Hello and welcome to Beyond Wellness Podcast! Today’s episode is interesting because a lot of us complain about sudden weight gain, or having no changes on weight loss at all after trying out diet plans. Dr. Justin, together with Evan Brand explains the uncommon causes of weight gain in the functional medicine world. Listen to this podcast or read the transcript below. 
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
01:40 Insulin
05:42 Inflammation Toxin, Metabolism
10:30 Carbohydrate-rich food vs. The Proper Nutrients
16:20 Gut Health
21:12 Mold Toxins
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, Evan, it's Dr. J here. How are we doing today? Man? I'm really excited for a great podcast. What's happening?
Evan Brand: Doing very well. We're going to dive into a mysterious podcast. You have so many people that say, You know what? I gained 10 pounds I gained 15 pounds, I gained 20 I gained 25 30 40 50 100 pounds mysteriously. I didn't change anything, quote, what the heck is going on? So we hope to shed some light on this because if you go down the street to your conventional doctor, and you tell him Hey, Doc, I gained 20 pounds. What's going on? 95% of the time, my clients have reported the doctors tell them, you're just getting old. This just happens when you get old things slow down and you gain weight, you get more tired, you get weird lumps on your skin. It's just part of aging, and I disagree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% I mean, your weight is a pretty good sign of your metabolism. It's a pretty good sign of inflammation as well. So we call Like your tummy or your gut like the inflammation meter. And of course, there are a lot of variables right common sense things like eating too much. But and then obviously exercise these play big roles right now. There's also the macro nutrient content of the foods that you're eating right protein, fats and carbs and we know the carbohydrate connection, right all the way back from Dr. Atkins with you know, the more processed the carbs are, the more refined they are the more starchy the more those carbs break down to glucose and fructose, the more that's it a stimulate insulin release, and the more the insulin is secreted by your pancreas, the more chance your cells are going to be numb to it if you're not exercising or more active. So of course insulin then opens up the the gates for glucose and fructose to be stored as fat or glycogen in the liver and then obviously fat in yourself. So of course, there's a big insulin component. A lot of people know it, they just don't really know how to test it or how to quantify it. So that's kind of a common sense thing. We know people have been talking about that. For years, and how we look at that as we'll look at fasting insulin levels, and we'll even do a functional glucose tolerance test to see how your body handles glucose and or sugar like fructose. Okay, so we have typical table sugar which is sucrose, which is like half and half glucose fructose. We have high fructose corn syrup, which is 55 45 fructose to glucose. These are going to go into our body, they're going to stimulate insulin release, they're going to get stored as glycogen in our muscles or if it's more fructose, it's stored as glycogen in the liver. Once those sources are stored, and they're at capacity, it's like a rag that you're cleaning up your kids mess on the table with it's fully it's full, it needs to be wrung out once it's full, all that glucose and fructose gets stored as fat. So that's one of the first one so we'll look at a functional glucose tolerance. We'll look at a fasting level of glucose. And then we'll do a one hour, two hour three hour after a meal and we'll see how fast Those glucose levels come down the faster they come down the less insulin spike to make it come down so ideally between 120 and 140 within an hour and ideally below 100 within two hours and definitely below 100 within three that's kind of my frame of reference and then ideally in the sweet spot on a fasting insulin we want our insulin levels between two and five definitely below seven if we're going to be testing our blood levels of of insulin fasting in the morning.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said and this is not something commonly tested right? I don't recall I mean, we've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people send just standard bloodwork they've got further conventional MD and fasting insulin is rarely on there as standard protocols that correct?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% not on there. Okay. You'll see glucose on there but nothing else.
Evan Brand: We see yeah, maybe A1C if you had some sort of history or if you were actually confirmed diabetic but you know, I've looked on many people and they don't even do A1C it's like, I don't know how much we run it for maybe 12 bucks, 20 bucks, I mean, A1C is cheap to add on, I just can't believe it's not standard procedure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don't love A1C because it can definitely be a little bit higher, the more the healthier your blood cells are and the more the longer your blood cells live, they can accumulate more sugar or more glucose over time. So there is that component. So I don't love it, but it's nice to have. It's nice to look at for sure. I agree.
Evan Brand: Better than not having it when you say.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, I agree as long as you can look at it in context of the whole big picture. And if someone has a false high, you don't go over the top. That's why I like my functional glucose tolerance tests with the at home blood sugar meter the best. Okay.
