The Thyroid, Adrenal and Microbiome Connection | Podcast #255

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Together with Evan Brand, Dr. Justin talks about the adrenal, thyroid, gut, microbiome, brain connection and a lot more. Go through this podcast to discover more about functional medicine world. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

4:13 Potential probiotics to treat thyroid nodule

9:06 Microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior

15:02 Stress in gut

20:16 Chemicals in water

23:10 Eating organic

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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Getting ready to go live now go get it live this week. And we are live. It's Dr. J here with Evan brand. Evan, how are you doing today? Man? I know in the pre show. We're gonna we're going deep, deep into the adrenal thyroid gut microbiome connection. How are we doing, man? 

Evan Brand: I'm doing really good. Yeah, this is trippy. You know, people talk about the gut brain connection. But when you actually look into the papers on this, you actually just found a paper that was from just a few months ago, that will have to dive into on gut brain, adrenal connection, thyroid cancer, all being tied into the gut. So where do you want to? Where do you want to start?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so this one article, I just want to read the summary of his articles. I think this really shows you the connection of the microbiome with the thyroid and of course, we have some scientific articles looking at the microbiome with the HPA access and connecting to the adrenal, so this is really, really powerful. I just thought this one conclusion here, and I really wanted to highlight it because I just think medicine is just really going in a totally different direction. So the title of this article here, I'll read it all for you all here is dis bios of the gut microbiome is associated with thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules. And there are correlated with thyroid function. And essentially, we know that autoimmunity which is the number one cause of thyroid issues with almost all people, right, that is a major association with cancer and with nodules, of course, the major cause of thyroid nodules are going to be autoimmunity. But the conclusion of this study was interesting they found our results indicate that both thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules are associated with the composition of the gut microbiome. These results may further support a clinical diagnosis to a great extent, and helping in developing potential probiotics to facilitate the tree Men have thyroid cancer and nodules. So conventional medicine in the Journal of endocrinology starting to come to the conclusion that, hey, we need to have probiotics to treat thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules. That's pretty amazing.

Evan Brand: That's a trip trip. Well, I've got another paper I was looking at here that was about babies. So let me read this one because this is pretty interesting and, and kind of up the same vein here that this was looking at 78 infants who were premature and were in the queue. And it was found that the infants that had despite AOSIS, which I just call an abnormal gut microbiome. They had more gut issues, even at age four of age, they followed these kids for four years. And if their gut was screwed from day one, even four years later, they still had gut issues. So not related to thyroid but just crazy how much the stress of the mom The diet of the mom the microbiome of the mom, if the mom doesn't have enough good bacteria, not giving good bacteria to baby, this is crazy. I don't want to get too off topic from from thyroid to babies, but there's countless papers coming out on even there was another one I looked at two, which was about sun exposure, right. And the sun exposure paper was looking at people getting UVB as in Bob UVB light exposure. And they had significant changes with their gut microbiome but it only worked in the patients that were deficient in vitamin D. So there's this you know, our mutual friend jack crews, he's always talking about Sunlight, sunlight, sunlight, everybody gets sunrise get your skin exposed to the sun. It turns out Yes, that is totally true because in various studies, living in higher altitudes means there's a higher risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease and Ms because at a higher latitude and higher altitude both you get less UV light. So now There's this gut flora, sunlight link as well, but it only was in vitamin D insufficient patients. If the vitamin D levels were normal, the sunshine didn't do as much to boost the gut bacteria.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, very good. So I want to just kind of connect the dots here with some of the more valuable Intel. So in the study that I just looked at, where they're talking about potential probiotics to treat thyroid nodule, and of course thyroid function issues and thyroid cancer, the couple of things to highlight is what does that mean? So despite doses typically means a higher amount of bad bacteria in relationship to good bacteria. Now in this one study, just kind of giving people to take home is the bad bacteria they were looking at that they were looking at they were higher in these cancer patients was the streptococcus and the nice Syria bacteria, and the beneficial bacteria was the lactobacillus and they also looked at the beautiful record bonus and beautiful components. I think it's just bacteria that helps make beautiful Beauty rate is the same fat that's in butter. Okay, so eating healthy butter and things that help improve beauty rate bacteria could be very beneficial. Also, anything that's going to be fermented is going to give you healthy levels of lactobacillus and support puter rate is great. So those are the big bacteria that we're looking. So I mean, these studies are limited because you're not looking at a whole suite of bacteria, right, or a whole suite of positive probiotics. So these studies are still a little bit myopic, and their focus, but I think it still gives us a little bit of insight that probiotics, beneficial bacteria important and some of the despotic bacteria can have negative implications even affecting your immune system and even cancer. So I think it's good to keep that in the back of our head. So when we're seeing patients, we're recommending comprehensive gut testing, that's DNA based, it's looking at all kinds of normal Flora imbalances, despotic balances, we're measuring it to, you know, the umpteenth degree because the DNA testing is about two to 3000 times more sensitive than your typical stool testing, and then we're also looking at infections because the bigger thing here I think is we could have an H. pylori issue or a fungal overgrowth, or we could have a, a major parasitic infection that could be thrown off the bacteria too. So sometimes the bacterial issue isn't necessarily the root cause. It's an effect of something deeper in the gut. That's kind of going wrong. And then also, we have to look at the fact that gut stressing gut inflammation can throw off digestion and when our digestion is poor, we're not ionizing minerals. We're not breaking down our Selenium and zinc and magnesium. We're not breaking down protein as well. We're not absorbing all the the hormonal building blocks like cholesterol and fatty acids and protein and fats to make our hormones and our neurotransmitters. So you can see this isn't just an isolated issue, it spirals off into other systems not working well. That's why you need some more the clinical picture clinical, I'm for this like me and you to dive in deep and kind of spiral off the intimate connection. And how and how and why this is a big deal.

