The Dr. Hyman Show - Ask Mark Q&A #4: MCT Oil, Reversing Diabetes, Pursuing A Career In Functional Medicine, And More

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Ask Mark Q&A #4: MCT Oil, Reversing Diabetes, Pursuing A Career In Functional Medicine, And More | This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley and The Pegan Shake In this new Q&A series, Dr. Mark Hyman takes live questions from his community. For a chance to speak with Dr. Hyman during a future Ask Mark Q&A, text your question to 413-225-8995 using the hashtag #askmark Topics covered in this episode include: The benefits of MCT oil Improving our food system by becoming a regenetarian, reducing food waste, and more Reversing pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and measuring blood sugar Nutritional deficiencies in children and teens Pursuing a career in Functional Medicine How to control candida and yeast, or fungal, overgrowth This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley and Farmacy. Right now, Paleovalley is offering my listener's 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/hyman to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. The Pegan Shake features a combination of collagen, pumpkin, and pea protein with healthy fats from my two favorites: MCT oil which is great for fat burning and brainpower as well as avocado oil. I’ve also included acacia fiber to help with gut motility and digestion. Check it out at getfarmacy.com/peganshake. Mentioned in this episode: Brain Octane Oil from Bulletproof Food Fix by Dr. Mark Hyman FoodPolicyAction.org Kiss The Ground Food Fix Campaign Food Fix Action Guide Functional Medicine Coaching Academy Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy Institute for Functional Medicine Tulane University's Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Sometimes blood sugar can be elevated in the morning in a relatively healthy person, not because their blood sugar is a problem, but because they are stressed. Stress will cause blood sugar to go up. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman here. Now so many of my patients ask me how I manage to work multiple jobs, travel frequently, well not so much anymore, and spend time with my family and still focus on my health.

I know it can seem hard to eat well when you got a lot going on, but the trick is to never let yourself get into a food emergency and to stay stocked up with the right things to support your goals. So when I keep nourishing snacks and the right supplements to optimize my health at home and at my office, I know I'm helping myself make good choices in the future. Recently, I discovered Paleo Valley Beef Sticks.

I keep these beef sticks at home and at the office so I know that whenever I'm in a food emergency, I have a healthy and delicious option to keep me on track. It's no secret that I have high standards when it comes to what I put in my body and Paleo Valley Beef Sticks checks all the boxes. They're gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and non-GMO. Plus, they use 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, which not only adds to the flavorful taste, but it also means they're free of any harmful antibiotics or hormones that you'll find in most meat. With grass-fed beef, you'll get more nutrients than you would with beef fed with grains, things like higher levels of omega-3 fats that help reduce inflammation, and more B vitamins and other antioxidants to support your body's converting food into energy,

and also more of the fat-soluble vitamins that are beneficial for a healthy heart. Plus, instead of being processed with chemicals and other questionable ingredients like similar snacks, these beef sticks are naturally fermented so you get gut-friendly probiotics with every bite. How cool is that? Right now, Paleo Valley is offering my listeners 15% off your entire first order.

Just go to paleovalley.com forward slash hyman to check out all their clean paleo products and take advantage of this deal. That's paleovalley.com forward slash hyman. I definitely recommend stocking up on the grass-fed beef sticks to keep in your house, in your car, and in your office. It's one of my favorite tricks

to staying healthy while on the go. All right, now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Mark Hyman. How y'all doing today? I hope you're surviving or thriving, as I like to call it. I'm really excited to be here with y'all today. We're doing a live Q&A show that I'm doing for my community. We're calling it Ask Mark. And it's where I take questions from my text community and invite those folks to join me live and ask their questions. And if you want to ask a question in the future, you can just text me at 413-258-995. That's 413-225-8955 with the hashtag Ask Mark. And my team's going to pick your question, hopefully,

for your future Q&A with Mark Hyman. That's me. Lastly, I can't give you any medical advice, but I'm going to give you a big picture about how I would deal with various health issues or health questions. Our first guest is Jessica, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Hi. Hi, Jessica. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. I have been reading a lot about, you know, eating healthy, and I follow you on Instagram and see your recipes, and I try to imitate them a lot. But I've been seeing a lot of MCT oil being told. Recommended. Recommended for people to use.

