Our gut is a group of organs that needs to be in good condition in order for our body to function properly. There are a lot of ways to take care of our gut. For today’s episode, Dr. Justin and Evan Brand talk about Top 7 nutrients to heal our gut, and also the root causes. Read more of the podcast below.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:21 Downside of OTC Medications
9:18 Healing Nutrients for the Gut
19:11 Gut Irritating Symptoms
31:57 Probiotics
32:47 Mold
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live. It's Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. We are really excited to chat about the top seven nutrients to help heal your gut. We're going to talk about the root causes of why your gut may be inflamed and irritated to begin with, and how we as functional medicine practitioners, help the body heal faster while addressing the root cause. Evan, how are we doing today, man?
Evan Brand: I'm really good. Feels good to be back in the saddle. And excited to dive in with you here today. We're in a gut disease epidemic. Maybe I should try to pull up some statistics here on like, IBS, your typical idiopathic chronic inflamed, you know, inflammatory gi issue. Let's see what the numbers are. According to the CDC real quick, but this issue is huge. It's I know it's in the millions. So CDC, I it's got to be bigger than this. This seems this seems low. Okay, well, these are people diagnosed with autoimmune gut disease. diseases. So Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, back in 2015 was 3 million people. But those are people diagnosed and you're talking the most extreme manifestation, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. So if we're talking IBS, completely different from IBD, the numbers, I'm going to say probably in the double digits of millions for sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, I mean, I mean, if you just go look at the top medications by sale, you're going to see I'm almost positive, you're going to see omeprazole or some kind of a Nexium or acid blocker in that top five or top 10 for sure, I know and pass It's been three or four. It's been common. I mean, you know, it just really depends on what you market, right? A lot of times when these medications go over the counter, it becomes a little bit less of a deal because everyone has access to it. No companies in the market it quite as much right? True. But in the past, it's always been a big, big top selling medication. And when you're on medications like that, you can actually create more damage and more inflammation, partly because you're not breaking down your foods, partly because you need acidity to prevent bad microbes from growing. So number one, you start having indigestion issues because you're not breaking down your food all the way. Number two, you don't have that good acid so other bacteria and critters can grow. Number three, yeah, it could potentially block some of the irritation in the gut. If you're not making enough acid, a lot of times your food rots and creates organic acids from the rotting process. That's, you know, that's real. Now the problem is having enough acid though, can also help break down that food and prevent that acid rotting from forming as well. So it's a double edged sword. The question is, is the gut mucosa in the stomach? Is there enough integrity to handle the acid? That's the question. Sometimes there is sometimes there isn't. The people where there is these are the ones that merely start getting better with some apple cider vinegar or some betaine HCl, the ones who feel a little bit worse. These are the tricky ones, right? These are the ones that have a whole bunch of back pain, right, but have a sunburn so they can't really get a massage because there's their skin on the outside is so irritated where the inside support that is needed right from those deep muscles and tendons can't receive it because of the inflammation. Think of that as a gut lining, right? That's irritated from all of the ads or inflammatory foods or a lack of stomach acid. All of that can be driving that for sure.
Evan Brand: Let's go into like story mode. Because people love this. I mean, lecture lecture mode is fun, but people love story mode. So let's go into story mode for a few minutes. I just want to tell a story and if you've got one to share, to have gut issues, you know, so I guess I have to me personally, you know, my gut issues were that I had major weight loss. I had depression, I had anxiety I was having panic attacks. I was having sleep issues, skin issues, just bad bad acne. I had burping I had bloating, I mean pretty much across the board. That's Something people don't think about is that it's not just your gut that's affected when you when your guts affected it's your brain and a lot of cases too. And long story short, I had many infections and I do believe even back then I didn't know this, but I do believe that mold was part of my journey and detoxing, it has improved my gut because mold can cause diarrhea. And so I had a lot of issues with my bowels that have gotten way better after doing binders. But the story that I was going to mention was a teenager who I saw within the last few months who was around 16 17 I think it just turned 17 and the GI doctors basically gave him a prescription pad he was diagnosed with pain colitis, which is where it was the entire colon, not just the the later section of it that was inflamed, and they gave him I don't remember the name of the drug but some sort of immune modulating drug and send him on his way. And we ran a stool test on this kid. His inflammation level was above 1000 on calprotectin, which is crazy. We don't like to ever see it even post that correct. And we just got him on some of the gut healing nutrients. So you and I always use and we're going to dive into what those are later. But within six weeks we retested his stool just because it was an urgent situation. Typically, we don't retest that soon. And we had already got the inflammation down into triple digits. So I mean, within six weeks, hundreds and hundreds of points of calprotectin had dropped, I think we got it down to maybe a 200. So from a it was over 1000, I think was 1200, down to a 200 in about six weeks.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So unprotect is like the equivalent of C reactive protein for your blood, right? Calprotectin is produced by the immune cells in the gut. So when you have a lot of interleukins are cytokines or nuclear factor Kappa beta, these are all like these inflammatory signaling molecules, your white blood cells and immune cells will produce calprotectin as a end result. So it's a good way of monitoring it like you're going to see it very high, you know, greater than 500 and a lot of irritable bowel diseases, colitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, those kind of things, right.
