Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Functional Medicine: Beyond Traditional Thyroid Treatment - Episode 320
Transcript
- 0:00then coming on, looking at the hormones, I think it's a big deal.
- 0:02We've had, you know, a low fat, cholesterol kind of dogma for a while.
- 0:06And you being a cardiologist, you probably have been preached that for a bit.
- 0:09But cholesterol is the raw material building block for all your hormones, right?
- 0:13Outside of your peptide hormones, which are gonna be your insulin growth hormone, most of your hormones are gonna be steroid based and that's a cholesterol backbone.
- 0:20And so you need that healthy cholesterol building block from from healthy fats and proteins that are aren't oxidized ideally, right?
- 0:26Grass-fed, good quality,
- 0:28to be key but that's gonna be the building block for that raw material.
- 0:31The guts are a major role and I can't tell you how many patients I see that have different infections whether it's SIBO right SIFO right.
- 0:39small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, small intestinal fungal overgrowth or candida overgrowth or H.
- 0:44pylori or other infections.
- 0:46These kind of infections play a big role because 80 % of your immune system is in the gut.
- 0:50And so anytime we have autoimmunity, is like the fastest most diagnosed disease really you see is autoimmune issues.
- 0:58Any kind of weird new disease you see today, like the new autoimmune condition.
- 1:02Your body's destroying itself in another unique way.
- 1:04It's like, well, the gut plays a big role because 80 % of all your immune cells are in the gout and the gap.
- 1:09So that.
- 1:13So when we deal with inflammation, not only do we have to really focus at the gut.
- 1:47Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity podcast.
- 1:50I'm your host, Dr.
- 1:51Jeffrey Gladden.
- 1:52And today we're going to be talking to Justin Marchegiani However, the podcast, as you know, is devoted to answering five big questions.
- 2:02How good can you be?
- 2:03How do you make 100 to do 30?
- 2:05How do you live well beyond 120?
- 2:08How do we live young for a lifetime?
- 2:09And how do we develop a 300 year old mind?
- 2:12And the conversation with Justin today, he's a chiropractor who went into functional medicine with a passion for hormone optimization and thyroid optimization becomes an
- 2:21interesting conversation.
- 2:22You'll see his approach and then you'll see the, some of the additions that we, that we have in addition to some of his thought process that kind of rounds out the podcast.
- 2:31But I think you'll enjoy this.
- 2:33should be interesting for you to, to hear.
- 2:37somewhat of the different and complementary approaches that we have and you can decide for yourself what you think is best.
- 2:45Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
- 2:48I'm your host, Dr.
- 2:49Jeffrey Gladden, and I'm here today with Dr.
- 2:52Justin Marchegiani I don't think I pronounced your last name correct.
- 2:56Why don't you say that for us, Dr.
- 2:59J?
- 2:59got it, Dr.
- 3:00Justin, Marchegiani Marchegiani, you got it.
- 3:03Yeah, you're right there.
- 3:04Good.
- 3:05Yeah.
- 3:06In the neighborhood at least.
- 3:07So, Justin, um, you know, you, you kind of have, started out in the chiropractic world and transitioned into a functional medicine kind of thought process and approach.
- 3:20And I think that's led you into, a real fascination with hormone and thyroid and things like that.
- 3:27Do you want to talk us a little bit through your.
- 3:29your journey of how you got to where you are.
- 3:31Great question.
- 3:32So I have an autoimmune thyroid disease myself Hashimoto's and so I wrote the book I spent the last 10 years writing a book called the thyroid reboot all on kind of the root causes
- 3:42and in regards to Hashimoto's and thyroid dysfunction and most people think about thyroid they just see their conventional endo here you got high TSH here's some synthroid let's
- 3:51bring that down and then you're normal but you could have a whole bunch of other symptoms and when you understand root cause physiology you know that you didn't fix all the other
- 3:58physiological imbalances in the
- 4:00background.
- 4:01You didn't fix the gut inflammation.
- 4:02You didn't fix nutrient deficiencies.
- 4:04You didn't fix any of the stress physiological hormone imbalances.
- 4:08That wasn't touched.
- 4:09But conventional medicine feels really good that they did their job.
- 4:11Which I get.
- 4:12You don't want overly high TSAs.
- 4:13That causes problems.
- 4:14And so I was on this journey of trying to help my own health issues.
- 4:17And before that I worked in a surgery center where I would help position patients that had
- 4:22limb amputations because of chronic high blood sugar.
- 4:25And then the more you go down the functional medicine kind of pathways, you see how insulin resistance, high blood sugar, oxidative stress is part of kind of the root cause
- 4:34of most conditions.
- 4:36Especially your background being a cardiologist in insulin problems.
- 4:39Number the one—number one, you know, root cause of cardiovascular issues in that area.
- 4:43Especially a lot of the blockages and such.
- 4:45Yeah, we see that all the time in our practice because we're doing a two hour glucose tolerance tests with insulin curves on everybody.
- 4:54And it's really dramatic when you do that to see somebody that has what looks like a normal hemoglobin A1C and even a normal fasting insulin.
- 5:03When they get challenged, my gosh, they, you know, they either their insulin shoots way up or they're, or, they cover the glucose or the glucose and insulin shoot way up.
- 5:13And they're diabetic for an hour or two.
- 5:16And it's really dramatic in terms of the health, you know, destroying impacts of that, right?
- 5:24You get increased con senescent cells and destroying the glycocalyx and the arteries.
- 5:28And so it's a big deal.
- 5:30It's one of these things that I call it.
- 5:32It's looking behind the curtain, behind the curtain.
- 5:35And to your point in traditional medicine, it's just not people look at the first curtain.
- 5:41never opened that and then I never opened the curtain behind that curtain to see what's really going on.
- 5:45So yeah, that's kind how we see that.
- 5:48Dr.
- 5:48Ph.D.
- 5:49And what do we need to remove from a diet and lifestyle standpoint?
- 5:52What nutrients and supports can we do to accelerate it versus hey, what drugs can we do to down regulate block re uptake ports?
- 6:00Put a break on physiology to control symptoms versus hey, how can we up regulate and support the healing of physiology?
- 6:07So one's a allopathic model, right?
