Functional Medicine Strategies to Help Improve Your Sleep | Podcast #360

Hey, guys! In this video, Dr. J and Evan discuss several functional medicine strategies to better your sleep. Achieving better sleep can lead to many health improvements. Here we’ve provided a list of suggestions from a functional medicine perspective for better sleep. Please note, this list is not meant to be implemented in its entirety. Instead, pick 3–4 changes to implement to improve sleep quality.

Some suggestions are to avoid alcohol (wine, beer, and hard liquor) within 3 hours of bedtime; avoid anxiety-provoking activities close to bedtime. As much as possible, go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day because it will help train your biological clock. Also, decrease the light in your bedroom by using a dimmer or reading light with a dimmer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 – The importance of light exposure in your overall functional capacity
7:30 – The effect of Vitamin Deficiency in sleep-wake cycle
11:58 – The benefits of water filtration in pineal gland function
13: 59 – Fluoride exposure affecting sleep patterns;
16:53 – The The nutrients that play a big role in the quality of sleep

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, how are you doing today man?

Evan Brand: Hey, I’m doing really well, I’m refreshed and rested and I think it’s due to some of the supplementation of nutrients that we’ll probably dive into today which is on the topic of functional medicine strategies for sleep issues which are epidemic in modern society. By the way, in Amish society, I was actually doing some slides this morning in a fatigue course that I’m working on before you and I jump on here together and then researching what’s called the old order Amish. These are like the super old school. There’s like a different level of Amish like some will have indoor plumbing, some don’t, some will use a smartphone but they only use it for phone calls that kind of thing but the old order, those are like no phones, no electricity, nothing. Anyway, they have less than 1% of depression, they report virtually zero insomnia and they have 10x, 10-fold the light exposure variation of the general population and they were found to have virtually zero prevalence of seasonal affective disorder which is like a seasonal depression. So, when you look at the Amish, they’re doing a lot of things right that we’re doing wrong in regards to our light exposure which then creates not only mood issues for us, more supposed advanced humans that use technology but also with our sleep and the real mechanism is because we’re not fully charging our batteries in the day. So, this study on the Amish and their light exposure, what they did is they put a light meter almost like a watch on their wrist and they track these Amish people for a couple of weeks and then they compare them to your modern person working in an office environment an indoor environment and because in an office environment, you’re getting such low intensity of bright light, you’re not really fully charging that cortisol in the morning, you’re not getting that initial spike whereas the Amish, they’re working outside, they’re getting that natural sunlight exposure. Even in the winter months, they still had 10x the light exposure of modern, you know, I guess you’d call them civilized people, uh, city people and so that’s a cool like free thing to do which is something honestly, I didn’t realize until I looked into this research. I’m much, much less like mopey in the winter than I used to be. I mean we’re almost in December when you and I are recording these years ago, maybe a decade ago when I had gut issues and all sorts of problems, the winter was so depressing for me. It doesn’t really bother me anymore. I kind of embrace it and I think honestly, it’s because even in the middle of the day at 12’ or 1’oclock, I’ll go outside and just get natural sunlight if I sit on my front porch the way our house is structured there’s not much wind. So, even on a day where it’s 15 or 20 degrees. I could sit out there with no shirt on and get that sunlight exposure. I always feel better, my mood is lifted, my circulation, my blood flow and my sleep is way better on those days as opposed to days where I don’t get out and get that bright light.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That totally makes sense. That vitamin D is very, very important, also just getting that good sunlight in the morning kind of gets, it resets that circadian rhythm. So, circadian rhythm is light and cortisol driven as cortisol drops, melatonin increases, this kind of inverse relationship of cortisol to melatonin, so the light kind of helps rest that so you get on the right schedule there as light stimulates cortisol, it hits your pineal gland, it kind of helps charge up the pineal gland as well, very important for melatonin synthesis at night time because as cortisol drops, we have this natural circadian rhythm, cortisol’s highest in the morning, drops throughout the day as it drops, melatonin can increase at night and that light really kind of help reset things so that’s very important. Also, very important as well, melatonin it’s kind of like a hormone kind of neurotransmitter made from the pineal gland, right this area here in the brain and it’s made from amino acids to 5htp or tryptophan, L-tryptophan, it’s an amino acid that’s a building block for melatonin and important cofactor for it as well was B6, as well, an important B vitamin, very important cofactor. So, if we’re eating nutritionally deficient foods, lots of processed carbs, not getting good quality B vitamins, not digesting our protein well, you could see poor digestion and poor nutrient density in the food could easily affect sleep quality.

Evan Brand: You know what, this is interesting too and sorry I knocked over my water bottle, I was trying to grab my phone to pull up at the D-minder app to look at when you can actually synthesize vitamin D because that’s only at certain times of the day especially when you’re in a more northern latitude. So, anywhere south of I think it’s the 37th latitude, there’s a vitamin D winter and so today believe it or not, it says right here in the app, today which we’re recording is November 29th, it says today is the last day of the year where I can get Vitamin D and I can only get it today from 12:13 to 12:49, so there’s literally barely 30minutes today is the final day to synthesize vitamin D and then that’s gonna last this quote vitamin D winter, meaning that the angle of the sun is gonna be to low in the sky to synthesize vitamin D that will last until I want to say it’s about February, I can’t remember right off top of my head but it’s usually December give or take to January or February. There’s almost a month or two where you can’t make any vitamin D, so I will be supplementing a little more and there’s actually a 20 20 paper on this that was called Vitamin D and sleep regulation and long story short, vitamin D supplementation improves sleep disturbances. It says that vitamin D is involved in the pathways of production of melatonin. So, I didn’t know that, I thought that it was primarily a cortisol, melatonin you and I talked about the seesaw of high cortisol in the morning and at night cortisol drops, melatonin rises bit apparently, the vitamin D receptors and the enzymes that control their activation and degradation interplay with melatonin, so there you go you learn something new every day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, it’s working on what device, so vitamin D is working on melatonin receptor sites?

Evan Brand: That’s what it sounds like. Yeah, it’s working on synthesis of melatonin.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, synthesis, so you have part of the, that’s what I think I mentioned like charging the pineal gland. I think charging the pineal gland to get in that good light that’s I think you need that good UV light to stimulate melatonin production and then you also need the raw material, right? You need the 5htp tryptophan amino acids, you need the B6, those are all really important cofactors and the light kind of, is an important stimulator to help make it, as well as, time it up too, right, it really times up that rhythm, uh, one of the best things when you have time zone issues. Is get up in the morning to watch that sunrise, you can even do a little bit of caffeine as well to stimulate the cortisol, so you get the cortisol increase while you’re seeing the light. The pineal gland sees that ultraviolet light coming in, it syncs up your rhythm and you do a little bit of melatonin at night and that kind of gets your rhythm right back on track. So, anyone’s traveling time zones, it’s one of the best ways to get back on track, see the sunrise in the morning with a little bit of caffeine and then sunset at night with some melatonin, that gets the cycle all dialed in.

Evan Brand: So, here’s another paper in the neurology publication and it just said that low vitamin D levels are significantly associated with longer time to fall asleep. Excessive daytime sleepiness and underlying conditions and sleep restricted individuals. So that’s interesting because I know years ago, I was vitamin D deficient and my sleep was worse. Now, granted I had other issues too, I want to make sure, you and I talked about the gut a bit but years ago, it’s interesting to think that my low vitamin D could have been a contributing factor to my sleep problems.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely, you know, a variable, there’s a lot of other issues too. I mean the first thing we’re gonna look at is we’re gonna look at circadian rhythm. So, we’re gonna test cortisol levels and rhythm. We’re gonna see it all throughout the day because one biggest thing that happens, the more stressed and inflamed you get, is you get either a flattening of the cortisol or you can get a flattening with an increase at night and that can make it really hard to relax, really hard to settle down, obviously the flattening throughout the day can cause lower energy the first half of the day as well as a flat mood, right? Because cortisol is a glucocorticosteroid, gluco meaning pertains to energy and stress, corticosteroid meaning inflammation, so it’s a natural anti-inflammatory. So, yeah, we don’t have that arch cortisol in the morning, energy can below and that nice drop at night really helps us relax so that’s one of the first tests we’re gonna look at and then of course, we know melatonin is made from protein. It’s nice to see what’s happening with the protein side of the fence because if we don’t have good just stupid things like, hey I’m vegan vegetarian, I’m not eating enough protein, or I don’t have enough hydrochloric acid or enzymes or I have chronic gut issues like SIBO, IBS, H. pylori, gut bugs, and that’s maybe creating a bottleneck and also creating an inflammation in the gut which is then moving through the tight junctions into the bloodstream, moving it’s way to the brain that could affect the brain, brain inflammation, HPA-axis function, that’s brain talking to the adrenal glands and that could affect everything for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean, when I had gut infections, my sleep was disturbed sometimes just because of pain in my gut, I mean so how many people have IBS that also have sleep problems, I can tell you it’s quite a lot, we work with that all the time and another thing too is the parasites, I mean, some argue that the parasites are more active at night. Some people report crawling and other weird sensations of parasites and I will tell you with stealth infections like Babesia, for example, which is an intracellular parasite. Babesia causes major problems with sleep in particular it’ll cause night sweats so some women think of it as hot flashes but it could be Babesia and unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of tick bites over the years and I can tell you with personal experience with Babesia that it would cause me to wake up at about an hour to after I went to bed. So, if I went to bed at nine I would be up by 11, sometimes sweating, sometimes no, but I would just be wide awake it was almost this infection was driving some sort of cortisol response, so after treating these type of infections usually the sleep problems go away and then as you mentioned we could supplement amino acids in the meantime especially because if someone has gut issues, we know they’re not gonna be synthesizing enough serotonin from their gut because the vast majority is made in the intestine. So, if you’ve got gut bugs and you don’t sleep well, you gotta fix the gut bugs if you wanna sleep well. Can you supplement melatonin and 5htp? Yes, and those are very nice natural things but they’re still band-aids, they’re not the root cause. So, like you said a stool test is something that could be an order, a urine test to look at the brain chemistry too because we could see dopamine and serotonin levels and then you mentioned cortisol which we could do via saliva or urine and we could see those inverse patterns. So, another thing I wanna mention is like, Relora. Relora is like a patented version of two different barks. There was one paper on it that it reduced cortisol levels by about 18% in four weeks. Now, I don’t recommend if you have sleep issues, just to go take this, you wanna test not guess. So, I don’t think it’s wise and I’m sure you would agree for people just to go take things that affect cortisol without knowing what your up against. I think it’ll be better for you to try to get some data first. So, don’t assume that because your sleep sucks that you have a cortisol problem because sometimes, we’ll test people that are wired at night and surprisingly they have low cortisol. Maybe it’s just emotional stress or something else but it’s not a cortisol problem and then sometimes people feel okay but at night their cortisol levels triple, where it shouldn’t be and then that’s where the nutrients come in to help to move it in the right direction.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. There also some things out there talking about pineal gland, that’s the gland that makes melatonin could, uh, get calcification and some of the calcification could be connected to fluoride and so may want to think about a high-quality water filtration system at least an under-counter RO system reverse osmosis that filters out a lot of the fluoride. Just because that’s gonna be essentially it’s a prescription drug in the water and you’re getting an uncontrollable amount, so it’s really good to have a good water filtration system so I have a whole house carbon-based system, as well as, a under the counter reverse osmosis system. So, I’ll highly recommend having both but at least have one for your drinking water in that way you can get a lot of the crap out of the water. So, we’ll put a couple of links of water filtration products that we personally use and recommend ourselves throughout with our family as well as patients. And so that will help at least improve the water quality because that could have a connection with, uh, pineal gland calcification.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, I got into fluoride years ago, just fluoride research and the toxicity of it and how even places, most major cities they add fluoride to the water, you know, so you’ll have like in Kentucky relatively decent water but then at the end they add fluoride to it which is just really criminal based on all the research we know about fluoride lowering the IQ and things like that and so when I was working out of a brick and mortar at a chiropractor’s office, we actually had a few x-rays where people had neck injuries from car wrecks and this might sound crazy but we were able to actually see the calcification on the x-ray, you know, if we were doing like a more of a head type x-ray for some of these neck and head injuries, you could literally see almost like this little darker spot or might have been bright white, I can’t remember, depending on the x-ray machine but you could see it and I was asking the chiropractor like what is that and he’s like well that’s the pineal gland. He’s like maybe this calcification thing is real because you’ll read that online, some people labeled it a conspiracy but I think there’s totally something to it and I have seen images of that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s one study right here, I’m looking at right now, it’s 2018 study, they’re looking at fluoride exposure and sleep patterns among adults and they’re talking about essentially, you know, looking at that level and they’re looking at fluoride exposure affecting sleep patterns. I’ll put the study here in the links but one of the conclusions here reached at the very end, let me kind of scroll down to it said chronic low level fluoride exposure may contribute to changes in sleep cycle and regulation and sleep behavior among older adolescents, U.S. additional prescriptive studies are warranted to examine the effects of fluoride on sleep patterns and determine the critical window of vulnerability for patients and so essentially they’re saying chronic low-level exposure, right. What about higher-level exposure, right? What about the extra fluoride in your toothpaste too, right? These are all some extra things that, you know, it’s just something you want to make sure that you have clean water and one benefit of clean water is keeping the fluoride out which could affect your sleep, also other stuff in the water such as potential parasites and bacteria that may not get hit by your typical chlorine and as well as potential pharmaceutical drugs. So, good health, uh, filtratration is gonna be wonderful. We’ll put the recommended links for the products that we use down below.

