Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - Why The Tongue Is The Secret Window To Your Health & Other Hacks | Dr. Josh Axe

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

What is your tongue saying? Dr. Josh Axe is a functional medicine physician, a New York Times best-selling author, and host of The Dr. Josh Axe Show. He is an expert in both Chinese and Western medicine and is passionate about helping people reverse irreversible conditions. In this interview, Dr. Axe discusses everything from the lesser-known risks of hormonal birth control to the healing benefits of raw honey.Thank you to our sponsors!Taylor Dukes Wellness⁠ | Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% OFF A’del Natural Cosmetics⁠ | Use code "ALEX" for 25% OFF Masa Chips⁠⁠⁠ | Use code "REALALEXCLARK" for 20% OFFGarnuu⁠ | Use code “ALEX” for 15% OFF ⁠Zebra⁠⁠ | Use code "ALEX for 10% OFFDr. Josh AxeInstagram | @drjoshaxeYouTube | @drjoshaxeWebsite | joshaxe.comAlex ClarkInstagram | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠New 'Culture Apothecary' Merch OUT NOW! Glass tumblers, weekly wellness planners, hats, crewnecks and more. Use code "Alex Clark" for 10% OFF at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tpusamerch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the Cuteservatives Facebook group to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the CUTEservative Facebook Group!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.This show is made possible with generous donations from listeners who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture.You can support our show by leaving a tax deductible donation ⁠HERE⁠ or by subscribing to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube for FREE! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and is for informational purposes only. Consult your doctor with further questions.#cultureapothecary #alexclark #podcast  #health  #wellness

Is the copper IUD really healthy? It's terrible. If somebody's been on birth control pills for up to 10 years, it increases the risk of hypothyroidism by 283.7%. I think the number one reason why women have hypothyroidism today is due to birth control pills. We have scientists and doctors today in labs creating things that are absolutely synthetic

that have side effects on the body. In fact, there's a proverb that says when God blesses us, he will add no trouble to it. So God's blessing has no trouble to it. There's not a single medication without a side effect. Today, Dr. Axx is going to tell you why you should implement raw honey into your meal plan immediately. What your tongue can tell you about your health. Why mushrooms are one of the greatest supplements you can take.

He'll explain the current testosterone crisis and if multivitamins are actually necessary. Dr. Josh Axe is a doctor of chiropractic, certified doctor of natural medicine and clinical nutritionist, with a passion to help people eat healthy and live a healthy life. style. He's also a best-selling author of like a bajillion books. I couldn't even list them all or it would take 20 minutes. I gave you a little snapshot of what we discussed in this interview, but man, I don't know that I've ever had a guest on where we cover such a diverse amount of topics in one episode. It's like a powerhouse jam-packed situation we have going on here. You can watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. They do video now. Please consider leaving a free five-star review telling people,

why you love culture apothecary. Of course, if you are looking for a new charity to be involved in, well, my show counts. We are donor funded. We are produced by a nonprofit so you can leave a tax deductible donation through the link in the show notes. Please welcome Dr. Josh Axe to Culture Apothecary. Radicalize us on why we need to be eating more honey. So honey is nature's greatest superfood. It's the greatest natural sweetener ever.

When you look at, this is amazing, they went and opened up ancient, Egyptian tombs are archaeologists. And they opened up canisters of honey. And they were still good. And they were 3,000 years old. What? When you think honey, think preservation. It helps preserve things. It helps things heal. It helps things regenerate. The people that have the longest lifespan are beekeepers. They live an average of 10 years longer than the average person, 20% longer. 76% of honey is fake. It's adulterated. It's been ultra-pasturized and it's been ultra-filtered. so it doesn't have pollen in it. The enzymes are killed off. The anti-accidents aren't there. And so there's a study showing that if you do the fake honey versus the real, it's a very different,

it's very different in terms of what it does to your blood sugar. People tend to worry about honey impacting their blood sugar. All the studies show it hardly has any effect on your blood glucose levels. Of all things that are actually sweet with sugar, honey and certain fruits that are low glycemic have the lowest effect on our blood sugar. And there are compounds in honey that have amazing effects that you could also buy isolated. Now one, but here's the thing I want to say, if you're buying honey, it needs to be raw and it needs to be local to have the biggest effect on your body.

Honey contains over 200 different types of microbials that act as a natural immunization. I know you've talked about vaccines before and immunizing yourself. You want to truly immunize yourself naturally? Eat more local raw honey. You know what? This brings up a great question. Is people say like before a certain age you shouldn't give a kid? One year. Honey.

Botulism. But what do you? you think? Well, I think likely it's probably safe, but I'm not going to recommend that on the show because of the risks with that. And so I think, you know, and I think honey, really kids, you should start eating when they have their first teeth pop up. That's how you know. God taught us, say, hey, teeth come out. Now you can start giving them food. I think that's likely about the time they could probably tolerate honey. But again, I'm not recommending that. I'm not saying that. Stick to the earth. I don't want to. Ask your medical provider or whatever they say. And last few things,

about honey here, I just think are just so powerful. One, again, and naturally strengthens your immune system. Most people don't take honey for allergies until they have them, the symptoms, which studies show it does help, but it's even more powerful if you take it year round because you're naturally getting your body used to the pollen and the microbes that are local via the honey, so it's a natural immunization that strengthens your immune system. Studies have shown bee pollen decreases allergy symptoms by 40%. Studies have shown royal jelly, which is what the queen bee lives. off of increases longevity in animals by about 20%. Propolis has been shown to increase natural killer cells fighting off cancer,

infections. That's why I love that Bipropolis spray for a sore throat and cold. So good. That you can pick up at the store. So when you're getting raw honey, you're getting all of those things, but also buying them in isolation, the royal jelly for longevity, the propolis for immune system, the bee pollen for allergy. So I think honey is one of the most underutilized.

superfoods and medicines on the planet. And it's also great for, like, so our daughter, who's now four when she was about six months old, she had cradle cap. Okay. And she had major dermatitis redness on her skin. We tried some things. It wasn't working. I decided, let me try manuka honey on there. Three days later, 100% completely gone. And so when you have kids with things like eczema, if somebody has psoriasis, dermatitis, manuka honey combined with certain things like essential oils. What honey does is it actually helps bring the perfect amount of moisture to the area, which allows things to heal more properly. Yeah, I like Manuka Honey instead of like Neosporin or whatever. Yeah, it's incredible. I've actually had a lot of chiropractors on the show,

but nobody has explained the history of chiropractic and how the heck you guys are able to figure out what's wrong with people when like a regular MD is like, I don't know, it's a mystery. I have no what you do you do with going on? Like, you guys have this special set of skills and have been so far ahead when it comes to holistic medicine, it seems. Well, you know, I think it's a combination of chiropractors, acupuncturists, people that practice and understand more of what we'd call root cause medicine. And you will see in the functional medicine community, a lot of those people are chiropractors, a lot are osteopaths. Some are MDs, but predominantly throughout the past 20, 25 years, it's been more chiropractors, osteopaths, and naturopas, who have practiced more functional medicine. And one of the things that I was always taught in school is D.C. stands for Doctor of Cause. Like, what is the root cause of this issue trying to get to the root of it. And so what chiropractors

tend to look at is the nervous system. So the brain and how the nervous system functions. Osteopaths historically have looked more at multiple organ systems, the blood as well, when you look at their founder. It really doesn't matter what the modality it is. It's figure out what the root cause is, then figure out the best modality. What I mean modality, I mean diet, acupuncture, chiropractic adjustment, hyperbaric chamber, whatever it is to get people well. But today, I mean, the medical system today, this is not how they think. I mean, they are trained primarily.

You know what funds a lot of the schools and even the doctors are pharmaceutical companies. And these pharmaceutical companies today only want doctors to prescribe drugs. Pharmaceutical companies don't make a single dollar off of, of if you go and change your diet off of avocados, off of grass-fed beef, off of turmeric, they don't make any money there. And so they're really incentivized to pour their billions of dollars into the schools, into the doctors, keeping them trained on only how to prescribe drugs. And that's really why we're so sick today.

I mean, I don't know if you've seen the recent stats. When you look at the top 12 nations, the U.S. ranks dead last. It's like we spend over, I want to say, like, 12 trillion. in health care, and yet we have a lifespan of about 77 years where Japan spends less than have, and they're closer to 84 years. And so really what we're doing today, where we're just pumping drugs down people's throats, it's not working. And so I think more and more, I mean, I've seen, you know, acupuncture, chiropractic, functional medicine just explode over the last 25 years in growth because people are learning that there are absolutely natural ways to heal that don't

require drugs or surgery with all the side effects. When I'm looking for a chiropractor, one thing that can be kind of intimidating to me and a little overwhelming is that everybody has like a different style and they all have these like different methods and I don't even know. One of the things that you are really a big believer in is Chinese medicine. And I have so many questions about this. I want you to explain Chinese medicine because I think to my Christian audience, that might really freak them out. They think that that's a little new age. There are a lot of different techniques, but generally there's two camps of chiropractors. Well, actually, there's really three camps, some that are more on the medical side, some that are really focused

on just doing chiropractic in order to optimize the function of the nervous system. And the way this works is we have joints that sort of start to have lack of movement. And what chiropractors will go is try and find the segments that need to be moved, help increase the movement in the area, help align the area, and that brings more blood and nutrients to the area. And nerves actually feed out of there. So there are nerves that go from our, you have your brain, which controls the function of every organ, and your brain sends messages down the spinal cord out to every cell tissue and organ of your body to help your lungs breathe, your stomach to digest food. And if there is lack of movement and disruption around those vertebra,

that can affect the spinal nerves, which can then affect the organs. So what chiropriders do is they aim to improve the function of our organ systems in order to help the body not only get rid of pain. there's a lot of medical studies on that, but even to improve digestion, to improve athletic performance, to overcome issues like allergies and asthma and colic and babies. And so that's sort of the idea around chiroprudy and then some chiropractories expand out into not just the practice of chiropractic. Many of them also practice things like nutrition, functional medicine, regenerative medicine, and really get to that root cause, not just with chiropractic, but also knowing, hey, if we're going to get to the root cause, we also need to address diet as well.

And one cool thing is that a lot of times, if you're really unsure where to start, like, how do I find my raw milk farmer and, you know, grass-fed meat in my area or whatever? A lot of times your chiropractor will be the one that can hook you up with those people. There's a lot. Yeah. Absolutely. If you just ask your carpenter, like, hey, do you know, like where I could get raw milk and stuff? A lot of times they know. Sometimes they do raw milk pickup at their office.