- 6:09The other one's a vitalistic, let's get your body to heal kind of model.
- 6:12I think you made a good point about the first thing that we see that typically needs to be done is to think about what needs to be removed.
- 6:22What do you take out, right?
- 6:24When you're taking this functional approach, people are always wanting to know, what are you going to do for me?
- 6:29What are you going to put in?
- 6:30What are you going to do?
- 6:31Because medicine, that's usually what they do.
- 6:33They write a prescription and put something into the system.
- 6:36But many times it's about what you take out.
- 6:40You know how you either improve detox capabilities, upregulate detox genetics, know, lots of things like this that we look at in great detail and how you get certain things out of
- 6:51the body before you actually start putting stuff in.
- 6:54And it can be done simultaneously when you see there's obvious deficiencies.
- 6:57But it's really important for the audience to understand that what you take out is as important as what you're putting in.
- 7:05Correct.
- 7:06You how I look at it and many functional medicine doctors do.
- 7:09I look at the underlying stressors physical chemical and emotional stressors that broke the person down.
- 7:15The problem is what broke them down in the beginning then creates imbalances in their body systems.
- 7:20could be hormones it could be gut detox immune it can create nutrient deficiencies it can create inflammation systemically in the vasculature and then that creates symptoms
- 7:30downstream.
- 7:30And so it's really easy to be hyper focused on all the symptoms the fatigue.
- 7:34the high cholesterol, the depression, the brain fog, but then forget to go upstream to see what symptoms or what systems are not working well, right?
- 7:43We want a system-based approach versus symptom-based.
- 7:46And then also go back to the underlying stressors that- that proceeded, that started the whole domino rally.
- 7:52And so if you look at it like that, you have a much better physiological, I should say philosophical kind of framework where you're gonna catch
- 8:01all the root causes that started this whole domino cascade along the way here.
- 8:06Yeah, I think it's another good point you're making around the stressors.
- 8:10And to your point, they can be physical or chemical or whatever, but many of them can be psychological uh and even psych spiritual.
- 8:19And so in our world, the life energy circle, we have five circles over here.
- 8:24The life energy circles are really the one that binds all the other four together because it's, the most important.
- 8:29And people are carrying around a lot of toxic thoughts or
- 8:33you know, lots of psychological trauma that they're living in reaction to.
- 8:38It has a massive impact on their biology.
- 8:42right, and understanding the genetics that actually makes somebody more susceptible to the trauma in the first place, and knowing how to actually make them more resilient by
- 8:55augmenting genetic function, SNP function.
- 8:57We find that to be super helpful at help
- 9:00Moving people in other words setting them up physiologically to then benefit from the psychological inputs and the spiritual know revelations and things like that.
- 9:09It's like it's like um creating the Substrates so you can actually handle the healthy things are that you want to do So, I mean that's true with addiction as well, right?
- 9:18There are People that are genetically much more prone to alcoholism per se once you understand what genes they have you can go in and actually manipulate those
- 9:27to where they're less prone to be addicted.
- 9:28Now you can actually start to work on the rehab.
- 9:30Dr.
- 9:30And so when you look at and you manage your physical, chemical, emotional stressors, that's activating like we talked about the epigenetics that's gonna activate the genes,
- 9:39right?
- 9:39Because just because you have a certain gene for something, doesn't necessarily have to express because the epigenetics play the role on which genes flip on or off.
- 9:47And and like we talked about, you mentioned the emotional stress side of it.
- 9:52It's very hard if you're in chronic pain to be emotionally present.
- 9:56When you're in pain, you're just so focused on the pain, it's gonna be hard for you to
- 10:00process the different stressors, right?
- 10:02Or if you don't sleep, you don't sleep last night and now you're in chronic pain, good luck trying to deal with your taxes the next day or good luck trying to have a, you know,
- 10:10difficult conversation with your wife or kids.
- 10:11You're just not gonna be able to handle it as if you had a good night's sleep and your body feels good.
- 10:15And so the physiological, the physiological structural side of the fence plus the chemical
- 10:21that all feeds into the emotional and of course if the emotional is good, right, and you're feeling good and you're loving your relationships and loving your job, that's gonna
- 10:28allow better healthier chemistry and that's gonna allow better healthier body but they all kind of feed in and the more you you work on that three-legged stool the better balance
- 10:36you have.
- 10:37Yeah, that's right.
- 10:38For us, it's uh yeah, we that's approach we take is you can't leave any part out.
- 10:43And it's one of the problems with medicine in general is that it becomes too siloed.
- 10:48You know, I was a cardiologist.
- 10:49People get trained or specialized in certain things.
- 10:52And it's it's really does an injustice to the entire system, if you will, to just focus on one aspect of one organ system.
- 11:00So, yeah, I think I think.
- 11:02We're synchronized on that.
- 11:04Talk to me a little bit about your approach to thyroid disorders, because you talked a little bit about Hashimoto's.
- 11:09Dr.
- 11:10so I got a book, The Thyroid Reboot, and in that book, most we talk about, you know, the root underlying factors that drive thyroid issue.
- 11:17And it's not just a, you have this high TSH, here's some level of thyroxine, look, it's good now.
- 11:22We look at the underlying issues and most thyroid issues, there's an autoimmune component.
- 11:26That means your immune system is attacking your thyroid gland.
- 11:31And then over time, that can create scar tissue that can decrease the functional capacity of your thyroid gland.
- 11:36Uhm— that also can uhm— impact the hormones from working in binding to receptor sites.
- 11:42Now conventional medicine, as you know, when it has— comes to autoimmune issues, what does conventional medicine typically do?
- 11:48It's pretty straightforward.
- 11:50They're going to steroids.
- 11:51They're going to some kind of a biologic.
- 11:53Whether it's like Remicade or Humira or some kind of a you know suppressant right those are the big three.
- 11:59Now when it comes to thyroid autoimmunity those side effects of those medications are kind of like maybe not appropriate for autoimmune thyroid issue like they would be for Crohn's
- 12:08or some kind of RA condition.
- 12:10So they do nothing.
- 12:11So they don't even look under that rock because they have nothing to do to it.
- 12:15There's not a ICD 10 or CPC code they can do to get billing for it.