Evan Brand: Yeah, we don't see it that often though. I mean, maybe I mean, more than the average person more than the average practitioner, probably because the people that we're seeing have already struck out with conventional doctors. But I would say out of a given month, I probably only see calprotectin above 500, maybe five to 10 times.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, me above 500. It's a lot. I'll see it typically above 50. You know, 50 is kind of my functional range. And hundreds, I'll see that quite frequently. And it just depends, right, we see a lot of patients that have already gotten very educated from us on the podcast. So they're already making a lot of first line changes. And that's kind of the benefit of the podcast, patients already come in with a lot of momentum and wind at their back because they're following a lot of these first line kind of low hanging fruit therapies. So they're making some diet changes, they're doing some simple things, and that provides a much better foundation so we see less inflammation coming in. So for sure, now, root cause what are some of the well we're going to talk about some of our favorite nutrients in a minute, but root cause you know, food allergens are going to be a big root cause grains, dairy, right booms, anti nutrients and plants. Some can be big deal. Not enough stomach acid, not enough enzymes, right? A lot of chronic stress, people don't realize but over exercise is actually known to create gut permeability. A lot of studies on post marathoners and lots of aerobic exercise, actually increasing gut permeability. People were like thinking about their gut and their leaky guts, which can create a lot of immune stress or thinking about inflammatory foods and infections and enzyme and acid deficiency. But guess what overexercise can also aid in that permeability.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so you mean you could think you're doing great and oh, I eat keto and 90 bulletproof coffee, but then you go run five miles every day. That's just not gonna be good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Maybe a stressor? Yeah, stressor was a big article. I think it was like last month in a golf magazine. Tiger Woods blamed all of his back in the surgeries on on chronic cardio. He was doing lots of running, which, you know, anyone that's in the athletic industry would know that, that doesn't really translate to the golf field that well, right. You need very specific types of movements and training modalities to allow That to transfer and chronic long distance cardio guess what it really only transfers to chronic long distance cardio sports. If you're not doing a chronic long distance cardio sports, most people are going to do better with a better targeted resistance training and or circuit training or Burst Training kind of workout. But that's neither here nor there. But it connects back to the gut permeability, which could be causing a lot of your digestive issues if you're over exercising.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I had a I had a girl who was in college, I want to say maybe sophomore junior in college, and she was running three to five miles per day, at least five days a week. So you're talking 15, sometimes 20 miles a week, Her skin was a wreck, and her gut was a wreck. The only protocol for the first six weeks after we got the labs back was samana microbial herbs to address all the infections. And then we did some omegas we did some enzymes. And and then the piece that I think was most important was I told her Hey, only do two runs a week above a mile. So like a mile, you know, twice a week and then the other days you know, do something else do yoga, do stretching, do weightlifting. And that alone was enough to to significantly change her her story and she's like, Oh my god, I didn't realize how tired I was. I was beating myself into the ground. And these athletes, they get addicted to the endorphins from the running.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, there is the big endorphin rush. So kind of moral of the story here is do the low hanging fruit have the right foundational things, you may need to see a really good functional medicine practitioner to kind of get these things dialed up and lined up. Now our first healing nutrient, let's plug it in right now would be zinc. Zinc is a very powerful nutrient in my gi restore. I have a zinc in there a zinc carnosine, which is a very absorbable zinc in the in the gut, which is great. That has been shown to decrease inflammation in the stomach. It's also shown to be very helpful on the gut permeability side. And in some studies that's actually been shown to decrease gut permeability induced by excessive cardio exercise. So keep that in the back of your head. back of your head there, zinc is gonna be one of those nutrients you'd want to be adding in. Very important, and it's going to be foundational and zinc is also very high and a lot of paleo foods, right. And a lot of your high quality meats and seafood products you're gonna get a lot of zinc will typically do, you know, anywhere between, you know, 10 to 30 milligrams of zinc in a day to really help on the gut permeability.