Yeah, you know, so I used to have a functional medicine clinic. And as part of it, we did chiropractic, we did nutrition consults, we did some physical therapy. We did a, it was more of a holistic health center, but we had people bring in things like raw milk and coconut oil and raw honey before it was even popular. We had somebody bringing in kombucha all the time. And so it's, yeah, that can be a great resource. You mentioned Chinese medicine. When I first heard about Chinese medicine, I grew up in a very conservative Christian household. I went through a Christian school. I was in eighth grade, went to church, and Sunday school every Sunday and Wednesday nights.

And so my mom was one of those moms that was very much like anything that was Eastern and not Western was New Age or of the devil. And so when I started hearing words like Chi or Yin and Yang, I thought, well, that sounds kind of out there. But as I studied medicine and Eastern medicine, and by the way, when you look at the Bible, that's in the Middle East, most of this is very, people are very, familiar with over in areas like Israel. In fact, the acupuncturist that I see one of my closest friends, his name is Gilbenami. He's from Israel and an amazing Jewish man. And he really believes

a lot of the principles align more with the Bible than our Western medicine, our pharmaceutical pharmaciaeat today that people look into. And so all that being said, and by the way, there's also thoughts in this. This might be a little Christians might find this interesting. But many Jews believe and not just the acupuncture. I know who's Jewish, but also one of my best friends, Jordan Rubin, and a lot of the Jewish researchers he knows in Israel, they believe there's a verse in the Bible that says, and Abraham sent his wife Katara and her son's east with gifts. And Katara means incense, and they believe some of those gifts were the ideas of Chinese medicine.

And when you look at the way Chinese medicine is taught in things like yin and yin, which seemed really weird to us. Well, yin and yang means yin is feminine and yang is masculine. And then also, there are just two categories of things. So yin is more estrogen. Yang is more testosterone. Yin is more internal. Yang is more external. Now, let's jump over to Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the night and the day and the land and the sea and the earth and the sky and man and woman. And so really, when you start to study it, if you kind of move biases aside and you decide, I just want to learn about how to help people heal, you start to understand that Chinese medicine's been around for around 4,000 years, it's been proven by millions

of individual case studies. And one of the crazy parts as well is people think that our Western society is so far superior to Eastern practices or ancient practices. But Western medicine, the way we practice that today's only been around for 150 to 200 years. That's right. Versus 4,000. very different. So what Chinese medicine looks to do is bring balance to the body. And so they'll say things like, okay, you've got too much or too little yen or yang. And with a woman, you actually, that would be looking at the difference between estrogen and progesterone. Okay, we've got too much estrogen, not enough progesterone. Let's, that's a form of yin and young. Let's bring that now back into balance and harmony. Or it could be an issue like your body's too hot or too cold

internally or too damp or too dry or you have too much movement or not enough movement. And an example of that would be like IBSD, an irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea. That is too much dampness, which is known as Candida in Western medicine. And it's known as being too cold, which is why you're also having diarrhea as an example there. So really, it's just looking at patterns and then using foods, herbs, acupuncture, and lifestyle to then improve those patterns. So if somebody has IBSD, we're going to say, well, we need to work. warm up the body. Let's do ginger herbal tea and let's do chicken bone broth soup. And then we also

need to clear up the dampness. So let's do some bitter foods like some parsley and some celery to help clear out the candida and dampness out of the body. I love that. And that's really the philosophy. As a Christian chiropractor, how do you feel about muscle testing? Is there a right way? Is there a wrong way? Is it demonic? Is it the occult? The body speaks to us in a lot of different ways. And one ways are symptoms, right? If somebody has a, their nose is running, your body's telling you something. If you feel worn down and tired, your body's telling you something. Well, your body, we can do different types of muscle testing and our bodies can tell us

something. Now, I will say, I think that there are certain things, certain forms of testing that might be more accurate than others and certain practitioners that might be more intuitive and can discover things more accurately than others. I think muscle testing can be fairly accurate with the right practitioner, but some practitioners are not going to be very accurate with it. Like, I'll give an example of this. If you're asking me about muscle testing when it comes to looking at maybe certain muscles

that aren't firing properly, I would tell you that I think that that's probably fairly accurate. If you're asking me about that with testing for supplements, okay? So, hey, is this supplement good for you? I would say if you have a very intuitive practitioner, it's probably, fairly reliable for them, but for others, it might not be. And so I don't have a really good answer on that one. I can tell people probably even more accurately what supplements they should take via looking at their tongue, hearing their symptoms, looking at blood work. And I really try and combine both East and West together. I like to be able to see what's going on via what their body is saying,

but also having some blood work on occasions really helpful to. Let's just remove all biases here and say, okay, if you test a muscle and you believe that that means something for your health, let me give an example of this. Our body, in order to have a heart problem, it's not only your heart that tells you you have a heart problem. I can feel your pulse right here to maybe tell you have a heart problem. If you have left shoulder pain, even when you're having a heart attack, that can be a heart problem, upper neck pain or a lower neck, upper back pain, that can be a heart problem.

Medical testing, blood test, that's a heart problem. So to be able to test somebody's muscles, and this has been known for thousands of years, different muscle groups, different tendons and areas of the body are connected different organ systems and how they communicate. And so against, if somebody has a gallbladder attack, they get pain in their right shoulder. Is that non-Christian? Is that weird or strange? I don't know.

So my point is, for someone to say that muscle testing would be unchristian, I think that that's where somebody starts to adhere to one ideology. and it tends to be things that are Western that I understand or true, anything that's outside of my understanding or anything that's not in the United States or Europe, that's evil. I think that's what starts to happen. And let me say this, I do understand the concerns from the standpoint of, you know, when you look at Ayurveda and you look at even the ideas of the chakras,

I actually think there's a lot of truth there. But I think when you look at the way that they start to treat it with things like Reiki, okay, well, what sort of spirit is influencing that form of treatment? Right. Yeah, I have concerns there, and I wouldn't let a Reiki practitioner, especially a non-Christian, practice that on me when they say that part of what they're doing is connected to some form of spiritual healing. Right.

I'm going to go to my pastor. I'm going to go to a close friend. I'm going to go directly to God and pray for healing. And so, you know, I do think, I do understand some of the concern. However, I think what people tend to do is lump all of it together. Well, it's like, well, acupuncture and Riki and Ierveda and all of it, it's all bad. And that's just not the reality. I know a lot of Jews, a lot of Christians who are acupuncturists, who are into and treat people

with Eastern medicine and get better results with Western. I would also argue that do you believe that God created us to heal within a synthetic drugs? We have scientists and doctors today in labs creating things that are absolutely synthetic that have side effects on the body. In fact, there's a proverb that says when God blesses us, he will add no trouble to it. So God's blessing has no trouble to it. I love that. There's not a single medication without a side effect.

This is good. This is good. And I'm not saying there isn't a time or place for medications. 100% there are. I had a spinal infection. I almost died. And antibiotics helped save my life. And so there's a time and a place where they're not going to do harm.

they're actually going to do more health and harm. But I do think there's a lot of medications being prescribed that are not bringing a blessing. I think it's trouble being added to it. For instance, you know, there's hardly a medication that does have a major side effect. I mean, birth control is an example of this. If somebody's been on birth control pills for up to 10 years, it increases the risk of hypothyroidism by 283.7 percent. Is this what happened to me?

I think the number one reason why women have hypothyroidism today is due to birth control pills, along with conventional antibiotics. Now, there are other things that contribute over stress, which can start to wear out the adrenal glands, not getting proper sleep. No, I went through 10 years of being on the pill and multiple years in row taking antibiotics because I kept getting strep throat and yeast infections

and whatever. I was always on antibiotics. Here are all the nutrients that birth control pills deplete your body of. Vitamin B2, B3, B6, B9, B12, selenium, magnesium, zinc. all of those nutrients are required for something called methylation. And if you're not methylating properly, have you heard some people have what's called a gene variant, the MTHFR gene variant? Yes, I had so many questions for you about what that is. A lot of women are pointing to

that as being the problem of, it could be infertility, could be low energy, can be hypothyroid. And the reason why a lot of women are having some of these issues, it's not just the MTHFR gene. That's one issue. The bigger issue, though, is contraceptive drugs to where it's depleted the body of all of the nutrients needed to create thyroid hormones. Gosh, and you know what's so strange is kind of ironic, anyway, I should say, is that my favorite food of all time is oysters. I can have two dozen oysters and one sitting, like, no problem. And that's like everything that you're saying has been depleted in my body. I wonder if that's, like, kind of why I crave those all the time. Well, that and then organ meats are going to be incredibly high, red meat, raw, dairy.

I mean, these things are going to be higher in those new. especially the B vitamins that we just shared, magnesium as well. And so when women have hypothyroidism, most doctors today what they'll do is they will go and prescribe a drug like synthroid, which never gets to the root of the problem. In Chinese medicine, it's known as a chi and yang deficiency. So really there's a deficiency of cellular energy, of nutrients, and of the body's ability to regenerate itself. It's being anabolic. What do I have? Do I have more masculine or feminine in me? Because you looked at all my labs. You have, based on your labs and what I'm seeing in your tongue, what's called a blood deficiency, which means we need to strengthen and build the blood, which is more known as Yang Energy in Chinese medicine.

And more yen is related to certain, it is a depletion of nutrients, but more so it's working too much. It's sort of going, going, going and being busy and sort of, you know, decreasing that. But it would be known as a kidney yen deficiency primarily in a kidney yang deficiency. So it's actually both. Okay, we have to talk about the tongue things. Yeah. This is like the weirdest thing a doctor has ever done. Tell me, what does the tongue tell us about our health?

