Mitochondria 101: The Key to Longevity
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
We all remember the mitochondria as the “powerhouse of the cell” from biology class. While most of us haven’t thought about these organelles since high school, the incredible power of the mitochondria has recently been gaining more and more attention. Today we’re going to take a refresher course in mitochondria, and learn how the mitochondria just might be the key to longevity.
What Are The Mitochondria?
Mitochondria are small organelles floating in our cells that produce about 90% of the chemical energy, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), that cells need to survive. Depending on how much energy a cell needs, some cells have thousands of mitochondria while others have none. These tiny organelles turn the electrons in the food we eat into energy our cells can use to power our bodies. Mitochondria are so important that they even have their own DNA, known as mitochondrial DNA (“mtDNA”).
Apoptosis: Cellular Suicide
In addition to creating energy, mitochondria produce other chemicals your body uses for various tasks, like breaking down waste, recycling waste products, and something called “apoptosis.” Apoptosis is programmed cell death and is crucial for a healthy body. When your body senses viruses and gene mutations, it may trigger apoptosis to prevent these from spreading. Cancer and tumors grow when left unchecked; apoptosis is needed to reign them in.
Click here to learn how to take your health to the next level!
Take Care of your Mitochondria
Healthy functioning mitochondria are essential for many of our life-sustaining metabolic processes. As essential to life as mitochondria are, they are also delicate and quite susceptible to damage. Mitochondrial dysfunction is currently characterized by a variety of metabolic illnesses.
The following conditions are associated with changes in the structure of mitochondrial DNA or are symptoms of mitochondrial damage or malfunctioning include
- Multiple Sclerosis: A neuroimmune disease, multiple sclerosis patients generally have impaired ATP synthesis, which is evidence of malfunctioning mitochondria. Most MS patients also have chronic oxidative stress.
- Autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD
- Fatigue: One of the most common symptoms of weak mitochondria is chronic fatigue.
- Motor skill problems, including trouble walking, talking or swallowing; loss of motor control; balance and coordination issues.
- Digestive issues: vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, acid reflux.
- Muscle aches, pains, weakness
- Heart, liver, kidney disease or dysfunction.
- Neurological problems,
- Age-related hearing loss
- Cyclic vomiting syndrome
- Cytochrome c oxidase deficiency
- Neuropathy, ataxia, and retinitis pigmentosa: muscle weakness, vision loss
- Stalled growth and development
- Respiratory problems
- Hormonal imbalance
Supporting Your Mitochondria Naturally
>>Healthy Lifestyle Habits: Avoid blue light at night, get full-spectrum sunlight, make conscious choices regarding the products you buy, get enough sleep.
Additionally, it’s important to be conscious of carcinogenic EMFs and minimize your exposure to these man-made electromagnetic frequencies. Healthy mitochondria can protect you from suffering too much damage from acute exposure, but constant bombardment from EMFs including cell phones, computers, Wi-Fi routers, microwaves, etc. will wear down your mitochondria. You can read more about protecting yourself from EMF radiation here.
>>Healthy Nutrition: Eating organic, whole foods is important for everyone. For an extramitochondrial boost, consider supplementation. I recommend Mito Synergy for a packed-punch of antioxidants and mitochondrial supporting nutrients.
Mito Synergy contains:
- Vitamin B: B vitamins are integral to mitochondrial energy production and proper mitochondrial function. A deficiency in any of the B vitamins disrupts normal energy production, leading to an accumulation of toxic byproducts and increasing oxidative stress.
- Creatine: Creatine is a substance similar to amino acids that you find in muscle cells. It can help increase muscle mass, strength, exercise performance, and protect against neurological diseases.
- L-Carnitine: Carnitine is an amino acid produced by the body, and is also found in red meat! It is involved in transporting compounds and also stimulates glutathione production—the master antioxidant.
- CoQ10: In order for our bodies to make use of the food we eat, our mitochondria has to turn food and oxygen into usable energy in the form of ATP. This conversion process requires the presence of CoQ10. Read more about CoQ10 here.
- Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA): ALA has actually been labeled a “mitochondrial nutrient” by researchers due to its ability to improve the structure and function of mitochondria. ALA has also been studied for its ability to increase antioxidant levels, restore vital enzyme activity, prevent oxidative damage, and protect against cognitive decline.
- Curcumin: Curcumin is anti-inflammatory: it works on a control switch called NF-κB. Genes generally aren’t turned completely on or off, it’s more like adjusting the volume on your stereo. Curcumin helps downregulate or turn down the volume on NF-κB, which results in less inflammatory markers and less inflammatory stress. Curcumin also upregulates glutathione, known as the master antioxidant that also protects mitochondria, by up to 600%!
Still have questions about the air inside your home? Click here to talk to a professional!
Foundational Nutrients for Optimal Health – Dr. Justin Podcast # 155
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand dive into the topic of nutrients and their importance to our bodies. Listen to this podcast and learn how B vitamins, Magnesium, Vitamin C & D, Selenium, Zinc and Omegas contribute to achieving a healthy body. Understand how these vitamins and minerals support different bodily functions and gain an understanding on how their deficiencies affect our health and cause unfavorable symptoms.
Explore other topics related to nutrients as they answer questions about leaky gut, H.pylori and some blood pressure medications which contribute to nutritional deficiency. Know some of the best sources of supplements and product recommendations which have been proven effective based on their practice and professional experience.
In this episode, we cover:
09:00 B vitamins
11:25 Minerals + Magnesium
28:15 Vitamin C, Selenium
36:26 Vitamin D
Evan Brand: A happy Monday. If you’re watching in the future I guess the day doesn’t matter but for us it does.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I had a great weekend, man. I was doing a little waterskiing action today. It was phenomenal—actually yesterday, I’m sorry. Great, great day and back in the saddle for an awesome Monday. Got some patients coming up right after our live podcast. How about yourself man? Anything good happening for you?
Evan Brand: Uh—Actually, Yeah. I’m going to create a pretty cool piece of content as soon as you and I get off the call together, I’m gonna go eat some lunch and a I’m gonna drive about an hour away to a local hemp farm where there’s a guy who has a Kentucky hemp oil company that I’ve been seeing his products everywhere. His son was having a major seizure disorder. His son was having hundreds of seizures within a week. And he started to use cannabis extracts to help his son and now his son has not had seizures for years— several years. And so this guy he moved from Northern California where he was growing medical cannabis and now he’s just growing hemp in Kentucky and so I’m driving to the farm. I’ll probably end up doing a podcast with him coz I don’t think it’s gonna be easy to do it in the field, but I’m gonna try to take my camera and puts— maybe a 45 minute little video together, try to interview him, get a little bit his story and share his products coz I’ve been using the CBD with my clients. And as you and I talk about with inflammation and the anti-anxiety benefits, you can pretty much use it with anyone. And it’s going to help regardless of the case whether it’s like Lyme or Hashimoto’s or H. pylori. Whatever we’re dealing with our clients, I mean we can pretty much use CBD across the board and we might notice some beneficial changes and it’s definitely not gonna hurt somebody. So looking forward to going to meet that guy. And stay tuned because I have a video probably the next week that’s gonna be published on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Yeah. I think CBD has some really good benefits. I use on handful of patients for pain issues, for sleep issues, uh—for anxiety, just from immune balance. And I do fine. It’s— it’s very good. CBD or Cannabis Diol is the non-psychoactive component of marijuana or hamper cannabis, if you will. THC Tetrahydro Cannabis that’s gonna be the part of the marijuana that gets you high and kinda gives you the munchies. So you get some of those benefits with the CBD without the, you know, the higher the munchies afterwards. And I’ve seen it work very well with seizures like you mentioned, very well with autoimmune and pain stuff. I mean it can be very therapeutic. I don’t think it fixes the root cause but I do think it’s very, very therapeutic. It can help.
