Dhru Purohit Show - The Top 3 Things You Can Do Today to Start Protecting Your Brain with Dr. Datis Kharrazian

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and InsideTracker. Many people think optimizing brain function is only for the elderly. But did you know that we can improve and protect our brain function and structure at any age? No matter how old you are, there are multiple ways to uplevel your brain and feel your best.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Dr. Datis Kharrazian about reversing and preventing cognitive decline through actions that boost specific components of the brain.  Dr. Kharrazian is a clinical research scientist, an academic professor, and a Functional Medicine healthcare provider. He is an associate clinical professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, and a researcher at the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.   In this episode, we dive into:    -The top three things you can do today to start protecting your brain (1:53) -Why nitric oxide is so important for brain health (4:14) -Misconceptions around why people have high blood pressure (11:10) -The connection between insulin and high blood pressure (13:32) -How to naturally lower blood pressure (15:18) -Early signs of brain aging (20:12) -The top foods that can lead to early aging of the brain (26:09) -The connection between a leaky gut and a leaky brain (31:30) -Dr. Kharrazian’s top supplement recommendations for brain health (43:01) -The relationship between your thyroid and brain health (56:45)  Also mentioned in this episode: -Glutathione: Your Most Important Defense -Solving the Puzzle Podcast with Dr. Kharrazian  For more on Dr. Kharrazian, follow him on Instagram @datiskharrazian, Facebook @datiskharrazianpage, YouTube @datiskharrazian, and through his website, drknews.com.  This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and InsideTracker. Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. It contains 7 different forms of magnesium, which all have different functions in the body. There isn't anything else like it on the market. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off, just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you are dealing with chronic issues and you've been all over the place, your first right flag is not a brain disease. The second most common cause for people that are really chronic and not getting well and all of a sudden having new symptoms is sometimes past brain injuries that are caught up. Hi everyone, Drew Brod here. On today's podcast, our guest is Dr. Detees Karazian. Dr. Karazian is a clinical research scientist, academic professor, and functional medicine health care provider. On today's podcast, we're talking with Dr. Karazian about all aspects of the brain. Do you want to have a better brain? Do you want to protect your brain? Do you want to set yourself up to avoid chronic disease later on in life? Well, today's episode is for you.

Now, a little bit more about the Tise. He's an associate clinical professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General hospital. Detis is one of the world's foremost experts in getting to the root of very complicated chronic diseases. And through his Karazian Institute, he puts out a whole series of courses on all these important topics, brain health, autoimmune, thyroid, and so much more. On today's podcast episode, he's going to be giving us a glimpse of some of the advice that he gives to

individuals that are trying to avoid these chronic diseases. I hope you enjoy and let's jump in. Dr. Detis Karazian, thank you for being back on the podcast. I'd love to just jump right into things. And, you know, a lot of people don't know where this podcast used to be called the Broken Brain Podcasts. Whenever I think about experts on the topic of brain health, yours is like right there, top of the list. High level.

You know, I know you work with a lot of chronic patients. You have incredible courses for people who are dealing with really tough and challenging disease that are out there. But high level for anybody who's paying attention today to today's episode. Give us a couple of things, two or three things that anyone can do at any age to begin to start protecting their brain from a future episode of cognitive decline or even worse, Alzheimer's and dementia. Okay. Well, if you look at the brain that you can say the brain has neurons, the brain has blood vessels, and the brain has glial cells. So I'll give you one for each one.

Let's do it. For blood vessels, you know, the key thing is you want circulation, you want blood flow, you want to raise your what's called endothilinic oxide. levels. So any kind of, and it's very basic. It's what everybody knows. Physical movement exercise raises endothelial growth factor, but what they're actually finding is higher intensity exercise tends to increase the amount of nitric oxide and protective growth factors that have a huge impact on the brain. So a little burst of activity can be very powerful. So even if you're like going for a nice walk, even if you just have a burst of activity a couple times in that walk and getting your heart rate really high, that will really increase the impact of growth factors.

and things like nitric oxide, which protect blood vessels in the brain. They dissolve placking. They help with vascular genesis where your blood vessels can branch into other regions. So that's one part of the brain. The second part of the brain is the glial cells. The glial cells are the immune cells of the brain, and they create inflammation in the brain. And a really simple way to dampen those is just to have a diet rich in phlybinoids. So phyloybinids would just be colorful fruits and vegetables, the more color you have.

or if you wanted to supplement with things like turmeric, reservoir, grape seed extract, they seem to have a very powerful anti-inflammatory effect on the brain. And then when it comes to neurons, it's all about connectivity, so keeping those neurons active so they can connect to each other. So always learning new things.

Whatever you're bad at, you should probably do to keep your brain healthy. If you're bad with math, you should work on math. If your balance is bad, you shouldn't improve your balance. Probably the things you don't want to do, you people like to do things that are good that we're good at. So, you know, if you look at the brain, simple things, get the neurons activated with the things that you're not good at.

Get your blood vessels healthy by increasing your heart rate, even just for burst of activity for a couple minutes a day. They have a huge impact on the vascular physiological response. And then for the glial cells, you know, get as many different antioxidant flavonoids as you can throughout the day. Let's unwind a couple of those and dig in deeper. You mentioned nitric oxide. Why is nitric oxide so key,

not just for brain health, but for the body overall? And what are the top things in today's society that are preventing our body's own ability to create it? So nitric oxide is basically a hormone gas. And several years ago, they reclassify the vascular system to an endocrine system because they found these layers of cell called vascular andothelial cells release nitric oxide. And there's also all these other vascular growth factors that are released. So when we look at our blood vessels are not just pipes, they're really part of the endocrine system. And one of the most powerful things that they secrete is something,

nitric oxide. And there are different types of nitric oxides. There's neuronal nitric oxide, there's cytokine intuoside, and there's endotheline nitroxide. But I think we can just focus that endothel nitric oxide for now. Nothel nitric oxide is just what is released from blood vessels. What releases them for blood vessels is just increasing circulation and blood flow. So as your heart beats more, that increased circulation activates what it's called endothel nitric oxide synthase, and then you release this nitroxoxide gas. And this nitrogate oxygen, and this nitroxact, gas, basodilates has antioxidant properties, dissolves plaques, and really turns on the mechanisms you need for neurons to branch into other areas. So it's really critical. Now, we have our nitric oxide

levels go down. One easy way, common way nitrogly goes down, so you please mouthwash. That'll have an impact on activating some enzymes that make nitric oxide. So you want to be careful with that and being having super high-dose alcohol dental mechanisms. Another reason metro oxide levels go down is high blood pressure. High blood pressure is one of the main pathways that destroys the vascular endothelium. So if you think of your blood pressure as pressure in your arteries, the greater the pressure is, the harder it hits against these cells that make nitric oxide, and over time they get destroyed.

