couple of things I’m doing and then obviously sinus flushes, the amount of mucus that is coming out of me is out of control so sinus flushes are really, really important because if you do not flush your sinuses, the amount of stuff that stays inside of you, oh my God. So, flushing my sinuses out 3-4 times a day, you know, really good saline reverse osmosis with a little bit of silver in there to kind of keep things flushed out is helping a lot. So, that’s kind of where I’m at but honestly feeling pretty good, um, the whole family got it purposefully, my wife had it and I’m like come over here honey gave her a big kiss and then I kissed all my kids, I’m like we’re done. We’re gonna get this thing all together, be done with it all that way we’re not, you know, I get it next month and then I’m isolating for two weeks and then my kids get no we’re gonna get it all at the same time and surprisingly my kids’ symptoms were 80% less than the adults, super, super minor. I couldn’t believe how minor it was for the kids, so very interesting. So, that was kind of my experience with, uh, with the big C, uh, so to speak. And also, the big correlation I was listening to someone talk about this, the, a lot of the post C symptoms that we see after, right, people that have dysglycemia, and blood sugar issues tend to be a big driving factor of a lot of these post viral symptoms afterwards. Talking about post-viral fatigue, one of the big things is make sure you manage your glycemia, meaning you’re having good protein, you’re having good fats, you’re not eating a bunch of refined sugar, grains, those kinds of things. Make sure you put good metaphorical logs on the fire, good proteins, good fats to really work on blood sugar stability.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll I’m glad that you’re coming through it. Regarding the shortness of breath, I would kind of put that in the same category as the post viral fatigue because that shortness of breath can create fatigue and the best thing that’s helped me and has helped many clients is doing the color oxygen. So, ChlorOxygen, you can get that on amazon, it’s readily available. And it’s just a, it’s a liquid chlorophyll extract. So, when you do that within probably 5-10 minutes, you can feel a difference, so it’s like C-h-l-o-r-Oxygen, ChlorOxygen. I would probably do 10-20 drops up to 3 times per day. That thing is absolutely incredible. You can go as high as one tablespoon in 20 ounces of water and just sip on that throughout the day. I had one guy in New York, major, major issues with shortness of breath in the acute and the long term and that ChlorOxygen literally just turned his situation around. So, I’d get some of that stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, it’s C-h-l-o-r Oxygen?
Evan Brand: Yeah, ChlorOxygen. Yeah, and it comes in a little bottle tincture and it’s incredible. Also, something I’ve used personally, I’ve used with several clients too is Ailanthus. Ailanthus is three of heaven which is an invasive tree. I see a lot of it in Kentucky but you can buy Ailanthus tincture and that one is also really, really good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Is this the one, right here, Is the ChlorOxygen?
Evan Brand: Yeah. That’s the one. Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Cool.
Evan Brand: Get you some of that but should help because that’s the problem is, you know, the shortness of breath was pretty bad for me and I felt better, you know, I got infected a long time ago. It was like August 2020 and then six months later that’s when I started to have some shortness of breath which I was like, holy crap and so luckily, I was able to knock it out, uh, with Demectin and uh, yeah, Demectin really helped me and then the nebulizer and the ChlorOxygen, I would say that combination was an absolute game changer, luckily, I haven’t had any issues since then. But what we are seeing is that the mitochondria have a role in this and some of this post-viral fatigue we’re seeing is due to mitochondrial damage so I’ve been fortunate enough to see a few dozen people now. And in terms of organic acids testing after the virus, and we are seeing that the mitochondria definitely showed dysfunction. You and I talked about this many times on other podcast about the mitochondria. We can measure the dysfunction and so what we’re doing is we’re coming in with mitochondrial support nutrients so CoQ10, we’re coming in with carnitine, ribose, a lot of these amino acids and B vitamins like riboflavin which can help fuel the krebs cycle and then also we can use things like PQQ to help get the mitochondrial biogenesis going, meaning we’re literally making new mitochondria so we can measure this on paper. So, if you guys are suffering, you know, one of us can reach out or you reach out to us rather and then we can get the urine looked at because we can measure this. You don’t have to guess where is this fatigue coming from. If it’s a mitochondrial induced problem, we can measure that. Now, you have permission to have multiple things wrong with you so there could be a dopamine problem, there could be a mitochondrial problem, there could be toxin problem. So, rarely is there one issue causing this fatigue but the goal is for us to try to get as many puzzle pieces laid out in front of us and then make an appropriate protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. I’d say, the worst thing about COVID for me right now, coffee tastes bitter like it tastes bitter, almost a little bit sour, does not taste like coffee. I’ve almost been like I’m not even gonna drink it right now until this thing gets better because it does not taste that good but for me I’m just alright, I got, you know, 20 grams of collagen in there, I got some good fats, I kind of look at it as like a meal replacement for me. So, that’s probably the worst thing the whole time. For me, it kind of felt like a cold. I’d say a mild, mild to middle of the road cold. The only thing that really surprised me was that, that back swing where I was like 80% better and then went backwards that was the hardest thing.
Evan Brand: And, it could have been you overdoing it for sure, I mean,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: oh, you totally did.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean I did have a little bit of that too where I kind of felt like I was better, overdid it and then I heard it again, so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. So, excuse me, anything else you wanted to highlight on that so far? I would say post-viral stuff, the things that I’m doing right now and I recommend people do, in general, are gonna be Adaptogens and I like medicinal mushrooms. So, Shiitake, Maitake, Reishi. Reishi is great. I love it because it does deactivate viruses. It does build up and support the natural killer immune cells so I do like that, uh, any type of ginseng, Ashwagandha, these are things that help support energy production, support the adrenals, help buffer the HPA excess. So, any of these types of things are gonna be, uh, helpful too.
Evan Brand: You need to get on some Lion’s Mane too for your taste because what I’m finding is that the nerves are damaged and that’s affecting the sinus. So, the sense of smell, sense of taste, some of that is related to nerve damage. So, I would probably hit Lion’s Mane, maybe like two caps twice a day. That’s been helpful to restore the sense of smell and taste in some people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably not damaged. It’s probably just more inflammation, right?
Evan Brand: Well, the long-term stuff, I’m talking to people just long-term. I’m talking to people that you know 6-8 months later say, I still can’t taste or smell. Bringing in Lion’s Mane, like 2 caps twice a day. It takes a few months but you know it does increase nerve growth factor and so I think that’s the mechanism.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s interesting. Yeah. I do have some Lion’s Mane. I’ll definitely add that in. I mean, I think medicinal mushrooms are gonna be really good to, um, be on top of, uh, just supporting your immune system and like helping with, um, the body regenerate and heal better.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Gabe was asking a question in the live chat on YouTube. How did you guys catch it? I don’t know, I mean I work from home. You know, I’ve got a home office, uh, Justin has a home office as well, you know, I do go out, uh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Personally, it’s the new variant. The new variant has an R-naught of seven, which is that’s equal to, uh, measles so the delta variant had an R-naught of 2 or 3 so that means for every one person that gets it, it can be passed to 2-3 on average, right. The new omicron variant, it’s seven, so you can literally pass it to seven people so I think my wife was in a yoga class with three people and they were like spread out across that broom like they were like way you know spaced apart, you know, for just all the safety reasons and it was still able to get it so my whole take on omicron, it’s very, um, I think the symptoms are milder than delta for sure. That’s what everything’s been reported but, um, it’s way more contagious. Everyone’s gonna get it at this point, you just gotta have your plan and, um, be ready ahead of time, right? People don’t have a plan and then when they get it then they get stuck and they feel like they have to go to the hospital and you don’t have as many options there so try to have a, um, outpatient plan ready to rock and roll but yeah, you’re gonna get it because the, um, our knot on this thing, right, is that seven which is at a level close to measles so it’s right there. So, if you haven’t got it yet, you will. Anything else you wanna highlight on the immune side, on the post-viral stuff obviously I’m a big fan of ginger, I think ginger is nice because it’s anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, uh, helps with lymphatic. So, if your kind of like have a lot of like stagnant lymph in the chest area or in the neck I really keeps the lymph moving all that’s very helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah. There was, uh, one person that commented if you’ve had delta you should have some memory T cells that will help if you get infected. Yes supposedly. Supposedly, um.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You definitely should have memory T cells as well as memory B cells, right? So, even if you were to get sick again, um, you’re gonna be able to recruit antibodies way faster, right? Normally when you get sick if you’re first time getting exposed to an infection it takes about a week or so to really get those antibodies ramped up and so even if you were to get sick twice, you’re gonna be able to make those antibodies inside of, you know, 24 hours or so. So, you’re gonna be able to bring those antibodies to the table a lot faster and so that’s, um, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Other strategies, uh, post-viral fatigue hyperbaric oxygen has been helpful. I’ve seen several clients that luckily have lived in a city where they’ve had access to do hyperbaric oxygen. Essentially, what it is, is it’s replicating being under water under water about 10 to 12 feet so that pressure is helping to get oxygen deeper inside of you. So, some of these tissues may have been starved of oxygen. This sort of mild hypoxia or hypoxemia, you know, you can basically reverse that by getting the hyperbaric oxygen. There are some people that can do there’s oxygen cans, little portable oxygen shots, if you will but it’s nothing compared to an oxygen concentrator with the hyperbaric oxygen so that’s good ongoing, I mean, I’ve had clients with Lyme that have done hyperbaric we know that’s incredible for traumatic brain injuries and concussions and that sort of thing. So, even if this is just a long-term fatigue problem, not related to viral issues at all, you know, hyperbaric is another good tool, you’re looking at probably around 100 a session but, you know, what, what’s your health? What is your health worth? So.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. One thing I did was very helpful was use my infrared sauna the last couple of days. That was helpful, just getting a really good sweat in felt very good, you know, raising that body temperature up can be very helpful just at um at your body knocking down viruses. That’s part of the reason why you get, um, chill while you get the nutshells but, uh, why you get a fever right. It’s part of the reason your immune system is actually knocking down some of that bacteria and or viruses by doing it that way so using an infrared sauna can be helpful too.
Evan Brand: So, look at your mitochondria, get your organic acids test done, we can measure that and look at mitochondrial function come in with specific support whether it’s B vitamins, adaptogenic herbs like Rhodiola, you mentioned, Siberian ginseng or Eleuthero. There’s medicinal mushrooms like cordyceps which there is some benefits. There are some papers on cordyceps and athletes and improving blood flow. There may be some level of oxygenation that happens with cordyceps too. So, cordyceps, reishi mushroom, I think the Lion’s mane for the brain and for the nerves would be beneficial, the ChlorOxygen for any of the shortness of breath along with the fatigue, rest, I mean just getting good quality sleep, making sure you got to do whatever you can to get good quality sleep. So, all the same sleep hygiene habits we’ve talked about for a decade together apply in regards to candling down at night if you need some passion flower. Even melatonin, there’s some really cool studies on melatonin. We know, it’s a very powerful antioxidant and we are seeing higher doses of melatonin be beneficial. So, in general, somewhere around 5 milligrams but there are some papers going wat up 30 – 40 – 50 milligrams and beyond. I don’t know a ton about the high dose so I’ll just tell you that the regular dose standard dosing is better than nothing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was that melatonin?
Evan Brand: Melatonin. Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Usually, it’s like the higher dose is like 10 milligrams and that’s gonna help with the oxygenation and then 30 – 500 milligrams for the arginine that’s to really increase the oxygenation.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The arginine for like nitric oxide production. Beet powder, you know, beet powder would be good too. So, anything you could do to create some vasodilation is gonna be smart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Anything else you wanna add, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. If you need help, reach out, get tested, hopefully you get back on the full mend here so, keep, keep rolling. You’re doing a great job and hope everybody is doing well and we’ll be in touch next week. If you need help clinically, please reach out. You can reach out to Dr. J at justinhealth.com or me, Evan Brand, at evanbrand.com. We’re happy to help you guys. Keep your head up. keep moving forward.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think the big thing out of the gates is to make sure you have time to sleep, rest. Don’t overdo it. Just know your body still needs more time even when you, when you’ve gotten through the whole thing to recover. Don’t overdo it. That’s really important. Keep the foundational nutrients dialed in so that would be like zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, you know, you can keep those things in there. You may not have to use them at such a high level that you did with the infection but keep some of those nutrients. Don’t go from something to nothing. Keep something in there the whole time, find a medicinal mushroom that you like, find an adaptogen that you like. Maybe keep a little bit of ginger tea going. Something that has some antiviral support and um, you know, try to get a little bit of movement but if it’s making you feel winded then just try to do just enough where you can feel like you’re doing something but not where it’s overly taxing you. I think it’s really important to kind of meet that right in the middle.
Evan Brand: Last thing, two last things, a low histamine diet is generally pretty helpful because there are a lot of issues with mast cell activation being triggered from this. So, a lower histamine diet, fresh meat, and no leftovers is very important. And then, histamine support. I’ve got a product called histamine support but essentially it’s quercetin plus some other nutrients so anything, you can do to stabilize your mast cells that’s gonna be helpful because muscle activation can cause fatigue, meaning, after the viral issue was over, the immune system can sort of have PTSD for lack of a better terminology and the immune system will go into this crazy state where it will shut you down so that fatigue trying to rebuild that energy back up is re-regulating the immune system so like the quercetin, other mast cell stabilizers are very helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Love it. Love it. Makes total sense and again not everyone’s gonna have that issue but you know, it’s kind of good to know if you fit into that camp. Those are a couple of strategies out of the gates. Anything else, Evan?
Evan Brand: No, that’s it. Take it easy. If people need help, reach out justinhealth.com and evanbrand.com will be available.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’re here to help you guys. I’ll probably be back later on today here. So, keep a lookout, comments down below. Let us know your thoughts on the topic, we appreciate a review. We appreciate shares to friends and family. Really helps us get the word out. You guys have a phenomenal day. We’ll talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take it easy. Bye-bye
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye you all.
References:
Recommended Products:
NeilMed Sinus Rinse Complete Kit
Genova Organix® Comprehensive Profile
Genova Organix® Dysbiosis Profile
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/post-viral-immune-support-to-improve-energy-podcast-363
Meditation Using Muse Device with Ariel Garten | Podcast #304
We all have thoughts, and none of us are good at meditation at first, during, or maybe at the end. Here’s Ariel Garnet, introducing us to the Muse and the use of an approach NOT to get rid of those thoughts but to help you make yourself aware of those thoughts and increase the choice of what to do with those.