Evan Brand: Speaking of drugs, why don’t we mention drugs. People that are doing different pharmaceuticals for fatigue or for mood issues or for ADD or ADHD, I mean people that are doing stimulants, you know methamphetamine derivatives, a lot of these people depending on the half-life, depending on the metabolism of the drug, depending on people’s digestion, depending on maybe that with caffeine or other stimulants, I mean that’s a huge problem and we are an addicted society to stimulants, I mean caffeine is probably the number one stimulant used worldwide but certainly I have tons of clients even teenagers unfortunately 14,15, 16-year-old, they are taking pharmaceuticals like Vyvanse or other really, really stimulating things to supposedly help them focus better but then they can’t sleep at night so then they’re on social media at night, they’re looking at their blue light screen which is gonna be suppressing melatonin production all night. Now, they’re laying in bed, scrolling on TikTok while they supposed to be sleeping and so there’s no wonder, we have so many teenagers that have depression and anxiety issues too because good sleep is really important for good mood and I tell you, if I don’t sleep as well, mood’s not as good and that’s just common sense because the glymphatic system, ‘G’ like Gary, the glymphatic system works when you’re sleeping and this is almost like a, think of it like a brain detox and with not enough sleep or quality sleep, that system doesn’t work and then our brain, we just can’t think clearly, we make worse decisions, we have less ability to react like in terms of driving and reaction time and speed, I mean, the brain really takes a hit when we don’t have sleep, you know, good quality sleep.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Well, let’s talk about some other nutrients that are very important. So, obviously, things like magnesium, very important, magnesium plugs into the mitochondria Krebs cycle supposedly at a minimum 300 to a thousand enzymatic roles in the body. So, it plays a large role in what’s going on with our health and with relaxation. Also, I like to combine a little bit of magnesium and some collagen which is very high in glycine. So, glycine and magnesium are super, superchargers for relaxation and really getting the parasympathetic nervous system up, very relaxing, very calming as well. So, I like that as just kind of a nice diet and lifestyle strategy and again if you make up a lot to go a pee, you may wanna give yourself an hour or two before the bed, before sleep, before you have that, at least an hour so you can kind of pee and get all that extra water out of your bladder. So, a good hour or two, very helpful, very relaxing, very calming. Of course, general lifestyle strategies like wearing good blue blocking glasses, um, just kind of mitigating a lot of the light stuff at the end, putting a lot of your lights on dimmer switches where you can at least not knock down a lot of the intensity down 80% or so, so that’s not stimulating cortisol and lowering melatonin. So, the light at night hits that pineal gland, it’s gonna raise your cortisol and lower melatonin because cortisol and melatonin are in an inverse relationship. Cortisol up, melatonin down so that’s very helpful.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, humans we’re so smart that we’re stupid and we brought the sunlight indoors whereas compared to the Amish, guess what, guess how much nighttime light exposure they have, virtually nothing. Number one, they don’t have electricity so if they want light it’s gonna be a candle and the intensity of a candle, number one the candle is gonna be amber red, there’s gonna be very, very minimal blue light coming from the candle and the intensity of it is a fraction of a single light bulb so, you know, you really screwed up by bringing lights indoors, I mean, they’re awesome but I try not use them so at night we’ll just use like a salt lamp at night, just salt lamps scattered around the home and those are relatively, uh, orange color and then relatively low intensity and then also, you mentioned the glycine. The glycine is awesome, I take glycine almost every day, it’s about, give or take 3 grams, just for a scoop of it and interestingly when my wife went in for a, to get, she had one mercury amalgams which are heavy metal that can affect sleep too, so we’ll talk about detox support, I think we should at least mention it. But when she went in to get her, uh, one silver removed, they actually gave her a glycine mouth rinse which I thought pretty interesting and she said it killed her out, like they had her almost like sit around and then swallow and she said it just chilled her out right before the procedure so it’s kind of like a natural, you know anti-anxiety formula that they were using in the dentist office so that was net. But let’s talk on detox support because I think we’ve talked about this before or at least I’ve mentioned in various podcasts but like histamine can be a problem with sleep so you know sometimes people need to go on like lower histamine diets and then if people have mold or other issues affecting their histamine then maybe like quercetin like a natural antihistamine would be helpful for sleep and or binders so like clays like zeolite clay can actually bind to histamine unlike charcoal. I don’t believe charcoal can but I have seen some stuff on clay binding to histamine so I will take a combination binder of some clay charcoal silica blends before bed and that does help my sleep and you know my wife, she definitely reports that she sleep better if she does charcoal before bed so the mechanism is probably that it’s binding up any nutrient or any toxin rather that’s gonna be stimulating a stress response, some people might benefit better with sleep remedies before bed and some might benefit better with detox remedies maybe you do both but maybe separate them by half an hour or so.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes a lot of sense. I’d also say, be careful of fasting too much, some people, they do really well with intermittent fasting and it can be helpful, some need to have some protein and some fat and a little bit of carbs before bed because their blood sugar may go low while they’re sleeping. So, if you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, you know, one of the best strategies is to have a little bit of a mini protein shake whether it’s collagen, magnesium kind of a coconut milk, maybe a little bit of berries in there just a little bit of protein a little bit of fat maybe a little bit of carbs, see if that kind of stabilizes your blood sugar. The goal is if your blood sugar gets too low, your body can utilize cortisol and adrenaline to pick that blood sugar back up, the problem is cortisol and adrenaline as it picks that blood sugar back up, it also wakes you up because it stimulates you, right? And then, you can fall out of sleep and that’s a big concern so managing blood sugar before bed and or if you wake up can be very helpful and I will also do some sublingual formulas if people wake up just to kind of help get back to sleep. Again, the problem with it is if you’re like an hour or two away from when you’re supposed to get up that can be problematic because maybe you’re a little bit drowsy going into the morning but if it’s the middle of the night and you got like three hours or so then you can definitely take that and that’ll help you get back to sleep but, you know, good diet lifestyle strategy is super important and then we have, you know, we have to look at the circadian rhythm and the cortisol levels at night and in the morning because, you know, we’ll look at these, we’ll test these with our patients and that’ll give us a good insight and one of the big things is just trying a little bit of food and or shake in the middle of the night and if that helps you get back to sleep or a little bit before you go to bed, if that helps you from waking up and there’s probably a blood sugar connection.

Evan Brand: Yeah. If you’re listening to this and your head is spinning, uh, we do consultations and so this is how we tease things apart so you’re just getting an insight into our brains so you’re just kind of tuning into Justin and I riffing, we didn’t plan this, we didn’t schedule this talk in terms of like how are we gonna dive into this, this is us riffing and so I hope you guys enjoy this flow because this is how we think, we’re approaching a situation with a client who comes to us and says, hey I’ve got sleep problems, we’re running through this is in our head almost instantly, the cortisol, the blood sugar, the stress, the emotions, the gut, I mean we’re just kind of filtering this in our head, we’re processing it, we’re listening to your symptoms we’re matching up gut symptoms with skin issues, with mood issues, with sleep issues and then we’re creating almost this mental map in our head, we’re creating this like spider web of what part of the web is disrupted in this person, where do we need to go, what part of the web do we need to reconstruct to get this whole symphony working together because sleep is really a complex thing. There’s a lot of things to be going good, to have good sleep, I mean, it’s no surprise wherein an epidemic of people taking sleeping medications because as you’ve listened if you’ve been somewhat paying attention through this podcast, you’re hearing there’s a hormonal component, there’s a neurotransmitter component, a gut component, an infection component, a blood sugar possibly a blood pressure component, a heavy metals and other toxins components so this thing can get really complex and so if you just go to the doctor and you get ambient or a sleeping medication, all you’ve done is put yourself in somewhat of a drug coma, you’ve done nothing to fix any of these root causes and if you have toxins or other issues creating the sleep problem, you’re just getting farther and farther away and it’s really sad to see how commonly the sleep medications are passed out like candy because what they don’t tell you it’s very difficult to get off of those drugs especially if it’s in the benzodiazepines category where it’s like an anti-anxiety and sleep remedy like lorazepam, those things are incredibly addictive, incredibly powerful drugs that are very hard to get off so we just prefer you guys, think root cause. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary but I guess it is because the conventional medicine approach of this stuff is garbage and then, uh, that was a little mini rant. One other thing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yep. 100% right though Evan.

Evan Brand: So, one of the things CBD can be helpful so there, you know, there’s so many states now that have medicinal cannabis to where you can get a tiny bit of THC. I’m not saying that people need to get high to sleep but I have found that clients in these legal states where they can get like a three to one or a five to one ratio so what that means is like say five parts CBD to one part THC, some of these sublinguals or topicals or sprays or edibles or gummies or flowers concentrates, whatever they like that can be enough to help regulate the nervous system. I think the mechanism is probably tamping down inflammation but there’s probably some nervous system component to it as well and so if you’re in a state where you can’t do THC, you could at least do CBD or try to get some organically grown plants and you could do give or take 10 to 20 milligrams is what I’ll do in tincture form put in under the tongue and it’s not like a sedative, it’s not gonna patch you out in the middle of the day but it will help you be a little more rested so sometimes I’ll do a combination of like the GABA chewables that I’ve got, a couple of motherwort tincture which is like a heart calming herb and then a little bit of CBD, something like that triple combos is pretty awesome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you know, I do like that a lot. That makes a lot of sense. So, deeper right kind of root cause stuff, we’re always looking at diet, we’re always looking at blood sugar, we’re always looking at inflammation, we’re always looking at circadian rhythm and adrenal function, of course females if we have estrogen dominance and low progesterone is very important for calming and activating the parasympathetic. We want to look at the hormonal imbalances that could be driving things, um, also chronically low thyroid low T3 levels, you can see associated with insomnia and sleep issues, got to look at the insulin, got to look at the thyroid connection there as well, got to make sure we’re digesting and breaking things down, uh, very important. The hard part is anything can cause everything, that’s the hard part so we have to look at the underlying root cause mechanisms, we have to look at the person as an individual we have to look at their diet and lifestyle habits, we have to kind of timeline their history out so we can understand all things that happened, as they either got better or worse in their condition that tells me a lot and of course we go to test, we got to make sure that we’re not guessing but assessing what the root causes are, that’s very important.

Evan Brand: Oh yeah. Well said, bringing up the thyroid there in the final hour, that’s very important and tons of people with Hashimoto’s right, autoimmune thyroid, they may have this attack on their thyroid where all of a sudden they’re leaking out thyroid hormone and then boom they’re anxious and wired in the middle of the night so great call on that and sometimes like thyroid calming herbs may need to be used and I believe technically in some of these thyroid calming blends we’ve used, I think motherwort is in there, I know Bugleweed is in there but I think motherwort might be in there too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, also Melissa or lemon balms, another calming one too. Yeah. So, they’re a very common kind of relaxing. Some of them really work on getting GABA really upregulated and, uh, and going so that’s super helpful. So, people if you’re listening here and you wanna dive in deeper at you know what the potential root causes could be with your sleep or health issues, you know, feel free to head to evanbrand.com, all right, Evan works with patients all over the world and or myself Dr. J here at justinhealth.com, we are available worldwide, they’ll be info where you guys can click, you guys can connect with us and our staff and we’re more than willing to help you, we do specific lab testing, we look at diet lifestyle strategies, we’ll look at potential toxins because sometimes mold or other toxicities can play a role. We’ll really get to the root cause so we can, not just kind of get you sleeping better, we get you healing and feeling better overall, that’s really the key.

Evan Brand: Yeah. Last thing here, sleep issues are really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s very rare to find someone with just sleep issues typically there is a like I mentioned a mood component maybe anxiety, depression, uh, generally it’s lumped into fatigue as well, maybe joint issues, gut issues, skin issues, I mean, so if you find somebody with just sleep issues, cool, maybe that’s an easier case for us to fix but many times fatigue is in the list and sleep, they often go hand in and obviously. So, this is not just important for you to get good rest, this is important for you to have more energy during the day so you can be more productive at your job, be a more productive parent, a business owner, entrepreneur or whatever you’re doing in your busy life. It’s really important that you get this thing dialed in. So, take your sleep issues seriously, please reach out if you need help. Dr. J at justinhealth.com or Evan at evanbrand.com and we’d love to help you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. I’ll put on some of the studies on fluoride as well than below and we’ll put some of the recommended products that we use for water filtration as well. All right Evan, good chat with you man. Hey everyone, have a phenomenal week and we’ll be back. Take care, you all. Take it easy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, how are you doing today man?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, it’s working on what device, so vitamin D is working on melatonin receptor sites?

Evan Brand: That’s what it sounds like. Yeah, it’s working on synthesis of melatonin.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yep. 100% right though Evan.

The Top 5 Ways Your Water Could Be Hurting You & How to Fix It | Podcast #350

We need to stay hydrated but is the tap water in your home safe? When we drink water at your house, it must meet strict safety standards as well.

Water can be contaminated in several ways, according to Dr. J and Israel. It can contain bacteria and parasites that get in the water from human or animal fecal matter. It can contain chemicals from industrial waste, spraying crops, and many more. That’s why it is essential to invest in water filters if you can or make sure that your water source is safe to avoid health problems in the long run.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:19 – Fluoride
6:06 – Chlorine
10:45 – How does Clearly Filtered work?
18:47 – Herbicides/Pesticides
19:56 – Pharmaceutical Drugs
26:03 – Contaminants Detected
30:53 – Benefits and advantages of Clearly Filtered

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s doctor Justin Marchegiani here. I have Israel Passwater on the show today. We are gonna be talking about water, water filtration, some of the top five toxins that may be in your water and hurting your health. So, really excited to have Israel on today’s podcast. Israel, how we doing today man?

Israel Passwater: Doing good man. Thanks for having me, Justin. It’s a great day, great to be here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, really excited to have you on. Um, one of the reasons why I have Israel on, he’s an expert in water and water filtration and the different technology but Israel also has a product to it’s basically, the better Brita filter right. We all know the Brita filters, right. The problem with them, they make the water taste a little bit better but they don’t filter out a lot of the other toxins. In Israel, it’s a product that actually filters out more of the toxins and It’s a kind of a low-cost product to kind of get into the water filtration space and I’m really excited. I talk about whole house water filtration, a lot of counter top, um, reverse osmosis systems. Those are great, they also involve a little bit of install, you may not be at a property that allows you to do it. So, this technology allows you to do it passively. It’s like a Brita filter for your fridge but gets of more of the toxins and more of the crap out of the water. We’re gonna go into the technology and some of the things that we need to be avoiding in our water to have healthier metabolism. So first off like, what is the number one thing in water today that needs to be filter out that could be hurting our health?

Israel Passwater: That’s a great question. It depends on who you ask, um, from our perspective fluoride would probably be the number one, because it’s in about 75% of the water supply, uh, internationally and nationally. So, that’s one that we believe to be in science has shown that there are, uh, issues or questions at least on the long term effects of that, uh, so typically when people are looking for, uh, like a water filter that will come about us, they say I’m looking for best water pitcher that filters fluoride or heavy metals or whatever it is you’re, you, you look on the news and you say, oh there was a contamination outbreak and there’s lead in the pipes and it’s in the water supply that’s where you know good parents like us will go and say, okay well, I need to find a solution to that. And that’s usually where people will find us without, oh wow clearly filtered. I think I’ve heard about them. If they haven’t heard of us, oh that’s pretty cool. So that’s usually the start of the journey is realizing that there is, uh, there’s toxins in the water and it’s not ah, oh maybe, oh gosh, I wonder if it’s really a real thing. It’s proven scientific. Um, so that’s usually where people kind of stumble upon us and not to start off with a scare tactic but again, that’s kind of what we do. We provide a layer of safety to bring help, people live healthier lives, you know, so we’re just.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, awesome, yeah. So, we have fluoride. Right now, there’s a lot of misconceptions on fluoride. A lot of people think of fluoride, they think of like, um, calcium fluoride, there’s some natural fluoride in the environment. You know, what we’re talking about is more of the Hydrofluorosilicic acid, more of the synthetic fluorides that, um, you know, a lot of dentists that are well-intentioned topically, may put on someone’s teeth to help make the enamel stronger, the problem is when you’re swallowing it, it’s a little bit different. It’s like seeing the benefits of sunscreen, so you don’t get burned and saying well let’s put in in the water and drink it right, so there maybe, you know, a lot of the data out there, maybe some of the benefits of fluoride, maybe more topical, but we’re talking about ingesting it orally. So probably not the best right? It’s good if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna be on a medication which fluoride is that you actually dose it. You don’t really control the dose when you put it in the water supply. So, I think that’s a good point and uh, keeping that out is beneficial and there’s a lot of studies if you go on pubmed and fluoride in the water supply and fluoride correlations affecting thyroid function and going down and even IQ going down. So, a lot of things there to kind of highlight from an implication standpoint.