Evan Brand: Well, I love that this paper exists because between you and I both we've put a combined 15 plus years of education and content about gut and how important it is and how it affects every other body system. But you still have people that go to their conventional doctor and they'll say, hey, my guy and work with Dr. Justin told me that my gut is affecting the thyroid. And the endocrinologist says, No, it doesn't know your hormone levels are just low. We're going to bump up your your Synthroid, we're going to give you extra t three and supplemental form and blah, blah, blah, and they never bring up the gut. Well, now here's the proof in the pudding. Here's the paper that proves what we've been saying the whole time. So it's good. I like I didn't need the validation, but I guess for maybe for our ego sake a little bit when you get good results with people. And we've seen countless time and time again that the thyroid antibodies and Hashimoto is go down when we fix the gut. I've always loved seeing that. But now we have the proof to be able to show why this is working.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and I saw a patient just from a few years back, her antibodies were well over 2000 2000 regarding feral globulin and they were around 30. Now, so I mean, you're looking at a 99% reduction with thyroid antibodies. And I've seen that quite frequently, and people listening and may not be practical to get your antibodies down, even below the reference range or even negative or to zero. That may not happen. But if we can have a 50 to 90% reduction regarding those antibodies, that's going to be huge.

Evan Brand: Let's Let's move on. Let's go into this other paper that you had sent me this was the one that was from frontiers and cellular and infection. microbiology. This was a 2017 paper. It was called microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior and endurance abnormalities and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. Let's go into this because this is another frickin awesome paper that proves what we've seen with regarding mood and the whole adrenal connection type into the gut. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So if we go into the what's that again? 

