Collagen Diet: Collagen-Rich Foods for Healthy Joints, and Skin
We know collagen is going to help with the joints because we know half of your bones are protein. We need good building blocks for our cartilaginous tissue and ligamentous tissue. Frankly, most people get most of their protein from muscle meats. That’s a problem because they’re not getting the knuckles, the bones, and the cartilage, as we would from old-fashioned soups. So, if you’re doing a lot of soups and bone broth soups, that’s great. If not, we really want to add extra collagen.
I do 20 g of collagen in my coffee every morning. I think it’s amazing. I do my true collagen with some MCT oil and grass-fed butter. I love it. I think it’s excellent for skin, hair, nails, and just for overall prevention of bone loss and cartilage loss. We know the wear and tear that most people experience in their joints throughout the year, especially if they do a lot of long-distance cardio. You really need more building blocks to help prevent and mitigate the wear and tear, so you don’t have knee and joint replacements later in life. Collagen can really help decrease some of that wear and tear.
How do you take collagen?
I like adding collagen in my coffee in the morning because it has a nice little kind of creamer-like effect. It gives that little bit of frothiness which is wonderful. I also do it before bed. Sometimes I’ll do a little bit of collagen (glycine), magnesium, and vitamin C because vitamin C is a really important building block for making collagen. I find magnesium has some very good calming effects as well where there are plugs in the GABA or it’s just a natural beta-blocker as well. It can calm the heart and bring the heart rate down a little bit. I think magnesium does work on some of those GABA pathways as well and, of course, magnesium helps with blood sugar. You’ll get deeper sleep and better REM sleep when you have good magnesium. So, I love combining collagen and magnesium at night.
Where can you get collagen from?
You can get collagen from food via bone broth. Chicken skin is super rich in glycine, roughly 3.3 g for 3-1/2 oz. If you make chicken soup, throw the whole chicken in there. Get a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods and or get the fattier cuts of the chicken at least with the bone and the skin, so that way you get the best of both worlds if you’re going to do it from a whole food source. Regarding seafood, wild salmon is going to be the best source of glycine.
The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Estrogen Levels are High – Men & Women!
Let’s talk about the top 5 reasons why your estrogen levels are high. We’re going to break them down today.
WHAT ARE ESTROGENS?
First, let’s look at the 3 major kinds of estrogens: E1 or estrone, E2 or estradiol, and E3 or estriol. In a woman’s regular cycle, it’s usually estradiol we’re talking about. When you start shifting to more menopausal and the ovary stops working, you start getting more estriol. The adrenals help in kick in a lot of DHEA and you make more estriol. Estradiol is more of the growth factor type of estrogen and estriol is a weaker estrogen.
WHERE CAN WE FIND ESTROGENS?
- PLASTICS. You’ll get it when the plastic is warm like in a microwave or out of a plastic water bottle especially if it’s in the car and the sun is hitting it or it’s outside. That’s why you want a good stainless steel or glass water bottle if you’re going to go outside or leaving it in the sun. The microwave heat and the radiation is going to cause a big release of plastic chemicals there, the xenoestrogens. One of the big ones are the phthalates but also BPA. There are other types of BPAs that are new which are supposedly safe but there are still estrogen-like compounds there as well. These plastics can affect women and men as well. Men are actually going to be more affected by them because men aren’t used to having estrogen in their environment and getting a whole bunch is going to be a problem.
- PESTICIDES. These tend to have an estrogenic quality to them and if you’re eating foods that are not organic, you’re definitely going to be getting organochlorines and various pesticides in your environment.
- PHYTOESTROGENS. These are found in soy. For example, I had a vegan-vegetarian patient. We ran a Dutch sex hormone panel on her and her estradiol was through the roof and really high. Phytoestrogens can be a big one, so soy may be a problem. With vegan-vegetarian, there’s a lot of phony protein consumption like fake meat kind of stuff such as the Beyond burger where there are a lot of soy and estrogen-like compounds in there. There are also hormones in meat. You have to make sure you get antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and ideally organic and pasture-fed or if you’re on the Whole Foods scale, step 4 or step 5 is ideal. Step 2 is at least pretty good. Organic means no pesticides, no hormones, and also the food they’re eating has no pesticides or hormones, too.
- HIGH LEVELS OF INSULIN. Too much carbs drive high levels of insulin because insulin responds to a high level of blood sugar. The blood sugars in your bloodstream go up and your pancreas comes in. The beta cells make a bunch of insulin to bring it down and bring it into the cellar and converted to fat. So, high levels of insulin upregulate an enzyme in men called aromatase that converts testosterone, the male hormones, to estrogen which becomes a problem. Now, in women, a similar thing happens but it’s the exact opposite or the big switch. Their estrogen is converted to testosterone. So, women can actually get more androgen-like issues which results in weight gain, acne, hair growth, and sometimes you can see some libido enhancements on that. So, that’s the difference between men and women.
- POOR GUT HEALTH. In the gut, we make healthy good bacteria in our gut that help us absorb a lot of nutrients. A good healthy gut function helps us break down protein for good HDL levels and good enzyme levels. We need these to break down protein into amino acids which are really important for helping us to detoxify. So, detoxification helps us to excrete estrogens that we’re getting exposed to in our environments such as the pesticides, plastic, or something that you don’t even know you’re getting exposed to. Good healthy detoxification will help your body eliminate that, so that’s a good backup plan.Also, if we have a lot of dysbiosis, SIBO and bacterial overgrowth, we can make a lot of what’s called beta-glucuronidase. This is an enzyme that’s made by bad bacteria and it makes it harder to detoxify estrogen. The beta-glucuronidase takes conjugated estrogens and binds it to a protein that helps us excrete it out the body. It takes that protein and it pulls it apart. It takes the handcuffs off that protein, so that allows that estrogen that’s been deconjugated to go back into the body in the general circulation. So, if we have gut issues, that could be a major concern.
HOW DO WE ADDRESS THE PROBLEM?
We need things like cysteine, glycine, glutamine, sulfur amino acids, and things that help us methylate like B12, B6, and folate. So, these nutrients we have to get them in our diet via a good diet. We need to be able to break down and absorb those nutrients, so we need good digestion to get those things in there.
So, in general, we’ve got to make sure we have a good gut bacteria balance. Even fungal overgrowth can cause problems and H. pylori that can lower stomach acid and make it harder to break down nutrition on one side and then it can create this bacterial overgrowth enzyme that makes it hard to detoxify estrogen. These are really important components. If you have any issues with estrogen, you’ve got to look there.
Now, we may want to do things to help detoxify like make lifestyle changes, food changes, pesticide changes, make the changes in regards to plastics, and make in in regards to your diet, your glycemic load, and your gut. That’s a good first step to get to the bottom. There are also different things we may do to help upregulate detoxification to help get that estrogen. It may be activated charcoal or various soluble fibers. It could be things like bentonite clay. We could use things like DIM or Calcium D-Glucarate or glutathione, sulfur amino acids, and vitamin C. They’re all helpful in different situations. We would recommend them based on what’s happening but at least make the diet and lifestyle changes out of the gates.