Evan Brand: Right. Well said. Yeah. Definitely not gonna fix the root cause but I’ve had some people too that are in California, other states where they can even get recreational cannabis and I tell people go for it if they asked me because if they’re doing a tincture or they’re doing a spray or sublingual, they’re not having to smoke, they’re not having to use a vaporizer if they just don’t want to get the high, there’s— there’s tons of different options where you can do a high CBD. And a very tiny amount of THC where people can help fix their sleep. I had a __ in California she’s had chronic pain. She’s had Lyme forever. She said if she does CBD by itself, does pretty much nothing; but when she adds just like a milligram, so do say, 10 to 50 mg CBD, 1 mg THC, all the sudden the synergistic effect happens and the pain goes away.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. They can be very helpful. It’s a good tool in your functional medicine uh— pockets, so to speak.
Evan Brand: Yup. Hey, Robert, thanks for joining us. James, thanks for rejoining us. Our topic, well, we figure we’ll do a Q&A but our topic initially is about foundational nutrients kind of what the things that are actually worth your time and money because Justin and I were so many people come to us after they’ve been to other functional medicine practitioners. And we’ve got a kind of clean up the mess and there’s like 20 or 30 or 40 supplements that people are taking. And we like to try to whittle that down to just some of the foundations. And some things people are taking might help and can’t hurt, but if you’re spending a thousand bucks or something crazy amount on supplements, we really want to give you the stuff that just gonna move the needle coz why take something if it’s not gonna do stuff for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And again, kinda foundation before we go in is a Paleo template to start. And again, that’s macronutrient agnostic. It could be high-carb, low-carb, high-fat, moderate fat, high-protein, moderate protein, right? So we’re just focusing on the anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense, low toxin foods. That’s number one. And then from there, the next step above that is making sure we have the lifestyle stressors in order: sleep, hydration, uh—not eating when we’re really stressed, that’s number two. And number three is actually making sure we can digest the foods that we eat. We eat a really good diet but we can’t break it down. That’s the equivalent of going to the grocery store and leaving that food out on the counter, not putting it in the fridge for a week or two. It’s gonna rot. So the next step above that is HCL and enzymes and digestive nutrients so we can break those really good foods down. That’s our foundation. And once we have that, that’s where I think some of the nutrients come in. So with my patients, all of them, they’re on all either the Multi Nutrients Supreme or Multi support pack which has the extra, kinda stress handling nutrients that are gonna be in there which are gonna consist of high-quality B vitamins that are methylated or activated like P5P uhm—of course, like your B1, B2, right? Thiamine, riboflavin right? These are all—niacin—These are all important nutrients. Of course, activated LMTHF folate, of course, methylated B12 or some kind other adenosine hydroxy B12.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh—chelated minerals like calcium and magnesium and zinc and selenium, right? All chelated meaning they’re bound to specific amino acids, so that we can have better absorption. When we have an amino acid, kind of uhm—they’re next to it, it’s like an escort or a bodyguard for that nutrient to get where it needs to go in the body, if you will.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. A lot of these nutrients people are—I’m hearing feedback. What’s going on your end? Maybe your speakers are a bit loud.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m good on my end. I don’t hear anything here.
Evan Brand: You don’t? Okay. Leave us a comment in the YouTube if people hear the feedback at all, if you hear my voice echoing. A lot of people are so deficient in nutrients, even with an organic diet. And that is something that you and I see and measure on the stool test and then we see and measure that on the organic acids test, too. You know we’ve got a lot of people that come to us because they’ve heard us talking about like a ketogenic diet or some other high-fat diet. But then we can measure something called the steatocrit on the stool test. And so, if people wanna quantify, “Well how am I actually digesting”, “What can you guys teach me about my nutrients?” and “My diet’s perfect, I’m one of those guys, I want to try to fix everything with diet”, well, we can take a look and see if that’s actually working for you. So if we see steatocrit that’s high, that’s a fecal fat marker. You can look at your stool, of course, but it’s better to have a number. And if we see that your fecal fat marker’s high, well, we know we’ve got to give you some good fat digesting enzymes, help out the pancreas help out the gallbladder. And then also on the organic acids panel, we’re going to look at the amino acid markers, so we can see do you have the raw breakdown materials? Coz your proteins—like your animal proteins and pastured animal products—those are all made of amino acids. That’s like the breakdown products. Stuff like those and that’s what fuels your brain chemicals, your neurotransmitters and so, if we see you’re super low on amino acids, that’s a problem. So we have to fix it.
And like you mentioned, why is it happening? Well could be infections like Robert is uh— he’s a left us a comment here. He is talking about that he’s had Blasto, he’s had Klebsiella, he’s had Citrobacter—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: He’s resolved a lot of his infections through Dr. J’s uh—antimicrobials, which is awesome. I guarantee you are getting robbed for a long time of your—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. 100% So the first thing is, right, we have that kind of diet. So think of like your health is like running a business. So every year that you’re unhealthy is like a business, right, having more expenses than its profit, right? Where then its revenue— gross revenue, right? So you’re going a little bit more into debt, a little bit more into debt. The difference is you don’t go into bankruptcy court, right, and go bankrupt. You have symptoms. And those symptoms eventually may lead into a cluster of diseases or pathology whether it’s diabetes or it’s just obesity or maybe it’s cancer or heart disease or you’re just in this in between where you kinda have chronic fatigue, you don’t feel good, you’re kind of depressed. And then you’re in this in between where you go to the doctor and they’re just like, “Oh yeah, you’re just aging.” or “Here’s an antidepressant.” or “It’s all in your head.” And then you’re stuck with these kinda in between kind of diagnoses where you’re not— you don’t have a disease, but you sure don’t feel good and you’re not getting any answers, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s kinda the big thing that we see. So we’re like, alright, so imagine that that’s the equivalent of business $1 million in debt. Well just because you start having good business practice and start pulling a profit, you gotta now make above and beyond that million before you start coming back in the black. So that’s where it’s really good for some of these supplements to come in because they kinda, you know, act like a mini bailout or a mini—a mini business loan to kind of bring you back in the balance. So things like B vitamins are great because you burn these up when you’re stressed. And if you have a lot of dysbiotic bacteria, these cre— the good bacteria produce healthy amounts of B vitamins. If you have a lot of bad bacteria, you’re not getting the B vitamins and you’re also getting a lot of toxins, too, which create leaky gut and create more stress and cause you to burn B vitamins and also creates a lot of lactic acid which eats a lot of your B vitamins. So B vitamins are really important first step. And we have B vitamins like B1, which is Thiamine or B2, which is Riboflavin or B3, which is Niacin and B6, which is Pyridoxine 5 Phosphate or Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, B9, which is Folate, uhm—B 12, which is amino, B12, right? Uhm—Methylcobalamin Hydroxyl Adenosyl Cobalamin, right? These are important B vitamins especially if you’re a vegetarian. B12 is gonna be one of those that you’re missing. So any comments, Evan, on the B vitamins and how important they are.
