Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand reveal to us today about a health issue that Evan is experiencing currently with regard to the parasites discovered in his stool tests. Listen as they share with us the things that can be done to get rid of these parasites via conventional medicine approach versus the functional medicine methods.
Discover what the common parasites are and what the conventional symptoms are that people typically experience when they have an infection. Learn the various ways and supplementation to help treat parasite infections as well as the laboratory tests you can take to confirm such infections.
In this episode, topics include:
00:44 Evan's parasite story and symptoms
5:03 Lab testing
11:28 Giardia
15:33 Cryptosporidium
22:17 Supplementation
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan Brand, how you doing this morning? It’s Friday.
Evan Brand: It is Friday. Hey, I’m great. We’re in the trenches again on ourselves today. So this is fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, today’s gonna be a different kind of podcast. I think we are pushing the envelope regarding functional medicine and functional health podcasting, because we’re doing tests on ourselves. So today we’re gonna be talking about some stool test that came in for yourself. And we already talked about them earlier this week and we’re just excited to share them with the general public because we know your story and my story will be able to help hopefully tens of thousands of potential patients and people out there.
Evan Brand: Absolutely so to give a little of history here about why we suspected something was going on is when I first moved to Texas. I was about 160 lbs and I quickly after moving there, I quickly began to lose weight without changing much of the diet. Paleo was pretty much my diet template. I was still exercising but not as much and I began to slowly lose weight and I bottomed out at like 138 lbs. So we’re talking about 22 lbs lost in about a year, maybe a year and some change, and when I—I remember the first I came over to your house, you were like, “Dude, Evan, you got a parasite. That’s not normal like you’re getting skinny, man. Like your muscle’s disappearing.” And I had just attributed it to adrenal fatigue because I ran a cortisol rhythm test on myself, too, and showed pretty low cortisol even though I had good DHEA. And so that kinda made sense but it wouldn’t explain that significant weight loss. So you even said, you know, over 6 months ago, “You better run a test for a parasite and see what’s going on.” And so I finally got around to it and turns out I popped up positive for cryptosporidium and also Giardia which are 2 different parasites that can be found or that you can get exposure to in different water sources. And so when I was talking to Dr. Kurt yesterday, he said, “Evan,” he goes, “Did you swim in any sources of water that were a little bit lower than normal like a drought-stricken place?” And I was like, “Oh my God, Lake Austin, Lake Travis–”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Barton Springs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Barton Springs.
Evan Brand: Krause Springs, like everywhere I went in Austin on the weekend was some sort of water source that–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: Could have potentially exposed me to it. And so the light bulb really went off and I’m glad that we found these things because now we’re gonna get into the treatment stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And one of the interesting things about this infection as well—well, first off, I saw pictures of you in the past before I knew you and you just looked bigger, more—more fuller in your—in your facial structure, and then when I met you in person a year or two later, I—I asked, I said, “Evan, you know, have you changed your diet at all recently?” Because I know you’re a big Paleo guy, so I–imagine you weren’t eating much sugar or carbs back then. You went, “No, I’m just losing weight and my diet’s pretty much the same.” And we did a diet review and you were like, exactly what you said, I’m like, “You have infection. There’s no way you’re losing this kind of weight without some kind of internal malabsorption.” And then we saw your fingernails, too, and we saw these vertical ridging and we’re like, I’m just, “There’s some kind of protein or fat malnutrition.” I know you kinda sat on it and then over time you were telling me some of the—you know, your cold hands, cold feet, you have it, every now and then you mentioned you’d have some kind of blood sugar or panic attacks explaining that we were connecting to some adrenal stress, and then we were saying, “Well, how is this adrenal stress happening because you’re so many good things right? And then we finally got this testing done and we were able to quantify that this is more than likely the driving factor and anyone of these infections by themselves is a pretty big deal, whether it’s Giardia or crypto by themselves. You have them together, so it’s like, you know, with—with the—all these forces combining it’s really an exponential issue. It’s gonna be far worse than having this one at a time.