- 12:18They just leave it alone.
- 12:19But in the functional medicine world there's a lot we do.
- 12:22Right?
- 12:22We can look at supporting healthy selenium levels.
- 12:24We can work out supporting healthy vitamin D and glutathione.
- 12:28Because these all produce inflammation.
- 12:29They help balance your T regulatory system.
- 12:31We can look at dealing with dysglycemia.
- 12:34That blood sugar roller coaster.
- 12:35You said patients can be, you know, diabetic for an hour or two after each meal.
- 12:40I see it all the time.
- 12:42I have patients run what I call functional glucose tolerance.
- 12:45I haven't given them a blood sugar meter.
- 12:46I have them take their blood sugar, right, fasting and then one hours, two hours later, they should be no higher than 120 in the first hour back below 100 within our two.
- 12:55can't tell you how many patients are still diabetic in two hours.
- 12:57They're still above 126.
- 12:59It's like that is not good.
- 13:00And what that's doing, like you talked about, right, the the the glycohalics and the cross linking of your proteins in your vasculature, what that's doing to the interleukins that's
- 13:09driving more autoimmunity, what that's doing to your adrenals because your adrenals, you got this blood sugar.
- 13:15So your blood sugar goes up.
- 13:17your pancreas beta cells make a bunch of insulin, right?
- 13:20The more resistant you are, the more insulin you make.
- 13:23That is a whole bunch of bad things to your hormones.
- 13:25If you're guy, it's more rummage, rummatization.
- 13:27If you're a female, it's causing more testosterone.
- 13:29Not good either way.
- 13:30That's causing the your blood sugar to drop.
- 13:33When your blood sugar drops, especially suddenly, that's called reactive hypoglycemia.
- 13:37That can create more cortisol.
- 13:39That can create more adrenaline issues and make you feel anxious and jittery.
- 13:43And I call it the blood sugar roller coaster.
- 13:45Blood sugar up.
- 13:46too much process too much inflammation, beta cells come out, knock the blood sugar down, adrenaline, cortisol bring it back up and then you're in this blood sugar kind of spiral.
- 13:54Yeah, no, I think that's that's right.
- 13:56I would say that it's nice that you're doing the functional glucose tolerance test with the, you know, with the CGM continuous glucose monitor or whatever device you're using.
- 14:06I will just let you know, though, that there are people that will never spike their sugar above 120 that have significant insulin issues.
- 14:13So when we do the insulin curve, as well as looking at the glucose, we see that people will have a high resting insulin level.
- 14:21should be around two or three, maybe 12 or 13.
- 14:25We'll see that their blood sugar may go from 90 to 118, but instead of going from two or three up to 10 to control that, or 10 or 15 to control that, they may shoot up to 60.
- 14:38And so that super high spike in insulin, while it's controlling the blood sugar,
- 14:44is also driving risk of cancer.
- 14:46It's driving aging, it's driving inessant cell formation, it's stiffening arteries, it's doing all kinds of things behind the scenes.
- 14:53And that's why I say the curtain behind the curtain behind the curtain is really interesting.
- 14:58And then when you look at the genetics behind that, you can say that some people just are built not to actually get the signaling when they consume glucose through the in-creten
- 15:07system to actually tell their, their pancreas to start making or releasing insulin.
- 15:13And so for those people, they're going to spike and then they're going to crash it on the back end.
- 15:18So there's many, many, many, many, uh, curtains to look behind to actually piece it together.
- 15:23The point being, once you do it, you can actually start from the jeans and work forward.
- 15:27Now, you know, Oh, well, this person will respond better if we do this and this and this, and you can kind of build it from the ground up if you will.
- 15:34And that's how we think about, um, you know, helping people with this.
- 15:38So.
- 15:38think fasting insulin is really important to look at.
- 15:41I think you can really tell a lot in that first hour after a meal because your blood sugar has got to go up that then pituitary sees that and then you get this huge beta cell
- 15:50production.
- 15:50So that first hour usually you're gonna get a pretty good window.
- 15:53I like finger pricks because I find that the interstitial fluid assessment which is like your CGM like your freestyle Libre 3 or Dexcom that's using interstitial fluid and it
- 16:03tends to just give you a little bit more of a delay.
- 16:04It doesn't give you that fast immediate response so it's a little bit delayed which it's fine if you're type
- 16:08one or you wanna do it over a long period of time just to see I think it's good but I you get a faster look at it um when you just do the blood by itself.
- 16:16Do you see the blood sugar go up though in that first hour or so and then you see the big insulin?
- 16:21necessarily.
- 16:22Not necessarily.
- 16:23Well, we see all kinds of combinations.
- 16:26So, for example, we'll see somebody where their blood sugar doesn't go up at all, and yet their insulin will go up dramatically.
- 16:33So they control the blood sugar extremely well.
- 16:36That's not the issue.
- 16:37it on a fasting insulin though.
- 16:38You probably see it there on an insulin.
- 16:41No, the fasting insulin is not enough.
- 16:44You're well, you do a two hour glucose tolerance test with an insulin curve.
- 16:49So you measure glucose and insulin and fasting.
- 16:5375 grams of glucose measured again, both at an hour and both again, two hours.
- 16:58Now you actually can see what's what's actually happening in both in both with the insulin and the glucose.
- 17:03And we find that that gives us tremendous insight.
- 17:06You know, you take somebody with cancer because
- 17:09You know insulin is a driver of malignancy and so you can see who's susceptible to more insulin release You also get an idea of just how much insulin resistance they have So it's
- 17:23really been phenomenal.
- 17:24We just saw a gentleman this morning and You know typical story, know fasting blood sugar was normal fasting insulin was elevated at about 14
- 17:32His blood sugar went up to 185 and his fasting or his one hour insulin went up to I think over 70 and then at two hours his fasting insulin was even higher.
- 17:46It was like 80 or 90 and his blood sugar was coming back down.
- 17:49So you see all kinds of permutations there to let you know kind of the extent of the insulin resistance and we find that super helpful.
- 17:57think it's good.
- 17:58There's a lot of ways to do it.
- 17:59So when I do it, I just do patients meals.
- 18:01And so that way we can test their meals and see how it does throughout the weeks.