Yeah, it tells people a lot. It's funny, you know, when we go to a doctor as a kid and they have to stick our tongue out, it's almost always just to look at your tonsils. But throughout Chinese medicine or throughout history, Chinese medicine practitioners, Japanese medicine practitioners, even in the Middle East in India, they would look at the tongue to be able to read what was going on. Greek medicine, all the way back to how much. Apocrates, they would look at the tongue. And so here's a few things you'll see. One, most of us know this

already. If there's a white coating on your tongue, that is candida, building up, or yeast overgrowth. In Chinese medicine, they call that dampness. And that's also connected too much phlegm, too much mucus. So it could be snot. It could be, again, phlegm all the way from your nose to something like ulcer of colitis, where there's mucus and phlegm building up in your colon. But we can tell that by if there's a coating on the tongue. Okay. If the coating is white, it means that it's just candida. If it's orange or yellow, it means that it's dampness with heat, with inflammation. If you have ridges on the side of your tongue that almost look like bite marks or scrapes on the side of your tongue, you're a lizard. Well, maybe that or it could be that or it could be a what's called a spleen sheet

deficiency, which is really a digestive system deficiency tied to the pancreas and the digestive system. And so that we need to strengthen up the digestive system. If the tongue is too red, it is inflammation. If it turns blue, there's a lack of oxygen in your body. And if the color of the tongue, not the coating, but the color is more pale, that's indicative of a blood deficiency. And so there are ways to treat that. Blood deficiency, we need to do herbs like Don Qua. You need to do iron, more red meat, more green leafy vegetables, more organ meats.

Anytime I have my chai tea, my tongue looks kind of like yellow green on the top. Yeah, it would be a little yellow. The reason is, is chai is full of a lot of warming spices. And so if you already have a little bit of a coat, the black pepper in there, the cinnamon, those are more warming spices. Some of that might be to the coloring of the actual herbs in the tea. So if you have something that's brown, that can make your tongue look more orange or yellow. So you really want to do it in the morning before you eat anything to get the most accurate diagnosis. You said that my tongue looked white, pale as a ghost. Basically, I'm like a dead person walking. That was your words exactly, right? Well, no, those are definitely your words. What I said was your tongue is more pale than it should be. Okay. Which means we need to build your blood. And that's, and there are different things that calls low energy, right? One is a blood deficiency, which could be anemia. Anymen with, and it's like borderline anemic. When I say blood deficiency, think about the equivalent of pre-diabetes to anemia.

It's like you're sort of borderline anemic in a way. Okay, so my conspiracy theory is that that day when you checked my tongue out a couple weeks ago, I just happened to have eaten a certain thing or it was cold out or whatever. I drank a certain thing. So I want you to look at my tongue again and tell me if it looks the same or if things have changed. Sure. Okay. It looks the same. It's the same?

I have no blood. I'm a vampire. So what I'm saying in your tongue right now is it's pale. There's a little coating in the middle, and it's a little bit orange. And that's tied to your digestive system. And so what we need to do is we need to build your blood and we need to strengthen your digestive system. You showed me a chart and it had all these pictures of all these tongues and what they mean and all that. And probably a thousand people said, where can I see this chart?

So where can they get that? Is that something specifically with you? They have to go to you to get that or can they Google it? No, they can Google it. And they just simply need to look up TCM, which stands for traditional Chinese medicine. tongue mapping. And if they do a search on Google or whatever search engine they use, they can look at sort of different mapping and different examples there of what tongues look like and maybe compare theirs. Another great thing to do is just go see a TCM practitioner and acupuncture as they could tell

you what's going on, the pattern in your body, give you some advice on what to do next. The thing I love about Chinese medicine, it's just, it's very accurate. I think it's more accurate than Western medicine. It gives you a better picture of exactly what's going on. I want to learn everything. Like, what are books I should be reading about Chinese medicine that really radicalize me. Let me say this. There actually are not that many good books. Now, I wrote a book years ago. I think it's maybe the best for the average person to read on the topic. It's called ancient remedies. And that book really gets into all of this. You had this whole little formula for me of like what I need to be doing to warm and warm my blood and recipes and all kinds of cool things.

could you we don't have to go through my whole thing but just like so they have an idea like it was such a customized cool plan like can you just give a couple examples of like what you had told me to do yeah so so with you in particular again we need to build the blood and we need to build up that the kidneys and digestive system and so what we want to do is focus on the foods and herbs and supplements that are going to help you do that so in order to build the blood from a food standpoint it's going to be some of the things i mentioned earlier it's red meat it's organ meats it's steamed green leafy It's beetroot juice. Those things in particular are going to help really build the blood.

So foods that are reds and greens tend to be the most blood building. Everything was like, we need to warm up your body, warm up your womb. Like you were like lamb and stews and soups. Basically like treating like my body's in like hibernation winter mode, you know. But again, with hypothyroidism, people's body temperature lowers. We have to raise it up. Do you think this tongue thing is connected to the Hashimoto's? 100%.

Oh. Absolutely. Yeah. So in Hashimoto's, it tends to be a few different, now there can be multiple causes, but it tends to be an adrenal issue with what's called your adrenal yang and it's connected to your gut as well, your gut microbiome. That's the autoimmune component there. With your tongue in particular, not everyone with Hashimoto's also has a blood deficiency. But that's why I'm recommending you get more of these blood-building foods that we talked about, like in the goji berries are included in that

too. Now, the other thing that everybody across the board with Hashimoto's has, is their adrenals are overstressed. And so there's a lot of adaptogenic herbs that help that, like aschwaganda. And then one I really like, if you also have autoimmune, is astragalus. So aschwaganda and astragalus, both are adaptogens. They both strengthen the adrenals. One, astragalus strengthens the digestive system and your immunity as well. I ordered every single supplement you recommended.

I feel like you put astragalus on there. I did. That was on there. Which I'm really thankful for because somebody else told me to do a liquid. supplement of estrangelis tastes like poop. I hate those liquid ones. Well, a lot of these herbs are bitter. Yeah. Very bitter. It's awful. And so they're, yeah, they don't, they don't taste too good. So my recommendation, and I mean, it's not bad. It's just some, and is it, is there some benefits? Like, I don't know, starts working faster when you do the liquid version of these herbs?

The only thing I will say, historically, these are always taken as teas. Now, they didn't have the power to encapsulate things back then. But maybe there is an impact in terms of, you. you actually tasting something. Because with a capsule, you're not tasting it. Now, I still think that capsules are fantastic, but I think that drinking certain teas... I just didn't know if they're more bioavit available or something. No.

Oh, so I'm just suffering for no reason? Not really. Okay, well, that's... Now, let me say. There are some people that believe that if, you know, you can absorb things if they're held under your tongue. And it is true. I mean, your mouth and under your tongue,

it does have the ability to absorb certain things. but I think most people are going to get just as good a result doing the capsules versus the liquid. Well, if you have to do any liquid supplements, I mix them all together, whatever the amount is, I put it all in a shot glass. That's right. And I quick, because it is the worst tasting thing you've ever had.

Do that quick. And then I have like an olypop or something like a strong, fizzy, you know, kombucha. It's got to be something like that to kind of like get the taste off. Can I tell you who else we do that with? What? My four-year-old. She loves that. See, and that's what you have to do with me.

This is a lot of people. people. I have to do with my dad too in his 70s. Okay, so talk about you. We're going to talk about the Hashimoto's. Yeah. Because so many people have it. Yeah. So Hashimoto's is known as a Che and Yang deficiency with also a immune component where your immune system is overburdened. And so what we need to do is, and here's what most people do. Most doctors prescribe synthroid or steroid to weaken the immune system. A lot of natural doctors will say, hey, let's maybe do some herbs and some vitamins and some dietary changes as well, like an AIP diet or Gaps diet or something along those lines, keto, carnivore. But what Chinese medicine will really look at

is saying, okay, well, we need to get to the root of the issue here. Let's first strengthen up the adrenals. We're going to do that with aschua ganda, astragalus, don quai, licorice root, rishi mushroom, some of these herbs, corticeps. And then we also need to really support digestive system, and that's going to be things like ginger. It's going to be doing chicken bone broth soups in general doing meat, cooked vegetables, bone broth. Those are going to be the most healing foods for most people with autoimmune disease. Soups, soups, and more soups. And things like cooked sweet potato are fine as well, pumpkins and squashes, rice cooked for a long time to where it's mush. That's called congee. If somebody consumes a diet like that predominantly,

and they take some of the supplements I talked about. Now, I talked about the herbs. I think a couple supplements that really help people with Hashimoto's are a methylated bee complex and soil-based probiotics. So high-dose probiotics along with methylated bees, along with the herbs I talked about. And then if people can then also just lower the stress levels, almost every single time I have people with Hashimoto's reverse it completely, get off their medications. I mean, predominantly that happens.

and people with hypothyroidism either get completely off the medications or get just to the minimal dosage almost every single time. Did you know that coffee shops are one of the top places where people fall in love in real life and in rom-coms? I mean, coffee really is the center of everything good, right? But here's the catch. Most of the coffee we're drinking. It's full of mold, mycotoxins, and even heavy metals. Yikes on bikes. That's why I recommend Taylor Duke's Wellness, Pure Coffee, to all the cute servitive coffee lovers.

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toxin-free luxury beauty. Trust me, you're never going to look back. That's Adele Natural Cosmetics.com with code Alex for 25% off. All right, listen up. It's 2024 and it's time to get your act together, especially when it comes to snacks. Because let me tell you something, if you're still eating those seed oil-laden, chemically infused corporate nonsense tortilla chips, you might as well throw your New Year's resolution in the trash right now. Honestly, just cancel the gym membership because your body is already giving up on you. But don't worry, I'm here to help. We all know that you've been on those chips, the ones that are soaked in canola oil, soybean, and whatever oil they found

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that you get after eating 20% of your body weight and seed oil snacks. You know, get it together, okay? You say, I'm working on it? No, you're not. You're sabotaging yourself. But you can fix it. Masa chips, okay? It's a step in the right direction. Plus, with Masa, you're not just eating something. good for you. You're actually doing something good with every bite because part of the proceeds go to supporting people doing real work, not just fattening up corporate executive bank accounts. So stop embarrassing yourself with those other chips. Get Masa Chips. Use by code real Alex Clark for 20% off your first purchase. Masa chips.com code real Alex Clark for 20% off your first purchase. Could some of the medications people are taking that they're prescribed by their doctor be causing

unknown nutrient deficiencies? Yes. there's not a single drug that doesn't deplete your body of multiple nutrients, not a single one. I mentioned birth control earlier, B2, B6, B9, B12, selenium, zinc, magnesium, actually vitamin C, vitamin E as well. So there's a lot of depletes the body. Antibiotics are the worst, though. Antibiotics deplete your body of almost every single nutrient. I mean, it's really crazy. When you look at the medical literature, and somebody could go look this up on Google or chat GTP or whatever and look up, what nutrient.

are depleted when you take an antibiotic drug, or is there a risk of any nutrient depletions? Look up any drug on chat GTP or Google. You're going to find a lengthy list there with all these drugs. Metformin. That depletes your body of vitamin B12 and coenzyme Q10. It increases your risk of heart disease and neuropathy,

which neuropathy, of course, is a side effect of diabetes, the drug that they're, one of the things they're trying to prevent with taking the drug for. So yes, I mean, there are, again, you know, ambient. like a sleep drug. Yeah, tell me. That's what, you know, that's what I'm struggling with. Magnesium.