And I want to know what the actual benefits of it is. And also, when looking at the different, you know, MCT oils that are being sold, what do you look for on a good MCT oil to buy? Yeah, great question. So for those who don't know what she's talking about, Jessica, thank you for the question. MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides. And it's a specific type of fat. It's mostly found in coconut oil. And it's a very different kind of fat than traditional fat. Most of the fat you eat is taken up by these things in your gut called chylomicrons.

And then they go in your lymph system. So they basically absorb through your gut. And they don't go into your bloodstream. They go right into your lymph system. And then they dump into your heart. And they get processed. So it's very, very different. And their other kind of fat,

the MCT oil, is absorbed directly into your bloodstream. And this is very important because it then goes to your liver and it has all these various effects. It also is extremely, think of it like super jet fighter fuel as opposed to like diesel, right? So it's an incredibly effective fuel for your mitochondria, which are the little energy factories in your cells that make you energy. So when you eat and you breathe, you produce energy inside your cells, these little tiny little organelles that look like a bacteria, hundreds of thousands of them in every cell. And when you're fatigued or when you kind of age, we tend to have lower functioning mitochondria. And it's a big problem with a lot of health issues, whether it's diabetes or neurologic

diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, weight gain. I mean, most chronic illnesses have some mitochondrial issue. And so MCT, like dementia, we find extremely effective in dementia because it's the perfect fuel for the brain. It also then is burned way more effectively, way more efficiently. It's like a super fuel. So if I go for a long bike ride, I'll just take a couple of tablespoons of that. It doesn't taste like anything before I go, and I'll just be like an energizer bunny the whole time. It also produces ketones, which is incredibly effective for alertness, focus, cognitive

function, and also speeding up your metabolism. And it actually is used in treatment of dementia and can be very, very effective for that. It also has the ability to speed up your metabolism. So you think, well, I'm going to eat fat and I'm going to get fat. No, it actually is going to potentially speed up your metabolism. Now, not if you're eating a junk food diet and you're eating tons of starch and sugar, but I'll throw like a tablespoon and a shake in the morning, and it'll just give me that extra little buzz.

So it's like caffeine without the buzz, but it gives me that focus, alertness, attention. So I wrote a lot of my books using NCTO, and I've written like 17 books. So I think it's good working out. Okay. And in terms of finding a good source So I think it's good working out. Okay. And in terms of finding a good source, I would say that there are a lot of products out there. You want a reputable company. I particularly like Bulletproof. My friend Dave Aspey runs the company.

He's very religious and diligent about sourcing the right coconut and also the process by extracting it. And also there's different MCT. There's different sizes of the changer, C8, there's C10, C12. So you want more of the C8. So he's, he's purified his in a certain way that has the most benefits. Okay. All right. And it's called brain octane oil. Okay. Is that something that you can do then every day or? Yes, but you should check your, you should check your lipids, right? Because like I said, if you don't know who you are in the genetic spectrum, it could be risky. So you just want to make sure you're checking your numbers. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jessica.

I think the next question is from Alice. My question is, what can I do to help your efforts to get our food system improved and fixed? Well, short of running for Senator Congress or the White House, I think that there are so many things that we can do that are powerful ways to have an impact, whether it's in our own choices or whether it's in our action, our communities and our schools, whether it's our political activities with who we vote for, all of that sort of makes an impact. So I would start with aspiring to be a Regenetarian. And what is a Regenetarian? Well, you heard me speak about regenerative agriculture earlier, but a Regenetarian essentially is someone who aspirational tries to eat food that's grown in a regenerative way, because

that will have a downstream effect to increase demand. It'll increase your own health. It'll drive the marketplace to have more and more people doing this and it'll generate reductions in carbon emissions, improvements in food quality, conservation of water and so forth. You can also start a compost pile because about 40% of our food is wasted. And that is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. If it were a country after the U.S. and China, it would take the entire landmass of China just to grow all the food that we throw in the garbage at a cost of $2.6 trillion a year.