- 18:04I've had a patient last week where they were coming in in that first hour at 180.
- 18:09And within an hour or two, they were at 140, still incredibly elevated, just a little tweak of the diet.
- 18:13And we had them, you know, below that 120 in the first hour and back below 100.
- 18:16I like that because I'll have patients test three different random meals.
- 18:19The functional the glucose tolerance you're talking about is nice.
- 18:23You have a lab and you can do that.
- 18:24My only concern is, you know, some people even if they're
- 18:27healthy, that's 75 grams of sugar.
- 18:29They may still not be able to handle it even if they're even if they're on point just because that's such a stress to their body that may be too much for most people.
- 18:36But I think either way it's blood sugar is such an important thing to look at and the more tools or windows you can use is vital.
- 18:43Yeah, no, I think that's right.
- 18:44I think you want to understand it as best you can.
- 18:47And then we are big users of CGMs just because people don't like to prick their fingers that much and you can continuously see what's happening.
- 18:56And we find them very useful.
- 18:58One of the things that I wish they would create though, and I've talked to several manufacturers about this, is actually an insulin sensor.
- 19:04Yeah.
- 19:07get insulin on there, we're gonna be amazing.
- 19:09Even if like, you know, I got the keto mojo, it's got a strip for ketones.
- 19:13It's got a strip for insulin.
- 19:14Just give me a strip for insulin, man.
- 19:16And I'm like, I am tickled pink.
- 19:19Yeah.
- 19:20really, it's kind of a deficit, I think, in the field that we don't have the ability to have a sensor for insulin that we have to, you know, go through a laboratory test to get
- 19:27it.
- 19:28yeah.
- 19:29Like if I were to do a startup right now, I'd be like, let's find a way to do insulin with that.
- 19:33That'd be amazing.
- 19:34It's gotta be being researched now.
- 19:36But I agree.
- 19:37And again, insulin's a big deal, especially for guys listening, right?
- 19:40That's gonna upregulate aromatase.
- 19:42That's gonna cause more of your teeth, testosterone to go to estrogen.
- 19:45And for women listening, right?
- 19:46That upregulates the 1720-Liase enzyme, which causes more of your female hormones to go to androgens, which is the root cause of infertility in most women, right?
- 19:55You have this elevation of prolactin.
- 19:57high amounts of androgens that causes ovarian cyst, right?
- 20:00That's why the major medication for treating PCOS, right, is what?
- 20:04It's Glucophage, Metformin.
- 20:06It's an insulin sensitizing compound.
- 20:08So insulin impacts both sexes equally, but in different ways.
- 20:12Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a really good point that you make.
- 20:16And I would just point out to men that what we find is that genetically, again, people have different predispositions, whether they're male or female, to aromatize testosterone
- 20:26and estrogen.
- 20:27So there are some women that are low aromatizers, generally speaking, and some men that are very high aromatizers.
- 20:34And it's important to understand
- 20:36you know, where you fall and then to measure the actual levels.
- 20:40Um, because what we find as well is that the concept of replacing testosterone or boosting testosterone and trying to block estrogen production is really, it's really foolhardy in
- 20:52our case.
- 20:53Um, because men need estrogen just as much as women need estrogen, especially if you have APOE4 genes and you have predisposition for Alzheimer's, estrogen is a godsend to your
- 21:04brain.
- 21:05And so.
- 21:06actually bone density is more related to estrogen than it is to testosterone.
- 21:10So you really, need estrogen.
- 21:13It's just that we need it in a different balance.
- 21:14And so the idea of crushing estrogen production is really, I think, kind of a fool's errand, but that's kind of how we're.
- 21:22you see lots of doctors, you know, prescribing HRT for men, I think way too willy nilly.
- 21:27Number one, they when they prescribe it, they prescribe way outside of the physiological norms.
- 21:33Your typical guy makes about six to eight milligrams per day.
- 21:36And the average doctor starting at 150 milligrams per week.
- 21:40And they don't they don't even dose it physiologically appropriate.
- 21:43um I say the more you can dose it daily if you have to.
- 21:47First off guy in your 20 30s 40s even 50s if you're doing the right thing you should be able to get the aromatization in check at your diet and check and you shouldn't have to
- 21:56need testosterone.
- 21:58Let's say for instance you're doing all the right things all the principles all the herbs all the nutrients and you need it fine but it should come later into the game and it
- 22:05should be used within that physiological norm start low.
- 22:09the lowest possible, right?
- 22:10Maybe 4 or 6 milligrams per day.
- 22:12Try to do it every day or every other day at the lowest level.
- 22:15And ideally, if you're having a compound or Remedex and use estrogen blockers, you're not doing it right.
- 22:20You're lazy.
- 22:20You need to do it at the right physiological levels.
- 22:23As you know, the major reason why most bodybuilders have heart issues, it's not necessarily because of too much testosterone.
- 22:30It's because they're taking estrogen blockers that destroy their heart.
- 22:33Right?
- 22:33You let— you mentioned earlier, estrogen is very cardio-protective on the heart.
- 22:37And if you—
- 22:38lower estrogen too much with drugs like Arimidex or uhm— which— what you see— I see a lot of doctors prescribing testosterone with Arimidex or estrogen blockers in the compounds
- 22:48and that can cause a lot of cardiovascular problems.
- 22:51And again, we're not talking dim or, you know, glutathione or sulfur that naturally helps clear it out.
- 22:55We're talking about, you know, blocking drugs, if you will.
- 22:57Comments on that.
- 22:58What do think?
- 22:59So what, just for the audience to understand what we're talking about here, it's important to realize that testosterone is turned into estrogen, uh, both for men and women.
- 23:07And then the body ends up detoxing the estrogen through three different pathways.
- 23:11Um, they're called hydroxylation pathways.
- 23:15So there's a, a 16, a four and a two hydroxy pathway.
- 23:18And the two hydroxies really the safe pathway.
- 23:21And then you need to be able to methylate that hydroxy compound for the second stage of detox.
- 23:27And some people are poor methylators.
- 23:29So we go in and genetically look at that and then see how well they're able to methylate.
- 23:33And there are many things we can do to boost methylation capacity.
