Enhancing Your Immune System With Vitamin D This Winter | Podcast #321

Getting enough vitamin D is essential to your long-term health. It’s relatively easy to get vitamin D through sun exposure most of the year, but that changes come wintertime. So here is Dr. J and Evan discussing why vitamin D matters and how to keep your levels up, even when the days are short and the skies are snowy and gray. 

Vitamin D absorbs calcium and helps you maintain healthy bones. It also contributes to the health of your muscles, nerves, and immune system. So if you don’t get enough vitamin D, you may be at risk of developing rickets, osteoporosis, other bone disorders, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. Older adults, people with dark skin, and obesity are more likely to have a vitamin D deficiency.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:49    The Importance of Vitamin D in Winter

5:15    Viruses in Winter Season

11:20  Vitamin D Supplements and Benefits

14:03  Vegan Vitamin D

19:01  Vitamin D as Epigenetic Regulator

22:55  Respiration Issues and Blood Pressure Issues

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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live is Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to be talking about vitamin D to help enhance your immune system is such a good topic because in the winter months, we’re exposed to all kinds of viruses and bacteria out there and immune stressors. There’s less sunlight, more cold, more sugar, more sweets, more holiday stress. And we really want to make sure that you guys have a strong immune system to be resistant to what’s happening in today’s environment. Evan, how are we doing today, my man?

Evan Brand: Doing really well. I’m ready for the sunshine to come back. You know, I was looking at my D minder app the other day, and the vitamin D window just opened back up. So and the which, technically, according to the way the earth is tilting, we’re actually past the deepest, darkest parts of winter. But you know, late December, because of Northern latitude, and the angle of the sun and all that you literally cannot make vitamin D, even if you’re outside, but naked, you just can’t. But luckily, according to my app, the vitamin D Window, at least from my latitude, just opened up about six days ago. So if there is Sunshine out from about 12 to one or two, there’s a good like two hours a day right now based on my latitude, where I can get adequate vitamin D with enough skin exposure. But the problem is, most people in the middle of the day there may be on their lunch break at their office, you probably can’t get outside enough to get the sun. And if it’s cloudy, of course that cancels it out? And can you undress enough at your office building to get enough sunshine to get enough vitamin D? So, in general, the answer is no. And this is why I would say 90% of people that we’ve tested via blood, we’re going to see vitamin D deficiency. And this is just something you cannot afford to be deficient in

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110%. So in today’s environment, with the winter being where it’s at, and depending on your latitude and longitude and, and your ability to be outside and expose yourself, getting vitamin D naturally to the sun, and it’s forming kind of these pre cholesterol d3, and that d3 being absorbed into your kidneys and liver, right, it’s odds are going to be pretty low. So we’re gonna have to supplement this time of year, that’s going to be without a doubt. And we got to get our vitamin D levels up to an optimal range as well, because we need to be at least above 50 on the United States metric for vitamin D, that’s important. If you have an autoimmune issue, if you have any cancer predispositions, you probably want to be even as high as 70, to 100, but at least 50 on the vitamin D side to really maintain optimal immune function.

Evan Brand: And this is something you can actually test at home now, which is pretty cool. So there are some labs that you and I can work with, where we can get people some dried blood spot testing. But if you’re working with us clinically, we might as well just run a full blood panel looking into thyroid and everything else. Because if you have other symptoms, you could take vitamin D and not fix yourself, meaning it’s great to optimize that. But you could still have other issues. So you could just do the at home blood panel or if we’re going to get you to the lab, we might as well look at everything else. And you’re not looking at an expensive test. It’s kind of hard to believe that this is not standard practice. But you go to your conventional doctor down the road, and they run basic blood work on you, they’re not going to run vitamin D, unless you ask for it. And even then they may say, Oh, it’s not covered by insurance. So what is your reply? Because it’s generally only going to be maybe 20, maybe $50. US max to test this is not an expensive test.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, no, it’s definitely not an expensive test. Now in general, and give you guys a couple of markers here in regards to the ranges. So off the bat, I already mentioned 50 to 70 is a pretty good range to be in I think for most people, right? If we have cancer, heart issues, autoimmune stuff, we can go 70 to 100. And the metric we want to look for is going to be nanograms per milliliter nanograms per milliliter. In Europe they do or Canada they do nano moles per liter. And the conversion on that I want to say is about two, you multiply whatever the level is here and you multiply it by about 2.25. And that gives you that conversion, right? So for at about 50 or so on the vitamin D here is sufficient, right? That’s the nanogram per milliliter multiply it by 2.25. That’s about 125 nano moles per liter if we’re talking Europe or Canada so you guys can make the conversion 2.25 All right, so 50 to 70 is ideal 70 to 100 is going to be you know if we have cancer, heart disease, immune issues. Now when we supplement with vitamin D, we want to make sure we’re taking d3 if your diets really great, lots of green vegetables, high quality gi butterfat, good kaitou then you’re probably fine. You don’t need k two if your diets not awesome or not great or you want that extra bit of insurance, you can always do vitamin K to with your vitamin D, just to make sure there’s an adequate balance there. A lot of your fat soluble vitamins tend to come and work together vitamin D vitamin K work importantly well because k helps calcium get into the bone D helps calcium be absorbed. From the gut as well, so it’s nice to have some k there. So we’re really helping to put all that calcium back into the bone that we’re now absorbing better in our gut from vitamin D. So it’s nice to have that as an insurance policy to make sure we’re putting and telling that calcium where it needs to go.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said, I just put another paper in the chat for you if you want it. This was from 2006. And it was just talking about how there was back in the 1980s, a guy Edgar hope Simpson proposed that a seasonal stimulus was intimately associated with seasonal epidemic, influenza. And long story short, the fancy way of saying, hey, winter comes and then boom, all of a sudden, you know, viruses become more of a prevalent issue. And then long story short, there was this whole interventional study, which there’s many, many, many, many on this long story short, vitamin D is reducing the incidence of respiratory infections in children. So this is specifically talking about kids. But there are countless of these for adults. And so what’s happening when the vitamin D levels are sufficient, are a multitude of things. But in particular, it’s helping to reduce interleukin six, which is one of those inflammatory cytokines that we’re seeing get people in trouble. So if you can reduce your cytokines, that’s going to be beneficial. And then also another cool benefit is not only as sort of an anti viral, but there’s some anti microbial benefit, which I honestly didn’t know much about this and start till I started reading these papers here that it can actually activate your immune cells to produce some anti microbials. So sort of like a natural antibiotic, if you will, by upping vitamin D concentration. Now, the question is, well, how do people take it? Is it just an ongoing thing, if you think you’re getting into trouble with the illness, do you go high dose of it, I think it depends on what your levels are. So would you say you probably want to get a baseline first to know where you’re at and how you should address it or-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Baseline first, I mean, I would say the wider your skin is, the more fair your skin is. Probably the more efficient you are going to be at converting vitamin D from the sun, right? The darker your skin is think of your your the darkness in your skin, that’s melanin, right, the more melanin you have, so you have kind of different spectrums full on African American, that’s the highest amount of melanin, melanin is like your natural UV block, right, it helps block your skin from the sun’s rays. So due to evolution, and where we evolved, people that evolved closer to the equator, more UV light based on the angle of the Sun hitting it, they naturally evolved with more melanin in the skin, people that have all further away from the equator, less direct UV light, less melanin in the skin, because it’s all about making vitamin D. So the more efficient you are at making vitamin D, you probably are going to be, you’ll probably be able to get away with not supplementing as much or as frequent. The more melanin in your skin, the more you have to be on top of your vitamin D, because unless you’re going to be outside six to eight hours a day, and you’re at a, you know, mid to low 30 latitude, you’re probably just not going to be able to ever make enough vitamin D, therefore, you really have to be on top of everything. And you’re testing. So lighter skin, I think in general, a good rule of thumb is 1000, I use per 25 pounds of body weight, especially in the fall and winter months. And then if you want to take a break in the summer, that’s fine, just make sure you get a test here there to confirm it, the darker your skin is, you may even want to double that in the winter months. And then you may want to follow up and retest come the early spring and see where you’re at kind of monitor where you’re at. If you’re someone that works outside, that’s you have to make that adjustment. If you’re an office person you’re inside all day, you also have to make that adjustment to so in general 1000, I use per 25 pounds of body weight. And then if you have darker skin, you may want to double that for the winter months. And then it’s always good to confirm in the summertime in the winter, and sometime coming off the winter, early spring summer to see where you’re at. And then we can always adjust accordingly. And if there’s any risk of autoimmunity or cancer, we probably want to be testing just a little bit more frequently. Once you kind of know where you’re at, you can kind of guess based on how well you’re doing. And then in regards to vitamin D, you know, I mean, vitamin K, K2, you probably want anywhere between 100 150 micrograms of K2 is kind of where you want where you’re going to be at per day on average. And so if you’re doing lots of green vegetables, if you’re doing sauerkraut fermented foods, you’re doing kaitou from grass fed butter or ghee, you’ll probably be fine. And then if you want that insurance policy of about 150 micrograms, you can always just find a good vitamin d3 with that in there. And then that gives you that extra assurance that you’re okay there. 