Evan Brand: Yes, sir. Absolutely. And I’m gonna address Robert’s question at the same time answering uh—or adding a comment. He said “Can these infections result in high homocysteine levels?” The answer is absolutely yes and there’s a journal that I’ll send over to Justin so we can put it in the show notes. It was American family physician was the literature but it was an article all about vitamin B12 deficiency and basically what happens is whether it’s H. pylori or like they even talk about in this article which is surprising coz most conventional medical people they kinda disregard parasites, but it’s talking about the link between parasites and B12 deficiency and then the link between B12 deficiency in elevated homocysteine levels. So, yes, we may give you some type of supplement, It’s gonna have the B12 like we always talked about. We’ve gotta get to the root cause, too. So we’ve got to fix those infections like I’ve had. We gotta fix those, too, at the same time while supplementing. So let me send it to you, Justin, so we can—we can share with the listeners.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That sounds great. I think B vitamins are really important just number one because of the stress component; number two because of the gut bacteria component; and then number three just to kind of—most people are still stressed so they need those B vitamins just to help kind of breakeven every day. So that’s the first component. Uh next let’s talk about minerals. So one of the first important minerals is gonna be magnesium because it’s a mineral that has over 100 or 1000 roles 1000 and enzymatic roles in the body, right? It has a major effect on dealing with enzymes. So with Krebs cycle, with energy, with blood pressure, with mood, with, sleep, with relaxation, with stress. Lots of different roles in the body and it’s one of those that are just incredibly deficient in our food supply. There’s lots of studies on magnesium deficiency and that’s it literally prevalent over 50% of the population. So this is important and if we’re not eating organic, then the magnesium in our food will be lower. So magnesium is one of these things that we wanna make sure is in a high quality supplement. I put it in my supplement via magnesium malate. So it’s bound to malic acid which is a Krebs cycle kinda intermediary nutrient. So it’s really important for the Krebs cycle and that way we can at least guarantee a couple hundred milligrams but because it’s chelated, we you know, it—more of it gets into where it needs to go which is really important. So magnesium is another one of those very important nutrients.
Evan Brand: Good. Well said. Yeah. And if you bought magnesium at Walgreens or CVS or Walmart or Target probably magnesium oxide, we talked about this before, but it’s about a 4% absorption rate. So if you’re taking 100 mg, you’re getting 4% of that; if you’re taking a 1000 mg, 4% of that. So take a look at your supplement bottle, flipped it around and look at the form of magnesium. If it’s oxide, you could use it for constipation that’s about the only benefit. But like Justin’s talking about the to help fuel the enzymatic processes and help Krebs cycle and promote energy and all that, it’s not going to do anything. You’ve got a look at the malate’s; you’ve got a look at the taurates; you’ve got the citrate’s; the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Glycinate.
Evan Brand: Glycinate, the threonate. So there’s many, many good ones out there. And Mercola, I don’t know if he’s just saying this like anecdotally or if he’s got some literature on it, but Dr. Mercola’s recent talk about EMF and how he believes that the magnesium can help mitigate the EMF and he’s recommending like 2 g a day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Evan Brand: — of different forms of magnesium. It makes sense, but I don’t know the mechanism of how that would help.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Well if we look at the big magnesium foods, right? Magnesium is gonna be lower in foods, but it’s gonna be highest in our green vegetables— spinach, swiss chard, uh— pumpkin seeds uhm—you know, kefirs, things like that, almonds, some legumes, avocado, figs, dark chocolate—dark chocolate’s a really good one, uh— banana. Again, you just have to be careful because if you’re kind of having autoimmune issue, more on autoimmune template to start, well, seeds are out, any dairies out, legumes out, uhm— some of these—half your foods are gone.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you have to be careful like the big things are gonna be high quality dark chocolate, uh—lots of good greens. And if you can do one of these nuts or seeds like the pumpkin seeds I mentioned, that’s a really good place. But if not, that’s were leaning on a good supplement is gonna be helpful, but the green veggie, I think will be the key uhm—to that. So we just gotta keep in in mind, you know, there may be some foods that are really good for us made nutrient profile but they may have an inflammatory profile that’s— let’s just say, kinda contradicts or kinda—the risk outweighs the benefit of getting that nutrient coz of the inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I agree. So if you’re autoimmune protocol, if your digestion’s compromised, which it probably is if you’re on an autoimmune protocol coz you probably had an autoimmune illness and that’s what we’re recommending an AIP diet. Sounds like a magnesium supplement will be much— much, much more necessary and helpful. Uh— we had a question from Linda. She said, should she be concerned if every time she goes to the stool, so every time she poops uhm— there’s an oil slick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know if I would say– I don’t know if I would say scared but concerned, oh, right, yeah. I mean I would be scared if there was blood in the stool.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like you know decent bit of blood and it wasn’t just from a tiny bit of a hemorrhoid issue. But if I saw blood in the stool, I would be scared, for sure. I would definitely get that—some kind of a hem—some kind of an ulcer or cancer, make sure that’s ruled out. But with just the slick in the stool, I would be concerned because you’re not digesting your fat which means vitamin A, D, E, K your fat-soluble nutrients like your long chain fatty acids like EPA or DHEA or you know, coconut, good fats like that, you’re not absorbing those which means you’re gonna have blood sugar issues and you’re gonna have malabsorption, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Absolutely. So in that case, Linda, if you listen to us before, we’ll sound like a broken record, but if not, uh— you know, if you’re working with Justin or I, what we’re gonna end up doing with you would be looking at the stool test, we’ve gotta measure that fecal fat, the steatocrit marker, we’re gonna look for infections. So we’re gonna look for parasites; we’re gonna look for yeast; we’re gonna look for fungus; we’re gonna look for anything that’s gonna be stealing your nutrients or messing up that absorption. H. pylori if that’s suppressing the parietal cells that make hydrochloric acid in the gut. Now your whole digestive cascades is falling apart, we’re gonna look at medications. So if you’ve got a history or your currently taking some type of acid blocking drug we’ve got a factor that in coz that’s such a huge factor for fat digestion, too, if you’re just suppressing that. So we gotta look for those underlying causes but eventually, yes, we could fix the situation and probably add enzymes back in. Let’s address uh—Haley’s question, too, Justin, coz uh—it kinda ties into this. She said that she’s— her digestive enzymes can make your pancreas and gallbladder quote unquote lazy. What are your thoughts? We know that’s not true. With melatonin, yes, you can turn down the production of melatonin if you supplement. But with enzymes, my understanding is we’re only feeding the fire. Justin, can you comment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well even with melatonin I talked to Dr. Ron Rothenberg about that and he says long as the dose is relatively low that that won’t happen coz it’s a positive feedback loop with these things. But when it comes to hydrochloric acid and enzymes, one of the major feedback loops for HCl and enzymes is gastrin, right? And gastrin when you take supplemental HCl, enzyme levels are –or gastrin levels don’t drop. So it’s not like you get testosterone testicle shrink in size.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s not like that. So my bigger concern is that someone’s not making enough enzymes because they don’t have enough hydrochloric acid in the stomach and my concern is that’s— there’s not enough HCl on the stomach because of the sympathetic stress response, right? That fight or flight from food or from emotional stress or physical stress, so we, of course, we’re fixing that stuff upstream, right? Eating in a good, stress-free environment, not hydrating with food hydrating before, you know, we’re after biting after an hour or two but after, you know, 15 minutes before. And then we’re taking enough hydrochloric acid to lower the acidity so we can activate our own enzymes. But taking something is gonna be great coz I’m more concerned about that food sitting in your gut and not being digested and basically rotting and rancidifying and putrefying, creating stress by sitting in your gut.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s my bigger concern.