Israel Passwater: I hate going to the dentist. But last time you go to the dentist, they do the fluoride treatment, what they tell you to do, they don’t tell you to swallow it right, they say no, rinse your mouth out, right? It’s like, it’s like they go, okay well, that makes sense but then people realize that you had fluoride and stuff like chloride being in the water. It may serve a purpose but maybe not the purpose they intended it to do so. I think maybe good intentions or at the time in 1920s or 30s when they started fluorinating the water. It was because not everyone had great dental care and access to dental, dental health, you know, so again, the rationale for doing was much different, well, and then it also depends on who you ask but again that was one of the main historical pinpoints why they started doing that but as we know, doctors also used to recommend smoking for lung capacities too in the 1920s and 30s.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And even sugar consumption as well, and anyone that has a kid that has like, you know, typical Colgate toothpaste, go look on the back of it, right it says you know, pinky size, pinky size amount and then it says, if you swallow, call poison control. So you know, there’s some understanding that this stuff is harmful and it’s always better to use a healthier toothpaste as well and get the fluoride out of your water, I think that’s a good first step. Also, I think half of all cavities, I think in teenagers and caused by dental fluorosis, meaning too much fluoride actually, causing the enamel almost crack.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. It’s an over-fluoridation that the concentration. So, yeah, there’s again, it depends on who you ask, but most people that have spent anytime and obviously you have looking and researching and I would encourage everyone and again, I’m a big believer because again, I come an educator’s background, um, again, I want everyone to do their own research, always like trust but verify, um, but the internet is a powerful place and there’s a lot of things, and Justin and I were talking right before we went live and I think the cool part about, you know, living in the society that we have and sometimes scary part is the access to technology that you have at your fingertips on your iphone, uh, stuff you can research, you know, if you have trouble sleeping at night. It’s like there’s a lot of information out there, so again, I like to encourage people, whatever you know, if it’s you know, our brand or another brand, whatever, just do the research, find out what your, what’s on your water supply and you know, be aware you know and obviously drive cautiously in that sense, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. People are listening, if they’re really interested, I put a link down below for the clearly filtered water filter, justinhealth.com/clearly-filtered. It’ll be right below, so if you guys want to take a look at it, we’re going to just go into what those big toxins are and the technology in a few minutes. So, we hit fluoride, why don’t we go to chloride next, right, I mean chlorine has well-intentioned right? It has reasons there to kill bacteria and kill things like that, but the problem is they leave it in right and it kind of has a smell that everyone knows what that chlorine smell looks like or smells like, because of being in pools and stuff. Uh, let’s go over chlorine.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. I mean it just depends, like again, the rationale for keeping chlorine in the water was that for transportation, you know, the idea was that they’re transporting in pipes long over long distances, you know that was the intent initially. But again, they’ve seen that chlorine vapor can cause long term damage to vital organs and they’ve there’s all sorts, there’s no reason they should be, uh, in the water supply. So, from our perspective, again, that’s another villain that people obviously don’t think about you know. They don’t think about it, oh it’s chlorinated. We’ll, that chlorine smell is, you know, what do you do when you get out of the pool, you rinse off right? It’s like you go to your face. Hopefully it’s salt water, you could. If you’re fortunate enough to have a saltwater pool but you know, what you go, you’re going to rinse off, you don’t want your hair to turn all nasty and green if you have blond hair. So again, there’s all different reasons that you say, okay well yeah, that’s chlorinated but should I be consuming that. You don’t drink pool water, but again there’s lesser concentrations obviously in the tap water but it does exist. So again, another reason people find us say, okay well, I want to take the chlorine out of my water, oh okay cool, so.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And a lot of times with that motivation, it’s more of just the taste and the smell, they just want the water to taste and smell a lot better right. So, there’s more of an anesthetic to that right?

Israel Passwater: Great point. So, a lot of it, like, if you go on our website, okay, this is I don’t want to make this salesly at all but I think if you look up different types of, uh, the contaminants we remove, a lot of the ones that are cancer caused into parts per billion not parts per million, so parts per billion. Like you take a medicine dropper, drop it in an Olympic sized swimming pool, since we’re talking about swimming pools but stay with the analogy that you take a mess and drop or drop, one drop some of these things are poisonous and parts per billion and that’s considered toxic and you think there’s a lot and the concentration is a lot higher than a lot of these. So, again, people don’t realize this and once they start to realize, they go, oh my gosh that’s really my water and there’s lots of different ways you can check your local water supply and see what’s in there and it’s truly eye-opening and if not scary.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah. And being a functional medicine doctor, I’m very concerned about gut health and I know chlorine has a lot of negative impacts on the microbiota in the gut too.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Oh, I forgot one of the things I was gonna say, a lot of the things you were talking about like odor so like chlorine. Like chlorine taste and odor is pretty standard like when you look at the industry for like water filtration kind of like benchmark. It doesn’t really much, but it’s like oh it tastes good, okay great, it must not be toxic. The problem is, most of the things that are cancer causing and you know, all sorts of detrimental things, you know like are, you can’t smell it, they’re odorless, they’re tasteless and you can’t see them because they’re microscopic. So that’s kind of going around with the sun, this illusion of safety, um, but again a lot of times you can’t see something that’s going to potentially be very harmful for you and your family. And that’s, I mean it’s scary but it’s true though so when people say, oh it tastes fine okay well or like, you know, I think my water taste fine because I live next to an aquifer or something like it. Again, the assumption is it’s safe but reality is that you know, most of the population has again with fluoride that 75 plus percent of the water supply is fluorinated, so.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then can’t chlorine convert to chloramine as well? Can you talk about that one?

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Uh, I’m trying to remember the process but yeah, they, It can, It can interact and one, the interaction sometimes can have detrimental effects as well. I’m blanking on the term, if you can prompt me that’s fine, but the point is these things shouldn’t be in the water supply anyway so, um, so yeah but yeah, so typically that’s how people find out about us or start thinking about us and that’s where we come in is like, a really good option, you know, so it’s like yeah you know, like I’m looking at your success pyramid, you know, like a lot lies underneath the surface and the same thing with water filtration.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It makes sense because they’re putting a lot of these compounds there because they’re trying to prevent, you know, the bacteria getting in the water along the way but in the end you’re gonna drink it and so it makes sense that there is some kind of end stage filtration that we put that water through before it goes in our mouth and we know if chlorine is affecting bacteria in the water well what’s what about all the eight pounds of bacteria in our gut.

Israel Passwater: Yeah, it’s correct.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, it makes sense, we know 80% of our immune system is there. So, it’s gonna have negative impact with our microbiome, our immune function, so it’s good that we have ways to get it out.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Especially if you’re immunocompromised too, that’s a real significant topic, you know, for people that are like yeah or just sensitive to certain things. You know,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%

Israel Passwater: There you go. That’s our website, um, so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just pulled up on screen first thing, we hit the, um, the first thing we talked about was fluoride, we talked about fluoride and the Hydrofluorosilicic acid right? Before Hydrofluorosilicic acid, we talked about, you know obviously the percent removal. This is great and this is all confirmed via lab testing is that correct?

Israel Passwater: Correct. Yeah. That was the thing I was gonna touch on too. Whatever you choose, okay, so like, when I’m talking to people that may or may not know about us or have you know, a medium interest in water, you know filtration, um, they say, well okay well, you know, how do you compare to brands x, y, and z and go okay well, we do actually if you go on our website, we actually have a few comparisons like how we compare to like, you know like Berkey, Aquatru or some these other brands that you know are might be larger companies might have you know bigger marketing budgets but they again, when it comes down to it, it’s all what is testing is proven to do and then how was it tested, where was it tested and that what are the standards. So again, the cool part about our, uh, filters is they’re tested at EPA and NSF, uh, certified laboratory. Uh, we test stuff all the time, we actually just recently updated our pitcher testing so like for now we’re, uh, up to 273 known contaminants. Oh yeah, that’s a cool video too if you have ever wanted to check it out like the red dye test. But it just kind of gives a powerful visual of you know what our filters are doing and again imagine the red dye being toxin xyz.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Toxins, yeah exactly.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. The cool part again, again our filters are tested. They work and again we feel we have the best option in the space or and again we’re not the only option but we’re probably the best, uh, as far as when you’re looking at water pitchers especially or our point of filter systems like our under the sink or inline filter for your refrigerator, I mean, we really in, again, we have bottles so we kind of fit in the niche of like between like, hey I don’t want to put in a whole house system because there are some good house systems like as you and I were kind of chatting about yeah, but I want something portable, I want something I can take with us, something I’m renting a house and I want to be able to have clean and safe water for my family, we fit in really well, there so.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very cool. So, let’s continue to hit, so we talked about fluoride, we talked about chlorine which I think is really important for all the reasons, we mentioned chlorine right here 99.5 and also the chloramine which is a metabolite too so we’re knocking a lot of these down. Let’s go into the plastics. I think this is really important because of the microplastics so you have different plastic compounds BPA, various estrogen chemicals. You could probably put, um, pesticides, perforated chemicals in there, different chemical pesticides runoff.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. A lot of time, they think, well how do microplastics or like us pesticides end up in the water supply because when you think about it, you know, I see you know, neighbors of ours out there were like you know roundup and which is equally horrible but they’re spraying killing weeds and stuff I got to go but what people don’t understand over long periods of time that ends up and seeps into the water supply and then again local municipal water department doesn’t necessarily have the tools in order to filter that out, you know, so again, the assumption of hey it’s safe or with microplastics a lot of industrial runoff, you know, we build and create things and that ends up also in the water supply too so there’s a lot of different ways because of runoff and seeping and leaching over long periods of time that can come downstream to us and things that we’re just becoming more, uh, clear about it, more, uh intentional about, um, I think that what again why people go. Oh my gosh. There are actual pharmaceutical drugs or another one. How are pharmaceutical drugs..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly

Israel Passwater: Well and yeah

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. With a lot of these chemicals too, a lot of times they’re still like pecs, piping that’s plastic, there’s still some plastic piping. So, a lot of these things may be running through that as well

Israel Passwater: Which are not BPA-free as we know so and yeah and again BPA is limping like all sorts of nasty stuff too. So again, It’s really just kind of like a systematic like, aha, moment like, oh there’s a problem with my water supply potentially oh okey tell me more about that and that’s typically where people like I said like gravitate to and again gravitate it doesn’t have to be us but again we are certified to remove more contaminants than most of your, your top brands, you know, so uh, again, we feel like we have the best big mousetrap to use the term you never talked about, um, and uh again sometimes, you know people ask me like about a compound, we haven’t tested for. I go, you know what probably but I can’t say it until we’ve proven it but again all of our lab test is available on the website, you can download it and take a look at it. So, the biggest thing, I would like to say too is like for anyone in that space and interested in that, do your research but ask, you know, if the testing data isn’t available on the company’s website or on the packaging, ask for it. If say, hey I want a copy of your testing data and a lot of they can’t prove that or it’s tested for five gallons or in-house. I’ve heard something on the radio today, you know, it was like yeah 4 out of 5 people said that they felt that better, I think it was like a like a protein powder or something like. I gotta go, I go, that’s a perfect example like oh trust me it works it’s fine, well we tested it in-house for people that are on the payroll, you know, so stuff like that, that’s what you have to pay attention to, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Yep. That makes a lot of sense. Let me keep by hitting other things. So, we also just have general bacteria and viruses right, I know, that’s really important especially with what’s happening today in the world right, um, so viruses getting that out of the water whether it’s a Rotavirus etc. or just general bacteria, E. coli. Different various cysts, I know, parasitic cysts, Klebsiella, Giardia. These are all different microbes that could be in the water as well. Let me just show that here as well, that’s important. Tell me a little bit more about that and so you’re saying conventional water filtration, they’re not gonna be getting rid of some of these bacteria, cysts, viruses?

Israel Passwater: They won’t, because again they’re servicing like volume. So, one of the things you’ll notice too like when you first makes …, is that they’re again, it’s a catch-all. They’re doing, I would not say they’re doing there best, they’re trying to service a very large population because like at least here in California, is like, when they were building the infrastructure like yesterday, I assigned a new place ice hockey or driving on the freeway through L.A. and he’s going why are the roads so bumpy they go we’ll again because they’re old and they weren’t you know why are we hitting traffic well, they weren’t designed to service this many people. Same thing with the water supply. Again, when California’s infrastructure was built, you know, 100 years ago, it wasn’t planned. They weren’t planning on having this many people live or what again, great place to live, um, whether wise but gain from an infrastructure standpoint for water filtration like servicing a lot of customers and they can’t again. That’s why good filtration takes time, um, so like you know people know it’s like oh wow, how long does it take to develop your water pitcher, usually about 10-15 minutes. I go, oh wow, that’s kind of slow, no it’s actually good because it’s doing its job so, um, it really just depends on how you look at it but again trying to service a bigger catch, uh, a bigger net but against letting some of those particles and contaminants through because again, they can’t, they’re not set up to do that and that’s okay but knowing that you say okay well I gotta go take the next layer, the next step in order to protect my family and myself, you know, so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense because it takes a while for water to fit through and if you’re trying to get millions of gallons out, it’s gonna be pretty costly and it makes sense to filter it source you know. I mean where it’s coming into the home so it’s most like that this should be just something that everyone should have anyway. So, they’re trying to make the water decently clean, so you don’t get really sick, taking it in but it’s still not gonna have the health properties that we need overall.

Israel Passwater: Right. And that kind of goes with the assumption of like, okay so like I have you know even if you have like a whole house system, some of them are rated different rates and some of them aren’t rated at all so it really like depends on it so again that’s the first step but the second step typically is like people like oh well I have a fridge, a refrigerator, LG refrigerator that’s got a filter and it has a light that goes on when I need to replace like filter and they say oh cool great and they asked the same question, oh well, what is the filter actually doing, they kind of have the deer in the headlights look like, I don’t know, I have no idea well it’s again the assumption of safety the illusion of safety is like oh it’s a filter okay it’s like a seatbelt was it crash tested, I don’t know, it’s the seat belt though, you know, so but again we wouldn’t again I’m kidding, it might be a poor analogy but like that’s the kind of assumptions that you walk around with like oh okay, it’s gonna filter okay cool. Well, what does it do, I have no idea but part is that we do have an idea and we can prove it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. And we kind of already highlighted the herbicide that is a big deal because of pesticide runoff. It’s coming in from different farms, it’s going into our water supply and again this is like a wide category right, I mean, there’s all kinds of organopesticides and these affect our nervous systems. They are hormone disruptors, so they can really throw off hormones. This is a big one right. Any comments on the herbicides at all?

Israel Passwater: Yeah. I mean especially typically when someone’s asking about the herbicides and pesticides, a lot we have a lot of mothers are asking about that they’re expecting getting out..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 99.99% out so this is great. So, this is really significantly reducing our reduction and just not cut you off but these things are really powerful at very low doses so you don’t need a lot of it to affect your body, right?

Israel Passwater: Correct. Yeah. They get effective dose on or the, the lethal dose but yeah it doesn’t take a whole lot in order to do a whole lot of damage, um, and that’s again a scary thought, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% So we talked about pesticides that’s important because we’re getting exposure there, I would say the next thing, um, we talked about pesticides and herbicides. They’re kind of the same camp, right? In the same camp there, I would say the next thing after that I think is really important, um will be medications. Can we talk a little bit more about the medications and like statins, antidepressants so if even if we just like pee right these metabolites are going through our kidneys and they get into the water, right?