Evan Brand: Yep. And the other cool thing about this I mean, in terms of how big of a game changer This is for your health for your immunity, we’re talking minor dollars for testing. We’re talking minor dollars for actually buying something now, we’re still going to advise you to go with the more professional product just because that’s what we’re going to use clinically. That’s what we’re going to sell to people so we still do Want you to get a good quality product, but in a pinch, could you get away with something just a typical store brought brand, probably. So we just have a lot of sensitive people. So we’re going to want to avoid a lot of the fillers, you’ll see soybean oil, sometimes you’ll see other things that we don’t like, and some of the cheap brands. So we’re going to try to get you just like a straight d3, possibly with a little bit of gelatin. But even sometimes we’re gonna do like a veggie cap, when you’ve got maybe a little bit of cellulose but- 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: MCT oil or olive oil, some kind of a healthier fat versus like you mentioned a soy or something more junky or more like polyunsaturated. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, but once again, I mean, you’re looking at, in general, I know some of the professional brains, you and I use, cost wise, you’re looking at, like 50 to 60 bucks for six months. So I mean, you’re talking maybe 10 bucks a month, and that’s for like professional quality. And there are liquid versions that you can use for children as well. I’ve got both of my kids taking vitamin D. Now we do give them some different cod liver oils and omega. So you can get some vitamin D naturally from some of the cod liver oils, you can get a few 1000 iu, but we are still doing a little bit of extra K1, K2 and D3 for the kids. And that’s easy. And my daughter calls it Hummingbird food, because it’s clear just like our Hummingbird food and it tastes a little sweet. So she loves it. It’s like her favorite part of the day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, cuz it’s got a tiny bit of stevia in there. Right. And then you also have, you know, it’s clear liquid vitamin like the MCT oil in there. That’s Yeah, good. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. So 100% on that, I would say supplementally. Like you mentioned cod liver oil, very good. You can also look at other fat soluble vitamins, the other ones may be vitamin A, right. So if you’re doing high quality, ghee or grass fed butter, you’re probably getting a good amount of vitamin A in there, especially if you’re doing something your tea or coffee in the morning. If you’re eating good grass fed grass fed beef and you’re doing good quality pasture egg fed egg yolks, then you’re going to be set on a lot of that, if you want some additional insurance, you can do some cod liver oil, like I mentioned, you can get a vitamin D that has some vitamin A in it, or just use some of the extra cod liver oil and get some good egg yolks in and you’ll probably be totally fine with that. Anything else you want to add?

Evan Brand: Yep. I would just encourage people not to do. Yeah, I would say I just encourage people not to do the conventional D2 supplement that you’re going to get from a local doctor. For example, if you ask your neighbor down the road to give you some vitamin D, they’re probably going to give you D2. They may give you like a 50,000 iu or possibly even like 100,000 iu that you’re going to get from a pharmacy, it’s going to be loaded with a bunch of binders and fillers. And we find that just those really high doses for a few days don’t really do as much as a lower dose over a longer period of time. So it’s not where you just come in and do 100,000 for a week and you’re cured. Now you really need to just optimize it over a slower period of time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, like myself, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll do sometimes 40 or 50, once a week, to kind of keep my levels pretty good. But I think it just kind of depends on where you’re at. Right. So if if for some reason, you know, you forget to do your vitamin D, I’d rather have people do it like at least once a week. So it’s there because it is a fat soluble vitamin. So it will kind of build up in your system. It’s not like a B vitamin where you just pee it out. But ideally, every day is good, especially in the morning time because think about it, you wouldn’t naturally make vitamin D in the middle of the night or at nighttime, if you’re taking it right, you’d make it more in the morning to afternoon. So take it more in the morning and afternoon. Right, that makes more sense to me from a kind of day in day out how vitamin D will be made in general. And then the other thing is, if you miss it or you forget it, I think doing it at least getting it in there once a week as a fat soluble vitamin, just make sure you test make sure you’re doing well on that. And like you said having d3 is in the B that’s more of the animal version, I think is a lanolin more of a plant version on the D two side. And the thing with it’s more synthetic and it doesn’t equate to improving your vitamin D levels because as to get converted in the body. So there’s a conversion issue that tends to get lapsed on and it won’t move your vitamin D levels is good.