Are you doing it right? The Muse uses Machine Learning Approach, which has an algorithm that analyzes brain wave activity. There, it shows focused attention (when it’s quiet) and distracted or wandering thoughts (when there’s a storm pick-up). Also, concentrated attention and meditation have a natural anchor such as word, part of the body, or our breath, which is more accessible. Ariel added that we have different forms of meditation and focused attention is the most common one. It puts the attention to your breath instead of following your thoughts and shifting it to yourself.
What’s the minimum dose? Twenty (20) minutes can be heavy, so it’s acceptable to do it up to what’s bearable for beginners and usually ten (10) minutes for regulars. It also shows that there are improvements with the body’s cognitive function, inhibition, and decrease in stress. Don’t miss the full video to see how it works!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:36 Muse Meditation Device
3:49 Basics of Meditation
9:30 How Muse Gets the Data
13:34 Biofeedback Devices
21:07 How Muse Works
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are alive. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Ariel Garten, the founder of the Muse meditation device, really excited to have her on today we’re going to talk about this awesome new cutting edge technology. And we’ll kind of also just bring it back down to the basics of meditation. What is it? What are the benefits? What’s happening in your brain and how to actually apply it? Ariel, welcome to the podcast.
Ariel Garten: Thank you my sincere pleasure to be here. Hello, everyone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself? And how did you make this journey into meditation and then what made you want to come up with this new technology to enhance that?
Ariel Garten: Sure. So my own background is a training in neuroscience. So I was fascinated by the brain and how it works. I then became a psychotherapist and began dealing with patients every day helping them shift their own mental state and recognized how difficult it was. And meditation was a skill that I was taught as something to use inside of my practice with my patients. But I would teach my patients to do it, and they would rarely actually start the habit. So it became this really frustrating process of teaching someone to meditate, and then not actually seeing the benefits rolling out into their life. I, at the same time was working in a research lab with Dr. Steve Mann, and he had an early brain computer interface system. So using eg electrodes, we could track your brainwaves and then turn that brainwave activity into sound. And we really had this aha moment, myself and my co founders of muse, Chris and Trevor, we had this aha moment that if we can make this invisible, intangible process, in your mind, visible and tangible, maybe we could apply that to meditation, maybe we could actually help people hear what was going on inside their mind while they meditated. And in doing so actually get people to start and maintain their meditation practice, if they could get real feedback and have real data from their brain. And that was born.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. So you have this kind of biofeedback, that kind of help you distinguish if you were in a good kind of brain wavelength state, so to speak. And then how does that how does that sound compute? So like, is it what’s the wavelength in your brain? That’s supposedly good? And how does it know that you’re there? And how does it How does it do all that connection back and forth?
Ariel Garten: Sure. So the old school approach to doing biofeedback or neurofeedback on meditation, is just to look at your band. So if you’re in beta band, you’re thinking in your brains all over the place, you’re likely not meditating. If you’re an alpha, you’re seeing an increase in meditation. And if you’re seeing some data, then there’s even more meditation. That was the old school way of doing meditation. At this point, we’ve now taught literally hundreds of thousands of people to meditate using news. And so we use a machine learning approach. And we have an algorithm that understands when you’re in focused attention, versus when your mind is wandering. So it analyzes every aspect of your brainwave activity at that moment, and knows if you’re specifically in focused attention, which is the fundamental of a focused attention meditation, or if your mind has wandered and is distracted. And what we do is we turn that into a sound that’s very easy to understand that it’s your mind. So when you’re focused, the sound is quiet. And when you’re distracted, you hear a storm pickup, it’s like my mind is stormy. Oh, okay, let’s bring it back to calm. And when you focus a calm again. And when your mind gets distracted on a thought up mind to stormy, then bring it back down to calm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s interesting, because I find a lot of people and even myself when they’re doing a meditation, one of the first things they kind of think to themselves is, am I doing this, right? Like, I’m not sure there’s kind of this hesitation of is this, is this all wrong? So I kind of like the fact that you get a little bit of a feedback. And so let’s say you’re using the device, right? And you get the storm clouds coming in, what should be the focus, like, what should that switch be to bring you back on track?
Ariel Garten: Sure. So you bring your attention back to your breath. So a focused attention. Meditation always has a neutral anchor, it could be your breath, that could be a word, it could be a part of your body, breath tends to be the easiest because your breath is always there. By simply counting your breaths, you’re bringing yourself back to a neutral anchor. You’re taking your mind out of your wandering thoughts into a place that is neutral and unintentional. Because most of us spend our life just wandering in our thoughts. Most of us just spend our life with the mind with thinking that just keeps going and we assume it’s supposed to be that way. But when you actually start a meditation practice, and recognize that you can identify when you’re thinking and choose to take your mind away from there and put your attention on something else other than your thoughts. At that moment, you fundamentally change your relationship to your thinking. You fundamentally can now choose the contents of your mind. And since most of the things in our mind are negative, repetitive, not particularly helpful, when we’re able to actually have choice over the contents of our own mental space and how we attend to it, you can dramatically shift the amount of stress, negativity, anxiety etc. in your life.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, very interesting. All right, so now someone’s coming into this or like, Hey, I haven’t even started meditating at all yet. So what does meditation look like for you is it just kind of what you kind of implied earlier where you’re just bringing that anchor, bringing that focus of that anchor back to the breath. And you’re just focusing on that, while you breathe in and out throughout the nose is that pretty much it to keep it simple for the listeners?
Ariel Garten: Totally. So that is the basis of a focused attention meditation, there are lots of different forms of meditation of focused attention is the most common. And what you’re simply doing is you’re putting your attention on your breath, your mind will eventually have a thought, because all of us have thoughts, it’s okay, you then notice that you have that thought, and instead of following the thought and thinking about your grocery list, or your husband, or whatever, you choose to say, Nope, I’m gonna let that thought Go and bring my attention elsewhere. Other than my thinking, I’m going to bring my attention back to my breath. And you just do this very simple activity over and over again. And the simple activity triggers those profound results, by the fact that you are actually now shifting the relationship to your own mind.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, okay. And so it’s okay, you shouldn’t beat yourself up, if your thoughts go off, just kind of recenter it back, be the observer of that, like, there should be no shame or any of that kind of feeling. If you can’t quite do it, or you can’t quite stick on it.
Ariel Garten: Exactly. None of us are good at meditation at the beginning, or even halfway through or even at the end. You know, we all have thoughts, and that’s okay. You’re not trying to get rid of your thoughts. You’re trying to make yourself aware of them and increase the choice about what you do with those thoughts.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. All right, interesting. So what’s the minimum dose to get some benefits? So if someone’s coming in is five minutes enough? Like what what do you recommend as a beginner to kind of see some benefit, but make the make the step to commit? Pretty easy?
Ariel Garten: Yeah, so with studies with news, we’ve looked at 10 minutes of meditation per day, and at 10 minutes of meditation, over six weeks, in trial studies, we’ve been able to see improvements in your relationship to your body, so less self reported, headache, nausea, etc, you’ve been able to see improvement in cognitive function as measured by the script task and go nogo tasks, improvement and inhibition, and obviously, a decrease in stress and improvement in calm. Okay, so in a lot of the studies in the literature, they look at 20 minutes a day, but 20 minutes a day is a lot to meditate for a novice. So the best amount of for you to meditate right now, if you’ve never meditated is whatever amount you can bear it for initially. That could be three minutes, that could be five minutes, you just want to start and try to do it consistently. Just five-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Five minutes be done twice a day?
Ariel Garten: Absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. All right, cool. And what’s the goal wavelength that we want our brain to be in during this meditation state.
Ariel Garten: So there’s, as I said, the old school way was to look at a goal wavelength. Now it’s no longer so much about the goal wavelength, it is about the state that you are in, and our brains are much more complicated than simply being an alpha or simply being in beta. Okay, what we see when you meditate is a significant increase in alpha activity. And also sometimes an increase in beta coherence. When you it’s not so just as simple as alpha, because alpha peak frequency changes as you age, okay, so when you’re young, you have the most amount of alpha at around 10 and a half hertz, let’s say, quite fast. As you age, your alpha peak, frequency slows down. So your alpha peak might be at 11 hertz, 12 hertz. And so as you engage in meditation practice, some of what might you might be looking to do is both to increase your alpha activity, and potentially to increase your alpha, decrease your alpha frequency to a faster wave. So it’s, it’s a lot more complicated once you start looking at the nuance of it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, all right, got it. And then what’s our active wavelength state when we’re just totally alert, doing stuff and working throughout the day?
Ariel Garten: Again, hard to say, when you’re active and engaged, you tend to be in beta waves when you’re thinking, but being in flow has a slightly different brainwave characteristic. And we also have different brain waves that we emit from different parts of our head. Okay, so you know, high, high, theta frontal midline, is going to be associated with really high attention, but high data from another part of your brain is also associated with mind wandering and ADHD. You know, it’s nuanced.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it. That makes sense. And so how is the device grabbing all this Intel? So is it I know it’s a device you put I think you guys have a Bluetooth connection or Bluetooth connection now. Correct?
Ariel Garten: Yep. So it is four channels of eg data. So it kind of slips on just like a pair of glasses. For those of you looking at the YouTube you can see the device now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Video guys, if you’re listening on the podcast, we’ll put the YouTube link below if you want to see the actual demo.
Ariel Garten: Yep. Or you can go to choosemuse.com/welcome. We also have videos there. That shows you what the device looks like. And so there’s two channels of eg data on the forehead and two behind the ears. And so that’s enough to track your brainwaves associated with focused attention versus mind wandering. And then that data sent to your smartphone or tablet where it interprets your brain activity. And lets you know, when you’re in the meditation zone and when you’re not. So you’re getting this beautiful guided feedback during your meditation. And then after the fact you see data, charts, graphs, scores, things that actually show you moment to moment what your brain was doing, and let you see your improvement session on session.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, that’s really cool. And now when you’re doing the muse, you have the device on. Is there any concern at all from you with the Bluetooth radiation that that’s connecting the headset to the to the phone or the smart device?
Ariel Garten: So the Bluetooth antenna faces outwards? So the radiation is going out towards your phone? It’s okay, low energy. So I mean, the amount of radiation that’s coming off there is infantile asmall, relative to even having your phone on the table.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, good. That’s good. Excellent. All right. So we have this device on right we’re utilizing it. What do you notice as correlation with a device meaning like if I’m eating diet changes, certain supplementation? I’ve noticed some patients of mine that have done the Muse device before and they’ve done magnesium and l theanine and different nutrients they’ve noticed, improve Muse scores, what associations have you guys made just on your own or clinically in practice with your patients?
Ariel Garten: Oh, that’s a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that. That’s super cool. Definitely, we notice when people start to meditate, they start to improve more habits in their life. So this is actually something that you see in the meditation literature that when somebody starts a meditation practice, it then becomes easier to adhere to the other things that you’re trying to do. Because you become more mindful, and you become more intentional. So you know, the the suggestion there is that you’re then more likely to take your supplements, you’re then more likely to help, you know, improve your sleep patterns. One of the things that we see when people start musing is that they report better sleep, and that they use Muse before they go to bed in order to improve their sleep. And so I we haven’t actually looked at what are the things that make your meditation better, but we’ve looked a fair amount at what are the things that when you meditate, also seem to be getting better in your life and in your health, and got their vast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. So you’re looking at Muse and then the effect benefits of it versus hey, these things over here may actually help make that Muse session better.
Ariel Garten: Yeah, and we have a number of studies running. So there have been over 200 published papers using Muse both as a clinical grade eg and a meditation tool. And the Mayo Clinic recently ran a study with breast cancer patients awaiting surgery. And they saw that using Muse through their surgery process was able to decrease the stress of surgery, improve their fatigue and quality of life. And now Mayo Clinic is looking at this relative to breast cancer patients going through chemotherapy, because they’re interested in understanding the impact of meditation with different forms of other interventions, be it surgery, chemotherapy, etc. And they’re also looking at a number of other disease states and studies using news to see how meditating with news can improve the outcome of those states.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. So what was your experience like with other neurofeedback devices? While you were a clinician seeing patients? We did you have a lot of experience with those devices? And then did you feel like Ah, this could be better, or we need to make something more portable for patients? What was your experience like with that early technology? And then how did it morph with the newer one?
Ariel Garten: So as a clinician, I didn’t use neurofeedback devices, but I had experience with biofeedback devices, and definitely felt that they gave interesting information, but that they didn’t actually give information about the brain. You know, they might tell you what your heart rate is doing, what your galvanic skin response is, but all of those are downstream effects of what war probably was initiated in your own mind. You know, the the anxious thoughts, the triggers that were mental that then ramp the body that then ramped the mind in this feed forward way. So, you know, we saw that there was a great opportunity. It was really at the beginning of the tracking movement, where you had wearables that track your sleep and your steps, but absolutely nothing that tracked your brain. And so we were able to develop Muse as an eg that would track your brain during meditation. And then since then, we’ve added more biofeedback methodologies to the same device. So in the Muse to you have eg degree feedback on your brain, there’s accelerometers and gyroscopes give you feedback on your body, there’s a breath sensor so you can get feedback on your breath rate and train yourself for different breathing exercises. There’s a PPG sensor to track your heart rate. And so you can actually hear the beating of your heart like the beating of a drum and learn to tune your interoception your understanding of your own internal state, and to know when your heart is increasing and decreasing can help you train your heart rate variability. So we’ve you know, pilot On a whole bunch of biofeedback methodologies on top of the neurofeedback as we’ve been on the path of creating and releasing news over the last six years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. So biofeedback would be more things related to heart rate breathing or neurofeedback is more biofeedback, specific to the brain wavelength, that kind of stuff. Okay, good. That makes sense. How does this correlate to like devices that are HRV heart rate variability, which a lot of people like the M wave devices that kind of connect heart connection to the brain and that coherent state of coherence we hear of that helps with with parasympathetic kind of repair and stress reduction. How does that? How do they connect? Is there a connection at all?
