It’s the holiday season: a season of gathering, celebration, thanksgiving. Where there’s occasion, there are also foods. Part of preparations should not only include serving the best in the menu but also the idea of a healthy ingredient substitute. It’s also the cold season, a time to plan about how to boost the immune system.
Today’s podcast talks about the healthy substitutes for Thanksgiving, what to do when you get sick, proper nutrients, herbal medicines, and immunosuppressants. Watch and learn how to boost the immune system through the geeky advice of Dr. J and Evan Brand. Sharing is caring!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:24 Healthy substitutes for thanksgiving.
10:31 What happens when you get sick?
15:15 Building up TH-1.
19:44 Blood tests.
24:21 Sickness via airplane.
26:31 Amino acids without meat, quinoa, or dairy.
32:12 Cyst in the upper arm.
35:05 Immunosuppressant drugs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Hope everyone is doing phenomenal. We just got off here the thanksgiving day holidays. Evan, how are you doing, how was your thanksgiving?
Evan Brand: Thanksgiving was great. I think I probably got gluten somewhere along the way but, I feel like a lot of us probably did. Even though I tried, and I did tick my special enzymes to break down my– my gluten exposure, the DPP4 enzyme. So hopefully I mitigated some of my risk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great! Now what– what did you do for your meals for thanksgiving? I can kinda go or remind– actually pulled out my uh– my smart phone, I got some pictures. So with mine, uh– couple things, I did uh– Apple Wood, turkey s– uh– smoked my turkey, on my smoker. It's pretty cool, I got this uhm— Bluetooth uh– thermometers, uhm— so they kinda– they go into the turkey and then they like transmit to my phone to my iPad, and then I have a nice little graph. And I can set like an alarm as soon as it hits like in that zone, temperature wise, like around 162 to 165 Fahrenheit for turkey– whole turkey without stuffing. Uhm– and then I can pull it off so it allows me to time it up to the exact like minute for the turkey. So that allows it to come out nice and moist, then it does an amazing job. So, that was pretty cool. And– we show you here, so I can get it up.
Evan Brand: Yeah I was jealous of your Apple Woods smoked. I mean, that sounded delicious. I just did a standard turkey in the oven that was in a little bag with different marinade of herbs. So it's still delicious.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so I got a– it's still right there, that's my smoker.
Evan Brand: Ooh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you can see it with my like 18 pound pasture-fed, grass-fe— not– pa– pasture-fed, free-range organic like really good quality turkey. Spend a little extra money on that. And then here's the meal. So I did some obviously some organic uhm— potatoes there. The gravy was celery and or in carrot paste, which is awesome.
Evan Brand: Cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Fructose sprouts, bacon, uhm— squash with some cinnamon and grass with butter. And then I– you don't see it here but I also have uhm— some cranberry sauce too which was like organic cranberries, tiny bit of honey, uh– a little bit orange peels uh– so was excellent.
Evan Brand: That's great. Yeah, I did mostly meats. I did do some sweet potato. One of our cousins had made like a sweet potato dish with brown sugar and cinnamon, and it was so good. I was like, “Dude, how much sugar is in this? It taste a little too good.” It almost like turn it into a brown sugar glaze on the sweet potato. And uh– I was just tracking my blood sugar for fun over the weekend. And– I'll tell you, I feel much, much better with starch. I think I've gone too low carb. You know, we talked a lot about lower carb–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: Ketogenic diets and, there's lot of benefit but for somebody like me who's a thinner guy with a quite high metabolism, I just don't adapt well if I don't have some sort of carbohydrate. If I just go straight meat and like peas or meat and green bean or leafy greens, I don't know, maybe it's an adrenal component but I feel better with starch. So that's my– that's my two sense.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, totally. Uhm– again, starch can be really helpful for people's blood sugars and adrenals especially if you're more ectomorph. Uhm– you know, you may really benefit with a little bit of extra carbohydrate. Uh– for desserts, for me, i did an apple cake. And I was uh– using uh– tapioca flour which is like cassava based which is more of a starchy tuber, and then also used a little bit of coconut flour, and then we get some grannies with apples, tiny bit of like organic palm cane sugar which is like a very low glycemic index but just a very kind of minor sprinkling. And then of course some grass with butter, and uhm— it would came out really-really good. And– you know, relatively lower on the glycemic side and grain free which is nice.
Evan Brand: Yeah, my wife made some pumpkin muffins with almond flour. And I wanna say she did some arrowroot flo— flour as well–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Flour arrowroot, little bit of cinnamon, few other things. I did that and put some almond butter on those bad boys. I guess that's a dessert. I don't really–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I'm not really into like super sweet stuff like cookies, or cakes or–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I don't like the– the s– the too sweetest well. I think you can make a lot of these desserts and really keep the sugar and the carbohydrate content down, so that's great. Any other tips or substitutes that you did over thanksgiving that– that helped?
Evan Brand: I mean I– I– I wanna say, I gotta divert back to the enzyme piece because–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: –enzymes are kind of my insurance policy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-huh.
