Insidious Inflammation & How To Fight It with Maggie Berghoff | 1131 | Dave Asprey

What's the difference between long term and short term inflammation?

Short term inflammation is like if you get hurt and say you get a scrape on your skin and your body inflames to heal that scrape and to protect yourself. It could also be something like you get super scared, like you almost got in a car accident and you get super scared and your body's inflamed. It's trying to protect yourself. And so that is short term inflammation. It's protective. The problem is actually twofold. Sometimes, like getting scared about getting almost in a car accident. We have that feeling often throughout the day, at many times throughout the day when it's not necessarily the best response for ourselves. And then also sometimes we get that response to inflammation, like the scrape on the skin, but to things like you wouldn't think about, like the lotion you're putting on your skin. So it's not necessarily that you have hurt yourself and your body needs to inflame to protect yourself. It's that intentionally or accidentally, you're exposing yourself to inflammation or to toxicities that cause inflammation in your body, and that's that chronic inflammation.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Our guest today has written a book called Eat to Treat, and this is all about inflammation. If you followed my work for the last 10 or so years, inflammation's at the root of everything because every day your cells take 30 pounds of air and some food and they combine them to make something and they can make electricity or heat or hormones or inflammation. And if they're making inflammation, it means you have less energy and it means your risk of every disease goes up. So if you can fix your food or your environment to have less inflammation, you will automatically have more energy and less muffin top. So our guest is a renowned functional medicine nurse practitioner. She's been a USA Today best selling author and has done a lot of work around the field. So I want to pick her brain today on what's going on with inflammation. Maggie, welcome to the show.

I'm excited to be here and talk about a topic that is, like you said, just so important to all of your health and wellness goals.

How do you know.

If you have inflammation?

No, just how do you know it's so important to health and wellness? Tell me your take on inflammation.

Yeah, so inflammation, first of all, is good at sometimes, like, we need inflammation. The problem in what I talk about is chronic inflammation, where we have so much chronic inflammation day in Day out, all these toxicities and then your body becomes out of balance and unable to handle the inflammation that you have. And that's when we start to get a lot of nagging symptoms, chronic diseases, illnesses. And so if we can address the root cause of inflammation and live a more deflamed lifestyle, whether that's food or your mindset, or your relationships or the environment, or the products you put on your skin every day, we have a healthier, a healthier chance at, like you said, boosting your energy so that you can naturally rebalance your body and heal and stay feeling your very best, looking your very best, performing your very best without putting so much hard work into it, really just focusing on reducing inflammation long term.

What's the difference between long term and short term inflammation?

Short term inflammation is like if you get hurt and say you get a scrape on your skin and your body inflames to heal that scrape and to protect yourself. It could also be something like you get super scared, like you almost got in a car accident and you get super scared and your body's inflamed, it's trying to protect yourself. And so that is short term inflammation. It's protective. The problem is actually twofold. Sometimes like getting scared about getting almost in a car accident. We have that feeling often throughout the day, at many times throughout the day when it's not necessarily the best response for ourselves. And then also sometimes we get that response to inflammation, like the scrape on the skin, but to things like you wouldn't think about, like the lotion you're putting on your skin. So it's not necessarily that you have hurt yourself and your body needs to inflame to protect yourself. It's that intentionally or accidentally you're exposing yourself to inflammation or to toxicities that cause inflammation in your body and that's that chronic inflammation.

What's the biggest cause of that? Short term, I'm going to die inflammation, aside from our government.

For me personally, I mean, I think everybody obviously is unique. So for me it used to be really decisions. I would stress about decisions and it could be a little tiny decision like gosh, something silly like what should I wear, what color of nail polish should I paint my nails this time? Or it could be a major decision like where should I live, what should I do with my life, what college should I go to? And actually indecisiveness caused a lot of inflammation in my life. So for me personally, that was one of my big drivers of stress, another big driver of stress. And that inflammation like oh my Gosh, is when I was, you know, before I embarked on my health journey was weight and image. So working out super hard, always concerned about, you know, my appearance, my physique. And I talk a lot about in the book, the mindset shift of that, that you can achieve that appearance and that physique, but in a way that does not inflame your body and mentally cause you to be so stressed. So me personally, those are the causes of that I used to experience for that inflammation.

I love it that you're talking about decision fatigue as a cause of inflammation. It's 100% true. And this is something in Game Changers and even in my brain book, which is. What's that one that is headstrong, I talk about how it sucks electrons and you run out of energy, Right? And when you run out of energy, the cells get stressed. And there's that famous study in Israel around what is the. The thing that gets people out of prison on parole. The number one factor, it's not what crime you did, your age, gender, none of that. It's what time of day was your parole board hearing. And in the morning, when you're full of energy, the judge is like, yeah, yeah, you can get out, you can get out. And then by the time you get to late morning or afternoon, they're. They're just out of energy. So, like, no, no, no. And it's kind of scary, the invisible stuff. So that's proof that that decision fatigue gets us. And as an entrepreneur, it's a hundred times worse, right?

Yeah. And this was even before I was an entrepreneur. You know, this was back before I became an entrepreneur and a business owner. But, yes, same with being an entrepreneur. And that's one thing that I'm grateful that I have now is I have awareness around this. Like, these decisions do not matter that much. Make one and go with it. Either way you go, you're going to figure out if it was a great lesson learned or a great lesson learned, but through kind of a fail or setback, you know. And so it's a skill set I think everybody should work on. It's not just, you know, what you eat, obviously. The book is called Eat to Treat, and I talk a lot about that. But it's how you think and how you make decisions and, you know, your mental capacity for inflammation and stress.

One of the reasons I wanted to have you on this show is that you're one of the few people who really clearly lays out the fact that anxiety or inflammation, it can come from inside your cells. And you have a framework for that. And then you also say, but it can also come from your psychology. And most people just think it's a moral failing. That was my path, you know, oh, it's because I'm not trying hard enough or whatever. And at the end of the day some of it comes from an internal biological thing and some of it comes from a belief system like I am not enough or whatever the heck. And all sorts of people have different ones and done tons of episodes on that. That's why I do neurofeedback. So you're trying to balance these out. If you were to take a guess, given everything you've seen as a nurse practitioner and all your stuff as an author, what percentage of people's inflammation is biological versus psychological?

Oh gosh. You know, I think it definitely goes hand in hand. And this is a question a lot of people asked me when I healed my body and through all the work that I do is like, what's the one thing that makes the difference? And it truly is not. I think the one thing that will make the difference is acknowledging that it's not one thing and it's not what kind of came first. It's a combination. For example, you're talking about, you know, know the stress and psychological, physiological, all that kind of stuff. So you might be bad at making decisions because you're so inflamed, your hormones are out of balance, you have certain genetic things going on. Your, your nutrients are absolutely in the tank, so you're not even feeling well to begin with and you're irritable. So if you fix those imbalances in your body and your nutrient levels and your gut health and your hormones and all of that good stuff and you're not flooding your body with toxins through and I talk a lot about like non toxic living, then naturally your mental stress becomes better to you become less irritable, less anxiety, depression, things like that. So it really is kind of like it's a joint effort. It's a joint effort of having a balanced body and a balanced mind. And I don't think it's one thing, you know, came first. It's a combination of years and years and years and years of habits and lifestyle and environment and exposures and you know, how you've been nurtured or raised or the belief systems that you felt, you know, your whole entire life.