So we have more than enough food to feed 10 billion people. It's just we throw a lot of it out. So then you can start a compost pile. You can actually work with your local town or city or state actually to create a composting ordinance. So you can, cities like California have done that. In Massachusetts, you can't throw out garbage if you have a food waste, if it's more than a ton. So if you're a grocery store or a food service company or a hospital or whatever, you have to dispose of it in a way that isn't throwing in the garbage in the landfill. So there's a company, for example, in Massachusetts has partnered with farmers to get the waste delivered to their farm. They build these anaerobic digesters. They throw

the waste in there. They throw some manure in there and they make electricity for 1500 farms. So you can work with your local and state governments to actually advocate for different ideas like this. If you're active in your school, if you want to be active in school, working on school lunches, there's lots of opportunity to work with your local school boards, which control a lot of this, to work with various kind of groups like Conscious Kitchens that actually give roadmaps for how to do this, or Big Green, which provides gardens and so forth for schools. So there's a lot that can be done at an individual level. And then, of course, people to vote, you know, with their vote. You know, there are ways to identify bad actors who are voting for policies that are undermining

our health and our nation's economy and our environmental resiliency. And there's a group called foodpolicyaction.org, where you can go on and find your congressman or senator, and you can write to them. You can go visit them in Washington or when they come to your district, and you can talk about these issues and be active. I mean, this works. People listen. And so there are a lot of ways to get engaged. If you have money, you can donate to causes and organizations that are doing things like Kiss the Ground, or I've created something called the Food Fix Campaign, which is trying to drive policy change in Washington. So I think I think there's a lot of opportunities to get engaged.

It's just a matter of where where you feel right and where you feel good and what works for you. And you can start as simply as your own kitchen and you can start more complex in your community and you can go all the way up to the government at the federal level if you want. Very good. Well, thank you. I'm a huge fan. I've been following you for a long time and I really appreciate what you're doing. Thank you. And Alice, if you go to foodfixbook.com, you can download the food policy, food, I'm sorry, the food fix action guide. And there's really a whole list of suggestions of ways you can get involved, whether it's joining community support agriculture or sourcing from regenerative ranchers, which I listed in there. So there's a lot of opportunities to actually make a difference.

Okay. Well, I have your food fix program, so I will, I will continue to read that and get more information. And again, I appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you, Alice. I think next we have Christina Harvey. Hi, Dr. Hyman. Hi, Christina. How are you? I'm good. How's it going? Great. Great. Where are you? I love your podcast. And my husband and i just recently got into your 10-day detox book and have been dabbling with some of the recipes for dinner so good yeah it's delicious actually really is so good scallops and asparagus were our favorites yum but um i do have a question for you um what are the best strategies in health and

fitness to reverse like a pre-diabetes or um even an a fasting uh glucose sugar that's high yeah just like an elevated level um i know that because i know so so I had my son four years ago, and I noticed that since having him, every time I get my labs drawn, the glucose is just like. A little high. It's a little high. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a couple issues there.

One, you know, diabetes and prediabetes are completely preventable and reversible. And it didn't even really exist until the last couple hundred years. Like it just wasn't a thing. Like type 1 diabetes, I think, occurred. But if you look back at the hospital records and so forth, now one in two Americans have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. And probably more even have prediabetes, you know, metabolic poor health, which is 88% of us. So you're talking about 88% of us being somewhere on that spectrum. And the reason we're on that spectrum is very simple.

