Incredible Foods for Stronger and Harder Erection with Dr. Michael Sinel

Medical foods have no drug interactions and they're safe to stay on chronically. We have people managing chronic arthritis and fibromyalgia and sleep difficulties for five to 10 years on these medical foods and often off their medicines or on very low doses of medication.

This podcast is for you. The modern man. I'm Dr. Anne Truong, your host. I'm an intimate health medical doctor and best selling author of the book Erectile Dysfunction Fix. I'll do a deep dive into sexual health and performance and how it affects men of all ages and backgrounds. So let's get started and be sure to visit my website@sexualhealthfulmenpodcast.com for more information and resources from the show. See you on the inside.

Hello there. Hello there. I am so excited today because I am talking with Dr. Mike, so to know he is the founder of Medical Foods and we're going to find out today what medical food is and how is that related to sexuality and why you should consider trying medical food. So, Dr. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Excited to be here.

Well, let's dive into medical food. So what is medical food and how is that different than a supplement?

Okay, great. So, yeah, that was the right question. How is it different from a supplement? So supplements, as you know, are not FDA regulated. Right. And supplements are unable to make medical claims that they treat diseases. Medical foods, however, are FDA regulated. It's a category of the fda. And I'll just go through the FDA definition of a medical food. Okay. So it's a specifically formulated. They're all natural. First of all, the ingredients are grass, which means generally recognized as safe. So typically vitamins, minerals, amino acids, botanicals. So the ingredients are all grass. The manufacturing has to be certified GMP manufacturing, which supplements don't.

Oh, can you go back to what's grass mean? What's GMP certified? So our audience will know.

So grass is stands for gras, stands for generally recognized as safe, which are typically vitamins, minerals, botanicals, amino acids. The ones that I'm going to speak about today are amino acid formulations. So that's the grass category, basically natural substances. And again, most supplements are natural substances. But again, supplements are not regulated for their manufacturing. So you could make supplements in your garage. So CGMP means Certified Good Manufacturing practices. And just like all the pharmaceuticals you see, they're all under Certified Good manufacturing practices. So the FDA requirement for medical foods is that they go through certified Good manufacturing practice manufacturer. So so essentially you know what you're getting in the bottle because there's been studies on supplements where, I mean, there was a cover story in Time magazine where I think they took 100 different supplements randomly off the shelf. And sound over 70% didn't have what was described on the label contained in the bottles. So medical foods have much more stringent criteria. And supplements also are really. And again, I take certain supplements. I think there are good supplements out there. But because they're not regulated by the fda, it's a bit of a marketing game. You know, it's very hard for the public to discern which supplements are good compared to not.

Right. So, so does that mean that the medical food is FDA or certified, FDA approved or not?

So it's FDA regulated. There's no approval process because it's not a drug. So these are all natural ingredients. So even though they're encapsulated like a supplement or like a pharmaceutical, our products are all encapsulated, they are regulated by the fda. The categories regulated, the other, the other criteria for the FDA is that you are scientifically proving that you meet the a nutrient deficiency in a particular disease state that cannot be met through a normal diet. So we're treating things here like pain and inflammation and fatigue and chronic sleep disorders, all diseases also symptoms that can be treated nutritionally. But you can't just treat them by eating enough in a normal diet. It would be too much to eat that amount of amino acid formulations.

So is it considered a peptide?

They're not.

Because you said amino acids.

I mean, they're very. I mean, our medical foods are combination, Our specific medical foods are combinations of specific amino acids and a variety of botanicals that are combined with a patented technology. It's a messenger amino acid technology. And this technology, when applied with these natural substances of amino acids and botanicals, have been shown to produce neurotransmitters that are shown to be depleted in these various disease states. And the fourth criteria is they require physician supervision. As I mentioned to you earlier, these were prescription only when I became acquainted with them and I was practicing, like yourself, treating lots of patients with a variety of problems, a lot of musculoskeletal pain. And I heard about these natural, natural products that were regulated by the FDA with studies, again published, double blind human clinical trials against ibuprofen and naproxen and trazodone, one of the most commonly prescribed sleep meds that were able to treat these diseases and make claims. So I started bringing them into my practice and now they're no longer prescription only and we are able to bring them out to, you know, chiropractors.