So you're dodging the question.

So what percentage is psychological versus physiological?

Yeah.

Oh gosh, I guess, I guess probably 80% would be physiological.

Yeah.

Because most people even, even accidentally are exposed to things that make their body out of balance. And when your body is out of balance, then the psychological things come to play.

I know that's a hard to answer thing. My number is 70%, by the way. So we're very close. I asked on an older episode, Joan Rosenberg, who's a famous psychologist, a similar question and she thought it was actually more psychological than I would have imagined. So different people have a different view. I believe very much like you, that if you could just handle your physical stuff, you'd have enough electricity to not be so tweaked by emotional stuff. Like if you're having your best day ever and you're so energetic and you're vibing and you're not feeling amped, you're just there and then, you know, your mother in law calls or whatever and you know, and it's something that would normally just really, you'd lose it. Like, man, look at this. I'm like, you know, Luke Skywalker with his little droid, just deflecting things effortlessly, or like Neo in the Matrix. And you're like, oh, this is cool. It's not cool if you ate a bunch of brown rice and oatmeal and kale and you know, industrial chicken or impossible burgers and all of a sudden like you didn't have a lightsaber, you're just like, you got a wet noodle and you're like, this doesn't work very well. And then you think it was your mother in law, but it was you. Yes, that's so interesting.

I say, I believe that when you're talking about like your energy. So the way that I think of this is when your body is healthy and balanced and deflamed, then your body has more ability to heal itself. And I always say the body is way smarter than any diet or pill or prescription. And so if you give your body a helping hand in the right direction to heal itself every day and to, like you said, combat the emotion from the mother in law call or whatever it may be, then you actually end up not having to try so hard to regulate your emotions or two, detoxify. Because your body is set up for success to do so on its own.

Do you really think the body is smarter than fentanyl?

I think that fentanyl is more powerful than the body for sure. But I think that if you are trying to heal, to rebalance, to remove nagging symptoms that you've been experiencing, if you can reduce inflammation and give your body that helping hand, it will rewire those pathways in your body. It will heal. Heal that gut lining. It will rebalance those hormones, boost those nutrients, or even allow your food to be absorbed better to up your nutrient intakes.

Who did your media training?

Am I bad at it? I've actually never had media training.

No, you're great. I'm asking all these hard questions and you're just deflecting them. Like that Neo in the karate scene I just referenced.

I never had media training a day in my life. These are just my thoughts and my opinions.

Yeah, it's because you got your energy back. Because, because, like, none of those even bother you a little bit. And for people watching, like, seriously, I'm asking. Are kind of hard. They're funny, but they're kind of hard questions. And you don't skip a beat. You're smiling and it's not a fake smile, and you're just like, no, I hear this is how it is. So kudos.

These are my opinions, thoughts, and personal experiences. So it's just very easy for me to speak about this. Obviously, I've been also working in this field for a while, but yeah, no, I've actually.

And you also have handled your inflammation right? So you have the energy to be like, Dave's being whatever. Which is. Which is cool.

I was going to say with the handling the inflammation thing. You talked about decisions with entrepreneurship. I don't think I would have ever been an entrepreneur if I didn't heal my body because I didn't have that desire. I didn't even have a desire. But once I healed my body and I was, like, feeling amazing every day, and I wasn't worried about these three decisions that don't matter, my whole world opened up.

Of course.

Course I had a newfound passion to healing because at the time, I was actually a traditional nurse practitioner. And then I healed my body through, you know, natural medicine and detoxification, things like that. And. But it. It opens you up. So if you've never fully felt your best, like, you probably have no idea what's next for you because you're not able to even think about or. Or consider that next option.

Yeah, it's. It's totally true. Um, you just. You just don't know because it's. I just have to survive the day. And so many listeners are in that right now. Half the country in the US doesn't have a thousand dollars for emergency expenses right now. And they're literally like, you know what's going on. And even if you're in that situation, if you can increase your energy by doing just a few small things for your metabolism, like the things that are in Maggie's new book. Then suddenly what feels like Everest is now just the Rockies. And then you do another little thing and suddenly like, okay, that's just like whatever those east coast mountains are that people think are mountains. And then suddenly like, oh, you know what? It's going to be work. But I can do this. And oftentimes that's the path of entrepreneurship. It's also the path of being a parent. Right. Everyone who's had a two year old saying no 10, gazillion billion times is like, I can't do this anymore. And somehow you figure it out.

Yeah. And I, I think, I mean, I've done all of those things. I'm a parent. I have three young kids. I'm a business owner. I've healed my body when doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist, was telling me I couldn't. And the cool thing is, is that once you do one little health habit and you feel a little better, it makes it easier and more desirable to do the next little health habit. And so it doesn't have to be this huge, dramatic thing. It can be, like you said, for most of the people who have $1,000 only and they're so stressed about everything, it can be just one change, just one little change in your life that makes the difference to take that next little change and then that next step and then those stack and soon you're feeling a whole lot better.

Hey, biohacker. So you've heard of stem cells. You know they're powerful and maybe you wonder about stem cell therapy, but the process seems kind of intense because it is. Well, there's a new company called Stem Regen that I've been working with. The founder, Christian Dropo, is a stem cell scientist. He's traveled the world in search of unknown plant extracts that can stimulate the release of your body's own stem cells right from your bone marrow. His discoveries led to an amazing breakthrough in stem cell therapy. Stem Regen is the world's first stem cell enhancer. Just two capsules will release 10 million of your own stem cells into circulation. Those stem cells migrate throughout your body and help your body naturally repair and renew itself. This is a new, powerful and very cost effective way to get the benefits of stem cells without having to hop on an airplane. And how about 20% off? Now go to Stemregen Co Dave. That's Stemregen Co Dave. I, I like that view a lot. Let's go Deeper. In the first chapter in your book, you talk about different types of inflammation. And this is one of the gems that's there in order for you to understand inflammation. When you're listening to this, you could read all the PubMed things that Maggie and I have probably read and you could go really, really deep on it. But giving you a framework for understanding so you don't have to do all the deep studying. Oh, it's just these three things. It has to be simple enough to be useful, but not so simple that it becomes like more plants, knowing that 99% of plants will kill you. So this is one of those frameworks that's elegant and useful. So I want you to listen in. Right, teach us what are the three, three things that cause inflammation.

So the three core things to inflammation could be infections, toxins or your immune response.

What about things like an injury or even just lifting weights for a long time? Those also cause inflammation. Like over training.

Yes. So over training could be beneficial to, I mean, training hard can be beneficial to reaching the goals that you're looking for if you are also supporting your body with the right supplements, the right rest, the right recuperation for that moment. But at the same time, over training, over exercising, overexerting your body could also harm your body. Because if you're already dealing with things like, you know, an out of balanced hormone system, you have gut complications, you have really low nutrients, you're not feeding your body what it needs to be fed, you're not sleeping well, your body can't handle that stress. Your body cannot handle the stress of working out really hard and tearing your muscles and needing to rebuild those muscles. And because it can hardly get through the day. So you again, just, even with workouts, it's important to know where are you right now? Are you able to go really hard in the gym to reach some kind of, you know, physique goal or actually is that harming your health even worse? And that's a really big key thing to notice for a lot of people.