Evan Brand: A double whammy. Yeah, and so I had a—a slide here that was from the Institute of Functional Medicine’s Intestinal Permeability Lecture and it was saying “a recent study revealed a 23.5% of clinical samples tested positive for at least one parasite”. So just go ahead and round that up to 25% of people that were getting tested had at least one parasite, and so we’re talking 1 in 4 basically. For me, it seems to be 1 in 3. And Blastocystis hominis was the number one at 12.5% and then you have Dientamoeba fragilis–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: And they had Entamoeba and then you had blah, blah, blah, and then Giardia’s at the bottom, 0.7%. So apparently Giardia’s pretty rare to even show up or to even have. So for me to have that and the crypto, you and I and Dr. Kurt, too, was also like, “Wow! This is rare to have.” And Kalish same thing, I’ve looked up a couple of his lectures and he said he had only seen it like once before of having the double whammy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and here’s the real important thing, too, is well, most conventional laboratories especially in a hospital setting aren’t gonna pick up the infection. Again, I think you said it to me, we did a 401H on you, they—where it came up and I don’t think it came up on every single sample because there’s 4 or 5 samples on that 401H test by BioHealth. We’ll give them a plug because they’re a really good lab testing company. How many samples do you—are you aware of that it came up on?
Evan Brand: I’m not aware of the number but it was, yeah, 5 or 6 samples over a 3-day period. So if we missed it on day 1, which if you’re doing the conventional stool test—actually, I had a—a female client last week that she actually had some really weird type of stools and so she ended up going to the hospital and getting a stool test there. It showed up negative for everything. So I’m waiting on her results for the same tests that I ran on myself. I’ll be so thrilled if we find something just to prove that those conventional ones fail once again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I’m finding even BioHealth, I’m teaming up with some other labs that are doing the PCR/DNA stool testing because it’s about 2 to 3,000 times more sensitive.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now sometimes BioHealth will pick certain things up that other labs don’t. So I’m gonna be really curious to get your DNA testing back either from DRG or GI-MAP because I think we’ll find maybe even something else there as well and here’s the real important take home, is you didn’t have a lot of the major conventional symptoms for Giardia. So like a lot of the conventional symptoms for Giardia are gonna be like lots of diarrhea, lots of gas, lots of bloating, right? You didn’t have a lot of those major, major symptoms. We did see, you know, we did see the malabsorption. I saw that more on the outside, but again a typical individual won’t make that connection because they’re not looking at your diet and how good it is. They—they’re not gonna be able to appreciate a conventional—a conventional physician won’t be able to appreciate a Paleo diet especially with the massive changes in weight you have. So I was able to notice that but you didn’t have a lot of those conventional Giardia symptoms and that’s why I just think it’s so important where if you have any health issues that you can’t quite put your finger on, and you’re going to a conventional doctor to think that they’re gonna be able to pick this up. A lot of times they’re not because most people—you didn’t have violent diarrhea. You didn’t have massive abdominal cramping. You didn’t have excessive gas or upset stomach or massive nausea, right?
Evan Brand: No, not really, I mean–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not really.