And that's also one of the minerals you need to sleep well. So what happens is oftentimes you take these drugs and what it does, it starts to deplete your body of the nutrient that you actually need to sleep well. So you become even more dependent on the drug. And I think magnesium is one of the best supplements. Like if you want to notice a difference like right away, if you've never taken any supplements, like I think telling people to start taking magnesium, they're going to be like, holy crap, I'm a new person.

For most people, I think the ones that move the needle the most are number one, magnesium, absolutely agree with you. Number two, vitamin D and number three, zinc. And then if somebody has a thyroid issue or an adrenalinal issue, B vitamins are probably ranked number four there. But in terms of the nutrients, yeah, magnesium is responsible for over 300 different functions in your body. Wow.

If you're deficient magnesium, it can ruin your sleep. It can ruin your digestive health. It can ruin your cellular energy. it can make you feel just old and awful. I feel like I've heard before that you're not supposed to be taking zinc every day, that that can cause problem. So how often do you take the zinc? You can't take zinc every day if it's an isolated zinc supplement

because what will happen is it'll start throwing your copper off. Okay, see, I knew there was something. Yeah, you need a balance of zinc and copper. What zinc does, zinc really helps repair your gut lining, repair tissues, and strengthens immune function. Copper is an anti-parasite. it's also, it fights infections. So if you get too much zinc, copper can start to decline. So it actually weakens your body's ability to fight things like Lyme disease, COVID, different types of infections.

So I've actually seen people over supplement with zinc. And then their Lyme symptoms or other symptoms got worse. And they thought they were doing great the whole time thinking, oh, I'm taking zinc. This is going to help me better fight and strengthen my immune system to fight this off, where they took too much of it. But if you take a food-based, zinc that also has copper, you can take it for a pretty long time, years, and it typically not be an issue if it has some of those other minerals like copper in it. But for the most part, if you're sick, taking it for a month, there's really no issue there. Is a multivitamin really necessary? My philosophy in medicine is very personalized. I believe everybody should have a very

unique diet customized to them. I've had so many people before who have had their friend go and do a diet and saw great results, and they tried it, and they're like, this did not work for me. In fact, it made me worse. I've showed it before, and I tried to give a disclaimer, like, do not just start taking this because I am. Everybody wants to know, please share your supplement routine. Please share it what you're right. I'm like, it could totally jack you up if you get on what I have going on because I'm a vampire zombie woman who has no blood. So, like, I could mess you up if you start doing what I do.

Well, yeah. So, like, if another woman has low energy in Hashimoto's, then there's a really good likelihood what you're doing is great for them. Right. But if somebody has cancer or inflammatory bowel disease or something, they really need to be on pretty different supplements. Yes. You know, when it comes to multivitamins, I think that if you're going to do a multivitamin, it should be a food-based supplement. That's something I've said a couple times now. A food-based supplement is where you are taking the nutrients from a food and multiplying it or it's very similar to you.

Oh, like broccoli. Like they have that, like broccoli supplement or Brussels or something, right? Yeah. Like greens. Yeah. And if you look at some of the larger supplements. supplement companies out there today that are in natural health food stores. You know, several of them are food-based supplement companies. And so- Or beef liver. Yeah. So they'll have things like liver in there.

They might have, again, broccoli, might have sprouts, might have beetroot juice, might have herbs, but also the nutrients themselves. Some of them are cultured or fermented nutrients. Those tend to be more bioavailable and better digested as well. So my point there is if you're going to take a multivitamin, and look for something that is either organic or food-based, and you tend to do better with that. Brands like ancient nutrition, Garden of Life, mega food, these are ones we've all seen in the past. You know, those are more food-based brands versus Thorn or Designs for Health.

Those aren't bad. They're less food-based, but they're still fine companies. And some of their products are fine quality. By the way, I'm not endorsing or recommending any supplement company right now. I'm just giving examples of food-based versus non-food-based companies. Is there any supplement company that's super popular? Like, this is trash, literally never take their supplements. Let me just tell you something I would never do.

I'd never give my kids like, or I would never take a centrum vitamin. Okay. And I would never have my kids probably take Flintstone vitamins either. Oh, well, yeah, that's a given. A lot of people don't realize this. When you look at the really cheap supplement brands that you're going to go and buy in a drug food store, a lot of those nutrients, they basically grind up limestone. and they pull out the minerals from those. So it's all very synthetic.

And there are studies showing, like, if you take an isolated calcium carbonate supplement, it increases your risk of heart disease of dying of a stroke and having a heart attack because what happens is you take the synthetic calcium. There's no magnesium with it. There's not these other nutrients. And it circulates in your blood.

Well, your body doesn't know how to use it. It actually gets lodged in the cholesterol in your arteries and starts to cause calcification of your arteries. So calcification, calcium. calcification of the arteries that hardened your arteries, increasing your risk of heart disease. So if people are taking synthetic vitamins, multivitamins, I actually think it could increase their likelihood of dying if they're taking synthetic multivitamins and vitamins versus doing the food-based.

How do you know if a supplement brand is truly using the highest quality or they're using synthetic fillers? I think it's just learning how to read ingredient lists. So what should we be looking to avoid? Well, there is a type of, when you look at a supplement, one of the things you do want to look for that sometimes they just say C, but it could be a sarcomices. It's a type of yeast or bacteria next to the vitamin. Those tend to be good. I think some of the methylated nutrients tend to be higher quality as well. So if you're looking at your vitamins and minerals, you're seeing that on there, those tend to be higher quality, along with having more of the fruits, vegetables, herbs, those sort of things in the supplement as well. Some of the things you want to stay away from are, um, food colorings, food dyes, a lot of magnesium stearate. Again, just things like just plain calcium carbonate. Are seed oils and supplements bad, or is that fine? Well, seed oils in anything are bad. Now, I don't look at a lot of synthetic brands. So they might be sneaking seed oils in there now.

It'll say like soybean oil or sunflower oil. Yeah, you don't want to touch those. Those are just the cheapest, worst brands that are, you know, terrible for you. I have gotten so many questions about mushrooms. What are the different mushrooms that we could be taking as supplements? What are their little jobs that they do for the body? Yeah. So we've talked about Chinese medicine. This is why mushrooms are so popular today. Is in Chinese medicine, they're prized as being the number one food to support immune health. Now, there are many benefits of mushrooms, but let me go through the top ones and all their individual benefits. One of the first one is known as Trimedes Versa color. It's known as turkey tail. Yes. And it's very, very brightly colored.

If you look at pictures at it, it's very beautiful. It's got green and blues and purples and oranges and browns and reds and yellow. It's just very colorful. It has really strong antiviral properties. So if somebody has a virus or a bacteria or a parasite, any sort of infection they want to fight, turkey tail is the best, whether it's the common cold or flu or even things like Lyme disease. I really like turkey tail for fighting infections. The next one is for the brain that's Lyons Main mushroom.

Lions mane almost looks like a mop. And there's actually a principle in Chinese medicine if a food looks like an organ, it supports the organ. So it looks almost like a brain with tendrils coming out, which is almost like your microvilli and your gut. Lions mane is known to support the gut brain connection. Okay, love. And it has something called, it supports something called nerve-ine growth factor, which is growing in regenerating nerve tissue, which is really powerful. It's been shown in medical studies to improve the symptoms of dementia and all. Alzheimer's, improved cognitive function and focus.

So Lions Main is amazing for that. Rishi mushroom is the most prized mushroom in all of Eastern medicine and Israel throughout the entire world. It has the best longevity benefits. So if somebody wants to add years to their life, they should be doing Rishi mushroom on a regular basis. Well, who doesn't? It's known as the mushroom of immortality. One other one is cordyceps.

These are grown on, they grow on caterpillars. And these were prized for boosting testosterone in kidney yang. It's also very good for hypothyroidism. And then another group would be Mitaki, Shataki, there's a lot of anti-cancer properties of those types of mushrooms as well. All of them across the board, though, for the most part, have anti-cancer properties. And last one I'll mention is Chaga. This is something that's a fungus that is prized in Russia and Siberia. It reduces inflammation and supports athletic performance.

When you are taking these, is there a rule like, you know, take these for like three months and then you need to switch to something else and stop or what? These are something you can do permanently because they're really a food. And what I tend to do is buy a multi-mushom supplement and do those or do a mushroom coffee or mushroom tea. But I tend to do one that has a blend of all of them. Or if I have a certain health goal, let's say I'm writing a book. I really want to be able to focus. Well, maybe I just take Lions mane there. Or if I'm sick, maybe I just take turkey tail.

But as a general rule, I take a multi-mushrum or a Rishi daily. Everybody wants to know about mushroom tea and coffee. Do you have a favorite one? I don't. I just do, to be honest, sometimes I just buy the raw ingredients myself and just simmer it and just drink it that way. Okay. We own a mushroom farm. So that, so for me, it's a little bit different. Jordan Rubin and I, we own 4,000 acres of certified regenerative organic land and we actually have a mushroom farm. Oh. So I can get mushroom, all these mushrooms. Yeah, you've got it all in

your yard. I mean, boxes sent to me any time. So do we actually need to be buying food to the grocery store that says organic? Are those foods more nutrient dense? And the answer is not always. Okay. sometimes the nutrient level is very similar. And when you look at the really big organic brands and they're doing mass producing a lot of food, it's not always more nutrient debts. It might be slightly more, but it's not always more. However, I do believe if you're going to your local farmer's market

or you're buying from a small mom and pop certified organic brand, most of the time, those foods are going to be more nutrient dense. Now, the benefit of organic, though, beyond that, though, is that it does not have herbicides, pesticides, and chemicals sprayed on it. There's a study I read recently that said glyphosate, which is the main chemical sprayed on all these foods today. It's found in Roundup, that herbicide. It alters 54% of our gut bacteria. I mean, it is absolutely crazy how bad it is for us. I think there's a lot of conditions today. Everything from low testosterone and men to hormone imbalances in women to cancer. In fact, there's other studies on Roundup increasing cancer risk, different forms of lymphoma, blood cancer is going up. And so that's the biggest benefit of eating organic.