I know so many fitness competitors who've said both men and women, but I maybe hear this more from women that I never looked better or felt worse. Right. Because they're over trained and they're eating the wrong stuff and you get this really lean look, but it's not a sustainable lean look. It's terrible. And it's because they're driving this inflammation because of those types of behaviors.

I agree. And oftentimes also I've spoken to a lot of those individuals too. They feel Horribly, mentally, they feel horribly. Physically, they're tired, they're physically feeling bad. If you would do their labs and you know, get some specialty functional medicine lab tests on them, they're probably severely malnourished and nutrient deficient. And so it's not, they're, they're not happy. But yeah, like you said, they look, they look good.

All they need is some CMOs and kale. Right? Won't that fix everything?

No, they need a full rebody balance, rebody and shift. You know, it can go both ways too. When I was going through my health problems, I looked at healthy. I looked fit, I looked good. And that's the main reason why a lot of my doctors dismissed me. They were like, you look great, you're fine. But I didn't feel great. And so that just goes back to being an advocate for yourself and digging deeper to find the answers to what will make you feel your best.

I love it. You treat the symptoms, including being tired, and doctors say, oh, you look good. There's nothing wrong with you. Look, just, dude, I told you there was something wrong with me. And if you're going to tell me that I'm crazy, you better have some damn good evidence that I'm crazy. Otherwise I'm going to get a new doctor. And people talk about medical gaslighting and all this kind of stuff. Yes, there are doctors with ego. There are also doctors who are really busy. And honestly, I mean, you're, you're a trained practitioner. If someone walks in the door and they're vibing and super healthy, you kind of know it, right? So.

And that was me. But, but I also did not feel well. I was super dizzy to where I had to pull over the side of the road. Cause I thought I might pass out. I was bloated. No matter what I ate, even if I ate something healthy, I was, you know, my mentality was changing. I was getting to be like unmotivated and irritable. That was never who I was. And so I knew, I, I knew that something was wrong. But you're right that doctors are busy, right? And it's not always their fault. And I actually had some amazing doctors who just told me straight up, like, listen, Maggie, we have no idea what's going on. Here's this pill to help you with their symptoms. It's not that they were trying to be bad, it's that they didn't know. And so that's where, you know, going the extra step and diving deeper into your health can really pay off in a big way.

I've had so many good doctors as well, and quite often it's just like you said, they just don't know. And if you have to make a split second decision, if someone walks in with dark circles under their eyes, they're obese and they're limping and, you know, there's snot running out of their nose, like, okay, I could treat this guy, I know what to do. And the next person walks in, well, they look healthier than 80% of people. The fact that your brain's inflamed, they can't see it, but you literally had a second to make a judgment before you could even think about it. That said, do I focus or not? And so it's that group. Well, they're doing pretty well. We're less likely to get it unless we go to a functional medicine practitioner who says, look, I take an hour with every patient to really understand you. And that means it's expensive, but that means you get it. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I look good, everything should be, should be. Right. It's probably me, I'm just not trying hard enough. No, it's actually something wrong. And maybe it is your psychology. Right. And you're just stuck in a helpless loop because, you know, you have a childhood issue or something, that's still something you can heal. It's not like emotional injuries and physical injuries are that different. There's a healing modality for almost everything. Now you just have to figure out what is the root cause. But the weird thing is, if you're going to heal the childhood stuff or whatever traumas you have, relationship dysfunction, try doing that when you have all your energy instead of doing that when you're barely one foot in front of the other.

Yes.

And that was what I learned on my path. And, you know, when I was 30, I started doing personal development work and I was also trying to heal from all these things. And it's just so much easier to have spiritual breakthroughs and psychological breakthroughs when you feel okay.

Yes. And those things, like the physiological things, they're a lot easier to fix than the psychological things. So you can create little wins for yourself. And, you know, so when I went to the doctors, my labs were normal and I looked fine and so that they just, you know, said that eventually they became abnormal because symptoms were ignored and inflammation just kept brewing. But with specialty tests, I could identify, oh my gosh, look at my nutrients. They're all in the tank. If I can boost those, surely I Must feel a little better. Oh my gosh, look, I have this crazy high, high, sky high aluminum level. If I can reduce that, surely it will help me. And so those are more easy wins that you can identify and see and start to work on. And then the psychological stuff, like you said, becomes a lot easier to rebalance when you're feeling physically. Well.

In my early 30s, I found a good functional medicine doctor and he believed me. And I, it was kind of easy to believe me cause I had some of the signs I wasn't doing well, but other signs I were okay. I think it was kind of confusing. And finally he said, dave, my patients get better. He said, my average patient sees me twice and then, and then they're okay. And he was a former Johns Hopkins ENT surgeon turned, you know, homeopath, longevity guy and glutathione and all the cool stuff. He doesn't practice anymore. His name was Tim Guilford. And the first guy to introduce liposomal glutathione to the market. So I'm like, okay, I have this guy who finally believes me and he sits down and says, dave, I want to run an HIV test. He goes, I don't think there's any chance of it. Like, you know, you're, you're in a relationship and married and all that kind of stuff, but your body's just not responding the way it's supposed to. And eventually he was the guy who ran the lab test to help me figure out this is toxic mold in my home. And when I, I understood that it made everything work and toxic mold was a major cause of my inflammation. I'm sure I had some emotional stuff in there as well, but that was secondary to what was happening with toxins. And when I look at your list of those three things, the infectious factors and then non infectious factors and immune response. Well, toxic mold for me did all three because I actually had mold growing in my body, which is an infection. It was making toxins and chemical irritants and things like that. And of course I had stress as a result of it, which is a non infectious factor. And then I had an immune response both to the mold and to the toxins made by the mold. So I'm like, great, I get the trifecta. And this is one reason we feel like crap. And if you had like a really popular man engineered virus from the last three years that might be an infectious factor, I wouldn't know which one I'm thinking of. Just this is purely hypothetical. And yet some non infectious factors like stress, because you were locked in your house for a few years or something like that. And, you know, some chemical irritants, like, you know, all of the household products that we were using that sterilized everything that you rubbed into your skin, like hand sanitizer and all that kind of stuff, and then you had an immune response because you had a perceived threat which would come from the news and would come from the fact that your body was manufacturing little actual threats. Same kind of a thing. And what I've found happens in people with the long version of what I just described or with toxic mold, is that the cells themselves, the mast cells, become so irritated that all of a sudden these are like little landmines. And they're supposed to, you know, only go off when there's a big invader. And they're like, oh look, the wind blew and they blow up and stood off all the ones around them. And we have wave after wave of inflammation. How common do you think this is today versus, I don't know, four years ago?