Evan Brand: Yeah, there's a really good study on this American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2016 zinc carnosine works with bovine colostrum and truncating heavy exercise induced increase in gut permeability in healthy volunteers. So, yeah, long story short, and we like colostrum too. So we will use that some people can't tolerate it, but most people can. So take, you know, zinc alone or colostrum with I wasn't on our original list of nutrients, but hey, it's done really, really well for me and many people too. So why don't I go ahead and throw colostrum into the mix as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, we're gonna put our links to some of the products that we personally formulated and recommend for our patients and have been doing for years. We'll put them down below. Evans gonna have his, what's the name of your GI product?
Evan Brand: Mine's called GI Sooth. So you do powder and I do capsules, they're both great. You can't go wrong with either one.
Dr. Justin Marchegian: Exactly. Mine is GI Revive is the designs for health product. Yours is the GI Sooth the mine is the GI Restore. And I've been using that one for about two, three years. That's a phenomenal product. And then the thing with yours is you don't have any additives or flavors in it. Neither does mine. The problem with the designs product has a little bit of additives and flavor in the powder form. And I've seen patients really react to some of these added flavors and sweeteners and gums. So you got to be very, very careful with that. You either want a powder that does not have a lot of sweeteners in there, or you want a capsule one that's very important. So there's some brands out there that are really good and clean, like I just mentioned, but have some of those binders in there. That could be a potential problem. So you really got to look at some of those binders.
Evan Brand: Yeah, we love them. But when you throw in natural flavors and then you're throwing in tapioca dextran. I mean, a lot of people complain to me that if they've tried that one before with other practitioners that it would mess up their blood sugar too, because that tapioca, I don't know the body recognizes them, you know, sort of as a blood sugar spike or so. So we, so we don't use that one clinically, but a lot of people have used that one previously, if you're working with like a naturopath, they may have brought that tool out on you, and it's probably still going to do more good than than bad, but that's not what we use.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think another low hanging fruit, a lot of people use this and a lot of people may even go do it to it as a first line therapy would be glutamine. Now, glutamine is excellent because it's a primary fuel source by the parasites in the gut, which is awesome. So these are like the gut cells that make up the gut lining. These these cells are going to require a lot of glutamine. So glutamine is very, very important for providing that fuel source. It really helps provide good integrity kind of like collagen and glycine. glycine is also really good for the gut lining collagen provides Good integrity for hair, skin and nails. Think about glutamine is providing really good integrity for the gut lining. And the problem is, why does the gut become permeable when there's lots of exercise? You know, Evan?
Evan Brand: I mean, cortisol is going to be my main my main thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Catabolic physiology right and catabolic physiology. What does it primarily attack it attacks protein and amino acids, right? That's why chronic cardio people that have a certain physique, right, they're much more leaner, more emaciated looking, definitely less muscle tone than a sprinter. Just Google sprinter versus marathon runner, you'll see an instantaneous side by side and what the difference is and part of it is because runners are going to engage in more catabolic physiology more cortisol, right. And sprinters are going to engage in more anabolic physiology testosterone growth hormone, right, and that's going to cause muscles to grow. So l glutamine is going to help balance out that catabolic physiology now that catabolic physiology could be from overexercise. It could be from inflammation in the gut from gluten. Right? It could be from all those different things. It could be from potential infections. Now, we could use glutamine in a way that's just symptomatic, right? Like we're not getting to the root cause, meaning I have an infection. I have poor diet, but I take this, that's okay. But we're always trying to get to the root cause. So if we add in L glutamine, we're gonna add it in with a lot of these other things as well and ensuring the root causes dialed into.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so you could say glutamine is basically anti catabolic. So looking at that zinc study, it was talking about how the intestinal permeability went up by what they say here three fold. So the intestinal gut permeability went up three fold after exercise the zinc or colostrum, basically truncated the rise by 70%. So if you threw in something like glutamine, which actually, you know, there are some kind of pre workout nutrients that we could use blends of amino acids that may have glutamine in there, and I'm sure with a good Grass Fed Whey protein, we We use some of those, you're going to get some glutamine there too. And so to me, it's, it's the great, you know, maybe pre or kind of post workout nutrient as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. I'd also say the synergistic nutrients that work with glutamine, I would say are also gags, which are like coastal amino glycans. You know, being a chiropractor for a while I work with a lot of disk patients. I don't do this anymore. But a lot of the disk material, the raw material in that disk is made out of these guys like also amino glycans. And these can be severely impaired with lots of insulin and oxidative stress. And of course, if we'd have had digestion, we may not get enough of it through our diet, right? So we may add in an acetal Glucosamine, which is a form of a glyco glycosaminoglycans a gag for short, so very, very helpful and helping connective tissue helping the gut lining lots of anti inflammatory benefits and they kind of work in conjunction with the glutamine because they tend to be connected, and then we'll connect in there the glycine right glycine is very high in collagen. So, collagen is also very high in glutamine, so glutamine, glycine and EDIS and an acetal glucosamine or the gags that the glycosaminoglycans are going to be very helpful at building blocks for the gut lining, and they'll be a really good buffer for catabolic physiology when cortisol and stress is present. And that tissue starts to get broken down.