Evan Brand: I agree. So we hit the minerals. You talked about those you did great. We hit our magnesium which is gonna be probably number one. There’s a whole organization dedicated to magnesium deficiencies. If you type in gotmag, it think it’s gotmag.org. There’s like stage 2, 3 and 4 symptoms. You could even have insane symptoms, big issues, heart arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, all sorts of other like heart-related issues due to magnesium, if you’re deficient. So if you’ve got some heart flutters or some weird symptoms, the cardiologist, they’re not gonna know you’ve got a magnesium deficiency, they’re just gonna end up putting you on like a beta blocker or some type of heart rhythm drug like they’ve done to my grandmother. And they’re not addressing magnesium and these drugs they’re using are likely gonna deplete magnesium even more. So we could get into some really, really big serious health implications if we don’t address something that simple as magnesium.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, hundred percent. So again, big source of magnesium, in my line, I have one called Magnesium Supreme. That’s a magnesium malate. That malate’s are– the malic acid so that helps in the Krebs cycle, it helps with energy but also has a relaxation effect. So that’s one of the ones I formulated. I still even like a little bit of magnesium citrate at night. I think it’s great. It may not be the best absorbed, it’s cheaper but it’s still good. So I like my Magnesium Supreme and then we use the Malate— Magnesium Malate in all the multis. And the multi-nutrients Supreme, in the twice or in the Multisuper pack. So that’s kind of what we have. I like those. I use those daily. I think they’re great. And then for kids that may be uh—you know have serious gut issues, we may do like a magnesium threonate kinda gel to help or magnesium chloride kind of uhm—Epsom salt bath, too.
Evan Brand: Nice. And with the anxiety like PTSD, traumas, phobias, the supplement in my line is called Calm Clarity. And I’ve used that one with great success with people especially veterans who come back from war and they’ve just got a lot of emotional trauma or women who’ve been through some type of abuse threonate crosses the blood brain barrier. So that’s another form of magnesium and not any one form is perfect but you can use a combination of these. So like Justin mention, you wanna cycle. Maybe you’ve got some malate here, you’ve got some citrate here—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: You can add different forms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then we’ll put show notes and links to some of these things. So if you guys want to support the show, we always appreciate that. We’re just trying to get you the best information possible. Now, I talked about the magnesium foods. Some of the B vitamin foods, okay? Again, you’re gonna have like if you go online and look you’re gonna see the fortified ones which are gonna be cereals and orange juices which is basically crappy, crappy B vitamins.
Evan Brand: Garbage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The worst quality. So do not count on any of the B vitamins from those foods. And number one, you shouldn’t be eating those foods, anyway coz they’re very high in sugar. With the orange juices and the grains are obviously gonna be the gluten thing which are gonna be inflammatory as well. So cut those out, nix those out. But you’re gonna do really with fish, with vegetables, with fruits, with meats, with leafy greens, egg yolks. So a lot of the Paleo versions of those are gonna have super, super high amount of B vitamins which is great.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Like Pop Tarts, like fortified with 12 vitamins and minerals. It’s like, “Oh yeah, let’s just eat pop tarts, high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified glyphosate sprayed wheat flour. We’re gonna be just fine.” Not true, not true, not true.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Remember, when you take in a lot of sugar and refined carbohydrate, all that refine carbohydrate converts to sugar and when you look at the Krebs cycle, how that Krebs cycle pumps around and it goes through all these kind of uhm—you know, reduction reactions where all these hydrogens kind of accumulate. It takes magnesium to run those cycles and if you’re basically—if it’s costing you more magnesium to run the cycle than you’re getting in, this is what we call nutrient debt, right? You’re not getting as much from it than you are— for the cost to run it, okay? So keep that in the back of your mind.
Evan Brand: Luckily the human body is resilient. I mean if that— if we we’re like a car, you and I use car analogies, if we we’re at such a nutrient debt like most people are, the car would be dead. But luckily our body will still survive. You just won’t thrive in these situations. You could have hair issues, skin issues, nail issues, like you said, autoimmune diseases, cancer, you’ve got bad skin, you’ve got acne, you’ve got poor sleep problems, you’ve got anxiety, depression, you’ve got chronic fatigue, you’ve got obesity. I mean, a lot of these diseases that have skyrocketed 10,000% over the last 20 years, there’s many, many factors that we can address in one podcast but like you mentioned, just a nutrient— the nutrient density of the soil has been reduced which is why—and I didn’t tell you this yet, but I uh—expanded my property. I bought the acre next door as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, cool.
Evan Brand: I’m gonna have a 1 acre farm and I’m gonna have as much of my food come from that as possible. Not the meats coz there’s a couple restrictions on having animals but my goal is to provide 50% is my goal. Uh— 50% of my own food. I’ve already grown stuff this year. I’ve had watermelons. Last year, I had bunch of sweet potatoes, I had strawberries, I had broccoli, carrots, all organic homegrown. There’s no more local—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Evan Brand: ..that you can get than your backyard.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And you can even team up with some farmers and make a deal and say, “Hey, you can use my land and I’ll give you half of what’s on there.”
Evan Brand: I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz then you don’t have to worry about it at all. And you kinda make this deal, they get free land but they get half the food. Hey, there’s enough food for you and your family. The rest may go bad anyway, so you may end up giving it away, anyway. So that could be a good deal for you.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m gonna try to do some pecan trees and I’ve got all sorts of ideas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. Yeah. Very cool, man. I think it’s important that uhm— people have to understand that your body is like a business. When a business starts having low profits and starts— the revenue starts dropping, the business has to either get incredibly efficient or typically, more than likely, lays people off, right? It fires people, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it goes off, it fires people that are least essential to driving the profit. Well, the body does the same thing. It just starts allocating resources to other areas. Some dead skin, it’s okay, we’ll have some irritation, it will get wrinkly and creepy, it’s okay, no problem. Fingernails—weaker, more brittle; hormones will be a little bit lower that means you’ll have a lot of cycles, you know, symptoms with your cycle; you’ll have lower libido; you won’t be able to recover from strenuous work out; you won’t be able to put on muscle, that’s okay, no big deal. And uh—yeah, we won’t—we won’t put it– inflammation as much so you’ll be a little bit more achy, you know, you’ll be little bit more prone to osteopenia or osteoporosis. That’s how the body thinks. Uhm– that’s how it allocates. It’s all about survival. We are really about surviving. So those nutrients help run those systems. We really want to make sure that we have enough nutrients to run systems. There a lot of people they’re focused on calories and if you’re eating a real whole foods those calories will have nutrition, but today, it’s possible with the whole pop tart analogy or the junk food analogy, you can get a whole bunch of calories and not a lot of nutrition on the flipside. So you gotta keep that in mind.
Evan Brand: Agreed. You wanna hit a couple more questions or should we try to move the conversation into some more nutrients. I’ve had vitamin C just echoing in my brain that I have to just talk about vitamin C.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s hit that. I wanna hit one last thing on magnesium and we can tie it to vitamin C. There’s a lot of the medications that are out there will actually create nutrient deficiencies. And one of the biggest ones are the blood pressure medications, the water pills, the Hydrochlorothi—Hydrochlorothiazide, the Lisinopril, the ACE inhibitors, right, the beta blockers. These will actually create magnesium deficiency which magnesium is really important for regulating blood pressure, so that actually create more blood pressure, which creates more dependency on these medications. So you can see that vicious cycle. So keep in mind the nutrient deficiency aspect with these drugs. Same thing with birth control pills and B vitamins as well and magnesium. So those are couple of common medications. And then the granddaddy of them all is gonna be the acid blockers that will affect nutrients in many directions, B vitamins, minerals etc.
Evan Brand: Yup. The Omni— is it Omni with an “n” or is it “m”? Omne—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Omneprozol. O-M-N-E and then prozol.