- 23:37So that being said, we want to decrease the 4-hydroxy, which is the most toxic for both men and women.
- 23:42It increases breast cancer risk, prostate cancer risk, et cetera.
- 23:47And then the 16-hydrosky is not
- 23:49good but not quite as bad as the four.
- 23:51So the dim comment is that we can push those metabolites of estrogen through estrone and then down through the two hydroxy pathway preferentially.
- 24:01So that's important.
- 24:02And these drugs, the aromadexies referring to blocks the enzyme that takes testosterone and turns it into estrogen in the first place.
- 24:10when you're thinking about
- 24:12hormone optimization.
- 24:14It's so important not to simply measure blood levels.
- 24:17It's so important actually to measure the urine metabolites in our world to actually understand how is somebody metabolizing these things because it's different and just
- 24:26genetically driven for in part, but it's also driven by what people are eating or what they're taking or how much stress they're under and things like that.
- 24:33So you can't just look at the genetics and get it right either.
- 24:36It can give you an idea of where you might have a leverage point, but you've got to measure those.
- 24:42those urine metabolites to know what you're dealing with to keep somebody safe.
- 24:46That's the way we think about it.
- 24:47Dr.
- 24:48I'll use some of the precision analytics testing a lot to look at testosterone, you know, the estrogen, the 2, 4, the 16, the 2 methoxy, 2 hydroxy pathways, that's important.
- 24:57And as I was talking about earlier, a lot of doctors use estrogen blocking medication because they give way too high of hormonal dose for someone.
- 25:05And it's just they're lazy.
- 25:06They don't want to adjust the dose.
- 25:07They want to give it weekly.
- 25:09They want maximal compliance.
- 25:10They don't want to have to worry about fine tuning.
- 25:12And in functional medicine world, hormones
- 25:16They're measured in picograms and nanograms.
- 25:18That's right to the, you know, to the ninth degree or to the 12 degrees.
- 25:21These are very potent things.
- 25:23And so I try not to use hormones unless someone absolutely needs them or we're using precursor hormone support.
- 25:30And so, for instance, guys are given testosterone way too early.
- 25:34Uhm— and also testosterone can thicken the blood as you know.
- 25:37Can increase your platelets, make your cells more sticky.
- 25:40And then of course, we have to be using physiological norms.
- 25:43And so, if I give testosterone and recommend it, we're giving it to guys that are older, that have already maxed out everything regarding sleep, movement, exercise, nutrient
- 25:53deficiency, zinc, selenium, you know, some of the herbs that have a really good impact on LH and FSH.
- 25:59And then if we have to, then
- 26:00we can recommend that but I'd say 95 % of guys that come to me that have some of these issues, whether it's muscle libido mood, we're able to avoid having to go that bio
- 26:09identical t routes and if we have to there's micro dosing strategies that work far better and keep you within the physiological range in that top 25 % or so.
- 26:20Yeah, I think that's a good point.
- 26:21You know, the other thing for people to realize as they listen to this is that everyone's aware that women go through menopause, which essentially means that the life cycle of the
- 26:31ovary for releasing eggs on a monthly basis has diminished.
- 26:37And the light egg cells inside the testicles that make testosterone also have a shortened life expectancy compared to your own life expectancy.
- 26:46Correct.
- 26:47If you, if you live long enough, odds are that the light excels will eventually poop out.
- 26:53and so you may end up needing testosterone, but there are many, many things that can be done for a woman in her thirties who's experiencing, you know, not even pre menopause, but
- 27:05sort of pre pre menopausal kind of changes and symptoms to kind of optimize the biology.
- 27:11And the same is true for men that are experiencing,
- 27:15you know, low T symptoms in their thirties.
- 27:17And one of the things we find is that there are a lot of environmental bioregulators that get in the way, a lot of plastics and things like this.
- 27:24So we're testing for all of that in our people as well to see what are they, what are they exposed to?
- 27:29What, you know, what do we need to detox?
- 27:31Not only get the detox system to work, but what do we need to sort of get out of their environment or out of, you know, the soap they're using or the plastic bottles are
- 27:39drinking from or whatever they're doing.
- 27:41Right.
- 27:41So it's a
- 27:42It's a complex arena here and there's so many endocrine disruptors or hormone disruptors in these chemicals that we're exposed to every day that a lot of the problems for a 35
- 27:53year old can be both stress related as well as environmentally related.
- 27:57It's kind of how we think about it.
- 27:58Dr.
- 27:59I agree and I'm seeing lots of guys come in to me in their 20s and 30s and they're being recommended testosterone, which I think is a it's a miscarriage.
- 28:11Number one, to these guys potentially could be infertile because as you increase testosterone, you're gonna take the FSH which talks to the sartorium cells that make sperm
- 28:19and then your cells elated is the LH ones that make testosterone and do you silence that's why guys notoriously, you know, get atrophy of their testicles.
- 28:27because of testosterone.
- 28:28so that happens too long, you may not be able to reestablish that feedback loop and you're gonna have low sperm and you may be infertile.
- 28:34And so most people aren't thinking about that.
- 28:36So from a functional medicine standpoint, how you treat a 60 year old is gonna be different than how you treat 20, 20 or 30 year old.
- 28:43And so I just want
- 28:44the guys to know that and with my females too of course you know this different guys kind of have this andropause that's kind of more slower and steady as you mentioned doc
- 28:52regarding the sartoli cells or the cells of lady kind of pooping out a little bit a little bit more slow and gradual where women's to be a little bit more punctuated in that late
- 29:00late 40s early 50s with their follicular reserve kind of going dry if you will and so there may be a greater need for a female hormone intervention on the hormone side.
- 29:09So we like to treat, you know, the sexes and you know, a little bit differently in that because how their physiology works, we gotta meet them where their physiology is.
- 29:17100%.
- 29:17Yeah, 100%.
- 29:20It's just that a lot of men are aware of the fact that women go through menopause, but they're not aware that they also run a timeline and that they will go through enderpaws at
- 29:30some point.
- 29:30um So that being said, we have people, clients in our seventies who still have
- 29:36you know, quite healthy testosterone and free testosterone levels, right?
- 29:39That's another thing that's not looked at is sex, women, binding, globulin and free testosterone.