Methods To Encourage Good Bowel Movement
You see women on Instagram. They’re all done up with their hair and makeup, and they’re marketing #ad #detox #tea. They have these ridiculous products that they’re remarketing and they’re not talking about poop. The best way to detox is getting poop out. I’m not going to buy detox tea. I’ll get a bit of dandelion or some milk thistle blended in and that’s part of it but unfortunately, detox is co-opted by the marketing industry. Most people don’t even focus on that. They’ll poop once a week but then they take a detox tea and they think they’re doing it correctly.
My whole take on detoxification out of the gates is very simple.
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- Get enough good clean water in your system.
- Make sure you’re digesting your amino acids and all your nutrients well.
Remember: Sulfur-based amino acids run the majority of your detoxification pathways, along with B vitamins. We need good B vitamins, good antioxidants, and good sulfur amino acids. For breaking down those nutrients well, there’s not a bottleneck with ACL levels or enzyme levels. We’re getting enough to clean water. - Not overly stressing our sympathetic nervous system.
Remember: The more we overly stress the adrenals, the sympathetic nervous system decreases that migrating motor complex which are the wavelike contractions that move stool through your intestinal tract, just like you roll up the toothpaste roll at night to get that toothpaste moving through to get your toothpaste out to brush your teeth. Your intestines are the same things.
If you can do those top three things right, you’re on the right track. There may be extra things where we need extra sulfur or extra antioxidants or compounds or binders to help with mold or heavy metal. That’s true and that would be addressed down the road but a lot of detoxification happens hepatobiliary, liver, gallbladder, back into the intestines, and then out the intestinal tract. So, we need to have really good motility and really good absorption of nutrients, and a lot of good clean water to help fuel.
Supplement Suggestion:Use one for liver support that has some gallbladder nutrients built into it. That can be really helpful because with sluggish bowels because a lot of times there’s also sluggish bile production. So, just helping thin the bile whether it’s using supplemental ox bile or methionine, taurine, B powder, whatever else we can do to increase bile flow. That’s going to be helping.
Detox and Diet
This is a low-hanging fruit that your average American is still really, really blowing it on which is just the fact that they’re not doing enough good meats, good fats, and good veggies. Your average American might wake up and do a piece of toast and maybe in 2020 or 2021, it’s an avocado toast but still that’s not the optimal thing for good poop.
Inflammation in the diet can easily mess up the intestinal tract and can easily create inflammation in the gut. That could either move the body more to diarrhea or more to constipation. If we start moving more to constipation, that’s not good. Of course, these foods can stress out the intestinal tract and then when we start creating inflammation in the intestinal tract, then we already have indigestion meaning we don’t have adequate enzymes and acids. So, we’re burping a lot after our meals, food sits longer in our tummy, and a lot of gases are produced because the foods are not being broken down properly. That’s a problem.
We’ve got to really make sure we’re masticating and chewing our food very, very, very well. We’ve got to make sure to increase the surface area for enzymes and acids to work. We also have to make sure not overly hydrating with our meals. So, hydrate 10 minutes or more before meal, and then if you’re consuming a little bit of liquid with a meal, just do it to help with swallowing pills. Don’t do it for hydration purposes. Because water has a pH of 7 and your intestinal tract has a pH of 1.5 to 2. So, if you start adding a whole bunch of pH 7 to up to a pH of 2, you’re going to move that pH more in the alkaline direction away from the acid direction. We need good acidity to help activate her enzymes in our acid levels. That’s very important.
If you have any issues with detoxification, please reach out to a functional medicine doctor.
Remember:
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- Chew your food up well.
- Make sure you’re not overly hydrating with the food. Do all your hydration 2 minutes before.
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Immunity Boost Tips to Help You Stay Healthy Over the Holidays | Podcast #298
Your immune system likely needs a holiday boost, and you are the only one who can do it. (Things like stress, foods high in saturated fat, alcohol, and skipping exercise can all weaken this key part of the body that helps fight off infection and keep you healthy.) Let’s hear from Dr. J and Evan to help you put yourself at the top of your holiday checklist and give yourself this gift of health.
Check out this podcast!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
2:28 Vitamins, Nutritional Mushrooms
11:31 Blended Formulas, Supreme, Monolaurin
18:00 Biofilms
21:07 Essential Oils, Nebulizers
22:49 Nebulizers
Evan Brand: And here, this is a time of the year where hopefully everybody’s getting together and having a good time. And we had some questions about immunity and what people should be doing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, they’re all valid, valid questions. I mean, this is the time a year right, vitamin D level starts to drop. Usually, we got more viruses out there floating around all different kinds, we have obviously lower vitamin D as well, because the angle of the Sun is dropping a bit due to winter. And then obviously, more sugar consumption, more treats, more candy, more sweets, from Thanksgiving, and Christmas, etc. So all those things are going to have a major effect compromising the immune system, plus people get their end of the year deadlines with work. So a lot of emotional stress, buying gifts, all the family obligations. So all of these stressors summit and could have a major effect on compromising your immune system. So our goal today is kind of to talk about all these things and different strategies that you can work on.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, those old classic Christmas songs, they’ll say, this is the most wonderful time of the year. But in general, most people I would argue, are more stressed. And they’re not as happy this time of the year, which is kind of sad, it really should be a happy time. And so I think first I want to dive into the impact of stress and the immune system, if I may, and want to talk about the influence of stress, whether that’s related to sleep, blood, sugar, emotional, whatever, that is really going to impact a lot of things. But most importantly, it’s going to affect your immunity. And so we know, we’ve seen countless cases where people are going to go from a 40 Hour Workweek and they go 5060 hours, we work with a lot of attorneys, CEOs, we work with executives, we work with teachers, we work with real estate agents, and we always see there’s this kind of a, I call it like the hustle effect where someone will go go real hard, like you said, kind of the end of the quarter sales thing, you know, they really got to get their numbers, or we got to finish this before the semester ends if they’re like a college professor, and then all of a sudden they have a crash from it. Now, if we can kind of come in with some strategic adaptogenic herbs, those can be helpful for the immune system as well. So I think the easiest one, just right out of the gate is going to be Reishi or Reishi. Mushroom, I think that’s going to be your best adaptogen that I would argue has some good stress and blunting effects. But it’s going to be great for boosting up your natural killer cells, which are going to be really important for any type of illness that you may be exposed to.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So of course, like you kind of hit you kind of highlighted a couple things off the bat here, just all of the immune stress due to the holidays, all of the obligations, all of the food stressors. So I mean, of course, the first thing I think we can kind of look at is alright, don’t compromise on sleep, make sure you’re getting enough sleep. And then make sure your diet is at least reasonably well. And I kind of tell my patients, if you know you’re going to be eating a whole bunch of treats or some not so nice food, try to always find a good replacement, you know, try to find something that’s going to be more healthier on the on the sugar side on the dessert side on the treat side. So you have a healthier substitute, especially if you have kids, right? We know once your kids get sick, they tend to be like the little petri dish that carries viruses and bacteria throughout the family. Right. So you want to keep your kids healthy. So kids don’t know any different. Just try to choose a healthier cheat. So I’ll tell you what we’re doing for the holidays, I went to a local trophy, true food kitchen and we got some of their squash pies. And we get we’re getting them for some of the holiday dessert. So they’re going to be a healthier kind of paleo version, cassava type of cross lower sugar but clean ingredients. Now we also use a couple other pecan pie and pumpkin pies that are just really clean ingredients, very little added sugar. And then we try to make a lot of our sides are going to be paleo, right so good clean, heirloom, pasture fed Turkey, organic mashed potatoes, good quality kerrygold butter, like not too much on the carbohydrate side. And we know all that glucose, all that carbohydrate, right is going to convert to glucose in our bloodstream. And glucose tends to have a similar molecular structure as vitamin C so it can bind into that vitamin C receptor site and it can negatively impact our immune system can also abnormally affect cortisol. So if you can get your glucose levels and your glycaemia under control that has a huge impact on vitamin C and your immune system so first strategy is kind of look at the desserts in the in the treats that you’re going to have around for the family and just try to find a healthier substitute for all the core ones and try to look at it as you know 80-20 90-10 in regards to kind of you being on point versus you being off point.