Evan Brand: Well, here's another cool thing about glucosamine that came up in the research was that it helps to reduce biofilm with different pathogens like E. coli. So, you know, you and I, we talked so many times about using anti microbials. And we'll come in and use our gut healing nutrients. What if there were some biofilm left behind? And by accident you and I were actually eradicating the biofilms therefore keeping people in good shape as opposed to allowing them a relapse if you didn't do a gut healing phase is kind of just gives us a little more credit and ego boost for doing the gut healing phase. Because if you just came in and kill, kill, kill, maybe there was something left like a biofilm of ecola then comes back but this paper on the NSE two glucosamine it talks about, you know, reducing that biofilm formation so that's pretty awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly and any of my patients that are listening biofilms are important. That's why I recommend a specific ginger tea protocol. And the ginger tea I recommend is going to have one high dose ginger in it that's juice ginger. Ginger is a very powerful biofilm Buster you can go into PubMed and just type in ginger and biofilms you'll see dozens of studies. It's also anti inflammatory, it's very safe as well. It's a natural blood thinner too. So it prevents a lot of the cells from getting stuck and sticky. And then also I typically recommend a little bit of the Manuka honey in there and Manuka honey really helps biofilms and has an antibacterial effect. But just dovetailing on what you were talking about regarding the gags the anesthetic glucosamine or the the glycosaminoglycans. They also have immuno inflammatory modulating effects, right. So we have different cytokines which are signaling molecules that are produced from the inflammation So these are like TNF alpha, this is nuclear factor Kappa beta, interleukin six different interleukin molecules, it helps modulate those and kind of dampen those down a little bit, which is helpful. So it's kind of like the fire is going, and I'll just kind of put that fire out. Now it may not be a root cause of the fire. But if you're working with a good functional medicine doctor, they're gonna make sure we use things that modulate the firewall at the same time we get to the root cause of the fire.
Evan Brand: Yeah, let's talk about that real quick. There's been a couple cases where we've had people in such bad shape that will actually come in and bring some of these gut healing gut soothing nutrients right away in the very beginning. I mean, if I've got somebody that's so miserable, let's say they've got major Cold Blood that's showing up they're bleeding every time they poop, I mean, their guts in bad shape. We may come in knowing it's not root cause it's palliative care, but we'll come in and use gut soothers in the beginning, maybe even before we get to the end of microbial phase, I mean, if their guts just so so hurting we might not be able to come in and kill the parasites are whatever is at the root of this thing. Have you done that before? Have you come in and said, Oh my God, this person, they're not even ready to go to the phase one we got to go phase like point five here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Patients have typical gut irritating symptoms in the top three to five complaints on their chief complaint list. And then we'll add in some of these healing and soothing nutrients off the bat, I find a lot of my patients, I don't really need to use them off the bat, if I get their diet and digestion working better, and I get enzymes and acids and food and maybe even, you know, some simple bone broth or some ginger tea in there. A lot of times I won't need it. But anyone where it's in that top five, will kind of come in there and use it for a couple of months just to really accelerate the healing, partly because I want to get people ready to deal with the gut killing part of the face. And if someone's guts too raw, sometimes those herbs, they're not going to tolerate them well. And the herbs right in my analogy of someone having a sunburn but needing a really good massage or a chiropractic adjustment because of their Their lower back, but at their skins really burned, they may not be able to receive that right? Same thing on the gut killing, we may need to come in there with some really powerful gut killing herbs. But patient is to run the mucosa. And they can't handle the herbs, or they can't even handle any stomach acid, right? So then we have to, that's where it's really important to get these things in on the front side.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and your average person listening who just wants to improve their health and their gut health, you may not be in that category where you have to go to gut healers, we're talking to people that have been a gastro doc for 5-10 years, they're really suffering or maybe they've just been undiagnosed this whole time, but they're in really bad shape. That's where we're going to bring that out in the beginning. So your average person listening that may not apply.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you know, I think low hanging fruit for anyone is going to be collagen, we can always add in the collagen, which is going to have a lot of the glycine in there. And it's also going to have some of the glutamine in there, right. And so that's at least a good first line step because no one's getting enough connective tissue in their diet unless they're doing lots of bone broth soups. That'd be the only exception. So if you're not doing a lot of bone broth, soups and things like that, You probably need some extra collagen in there. Yep, yep. So favorite brand. So I mean Evan has his gi su died my gi restore, but I also have my true collagen, which is a product that I formulated. And with that product, a lot of collagen or actually they add sulfuric acid into the collagen. with mine we were able to do proteolytic enzymes, why does that matter? It matters because your tummy doesn't really have to do much of a breakdown process because the enzymes already make the the collagen so absorbable there's very little digestion that has to happen to take in those nutrients. And when the guts really inflamed, you want a lot of these things pre digested so it's easy for me to handle. We'll put our links down below in the description below.