Evan Brand: I have seen some like vegan D3, I want to say they’re like an algae based product. Yeah, I haven’t looked too much into them. I mean, I have had some vegan clients who were like, Hey, I’m just really opposed to any other source of vitamin D. I’m like, okay, fine, we’ll get you some of the vegan ones. I think it’s a lichen. Maybe a lichen or an algae. I mean, I’m okay with it. But I don’t have enough long term evidence to say where I’ve looked at people and regards to their test results to confirm that their levels we’re getting up from the algae or the like and based one, I’m sure if it’s D3, and it says 5000. I mean, in theory, it’s good enough, but I just haven’t I don’t have enough data to say whether you should go for that or not. I would just go with your typical D3

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Now vitamin D has a couple of different benefits. You already mentioned a couple things, let’s kind of go over some of the benefits for the listeners. So we already chatted about the the natural antibiotic that’s being produced by vitamin D. It’s called cathelicidin. It’s a kind of an antibacterial enzyme. That’s super helpful at being able to knock down bacteria, okay? It also has antiviral mechanisms as well. It has the antimicrobial peptides, like I mentioned, it also has some antiviral mechanisms. Part of that is it stimulates and can modulate the th one immune response and the th one immune system, that’s where you’re making a lot of your natural killer cells and your helper cells, which are really good. And then also good helper cell can also help you know that your antigen presenting cell can help make antibodies more efficiently. So you’re also going to have better TH2 immune response. So you’re going to make antibodies to whatever that infection is, those tend to come a little bit later in the game, but good signaling to make your antibodies is super helpful as well. I would also say as a couple other studies here that we’re talking about different things, so we have a reduce in our MMP 9 concentrations, we have a reduction in Brady Keinen storm, and our original reduction in our cytokine storm. So basically, we have a lot of inflammatory molecules that get produced, right, Brady keinen cytokines interleukins, MMP9. And basically these are inflammatory type of chemical messengers. And vitamin D can help modulate that and prevent that from being overproduced, which because the more we over produce those, the more our immune system responds, right, and we can create more cytokine storm issues because our immune system kind of is on this positive feedback loop, responding and creating more issues with these cytokines. So we can kind of modulate and bring these cytokines down a bit. And when there’s less cytokines, there’s less chance of a cytokine storm, which is basically our immune system responding. And imagine a fight between two people, you know, one person yells, the other person, that person yells back down, then we’re pushing them we’re shoving, then we’re hitting, and the violence escalates. That’s kind of what happens with the cytokine storm, with your immune system and all the different cytokines and immune chemical signals, so we can keep that modulating a bit, which is very helpful. And vitamin D plays a really important role in that.

Evan Brand: Awesome. I don’t think there’s really, really any other mechanisms that are important for this. I mean, I’m sure there’s other stuff that we could, we could pick out. But, you know, I would argue that, you know, if you’re darker skin in Canada, you’re in trouble. If you’re in New York, you’re in Michigan, you’re in Montana, you’re in Seattle, Washington, I mean, even, you know extremely fair skinned people, Irish people like me, if you’re that far north, and you’re not supplementing, I’ll bet you $1,000 you’re deficient. So it’s pretty easy. It’s pretty easy. This is so easy. But such a game changer. I wish it were the front headlines everywhere.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would at least kind of convince people here just get on vitamin D, from thanksgiving to spring. Yeah, at least do that right, at least make that investment get on vitamin D supplementation from thanksgiving to spring. Or if you want to come off the rest of the year, as long as you’re getting some sunlight, fine, but at least do that that’s gonna give you a good bump. And the fat soluble nutrients, you’ll get over those four or five months, we’ll hang around months afterwards, too, because it takes a while for that for that vitamin D level to build up. Now, what are some symptoms of vitamin D excess. So if you’re not testing and you’re just doing a lot of vitamin D, well, you may have high levels of calcium, you may notice hypercalcemia hyper calcium iya. So if you run a comprehensive metabolic panel, you may see high levels of calcium. You may also notice you’re more nauseous, you’re vomiting, you’re weak, a lot of urination, bone pain, kidney issues, calcium stones, if you’re having any of those symptoms, and you’re not really monitoring your vitamin D, you may want to just double check on that. I’ve also seen clinically that vitamin D toxicity happens less when you have other fat soluble vitamins present. So if you’re noticing that you may want to back off a bit, you may want to really focus on getting good vitamin A and good vitamin K in there, as well, just to make sure you’re not creating a fat soluble vitamin imbalance, I think is a really good kind of thing out of the gates.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s pretty easy. Oh, a couple other things I wanted to mention, this is at the top of the the paper you and I were looking at, you already mentioned like benefits for autoimmune diseases like MS. But also in regards to just helping with epigenetic switching. So you know, all this reading here, because it’s pretty simple. Vitamin D is a powerful epigenetic regulator influencing more than 2500 genes. So what that tells me is you and I seriously, we don’t even fully understand what all this benefits. I mean, we have a clue based on knowing how many genes that can positively influence but who knows, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. So how many other beneficial things are we doing? That science hasn’t even uncovered yet? Probably a ton.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% right. So when you talk about the different epigenetic signaling that can happen, that’s pretty powerful, right? Because we know that I think 800 900 It’s a bunch of different DNA, a bunch of different genes are being affected, and so on. It’s important. We don’t know all the things that could be affected. But we do know that if you get your vitamin D levels up, you don’t really have to worry about everything that you’re doing. That’s kind of the, that’s kind of the important component there, you don’t really have to worry about it, you just got to make sure that you’re doing the right thing. And you’re set. And you’re pretty much good to go.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve got my grandfather testing his now I- Well, I’ve got my grandfather, he’s been on vitamin D for several years now. And I’ve got his doctor to the point where he doesn’t question it anymore. He just runs it. So we’ve got him up, we just got his blood work back. He’s up around 60. And he’s doing 5000 units a day, and he’s hanging out around 60. It took a little while to get up there. So we did 10 for a while. And then now we’re just staying at a baseline of five a day. And he’s doing great with it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. So can you repeat the dose again?