Evan Brand: This is the one I'll I'll put it back in the chat for you here. This is the pub man one, go check your chat I just put it in your chat on on zoom. This is the one that's called microbiota modulate anxiety like behavior. And so I'm going to go into Yes, kind of the bottom section of this, where it's showing all the pictures here about the connection between you've got your cortical, yes, hormone, your AC TH you've got the metabolic effect picture here. And what we're finding is the microbiome, the gut, your microbes, your intestinal microbes, they are changing this whole brain gut access activity, and all of your gut microbes are responsible for your dopa mean, your Gabba, you've got histamine, you've got acetylcholine And regulating the function of the CNS, which is your central nervous system and the stability of the HPA axis. This is the crazy part to me, this last part of the sentence that the intestinal microbes regulate the stability of the HPA axis. Because when we talk about the kind of this brain adrenal connection, we just talked about, like adaptogenic herbs and you know, I meditate and and deep breathing and extra Asheville, ganda and all that and maybe you need some l theanine, which is all cool. But if you're just doing that you're missing the boat, you're missing the fact that the gut is going to overpower any effort on your brain. It's like, Oh, I'm going to go do yoga to calm my nervous system. You can't if your gut microbes are screwed.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I want to highlight one sentence in this study conclusion. I think it's vitally important. They say here imbalances of the HPA access can't cause by intestinal microbes. So now this study is kind of submitting to the fact that the microbes are calling HPA access imbalances could affect the neuro endocrine system in the brain. That's the brain talking to the hormonal system primarily through the adrenal and the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic result in anxiety like behavior. And the study suggests that intervention into intestinal micro Flora may provide a new approach for treating stress like diseases that is profound. They're talking about altering the microbiome typically. And that's going to be done in two ways. It's going to be done by killing or knocking down this biotic bad bacteria or supporting beneficial good bacteria. Those are the two modulatory ways to do it. So that's amazing. The fact that conventional research at no one even talks about this on the conventional medical side, partly because it's about a 20 to 30 year lag between stuff and the literature making its way into conventional medicine and there needs to be a profit motive. So if a big pharma company cannot patent what's happening here, and we probably won't see this be applied, because there's gotta be a reason to spend billions of dollars in research and get patents. And if we can't patent it, what are you going to do?

Evan Brand: Yeah, so like the $30 bottle of probiotics that we sell after we do some type of a gut killing protocol, I mean, 30 bucks, is it your profit margins, not going to be like some of these cancer drugs, for example, they're like 1000 to 10,000% markup, you know, you'll have like, one vial of chemotherapy, that's 10,000 bucks.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And it's not just a, it's not just the the money you make on it, it's the ability to guarantee that you're the only one that can produce it. So if you get the patent, that you're the only one that can produce it, then you can artificially make the price higher, right. So that's kind of how it works. It's not that there's not a natural profit, you know, like a 50% markup or something like in a lot of stores that you see is going to be thousands of percent markup, and it's going to be artificial, did a patent law.

Evan Brand: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, you're talking rather than 20 companies all making the same thing and charging 100 bucks if you're the only soul guy, then you're allowed to charge 10,000.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you can charge a lot of money for it. Yeah, that's how it works. That's how you saw that with the, the epi pen when the patents went out. Only one company had it and they jacked it up. And that's kind of that's how it happens. So the more we can use things that are natural, that can't be patented, you know, then you have a little bit more market force keeping the prices down. So that's nice. So interesting. In this study, they also talked about however, the precise mechanism of action and how intestinal micro Flora means unclear. So it's really interesting they have there's some unknown pathogenic mechanisms I think with a lot of the the infections causing problems, my gas, all right, my into intuition really comes at it from the perspective of intestinal permeability. I think the intestinal permeability aspect is a big one. I also think a lot of the good bacteria has a modular Tory effect on your immune system, because we know your immune system is in the gut. So if your immune system is hyper regulate or hyper stimulated, that can do a lot of different things from increasing gut permeability, to just sucking up a lot of resources for energy. And I think it also has a negative impact on your mitochondrial function as well. And then I think the low hanging fruit is you may not be digesting, absorbing and assimilating a lot of the key nutrients in your diet, which go to make other systems work like your mitochondria, like your thyroid, like your adrenal, is we not getting enough selenium, we may have thyroid issues not getting enough. Magnesium, we may have issue with our mitochondria. So we need a lot of these nutrients. And if we have stress or interplay with the HPA axis and our gut, there could be some absorption issues for sure.