It's not just the nutrient density, which might be slight, but it's much more you don't have to worry about glyphosate and all of these chemicals and herbicides being left on our food. Now, there are tricks to help get this off. Taking your fruits and vegetables, soaking them in baking soda, and rubbing them down for one minute actually eliminates over 90% of the pesticides and chemicals. Yeah, that's all I do. Everybody's like, what's your fancy fruit and vegetable wash.

I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I just use baking soda and water. That's it. You brought up testosterone. We need to have a come-to-Jesus talk with the men. Yeah. We are seeing a terrifying testosterone crisis, right? So what is happening and what will it mean for civilization if we do not fix this?

When we look at the statistics of how far men's testosterone levels have plummeted over the last 50 plus years, it's absolutely staggering. It's around 35%. That would be a man in their 20s today has an average testosterone of a man did in their 70s. back 50 plus years ago. So then is the fertility crisis that we're seeing? Is it equal blame between men and women of stuff that's going on with us? Or is there a lot on the men here? Statistically, it still skews towards the women.

But men more now than ever before also are contributing. There's no doubt about it. And why are we seeing these testosterone levels drop like this? Well, I think there's a combination of dietary, toxicity, and cultural. And so here's what I'm. mean. So when you look at chemicals like Roundup and glyphosate, those definitely decrease testosterone levels. When you look at phallates, these are found in everything from the receipts we buy at stores. Those have chemicals that decrease testosterone. Plastics, microplastics, increased estrogen, decreased

testosterone. The food we're eating, like vegan diets, those decreased testosterone. So a lot of our, the foods we're not getting, the nutrients, we're not getting from red meat and organ meats and nuts and seeds. Those are a lot of the testosterone boosting foods. Is ultra-processed food contributing to the testosterone crisis, like guys that are going to Wendy's every day for one? Absolutely. Seed oils, processed foods.

All of these again, boost estrogen, decrease testosterone dramatically. Oh, my gosh. The fast food is feminizing the men. So for the women that are like, I just don't know what to do, Alex. I'm so on board with all of this. But my husband, like, I can't convince him. I don't know what to say to convince him. I feel like saying what you're door-dashing every day.

where you're going on lunch at work, it is making you more womanly. It's destroying testosterone in men. Absolutely. Wow. The altar processed food is destroying testosterone and men. And what men can do is just pick a different restaurant to DoorDash from. Buy from Kava or a faux restaurant. Buy, you know, Whole Foods Market, True Food Kitchen. I mean, there are other options out there where you can buy organic meat and even whole grain bread. Have your wife make sourdough for you and send it with some, you know, sliced turkey meat. But let me say a few other things about testosterone.

Yes. That people need to know about. It's not just the men that have a low testosterone. Women? A lot of women now have very low testosterone as well. And it's because the microplastics, the processed food. The other thing is it's the feminization of society. Now I know this might be a little bit controversial.

Not for my audience. Yeah, you're right, exactly. Not for your audience. We have glorified. It's not even true feminization. but feminism today, but it's more the feminization of men. So it's like we're trying to make like victimhood almost women more like men and men more like women. And there's a study I came across on one of the number one things you could do to build testosterone. And you know what it was?

Men going out and chopping wood. Love. Yes. And let's set up a camera and you know what? And we can judge. It was actually more effective than playing sports like soccer and basketball and other athletic events going out and chopping going in the backyard for men. I think there's a combination of it's a full body activity, but also it makes you feel like a man. I can tell you when my dad brought me out in my yard when I was a kid and he taught me how to chelphirewood.

It was probably the most outside of shooting a bow and arrow. Those were like the most manly things. I remember my dad ever teaching me to do. So I think men have lost the art of being men. A lot of men today, when your testosterone goes down, you don't feel motivated. You don't pursue your wife as much. You're not attracted.

You're not as attractive yourself. All of those things start to happen. But there's a lot of men today that are demotivated. They're not as ambitious as they used to be. And I think a lot of women see that. And they're like, what's going on with my husband? What's going on with my mate here? And their testosterone has crashed.

And so a few things they can do it. They need more certified organic grass-fed red meat. So they need more meat. Brazil nuts are great. Walnuts are great. More healthy fats from coconut. herbs like ginseng, herbs like aschwaganda, fenya-greek cinnamon. And they need to be working out and hanging out with other masculine guys

is maybe the single greatest thing they can do, along with chopping wood, to help get those testosterone levels up. And for women, they need to do more of those warming herbs that we talked about. Cinnamon, ginger, fenya-greek, holy basil, ashawaganda, the cortispsies are all good for women. And I think that when women have low testosterone, Also, sometimes that's correlated with hypothyroidism as well. What are the top foods for gorgeous hair?

Well, number one is going to be bone broth. Bone broth contains about 90% collagen. That's absolutely critical. And then foods rich in biotin, which is vitamin B7, are also important. I think raw milk can be pretty great for hair health. Healthy fatty acids, especially omega-3 fatty acids. We're going to get in wild-caught fish, flax, and walnuts. Love.

Organ meats are going to have a lot of those B vitamins that are going to be very supportive to hair health. And then there's actually, just in Chinese medicine, nettles and horsetail are two of the supplements that are high in things like silica, which are also very good for strengthening hair. What would you recommend for chronic dry eye? This is one of my worst Hashimoto symptoms, and it is miserable to deal with. I have a little warming eye mask and I'll lay there and have that on my warming up my tear ducts and stuff, but it's horrible. Yeah. So in Chinese medicine, this is typically tied to what's known as a kidney, which is also adrenal. So when I say kidney is adrenal, yen deficiency. So your body is not producing enough fluids. And so consuming more foods that support that is going to be good. So foods that would support those types of fluids are going to be coconut, mango, banana, egg yolks, especially ducks are even higher in this, duck egg yolks, cucumber, celery, miso and not. And so. so beans actually can be good for this as well. But a lot of this, that's a sign of over-exertion. Well, funny, every single one of those foods that you just listed,

I either can't eat because it came up on my stupid I-G-G-food allergy thing or I don't like, so I don't eat. Can I mention with these IgG food allergy tests that they're fairly inaccurate. Okay, thank you. I knew it. My instinct, this whole time has been telling me it's fake news. I don't believe it. The only thing I told you, I believe is the eggs because I, I do like start to get really sick.

If you're only doing an IGG in isolation, you're going to have a lot of false positives. So it's not, here's the reality. It is telling you, these food sensitivity tests, they are telling you some of the things that you're intolerant to. But it's also giving you some foods that you just might be eating a lot of.

And that's what it was. And so you're going to see that. Now you can do a food sensitivity test where you not only do an IGG, you do an IG. IGE, IGA, where you do more looking at other antibodies and immunoglobulins, and that will give you a better frame of reference of maybe across the board what you're allergic to. So it's more of an advanced food sensitivity test. That is a little more accurate, but still, here's what I tell my patients.

I still sometimes will have them do food sensitivity tests. But what I will do is say, listen, here's a list of foods. What I want you to do is these are the foods you need to pay attention to. and you need to feel if your joints don't feel well the next day, if your nose runs, if you get flim, if you have any reactions. So don't use it as an absolute. Use it as something. These are the foods you need to be most aware of that you could be allergic to. What would you give your child who has an ear infection before you ever gave them antibiotics? Yeah, probably garlic malayne oil. And so garlic is an antiviral. Right in the ear? Well, most often you rub it around the ear. And so sort of the vapor there gets around the ear. ear. So there are some of those that you put directly in the ear and some that you just put around

the year. So you need to look at the brand and see what it recommends because it actually depends on the brand. That's the first thing I would do. And one of the thing that actually helps that is chiropractic adjustments can help with ear infections. So that can be highly effective. Acupuncture can be highly effective. But a lot of times viruses need to run their course. Giving kids chicken bone broth soup with some herbs like thyme and parsley and garlic, those are really strongly antiviral. You know what's so funny is like, like, why do we call it a cold today? You know, we call it a cold? Why do we call it a cold? That stems from Chinese and Greek medicine, that your body is too cold internally. So think about most of the remedies for getting rid of a cold. A warm bowl of chicken

bone broth, ginger herbal tea, garlic, oil of oregano, you know, cayenne pepper. These are all very spicy and warming foods to warm up your body from a cold. Now, there's two types of cold. You have the cold cold, which is your body's cold internally. And there's also a type of cold you can have where heat invades your body. And that's where you get a fever. Your body gets too hot. And so you need to cool it down. And herbs that help with that are things like time, mint, propolis found in honey, andrographus, echinacea are going to be more cooling and dry viruses out of our systems. My dad gets this horribly hacking cough every single fall winter like clockwork. As soon as the weather starts to warm up, goes away, he's fine.

As soon as it starts to cool down, this horrible cough comes back. And no doctor can figure it out. I mean, where would you start on that? Like, what do you think? There's a seasonal change that happens in the fall and through winter. And the number one common thing that starts to happen is the air gets more dry. It gets more cold and more dry. And so when that happens, almost every time, there's dryness.

And so a lot of people today have more candida and more dampness issues. People with that sort of hacking cough, what they do is they have a dryness, but then there's a little bit of phlegm and mucus that remains. And so that gets stuck in their throat. The best remedy for that is to eat a pair three times a day. What? So, yeah. It is.

I mean, that's the ancient sort of remedy for that. But what I would say, it's a lot of yellow foods. that's what he should eat. And a lot of foods that bring moisture to the body. So what I would have him do is do a lot of chicken broth soup with chicken rice noodles like fah that you'd get at like a Vietnamese restaurant would be amazing for him or just chicken soup. Eating pears, apples would also be good for that. But really, I mean, pears would be just, I mean, it's the perfect remedy for what he is going on. I'll see if he'll do it. Why is the American Heart Association in particular corrupt? Oh, goodness. I mean, this would be a whole tirade I could get into. But, I mean, it's a really sad truth that most of these organizations basically embrace an ideology from years ago.

And then they never change. And here's the reason why ego and pride. They don't want to say they're wrong. And that is actually the number one reason. So this is why most doctors in the whole conventional medical system. and the AMA and the American Heart Association, all of them are, they're holding on to the past. They don't want to change it. And again, it's a pride issue.

Doctors, many of them have a God complex. They don't want to be wrong. And so they'll hold on to these old things that they've done for years. And the medical system also does not support very well due to the pharmaceutical interests, doing things that are non-medical. And even things that are new, they're very slow to adopt. It's not going to make money for the industry. And so the reality is, the big issue is that there are so much money relying on these things and so much pride.