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: That’s great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Prilosec that’s the trade name of it. That’s the—Omneprozol is the generic. So yeah, these are the medications. These are the family of meds we got to be careful of. So, kinda tagging into your vitamin C. I’ll let you the ball with that Evan.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I just wanna—one more comment on the Prilosec.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And the thing that’s scary is these acid blockers used to be prescription and now they’re over-the-counter. So people just go to Target and they just go buy a 48 pack of these, six month supply and they throw that giant value pack 20% more pills into their shopping cart and they just go home, “Oh, yeah, Prilosec.” It’s like, “good God”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s really interesting because you know you get all the people that say, “Oh, you have to be such a super, super smart medical doctor to prescribe these drugs. They’re so dangerous. You need to have, you know, a medical Dr. kinda looking over you. And of course, that it—that is true with in a lot of cases, yeah, they contradict themselves coz then these drugs seven years later when the patent goes out, once they go generic and there’s no money behind them, they go over-the-counter.
Evan Brand: Oh my God.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Look at Ibuprofen, right? It kills 20,000 people a year and now it’s over-the-counter. It’s okay.
Evan Brand: Ugh. Insane isn’t it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So I mean, you kinda talk on both sides of the mouth and you know, we pointed out. Uhm so, yeah, in general, the medications that you’re gonna see that are gonna be out there, primarily are gonna be the patented ones. Once that seven-year patents off or if they can create a mini-me version of it, then it’s over-the-counter and anyone can buy it. It’s up for grabs now.
Evan Brand: Fortunately, beta-blockers and antidepressants are still prescription only. So, that’s good. We’re saving a lot of issues with that. But yeah, let me get back on subject. Vitamin C is huge. It’s gonna be stored in the adrenal glands, typically.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So Justin and I are gonna measure your nutritional markers when we run organic acids testing on you. We’re gonna look at a lot of nutrients. Nine times out of 10 vitamin C shows up low because people burn through it like jet fuel, just like B vitamins that Justin mention about stress, same thing with vitamin C. There is a reference range most people aren’t even on the map. I’m seeing people at like a point level, like a decimal point level when they should be hundreds of times higher. So I’m typically gonna be using about 2000 mg and I’ve had people say, “Oh Evan, I’ve taken vitamin C for years they still show up low because they were using some garbage they got at like a health food store. Even thought it’s a health food store could still have inferior quality or it’s a consumer break— consumer grade product they bought at Whole Foods or Amazon or somewhere else. And they’re not using professional grade or they’re just using ascorbic acid only, which is decent. But to really boost up the levels, you’ve got to have the antioxidants with it. The quercetin, the rutin, the bioflavonoids.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mixed ascorbate.
Evan Brand: Yeah. You gotta have the mixed ascorbates, too. You’ve got the magnesium ascorbate, the calcium ascorbate, the sodium ascorbates. If you just do—like what is it? emergency that garbage that they sell at the check out line at Walgreens or other places where it’s not only is it just rate ascorbic acid it’s got fructose in there, too, which is gonna destroy blood sugar. That’s not gonna do anything. You could buy a year supply of that and not move the needle. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent, man. So may—uh—Vitamin C is really important. I also say selenium is one of these things that are very important as well because it’s important for thyroid conversion. Uhm— it’s important for liver detoxification, it’s important precursor for glutathione, right? And we like to give that neither like a Selenium Glycinate or Selenium Methionine kinda bound to one of these sulfur amino acids.
Evan Brand: Let me ask you this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: What do you say to all these people, “Oh, Justin, I don’t need Selenium. I eat three Brazil nuts per day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I mean I think that’s a really good source of selenium; the problem is the amount of selenium in those brazil nuts can vary tenfold. So you could either be getting 50 µg or 500 µg. So the problem is you just don’t know how much you’re getting in each of them. So I think it’s good if you wanna do a Brazil nut or two a day. Just make sure that the uhm—the multi you’re taking guarantees you at least 200 µg of selenium per day. And I think you’re in a really really, good place.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And we talked about the absorption issue. So if somebody has got some gut bugs, doesn’t matter if you eat the Brazil nuts. You could probably eat a whole bag and not boost up selenium, if you’re deficient and you’ve got things stealing your nutrients or compromising your digestive quality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And it’s just good to have that insurance policy with selenium. Uh—it’s gonna be hard to overdose with it if you’re in that 2 to 400 µg range and you’re using a good quality like Selenium Methionine. You’re gonna be in really good shape. And again, just kinda tag teaming, we got a lot of people talking about hormone stuff. Selenium is really important for hormones especially testosterone and then we even have Zinc, right? Whether it’s zinc aspartate or zinc methionine or uhm— zinc’s really important. The zinc fingers have a lot to do with the genetics like the DNA the epigenetics. So having enough zinc is really important to activating— having good affects our epigenome. Zinc is extremely important for making HCl. It’s a really good building block for our sex hormones as well. So gotta love zinc and when you’re stressed and you have low hydrochloric acid level, zinc can go low. And you can do is a tally test. We do some Zinc Chloride or—is it Chloride or Sulfate? I was getting confused.
Evan Brand: I think Sulfate for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So Zinc Sulfate. We could do a Zinc Sulfate test. The more metallic you’re tasting it is, the better— the better your Zinc is. The better or the more neutral taste, the lower your zinc is. That’s a good little kind of rule of thumb test.
Evan Brand: So people heard that, they’re like, “What the hell is he talking about?” So basically, uh—Justin and I can send a high-quality liquid Zinc Sulfate and based on the status of your zinc, that will change the flavor of the zinc. When I took this test a few years ago, I think they say, “hold it in your mouth for up to 30 seconds” So you put a little bit zinc in your mouth, you kinda gently swish it around. I swallowed it,. I tasted nothing. That was when I had all those infections. I literally tasted nothing. It tasted like water. My zinc was trashed and then as you improve infections, you get your digestion better, your supplementing with the right type of zinc, all the sudden you could put the zinc in your mouth and then it almost tastes like your licking a piece of metal like right away. That’s the goal but would you say, Justin? 95% of people they’re not going to taste the metal right away which means they’re super deficient.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean a lot of them are gonna be deficient if they have gut issues or stress issues or malabsorption those kind of thing for sure. So I think that’s a really important one look at. So we hit the Vitamin C, we hit Magnesium we hit Selenium and we hit Zinc.
Evan Brand: I’d say Omegas and vitamin D would be two others we have to mention.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think Omega-3 is really important which is—the typical Omega-3 fatty acids there is ALA Alpha Linolenic Acid. That’s the omega-3 in flaxseed oil. We have EPA which is 20-chain carbon which is Eicosapentaenoic Acid, that’s EPA. And then we have the_ DHEA. These are the 20 and 22. The EPA or the DHEA are the fats found in fish oil. These are the really important ones. These have all of the anti-inflammatory action. They help block this prostaglandin E2 pathway which gets inflammation jacked up. They also are really good building blocks for the brain and the neurological system. And the ALA are the Alpha Linolenic Acid from the flax seeds and the vegetables, that actually has to get converted via this enzyme, I think it’s Delta 5 Desaturase. And that enzyme converts the 18 carbon to the 20 carbon and things like insulin resistance and inflammation and stress can affect that conversion and knock it decreased function by 80 to 90%. So you’re not getting those really biologically active omega-3 fatty acids when you’re doing a lot of the plant-based Omega-3’s because of those mechanisms I mention. So getting the really good Omega-3’s from the fish is going to the best way. Plus the fish actually bio accumulate how the plants get it which will typically is the algae, right? A lot of the good vegetable, Omega-3 supplements vegetarian ones are gonna be algae based. Well the fish concentrate the algae. It’s kinda like the grass that cows concentrate the grass. So you’re kinda getting that bioaccumulation in a more concentrated form when you’re doing some of these really good fish oils.