Evan Brand: We should almost just title this podcast which we already came up with a better title that you're that you're seeing or you already clicked on to download this, which was like the microbiome adrenal thyroid link, but really, we should call it yoga ain't gonna fix you. gut. I mean, that's basically the summary here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And again, there's a lot of data on this where the stress in the gut and stress in the brain is bi directional. In other words, Stretton the stress in the gut can create brain stress, but stress in the brain can create gut stress. And we know this because high levels of cortisol stress in the brain that makes a CTH adrenal cortical tropic releasing hormone that stimulates the adrenal to make cortisol that can create gut permeability at high levels, it can break down the gut barrier, and we know stress in the gut through number one is gluten is a big one can easily create gut permeability, which can then also create gut stress. So these are important things. Quick Study I want to pull up here. I did not show it to you but this is called dietary gluten induced dysbiosis can create issues with the tight junctions. And that's the summary of the title. The title is really convoluted, but

Evan Brand: I want to have that link from book market myself. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I'll send this to you right now. So you have it. But this is fascinating. And basically they're talking about gluten having a major impact on the gut bacteria and creating this bio system. And we know with this by osmosis, that can affect the whole neuro endocrine HPA axis cascade of things. And they talked about dietary gluten had effects on the streptococcus family, the lactobacillus family, the Koryo bacteria family, really, really, really interesting and how it affects different things. It Down regulated, the guts, absorption and a lot of different ways created inflammation. So there's a lot of different potential cascades that happen when gluten comes into the equation. So the low hanging fruit that we talked about is kind of getting patients on a paleo template which is a grain free, grain free, dairy free legume free template. And then potentially even moving towards a paleo template where we're going grain free, legume free dairy free, no nuts, seeds, nitrates and eggs.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you may have the autoimmune. So here's the point that we're trying to make is that the people who say, Oh, I eat gluten and I feel fine. It's not about whether you feel fine. It's about that internal biochemistry that's changing. It's about those microbes that are changing. Also, in that study that you just sent me here. It was talking about Prevotella being affected too. We know there's a huge link between Prevotella and joint pain. We did a whole podcast on joint pain, you know, functional medicine. And so it's not that like, Hey, you have to get a rash or you have to break out an acne after you eat gluten. That's not it's a lot more subtle, but the subtle changes over time, change the whole system.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: As a lot of people out there that I hear I won't mention their names but their podcasts out there and say, Hey, you know, you can have gluten if you haven't, you don't have any symptoms. You know, you're fine. The problem is the inflammation that's happening here. may not create a symptom, there may be a delay in the symptoms that occur. And that that's kind of the myopic level of thinking. You can't just you can't go to that conclusion, well, if you don't have symptoms, you're fine. In this one study, they're looking at inflammation associated with the micro RNA. So they're looking at inflammation at the RNA level. I mean, that is a very myopic level, very, very microscopic level, I should say. And in this study, they had some people on a gluten free diet and some eating gluten. And they saw on the gluten diet, they saw this increase in inflammation at the micro RNA level, which is pretty profound. So it may take time to manifest into actual symptoms. And we know there's data on the fact that there are people that even if they aren't celiac, or even really gluten sensitive symptomatic Lee, they still saw permeability with their gut when exposed to gluten. So kind of my general recommendation is try to be grain free all the time, especially if you have an autoimmune condition. And if you're going to cheat, try to choose gluten free cheat, if you can. Now, if you don't have a known autoimmunity, then maybe you choose a little bit of gluten here or there but be very careful with it. Try to do things like extra enzymes, extra enzymes with DPP for maybe some extra activated charcoal include a bio and to kind of deal with the stress and the inflammation associated with that you can also add in some extra glutamine and things help with the gut lining. So these are some ways that we can mitigate it. So I kind of I tear things a known autoimmunity, no gluten ever, and if you're going to cheat, try to make sure it's gluten free. If you're relatively healthy and no autoimmunity, then maybe you cheat a little bit with gluten but try to make it a special occasion holidays, birthday, etc. and then try to use things to blunt the negative consequences that may occur.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said people aren't even aware of that. We have some little cheats in our pocket, especially that will give to people around the holiday season, different enzyme formulations that can actually sort of break up or reduce the effect of some of those food allergens. Your dairy, your corn, your egg or soy, you know, you can use enzymes to help break those apart. But we don't want people to get hooked on those or use that as a long term solution, because then you're still cheating and it's not going to be reducing the the impact 100% it's just going to blunt it, as you said. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And one thing I wanted to highlight, I saw this article come across my desk too. It's a compound called Tributyltin, is in the chemical paint that they paint on the underside of the hall of the boats, and this compounds getting in the water, and they're finding that this compounds actually an obese engine, and it negatively impacts the gut microbiome and then you're getting exposed to this in the waters. So I think this is really important, why we need to be filtering our water because it's possible that these compounds may not be filtered out with conventional filtration processes. And this compounds Aaron obesogenic and they affect your microbiome. So another great reason why you should head over our sites get a good high quality Water Filter that we personally use EvanBrand.com or JustinHealth.com slash water. I'll put the link in the description. Waters a big component is a lot of chemicals and toxins and tributyltin and it's just one compound that could negatively impact your gut microbiome.