There's like waves destroy the shoreline, so the higher your blood pressure, then you get more nitric oxide destruction. and, you know, in addition to high blood pressure, mouthwash, just not getting your heart rate up can impact your nitric oxide levels. So just a sedentary lifestyle can impact that as well. I'm going to keep on pulling on these threads here because I feel like you're so good at connecting all the dots. Let's talk about blood pressure. You know, a lot of people are familiar when they're dealing with things like hypertension.

They're familiar with their doctor talking about exercise as well as like cutting down on salt. A lot of people don't know that the vast majority of salt in Americans' diets, and increasingly around the world, is coming from ultra-processed food. There's ways that they can pack in salt in a way that, or sodium, that you'd never be able to add to your own cooking. But what other things are misconceptions or sort of like deepening the story around why people have high blood pressure that you feel like the average person is maybe not always aware of? This episode is brought to you by bioptimizers. You know, if you struggle with chronic fatigue, low mood, heart palpitations, muscle aches, brain fogs, anxiety, headaches, constipation, or as my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman likes to call it FLC syndrome, which is code for straight up feeling like crap,

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One is when you look at people that have salt sensitivity, and not everyone has salt sensitivity to, it's impact on blood pressure, but most people especially get older, start to develop it. And they found a relationship between the microbiome. They found some bacterial species that contribute to the expression of sodium-increasing vascular dynamics and impact blood flow. And then in recent studies, have they shown inflammation in the glomerulide. The glomerulatolide is kind of like a filter of the kidneys.

There's inflammation in those kidney regions. People are much, much more salt-sensitive. So, you know, as we get older, if our microbiome changes, becomes less diverse. If we have lots of inflammation, especially some subtle inflammation, kidneys, we're not talking about infection or a disease, but just systemic inflammation. Those do make us more sensitive to salt as a factor to raise blood pressure. So overall, you know, healthy, diverse, microbiome, reduce inflammation, maybe some of the underlying things that may impact our sensitivity

to salt. And then, you know, salt reduction clearly has worked in studies. There's lots of published studies on what called the DASH diet where they reduce salt and increased potassium and, you know, vegetables are you high in potassium. And that seems to absolutely lower blood pressure. So, I mean, high blood pressure for sure will be a risk factor for stroke. It'll be a mechanism for vascular dementia, it'll be a mechanism for destroying the vascular to thieling over time and getting poor circulation, like cold hands, cold feet, fungal nail beds, even hair falling out, happens when there's lack of blood flow into the scalp. So lots of vascular dynamics that are promoted by these mechanisms. So you mentioned nitric oxide, of course, playing a important role in

vascular health. We talked about, of course, knowing that salt reduction, and primarily sodium. And again, I don't know if you concur, but I feel like sometimes like salt specifically like adding a little bit of sea salt to your vegetables and other stuff. I see so many people worried about that who are dealing with high blood pressure, but then forget that breads and rolls that they buy from the grocery store are like way, or Doritos or chips or whatever have way more sodium than like that little bit of sea salt that you add to like some, you know, some of your vegetables or home cooked, home cooked meat. But is that it?

Are there other underlining root factors that play a role? What about insulin resistance or any of that stuff when it comes to blood pressure? Yeah, good point. I mean, insulin signals different to trigger. Insulin activates different vascular endothelial mechanisms that also can impact blood pressure too. So sometimes, like you're saying, someone's having something with lots of carbohydrates in there that can increase insulin, insulin levels unrelated to sodium. can increase those dynamics as well, that impact blood pressure.

So, I mean, it's a complex scenario. I mean, stress hormones, insulin, thyroid hormones, estrogen, progesterone, inflammatory mediators, all play a role with things like sodium. And then you have, you know, all the different expressions of different gene variations of like angiotestin one, the end uptestin two, changes in the microbiome, changes in glomerolay expression. So there isn't like a single protocol. And there's sometimes just trial and error.

Like you can't just go, hey, this is the protocol. to use. Like if you have nowhere to go and you want to get your blood pressure down, mostly clear evidence is the dash diet, which is like a low salt diet with lots of potassium, high potassium, high magnesium. But, you know, even some people that do the dash diet, they're on beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, diuretics, still like getting the blood pressure down. And some of that could just be chronic inflammation in the actual kidney glomeruli that we're starting to learn about more in research circles that it's not really an infection, but just a subtle inflammation there.

No one really knows what's causing it specifically yet. We know it's inflammation, most likely systemic inflammation. But that seems to be a factor. And then a lot of the recent research with different changes and different microbiome species and different populations may impact that. So it's a growing field. And I don't think it's clear.

Now, simply, I mean, if you're looking at trying to lower it, things like hawthorn extract, Vempocetine, ginko, those naturally raised nothelanic oxide. taking potassium and magnesium throughout the day, lowering salt, are the most common and well-published natural mechanisms. But even if you do some of those things, it may not work with some people. I want to go back to brain health for a quick second. Sure, and actually brain injuries can easily cause chronic hypertension to it.

Yeah, as you bring in another variable. You know, the brain works by dampening an area of the brain stem called the rostril mesenceapalic, particular formation that dampen sympathetic centers. So there's also neurogenic hypertension where it's brain-based. Some people start to get brain injuries. That can be a reason why they have their blood pressure go up. They can have disautonomias. They can have the heart rate changes.

So people start to get neurodegeneration. So it's not always metabolic. Sometimes it's what they call neurogenic. Medo-neurogenic meaning coming from the brain. Even with so much more education out there in the world about the importance of our brain health and starting early and all the different preventative lifestyle measures we have to protect our brain, she as we age, what do you think are still some pervasive misconceptions that are out there in society about the brain as a whole?

There's a couple things. First of all, there's a concept of there's no hope. There's always hope with the brain. The brain has connectivity. The brain has plasticity. But at the same time, it's not there forever. There is a point of no return. There is a point.

You will not have the mechanisms in place to develop neuroplasticity. and there is a point where you can cross that pretty quickly. You know, there's a point where preventive medicine has to be employed. For example, someone has dementia, I mean, if you do imaging studies with the brain, the brain is actually atrophied. It's just shrunk, okay? It's just, that's what you see. And you can't really go back from there once your brain is shrunk.