I think that there's always been things that have contributed to these trifectas. I don't think it's brand new that we have that experience, but I do think that now more than ever it is. Especially because a lot of people in the last four years, specifically you're talking about that you've been displaced. A lot of people have moved, a lot of people have lost their jobs, a lot of people have lost families, family members. A lot of people have disagreed with friends and family on certain stances on things which it's just, it has been a unique situation. I don't think it's the only time in history that something like that has happened by any means. But it's definitely been a unique situation that could definitely exasperate, exacerbate a lot of things that you've been predisposed for. So I talk a lot about like your total toxic burden. It's like, you know, your body can only handle enough. It's going to, you know, toxic exposure and infection and non infection and immune response after immune response after immune response. And suddenly your body's going to say, I'm done. And that's when you're going to get a lot of symptoms, diseases, cancer, just everything. That's when your body can no longer function fully the way it's supposed to.

You've got a point there because we get overwhelmed and there are ways out of chronic inflammation. For me, I spent probably a million dollars of the $2 billion I've spent reversing my age and upgrading myself in all these different ways on dealing with inflammation and doing panels and trying this and trying that. It was hard for me to know where do I start? Do I start with what my immune system's doing? Do I dampen that? Do I handle these non infectious factors like your irritants and toxins and things, or do I go for an infection that I might have under a tooth or chronic Lyme or mold or whatever? Where does a person start?

I think the easiest thing to start is actually not anything internally with your body, but your environment. This doesn't.

Oh, so you're a biohacker. Oh my gosh, I love this.

Tell me more. Maybe not to your extent, I don't know, but I feel like I've never called myself a biohacker. But I really like simplifying and detoxifying your environment. So these are immediate things that you can do today to reduce inflammation. So every day when you wake up in your home that you spend a lot of time in or in your office, you're, you're not as inflamed just by nature. So things like, you know, the chemicals you're using in your cleaning products and your self care products and your, the things that you're doing in the shower, like all of those types of things are easy wins to reduce inflammation. And like we've been talking about, when you reduce inflammation, you boost energy. When you boost energy, you can heal better. So I feel that's a really great way to start is your environment and then from there. In the book I do talk about depending on your specific inflammation type, like are your symptoms all related to musculoskeletal and you can hardly get out of the bed in the morning or are you like having GI problems every day? Those are different situations. And so depending on what's going on in your body is where I would say to start with kind of like your most evident complaint. For me personally, I can only speak to myself obviously. So for me personally I definitely had hormone problems and I definitely had gut problems. So that's where I would start as far as healing inside of the body.

Hormone and gut problems were definitely part of my world. I had lower testosterone than my mom when I was 26. And it's funny because most 26 year olds listening to the show and it's funny, the, the largest percentage or the second largest percentage of listeners is 25 to 35. So there's a lot of people out there like what's going on? Whether you're a man or woman. Testosterone or estrogen or thyroid are major parts of your, of your symptoms and you don't know why that is. And if you're over 40, it's just guaranteed like there's no question about it, that that's a part of it. Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I do think that our hormones become less balanced as we age and that you probably do need. I'm not as experienced there, but need some sort of support for your body. But I also was struggling with my health in my young 20s. I was about, I think 22 when it first started happening, 24 when I had a mini stroke and 25 when I rebalanced my body fully. So but major hormone imbalances. When I was young and healthy on the outside, I also was already eating organic, going to the gym every day, doing mindset stuff. I was a self care kind of person. So it just goes to show that it's really a, a combination of a lot of things that cause the chronic inflammation to where you're going to start to decline.

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Six.

What's the URL for the quiz?

E2treat.com backslash resources.

Okay. Eat to treat.com resources. I don't know if it's a slash or backslash, but everyone will figure it out. If they get it wrong. They probably need to do some deep breathing exercises.

Backslash. There's two, there's, there's actually an inflammation assessment to figure out what type of inflammation and the severity of it. Because if you are like me and you're, you know, passing out, like if you're very inflamed, there are different things that you might need to do than if you're just like kind of interested, kind of feeling kind of headache lately and want to address that. And then there's a total toxic burden one which is the really cool part of like assessing how, how, how burdensome are the toxicities in your life in different categories. And then those are immediate wins where you can see, oh, I'm making improvements here and you can reduce that total toxic burden level.

I, I, I like that idea. You, you've gotta be able to, gotta be able to figure it out so that you can step in and, and make change. Um, I wanna go deep on a couple of the different types that you have in here. Uh, you talk about muscle and joint inflammation as a type of inflammation. It seems like that always happens after you have allergies or after you have gut issues, but you already have allergies, two other categories. So what causes muscle and joint inflammation that isn't a leaky gut.

So it's actually not so much what causes each because we know the root cause is inflammation and non infectious, infectious and immune responses. So in the book it's more so if you are experiencing like your main thing is you have muscle and joint pain, here are the next steps to start to reduce that immediate pain so that you are not in pain every day and then how to rebalance your body, what to look into, maybe certain things to eat, certain lifestyle habits to do or not to do to help with that muscle and joint inflammation.

It makes a lot of sense to approach it in that order. I'm still, I'm thinking like for me I don't have a lot of musculoskeletal pain on a normal basis now, but for most of my life it was a major thing. Arthritis since I was 14 in my knees I used to feel like I had a Candle burning between my shoulder blades. Just really, really just nasty upper back pain that was so hard to deal with. And occasionally it comes back. I know it's toxin related now. And it's also related to oxalates in the diet. Like give me a whole bunch of kale and spinach and raspberries and almonds and sweet potatoes and whatever else. And I'm like, oh wow, I'm suddenly feeling all this pain again and old injuries light up. How much of muscle and joint inflammation do you think is immune versus toxin?

I would say toxin first. So maybe kind of similar where it's 70% toxins, 30% immune response.

Wow, I love it that you said that. I didn't think that's what you're going to say.

I'm passing all your quizzes, it seems.

Oh no, I'm just, I'm curious. Right. Because you, you treat people. I don't. I'm not a doctor. I just know a few things. I'm an unlicensed biohacker, which makes some doctors very angry. I'm talking about Peter Attia here in particular. Hey Peter, turns out that you can do more than statins, vaccines and exercise to extend human life, even though you don't think it's possible. But hey, that's just a disagreement. So like there's all these different mindsets that are out there. You just seem to have a unique perspective that like, huh, you could do something about these things. So anyway, your, your order of operations seems very lucid, which, which is cool. Now dealing with.

I was gonna say, yeah, like if, if you are. Because it just goes back to the same thing. If you are balanced in your body, if your nutrient levels are on point, if you are reducing toxicities, you're reducing inflammation, you will feel better. So, so the immunological response, yes, may be there, but if you eliminate or greatly reduce all of these other factors, then you're not going to be experiencing in this situation the muscle pain and the joint pain as much or at all that you would be otherwise.

It's worked for me. I do know that some of what I had was inflammation driven and a lot of it was directly toxin driven. And you could say, well Dave, you know, oxalic acid crystals in your joints cause inflammation. So it actually was inflammation driven. And the thing is, was it immune driven inflammation or was it physically induced inflammation, which is what oxalates eventually are. So I like the nuances. And just from a quiz you're helping people to tease out, you know, where are you between muscle and joint versus other ones. You also have hormonal and thyroid, which is maybe my number one recommendation, especially for people under 40 who aren't feeling like they're just ruing, like. Like you're supposed to have all the energy and all the vibe and be able to bounce back, and they're not. So tell me your take on hormones and thyroid and inflammation. Kind of summarize it for me.