Evan Brand: Yeah, we had him at 5000 a day. For a while we went up to 10, because he was only at around a 30 or 40. So we went up to 10 for a little while. And then we backed him down. So now he’s at a five. So we went five, up to 10 for a while now he’s at a 60. So now we’re just going back down sticking with a baseline of 5000 a day with K and it’s working really well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my kids, they get some vitamin D out of the gates every single day, which is helpful. And then we make sure they get some cod liver oil. And then they’re also getting some really good fat soluble vitamins via gi and such like that. And so out of the gates here, you know anyone that’s supplementing their kids or their family or friends, just make sure you’re getting other good fat soluble vitamins along with the vitamin D, and you’re going to be pretty darn safe out of the gates. And I would say at least try to do some kind of testing going into the winter and or coming off the winter just to make sure you’re on track.

Evan Brand: Yep, and we’ll put some links below I believe you’ve got a professional vitamin D that you use. I’ve got one that I use, there’s liquid, there are different soft gel capsule versions. So we’ll put a couple links for people if you want to check them out. Once again, this is one of the most cost effective but most health impacting supplements to be using it this time. And I think it should be in your pantry and your cabinet.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thinks so too. So out of the gates, we talked about all of the immune benefits the immune modulating benefits, we talked about the natural antiviral antibacterial mechanisms. We talked about how they modulate cytokines, decreased chance of a cytokine storm. We talked about the the modulating of all these different chemical messengers. Also important benefits in regarding breathing, right, because we talked about vitamin D can help modulate high levels of angiotensin right. So we have a lot of blood pressure medications, angiotensin converting enzyme medications, right, or ARB right angiotensin receptor site blockers, vitamin D modulates angiotensin two rennen right it modulates it, and that can help with blood pressure. And blood pressure is important, right? Anytime we have respiration issues or breathing issues or blood pressure issues, modulating NAC can help. Alright, I would say the only other thing I really like adding in, especially if I’m having breathing issues outside of vitamin D is throwing either in some Bluetooth ion or some NAC and or both because that can one help reduce mucus when you have less mucus, you have better transfer of oxygen from the alveoli to the bloodstream, right? So you can take oxygen, deoxygenated blood, bring it back in get oxygen, so you just have better transfer of oxygen back into the bloodstream, which is important. And that’s going to help you help you breathe better and it’s gonna help keep your oxygen levels up. If oxygen levels dropped too much, you’re gonna be really fatigued and tired. So the only other thing I would throw in with vitamin D is maybe some NAC and or some glutathione.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said yeah, oral and or in bigger situations, more problematic situations. nebulised bluetooth ion, we had one client who had a brother who had a lot of issues, got him on the nebulizer with the Bluetooth ion and he was stellar within just a few hours. So I think that is another essential supplement to keep in your pantry.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I had a patient just last week she’ll probably listen to this podcast, but she had some breathing issues due to a winter cold, some significant breathing issues and she had seen my podcasts and video on using lipids omo or shoot using nebulised bluetooth ion and I my little nebulizer right over here. Right under there. And I use the nebulizer to fire on with some saline solution. And she said right away her ability to breathe and respirate improve right right out of the gates. Oh yeah shows that you know getting really good glutathione obviously orally into your body is low hanging fruit. But if you need to get it internally right to your lungs, there’s a lot of studies on showing how beneficial that is in helping your breathing and just helping to reduce inflammation in your lungs.

Evan Brand: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. My mother in law she had diagnosis of COPD even though she’s never smoked. We think it was due to chemical exposures probably virally. bacterial issues as well. Same thing got her on the nebulizer. She said it’s a game changer she got off of her inhaler completely after using the nebulizer so it’s pretty unreal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So what we’ll do is we’ll put some links here we have some vitamin D products and glutathione products that we like and we personally recommend, we’ll put some links here below so if you guys are interested and you want to take a peek and you want to support the podcast, that’s one way to do so. And again we only we only recommend products that we personally use with our family, ourselves and our patients and because we’re in the thick of it rolling up our sleeves dealing with patients clinically every week it’s it’s into our it’s let’s say it’s part of our best interest to have the highest quality product so we can get the highest clinical outcome.

Evan Brand: Totally, totally well if you need help clinically as well if you need advice, we work around the world with people via FaceTime, Skype, phone etc. You can reach out to Dr. J at Justin Health. JustinHealth.com for Dr. J. Me, Evan Brand at EvanBrand.com and we’re available worldwide. So you can use the scheduling links you can book intro calls you can book new client calls, but we are here so please reach out if you need help.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Hey Evan excellent chatting with you my man. JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com. Sharing is caring if you guys enjoy it please send us a review we really appreciate it. JustinHealth.com/iTunes, EvanBrand.com/iTunes we’ll put a review link below. We really appreciate you guys. Alright, you guys have a phenomenal day. Take control of your health. Keep your immune system strong during the winter months. Take care y’all. Bye now.


References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/enhancing-your-immune-system-with-vitamin-d-podcast-321

Recommended products:

Emulsi D Supreme

Detox Aminos

Vitamin D Blood Test

Winter Skin Care Tips: Get Rid of Dry Skin | Podcast #320

Winter can wreak havoc on your skin — making it dry, itchy, and irritated. And it can feel like there’s no escape: Cold, blustery conditions outside can leave your skin feeling raw, while indoor heat zaps moisture from the air and from your skin.

In this podcast, Dr. J and Dr. Evan are talking about skin problems that you might encounter during this season. There are many simple ways to combat the causes of dry winter skin and help keep your skin feeling moist and supple all season long, including some easy changes to your everyday routine. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:23    Skin Issues

4:43    Detox Pathways

13:24  Infections

22:00  Humidity Issues

24:07  Proper Digestion

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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, hope you had a great new year great holiday season so far. Today we’re going to be diving into skin issues dealing with skin issues coming the wintertime, all the different things that may happen due to dryness, cold. Lots of sweets from the holidays in the New Year’s all that stuff. Let’s dive in man. How you doing? 