It's money and pride. Those are the biggest reasons. I also think it's incredibly disturbing. If you look at the American Heart Association's website and you look at who the biggest sponsors are or whatever, canola oil is one of them. Yes. And, you know, that's like this whole thing that they try to say, like they try to say seed oils, vegetable oils, or heart healthy. what is your response to that? Well, one, this came from the most flawed studies of all time.

I mean, like one study in particular was back in the 1960s or 70s, and the study was done on animals. It was done on rabbits, and they gave them red meat. And they saw to increase their risk of heart disease. Well, one, rabbits are herbivores, not omnivores. Even their systems are not meant to eat meat. So that doesn't make any sense. And then also, it's conventional meat. So people always throw the bag.

maybe out with the bat with water. Let me, let me share a statistic that I found stunning. I recently on my podcast did an episode on the percentages of studies that are actually accurate. 51.6% of studies today are inaccurate. So less than 50%. How do you know what's true and what is it? And here's why they found this in the study. One is there was so much bias from the pharmaceutical company's funding studies, but also cherry picking data. The sample studies, the sample size was too small of people, it wasn't reproducible. You know how many studies there are on red meat being bad for you? A lot.

You know how many there are, though, on it being good for you? A lot, too. Which one do you believe that red meat is the most amazing healing food or that it's going to kill you? Well, one, you need to go and look at the fine details. Was it actually done on certified grass-fed organic regenerative meat? It's a very big difference between that and the conventional GMO-fed, you know, cows today and their lifestyle the way they're slaughtered all of it. these are two very, very different things. And so the first thing we need to know is so many of these studies are not true. So just because you see it on Instagram or you hear somebody quote it,

it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. So what we tend to want to do is look at something called a meta-analysis, which is where we pool all the studies together on a topic, or at least many studies together, and we look at it over a long period of time to discover the truth. You want to do that combined with having a level of wisdom. in common sense about what may be ancient's practice or what's been known for a long time and make your decisions based off of that information. Here's another thing. You might be like, most of our listeners, they're not going to go and read the meta-analysis.

Well, then here's what I would say. There's a Bible verse I love, and Jesus basically says, buy your fruit, you'll recognize them. Go and look at the people that are physically healthy. Go and look at the doctors that are helping people get the best results without the side effects. Like, if I'm going to listen to somebody in the government about health, I'm listening to RFK Jr. Have you seen the guy? The guy is ripped. He's healthy in his 70s. You're not going to listen to the man dressed like a woman. My point, exactly. You don't listen to that person or you're going to end up the same results with them.

These are principles. If you want to be healthy, follow the people in the groups that are actually healthy. Why is cholesterol not as bad as we have been told? Well, cholesterol is your body's repair substance, specifically for the cardiovascular system. And here's another thing that people might find surprising. 25% of your brain and nervous system is made up of a type of cholesterol. We're just treating the symptom here. So when somebody has heart disease and their blood pressure is high and their cholesterol levels are high, what's going on there?

Where there's inflammation in their arteries. Well, let's use the law of first principles. This is something Elon Musk will talk about in terms of how does he design a rocket? Well, you break things down to their most basic parts and you go back to the beginning and then you work your way back. Okay, so there's inflammation. So what's heart disease? It's inflammation of the arteries.

Why is there inflammation in the arteries? Well, it's due to there's too much sugar in the bloodstream, and that's damaging the arteries, causing ROS in your bloodstream. And so, well, how do we fix that? You stop eating sugar and you stop eating seed oils that get into the bloodstream that cause inflammation. So that's number one the way to fix that. But cholesterol is just trying to heal you.

I mean, you have a damage in your arterial wall. Cholesterol goes there to patch up and help heal the area. Did you know that some tampons are secretly packed with toxic metals? Yeah, like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. Yikes. A recent study found that 12 out of 16 metals showed up in every tampon tested. And since your body is pretty great at absorbing stuff, these chemicals can bypass your liver, head straight into your bloodstream.

Definitely not the kind of surprise you want during your period. That's where Garnu comes in to save the day. They're all about keeping your health top notch with 100% organic cotton tampons, pads, and period cups that are totally free of toxic chemicals, metals, and pesticides. So no more worrying about what's in your period products. But wait, there is more. Garnu isn't just about your health. They're a conservative-owned company with a heart donating part of every purchase to fight human

trafficking. And their packaging, it's basically the cutest thing ever, pink and purple boxes that make your period feel a little more sparkly. Plus, they deliver straight to your door, so you're never going to have to panic when Strawberry Week arrives. Go to garnu.com, use code Alex for 15% off your first. order. That's garnu.com. Code Alex for a healthier, cuter, and way less stressful period. Jen Thatcher wasn't about to wait around for someone else to create truly non-toxic products.

After discovering the alarming research about fluoride and its potential health risks, she knew something had to change. Studies have shown that fluoride often found in toothpaste can have harmful effects on your health over time, especially when used consistently. She decided it was time to take matters into her own hands and founded Zebra, a brand built on faith, freedom and the belief that you deserve to know exactly what's in the products that you use every single day. Not only do they have amazing toothpaste and mint or coconut if you're not a mint person. I also love zebra deodorant. It's aluminum-free, paraben-free, and made with naturally mined sodium bicarbonate, arrowroot powder and essential oils. No irritants, no lies,

just a clean, effective way to stay fresh. Or zebra toothpaste, of course, no fluoride, no artificial chemicals, just trusted natural ingredients like calcium carbonate and theobroma cacao to protect and strengthen your teeth plus xylitol. They also have floss. Jen created zebra for her kids and for yours. Everything is black and white with no hidden toxins and no compromises. Because when it comes to your family's health, there's no room for gray. Go to yayzebra.com and use code Alex for 10% off.

That's yayzebra.com code Alex for 10% off, clean, safe, and created with love because you deserve better. What do you think about nutritionists that will say, oh, you have heart disease or whatever? So it would be a really, really bad idea to include animal fat. in your diet. Well, let me say this. I do think that not everybody is the exact same in terms of the diet that's best even for their heart health. But I would disagree with those people the majority of the time. Now, I do believe, let's say somebody's had their gallbladder removed and somebody also has heart disease and very high cholesterol. Do I think those people might need to be on a lower fat diet? I actually do. But the fats they should still be getting are extra virgin olive oil

and some coconut oil and some walnuts and some wild salmon. Now, some people can do well on a keto or carnivore where they're doing higher fat, and their liver and gallbladder can handle that. The reason why some people can handle a high fat diet and others not has to do with really the way God designed them and wired them internally and the emotions we experience on a regular basis. The emotions? The emotions. What do you mean? Every emotion affects a different organ system. And let me go through the five major organ systems and the different emotions that impact those.

fear starts affecting your, so what do you think that? When we're talking about fear, if somebody gets in a fighter flight state, what organs might be affected. Your stress, your brain's affected. Yeah, your brain, your adrenals, and your cortisol level, exactly. So we know for a fact, fear affects your adrenals and your brain. And then your body starts producing more cortisol. That's important to know. Now, another example of that would be worry.

Worry affects your upper digestive system. You've ever heard somebody worrying, they're like, oh, my stomach, it's like it's tied in knots. You know, so we know worry affects that. We know that anxiety, if you're really, if you're really concerned about something, your blood pressure will start to increase. If there's a certain amount of stress, that affects your heart and cardiovascular system. Grief, if something's happened in the past and you're still living with it today, could be emotional trauma, could be physical trauma, could be a regret or shame from the past. And it still bothers you today. That impacts your immune system, your lungs and colon. And if somebody has a lot of anger, resentment,

unforgiveness, that is the liver. That's the gallbladder. That's the lymphatic system. So, so different organ systems are affected by different emotions. And I bring that up to say, if somebody has a lot of anger and resentment, unforgiveness, they won't digest fat as well. Whoa. And so they actually need to be more careful of the amount of fat they're eating, and they will not, they tend to need to be on a little bit lower fat diet for a period of time. And this is all Chinese medicine? It is. But again, it's not just, when I say, say it's just Chinese medicine. It's part of Chinese medicine, but also Middle Eastern medicine. People knew this in biblical time. Some of this. Greek medicine knew some of this. Let me say,

it's just not Western medicine. Most of Eastern medicine, Asian medicine, you know, Japan, who has the longest lifespan today, the country of Japan, the number one form of medicine they practice, is a combination of comp compo, which is Chinese medicine, essentially. That's where it came from, and Western medicine. So they have integrative medicine. where they combine these Western ideas along with the Eastern together. And because of that, they have the longest lifespan. Is it true that most U.S. sunscreens would be banned in Europe? Many.

Yeah, many. Now, there's a lot more natural coming out. But when you look at the paribans and a lot of the chemicals found in the sunscreens today, yeah, many of them would be banned. Many. So we, like, are putting this on ourselves, our babies, our children, because we think this is making us safer. and actually it might be harming us worse than just going without. It's similar to the food die situation. I mean, you and I went to Michigan together, march together, which was such an honor.

I mean, that was such a thing. And I know you and I care deeply about the health of our kids today. And that's why we went there and we protested Kellogg's and all of the artificial ingredients. The food dies, the B.HT found in food supply. And it's the very same thing. But most of those ingredients or the food dies of BHT, those are banned in Europe, including France and Italy and the UK. it's banned in Israel, they're banned in Australia, they're banned in Germany, they're banned all over the place. It's the same thing with sunscreens. And here's how the U.S. thinks about it, is they say we need to

have absolute concrete evidence in our double-blind placebo studies that are funded by some groups that sometimes have an interest in this in order to ban or outlaw something. Whereas in these other countries, it tends to be, well, if we believe that it's going to harm our kids or there's some evidence, let's just go ahead and ban it because we don't want to take the risk. Because this happens all the time. Think about how many times throughout history. I mean, tobacco, of course, is the best example, but there's many others, asbestos, where we realized later on, 20, 50 years later, oh, we were telling people they could smoke to lose weight, but it was giving them cancer. The same thing's happening with sunscreen today. I mean, sunscreen is so simple. Zinc oxide, coconut oil and some essential oils. You know,

it's pretty easy combo. Do you believe that Big Pharma is high? a cure for cancer. No. I don't think they have a cure. Now, do I think that if we would have spent trillions of dollars on nutrition and natural medicine, the cancer industry this year will make around $220 billion, so over $200 billion in that industry. And we've spent trillions and trillions of dollars, I think it's since the 1970s, we said we will cure cancer. Right. And where's all this money going? It's gotten worse. Where's the money going? In the pockets of, I don't know, the deep stay, other people, you know, what wealthy individuals

that are taking advantage of people that are the most in need. When you look at the cancer industry today, I truly believe if we would have put all of those dollars into that we would have, I think cancer would be reduced by over 90%. I mean, it may be completely gone. It'd be close to. Now, let me say this. I believe that there is a really strong spiritual component to cancer. and this is why the pharmaceutical industry could never fix it.