Evan Brand: There's several that you and I manufacture and use. And a lot of our enzymes have the DPP4 enzyme in there which does break down gluten. So, if– you know, people, if they're trying to stay away from gluten, they don't wanna offend the family, or– they just– they're family just straight up doesn't know, “hey what was in that gravy?”. Well if you're taking some extra enzymes you could prevent any issues. If there's somebody who's gonna react, and let's say you're gonna have a major skin flare, or an autoimmune flare–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-huh.
Evan Brand: –like a joint pain flare, or something–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: You almost feel paralyzed like you can't go to family events. So I– I– I would say, if you're in that category of very sensitive people, dairy, ___[04:47], you– whatever type of sensitivity you have, you can take enzymes like protease to help break that stuff down. So that's what I would do. And that's what I did.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: On my thanksgiving day table I had HCL, and enzymes and activated charcoal out. So I said, “hey, they'll feel free and– and utilize these.” So some of the came in there and– and did that. We hosted the thanksgiving, so we had almost– we provided almost all the food. So we were able to have everything grain-free and organic, people didn't even know– a lot of people that were there don't eat that way.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then no complaints. They didn't even know which tells you, right, that you can eat this way, that you can find healthy substitutions. And it totally can fly underneath the radar.
Evan Brand: Yeah it doesn't have to be–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-huh.
Evan Brand: You don't have to have a billboard that says– that it's this, that and that. And then it has to be so quote, “different” to your family members. It can be a totally normal diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So those are some good substitutions, you know, potatoes– I'm okay with. Ah– high quality turkey, you now, up the quality, right? That's a big one. Uh– I also say uhm— stuffings are big one, you can use it great uhm— ss– like celery carrot kind of mixed little bit of coconut flour to thicken it up. Everyone had our gravy and was like, raving about it. You got more vegetables in your gravy than you could imagine. And then of course uh– fructose sprouts, cranberry, didn't have a whole bunch of sugar, and then good quality turkey, potatoes are okay, good– good heavy cream and or gras butter in there. So, yeah, great substitutions there. Anything else you wanna add about your thanksgiving?
Evan Brand: Uh– I– I– I would like to have some wild turkey, you know, I was on a hunt, I was almost going to get a wild turkey, but I had so much fun watching them, that I had the potential to shoot one with my bow and I passed, 'cause it was just so fun watching all these little turkeys talk to each other. They weren't little– they we— they're actually humongous turkeys. But they were having so much fun together. I thought, “ah! I wanna pass.” But maybe next year, I'm gonna have some wild turkey with I've heard is even better than like a farm-raised turkey.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great man, very cool. So we talked about today, you know, it's the holidays, it's– cold season, what can you do to boost your immune system? I've done a couple articles in the past than this. If you go to justinhealth.com, you put in uh–, “What to do when you get sick”, its a part 1 in a part 2, check that out. We'll be kind of going over some of the clip notes today. We have some previous podcast on these topics as well. I'm getting over a cold now, I mean, I just have a little bit of uhm— little post nasal drip and just a little bit of congestion. But overall I feel great, energy's great, mood's great. Uh– no throat soreness, no irritation, no fatigue, so I'm feeling good. Just a little minor thro– uh– frog in the throat so to speak, and a little bit of post nasal drip, but overall I feel pretty good. Uhm– I'm on right now, higher dose Vitamin-C, and then a couple of different immune cocktails. One's called immune supreme that has some reishi mushroom in there. It has some higher dose andrographis astragalus, echinacea root, uhm— those are really-really profound. I'm also doing some silver and some golden seals as well. So we can kind of talk about some of the individual ingredients, and walk that through. And also higher dose Vitamin-D as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, Vitamin-D, that was– I mean that's the low-hanging fruit. Now, if you've talked about dosing like, what, 50,000 a day for a few days. I know typically you're only doing what, maybe 5 to 8000 on a regular basis though.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For Vitamin-D, I have ratcheted up a hundred thousand I use for three days. Right now I'm just on 10 to 20,000 which okay, as well. Well right now I'm doing Vitamin-C up to 8 to 10 grams a day, uhm— currently doing– you know, astragalus, you know, 1 or 2 grams a day. I'm on a higher dose of reishi mushroom extract, about 500 milligrams per capsule, and I'm at about, you know, 8 to 12 caps a day, to get my immune system wrapped up. Then I'm also doing couple of shots of a colloidal silver, and– and my GI clear 3 cocktail. One thing I need to be doing more of, I haven't been able to it as much but it's a game changer. I probably have my post nasal drip knocked out, which is the uh– ginger tea recipe. The ginger tea's excellent. I've been doing a lot of like topo chico mineral water with like juice lime in there, and that's really helpful for drainage. But the ginger tea, when you juice those 2 or 3 ginger pieces and 12 the– 14 ounces of hot water, and then you add a half a lime in there, and a tiny bit of honey, wild clover manuka, it works phenomenal and it's very helpful for drainage and post nasal drip and for coughing. So that works excellent.
Evan Brand: Sound like you need to take your own advice. [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I've been doin' it. I have a– a product called ginger tussin that's a– a ginger syrup. I just need to get the ginger. Uhm– I just haven't have a chance to get to Whole Foods to get the ginger. I got a couple pieces of my ___[09:22], so I'm gonna go make a couple days worth after this podcast and get myself rolling. I was out of uh– the country here for bit, so I'd have do my best.