Evan Brand: Doing well. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to everybody. This is the first podcast of 2021 Hooray, we need to like clap for a minute. Yeah, exciting. 2021 All right. So skin issues. While I was telling you about my daughter, Jenna, my little 1- 19 month old, she was having some really dry skin on the back of her arms and legs. And so we’ve done a couple of things to help her which is pretty cool. So I’ll share that right off the bat and then we’ll dive into some more root cause stuff. So we really upped up her fish oil we were giving her about it was two squirts of a liquid and it was a professional version so I don’t remember the milligrams but we just doubled their dose so we just kind of doubled her doubled the normal dose of omegas and that seems to help especially if we think what’s happening is like a keratosis Polaris, which is a common situation. And then secondly, we did a babo botanicals brand and it was called a colloidal oatmeal lotion and it was fragrance free. And it’s mainly just like shea butter. We tried coconut oil topically that’s always kind of my first go to for skin issues, but it didn’t touch it. It didn’t help it at all. But when we got this Colloidal Oatmeal Babo Botanical product, it was a game changer. And no This podcast is not sponsored by them. But hey, if you want to sponsor us reach out to great product above to share it with more people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Very cool. So we have the keratosis Polaris, which is where the [inaudible] and kind of just accumulates in the pores and, and you can get this bumpy chicken skin feeling usually like on the back of the arms on the button stuff, right? Is that what you’re referring to? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s right. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you’re saying that the omega threes really helped that omega threes really make a difference and help improve the extra keratin deposits in the pores?

Evan Brand: Yeah, my wife had it too real bad when we first started dating and we’ve got around like, two to four grams a day of omegas and her back her arms feel perfectly smooth now. I mean, of course we got her gut better, we got her diet better, but I honestly think the biggest factor the biggest variable was the omegas.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the extra omega threes can make a big difference. Also good zinc, extra zinc too can also help. That’s really good to know. So we also talk about skin diet plays a big role. So we have to kind of rule out things like gluten extra refined sugar can feed yeast and bacteria and these things can produce, you know various mycotoxins or endotoxins that can put stress on the liver in the body and you may see the skin reacting as a means to that you may see skin issues and breakouts as a means of that. Also, large amounts of sugar can cause insulin which can cause insulin surges, which can cause extra sebum and sebum, can cause can feed bacteria on the skin which can create more acne and more skin inflammation. Also, things like gluten can potentially drive autoimmune reactions like eczema, psoriasis, potentially even rosacea issues. So you got to look at dairy you got to look at gluten, you got to look at refined sugar that could be driving a lot of that insulin that could be feeding a lot of the microbe was the fungal the yeast, the bacterial overgrowth, which can obviously affect the skin too.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. So what about eggs? I think that’s important to mention, too. I personally feel that pulling out eggs is a good strategy for people if they’re unsure of what’s happening with their diet and reactions, that eggs may be a culprit. And then also, conventional dairy. I know that was a big culprit for me. I would like to cheat on it a little bit and do like some grass fed cheese every once in a while but then even that sometimes I’ll notice a skin reaction to it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so eggs could definitely be a role. So for unknown I’d probably want to go autoimmune out of the gates, no grains, legumes, dairy, nuts, seeds, nightshades or eggs and keep the sugar down just so we’re not overfeeding bacteria and yeast which could be causing skin issues like I mentioned earlier. So that kind of be a first step. I always want to look at omega threes, right? Because that can help to KP the keratosis Polaris that can also just help inflammation. Your skin needs really good healthy fats. So if you’re a female and a lot of your skin issues tend to be more based around your cycle. I tend to like fats like borage or black currant seed oil, which are GLA omega six fats, a good omega six, but it can these kind of omega six like GLA fats can really help decrease a lot of the sebum and a lot of the stuff that may clog the pores of the skin. So I do like a lot of the black currant seed oil can be very, very helpful for women’s skin issues. That’s excellent out of the gates. Usually women tend to help it more but if you’re a guy and you’d have more of the KP or the bumps, that’s where really up in the omega threes can make a big, big difference.

Evan Brand: Yeah, awesome. How about detox pathways? Maybe we should mention that I think just supporting the liver I’ve seen personally, especially with kids, when we see skin issues will come in with some liver support. If it’s a kid who can’t take pills, we’ll give them some kind of a liquid liver support tincture and I’ve noticed a big difference especially under the eyes, you know, if we’re talking scan, we’re not just talking like bumps on the arms. We’re not just talking acne, we’re talking possibly like dark circles under the eyes. That’s often at least in Chinese medicine, they say dark circles under the eyes, his liver, and I’ve actually noticed that correlate quite well. When we bring up liver support dark circles under the eyes go away. So if you’re a woman, every morning, you’re doing your makeup. And here you are doing your powder foundation or whatever the heck you’re putting on under your eyes. You might not have to do that if you just support your liver. It’s funny how women, they can just cover stuff up with makeup, but man, we’re not going to cover up it. So we’re going to see the dark circles, we need to treat it root cause we’re not just going to, you know, put some powder on it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. And so with the we call allergic shiners, so what you see is a lot of lymphatic pooling, so you have a lot of lymph in the face area. And a lot of times what you see is the pooling of the lymph right under the eyes. And a lot of times that’s going to be food allergies, just go on Google type in allergic shiners, okay. And that’s a lot of times because of it’s not like an aging thing. It’s a lot of lymphatic stress because of certain foods. So like I mentioned, cut a lot of those big foods out, see how much that helps decrease the lymphatic pool. And you can also do things to support the lip, right? You can do rebounding, you can do whole body vibration, you can drink ginger, or burdock tea or essiac tea, things that naturally bright clover tea, red roots, etc. Things are naturally support the limp that can be helpful. But if you’re doing that, and you’re still eating foods that are inflammatory, that may still kind of counteract it. So ideally, you know, support the limp and cut out some of those commonly offending foods that may really help decrease that pooling underneath the eyes.

Evan Brand: That’s smart. I didn’t know the the food connection there with the allergies. So what about the darkness? Do you think that’s tied into any kind of toxicity? Or do you think just with the lymph in general, it’s just going to appear dark just because it’s stagnant no matter what.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, a lot of that just has to do with the length. I mean, we’ll pull up a couple pictures here in a minute. But anytime you really increase an immune response, you’re going to just get more lymphatic pooling, and you’re going to see it underneath kids eyes, or Yeah, it’s interesting on kids, and you also see it in, in adults too. But you know, it’s people put they go to the spa, you put a cucumber over it. Why? Because the cucumber telling tends to help disperse a lot of that lymphatic fluid. That’s the reason why. And let me pull up a Google image here so you guys can see.