So there, so there are four criteria for medical food. And you, you listed it. And let, let's start with number one. What is that again? Number one.

Okay. Grass ingredients generally recognizes safe. So all natural.

Okay, Number two.

Number two is cgmp, the manufacturing good manufacturing processes Number. Number three. Well, I'll give you number four. First, they should require physician supervision. So if you're being monitored for a disease, you should tell your physician he should. If you're coming off some of your meds, your sleep meds, your pain meds, your anti inflammatories, you want physician supervision of your disease. All right, so we have it on our labels. And then the fourth criteria is you have a scientific basis, a proven scientific basis that you're meeting a nutrient deficiency in a particular disease state that cannot be met through a normal diet. So you're balancing the body so that it could optimally heal because it has proper nutritional balance at a cellular level. And as it turns out that neurotransmitters, because of the increased metabolic demand in many disease states like chronic pain and inflammation, you have a relative depletion of a variety of neurotransmitters. And when you replete the depleted neurotransmitters and bring them back into balance, the cell is optimized and the body hopefully naturally heals a lot better.

Well, that's right in my lane there. So the value is that this is medical food that is actually replenishing the nutrient that your body lack because of the medical condition. It's more regulated than just a supplement anybody make from their garage and sell it at any store, and that it should be monitored under a physician's supervision. So let's dive into this and go. Well, as you know that, you know, ED erectile dysfunction is due to decreased blood flow, and decreased blood flow is due to endothelial. Anything that causes endothelial inflammation. And if you have ED is really a harbinger to a man's health and say, hey, something's going on. You're having inflammation, you're having endothelial inflammation. And ED is actually a warning sign that decade down the road, you may have some cardiac heart disease as well too, because the blood vessels in the genital area is only 1 to 2 millimeter, versus the blood vessels in the heart is about 3 to 4 millimeter. So everything happens down below the belt first, and it's actually a red light. And then, you know, a decade later may affect your heart. So that leads me into the question and you know, what, what are some of the medical food that you think will be beneficial for, you know, for ED in the. In the context of inflammation of the endothelium?

So, I mean, our number one product, which is indicated for the nutritional management of chronic pain and inflammation. All right, so we have arginine in there as an example, and arginine will produce nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator. Okay? So it helps combat inflammation with a variety of neurotransmitters, one of them being arginine, which again, will have a vasodilatory effect. But we also know that chronic pain in and of itself and chronic inflammation. I mean, there. There's a component of sexual function that obviously is mental, right? Because if you're not in the right mood, you're probably, you know, if you have depression or chronic sleep deprivation or chronic pain, you're probably not going to be in a mood for sexual function. So aside from the vasodilatory effect, we also have to talk cognitive or emotional, psychological.

Sure, sure. Well, the brain is a larger sexual organ, not the organ below the belt. The brain is a larger sexual organ, everything.

And that is why the medical foods, what the medical foods are doing our medical foods in. Although we treat a variety of diseases, including chronic pain and inflammation, sleep disorders, fatigue, cognitive decline, neuropathy, we're doing it through the brain because we're producing neurotransmitters that are depleted in these variety of disease states. And then we're optimizing brain health through the optimal nutritional supplementation of neurotransmitters by providing these amino acids and the patented technology. I just want to make one comment that may be good for the audience about the neurotransmitters and nutrition. So if you think of any disease, there's an increased metabolic demand on the body, right? It's just like a car going up a hill. It's going to use more gas. So these days, with my Tesla, more electricity, right? So if something's using more, you're potentially depleting your natural balance level. And it turns out many of these chronic diseases, the levels of a lot of the neurotransmitters that should be optimized are depleted because of the increased metabolic demand. We are supplying the amino acid precursors to the neurotransmitters with certain botanicals, with the patented technology that's been proven over 15 years to balance neurotransmitters and let the bottom body optimally heal through a nutritional approach. And this could complement prescription Meds or help people get off a variety of prescription meds, which in and of themselves may be playing a role in erectile dysfunction. Because many prescription meds have many, many side effects.