You know, our bodies are adapted to periods of fasting and famine and the really unavailability of large amounts of starch and sugar. Grains were only introduced about 10,000 years ago. People got roots and tubers, but they had a lot of fiber. And sugar was really rare. I mean, if you got a honey patch or something, good luck. But it wasn't something we ate. And then, you know, the average hunter gatherer maybe ate 22 teaspoons of sugar a year. Now we have about 22 teaspoons a day per person in America and kids have 34 teaspoons. So starch and sugar are really driving this. And depending on your genetics, like if you, even if you are not normal weight, you can be still having this issue, right? And so, so I think there's a whole condition called metabolically obese normal weight. So you look thin on the outside, but you're fat on the inside.

And that may be really related to the amount of starch and sugar. So some of us are more carbohydrate intolerant than others. For example, the Native Americans, they are extremely carbohydrate intolerant. Like they really can't tolerate that because their diets were so much different a hundred years ago. And now 80% of them have diabetes. They don't, it's not like they have the diabetes gene. They just were adapted to being extremely good at storing fat because whenever they, whenever they needed to get into a winter situation, they'd have to make sure they could store all the fat to survive the winter. Problem is, you know, we just keep eating all winter. Right. And so, so the, the key here is one, two, to identify the starch and sugar in your diet.

Now, flour is mostly what I'm referring to by starch. We eat about 133 pounds of flour and 152 pounds of sugar every year per person. And it's, it's like almost a pound of sugar and flour a day for every man, woman, and child in America. Now, I'm not having that much, so somebody else is having a lot more. And that's really driving this pandemic of overfat, which is driving the blood sugar issues, right? So you have to look at your diet and say, where's my starch coming from? Am I eating a lot of potatoes, a lot of rice? Am I eating flour products? Am I having a ton of fruit?

Am I having a ton of sugar? You know, what was going on? And you could try to eliminate that while also increasing fat, the good fats like avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds. Those are great fats to include, which will help also and help cut some of the sugar cravings. Lots of fiber helps to bring down the sugar. So eating lots of fiber, plant-rich foods, obviously, really critical really critical and also i would say sometimes blood sugar can be elevated in the morning in a relatively healthy person not because their blood sugar is a problem but because they are stressed stress will cause blood sugar to go up so even if you're not eating badly if you have stress it makes your blood sugar go off why because

when you're when you're running from a saber tooth tiger you want to have a lot of glucose running around your blood so you can fuel your muscles right except you know your your body doesn't know that it's a saber-toothed tiger or if your kid's having trouble in school or your husband you know stayed out too late and didn't text you he's coming home and you're mad at him. Like, you know, like all the same response in your body. So, so that can be a factor. And then, you know, you want to look at other factors like your A1C, like your insulin. So similarly, I have a high fasting blood sugar, but their average sugar is fine. Or some people have like a high insulin level. That's bad. But if you have a low insulin and a high blood sugar and

your A1C is fine your cholesterol and triglycerides and hgl is fine i probably wouldn't worry about it it's frustrating because i'm like a health nut i really really like i um since having my son i've really gotten into the functional nutrition and so to the point to where when i go get my labs drawn, I know the doctor's not going to really know like what's going on. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Because I do resistance training. I do intervals. I, you know, eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, hardly any sugar, you know, drink a lot of water. I do a lot of the right things. And then to kind of see that you're like, ah,

but there's something like, I just want to know what I did. It's not that problem of why you're happy every night? What? Yeah. No. Like I said, it may be elevated, but it may not be a problem. It may not stay elevated. So for example, if you got a continuous glucose glucose monitor you could measure your blood sugar all day long and you would see what the swings are and the patterns are but if you're otherwise healthy and all your other numbers are good i don't usually worry about it thank you so much sure thanks christina and we have next we have Melina. Yes. Hi.

Thank you so much for taking the time. Hi. My question is to my son. He's 13. And since last year in his annual checkup, he came like underweight. Yeah. To give you an idea, he's 4'11", and he's like 75 pounds. Does he eat healthy or not?