- 29:44Cause it's not the, it's not the testosterone number that really matters.
- 29:47It's what's the free testosterone, right?
- 29:49That's really what's doing the work.
- 29:51So again, it's a sophisticated, it's not just walk into a tea clinic.
- 29:56your tea is low.
- 29:57We'll give you tea and give you an aromatase inhibitor.
- 29:59I think that is such a disservice to not only the person, but really to humanity on some level.
- 30:05because of the sperm counts and the other things you're mentioning.
- 30:08And it's not uncommon for me to be able to help the men that come and see me and double their testosterone.
- 30:13Double it.
- 30:14Mm-hmm.
- 30:15Sure.
- 30:15we have to look at all of the Xenoestrogens in our environment have to be removed.
- 30:20whether it's the phthalates in your soaps or in your dish washing detergents or the little tree car freshener or the glade plug-in those are all a soup of estrogen.
- 30:30right.
- 30:30And estrogens and also the organochlorine, pesticides, the glyphosate when you have estrogens or Xenoestrogen compounds that comes into your system and that shuts down LH
- 30:40that shuts down luteinizing hormone.
- 30:42So the feedback loop in the pituitary the
- 30:44cells, the cells of ladeic to make testosterone drop.
- 30:47So the first thing you have to do is get rid of the chemicals in the environment that's screwing up that feedback loop.
- 30:52That's number one.
- 30:53Even if you're gonna use testosterone or herbs or whatever, or nutrients, have to reestablish healthy feedback loop and the first thing is get the environmental toxins
- 31:02down.
- 31:03That's right.
- 31:03Again, well, it's back to what we said at the beginning.
- 31:06One of the earliest comments you made was beginning by looking at what it is that needs to be taken out, right?
- 31:13This is, it's really key.
- 31:14You can't, other words, you can put in all day long, but if you're not taking out the stuff that needs to come out, you're kind of, you know, trying to breach a wall that's
- 31:22unbreachable.
- 31:23So yeah.
- 31:24me they're like, well, what should I do for detoxification?
- 31:26Well, the first thing is let's just work on removing stuff like from our environment.
- 31:30There's that because it's so much easier to detoxify once you've pulled out all the crud.
- 31:35Now your system can work so much better once the you know, the junkie foods out.
- 31:41That's right.
- 31:42And to your point about that is that if you're if you're still being exposed to all those toxins, even though you're on a good detox protocol, right.
- 31:50It's coming in as fast as you're getting it out.
- 31:53So ah we see that with mercury all the time.
- 31:57You can actually look at the rate of mercury clearance.
- 32:00through a Quicksilver test and you can see whether or not people are actually getting rid of it faster than they're accumulating it or vice versa.
- 32:07So we've been able to detox people of mercury without having to go to chelation, but a lot of it involves getting the mercury out of their system, whether it's the fish they're
- 32:16eating or the coal plant that's up the road or whatever it else where it's coming from, getting the air purifiers in.
- 32:22And then when they get in the sauna and you give them the charcoal and you give them the
- 32:26metal free and the other things that help them pull it out through the gut as well as the skin.
- 32:30We see mercury levels go back down to normal very quickly.
- 32:33So it's pretty cool.
- 32:34Yeah.
- 32:35absolutely.
- 32:35then coming on, looking at the hormones, I think it's a big deal.
- 32:38We've had, you know, a low fat, cholesterol kind of dogma for a while.
- 32:42And you being a cardiologist, you probably have been preached that for a bit.
- 32:45But cholesterol is the raw material building block for all your hormones, right?
- 32:49Outside of your peptide hormones, which are gonna be your insulin growth hormone, most of your hormones are gonna be steroid based and that's a cholesterol backbone.
- 32:56And so you need that healthy cholesterol building block from from healthy fats and proteins that are aren't oxidized ideally, right?
- 33:02Grass-fed, good quality,
- 33:03to be key but that's gonna be the building block for that raw material.
- 33:07Yep.
- 33:08No, that's right.
- 33:09I think, you know, we went through a phase where we demonized cholesterol.
- 33:13We all know this.
- 33:14And then we went to the low fat, low everything.
- 33:19And we robbed ourselves of a lot of things also, you know, the C15 molecule, which shows up in whole fat dairy and things like that.
- 33:28People were losing a great deal of that.
- 33:32And it turns out that C15 tends to be associated with longevity.
- 33:37So there's beyond that cholesterol, as you point out, is needed for lots of steroid based hormone synthesis.
- 33:44And so you don't want your cholesterol to be too low.
- 33:47In fact, if you look at population data, people that have cholesterol's total cholesterol's below about 220 actually have a higher mortality relative to people that
- 33:57have a cholesterol of around 220 or 240.
- 34:01So and obviously, if it's too high and it can be that increases mortality as well.
- 34:06But
- 34:07This is where for us in the cardiology world, it really boils down to focusing on the glycocalyx and the nitric oxide system to be able to keep an artery healthy and then
- 34:17decreasing insulin resistance, high blood sugar spikes, glycocalyx, things like that.
- 34:22So all that becomes super helpful as well.
- 34:25Yeah.
- 34:26Dr.
- 34:26I think that's really important and when we look at things like statins for instance, A statin is an HMG CoA reductase inhibitor, right?
- 34:33When you look at most medications, they just inhibit.
- 34:35It's a PPI, proton pump inhibitor, an ACE inhibitor, angiotensin receptor site blocker, right?
- 34:41You know, all these medications, right?
- 34:42They just inhibit, inhibit, inhibit.
- 34:43But when you look at that, what are the— what's the major thing that stimulates that HMG CoA reductase enzyme?
- 34:49The major compound, the major hormone that stimulates its insulin.
- 34:53right?
- 34:53Because we know most cholesterol is made by the body and your body can overproduce it if you're in a insulin resistant state and if you're overly inflamed cholesterol can go up
- 35:02and so I'd be curious to know your kind of ranges.
- 35:06don't typically worry too much about cholesterol until it starts going into the 300s but if I start to if I'm really trying to rule out risk factors we're gonna look at things
- 35:15like oxidized LDL small dense LDL and make sure that cholesterol is not oxidizing we're gonna look at
- 35:22clotting factors, because we know most cardiovascular incidents, right?