Evan Brand: Oh man, that's amazing. Well, there's countless like that I just got the Environmental Working Groups report on local Kentucky's tap water. And you know, people say oh, we got voted the best tap water in the US because we've got a lot of limestone here naturally that kind of filters out our water. It was still garbage man. There was still tons of flame retardant chemicals that PFOA which is like the Teflon nonstick chemicals, foams, heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides. I mean, we had countless pollutants in our tap water here, even though it was voted best and it does taste good. But you might you're not going to taste these part per million chemicals that like you said can be an obese adyen or disrupt hormones. So yes, drinking tap water can make you fat and sick. Absolutely.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course and then the number One thing you can do, this is a no brainer. Most of our audience and listeners know this is avoid glyphosate. So you really want to eat 100% organic because glyphosate, many, many studies are shown to affect the microbiome couple of rat studies, looked at different rats and microbiome and saw significant, you know, impact on the microbiome of these rats when exposed to glyphosate. So you really just got to be careful, make sure you eat organic as glyphosate, which is the major pesticide Roundup. And again, one of the studies I have up here now 13 weeks study, guess what bacteria were knocked down with Roundup. I mean, I'm going to guess all of them but probably lactobacillus. lactobacillus was the major one. It was reduced in the roundup study. And we know that the thyroid cancer study showed what that the cancer group had lower amounts of lactobacillus and then when we improved it, you know, we saw an improvement in the cancer. So we know lactobacillus is beneficial and glyphosate, roundup same name is going to negatively impact that.

Evan Brand: That's a trip well, so people say, Oh, I haven't done antibiotics doesn't matter. You did an antibiotic and the glyphosate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, exactly. So you really want to be careful. This is another reason why you want to eat organic. There's two reasons right? Number one, you're avoiding toxicity, which is going to affect your microbiome and your immune system. Number two, increased nutrient density. Typically, organic farming will have higher level of nutrient density because the soil microbiome will be more healthy and the microbiome and the topsoil produce help the plants produce more nutrition. So we're nutrition on one side, less toxic than the other side. And even if, let's say you don't buy what I'm saying about nutrition, just the fact that you're getting less toxins, right? Because for it to be organic, USDA Organic, it has to have no pesticides in that soil for three years. You are definitely getting less toxins, for sure.