Evan Brand: Make sense? Yeah, that's the low hanging fruit, right people. You could look back at even just in the 1950s. I mean, the obesity rates were nothing to what they are today. I know my grandparents grandparents were out on 300 acres and eating chickens in the backyard and they ate lard every day. None of them died of heart disease. They all lived into their 80s and 90s. They were outside working the land getting exercise and sunlight every day they were eating foods that were likely much, much richer and micronutrients and minerals because the soil wasn't depleted. Cliphosphate and other herbicides weren't invented yet, so they weren't getting those low dose antibiotics killing the good diversity. It's possible that and this is just me casually transitioning into the next point, this could be all related to an imbalance of bacteria in the gut. Why don't we talk about dysbiosis? Because you and I look at the GI map stool test. And if we look at Firmicutes that are elevated or other bad bacteria, that can make you fat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, of course, inflammation plays a huge role in your metabolism, right? inflammation is going to cause more cortisol to be secreted. High levels of cortisol, it's an anti inflammatory, but it also creates a mobilization of sugar or glucose. So people think well, like I'm not eating a whole bunch of glucose or carbohydrate, you know, but you could be surging a whole bunch of cortisol because of the inflammation and that cortisol could be mobilizing glucose. And so this is why it's important that if you are surging, a little bit more inflammation, going for a walk, doing a little bit of a cross, not across CrossFit or interval or some kind of a circuit training to kind of take that glucose and soak it up can be helpful, because the higher that level of glucose is up because inflammation, your cells getting numb to insulin. So that same thing of eating too much carbohydrates, that's driving up insulin, that same thing can actually happen from inflammation, so independent of just the carbohydrates, so you may have carbs coming in, let's say from gluten, right? But then you have the inflammation component, the more gluten sensitive you are that can also surge more cortisol, which can then also create more glucose than what you actually ate in the actual bread to begin with. And that creates more insulin resistance, more court, more courts. are mobilizing sugars. That makes sense.
Evan Brand: It does. Yeah. And if you've got the cortisol issue that's affecting your gut barrier further, which is in allowing infections to create more inflammation so it can become a vicious cycle. What do you think about? So for me, I lost weight. When I had all the gut infections, certain people will see they gain weight and when you get rid of their infections, all of a sudden their weight normalizes in the 20 pounds, they gain go back to normal. Do you have any thoughts on why some people lose weight, some people gain weight, I think it depends on the type of infection or what?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, it definitely depends on the type of infection and also depends on the individual. Some people can kind of be more prone to be in an ectomorph stage or they, as they go lower calorie as they have malabsorption they drop weight, some people gain weight, it's just I don't really have a an exact rhyme or reason why. I tend to see over time though, people will eventually start gaining weight over time. Whether it's gaining weight because their body fat goes up and their muscle mass goes down and their weight still stays the same, they're still going to be losing high quality, lean muscle mass over time, you're never going to see someone's body fat drop, and then also have their muscle mass go operate the same. So usually there's gonna, there's still going to be a reduction in their high quality muscle, even if they are dropping weight, you'll become more sarcopenia, right? Yeah, you'll may lose a little bit of weight, but you're also going to lose muscle mass, bone mass, etc. So in the short run, though, why you lost weight versus someone else, it's hard to say, you know, there's probably some genetic variations there. And that may be different from you and your 20s to you and your 50s, right, so maybe a variation of just where you're at metabolically and as you get older, that may change. But either way, this is why we focus on body composition when weight loss is occurring, because you could have weight loss but muscle mass is dropping, right? So the body, the body composition really matters the most and you can actually gain weight. Have muscle mass drop as well. So this is it. These are important components to keep in mind muscle mass really matters the most. And it's one of those things if you don't use it, you lose it. So that's why getting a little bit of move, whether it's push ups or pull ups or some bodyweight stuff, or we talked about doing some circuit stuff, some interval stuff to kind of keep those the muscle mass. They're really really, really important.