What? The diet is being a struggle. Like the doctors give him milk, but he's always have a runny nose. Should we eat him a lot of protein? Give him milk. Right. We try to give him protein, a starchy food, so he gained some weight. I've been trying to give him vegetables, but he hates everything that I cook with vegetables.

So my question today for you was, one, if you do recommend vitamins for kids. Yes, I do. recommend vitamins for kids yes i do and two is if you have any tips in a diet for a 13 year old well you know i i i've had teenagers uh and you know this is not an easy age uh and i often say jokingly to my friends when they have teenagers that you know adolescence is a period of temporary psychosis so just don't pay any attention to what your kids say. They don't mean it and they'll grow out of it. And I think there's some truth in that. You know, what I normally do is I get kids started early, you know, cooking with me, being in the kitchen, shopping with me. So it becomes part of their life. And I was very focused on this with my kids. So when my kids were a year old, and they were in the kitchen making a mess with stuff, and they were helping me cook, and we had

a garden. And so I think it requires, you know, a really early start for kids to start to really understand, be able to taste amazing food. Like, you know, have a kid go to a garden and pick a cherry tomato and eat off the plant. And it's like melts in your mouth and sweet and rich and delicious. I think the reason kids don't like vegetables often is because they just had bad vegetables. I'm not saying that you're a bad cook or that you don't make good vegetables, but I just think in general, I think there's an issue there. And I think that our taste buds have become hijacked by the food industry. So if you are eating junk food, if you're eating artificial sweeteners, if you're eating all these artificial chemicals on your tongue every day, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a food carnival. And, and, you know, when you're, when you're dealing

with a carnival, it's like hard to get to pay attention to anything else. And so I think, I think, you know, helping kids learn how to enjoy food and get in the kitchen and cook is a really good thing. And try to focus on the thing he cares about. Does he have acne? Does he want to grow big and strong? What does he care about? Right now, he doesn't care about much, to be honest.

We're in quarantine, four months inside our house. So it's not that we can really have a lot of things to help him out but the doctor's always the information that they give you is so confusing or so opposite to when you read your books or follow people yeah ask the doctor uh how many years of nutrition research and studies done and how many hours he had in medical school it's probably going to be pretty little. So I think don't get your nutrition advice from doctors, I hate to say it, unless they've been trained properly, right? I think that's the challenge. And I think functional medicine doctors are much better at that. You know, there are ways to increase it. I mean, there are ways to get him shakes and stuff that he might like, like, you know, protein shakes, you can add fats in there, You can add things that taste good.

You can even put in things like monk fruit sweetener, a little stevia to make it all sweeter for him. So there are ways to sort of trick him by putting it in smoothies and things like that. So I think that's sort of a great way to do it. If he likes protein, he can get protein from hopefully, ideally, regeneratively raised or grass-fed animals. You know, eggs are great. I don't know what he likes or doesn't like, but there are ways to do that.

And do you recommend vitamins? Do you have any brand that you think is better? You know, I think a lot of kids, I mean, eating junk food are highly nutritionally deficient. I was shocked when I started to test these kids, and I see zinc deficiency, magnesium deficiency, omega-3 deficiency. I see zinc deficiency magnesium deficiency omega-3 deficiency i see iron deficient i mean i just see so many of these deficiencies b vitamin deficiencies so good multivitamin fish oil and vitamin d usually takes care of it and i try to focus on companies that are actually rigorous about testing their products pre and post production. So they'll test the raw materials

for purity and potency. Once it's there, they make sure it says a hundred milligrams. It's actually a hundred milligrams. If it's 95, they throw it out and start again. And they test for contaminants and they use bioavailable forms of nutrients. For example, I had a patient taking magnesium. She's getting at the grocery store was magnesium oxide. Didn't help her at all because magnesium oxide is not very well absorbed. So I gave her a different form of magnesium and it was absorbed. So it really is important. And I, you know, have these companies that I've used over the years that I recommend to my patients that are quite good. They're mostly professional brands, but you can get access to them in specialty pharmacies.