Evan Brand: Beautiful, beautiful. So speaking of sunburn, let's go on to the next one. Let's talk about aloe. I love aloe, and actually have one I've got one called GI Sooth 2, which is just a straight aloe extract just because, you know there's some cases where I don't feel like we need the full shebang with the glutamine and all that. So we'll just say well, let's try out By itself, and there's a paper here, some kind of pharmacology therapy paper, randomized, double blind placebo of oral and this is just aloe vera gel. This is not even the concentrated extract that we're using, we're talking just straight aloe vera gel for ulcerative colitis. And even just in four weeks, it was a clinically significant benefit for colitis. And so we're talking people in major autoimmune gut issue and in four weeks, they're in really, really good shape with it. That's not going to happen with drugs, I'm sorry, the pharmaceuticals are not going to have that fast of an outcome. And it's probably going to be a hell of a lot more expensive for for the drugs. And once again, it's not really gonna, I don't know it's just not root cause for me aloes, more root cause it's going to soothe the gut, it's going to reduce the inflammation. It's not just going to try to modulate some enzyme or modulate this. It's just, I like it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aloes, also has some anti inflammatory effects, right? There's a so we talked about C reactive protein and nuclear factor Kappa beta and interleukins and cytokines. There's another answer. There's another inflammatory marker called MPO, or Milo peroxidase. And aloe helps modulate Milo peroxidase. And it's also shown to have a lot of antispasmodic effects. So a lot of people that have IBS, for instance, a lot of times they have a lot of spasms. I know Evan, when you were diagnosed with IBS, at what, 10 years ago, they recommended a lot of antispasmodic drugs and it's too bad yeah, you didn't have that functional medicine knowledge. You know, you could have been taken out of the get go to help with that.
Evan Brand: I did. I didn't do the drugs but yeah, they recommended them. And so luckily though, the the stats The funny thing about it, the spasms it wasn't what I've learned our spasms clinically it was more just Hey, urgent, boom, gotta run to the bathroom. versus some people it's they're just sitting there at their chair trying to type on their computer and Boom, they've got these spasms happening. So for me, luckily, it wasn't as miserable as it could have been. At the time, though, you know, even though I didn't know what I know, now, I still was doing some of the enteric coated peppermint oil. And that was very, very helpful. I don't mean of course, it wasn't root cause it didn't magically erase my infections, but the entire code of peppermint did do some good for me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's good. That's excellent.
Evan Brand: And that wasn't on our list, but why not throw it to the list? It's gonna end up being like 12 nutrients for your gut, but we had to have some kind of buzz, you know, Buzz worthy title. So we said seven but peppermint, I think could also be considered.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, we're gonna provide overvalue here. I would say next is gonna be sulfur compounds. So one of my favorite sulfur compounds is MSM, which is methyl sulfur on methane, so powerful organic sulfur compound. Again, first mechanism, what's the underlying root cause mechanism for you science junkies out here? It's going to be modulating your B cells, it's gonna be modulating nuclear factor Kappa beta, it's gonna be not not modulating TNF alpha, interleukin one, interleukin three Looking sick, these are all chemical signaling molecules from inflammation, it's going to be decreasing Milo peroxidase, like the aloe, a lot of studies showing that MSM and these sulfur rich compounds are going to have a lot of powerful antioxidant compounds in there, really helping to suit providing a lot of, let's say neutralization of the oxidative stress. Why is the oxidation there? Well, because of the inflammation, inflammation, cause oxidation. Oxidation is when you lose electrons. When cells lose electrons, they become very unstable, and that can create DNA damage. And so we need antioxidants, things that have extra electrons that can donate them. And that helps prevent the oxidation thus preventing the DNA damage. So the sulfur rich compounds, they reduce inflammation, interleukin cytokines, and they have antioxidant properties to help stabilize the cells in your gut. Very good.