Evan Brand: That—that one day of food poisoning or whatever—whatever that was, we talked about it on a previous episode but that was the only real episode where I thought, “Wow!” Something was up with my gut and so it’s crazy. I didn’t wanna read in which I kind of alluded to already where you could pick this up, but you know, the Mayo Clinic, they write about how people become infected with Giardia and that’s after swallowing contaminated water that could—you know, where the Giardia parasite is found in lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, municipal water supplies, cisterns, swimming pools, water parks, and spas. And so I almost thought about we should title this episode like the downsides of being primal or something, because I go barefoot a lot of the time–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: Which I read that you can get exposed to somebody’s parasites via soil, and maybe I’m not soaping myself enough, you know, I will use from Dr. Bronner`s organic soap you know on the important areas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: And maybe—maybe sometimes I wasn’t cleaning myself enough and I was taking it too far with the whole dirt is good for you, you know, going barefoot, putting my hands in the dirt, in the mud in the backyard all the time. I could have picked something up that way, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely and the big issue, too, is with these—with these different infections, they can be spread fecal-oral, but Giardia and crypto can also be spread via water. So I do a lot of water skiing in Lake Austin every week so I’m—I’m gonna make sure I’m tested, you know, a couple times a year because you’re gonna get these infections two kinds of ways. You’re gonna get it, number one, where you’re chronically stressed whether it’s physical, chemical, emotional stress accumulating and the chemical could be food allergens, gluten. It could be blood sugar swings, skipping meals, not eating—not eating nutrient-dense foods. It could be toxicity issues. It could be a whole bunch of things, low stomach acid and enzymes and then that chronic stressor opens you up so when you get exposed to something, it’s able to set up shop and create basically a niche in your gut and start to proliferate more cysts and spores for other offspring. And that’s kinda like one, where you—the chronically ill person gets exposure. And then there’s people like you that are just—they’re healthier but they just get exposed to a large bolus of it over a period of time, maybe just all at once or maybe at multiple times throughout the week like you mentioned, like your symptoms are perfect, right? It’s a perfect script for it, and then—boom—now it sets up shop and then you’ve been gone from Austin for over a year and you’re not quite doing that same type of thing you were in Austin but look, you got two infections now. So more than likely the water issue was a–a big driving factor and you know, I’m gonna get myself tested like we talked about again because I do it yearly with a couple of different tests all at once and we’ll do a podcast analyzing my test results soon as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so looking back on what I think was definitely some of the factors that—that led me to this. I mean, I was still working at the supplement company, directly for the CEO, super–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: High position, super high stress position, and then I was also running my clinic on the side at the time. And this is when you and I were being able to—we got to hang out locally and I was just seeing clients, you know, outside of my basically 8 to 5 hours during the workday at the office and then coming home and spending more hours looking at research, looking at labs, talking with people, that low adrenal function, I had to burn myself through. I had to burn through stage 1. I probably had high cortisol, gave some leaky gut condition, maybe made myself more susceptible to all this stuff, made the perform storm of stressors, and maybe even lack of sleep from the stress that set me up. Now quickly which is kinda crazy actually, even though I still tested positive for these two parasites, I was still able to put on—I’ve put on about 6 lbs since I’ve moved back. I’ve got back in the gym, my strength’s coming back, my injury where I thought I had a hernia has healed. And so it’s amazing to see the progress that I’ve already made just by reducing the stress and being able to have more social interaction, being back in a—a place that I call home that makes me feel comfortable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So I’m excited to see what happens once we get these things knocked out, how my progress especially with my strength and my weight coming back will—will be.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely and also there are over 40 different kinds of Giardia. The main one that we get exposure to as humans is Giardia lamblia and that’s the—the so-called Beaver Fever that you can get exposed to in the water. It can also be spread fecal-orally so at some point, we’ll have to get your wife tested as well and make sure she’s treated because don’t want—we wanna make sure that vector isn’t being passed back and forth as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I looked at her fingernails. She’s got some vertical ridges, too. But you and I talked about off air, even if we were to get a positive results on her with the baby growing in her tummy, we can’t treat her right now anyway.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: So we’ll just have to wait until after the baby’s coming and—and look at it then.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely and also a big vector for Giardia, I’m gonna say it now because it just happened last month with a patient, is gonna be your pets especially dogs because dogs love to lick and there’s you know, a big article over at Petsandparasites.org, right? Dog owners and Giardia that’s a big one, but I had a patient come in and we had diagnosed her with Giardia the month before, the next month she came in and said, “By the way, my dog was having some issues, we brought him to the vet, and the vet said he had Giardia.” And she kinda felt bad because she thought maybe that she gave the dog Giardia and I said, “Other way around, he vectored that Giardia to you.” So for all these pet owners out there, be very careful of playing kissy-face with your—with your dogs because you know, they’re licking something else, if you know what I mean, and they’re going home and licking you and licking your face or licking your hands. So if they’re licking your face, that’s a no-no, and if they’re licking your hands, make sure you wash it off because they can vector these parasites, and I’ve seen many people that have worked with pets and with dogs and with animals, trainers and veterinarians, and they almost always come back with Giardia and multiple other infections.