Evan Brand: Yep, yep, good point and then beverages I mean, we do a lot of herbal teas I’m always just brewing some some tea so I think if you have somebody who’s not really entity or if you’re just not a tea person look at something like a hibiscus tea with a little bit of monkfruit or stevia I mean that’s delicious. You won’t know and your your your friends and family they’re not going to know if it’s not like a juice. I mean, some of the hibiscus blends I grew up I mean it almost tastes like juice. I mean the kids just absolutely love it. Even my 18 month old Drink hibiscus tea. So I think something like that would be smart, and just keeping you away from all the corn syrup. I mean, it’s crazy how, you know, you still look at the the table and it looks like we’re still in 1990 you’ll see the the coke and the Diet Coke and the Pepsi and the whatever it’s like, No, we don’t want that. That’s there’s definitely, definitely an impact on sleep, stress, blood sugar, sugar, it’s all connected. So it’s really easy to derail yourself, but it’s so easy to dial it in. So what I would be doing, I would be doing a gram a day of some reishi mushroom, I would be doing a gram a day of some quarter steps mushroom, which is going to be great for energy production, but also just as kind of an adrenal adaptogen. And then with some of the diet tweaks you’re mentioning, and going to bed, I mean, that’s the simple thing. Yeah, to be off to a good start.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s, that’s a big one. So I mean, I just say get the food right, keep the glucose under control. The next thing on top of that is you know, low hanging fruit is going to be things like vitamin D, vitamin D, for dog, vitamin C, for cat, these are all going to be super helpful things. Vitamin D has a major effect on modulating the immune system, right th one th two it affects the T regulatory cells, which can modulate your immune response. Also, vitamin D produces this antibacterial peptide called cathelicidin. And that can have a awesome impact on bacteria that you’re exposed to. So vitamin D is great vitamin C, like we chatted about, it’s wonderful. You can always do things like glutathione. Or if you want to save a little money, some n acetylcysteine. And that can have an effect on glutathione is wonderful at modulating the immune system as well. Especially NAC is very helpful for mucus production and post nasal drip stuff. And which can help with a lot of cough stuff as well. So and acetyl, cysteine and glutathione is wonderful. I’m taking some reishi mushroom here, right now, Reishi has a couple of compounds in there, it’s got the one three Beta Glucan in there, it’s got the various polysaccharides, it’s got things in there called triterpenes. And trader beans actually deactivate virus replication. And so it’s very nice because it can one enhance your immune system, your th one immune system, which is kind of the natural killer cell immune response. But it can also decrease virus replication. And so a virus works by getting into your cells, and they replicate things like zinc, decreased virus replication, things like glutathione, decrease it, and acetylcysteine decreases it. So these are all powerful nutrients that you can use to Reishi, the terpenes decrease it. So if you can do things that naturally decrease that replication, it gives your immune system a huge advantage.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And then with the vitamin D, I believe you and I have access to like an at home professional finger spot prick blood test, where you could check and confirm your levels of vitamin D. However, in most cases, we’re going to be running comprehensive blood panels on people. So if you’re listening, and you’re like, well, I don’t really know where I’m at, or what I should be doing dosing wise. In general, fall, winter time, to anywhere up up to six, maybe 8000, I use of d3 Plus, we have professional formulas we’re using where they have a little bit of K one and K two added as well. And then you could just confirm after two to three months of supplementation with your blood you want to be I would say somewhere 60 to 80, I think is smart, but at least a minimum of 30. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve seen initially where their vitamin D is in the single digits or in the low 20s. That’s a very, very common spot to be with that. I mean, look at people, they don’t spend much time outside anymore. And they’re, they’re covering too much of their skin. And now as you mentioned, this time of the year, when we’re talking in late November, you’ve got the angle of the sun, where if you’re farther north than basically Atlanta, Georgia, it’s almost impossible to get any vitamin D, except for maybe a couple of hours in the middle of the day, you know, but once we get into the deep winter, just the angle of the sun, you just can’t do it unless you’re in like South Florida, basically, South Texas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, vitamin D kind of a good rule of thumb is you can take 1000 views per 25 pounds of body weight and then retest usually within one to two months. If you know you’re low out of the gates, I typically recommend doing whatever one 1000 iu per pound or 1000. I used for 25 pounds of body weight times two. So if you’re like 200 pounds, right, that’s going to be typically 8000 I use times two so like 16 to 20,000 I use for a month and then and then bring it back down to the general recommendation of like that five to 8000 right, you know, layer and again after that first month, you may want to retest that way you can kind of get your levels up fast tests, make sure you’re good. Make sure you’re not over 100 or so. Again, vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin so it accumulates over time, but when you pull it out, it also drops slowly over time. It’s not like a B vitamin or vitamin C. That’s water soluble It’s a fat fighter Wednesday. So while the kind of it can increase pretty fast, but then takes a while to decrease it, so sometimes getting it up to 100 or so, and then kind of pulling back a lot, even if the level that you’re at may not be enough to keep it there, you may be at 100 or so in December, and then the time March hits, you’re like at 70. That’s cool, too, because then the springs coming back, and then you’re going to be getting more sunlight. So that works, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s good advice. And then vitamin C. I mean, it really depends on where you’re at with your bowels. I mean, we use a lot of different blends of vitamin C, which kind of helped move the bowels too. So generally, I’m going to be two to three grams a day, I don’t see any issue with that dosing, sometimes we’ll go a little higher. And sometimes we’re at a gram a day. So I think I’d say one to three grams, on average would be about right for for vitamin C, and we’re going to do a mixed ascorbate, if possible. So we’re trying to avoid using just straight ascorbic acid, we find that, especially just that by itself, it doesn’t do much, we really like to see some of the citrus bioflavonoids in there, the course attend the route. And those are the things we use. So if you go to, I don’t know, Walgreens or just generic store and get vitamin C, probably just ascorbic acid by itself, probably not going to absorb much. And so we’ve tested thousands of people via urine organic acids testing, and we always see low vitamin C, it’s a very, very common occurrence. And so I would argue, a mixed ascorbate, like a professional formula that we carry is going to be much, much better. Exactly. So you like the ascorbate. And that’s the one that’s reduced. Correct. I like to do the mixed one. So like a sodium ascorbate, magnesium ascorbate, calcium ascorbate. Those three together work awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, like that. That makes a lot of sense. That’s cool. We talked about vitamin C, we talked about some medicinal mushrooms, I have a blend blended formula called immuno boost. And that is a really good one because that’s actually you know, Supreme, and that has some really, really good nutrients in there that are going to be amazingly helpful. And that’s going to have like akinesia in there to net akinesia, it’s going to have some astragulus, which are really good for modulating the immune system, they’ll have some mushrooms in there. So we’ll have some Reishi, it’ll have some pataky, it’ll have some cortiseps in there. Also some monolaurin monolaurin. Excellent, because that’s a very helpful at decreasing virus replication. monolaurin can kind of come in there and it can digest the virus envelope. And the virus envelope is like a cloaking device the virus uses to hide from the immune system. So as soon as the immune system can tag the virus, it’s easier for the body to now go after that virus and destroy it. And so by decreasing that virus envelope, its ability to hide it monolaurin can be used in a very helpful way to expose that to the immune system.
