Tips to Reduce Inflammation | Maggie Berghoff x Dave Asprey

You had 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, um, I like you've been displaced, a lot of people have moved, a lot of people have lost their jobs, a lot of people have lost 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, these non infectious factors like 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 that.

Tell me more. Maybe not to your extent, I don't know. I feel like I don't. 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, your 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 like 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 so 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.

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