There's been a few studies that have been done that show that the area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is like in the medial temporal lobe in the center of the brain, has some stem cells that can be regenerated and reactivated, and that volume can change, but it's minor. It's minimal. It's not, there's some potential there, but it's not unlimited potential. So I'm hearing before you continue further, I'm hearing two things. You're both saying in one way, people underestimate their ability to start early and to change

the brain and how much control they have. And we're going to talk about what some of those things are. But in another way, there's maybe another group of people who are like, I'd all be fine. I'll be fine. Let me just do my thing and live my life. But you got to be careful with that too, because you could hit certain. points, especially later on, where in the instance that you just shared, volume of the brain shrinks, and you can't really exactly get that back with the technologies and the knowledge that

we have right now. So some people underestimate the power of the brain to repair, and some people overestimate how resilient the brain is to life's insults. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, and there's some truths to both sides of the story. The problem is, if you're a pessimist, you focus on one side, if you're optimist, you focus on one side. And then there's like the clinical reality, which is a blend of both of them, right? So there are studies that show that the hippocampus, which is the area of the brain that's involved with long-term memory, it's the area of the brain involved with encoding. Encoding is how we take things we learn, like our working memory, internal long-term memory. It's all generated to the hippocampus. So that area of the brain

does have some precursor stem cells that can be reactivated. And things like running, exercise, cognitive exercises have been shown to have an impactos in some studies. And then the volume can increase. So in some clinical trials, they see some people, some subjects have the volume increase. Not every subject, but some subjects do. So there's lots of variables that may be a factor that causes that. And in the case of these clinical trials, just asking, what were some of the things that they were doing that would help the brain regrow? Like was there tools or techniques? Are we talking about drugs? Are we talking about exercise? These were just lifestyle factors. Lifestyle factors? Like what? What would be some examples of things in the studies that you

might have seen that helped the brain grow? Yeah, one of the studies that was published, they just looked at having them do some cognitive tasks, like playing chess, playing cards, socializing, and then to get into physical activity in. Okay, so that's one example of something that could help the brain grow. It's not a huge amount, but it's a little bit. It's helpful. You can see that types of changes. And definitely, you know, you can see connectivity and plasticity happen with animal studies

where they can actually dissect the brain and do specimen staining and compare one group to another. But in human studies, they've been able to show some changes with, MRIs on the volume of the hippocampus, but nowhere else. It's not like the rest of the brain can develop. So, for example, the frontal lobe is where you have focused attention and concentration. That atrophy is permanent. That's not coming back.

There's no stem cells there. So you're looking at... Can I ask you a question about that? So the frontal lobe, for example, right, our executive function, a lot of people do notice, and you had a really great series on Instagram, link to your Instagram inside of the show notes, where you were talking about some of the earliest signs. of that decline in your frontal lobe. Can you give it in some examples?

What are some of those earliest signs that you just do not have the same executive function that you thought you once did? Yeah, executive focus, concentration, planning, organizing, starting tasks, finishing tasks. Those are all frontal low. Even things like I've heard people say, would love to hear your thoughts on this,

it's harder for them to get through a book or read through like a chapter of a book. They used to be great at when they were younger. They're not as great as it now. Is that just getting older and people are a little bit more attention deficit and the phone comes on and it's easier to focus on that? Or is that actually that they might be losing a little bit of brain power? Well, that could be one of two things. That could be endurance. And that's one of the first things you'll start to lose when you brain starts degenerate. You lose endurance and tasks you're

able to do. So you can't read as long. You can't drive as long. You can't do whatever it is, any kind of cognitive task, even motor tasks as long before you fatigue. And that's an early sign of neurogeneration, but frontal lobe specifically related symptoms of it atrophying and degenerating is really what people call laziness, you know, inability to get motivated, inability to finish a task, inability to plan something, inability to fall through with something, inability to run a business, an ability to follow your dreams, that's all frontal lobe. Inability to put up with ideas that are counter to maybe your beliefs about life, like not being as open to new ideas?

Yeah. You know, when you look at like, let's say, some kids have the frontal lobes don't develop, like ADHD, ADHD, ADD children, they become ADHD adults. Those are frontal lobe deficits. So they have this inability to, you know, focus and attention means you also take out information and noise and stimulants that you don't want to focus on. So the ability to have sustained attention is all frontal lobe. So you see that they just can't get started. They can't motivate and get to school. Maybe they live at home. And then they're at 40, that's just a frontal lobe that hasn't necessarily developed over the years. There's many reasons why that can happen. And then there's those that are adults. Now the frontal lobe is degenerating, right? So we see a lot of frontal lobe generation people that go into retirement and they go downhill quick because they no longer stimulating their brain. They're basically, oh, I'm just going to watch TV all day.

And they just watch TV all day and don't do anything. And they don't have social interactions. The ones that are socially active and playing tennis with friends and loved ones are doing things, they maintain a healthy frontal lobe. But the ones that don't, that's the ones that start to decline really quick. So in addition to not having social activity, which we'll come back to then in a second. So you talked about not having social activity. So in addition to not having social activity and not challenging your brain by trying to get good at things that you're not good at, you mentioned getting good at chess or getting good at math if you're not good at math and you used to be good at math, you know, practicing, practicing stuff and challenging your brain.

what are some other things that cause our frontal lobe specifically, our executive function, to sort of age early? So what are some other lifestyle factors that would cause it to age early? And we just don't have the ability to be as sharp as we once were. Well, I mean, with that question, most of these neurodegener pathways are all fueled by inflammation. So the greater inflammation we have, that'll be a big role. But inflammation, you know, it could be inflammatory food. foods or not enough anti-inflammatory foods. It could be inflammation treated by environmental

chemicals or we don't have enough antioxidants to protect against them. It could be past brain injuries. Past brain injuries can catch up over time. Sometimes you bump your head when you were playing soccer on your 20s and now as you're older. The injury is still there and now it gets to be expressed more over the years. That's kind of the mechanism for what they call chronic traumatic encephalopathy. So, you know, like, you know, lack of movement, last shelter interactions, lack of doing cognitive tasks, things like high blood pressure, things that impact vascular blood flow, not enough antioxidants to deal with chemical load exposure because we all get exposed to chemicals. Even infections have been shown to be a factor in

neurodegenerative processes. They're not all specific for the frontal lobe because it doesn't work that way, but it's going to have an impact the entire brain. But you may notice those symptoms in the frontal lobe before anywhere else because that may be what you're counting on to function and survive throughout the day. You can have other parts of your brain actually degenerating too, like your parietal lobe, which maybe feels where your body is in splice, and you make it more ankle sprains or ankle injuries on the side because your brain knows where things are.