Yeah, I love monolaurin. We both got animals. I hear my dog barking, I hear your cat meowing. It’s like the farm life over here, isn’t it? Yeah, no, totally. Absolutely. So we hit on the sleep, we hit the stress, we hit the mushrooms, we hit the vitamins. You know, I think just a good methylated multi is good. I manufacture one called True multi I believe you manufacture a professional multi as well. Just getting a lot of the bees, bees and Bravo are going to be important because with the stress of whether it’s just your day to day life, your work stress, the emotional stress, whatever is going on with you, you’re going to burn through your bees pretty quick. We’re going to measure those via urine. But your average person, if you’re just someone listening, you’re not actually running organic acids testing to confirm this, just trust us we’ve seen thousands of cases, I’ll tell you a B vitamins are going to burn up quick. So it’s okay to supplement those. And your pee may go highlighter yellow for a little bit. That doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money, you’re just going to pee out the excess and then your body’s going to get calibrated. And you should just have no relatively normal urine. It may always be a little more yellow with the bees. But that’s not an issue. And that, like I said, doesn’t mean you’re wasting your money.
Yes, 100%. So we talked about vitamin D, we talked about the Reishi. We talked about glutathione vitamin D as in dog, I talked about monolaurin and how that kind of helps digest and break down the viral envelope. Let’s talk about astragalus or akinesia or golden seal. These are wonderful herbs that have amazing immuno modulating effects. So I like astragalus as well. It can do a couple of things, they can decrease virus replication. Usually these herbs do kind of they have like two major mechanisms, they enhance the immune system, usually a combination of th one th two tends to support more th one but they also can help the th two side and where they make where they actually make antibodies. So you can help the natural killer side th one or you can help the antibody production side. Usually antibody production side comes in a little bit later in the game. So if you want to avoid getting sick, it’s going to make a bigger bigger difference if you’re if you’re enhancing the th one because that’s kind of the faster acting immune response. Now longer term supporting th two is very helpful because you can have what’s called cross reactive immunity. So your th one immune system may have seen previous viruses in the environment. And it can mobilize antibodies faster even though those antibodies may not already be there, you may be able to mobilize those antibodies faster because the th one immune system has seen similar viruses in the past. So you may get a faster mobilization of these different antibodies. And so yes, in my product is the amino supreme one and a couple of the ingredients, we have the akinesia in that one and the astragulus, which is wonderful. Also andrographis, very similar. Goldenseal, very similar monolaurin, we talked about monolaurin the different medicinal mushrooms, corticeps, shitake, mytaki, Reishi, these have effects on supporting the th one and also the triterpenes help deactivate the virus, right. So what does that mean? virus has to replicate to start creating symptoms, right. And if the virus cannot replicate, you deactivate the replication process. Now, not a big deal, your body can keep it under wraps. And then of course, things like zinc, are going to help with virus replication. So I’ll put a link down below to my product. Um, you know, Supreme, I know you have one similar to Evan, will make sure that’s down below. And these are things that we clinically use with our patients that work really, really, really well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you know, berberine is a good one, too. I mean, there’s a lot of papers on anti influence activity of berberine. And viral clip, reducing viral replication, using berberine. So for those listening, if you’re doing any kind of anti microbial protocol with us, a lot of times we’re using blends, like in particular one that I have called microbiome support. Number one, I use that a lot for gut infection, so any kind of bacterial overgrowth issues, but guess what, the cool thing about herbs, unlike drugs is you have, you’re killing multiple birds with the same stone. So we could be coming in with the berberine addressing the bacterial overgrowth, but then we’re also reducing viral replication. So I think that’s a great one berberine in isolation would be fine. But something like the microbiome support as a broad spectrum. You know, that’d be smart, too. And for your gut, I’ve got some dgl in that product. So that’s going to be giving you a little bit of gut healing, if you’re eating some stuff that you may be irritating your gut by, you know, that’d be a good insurance policy. And then what about enzymes? Should we hit on enzymes at all?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I mean, you can do systemic enzymes, which can be helpful for just kind of breaking down viral envelope as well or helping with stagnant you know, coagulation, right? If you have increased coagulation, a lot of clotting, poor blood flow. Enzymes can be helpful for that perspective. Also, maybe with biofilms right resistant bacteria have biofilms. What other kind of what were you thinking of em enzymes for in regards to supporting the immune system out?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I was I was thinking like, there’s a couple that we use, like there’s [inaudible]. There’s lumbered open-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -about it from a biofilm perspective, or quagga bility thing? How are you thinking about it?
Evan Brand: Yeah, good question. Probably the biofilm piece because I’ve had a lot of people with resistant infections where will come in with a biofilm support, and then that kind of gets them over the hump. So Lately, I’ve been using a lot of different ones. Beyond balance has done a great job making some particular biofilm products, you have to use us a professional to order it for you. But we’ve done we’ve done good with those. And then there are some other professional companies I’ve been personally experimenting with some lambro kinase. And that’s a much much stronger than something like a sarapeptidase and I’ve noticed a big increase in blood flow, like my hands are much much warmer using lambro kinase. So I know it’s doing something from a circulatory perspective. And I would argue that when you’re taking all these herbs and mushrooms, if you have good blood flow, good circulation, that’s going to deliver the nutrients everywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the key. So when you get really inflamed, usually there’s a lot of poor coagulation, a lot of poor circulation, there’s increased coagulation, right? coagulation, when the platelets kind of stick together and they kind of clot and you get more fibrinogen hanging out right then more fibrin or fibrinogen, because he goes fibrinogen to fibrin, so fibrin, or like the clot, so to speak. The more fibrinogen fibrin you have the more clots you have the decreased blood flow you’re going to have. So a hallmark of inflammation is just a lot more sticky cells. And so if you can make those cells a lot more smooth and less sticky, you do that with a good anti inflammatory paleo template. You do that by keeping your blood sugar down. You do that by keeping inflammation down from grains and other inflammatory foods, hydrating adequate good fats like fish oil, right. Evan mentioned the enzymes also help also ginger ginger is amazing. Ginger actually has antiviral qualities. Go into PubMed, type in ginger or zinjibber, which is I think the technical term Zinjibber, and you’ll see all kinds of studies on inflammation reduction, you’ll see viral particle replication or viral particle adhesion, part of how viruses everywhere they have to stick to a cell receptor site to stick to it. And if that’s removed, Iris can’t stick to it as well right Were you able to flush it off with ginger are good antimicrobials are biofilms. All that can really, really help the virus from causing problems it can really prevent it from causing problems so gingers great good anti viral, helps decrease viruses from sticking to the receptor sites also is very anti inflammatory, supports good healthy digestion and motility as well and can really help with irritation in the throat so like coughing and things like that. Ginger has a natural Tustin quality to it right custom meaning it kind of helps with the coughing and so does you know, decreasing the mucus with like a good n acetylcysteine. And some good really good sinus flushes with xylitol and bicarb. And minerals can also decrease any bacteria or fungus junk up in the nose or even going down the throat via a post nasal drip issue.