Evan Brand: You gotta get that good stuff. You're still doing the– the bottled stuff which is great. But I think you're probably getting some compounds we may not even fully understand when you're doing it fresh like you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the potency when it's fresh is– I mean, you can just– you'd know because the spiciness is out of control, that's why you want a little bit of lime, and a little bit of honey, 'cause it really kind of curls– it kind of curves off that spiciness makes a little easier to handle.
Evan Brand: Yup. So, ah– in terms of other stuff, or immune, people talk a lot about bone broth, but here's the thing I've noticed with bone broth is, if you've got something going on in your gut, or you're somebody who's like a really histamine intolerant person, or you think you're having like a histamine reaction, the bone broth could flare people up. So I've had people say, “Hey, you know, I've tried this bone broth, everybody, you know, promotes it and talks about it, and I've tried it and I got worst. I had more sinus issues, I had itchy eyes, a runny nose, or this or that”. So I think bone broth is in the category of these good nutrients but then it could have a– a disclaimer with it. Which is at if there is a histamine reaction it's possible you may react to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so, when you're sick, one of the big things that happens is, it's common to have a little bit of nausea. And that nausea is there because your body has a– enhanced re– recycling immune cell effect when you fast. And this could be super helpful. So when you're– when you're sick, it takes a lot of energy to digest food. So your body naturally wants to be in a fasting state because it can recycle your immune cells. So if you're fasting, and you're nauseous, one of the best things is one, the ginger tea is– is excellent 'cause ginger actually helps with nausea, and that could help your appetite a little bit. There's a reason why chicken soup's been baked, right. What's chicken soup? You're getting a nice broth forearm. Ideally you're getting a lot of minerals and amino acids in the broth, which is really easy to digest and handle as long as there's not a histamine issue, that's amazing, 'cause you're getting all these nutrients really bile available. You're getting proteins that are already easy to digest, it's pretty easy to syrup down some really good organic chicken than a soup form. Not a lot of chewing– uh– much easier on your digestive system. And then of course you could even throw some vegetables in there, some celery, some carrots, things like that as well, but much easier on your digestion. And that way you can at least get some food in there not quite feel as nauseous, and then if you do the ginger tea, the ginger's a– a natural antitoxin that will help with the coughing. Number 2, it will help at drainage and help get the sinuses to drain out. And then number 3, it's highly anti inflammatory, and it'll hop bump up your appetite as well, and it's a natural prokinetics, so if you're not– if you feel like you're not digesting as well, it kinda help gently move your digestive tracts through. And then of course you can move to like a soup or broth form if you're really not feeling that hungry just to get some good fats and– and minerals and amino acids and– especially if there's looser stools are showing up we– we wanna make sure that we don't lose those electrolytes and minerals. I– if we are doing that, we'll have to go to the ER and get an IV, like a lactate ringer IV with some good minerals in it but ideally if we can get it down to hatch, bone broth, good minerals, a– that would be helpful on the mineral side.
Evan Brand: So, wild cherry bark changed my life. I have to get some last year. I don't remember exactly if it was throat– throat soreness or swollen lymph nodes or just a cough or what it is. But I ac– I think in your ginger syrup as well there's probably some–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: –probably some wild cherry bark in there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You've done your test in there as well cherry bark and ginger. That's nice, and it can kinda like gargle with that and that hits the back of my throat–
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm– the ginger tea – I really like 'cause its very potent. So I'm gonna go make some of that. That's huge, especially if– like my first sign of a cold is like my throat gets a little bit dry and scratchy– first sign. And if I can hit it with the ginger, makes a huge difference.
Evan Brand: Astragalus too, you can go pretty high, I mean, you could go 6, 10, 15, 20 grams with it. Uh– the Chinese, they were using astragalus in the base of their soup. So I've heard of extremely high dose astragalus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Here's my astragalus right here I've been knocking out of the park, so, I have astragalus in my immuno supreme product but I– I just been going on top of it–
Evan Brand: Adding some extra ___[13:31] astragalus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, extra astragalus roots. 600 milligrams per two capsules, and again, this is uhm— the whole root [crosstalk]. We don't just want the flower and the stem, we want the whole root, that's where a lot of this active constituents are in what you see in a lot of– let's say cheaper products, as you don't see the whole root in there. You see like the flower, you see a little bit of stem, you don't see the whole entire root which is important.