Oh, absolutely. And that. That's one of the top three that I recommend when a man has ED is to review his medic. You mentioned transmitters. So when you take this medical food, you're saying that there are certain transmitters, and transmitters are really messenger chemicals that are released in the brain that start a cascade of cellular changes in the body. What are some of the neurotransmitters that are released?

So some examples of the ones like in our main one of which is theremine, would be like gaba, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and it can often help dampen the pain pathways. Or choline, which produces acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a significant signaling neurotransmitter, 5 HTP, precursor to tryptophan. Right. Again, playing a role in many of many of the pathways and many of the pain pathways. In particular, we have L. Glutamine, which is producing glutamate. Right. And a lot of these things are interfacing with the serotonin pathways, again, which will affect mood, which downline, will all affect brain health and as we say, sexual mood and sexual health overall. So that's an example of a handful of them.

All.

Right. So what particular ones are targeting more of the serotonin and the acetylcholine neurotransmitter? Acetylcholine. The reason why I mentioned that more of a parasympathetic pathway and the serotonin is really more of the feel me good pathway.

Right. But it turns out acetylcholine. So we have the choline precursor in our which is the precursor to acetylcholine as that's applied in our main theremine and choline is in a number of these. Acetylcholine actually also in the brain decreases the nerve sensitivity of pain fibers to substance P. So it does interface like a lot of these things have been found to have interfaces in the pain pathway of dampening signals. So I would say between the acetylcholine, the arginine effects on the no 2, which also dampens transmission of neuronal activity in the pain pathway.

Wonderful, wonderful. So that. And as we know you had touched upon this before, it's all about inflammation, right? Things that you eat, you don't exercise, you don't sleep well, you have a lot of stress or even Smoking or alcohol. Now it's all geared toward the category inflammation. And inflammation is almost an ambiguous term that is defined differently for different people. And I find that sometimes it's hard to define that. So how do you define inflammation and how did medical food help with inflammation?

Inflammation is the inflammatory processes where a lot of chemicals are being released and the body's in a state that is certainly not balanced typically associated with pain. And anti inflammatory medications like ibuprofen and naproxen are like extraordinarily commonly used for everything, for things like arthritis, when people have inflammation of the joints. Right. And people commonly take these medications, but these medications, more and more we're seeing the side effects of them. I mean besides just the historical gastrointestinal side effects which are extremely prevalent and ulceration, they have cardiac toxicity, they affect the kidneys, they have bleeding diathesis, you know, they're also shown to change the sensitivity of the pain pathways. And that's really significant because we're finding out more and more if we're using chronic anti inflammatory medication, besides all the other side effects which are quite dangerous, they might also actually increase sensitivity and likelihood of chronic pain. And our theramine product and some of our other products, but theremine in particular, we have double blind studies comparing it to naproxen and ibuprofen, human trials showing you could either take people off a dramatically reduce by balancing the neurotransmitters with the unnatural products and reduce the levels of the anti of inflammation and of use of anti inflammatory medicines. So what?

Yeah, interesting, interesting.

I was just going to say one of our studies, when theremine in a number of chronic back pain patients studying against naproxen showed you could reduce naproxen by 70% if you add theremine on and that would reduce like 95% of the side effects because side effects of most of the anti inflammatories and most meds are dose related. So if you could come down on your pain and anti inflammatory meds and your sleep meds dramatically by bringing the natural substances and employing your body's natural healing techniques, you're doing yourself a dramatic, dramatic benefit.

And as you were saying that you know, the five most common causes of ED is not getting enough sleep smoking because of the nicotine effect, which is inflammatory. And so you were mentioning trazodone, sleep and also medication. Actually we know that you take opioids or even NSAID that can actually contribute to ED as well. And we know that opioids is an erection killer. And then the other condition you mentioned, pain. Because when you're having pain, your sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight system is overrides the parasympathetic which is, you know, eat and sleep and relax system and when you are constantly in stress, because if you have pain, you're not going to be able to relax and therefore it's harder to get an erection. So by eliminating those factors, you're of, you know, stress and eliminating not able to sleep and getting rid of nicotine, you're actually going to be really helping your sexuality, not to even mention even heart health as well. So what, what you're, what you're talking about, pain is really kind of parallel sexuality. Right. Because if you can get yourself out of pain, you sleep better, you're helping things not outside the bedroom, but also in the bedroom as well.