Ariel Garten: I can talk about that a little. It’s a cool question. So when you’re looking at your HRV, most people don’t understand what it is. So when you breathe in, your heart rate increases. As you breathe out, your heart rate decreases, this pattern is called your sinusoidal arrhythmia. And what your HRV is, is the difference between the fastest heartbeat on your intake and your slowest heartbeat on your exhale. So that’s why extended exhales actually make you more relaxed, because your heart rate is slowing more and more and more throughout the course of your exhale. And so an extended exhale is actually going to increase your heart rate variability. Now, when you’re super stressed, you have a very shallow change between your increase and your decrease of your heart, you’re probably breathing shallowly and your heart rate is going in parallel. So when you’re super stressed, you just see like a tiny wiggly line for your heart rate variability. When you’re relaxed, you have a great increase in decrease a great like up and down a nice, beautiful sinusoidal wave that goes with your HRV. And so that’s how you see the increase in your HRV. When you’re relaxed. In terms of the correlation with meditation, as you do the breathing through your meditation and relax your body and take your mind away from stressful thoughts. You are typically inherently increasing your heart rate variability, the correlation is not perfect one to one. But as you start to relax the mind and the body relaxes through deep breathing, you also see a beautiful change and shift in your HRV. And when you look at long term correlations for HRV, you see that people who are depressed for example, have very low HRV. And people who are not depressed and unhealthy states have an increase in HRV. So the kinds of effects you get with meditation also parallel the kinds of things you might see in somebody’s HRV.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s awesome. Is that a device? Or is that a biofeedback tool that you may add to the Muse at some point.
Ariel Garten: Um, so with the existing Muse Muse to and are new and Muse as you’re able to see a graph of your heart rate. So you can actually see your heartbeats like the increase in the decrease, you can visually see your HRV, we don’t give you an HRV calculation, because there’s actually a little bit of a controversy in the scientific field around how accurate instantaneous HRV is. So the pure science says that you need long term calculations of somebody’s heart rate in order to really get their HRV. So we’ve steered away from a specific HRV calculation, but you can see it on the graph like you can see actually what’s going on in your heart. And it’s quite amazing. You can see when your HRV is good, and when it’s short.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool, what other little kind of nuances with the device you can share with us that could be could apply to improve our health on top of what you already mentioned so far.
Ariel Garten: Sure. So we have a new device that just came out Muse s, and for those of you watching the video, it is right here. It is a soft, comfortable form factor, and the module just pops off, you can watch the band. And we made it specifically for people who want to track their brain overnight and help them to fall asleep. So we found a lot of people were using us to help them fall asleep. And but you’d have to take your Muse device off when you fell asleep. So we made Muse s super comfy, so you can just fall asleep with it on. And we give you these beautiful things called sleep journeys, guided sleep journeys, they’re guided meditations that lull you into sleep. And you also get a soundtrack that’s actually built from your body that’s designed to entrain you into sleep faster. So you might hear the beating of your heart like the chirping of crickets and the soundscape. Or the movements of your body like the lapping of waves, you’re literally hearing your own body. And then what we do is as you start to get into a rhythm and slow down a little bit, we actually slow down the soundtrack in a way that’s designed to train you to fall asleep faster. And so it’s a super beautiful experience. And then towards the end of this year, we’re releasing comprehensive eg sleep tracking. So you’ll be able to see all sorts of details about your night’s sleep even you know coffee details like the amount of sleep spindles you had.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really cool. I think anytime you’re trying to teach someone to develop a new habit, especially when they don’t have a lot of confidence, it’s important to have a coach or someone to kind of pat them on the back or give them encouragement that they’re doing the right thing or, or feedback after doing the wrong thing. And I think the benefit of this device, it really provides that little bit of a meditation coach over your shoulder to give you a pat in the back or give you feedback if you’re not on the right track. So I think it’s really beneficial. Because if people can can do it and feel confident about it, they’re more likely to make it part of their kind of day in day out habits.
Ariel Garten: Absolutely. That’s literally why we built this, whether you’re somebody who’s never meditated before, and is just like what’s going on, or you’re an expert meditator who wants more insight into your process. This is a device that’s literally like a little coach or guru inside your head, encouraging you showing you what’s going on giving you your feedback, so that you can know when you can improve.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. So how does this work? So you put the device on? Is there any way you can do it while we’re on live on the podcast here?
Ariel Garten: Not while holding my microphone simultaneously.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’d be amazing.
Ariel Garten: So so this is the Muse here. It slips on. Great, it then would connect to the app on my phone. So here is I don’t think you can see there’s too much glare right there. There you go. There’s the Muse app. And so inside, that’s my notification that I have new content available. Inside the Muse app, you have meditations for the mind. And there you can set the length of time that you’d like to meditate for the soundscape you’d like to use what you’d like guidance or not. We also have meditations for the heart, where you’re hearing the heart like the beating of the drum, you can actually see your own heart rate variability and what it’s doing more meditations for the breath for the body. We have an entire section of guided content here. Let me open that for you. Where we have literally hundreds of meditations for stress, anxiety sleep, we say if you’ve got a problem in your life, we’ve got a meditation for that. So whether it’s performance, workplace, etc you can go in there and really find the thing that you’re trying to work on or is bothering you and get a meditation and guidance and insight to help you in that process. With or without your Muse.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. I totally love it. I’m really excited to try this out get my own device go and that’s awesome. We’ll put a link here for the listeners choosemuse.com/welcome, choosemuse.com/welcome. And the discount code will be welcome 10 we’ll put the links below. So if you guys are driving and you’re active, we’ll put that below so you can access the later areas or anything else you want to leave the listeners with right now.
Ariel Garten: Really the understanding that if you’ve tried meditation before, and you’re like, I don’t know, I’m not good at it, whatever. Put all of that behind you because literally anyone can meditate. It’s not about whether you’re good at it. Whether you feel like you did it well or not. None of that matters. Meditation is just a process that you practice a little bit every day. And when you do it you will start to see the fruits and the benefits in your life.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it is there anywhere else people can get more information about you or the device.
Ariel Garten: At choosemuse.com/welcome. There’s lots of information about the device, the neuroscience behind it and more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Ariel, thank you so much for being part of the podcast.
Ariel Garten: My sincere pleasure. Thank you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thank you.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/meditation-using-the-muse-device-with-ariel-garten-podcast-304
Keto Tips and Common Misconceptions
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
What if I told you that eating bacon, avocados, and butter could not only improve your health–it could also help you lose weight? By now you have probably heard of the keto diet, but what exactly is the keto diet and how does it improve your health? Let’s dive in!
What’s the Keto Diet?
The Keto Diet is a high fat and low carb way of eating which prompts your body to enter a state called ketosis. Ketosis is when your body burns primarily fat, rather than glucose, for energy.
The standard American diet is very heavy in carbohydrate-heavy foods. When you’re eating a high-carb diet your body mainly runs off of glucose (sugar) as fuel. However, if you cut the carbs and start eating more saturated fat, there’s no more glucose so your body starts burning fat (including stored body fat) for fuel instead! The weight loss effects of entering the metabolic state of ketosis is a huge reason why the keto diet is so popular for weight loss, but it also a great way of eating to lower inflammation, improve your insulin response and prevent/heal diabetes, and is protective against cancer, Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Glucose actually burns dirty, like a diesel fuel. It’s stinky. But ketones burn really clean–you don’t get a lot of reactive oxygen species or free radicals afterwards. Imagine fat is like a big branch and that you throw into the wood chipper, and then out of that wood chipper comes these things called ketones. These ketones can be used by different tissue in the body. In addition, burning ketones avoids the effects of glycation, which is basically all the proteins or tissue in your body gets sugar-coated and that creates basically a magnet for free radicals. Ketones are stable, whereas burning glucose is a constant up and down reaction.
How to Lose Weight on The Keto Diet
One of the biggest ways we can induce ketosis and burn body fat for fuel is by cutting carbs. Typically 20-30 grams per day is a great starting point for most people.
I recommend following a Paleo template for your keto diet, utilizing non-strachy vegetables for the bulk of your carbs. Around 20-30g per day is the sweet spot for most people. This is attainable if you keep your carbs to your paleo veggies: a cup of broccoli, a cup of spinach, a cup of kale, some asparagus, a salad… Once you factor out the fiber, you’ll probably be around 20-30 net carbs. As you continue with the keto diet you can play around with your carb range, some people feel better on 10-20 grams, others do well hitting around 40-50 grams of carbs per day.
How Do I Know if I’m In Ketosis?
Some people like to measure their ketones, either measuring their breath, urine, or blood. Not all of these methods are always effective–for example, if you’re burning ketones, they may not end up in the urine, giving you a false negative.
I use a ketone meter, either the Abbott Precision Xtra or Precision Xtra, to measure blood sugar in addition to ketones. The Ketonix breath meter is another good way to measure.
A Common Keto Mistake
One of the biggest keto mistakes is eating too much protein, as high as 30-40% protein. It’s hard to eat that much protein unless you do two things wrong. Number one, you eat lots of lean meat, and number two, you use excessive protein powders.
However, you can get away with going higher on protein if you’re doing a lot of resistance training. However, most of us are not elite athletes, so ideally your macros will be about 60-70% fat as a pretty good starting point.
Keto Misconceptions
Let’s clear something up. When people hear about ketones, they’ve likely been in the grocery store and they’ve seen the “raspberry ketones” as a weight loss supplement. This became very popular over the last few years. First off, raspberry ketones aren’t even derived from raspberries. Most of the time these products are filled with synthetic chemicals, artificial colors and artificial sweeteners. I do not recommend them, the ingredients will most likely do more harm than good.
For a good ketone product, try Keto OS or Keto Sport which use beta-hydroxybutyrate salts, which are the gold standard in keto products.
You can use ketone precursors like medium chain triglycerides C8 and C10. These MCT oils provide both the brain effects and metabolic effects of ketones. In the morning I do butter coffee with a high quality MCT oil. I’ll get my ketones up within an hour or 2 to—to .5, .6 mmol and I feel great.
Some people think the keto diet may be dangerous and destroy muscle. Sure, you can be in ketosis when you’re starving yourself. This doesn’t happen on the keto diet because we’re doing it nutritionally, meaning we’re actually eating foods. They’re real whole foods and we’re getting enough calories so you’re body’s not going to be eating away lean tissue.
Can I Cheat on the Keto Diet?
Cheating on the keto diet implies you’re eating enough carbs to bring you out of ketosis. Some people like to cycle in an out of ketosis in daily or weekly cycles. If you save all of your carbs for the evening and have some sweet potato or dark chocolate, the carbs can actually help you sleep! Some people can develop hypothyroid symptoms if they stay in ketosis long term. These people, primarily women, may benefit from cyclical ketosis like 5 days on, 3 days off.
Exogenous ketones can be great from a performance and neurological standpoint. They can be phenomenal if you are on the ketogenic diet–we call it therapeutic ketone therapy. However, if you’re still eating high carb and high sugar, don’t waste your time and money on expensive ketone supplements.
Who Should Try the Ketogenic Diet?
I recommend the keto diet for most people, especially those dealing with metabolic syndrome, which is when there’s a level of insulin resistance and you’re body is having a difficult time tapping into fat for fuel.
The Keto Diet is also great for cancer patients, Alzheimer’s patients, anyone with metabolic syndrome, women with a waist size 35 or larger, men with a waist size 40 or larger, blood pressure over 140, and anyone with inflammation or chronic pain.
The Best Bone Broth for Gut Health
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Bone broth seems to be all the rage these days, but what exactly is it about this bone juice that has everyone obsessed? Bone broth is so much more than a trendy drink: it has the power to aid in healing many modern issues, from leaky gut to wrinkles!
The Power of Bone Broth
What is Bone Broth?
Bone broth is made from animal bones, tendons, ligaments, marrow, skin, and other flexible connective tissues. In modern times these parts are usually discarded as they aren’t easily eaten on their own. However, when simmered in water for long periods of time, animal bones and tissues make a healing nutrient-dense elixir. The best bone broths are made from the parts of organic, grass-fed animals. To pack even more nutrient density, you can also add organic vegetables to turn bone broth into a flavor-packed sipping broth or use it as the base for a soup.
Bone Broth’s Secret Weapons: Collagen and Gelatin
The protein providing strength to animals’ (including humans!) bones, cartilage, and tendons is called collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin, a jello-like substance.
The best bone broths contain collagen and gelatin which provide your body with a host of immune-boosting properties, amino acids, and gut lining support to aid and heal many modern ailments.
Healing Benefits:
Bone broth is easily digested, unlike many other foods which can be hard to break down. But the real power of bone broth is that it is actually healing to the digestive system. It has been found to aid in cases of leaky gut, IBS, food allergies and sensitivities, and much more.
Collagen is a protein that forms the GI tract lining. Consuming the collagen and gelatin in bone broth helps heal the walls of the gut lining, preventing food and toxins from escaping and causing inflammation and other damage outside of the tract. This is major good news for those suffering from poor digestion and gut-related health issues (leaky gut, IBS, Crohn’s).
The collagen and gelatin from bone broth are also great for anti-aging effects. They keep the skin youthful by reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, aid the growth of hair and nails, and strengthen your bones! Collagen also helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite over time.
Essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, and silica are all electrolytes in bone broth which keep you hydrated, help with bone health, and can reduce brain fog and fatigue.
The amino acids found in bone broth include glutamine, arginine, glycine, and cysteine, and proline. Together these amino acids offer a wide range of benefits, including:
- Skin elasticity
- Build up the walls of the intestines
- Aid in proper bile and stomach acid production
- Enhance the immune system
- Anti-inflammatory, reducing oxidative stress and autoimmunity
- Promote human growth hormone
- Liver detoxification support
- Generate glutathione
Where to Find Bone Broth
You can make bone broth yourself, at home! Below is my favorite recipe for cooking up a big batch of anti-aging bone broth. If you are someone who would prefer to purchase bone broth, or are looking for something easy to take on-the-go, I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. Kettle & Fire is the best bone broth I have found, and they use premium ingredients like 100% grass-fed bones, organic produce, and apple cider vinegar to create a delicious and nutritious product that is easy to heat up and sip, or use as a base for soups and other recipes! Bonus: it’s also paleo and keto friendly! You can check out Kettle & Fire bone broth here.