Evan Brand: And sometimes it’s dark. And then sometimes it’s bags too. Oh, yeah. Yes. You look at the one to the left, though with the little girl. That one. No, go to the second one there. That’s what I’m used to seeing with people. Yeah, just that kind of darkness.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, it just has to do with the increased blood flow and lymphatic pooling. It’s really what it is. Wow. And just cutting that out can make a big, big, big, big difference.

Evan Brand: Yep. I wonder if there’s, there’s got to be a histamine connection to this too. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, anytime you have a food allergy response, part of a allergenic response is going to be histamine at so-

Evan Brand: Oh go back up, go back up on the top there on that screen. The very top of there, it said, Oh, this is interesting. So it was talking about indoor allergens. So mold could be a trigger of the allergic shiners, too. I never even thought about that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, anytime you breathe stuff into that sinus cavity, right? Whether it’s outdoor allergens, like dander or cedar or things like that, grass pollens, right of course, those can be a big role. But you know, you can see right here what causes it, right. So what happens is the the tissues and the blood vessels in the nose become swollen and a lot of excess fluid happens. People don’t understand when you have a histamine reaction. And a lot of times that causes things to vasal dilate. So these blood vessels get swollen, so you get a lot more blood, you get a lot more lymphatic flow, you get a lot more immune reaction. And that’s why all that stuff sends a pool right there because all that the sinus cavity kind of coming together right in this T zone here.

Evan Brand: There you go. Look at that pollution and perfume and other irritants. So women if there’s any left listening to the podcast, it’s still wear perfume. Stop doing that. That’s so bad. Do essential oils if you want to smell.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. If you want a nice scent do a good really good essential oil, do a lavender do a.. see trying to think of a bunch of other feminine herbs or feminine essential oils if you’re a guy do rosewood or do cedar keep it really simple. You know there’s a couple of really good blends that are out there that I like Frankincense is a pretty good neutral one. You know, I just tend to rely on my nice essential oil based deodorant tends to be really clean and, and works well. But yeah, so you want to not put in, rub toxins on your skin, toxins on the fragrances, all of that can affect bags under the eyes. All of that can affect your skin too, because it’s going to just create more toxicity, more stress on your liver in your body. Now getting back to the hormone stress, if we have more, let’s say detoxification problems that could create issues because if we have estrogen dominance, right, well we have high levels of androgens as a female, right high levels of estrogen estrogen dominance, and it can be low estrogen, but it’s just higher relatively speaking than progesterone, right? That ratio is off that 20 to 25 to one progesterone, estrogen often maybe it’s 10 to one or 15 to one That ratio starts to skew that could put more stress on the liver. And if you have estrogen issues that can be a problem. A lot of women when they consume too much refined carbohydrates and inflammatory foods, they tend to convert more of their estrogens to androgens, testosterone, right stauss rounds and androgen, it’s in the androgen umbrella, right. And those can cause like I mentioned a lot more sebum and more skin issues and more acne that way, and then having prostaglandin imbalances prostaglandin two, which is more inflammatory. Having them one in three supported with a lot of those good fats, like I mentioned, are going to be helpful. So you’re going to really help a lot of the inflammatory pathways with good fish oils, you’re also going to help prostaglandin one and three, which are going to help with the skin with the black currant seed and the borage oil. So those can be very helpful too.

Evan Brand: Good Good call. Also, when we’re coming in with detox support, you mentioned estrogen we’re going to come in with like some phase two detoxification support anyway, so we may come in with something to help with glucuronidation, maybe some calcium D glucose rates, so you wouldn’t think of it like your average person, maybe even a naturopath or a functional Doc’s probably not even going to think calcium D glue, great for skin issues. But if you think that the mechanism of helping with estrogen dominance, it may be a game changer. And then let’s go into the infections a bit. I–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also calcium lucre could help with some mold too, because it was any mold exposure that could also help by enough to mold too.

Evan Brand: Totally, yeah, binders plus a little calcium D glue. Great. I think you’re on your way. Let’s Let’s hit on infections. I’m surprised you and I haven’t brought this up here we are this far. And we haven’t thought about infections. I mean, that was a big one for me. I think my face was already better. But I was still suffering quite a bit when you and I first became friends my skin was still not very good because of all my gut infection history.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think you were also still consuming some higher quality dairy that may have been a problem. So some people that are doing a lot of cheese or like milk even if it’s raw. Right and good quality, you may still have a problem with that even if it’s really good clean dairy. Usually butter or ghee tends to be okay because there’s less casein less lactose in there almost none. But if you’re doing other stuff, it could be a problem. Was that an issue? Evan? Do you remember the dairy being a problem? 

Evan Brand: Man, you remember Central Market and all their amazing cheeses I would do some of those grass fed organic cheeses. It wasn’t often though I’ll be honest, it would maybe be like a chunk of cheese every few days or so. But I think even that was too much for me. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and you know, I tell you I can do well with butter or ghee, but I do not do well with milk or cheese as well. What happened is gassy, tend to get loose stools and then skin issues will tend to manifest shortly after for sure. So even high quality dairy not that good. Now the fat based dairy, right? Butter and ghee tends to be different because it’s primarily 99% fat. There’s very little casein, very little lactose, which is the sugar in dairy. And so of course, gese even cleaner than butter because there’s virtually zero casein versus virtually zero. lactose in there. So I tend to be a lot better.

Evan Brand: I mean, it’s curious. How do you do with whey protein? Are you okay with it?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I do. Okay, with wakers weighs 99% casein and lactose free? Mm hmm. Yeah. tends to be a lot better. Yeah, I do okay with it. My favorite is gonna be collagen, you know, high quality grass fed collagen peptides. So I do my true collagen blend, which works great. Because there’s really it’s it’s in a peptide form. So there’s no other larger proteins in there. It’s really clean and well broken down. So that tends to do my powder standpoint does really well.