Sure. And mood in general, as we say, the brain itself is the biggest sexual organism. Orgasm. There you go. Interesting slip. So you know, when you look at things like chronic fatigue, right. You know, we, we have neurotransmitters and we have medications here, Centra am that many people are taking for fatigue. And if they're getting their fatigue better, balancing neurotransmitters, more than likely they'll be more in the mood for sex if they're not as tired and if they're sleeping better. With some of our sleep meds, Centra PM is studied against Trazodone. We also see benefits for depression and anxiety with our Centripem and Gabadone products which are for sleep but also have significant mood enhancing effects.

Hmm, interesting. So it's kind of taking metal food kind of a shortcut instead of trying to get the nutrient that you need through exercise, exercise or even supplements.

Well, I, I clearly endorse as many lifestyle management tools like good diet and exercise and stress management for everything for overall health. Like those things are super important. But in, in all these places where you have symptoms of anything of fatigue, of some pain, of some inflammation, of some anxiety or sleep disorders, the medical foods will be a big boost to getting your neurotransmitters b and promoting your body's natural healing mechanisms. You also brought up like everyone's dysregulated in their autonomic nervous system. We live in a high paced society with a lot of stress and the autonomic nervous system, the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic as you described, flight, fright and relaxation, that's, that problem is endemic to our society and that's mediated through neurotransmitters. Like acetylcholine. Right. So again, mood and stress, utilizing these amino acids with this amino acid technology and balancing them with the supplementation that we give, which is very scientific and you know, really proven in humans is a big step up from supplements. And again, there's certain supplements that are good, but in these disease states, having something natural and scientific that's going to promote natural healing is a no brainer for anyone. I think even if you're taking the meds, if you could reduce them a little bit. And I'd love to speak to their doctors, Dr. Mikedicalfoods.com and explain this and let the doctors be educated to bring this out to more of their patients. Because I'm very passionate to spread the word.

Right. So how can somebody start taking the medical food and be able to gradually work away from their prescription medication? What is it that the doctor needs to monitor and the patient need to know?

Sure. So if you think of it, if someone's taking like a typical anti inflammatory medicine, whether it's ibuprofen that their doctor's overseen or one of a hundred other anti inflammatories, what I would typically do in my practice, I would just start the medical foods. And then as a doctor, I was slowly after a few weeks starting to cut down on the anti inflammatory dosages. And again our studies showed like with Naprosyn we could get the same result clinically, the same efficacy with 70% less Naprosyn. So if you're taking only 30% of the Naprosyn, your side effect profile is like 98% down. You know, so same with the sleep meds. I wouldn't necessarily stop it right away, but I would say let's start you on the medical foods. Some people respond very quickly. I usually tell people give it a month because we're addressing a nutrient deficiency and it takes a while to build up. So I tell people give it a month, but then the doctors would slowly start cutting dosages of medications as the medical foods are on board and the medical foods have no drug interactions and they're safe to stay on chronically. Like we have people managing chronic arthritis and fibromyalgia and sleep difficulties for five to 10 years on these medical foods or even a combination of medical food and often off their medicines or on very low doses of medication.

Right. Is there any side effects to the medical food?

Sometimes some dry mouth a little bit, or some nausea occasionally when you start taking it. But we have 40 million doses over 10 years with no adverse side effects and reactions. Other than a little dry mouth, a little nausea on occasion. Extremely safe.

So once you take it, you need to take it forever.

Well again, hopefully when you get your symptoms under control, like everything else, if you're living a healthy lifestyle, like with anything and you're exercising and dieting and managing stress, hopefully your body will start to optimize. We certainly have people who've stayed on them, we certainly have people who use them for three months, six months, a year or two, got a better lifestyle, lost weight. We have an appetite suppressant as well. That's a medical food. And again these are FDA regulated and nutritionally treat these diseases. So some people stay on them for years, some people are on them for months, some for five years. But it's safe.