Takeaway
Bone broth is incredibly simple to make, especially when looking at the benefits reaped from consuming this healthy elixir. The collagen, gelatin, amino acids and minerals in collagen make bone broth an incredibly simple and powerful solution to create healthier joints, skin, bones, and gut. If you’re looking to try my favorite bone broth for both flavor and health benefits, click here.
Sources:
https://blog.kettleandfire.com/4-amazing-ways-collagen-bone-broth-heal-your-gut/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949208
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358810/
Scaldaferri F1, Pizzoferrato M, Gerardi V, Lopetuso L, Gasbarrini A. The gut barrier: new acquisitions and therapeutic approaches. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;46 Suppl:S12-7.
Eating A Plant-Based Keto Diet
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Eating a ketogenic diet has reached mainstream popularity, often referred to as a diet full of meat and cheese. If you are interested in the fat-burning health effects of the keto diet, but turned off by the consumption of animal products, you may be curious if it’s possible to be both plant-based (vegan vegetarian, pescatarian) and stay in ketosis. Good news for all you meat-free folk: ketosis is most definitely achievable while sticking to plant-based foods!
Refresher: What’s the Keto Diet?
In a traditional Keto Diet, you eat high fat and low carb, and your body enters a state called ketosis. Ketosis is when your body begins burning primarily fat, rather than glucose, for energy.
The Standard American Diet is composed largely of carbohydrate-heavy foods. With a high-carb diet, your body runs off of glucose (sugar) as fuel. When you lower your carbohydrate intake and reach the metabolic state of ketosis, there is not much glucose available, so your body begins to use fat for fuel–including stored body fat. This is one reason why the keto diet is so popular for weight loss.
In addition to the weight loss benefits, the keto diet has shown amazing results for lowering inflammation, regulating insulin response, and protecting against cancer and neurological disease. It’s no wonder this diet has taken over the health world!
How to do the Keto Diet and Eat Plant-Based
Mainstream chatter about the keto diet leaves our plant-based friends in the dust; many vegans and vegetarians don’t realize that they too can partake in the keto-hype!
No matter your diet, it’s important to choose high-quality food sources. If you are eating a conventional keto diet, a fast food hamburger patty with cheese technically meets the “keto requirement” of high fat/low carb, but it is not going to provide much nutritional value (and if anything, will have negative effects on your health). Similar scenario with a plant-based diet: Eating chips and soy veggie dogs is within the bounds of a vegan diet, but is not going to do you many favors in the health department.
Applying this to a plant-based keto diet–let’s look at how we can reach ketosis with high quality sources of fat and protein.
Questions about plant-based keto? Click here to talk to the doctor!
Plant-Based Foods for Ketosis
For plant-based ketosis, here are some of the foods that should make up a large part of your diet!
Plant-based keto foods (vegan-friendly):
- Avocados: Avocados, and avocado oil, are a great source of healthy fats as well as a whole host of micronutrients.
- Coconut: Coconuts, coconut oil, and coconut yogurt are great sources of healthy fat. Add coconut oil to your coffee for a satiating keto coffee to help extend your morning fast.
- Olives: Olives are a delicious snack and make a great addition to many meals! Load your salad up with olives and drizzle with olive oil.
- Nuts and seeds: These are an excellent keto-friendly snack, and can also be added to many meals for an extra dose of fat and protein!
- If you are vegetarian (no meat, but other animal products are okay): Pastured eggs, goat cheese, goat yogurt, grass-fed butter and ghee are great sources of healthy keto-friendly fat and protein.
- If you are pescatarian (eat fish), wild-caught fish is an excellent source of healthy fats and protein.
Keto Foods to Avoid
Let’s have a look at a few common “bad” plant-based foods and why we want to avoid them.
- Highly processed seed oils: canola “rapeseed”, vegetable, and soybean oil are all highly inflammatory oils prone to oxidation.
- Soy: Soy is high in antinutrients, which inhibit nutrient absorption. This means that any meal containing soy is going to automatically have lower nutritional value. Soy is also high in lectins, which are linked to leaky gut, inflammation and autoimmune reactions.
- Seitan: Seitan is a soy-free meat replacement, however, it is made from wheat gluten which is inflammatory and can lead to leaky gut and other health issues over time.
Good sources of protein on a plant-based diet, keto or not, include nuts, seeds, spirulina, natto, and tempeh.
Takeaway
Plant-based ketogenesis is totally possible! Just like any other diet, be sure to choose your foods with care: organic nuts and product, high quality fats and oils, and if you are vegetarian or pescatarian, pastured eggs, grass-fed dairy, and wild-caught fish. Choosing organic whole foods provides you with the most nutrition, while avoiding pesticides and inflammatory compounds.
Curious if the keto diet is right for you? Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23801097/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19664276
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1503071
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1868922
Conventional Medicine to Functional Natural Medicine | Podcast #232
Conventional medicine is a system in which medical professionals treat symptoms in diseases using medicines, or surgery. Functional medicine, on the other hand, is a treatment that focuses on optimizing the functions of the body organs, which involves holistic or alternative medicine.
Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Russell Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe is highly respected in the functional medicine industry. As a physician and scientist who aspired to be comprehensive, objective, empiric and experiential, Dr. Jaffe started his career searching for deeper understanding, wisdom, evidence, and insight in mechanisms of health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe
In this episode, we cover:
00:51 Medical Research to Functional Integrated Nutritional World
10:32 Intermittent Fasting
15:02 Keto Diet
34:15 Importance of Vitamin C
58:56 Importance of Vitamin D
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome back to the beyond wellness radio podcast. Today we have a phenomenal guest, we have Dr. Russell Jaffe in the house. Dr. Russell is a Ph.D. MD nine years all at Boston University. One graduation lots of good knowledge there and Dr. Jaffe was really on the conventional medical side. I really want to dive in we’re gonna get his story and how he converted moreover to the functional natural integrative kind of model. Dr. Jaffe runs the perk supplement company, he also runs the company called Elisa Act which does premier testing for food allergens. Dr. Jaffe welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Thanks for having me
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s just dive in. I want to hear your story and how you went into this mainstream medical research kind of world environment over to the functional kind of integrated more nutritional world. How did that happen?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I was trained in need in academic medicine at Boston University then I matriculated to the National Institutes of Health where I was early on the appointed to the senior staff which is a bit of an indication that my science was acceptable and of course I was skeptical about anything that I didn’t learn in academic medicine in internal medicine in clinical pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In fact, when I heard that Queen Wu, an acupuncturist in Washington DC, could get results that NIH could not get. I went with great skepticism and ended up doing a seven-year apprenticeship with him
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Then I then I heard about yoga and I heard about Dr. Ramamurti Mishra an MD Ph.D. cross-trained in Banaras, wrote the textbook of yoga psychology commentary and Patanjali sutras. I went as a skeptic and I was his acolyte for five years, then I met a Cambodian Buddhist monk named Anti Dharma Aawara and I had the last 30 years of his life from 80 to 110 mostly together
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow that’s amazing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So, I came as a skeptic but when I… but I was also curious and because I was curious, I went outside my silo I went outside my immediate peer group. Because I can tell you that when I started to bring information about traditional oriental medicine and acupuncture to the National Institutes of Health where it’s practiced today. I can tell you it was met with great indifference and crashing silence. Because these were very smart people who knew that they knew more than anybody else because they were at the NIH and I was you know with them. But I was also outside, curious, finding mentors who had answers, wisdom, traditions that I knew nothing about. You know I mean I knew from nothing. So, I had the time with Queen and with Ramamurti Mishra, Dr. Mishra and with his Cambodian Buddhist monk Anti Dharma, and yes, my world has absolutely turned around if you will. Why? Because I now advocate nature nurture and wholeness, I advocate physiology before pharmacology. I advocate eating what you can digest assimilate and eliminate without immune burden. I can tell you if you get restorative sleep and you keep your neural hormones and balance then gratitude will rise up at least in the springtime when you see the earth renewing itself. So yes, I do think that a functional, integrative, personalized, primary, proactive, predictive, personalized prevention practices is the medicine of the future, and my work is to speed the transition from sick care to health care. Because most people get sick care today, they really don’t get health care. In your clinic they get health care in my world I would like everyone to get health promotion health care preventive, proactive care. But that is a dream today, that is an aspiration. It is also a necessity because the cost of sick care is going to sink the businesses of America. We’re not going to well, let me summarize very quickly who. Uwe Reinhardt, a very famous Princeton health economist. He says, if you just look at the rise of chronic disease today and projected forward a generation or so, everyone’s gonna be in a hospital bed taking care of the person next to them. No one’s gonna be working or paying taxes that’s clearly not a vibrant productive society.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct 100%. Now I’m just curious having it’s such a, you know strong conventional background MD, Ph.D. and having to had such an open mind to pull in other modalities and other forms of natural medicine and you know you’re looking at obviously the outcome you’re looking at the effectiveness. What it’s your colleagues think cuz I mean obviously conventional medicine, the allopathic pharmaceutical surgical approach, it tends to rely on not addressing the root cause and it tends to not have a preventative nature to it. So, when you are looking at these natural forms of medicine obviously prevention kind of comes in we’re gonna be talking about predictive tests that can help us look at and assess and maybe prevent some of these things but what did your colleagues think did you feel like they were threatened? And then what was the atmosphere around with just the drug industry? You know cuz that kind of motion one direction.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I can. I’m gonna answer your question but before I answer it, Merck Sharp & Dohme gave me their annual award one time. I got the meritorious Public Health Service Award one year; my work was featured in the New York Times at one time. So, I was not unknown or unrecognized, I got to teach every year because NIH has its own University on topics that I was interested in that I was interested in introduced.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But to answer your question especially about people who have advanced degrees they either come out of what’s called the Decartian Reductionist Mechanistic way of thinking, in which case I will not talk to them because they won’t understand what I’m saying and it probably will be uninteresting or irritating to them. Then there are the people who come out of the Garrettian Rudolf Steiner.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Before that, there was a theorist as Hoenn half before that you can go all the way back to Mymanatis and Hippocrates. But I will mention that Hippocrates practiced on the island of Kos because the conventional doctors and Athens drove him out of town.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Because ah was for radical to their beliefs and now, he’s a father of Western medicine
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable so they, you did get some accredited you did get some accolades but not enough to incorporate a lot of these things in mainstream medicine. So, there’s still kind of a block.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well that’s above my paygrade.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My responsibility at the time was to do my job.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To publish to communicate to inspire to inform to motivate and I’m glad to tell you that many of the people who are skeptical of my enthusiasm at the time have gone on to research in these areas and now they too have come around and an example, a very important example, but it’s just a personal face on this conversation Dr. Tony Lamas, Gervasio Lamas, he is the chairman of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami and he is on the Faculty of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York and he led the tact trial funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute NIH NHLBI he is the superb cardiologist, very conventionally trained, who now has documented the benefits of chelation therapy especially for people with diabetes. And we’re both on the rostrum today, we’re both on the program teaching other doctors. What we find to be the information that inspires us that keeps us younger and I will mention that he and I just got off the elevator just before our interview and he noticed that I had lost 65 pounds and I mentioned
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I wasn’t going to find them again and I noticed that he had lost some weight. And so we commiserated with each other because it’s not easy to get to your lean weight but you feel so much better your restorative sleep is so much better your digestion so much better your moods are so much better. That from my point of view it’s absolutely worth doing in fact it’s an investment in my future and others have heard this I don’t know if you have, Dr. Justin, but I’m planning to be dancing at 120 and I want you and I want you to be with me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful. That’s wonderful that’s excellent. Well, also you got your CCN as well so you obviously have it your conventional medical training. When did you go and start learning more about nutrition, in general?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I actually, I actually helped found the IWCN, I was the program director for the first eight years of the certified clinical nutritionist program, I believe that I have CCN number one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow so before we dive into some of these predictive markers and I also want to you know get a sense of your background too because you also started a supplement and lab company which I think is very unique as well, but before we go into that, what would you say, give me a breakdown what’s your typical day like breakfast lunch and dinner, how do you spend your day doing a lot of research what’s that day like?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well thanks for asking. Here’s my day, I’m kind of a farmer which means I go to bed early, I get up early. I get up usually before dawn and I happen to have a wonderful mattress that I love and I stretch before I fall asleep, I stretch when I get up before I get out of bed, then I kind of check myself then I have a morning shower while the coffee is brewing and I do get organic shade-grown tea buried coffee from a wonderful guy who roasts the beans the day he sends it to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And while the coffee is brewing, I take my shower and I stretch again in the shower and I go through a mental checklist to see if there’s any part of my body that really needs help today. Then the next thing I do aside from putting on some clothes usually, is I make sure I’m well hydrated and I am now following a fellow who believes that it is better, in the long run, to take almost all of your calories in just six hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm so intermittent fasting?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, you can call this intermittent fasting. I like to think of it as intermittent digestion or…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: What is it whatever is the good side of fifth to me fasting is, I don’t want to fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have resistance of the word not in the process but I tell you that my mornings at this point now I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day but please don’t knock me out about this. That’s what I actually do and I’m going to be honest with you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My mornings I stay hydrated I sip on coffee, I don’t put anything into my coffee there are no extra sweeteners in my home. You’re sweet enough as you are you don’t need to add sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And by the middle of the day I’m beginning to feel hungry, and where am I in the middle of the day? I’m at my R&D center in Vienna Virginia which is also my home. So four days a week I get to think write meditate and then I go out in our permaculture biodynamic food forest garden, where my job is to sit and watch the pollinators pollinate and the birds eat the birds, seed. And then my other job is to pick whatever is right for dinner because we like to eat from our land. We have a biodynamic Community Supported Agriculture CSA that we belong to and once a week we get very fresh food. And yes we go to Whole Foods but we only buy things that are whole. In my home, there are very few packages. We don’t need them. There are devices that make it easy to cook things work very well very quickly, yes we have steel cut oats not rolled oats and yes we put them in water or some broth overnight so they pre swell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I’m trying to think what else for me I often in the evening before bed I have about a half an hour where I get in a warm tub of water that has a cup of Epsom salts and a cup of baking soda that helps detoxify and relax. When I’m in the bath five minutes I do deep abdominal breathing just slow rhythmic breathing if you want to know what abdominal breathing is like watching a baby they all know how to breathe in there happen watch most adults, they under ventilate, they hypo ventilate they have so many traumas growing up that they’re daring to move that’s right they breathe from their chest which is not where the action is it’s these little tiny air sacs called alveoli, I really am a doctor at the that you have to expand your lung so I five minutes of abdominal breathing than 15 minutes of active meditation. My friend Robert Leichtman wrote a book called Active Meditation: The Western Tradition and published around 1976, still in addition highly recommend it and anything that Bob Leichtman has ever written because most of us have days that are structured I have earned and I worked hard to get this didn’t happen overnight but I worked hard to get to the point where I had a team with people that could take care of the day-to-day and in fact it’s better for me to not even interact with that because I’m constantly fixing things that aren’t broken.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But if they if they can’t solve a problem well then it’s mine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Four days a week yeah four days I’m a week I’m at the R&D center in the woods I get eight to ten thousand steps a day in and how do I doing that well I have a hands-free telephone and when I’m talking which I offer them, when I’m talking I’m walking.