Evan Brand: Awesome. All right. Well, let’s just talk a couple minutes about infections. I think this is an important part to consider if you have skin issues, I’ve worked with countless small children and teenagers and we always are going to look at the potential for infections. There’s nothing in particular, I’m not going to say hey, it’s got to be blasto. Or it’s got to be this or that. I would just say in general, any type of dysbiosis bacterial overgrowth SIBO Candida H. pylori, the whole party that usually happens together is going to be a potential. And I think the one of the big mechanisms here is just to reduce stomach acid by the H. pylori. So I think enzymes to fix the skin are also another important strategy we’re going to implement.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anytime we have indigestion and our protein and our fat and carbohydrate molecules of the food that we’re eating are larger and are broken down. You’re going to have intolerances, foods not going to be broken down all the way. And those large globules, proteins, fats, etc, can get into the bloodstream create more immune reaction, also, there’s going to be a fermentation that happens when those food molecules are not broken down all the way and that can create bacterial overgrowth. And we know hydrochloric acid does have a way of being disinfected in a way it really decreases. bacteria and yeast flow to the intestines. And if we have low levels of acid, it’s kind of like missing the natural disinfectant on your table. Right? That you know that can help clean things up in your body so that that’s definitely a real thing there. And the other component i would say is being because we were kind of talking about the holidays and Christmas is it can get very dry in the wintertime and a lot of places in this country. And so having a really clean moisturizer can be helpful. Now it depends So we’re just talking about, you know, person with dry skin, we may just choose a really, really good clean shea butter, or coconut oil or just a really clean, moisturizing product from a high quality company. And you can use skin deep cosmetic database Environmental Working Group database to look at healthy skin products that have really good ingredients in there. I like to use the Marie Veronique products. I like their lipid barrier complex and their barrier restore serum. They work amazing. I use that on my skin. And I had one child that had eczema, he’s kind of gotten over it, he’s done really well. We’ve kind of cleaned out the his diet and his mom’s diet too. So things like salicylates could be a potential problem outside of just your autoimmune foods. And then we use a really clean, hypoallergenic moisturizer called Vannapply. Again, it’s not anything like nutritious for the skin. But sometimes when the skin’s inflamed, immunologically, from an autoimmune skin issue, sometimes the skin just needs moisture and not things that could potentially stimulate the immune system. So sometimes a clean thing like that can be very helpful. So that applies very good. There’s another product called La Roche-Posay, I’ll pull it up, it’s a French brand of a moisturizer. And that works very good, as well as providing just really good moisture. And then sometimes we may have to change the environment, sometimes it gets very, very dry, you know, 20, to 20%. And humidity, we may have to add a humidifier into the kid’s room or into the adults room to get a little bit more humidity in the room. The big X Factor is don’t just leave it on non stop, because you can actually create mold it with a humidifier if it’s unchecked, unchecked Uncharted. So you have to make sure that if you’re adding humidity to the room, it’s for a season, it’s for a reason it’s for a short period of time. And you may want to have a humidity detector in the room just to make sure you don’t get above you know, 50% where mold could grow.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you know what I was thinking I’ve never seen it, maybe it exists, it’d be cool to have a humidifier that actually has an hygro hygrometer built in. So like you could set your for you know, 40% and then you’re pumping humidity in and then it hits 40 and shuts off. That’d be super cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I 100% agree. Yep.

Evan Brand: So I think the x layer would be good too for just to implement this as a tangent, not related to skin. But the xylitol spray for the sinuses are is awesome too, because that can help moisturize it. And the next layer is kind of a good, natural antimicrobial, if you will, it can help a little bit with the sinus cavity. But yeah, back to the skin. So how we’re going to investigate this was peoples, we’re going to start with diet, we’re going to come in and say, probably remove the eggs, definitely get off the dairy, get off the gluten. And then we’re going to come in and do stool testing, we’re going to do urine organic acids. So we can look at all the different bacteria that may not show up. You see, sometimes what happens I had to happen last week, we had a guy who, on the organic acids, he looked pretty good. There wasn’t any kind of bacterial overgrowth evidence, but when we got to his stool test, he had Prevotella and klebsiella, and all sorts of bacteria off the chart. And so if someone’s on an extreme budget, maybe one test would be sufficient. But in most cases, we’re going to try to get the full picture because it’s hard to make a puzzle complete if you don’t have all the pieces. And so that’s really why we’re gonna want to look at multiple things. And then as you mentioned environment, we’re going to factor that into, and then potentially improving the indoor air quality. So what if you are having some sort of an allergic reaction to your environment, whether it’s mold or dander, pollen, or whatever, something like a really good charcoal filled air filter, it’s going to be a game changer, possibly putting charcoal in your body, you know, supplementing with binders, and then addressing any infections we see supporting the liver bumping up omegas. I think stress has a factor. We talked about hormones, we talked about the estrogen we talked about glucuronidation. I think those are really the main variables. Do you think we’re missing anything else?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I think we hit it pretty well. My only other component is if you have eczema or psoriasis, and your skin’s overly dry and you’re trying to get the dryness down while you’re fixing the root issue. I mentioned the vanapply vanicream product being good. And the other one was the La Roche-Posay, and it’s the lipikar balm is a nice one. It’s just a lot of moisture, which can decrease a lot of the dryness and then when the dryness is decreased, that decreases the itching and when the aging is decreased, that can help decrease a lot of the inflammation. But you have to make sure a lot of people when the eczema psoriasis kind of Facebook groups because I follow a lot of them just to read what they’re doing. They want a magic solution. They want something to rub on their skin and have it all go away. But that’s never how it is. So you typically have to get to the underlying issue with foods and guts stuff too. So make sure if you do something that’s a lotion that’s topical, make sure you’re not ignoring the internal stuff.

Evan Brand: Well that one sounds so fancy. It’s got to be good just based on the way you pronounce the name of it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know like a nice little long French name there with the Amazon links in the description so you guys can access it. And then you mentioned the other one that had the oatmeal in there. That was really clean. What was the product?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ll give it the link to it it’s like a there’s like a kid’s, like fragrance free version. It’s like a colloidal oatmeal product.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It began with a B right?

Evan Brand: Yeah Babo. Yeah let me look I’ve got it here. I was like colloidal oatmeal lotion and this stuff is awesome I tell him my wife’s like honey this look at look at her skin and I was feeling these areas on our little girl’s skin like man it’s it’s crazy and yeah here it is nine bucks can’t beat it. So it’s called Babo Sensitive Hydra lotion, Chamomile Calendula. And then like I said, it’s got the colloidal oatmeal, I’ll put you the link in the I’ll put it in your chat here if you want to look at it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And is there any worries at all with that due to gluten sensitivity in the oats?