Evan Brand: I wouldn’t doubt it if I got it from our Shih Tzu because if I’m playing with her and she’s slobbering all over the toy, I may not go and wash my hands right after I play with the toy and then I could touch my face and maybe even touch my mouth by accident.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: So who knows? You know, Lucy, our Shih Tzu, she may have Giardia as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s very possible. I would say one, we could get her tested, but al lot of times the conventional vet tests don’t work a bit, they aren’t awesome, but it’s worth a try, or you can just do a human-based test and see what happens on that. But number two, it may even be worth just treating your—your dog with the conventional antibiotics for that infection. So for the Giardia, that would be like Flagyl or metronidazole. Again, I typically don’t recommend the antibiotics for most people. You can do it. Some people will do it like the Flagyl or the metronidazole or Alinia or like the—the go-to antibiotics for the infections. I like the herbs better just because of the fact that the side-effects with the antibiotics can be very, very severe and a lot of times you get the better exposure with the herbs over a longer period of time. Because with the Giardia and other infections, the Giardia may be there but there may be a massive imbalance of other bad stuff and the herbs can kind of help knock that back down without all the side-effects. If someone wants to go the antibiotics route, then we’ll typically do antibiotics and then follow-up with herbs as well. The only issue with dogs—it just depends. If you can do herbs with your pet, that’s great. A lot of times it’s difficult to do that especially every single day. It’s easier just to do it with an antibiotic, you know knock down the vector and then come in with some good probiotics afterwards. But again herbs for humans are gonna be my number one—number one go-to with that, and I’ve knocked out hundreds in the past.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so let’s talk about the protocol that we’re gonna start with because antibiotics are the conventional option, the go-to thing for these types of infection, but you and I talked about it and we’re like, “Let’s—let’s go herbal route.” So we don’t have to go specifically over every single ingredient but wormwood and some of these other natural antiparasitic, antimicrobials, oil of oregano and then a—a few other supplements is gonna be the treatment protocol that I’m gonna be starting on. Everything’s ordered, I should have everything to my door in a few days and I’m gonna be started ASAP and then for the timeline–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just wanna touch upon just one thing–
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Real quick.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We—we didn’t quite highlight crypto yet, but crypto is another waterborne parasite but it can also be, you know, fecal-oral spread meaning some type of fecal material from whether it’s intercourse or whether it’s from poor preparations or not cleaning hands, that’s another vector these things can be spread by, but crypto is that other major parasite and again, like in the mid-90s I think it was Milwaukee, they had a major outbreak in the water supply where I think 500,000 people were infected with crypto. I think even 4 died.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So crypto is another big one. We’ve been giving Giardia a lot of love here, but crypto is another one that can be basically hide in the crypts. The crypts of Lieberkühn in the intestinal tract in between the microvilli buried deep out—deep down into the intestinal wall and that’s another infection that we’re dealing with here, that typically we have to kind of separate how we treat both of them because Giardia can move and get into the bile ducts and affect fat digestion and crypto can bury deep into the intestinal tract and in between those crypts where the microvilli are close by. So different infections, a lot of times will call for different treatments and both can be spread via water, fecal-oral, and a lot of the side-effects and symptoms may be the same, and again immuno-compromised people tend to have that, like a lot of your AIDS patients and such, but you know, you’re not in that camp, and you may just been stressed and got exposed to it, so it’s not just the super immuno-compromised that the conventional medicine people say. It could be someone like Evan who—who is super healthy and productive, and has a lot of energy—a lot of energy, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s amazing how much I’ve got done. You and I were kinda laughing like how productive I’ve been despite having these two type of infections simultaneously. So I can’t wait to see what happens as we kind of work through this protocol which the timeline that you and I have kinda discussed is about 2 months that we’re hoping we can knock these things out and retest and see what see what happens and then something on hand that I have for die-off, just some activated charcoal I ordered some of that just in case, and then I’ll be using a probiotic at night, too, just to try to help out with inflammation and then obviously I’m gonna stick with the probiotic, too. Once I’m done through this protocol and try to just focus a little bit more on gut healing and try to repair any type of damage that’s been done.