Evan Brand: Well said. Yeah. Pastured meats, too, you will get some— you will get some fatty acid. So your bisons, your elk, which are my two favorites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Your grass-fed beef, pastured pork. I would assume you’d get some from pork.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. More than likely you’re gonna get some from any of the animal products. The healthier they are, the more pastured they—the more pastured, the more biologically appropriate their diet is, uhm— the better chance that you’re gonna get more of these Omega-3 fatty acids than the more inflammatory Omega 6. But again, Arachidonic Acids are really important building block which is an Omega-6 fatty acid, but that’s gonna be a really good fat, too. So you don’t want to say, “Oh, all Omega-6 is bad. It’s just gonna really be a lot more of the Omega-6 that are gonna be driven from vegetable oils like refined vegetable oils, right? The good vegetable oils are gonna be olive oil which is a—a Oleic Acid which is really an Omega-9, your—your uhm—short chain fatty acids are gonna come from your butters and ghee which that’s gonna be more animal-based. MCT oil or your Caproic, Caprylic uhm—Lauric acids. These C6, C8, C10, C12 fatty acids, these are gonna be in the coconut. That’s great. Uh—so those are gonna be some of the really good ones to start with. All avocado oils, another really good neutral one as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I just wanna point out the fact that we’re hitting a lot of really good foundational nutrients but we could do entire episodes just on magnesium, just on vitamin C.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We have that on magnesium. I know that.
Evan Brand: I think we did. Yeah. So if—if we feel like we’re glossing over some deep aspects, then that’s okay. The vitamin D that’s huge. It’s really a hormone called vitamin but vitamin D is important we like to your levels at preferably 60 or above. I say nine out of every 10 people are gonna. be deficient in magnesium As you get older, you can’t convert sunlight into usable vitamin D as much. So even if you’re getting plenty of sun exposure which I’ve talked to people who garden for six hours a day, they are still deficient in vitamin D. And so in less— you’re like Dr. Mercola, where he said he hadn’t supplemented in seven years, something like that, 5-6-7 years, he lives at a very south latitude in Florida. He’s out on the beach hours— three hours a day with so much skin exposed and he keeps his levels at about 60. So I unless you got that amount of time and lifestyle to dedicate—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: ..to sun, it’s gonna be really tough to keep it at adequate level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I hundred percent agree. So Vitamin D is really important. We try to do it with actual sun exposure, uhm— don’t burn, kinda get your Minimal Erythemal Dose, MED, if you will. And uhm— supplement the rest. If you can— if you just do a really good 25 hydroxy vitamin or a regular vitamin D3, mine’s uh—Emulsi D Supreme and it’s got the uh—MCT oil and the vitamin D3—D3 in there which is a really good form. Again, you can also add some K2 in it. My biggest issue is you don’t get enough vitamin D with the K2 ones but just make sure getting some really good K2 in your foods which fermented foods are gonna have a lot of K2 uhm—a healthy gut bacteria makes some K2 and then also a healthy grass-fed butter or ghee are gonna be other excellent sources of vitamin K2 as well.
Evan Brand: So Designs has one that’s got 5000 IU of D+ K warning K2. I can’t remember the name. But it’s a pretty good one and I’ve used it before think. I think—I think it’s gonna be called the Su—I think it’s Supreme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: That’s what is it. D Supreme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem is the vitamin D levels in it are very, very low. That’s the only issue.
Evan Brand: I think it’s a 5000. What are you—what are you talking about using? You talking about using 8 or 10 thousand or is 5,000 good in your eyes?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It just depends. I like doing the liquid Vitamin D just because if I need to use it therapeutically like someone’s sick, right? I may do 100,000 IUs—
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that ends up being like 20 or 30 pills. It becomes doing too hard, so it’s easier to take like 30 or 40 drops put in your smoothie and you don’t even know you had it.
Evan Brand: Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I go more with the liquid, but again, your great vitamin K sources are gonna your green leafy’s, fermented foods like—like Natto, of course, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, fermented dairy, prunes, uh—high quality uh— grass-fed butter or ghee. So you really, you know, you can get a lot of those uhm—make sure you’re getting a lot of good nutrients from those foods. Make sure their organic and that will help significantly. So if you’re doing a vitamin D, you really want to make sure that K2’s there and make sure those foods are really good in your diet and a lot of good multis and have a little bit of K2 in there, too.
Evan Brand: Good, good. Well said. Shall we look at a couple questions here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Let’s hit them.
Evan Brand: Okay. So uh—we had a question about Mercola’s complete probiotic. It’s probably decent, Justin and I use professional grade. So if there’s a consumer grade product out there, we’re always gonna say ours is better because we’ve got healthcare manufacturers that make our products. There is very, very, very stringent restrictions in testing and manufacturing processes that we use and so were always going to push you towards our probiotics instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: His is probably good, though.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m sure their good. I mean Mercola’s, you know, he’s very detail oriented. So I’m sure his are good but we’re biased. So we’re gonna want you to buy ours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So you could check out uh—justinhealth.com Check out his line. He’s got several in the gut support section and I’ve got a few formulas, too, that I’ve got on my site evanbrand.com You can check out those.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Perfect.
Evan Brand: Alright. Let’s keep going. What else as we’ve got here? Uh— Robert he asked, “What foods and supplements can you take to speed up restoring low secretory IGA?” What do you think? I think a lot of the gut supports like the leaky gut formulas, your slippery elm, your marshmallow roots, chamomile flowers, anything that’s kinda fix a leaky gut situation maybe some mushrooms to support the IGA for the immune system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think making sure the infections are gone, number one. Making sure the diet’s good. Making sure you’re breaking down the foods that you’re eating. Uhm— number three, once the infections gone, adding in a lot of the healing nutrients. So in my line, we use one called, GI Restore, which is a lot of those same nutrients. Uhm—it’s got the glutamine, it’s got the slippery Elm, the aloe, the DGL, a lot of the healing, soothing nutrients. Getting the probiotics up is gonna be really helpful, you know, the Lactobacillus, the Bifidobacter strands, various strands there. Also very high amounts Saccharomyces Boulardiis is proven to help improve IgA levels. So those are really good things that you can add in there. And just making sure the adrenals are supported.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because a healthy cortisol levels have a impact on your immune system which has an impact on your IgA. Coz your IgA is that mucosal that first-line defense for your immune system.
Evan Brand: Yes. So chronic stress, too, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: If you’re taking all the supplements in the world but you have a terrible boss and you hate your life, you’ve got to address that chronic stress component coz that’s gonna be the number one cause that’s going to drive down the secretory IgA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent.
Evan Brand: Uh—there’s another question here. There was a supplement a person had to had a tiny bit of soy lecithin in it should they be concerned? What’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wouldn’t worry about soy lecithin. It’s tough. Uhm—soy lecithin is more of an emulsifier. It’s more to help with the digestion and the mixing of that product is typically not gonna be soy protein in that.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The soy protein is really what causes the problems. Lecithin’s more of an emulsifier. So as long as it’s a good quality product uhm— I’m okay with there being a little bit of soy lecithin in there.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I’ve got a couple formulas that have it in there. I’ve had people say, “Oh my God, I’m allergic to soy.” They’re fine. They have no issue. that’s not actually— it’s such a— it’s such an extracted form that it’s not like you’re eating soy. You’re not eating soybean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And then in my line, I think I may just have a few that have soy lecithin in there. But we were able to make sure that it’s guaranteed that it’s non-GMO soy. So you really want to make sure it’s at least non-GMO soy lecithin. And as long as that’s there, I’m okay with it.