Hormones, like sex hormones and thyroid are really closely related. So if you have one or the other out of balance, probably they both are. But I do think that it can start with one for me. Hormones were first, I believe, because I did not have a cycle until I was 18 when I started birth control pills. So clearly there was something wrong with my hormones. And then that contributed to the gut health and the nutrient deficiencies and all of the things. But that just goes to show, this stuff is chronic. We're dealing with chronic inflammation, chronic imbalances, chronic complications. But for hormones and gut health, the cool thing is that when you do fix those, everything else is positively impacted as. As well.

Top three most important hormones for people to measure and pay attention to.

I would say the basics are progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, not thyroid. Okay, So I went. I went sex hormones with thyroid, they're both in one of the same. So I would say you would need to get tested for all of them. But for sex hormones, those three. For thyroid, make sure that you have a TSH T4 free T3 to make sure that you're, like, looking at a full panel. And then also, I was just going to say also the nutrient level. Since nutrients do play a major part in making hormones, you'll want to make sure that you're testing your nutrients to make sure that those are adequate.

So it sounds like there's four tests, really, that you have to. An advanced thyroid panel. Okay, we totally agree on that stuff. And I just say an advanced sex hormone panel. But in your case, the sex hormone panel would include testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, Be those. Those three things.

Some good, good ones. Yeah.

Okay. And. And you might as well throw in DHEA and pregnant, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so, guys, that list one more time. It's testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, pregnenolone, DHEA with advanced thyroid panel. And the advanced thyroid panel is T4, T3, reverse T3, TSH, and antibodies. Antibodies for Hashimoto's. Right?

Yeah. And while you're at it, throw in a nutrient panel because your nutrients make a big difference in your hormone health. So you'll want to make sure that those are adequate.

What is the best way to measure nutrients?

There are several ways. I think the best way would probably be through. I do all the ways. I do hair, urine and blood. But if you have to choose just one, a great option would be through blood or urine.

I usually recommend an RBC mineral analysis. Red blood cell. Because red blood cells turn over a lot. It's going to tell you a lot. But I'm also in agreement with you that, you know, if you have unlimited money and time, might as well do some pee. Except that your body may be holding onto things that don't show up in your pee. And then hair, same thing. So kind of like I feel like doing a hair mineral analysis is like reading, reading the type of fire. From the color of the smoke, you can tell if it's an oil fire versus something else. But you kind of need some more data in there. But it's really helpful.

Yeah.

And then urine. I'm always torn on that. Tell me why you like urine panels for measuring nutrients.

I think it just gives an extra thing. Like I said, I like all. So I think it just gives you a thorough picture. I like to look at the whole picture to see what's going on in the body. And so you can kind of compare and contrast and see some similar trends and see what things you may need boosted. But it's not in particular that I'm like obsessed. You have to get this urine test for this test or for this level. And I do like testing. The reason the quiz exists is so that if you are trying to save money or you don't have the money to do this, this will help you a lot. But I do definitely believe in and love testing so that you can get the actual information on your body and know what's going on for certain.

Should we drink our pee?

No, that's not in the book.

The look on your face was priceless. There are a variety of people talking about this these days and I was just wondering what your take on that was.

I personally do not or would not drink pee.

So you've never tried drinking pee?

I have never.

You're a functional medicine doctor. We've all heard lectures on this. You never one time just taken a sip to see how bad it was.

Well, first of all, I feel really good. So I don't feel the need to experiment with drinking my urine. But no, I never have done that.

Okay. I will confess and I have before. I read a book on this 20 years ago and I was desperate and I did Try drinking pee. And it wasn't very pleasant. And then they said, like, ferment it for three weeks and try it. And I was like. Opened it. I'm like, fuck that. I am not drinking that. But what I did do that provided amazing relief from allergies was I injected myself urine. Have you heard of urine injection therapy?

No.

You want to know about it?

Sure. I'm sure everybody would talk to us about how you put urine into your body.

This. This doesn't. It's not as crazy as it sounds. So after you are exposed to an allergen, whether it's something you breathe or it's something you eat, about four to eight hours later in your urine, you'll have huge numbers of IgG antibodies to the substance. Right? Like, that's something we understand. You can actually measure them. Well, if you collected that urine in a sterile container, you buffered it with a little bit of baking soda, you mixed in some lidocaine, so it didn't hurt very much. And you injected 10ml through a filter into your muscle, your body will see all of these weird iggs inside the muscle, and it'll say, oh, my gosh, I'm getting invaded. It must be an infection by an agent that makes iggs. So then your body makes an antibody to its own antibodies, and it cancels them out. And it's very much a hacker way of thinking. And the reason that I first tried this, this is many years ago, was doctor who taught me this. I actually. I don't know if it's a good idea to mention his name. He's on Vancouver island, and I kind of want to, but I don't know if he's still practicing. I also don't want to mess with his licensing stuff, so I'm. I'm. Well, if he reaches out and hears this, I will post it somewhere. But I don't think I can tell you guys this. The original protocol came from a guy named. I can't. I can't mention his name because he's super canceled online right now either, for the last four years. Let's see.

So, top secret stuff.

His first name is Rashid, he's a doctor, and his last name rhymes with butter but has an A in it, so. And anyway, maybe that's enough. He was apparently the inventor of this protocol. The first doctor who taught me about this said, Dave, I had a guy who was anaphylactic to cats, and his girlfriend got a cat guy who was in his 60s. And so he was gonna have to break up with her. And he said, doc, you gotta help me. So I said, well, let's try it. So he'd go and he'd breathe cat stuff, get almost anaphylactic, and then collect urine and do this. He said after eight injections, the only way he could elicit an immune response was by sleeping with a cat blanket on his face. Okay, that is profound healing from an allergy. Now, you'll probably get toxoplasmosis if you sleep with a cat blanket on your face. And that stuff takes over your brain, kind of like that movie the Last of Us. So maybe sleeping with cat blankets is not a good idea. But regardless, that convinced me that I should try it. So I did. At first, I would eat all this shit for dinner, like, all of the bad stuff, and then I would, like, hold it, and I would go to sleep, and I'd wake up, and the guy's office was an hour away. And I'd drive really, really fast and break some laws. And if I got pulled over, which I didn't, I'd be like, I have to pee anyway. And I get to his office, and I'd run in and I'd, like, pee in a cup. And then they'd inject me after, like, three of those. I'm like, this is dumb. Can I get some lidocaine? And so I have all the filters and stuff, and you can. Anyone could do this at home. So if you're, like, you know, really desperate and have really strong allergies and you don't have the budget for this stuff, it is possible to do it. But I think you want to work with a doctor to learn how to do that kind of stuff. So there's something going on with pee. Ayurveda says there's something with pee, but you're just not into it.

I'm just not. I'm just not into it. I'm not judgmental about it. I think that's a really cool story. It's epic. If I was really. I don't know if. About. If it was a girlfriend who had a cat, but if I was really struggling with allergies, like, you know, you try what you have to try. Right? So I'm not judgmental or opposed to it. I just personally am not doing it.