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And even with the cryptosporidium it’s known that cryptosporidium causes zinc issues, zinc malabsorption. Well, let’s think about that, right? If we have low zinc, we need zinc to make hydrochloric acid. We need zinc to make our—especially testosterone, our hormones, it’s a really important building block for hormonal health. So if we have that, if we have low stomach acid now because we have now low zinc, we need zinc for our immune system, right? The zinc fingers are really important epigenetic factor for our DNA, and then we need stomach acid, we need our sex hormones, so you can see what happens here when you get an infection, the sequelae of how you tend to get sicker or symptoms get worse overtime because of malabsorption, lack of ability to break down food, low nutrients compromised immune system, compromised sex hormones, compromised ability to make more digestive secretions to break things down, different infections can hide in the bile ducts like Giardia and then create inability to shoot out bile so now we have an inability break down fat soluble nutrients, well, there goes vitamin A, D, E, K, all your EPA, DHA fats, cholesterol, and now we have this kind of bottleneck and then we miss all of these buildings blocks to make our hormones and be really healthy.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and I would like to add one other thing to it, too. We ran an organics and looked over that, and we were just talking about that together, too, which showed high arabinose; therefore, meaning that I have some candida issues going on on top of all of this. So kind of a triple whammy and it’s funny because I haven’t felt that bad and now thinking back a little bit though when I went, I guess this was a couple of years ago when I was kind of geeking out on the whole pyroluria topic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: And I ran the kryptopyrrole test which showed very, very high issues where I was gonna be lacking in the zinc and the B6.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ah, see!
Evan Brand: Yeah, so I’m wondering if it were—what, you know, chicken or egg here. Was it the kryptopyrrole issue first or was it the infection that led to the problems with zinc which elevated py—you know, the pyrroles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: I mean, what do you think? That’s—that’s a hard—hard thing to try to figure out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, again I’m partial to these infections causing a whole host of issues.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the big thing I wanna hammer home is you didn’t have a lot of the conventional symptoms so anyone that’s listening to this and think, “Well, I don’t have the main conventional symptoms. My conventional doctor said it couldn’t be this.” Think again. Evan is a perfect example right now and Evan is a super healthy guy and—and look what’s happening here. We saw symptoms in and around different areas and because of the fact that, I know you mentioned like maybe some—some anxiety at—at times, it’s very possible because of the protein and stuff. We looked on your organics, we’ll do a separate podcast on this. We saw some lower neurotransmitters.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think in—in the dopamine and catecholamines side of the fence and we need hydrochloric acid and we need healthy digestion to break down protein to convert those proteins to your brain chemicals. So it’s very possible this was driving some of the underlying, you know, slight anxiety under the surface as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and I’ve told you this, and I’ve told the listeners probably a dozen times, I’m not an anxious person–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: By nature. And so that was really odd for me to have some of these feelings of panic and anxiety overwhelming me where I literally had to leave the movie theater one time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: Because I was having a panic episode and I tell people this all the time, it’s not you necessarily. Like it’s not you as a person, that’s anxious. It’s your biochemistry. It’s your neurotransmitters. It’s the imbalance. It’s the overgrowth of bad guys in the gut. It’s—these are creating a toxic situation where it doesn’t matter who you are as a person, you can get overwhelmed and that’s what happened to me is that, sort of a good guy versus the bad guy, the light versus dark, the dark started to win on me a little bit so–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Really looking forward to get going with this thing and I—I can’t wait to see what you have. I mean, because you’re in—you’re in the water probably more now than I was, so–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s true. It’s true.