- 35:26Most MI's is not necessarily a blockage, it's a clot being thrown.
- 35:2960 % of clots being thrown.
- 35:30So we'll look at D-dimer, fibrinogen, we'll look at homocysteine, we'll look at fasting insulin, we'll look at LPPLA2, which is an inflammation marker in the blood vessels, and
- 35:39I'll do that to kind of weigh kind of you know the balance of where these lipids are at and also just making sure that trig to HDL ratio ideally is close to one as possible for
- 35:48healthy uhm— go ahead.
- 35:50so we do that.
- 35:52We take probably a little bit different approach in that we're looking at markers of inflammation, including LPPLA2, but myeloperoxidase as well.
- 36:01We're also looking at oxidized LDL, F2H2, prostane, ADMA, SDMA, and also microalbumin creatinine.
- 36:09This is a really sensitive marker for vascular inflammation.
- 36:14So you put those together, it turns out that inflammation is what drives events.
- 36:18And then we look at genetics around clotting because some certain people are more predisposed to clotting and when they are, we'll put them on things like natokinase or
- 36:26pycnogenal actually helps in the blood, right?
- 36:28And so, and then LP little a is very important.
- 36:32So we look at that because that's a big driver of cardiac events.
- 36:35And the problem with LP little a is that when it's elevated and is genetically determined, it decreases your ability to
- 36:42to dissolve a clot that might form in your blood.
- 36:44So let's say you're having a heart attack and normally your body would try to dissolve that clot.
- 36:48If you've got LP little A around it, blocks your ability to dissolve that.
- 36:51So you end up having a bigger heart attack.
- 36:53And it also potentiates plaque formation in the first place.
- 36:56So we're looking at LP little A, then we're looking at...
- 36:59to help bring down the Lp little a?
- 37:02there isn't any that actually work.
- 37:03So we go to the PCSK9 inhibitors that seems to bring it down.
- 37:07And then we're also looking at, you know, there's lots of talk about NISIN, but quite honestly, it's never really proven to be that effective.
- 37:15So then the other thing we look at is the APOA family, which is all the good guys and the APOB family, which is all the bad guys.
- 37:22We look at small dense LDL, as you mentioned, but the thing that's more important
- 37:27than almost anything except LP little a and what we've talked about is what's the ability for reverse cholesterol transport?
- 37:34Because if you can actually get cholesterol out of a plaque or out of a cell membrane back to the liver, you're actually much more protected than if you don't have the ability to do
- 37:43reverse cholesterol transport.
- 37:45And that becomes a function of plasmalogen levels.
- 37:47It becomes a function of phosphatidylcholine levels.
- 37:50And so we're measuring all these and we help people.
- 37:53augment their ability to do reverse cholesterol transport because if you have a healthy glycocalyx and you have good reverse cholesterol transport, you can have a cholesterol 240
- 38:03and you're okay.
- 38:05But if you don't have good reverse cholesterol transport and a high HDL is not indicative of reverse cholesterol transport because a lot of that HDL is dysfunctional.
- 38:13So you've got to actually have a metric to look at reverse cholesterol transport.
- 38:17So in a Cleveland Heart Lab study that we do,
- 38:20profile, it does give us at least an algorithm to look at reverse cholesterol transport.
- 38:25So we look at all of that.
- 38:26And then we actually have a glyco check scope where we can actually under the tongue, we can look at the microcirculation and actually measure the thickness of the glycocalyx and
- 38:34where it's failing or where it's not.
- 38:38we have many, many lenses to look at the cardiovascular system through as well as.
- 38:42at to look at HDL?
- 38:43I mean, HDL is the bus that brings the cholesterol back from the artery back to the liver to recycle and LDL the reverse.
- 38:49What's the what's the marker?
- 38:51Well, the HDL is part of the APAWA family.
- 38:55And as I mentioned, HDL can be dysfunctional.
- 38:59So just because you have an HDL of 70 or 90 doesn't mean it's actually doing the job.
- 39:04on oxidation?
- 39:05What's the marker to look at dysfunctionalists?
- 39:08there's an algorithm that looks at subtypes of HDL to basically calculate what the actual capacity is for reverse cholesterol transport.
- 39:17It's available on the Cleveland Heart Lab profile.
- 39:20Yep.
- 39:21Okay.
- 39:21I mean, the good old fashioned way to bump up HDL and make it more functional is what?
- 39:25It's gonna be really just trying to choose healthy fats and proteins that aren't oxidized, correct?
- 39:32yeah.
- 39:32And yes, yes.
- 39:33Any particular type.
- 39:33Are you more interval, zone two, a combination of the two?
- 39:37Yeah, this is interesting too.
- 39:39So we measure cardiopulmonary exercise tests on every, every client.
- 39:43So we actually measure VO2 max and anaerobic threshold.
- 39:46And you're probably aware that VO2 max for longevity is one of the strongest indicators for longevity, right?
- 39:52Even stronger than muscle mass by a factor of two and a half.
- 39:55So how do you train for VO2 max?
- 39:57Well, there's a lot of misinformation out there around zone two.
- 40:01We find zone two is
- 40:02I've been doing it for over 20 years now, measuring cardiopulmonary exercise tests and training people for VO two max optimization.
- 40:08And what we found is that zone two is good in a couple of situations.
- 40:12Um, zone two, you can, if you're listening to this zone two is essentially a form of exercise where you can carry on a conversation.
- 40:19Right?
- 40:19So you're walking, you know, you're, lightly doing something that's not that yeah, that's zone two.
- 40:26And if you are overtraining zone two is great.
- 40:30If you are just coming off the couch.
- 40:31Zone two is great.
- 40:33But if you're actually reasonably athletic to build VO2, what we found is you need zone three and you need zone three three days a week for about 45 minutes.
- 40:43And then you need interval training where you're at zone five, which is all in, so to speak, for about interval training.
- 40:50It would be like one minute intervals or 90 second intervals or maybe even 30 second intervals.
- 40:55maybe six to eight of those within a 20 minute period where you're kind of going all in, then you have a 90 to 120 second recovery.