Evan Brand: Love it. Love it. Yeah, gingers amazing. I mean, we talked about it. You see it at the grocery store. You look at it, you’re like, is ginger really that special? Yeah, it really is. I actually had a double bag of ginger yesterday with a little bit of raw honey and it was absolutely just so delicious. So therapeutic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, anything else you wanted to highlight off the bat, I mean, a couple things you can do. There’s some good essential oils that are out there that you can kind of drip into your water and just kind of get a homeopathic dose in your water throughout the day. It’s helpful. I know there’s a couple brands doterra has one called ’On Guard’. And then I think Young Living has one called ‘Thieves’. You know the common theme and a lot of these usually some kind of clove or cinnamon or some kind of like an orange peel s kind of thing. And these are very antimicrobial, very immune supporting and you can always kind of put a low dose in if you have a little throat issue going on. You can always kind of gargle with it too. Or if you’re doing some oil pulling, you know, put a couple of drops in the oil in your mouth and kind of swish that around and give it five or 10 minutes and they can kind of hit the back of your throat and clean out any nasty bacteria or biofilms that are hanging way back in your throat can be very helpful. Just make sure you spit it out afterwards.
Evan Brand: I think diffusing would be smart too, right, why not? You could defuse put some of the oils into the air Just be aware of your pets. I don’t remember what particular oils that were but I did have a client who was getting super into the oils and she was diffusing something and her dog got super lethargic had to take the dog to the emergency vet. I can’t remember so just do a little research essential oil dogs diffuser, there was a couple of stories about you know particular one so don’t go too crazy pumping your whole house full of it and making your dog pass out or something like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s smart. The only other thing I would say besides the essential oil I think we Oh, I think we could also talk about diffuse including ion there are some really good reduced kind of soluble glutathione compounds out there. I’ve one called by third naturals is really good. I’ll put a link down below if you guys want to see I think you have a link as well to it.
Evan Brand: You mean, nebulize? You said diffuse you mean? nebulize?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, I meant Yeah, well, kind of the same thing. But yeah, in general, we basically a diffuser is kind of for the systemic environment. a nebulizer is something like this, that you put in devices device like this, don’t you love that is that i mean is that nebulizer not the best one I’m telling ya, man, it’s great. I gotta clean I gotta clean it out a little bit. But you have the battery here you have the facemask here, you just connect it in like this. Yeah, the one he’s showing for people listening on audio, this is a one by Philips, it’s called inspire in a spire. And then you basically just take the five milliliters of a salient solution, you put right in the top here, and you add your 200 milligram glutathione reduced. And it’s it’s you can’t do it for any glow to find on the one that we’re talking about. It’s by a company called Therm Naturals, we’ll put the link below. And that is a glutathione that’s reduced, that’s mixed with sodium bicarb. So then when you add the saline solution to it, it actually becomes soluble. It’s just total it diffuses into the water 100%. And then you close the cap attached to the battery pack. And then you can do a five minute session or so breathing right in. And that’s helpful. If you have active lung issues, it may not be necessary. If you are already are in good shape, you may just be able to take some oral glutathione or oral NAC. But if you start to have active issues, it can be helpful because you can really increase the saturation right into the lung area to the alveoli. And right into that respiratory tree.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve used it with several clients who’ve had lung issues. And it’s been it’s been great COPD and other issues. It’s been wonderful. So it’s a great, great tool to have, like you said, you probably don’t need it if you’re super healthy. But if you got some going on, you may want that out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s active. And you may want to even look at it using it for a really good silver as well. You could do a silver maybe 10 pm or less on there. It’s very controversial. So kind of do a little research on that. I don’t just recommend that because a lot of conventional doctors don’t like it. But if you’re doing a silver that’s very, very small. It can be helpful if you have an active viral infection in the lungs. But But do your homework on that first, because you don’t want to be nebulizing silver that is a large molecule sighs we want to make sure it can move to the sell adequately.
Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Good advice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you triend nebulizing silver by the way?
Evan Brand: I’ve done it, I haven’t, I wouldn’t say I would, I would notice a ton from it, you know, it’s not one of those things where it’s like, whoa, I feel incredible. But I’ve done it, I’ve mixed it. I’ve done the glutathione on silver combo, you know, but I wasn’t in too bad of shape. So I, you know, I can’t say that silver was necessarily a magic remedy for me or not, but I have done the silver up the nose. And I do believe that has helped as well for some of the sinus colonization that can happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can do silver up the nose, you can also do silver orally, you know, any of the side effects that you see about silver, like the argyria turning blue, that has to do with very large silver molecules and usually kind of a homebrew. If you’re dealing with a high quality silver brand made by like, you know, a tier one supplement company like the one that I make in my GI33 or like a sovereign silver or like some kind of a silver soul or some kind of a nano silver. That particular is very, very small, and your body’s gonna have no problem excluding it. It’s a very, very large silver molecules that are going to be problematic.
Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else Evan?
Evan Brand: I don’t think so. If people need help clinically, please reach out. We’re available worldwide if you want to get a hold of Dr. J. JustinHealth.com, worldwide consult. So even if you just need a call, hey, I need help. I’m concerned I need help to boost myself up. What do I do? You know, we’re here for that. But we love helping people get to the bottom of their issues, using functional lab testing to find and fix the root causes of your issue. So rather than coming in and doing the spot treatment, have a little bit of this a little bit of that. The reality is, hey, here’s what’s going on under the hood, this is what’s putting you at a disadvantage. So we’re going to help fix you. So JustinHealth.com. And for me, Evan Brand, EvanBrand.com and we’ll be back. So stay tuned.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Put your comments down below everyone. We really appreciate it comments below, give us a like give us a thumbs up. And if you want to dive in deeper, we’ll put the links for you guys to make it accessible. Hope you guys have an amazing holiday season coming up. We’ll be in touch. Take care y’all. Bye now.
Evan Brand: Take care.
References:
Audio Podcast:
The Top 5 Causes of Chronic Headaches
Today we are going to be talking about the top underlying reasons why you may be having a chronic headache. I had a patient come in today who had headaches for 25 years, monthly and chronically, and we were able to get to the root cause and there are many different root causes for every person. Let me lay out the common ones that I find to be a major vector of my patients.
So we have headaches and head pain or migraines where you kind of have that aura and sound sensitivity. There are a couple of different major reasons why headaches may happen.
1. Food Allergens
Most common food allergy is gluten and dairy. There are some studies on gluten affecting blood flow up to the brain. We have these garden hoses on the side of our neck called our carotid arteries. When we have inflammation especially caused by gluten that can decrease blood flow and blood profusion to the frontal cortex, and when you have less blood, you’re going to have decreased performance of the brain. You can see that manifesting in a headache. People don’t know but headaches are actually an issue with vasodilation in the brain. Caffeine can help as caffeine actually causes constriction and brain’s typical headache signal is caused by vasodilation.
2. Food Additives.
These could be things like MSG, aspartame, Splenda or various artificial colors and dyes.