Evan Brand: Yup. Now, in terms of astragalus, I mean, it is an amino modulator so this is not saying everyone in the world can go straight to astragalus and hit it high dose because it does modify the immune system. So, you know, you could try it, just on your own, but if you notice there's something's not right, work with a practitioner because we've had clients before where they're taking all these immune-stimulating herbs, and they're actually making their autoimmune condition worse. So, if we're talking hashimoto's or MS, or RA, or other autoimmune conditions, certain herbs for certain people, you've got this TH-1, TH-2 immune system, you may shove one system way out of balance in terms of the other, and cause yourself aflare. So, all immune herbs are not good for everyone across the board.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: People that are more uh– autoimmune scenarios, maybe the ones affected the most by it. So some autoimmune– so like a lot of the uhm— andrographis, astragalus, medicinal mushrooms–
Evan Brand: Cat's claw–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –they really bump up TH– cat's claw, they really bump up that TH-1 side of the immune system. And the TH-2 side, that's the humoral, that's the antibody based immune system. And that's gonna be more bioflavonoids, green tea, resveratrol, pycnogenol, ___[15:06] basically. Uhm– really important like bi– bioflavonoid compounds. So, again, my biggest thing is, if you– if you're sick and it's an acute thing, don't worry about it–
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Medicinal mushrooms are gonna be immune billers. Herbs will be really good immune supporters, really bumping up your immune system as well. And then you have things like ginger which can actually deactivate viruses, you have silver which can actually help break down viruses and bacteria. And be very careful too because– a lot of people, they mistake a viral infection from a bacterial infection, there is really harsh in the difference. And especially if your doctor's not doing a culture, like, you know, testing you for strap or testing you from– from pneumonia, you know, you may get treated with antibiotics for a viral infection that it won't be darn thing on. And the only real viral things that are out there is gonna be tamiflu. And tamiflu has an increased chance of psychotic episodes, so it can increase psychosis, and only decreases the symptoms of flu by 17 hours. So it's really like a half a day. It's almost, right? So, it's not really much for the increased side effects, and it doesn't really boost your immune system, it's just decreasing the symptoms of the flu.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's not doing anything to increase, you know, your TH-1 or your TH-2 immune activation, right. TH-1, that's the special forces, that's the navy seals, that's the delta team, that's the army ranger, those are the people that are going first line. TH– that's TH-1. TH-2 is the second line, this is the infantry that comes in after all that intel comes in, you know– you know– aaahh— I forgot th terminology, when you do all these kind of data mining, and you figured out where the enemies are at, you– you take all that information, send it back to the troops. Now the infantry can come in, typically takes about a week for those antibodies to really get revved up, right? So now we had this intel, our TH-2 is now revved up and it's coming to the sites. So, we really wanna work on building up TH-1 with a lot of medicinal mushrooms and herbs. And then that will help us to have a better uhm— TH-2 immune response 'cause we're gonna be healthier, and we're gonna have better immune function. We can do some fasting if we need, we can do bone broth, and that will allow better antibodies. The antibodies are protein. They're made from protein. So if we can get some good amino acids in, even just bone broth or collagen peptides that will help with some of the antibody production as well.
Evan Brand: Good, good. Now, oregano oil, I think we should mention that too just because it's such an easy thing that can kill such a wide variety of bad guys. So you can kill viruses, you can kill bacteria. We use it often to help kill some other gut bugs too. Parasites even, you know oregano maybe in one of our protocols. And then you mentioned the silver, which is awesome. I know some of the protocols you've talked about you'll combine silver with oregano. Garlic would be another extract–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: –that we use it's great for candida. You know, you could have–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: –candida overgrowth. Let's say you– you went down the rabbit hole like you mentioned. You get some type of colder illness. You go to the conventional doctor, what are they gonna do, maybe they're gonna put you on antibiotics, then you're gonna have a candida overgrowth that comes back. So now, you're in worse shape than you were before, because now you got pumped all antibiotics. So we might have to come back in and clean up that yeast because if you have lasting symptoms after your illness, let's say you get like a cold but then you stayed with brain fog, you stayed with fatigue, you're not rested after you sleep, maybe you've got some anxiety, maybe you've got joint pain, there's probably something deeper. So, you know, I think you've done a great job of outlining some of the acute stuff but you always have to loop it back to– okay, well, after the calm has come, the storm has cleared, the calm has come, what's left? And there may be some residual cleanup that you have to do in terms of the gut. So for me, like if you have infections, you're probably gonna get more sick more often than a person who doesn't have infections. So you gotta rule that stuff in or out too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you are taking things that will have an effect on parasites or bacteria, like, I'm taking some goldenseal, I'm taking some silver. So that may have an effect on my gut bacteria, and non-silly a bad thing but we wanna be careful of what's called the rebound overgrowth. If we kill some good stuff, right? We wanna make sure that we fill it up with some good probiotics. So, you know, if you are doing a lot of killing for a week or two, you may wanna come in there with, you know, some probiotics for a week or two. And or just work on consuming some good fermented foods during that phase, whether it's– you know, some uhm— some coconut kefir, kombucha, or some sauerkraut, you know, or some fermented cod liver oil. Those are our really good probiotics that you can do with your food. And the pain that how much killing you do with these herbs, we may wanna come in with a bottle of probiotics on the flip side just to make sure our guts' in good shape.
Evan Brand: Yup, good point. You may wanna get this conversation elsewhere but I thought we should mention some lab testing. So, I wanted to mention some blood work and things you may wanna look for on blood work that can help you indicate what could be going on. An easy one would be white blood cells. I had a woman this morning, we were looking at her blood. Her white blood cell count was around 2, and reference range, I don't remember what it was but it was extremely low white blood cell count. And so, we guarantee there's probably some chronic infection. Maybe parasites going on based on GI symptoms. Uhm– Vitamin-D status, very easy to check. You wanted 25-Hydroxy Vitamin-D, not the 1– comma, you don't want that one. You want the 25-Hydroxy, not the dihydroxyvitamin D. I would say if you're around 50, 60, 70, something like that would be good. Most people in the winter, they're not gonna be 50, 60, 70 unless they're supplementing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: What else would you say to look at on– on blood– on blood counts or other blood test?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, things you can do to impl— let– let's say you have lower immune function kind of naturally, or it's been that way for a while, uhm— things you can do to naturally boost your immune system up will be medicinal mushrooms. So I'd like kind of a r— a reishi maitake shiitake blend, or just reishi by itself is amazing.