Evan Brand: Good answer, I definitely lost muscle. I definitely lost strength. Some people will say, Oh, I wish I had a parasite. And I can lose 20 pounds without trying. It's like, No, you don't trust me, that's not a good way to lose weight at all. And the weight that you're losing is not body fat, your body is going to hold on to that body fat. It's not like you're magically going to get six pack abs. If you get gut bugs, trust me. You're losing muscle, you're losing strength, you're losing, like you mentioned, possibly bone density, bone strength as well. So not a good thing to have. And we know that just addressing those gut infections could be could be huge. So you mentioned the whole insulin cortisol connection, but a lot of what we would consider low hanging fruit for us because we do It all the time every day all day with people is we help them to test and fix gut infections. So if it's an H pylori issue, causing low stomach acid, you've then got the malabsorption of food, the body sort of freaking out looking for nutrients. It's like okay, I'm not getting well fed, well nourished, let's go into fat storage mode because we're not getting fed well, even though the quality is good, it could be a grass fed steak. If the absorption is so bad, it can still trigger that fat storage mode in the body because you're you're not getting the nutrients you need.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and again, you could have a lot of carbohydrate rich food and a lot of caloric rich food and not have the nutrients you need. So in general, you kind of already alluded to it, you need B vitamins, you need co Q10. You need alpha lipoic acid, you need carnitine you need a lot of these important nutrients to run your mitochondria to run fatty acid oxidation. So you can generate ATP, which is the cellular currency for energy in the body. So you can burn fat for fuel you need They'll all be vitamin nutrients for your Krebs cycle, right? Or to run and generate, basically to gain all these hydrogens, right? We call it the reducing compounds FADH2, and NADH, they dump all these hydrogens into the electron transport chain. And this generates more fuel 36 to 38. ATP is going through glycolysis to the Krebs cycle to electron transport chain, right and fatty acid oxidation. So these are very important pathways to generate energy. And when you have someone who's gaining weight, what that tells me over time, is there an energy store, not an energy burner, and we really want our body to be in this energy burning mode. Because burning means to we're not our body isn't allocating it to fat, right? Fat storage, so when we're allocating it to fat, that means our body's kind of saving it for a rainy day, which may be okay if we're saving financially, but not necessarily if we're saving and we want to be you know, lean and have good muscle mass.
Evan Brand: So let's keep unpacking what you're saying, because this is important. We've had people say, Well, I'm doing keto. I'm doing little to no carbs, I still can't lose weight, what the heck is going on? And I know this isn't the only mechanism. But let me say this one and then if you want to build on it, my thought is if I and I've had people who say I'm full carnivore, I'm just eating grass fed steak couple times a day or something like I have zero carbs, why am I not losing weight? Or why am I even gaining weight? My argument would be, as you mentioned, the carnitine and all the nutrients you need to fuel those cycles. If you're not absorbing or assimilating that grass fed steak due to low HCl infections have some stored inflammation in the gut, it doesn't matter if the if the food itself is good because you're still not getting the nutrients you need to run those cycles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So if we are going lower carb, we want to make sure we're consuming for the most part on a ketogenic template, unlimited amounts of non starchy vegetables for the most part, it's fine. You know you most people are going to be in that 20 to 30 maybe 40. net car grams per day. And you're looking at three to four carbs nets with your green vegetables serving. So you can be eight to 10 servings a day on your green vegetables. And you're probably going to be in that ketogenic range, so that the vegetables tend to not be a problem. And you can do organic and make sure the nutrient density is high. You can also consume things like organ meats, and obviously high quality grass fed pasture fed meats and egg yolks and all those things that are nutrient dense so we can make sure those foods are there and in the diet. Some of the hidden things could be like you mentioned having with you is having inflammation in the gut from infections not having enough stomach acid or enzymes or bile salts. So those foods overwhelm the system and may actually create more inflammation because we can't digest them. So there also is that as an X Factor, we have to keep that in the back of our head. Most people are going to lose weight, dropping carbohydrates if their carbohydrates were previously high, just because for you know, for one molecule of glucose, there's three or four molecules of water right behind it. Okay. So as you drop down the glucose, you drop down water weight. And so of course, you're gonna see that as well that's like a no brainer. So most people off the bat are going to see some level of drop. If not just the insulin dropping, then the glucose drop or the glucose dropping, then the insulin dropping, and then the insulin, dropping the water, and then the water and then the sodium. And so you're going to see a massive reduction in water weight, okay? Now, if we're struggling, and we're still not seeing that weight reduction, we're going to have to look at the gut, we're going to have to look at the inflammation and the food, we're going to have to look at how you're digesting the food, is that food nutrient dense. And then if we're looking at all those things, and we still been following this for a solid month or two, and we're still having problems, that's where we have to look at the adrenals aka cortisol, cortisol rhythm, that's we're looking at the female or male hormones, definitely more with the females females are going to struggle more because if they if they're already in estrogen dominance, right, that's already going to create more storage hormones. They're like insulin right? Because estrogen is kind of a it's kind of a growth hormone. could promote more fat growth as well. And then of course, thyroid and it could be a low thyroid, it could be a thyroid conversion issue. It could be an autoimmune issue. And a lot of people improve their thyroid going keto, because one insulin does affect our way conversion. And when you're typically going keto, you're not eating grains and things that could stimulate autoimmunity. So kind of like our is a lot of people out there that are like keto is the solution, keto solution, but what if you're that person? It's not why. And that's where functional medicine comes in when we look at those next levels above, and then then we have to get more specific.