Evan Brand: I don’t think so. We haven’t seen any type of issue. I know there’s a possibility. You’ve got that Avena Sativa Kernel Flour. So it does have the oat flour in there. I mean, if I thought that was some autoimmune possibility, we may stay away with it. But it’s a pretty rare situation. I’ve only seen a few people where we thought that they were going to be sensitive enough to it, you know that we should pull it out or find something without oats I’m not doing like oatmeal bass or anything like that, you know, this is just like the the spot of maybe a quarter at most on the areas and that’s like maybe once a day, if that issues- 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -any kind of here and there to kind of knock it down. It’s not like a staple. 

Evan Brand: No, no, no, we’re not lathering her in it or anything. It’s just like a spa treat is is all we’re using it for. I know some people get crazy with lotions or lathering the whole thing. Now I think I’d probably stay away in that case, but for spa treats, probably. Okay,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s smart. Excellent. I think we hit a lot of good skin stuff. Today we talked about some of the hormone stuff with female hormones. We talked about some of the androgen component and how that can tie into insulin. Don’t forget guys, high levels of insulin can drive excess estrogens in guys. And that can cause other issues too, and put stress on the liver. We talked about some mold stuff. We talked about allergen issues, food allergies and stuff and some of the eye stuff. We talked about the humidity issues in the winter, where it gets drier, maybe get a humidifier really monitor the percent humidity if you can get one that has engaged that test the environment and let’s say it doesn’t go above 40% or 35%. That’s better, because that way you kind of have a limiter on there. It doesn’t go over the top. We at one point had the humidifier on too much. This was years ago, and we noticed a little bit of mold in the in the carpet nearby. And we never made that mistake again. So if you use a humidifier, like put a timer on it, like an hour or two, boom, have it go off. Don’t leave it on all the time. Be smart about it.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s interesting. When you think about a humidifier, right tip tip, typically, people are going to just sit it on like a wood, night nightstand or something and then that wood is probably just absorbing all that moisture. It sounds like a recipe for disaster if you overuse it for sure.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So you may be like if you can, if your kid has some humidity issues, skin issues, maybe put it on for an hour or two at night, put a timer on it done. Yeah, and that way, it’s not going to go the whole night. But we’ll provide a little bit of relief and and help the mucous membranes that may be a little bit overly dry.

Evan Brand: And then also, you know, don’t overbake don’t over with your soaps or shampoos or conditioners make sure everything’s clean there. Don’t over soap yourself. I mean, you’re not you don’t need to lather your whole body and soap. I think that’s an easy one. Regarding hand soaps, I mean, I know a lot of the conventional ones are gonna dry out hands and skin. So we got to mention that also water filters are key. That’s why you and I both have whole house water filters, because the chlorine and the trihalomethanes and all the irritants in the tap water can irritate your skin in the shower.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a big one. Yeah. So if you have a lot of chlorine and a lot of chemicals in the water that can be very irritating on your skin. So we really want to make sure that that is addressed with a high quality filter. And that will take stress off your skin a ton really well.

Evan Brand: I don’t travel with it. I even bring like the Berkey or a comparable shower filter. Like when we went to Florida last winter, I brought a portable shower filter with us man, it was a game changer because, you know, we wanted to fill up the bathtub for the kids because the chlorine was so strong. So luckily, we just filled the tub with the showerhead filter. And it was awesome. So we didn’t take the kids and they weren’t just breathing in chlorine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s good. That’s really good. And the only other thing I would just say beyond that is just making sure you’re digesting your fats and proteins well. So people think oh, I’m gonna just drink a whole bunch of water that’ll get moisture to my skin, it’s like well, you need a good fat carrier to bring that hydration to the skin. A lot of times the skin and the you know, these are that layer there’s a hydrophobic layer in the skin so it does not like water. So you need fat to kind of bring that moisture to that skin. So if you don’t have enough fat you will get very dry skin and dry skin can get more irritated, you tend to scratch that dry skin more and then that scratching creates inflammation and that inflammation just it’s a kind of a self defeating cycle. So you really want to make sure you have good healthy fats in there and at least half those fats should be saturated fats coconut oil, it should be high quality grass fed animal products. It should be pork, pork fat lard and if you want to do any plant fats Keep it to high quality olive oil, avocado oil, maybe some palm, obviously coconut is going to be a great fact that it’s saturated and it’s plant. So those are a couple of good things to do just to make sure you have good fats. And of course, if you don’t have good digestion, you know, at least get into enzymes and some HCl In the meantime, while you work on fixing your stress or fixing your gut In the meantime, for better absorption and digestion.

Evan Brand: You know, the way I look at it, it’s rarely going to be just a skin issue, there’s going to be possibly bloating, gas, burping, some type of food sensitivities, food reactions, right skin issues are rarely going to occur in isolation. So I think of it as a clue, right? You and I talk about clues in functional medicine, the skin is really just a clue. And then we think Oh, interesting what’s going on under the hood. So that’s where we come in, and do the testing. And if you need help clinically, please reach out. We would love to help we work with people worldwide, via phone, FaceTime, Skype, etc. We’re very blessed to be able to provide lab testing to people across the globe, and to provide solutions to healthcare that other practitioners and doctors have failed before. So if you need to reach out clinically, you can reach Dr. J at JustinHealth.com. You can reach me Evan Brand at EvanBrand.com and we look forward to 2021 together so let’s have some fun. Give us some comments and questions if you’re on watching listening on Dr. J’s YouTube channel. Put some potential topic ideas in there. We’re always open to new topics. We talk about stuff we think’s important, but if you have some issues or concerns, you know, we’re happy to do kind of like some q&a stuff too. So please give us some feedback.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. If you guys want to reach out and dive in deeper it could be a good issue could be a hormone issue. EvanBrand.com for Evan, JustinHealth.com for myself, we are here to help worldwide. Thank you guys, and I hope you guys are having a great start to 2021 and we’ll be here you guys take care. Bye now.

Evan Brand: Take care.


References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/skin-care-tips-to-improve-dry-skin-podcast-320

Recommended Products:

GPL Mycotox
Omega Supreme
La Roche-Posay Lipikar Cream
Mother Of All Cream
Babo Botanicals Sensitive Skin Hydra Therapy Lotion
Air Doctor Air Purifier
Whole House Dehumidifier
Water Filtration Device
Whole House Water Filter
Clearly Filtered
Pelican Water
Organic Grass Fed Meat

 


The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Justin Marchegiani unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Justin and his community. Dr. Justin encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Marchegiani’s products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using any products.