All right, Right, right. So I wanted to add also that you know, if you're buying supplement or even medical food, you can actually, if you can have a doctor write their recommendation on and you can turn it in for your flexible spending account or FSA or even part of your HSA or health savings account. And I want to mention that because it's December, so most people, it's a calendar year. So if you don't use your flex account, you actually lose it. And these, these are your, the money that is pre tax. So if you, whatever your, your, your, your pay is it, it, it gets taken out into a flexible spending account or HSA pre tax and then you know, you put it in, in an account and then you just withdraw from it from all your medical needs and the supplement and its medical food, you can, you know, use it from that account as well. And so having, having said that, if somebody starts on medical food, when should they see an improvement?

Well again, and by the way, that, that HSA thing, many people do overlook. So I'm glad you brought it up. And it's why we're giving your lesson listeners a 20% discount when they use the code you provide them to get the medical foods before the end of the year. But so I would say I tell people to give it a month for sure, give it a solid month, sometimes up to six weeks. Just because we're providing nutrition to the cells to get the neurotransmitter levels up to their optimal state. But I could say like in the sleep meds, some people start having good results in two, three, four days at times. You know, the chronic pain often takes longer. But we do see people in a week or two responding to theramine. And many people depends on where their nutritional deficit is, what the threshold is, which we never know. But some people do start to respond quite quickly. But I usually say give it a.

Solid month, to give it about a month. So if you are interested in trying out medical food, always do it under a doctor supervisor vision first. Don't try to wean yourself off of your prescription medication. Always see a doctor. And I will offer, I will also list in the show note the coupon code to get 20% off of the medical food and the link for you to go to to get the 20% off. And but please make sure you do it under doctor supervision because like you said, it can release some chemical messengers in your brain that can actually affect how you sleep and, and other things. So try, do not get off your prescription medicine first and then start this. It has to be a wean and a progression of dosage, right?

Exactly.

You have to do it concurrently and may just be that you may need a lower dose of your prescription med as you're taking the medical food, which is really a win win situation because you're taking something that's natural and then you're taking and then on top of that you're lowering the medication, you feel better and maybe because of that you can be more active, eat better, sleep better, and then maybe eventually, you know, get off the prescription medicine and stuff. But we know, Dr. Mike and I know that, you know, chronic disease is really due to inflammation, which is due to reversible lifestyle modifications. It comes down to sleep, eating, exercise and enjoying nature.

Yes, right.

Mindset and stress management. Enjoying mindset and enjoying nature because we're not as healthy as we are now compared to the 1800. When people live in the 1800, they have to get their own food, they have to farm their food. So they go outside, they're active, they're not sitting in front of a computer, they're not playing video games, they're not inside all the time. They go outside, they get the sun. I'm a big proponent of nature and chronobiology, which is getting the sun activated through the sun rays, the sunlight that get to your eyes and then activation of the messenger that reset your circadian rhythm, which is called chronobiology because the circadian rhythm is really deep rooted in sleep as well as alertness and focus and also inflammation as well. But the point is, if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or even diabetes and ed, these are all actually reversible condition that if you change your diet or, and look at how you're exercising, how your sleep level is and stop the nicotine and moderate the alcohol intake and also stress reduction. A little bit of that goes a long way. So having said that, how would you like, what would you like our listener to, as a takeaway from this episode.

Like them to understand there are natural substances that have big science, unlike supplements that are able to treat all these diseases naturally with natural molecules and help your body come into balance through neurotransmitter science and help you get down off a lot of your prescription meds, hopefully, and have much less side effects and have a safer, natural way to heal from many, many problems with things like theremine, centripetm, you know, centra am, et cetera. A whole lot of medications that we're making available to all your listeners.

Well, thank you, thank you for being here, Dr. Mike, and for the audience. Follow our show notes and we'll post a link on there and how you can get medical food at 20% off. And I love to hear from you. So put in the comment if these if you try it, if you have any questions regarding medical. Until then, see you next time.

Thank you very much.

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