3. Blood Sugar Fluctuation.
We want to have healthy proteins and healthy fats with every meal. If we skip meals or we eat foods that are too high in carbohydrates and refined “crapohydrates” and sugar, and not enough fats and proteins, our blood sugar can go up and then drop. This is called reactive hypoglycemia. We react by putting a whole bunch of sugar in our bloodstream because all of these carbohydrate sources break down into sugar — processed sugar, grains, flours and acellular carbohydrates. These type of flours and refined processed carbs get converted to glucose in our bloodstream. When glucose goes up, our pancreas goes, “Holy smokes! We got a lot of glucose there. We got to pull it into the cell.” It spits out a whole bunch of insulin and pulls that glucose right down, and we have his blood sugar going up with a lot of insulin driving that blood sugar back down. When that blood sugar goes back down, this is where we have cravings. This is where we have addictions, mood issues, energy issues, jitteriness, and cognitive issues. Our body makes adrenaline and cortisol to bring that blood sugar back up. Most people literally live on this high insulin where they are making fat, storing fat and engaging in lipogenesis which makes us tired. Then blood sugar crashes which makes people jittery, anxious, and moody. Most people live on this reactive hypoglycemia rollercoaster and that can drive headaches.
4. Gut Infections.
Patients with a lot of gut inflammation, gut permeability, and infections whether it’s H. pylori, SIBO (small intestinal, bacterial overgrowth) or fungal overgrowth have gut stressors can create inflammation in the gut. When we have inflammation in the gut, we have gut permeability. So our tight junctions in our intestines start to open up and undigested bacteria, lipopolysaccharides, food particles can slip through and create an immune response. You can see histamine along with that immune response and histamine can create headache issues.
5. Hormonal Issue.
A woman’s cycle is about 28 days and in the middle is ovulation. Some women have it during ovulation and most have it right at the end just before they menstruate. This is called premenstrual syndrome that is right before menstruation. A lot of women may also have it during menstruation, too. What happens is progesterone can drop out early and that drop in progesterone can actually cause headache manifestations and also the aberrations in estrogen can also cause headaches as well. We may also see it with excessive bleeding too. So if you’re bleeding a lot or too much, what may happen is you may lose iron and that low iron may cause oxygenation issues. That low level of oxygen may also cause some headache issues as well. Because if you can’t carry oxygen, that is going to be a stressed-out situation for your mitochondria and your metabolism. For menopausal women who have chronically low hormones and they’re not in an optimal place, that can create issues. Progesterone and estrogen can be very anti-inflammatory. So if there is inflammation in the brain, progesterone is a powerful anti-inflammatory and that can really help a lot of inflammation in the brain.
Oils That Cause Gut Inflammation
There are various top-causes for gut inflammation but a big one is an oil. The oil you use to cook or bake into foods could be a major culprit to your very uncomfortable gut inflammation. Let’s look at the good and stable oils vs. the unhealthy oils.
If you look at the standard American diet, just even a hundred years ago, your grandparents or your great grandparents, they did not have access to these type of oils. They were cooking with traditional fats. They did a lot of lard and maybe some beef tallow.
If I asked my grandfather, “What did your grandmother cook you and what did she cook it with?” She was not using soybean oil. She was not using corn oils. She was not using rapeseed oil, which is canola. She was not using peanut oil. If they did something fried, it was going to be fried in possibly bacon fat, which came from the pig in the backyard of the farm or it was going to be cooked in some type of like a beef tallow, where the cows were on the back part of the farm.
When it comes down to fats, most plant fats are not going to be the best unless they are cold extracted or unless they are minimally processed to extract the fats. Partly because of the processes of extracting, it tends to damage the fats because the heat and the extraction process also makes the fats rancid and taste bad. There’s a lot of like deodorizing and filtration and different processes to make it more palatable that you would never be able to have at a natural state.
So the best plant fats are:
- Coconut oil because it’s a saturated fat and it’s more temperature-stable.
- Cold-press olive oil and good-quality avocado oil, which is primarily a monosaturated fat.
- Palm oil, which is more in a kind of saturated state.
There are some nut-based and some seed-based oils, but then you start ramping up the Omega-6 and those may not be the best. There are some supplemental oils that are more GLA-based that I’ll give supplementally, like black currant seed oil but we’ll give it supplementally and that’s coming from great sources that are going to be in capsules that won’t be oxidized and such.
Bad fats are going to create a lot of oxidative stress and they are going to deplete a lot of your antioxidant reserves because if those fats are oxidized, your body is going to need a lot of vitamin C and vitamin E to help with the oxidative stress that those fats may cause your body.
Now what it you find a good fish with gluten-free breading so it’s not covered in wheat with some type of non-gluten containing flour, but then you’ve got canola oil. Do you think you’re still going to be net positive in terms of nutrition because you’ve still got the good fish, but yet you’ve got the inflammatory oils or would you say, just get you some grilled fish and then if you want to bread it, you bread it yourself?
There’s a product that we like of sweet potato fries that my wife will do for my son because it’s really easy, but they have a little bit of canola oil in there. So you have this kind of convenience factor where ideally if you could you always would want to put your own fat on there if you could and my easy saturated fat or my easy fat for cooking that’s plant-based would be avocado. I like avocado because it tastes a little bit more neutral. I do not like olive oil as much. Olive oil is better for dressings, but I’ll do avocado for cooking. If you have control over it, you always choose the better fat over the junky fat if you can.
So the interesting thing is like coconut oil and avocado they’ve become kind of trendy and I would say avocado is not going to be a traditional fat meaning, meaning like traditional people were probably not doing it because you’ve got to have some heavy-duty equipment to extract the oil, but coconut oil would be super traditional. I mean, this would be something that has historical use.
Your big fats that are going to be plant-based would probably be primarily coconut. But your biggest ones that I think are going to be used more long-term from generation to generation will be your tallows, your bacon fat, your duck fat, and those kinds of things because saturated fats don’t go bad. They stay good for a long time because the carbon is saturated with 4 hydrogen bonds between them, which makes the fat really, really, really temperature-stable.
Take note of oils are that bad for your gut because they cause inflammation and oxidative stress.
4 Herbs That Give You The Upper Hand Against Viral Infections
Let’s talk about four herbs with antiviral properties.
Click here for a consultation with a functional medicine doctor before taking herbal supplements!
Olive Leaf
As part of a Candida protocol, we’ll have a couple of herb combinations that will have olive leaf combined with monolaurin. Stack those two right on top of each other. Monolaurin is a lauric acid coconut extract. It has been shown to be very, very potent as an antiviral. With olive leaf, the main compound in it – oleuropein – and that actually prevents the virus from attaching to the cells. We kind of talk about mechanisms a lot and people ask why does that matter. It is because some herbs may prevent the replication of viruses. Things like olive actually prevent the virus from attaching to healthy cells. So if you have multiple herbs, you’ve got multiple mechanisms. You’re just making yourself even more resilient.
Astragalus
They help with either immune modulation, natural killer cell, antibody modulation which is the infantry that comes in afterwards, or it is going to help with viral replication. Typically, it’s going to modulate the inflammation from the immune response.
Usually it is hitting things in about three to four different ways, and most are going to fall into that category. That is kind of the mechanism how they are working.
Cat’s Claws
We use Cat’s Claw or Samento a lot with biofilms. They work really well. These are protective shields, bacteria and critters use. We also use it with a lot of Lyme and various co-infections, but Cat’s Claws is great at the immune system, helping with viruses, and really enhancing the body’s ability to deal with infections. Again, everything we are talking about is not necessarily to treat anything. A lot of the time it is just to support our own immune response to what’s happening, because our body is really the ultimate fighter in all of this. Everything we are doing is just trying to give our body’s immune system an edge to address the issue to begin with. The body has dealt and humankind has dealt with viruses since forever.