I'm. I'm judgmental, just to be clear. But it's more fun that way. Yeah, I just don't judge people out loud so they can always be wondering because, you know, that's just more fun. No, the other thing is all the Companies that have those porta Potties for events and all that stuff, they sell your pee because there's all kinds of expensive, useful stuff in it.

No, they do not.

They totally do. They concentrate the pee and then they're. They're selling a ton of stuff that's in there, including some like, antibodies and things like that. So I'm like, that doesn't seem very fair because I'm not getting my cut of the pea profits. So I, I just kind of go on the seat, which solves the problem.

So I don't. I. Obviously, I know you're joking about the seat part, but like, I, I do not. They do not.

They do that. I'm not making up this peeing on the seat. I never pee on the seat on purpose. But I am a guy, so let's not say it might not have happened one time when I wasn't paying attention. But in truthfulness, if you look around, yeah, there, there's a major source of profits for the Porta Body companies and even the discovery of phosphorus. Way back in the days of alchemy, when we were just figuring out natural philosophers society and understanding the basis of biochemistry, they discovered phosphorus from the king's stables pee. And then they would send people around to collect chamber pots to get enough pee to boil it down to make the glow in the dark stuff that must make you live forever because, hey, they didn't.

I don't know. I've lost a couple good pairs of sunglasses in Porta Potties, but yeah, I.

Would leave my sunglasses in there too. So, you know, something happened to me the other day. It was pretty horrible. I got out of my jeep and my phone falls out of my pocket into the gutter and there's like an inch and a half of slimy black gutter water. Like stuff like. I'm not putting my hand in there because there's probably a needle like that bad. And you don't. I couldn't find it with my foot. I was like, God, what do I do here? So eventually, yeah, gutter diving was required, but it was terrible, but I did it. And I sterilized my phone with alcohol. So there we go. Not a porta Potty, though. I would have just left the phone. All right, I want to talk about something else that's in your book. Since we got distracted by all the weird anti inflammatory stuff that no one hears about. Um, let's talk about metabolic syndrome and its role in inflammation. Because you, you go into it in your book really, really well, I think that's Chapter five. So metabolic syndrome, what is it and why does it cause inflammation?

Imbalance and basically inability to handle sugar regulation is a major role of it. So the reason that it causes imbalance and inflammation in your body is because it really impacts your sugar and insulin levels, your hunger cues and your metabolism as well as your hormones. And we all, we just discuss how hormones really impact your overall health and wellness.

I look at inflammation that's caused metabolically as your body was supposed to take sugar or protein or fat, hopefully not protein, but as a backup it can do that and an air and combine them to make those electricity and heat like we talked about earlier. And if it sucks at doing that, there's a problem. Then it the, the Krebs cycle, or the citric acid cycle as it's known. This is the thing that makes ATP. Instead of ending up with an ATP, it throws off inflammation, it throws off electrons where they shouldn't be and it causes basically a lot of havoc. And the causes of metabolic syndrome, is it because the cells sucked or because the environment sucked? And like earlier you said I'm not really a biohacker. The definition of biohacking is change the environment around you and inside of you so you have control of your own biology.

I guess I really am a biohacker because that's the core belief system it is.

And it's a mix of longevity and epigenetics and sports performance and neuroscience and all. But really everything in your environment's a signal to your body to do something. And that's why I lecture at a 4M the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine and all because the alignment with functional medicine is so good. But it also means you have to sleep. And some doctors will talk about sleep. I mean, you talk about sleep, right? But a lot of doctors don't because it's kind of out of the medical realm. It's lifestyle. So I wanted to bring us all together and just say can we have a talk about everything in our environment? And it's, it's kind of exciting because that means we can talk about everything from sleep to a hormone panel to pee, right? Like it's all in there, it doesn't matter. Like, like we're just going to make.

Ourselves better and it all helps. So the cool thing too is that you don't have to do every single tiny thing perfect in order to make a difference in your lifestyle. So like for sleep, for example, you just brought up that I have a, I have a three year old, a four year old and a six Year old. My sleep is not on point right now. And. But that's okay. That's okay because there are other things that I'm doing that do boost my body. You don't have to be perfect all the time. You don't have to do every single little thing that you've heard of. You can pick and choose in your season of life and how, what your severity of inflammation is what you're really focused on at that time so that you can have more of like a long, long term lifestyle habit type of situation and have tools in your pocket to balance your body. Because sleep is very important and it's definitely not something that I am able to prioritize fully in this season of my life. But that does not mean that I have to be gaining 40 pounds and irritable and bloated and falling asleep in the afternoons because there are other things that you can do to boost your body.

So do you just get like soundproofing for the kid's bedroom? Is that how you boost your body or.

No, I just told you. They cry and I go to their bed. I'm not. Don't follow me for mother advice.

I was hoping you would not say that because that's mean. Kids when they're crying out. There's a reason my kids slept with at least one parent when they were young.

Oh yeah, I'm. I'm always waking up. Somebody asked me on an interview the other day, like, what's your morning routine? I'm like, well, I wake up in my daughter's bed. She usually tells me, mom, it's waking time because she woke up in the middle of the night and I ended up there. Yeah.

People who don't have kids oftentimes just don't understand. And I have a couple friends in one of my friend groups, they're early 30s and the first in the group to have kids. And it's just so funny watching because I went through all this, right? And watching and all of a sudden like, oh my God, the things I used to do just don't work anymore. And then all the other friends are like, why are my friends not around? I'm like, because they're never sleep. And so if you're listening, if you're listening and one of your kids just had, or one of your friends just had kids for the first time, it's actually your job to go hang out with your friends because they're not going to call you anymore. Like, they just aren't. They can't manage it and they're Tired. So just like come over and hang and they'll be like, oh my God, I saw an adult. It's so nice. But no one tells me it's accurate.

It's accurate.

What are the things you can do to maintain your health and energy if you're not getting enough sleep because you're a new parent?

Nutrition is my number one. That's an easy no brainer for me. I enjoy eating healthy. I like eating nourishing foods that boost my nutrients. I can literally like envision it just flooding my body with goodness. So I, when I'm extra tired, I'm seeking extra nourishing foods. I'm on purpose, not seeking the donuts, the ice creams, the things like that. Because I know that's going to make me feel even worse. And I've been there, so I don't judge you if you're still there. I've been there where the comfort food is what I would seek. If I had a bad night's sleep or I was irritable or I was tired or I had a big decision to make. I used to do that. I don't do that anymore. And it took a long time to get to that point. But yeah, nutrition number one is, I always say, just flooding my body with nutrients. If I am extra tired or extra irritable or I know I'm pushing my body to the limits because I'm an entrepreneur and sometimes that requires that. Sometimes like with red eye flights or whatever it is, I'm nourishing my body extra. That's, you know, food is number one to me.

I'm with you. If you're going to invest in one thing, even if the budget's tight, it's food quality. And it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than it is. What's more important? Avoiding toxins in food or making sure that there are more minerals in the food or more nutrients?

Hmm. I would say more nutrients because.

Really?