Evan Brand: Yep. Well, this has beenfun. I mean, we could do Part 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 on this because this is like one of my favorite favorite things ever. So we'll be back to talk more about I've got so so I'm just giving you I've been told you this, but this is what we're going to cover. Next we need to cover the gut microbiome in the issue with pans, which is the pediatric acute onset neuro psychiatric syndrome and kids. I just sent you a paper on this one. Let's Let's hit this next time though, because it's a whole nother can of worms, but it's about all these children that are having behavioral issues and anxiety and different problems. And it's related to certain species in the gut. And if you can shift the gut out of this pro inflammatory state, you can calm the brain down. I mean, we basically already hit on that but it's a little different for kids and I've seen it personally and clinically, you have to So I do want to get into this and also, there's talk about the specific bacteria this or ODR bacteria and the link to autism. And alzheimers. So Wow, this is I mean, it goes deep.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it totally, what I'll do is I'll put all the links of all the studies that we talked about today in the description so you guys can go take a look at it so you can see it for yourself. It's amazing. Your conventional medical doctors aren't going to know about this stuff. And it's because of the 23rd 20 to 30 year gap between the literature and going into effect in the curriculum. And also there's just has to have a profit incentive for the big pharma if if they can't patent it, then you're not really going to use it as a modality. And guess what, as functional medicine docs, we take that up and we put that in our metabolic toolbox. TV's healing get better. So I love it. Is there anything else you want to highlight today? Evan? 

Evan Brand: We're going to be looking into your gut if you're working with us, so if you're like, Okay, what do I do? How do I investigate this? How do I fix it? I mean, we live and breathe and look at labs all day every day. So we'd be happy to run some panels on you and take a look at your gut and see how is your thyroid function affected by your gut? I guarantee it is how much is it affected. I don't don't know yet, but we can run some labs and figure it out. So if you do want to reach out clinically, you can do so at Justin's website, which is JustinHealth.com he works with people all around the world. So do I, my website is EvanBrand.com, and we don't care who you work with as long as you get better. So please reach out if you need help. That's what we're here for. Don't wait till you're super miserable. We got tons of people that like buy supplements and listen to podcasts and listen to summits and they buy 50 to 100 supplements and they don't know what the heck they're doing. You're spending a lot more money in wasting time and maybe getting sicker by doing that. So it'd be much better to have somebody that can help walk you through the process rather than you buying this probiotic and it didn't work and then you bought that gut healing supplement and didn't work and then you bought this detox supplement, you felt like crap, Okay, stop doing that. You know, let us help you through what we found to work clinically.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% also we can get a window into the HPA access as well using cortisol rhythm testing. So we'll measure your cortisol which is your major stress hormone. That's the hormone that Made by or that stimulated by ACTA, that's that brain chemical. That's the neuroendocrine connection, the brain, the ACTH, the cortisol, we can look at that rhythm. And that gives us a pretty good interplay into HPA access functioning, because the data says that, you know, as that cortisol starts to get this regulator rhythmically, that's a big sign that the HPA access is out of balance. And so we can use specific herbs, we can use protocols, we can work on fixing the microbiome, we can look at getting rid of some of the chemicals like we talked about, we only mentioned to today, the cyberbullying and the glyphosate, mold, and others toxins and metals could be another factor as well. That's another podcast of the day. So there's a big is a big net that we're kind of looking into and trying to connect everything here because everything's intimately connected. And I hope you guys are enjoying the Intel. If you're feeling overwhelmed, just feel free to reach out to us we can help break it down. The big connection here today is stress, brain stress, HPA access. That's the communication all feedback loop brain to the adrenal brain to the thyroid. Think of that as the thermostat to the heater thermostat to the air condition, right? Imagine you having that thermostat not talking appropriately to the heater when you want it to get hot, or the air conditioner when you want it to get cool. And that's a big big connection. So when we talk brain stress, or HPA access, pretend like your thermostat in your house is not working or probably that's kind of the equivalent here.

Evan Brand: Makes sense. Makes sense. Well said.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Well, if you guys enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up give us hit the bell as well. So you subscribe. We appreciate great reviews, JustinHealth.com/iTunes EvanBrand.com/iTunes for reviews. And let us know your comments down below things that have helped you things that have hurt you in regards to the HPA access and your gut microbiome. We appreciate it. Evan, it was great chatting today man you have a phenomenal day. 

Evan Brand: Yeah likewise you too see you. Take care. Bye bye.


References:

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