Evan Brand: I can’t wait to see what’s up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, I’ll be really curious, you know, healthier IgA, healthier hydrochloric acid can help because it’s like a disinfectant. You got a dirty table, the hydrochloric acid and/or IgA can come in there and clean that table off. In my real world analogy, that’s like using bleach, right? You–
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pour on the bleach out or using your—your Seven Generation natural cleaner for all everyone here that’s more naturally oriented. We’ll use that stuff, get it clean and then—boom—you got a nice table that you can eat off of, that’s kinda like your intestinal tract where you have IgA and hydrochloric acid that can basically pinch hit for that bleach in our real world analogy.
Evan Brand: Right. So just to finish off, I’m sure–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: People are curious. A couple other pieces to the puzzle that I’m still keeping support nutritionally, obviously keeping the diet dialed in, keeping the sleep dialed in, I—I can’t imagine if someone didn’t have all the things that I have dialed in. How awful they would feel to have two infections at the same time?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, my God.
Evan Brand: And so I really think, and you probably agree that this is the only way that I’ve been able to stay so productive is having the lifestyle and nutrition and the stress and the adrenals and all that in check, because otherwise I’d probably be a wreck. I don’t know. I don’t even wanna know really.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right.
Evan Brand: But I’m—I’m doing the fish oil, you know, I’m doing, you know, high potency. I’m trying to get at least a gram per day and then also doing some enzymes, doing some HCl, a little bit of oxbow, because thinking back and I don’t think I mentioned this to you before, when I first tried to start MCT oil, I was in such severe pain. I was rolling on the floor, you know–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Evan Brand: Grabbing my stomach from literally one teaspoon of MCT, and so this infection is making me—this makes me think that I was unable to digest fats because my gallbladder was impaired like you were mentioning. So this is—it’s kinda crazy now that I’m gathering all of these pieces that I didn’t think anything of when they happened in such isolated fashion.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, well, let’s just—I know you only got a few more minutes left here, Evan. Let’s just go into treatment real quick. I already alluded with the Giardia, the conventional is gonna be your Flagyl or metronidazole, your typical conventional. Some of the more functional medicine MDs or—or even people like myself sometimes we’ll use an antibiotics called Alinia, and we’ll use that as well. But you gotta be careful, there can be a lot of side-effects and I’ve seen many people already gone through antibiotics and still have the infection. I’ve seen it dozens and dozens and dozens of times just this week. So the—the moral of that story is don’t think because you get the antibiotics that it’s a slam dunk and it’s gone. Just don’t have that assumption and if you do the antibiotic route, you still wanna follow up with the herbs anyway because there’s a whole bunch of gastrointestinal imbalance that’s gonna be there and you wanna clean everything up.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so to be clear, we have both kind of talked about this and we’re not going antibiotic route. Yes, technically, we’re doing some natural antiparasitic, natural antimicrobials but not the conventional antibiotics, and we’re gonna be this for about 2 months and then we’re gonna re-test and see what happens after we use some of these remedies and see what type of results we get and then hopefully when we re-test we’ll see that it’s gone and we’ve wiped it out successfully and that’ll be another one for the books.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we’ll just kinda list off a couple of things that we’re doing but we’re doing higher dose oil of oregano, higher dose wormwood, higher dose berberines and black walnut and grapefruit seed extract. We’re gonna be adding in neem. We’re gonna be adding in bittermelon, barberry, and other different families of berberines. We may even talk about adding in some silver, and then there’s a couple of other herbal blends that we’ll do because we have to open up the crypts so we can get good exposure to these antimicrobials for the cryptosporidium, so we’re kind of doing two infections at the same time which is harder but I know you’re healthy enough to handle it but these are a whole bunch of families of herbs we’re using and you gotta be careful, too, because higher doses of wormwood can be very effective but they can also raise liver enzymes so we may have to add in binding support and liver support. So you really wanna make sure you’re working with someone that has experience. So one, you make sure you get a therapeutic dose, and two, you have the die-off binder support so if you start having too much of these biotoxins from these infections accumulation, you could have