It's like depression isn't only a biochemical imbalance in a food issue. That's a spiritual issue as well. If somebody doesn't know their identity and their purpose in life, that makes them sick. You know, when I first opened my functional medicine practice in Nashville, the most common conditions I was seeing was hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, low testosterone, diabetes, obesity. today, I have a virtual practice called the Health Institute. The most common issues I see are mental health issues. Yeah.

I mean, and this is tied to depression, anxiety, poor sleep, ADHD, identity issues with people. And so I truly believe that the number one cure for cancer is Christ. It's building a stronger relationship with God. It's spending time in God's word. It's praising God. it's living in a state of gratitude. I think that the emotion of fear is the number one emotion, fear, and worry that really drive cancer.

But again, I do think there is a major, major, emotional, spiritual, mental component to cancer. You know, my mom had cancer. And she had breast cancer. I remember when I was in seventh grade, my mom came home and just started bawling and saying, I've been diagnosed with cancer. And our family lived in the conventional medical system. And we went through all of the conventional medical system. treatments. My mom went and had a mastectomy. She went through rounds and rounds of chemotherapy. I remember my

mom having a comb, taking it through her hair, all of her hair coming out. I remember just being a kid in seventh grade and almost never crying. But with that, just going and weeping my eyes out because seeing your mom suffer like that was so hard. And I remember eventually my mom was diagnosed as being cancer free and healthy. The thing that was crazy, though, was my mom seemed sicker before after going through all the chemo treatments. My mom was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome. she got put on antidepressants and anxiety drugs she was sick all the time and then this was what inspired me to become a doctor i went and i started you know um you know i was in school and i was about just months out from opening up my own functional medicine clinic and i get a call from my mom and she said i've

been diagnosed with cancer again just sweeping on the phone i flew back we prayed together we talked about it we decided to take care of her all naturally so we started having her juice vegetables like celery juice and beaten carrot and spinach and ginger. We had her start doing mushrooms. We did a Rishi-corda-corda-bizabeth. We had her start doing turmeric. We had her start doing essential oils like Frankencents. Her diet was mostly juice vegetables, wild salmon, some bone broth, lots of steam vegetables and berries. I mean, that was like her diet. And we followed this diet for months. After four months, he went back and redid a CT scan. The tumors had shrunk in half. Nine months later, complete remission. My mom reversed her cancer.

using food, but also spiritual medicine. The other thing I want to mention here is is my mom had a list of Bible verses that she prayed every single day. By his stripes, I'm healed, you know, constantly meditating on his word. And we also did things that she loved to do. She started horseback riding again. She spent more time with my dad just walking in nature. But we prayed for her constantly.

She spent a lot of time in praise and worship. And she would tell you she felt like part of her healing and breaking fruit from cancer. One was the nutrition part. But the other part was she had so much fear and worry in her life. She was a people-pleaser. She constantly just, you know, didn't take care of herself. And once she started to just embrace the love of God and praise God, that was another big breakthrough. So my point there with cancer is, even if the pharmaceutical companies were hiding a cure, I think they can hide, I think they're hiding improvements. I think that they know the studies on turmeric, the studies on mushrooms, the studies on a lot of these, you know, amazing therapy. today and that they are hiding those. But I don't think it would completely cure cancer. That's a really

long answer I just gave you. No, I love that. Have you been radicalized on pet health? I have pets. Chelsea and I are actually building out a farm, a homestead right now where we're going to have cows, sheep, ducks, chickens. And I already own all these because I haven't owned the farms that I own two farms. We have water buffalo. We have a lot of different animals. However, so my answer is, I think maybe I've been radicalized, but I don't know what you've mean, so clarified. What I've learned, and I'm like dying, if anyone has a contact to Dr. Karen Becker, that is like a dream guest. I do. I know, Dr. Karen. You do? Of course. Oh, look at that. Okay. So I'll introduce you. Okay. That's like a dream guest. She's a rock star. She's incredible. Well, I just read her book, the Forever Dog Life that just came out this year and changed my life. And I just got my first pet ever. I've never owned a pet. And I just got a dog.

I have a Pekingese. Looks like a little mop. Yes, great. Cousinit walking around. And his name is Mochi. And so anyway, her book taught me so much about how, like, it's really similar to our ultra-processed food industry when you look at the dog food industry and how sick it's making pets.

It's just like you would for a child. Like, it's important to be using non-toxic cleaning products and making sure that they're drinking filtered water, just like you do for yourself or your children. Basically, the same principles that, like, we're practicing for ourselves and our family, human family, we should also be practicing for our pets, our cats and dogs, and they would live like eight to ten years longer a lot of the time than they are, that your pets should not be dying after only a couple years. And it's because of the environment that we put them in, in the food that we give them, the fact that they eat the same, like, kibble crap every single day.

Like, that's not how dogs are supposed to eat. And so anyway, I just didn't even know anything about this. I mean, first of all, I just am learning all this stuff about human health for the first time. Then I read her book. I'm like, oh my gosh, so everything I'm learning when it pertains to me also applies to my dog. And so probably the weirdest wellness thing that I'm doing actually isn't for myself. It's for my dog. Mochi only drinks spring water from Mountain Valley in the glass. That's what I pour into his bowl. That's so extra to people, but that's what he drinks. Yeah, I mean, we're the same way with our pets. We've had King Charles Cavalier Spaniels, and then we have great Pyrenees out at our farms.

Oh, those are huge dogs, right? Yeah, they're awesome. We're actually looking at getting a great Pyrenees poodle mix called a Pyroodooodle as well. So anyways, we love dogs. I mean, we love animals. And so we feed our dog a lot of raw food. We give it filtered water, a lot of time outside, a lot of raw food. So we'll give it like duck necks and chicken necks and things like that that are organic.

He's only eating raw food too. And then there's a brand that I love. it's called cave pets. And they have, I think, the greatest supplements and foods out there for dogs. It's organ meats. It's mushrooms. It's herbs. So, again, the brand's called cave pets.

And so, and there's some other really good raw companies out there and dog food companies. That's one that we give our dogs and they love. But, but Karen Becker is awesome. Okay. I'm so excited. I was just saying that to the audience. Like, does anybody know? Because that would be so cool.

But if you know her, oh, please, I want to do a whole episode on pets so bad. because, you know, that's something I don't really know any health and wellness podcasts are getting into that and I really am interested. Especially as a new dog owner. Let's talk peptides. I'm hearing all this stuff about peptides. We need you taking peptides.

I don't even know what that is. What do they do? So one thing to know about peptides are they are naturally occurring in our body. And so we've got, of course, collagen peptides. We're all familiar with those. That makes up our gut lining, our skin hair and nails, our bones, our teeth, a lot of those different areas. You've got peptides in our stomach gastric acid known as BPC.

which is where we get BPC 157. And so that comes from stomach acid and stomach lining. You've got thymocin, which is from, you know, the thymus gland. And so anyways, which is TB 500, is a form of thymocin. So one thing, I just wanted to point that out that these are things that can be naturally occurring within our body. These peptides, which tend to run and help facilitate our organ function. Now, when you look at it, you look at it. look at peptide therapy today, I think it's incredible. I don't think there's enough long-term studies for me to just give definitive answers on everything. But when I had my healing process, which a lot of people don't know this, I went through a severe health crisis about two years ago

where I went in for a real simple procedure of PRP and stem cells, which I had had before, which really helped my back. I injured at lifting weights. And when they went in and injected my back, I somehow ended up getting an infection. Oh. And it went into my disc. It then spread into my bone. One morning I woke up, like I kept feeling pain. It got worse and worse and worse. One morning I woke up, I couldn't walk. Chelsea and I were in Puerto Rico at the time. We had to call an ambulance. Come pick me up. This was two and a half years ago. Oh, scary. I had to take a medical flight from Puerto Rico to Florida.

And I was in Florida meeting with a doctor and he said, Josh, listen, this infection is so bad. It's spread into your bone. And now there's an absence by your spinal cord. He said, you can never walk again. This could kill you. He said, in all likelihood, you're going to be permanently disabled. I had 24 hours of feeling like my life was over. And I decided that I really needed to press into God. And I felt like God told me that I'm bigger than this diagnosis.

And I decided, I'm just going to do everything I can to heal. Because I went from, I mean, Alex, I was throwing my two-year-old daughter up in the air in the pool, squatting, deadlifting, cycling, swimming. I was in great shape. And so to get this diagnosis and tell a doctor say, hey, you might be disabled from this. It was just very hard to hear. So I decided I was going to do everything I could to help myself heal. Yeah, what'd you do?

And so I started getting in a hyperbaric chamber every day for like two hours a hard chamber. Okay, you know who's doing that now and is like just singing the praises of hyperbaric chambers is Charlie Kirk? Really? He just started doing that, I guess. And like, oh, Charlie, he's got his hyperbaric time. It's a whole thing with him. He's obsessed. I've never tried it.

It's amazing for longevity. It's amazing for fighting infections. It's amazing for brain health, lung health, anti-cancer. I mean, there are lots of benefits of hyperbaric chamber. So I did that almost every day. And I read a study that I could cut down on antibiotic time, which I had to take an antibiotic. By the way, the first time I'd taken a drug since I was 19 years old. Let's go.

And I'm 43 now. So it had been 20 years. Yeah. But I knew with this infection, how serious it was I had to get on it. But they were recommending three months. I would found a study that said I could do it for probably four weeks if I would get in a hyperbaric chamber every day. And I did that.

So I got in a hyperbaric chamber every day. And how long do you stay in there? Two hours is how long I did it. Now, some people can do 60 minutes or 90, but I need a major issue. What are you doing there? Can you read a book or something? I watched Bible studies. I listened to audiobooks.