Evan Brand: Well, how about the How about the Cox 2 pathway too because that's going to change Increase inflammation and the MSM back can also down regulate Cox 2. So, I mean, you can't say that it's gonna act in the same way like is aspirin but I mean it can definitely help with some of the gut pain I would say associated with some of these infections.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well yeah also, you know, we know we need so the Cox two enzyme also is going to be modulated by, if you remember back in the early 2000s to drug Vioxx, that was a big drug also NSAID's modulate that Cox two, right? Cox stands for cyclooxygenase. Two. The problem is if you do too good of a job blocking that enzyme, we need that enzyme to build up our gut lining build up our heart and stuff. That's why we saw lots of strokes and even potential ulcerations from those kinds of medications because they do too good of a job. That's the problem with drugs is they create lots of side effects herbs and they tend to have more of a modulating kind of use where they kind of bump it and move it in the right direction but not So far where it causes the side effects where drugs go way too far, and then you have a lot of side effects, right? Like it was a journal article in the New York, New England Journal of Medicine 1998 by Wolf at all talking about ibuprofen, killing 19,000 people a year taken appropriately. So the nice thing about these natural supports, if you're not gonna have to worry about those kind of side effects, which is great.
Evan Brand: Wow, what was I mean, not to get too off subject, but what's the mechanism on that? It's just the intestinal bleeding that happened or-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -bleeding, which then affects the liver, which also can affect the alterations in the stomach. And that can also affect the heart. It's so yeah, it's that Cox enzyme is to to dampen and torque to good on it. And then that enzyme is needed to do other things that are important in the body. Wow It's kind of like, imagine if like you had a high ashwagandha or high levels of cortisol and you took some ashwagandha demodulate it well, if it not cortisol all the way down. to the ground, you'd be in a state of Addison's disease. Right? And yeah, like that you kind of trade one thing. It's not all the time, right? And if people that are using it chronically, those are the ones that really have to worry about it. So if we're going to use something more longer term, we want it to be more natural, because it's gonna have a safer profile to it.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So if you're out there and you're on daily dose of ibuprofen, because you got a headache because you're still eating gluten, you know, consider that your warning get off gluten, get rid of the headache.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% 100%. All right, what else do you want to chat about? How are we going to licorice?
Evan Brand: Love licorice. So let's talk about the difference real quick, because you and I love licorice for many reasons. I mean, it's one of those nutrients that can be used for different body systems. So we're often going to use more of an active licorice for adrenals. So where you have the glycerin, the active component that can help extend the half life of cortisol. I use the analogy of plugging up your smartphone to one of those little battery packs where you're going to get a little extra juice out of your phone. That's what we use it for regarding adrenals if we're working on that, but if you take the glycerin out, and you remove it, and then it becomes called dgl, where it doesn't have the, the active component anymore, so it's not necessarily going to affect cortisol now, now it turns into like a gut healing nutrient. So dgl is in both of our blends, and you and I've used it, I don't know thousands of times by this point, and it makes things taste good to dgl. Like if you have it in some bitter herbs, it can, it can kind of blunt that nasty taste a bit
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So DGL is excellent, you already talked about it. Regular licorice is going to have an effect that increases cortisol, which can then also increase your mineral corticoids, which hold on to water and sodium, which on the adrenal side may be a good thing if we need it, and we have a test showing low cortisol. But if we don't have a test and we want to make sure we don't over increase cortisol or our blood pressure, that's why we use the test. dgl licorice though I think you kind of highlighted that dgl is is very powerful because you have the anti inflammatory benefits without the cortisol increasing blood pressure increasing sodium fluid retention effects.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I had a study here I was trying to see exactly what it said it was called integrative treatment of reflux and dyspepsia in children. Of course, all the good stuff licorice was on there gingers on the list here of botanicals. talked a little bit about sleep hygiene. Anyway, I was trying to just get a number right now in terms of how beneficial it was. It just talked about they didn't say a number they just said here that compared to placebo licorice extract showed a significant decrease in the total symptom scores of the gut issues. So of course, they always put this in there, although more evidence is needed. DGL can help people wean off acid drugs acid blocking medication.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, that's powerful. I think we hit seven already, which is great. So let's kind of go into a bonus round here off the bat, I would just say probiotics can be very helpful. A lot of times we don't add probiotics in on the front side. But we'll add them in after on the back side just because there's a lot of things we can do on the front side, but probiotics, bifidobacterium, lactobacillus, acidophilus, etc. These have been shown to have anti inflammatory effects on the gut. And now the timing is everything because there's a lot of things that you can do. The question is, at what time and the thing is, Evan and I have seen thousands of patients we have a lot of experience in the timing of things. So a lot of times we'll use probiotics on the backside are really help. One, help gut permeability help IGA levels help crowd out a lot of these bad bugs which can them them in their own right, create inflammation. So if we crowd them out a little bit in a gentle way that can also reduce inflammation and then just naturally helping to modulate a lot of these interleukins and cytokines and all these compounds are very powerful.