Evan Brand: Yeah, here's another hidden part of this whole issue too, since you brought up estrogen is when we're looking at someone stole panel, we'll see the enzyme the beta glucuronidase that goes high, typically due to dysbiosis. There's other causes as well. But when this enzyme malfunctions if your guts not working properly, now you're going to recirculate estrogen. So even if you weren't taking an estrogen birth control pill or anything like that, you're like, you know what, where Why? Why would I have excess estrogen? Well, it could be what you've had in your body is is simply getting recirculated and that'll cause tons of issues. And so part of our goal is we have to get that enzyme working from that enzyme functioning properly. And some people lose weight just by doing that. I mean, it could be simple as fix the gut and they lose 20 pounds. We see it every day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110% so the guts a really important component. And then the hormones play a really important role as well. And we already talked about how important healthy gut function is for detoxification and we have in previous podcasts, healthy gut function is important. That's where we eliminate our stool. we eliminate a lot of toxins via heavy metals or mold via the hepatic biliary system. That's liver, gallbladder into the gut out the stool, or liver, gut, you know, kidneys out the urine. So we there's a lot of different ways that we eliminate now. to dive in one step above we'll kind of get there is things like mold and mycotoxins can slow down thyroid. There's different studies on like, the mole toxin is Elena and they actually put that mole toxin in the ears of cows. And they do that because that the cows actually convert more of their calories to fats, when they expose them to that mold toxin. So we know different molds can slow down thyroid function, they can affect T4 to T3 conversion, and they can cause more fat gain. So mold can definitely be a component in this whole thing. And it's not the first thing I go to. It's not the low hanging fruit. But if we do a good history, and we address the other things and we're still at a standstill, then then it's something that we can definitely dive into eventually, if history leads us there.
Evan Brand: Yeah, my wife and I, we were looking back at some pictures of ourselves and we both lost weight. You know, we just blamed it on my wife breastfeeding all the time, we thought Oh, she's just you know, putting out so many calories. She's not eating enough. We're pretty low carb. Maybe she wasn't eating enough. But we both had lost weight. And then once we improved our air quality, we both gained our weight back so I can confirm that your weight could go either way, just like it came with gut infections. You could lose weight when you're exposed to to mold or you could gain weight. So it can go either way. Now, for those that have been following for a while, you may know this, but if not Dr. J is working on a thyroid book. So I want you to maybe give us a little more insight on this thyroid mechanism. You mentioned it but what specifically is going on with Is it the antibodies? It's, that's the problem is it just thyroid receptor sites being blocked? What's going on when you're saying thyroid is one of those pieces of the weight gain?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So mold toxins can affect thyroid conversion, T4 to T3 conversion, you can see an increase in reverse t three, which is our inactive thyroid hormone. It's kind of like someone being in the parking lot, right? And instead of having an open parking spot, someone just kind of put some cones in the parking spots right? And so you can't go park in there because the colon there. Well imagine the receptor site is the parking spot and the thyroid hormone is the car. Well if you got a whole bunch of parking spots that you wanted to park in, but now they have a cone in it. Well you can't dock right that thyroid hormone can't work. Right think of the cones as reverse T3, it's blocking the receptor site for thyroid hormone your car from being able to use it. So that's a big role in thyroid increases your metabolism, heat energy, etc. So there's that. Also, that's-
Evan Brand: -so that's the mechanism that people need to know. It's that, you know, I think of it kind of like a blank bullet, too. So you're saying that if that cone is in the way, no matter if the blood level, so you're saying like free t three could look okay? But if you've got elevated reverse t three, that free t three can't get into the receptor, therefore the metabolism never fires, right? The sparkplug doesn't fire, is that correct?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And usually with higher levels of reverse t three free t three starts to go down because you only have so much t three building block or T four building block, and it's either going to go to t t three or reverse t three, okay? And the more reverse t three is increasing. That means less of it's actually going to the active t three. And then the more reverse t three, it makes that active t three that's there even less viable. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: It does so it's like a diversion. I'm picturing like a garden hose with one of those little two way splitters. Bingo. And I had this, I remember you and I looked at this in my blood, I had reversed t three almost to a 30, which is really high at one point. And basically the diverter switch was flipped. And so luckily, that is now resolved, and I feel much better. 