- 41:03So you do that twice a week and you do the zone three, three days a week.
- 41:08And we see, we routinely always see VO two go up, but people will tell us that, I'm doing orange theory now and I'm plenty of cardio.
- 41:17My trainer says we're getting plenty of cardio.
- 41:19I do some cardio before I lift my weights and then
- 41:21I'm doing circuit training.
- 41:23My heart rate's always elevated.
- 41:24I said, great, let's measure your VO2.
- 41:26It always goes down.
- 41:28Always.
- 41:28I've never seen it go up.
- 41:30And it's not that I didn't want it to go up.
- 41:32It just went down.
- 41:33it's like, well, okay, well then we need to come up with a strategy that actually works.
- 41:36And cardio will raise not only HDL, but it also raises Clotho.
- 41:42And Clotho is God's gift to your kidneys, your heart, your brain from a stand and longevity.
- 41:47So lifting weights lowers Clotho and
- 41:50and cardio raises clothes though.
- 41:51So really there's so many benefits to cardio when it comes to cardiovascular health and longevity.
- 41:56uh
- 41:57Makes sense?
- 41:58Absolutely.
- 42:00Yeah.
- 42:01So what are the things, what are the things would you like to chat about?
- 42:06Dr.
- 42:06So I would say when we look at thyroid, we want to get to the underlying issue of that because we don't just want to rely TSA rely on TSA is our underlying metric of thyroid
- 42:15health.
- 42:15I think it's important that we dial TSA in if we're overly high because that's your sign that your pituitary is freaking out and we want a little bit more thyroid hormone most of
- 42:24the time but we have to support the underlying factor.
- 42:26The guts are a major role and I can't tell you how many patients I see that have different infections whether it's SIBO right SIFO right.
- 42:34small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, small intestinal fungal overgrowth or candida overgrowth or H.
- 42:39pylori or other infections.
- 42:41These kind of infections play a big role because 80 % of your immune system is in the gut.
- 42:45And so anytime we have autoimmunity, is like the fastest most diagnosed disease really you see is autoimmune issues.
- 42:53Any kind of weird new disease you see today, like the new autoimmune condition.
- 42:57Your body's destroying itself in another unique way.
- 42:59It's like, well, the gut plays a big role because 80 % of all your immune cells are in the gout and the gap.
- 43:05So that.
- 43:09So when we deal with inflammation, not only do we have to really focus at the gut.
- 43:14100%.
- 43:15100%.
- 43:16I think that is the key place to start.
- 43:19Yeah.
- 43:19so cleaning up the gut becomes really, really important.
- 43:22First, you got to kill off the bad guys, then you got to rebuild the mucosa, then you've got to basically keep people from destroying it.
- 43:28And so there's a lot that goes into that.
- 43:31Getting digestive enzymes right, getting the food sensitivities right.
- 43:34And then we use peptides to help with that as well.
- 43:37Oral BPC-156.
- 43:38uh
- 43:39and KPV, those are very helpful at rebuilding the gut.
- 43:42But I agree with you that a lot of autoimmunity occurs there and that can, you know, show up as Hashimoto's and other forms of autoimmunity with dysregulation of Treg cells, et
- 43:52cetera, et cetera.
- 43:54One of the things that we do for thyroid is we do resting metabolic rates on everyone.
- 43:57And we've been stunned that blood work is useful, but really not accurate.
- 44:04For example, we see many people with normal TSHs or even what most people consider a good TSH and they're still hypothyroid or they're hyperthyroid and they don't know it.
- 44:15And so we find that a resting metabolic rate is really for us the gold standard when it comes to dialing in thyroid.
- 44:22We've had many people come to us that are on thyroid.
- 44:24and they just don't feel right.
- 44:25And the first thing we do is we do the blood work, of course, very comprehensive blood work, but we also do the rest of the metabolic rate and all of a sudden it's sitting right
- 44:32there in front of us.
- 44:33that being tested?
- 44:35with a metabolic cart.
- 44:36So it's the same way that we would do it like a VO2 max just sitting in a chair.
- 44:42The other thing that's missed commonly is we're doing genetics on a DIO2 gene, which is basically the ability to convert inactive to active thyroid T4 to T3 in the brain
- 44:52specifically.
- 44:53So you can even have a normal resting metabolic rate.
- 44:55You can have normal systemic thyroid levels.
- 45:00T3, T4, free T3, free T4, TSH, uh reverse T3, all of those can be normal.
- 45:06And yet somebody can still not have adequate thyroid activity in the brain.
- 45:11And we've had cases where we've added a small amount of T3 only, Cytomel, and people, brains come back online.
- 45:19So it's really, really, it's a nuanced art, I think, to...
- 45:24to really dial in thyroid for an individual.
- 45:26And for us, it really requires the DIO2 gene measurement as well as the resting metabolic rate.
- 45:31Yeah, now that makes sense.
- 45:33Yeah, good stuff.
- 45:36So it sounds like it sounds like you've got a robust practice down there in Austin helping people.
- 45:42How do people get a hold of you if they'd like to make contact?
- 45:45Dr.
- 45:46my website is justinhelt.com.
- 45:49I'm Dr.
- 45:49Justin, so J-U-S-T-I-N-H-E-A-L-T-H.com.
- 45:53There's a work with Dr.
- 45:54J.
- 45:54Button.
- 45:54I see patients all over the world.
- 45:56So patients wanna reach out and schedule.
- 45:57Also, I got a book called The Thyroid Reboot.
- 46:00It number one on Amazon for preventative medicine.
- 46:02Talk all about this and we kinda connect the dots and that's a great kind of opportunity to reach out, get more information.
- 46:07It's also podcast and YouTube channel.
- 46:09I got almost 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and doing this for 15 plus years.
- 46:14So I've been at it for a while.
- 46:15So just trying to provide lots of great information to the general public to help them kind of take control their health more.
- 46:21Yeah, no, that sounds great.
- 46:22Sounds great.
- 46:24Well, good.
- 46:24Well, thanks for.
- 46:25and nice chatting with you, Dr.
- 46:26Jeff.
- 46:26It was nice.
- 46:28Yeah, appreciate that.
- 46:29Okay, thanks.
- 46:30nice to meet you.