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense I have a setup here where I’m on a treadmill at my desk and when I’m sitting I have a like basically it’s called the QB and it’s put by spending on us and you can bike. So I do the same thing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: That’s wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just can just curious about protein consumption in fat consumption.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: oh well it’s, first of all, understand that the clear and the recent studies completely support what I’m going to say. The Greek Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet the next healthiest diet is the Japanese diet. In both cases you take in lots of fresh things in joyful ways with lots of herbs and you have 60% complex carbs, 20%, of calories from fat and 20% of calories from protein now why do I say that, because if you want insulin resistance then go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. If you want to increase your risk of atrial fibrillation and magnesium deficiency and all the consequences thereof go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. It’s in vogue it’s called keto I even hear that South Beach is now a modified friendly keto. I don’t know what a friendly keto is. I know it keto, I know a ketoacidosis is it’s called starvation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You will lose weight if you if you do what Bob Atkins and others recommended for many years which is eat a lot of fat a lot of protein and zero as close to zero carbs as you have… weight but you but your bones will melt.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s your there’s a lot of data coming out from over at Duke University, Eric Westman, a bunch of other Doc’s on the ketogenic kind of template you know they’re modifying it anywhere between 20 or to 50 grams of net carbs typically around thirty thirty net which typically gets you like eight servings of green vegetables a day. What’s your take on that? Because there’s lots of data with less mass…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The folks that the folks at Duke are doing good folks at Duke are doing good work there is an integrative medicine group at Duke at they’re part of. However, you can call that what you want you can call it a rose or a petunia it remains what it is it’s not ketogenic. Ketogenic means you deprive yourself of carbohydrates and you force your mitochondria cells, the battery of the cell to use fats and amino acids for energy. So what they’re saying is if you’re truly ketogenic you’re in starvation and what I said before applies now what they’re saying is we want to have a best of both, we want you to have the option of more fat and more protein. So we’re gonna cut the carbs half of what I said. So I said 60% not and I’m remember I said no added sugar so that 60% from fiber nuts and seeds and things you have to chew those are the thing and fruits and vegetables which turn out to be associated with long life and good health and depriving yourself of fresh fruits and vegetables I don’t think anyone today who really knows about the true functional nutrition literature as a fellow of the American College of Nutrition as someone who was on the National Nutrition Consortium appointed by Mildred Seelig at ACN today. I can tell you for sure that the Greek Mediterranean diet is associated with the healthiest long life and the best energetic mood stability symptom reduction from diet alone. Now it’s not it’s more than diet, of course, it’s what you eat and drink it’s what you think and but in regard to eating and drinking with respect to the folks that do they’re trying to take a very overlooked problem identify it and find a solution by splitting the difference. As someone who is in academic medicine, I can tell you I’m splitting the differences often what’s done but it rarely turns out to be very helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you say splitting the difference do you mean just instead of consuming zero carbohydrate kind of like a carnivore diet they’re doing essentially you know six to eight servings of green vegetables keeping the net below 30. Is that will you mean by splitting the difference?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes I’m saying that the healthiest diet is 60% complex carbohydrates, 60% lots of fiber, 20% from protein, 20% from fat in which they’re very nicely…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you customize the carbs if you have a patient that’s coming in with a let’s just say elevation in fasting insulin let’s say greater than 10 or at 15 or a functional or a glucose tolerance that stays up high 2, 3 hours after a meal. Would you make exceptions to cut the carbs lower if you’re dealing with those patients?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If you want to reduce hemoglobin A1c if you want to improve glucose-insulin ratio, if you want to improve Homa which we studied in our diabetes outcome study which we talked about if you want. But if you want to optimize any of those parameters as you should. You must keep the fat less than 20% of calories, and you must have at least forty to a hundred grams of unprocessed fiber in your diet daily. That means 60% from complex carbs, 20% from fat, 20% from protein. Now if you include seeds and nuts if you include seeds and nuts you get healthy oils but remember that as soon as you remove the oil from the seed or them but, the protective factors are gone and now you have something that air is the enemy now and so there are no edible oils in my house. We cook with broth, we cook with wine, we cook with juice, we cook with foods that are wet. We like wet foods we started all of our meals with something wet and warm. That Americans but it’s a makeover that adds years to life in life to years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now you talked about 20 wouldn’t… go ahead.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I was just trying to kind of guild that point which is I had insulin resistance when I weighed 65 pounds more than I did now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I can tell you the last the last two hemoglobin tests on myself for 4.5% and the best outcome goal value is less than 5% and even a little bit about five and you begin losing years on the far end but losing quality of life today. It’s a bad proposition.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: We need it turns out we need a lot of fiber we also need a lot of probiotic good bugs and then we need a lot of nutrients that come from things like fruits and vegetables. Especially healthy fruits and vegetable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To me today the minimum is organic I prefer biodynamic and actually, I would prefer to grow it myself if I quit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. Now you talked about having the fact go higher that causes insulin resistance. What’re the mechanisms? We know fat doesn’t really have much of an insulin genic response I mean you have some with protein more with carbs. So what’s the mechanism of fat getting higher and causing more insulin and just to be clear right, we want to draw a line between you know process kind of more rancid omega-6 or more trans-fat right and then we kind of have our healthier saturated fats in the category coconut oil maybe gear butter and then, of course, we have our unsaturated avocado, olive oil, those kinds of things.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me jump in on that and just just to make a very important point. EVO, extra-virgin olive oil is a fraud waiting to be revealed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay let’s hear it yeah why.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yeah well why because my family I went to Tuscany at the time when you harvest olives and you bring them and overnight they grind very slowly on this grinding wheel you know this is a stone wheel and one comes out is dark green and viscous and delicious and they eat it there and they love it there and you can buy it commercially. What you buy and this is actually what happened we stayed there all night in the morning there was this mountain of spent olive mash outside the building, and this big truck from Bartoli comes by and I say what’s happening and they say, Oh hahaha Portola is going to take our spent olive mash and the first time they process it they’re gonna call it EVO.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s a fraud waiting to happen. Ghee, on the other hand, can be liquid sunshine Beatrice from hunter wrote about that many years ago but remember the ghee comes from the cow and if that was a healthy cow that’s fine. But most ghee is contaminated with the products at the cow ate including glyphosate, including lead and mercury and… I okay and and now if you want to make a fondue and you want to use some organic grapeseed oil a few drops, I will not tear it out of your hand in fact there is i feel to show you I’m not totally consistent there is a small bottle of grapeseed oil and we made fondue with it. If you tell me you have organic peanut oil and you want to do a stir-fry, I’m killing a few drops of organic peanut oil in a wok or a cast iron pan, it’s fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But most of the oil should come from Whole Foods seeds and nuts. The complex carbs are what regulate a slow uptake from the gut of sugar and the minerals that are necessary to process the sugar so that you actually enhance insulin functionality by having a lot of fiber in the diet. Now let’s flip to the other side let’s slip to the other side. Assuming that you will agree with me that you’re sweet enough as you are and therefore you don’t need any added sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I totally hear that.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now most now most of the studies that the people have cited included sugar and complex carbs as carbs. Sorry, that’s not fair look at the diet studies that use Whole Foods as their source of carbs. They got the best insulin resistance below 20% of fat from calorie… fat as source of calories, less than 20% of calories from that. Now, why is that? It turns out the more fat you take the more rigid are the membranes of your cells and it’s a little complicated biochemistry but trust me I’m not making this up. When the cell membrane itself this is the wrapper around the cell this is a very important packaging but very dynamic of thing membrane when that membrane becomes more rigid the fit between insulin and the insulin receptor becomes less efficient, and you develop insulin resistance but since your…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Doesn’t that membrane get more rigid more with trans-fats though then or like vs higher quality omega 3s or higher quality saturated there’s no difference in that? mm-hmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well let’s go back to the trans-fat comment. Kumar Kumaroh and Marianne showed in the late 70s early 80s, trans fats should not be part of the human diet, trans-fats should be out of your diet it’s not hard today because even the companies that used to advocate for them agree the trans fats bad bad bad yes trans fats do make rigid membranes but they’re bad and suggestible. Now stearic acid saturated fats are more rigid unsaturated fats are more flexible and fluid. You want to have more EPA DHA as omega-3, but you want it from a source that was distilled under nitrogen to remove the toxic metals and to avoid air oxidation damage of the delicate EPA DHA then you need enough magnesium in your body because magnesium acts as an antioxidant to protect the EPS, the unsaturated fats when they’re in trend.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, now when you talk about some of these fish oils how much does it matter if it’s a triglyceride or an ethyl ester what’s your opinion on that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: In my opinion on that is that there are two points of view, one advocated by company a and the other advocated by company b. There are virtues to both what is critical from my point of view is that the distillation of the oil whether it be a triglyceride an ethyl ester or not, that the distillation be under nitrogen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nitrogen is important is that preventive grantee oxygenation doesn’t happen essentially.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To prevent what will be irreversible oxidative damage to the delicate essential fats that you are interested in it yes so you must have still under nitrogen and then you want to take the traction that has the most EPA DHA of course, and now you want to micellize that in a soft jell because that will protect it until you swallow it and the micellized little droplets get into the body easier because it’s not easy to take up either the triglyceride or the ethyl ester you need some bile you need a gall bladder that works and as I started to say what’s really important is the quality of the EPA DHA because you can make a case on both sides, which means we really don’t know the answer yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And of course like you know you run a supplement company so we, you’re going out and you’re trying to find a person that to buy raw material offered there are obviously different tiers right you can go and buy cheaper stuff like you would maybe the equivalent of a burger at your local McDonald’s or you can choose the high quality grass-fed organic beef at your local farmer correct, so you’ve different options on your keys…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The reason that Park Integrative Health the reason that Park was founded in 1987 was because I wanted to use pharmaceutical quality and above raw materials all the time. And I was told by people who knew better that our cost of goods was going to be so high than I would have a hobby and not a business. So I did something that some people do which is I took the marketing budget and I put it into the cost of goods I put it into the quality of the bottom the quality of our service and we’ve grown quite a nice business, thank you, over service without having more than a few dollars for marketing. Because you’ll never see a sports celebrity endorsing a Park product but if you take a Park product, you’ll feel the difference because if you use the higher quality raw materials and you put them together so that it’s only active ingredients all the time which is something we pioneered. Now you have a safer, more effective form that when you study it as we have in community-based outcome studies delivers feel the difference results and as you know we have an unconditional guarantee because we trust people to feel the difference that Park approach that is use the highest quality and monitor it very carefully, because people will promise the moon and deliver modified dog poop.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense. And then with your a fish oil what’s your opinion do you like the triglyceride, or the ethyl does it matter and then what’s the difference is to kind of put it in in layman’s terms.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well right see the difference is that eventually these delicate fats are going to get into a membrane as part of a triglyceride, and a triglyceride is three carbons, that’s the backbone and coming off of each of those carbons is a long chain called a fatty acid. Now the two position there’s one two three the middle position the tube position of the triglyceride is the source for your cytokines thromboxanes and prostaglandins it’s really important so if you put a racemic acid in there or you put it on mega six fatty acids in there you’ve got a completely different response than if you put in EPA or a DHA in there. So in that sense, you would think the triglycerides are better. But it turns out that the body is going to deconstruct and reconstruct a triglyceride so that’s not so critical and the ethyl ester, not the methyl ester ever the ethyl ester is easily taken up it has better bioavailability so if you say to me this is a person with a perfectly healthy gallbladder, across the coin both of them are okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If your bile from your gallbladder is limited, well then you should have the ethyl ester.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then when you’re producing the product what’s the how are you preventing the oxidation from happening outside. I’m just keeping the temperature down. Are you putting like a rosemary antioxidant, how are you keeping it stable?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well when I said, first of all, there’s a pharmaceutical-grade fish oil company.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re choosing a good quality right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I’m choosing way above a good quality, the best food-grade right right right so there is food grade which you can think of as floor sweet. Then there is quality grade we can think of as better than floor sweet things. Once you get up to American Chemical Society to reagent grade to pharmaceutical grade and above, now you’re at a different level. You’re dealing with different companies you do different they provide different kinds of documentation you do we do third-party pros production testing on all our products because even though we trust our suppliers verified by President Reagan used to say Rastenburg.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly yeah that makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So what happens is the fish oil is distilled under nitrogen the middle fraction the concentrate EPA DHA is basically put into a sealed container, it then goes to the place where it’s going to be micellized into the soft gel where it is immediately and without any exposure to oxygen, put into tiny droplets that are easily taken up from your gut. And by the way, you don’t get the burping and the comeback that most officials have you can bite into this fish oil soft gel and you’ll find it very delicate because it’s not rancid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and then if you consume, so if you were to consume rancid omega-3s you essentially have more lipid peroxidation correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You would have more lipid peroxidation and it would be a member of studies there have been several studies recently that said, oh we thought fish oils were good but they’re not really good. And if you look at them carefully these were people taking fish shows made in oxygen fish oils that were rancid and should, in my opinion, should not be consumed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: is that just robbing from your antioxidant reserves it’s sucking up more vitamin C what’s it doing in your body?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well it’s doing several levels of harm yes you’re right when you start with something that’s damaged and oxidized than the body has to use antioxidants which is protective but he has to use antioxidants in order to somehow get the oxygen off the molecule that has it. Because when you put oxygen on a molecule like a fat, it’s like putting a hand grenade on the fat. When that oxygen comes off the recoil energy is going to be so high that you’re going to break the membrane of the cell you’re going to damage the cell that’s a bad thing. And now you have a molecule that kind of fits in where an omega-3 or omega-6 should you know triglyceride in a membrane, but it doesn’t have the right shape. It’s got this big extra oxygen on. So peroxides are bad epoxides are bad anything that robs your antioxidants are bad and most people need help with their antioxidants so anything you can do to preserve to enhance the function of your antioxidants like ascorbate. Is to your benefit and anything you do that depletes your antioxidants it’s the opposite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and what does that do to your cell membrane? Is it making the cell membrane more inflexible?