100% you're really tired, too. I want to mention that too. Because I want people to know, okay, you're all getting into this receptor site and all that. Well, how does that affect me on my day to day life? Well, I'll tell you, from someone who has high reverse t three, you can feel it, you feel that you can't push the gas pedal, it's as if somebody put a rock under the gas pedal, and you now can't get the pedal to the metal. So you're lethargic, you just feel blah, your mood is not as good. Your energy's not as good. So these are the people who are like, Oh, I know you're telling me to go do high intensity interval training. I friggin can't do it. And it's because of that issue. And so sometimes you have to work backwards meaning you've got to resolve elevated reversed T3. You've got to resolve the gut issues to even get the mitochondria working enough to give you the ATP so that you're actually have enough energy in the tank to do the exercise that you know will make you feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So then you have the mold toxins right affecting thyroid conversion and activation. Also, what affects the conversion? Well, typically the enzymes the di dnase enzyme, the five prime di enzyme is coming from the liver. It's coming from Selenium. So of course it delivers more burden, right, and glue to ion pathways and our top detoxification pathways are stressed. It makes sense why the conversion may be effective because the detoxification pathways are impaired, and then our body. Like it's always trying to sequester things like it's going to try to flush things out first, but then if it really has a hard time, it'll store things in the fat second, so the body will tend to store things more on the fat side of the fence just to kind of keep it sequestered. It's kind of like your kids running around causing a whole bunch of problems in the home. You're probably going to say go to timeout or go to your room, right. So they're not running around causing a ruckus. It's kind of the same thing with your toxins in your body, hey, you know, hey, mold, I want you to go to the fat cell, right? That's kind of what's happening there. And of course, the more fat cell you have, the more the body wants to store they're just like that just kind of it creates momentum in regards to fat storage and slows down the metabolism. And of course, the less Selenium included IO and you have the less the thyroids going to be supportive. And then if you have, God forbid autoimmune issues, now that autoimmunity is going to be tamped up, and it's going to be harder for the body to modulate or downgrade that inflammatory response.
Evan Brand: And that's because you've basically gone into attack mode right now you've got you've got the cop shooting the wrong bad guy, you hit your thyroid, now the thyroid could be damaged and therefore it could produce less active hormone is that right? So I mean, after years and years of thyroid damage, you literally can produce less Is that true?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct and and also the new Treatments needed to quell that inflammatory response is too busy dealing with the mold toxins. Does that make sense? Yep. And then kind of a very similar mechanism, again with heavy metals, very similar again with heavy metals, Mercury lead, are they going to be the big two? And then we also have like cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, those kind of ones as well. So of course, we have those kind of having a very similar mechanism, as I just mentioned, stressing out thyroid conversion, potentially affecting autoimmunity being stored in the fat cell creating stress on our metabolism.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And how does this look because people like oh heavy metals, right, it just sounds so kind of airy fairy in the air. This could be as simple as something we've seen this we've seen dozens of cases like this. Someone goes in for a routine dental procedure. They go get a major deep cleaning done while they have silver quote silver fillings which are 50-53% mercury. They go get a deep cleaning. After their deep cleaning, the person is scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing. They're getting millions and millions of micro particles of mercury into the brain via inhalation. They're swallowing it into the gut. And all of a sudden I gained 20 pounds after a dental procedure. What was the dental procedure? Oh, it was a deep cleaning, ah, bingo. And then if you if we need to, we could do a, like some sort of provocation and then run a urine heavy metal screen to look for this on paper. But if we just go in and do the binders and such to actually get rid of heavy metals, sometimes we could just confirm using an educated guess and history. All of a sudden, the heavy metal protocol we use, boom, they lost 20 pounds. It could be that simple.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it definitely can be that simple. So we have to look at everything holistically. So I think we hit the mole toxin, we hit the heavy metals. We talked about a lot of just the general inflammation. We talked about some of the hormones, we talked about cortisol. We talked about, of course exercise, what exercise does is it's going to help decrease insulin. It's going to help improve insulin sensitivity, and it's going to help me Take more space in our muscle for the glycogen to which is helpful.