Evan Brand: And it’s gonna be a tiny amount. When you look at the formula we’re talking and the other ingredients, it’s not an active ingredient. So could be 1% of the formula.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And less, you know, single digits fraction of percents for sure.
Evan Brand: Yup. Good. What else we’ve got here? If you feel like hitting this and we can, we can save it for another day—symptoms of chronic intestinal infections. I think we hit on that already with the hair, the skin, the nails, the acne, depression, anxiety, fatigue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. All your— all your common symptoms, right? Your uhm— your intestinal symptoms: bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, acid reflux. And then your extra intestinal which are all the mood-based and energy-based: fatigue, mood, joint pain, depression, anxiety. Those kind of things, sleep,—
Evan Brand: Autoimmunity—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hormone stuff, autoimmunity. And we got a whole podcast on that. So just google digestion or parasites or leaky gut and you’ll get a whole bunch of podcast and videos on that topic.
Evan Brand: Cool. Robert said he loved our podcast on histamine and it hit home prior to having infections no foods were problem, uh—post infection, fermented foods read havoc on him. So thanks for the podcast. Thanks for the feedback Robert. We love to hear that the histamine podcast was a killer one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m looking forward to chatting with you soon, Robert. I know uhm—you’ve been doing good work on your— on yourself there with uh— some of those good informational put in the podcast. But if you need more support, let us know. I’d get retested. Make sure we get to the root cause coz if those issues are still there with the post histamine stuff, there may be some additional critters hanging around.
Evan Brand: Yep. I agree. Another question about chronic dry eyes. “How often have you seen this with your patients? I’m working on healing the gut do you think there could be other root causes to dry eyes?” Justin, what’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Chronically low cortisol. You’ll see load—you’ll see dry eyes. Typically, get your diet stable. Once your diet’s stable, you can add a lower carbohydrate kinda diet. If those dry eyes are still there, gently taper out that carbohydrate every couple of days. You know, 10- 15 g of carbs primarily at nights. Do the safe starchy versions: squash, sweet potatoes, plantains, those kind of things. And you may see those dry eyes start to go away. You can even try a tablespoon of coconut oil and a teaspoon of honey, right, before bed as well that may help.
Evan Brand: Cool. So what else we’ve got? “Can I re-infect myself with H. pylori with makeup like lipsticks that I’ve used when I had H. pylori? I’ve no idea what the lifespan of that is on the product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is possible. I mean I would just look at uhm—the lipstick stuff. Maybe just get a razor blade and cut that end off there. I think you’d probably be okay with that. Uhm— typically, you know, as you knock out the infection, you know, you’d still be using it. So eventually, you’d wear off that but I think if you wanna be on the safe side, I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Even more important uhm—things that you can quite excise as easy like partners, right? Spouses. Ideally getting them at least treated semi- “semi” meaning maybe we only use one supplement just coz the compliance is so important. I would really be more—more imperative on the spouses and the partners.
Evan Brand: I agree. Partners are probably much bigger issue, much bigger carrier and reinfection source than your makeup and lipstick. I don’t know of any high-quality lipstick. Maybe they’re out there, but I would just throw that stuff away and maybe does discontinue using lipstick, too. I doubt you’re missing out on much in you know it’s— there’s parabens and all sorts of other stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And they have some really good things on the market now that do a lot like food-based ones where they are like extracting cherries and all these different food-based ones that kinda produces the fruit-based stain and kinda gives you a similar look but it’s using nutrition and foods versus, you know, some of the synthetic things.
Evan Brand: Uhh..okay, okay. So maybe you— maybe you stick with the lipstick then. Alright. James said he had a over sympathetic—let’s see having over sympathetic with sexual activity does blood pressure med Norvasc affect ED issues? That’s kinda like—I don’t even fully understand what you’re saying coz it’s kinda like a piece together thing. Are you understanding what he’s asking?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think what he’s saying is those medications have a potential side effect of erectile dysfunction? I would just go to RXlist.com and put that medication in there and look at that long list of side effects. I can—I can do it from right here while we continue with the conversation. What was the medication called again?
Evan Brand: It’s N-O-R-V-A-S-C. Norvasc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, cool. I’ll pull it up here in a second. N-O-R-V-A-S-C?
Evan Brand: N-O-R-V-A-S-C. as in Charlie.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Norvasc. Got it. Okay, cool.
Evan Brand: Then he’s saying, even with Viagra, it doesn’t correct lack of sensitivity. So, yeah, I mean here’s my easy quick answer. If you didn’t have those symptoms before and now you’re on this drug and those symptoms are happening, how could that not be a factor?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. This is a an—an—Am—Amlodipine, which is a basically a calcium channel blocker, okay? Which is a calcium channel blocker, which again, magnesium kind of does the same thing, FYI. And if we look at the side effects, uh—feelings like you may pass out, swelling in your hands feet and ankles, pounding heart beat or fluttering on your chest, chest pain, heavy pain spreading arms and shoulders, nausea, general ill and there’s more uhm— side effects as well. So—
Evan Brand: It’s like a commercial all of a sudden.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, right? Let me see here: dizziness, drowsiness, tired, stomach pain—
Evan Brand: What is this—what is that? That’s for blood pressure? Is that right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. This is for blood pressure medication, but I think what you said is the best advice if that wasn’t there before and then you started taking the medication and it started happening, as long as your blood pressure is not too bad and you could taper down or you could come off with your doctor’s approval, uhm— I would have no problem doing that and seeing if those symptoms improve, then you know. Coz in the end, if it’s not a side effect on RX list.com but you take the meds out and it gets better, does it really matter that they say it is? We know clinically, right?
Evan Brand: Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: There’s so many ways. Didn’t we do a whole podcast—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Don’t—don’t come off. If your blood pressure is 160-170 and you’re on blood pressure medications, coz it will go that high afterwards, don’t come off it. You really want to make sure that if you’re on a medication and you wanted to try and see if there’s an issue, one, fix the root causes; but two, talk to the medical doctor that prescribed it and make sure they’re in concurrence—you know, in agreement with you on the taper that you’re going to do. Make sure they are on the same page.
Evan Brand: Yes. Some people they go to the other end of the spectrum where there are so anti-pharmaceutical that “I’m getting off of this.” That’s bad. You— that’s like stroke territory. So don’t do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You just gotta be careful. Some people if you’re like 130 or 140 over like 80 or 90, not too bad. You could probably come off as long as you’re fixing other root issues, but just have a blood pressure cuff by your bed, test it in the morning, see where you’re at. Just you— you want to do it responsibly. If you do it and you want to get to the prescribing doctor on the same page as you. You don’t want to go rogue.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Any other questions you wanna hit up?
Evan Brand: Uh let’s see. What else we’ve got.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have one here. We got one on Facebook here from Michelle or from
Mitchell. “Can L- tyrosine for dopamine support be too stimulating? How much should be taken to minimize side effects?” Yeah. It can be for some people. Uhm— tyrosine can kinda provide precursor supports to dopamine which then above that can go to adrenaline, so it can be. I think starting at 500 mg and working up to maybe, potentially 3 to even 6 g a day is okay. But start low and slow and if you know that it is stimulating, use it more in that first half of the day not the last half of the day.