Evan Brand: Turkey tells me too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Turkey tells great, I mean, a lot of these 1,3 beta glucans in there are great for the immune system. There's compounds in the reishi called triterpenes that can actually help deactivate viruses, which is great. It's a really great immune supporting, immune building, have been used for thousands of years. There companies out there that have like uhm— they have like mu– medicinal mushrooms in their coffee or tea which can be really good too. You just wanna make sure you're getting a really good quality brand. The one's that I use are all tested for the triterpene content like a 10 to 15% triterpene content, which has that for the 1,3 beta glucan, and make sure that's there. So, good medicinal mushrooms. Uh— also you can do shots of apple cider vinegar which is great. The acetic acid in there can really help to strip and dry out some of the mucous in your throat. So I'm gonna do some apple cider vinegar shots which is great. Uh– bragg has some nice little drinks too that have the apple cider vinegar with a little bit of ste— the adrenal that's really good. Uhm– next thing I wanted to highlight was, we hit the apple cider vinegar, we hit the ginger, we hit some of the herbs. Anything else you wanna highlight there Evan?
Evan Brand: Uh– I wi– I– I was like my brain was in the whole another department on the blood work. I was gonna ask you, is there anything on blood work? [crosstalk]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, yeah– so you mentioned– I mentioned the medicinal mushrooms to boost up the immune system, you could also do cat's claws while on samento, that will also boost up the immune system. So, for the most part you have your WBC, it's your overall white blood cells. And then you have your, “Never Let Monkeys Eat The Man”, that's– that's the mnemonic device you'll learn in doctorate school for remembering all the white blood cells. Neutrophils, Lymphocytes, Monocytes, Eosinophils, Basophils, right? So, neutros— neutros— neutrophils, lymphocytes are gonna be the big one's you're gonna see. Neutrophils' typically go out of balance with bacteria, lymphocytes with viruses. But you know, could be either-or. So you can look at individual white blood cells being out of balance as well. You may see that acutely. But the question's, “What do you do next?”, right?
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's that's where we wanna really boost up the immune system, low sugar. Uhm– sugar can decrease immune function. And a lack of sleep, typically 12 hours of sleep when you're acutely sick is gonna be essential to really help let the immune system rest. When you're sick, you're immune system sucks up a lot of your energies. We really have to make sure we cultivate it with supporting good thing.
Evan Brand: So– let's mention some functional test for a little bit. ‘Cause if you see that the white blood cell counts low, maybe you've known that your white blood cell count is chronically low, maybe that's related to your current sickness, but you may have to dig deeper. So, I would say organic acids testing, 'cause we can look at your bacterial load, see if you have bacterial overgrowth, we can look for candida, see if there's a yeast or fungal component, we can look at mitochondrial function, we can look at your amino acid metabolism. So, organic acid testing to me will be a good next step, like if you're trying to go a little deeper beyond this acute sickness. Get the O-Test, and then the stool. We always talk about it and we should continue to always talk about it. Yup, I– I've ran my daughter's stool, you and I looked at it last week. She showed up with some H-Pylori, she showed up with a dientamoebafragilis, a small amount which is a parasite–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: She had some bacterial overgrowth. So luckily, she's only have like a couple of cold/sicknesses in her 2 and half years of life, so for– but, those are things in her stress or illness bucket that we don't want. So we're going ahead and taking care of those with some herbs. So, if you have gut bugs, it doesn't mean that's the cause of your acute sickness. But if you're getting acutely sick and you think there's something underlying that's deeper, get the stool test run so you can confirm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then for me, the only time I ever get sick is– there's an airplane involved, I'm travelling on an airplane. And I went to my vacation in mexico, and I caught it on the way there. My son had just gotten a cold as well. So he got over it, we had some immune kind of tonics for him, he got over it, and I've gotten over it, but 95%. But, if you have– if you're interacting with an airplane, traveling for the holidays whatever, lots of recycled air coming in that tube in the sky, so you really wanna– in my opinion, proactively bump up your immune system when you're going on the airplane. So–
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –if you know, get some of your immune support going, a day before, two days before, get your immune system wrapped up so when you're there, you're ready to handle it, you know, bring some like essential oil and hand sanitizer. So if you're on the plane touching stuff you can get or pull out something and then make sure your hands are– are relatively clean, and not all the– the propylene glycol alcohol based stuff that dries you up but something a little bit more natural, it's great. And kind of be preventive of there. And then, I'll open it up for questions, anyone writing in, lots of great questions coming in, a lot of them are on topic. So you guys, can kind of frame your questions in regards to immune boosting type of questions, that will be awesome. And remember, if you have digestive issues during this time of being sick, bone broth, chicken soup, free-form amino acids, collagen can be great, 'cause that can bump up your antibodies, which tends to be protein-based. So, fast thing can help, but having a little bit of easy to process amino acids, from chicken soup, can also be really good as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Uh– I was gonna mention that actually. You're talking out traveling in airplanes. So the Xlear is the nasal spray with the xylitol in there, that's good. And so, if you're traveling, you could squirt some of that up your nostrils and clean everything up. Maybe there was a virus or something sitting in your nose, but it's not fully into your system yet, maybe you can rinse that bad boy out, and then prevent yourself from getting sick even if you're around sick people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They have that for silver as well. So you can get those with the silver, kind of nasal injector. So if you are traveling, you can line that nasal canal with some silver. So, if you encounter a virus from a respiratory standpoint, it potentially can get killed off in the process.