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: It’s not only making it more inflexible when the oxygen comes off the recoil energy is so high you actually break the membrane and very often the cell is killed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow I really appreciate your biochem background it really helps and I know you’re also famous for doing a vitamin C calibration. Can you talk about the vitamin C calibration and who can benefit from that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right so let’s talk about the C calibration also known as the C cleanse and the reason that we focus on a ascorbate, known as vitamin C it’s really an antioxidant does not think of it as a vitamin A vitamin is something you need a little love to activate enzyme catalyst. Albertsons Georgy pointed out that ascorbate is as important to survival as light and oxygen. When you’re that important you’re kind of really important and the end the next question has to be, well how much, how much should I take. Now Linus Pauling famously said 9 grams then he said 18 grams and I got to ask him why he said 18 grams and he said because doctors are so dumb they could only remember a number and if I say it long enough then they’ll remember and I said but doctor timing shouldn’t it be individualized he said of course but doctors aren’t smart enough for that. I think people consumers are and I think that people aren’t a functional integrative and holistic medicine are and so the C calibration the C cleanse means that every 15 minutes you take a certain amount like a gram and a half, three grams, six grams, every 15 minutes and notice I said grams, not milligrams. But of course, you use fully buffered fully reduced l-ascorbic nature’s form is l-ascorbic you want to fully reduced not the partially reduced fully reduced and by the way our source of ascorbic is fermented. It’s done by natural fermentation but under a nitrogen blanket so that during the production of the ascorbate, which is triply recrystallized under nitrogen which is it’s a challenge but it now gives you nature’s form in a concentrated way. And then we have a balance of minerals potassium, calcium, magnesium, and zinc you need all of them in a proportion so if you need one gram 10 grams or a hundred grams you still get the minerals that help the ascorbate come in and help it work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so what’s the goal how high do you go up to and then do you ramp down how does the whole process work and why should people be looking for symptom was.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well what they’re gonna do is once a week they’re gonna check their C calibration they’re gonna do it by taking the ascorbate every 15 minutes until they cleanse, until they have an enema from within, until they have a flush something so unique that until you’ve had it you don’t understand it but once you’ve had it once you know what I’m talking about. So you rapidly get toxic matter and fluid pumped into the rectum and evacuated from the tosh that’s why I meant by an enema from within. They do that once a week we do that once a week now in between you take 50 to 75 percent, so let’s say it took 10 grams to cleanse, you take between five and seven and a half grams. I recommend that people start at 50 percent and move up to 75 percent over time. You do the cleanse every week because the amount you need will likely go up over some period of time as you overcome the repair deficit that your body has accumulated for years or decades, and when you finally get to Plateau which means for four consecutive weeks your cleanse is the same amount. Now you know the amount you need on a daily basis, you’re taking three quarters of the amount to do that cleanse and you keep doing that until you get bulky or lose your stool indicating that repair has finally completed and now you do ramp down see now you check it once a week as you need less and less. And the goal is to need less than four grams, and when we checked about 4,200 people that reported their C cleanse. The people who are asymptomatic and healthy cleanse on four grams or less. They’re people who had just a few symptoms cleansed on four to ten grams the average person cleansed on ten to a hundred grams and there are people who need well over a hundred grams which is a hundred thousand milligrams to cleanse but it is safe and for it is safer for people to do this because the amount of oxidative damage, the amount of oxidative toxic material, the amount of nutrient-deficient oxidative processed foods that people are taking in the stress of high tech living has dramatically increased the amount of ascorbate that people need, ascorbate is the mother or maternal antioxidant that sacrifices herself so that all the other antioxidants can be regenerated and protected. so ascorbate is the critical one to test and the c cleanse is the way to find out how much you as individual mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially just to kind of recap at your doing about one teaspoon of the L ascorbate reduced powder which is about 3 grams 3,000 milligrams every 15 minutes or you’re taking more of it and you’re trying to get to a place of bowel tolerance where you’re essentially you’ve saturated your bowels or saturated your vitamin C stores and now the stools start to get loose and that number may be higher in the beginning and as your vitamin C levels get more repleted, or topped off so to speak, then that threshold to move the bowels as you said drops. Is that correct?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well no let me clarify my friend Bob Cathcart introduced bowel tolerance. It has a fatal flaw. The fatal flaw of bowel tolerance is you creep up on the amount you need as opposed to the cleanse where you rapidly ramp up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you’re doing degree increments though right teaspoon 3 gram 50 minutes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No let me say again what I said before. If you’re really healthy if you’re really healthy you use 1/2 a teaspoon which is a gram and a half.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Gram and a half got it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right if you’re a typical person you do use a teaspoon which is 3 grams but many people there are many people who need 2 teaspoons which is 6 grams and they need it for hours and if you do 6 grams for 4 times in an hour that’s 24 grams if you do that for two hours that’s 48 grams. Most people will cleanse in that time the idea is to rapidly saturate the body with the ascorbic so that the ascorbate can energize the rectum which is really from the kidney embryologically and pump toxic matter and extra water in to the rectum and that would come whooshing out flushing out cleansing up. So yes it’s the same idea, but it’s the next generation after bowel tolerance it’s the C cleanse or the C calibration. And it really depends on how well you are. If you’re really well you don’t need that much but if you’re a typical American, even 3 grams and I just had a someone contact me about this they took 3 grams every 15 minutes for 5 hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a significant amount.
40:45 Yes sir, but if they had done six grams they would have flushed and calibrated but after five hours what they proved was they had a lot of oxidative burdens and they need a lot of ascorbic. So you really do, I really recommend that folks read the literature that we have, this is free to download online, you can look up C cleanse, you can look up joy of living the alkaline way or alcohol a guide, and we want folks to help them we want to help people understand themselves so they can do it smoothly, efficiently, and generally within a couple of hours. So I personally do my cleanses on the weekend and I can cleanse within a couple of hours. But often we hear from colleagues that people try say a teaspoon and that means three grams every 15 minutes, that means 12 grams an hour, but they need 70 grams to cleanse and it’s gonna take them more time than they’re willing to take and. I don’t think it should be your whole day you shouldn’t be sneak on waiting for a cleanse the whole day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if that’s the case, could you go up in tablespoon increments if you wanted to go faster?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well understand that you want something close to an isotonic iso-osmotic beverage so when you go to 6 grams or 2 teaspoons, you’re now talking about at least eight ounces.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And if you go and if you go above that you might go to 12 or 16 ounces, most people don’t want to drink that much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have no I have no objection to that. I’m just saying that I don’t make it too concentrated and don’t make it too dilute, you don’t want hypotonic, you don’t want hypertonic. You want as close to isotonic as you can get and that’s why what we recommend is as the upper dose is the two teaspoons in 8 ounces. Could be water could be your herbal beverage could be a juice that you diluted one to one with water. And by the way, some people find if they take the recycled glutamine or they take a dose of magnesium and choline citrate or they take a dose of the digestive guard before the cleanse. That things go more smoothly and more easily.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and I’m just trying to wrap my head around what the difference between this cleanse and just typical bowel tolerance by vitamin C. Is it because it’s in the L ascorbate reduced form with the minerals, does that make it different? What’s happening is different.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well Bob has gotten himself recommended sodium L ascorbate and he did that because he knew that ascorbic acid would pull the dentin the calcium out of the teeth you know so you don’t know use ascorbic acid. He didn’t want to use a synthetic form and I agree with him on that, but what he said is you just keep taking it until you feel until you until your poop. That’s called bowel tones. Here’s here’s the fatal flaw with bowel tolerance and I spoke with Bob about this and he agreed with it was a very honest guy. When you do bowel tolerance, you have a very high probability that if you have a long transit time long digestive transit time as many Americans do, that you will recirculate toxic matter throughout your body and feel worse in contrast with the C cleanse you quickly ramp up, saturate the ascorbate throughout every cell of your body, and then pump the toxic matter and the extra fluid into the rectum, and it comes out quickly, and you don’t get the recirculation of toxic matter. People don’t want to feel worse on the way to feeling better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well you motivated me. I’m gonna go pick some up and do my own vitamin C calibration very soon. Excellent. So let’s transition the conversation you talked about there eight predictive markers for your health to kind of give a window kind of your check engine light so to speak to see how you’re functioning in an optimal perspective. So let’s just kind of break down those eight markers briefly and let’s do a quick little blurb on each of them, so what’s number one?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well yes. Now with regard to predictive biomarkers, we reviewed hundred-thousand lab tests because we wanted to know what covers epigenetics and epigenetics is everything that’s not genetics. Epigenetics is everything you can influence with your lifestyle. It turns out to be really important, it’s 92 percent of your life Steinhaus epigenetics influences your genes, your genes are not a fixed blueprint they’re rather dynamically acted upon and modified by your habits of daily living, and your habits of daily living are summarized epigenetics and there are eight of these tests and I’d like to go through them and I’d like to point out what’s unique about our interpretation. And some of these are familiar, hemoglobin a1c. And the best outcome goal value is less than 5%. Now today if you ask most diabetologist, most doctors who specialize in diabetes don’t tell you that they don’t want to know the fasting glucose they don’t want to know the fasting insulin, the 2-hour postprandial. They want to know the hemoglobin a1c. It’s the average sugar stuck on to your hemoglobin protein over three or four months. So it’s a very good average risk predictor, it’s an oil cause morbidity mortality predictor, it predicts whether you want to live ten or more years pretty accurately, and the goal that is less than 5%. Now the second test is high sensitivity c-reactive protein, HSCRP, and you do need the high sensitivity version. Pointed out that while c-reactive protein is a good measure of acute inflammation, the more common chronic repair deficit which is what inflammation really is it’s really repaired deficit, that can be measured with a high sensitivity c-reactive protein known as HSCRP and that should be less than 0.5.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that the same as the cardiac CRP? I think it’s the same, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes yes sir yes sir. Originally Read Crew who is a cardiologist thought that the high sensitivity test was cardio specific, and it’s sometimes referred to as the cardiac CRP
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That helps.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And yes, yes no I’m glad you brought that up. It is it’s not cardiac-specific, but it is sometimes called cardiac CRP and it is the high sensitivity or the HS CRP that we want and the best outcome goal value is less important
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see a lot of patients that want the HS CRP but their lab whether it’s a quest or LabCorp only has the cardiac and from what I’ve seen like you just said it’s the same thing.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh same thing same thing yeah. So the next test the third test in the sequence is known as homocysteine. This is a plasma test and you must process especially within 30 minutes or the lab shouldn’t even run it, but a plasma homocysteine predicts atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, almost better than any other single marker and when you combine the predictive biomarkers the way we do you’ve covered all of your cardiovascular risks and you notice what’s in here and what’s not in here we can talk about what’s not in here at the end. So the next test is your immune tolerance task. Oh sorry, the homocysteine should be less than 6 the homocysteine should be less than six. And that, yes homocysteine should be less than 6 again don’t pay any attention to the lab range healthy people have a homocysteine less than 6, they have a high methionine, a low homocysteine they are protected from cardiovascular disease and they can methylate which is a very important function for moving things around in your body. So homocysteine value less than 6 on the plasma properly done specially
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if that level is on the higher side what nutrients should we add in to help bring that down? Assuming a diet and lifestyles good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes well you’d be surprised actually how much B complex including folate, how much magnesium and choline citrate, how much betaine hydrochloride known as trimethylglycine people need in order to keep a healthy homocysteine, and you can look at all these cycles if you want because I’m a biochemist and I do it in my sleep. But the bottom line is you need at least a super B complex, you need folate probably milligrams a day, you need trimethylglycine at least 250 milligrams a day, you need enough ascorbate to protect and two other antioxidants, and with that and with enough magnesium and choline citrate to activate your ATP, you too can have a low homocysteine a nice high methionine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and they just the back story for everyone listening they can look at it here is Kilmer McCully who was a Harvard researcher that discovered the homeless cysteine atherosclerosis link. Was basically laughed out of Harvard me 10 20 years ago in this discovery, but now it’s becoming mainstream and its even part of your predictive markers for overall health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Kilmer published in 1967 when I was a young scientist in Boston, I knew him then. He went to the VA and distinguished research career but you’re right he got left by other parties. He was right and he was right, and they were in it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now the fourth test is the immune tolerance test known as LRA, lymphocyte response assay. Lymphocytes are specialized white cells, and they respond to things that are foreign and harmful, but they don’t respond to neutralizing and helpful things. So you want an LRA the LRA by ELISA/ACT is what we recommend and the goal is to have no intolerance is to be completely tolerant in your immune system, and healthy people with a healthy digestion and a healthy intake of the nutrients they need. The few of them that we found too are asymptomatic tend to have no reactions out of hundreds and hundreds of substances that we can now accurately measure on one ounce of blood, as long as it gets to us within a couple of days.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now with that test, how is that different than your typical food allergy IgG your IgA. Is it companies out there like Everly Wells a big one you see on Facebook all the time which I think is looking more IgG IgA? How is that different from that typical you know food allergy that’s more antibody based?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The antibody tests were developed in the 1950s, they were outmoded in the 1980s, they’re still offered by most labs because they’re easy to do and impossible to interpret. So when you get an IgG antibody result, you have to ask yourself. Is this a beneficial neutralizing helpful antibody or is this a complement fixing harmful antibody? You can’t tell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially with the ELISA/ACT, you’re looking at the lymphocytes and you’re able to see if there’s a t-cell kind of mediated response to these foods specifically? Is that how you look more specifically?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes. The innovation that we brought to immunology was the first amplified procedure done on the surface of a white so-called a lymphocyte. And the novelty is that we can do reproducible tests that is less than 3% variance. So we do a functional cell culture more precisely than a physical chemistry lab measures an antibody, and the point you made that you jump to is correct. More important than b-cell antibodies and more important than distinguishing helpful from harmful b-cell antibodies are the t-cell responses which you can only get cell culture, only get from a cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the IgG and IgA, that’s more B cell-mediated and…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Hundred percent. Not more these cells make antibodies
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Antibodies, correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: B cells make antibodies through specialized antibody factories called plasma cells. When you do physical chemistry, say hi GG or any antibody measurement, and I don’t care if you used a cooked antigen, I don’t care if you use a freeze-dried antigen, I don’t care if you used an aerosolized antigen, I’m telling you if you’re measuring antibodies you’re doing old-fashioned physical chemistry and you can’t interpret whether it’s good or bad and since you don’t know the function and you need to know the function I say don’t do tests that are intrinsically incapable of giving you the information you need. And then the point you made is well made which is T cells are more important than the antibodies, and you get nothing about the T cells when all you’re doing is old-fashioned physical chemistry. So we outmoded this in the 1980s we have over eighty thousand cases in our database, we’ve done over twenty-five million cell cultures, we published more outcome peer-reviewed studies that show the benefit of this approach when it was applied just by people living their lives. But as you said a lifestyle program, a program to add life to years and years to life, and we’re more excited today than ever because the data continues to come in that we have an advanced approach. It’s part of this predictive biomarkers suite of advanced interpretations and I’m glad to tell you that we at the Health Studies Collegium have been able to pioneer much of this validate it to the satisfaction of our most difficult critics and now make it available to colleagues and consumers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Now your test for this is the Elisa act biotechnology test now I’m just curious though. Is the liza the same thing as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test? Or is that just kind of a play on words there.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no it’s very specifically Elisa act, which is the coming together what you said Elisa, with a CT Advance cell culture technique
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so it’s combining it. Okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s the first time, first time that an amplified procedure was done, not with a sandwich assay like a conventional Elisa introduced by Bursa Aiello in 1953, back then this is using a lymphocyte enzyme that when the cell is resting, when it doesn’t see anything that it reacts against, the enzymes turned off. Because this is the same enzyme that turns the cell on when it needs to go through mitosis and reproduce itself. We were fortunate enough to figure out the specific kinase at the MHC locus for those of you who are super technical. The antigen presenting cell in this autologous ex vivo cell culture wiggles over to thelymphocyte presents the processed antigen at the MHC locus turns on the kinase we see the results of that. This is the bringing together for the first time I’ll be Liza, just as you said and cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting so you’re able to get the antibody response from that, the IgG IgA IgM, you’re able to get the immune complexes, and then you’re also able to look at that the t-cell activation there too, all three