Israel Passwater: Well, because you think, like how on earth could like this kind of stuff be in the tap water and then initially when we started talking about this, I go really there you go, that’s, that’s a thing well yeah obviously our body filters it through our own filter system and it excretes all the toxins that’s what your body designed to do but that also includes trace amounts of insert whatever, uh, pharmaceutical drug you’re taking, you know, so that stuff shows up in traceable amounts in the water supply and people are kind of shocked when they find out, you know, like roundup. Okay I see like, my neighbors sprinting around up on his on his yard or something about ant killer or whatever the toxic thing yeah, I can see that it rains it runs down the drain it goes into the water suppl, makes sense but pharmaceutical drugs, you think, how on earth that well okay, when we think of it from us being the carrier or at least the disseminator of that or if you’ve ever dumped pills down the drain or down the toilet that can also end up with water supply too. So again, there’s a variety of ways that happens, um, but it’s something that we need to pay attention to, uh and something that’s very easily overlooked.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean just looking here on, on the list that you guys are actually testing right deep. That’s insecticides or you know, uhm spray for mosquitoes, right?

Israel Passwater: You think, okay like that makes sense. You know but some of this other stuff is like, like way hardcore you know. So it’s like..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This phenol A, obviously a plastic compound, a lot of the hormones that women maybe on which we don’t want men being on right?

Israel Passwater: Correct.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s like GABA medication, right? And then you have, um, just trying, I don’t recall some of these names, Naproxen, that’s some pain medication.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Again, I’m not a medical doctor, my degree in exercise physiology so like but again from a from health perspective, you think of all the things you do, during the week, you know, you know, like I’m a runner you know, it’s like, like training I’m running 60 miles a week, I’m stretching, I’m cross training, I’m taking some supplements, I’m trying to eat healthy and you know not drink too much or whatever it is you’re trying to do but again an easily overlooked one is like what, how, not just how much water you are drinking what kind of water are you drinking so that’s where really people go, oh, yeah you’re right, you know pesticides as we see, you know, its like, you know, those kind of things. They’re there, there proven and uh, I don’t know if you’ve shared with your audience

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For this handout people here, this is uh, anyone listening we have some stuff on the screen shared here. This is the actual lab assessing assessment testing on 100 gallons. This is cool. So, we’re seeing this is also getting removed like we know it and so on the website, you, kind of have it here right, you, kind of have it oh, you had it listed here, what was being removed but then we actually have the lab assessment here so that’s cool.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Yeah yeah. And again, yeah, we’re going to be adding some features on the website so if you look over the next week or two or three. It’s gonna have some other tools that we’re adding not to tease it but again we, the way it kind of the way I see is like, you know, from not just like we’re not selling water filters will help them educate people too that’s obviously why you and I are connecting on the podcast today but I think it’s important to if you take away nothing else from this podcast other than, hey I maybe need to rethink what other kind of water filter or if you’re not doing it, go do some research and find out some of the ones that’s best for you because again like what I said we’re not the only company that does this but we’re the ones that do it, obviously a greater extent, um, and again we’re decently in our opinion very affordable, easy to work with, um, independently tested and certified. So, I can, I, I see it’s kind of a no-brainer but it really starts with in an individual saying, you know what let me think about that, let me see what, what is my fridge filter is doing or is it doing

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yep. That makes sense. That’s good. I like that. So, we hit the fluoride right and get a big one, we hit a lot of the viruses and bacteria stuff and then we hit a lot of the plastic compounds we can put, like phthalates in that category, we have to put microplastics in that category.

Israel Passwater: I’m trying to think of any, like the top offenders too, like for people but again you know, fluorides usually where people like or in heavy metals or where people start you know like..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pharmaceutical drugs, right?

Israel Passwater: Pharmaceutical drugs, radiological elements, obviously, that’s one that we do too but I mean it really just depends on like everyone has a different you know top of their pyramid, they also have a different fear points here so they like whatever is most fearful of them or what’s most recent as far as exposure or you know, you know whatever that is again, we can service of those needs you know so and occasionally someone will say, well what about this and go well if we’re not certified to remove it we won’t claim it because we don’t know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that makes sense.

Israel Passwater: And it’s also too very costly and very timely to do this, so it’s not like we can’t just run down the street and have it done, it’s like no we have to have it send out and it cost thousands of dollars and so we’re very intentional about the ones we test for, um.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yep. That makes sense. And so just kind of the big five, right, we have pesticides-herbicides, we have fluoride, we have chlorine, we have pharmaceutical drugs, right and we have a lot of the you know, heavy metal here as well too, mercury, lead. These are important right, a lot of pipes used to be lead, I mean there’s a reason why, um, plumbers are called plumbers, I think, what is it the periodic table for, uh, lead, I think it’s plumbum is, is lead, right? How, that’s I think Latin for Lead is like plumbum the, in the periodic table of elements Pb which stands for plumbum and that’s what plumbers got their name from because plumbers dealt with pipes that were literally lead so lead pipes and plumbers were kind of synonymous, so it makes sense there may be still old piping out there in certain areas so you want to make sure you’re pulling the lead out, pulling any mercury out, pulling any, uh, compounds out that could be problematic. So heavy metals, pesticides, plastic compounds, uh, then we would have a lot of our pesticides and then chlorine fluoride. So those would be our top five here today. Anything else you want to talk about regarding other problematic compounds we didn’t dive in deep enough on?

Israel Passwater: No, I, I think I would just encourage everyone there’s a fun open-source tool they call the environmental working group that’s the EWG. They actually have a database where you can pull up your zip code. So, you can punch in like mine’s 19694 so you know where I live now, but it’ll pop up but hey here’s the, the compounds that we found in your lab testing. Yeah, here we go, perfect.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, here’s mine. This Austin, right here. This is Travis country, so you can look here, we see,

Israel Passwater: Like, well, let’s see, like oh, there you go, yeah and again and also too I wanted to mention that a lot of these substances are regulated by the EPA, so they say well, you know, the EPA is there to protect us and they are but again a lot of these things aren’t regulated or if it’s regulated it’s not to a healthy extent because you shouldn’t be like chlorine, you shouldn’t be ingesting chlorine but it is regulated so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, and then if we go here. Let me go pull this back up, right and we look at some of the testing, so we so in my area, I think the big one we saw was a lot of bromines, so there’s bromo, your bromochloroacetic acid, that would filter that out and we, I think we saw a bunch, um, you look at what else we saw there, the chloroform, so that that’d be that’d be your chlorine, right?

Israel Passwater: Right. Correct.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Over there.

Israel Passwater: And that’s the kind of the fun part is because you can thumb through and our goal is to be as transparent as we can, you know, so like I said, if there’s something we haven’t tested for, we just said, you know what we haven’t done that, we’ll put on a list, you know, and were constantly building a list and we’re constantly retesting you know, like I said we retested our pitcher, uh, this year and we’ll be doing the same thing with our inline filters but again, everything were certified to do, is like what we have proof of you know and it’s like yeah

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Here’s your chloramine and here’s your, uh, your chloride. So, it’s then you can kind of go in there and say, okay cool like at least have some coverage, um, for some of these issues, so that’s good and high levels of chromium too.

Israel Passwater: And yeah, I just want to mention, so this information is getting pulled from the universal database, so EWG just proved like, compiles all the data and then kind of google and then it kind of presents it in a very, uh, I think eye-opening way, um, so one of the cool parts is that you say well if you don’t believe me that your water supply is there’s probably something to be worried about, go here and then they’re a non-profit, we have no, we don’t paid by them or anything like that. So again, I like to show that is kind of like for someone who maybe new on that journey, um, towards, if either finding us or finding something else, say you should do something because you should consider this and that’s usually like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. That’s great. I want to just compare the technology to like you know your general breeder. I’m on your site here right. Where’s the best way to go see that, I know that you have like a comparison on here. Is it a featured pitcher? Is that right side?

Israel Passwater: Uh, yeah. The comparison I’m trying to think about the comparison, it already should, I should know this.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I went, I went through here earlier and I saw it and I thought it was really good. So, I’m gonna, I’m gonna put her around here as we, as we’re chatting to see if I can pull it up here.

Israel Passwater: And I’m trying to think, I, we have like a blog session, a session section, excuse me, that like really showcases, like, some interesting articles like us versus Brita versus Aquatru, us or Insert brands. Again, like I said we’re not the only people that do water filters but again kind of goes through like, how we’re..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Here it is. Right here. I got it right here. So, there’s, you know, you clearly filtered standard carbon, zero water, so let’s just kind of go through the big thing here. So the big one is obviously fluoride, microplastics, lead, a lot of the, um, the I think these are volatile organic compounds, right here. So, we’re really filtering a lot out so most are going to do pretty good. In regards to what’s probably more lead and then what else. Let’s, let’s use the easiest one, one of the easier ones to test for too and you know if you have any carbon block filter of any type, it should remove some percentage of that. So again, we never want to just like, to discourage other brands, that’s never my thing, it’s like hey whatever you are, you’re using even a Brita filter for example because they’re the most know brand because they’re been around the longest and they’ve had the most like a said the most marketing budget for longest time but again, it’s going better than drinking tap water, so it’s definitely better amount of good so that, which is a good thing you know so it’s like you know, hey well, you start here and then you move here and move up, you know, but uh, I think too, one of the things that keep in mind too is like, uh, when you’re looking at comparing like, brand A to brand B to brand C. You got ask yourself, you know, three main questions: how is it tested, is it tested, those are two parts and then to what degree, who’s testing it and then also to the other part is how long does it last, you know how easy is it to work with, you know, is it made domestically or is it made overseas that’s the one thing to consider, um. Again, all very important questions to consider when you’re looking at but I think the biggest thing is transparency because there’s a lot of non-transparent, uh, practices and a lot of unregulated. So, we try to be as up like I said as upfront as we can about with people and I think they appreciate that, you know, I do.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s good. That’s good. Let’s talk about kind of what like the technology. So, if someone’s researching a brand, someone’s saying I want really investigate a water filter and what makes a water filter great and they want to look at different brands what should they be looking at. So, let’s kind of compare and contrast using the technology you have, how would you know, you’re dealing with good tech? Let’s just kind of contrast what you have and how people should be educated on this.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Yeah. Great question.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I’ll put the screen back up here so you can, you can kind of use that as a guide to walk through it.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That’s fine. So again, our technology, it’s, it’s our own technology. It’s affinity technology, we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in multiple years coming up with the filter, uh, yeah, so we actually ever realized what was made up. Well, we don’t disclose the ingredients list but again we’re not using activated charcoal or bone char or anything that’s going to be problematic so it’s all, it’s all up and up and obviously if we’re tested so we need to update that graph, by the way sorry, um, you’re constantly finding things but yeah again the technology basically the way this simple elevator answer is your water supply or your water, uh, your water supply is polluted, we have a technology to remove it. Takes out all the bad stuff, the toxins, the chemical, the PFAS, the lead, uh, the VOCs, and retains the nutrients in the water so that. that’s the secret. So, a lot of times even when you look at like an RO system, RO systems aren’t inherently bad they pull everything out of the water and then a lot of that they added back in the salts and stuff like that. But the cool thing is like, with our filters is that we have the ability to remove all the toxins, so our filters are smart they’d be able to discriminate between filter or sorry between water, uh, nutrients and then toxin. So, that’s really where people go wow, that’s pretty cool and it is. It’s awesome. Like, I said, we put a lot time and energy into that, our design team is constantly working on ways to innovate, uh, we have some new things coming out that I can’t quite share yet but, um, things that I think will be really well received and making a little bit easier for our customers. But the big thing is, we know how to remove the bad stuff keep the good stuff in and the other stuff too, oh yeah, like I was saying, like with the RO systems, uh, they’re about 75% less water efficient, so for every clean gallon of water, it makes, it wastes three and a half gallons. So, for us, we don’t do that. So, we’re also eco-friendly, um, again all of our stuff like you see, our testing data is fantastic. Uh, it’s independently third-party test and lasts a long time. So again, we see it as like a slammed up for the right person who’s obviously open to that, um, but again when we’re looking at different types of filters, you know, yeah like I was mentioning, like our pitcher filter, it takes you know, 10 mins to fill the reservoir. Well, it’s doing its job. So sometimes fast is not a good thing. So

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly! I love the, the water pitcher because one, it’s not expensive at all, especially when we know how important water is to our health. This is like, it’s just about prioritizing our health and knowing that 70% of your body is water and making sure it’s clean, right? You’re literally swimming in your water and if it’s clean then that’s great, if it’s toxic then it’s poisoning us, that’s a problem, and some people are in apartments and they’re traveling they haven’t the ability, so I love the ability to bring it with you and just put it in your fridge. So, I like this as a great option here. Can we talk so like, talk to me about the technology, so we have phase 1. There’s some kind of a medium, it’s flowing through like other brands are using charcoal or bone char. You have your kind of medium that’s a non-toxic medium that it’s, it’s moving through and then what’s, what’s there after that, like what’s the next step? So, there’s some kind of a filtration medium. What’s the next level up after that?

Israel Passwater: As far, as far as our filter or other yes

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s just for yours and then in general. What would other people have?

Israel Passwater: Yeah, I mean, it’s again, think of layers, so it’s like, you think of like a layer cake, it’s just.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So just, I got the image up so we have like a woven mask, some people would have the charcoal with a bone char because that’s kind of step one, right?

Israel Passwater: Yeah. And then go to step 2, you can scroll through and then

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, then you have your coconut carbon

Israel Passwater: all right and then you go to step 3 and then combine the shell, kind of like holds it together and stuff like that. So again, it’s again, even if we gave you the ingredients list like coke for example, like no they, they keep that under lock and key, what’s the secret, you know recipe for coke, we know right, right part of the sugar, part of this diet, the other thing but again we can give you the ingredients list but the way it’s put together that’s really what comes together. So again, not the first people that come up with the idea like this but again we have the best one. So, uh, but again think of like a meshed layer that can woven together and again it’s how it’s put together and what stage and how it’s composite in and what not. I can’t say much more than that but again, that’s right

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, so most people are just primarily having this stage 2, right? It’s a kind of stage 2 thing or

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You kind of have your pattern on page one.

Israel Passwater: Yeah. Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With your mesh and then you have the stage 2 and then you obviously your stage 3 compartmentalized at all. That makes sense.

Israel Passwater: Most part, you’re not gonna take them apart inside like how is this put together it’s more like how fast is it doing, is it doing it and does the water taste good, again that’s just literally like the way I would have looked at it before, we started clearly filtering like, oh, okay, it goes, it’s going through, it’s not leaking, it’s not gonna leak into the reservoir. Okay great. Awesome. But again, stage 2 up for like a coconut carbon, it’s just like a block of, it’s gonna remove some stuff. That’s better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then we have all of our test results so we kind of know what it’s doing, that’s good. I like it. I think it’s great. If you guys wanna, if you guys enjoy the information and you wanna have an additional level to clean your water, justinhealth.com/clearly-filter. We’ll put the link down below, um, we’re just trying to provide a lot of education for everyone because, you know, I see a big gap in this field is, I recommend a lot of under the counter whole house systems but there’s a lot of people that, that can’t do that so this is a kind of a better mousetrap in that way, um, and we know water is so important. Anything else that, you know, Israel, that we talked about today, we didn’t go deep enough in, that you wanna highlight?

Israel Passwater: Yeah, no, I, I think one of the things too where we play really well is like you’re saying like on the go for people living in apartments and stuff like that. I think for, you know, just a skim, even when you’re traveling that’s why you’re getting more bottles you’ve got to wear filtered bottles which are kind of cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, you got a bottle too? See a filtered bottle that you can bring with you to. That’s great.