Evan Brand: Yup. That’s a simple fix. Good answer. Uh—Nora had a follow-up here. “Thanks for answering the question. So can I successfully eradicate H. pylori and other pathogens as if I live with people who have it. Do they have to do treatment in parallel with me?” Well, if you’re sexually active with people, you’re kissing or simple enough, even just sharing straws, sharing cups, drinking after each other, that’s enough to infect them. So even if it’s not a partner, but it’s someone, “Oh, hey, let me have a drink of that.” That’s enough to still pass H. pylori. Justin and I have seen it hundreds of times.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The stronger your immune system is, it becomes less of an issue so like with Evan and myself, we have stronger immune systems coz we work on that. We maybe less prone because our IgA levels are up high enough where the tiny bit of that in your system, our IgA would squash it. But if your IgA is lower and you got more the stress going on and you have poor hydrochloric acid levels, then for sure. That could happen.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I had low IgA, too. So that’s something that you’d want it measured Nora and check with the stool testing and look for your IGA figure out which your first line of defense is looking like. If it’s low and weak, you’ve just got a lot of chronic stress, then, yeah, you’re gonna be more susceptible to—to pick it up. But to answer the question, “Could you eradicate it?” If you live with other people, yeah, you could but there’s gotta be a lot of things in your favor and you’re not sharing or sharing cups or drinking for most people or kissing them etc. Uhm— Anthony—well there’s one question about—from Anthony. He said, “It’s been over five years with gut issues, irregular stools, many doctor visits.” He found out that he had a whey and casein allergy. “Where should you start to get help?” Oh, wow! That’s a hard one to answer. Uh—right here. Justin and myself. justinhealth.com evanbrand.com I mean we’ve dealt with people who’ve already been to many doctors. I mean it’s such a common story. We always asked the question, “Hey, kinda give us your history. What—what’s been your experience with other practitioners? What have you tried to help? What have you tried that hasn’t helped?” I’d say 90% of people we talked with they’ve already been to a either a Gastro doctor or some other type of doc for their gut issues and they’ve had no success and only prescription drugs like I got recommended to myself anti-spasmodic, anti-acid drugs. If you’ve got a regular Bell’s, man, you’ve got infections. I can put money on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I’m a huge believer— I want every patient to at least go in the conventional medical workup before they come see functional docs or functional practitioners like ourselves just to rule out big picture pathology stuff. You know, it just makes it so we at least know that the big glaring stuff is at least been looked at and addressed and assessed. And now we’re looking more functional imbalances which is really what functional medicine is treating. It’s not medicine from a conventional disease based medicine; it’s medicine from a uh— nutritional kind of support perspective working on supporting systems, not treating symptoms and disease.
Evan Brand: Yup. We’ll take one more question here. Uh from Charlotte O: “How do you feel about NOW foods brand supplements my health coach is using them on me. I think NOW foods is okay it’s once again, a consumer grade product, so it is going to be likely less high-quality. I have seen some fillers and some of their products. I have seen them do some inferior forms of certain nutrients; however, they’ve also got a lot of really good products, too, where they’re stepping up their game in they’re using the methylated bees and the higher qualities with the Omega’s, so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And plus, people doesn’t know. NOW has another line. It’s a higher up line. It’s called “Protocols For Life” That’s their higher-grade line. So if you like NOW, look at Protocols For Life.
Evan Brand: Is protocol uh—will that have to be through practitioner or is that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Couldn’t say it’s a practitioner one but it’s a little bit higher grade but it’s—it’s made by the same company. It’s their one step up.
Evan Brand: But overall what’s your take on NOW?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean I think they’re okay for certain things. You know, uhm— so as a kind of initial kinda get in your foot in the door kinda thing, I think it’s okay. But of course, you know, we—we have are our bias because were trying to get the highest quality in everything. And part of that is because we actually work with patients face to face. It’s not like they go online and buy something, we never see them again. We’re working with them face-to-face so we have to know that what we’re recommending is the best because we need to seek clinical outcome. So we have to know that. So it’s a little bit different for us because we gotta go all out and make sure that nothing is held back.
Evan Brand: Right. So when you’ve got these other companies and people out there promoting stuff, they’re not working with people one-on-one. So it comes directly back on Justin or directly back on me if we give him our product and it doesn’t work. That’s not very sustainable for us. So that’s why it’s much, much better enough for us. That’s why we have access for people that don’t work with us. We allow other people outside to access our uh—products because they’ve been tried and true and tested. And if they didn’t work with people, we wouldn’t carry them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And if it doesn’t work, too, then it allows us to say, “Okay, there’s not some crappy filler or there’s some sub—sub nutrient in there. Let’s look a little bit deeper.” So it gives us the confidence that we just need to look deeper now. So it’s gonna be on both sides.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And just a firsthand experience with NOW foods and the secondhand, I guess, through clients. I’ve had people taking like their super enzymes, for example, and I get their digestive health markers investigated on the urine and stool test, and it looks terrible. Their digestion is not working at all even with the high dose of their enzymes. So does that mean the quality is bad? Does that mean they’re not dosing it properly? Maybe they’re not consistent as much. I don’t know. Probably a combination of factors, but I always switch over people over to my professional enzymes and then I retest and then all of a sudden, it’s fixed. Is it compliance? Is it quality? Probably both.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And you know everyone has got their bias and we kinda state our bias there. You know, we’re trying to be uhm— super transparent. Uhm—but yeah, I think there 95% of companies that are out there are bad. But I think that would be in that—I would say they’re in that 5% at least are better, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s it for questions. Anything else you want to hit before we wrap it up. I think we did pretty good today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think James uh—who is it—someone came out there—was it James—Yeah. James asked about Tom Brady. Again, love Tom Brady. Huge Patriots fan. Again Tom Brady does lots of things I would say go back and check out the podcast I did on him a year and a half ago for more specifics but he does use the green stuff. He does kinda promote like a Paleo-Alkaline diet. A lot of people have really uh—let’s just say Tom Brady like have a vegan cook. So because he had a vegan cook, Tom Brady was now on a vegan diet. No. He eats 20% meat. That’s far from vegan, okay? So just kinda keep that in the back of your mind. A lot of misnomers about Tom and he has a lot of a different training uh—modalities, too, that I’m hoping— I would love to get Tom Brady’s coach or strength coach on there.
Evan Brand: Or just get Tom Brady and the coach in a three-way podcast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I would love that, man. I would love to hang out with Tom and get some secrets down. That’d be awesome. I think he may need to wait til he retires to truly unveil some of the stuff. But we’ll see.
Evan Brand: That’s true. That’s true. Well, reach out. I’m sure there’s a media/press person and tell him, “Look, we’ve got insanely popular health podcast. Uh— we’d like to interview Tom and his coach.” But yeah, they’d probably be like, “No way, dude. We’re not giving you the secret sauce, hold on.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. I know. Exactly, so— I know Alex Guerrero is— is his—uh coach that does a lot of the stuff. So I mean— really, really interested to get Alex on a uh— podcast. That’d be freaking awesome.
Evan Brand: Never hurts to ask.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, absolutely, man.
Evan Brand: Well, let’s wrap this thing up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We had a great call today. I’m late for my next patient here, but uhm—keep dropping knowledge bombs all day, man. Really enjoyed this call with you. Anything else you want to add or say?
Evan Brand: Well I think we mentioned it all. If people wanna work with us, we work with people around the world. So Skype and phone consultations is what we do and all the lab testing except for blood you do at your house. So if you want to get help, get to the root cause, reach out justinhealth.com or Google Dr. Justin Marchegiani or myself evanbrand.com or type in Evan Brand. Find us. Subscribe. And if you have more questions, concerns, get a hold of us. That’s what we’re here for. We love helping people. That’s what makes us thrive so we won’t help you thrive, too. So, have a great day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And leave some comments below. If you like this podcast, tell us. Tell us what you like. If you don’t like stuff, tell us what you don’t like. And tell us what you want us to talk about next time and give us a thumbs up. Give us a share. We really appreciate it, guys. And you all have an awesome day, Take care you all.
Evan Brand: Take care.