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Exactly right C lymphocytes are smart enough that they will only react to harmful antibodies. So we get the meaningful harmful antibodies and we ignore the helpful neutralizing antibodies and then yes, we get the immune complexes which is IgM anti-ag G antigen and most importantly we get the T cell reactions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. What’s the next marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, the next marker, the fifth one is measuring the pH or the acid alkaline state of your urine after rest. It turns out after six or more hours that the urine and the bladder equilibrate with the bladder lining cells and now you get once a day a measurement of cellular metabolic status. And if you lack magnesium, you have metabolic acidosis if you have enough magnesium you have a healthy happy cell. Why is that so important? Well magnesium is not just an electrolyte that balances calcium you need one molecule of magnesium for every ATP molecule to do any work in your cell. You need magnesium to activate your mitochondria so you can get the toxins detoxified. You need magnesium to activate hundreds maybe thousands of enzyme catalyst. You need magnesium to protect essential fat’s in transit, magnesium is nature’s calcium channel blocker. The problem has been that until very recently magnesium has been notoriously hard to get in, it tends to run out as soon as it comes in, and therefore it’s been forgotten. Now what we did was find out how to make inverted micellar nanodroplets, so you combine ionized magnesium salts with choline citrate and now you get enhanced update and chaperone delivery to the cells we’re hungry for it. So now we should remember magnesium.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful, excellent. What’s the next marker.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well the goal value from pH is 6.5 to 7.5 if you’re below that you’re too acid and you need more magnesium if you’re consistently above 7.5 it might be catabolic illness and that’s something you don’t want but we could talk about later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we want like we want the urine though the saliva it doesn’t quite matter
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no urine urine and the reason we want the urine is because that’s what we standardized, but more importantly if you put a Kirby Cup, if you put a little plastic discover your parotid gland in your mouth and you collect pure parotid saliva you two can measure the pH of that. But having had that done to me when Frank Oppenheimer was a postdoc and meet at some subjects, very true people will do that. What we call saliva or spit it’s a combination of gingival fluid zero sanguinis exudate some saliva sub submandibular some parotid, it turns out that saliva is not what you think it is. At least not in most Americans mouths and and talk to the dentist. There are very few Americans that have a healthy mouth.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then with the urine, are we testing first morning urination, or they can be another example?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no no there’s only one time of day. You can only get a meaningful measure after six hours of rest. So when after six hours at rest the next urine… yes, and you by the way during those six hours you can go to the bathroom and go back to bed. You just can’t go to the gym or the kitchen
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, because you’re gonna create acid byproducts on your muscle activation.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And other than after those six hours of rest, there are somewhere between 20 and 40 variables that influence urine ph at any random time
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That totally makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right the next measurement, the next measurement is vitamin D, specifically what’s called 25 hydroxy D but if you just ask for a vitamin D that’s what they’re gonna do. Now there are three forms of vitamin D and there are some experts who say measure all three of them. I do not advocate that, partly for cost and partly for practicality. So if you think there is something wrong with the way their kidneys are processing vitamin D or their liver is processing vitamin D then you might want to do all three different what are called isomers. In general you want the 25 hydroxy d and the goal value is 50 to 80. Now there was recently an article in New York Times, and a very distinguished science writer says, almost everyone in America is low in vitamin D it’s normal to be low in vitamin D so don’t even measure vitamin D and don’t supplement. Now did you understand what I just said it do you understand how silly that is?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely yes okay absolutely.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me clarify for everybody, because I know you know this, but when vitamin D is below 20, well of course your bones are gonna fall apart, but more importantly you just tripled or quadrupled your cancer risk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And you probably tripled your cardiovascular risk. Because vitamin D we call it a vitamin, it’s actually a neurohormone. It actually regulates cell division; it does a whole lot of things and we know in my opinion the best outcome goal value 50 to 80 the vitamin D council I believe says 40 to 70 but that’s close to 50 to 80. And the ranges that we have said were the values that we have said give you a certain latitude. So if you take a little bit too much vitamin D, and you get up to 90 or 100 I have no concerns. So when I say 50 to 80 I don’t mean that 81 is a problem, I’m saying the safer range that we know to be effective and protect you from the profound chronic illnesses 50 to 80. And how much vitamin D do you take? How much vitamin D do you take? Well as much as you need to get into the 50 to 80 range.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah as much as you need.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And I take and I prefer for people to take drops under the tongue, so they can absorb, well that’s a turkey word be careful of that but drops under the tongue before you swallow them are easily taken up and many many people over forty million according to my colic. Over forty-million Americans don’t absorb vitamin D from their gut. They’ve got to take it up they’ve got to take it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting
Dr. Russell Jaffe: From their mouth
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah Hollen he’s also he’s also a researcher over ABU as well right at your alma mater?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: that’s where I met Mike Hollen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay he’s been there for a long time right. 34 years.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: About that he’s developed the fundamental methods in vitamin D research he’s known as dr. sunshine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah absolutely now I’m seeing some people online they’re pushing back a little bit cuz we have vitamin d3 the pre-vitamin D we make on the ski. Somebody hits it that cholesterol I think goes through our liver and gets forming the 25 hydroxyvitamin D, which is calcidiol and then calcidiol hits the kidneys and gets converted to calcitriol. So more people I’m seeing are saying hey we had a measure calcitriol or that the vitamin D that’s activated to the kidneys and they say there should be like one to one ratio on the d3 the 25 hydroxy versus the 125 which is the calcitriol. What’s your opinion on that having that one-to-one or the 125 is?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Having spoken to 12 different world’s experts and their opinions matter and mine doesn’t cause vitamins not my particular expertise. I can tell you they each have a different opinion. With respect to what your folks, were saying if you have the resources and you want to have the maximum useful information. Then at least you would measure the 25 hydroxy and the 125 hydroxy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But you might want to measure the precursor as well. If you’re going to do that, but I will offer to most people for home the value proposition including how much is this going to cost…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Leads me to conclude for most people to start with 25 hydroxy D. No disrespect on the question but just start with 25 hydroxy D bring people into the 50 to 80 nanogram per ml range. Then if you have any question or if you want to just be a more scientific and evidence-based practitioner, when you get them into range then measure and see if you have a one-to-one ratio.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what if there’s not was it would there be something you would do specifically. I know some data says you should give resveratrol to help with that some today it can be an infection kind of thing. What’s your take on why that may be skewed we’re 25 is higher and 125 is lower?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well you raise several very good points. My friend happens to own resveratrol globally and I can tell you they’re going out of the resveratrol business because resveratrol tall has very low bioavailability. It is a polyphenolic it is in red wine, especially granule red wine. However, because it is very low bioavailability, which means very low solubility. When you give it in the doses that people have tried to give it, you end up irritating the gut and irritating the immune system. So we have for a long time at least the last 25 years advocated the safer more effective polyphenolics and activate your innate immune system and do many wonderful things for you. And that’s quercetin dihydrate as the flavonoid, and soluble OPC ortho proanthocyanidins for the chemists as the flavonol, because you need flavonoids and flavonols. These are the colorful compounds in foods but almost all of them in high doses are mutagenic which means oncogenic which means promote cancer because they have such low uptake and they can be irritating, and if you irritate the immune system enough, it will become very upset.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Flavonol but safer the soluble OPC we have them together in different forms because they help prepare they reduce pain they enhance many functions of the innate immune system and when your innate immune system is functioning, you are in a repair mode where you don’t have to call in the extra troops. What’s called the adaptive immune response which are the lymphocytes and the other delayed immune reactive cells. So, which one is to provide a lot of energy to the innate immune system so it can defend and repair you, so they can recycle foreign invaders down to their building blocks and make them available for the body to build itself up? And then more importantly, after you do defense you have to do repair. Well, most Americans are in defense mode almost all the time. You can think of it this way, during the day we do more defense work when we’re getting restorative sleep, we do more repair work. Ah notice I snuck in restorative sleep. Now if you need restorative sleep, then you might need that salt and soda bath the dichromatic light which we didn’t talk about but that goes along with it the abdominal breathing, the active meditation the magnesium and choline citrate, maybe tryptophane with some zinc and b6 so that your body can make the serotonin and the melatonin. I never give serotonin. I never give melatonin because the body never floods itself with those neurochemicals and neural hormones. I give the tryptophane in a way that it goes exactly in the brain where it’s needed, where the brain turns it into serotonin or melatonin as needed. And by the way, it has a very short life in the body because it’s too potent to leave around. So, we follow physiology before a pharmacology, but that also means we study physiology and frankly most of my colleagues today, they know about pathology and I am a double board-certified pathologist, but they don’t remember physiology and biochemistry flummoxes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I agree healthy egg yeah biochemistry and physiology and when you apply it that becomes Clinical Nutrition and functional medicine essentially, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So now the next, right. The next test is an omega-3 index, want to know where you are omega-3 to omega-6 this is Bill Harris’s test. Can be done on a blood spot, and the goal value was more than 8%, and the quick anecdote is that Bill Harris was in the offices of Professor Patti Deutsch at the Military Medical School, she and I are friends I came by because I was going to confer with her and bill was lamenting the fact that it’s so hard to find adults with healthy omega-3 levels. Patti points to me he pulls out a Lancet he calls me up a few days later he says your omega-3 is 13.2% something like that I said well is that better than eight he said well we think it is if you know that above eight is good we know that above eight is good but let’s say that you were just a consumer or just a listener to this show. You might assume that 13 is better than eight. But I’m a scientist so I had to ask Bill is it really better than eight and he’s an honest enough scientist to say we think it is we pray it is we hope it is come back and five or ten years we’ll have more day. So that’s the omega-3 index. And then we only have one more and that is a urine test, this is the measure of oxidative damage and risk in your DNA it’s called 8-oxoguanine that is 8-O-X-O-G-U-A-N-I-N-E, 8-oxoguanine, and because it’s a urine spot test, we actually have a value per milligram of creatinine. So, your best outcome value is less than 30 milligrams per milligram of creatinine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is a test in organic acid by Genova it’s called 8 hydroxy – deoxyguanosine, it sounds very similar to that I know that’s an oxidative stress marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, yes. I think that we’re talking about the same molecule I can tell that this molecule has several different names, they’re all the same you want the DNA, the nuclear DNA oxidative stress marker that’s the one you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it that’s correct good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now we help people interpret tests that other labs do. So we folks want to know about these best outcome goal values and how to attain them, then you would talk to our health coaches and our nutritionist. If you want to have them perform they can be performed through our lab or through your lab although the LRA is distinctive to us, and the omega-3 index is distinctive to Bill Harris.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. And then what’s the range you want to be in for the omega-3 again?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, for the omega-3 index you want more than 8% to be omega-3
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And with yours, you were up to 13 you were saying right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: 13 plus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so what we’re going to do…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: At the moment there’s only one person who has a higher value if I remember correctly from what Bill said, and it was actually a youngster, was a teenager but this mom took very much pride in telling us how much omega-3 she got her kids to eat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if they’re a high threshold for that just because of the lipid peroxidation would you say eight grams, four, six, what’s your high-end recommendation you know we’re assuming farmers pharmaceutical-grade super high quality, so it’s not oxidized.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well if the question is how much EPA and DHA do I take and I would never take an oxidized product and I would never recommend anyone do that. But I currently take 8 to 10 grams a day, and that may seem high but I can tell you that given my particular background, that’s what seems to be needed to keep all the other parameters in the range that I would like them to be. So I’m personalizing my intake.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Plus you’re also probably calibrating the L ascorbate which is you know stabilized membranes too, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh of course and I take the polyphenolics and I take the super B complex that has a full mineral complex, and I occasionally take some extras in because I’m a man. So yes and I take prebiotics probiotics and symbiotic. So yes I actually sent someone a photograph of the 12 supplements that I take a day and I take two to four doses a day of those supplements. Now I’m like everyone else when it comes to opening-closing bottles, I understand that it’s a commitment I have made because it helps me feel and function so much better. By most physical and functional measurements, I’m half my age and if I can keep that up if I can keep that up for another 30 40 years it’ll be a good run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent Dr. Russell Jaffe, it’s been an amazing podcast. Lots of knowledge bombs lots of great information. Were there any other biomarkers that all the eight?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no we got through all eight of them yeah that was pretty quick but thank you for being such a good host and for making sure that I stayed on top
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I’m gonna put in the show notes here, we’re gonna put the links to the ELISA ACT biotechnology food allergy lymphocyte test. Will put the vitamin c el ascorbate, the potency guard powder links, and everything so if anyone wants information, we’ll put it down below. Is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with here today dr. Jaffe?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh gosh yes, I would like folks to know that in the 21st century we have to save our own lives. You cannot rely on science from the 19th or 20th century. I’m not even sure today you can rely on an expert. As Jackie Mason, the comedian says, in the phone book or wherever you look up your doctor its lists every condition and whether they were present or absence the day your problem occurred. And I’m just trying to be a little bit humorous about it, I think consumers should be very active today learning about themselves through self-assessments, through tests that can be interpreted to best outcome individual levels, as we’ve just been talking. Now, this is a new paradigm, this gives information inspiration and if you put some effort perspiration in, you can recover decades of quality life, and you can feel and function better tomorrow. It’s the best value that I have found in all my years in science and by the, way this is not only how I follow through I do walk my talk. But this is how my parents live near the end of their life and the way my children live today. So put us to the test and find out how well you can feel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well thank you so much I think you did a phenomenal job taking the hard science, biochem science, and applying it and making it practical so people can apply it so, thank you so much I look forward to having you back soon to dive in deeper and you have a phenomenal day that dr. Jaffe, you take care
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You the same, thanks so much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much, bye now.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKqHwkdOpc
https://www.merck.com/index.html
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/conventional-medicine-to-functional-natural-medicine-podcast-232
General Minerals and What Can Happen | Podcast #188
Welcome to today’s podcast with Dr. J and Evan Brand! Listen as they dive into issues relating to the top five general minerals, namely, Sodium, Potassium, Magnesium, Chloride
Also, learn how minerals
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
02:00 The Big Five Minerals
07:11 Hyponatremia
14:40 Antidiuretic Hormone
16;33 Minerals, Blood Pressure
23:04 Getting Enough Potassium Doing Keto
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, guys! It’s Dr. Marchegiani here. Welcome back to Beyond Wellness Radio. Evan Brand, how are we doing my friend? How’s your weekend?