But maybe your daily task is working, and you're noticing your executive functions are down. But in reality, it's probably the rest of the whole brain degenerates with these mechanisms. So in one way, it's quite alarming because what I'm hearing from you and correcting if I'm wrong is that there's so many, different things that can force your brain overall, not just your executive function, but your entire brain to say, ouch. And those things could be, just to summarize some top ones that you

mentioned here, not having movement in your life. And we'll chat about that in a little bit, right? Some sort of exerting physical activity. I'd love to get your thoughts on dosages, et cetera. Environmental toxins, right? So those are some things that can play into those inflammatory pathways that are there. General inflammation that just can come from either chronic infections or just even simply from our diet, our diet that's on a daily basis. Those are some in addition to a few others that you mentioned. So food is always one of those interesting things that people think about. When we're young and our body has a lot more stem cells and seems very resilient,

we can eat a lot of things and get away with it often. As we get older, talk about some of the top foods that people might want to take a little, little bit of a microscope too, you know, as an analogy in their life and really examine its role in sort of causing or being linked to early aging of the brain. So what are some top foods that are out there that people might be wanting to pay attention to? We definitely want to avoid partially hydrogenated fats. That's definitely up there. So partially hydrogenated fats are fats that are in boxes, bags, you know, processed food, those types of fats are devastating for neural membranes. They will be a serious factor in your brain health if you consume those

on a regular basis. So you definitely want to avoid partial hydrogenate fats. And then there's a strong relationship with certain food proteins that have been linked to brain information and more and more in the population. Most common ones are gluten sensitivity, dairy, casein sensitivity, other ones are eggs, and. protein sensitivity, but those are specific to actually if you actually have sensitive to them and you react against them, right? And then you can look at it from food groups that just secret more insulin. So higher carbohydrate, higher sugar, higher concentrated sugars release more insulin. Insulin turns on the inflammatory mechanisms in the brain, insulin causes insulin

resistance in the brain. Insulin elevations can disrupt neurotransmitter transport mechanisms of the brain so they can cause a lot of disruption. So it's really just like processed fat, certain inflammatory foods people are reactive to, really high carbohydrate, high sugar grains. Those are all the things that for sure are bad for the brain. It's the stuff everyone already knows. You would think everybody knows it, but then you go to the grocery store, and it's obviously very clear that a lot of people don't know it, which is why we put some of this content and so much of what you do is putting out information for free because slowly, slowly,

more and more people are learning. But if you go to Times Square and you talk about partially hydrogenates fats or certain types of fats are not good for the brain, you're going to get a blank stare, and most people are going to not have any clue what you're talking about. Right. That's true. So what is it about those fats? And also, what do you think about seed oils? You know, there's a lot of conversations about seed oils online, and you have people that are using sort of big, large observational studies on seed oils, things like canola oil and soybean oil, and showing that seed oils are associated with less vascular disease and things like that. And then you have a lot of

a lot of functional medicine doctors who feel that seed oils are quite inflammatory and really want to get their patients off of those things. So I'd love to get your opinion on seed oils, canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, all those in those categories. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, you know, trends that happen in functional medicine and in the community. There's, you know, obviously any processed oil is really the problem. Like if you have rapeseed oil, canola oil, cold press rapeseed oil has really really high amounts of EPA and DHA in there personally can't take fish oils they can really turn on the brain function pretty quickly the stuff you get the grocery store that just processed can oil that's you know not the best

thing and there's definitely a major concern now for people that have lectin sensitivity there's like seeds are getting concerned as a concern for people obviously corn and how these things are processed the processing of the oil itself and the protein be more of an issue than the actual food source itself so that's something to think about too we kind of And just think of it about just corn, but it's not corn. It's the process of going through becoming an oil that changes the structure of the proteins. Structures of proteins change when you heat them. Structural proteins change, become more immunogenic or more inflammatory through different processes.

So in the world of immunology, a protein has a shape. And as those heating processes and processes change the shape, they become proteins that can become more immune reactive and more inflammatory. even though the original source was corn or was seed. So I think there's some truth to concerns for the seed oils being an issue, and it's most likely not necessarily the seed, because seeds can provide a really great source of essential fatty acids, assuming that a person doesn't have protein reactions to the lectins, which some person percentage of population do.

And that's the key thing is these larger studies are looking at generalize ability for the whole population. We really want to get to chronic illness, there's individuality. And some people may not have any problems with seeds. And some people have significant problems with seeds. But the processing of seed oils for sure itself is most likely the main issue. You know, not so much the food source itself. But yes, I would say you probably want to limit those.

If you get natural oils, olive oil, you know, avocado oil, there'd be better than the seed oils for sure. You know, we recently had one of your friends and colleagues on the podcast talking about leaky gut, Dr. Elroy Vigdani, who has nothing but the kindest things to say about you, like holds you in such high esteem. And, you know, he was talking a little bit about the connection between a leaky gut and a leaky brain. I'd love you to expand on that a little bit.

How is it that a leaky brain can become leakier over time? and now some of the things that we used to be able to handle when we were younger, all of a sudden cause a lot more damage as we start to begin aging and could contribute to things like cognitive decline and even increasing our risk of things like Alzheimer's and dementia. Yeah, there's definitely a relationship between leaky gut and leaky brain that are out there. And we've actually published a paper, I think we published a paper, International Molecular Science, where we looked at some associations,

and people that have Crohn's an ulcerative colitis. We measured markers for intestinal promulity. We've found really, really high associations and risk factors for them also having leaky brain. There's different proteins that show up with leaky brain. They're, you know, not to get to technologists like S-100B, aqua-pournate protein antibodies, but you can measure proteins in a laboratory setting in a research study determine if someone has some kind of barrier compromise.

But for the most part, there's some relationship specifically to a protein called zonilin. Zonilin is a messenger protein that opens up the tight junctions of the intestinal tract, and they also open up the tight junctions on the brain. So the singling mechanisms and the molecules that open to the tight junctions and the blood-brain barrier are identical to the gut barrier, and also identical to the lung barrier. So usually when there are inflammatory mechanisms or things that increase zonelin level elevation,

like people have celiac disease. When they get exposure to gluten, there's an increase of zonelin. Zonin is going to open up all of the blood blood, all the barriers. It's going to open up the blood-brain barrier, the gut-barrier, the lung barrier. Defensive and physiologically, zonelan is there to open up barriers so we can get rid of a pathogen or get rid of a substance that's in her gut or in our lung barrier or in her brain, so we have to open that up. Also, you know, when the brain is injured, the brain's inflamed, the blood-brain barrier does open up. And traumatic brain injuries, for example, open up the blood

brain barrier because you have to bring in cells like natural killer cells and T-cells to get rid of the debris in the brain. So when there's a lot of inflammation in the brain, they do open up. So when you get inflammation in the gut, the inflammatory meteors in the gut can activate messengers in the brain. The glial cells, those glial cells, then sure of mechanisms, zonolins released, the blood brain barrier opens up to deal with anything that could be in the brain. But if it stays chronically opened up and there's chronic inflammation and chronic injury, you can have some serious problems. Now, if you look at, for example, studies in the traumatic brain injuries, people get head injury, their blood-brain-brain can be open for six, seven weeks after the brain injury.