Evan Brand: Justin's cat is in the background. She is interested in glycogen to she wants to increase her glycogen by getting fed. Yeah, the exercise. Exactly. Well, actually, it's a boy though, isn't it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, Dexter.
Evan Brand: Dexter wants to get his glycogen reserves up. And so regarding the exercise piece, you see why people get this wrong. And it's not their fault. It's just you don't know what you don't know. They think okay, I just need a $10 gym membership. And I'm just going to go pound the weights and magically I'm going to lose weight, right? Because diet and exercise. Those are the two variables that everyone on Good Morning America talks about. Look at this celebrity trainer. If I just do what he does, I'm gonna friggin get in shape. And it's like, maybe if you don't have all these other root causes, but the problem is everyone in the modern world based on looking at thousands of toxic people. People are very toxic. It's not that easy. anymore maybe 100 years ago, it would have been that easy. But now there's so many other variables, we have to get out of the way so many other roadblocks.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And everyone can at least start out, they can at least try it, they can start going with it, that's fine. And then if they have an issue, then they at least know why we're on their radar, we're kind of in the back of their head. Or if they're going through all the exercise stuff, and they're just the exercises, speeding them up, and they're just feeling like crap. And there's at least a next level we can go to if we need.
Evan Brand: Well, I knew something was wrong with me when I was having three to four days of recovery times when I previously had one to two day recovery times, even though the intensity of the workout wasn't much different. And also when I was getting diminishing returns, so I put in the work and my weight or muscle mass or strength would stay relatively the same. I thought something is not right. And then that's when I found out I had gut infection. It's like, okay, I've been getting robbed of all of my amino acids. I can't even manufacture more muscle mass right now until these infections resolved. And then here's the funny thing. I literally started building muscle looking more fit With less exercise than I did before here, I was working so hard and go, I worked out less. All I did was clear the infections and then boom, the muscle came on. And people might argue well, oh, and you were just overtraining. And the cortisol was eating away your muscle tissue? No, no, no, I'm talking like going from three days a week exercising 20 to 30 minutes to like, one or two days a week. And I gained more muscle that way. It was crazy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yep, that can definitely be a thing, you know. So I think we hit a lot of the really important things here regarding the diet component, which is foundational, and that's going to be your 8020. You know, that's where 20% of you know, 20% of the results are going to happen. 80% of the results are going to happen from from those 20% right there. Okay, then everything else gets a little bit more nuanced. And that's where we layer and stack and functional medicine is a good next option. And then of course, all the different toxic things and the hormonal components in the gut and the absorption stuff that all make sense. Anything you want to add to that.
Evan Brand: The good news is you can resolve this and so if you do a good workup on somebody, you can find out exactly what going on. Now, we may not go straight away to do on the blood work, we may not go straight away to doing the cortisol. It really just depends on your history. We're going to ask you about sleep. We're going to ask you about stress, we're going to ask you timeline. So when did all this happen? like we talked about the lady who got the dyno cleaning, and all of a sudden she gained weight after the dyno cleaning, or, oh, you gained 20 pounds after the divorce or you gained 20 pounds after you moved into this new house, right? So we're going to base our lab testing investigation protocol on what gets uncovered during the history. So you can't take that lady who got the dental cleaning, and assume that that's your issue, right? You really want to stack all the puzzle pieces out on the table together and just see, okay, Look, she's got some mercury here. She's got the gut inflammation over here. She's got the elevated cortisol at night. She had water damage in her basement, you see and then we start adding all those puzzle pieces so that way you can get her 20% better, they're 20% better there. And then you get the person fully well, so if something is The gym is not working. You don't feel like it's not working. There's probably something going on under the hood. And not always but as, as we've talked about, we've tested thousands of people. modern humans are extremely toxic from gasoline additives to paints, nail polish, hairspray, hair color, the pesticides and herbicides, the pharmaceuticals that are in tap water, I mean, there's endocrine disrupting chemicals in the tap water if you're not drinking filtered water, and we're not talking just a fridge filter, that's not sufficient. You could get fat just from drinking tap water. And people say, Oh, that's ridiculous. No, it's not. You can look at the studies on the Environmental Working Group and many other people have done studies on tap water across the US and across cross globally. And trace amounts we're talking parts per million of certain drugs like antibiotics and birth control pills and things can end up in the water supply, therefore affecting hormones therefore making you fat. So it's no surprise when you look at the amount of time toxins, it goes up like a hockey stick just like the obesity rate. Can you blame all obesity on toxins? No, but I think it's a huge part of the puzzle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110% 110% Yeah, I agree, man. That's really, really important. So I think you hit some really important components there regarding the food stuff. Inflammation toxin. I think we did a really good job kind of laying everything out. Is there anything else you want to touch upon here?