Evan Brand: Hey, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dude, all you need for that, man,
Evan Brand: Hmmn—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take a little bit of that in the cotton ball and just rub it right on the bite. Gone.
Evan Brand: I’m gonna try it. I think I’ve got some. I think I’ve got some Rubbing Alcohol— Uuh— No. I may have Hydrogen peroxide. I have to get some. I’ll get some. I’ll get some Rubbing Alcohol and report back. [crosstalk] I don’t think it’s the mosquitos. I haven’t seen any mosquitos yet, but uh— I know they’re out there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It could be just some kind of other little pests out there that’s giving you some bites.
Evan Brand: Cool. Cool. Well…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How’s that?
Evan Brand: You came up with a good topic idea today of minerals, which I thought was cool because I had mentioned another topic which is kind of like, “Okay. I’ve been doing a lot of yard work and I think dehydration is a common issue for people. We kind of skipped over spring, like we’re straight into summer here so it’s been 90 degrees and above Fahrenheit. It’s been crazy hot for Kentucky and May, and I’ve been doing some work outside. And then I come in and throw together a bunch of little tinctures and potions and powders. And I thought, “Man, how many other people are dealing with mineral issues?” And you’re like, “Hey. Let’s, you know, maybe we tied
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Where do they— Where do they source it? Is that uh— like a well? Or, what is that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know. It’s in Monterrey, Mexico. Uh—
Evan Brand: Hmn—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m just a huge fan of the— the flavor and the taste. I know it’s good quality mineral water from when I see online and such. I also have a whole house of
Evan Brand: I would think that most people that the heart is a muscle but if you do have, and many of you listening probably do, if you’d had issues yourself with your heart or you’d had issues uh— on your family with heart issues, you know, you’re gonna get probably some Potassium IV, maybe some other type of minerals via IV, like if you’re at the emergency room and you thought you had a heart attack or you’ve got like Atrial fibrillation, or you have uh— Arrhythmias of some sort. You know— there’s a lot of these heart issues that can be functionally treated. And our— our good friend Dr. Jack Wolfson, the Paleo Cardiologist, he talks a lot about that when you and I chatted with him about minerals and how many people end up on these heart drugs, you know, beta-blockers and uh— heart rhythm drugs and other problems. And it’s really a mineral problem, or it’s some type of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is. Pumpkin is Squash too. Yes.
Evan Brand: Is it— Okay. Okay. And then Sweet Potato, you mentioned that one, and then you mentioned fish. So— So, those are all good. I’m drinking some electrolytes right now, and uh— I added in some different tinctures, too. I added some Schizandra tinctures, some Ashwagandha tinctures so, I’m feeling really good. Cheers!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh. You too, man. Absolutely. Now, just real quick. With the Sodium-Potassium pump is we have, essentially, Sodium on the inside of the cell and then Potassium on the outside of the cell. And then what happens is a gradient, where they kind of switch. I think it’s three
Evan Brand: Oh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And this girl, I
Evan Brand: Oh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because you develop Hyponatremia because she diluted all those minerals down now the cell can’t communicate.
Evan Brand: So, what happened? A Heart Attack or something, or what? What happens from over diluting your minerals like that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ye— It’s gonna be Cardiac Arrest.
Evan Brand: Mmh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right? ‘Cause the heart’s not gonna do the work. So, yeah. So, I was correct the first time. Inside the cell, right? Sodium. Outside the cell, Potassium. Two Potassium go in, three Sodium go out. So, it kind of place this little switcheroo scheme.
Evan Brand: Okay. So, let’s chat about— Yeah, it does. Let’s chat about the adrenals in that context then. So, you brought up
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, there’s a natural Sodium-Potassium kind of ratio that happens. So, as your adrenals get more stressed, there’s a hormone inside the adrenal glands— right— called the Aldosterone. And like in— in Doctorate School, when you’re learning about the function of the adrenal glands, i— it’s like this. It’s sugar, salt, sex. The deeper in you get, the better it gets. That’s how you remember the adrenal gland function. So, the outside part of the adrenal glands, sugar. That’s the Cortisol portion of the adrenal gland that regulates blood sugar. Okay? The inner part in regulates salt. That’s the mineraloCorticoids Aldosterone. And then the very inside is the sex hormones. That’s the DHEA and such. So, sugar, salt, sex. So, Cortisol, mineraloCorticoid Aldosterone, which helps regulate minerals, that’s what we’re talking about here. And then the sex hormones. So, the reason why it’s important is
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You need 4,700 milligrams of Potassium a day. So, what does that mean? So, if you got to justinhealth.com/cronometer— or
Evan Brand: He’s got that frog in the throat coming back.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Little— Little frog in the throat. It attacked me. It got me!
Evan Brand: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh— So just put your foods in there for a simple day, and what you’ll find is, at the bottom, it’ll tell you your macronutrients. Your protein, fat, and your carb percentage. It’ll tell you your micronutrients, too, which it’ll walk you through your Sodiums, your Potassium, your minerals, your vitamins, and you want 4,700 milligrams of Potassium per day.
Evan Brand: That’s a lot. I—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a lot!
Evan Brand: I guarantee…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a lot.
Evan Brand: …ninety-eight percent of people listening, if they do that, they’re gonna see that they’re too low. It’s
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. So, you need about 4,700 milligrams of Potassium a day. You’re gonna typically need about 3,400 hundred of Sodium— Sodium and Chloride. Now, that’s easier to get because, typically, even junk food has Sodium and Chloride in it.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Table salt is Sodium Chloride, right? N-A and then C-L. So, even people
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] So good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …some of the minerals in it so I like that. So, you’re getting good quality Sodium, good quality Chloride but we also need the Potassium, right? About 4,700 milligrams a day. What does that mean? Okay. You’re gonna get about a gram per Avocado. Okay. So, one Avocado gets you almost 25% of the way there. And then, you want about five or six servings of green vegetables. So, I’ll do like a green drink. I’m gonna have it in a little bit. I got uh— a Thyroid Reset Summit interview, which I’m excited about, in about 20 minutes. Go to thyroidresetsummit.com to sign up. It’ll be this fall. But,
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m good. You can also supplement with Potassium Chloride, there’s a salt called the Nu-Salt, N-U-hyphen-salt. And that’s a Potassium Chloride Salt. So, you can salt your food with that, and that can get you over the top as well. I also use a couple of electrolyte support products by my sink. That is
Evan Brand: That’s cool. I— I’m doing
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. That’s a good one. I’ve seen that.
Evan Brand: It doesn’t have vitamin C. Uh— Couple other brands that you and I use.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And if it’s a small amount like couple hundred milligrams, probably not…
Evan Brand: It’s like 2,000.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh! [crosstalk] That’s a lot.
Evan Brand: It’s like almost two grams.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Two grams.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. That makes sense. And then
Evan Brand: Do you do this stuff on the weekends and people—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [crosstalk] And Sulfur— Sulfur.
Evan Brand: People probably hear you uh— talking about being out on the boat and going skiing. I mean, you’re doing some pretty intense physical stuff, Are you
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I bring my Toe Pachecos out there.
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know— I bring my Toe Pachecos or my LaCroix out there. And again, on the boat, you’re really only gonna have an issue if you’re sweating a lot…
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …and you’re drinking alcohol. You drink a lot of alcohol, you’re gonna pee out a lot a whole bunch of minerals. Why? Because alcohol inhibits your antidiuretic hormone. So, it’s like, in school, I had to play these games to like remember these things, right? So, antidiuretic hormone, it’s— it’s the anti-pee hormone, right? If a diuretic makes you pee, and your anti-peeing, so if you inhibit the anti-pee hormone, that means you pee. [crosstalk] Does that makes sense?
Evan Brand: Uh— I’m just visualizing it like uh— like a big barrel, and the barrel is the bladder, and then the cork at the…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …bottom of the barrel is the antidiuretic hormone
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo! So, you in— So, you inhibit the anti-pee hormone. That means you pee. So, if you drink alcohol, you inhibit the antidiuretic hormone, meaning you pee more and you lose more minerals. And then obviously, alcohol tends to be more inflammatory in nature so then you’re gonna buffer minerals as well. So, my rule of thumb is, “If you’re gonna drink, the best thing to do is activated charcoal?
Evan Brand: I know we’ve got a couple minutes so let’s talk about something I— I think I mentioned off here, but we haven’t mentioned on here yet, which is blood pressure. And, people may be listening to all this mineral talk and then they’re like, “Okay. Well, how does this actually apply to my actual day to day life in terms of health?” I talked about the heart function a bit, in terms of like Atrial Fibrillation or Atrial Flutter. Some of these other more functional heart issues that can lead to bigger issues down the road, if you don’t fix it, that could be affected by minerals. Also, blood pressure, though. So, like back in February, I had a lot of stress going on. I was doing a bunch of interviews from my summits, running the clinic four days a week, doing podcasts, all sorts of crazy stuff, dealing with the baby, getting woke up during the night, and not sleeping as well ‘cause of the baby and other things. And, I believe, that what you and I discussed was probably accurate. The adrenal stress was causing me to dump minerals. Me losing my minerals caused my blood pressure to go up. So, why don’t you just take that little bit of a tangent and go a bit further with
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, couple things. Uhm— Inflammation, whether it’s inflammation from your sympathetic nervous system going into overdrive, will create your sympathetic nervous system to respond with adrenaline.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You take your thumb. You put it over the water hose. Why? What are you doing? You’re cutting off the flow and what happens to the water? You’re increasing pressure and that allows the water to go where? Further out. So, think about it. If your body is
Evan Brand: Yeah. Uh— I had a two more cents to add about the stress piece. It’s that, anyone listening and they say, “Oh. You know, Dr. J, I’m not stressed.” It’s like, “Okay, look. It doesn’t have to be just emotional, like job
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the hidden stress we’re talking about. And then, remember, it’s not just the stress of the gut bugs, the gut bugs are also gonna create
Evan Brand: Yep. So, if the diet’s perfect, he’d been following a good Paleo template and you’re still not getting results, well, you got to look deeper into the gut. Get those functional tests done ‘cause if you have an H. pylori infection reducing stomach acid, as Justin mentioned. Now, you can’t— you can’t manufacture everything you need to from
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: justinhealth.com. Uh— reach out to Justin. If you want to reach out to me, you could check out my site, it’s evan— E-V-A-N-brand, like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Then, just to kind of reiterate here, couple things. Uhm— Couple people wrote in the questions here. Is it possible to get enough Potassium doing Keto? Yeah. I mean, you have to do about six or seven green vegetable servings a day. So, like— Let’s say a palm serving is one serving so every meal you should have— you should strive for at least two servings, number one. Number two
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Your fish, don’t forget
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: …if you’re on Keto, you probably gonna be eating some fish.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some potato squash.
Evan Brand: Yup. Uh— Coconut water— I mean, that could be a good one but—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Post-Workout— Post-Workout, it’s great.
Evan Brand: This— Look. Make sure they’re not adding sugar to it. Some brands add sugar so just look out for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think I— we hit it all up. I would just say, “Everyone, if you’re enjoying this,
Evan Brand: I don’t think so. Just uh— if you guys are out and about, sweating your butt off in the summertime, which hopefully you’re outside and getting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Excellent podcast today I mean, this is very timely, based on the time of the year that we’re in. So I appreciate it. Evan, phenomenal chat and we’ll chat real soon.
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye.
References:
“Salt Your Way Back to Health Detox” book by Dr. David Brownstein
https://thyroidresetsummit.com/
https://justinhealth.com/cronometer or https://cronometer.com/