It can sustain and be open even for months and months and years if the inflammation continues. That's there. And then that can accelerate neurodegenerative changes. And then when you look at, so it's like the blood-brain-brain opens up, things that shouldn't cross can cross. So larger-based chemicals can cross into the brain. Now you can get aluminum and iron buildups, iron depositions in the brain. Those are linked to neurogenital diseases.

You can have antibodies and pathogens cross into the brain. They've already been linked to like placking and Alzheimer's disease. So yeah, there's definitely, you know, gut-brain relationships that are there. It's almost like if you have one, you're very likely to have the other one. You recently did an entire episode about how powerful glutathione can be in the body. And in this topic that we're talking about right now, reducing just overall inflammation for the body and the brain because we know on this podcast that what you do to the brain you do to the body what you do to the body you also do to the brain so tell us about how glutathione can be an important

part and focusing on glutathione can be an important part of helping us to reduce our overall levels of inflammation and maybe age a little bit better than we normally would when our levels are super depleted yeah so glutathine is the tripeptide amino acid our body makes it's the most abundant antioxidant we make and we can do things like take nacetyl cysteine or eat foods high in sulfur to raise our own nitric glutathione levels but glutathion is really i mean the most important antioxidant if you really think about it protects our mitochondria cell powerhouses it's been shown to heal the blood-brain barrier heal the gut barrier it prevents oxidative stress inflammation from chemical exposures so it's one of those things that

you could almost probably look at it as a variable of how fast someone ages or how fast someone becomes chronic or what their recovery is based on how their glutathine levels go down. Like they've done studies where they've taken different gut pathogens and measure when the barriers start to break down and the gut from the infection. And it's directly linked to when glutathlone levels get depleted. So, and same with the pulmonary barrier. They can, you can expose to environmental, airborne, uh, triggers, then your lung barrier is intact until your glutathone levels get depleted, then your

blood membrane barrier opens up. So it's one of the most important antioxidants, I think we all have, and it's not a bad idea to take things like anacetyl cysteine daily. You can also take glutathone as a supplement as a daily type of preventive mechanism. But it's not one of those things that may necessarily make you feel dramatically better like most antioxidants. Now, some people will take things like NSILS and feel dramatically better, had more energy and their information goes down quickly. That's a sign that they were severely depleted. But most people won't notice a big difference.

But it can have a lot of protective roles with them. So as far as supplements go, it's one of the top ones you should consider. And in the case of dosages where you're not necessarily working with a practitioner, and it's just something that you're taking on your own, whether, you know, let's talk about maybe direct glutathione and then again, And yeah, like what would you recommend in terms of dosages if people are going to explore using the different varieties that are there, whether it's direct glute thion support or the precursors that people would take?

You know, most of the dosages people make are just literally made up. We don't know. Okay. There's some room for experimentation. I can overdose on an acetyl cysteine, right? So you might have to experiment. Typical dosage for like inocetal cysteine or 500 to 2,000 milligrams a day, you know. There's no one out there doing these long-term,

studies going, okay, 500 versus 750 versus 1,000. The ones that are done that way in animal studies and human studies where they see breakdown, it's very clear. The higher the antioxidant, the more protection it is. There's a point that kind of balances out, but it varies at different times for various mechanisms. So if you're taking a steel cyl-16, 500,000 milligrams today, if you're taking glutathione, it depends if it's like oral glutathione or liposomal glutthion.

You can always start with the manufacturer recommendation that's in the back and then play around with the dose. it's not something that you'd have to worry about overdosing on. It's basically just sulfur amino acids. Well, I'll tell you that, you know, I just moved into a new office recently where we're building out a new studio over here and they're still setting it up. But there's a lot of new furniture. There's new carpet. There's this.

And I have the filters on in the background on 24-7, but you can still get that sort of, quote-unquote, new office smell, new car smell. And that gives me a headache. But I've been taking glutathione all through this process. If I have to come in for like an interview like today, even with the filters run on high and the smell mostly gone, I will go home and I'll take a little bit of, I'll take a couple pumps of like a liposomal glutathion because I just know in the background it's helping my body fight off all that off gas and chemical that I'm getting exposed to. Do you notice a difference with it? You know, I don't, but I notice the opposite for a few years. And I'd love you to chat about this if you have any insight. for a few years, you know, I was not taking glutathion supplement.

It's almost like I forgot about it. And I went through a very challenging time in my, you know, a few family member things that were there that we were trying to be supportive around, et cetera. And my sleep wasn't as good. And I think I was suffering from, I was doing a little bit of a higher saturated fat, ketogenic type diet that was not responding to me well. and in a matter of a few months, I had the biggest explosion of gray hairs that I've ever had, specifically on my beard.

And I remember chatting with one of my colleagues who's a functional medicine doctor, and they were saying, like, listen, you're going through stress and other stuff, and yeah, maybe switch up the diet, but also, have you ever thought about taking glutothion? And I was like, I used to take that all the time. And now I haven't. And so who knows if that played a little bit of a role in terms of that I. oxidative stress process. Any thoughts on that? Well, I for sure notice for myself, I'll get my whites coming in, you know, I'm 50. Some of that is just going to happen with age, of course.

Yeah, it's going to happen with age. But I know when I am taking like a high antioxidant and cocktail, sometimes I'll just go away. And then when I'm stressed out under a lot of, you know, triggers and various things that comes back, you know, I got to load up again. But I've noticed relationship for myself personally but you know it varies from like real life from actual patient their response um is so different but you know it's actually a good sign if you take glutathione and you don't have a huge huge change because if you the ones that do take glutathione also and some have significant oh my god my joints don't hurt it all anymore I feel fantastic that's really a big sign that they're so depleted and so inflamed um but you know glutathine like there's a couple

of things that you mentioned. First of all, glutathione, in addition to being anti-oxin helping barriers heal, glutathine, in addition to being anti-inflammatory properties, glutathine actually binds to what are regulatory T cells, and regulatory T cells control our immune tolerance in how we react and not react to things like foods, like food sensitivities or environmental chemicals. Glutathine binds to various chemicals like heavy metals, so it has a chelating property effects. Glutothine can cross the blood vein barrier and actually protect neurons. Glutothine is the main antitoxinate that protects our mitochondria from degenerating, which is associated with aging.

I mean, it really is, you know, sometimes I, I talk about glutathine. I feel like, you know, the guy in the, what is it, the Greek movie, the Greek marriage movie? My big fact, green wedding. Windex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Windex is the problem solvers for everything. Yeah, gluten, I can fill that role.

I mean, sometimes when you talk about all the mechanisms, and you just talk about what's been published on it, and the mechanisms it works. It almost sounds like Windex from that movie because it does all these great things, but it really does. And it's like, well, not selling glutathione. We're just telling you like what's out.