support there and maybe even have someone monitor your liver enzymes if needed as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, definitely. So obviously, we’re a little bit biased here. But without a doubt, for your health and for your overall wellness, even if you don’t have any symptoms at all which my own symptoms were really the nails and the cold hands and the cold feet, get tested, you know, reach out to one of us. Get tested. Run yourself through just for general wellness. You don’t have to be one of those people that wait—wait until you get sick or wait until you have 30 symptoms and you’re on 5 pharmaceuticals and then you get tested. Take the proactive approach like we’ve done. I could have been just fine. I could have just said, “Well, it’s winter time. It’s 20 degrees outside, hmm, I have cold hands and feet. No big deal.” I lost some weight, whatever, it was stress, and I could have just ignored this stuff. But just trying to be a little bit more proactive can really save your health and really save you from, I mean, not to bring up the—the big C word but I mean from cancer and other–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Chronic illnesses that could happen. If I were to—what if I were to keep this infection for 20 or 30 years?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And then finally get discovered. I mean, oh, my Lord.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My God. And the big thing, too, is—oh, I think one other thing we’ll—we’ll add in. We’ll put links so people if people wanna get access to some of the stool tests then they can at least click below, but you wanna make sure you get interpretation either someone like myself or Evan or a good functional medicine doctor that’s trained in—in what the next steps are because the big thing that you’re doing here, that we haven’t emphasized you—you mentioned it briefly, is you’re doing all the diet and lifestyle and adrenal stuff and we’re even getting you on some brain stuff as well, which is you know gonna help you go through this whole protocol without the side-effects and keep you functioning at an optimal level so you can help, you know, all the patients that you’re helping.
Evan Brand: Right, and luckily I have a little bit more of a relaxed lifestyle where I’m at home so if I need to take it easy on myself and block out some more time then I’ll be able to do that, but the goal is to maintain productivity and a lot of people they don’t have time to—to be sick and be laid out. So we’re trying to craft this protocol here to where I’m still being able to be on hustle mode and still work through this thing, so excited to get going and I’m really happy that we—that we could share this with you all today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I am, too, and this is such a clinically relevant podcast so please refer to all of your potential, you know, candidates or friends or family, anyone listening that could resonate with this, please share it out there because it’s so clinical and I think people that hear it and resonate are gonna actually be able to take direct action from this podcast and that may help bring some closure to some of the underlying chronic symptoms that may be there.
Evan Brand: Absolutely and just to hit—hit that drum a little bit harder one more time. This is not a theory podcast where our goal, which I did this for a hundred episodes successfully. We’ve hit 4 million downloads on iTunes, etc. you know, what I started with NotJustPaleo podcast was very successful and very enjoyable but it hit a certain point, and especially, you know, in our careers where we’re realizing, look we don’t have to have some random new name on the podcast every single week because what we have going with our clinics and what we’re actually doing in the trenches to me is becoming more important than having some new voice or new perspective on every week. So I’m glad that you guys—we’re still seeing the numbers of the downloads go up significantly when Dr. J and I are doing these episodes together, so thanks for your support and thanks for really digging deep with us and not just looking for the next piece of brain candy. We’re actually sharing the things that may get a little bit repetitive but every single person is different and for this type of scenario, for me, the practitioner to have a two parasites myself, it’s like wow! This stuff can happen to anyone so–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, and then Evan, do I have your permission to post up your—your lab work for this test online so people can actually see that this is the real deal.
Evan Brand: Yeah, of course.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great, and I know, we’re both running late, we both have patients because we’re in the trenches. We’re doing it. We’re rolling up our sleeves trying to help people get their health back, so Evan, thanks for this awesome show. Super inspired today with your story and I know that we’re just gonna help so many more.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well, take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks, Evan. You, too.
Evan Brand: Bye.
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