Echinacea
When we are doing a lot of these herbs, a lot of times we want to make sure the whole root is present. A lot of times with Echinacea, you will see a lot of flower present. I want the whole root. I find that it has a lot more of the immune-modulating alkaloids that really have the immune benefit. It is excellent in how it reduces virus levels. It inhibits the growth of bacteria. It inhibits the growth of viruses. It is also going to modulate with the inflammation caused by that immune response and caused by the cytokines and interleukins.
What can you do to try to gain the upper hand?
These things are just going to improve your resilience. It’s important to have the right mindset. A lot of people are selling like cures or solutions and that is not going to be the case, but it is really going to be our body to begin with. Even antibiotics, when an infection gets cleared, it is still not the antibiotic. It is the antibiotic lowering the level of the infection and then the immune system can kind of come in and play. It is like if we are using a lifting analogy, it really gives a very helpful spot when you’re kind of low in that bench press, it really gives you that little spot to kind of get it up through that sticky point.
Keto Tips and Common Misconceptions
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
What if I told you that eating bacon, avocados, and butter could not only improve your health–it could also help you lose weight? By now you have probably heard of the keto diet, but what exactly is the keto diet and how does it improve your health? Let’s dive in!
What’s the Keto Diet?
The Keto Diet is a high fat and low carb way of eating which prompts your body to enter a state called ketosis. Ketosis is when your body burns primarily fat, rather than glucose, for energy.
The standard American diet is very heavy in carbohydrate-heavy foods. When you’re eating a high-carb diet your body mainly runs off of glucose (sugar) as fuel. However, if you cut the carbs and start eating more saturated fat, there’s no more glucose so your body starts burning fat (including stored body fat) for fuel instead! The weight loss effects of entering the metabolic state of ketosis is a huge reason why the keto diet is so popular for weight loss, but it also a great way of eating to lower inflammation, improve your insulin response and prevent/heal diabetes, and is protective against cancer, Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Glucose actually burns dirty, like a diesel fuel. It’s stinky. But ketones burn really clean–you don’t get a lot of reactive oxygen species or free radicals afterwards. Imagine fat is like a big branch and that you throw into the wood chipper, and then out of that wood chipper comes these things called ketones. These ketones can be used by different tissue in the body. In addition, burning ketones avoids the effects of glycation, which is basically all the proteins or tissue in your body gets sugar-coated and that creates basically a magnet for free radicals. Ketones are stable, whereas burning glucose is a constant up and down reaction.
How to Lose Weight on The Keto Diet
One of the biggest ways we can induce ketosis and burn body fat for fuel is by cutting carbs. Typically 20-30 grams per day is a great starting point for most people.
I recommend following a Paleo template for your keto diet, utilizing non-strachy vegetables for the bulk of your carbs. Around 20-30g per day is the sweet spot for most people. This is attainable if you keep your carbs to your paleo veggies: a cup of broccoli, a cup of spinach, a cup of kale, some asparagus, a salad… Once you factor out the fiber, you’ll probably be around 20-30 net carbs. As you continue with the keto diet you can play around with your carb range, some people feel better on 10-20 grams, others do well hitting around 40-50 grams of carbs per day.
How Do I Know if I’m In Ketosis?
Some people like to measure their ketones, either measuring their breath, urine, or blood. Not all of these methods are always effective–for example, if you’re burning ketones, they may not end up in the urine, giving you a false negative.
I use a ketone meter, either the Abbott Precision Xtra or Precision Xtra, to measure blood sugar in addition to ketones. The Ketonix breath meter is another good way to measure.
A Common Keto Mistake
One of the biggest keto mistakes is eating too much protein, as high as 30-40% protein. It’s hard to eat that much protein unless you do two things wrong. Number one, you eat lots of lean meat, and number two, you use excessive protein powders.
However, you can get away with going higher on protein if you’re doing a lot of resistance training. However, most of us are not elite athletes, so ideally your macros will be about 60-70% fat as a pretty good starting point.
Keto Misconceptions
Let’s clear something up. When people hear about ketones, they’ve likely been in the grocery store and they’ve seen the “raspberry ketones” as a weight loss supplement. This became very popular over the last few years. First off, raspberry ketones aren’t even derived from raspberries. Most of the time these products are filled with synthetic chemicals, artificial colors and artificial sweeteners. I do not recommend them, the ingredients will most likely do more harm than good.
For a good ketone product, try Keto OS or Keto Sport which use beta-hydroxybutyrate salts, which are the gold standard in keto products.
You can use ketone precursors like medium chain triglycerides C8 and C10. These MCT oils provide both the brain effects and metabolic effects of ketones. In the morning I do butter coffee with a high quality MCT oil. I’ll get my ketones up within an hour or 2 to—to .5, .6 mmol and I feel great.
Some people think the keto diet may be dangerous and destroy muscle. Sure, you can be in ketosis when you’re starving yourself. This doesn’t happen on the keto diet because we’re doing it nutritionally, meaning we’re actually eating foods. They’re real whole foods and we’re getting enough calories so you’re body’s not going to be eating away lean tissue.
Can I Cheat on the Keto Diet?
Cheating on the keto diet implies you’re eating enough carbs to bring you out of ketosis. Some people like to cycle in an out of ketosis in daily or weekly cycles. If you save all of your carbs for the evening and have some sweet potato or dark chocolate, the carbs can actually help you sleep! Some people can develop hypothyroid symptoms if they stay in ketosis long term. These people, primarily women, may benefit from cyclical ketosis like 5 days on, 3 days off.
Exogenous ketones can be great from a performance and neurological standpoint. They can be phenomenal if you are on the ketogenic diet–we call it therapeutic ketone therapy. However, if you’re still eating high carb and high sugar, don’t waste your time and money on expensive ketone supplements.
Who Should Try the Ketogenic Diet?
I recommend the keto diet for most people, especially those dealing with metabolic syndrome, which is when there’s a level of insulin resistance and you’re body is having a difficult time tapping into fat for fuel.
The Keto Diet is also great for cancer patients, Alzheimer’s patients, anyone with metabolic syndrome, women with a waist size 35 or larger, men with a waist size 40 or larger, blood pressure over 140, and anyone with inflammation or chronic pain.
Does LESS Exercise Make You MORE Fit?
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
High intensity interval training, called HIIT for short, has taken the health and fitness world by storm. The concept is simple: by working out harder, less often and for shorter lengths, you can actually maximize your fitness returns. Research shows HIIT can burn fat quicker and substantially increase performance. The best part? The time commitment is minimal. Say goodbye to your daily hour at the gym, and hello to HIIT!
How to Do High Intensity Interval Training
High-intensity interval training is a way of exercising through a repetition of short bursts of high-intensity exercises followed by a brief period of recovery. The HIIT sequence of “burst and recover” is generally repeated for a duration of 20-30 minutes.
HIIT can be applied to both cardio and weight training. In a treadmill setting, a HIIT session would involve alternating between high intensity sprints and a slower jog, or even a brisk walk, during the recovery period.