Evan Brand: I don't think so. Unless you had any questions. I don't have any on my side.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, there's one more thing I want to highlight is people talk about eating too much or too much calories. Now, that's always a possibility. But the problem is when you're consuming good fats and good proteins and your blood sugar is not on a rollercoaster ride on the foods nutrient dense that you're eating. The odds of overeating gets lower because of the fact one you have nutritional density to protein and fat signals, a lot of satiating compounds in the brain adiponectin peptide Why Why? It's gonna simulate colon assisted kinda in a lot of these things are going to help you feel satiated and help you feel full. So it's harder to overeat fats and proteins. I mean, is it possible, if you're just doing scoops and scoops almond butter or straight up butter, it's possible. But if you're eating at a normal pace, and you're eating, you know, vegetables and protein sources and good fats together, and you're not chopping things down super, super fast, I recommend eating till you're about 80% full, and then kind of giving yourself five or 10 minutes to kind of let things digest because sometimes there can be a delay, and that satiation signal, and that kind of helps your body but Okay, yeah, I'm good. You actually had enough you've got to give yourself that equal your 80%, not to your 100% and give it that five or 10 minutes to kind of get that feedback loop back up to the brain and be like, yeah, I'm satiated. I'm, I'm good. So that's kind of my big strategy on the calorie side. And then of course, of course, of course, of course. eat the right foods. When you do too much carbohydrate. You don't get The satiating signal that you get with fats and proteins. That's why the Pringles commercials are the 90s. Everyone knows that if you're if you're that old, once you pop, you don't stop, right? Or everyone has the experience of buying a pizza and eating it, you know, in back in their college days to their whole face, right? They eat the whole thing. Why? Because they like gets, yeah, the Lay's chips. You don't get that satiation signal or it comes way late in the game. And that's why you can overeat carbohydrates, it's much harder to overeat, let's say, a dozen eggs, right? You'd be nauseous because of all of those compounds, cck, etc. that will make you feel really nauseous.
Evan Brand: You know, we ought to do we ought to do one of those. React video where you'll see like health practitioners react to certain videos, you and I need to pull up like a bunch of commercials from the 80s and 90s and just share our thoughts on them because it's really sickening. If you think about it like the Lay's motto, wasn't it a bet you can't eat just one. It's like, Well, duh, because you're getting no satiation. You're getting no leptin response from that nutrient devoid food with hydrogenated cottonseed oil on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they're also putting a lot of stuff in there to stimulate appetite. They're putting more things to stimulate it right? You're using a lot of sodium in there. They're putting a lot of MSG in flavor enhancers. And then don't even get me started with the low fat phase. They started adding me olestra and the olestra was the fat but it was digestible. So you'd get disaster pants after you consume it because your body couldn't break it down. So you'd have the fat you taste the fat, but then it will go out your pants. It was terrible. Remember that stuff, the olestra in the late 90s.