And then in addition to hyperbaric, I got vitamin IVs. I also did red light therapy. And then I did peptides. I did BPC-157 and TB 500. Those are known to be the best peptides for tissue regeneration from healing from injuries, from pain. And so I started doing these every day. Now, I do want to mention. I did these on the back half.

I didn't do these early because I didn't get turned on to them early enough. But I didn't walk for 10 months. Oh, my gosh. And then I was on a walker for two months. So I didn't walk on my own for a full year. All of the year of 2020, end of 2022 and all the year of 2020, for the most part, I didn't walk. And then I, because there's not much blood supplied to your disc, and so it took a while for me to heal. But all that being said, I started doing, and I did stem cell again, but I really believe,

that doing peptide therapy really help me heal and recover. And so I did quite a bit of peptides. I would do them for, you know, like six weeks on and a few weeks off. And then so I would sort of cycle through them. But peptides are really powerful at supporting your organ systems for tissue regeneration, for hypothyroid, for low testosterone. And here's the thing I like about them. They have less side effects than hormone replacement therapy. Okay. My opinion on hormone replacement therapy is, there's a time and a place for it, but it should not be the first thing you try and do. If a woman is going through perimenopause or menopause, they should first do herbs like Don Quai and black cohash and wild yam and do more foods that are going to support their health

and lifestyle changes and then maybe do peptides with it. And if those things don't work, then try hormone replacement therapy. Same for men. If men have low testosterone, do ginseng, do fenugreek, do red meat, do organ meats, go out and chop wood and lift. weights, those will get testosterone up. And then if you need to, do peptides like BPC 157, TB 500. So I'm a big fan of peptides done in conjunction with eating a good diet and taking the right supplements. Is there a certain doctor that you really like to go to for peptide stuff or is it something you order? I don't even know. Like, how do you get it? Well, well, I mean, this isn't going to surprise you at all, but, you know, the medical community is trying to ban an outlaw peptide therapy. They're trying

to. Gosh, every time, man. They're trying to. They're trying to, they're trying to, they're trying to, to make it a drug right now. So it's different nationally, it's different state to state. So some doctors, because it's a gray space right now, are prescribing and recommending peptides. It's going to be like raw milk all over again. We're going to have a black market for peptides. Well, you know what? There's a good thing that we've got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on our side now. Isn't it? And we can freaking say that. That's right. So good. The MTHFR gene that we brought up earlier. How do you know you have it? And then how can it impact health? Well, there's a simple genetic test people, can get to test for MTHFR. And there's really two variations. And some people just have one,

some people have the other, and some people have both. And I want to say this to start, just because you have the variation doesn't mean that you can't still methylate some and that you can't create things like methyl folate. It doesn't mean that. It means that it's harder for your body to do and you're not as good at it as maybe some other people. Someone told me if you have a birth mark on your leg, then that might mean you haven't. And I do. I've never heard that. Somebody said that's the son. Like, that's how you can tell. I haven't heard that or seen that yet, but I do know you can tell with the blood test for sure. And what this is is that, so some people don't convert things as well.

Some people don't convert vitamins into the usable form as one. One example of that is methyl folate, and that's what the MTHFR really a big part of what it stands for. So when we eat certain foods like red meat or spinach and we get folate, our body then in order to utilize it, needs a methyl group attached. So just like we talked to, you might, Before we actually were filming, we were talking about different forms of magnesium. So for your body to utilize it, you can't just have magnesium. You need magnesium glycinate or threonate or saturate, so it needs to have something attached. The same thing goes for certain B vitamins.

Like folate needs a methyl group attached. It's like your body gets a car without wheels. And in order to use it, your body's like, well, we need to put these methyl groups, these wheels on the car. So now it can drive places and do the things it needs to do. So some people aren't very good at attaching on that methyl. group in order to utilize it by the body. And there's other things. There's other enzyme reactions. The number one factor that really, I believe, impacts methylation is gut health. If somebody has an

unhealthy gut microbiome, they're not going to convert as well. And you've got a whole book on gut health, right? That's right. Well, I've, yeah, I wrote one years ago called Eat Dirt. It's really all about how to heal leaky gut, support the health of our gut microbiomes. That book is really focused on gut health. But I think with the MTHFR, what people need to do, here's the thing they need to do in order to fix it. Number one, just eat as healthy as possible. Lots of red meat, lots of probiotic rich foods. Focus on that. The next thing, outside of eating a very healthy diet, take a very high-dose probiotic supplement. Ideally, like even a trillion prox would be amazing, but, you know, at least $100 billion, that's going to support the absorption, help prepare your gut. Then take a methylated

B-complex vitamin. So this is very important that it says something like methylfolate or methylcobolamin. And you'll actually be able to read that next to B-9 or B-12 on the supplement label.

So you need to take a methylated B-complex or methylated multi. And then another one I really like for people to take is it a glandular or organ supplement like liver. Because it has most of those nutrients in a food form

that also working with your gut bacteria is going to help people methylate properly. So that's really. really, I think, the solution to helping people heal and overcome the MTHFR gene. Is the copper IUD really healthy? It's terrible. Copper IUDs are not healthy at all. Let me say this. Going back to the birth control. People think it's better. The best option of birth control option is keeping your temperature, looking at your mucus, doing proper family

planning. That is the best. It's the oldest. It's the most proven. That's the only healthy way, really to do it. You can use condoms. There's another option. But copper IUD, remember we talked with this earlier, too much zinc. What does that do? It impacts copper. What does too much copper do? It impacts zinc. So what happens is when people do these copper IUDs, they're, they're imbalancing their immune system. They're going to cause immune issues long term and bacterial issues as well. It's also going to affect the gut microbiome. It's also going to cause deficiencies. So where it's not going to have the exact same negative effects as doing a contraceptive pill. It's a whole other can of worms, a whole other set of problems you're going to have, some overlapping, some not, with copper IUDs.

If you could provide one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, mentally, or spiritually, what would it be? Do my spiritual triathlon in the morning, and it's this, and then I also have a superfood smoothie. This is why I do every single morning. The first thing I wake up, and I get grateful. I say, God, I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my amazing wife. I'm so grateful for my daughters. I'm so grateful. So starting off by just saying everything you're grateful for for just a few minutes is so spiritually empowering and it's so healing. I mean, part of health is what you focus on. So when you get grateful, it's very healing. The other thing I do right after that is I spend some time reading my Bible and, you know, God's word is a form of medicine. And then after that,

I spend some time with prayer, just really connecting with God, maybe with, that prayer. Maybe I'm meditating a little bit on his word, how I'm going to apply it that day. But that's my spiritual triathlon. And while I do that, I do a superfood smoothie. My smoothie tends to be room temperature, not cold, because that's not good for the digestive system. I know. I was like, I don't know about that, but I'm listening. So if somebody has hypothyroidism or autoimmune disease or a weak digestive system, your body cannot digest as well with cold food. So ice drinks and and cold smoothies, ice cream are not good. So I have people do sweet potato smoothies or pumpkin smoothies or I have them take blueberries or cherries but at room temperature or goji berries and add that in at room temperature.

I do a scoop of a bone broth protein or a collagen protein or stem cell protein, but something with collagen. I do another scoop of some sort of plan or animal protein and then I'll add in maybe some super food powder and maybe a little coconut milk. And that's what I do most mornings for breakfast. And if people think about it like this, if they just change their breakfast, they're changing one third of their diet. That's a massive change. So if people would spend 15 minutes in the morning doing that spiritual triathlon while at the same time doing that superfood smoothie, I guarantee it would help them heal body, mind,

and spirit in such a powerful way. Is this superfood smoothie of yours, Dr. Axe, on your website or something? You know what? I talk about it on my podcast some. It might be on my website. I have a lot of versions of this. It's in books I've written in the recipe section. But basically it's this.

Protein, two types, collagen and plant or animal. Two types of proteins, though, a plant-based protein and animal. And a collagen-based protein. Okay. And so that's like 40 grams of protein. That's right. Most people need to be doing 30 to 50 grams of protein at every meal if they want to heal. The second thing is berries or some sort of superfood.

And the third thing is either water or coconut milk. And so that's just kind of the simple smoothie recipe. And the water needs to be filtered. Do not use your tap water. That's right. That's right. Absolutely. 100%.

What is your Instagram? At Dr. Josh Axe. And tell us about your podcast, which I've been on so you can type in Dr. Josh Axe, Alex, Alex, Alex, and you should be able to find his interview of me as well. And you crushed it. Your interview is so good. We had so many things go viral from that conversation. So, yeah, my podcast is the Dr. Josh Axe show.

And you can find it on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube. And sometimes people want to learn more about specific topics. and you could search on YouTube or Apple like Dr. Axe hypothyroid or Dr. X testosterone or Dr. X, you know, leaky gut or whatever it is and see probably a topic that I've covered in the past or something like that on it. But yeah, your episode was, it was incredible. Thank you. Yeah, that's a really good tip is that in, you know, Apple podcast or Spotify, in Spotify, if you click on a show, it'll say search the show type of keyword. It'll bring up every episode or conversation where you've mentioned a keyword, which I really love that tool.

And also, you guys, there is a transcript option on Apple Podcast. You can click transcript for any episode. And then there's a search bar within the transcript. So, for example, for this, if you want to go back, you're like, oh, what was it that Dr. Dr. Axe was saying about raw honey? If you click on this episode in Apple, type in transcript raw honey, then it'll take you to exactly what he said. You'll have the written words because so many people like, what was the mushroom supplements

that were recommended? You know, you guys can search the transcript. So I've never, like, brought that up. But yeah, there is tools there for you to use. Thank you so much Dr. Axe for coming on the show. This was so fun. I'm a huge fan of your show. I told you before we were starting.

I've listened to several of your shows. You ask incredible questions. And you've got such a great audience, too. I mean, I noticed just on your social of people that are just on fire for, you know, their health, their family's health. And so it was an honor to be on today. Thanks for having me. I love that we did a deep dive into supplements on this episode. And then we also talked a lot about much.

Two things I have not spent a ton of time on before with any guest. Please leave a five-star review. Tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary. What brought you here? What was the episode that introduced you to the show? I'd love to know. Don't forget that we have a huge community on Facebook. The Kutervatives Facebook group is for fans of my show. Like-minded, conservative women who really care about health and wellness. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark.

You can find show merch at TBSAmerch.com and get a 10% off discount with Kod Alex Clark. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. We are on a mission to heal a sick culture twice a week where new guests bring their own unique remedy to do so. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture of Papua Carey.