Israel Passwater: Which is good because like you know, my wife and I, we went to Hawaii for work, uh, a couple of about a month and a half ago and it’s like we brought our bottles and I actually brought a pitcher because I go, I want that convenience it actually fits into the refrigerator for like you know a Hawaii size you know, uh, refrigerator. So, I was like, that’s pretty cool, so you know again, we played really well for, for we offered the service then obviously you know great technology, great customer service, um, again, transparent, easy to use, easy to work with and again you know that’s really why I think kind of fun part about us, helping people live healthier lives is that where it, it’s easy to do so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s cool, so you got a portable bottle as well with that same mesh and activated charcoal technology that still filters out a lot of that while almost all the fluoride, all the chlorin, heavy metals, so it still has similar benefits as the actual. That’s great. Wow.

Israel Passwater: Yeah and most people like because they think like okay well I’ll have to fill up, you know, they have refilling stations at your gym, there’s nothing wrong with that but again they’re they have a filter on it but we’ll kind of filter it well, I don’t really know exactly and that’s where you think, well, you don’t have to worry about that it’s like or if you’re going to the airport now, that people are traveling now, hope it’s kind of helpfully winding down, you know, it’s like yeah and now that people are back to going they’re really focused on that, so that’s something that you think from an economic standpoint and typically, uh, I believe the stat was most people are spending about 1200$ a year in bottled water so you gotta Costco get the coarse blend, you know, 24, 36, and 48 packs, that’s a lot of money savings too so again if it’s money if it’s you know obviously chemical reduction, uh, indigestion, that’s, uh, something that we can definitely help with, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really good. Well in general, I think really important the solution to pollution is dilution. So you wanna have good clean water. Your cells need to regulate temperature, to pull toxicity out, run to help run our kidney, so really important to make sure kind of as a foundational right, clean food, clean water, good sleep, good movement, these are essentials to being healthy, so here’s another great product that I recommend, that recommend for patients and use myself that I think people would benefit from. Anything else, Israel, you wanna leave the listeners with?

Israel Passwater: Yeah, no, I think the biggest thing is like, you know, where if, if they’re interested in, you wanna choose, that make sure you did your research like do your homework and that’s with anything if you talk about supplements, uh, anything again, we read you know the back of packages, you know what I’m eating, so the same thing goes with like water filter so if it’s just us or somebody else, do your homework. Make sure you’re getting into, uh, I think that and we will shine after that but, uh, I think I really, it’s more just like I just again always encourage people to do their homework, think for themselves, question everything and that’s really important because again there’s a lot of misinformation out there or lack of transparency, um, so that’s kind of one of the downsides to our industry. It’s not very straightforward and so you really, really dig into the weeds there and again we’re busy too, I mean I work full time, my work works full-time, you’ve got a life, you’re trying to work out be healthy, you know, all those things but again, if you’re gonna invest in yourself, you can definitely want to make sure, you know, what you’re doing, you know, so if that goes with anything we’re not the whole piece of the pie but we are one piece of that, that’s overlooked like. I said, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, yeah. A lot of people that already are using a simply, you know using a filter already and it’s just we’re gonna exchange it out for something better that’s gonna clean the water better and then also I always tell patients, I’m not worried about stripping minerals out, they’re always, they’re already good supplements out there, where you can pinch a little bit of minerals back in. It’s easy to re-mineralize, it’s harder to pull out toxins.

Israel Passwater: Correct, yeah, correct. And remember, yeah like I said it’s a lot easier to do that than the opposite, you know, so that’s why obviously, we’re around and that’s why it’s something, the way I think it’s like, it’s one less thing to worry about, um, so if you worry about stuff being a parent, you know, being a healthy or not then you know, this gives you. One less thing, you know, have to consider, you know, if it’s at home on the go so.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anytime you can set like your health habits on automatic, like okay I’m just plugging this in and then I’m just gonna continue with my routine and then now, I have a higher quality food or higher quality water, you get the benefit, right? The more we can set these habits on unconscious competence where it’s just automatic, it’s always better. I love that.

Israel Passwater: Yeah yeah and then one thing on the automatic too that, we’re talking about easy to work with, again, we have a subscription service so again, we ship domestically for free, uh, for anyone on our, uh, subscription and, uh, basically, the cool thing we need to talk about like not having a room with things I forget everything, you know, so I have to have everything written down or a calendar reminder, uh, but the cool part is you know, we can put it on auto ship so if you want one every two, three, four, five, six months, you control them, so the cool part is like that ability to be able to choose not to have to think about it or if you need to push it back, they can do that so again, we make it super easy for you, um, again, we have really great customer service team and we take good care of everybody, so I think again, that’s one less thing that I have to worry about, you know, imagine like, you know you have that with entire rotation, somebody automatically does that for, you instead of having to go down, the entire shop, get the oil change and entire rotation so we want to make it easy on you, you know but, um, that’s also powerful to know that you have full control of that too, so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Anything else, Israel, you wanna leave enlisted with?

Israel Passwater: No, I just thank you for your time. I’m really, I’m excited, I’m glad I get to be part of your audience and uh and here with you guys today and if they have questions, um, I don’t know if you want to funnel through you to me but they can, I can give you all my contact info, you can share that later too. I’m happy to give a resource to you, if I can and yeah

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any questions you guys, put them in the comments that’d be awesome. You can always come back around on the youtube video and respond back and if you guys enjoy, I’m always trying to hunt down good products and this is definitely one we can add to that list. Everyone and then justinhealth.com/clearly-filtered and I’ll put the link down below. If you’re driving just go down below, first link, click it and you’re good. All right, Israel, phenomenal chatting with you, thanks for dropping all these knowledge bombs and have a phenomenal day.

Israel Passwater: Thanks Justin, good to see you man.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-5-ways-your-water-could-be-hurting-you-how-to-fix-it-podcast-350

Recommended products:

Clearly Filtered

Water Filtration Device

Whole House Water Filter

How to Address Acute Tummy or Stomach Upset – Podcast #347

There are several things worse than having an upset stomach and diarrhea. This situation may completely throw off your day, limiting the foods and drinks you can enjoy and keeping you tied to your toilet. Understanding the root causes of these symptoms and how to manage them effectively can automatically cut down the effort and time you spend dealing with them.

Most of the time, tummy issues are treatable at home. As soon as you feel sick, begin regulating your diet to clear liquids in small amounts and frequents. Make sure to drink enough water to keep your urine clear or a pale yellow, and don’t hesitate to seek medical attention when things are getting worse after first aid treatments.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1: 53: Natural Strategies to get things under control

4:13: What’s the possible root cause?

10:49: This you can do with diarrhea

14:56: Natural strategies and Testing

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’re really excited today. We live on a bunch of different social media platforms at the same time. So excited to interact with a lot of different people; not just from youtube but, facebook, instagram, linkedin, a bunch of other still periscope as well. So really excited. Evan, how are you doing today my man. What’s cooking?

Evan Brand: Well not too much i was dealing with little vomiting this morning with some kids. So I thought, well, why don’t we do an acute to me upset video and hopefully that will help some people. You know a lot of people at first, you need to have… Anytime, anybody’s sick now i mean, everybody’s like COVID until proven innocent right? Whether you have sinus issues or smell issues, tastes issues, tummy issues, people freak out you know. Luckily, there are some really good at home rapid test that you can do with a 15-minute result now. It may be difficult to find those. You may have to order order them online but, Abbottt makes a good one so if people are at home and they’re worried, they get sick like, “What do i do?” you know. A lot of people, they are just stuck In this fear response like, “Oh my god.” I’m going to die as soon as anything’s wrong. So you can get these rapid tests and have them at home. So i think that’s a good strategy just out of the gate for people. If you get into acute issues whether it’s vomiting, diarrhea, shortness of breath whatever you think is going on. For me, before you feel like you got to run out and go to the hospital, i think it would be good to do an at-home and mess before you could always go to a local clinic where you can get a rapid test. Supposedly, a little bit more maybe a few percentage points more accurate than at home.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah i think those are good things out of the gates. Now one of the things we are heating today is because your daughter had a little bit of tummy upset over the weekend into today, and you know, there’s a– we’re parents, we have kids you know. Obviously, we see patients all over the world and we deal with some of these acute tummy upsets. Weather it’s vomiting or acute diarrhea, and what are some natural strategies to fix that? What’s the root cause? What are some natural strategies to atleast get it under control? So first off Evan um well, how did you handle your daughter? What happened with her over the weekend? What did you do that helped?

Evan Brand: Yeah she had sinus issues first where she just had really really tough time breathing out of her nose. So i tried to get her to do some sinus spray with a five-year-old. hey really don’t want stuff squirted up their nose so that wasn’t too successful. We were able to get some argentin in which is a professional silver hydrosol. So we did a little bit of that early and then with hit some antimicrobial drops. So we did some liquid antimicrobial, it depends on what you got going on. For us we did kind of a broad-spectrum formula but, there’s different ones that you can use. So olive leaf is a good option. There’s some that are full spectrum like microbes layer used called uh poseidon drops can be helpful too. So a few options we’re just kind of rotating through some of these, and then We are doing binders so just because you don’t know what’s going on If it’s bacteria or some sort of pathogen, it’s going to be pooping out these lipopolysaccharide endotoxin some kind of garbage. So we do Some binder within a half capsule of some binders Before bed with applesauce that seemed to calm things down but then, with the vomiting, we were talking about this before we hit record, You know what the coolest thing was in the most effective so so far was homeopathic so we did two of them; we did cinecom album and then did nux n-u-x vomica. So those two homeopathics, i would say really really changed the progression and helped her go down the fork in the road where it stopped the vomiting. Now, is it possible that she just got it out everything out of of her system and it was good on its own? Or Is it possible these homeopathics really you know, stop it? I’ve had a lot of success personally and clinically with homeopathics. It’s something that i didn’t know a ton about until i started experimenting but, these are very very good, safe things that can be tried and worst case scenario it’s not hurt. It can only help. So arsenical is going to be more For vomiting and nux is going to be more for nausea. There’s actually like if you look on the label either one of these could be used for food poisoning but, i’m finding that nux is better for the symptom nausea whereas arsenical is better for the actual symptom of vomiting.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Excellent. So out of the gates here you know, what’s the root cause? You know, most of the time i find when you have a root kind tummy upset, it’s usually going to be some kind of food poisoning thing out of the gate. So of course I think some kind of e coli or some kind of toxigenic e coli or maybe a salmonella, or campylobacter. Some kind of like food poisoning bacteria out of the gate. It could also be a parasite too! I find food poisoning tends to be a little bit more acute and that’s kind of how you know at the moment. You may not be clear enough but out of the gates like you mentioned a couple different things, silver can be helpful, higher dose probiotics – probiotics can be very helpful because especially the bifidobacter and lactobacillus because one they are anti-inflammatory so they bring the inflammation down in the gut. Probiotics are shown to help with gut permeability issues so with the acute food poisoning or acute tummy stress there could be a lot of gut permeability which then increases the immune Response because then you have all these toxins leaking into the bloodstream potentially creating gut stress in immune stress. And then i would say after that, um, they’re going to help crowd out a lot of bad bugs so if you had a big whack of e coli or a big whack of campylobacter or salmonella something like that, listeria it’s gonna help crowd some of it out and so probiotics i think out of the gates for it’s calming effects and i think you can look deeper in run a stool test if some of these issues or more chronic. Parasitic issues maybe more chronic and then of course my good old favorite ginger tea is wonderful because ginger is anti-inflammatory, has some mild antimicrobial benefits as well and especially bacteria and also has some anti-biofilm benefits. So you can combined ginger with probiotics you can combine ginger with some antimicrobials as well, Two kind of help those herbs to be more Let’s just say virulent because you essentially are taking the shields out of these bacterias, you know, arms right. Biofilms are the protective shields the bacteria use and when you take the shields out, the bacteria are more vulnerable and then the herbs work much better, and they help kill them much better. So those are a couple of strategies out of the gates anything else Evan that you’re doing?

Evan Brand: We tried to go for the ginger tea her tummy was just so upset she couldn’t Keep liquids down so we just said ok to intense right now. We’re just going to just let it rest so luckily with a palette homeopathy she was just able to just put it under her tongue. Therefore she didn’t have to take in any new liquid so we tried to do just some other liquid tinctures. There were a couple mils but It was just too much so luckily, without It, we just gave the tummy a break. No more liquids hit the homeopathic and then boom! The gut’s calm for now, so we’re still in the middle of it at the time this is recording but, she has not vomited since we did those homeopathy remedies. So hopefully she’s, she’s over the hump now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah homeopathy is interesting i don’t see A lot of it as being like root causal like it’s not Fixing like lexi your daughter ate some food or Head of food allergen exposure or eat it, was eating while stressed, not enough stomach acid or got a bug It may not fix that but It’s going to help control sum of the symptoms, modulate the inflammation kind of help bump physiology back into the normal direction. Which kind of buys you time to fix whatever is going on. So i like that, so i think that’s a pretty good strategy out of the gates. I think also too is…

Evand Brand: The microphone depend on it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah i think also modifying…

Evan Brand: I’m just gonna say I’m not gonna depend on it. I wasn’t gonna depend on solely but, if i can buy your time like you said, and then If you see in a week there’s still an issue when boom! We’re going to run urine or we’re going to run stool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly yep and i like the idea of you want either fasting out of the gates. If it’s really a bad infection and there is really a lot of nausea, you could also do things like bone broth. Just where you get a lot of nutrition but it’s pre digested, so there’s not much digestion that has to happen to grab that glycine or grab those fatty acids because it’s pretty well digested. So some kind of bone broth is wonderful, some type of a ginger tea is great, some type of collagen amino acids is great. I think all those are you know, really good strategies out of the gate just to kind of help provide nutrition but not what a lot of stress on your tummy to be able to digest it and access it because when the gut’s really inflamed, It can be stressful absorbing those nutrients.

Evan Brand: Yeah good point she was complaining of stomach pain too. So as soon as her tummy settles down i think she can handle liquid. What were going to do, we’ve got a couple different formulas i know. You and i, we manufacture some but, there’s also some other good professional competitor brands. There is one from Innate response that i like it’s a GI like soothing formula That’s got like some raspberry flavor into it. It’s got some glutamine some larch tree extract. I believe it’s got some mutant chamomile aloe, those type of blends. So kind of a leaky gut permeability support those are good in this situations too. When did make sure like you said you don’t know what it’s from It could be bacteria, virus, parasite; whatever this to me, honestly, at this point It doesn’t matter. I’m just in the acute phase, i’m trying to calm her tummy down. So if i can get her to do over the period of today a couple grams of glutamine, need some of these extracts that’s going to calm the gut down too. You and I have seen clinically beneficial like ulcerative colitis, crohn’s, any type of diverticulitis, any type of these flare-ups or autoimmune flares. We’ll use Use some of these licky gut remedies, so i would then use that as a crossover right. I would use it in the same in the same situation.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. Now, out of the gates when deal a lot of these situation we always want to understand the root cause. Now, the nice thing about acute traumatic situation, like in your situation here, is the root cause is usually is a one off right. It’s going to be a food poisoning episode. It becomes more Of an issue if it’s an acute parasite and it lingers. And most of the time it’s a one off, and as long as someone’s diets reasonable, and they have decent health, you don’t really have to go super upstream and, and look at all of the underlying systems. You can find out just do triage with natural medicine which is kind of cool, Command bear with some of the different nutrients and herbs that we talked about, support some of the lymphatic system with ginger, or burdock root right. Slippery elms wonderful for the lymph, wonderful for calming the gut lining. L-glutamine is also wonderful for calming, Aloe’s also wonderful for gut lining. So there’s a lot of great things That we can do to calm the gut lining. Support barrier integrity get the inflammation under control. We don’t really have to worry about getting the root because usually, that root is an isolated situation especially when someone’s relatively healthy and then they have an acute episode.