You're selling the concept. It's down some way. Because, you know, when you hear like someone like in an infomercial and they're trying to talk about something, they make everything sound so great. But even if you were a total skeptic and just look to glutathorn research, you'd go, oh, my God, it does all these things. So I think people hear it.

They're like, oh, my God, yeah, another miracle supplement. It's not another miracle supplement. It actually is very powerful and clearly shown to have an effect. Yeah, and we'll link to your episode, which is a really incredible podcast you did. And you took a lot of questions from your community on it. So if anybody wants to dig into more about glutathione, they can check that out afterwards. On that note, you know, on that range of like over-promising borderline snake oil, you know, this is going to cure for everything.

and, you know, that other side of the spectrum, are there any other things like that that you would say are well-documented items that when we talk about supplements, of course, supplements are just that. There's supplements on top of a great foundation of a Whole Foods diet that's personalized for you, not just Whole Foods, but personalized for you. That means that certain people have to remove things that they might be sensitive to and they can try that with an elimination diet or look for a functional doctor who can help them do some deeper testing that's there.

once they've done that, are there things that you've seen and come across that might also be, maybe one or two things that would also be in your top 10 list of recommendations? Yeah. So like when you talk about nutraceuticals and you talk about how to do things, there's two ways to look at them. One of them is what's generalizable to the whole population, right? So when you look at observational studies, when you look at even clinical trials that are done, you know, you can see that they're trying to look at what has an impact. in a group of people. Of course, there's inclusion exclusion criteria. Then there's a world of individualized medicine where certain things can have a very powerful impact based on the condition

and the like thing that they are dealing with. Okay. So, and for most of us that practice functional medicine, working with chronic conditions, we're kind of, you know, working with people that have, let's say, a very specific autoimmune disease or someone who's just, you know, recovering from a stroke or an injury that way, and then we're trying to do interventions that may not be generalizable to the whole population. So I'll answer your question by telling you what's generalizable to the whole population. Like, hey, you should definitely take this because there's a lot of evidence on this. Fish oils. That is huge. So if you look at the most common reason, well, most of us will die, it'll be from a stroke or a heart attack, right, some kind of cardiovascular event. So it's a number one cause of death.

and there have been so many randomized clinical trials at the point where there's now multiple meta-analysis, multiple medical trials together to get a composite score to really look at the evidence. Because, you know, when you look at a study, some are good, some are bad, and, you know, people can cite one versus the other. The whole purpose of what's called a meta-analysis to take all the different studies that are good or bad and look at how they all outweigh, you know, good and bad way, outweigh each other and have a total impact. there is no question in the world at this point. If you look at the evidence, fish oils have a very, very protective role for cardiovascular disease.

And they actually have more studies are showing even the higher of the dose you take may even have more of a protective effect. So typical dose to most of these studies like 1,000 milligrams, which is like one fish oil. Some studies are now showing 5, 10 capsules, 5,000, 10,000 milligrams of fish oils can have a huge impact. In fish oils like EPA and DHA, they for sure, impact the brain and the impact of blood vessels. The two areas of our physiology that are vulnerable as we get older to inflammation, deterioration, anatomy changes, and so forth. So in the blood vessels,

fish oils protect the vasculine tholeum, they have anti-inflammatory effects, they have anti-platelet sticking together, aggregation effects, and they really, really slow down all the different mechanisms that lead to clotting, strokes, and placking. In the brain, fish oil, dampen the microglial cells from being so active and inflamed all the time to an anti-inflammatory effect. And then fish oils also support neuron membranes so they can be more efficient in how they have neurotransmitter signaling and ion exchanges that are happening. So it works fantastically. So it's almost, you know, at the point where if you really were a true scientist, I'm not talking about biased. If you were if you were really looking at the evidence and you look at the abundance,

information published on fish oils and you look at all the meta-analyses done in the literature peer review literature would make no sense to not be taking fish oils on a regular basis so fish oils would be up there glutathione we talked about unfortunately glutathione has much more clinical effects we all see than this research that we see because no one's doing large clinical trials of metanalysis and glutathine yet but as far as antioxidants go there are lots of small different studies and various factors that seem to all point to the fact that that could be one of the most important nutraceuticals that we can take. So if all you take was things like enacidyl cysteine and fish oils, you would have a lot of things covered, right? Because some people are like, well, I don't want to, what am I going to take?

I don't want to take 50 supplements, right? I'm just like what are the most important ones? Take some enacetyl cysteine. Take like 2,000 milligrams, 2 or 3,000, even more of an acetyl cysteine. It's a cheapest way to get your glutathlone levels up. You can find it at any, any, any, any, health food store. and take, you know, two, five, six, seven thousand milligrams of EPA DHA fish oils, and you're going to cover a lot of bases.

And there's this phenomenon, you know, when we look with chronic diseases and so forth, in a clinical setting we're trying to have what's a hormetic effect or a widespread effect. So when you're trying to intervene, you want to intervene with something that impacts multiple pathways instead of just one. So you can unwind something. And without question, EPA DHA from fish oils and N. Acidyl cystin, easiest way to reach the glion can have profound impacts on all these different systems.

That's beautiful. And thank you for that. That's super actionable. And people can walk away with that today. And, of course, a little, you know, no plug for any specific brand, but just a plug for a lot of, like, the high-quality doctors brands that are out there, you know, supplements range and quality. And there's a lot of really, like, top, there's a lot of, like, hidden sort of nefariousness out

there. So just, you know, do your research and look for, like, good quality brands that are there. Well, let me add to that, because this is a big issue, too. There are supplements manufactured in third world countries, the most common ones being China and India. There is no standards for production there, manufacturing there. And when they import them in, they don't have to check to see what's on the label is actually accurate. And how they were processed and manufacture there is up to them.

In the U.S., we have good manufacturing practices where things are done in a clean facility, things are measured, things are regulated and the information is accurate. So, you know, when you go to, when you go to like a store, I'm not going to mention any stores, but health stores.

Costco, Walmart, CVS. You don't have to mention it, but I'll mention it. Whatever it may be. And you see like a $2 supplement. There's a reason probably why that's there. There's no way that could be processed with the, like, you know, the cost it takes for good manufacturing practices

and let's say in the U.S. to do that. Yeah. And that's an issue. Now, you can also have companies that are in the U.S., right? But they're actually sourcing their actual ingredients from other countries. And, you know, so just make sure that companies are working with manufacturer. They're not just in the U.S., but manufacture their nutraceuticals in the U.S. That's the easiest guideline, or if you're in Europe, a European country or something like that.