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I've been a bigger fan of probiotics. Lately just because of dealing with mold and trying to detox that out of my system and helping people deal with mold, there's this pathway that happens. Basically, you can convert more toxic molds into less toxic molds using probiotics it basically, I don't want to say it conjugates them because that's not the mechanism but for lack of a better word, it's sort of maybe de granulate. The mold toxin, makes it less toxic, and then you can excrete it out and the remaining toxin does less damage because now you've converted it. I don't have it in front of me, but those are just charred of okra toxin, with the help of probiotics being converted into maybe alpha okra toxin or something. It's kind of downstream tablet, and then downstream again, and then the toxicity drops with the help of probiotics. So long story short, I use probiotics all the time, and they work great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Also, let's do a little bonus round people. Let's talk about mold. This could be well, so we have gut infection that could also be big things that are holding people back. I don't think we have to go into this in depth. We've done podcasts On this, but a lot of people forget about the mold aspect. Because mold has various mycotoxins, which can increase gut permeability. We've done a podcast where we go more into how we deal with this clinically, but can you just go over that concept, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah, the main thing is, you know, after interviewing a guy, Dr. Nathan, he's a medical doctor been working on mold for 2025 years, he told me, he said, You can't fully heal your gut unless you get rid of the mycotoxins and I thought, well, how is that true? Because, you know, I've been working with people for a while now. And I've had many people who their gut symptoms are so much better so that I just get lucky that those people did not have mold. Was I missing the mold? Or, or what? How could How could you say something so strongly, you can't heal your gut without it. And then I started looking back at some of these cases where people would be in really good shape for a few months where you eradicate the infections, you come in with some gut healing nutrients, and then a few months later, they'd say, you know what, I'm kind of, I've got Candida coming back or my tongue is white again, or I'm having sugar cravings again, and now I'm Going kind of circling back to those people and testing them for mold, and I'm finding that they're positive, they've got it, they've got toxic levels. So now we just throw it into the mix. It's not that I'm saying it's the end all be all biomarker, it's the end all be all catalysts for leaky gut at all. But if you're somebody who's gone down the rabbit hole of addressing H, pylori parasites, bacterial overgrowth, and all that, and your integrative natural functional, whoever practitioner didn't look at this piece, I would consider it because it's also the mechanism of weakening the immune system. So it's not just the direct damage on the gut barrier, but I would assume that weakening the immunity has a role in this too. I mean, if you look at <INAUDIBLE> acid, something we test for, they give that to people when they're doing organ transplants, so that it'll kill the immune system so much that their body won't reject the new organ. I mean, that's how they use any conventional medicine. So this stuff is potent, potent, potent, and then you've got things like glio toxin, which affects the gut and the brain. So It's a game changer. I mean, I feel like we talk about it so much now, but it's really transformed my life and in our clinical lives too, because this is the epidemic. We used to not build houses with drywall. And now we do. So when you look at your great, great grandpa, he didn't have a problem because this house was built with plaster. And now the house is built with drywall with paper backing. So it's it's a new epidemic, but I do believe it's the number one cause of chronic fatigue that we're seeing out there based on Dr. Brewer study, you know, 95 plus percent of his patients with chronic fatigue tested positive for mold, and all those chronic fatigue patients, they often have gut symptoms. So a lot of people have diarrhea, and they're tired. Is it the diarrhea causing the fatigue? Maybe, but it also could be the mold. So that's my rant on that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the only comment, I would say it just really depends, right? Because I've seen a lot of patients that are in a moldy environment or could be in a moldy environment. I have seen a lot of benefit and a lot of improvement, with a lot of the foundational changes that we do without even talking mold. So it just depends upon how chronic and how much is there. And then also genetically how sensitive you are to mold. There are some genetic types, they can just handle a lot of mold, and some not. So I don't think it's a be all end all. But I think it's definitely an important factor that should be on our checklist, and we should be aware of it. And anytime we see a chronic health issue, we should be testing for mold in the home as an easy low hanging fruit. Because if you have high levels of mold in the home, you know, that can affect everyone in the house, right, which is great. You don't have to test everyone's urine individually. But then once we see high levels in the home, then we can go and start being more specific on what that individual person's load is. And then, you know, my biggest thing is, Hey, if you're out of the home for a week or two, how do you feel? Do you feel better, and I've seen a lot of patients they're out for a week or two, they come back and it's like, boom, now we got to be careful if you're out of the home because you're on vacation and you're hanging out relaxing all week or two, and then you come back to a stressful environment. That could be a factor too. So you got to keep stress under under that control, so to speak. So you're comparing apples to apples.