Evan Brand: Here is a question from Bridget, “How do you get complete amino acids when you do not eat meat, quinoa or dairy?”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, off the bat it's gonna be hard. So obviously you can combine it as a vegetarian with rice and beans. Uhm– that's a reasonable way to do it. Again, methionine and lysine’s gonna be a missing component there so you can combine it and you can help. Difference is you're gotta get a lot components that may be got uritans, uh– phytates, oxalates, mineral blockers, you also have the cross-reactivity with the rice so you gotta be careful with that. You got a lot of carbs too, so you gotta be careful if you're insulin resisted, you know, you– I hav— my recommendation is try to get some level of meat in there. Whether it's a simple uhm— light white fish, or if you could do like some crustaceans like oysters, or– or scallops, or shrimp, that's reasonable as well or even just an egg yolks to stark. If that's too much for you then just get a really good collagen support product or just even a good free-form amino acid powder that has all the amino acids already broken down for ya. That way you're at least getting some good aminos without all of the additional carbohydrate along with it.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it's really easy to absorb.
Evan Brand: Good point– good point. The easy way, get some fish in, organic pastured eggs something like that. I mean, we just find– uh– I guess, here was an earlier question from her, “How do you feel about the blood type A positive and eating turkey and chicken?”. So this is kinda in reference to like a blood- a blood type diet. Those create more fear than they were. I haven't seen that– that really– depends out the way that it supposed to. We're “Oh, this is your blood, you're supposed to react to this, and this, and that food.” I've not seen that to be true. Can you speak on it though?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so if you look at the blood type and diet. For the most part, you know, you have your type-O, nad you're type-A, that's the majority. Ah– “O” is typically gonna be classified by D'Adamo who is the author of that diet and this James and– Peter I think as like your paleo template, right? And then you have type-A, it's gonna be like your vegetarian-vegan template which I do actually recommends soy in that which I'm not a fan of it at all. And then you kind of have your more balanced type which is B-B is the balanced type which is uh– kind of a balance in the A, and the O. And then AB is kind of a hybrid between uhm— a vegetarian and less meat. So in general, if you look at where people have evolved, you're gonna see people that have evolved with A-blood types in parts of the world where there are winter. The problem with that is, for thousands of years, we have not had means of refrigeration, so it's very hard to come by a vegetarian diet where there's permafrost and it's cold for 46 months. Almost impossible, right? So if you'll think about it from an evolutionary perspective, you know, animal products were gonna be essential because, you could kill them, you could hunt them in the winter time. Buffalo, whatever provide tons of food throughout the winter. You can make turkey, you could– you could uhm— dehydrate it, right? You could– you could have that throughout the winter. So, it makes sense that animal products to some ___[29:23] or probably consumed, especially anywhere there was winter months. And then of course, lots of tribes closer to the equator, lots of fish as well. Uhm– if you look at new studies, some of these documentaries that talk about the evolution of the brain, it was the higher quality amino acids, and fatty acids especially from fish and from bone marrow that cause a brain acceleration in size and growth. So, my personal opinion is I– I think it's flaw based on how evolution is worked, based on how important these nutrients were, and based upon availability of these nutrients especially in winter months. Uhm– think there'r probably tribes, that were closer to the equator, that could have made that worked for them. So I'm not gonna say that– that's, you know, absolute, I will never do that. But in general, that's the trend that I'm kinda putting up there.
Evan Brand: Right, yeah, I mean, in– in February in Kentucky, when there's a foot of snow on the ground, you're not gonna go out there and get broccoli–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or forest berries, yeah.
Evan Brand: And forest berrie. I mean, you wanna had– you would have had you know, 60– e– estimated 60 million bison roaming the U.S. at the time. Pronghorn were everywhere. Pronghorn being the– you know, I– I'd like to try pronghorn. I've heard it's really– really– really high quality meat. Uhm– pronghorn is like your american antelope so to speak. Those guys were everywhere. That's where you would have been eating in February when there's a foot of snow in the ground. Not pineapple that was brought in from Costa Rica, but you live in Manhattan. It's not gonna happen, that's not how it's supposed to work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then also for– ___[30:50] writes in, “What about for boosting children?”. So in general with my chiild, I use some liposomal Vitamin-C when he got sick. There was a couple of herbal tinctures that I like from gaia herbs, they have some children's tinctures, which use a little bit of vegetable glycerin which is easier for kids that can't swallow pills 'cause it's a little bit sweetened, uh– which is nice, so, you know, spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the old Mary Poppins quote, so I like that. I use they're echinacea goldenseal. I also use they're sinus support. And then I have another immunoberry product that I like is dwell with elderberry and some echinacea and some medicinal mushrooms, maitake shiitake and reishi, I like all of those. So those are the 4 stacks that I've been using with my son. And then also supplementing my wife with higher and more Vitamin-D, so that can be passed in the breast milk. And if you're doing Vitamin-D with little ones, you'd probably wanna get like a 400 IU dropper. And maybe start with 1 to 2 ca– uh– a 1 to 2 drops on that. Go really low, uhm— just to be in the safe side.