But when it doesn't say, and things are really cheap, and you know, you can, you can, can't get a clear idea where they're actually manufactured, not where they're bottled. And if you don't see the word bottled, if you don't see the word manufactured on there, it's a red flag, and especially if it's inexpensive, it's a red flag. So you want to do a little bit digging and find them the right ones. And the great thing is because the internet, there's so many great brands that are out there. It's not that hard to find. And that's a good thing.

Let's talk about minimum viable dosage to really get the benefits of movement in your life. You know, we've had many people on the podcast come on and say, if I could put exercise into a pill and sell it, it'd be a trillion dollar company, of course. So what have you seen in the literature? And when you work with people that are early stages of cognitive decline and live a very sedentary lifestyle, of course, there's a gradual process of starting off, even things like walking are beneficial. But where do you want them to be to get the benefits of really what exercise and movement can bring to their body and their brain? Right. So when you look at the physiological magic of exercise, there's a direct relationship to intensity. So intensity raises growth factor, opioids, testosterone, nitric oxide. So the more intense the physical activity, the greater physiological magic takes place. So, you know, people will say things like, oh, you know, a light walk can have effects. It can. Absolutely.

but higher intensity would have a greater effect. So higher intensity activity, even if it's for short burst, and this is why things like the seven-minute workout have become popular or the three-minute workout have become popular. But right now I'm just talking about the physiology of chemicals that turn on that slow down neurodegeneration or have other effects on the body. And there's difference between the physiological response to get a change in physiology versus exercise to burn calories, for example.

Right? Burning calories is all about duration, doing it for long extended periods of time. But the stuff that really turns on the chemistry of the brain for a neuroprotective effect is not so much based on duration. Like if you went for a long walk for three hours, casual walk, but if you had burst activity for 15 minutes, you're probably going to have greater response for burst activity or two minutes on your brain, then you will from a casual walk. They're both going to have benefits. I'm just saying the physiological magic of exercise is, is a great response to burst activity or two minutes on your brain, then you will be casual walk. They're both going to have benefits. I'm just saying there's the physiological magic of exercise is, most profound with higher intensities. So, you know, higher intensities can be very protective, but also they create more inflammation. So, you know, some people that are already inflamed are really dealing with an inflammatory disease or condition already. If they try to do high intensity, they just may not recover for days and days and days. So really the balance, I would say, the way I kind of communicate with patients that I'm dealing with the network with the chronic disease population is try to get as high as high as intensity as you can with what you're limitations are at that or but you can't your capabilities are at this point so but you have to be

able to completely recover from that the very next day right it shouldn't throw you out of commission for more than a day yeah like they do high intensity workout that's 20 minutes long and then they're in bed for the next five days trying to recover a concern flame that that's kind of productive right yeah so the brain may feel great that day they would have oh my god I feel awesome I feel amazing this is so good but the next day they're crash and they they go down the other way so it's kind of like curve when you look at it. So the higher intensity a person can go without crashing would be the ideal scenario. And then again, then you get the second part of it, which is frequency. So being able to do it more frequently would be the best. Let's say we're trying to protect someone's brain.

Okay. So that's different than, for example, someone that's trying to get six back or something like that, right? For them, it's all about really cutting on calories and exercising for long duration. But when you're trying to protect the brain, what you really want is the highest amount of intensity that's consistent. So you want that high intensity exercise, right? That level where it's hard to breathe. You're doing it for 30 seconds a minute and then taking a break, 30 seconds a minute, taking a break. And then it's not to the point. It's so inflammatory for you that you can't recover for it for the next day. So that would be the ideal story. So if someone does like casual walking, if you can just do some burst for 30 seconds of a minute of like a sprint

or really fast-paced walk, that can make a big difference, right? Or if they're doing casual exercise, just doing like squatting for as long as you can for 30 seconds for a minute, just like air squats or just push up as fast as you can, those little calisthenic types of movements can really get someone's physiology up into the high-intensity state, and that's going to have the sustained effect of releasing things like nitric oxide at much, much higher levels. And this is why people feel a lot better. The exercise high they get is related to the neurochemical response that's there.

So you may not get the exercise high. It's just like a casual walk. We may get an exercise high for doing jumping jacks and push-ups and air squats for like three minutes or something like that. And that is the response you may notice that it's turning on the magic, as they call, putting exercise in a pill. It's when all those chemicals start to change. That's definitely intensity-based. And getting that, you know, sometimes we hear like three to four times a week. Is that what you'd say?

Like, again, within those recovery constraints that you have, you know, how do you think about dosages in terms of the week for, again, the most beneficial benefits to the brain? I mean, you have to listen to your body. If your body's not recovering, that's a problem. But even with higher intensity, even just like three or four minutes, if it's done daily, that's going to really protect your brain, right? Some people don't have, like, the schedule to go and exercise two or three hours a day or, you know, or do those things.

Most people don't. Yeah. So, but if we're dealing with someone's got like neurodegenerative issues, we are at a brain injury and they're trying to recover, or we really want to figure out what they can do at the highest intensity for burst. And then even if they do more casual types of doing exercise, that's all okay. But we just want those bursts to really turn those chemicals on. You know, we started this whole conversation about protecting our brain as we age.

what are the things that take insult on the brain? I want to get a chance, especially because a huge percentage of my audience would find themselves in this category as individuals struggling with this. You are like one of the go-to experts in the world around all things autoimmune, but also thyroid. So tell us, what do you notice about the relationship between

the thyroid and the brain, especially as people start to get older and their thyroid isn't functioning as well? Is there a connection or a relationship between those? Even in terms of I've heard anecdotally and a lot of patients that come to our clinic at the Ultra Wellness Center, you'll often hear that some of this stuff that they brain fog and other stuff and things like that, and then they fix their thyroid and all of a sudden that symptom isn't as strong or they feel like way better than they previously did. And they thought it was one thing, but it was just getting their thyroid working well.

Talk to us about the thyroid. The bottom line is this. The thyroid is the most vulnerable endocrine we have. to oxidative stress to inflammation to immune dysfunction, all right? It's a gland that doesn't have much antioxidant reserves and is very vulnerable for environmental toxins and there's lots of gene uniquenesses and it's in the most common cause of thyroid dysfunction

hypothyroidism is autoimmunity. Most common autoimmune diseases in the world in every single country is Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune thyroid disease. So as we get older, you know, we have this thing called senescent, normal physiological aging, but our immune cells learn, our immune cells start to dysfunction and not be able to distinguish self from non-self more frequently. And the most common

autoimmune disease to turn on is thyroid autoimmune disease. And then most people don't even know they have an autoimmune disease because they just get diagnosed with hypothyroid, not knowing that the actual cause of that is autoimmune. And then once the thyroid hormone gets to get attacked by the immune system, those glands that have cells called follicular cells, they get injured so the thyroid doesn't have the ability to put out as much thyroid hormones as they used to, and then the person becomes hypothyroid. The thyroid hormones have an impact and they bind to every single, every single tissue in the body has receptor sites for thyroid hormones, because thyroid hormones control the cells' metabolic rate, how efficient they are, making energy and using energy.