Evan Brand: Right and then your system is going to get back to baseline on its own. We’re just kind of helping it. So like you said it might not need much more attention then just a couple of days which would be great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So that’s pretty cool out of the gates. So we talked about diarrhea, a couple of things. We can do with diarrhea is a lot of times, you have to understand why the body is doing what it’s doing. So the body is usually getting exposed to some kind of bacteria, parasite, some type of toxin that is very irritating on the gut lining. And the body is thinking hmm, how can we dilute it, Dilute whatever that compound is and flush It out of the body as fast as possible. So what the body is typically doing and say, “Ok. Let’s bring a whole bunch of fluid and water into this system here.” Let’s flush it out, let’s increase motility time. Now what it’s going to do is it’s going to screw up your electrolytes a lot of times, It’s going to screw up your hydration status. And it’s also going to make it hard to absorb nutrients. So what’s the first thing we do? First thing is we can put some binders in so we can bind of those toxins so they are less irritating, less inflammatory. So are different binders could be activated charcoal, bentonite clay, different zeolites, different pectins. These fibers are great because they will bind up that toxin, and it will make it less mobile, less inflammatory. Kind of put straight jackets or handcuffs on it right. The next thing we’re going to do is make sure we are hydrating because the solution to pollution is dilution. We want to make sure there is enough water there. So we can dilute and not get dehydrated. And the next thing is make sure there’s enough electrolytes. Electrolytes are a big deal because, if we are low in sodium, and potassium, and magnesium, when you start having a lot of these bugs, what you start to notice is you may start getting dizzy, vertigo , or heart palpitations , or just feel totally off, and a lot of that can be from a lot of electrolyte issues due to the infection. And so we get the electrolytes right The hydration right, and then we also provide some good binders there that can prevent these toxins one from being as mobile, and being an inflammatory and um, and that can create make a better environment for the body to move the bowels out slower without losing all the nutrients as well.

Evan Brand: Yeah good point and this is kind of an Art right this is where the art comes in Ab medicine when your Trying to integrate these things at the right time That someone can tolerate so right now If i try to give her a big cup of electrolytes She might not be able to because she had trouble keeping down The mcqueen so you kind of have to know when Like you might hear this and go oh my god i’m going to do all the Things because i want to get better but there can be an o order of options. I think get Your got come down first if you can go on an hour or two if you’re in an active vomiting situation. If you can go an hour or two without vomiting, that might be the cost might be clear enough for you to try to work some of the other stuff, and whether its a liquid tinctures to kill or if you are doing something like a bio site or other antimicrobial drops, We use the dosage is usually so small, that i think you can keep it down because you’re not going to have to do a ton of drops right. If you could just do like five drops, That’s tiny your body is barely going to recognize that. And if it’s the tongue, i don’t think that’s going to create more vomiting but that’s kind of where the art comes in paying attention to what’s going on.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree doing some of the liquid drops are wonderful. Because if you can’t do a full capsule, hopefully you can right. But if you can’t you know getting some liquid drops in near epsom herbals can be super helpful, maybe some silver. Also, like you mentioned if you really have a hard time keeping things down, that’s very good iv iv fluids, iv electrolytes, iv nutrients maybe a good Idea because that bypasses the whole digestive system. So then it gets right into your bloodstream and does what it has to do so you can find some liquid iv services come to your house or find a facility near you where you can pop in, get it done. Ideally, if it’s acute Probably better off paying the money and having someone come to your house. Probably feel a lot better and i think it’s better than going to an ER. Unless you’re you know, really in rough shape. Then go to an Er but if not, but if you’re better off doing it at home because there’s less um, infectious material You know at home than in the hospital right. So i think that’s good strategy out of the gates for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well. And to take it a step further not only that but, if you do these mobile services, like i did this last summer you’re able to customize what you want. So the hospital is not going to put glutathione in IV like they did no i’m not going to give you 10 Grams of vitamin c like i requested. So you’re going to get a much much better menu if you will of nutrients if you were to go to th e hospital.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep! I agree. I 100% agree. So first thing out of the gates i would say is, Try to do liquid or even just fast and then if you really having a hard time with the with the nutrition try to do liquid whether it’s an elemental diet, or some collagen and amino acids, or someBone bro that’s great , and if you can’t eat the food down ideally try to get some kind of an I be going on there i think that’s a good strategy out of the gates. I think the next thing that would probably happen it would be like IV antibiotics if you absolutely had to but ideally, we don’t want to go there unless unless all the other natural strategies aren’t working. So we want to Really try the low-hanging fruit That’s going to have the best bang for the buck, The least amount of side effects, the least amount Collateral damage, And kind of go up from there so of course, try to look at what cost the problem. Did you eat some bad mayo, Did you eat some crazy seafood , what happened, try to isolate the cause If there’s a lot of vomiting or diarrhea. And um, vomiting is going to be harder because it’s not moving Through the intestinal tract it’s staying in the stomach essentially and the intestine upper small intestine and moving out right. So you’ve got to do things to calm yourself down. So i think the big things like you mentioned the homeopathic i think are great. I think the probiotics are great too. I think ginger can be great um, for the vomiting components but, Everything else i think the diarrhea stuff you know, The binders , the hydration , getting all that stuff going to calm down, the ginger. All that stuff’s wonderful. Anything else you did besides the homeopathics for the vomiting, Evan?

Evan Brand: No so far that was all she could get it down. But luckily it’s been good enough.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. Yeah, that’s really cool. I like that. Alright! So Out of this out of the gates here um, We’re kind of hitting things like on an acute level right. So patients are coming in, they have these acute symptoms that are the kind of some of the strategies we would look at. Of course it’s easy for some of these people to move into the crowd. I’ve heard a lot of patients that are like, oh yeah. Like three years ago, i went To this place and i eat this food and i felt realistic for a week or two and then i started getting better but I didn’t get all the way better and now this stuff is lingering. And of course for some people this type of acute scenario, you may get over it but you may not all the way recover. And why is that? You can get another kind parasyte infection, you can get h pylori, There could be some food poisoning which we see on some of the testing we do. We’ll see some of the Shiga toxin some of the toxigenic e coli, What is it What is it truethe 0Oh157h right. This is the food poisoning type of e coli that you See in the spinach once a year and such so Lucy song on these things on testing. And some of these things can cross the acute Level into the chronic sphere. And People have had these experiences. Then they may not recover all the way and then, that’s where we think start to have to start integrating more tool testing to look at and see what’s happening.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. I mean there’s so many people that say they have Bali belly right. Name go to Bali, or they go Mexico or they go somewhere; they come back and then they are never the same. And it’s an interesting phenomenon because a lot of times We’re just trying to find them at the acute phase like ok, binders whatever but, then If they don’t fully recover, or sometimes they will reach out to us, we never got to help them in the acute phase. They’re just coming to us in the chronic like hey i’ve been sick for three years after this Mexico poisoning event. When that’s where we come in with a testings uh, you mentioned infections. We will see salmonella, we’ll see giardia, we’ll see crypto. If there was like a lake trip we’re maybe, got some fresh water contamination, or a backpacking trip where they got some parasites. Ee will find that on stool test pretty accurately, gut information we can measure. That’s where we might do a test for you know, just because i do it a couple of times a year but, If she get over this. Then I might rush to do it right away so it depends on the person right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah i mean i have a lot of Australian patients and it’s funny In that culture, um, it’s because they’re so close to Bali, a lot of them will take trips over there. Ang of course, the the I mean it’s like one out of every two of every two of my Australian patients they got sick in Bali and it is actually a cultural thing. I look it up we’re a lot of them would do this This raspberry cordial cordial drink it was a big thing and they would bring it with them to Bali, and we would drink it prevent totally while they are in Bali to mitigate the Bali berry uh belly, and i did a little research on it. Some of the berries that we’re used To make that drink actually have some antiparasitic antibacterial effects so they are kind of taken. Even though it is a sugary kind of not so great drink there is still some therapeutic benefits of some of those berries being antimicrobial. And so even people in australia kind of know, okay. We’ll take this raspberry cordial drink and bring it with us to Bali to sip it over for the next couple of weeks to prevent a tummy infection.

Evan Brand: That’s cool. Well, you and i talked to about That before i think we did whole podcasts on like travel supplements but, i mean that’s yeah enzymes, oregano oil, silver. Those kind of things, binders would come in handy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah i did a food poisoning podcast i think about two years ago. I was in a friend’s wedding and i remember i was In the north end and i had a nice rib eye steak In the north and right. Anyone that knows the Boston area north end’s a big Italian area, big restaurant Italian area. What a nice rib eye steak and i eat it and it was Just like it was like someone punched me in the stomach. It was like woah oh my gosh like i felt totally just incredibly a lot of nausea. And then i brought my GI Clear 4 with me. I hit that i remember I had like two, i had my GI Clear 1 and some oil of oregano and a hit that hard. It didn’t quite do it and the next day i hit the GI Clear 4 and within 30 minutes, It went away. I couldn’t believe it, it was like someone flipped a switch. It’s crazy! So sometimes you need synergistic herbs sometimes you know, the goldenseal and the high dose berberines, and some of the burdock root. It can’t really really calm down the gut lining.

Evan Brand: You know when people see my pantry or my cupboard full of different supplements, they’ll look and be like. “Oh my God. This is crazy! You’ve got like 50 60 bottles of stuff.” and i tell them look, I I don’t go to the doctor. I mean, if i’m dying, I’m gonna go but otherwise I’m gonna be working on myself, and i think it’s a very empowering thing to get experience and learn some of these herbs, learn some of these protocols. I just want people to not be fearful sickness you know, i think a lot of times even my why i told her i was like, “honey, you’re like freezing up” because you know, here’s my daughter vomiting and i’m running over there sprinting I want on the other side of the house but i’m sprinting over there with the trash can to give it to her because my wife was just kind of froze up and i was like, no you got You gotta get yourself out of this freeze response, don’t be afraid of this, we going to help her through it. I just want people listening to know that there so many good options and things that we’ve done for thousands of years period. We’re not talking crazy stuff here; these are not new inventions that we’re discussing. These are things that have been used traditionally in India and China, and other countries for forever. So these are things that are so powerful that i would say in the majority of cases, you are not going to need to hit as you mentioned like IV antibiotics. That’s on the extreme end of treatment. I think in most cases, these type of situations We are talking about will lead to that level of intervention.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So people Listening here, hopefully you have some strategies regarding acute situations of vomiting and diarrhea. Now why does one vomit over diarrhea? That’s a great question. I mean i would say the inflammation has to be stomach area upper intestinal tract, for vomiting to occur, and probably Information has to be more lower intestinal tract because once things have gone so far right. You just have natural gravities and two things downhill versus uphill. So i think a lot of that may depend upon where What inflammation is and how uh where all this toxic burden in the intestinal tract higher of i think on the vomiting side, Lower up in the diarrhea side. So either way i think you’re going to have similar root causes of why it is Happening and hopefully will give you a couple of ideas to kind of triage that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I would say certain infections just attack certain parts of the body. More certain infections are going to go more for the stomach, like each pylori you know you’re going Do you have more heartburn in digestion type symptoms. You are not going to have so much diarrhea necessarily Web h pylori wear something like giardia or crypto. Those are to me, going to be more intestinal based you are going to. Because those are intestinal parasites so you have More diarrhea so i think it depends on what you are dealing when too. And that’s why we will use some of the testing To if this becomes more chronic we will use the testing to kind of, guide us on what to do because if it is more tummy upset. We made you this set of blend but if it’s more colin we might go this set . So there’s kind of that’s that’s the reason we have a toolbox that’s the reason we have testing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. well if you guys are listening and you want to reach out Deeper you need some acute health or you want to You know get a long-term strategy 66 song on face chronic issues In your health see you free head over to evanbrand.com, Evan’s available worldwide for consultation support, and again I’m Dr. J justinhealth.com Is my site feel free there will be a little button, click in schedule we are available worldwide. Again we’ve been doing this for many many years many thousands of patients, of feedback, and support so kind of have learned over the years. I tell you, In school you develop a really good foundation. But then, In practice that is really where it gets you good because you see so many people, and you figure out what works and you develop the common themes and you can just rinse and repeat that over and over again.

Evan Brand: Yeah, getting your hands dirty, getting in the trenches. I mean it’s been a blessing for us you know, You and I learned so much from the people we work with. I mean More than probably any book or any course I mean it’s A real blessing to have like you said. Once you see the trend of people, it’s fun. It’s really fun to help people. It’s addicting. We love it.

Dr. Justin Marchagiani: 100%. Ok guys feel free to give us a share, thumbs up, like, put your comments down below. Let us know what you think and we’ll be back. Have a great day. Take care y’all. Evan Brand: Take care now bye bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-to-address-acute-tummy-or-stomach-upset-podcast-347

Recommended products:

Genova Organix® Dysbiosis Profile

Genova NutrEval® FMV

International DSL GI MAP genetic stool test

DSL GI-MAP Genetic Stool Test

Probio Flora

GI Clear 1

GI Clear 4

Water Filtration Devices

Whole house water filter

Clearly Filtered

The Top 5 Common Digestive Supplement Mistake – HCL, Enzymes and Bile Support | Podcast #338

As a functional medicine practitioner, Dr. J and Evan Brand see many clients who take dietary supplements regularly. But, as simple as it sounds, supplementing can confuse—and people often make mistakes. Do you think you’re taking all the proper nutrients and that you’re taking them the appropriate way? Let’s learn some common errors people make:

Dr. J highly recommends that you avoid having the symptoms cured rather than the source. Don’t just accept your signs and symptoms as usual; consult your doctor and express your concerns. Your doctor may advise you to do diet modifications and have yourself tested to find out the root cause and fix it. Also, watch out for over stressing. Stress can affect your decision-making and as well as your gut health. Another reason can be chewing your food too quickly that makes your digestive system suffer, inadequate water intake, or very few fibers in your diet.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this podcast, we cover:

0:36 Common Mistakes in Using Digestive Support

12:03 Healing Gut Lining

15:39 Sex Drive and Libido Effects

17:59 Bile Support

21:48 Higher Fat Diets

25:09 Cooking our Food

31:04 Food Quality

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live, it’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today, we are going to be talking about the top five common mistakes. When using digestive support. Again, we’re in the trenches with patients every week from all over the world. And this is a common issue that we see is people are not using digestive support correctly. And if we don’t break down our food, if we don’t emulsify it, break it down, utilize it absorb it, we’re not going to get the nutrients from that meal. So it’s not a given that we’re eating good food, we have to go through good digestive processes to get those nutrients and to decrease stress in our gut. So I’m really excited to dive in today’s topic on that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, me too. So I mean, I was doing digestive enzymes when I still had gut infections. So I know we put together a list here, and I’m gonna just go straight to the one that was a little lower down the list, which was, I think, possibly one of the big smoking guns for a lot of people is, and I technically should have written in our notes, not testing. My note was not addressing infections and how not addressing your gut infections leads to digestive problems, because if you’re someone who’s taking supplemental acids and enzymes, but you haven’t tested or treated yourself for parasites or worms, or H pylori, bacterial overgrowth, fungal overgrowth, mold colonization, you’re gonna have very limited results with your enzyme, enzymes and acids. So for me, I did that mistake. I just had high quality enzymes. I was taking those but yet I still had diarrhea and other gi issues years ago, because I had parasites, and I hadn’t tested or treated those. So that’s to me, I think the big one because people will go to Whole Foods or wherever, hopefully, they’ll buy from us because it’s professional quality, but they’ll buy enzymes take it and then they still have gi issues. They’re like, well, what the heck, I thought the enzymes were supposed to fix it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I see that we see that all the time. Now the question is, why is that happening? So let’s go over some of the bugs and some of the reasons why that may happen. So first off, h pylori is a super common one h pylori is a bacteria that resides primarily in the stomach, you can also go a little bit into the small intestine, and H. pylori is going to produce an enzyme called urease. And urease is going to take protein from you know, which is the protein metabolite urea and it’s going to convert it into ammonia and co2. And so on a positive H. pylori breath test, we’re gonna see elevations in co2 after you swallow the urea from the breath test, and you’re also going to see a lot of ammonia. Now ammonia has got a pH of 11. And so that’s more on the alkaline side, so your guts only a two or three on the pH. So that can start to alkalize the gut and maybe throw off the digestive capacity because we need that nice that nice low pH helps activate enzymes and acids. Well, it actually activates more of the enzymes that can be pepsin, various proteolytic enzymes, and it sets the table for the pancreas and the gallbladder to produce more enzymes, lipase bile, when we get into the small intestine, so the acidity in the pH sets the deck it sets the domino rally, so digestion works downstream and so, infections like H. pylori can cause problems infections like cebo can also cause problems. SIBO is notorious for making it harder for that esophageal sphincter to close and so that esophageal sphincter can’t close is prone, you have proneness to having that acid rise up and burn your esophagus, right? Those are all potential problems. Also, any stressor or infection, whether it’s H. pylori SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or it could even be something like a parasite, these infections are going to create sympathetic nervous system stress. And so the more your nervous system is over stressed that sympathetic nervous system that fight or flight tone is being stimulated. What’s going to happen is that fight or flight is going to take digestive enzymes and acids, it’s going to reduce them, it’s gonna start shunting. A lot of the digestive secretions and the blood flow away from the blood away from the stomach and the core and to the hands and the feet to run, fight and flee because our body is trying to move blood and move resources to the areas that are most metabolically high and expenditure. And in a fight or flight circumstance, that’s going to be the extremities fighting, fleeing, running, and our bodies prehistorically driven that way, because you don’t want to be hungry. When you’re running. You don’t want to think about digestion, you want to be focused on getting away or fighting. And that blood has to carry oxygen so these muscles can work. And so that blood moves away from the intestines. And that’s part of the reason why these infections can really throw off your body, they can really increase that sympathetic nervous system and take away from that vagal tone vagas nerve, parasympathetic nervous system response.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I can totally relate. I mean, when I had infections, I was anxious, but I had nausea and I had no appetite. So I would sit down. I remember like yesterday when I was down in Austin, I would sit down at the dinner table. I just cooked an amazing bison steak and maybe I had some veggies with it. I remember looking at the plate and going Ah, I just can’t do it. And some of that was the infections But some of it was the stress from the infections. And some people, they’ll kind of demonize meats and say, Well, I don’t feel good. Like I just can’t do the meat. It’s not the meat in general. That’s the problem. It’s the infections, damaging the parietal cells, reducing the stomach acid, it’s turning that digestive fire back on, that’s really going to help you feel good with those meats. So I, it’s sad because people get scared away from the meat. But in reality, it’s some of these root causes that we’re talking about. And then you hit on this kind of primal response. This is totally normal, by the way, but it’s not normal in our chronic stress lifestyle. So occasionally, if we were stressed, it’d be great. Like you said, turn off the digestive system. So we can run. But the problem is, we’re are we’re always stressed. Now. We’ve never as humans, we’ve never experienced this level of chronic, ongoing stress. I mean, I pull my audience all the time, I’ll do a little polls on my Instagram page and ask people like how you’re feeling. Everybody’s stressed. Everybody’s overworked, everybody’s burned out. So this is an epidemic problem. This is not like a one off thing. This is everywhere. And I think we could transition now if you’re ready. And we could talk about how too much or too little HCl when you’re trying to get this digestive fire back on, there is kind of a sweet spot, and it’s going to depend on the people, it’s going to depend on gut inflammation, maybe diet, infections, and then let me just bring up before I forget, these infections are very contagious. So if you do have h pylori, it’s very probable that your spouse is infected as well. So if you’re someone working on your gut, and you’re not working on your significant others gut, you probably need to whether you’re running testing, or maybe you’re guessing and checking, which is not as wise, but we’ll see a husband or a wife come in to work with us clinically, they have good results and then two to three months later they go backwards. That’s often because the the infection came back due to the significant other and this could even be from children as well or even dogs. Like if you got a dog with h pylori, you’re playing with a slobbery toy, you’re throwing the slobbery toy there Nope, you pick your nose, you bite your nails, whatever boom, you could get, you know, exposed to the vectors that way too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% So with the too much and too little HCl, some people their gut lining is so inflamed, they have atrophic gastritis, meaning that gut lining has gotten really thin. And they may not be able to handle much HCl, even though they need HCl, they may not be able to handle it and that becomes dicey. So it’s all about helping people where they’re at, even though they need something, if they can’t receive it, then we need a backup plan. And so you got to know what people are at. And so some people, their digestive system, or symptoms actually get better. With more HCl, even though their gut has a lot of problems, they have a lot of inflammation. Some people their gut lining integrity can still deal with the HCl when you start adding HCl. And it’s like they start getting better and you’re like, but your guts so inflamed, how were you able to receive it, but then patient a over here couldn’t receive it. So everyone’s a little bit different. And so if we’re going to try HCl, I mean, ideally, don’t try it. If you know there’s any alterations, coughing up blood in the stool. I had one person though cut people who had alterations, though, did it and they’re like, it helped my issues, I felt so much better, and actually my ulcer stopped. Now, that may be the exception. I’m just kind of highlighting if you are that person, tread lightly work with a practitioner. And of course, all reactions are dose dependent. So if you’re going to test it, try the very smallest dose you possibly can maybe even a little bit of lemon juice, or apple cider vinegar and some water, dilute it down and then test it. And if you overdo it, you can always try a little bit of baking soda in water to kind of calm it down if you irritated it. But ideally, don’t do it unless you’re working with someone that’s helping you on the functional medicine side. And if you do it, make sure it’s dose dependent on that side.

Evan Brand: Yeah, good call. So just we’ll give a couple numbers. I think numbers are helpful. So if you’re working in HCl, I know you and I we have some professional manufacturers we work with we make our own line of digestive products. We go pretty conservative, like 200 milligrams of butane per capsule. So we could dose that as low as one cap 200 milligram, we could go up to 3 4 5 6. So you could go I’d say 200 on the low end up to I personally don’t see a need much beyond maybe a couple of grams, 2000 milligrams, and even that, to me is sometimes too high for certain people. I just don’t like to push it. I know you and I’ve talked about that test where people will take a ton of HCl until they get burning and then back down from that dose but I prefer not to poke the beehives I personally don’t do that with people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I will do that within five or six capsules. It depends if someone has a lot of digestive distress. You know, we’re typically not going to go that high, but usually within five or six capsules, that tends to be okay. And Dr. Jonathan Wright’s book, why you do stomach acid, he talks about, you know, being able to go up to four to five grams of HCl. And again, I typically wouldn’t do that if someone’s having any alterations or any incredible gastritis issues. Usually we’re going to test at a much smaller level than that and even with them, we’re still starting at maybe one capsule and we’re gently going up and up. For taking the digestive support in the middle of the meal, because if your guts Ron and flame just enough of that acid leaning on that gut lining directly isn’t to be a problem, at least if there’s some food down, then think of the Oreo cookie, right, you get the cream that you get the the frosting in the middle of the HCl is in the middle of all the food, and therefore the body tends to mix it up. And then when it starts moving throughout the intestinal tract with the throat, the stomach, it’s not going to be as intense at the tissue area. And so that tends to be very helpful. And I’ll typically, you know, try it within four or five capsules, see if we have an improvement. Some people do, I hear doctors doing that up to 1020 capsules. And that’s I think you’re just messing with trouble, you mess up a fire there because your body has to use bicarbonate and from the pancreas, to start to neutralize the acid from the stomach. So like that Domino rally of digestion, you have all this kind mixed up in your stomach, that kind is all the food with the acids and the enzymes that has to get released from the stomach down into the small intestine. And so it’s nice low pH once that goes into the small intestine, right the dwad, then we start making a whole bunch of bicarbonate to neutralize that. Now bile acid will also be produced bile acids still an acid it’s still a pH of around five or so. So it’s still on the acidic side. People have written in o bile acids. Well, it’s a it’s a p it’s a pH neutral. Well, you know, we’re talking bile acids. bile is made up of bile acids, cholesterol, a lot of different substances. So the bile acids are in their very nature by their name on the acidic side. So typically, your body’s trying to take that pH and bring it up to a neutral pH and the more you stress it with tons and tons of HCl, there’s a greater chance that your bicarbonate system may not be able to handle it from your pancreas. And you could develop a peptic ulcer. So we got to be careful with that. Try to use HCl within a reasonable range. And if you’re going to test it, you know, just be careful with it. Just be careful. Make sure you’re taking a look at your gut and making sure you’re you’re you’re knowing what your calprotectin levels are and you’re in you’re taking it the right way.

Evan Brand: That is like the pinnacle of edutainment right there that was so entertaining to listen to. I’m picturing all this going on in the system, I’m learning at the same time. This is why I love what we do. This is so fun. All right, let’s go to let’s go to number two here on our list, which is supporting or healing the gut lining and how that’s very important to do possibly even before you get to the digestive support. So you and I are seeing tons of people that usually have been to previous practitioners or doctors or naturopaths or whoever before us. And so maybe they have healed their gut somewhat already. Or maybe they’ve been wrecked because other practitioners did too much. Or they did too hardcore things. I had one lady who she got put on really high biofilm busting support right in the beginning, she got put on the interface plus from Claire labs, which we can and do you sometimes but man it wrecked her gut, her stomach was so wrong. We had to do almost six weeks of gut healing support before we could even bring it any other support. And and that’s kind of a reverse order thing. Because you and I talked about this idea of healing the gut after you treat the infections, but man, in her case, we couldn’t do that. So I’ve seen firsthand what can happen if you do too much biofilm support, you’re aggravating an aggravated system, it’s just not good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And that’s why if we’re having someone with an inflamed gut, one of the first things we’re going to be doing is trying to really dial in digestive nutrients to heal the gut lining. So we may be adding in things like dgl, licorice, aloe, slippery elm, sometimes we’re going to do a lot of zinc or zinc carnosine. A lot of studies on zinc, helping to decrease gut permeability, which is really important, decreasing gut inflammation, there’s studies on zinc showing the decreased calprotectin in the intestinal tract. So that’s wonderful, of course, l glutamine. If you’re very histamine sensitive or very inflamed, sometimes I’ll clue to me can go downstream to glutamic acid and glutamate, and you may have negative symptoms there. Again, typically, I don’t see that and so we don’t see that. I say 95% of the time, there’s no problem with that. But we want to be able to use other nutrients to calm down the gut, vitamin u, which is vitamin oltre. You see that in like a lot of okra, things like that. cabbage juice, I would say Allah we already mentioned. And then of course, there’s just good old fashioned bone broth, and collagen peptides which are very, very high in glycine. And glycine is very important building block for the entire sites that make up the gut lining the entire sites or little cells that that make up the tight junctions and the gut lining in the intestinal tract. And so they love, love, love glycine, and of course, that the same cells that are helping to build the intestinal tract, they also help with detoxification. glycine is a very important compound and toxification. So if you have a lot of gut inflammation, your body’s going to be using a lot of that glycine for healing, inflamed tissue and maybe not running the toxification. So that’s part of the reason why you can have detoxification problems, because your guts chronically inflamed, it’s sucking a lot of the resources Is that it may be using for detox.

Evan Brand: Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. So there’s a lot of talk Stephanie sent off. And I know some others have talked about using glycine to help glyphosate detox. Yep. So that’s pretty interesting mechanism there, you’re saying that the system can’t focus on the detox. If it’s so focused on the gut damage.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The body is always tending to deal with what the more acute matters. And if your guts Ron inflamed, it’s probably going to prioritize that over detoxification. And again, we don’t have like a test that to say that, we just kind of have common sense functional medicine, healing philosophy, the body’s always prioritizing stuff. And whatever the top stress is, the more apparent stresses, that’s where your body’s typically allocating resources.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and I don’t want to get too in the weeds on this, but I’ll just bring up an example of that, for example, sex drive and libido. When we see people that are chronically stressed and depleted, usually sex drive is going to go down or become non existent. I asked that question on my intake form is your libido adequate, and all the sick people know their libido is not adequate. And my interpretation of that is libido is really, a it’s a luxury to be able to do that. You’ve got to have some optimal things that happen. Obviously, there’s other mechanisms at play, but just at a simple basic level. You know, sex is a luxury when you’re running from a bear, you’re not going to, you know, be aroused if you’re running from a bear. And that bear could be your boss, or your spouse or your kids if they’re driving you crazy. And libido is like that, whatever. So that makes sense.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you just look at how the the nervous system allocates sexual energy, so typically foreplay, or just, you know, that intimacy that you’re going to have before ejaculation, or before an orgasm, that’s all parasympathetic. And so you need parasympathetic nervous system stimulation for, you know, the foreplay aspect of intimacy. And if the parasympathetic isn’t there, that’s where you see premature ejaculation, right? Because ejaculation or orgasm is sympathetic. And foreplay is parasympathetic. And so if you don’t have parasympathetic stimulation happening, because you’re so stressed or so inflamed, it, you know, that’s where premature ejaculation or just not even being able to rise to the occasion, if you catch my drift, because that parasympathetic nervous system response is so squashed.

Evan Brand: Yeah, this is a huge problem. I mean, I’ve seen 20 year old guys that are jumping on Coke, the little blue pill, and you’ve got all these websites now that are promoting like off the market Viagra. It’s like, what the heck, like we have like teenagers and 20 year olds now like carrying around that that you know, used to be like, when you know, high school is kind of the cool joke thing to have. But you got a condom in your wallet. Now, it’s like you have a condom and you have Viagra as a teenager?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, that’s why you typically need a couple hours of stress free conversation and, and connection before before that kind of nervous system stimulation can happen. You can’t just go it’s harder to go into a stressful day, switch the switch. And then there you go. It’s just tough. That’s because of the nervous system. So we just got, we got to know that.