You know, you can go to Whole Foods. You probably got better quality products, but, you know, you have to do a little homework. Okay, I will. Thank you so much. Of course. And our next question is from Lisette hi how are you good how are you good good I'm doing good great so my question is what is your advice to someone wanting to pursue a career in functional medicine? Well, it depends on what you want to do, because there's so many ways to get into it. You can be a health coach.

You can be a nutritionist. You can be a doctor. You can be a physician's assistant, a nurse practitioner. So there's a lot of ways to actually get in. And I think it depends on what your abilities are, your interests are, what you want to do. You know, obviously, I'm biased. I'm a doctor because it gives you the most flexibility. It gives you the most understanding, the most training, but you don't have to be. I mean, I have a physician's assistant. It's a two years training.

She's probably as good or better than a lot of functional medicine doctors. I know I shouldn't say that, but she's really talented. She's really smart. I've trained her. And I think it depends on what you're, what you're, what you're really wanting to do with your life, what you want to do. So I think, you know, the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy is a great place to start if you just want to be a health coach. If you want to be a nutritionist, you have to get regular training. But there's IFNA, which is the Integrated Functional Nutrition Academy. The Institute for Functional Medicine is a great resource if you want to go on to further training. You know, there are medical schools now that are looking more at progressive education around nutrition, like Tulane has a culinary medicine program. So I think

depending on what you're wanting to do and where you're wanting to go, there's sort of a lot of options. Okay, great. Of course. Well, good luck with your choices. Thank you. Of course. And last but not least is Marianne. Hello. Thank you so much for taking my call. Here's my question. I'm curious about candida, and I have heard you talk about this a lot. So I'm not a novice on your opinion, but I'd like an update on it. It seems like in the last several years, people thought candida is a big deal. In the last year or, people thought candida is a big deal. In the last year or so, not so much of a big deal. So tell me again, why you believe it's important. And then probably more importantly, how we can control it. So I did one of those fasting things

to get it under control. And I believe I did, but then I believe it's back again. And I've heard you talk about a specific drug that you often use rather than having people just, you know, hone down their diet. But I don't remember the name of that drug. Sure. Well, this is a long conversation. But, you know, the whole Canada craze is kind of unfortunate because it's like anything else. I mean, it's on keto or Canada or this or that, and it's just so extreme. And there's a kernel of truth within all of it. And the question is, you know, does it apply to you? Now, I don't think every problem under the sun is Canada.

And I often think of it more of as yeast overgrowth or fungal overgrowth. Yes, that's what I mean. Yeah. So Canada is a very specific yeast, but there are many, many yeast and you always have yeast and fungus in your gut. It's normal. Understood. It's normal. But it's when it gets out of control, it's a problem. So if you're diabetic, for example, and your blood sugar is really high, you're way more prone to yeast infections, right? If you're on the pill and you're a woman, the estrogen tends to cause more yeast infections, right? If you're on the pill and you're a woman, the estrogen tends to cause

more yeast infections, right? So if you've taken antibiotic, it screws up the gut flora and lets the yeast take over. So I'm very focused on personalized treatment. And I think I don't want to over-treat people with these issues. I want to find out if it's an issue for you. So if I have someone who was born by C-section, never bottle fed, which I know their guts messed up, had lots of antibiotics as a kid, has had eczema and has had dandruff and has plepharitis and has vaginal yeast infections. And I mean, I know these people have an overgrowth of yeast. And then there are certain tests that I can do to confirm it. But I use a lot of history. You know, if you have anal itching, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things, which can have many causes, but there's a whole bunch of things that can really