So when someone finally develops, let's say, hypothyroidism or their immune system, their immune system had dysfunction developed an armine disease, they started to attack their thyroid. And if enough of those follicular cells can destroy it and they can't make enough thyroid hormones, they can have a whole host of symptoms from brain fog, depression, cognitive decline, osteoporosis, so cardiovascular risk, inability to recover, you know, constipation. So they get this, you know, very diverse, weird symptoms all over the place. And it may take a long time for them to finally get diagnosed properly. So doing routine thyroid testing is not part of the routine healthcare system.

So, you know, they usually go to someone who can think a little bit outside the box and maybe even start to order a thyroid panel. And then when you get into like thyroid assessments, you know, there's all these different workers that can look at subtleties and changes. And I don't know if you want to go deep that. That's a deep hole to go down to you. That's a very common thing for a lot of people to have thyroid disease and all of a sudden they start to go downhill.

And just top line, because a lot of people are like, well, I went to my doctor and I got my thyroid checked out and like all the labs looked like they were in range. Just mentioned briefly about why the labs that you often get from your, you know, often well-intentioned doctor around your thyroid, maybe not be the complete picture around your thyroid health. Okay, that's a big one too. But let's talk about that. So first of all, there's the market called thyroid-stimilar hormone. it's called TSA. So that's the marker that's used to diagnose hypothyroidism, meaning your thyroid gland isn't making as much hormones as it needs to do, right?

And that TSAH measurement isn't actually a thyroid hormone measurement. It's a hormone that's released from the pituitary. So the pituitary releases a hormone called thyroid-stimulating hormone. It's supposed to activate the thyroid to produce hormones. And when the thyroid isn't doing its job right, T-SH levels go up to try to stimulate whatever is left from those injured thyroid cells to work harder to meet the body's thyroid demands. So when you look at TSAH measurements, one of the first things is there's no agreement on what TSA's level should be.

So, for example, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy Family Physicians, the European Council, Vendurcan Disease, whatever group you want to say, they haven't all agreed upon what a proper TSA level is. So no one knows. Okay. So they all have different numbers, but there has been a trend over all these years they keep getting tighter. You know, it used to be like any, you know, it's got to be eight and above. to be hypothyroid, then it was seven and above, then it was six, now it's to 4.5, some people think it's four, some people like it's three, any bit of think about three could be reference range, but that's where some of the frustration comes in. So what most physicians do is they kind

of just use what the lab range is, and the lab range isn't really based on any of these guidelines. It's just based on a bell curve for the person in that population. And a typical lab range could be, you know, let's say one to 4.5 or 4. Some lab will be 4.5, some lab will be 4. Some labs do different assay methods that I have different issues. So there's a lot of, even with the best intentions, there's a lot of great area. Now, if someone has like really severe hypothyroidism, the range is clearly outside the range, but with the subtle ones, they may be a little harder to determine. And the other issue is that the most common cause of thyroid hypothyroidism is actually autoimmunity. And in autoimmunity, especially in the early stages, and those early

stages could be one year, could be 10 years in that early phase, pre-disease phase. TSA levels, some days are normal. TSA levels, others are not. Other days are not. And they fluctuate between normal and abnormal, right? So if you have one day normal, one day abnormal, one day normal, one day abnormal, one day abnormal, and then you have a visit on a Tuesday randomly in the month, you may test as normal. And then you don't have your next physical exam until the next year. So you don't get diagnosed. So that's another problem that happens with the, you know, pre-disease state, early stages of the condition where you would have all the symptoms. So I think one of the most important tests you should ask for is to just see if you have autoimmunity against

your thyroid gland. And that can be measured with what are called TPO antibodies or and or thyroid gland antibodies. So you can ask for both. Thyroglabel antibodies and TPO antibodies. If you can only get one, get TPO antibodies. It's a shame to have more positives than thyroid. Now, if that's positive, that means you have an autoimmune thyroid disease. That means your immune symptoms attack in your thyroid. And if you have those antibodies,

some days your TSA will be normal and some days your TSAH won't. So that would be the better test. Now, it's not done in a typical insurance-based health care model because it's expensive and doesn't necessarily change treatment. They're going to wait for a person to be clearly diagnosed hypothyroid where their thyroid

is working at all. TS.H. before they consider replacement. But if you know you have thyroid auto immunity, you can then jump into diet, nutrition, lifestyle strategies to really dampen the expression of that. And maybe even look at your TSA more critically and see, you know,

or you're at the point where you need to go in some kind of thyroid replacement to help your physiological functions. So that's one of the biggest problems that's out there that a lot of people face, especially women. Most type of thyroidism turns on anywhere between age 30 and older in female patients. So they're fine, fine, fine, for turn 30, have all these slower metabolic processes, constipation, hair loss, cognitive decline. The body just is not functioning as well as we used to.

And they may get their TSA's measured. And that's the time they measured it was normal, but they haven't gone further and checked those antibody markers. So definitely check your thyroid antibodies if you have all the symptoms of low metabolic activity. Toadice, do you want to leave our audience with just a little bit of any kind of closing messages or thoughts here on any aspects of health that you want to touch on? It's sort of like final words here to wrap up and put a little boat tight on the interview. You know, for people that are out there that have been doing all the right things and things aren't making sense, your first right flag is an autoimmune disease. Make sure you can screen for an autoimmune disease. number two the second most common cause for people that are really chronic and not getting well

and all of a sudden having new symptoms whether it's dizziness or chronic gut issues or chronic nausea or just brain fatigue or chronic depression is sometimes past brain injuries that have caught up so as a person in the trenches just going back through someone's file and going through the whole process and trying to figure out those things those are the two most common things right so if you are dealing with chronic issues and you've been all over the place make sure you're really consider those two mechanisms because they are very, very common. Fantastic. And you launched a podcast.

If you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about it, and we have a link to it in the show notes with the first episode that I'd recommend people listening after this is a glutututthion masterclass to continue the discussion. Tell us a little bit about the podcast and then where people can follow and kind of keep in touch with you online. Well, the podcast was started because they talked to you. You said you should do a podcast. And I'm like, okay. So all my information is at Dr. K News, DRK, N-EWS.

com, Dr. K News. My last name, Parazin, is pretty hard to spell. So I just try to use Dr.Kews.com as our website. So everything's there. Well, thank you for your work and really setting the standard of what it is like to be a practitioner who's focused on educating and really serving the public. And I appreciate you coming back on the podcast for a second time now. It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks, you appreciate it.