Evan Brand: Yup. And also, I use Douglas laboratories, has a chewable multi that I often do for kids, it's like–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: –a natural on-flavored, they could chew it up, it's got all your ___[31:56] and B-Vitamins that are gonna be essential your trace minerals to help stabilize blood sugar, that's all important too. ‘Cause if– if you're sick and you're not eating as much, you may have some hypoglycemia going on, blood sugar drops, that's just more stress in your bucket, so–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then ___[32:13], hey Grace, talking about a cyst in the upper arm, so is this like in the axillary area where the arm meets the breast tissue or just on the arm to– you know, in general? Typically a cyst is gonna be inflammation with some fluid kind of packed in there. The question is, how do they get there? If it's in that breast tissue, you know, easily, some iodines and topical iodine can be rubbed in if it's like fibrocystic, you can rub it into that area. Do it after you shower, that can help kind of break some of that cyst up. It just depends what the root cause is, but iodine could be very helpful on the topical side.
Evan Brand: Maybe it's like a lipoma, you know. Obviously you'd wanna go get it checked out by a doctor, have them look at it, see what it is, I mean, some may say that it's like a virus that's been encapsulated by your immune system. You know, like my grandfather popped up with the– kind of like a cyst like think on his shoulder. They went in, said that it's a lipoma, there's nothing we can do, it just happens. I think there's probably root cause to it though, but–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it depends at what your immune system's doing. You can also make a poultice– uh– the– there's– you can make some poultices out of like apple cider vinegar and like turmeric paste, and you can apply it to it and that can help the immune system topicly to help reduce it. Also higher dose systemic based enzymes like a wobenzym or a vitazym, take it away from ___[33:22] can also help with a breaking it down. It just– it really have to connect it back to the root cause, but sometimes the immune system is wallowing these things off and it's none that surely a bad things, sometimes it can be a food uhm— inflammatory thing too. So you just gotta– get– get to the root.
Evan Brand: Yeah I guess you could throw in a little turmeric too, some fish oil, other things like that, but yeah, I mean, for us to guess, or for you to guess, since he's asking you, that's– that's a tough one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. Anything else you wanted to run by here Evan? Any other questions that you wanted to address?
Evan Brand: I didn't see any others that were on the immune system stuff. A bunch of other questions maybe we could answer another day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, ugh– one question here I'll– I'll answer about the dog. Veronica wrote in, “What's a safe and a good uh– to give a dog, after taking a huge dose of antibiotics?”. So, in general, there's some– some companies out there that make uh– pet probiotics. Mercola has a good complete pet probiotics, ___[34:10] labs has uh– one as well that I've used, that's powder form, and I would just look at whatever the recommended doses and I would just double it. Typically they'll give you a scoop in there, usually it's a 1 scoop a day things, I would do a 2 scoop a day, 1 in the morning food, 1 in the night time food. And I would just do that if you had to give your dog uh– antibiotics. I would– work on that with them.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good– good– good– good advice. There are some professional products out there too, so if you work with a practitioner, ask them, you know, even though Justin and I are not vets, uh– we do have people ask us about they're pets all the time and we do have access to some high quality stuff. So if you work with somebody ask them, “Hey do you have any pet, this pet, that–“, you know, I– I've even seen people having good benefit with antimicrobial herbs for dogs, where instead of doing antibiotics, or other pharmaceutical drugs from the vet, there are like parasite formulas for dogs and cats. So I'm not sure what was going on before this dog uh– antibiotics but, it's possible that there could have been something natural use instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And then someone wrote in about uhm— “I'm taking immunosuppressant drugs”, so, I mean if you're taking immunosuppressant drug, I mean, I wanna know why. Like, if it's an autoimmune condition, alright, well, you gotta get to the root cause of that. I mean, let's say it's something more extreme like an organ transplant, right? Well obviously you have to be on that. So then, what's the next step? I mean, I would if you're traveling in an airplane, I would get one of the really nice mask that go on your face. They have some now that– li– or lime with silver, in the mask area which is really nice, so it kinda prevents this barrier of viruses getting up there 'cause it can kill it, I like that. Uhm– you could also do some good– really good essential oils and have them vaporized. I think that would be really good and you just kinda be able to breath some of them in or– or topically even– you know, put some in your water like homeopathic level and drink it. And if it's crohn'stubious, I'd work with a good functional medicine doctor to get that– the underlying cause address– 'cause you shouldn't be on those long term, maybe short run but if you get to the root cause, you should find that you should be able to drop those accordingly and maybe practice on that your own as well. But again, that you gotta get to the root cause, I don't know how severe your condition is specifically, but, you wanna work with someone that at least progress you in that direction. And even monitor you inflammation markers, whether it's a calprotectin or– ESR, or– CRP, whatever markers you're being used. That can be looked at to assess it as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. And get the testing done too 'cause we find a lot of people with crohn's, all sort of colitis, we work with gut issues everyday all day. You know, that's like, one of the biggest things we work on. Usually, we're gonna find that aloe, or the cat's claw like you mentioned, chamomile flower, Vitamin-A, zinc carnosine, there's a lot of stuff we can use to try to heal up the gut, and to get it to where the person can go back to their doctor and say, “Hey, can you wean me off this drugs?”. Also, they can reduce the dosing of the drug, and it's because the nutrients are keeping them stable, or like you said, the root cause was addressed like some type of infection that's drive the inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And people listening, you know, a lot of people are coming in with some great questions that are a little bit off topic, so I'm gonna hold my live FAQs, this week as well, and every week, so, just tryo to chime in with questions that are more random during those times. And then also, nutrients for immune system. Zinc's gonna be really important. Zinc's really important. Vitamin-A, really important for viruses, excellent cod liver oil. I've couple of products that have higher dose Vitamin-A in it as well. Uhm– Vitamin-C, very high doses, 8 to 10 grams per day can be helpful just before bowel tolerance. Really good for the immune system. Magnesium's also really good. Uhm– any other nutrients that come to mind Evan that's– that's good immune boosting besides those?