Evan Brand: It's absolutely horrid. I can't believe what Americans have gone through in terms of the food supply. If you were someone who lived in a rural area, maybe you bought your food from farmers back then and you kind of avoided supermarkets. Maybe you dodged a lot of this but unfortunately a lot of people are victims to what's happened with the food supply. So this is just more reason to connect with yourself. farmer buy your food locally, it's going to have better soil density of nutrients, hopefully, you're going to have less transit time. So therefore you're not eating blueberries from Mexico that were picked way too early, and they didn't develop in origin picked at the peak. So there's a lot of benefits to going local with your food supply. I could go on a whole rant about that. But regarding the the satiety hormone stuff with the fluids, it's huge. I mean, and so that message that 80% full thing goes to all those people. And this was me, I'm going to admit it. This was me, even though it was like a grain free cookie, you know, almond flour or something with coconut sugar. You know, I would eat a meal. And I'd be like, hmm, I'm not satiated enough. I need to have something sweet. It's like I wasn't getting that, that full signal. And once I've detox and mold, I don't have that anymore. And if I just sit there to table for a couple extra minutes, all of a sudden, Oh, you know what, I am full. I don't need anything else. And we have that report all the time from people like Oh man, I gotta go run and get my piece of chocolate. After the meal, if you If that's you, then there's something not right that's not now too common response, but common doesn't mean normal. So if you eat grass fed steak, baked sweet potato butter and cinnamon and a big old fat plate of some butter with broccoli, and you don't feel good after that, and you're still running for the cookie or the chocolate investigate because there's something going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it's okay if someone is having a little bit of dark chocolate after a meal, just make sure it's going to be lower sugar high and Macau, so then you're not getting much carbohydrate, you're getting a lot of nutrient nutrition in that or just choose the healthier option. Maybe it's some low sugar coconut yogurt with some fresh blueberries in there, right? So we can always, you know, kind of look at making your fruit making it like a dessert almost right. So if you're going to do some low sugar fruit or put some good fats in there, that way one, there's good fats too. There's not a whole bunch of sugar in three there's a lot of nutrient density there so you can kind of still kind of have that little bit of satiation and that like desert feel without having Having all the side effects true and it's in it's totally awesome and beneficial to do that. I'm not trying to demonize it or make, make it seem like you should never enjoy yourself. That's not what I'm saying. But just for those people that say, I have to have it, like if I don't have my chocolate, you know, you don't want to be around me those things. That's when it seems like it's an excess, but just for enjoyment. Yeah, I think you could do some awesome stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you look at like a 50%, dark chocolate or milk chocolate, right? A whole bar half a bar isn't that 2025 grams of sugar versus you go have a dark chocolate maybe at 88% like an endangered species brand. Well, now you're at four or five grams. So you see how there's a that's a 90% reduction in the sugar, just from choosing one dessert over another dessert so that it's a total totally big difference there. So if you guys are like hey, I want something, just choose the healthier option.
Evan Brand: Yeah, absolutely and cool. The dark chocolate thing too, even if it is super high dark chocolate content and it's not much sugar. If you're going for that too often in your emotions. sensitive and it's comforting you to have that then your endorphins are probably burned out. We measure that on organic acids testing. Yeah. All the time. Well ask those people Oh, yeah, like, Oh yeah, if I see a commercial, it's not even sappy, but I cry, and I have to have dark chocolate every day. Well, then you got an endorphin problem most likely. But that's a whole nother podcast, we'll save that for a brain chemistry show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly like my go to right now has been just like some really nice, clean, unsweetened coconut yogurt with a little bit of cinnamon and maybe some fresh blueberries or strawberries, something really simple, nutrient dense with some good fats. And just trying to keep that that mindset of eating till you're about 80% full is a good indication because that 80% once you stop eating, you may notice you start getting full for the next 10 or 20 more minutes, even without eating because that signals just a little bit behind. So that's why it's good to have that mindset. So then you're not eating too. You're 100% and then you're like, Whoa, I gotta undo the belt buckle a notch or two. It's like Thanksgiving Day dinner, right? That's what we want to avoid. Very, very good where it's uncomfortable to move right, we should be able to move comfortably afterwards.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that's a good statement. We talked about that too, with HCl production and such if you if you eat and then you need to go lay down. Something's not right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. Well, anything else you want to highlight Evan, I would just say that to the listeners if they want to dive in deeper, and they feel like they need a next step person, a coach to help them get to that next level, head over to EvanBrand.com. You can schedule with Evan, head over to JustinHealth.com. You can schedule with myself, Dr. J. If you want to dive in deeper, sometimes these tests are necessary. Or maybe you've already gone a lot of the route that we've talked about and you're ready for those next things where there could be a hormone issue or a toxic stressor and you want to roll it out. That'd be your next step. Anything else? Anything you wanna add in?
Evan Brand: No, that's it. You did a great job. Check out the sites JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com. Thank you for being there. And we enjoy having you on the other end of the microphone. So stay tuned. We'll be back next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. And people that are listening. If they have friends or family that could benefit please give it a share. Your comments down below we want to know what you think. Whether it's future topic ideas or just comments on today's show and make sure you hit the bell and noticing hit the subscribe button and the bell so you get notifications of great content coming your way. Alright Evan, you have a great day, man. Take care.
Evan Brand: Take care. See ya. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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