Yeah, because oh my gosh, you need, you need the nutrient. Well, if you're, you know, if the alternative is toxic food versus nutrients, obviously, like you need the nutrients to heal, to give your body that energy to be able to detox from toxins. So for example, I'd rather you have a non organic raspberry than not have the raspberry at all. Um, I do think that that would be my answer for them.

I would be like, don't you know raspberries are as high in spinach? Or I would say, don't you know raspberries are as high as spinach and oxalic acid and that there's a huge number of women who think they have interstitial cystitis who actually just have oxalate poisoning from eating two bowls of raspberries and some spinach, almond, whatever, every day. What would you say to that?

I would say variety is key and everything in moderation. I'm big on like a varied and diverse diet. I don't think I had spinach today. I don't think spinach is bad. I think that having a. Yeah. What?

You chose weakness today?

No, I chose to nourish my body. So I have a very nourishing mindset around food because I used to not. And that used to be a huge issue for my body and a huge contribution to inflammation. So, you know, spinach is not bad in my opinion. But yes, if you eat spinach all day, every day, and the only green you ever eat, the only vegetable you ever eat is spinach, then yes, that is going to turn into a negative impact. So varied and diverse.

So everything in moderation that includes like mercury and aluminum.

No, so that for health foods.

Oh, okay.

For health foods, for real foods. Fruits, veggies, meats, fish, nuts, seeds, oils, but then variety.

So canola oil is totally a good one in moderation, right?

Which one?

Canola oil?

No. So the anti inflammatory types of foods.

Okay, so. So spinach good, Anti or spinach good, Canola oil bad. Just, just looking for logical consistency here.

Actually, no, I'm not big on good and bad foods. So. True. Like if you have an item that's made with canola oil or even sunflower oil, that's not the end of the world. What would be the end of the world is long term inflammatory choices, negative mindset towards food, stress on food. I think it's actually more harmful to be overly stressed about your food choices than to eat the food itself that is bad. So I have a very different approach to food.

You nailed it. Actually. It's not that it's good or bad and I had a really good conversation with one of my kids about this. If it's good or bad, it's a moral failing and it's about your worth as a human, human being. And if it's better for you or worse for you or compatible with your biology, or not compatible, then it's just a decision. Or maybe it's even a mistake. Right. I made a decision that wasn't optimal. Well, everybody does. So you lose a lot of the, the shame and guilt and it's Absolutely true. If you're terrified of eating something that might have glyphosate in it, you're probably gonna be terrified all the time because there is glyphosate in almost everything in North America, right? Just it's a question of the amount, right? So that said, you probably will find some foods like let's say you have anaphylactic response to peanuts. You probably shouldn't eat those, right? And you will identify as soon as you go down the path and eat to treat or bulletproof diet or any of the things where you become conscious of your food. Some foods, every single time you eat them, you pay. Like those are ones you avoid and it's not to be afraid of them. If you were starving to death, would you eat, you know, the worst fast food ever? Of course you would. And you'd be grateful for it. Even if you were inflamed the next day. It was better than starving the next day, right? So this peacefulness about your decisions, even if they're not perfect, beautiful perfectionism in food, super toxic, but maybe not as toxic as spinach. Man, that stuff is bad for.

Well, remember like the example you gave earlier of the super, super fit fitness star who actually felt horrible. If you are so perfect with your diet and like you're so worried about everything. I mean, I've even had a client who was like worried about touching the side of the bench at the bus stop. Like, that's not going to lead to a healthy, vibrant, fulfilling life. That's going to lead to more guilt, shame, worry about living and like we're here to live and have an awesome life. And so we're really just focused on in general choosing things that are anti inflammatory for your body, but you don't need to. I had a client one time literally take the time to apologize to me because they had, I think it was a piece of pie at their family gathering. And I'm like, dude, do not appall, like eat the pie. Was it good? What kind? But you should just be enjoying a moment, you know, being joyful about the people around you, imagining that pie filling you with joy and abundance and all that good stuff. Like, yes, it's not ideal to eat that every day, all day. It is going to cause inflammation. But the worry and the guilt and the shame associated with the fear of that food is way worse in my opinion.

I always deal with this new employees who work for me. I've got many dozens of people on the teams for different companies. We go out for a meal like, oh my God, what did I order? Dave's. Dave's watching. Like, I actually really, truly don't care. And it's not that I don't care about you, is. I do care about you, but I also value my time. And for me to spend my time judging what other people eat is lame. Right? Am I going to. If I'm catering, am I going to buy crap foods that cause inflammation? No, I'm not. I'm going to spring for the good stuff. But if we're at a restaurant and you want to order some French fries and beer, like, that's what you eat, as long as your body's working on it. I don't. I don't. It's. It's up to you, right? It's just. It's fine. So learning to be at peace with making a decision that isn't perfect is awesome. While not being addicted. And it. It feels like so many people. It's not just perfectionism, it's guilt because they're saying, I wanted to do this, but I did this. And then you feel a disconnection. Do you have a. A reason why our body does one thing and our mind wants another?

Well, inflammation, I guess. So it's, you know, it's harder to make those decisions that you want to make when your body is not feeling well. And then it's kind of. It takes, I guess, you know, sometimes maybe even hitting rock bottom to get to the point of changing your entire belief system around stuff. Like, for the food example, you know, my belief system and fear of food or cutting out entire food groups or whatever it was that I was doing, I had to completely stop that and completely shift to. I then focus on. I eat for energy. I eat to nourish my body. I like. I love eating. I love this food. This tastes so good. And, you know, over time, then it's easier because your body becomes more balanced. But it's. When you're in that moment, you can't. You can't make sense of it. If you told yourself, I'm not going to eat gluten for seven days, and you do, and then you're like, oh, my God, what? I ruined my streak. You know, you can't make sense of it in that moment. So you can just do the best that you can. Prioritize on your mindset and make it fun. It's a status upgrade to enhance your health and to embark on a healing journey. So make it just fun. And as an upgrade versus something you have to do or restriction every now.

And then, it's a really good idea to punch yourself in the face just to remind yourself what it feels like. So I did this last week. I went out to this restaurant in Austin called Dai Dewey and I love him. It's a former butcher shop turned into a restaurant. And it's like all wild, whatever this. And just like the most amazing meats and not a lot of vegetables, which I approve of. But they also served like mushrooms with egg, raw egg yolk on sourdough. I'm sure it was homemade, organic sourdough, whatever. I don't eat bread. I haven't had bread in the US in 20 years. But I'll maybe if I'm in Europe, I'll have a little bit with some enzymes. I'm like, I'm gonna have two bites of sourdough. I wake up the next morning, I'm like, oh, look, there's the knee pain that I had all through my teens and it's back in one freaking night. And it's in a specific part of both knees. And I know that's where lectins or whatever the heck from American Wheat just gets me. Dang it. And still sore a week later. Okay, that was a reminder why I don't do it. But it took me 20 years to need it. So I recommend for anyone listening, if you're sort of starting to feel guilty about, just go out and just do it. Do all this stuff that you know is bad and just wake up and spend a week in hell and just be like, that's why I do it. So you realize it's not about perfection, but it is logical. And that you're now making a choice for your body and for your mind and for your inflammation and for everything.

And because you want to feel good.