Evan Brand: I would say potassium would wanna be part of it 'cause of we're doing magnesium, maybe you're trying to get into a sauna. If you're sick you could be throwing off your potassium, sodium, magnesium. So just having a good electrolyte blend is– is important. I always keep electrolytes around.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And ___[37:50] about Vitamin-C. So, you wanna just make sure you're buying from good companies like for instance, the Vitamin-C that I manufacture is all independently tested to make sure what's in there, what's on the label is actually what's in there. So you wanna make sure you just buying from good reputable sources. And liposomal vitamin c is also really good too, little more expensive. I use it on my son, it's because it's liquid, it's easier to get inside of him, but a really good Vitamin-C like my Vitamin-C synergy has like bioflavonoids in there as well which are great. Just make sure you're buying from a really good source, whether it's myself or Evan. We're a really good professional to your 1 line. Uhm– just don't buy the cheap ones 'cause you may have exactly the problem, what's in the labels not what's actually in the capsule.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah we see that every single day. We test people's Vitamin-C levels on the organic acid test, to say, “Oh, but I was taking ‘XYZ' that I bought at Walgreens or Target, or Walmart”. If you buy consumer grade products, you're gonna get consumer grade quality, and that's not probably gonna be enough. You want professional health care companies which is who we use to manufacture our stuff. So the quality is key, even over quantity. I mean, you could go and take 10,000 milligrams which is 10 grams of ascorbic acid you bought at Walmart, and we make it better results with our mixed ascorbate that was 25 hundred milligrams, just much much higher quality and a higher uh– absorbability.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and Vitamin-C, the active constituents of ascorbic acid that I always recommend taking it with a bioflavonoids. The root and histidine, all those bioflavonoids with it. That way you're getting a combination of those bioflavonoids which, you know, help that Vitamin-C complex work. So I think it's always good to do it uhm— that way.
Evan Brand: Yup. I'd say we're ready to wrap this thing up but if people wanna reach out and schedule call with Justin, they can. His site is justinhealth— justinhealth.com. You can reach out. There's more videos there too. Justin hadn't talked about it but he's got other videos, I mean, like, I don't know, hundreds of stuff there, articles that are there, so, I'm sure if you have a question, like one lady wrote in here about edema, go on Justin's site type in edema. There could be something on there. I mean, we've talked a lot, so all the transcriptions are there too. We may have covered that in the– in other episode. And uh– also consultations, you can reach out there. My site, if you wanna check me out, it's evanbrand.com, there's also hundreds of podcast there too. So, if there's– a topic that we haven't addressed yet, tell us, we'll make a podcast on it. But if we have done it, look in the library, I'm sure it's there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Guys, give us a thumbs up, give us the share. I'll be coming back with live Q and A's so if you have more random question that are just kinda cross the board, love answering them one by one. I think people can learn more from– you know, just questions that we feed off the fly, then just maybe a structured podcast, so we kinda– have the two going, that way we have this really good database. So, if you aren't too ___[40:31] and you wanna hear a topic, you have this podcast and then we have FAQ's that are more all over the map but which can be great learning to all. So, we appreciate you guys, and sharing and thumbs up, and hit the uhm— the light button on there and hit the reminder button there so you get the– uhm— the reminders up in your– Facebook feed or YouTube feed when we go live.
Evan Brand: Elizabeth did try, I mean, she said, “Yes, I'm– I'm just buying the Whole Foods brand, I should probably switch to yours”. Yeah, check it out, Justin's got good stuff, I've tried it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, absolutely. And Evan has great stuff as well. Uhm– we wanna really– make sure buy from the best manufacturers. I can tell you, when I buy from the manufacturer, and I look at the raw material, being more expensive than what some of these cheaper supplements are in the shelf, it's practically impossible to sell for their prices if the raw material is the high quality. So just keep that in the back of your mind. You get what you pay for. Uhm– so I hope that helps.
Evan Brand: Yup. Good– good– good job. Alright then, we look forward to talk with you on next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You take care, we'll talk soon. Take care everybody.
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