Evan Brand: True, true. But yeah, I mean, Dr. Nathan, when he's talking about he can't heal the gut unless you get rid of mold. Yeah, maybe in the 25% of the population who doesn't genetically detox mold. But you and I have seen so many cases of probably the 75% of people who they can detox mold, so it wasn't an issue. And that's why we we were like you mentioned able to get them such good progress and results in success without even addressing them all, because they were probably genetically gifted. He seen the genetically gifted like me, who built the mold toxin up and then it had some downstream effects.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And also, if you get tested for mold, and you're gonna test your urine, make sure you challenge it with a lucify on for at least a couple of days to a week ahead of time, I typically recommend one gram of solidify on a day, you know, for three to seven days ahead of time, too many people I see come in, they're like, Oh, my molds, fine. And I'm like, did you do a challenge ahead of time? They're like, nope. So you got to make sure you're really challenging the urinary mold levels ahead of time. Can you speak to that?
Evan Brand: Yeah, that's very helpful. And if you're you might not need a gram. If you're doing that. Like a better quality if it's like bizarre more maybe a seagull you may get away with, you know, a few hundred milligrams to half a gram. You know that less? Yeah,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah, it was almost probably 500 milligrams to a gram would be fine if it's SSE or one of the other types that we like, then you get a couple hundred milligrams, it's probably fine.
Evan Brand: Yeah, but the sawn has been helpful too. I've had some people just as an experiment, right? You and I are we're experimenters. We're in the trenches. So I'll have people you know, I'll have you know, Jane Doe I'll have her do five days glue to fine and then I'll tell her on the morning of when you wake up hold up, jump right in the sauna 2030 minutes then collected Whoa, it's crazy how much more you see coming out. So and we know that we know that heating up the body helps mobilize toxins of all kinds. So if we're going to do like a combo urine, organic acid, Miko chemical profile, man, we really do get a better read on people. My analogy is it kind of squeezes the orange, you know, in the cup of tea shows up just more accurate.
Yep, totally. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Totally. Makes a lot of sense. Well, let's wrap it up if you're ready for the highlight today.
No, I'm done. You want to wrap this thing up?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think so. I think we're on the right track with everything. So anyone want to reach out to myself JustinHealth.com available worldwide for console Evan at EvanBrand.com. So if you guys want to dive in deeper and get to the root of what's happening here, we are happy to help you. We do a lot of these testing all over the world. So if you're coming in, we test them all. We'll test the gut, we'll do all these things. We have kind of have the right algorithm, the right formula to kind of get people on that healing journey. Anything else? Anything you want to highlight around?
Evan Brand: I would just say that the issues we talked about are worldwide. You know, this is not just an American problem. You know, we've got clients in Australia, we've got clients in Canada, we've got clients in Europe. I mean, this is this is something happening around the world and it's amazing how many people don't get the proper help that they need from the conventional doctors. It's really really sad. I was looking at my podcast reviews this morning. And of course, you know, I and you were in the alternative health category and I thought you know what we need to stay in this alternative. Category until this becomes the mainstream, you know, and that and people have made that argument before that what we're doing. This is the original medicine. This is what people were doing thousands of years before the quote, conventional medicine existed before the vaccines and the drugs and the prescriptions and the acid blockers. Allah was around before all of that. So this is not really alternative or, or new age at all. This is just legit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, appreciate it. We'll put the recommended products that we love. Evan has GI Sooth, I have my GI Restore, we'll put the links down below so if you guys wanna support us, we appreciate that. And you guys have a fabulous day. Take care ya'll.
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/top-7-nutrients-to-heal-your-gut-podcast-294
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