Evan Brand: Give us your comments. Do you want a functional medicine, optimization of libido podcast? If so, let us know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll chat about that’s great. All right, I would say next thing we can kind of we talked about the gut lining support, let’s talk about bile support. So bile is really important for fat digestion. A lot of women are going to be affected by bile issues, because it’s very common women, when they’re 40s, they tend to get their gallbladder removed. It’s a common procedure, you have any upper right quadrant pain issues, boom, they’re taking out your gallbladder right away. And your gallbladder is part of what concentrates bile, your liver will make it and then it stores it in the gallbladder. And then it gets released. It very specific times via coli cystic keinen cck stimulation, and cck is going to be stimulated when you have a whole bunch of fat and protein going getting released from your stomach into the small intestine so that we get to release it. It happens at a very specific time. And it’s concentrated 15 to 20 times more than just what your liver would drip it in. Because when you don’t have a gallbladder just chatter dripping. And when it drips, you can you can have bile acid diarrhea. And so that’s where you have to use bile acid sequestering agents to kind of calm it down. And we got to put our bile in at the right time. And so we may have to take supplemental bile definitely for life that we don’t have a gallbladder. If we have biliary insufficiency, we’re going to have to be taken bio as well maybe extra lipase, which is a fat enzyme from the pancreas. But if we don’t break down that fat, you know, we’re gonna see our stool start to flow, we’re going to start to see, you know, St Mark’s skin marks on the toilet, see, because the fat is, is streaking, it’s not well absorbed. And then you’re also going to see a lot more excessive wipes when you go to the bathroom when you clean yourself because it’s just the fat is streaky, right, it’s it makes a big mess. And so we got to break down that fat adequately and then we may have to add extra bile into digestive support may have to add extra label lytic enzymes as well. Also, if you’re a female or even a male, high levels of estrogen is going to make your bile flow more stagnant. So if your bile flow is more stagnant, you’re not going to have good biliary output. And I would say last but not least, if if you’re one of those people that got thrown into a low fat diet Well, when you go low fat your gallbladder is not emptying because it’s the trigger for gallbladder emptying is coli cystic keinen from fat consumption. If your gallbladder is an empty, empty, what happens all that bile, it can start to form bile crystals. And those crystals are sharp. And when you finally do eat a little bit of fat, it’s like giving a hug to a porcupine. All right, it’s gonna be quite painful. And so imagine your gallbladder contracting on it’s like giving that porcupine a big hug and you’re going to inflame that gallbladder. And so chronic low fat diets with a punctuated higher fat meal, and also coming in there with estrogen dominance, a lot of detoxification issues, not clear handling estrogen, well, maybe having a lot of estrogen in your meats in your pesticides in your plastics goes for guys, too, that could definitely screw up your gallbladder and cause biliary and fissures not enough bile flow to that gallbladder.

Evan Brand: Wow. Okay, so let me just clarify, because this is interesting stuff here, because people online, including us were really big proponents of good quality, pastured animal products, and high quality fats were a big proponent of that. But you’re saying that when a person comes in, let’s say they came from the brainwashing of the even 2000s, I mean, part of me want to say 1980s 90s, and 2000s. But it’s still, there’s still the low fat dogma still there, that’s still like one of the labels on a product low in fat that’s still marketed today. So this is still a trend. You’re seeing someone coming from that with gallbladder issues with infections with low stomach acid, then they try to go keto, carnivore, meat based paleo, whatever, they end up with problems. If they have like a gallbladder issue or a gallbladder attack, the doctor is going to blame maybe the fats and just cut the gallbladder out. But you’re saying there’s kind of a few steps, if you will, that have to be a prerequisite to handle a higher fat diet properly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, why don’t we just have the propaganda of the 80s and 90s. And just the fact that calories in calories out, right, oh, you’re worried about how many calories you consume? Well, we know one gram of fat got nine calories in it, compared to four in the protein and four on the carbs. So of course, fat gets to be looked at more deeply on that side, because of the caloric intake. And then also, if you’re, you know, a lot of the studies on fat causing heart disease, which we know are all nonsense, we know that the meta analyses in the last 10 years show there’s no correlation with that, with fat and animal cholesterol, a lot of the studies in the 60s and 70s, they did not differentiate saturated fat with trans fats. And so they had a whole bunch of trans fats mixed in with a lot of these experiments. And you didn’t really get good data because they had the trans fats, which we know hydrogenated vegetable oils are terrible and bad for our health, we know that. So you got to pull out those confounding variables to really get good data. And so we know that in the last 10 15 years, that is not the case. And that cholesterol and fat is going to be fine. It’s really going to be the sugar of the trans fats, and maybe an argument for a lot of the refined processed vegetable oils, these vegetable oils during the processing of them, they get damaged. Because your polyunsaturated fats, omega six, they get damaged, and they create a lot of oxidative stress, and they get stored in your cell membranes for a long time.

Evan Brand: Yeah, these are these are super bad oils, and they’re everywhere. I mean, even at Whole Foods. If you go and look at organic potato chips, you’re still sometimes gonna see cottonseed oil, you’re gonna see sunflower oil, you’re gonna see canola oil. I mean, I get frustrated because Whole Foods kind of markets themselves as healthy. But if you go to like their I don’t know, if you call the buffet, but their hotbar, if you will, every single food item they have, there’s canola oil and everything.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s just cheap. And then there’s also a lot of stuff on the olive oil being fake, right? So you got to look at that too. But that’s why at least half your fat should be high quality animal saturated fats, because one, those fats are just really stable, they’re going to be really temperature stable. And if you’re getting organic, decent fat, there’s no processing of that that’s going to damage the fat like you may have with a vegetable oil. But ideally, try to get cold pressed, try to get organic, try to get reputable brands that you know, aren’t going to be a blend of other canola oil mixed in which is terrible.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, let’s hit another point, which is important is the fact that the bile has some antimicrobial properties and all these estrogen dominance issues you’re hitting on you’re hitting on the low fat you’re hitting on maybe the the no gallbladder. Yeah, it makes sense why we see so many women, for example, that have had their gallbladders removed, they have massive, massive gut infections.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, correct. And so bile is antimicrobial. And so it’s gonna make it harder for bugs to grow in the small intestinal tract. And so just having good biliary output, it’s going to act like anti microbials and make it harder for these bugs and dysbiosis to grow. So having good fats in there, going to stimulate good bile stimulation and flow in that bile flow is going to help you emulsify and break down the fat and it’s also going to make the environment harder for bugs to grow. So it’s definitely a win win on both sides of the front there.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you and I don’t have any published studies to say hey, we had 278 patients and, you know, 275 had their gallbladders removed and all 275 had SIBO we don’t have it like published like that. But I know that you would agree clinically what we’ve seen, you know, combined over the last 10 plus years is that We see tons of SIBO SIFO issues and a lot of those people have gallbladder issues or they don’t have a gall bladder period. So it’s definitely, definitely correlated.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. And it’s good to look at that. No, I would say next thing we can kind of switch into is cooking our foods. I mean, sometimes fermentable carbohydrates, sometimes just the fiber in those foods, the rawness of the foods, the anti nutrients, lectins salicylates, females, can really be irritating to someone’s got if it’s already wrong. So sometimes just one cooking those foods can be wonderful. Sometimes even switching to a carnivore diet, as long as we can handle the fats and proteins can be great, because you’re decreasing all those anti nutrients, sometimes just really making sure everything’s really cooked and steamed and sauteed. Or maybe using an instapot, or some kind of a method really helped break it down. And then of course, low hanging fruit, like just chewing your food up really well to like almost like an oatmeal like liquid consistency, making sure you’re not overly hydrating with your meal, maybe just a couple ounces of water to get some pills down. But that’s it you’re hydrating, 1015 minutes before two hours after because water’s got a pH of seven, right? And your stomach’s a pH of two, two and a half and you add a whole bunch of seven, there’s a bunch of two and a half, you start raising the pH plus you’re diluting all your enzymes and ask for the potencies drops. So all those things matter.

Evan Brand: Yeah, here’s an interesting thing. I looked at some of the videos. And I interviewed him on my podcast too super cool guy, Paul Saladino, who wrote a carnivore book and he talks a lot about carnivore diets. He visited the Hodza tribe. And something interesting is he thinks that we’re really like over hydrating, like, if you watch these people, these tribal people, obviously they don’t have water bottles, and they don’t have really access to water the way we do. But he would notice they would eat an entire meal with no liquid. And then here we are in America, you go to the restaurant, and they’re like, what do you like to drink, sir. And if you’re like water, they bring you a frickin huge cup. I mean, it’s probably 1620 ounces of ice water. It’s cold, which I don’t know, people may debate me on this. I don’t know if ice water is necessarily good around meals either. I just feel like no, from an energetic-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your stomach longer sits in your stomach longer because your stomach’s not going to release your internal body temperature is around 99 98 degrees, and you drink a whole bunch of 50 degree water, your body’s gonna hold that water in the stomach until it gets up to body temperature and then release it. I mean, very simple. Just drink a whole bunch of cold water and you’ll feel it sloshing around drink room temperature water and you’ll feel it move through your body way faster. When you move around. 510 minutes later, you won’t feel the sloshing.

Evan Brand: Ah, you know, see just intuitively I just keep I just drink room temperature water now they’re on a really hot day. Yeah, like some ice water. But just like normally, during the office hours, you know, I’m just drinking room temperature water and I feel so much better with it. But yeah, so sorry, I got on a little tangent. But I would-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. If you do that and drink wine, drink cold water, just be careful of drinking really cold water right before a meal. Because it will take longer to move through. So at least if you’re going to do cold water, make sure it’s not 10 minutes before meal.

Evan Brand: Okay, Okay, understood. But anyway, the idea was like he saw these tribal people and how they’re how they’re eating and drinking. And, you know, they didn’t really do meal combining, there’s a lot of like, when you go to a restaurant, there’s this feeling that you got to have your meat and then your vegetable and then your potato. And obviously this is different. I’m not saying we all need to live like tribal people. But what I’m saying is I find it very interesting that their life is more what our DNA expects, meaning if they’re walking along and they stop upon a bush, they might just gorge on these berries. Or if they stop and find this bail Bob tree with a particular type of honey in it, they’ll cut open the tree, find the beehive they’ll eat just a meal of honey and then they get the kill and they eat just the meat so I personally have experimented with that like just meat, just berries just starch and just try to play around with it as opposed to doing the steak with the broccoli with the sweet potato and I personally do feel better on just those single items so I’ve I’ve definitely been leaning more that direction I feel significantly better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think you know a couple of things one I think most of their meals are probably going to have more protein in it because if you kill an animal that that meat last way longer and if you look at a lot of the the fruit they were to have back then I’ve looked at a lot of these studies that they’re a lot more tart a lot more bitter they aren’t like overly sweet like we’ve due to hybridization and genetic selection we’ve kind of chose the sweetest berries the sweetest this so a lot of the fruits way sweeter than what you would have typically found in nature on average and things like honey would have been a rarity it wouldn’t have been something that you’re you’re have access to every single day and so we have access to it every day so you know if it’s something that’s every now and then it’s probably not a big deal but if they were doing honey like that every single day and they weren’t as active right because they have to be really active to hunt and kill and do all their stuff there may be metabolic issues.

Evan Brand: Oh yeah, I think I read he was just trying to keep up with the tribe. I want to say they were doing something like 10 miles a day walking I mean there’s an insane amount of steps.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, anytime one your stress is decent right because you know most of their life was just focused on the next meal right killing having their next meal obviously making sure shelter stable but once shelter is good Then really most of your focus is on food as a food and safety for the tribe. That’s it. You know, you’re not having to go pay a big mortgage down or worried about your kids private school, right? Yeah, that’s a different priorities right?

Evan Brand: Have you seen the organic strawberries lately? My god, they’re freaking huge. They’re like small apples, man.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I had a couple over the weekend. They were like almost the size of my hand. I was like, Holy smokes!

Evan Brand: Because I kind of thought that organic was and I guess I thought wrong. This is me being dumb, I guess. But I thought that organic had a little bit of separation from the conventional practices meaning the hybridization process, but my god, you look at some of these apples now to their like softballs.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, I mean, just farmers naturally over hundreds of years, they’re going to just start selecting seeds and, and crops that are going to be more tasty, just just natural selection of what sells. And so that tends to shift over time, where if things are just growing in Mother Nature, you know, we don’t quite have that ability to select it as much.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I go, you know, I’ll be out in the woods and I’ll find some wild strawberries. They’re tiny. They’re like the size of your pinky fingernail.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Real. Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. So yeah, but most important thing is the food quality. And, of course, if you have insulin resistance in your inflamed, you know, leaning to less sugar is always better. Just because your body doesn’t have you know, if you’re the hunza, right, and you’re walking 10 miles a day hiking and doing all these things, you have the ability to burn all that stuff up. No problem. It’s not a problem, but you have don’t have the ability to burn it up, what’s your body going to do with it, then it gets stored in the liver, and it’s stored in the muscles, and then when that’s tapped, it’s gonna get converted to fat. And you’ll get insulin resistance. We got probably that’s I’ve got to be careful that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and the main last point, there was just adjusting how your food is cooked based on what’s going on with your gut. So if you’ve got infections, like for me, I’ve rarely ever do leafy green salads. Raw just doesn’t agree with my gut. And so I don’t do it. And I could, I’m sure I could work it in, but to me, I feel I feel good. My gut feels good. I feel good. So I’m okay with cooked veggies. And those work for me. So.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, worst case, just take your veggies laid out in the frying pan and put a really good saturated fat down and some sea salt, you know, and, and boil it, you know, for 20 minutes at 400 nice roasted vegetables are pretty good. As long as you’re using the good healthy fat on It’s wonderful.

Evan Brand: Yeah, would you recommend something like ghee, because if you go too hot with butter, you might get some smoke, right? So would you say ghee or what do you like?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You could do ghee or any Talos you could do a little bit of avocado oil. Avocado oil is pretty heat stable use got to make sure you’re looking at what the heat is. You don’t overdo based on the smoke point. Okay, that’d be cool. Anything else you want to hit on? I just think people that are listening here. If you’re struggling and you’re having a hard time, you know, feel free to reach out to someone like Evan and I would be happy to help you out. And you can see Evan at EvanBrand.com and feel free you can schedule with him worldwide, as well as myself, Dr. J at JustInHealth.com. Happy to help you guys out. also put your comments down below, let us know your thoughts on the topic. Let us know what you’ve done. What’s helped you in the past. You know, we learn a lot through our patients. Because you know, when you only have yourself that’s that’s only one person. But when you have 1000s of people that you can learn from you just see what works. You don’t need a scientific study to tell you because you see it, it’s real. And then we apply it to help our patients. And we really appreciate y’all sharing your stories here as well. And reach out links below for everything guys, and then make sure you share with family and friends that they could benefit. Please put it in their inbox or share it on social media. We really appreciate it.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, well, awesome job. And yeah, once again, JustinHealth.com. Or EvanBrand.com, please reach out we’d love to help you. And you know, we didn’t talk about it too much today, because it’s more focused on other things. But testing is part of this protocol. So figuring out exactly what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, when we’re doing it, why we’re doing it, it is based on testing, we’re not just using you as a guinea pig, we are truly looking at calprotectin and stouter crit and Alaska as there’s, there’s so many biomarkers that we didn’t even discuss that we’re working into that. So I just want you to know that we’re not coming in blind here. We have data that we’re using, which helps us to guide these protocols. And that’s really where the magic happens is once you get to the get the data. So test, don’t guess, reach out if you need help. And we’ll be in touch next week.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just to highlight that. On the digestive side, we’re looking at markers likes the adequate, which if that’s high, that’s a lot of mal digested fat. If we have a lot of calprotectin or lactoferrin, or increased immune response like IGA that means there’s stuff going on in the gut. And so it’s good to know that ahead of time so we can really quantify what’s happening, or maybe even gut permeability like Sanyo, and that can all be very helpful. So I’m glad you touched upon that. We’ll put links below guys for everything that you guys need to take next steps and you guys have a phenomenal week.