Yeah. In your decision and you might get depressed or angry or yell at your partner and all that kind of stuff, that all happens from food. A final question for you. If inflammation is such a big deal. Aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, non steroidal anti inflammatories. Why not just kind of help it out a little bit?

Yeah. Time and place. I'm not against pharmaceuticals. I think that there's a time and place for them. I've had three C sections and I definitely needed help with inflammation and pain.

So you support Big Pharma's occupation of the US government. Thanks, I really appreciate that, Maggie.

If my six year old is in a car accident and they're sent to the hospital with a broken leg and a concussion, I'm on board with medicine.

Pharmaceuticals are lovely. They're so useful. Just don't do them all the time. I'm so with you on that front. Despite my, my trying to elicit a response there, which, by the way, you didn't take the bait. Like, you never take the bait.

Yeah, well, I guess I just have strong belief systems, but yeah, that. Time and place for medications, obviously long term pharmaceutical is not the best option. Plus, if you're taking something like an aspirin or Tylenol every single day, the issue is still there. So it's going to get worse. That's why I had a mini stroke when I was 24. My doctors were ignoring my symptoms, ignoring my symptoms. I was telling them something is not right. But because my labs were normal, it just kept brewing and brewing and brewing and then boom, the big thing happens. If you're just taking Tylenol every day, all day, but the issues are still there. You're, you're, you're not fixing the problems. It's still there underneath the hood. It's not looking good. Hey, that was a cool little rhyme, but that's, that's the issue. And so that's why it's not great just to rely. Like, that's not going to help you. That's not going to reverse the heavy metal toxicity, the gut issues, the hormone imbalance. That's not going to help with your root cause of the complications you're experiencing.

Plus the, the Tylenol and that stuff is really toxic. It doesn't help with inflammation anyway. But the, the newer studies in kids, you should never give your kids Tylenol as far as I'm concerned. And as an adult, the only time I ever take Tylenol is because it's packaged with codeine and you can't get it packaged with something else in the US Tylenol is that bad for you? And I take a handful of glutathione every time I take it, which is very, very rarely. But aspirin, especially one or two baby aspirin, it increases heat production from your mitochondria. It can thin the blood in a beneficial way. And if you pair it with a histamine 2 blocker like Pepcid AC, which means then you have to take something like Betaine HCL so you digest your food. If you do all those in order, you won't get bleeding in the gut and you may get an improvement in fat loss, an improvement in cognitive function, and a reduction in inflammation. I wouldn't do it every day, would I Do it once or twice a week if I kind of needed it. I'm not opposed to it because it turns out aspirin plus caffeine equals resolve migraine faster than almost any other drug out there because of the changes in blood flow and mitochondrial stuff. So they're not all bad, they're just not all good. Because what does daily aspirin do? If you take that every day, it.

Depletes your vitamins and nutrients, especially vitamin B. So there's some times where it's like I joke sometimes with my clients. Sometimes they feel built around medications and sometimes I joke like, you know, there are some things that a lavender bath just isn't going to fix right now. You know, sometimes you need something to help bridge that gap to getting. Well.

I'm with you there. And just a shout out. This is from Sandy and the Upgrade Collective and if you're listening, the Upgrade Collective is my mentorship group. It's dirt cheap to join, just go to our upgradecollective.com and you could be commenting and chatting with me on video on Zoom right now instead of listening to this in your car or something. But Sandy says don't buy Bayer because it's evil when you're talking about aspirin. And given that Bayer owns Monsanto, Sandy, I think you have a point there. So buy the generic aspirin. Oh, but then don't buy the Amazon brand generic aspirin because they're just as evil. So it's like pick your poison.

I there's like a brand, I don't know if you know a lot about it, but there is a brand that I would choose but I haven't researched too heavily into it. Genexa. That makes the pharmaceuticals without the food dyes and the different additives.

Genexa. All right, I'm going to check those guys out. If they're legit, I'll bring it up on a show because it's funny. In 2008, I co launched a medical lab testing company that we were looking for non antibody mediated inflammation in response to implant materials and environmental toxins. We could see if your white blood cells went crazy in the presence of mercury or something. And the test was designed because a researcher, I think at Glaxo, one of the big things, they were having such bad side effects from one of their new drugs, they're going to cancel it. And the lady's like, hey, I developed a test. It's the colorings that you're putting in there that's causing all the problems. It's not Even your drug. And they were so grateful, they gave the lady the patent. And then we took it to the U.S. wow. So, yeah, like the. The colorings and all. If you're taking regular pharmaceuticals, gross. So I'll check out that new company.

Theme between that company. Yeah, you should check them out. That's what I found has worked for my family, so. Cause sometimes there is a need. So the theme is that they replace all of the standard pharmaceuticals that you would need, but they don't do it with any food colorings or dyes or additives that are not needed. It's literally just the pharmaceutical.

I'm gonna check those guys out. That sounds like such a good idea. Like, who would have thought clean pharmaceuticals, maybe there's such a thing. So thank you for bringing that to all of us.

You're welcome.

Maggie. Your book is awesome. And there's another chapter we didn't get into about detoxifying your environment. Environment. Followers will recognize things. Oh, you mentioned red light therapy. Dude, you're totally a biohacker. Para purification, circadian rhythm, emf. Biohacker, biohacker, biohacker.

I'll need to update my bio. You know, it's funny actually, when I was in college, I said I was eating kinda healthy, so in college I was paleo, but paleo didn't really exist then. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm paleo. I had no idea. But that's just naturally how I was eating and doing and things. But yeah, I guess I'm a biohacker at heart.

You had problems early on and people, you know you're having hormone issues. Even at 18. I had issues younger too. So when you're young and things aren't working, you become a biohacker. And that's why almost everyone young today is a biohacker. And they're finding the stuff in the biohacking world going, oh my gosh, this is life changing. Like, yeah, I'm writing all my stuff as if I was going to read it when I was 19 because it would have made that big of a difference. Just more people need it. So I think you definitely count as an honorary biohacker. And that means two things. Number one, people should get your book Eat to Treat and check it out, because your framework for inflammation and your quiz are new contributions to the field. I like those. And secondly, you should come to the biohacking conference. It's@Biohackingconference.com. it's at the end of May and beginning of June in Dallas. And there's about 3,000 people showing up, lots of functional medicine doctors, and you get to meet all the people making all the products and all the cool stuff, so. Right up your alley. And of course, I would be happy to see you because, well, you are a biohacker.

You're inviting me to the event? I would love to come to the.

Biohacker event or get your ticket. Okay, I'll send you a pass. I'd love.

I'll be there. So I hope if you're listening, you'll come too, and we can all meet each other.

Cool. Thank you so much for being on the show and my friends, thank you for listening to the show. I hope this was fun. And I apologize, I guess, in what's the word for after you do something. I normally apologize in advance for offending people, so I'm apologizing post advance for all of the horrifying yet medically useful commentary about Pete.

I love it.

All right, Maggie, I will see you at the conference. And if you're listening, I'll see you at the conference, too. Biohackingconference.com the 10th annual the conference that launched the entire movement. And it'll be more fun than you've ever seen.

I'm so excited. Thanks for having me, Dave, and everybody for listening in. This was super fun.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.