give you a clue as a doctor or health provider, whether this person has a risk for increased overgrowth of yeast. And then, and then there's some tests, there's stool tests, and they can be helpful, but they're not definitive because you're trying to culture something. You can't always grow it because it may not grow. There are urine tests that look at metabolites of yeast that I find very helpful on organic acid tests. You can measure antibodies, but that doesn't really tell you much except that you've been exposed to it at some time. And there are immune complexes you can measure, which may indicate their immune system's a little irritated by it. You know, I think there are, you know, I can have someone with every test being negative, and I'm 100% sure they have fungal issues. I treat them and they get better. So I don't,

the tests are a guide. I don't think they're definitive. And what do we do? Well, it's, you know, you cut out those things that yeast love, alcohol, sugar, and starch, right? And if you really want to be strict for a while, you eat mostly protein and vegetables. And that really helps. And then I will often use probiotics. And probiotics can really help. Also, there are specific probiotics, one called Saccharomyces, which is a yeast against yeast. It's very powerful for fighting yeast. And sometimes if I get stuck, I might use an antifungal agent like nystatin or diflucan or other ones, depending on the situation. But those are not the first resort. So I think

it's really, really, really important that we focus on, you know, what the cause was to get rid of it. And then, you know, someone just had a bunch of antibiotics and they, you know, they need a whatever, like that's fine. So I think it's really focusing on the cause, fixing the story, and then working on the diet. And then there are a bunch of herbs we use. I use oregano and I use thyme and I'll use a bunch of other herbs that can be very helpful. Yeah. These tests that you do, a specialized lab for that? Or can LabCorp do those?

No. LabCorp doesn't do that. Yeah, no. These are specialized urine tests, tests you know so i think i think it's it's a little bit usually more with a functional medicine doctor right but uh you know for the most part if if you know people cut out all the junk in their diet if they take the saccharomyces and some probiotics and try some of the antifungal herbs that usually works for most people okay how long i'd give yourself a couple months

okay got it yeah and then of course if you go back to you know drinking alcohol and sugar it's like it's going to come right back right okay thank you so much of course well thank you thank you all so much for joining this special episode of the doctor's pharmacy called ask mark it's just so fun. I love everybody showing up and having really smart questions and taking the time to watch the show and just be with us for the whole segment. I just, I can't tell you how fun it is for me

because, you know, one, I'm stuck here in COVID and I'm lonely like you and it's nice to see and talk to people. And second, you know, I get to really talk to people who are interested in health and answer questions that I think are probably on a lot of people's minds. So I really appreciate you coming. So that's it for our show today. If you want to ask me a question in the future, you can text me.

Yes, you can text me. 413-225-8995. Use the hashtag Ask Mark. And my team might pick your question for one of our future calls and I'll get to chat with you myself, which I'd love to do. So thanks for joining us today on this special episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy called Ask Mark and That's Me. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy.

I want to take a moment to tell you about something really exciting, my first ever shake called the Pegan Shake. After years of trying to discover the best breakfast meal, protein powder, or shake recipe, and coming up short, I decided to create my own. The Pegan Shake is 100% clean and combines healthy fats from MCT oil and avocado oil with organic and grass-fed protein from collagen, pumpkin seeds, and pea protein and extra fiber to create the perfect way to start your morning, balance your blood sugar, and energize your day. These ingredients are also great for fueling your mitochondria and for fat

burning. So far, hundreds of people have been trying the Pegan Shake, and here's what some of them have had to say. Suzanne M. says, highly recommend the Pegan Shake. Great flavor, curbs cravings, and love the fact that it has healthy fats. And it's great for digestion. I love it, and I'm going to order it again. Laura B says, I love starting my day with a quick filling smoothie, but I was never full until lunch. My attempts to supplement my own fell short. The Pegan Shake includes the protein, fiber, and fat that provide the nutrition and energy I need.

I'm so grateful for the Pegan Shake. This shake is designed to support your blood sugar and keep you feeling full and satisfied while giving your body the best information and nutrients to thrive. I know you're going to love it as much as I do. Check out the Pegan Shake at getpharmacy.com forward slash Pegan Shake. That's Get Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y forward slash Pegan Shake. Hi, everyone. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical

or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.