High-intensity interval training differs from traditional consistent state exercise in which you’d keep a similar pace, exerting constant energy for the duration of your session.
If you’re looking to burn fat, increase endurance, or otherwise boost your health and fitness with but less of a time commitment, HIIT is for you!
Is HIIT right for you? Click here to ask a functional medicine doctor!
Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training Over Traditional Methods
- Burn Fat More Efficiently: A recent study compared the impact of HIIT workouts versus steady state exercise on body fat and musculature. While a HIIT workout burns less calories during the course of the session, a HIIT routine still results in more fat loss overall. The study also found that high intensity training workouts more efficiently build muscle and improve metabolic function.
- Cardiovascular Health: Interval training is being studied for its effects on cardiovascular health. Interval training regimens, such as HIIT, have profound improvements on VO2max which is one of the best indicators of cardiovascular health. By exerting more energy and pushing your heart rate during the HIIT “bursts,” you condition your heart and over time make it much stronger and more resilient.
- Anti-Aging: The relationship between physical activity and life expectancy is well known. More recent research has shown that one way in which exercise increases life expectancy is by activating telomerase, an anti-aging enzyme. HIIT not only increases telomerase, it also reduces a protein responsible for premature aging and tumor suppression.
- Capillary Function: Resistance-based interval training specifically benefits blood flow, blood vessel dilation, and capillary density. A study from 2004 found that HIIT increases capillary density by 20% which means the body is better able to feed sugar and oxygen to the muscles than in a person who is doing steady state exercise.
Choosing the Best High Intensity Interval Training Workout For You
Here are a few HIIT workouts to choose from. Have a look and see which one matches your skill level and interests! As your skill grows, you can modify these plans to include more high intensity bursts.
IF YOU: are very fit, have little time, like to run
Tabata Running: Tabata training is a very popular form of HIIT consisting of 8 rounds of high intensity exercises. Intervals are 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. Including a warm up, this HIIT session is done in under 10 minutes! For an experienced runner, it would look like this:
- Start with a 3 minute warm up.
- Then, 8 rounds of:
- 20 second ultra-intensity sprints
- 10 second light jogging.
IF YOU: are moderately fit, flexible timing, like to cycle
If you have 30 minutes to spare and like to cycle, this method is for you! The intensity can be adjusted to match your skill level. The basics of this cycling HIIT workout for someone of a moderate fitness level:
- 3 minute warm up.
- 60 seconds of cycling FAST at maximum resistance.
- 75 seconds cycling slow at a low resistance.
- Repeat for 12 cycles
IF YOU: are new to fitness, have moderate time, want to incorporate strength training
For someone new to fitness and interested in the benefits of HIIT, a 45-minute beginner’s workout would look something like this:
- 5 minute jump rope warm-up.
- 8-reps of weight lifting
- 1 minute of mountain climbers
- 1 minute jumping jacks.
- Repeat this circuit until you have hit 45 minutes
Ready to take your health to the next level? Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8028502
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23539308
https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/the-complete-guide-to-interval-training/
Nutrition is Science-Backed Medicine
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Nutrient: “a substance that provides nourishment
essential for growth and the maintenance of life.”
You Are What You Eat
Why do people change their diet? While popular answers are to lose weight (fat), or to get in better shape (adding muscle), good nutrition is in fact about so much more than changing your physical appearance. Proper nutrition–diet and supplementation–is a science-backed way to improve your health. “You are what you eat,” and everyday you have the power to decide how the foods you consume will serve you. Let food be thy medicine: heal your gut, balance your hormones, improve your mood, boost your energy, and more.
Nutrition as Medicine
As kids, many of us were told to eat our vegetables–why? ”Because they’re good for you.”
As adults, we are told to eat our vegetables–why? “To shed some weight.”
Neither of these answers demonstrates the true healing nature of what we put in our bodies, so, without further ado, here are some of the most powerful science-backed healing properties of a healthy diet!
Click here for a personalized health plan from a functional medicine doctor!
Physical Appearance
We all know that changing our diet can help us lose weight, but did you know that a healthy diet can improve the appearance of your skin and hair too? B-vitamins, like biotin, have been shown to improve the appearance of skin and nails. Collagen also supports healthy hair, skin, and joints!
Increased Energy
A poor diet lacking in healthy macro and micronutrients–paired with a diet high in sugar, alcohol, and processed foods–can lead to headaches, brain fog, and fatigue. On the other hand, eating grass fed meat, healthy fats, and lots of fresh vegetables will give your body the fuel it needs to function optimally.
The Standard American Diet (“SAD” – a fitting acronym) is full of inflammatory processed foods and refined carbs & sugar which deplete the immune system, increase the rate of cancer, and increase the risk of developing autoimmune disease.
Inflammation is the root cause of most diseases: but a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods is the best gift you can give yourself to feel and function at your best!
Better Sleep
Poor sleep–whether you’re lacking hours, or your sleep quality is not that good– can increase your risk of diabetes, decrease your immune system, and accelerate aging.
Alcohol and caffeine both impair sleep quality. Caffeine has a half-life of around 6 hours, so ideally you want to have your last cup by 2pm. Alcohol robs you of restorative REM sleep, which in addition to its dehydrating effects, lead to the next day’s dreaded hangover.
Food that positively affect sleep include veggies, grass-fed beef, chia seeds, sweet potato, wild-caught salmon, and those rich in magnesium. On the other hand, simple carbs and sugar negatively affect blood sugar and sleep–especially if consumed in the evening.
Balanced Hormones
Your body *needs* fat! Fat is required for your body to produce various hormones and keep inflammation low. Carbs, especially simple carbs, can actually increase inflammation and disrupt the delicate balance of your hormones.
If you suffer from leaky gut or other gut issues, you may be deficient in gut bacteria. Probiotics, like those from fermented foods–like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha– provide your gut with beneficial bacteria which can help keep your hormones in balance.
Improved Mood
Did you know that dairy, sugar, and gluten are linked to depression? While the Mediterranean diet, rich in saturated fat, fish, and vegetables is associated with both decreased rates of depression *and* a longer lifespan!
Ready to Take Charge?
By now, you should have all the motivation you need to make a change for the healthier. Here are some resources to help you get started:
- The JustInHealth Eating Plan
- How to Eat, What to Eat, and the Healthy Meal Matrix
- Nutrient Support
- If you or your diet is deficient in certain nutrients, supplementing with high quality supplements shouldn’t be overlooked!
- Iron Supreme: Hypothyroidism, anemia, and iron deficiency are all linked. Many women are iron-deficient, which can be remedied by eating red meat and supplementing with a high-quality iron supplement, like Iron Supreme.
- Magnesium Supreme: Magnesium is essential for proper function of over 300 enzymatic reactions and for the performance of many vital physiological functions. A magnesium deficiency can lead to osteoporosis, blood sugar problems, poor sleep, muscle cramps, and more.
- Multi-Nutrient Supreme: Your daily all-in-one for general nutrient support! Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and so much more!
- If you or your diet is deficient in certain nutrients, supplementing with high quality supplements shouldn’t be overlooked!
Questions? Click here if you are ready for help learning how to take your health back into your own hands!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24939238
Jun S Lai, Sarah Hiles, Alessandra Bisquera, Alexis J Hure, Mark McEvoy, John Attia; A systematic review and meta-analysis of dietary patterns and depression in community-dwelling adults, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2014;99(1):181–197
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5532289/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/