Q&A with Gary: Parasites, Mold Toxicity, Folic Acid, & Testosterone Boost | TUH #162

Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. This is the short version where I answer the most commonly submitted questions and I try to put them into one concise short. So here we go. How do you know if you have a hidden parasite and how do you get rid of it? We all have parasites. The question is whether or not is folic acid actually toxic and should pregnant women avoid it? Folic acid is not toxic. Folic acid is just. Why do most multivitamins actually do more harm than good? So, for example, a lot of multivitamins will contain things like how does alcohol consumption affect long term health and what are your recommendations? Well, if you are going to drink alcohol, please, what's the one supplement you'd never take and why? I don't know that there's a single supplement, but there are some ingredients like. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. This is the short version where I answer the most commonly submitted questions through all of our social media channels and I try to put them into one concise short. So here we go. Is folic acid actually toxic and should pregnant women avoid it? Folic acid is not toxic. Folic acid is just the synthetic form of folate which occurs naturally in nature. Remember, folic acid does not occur anywhere naturally in nature. You cannot find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the earth. I do think that pregnant women should avoid it because pregnant women may or may not know whether or not they have the gene mutation that does not allow them to metabolize folic acid. This gene mutation is called mthfr. Now you don't have to go out and get tested for it. You can just take the converted form of folic acid called methylfolate. So if you're using a multivitamin or you're going to take a folic acid supplement, look for the methylated version called methylfolate on the back of the label and you'll be doing yourself a lot of good, especially if you're a pregnant woman and you're concerned about a healthy pregnancy. Why do most multivitamins actually do more harm than good? I don't know that multivitamins actually cause harm. I just don't think that a lot of them are benefiting you. So for example, a lot of multivitamins will contain things like folic acid or cyanocobalamin, these very low or non bioavailable forms of ingredients. One of the reasons why I recommend methylated multivitamins, I actually designed one called 10x optimized. You can find it anywhere on Amazon, but there are lots of good methylated methylated multivitamins, Thorn pure encapsulation Symbiotica. They all make great methylated multivitamins. I have no relationship with those brands, but they make good methylated versions of your multivitamin. How do you know if you have a hidden parasite and how do you get rid of it? There's lots of things that would indicate that you have a parasite, but here's the shocking news if you're watching this podcast. You have parasites. We all have parasites. The question is whether or not we have parasites that are doing harm. Very often what you'll see on a blood test is very, very low iron levels, especially in men. These are indicative of parasitic infections, but gut dysbiosis, brain fog, hormonal imbalance, even autoimmune conditions are linked back to helminth, parasites and other parasites. I actually recommend doing a parasitic detox, which you should talk to your own doctor about because I am not licensed to practice medicine, but I do take a form of ivermectin and fenbendazole. I take it three times a year, just as a general parasitic detox. Lots of countries do these naturally so they can rid themselves of parasites on a regular basis. Talk to your functional medicine doctor about whether or not a parasite cleanse is right for you. I think they're very beneficial. What does your poop say about your health? Wow, that is an interesting question, but it says a lot about your health. So here, let's talk poop for a moment. First of all, every day you should be waking up and within 45 minutes of waking you should be having your first bowel move. Your bowel movement should be solid, not hard like constipation, and not soft or runny like diarrhea. But it should be a firm bowel movement and you should have one within 15 minutes of waking every morning. One of the reasons why a lot of us are not having regular bowel movements not the only reason, is because we are magnesium deficient. There are lots of products you can get out there for magnesium deficiency. Magnesium threonate is actually very good for bowel movements. I actually take a magnesium breakthrough product that has all seven forms of magnesium in it, but you should be actually having regular bowel movements at a minimum of once a day. Most healthy bowels will eliminate two to three times per day. So the frequency of your bowel movement says a lot about your health. How is your deodorant messing with your hormones? Wow. I just did an entire short on deodorant, so go back and find that deodorant short. It's completely free. I actually go through all the ingredients that are disrupting your hormones. But as a beginner, you should be thinking about the fact that we use use aluminums to actually block our pores. Remember, there are deodorants which actually allow you to sweat and cover it with a fragrance. And there are antiperspirants which actually block your sweat glands from producing the sweat. Those are particularly harmful because very often we're using aluminum to block those sweat glands. Switch to a natural deodorant, you will find that they are the same price, they will block the same amount of odor, and they are not wrecking your hormones and clogging the axillary lymph nodes, which are right here in the axillary region of your arms, very, very close to your breast. Why are kids hitting puberty earlier and what's really causing it? Well, it's hard to say that it's a single cause, but it's multifactorial. In fact, the MAHA movement is looking at this right now. Is it vaccinations? Is it the endocrine disruptors that we're giving our children? Is it the actual mimicking of estrogen that comes from things like hormone laden chicken? So here's a way to actually start safeguarding your kids. Try to go organic, try to feed your kids whole foods. Highly processed diets interrupt our endocrine system. Lots of things like BPAs, these Bisphenols, are actually estrogen mimickers and they can actually have kids hitting puberty earlier. In fact, a lot of young women are starting their menstrual cycles, not just in their teens, but starting them before their teenage years, what we call pre pubescent years. And so these are very dangerous signs that we're actually taking in chemicals that are actually mimicking hormones in our body, like estrogen, mainly things like soy, things like caragean, other thickening agents. So switching to a whole food diet is one of the best ways to safeguard your family from hormone disrupting chemicals and stop your kids from entering puberty early. What's the one supplement you'd never take and why? I don't know that there's a single supplement, but there are some ingredients like cyanocobalamin, the cyanide based form of vitamin B12. It's the cheapest form of vitamin B12. It's in a lot of your supplements, protein powders and energy drinks. Look for that on the back of the label. I like to avoid cyanocobalamin. Another one I would never take is folic acid. It's the synthetic form of folate. And you can find folate or methylfolate or 5 methylfolate, or even something called folinic acid in your supplements. And those are better choices. Remember, if you're taking a probiotic, make sure that your probiotic protects the probiotic from the acid in your stomach and opens in an alkaline environment. So those probiotics are dropped off in your intestine, not bathed in the acid in your stomach juice, where they can't survive. What are the most common nutrient deficiencies and how can they be addressed? The three most common nutrient deficiencies are mineral deficiencies, omega 3 fatty acid deficiencies, and amino acid deficiencies. Now, these deficiencies can be fixed by putting a mineral salt in your drinking water in the morning. As you know, one of my favorite biohacks is Baja Gold sea salt. You can put a heavy pinch of this in your water in the morning. You could also use a Celtic salt or any number of other mineral salts. I believe that hydrating and mineralizing our body first thing in the morning is a great idea. I also take a supplement called Perfect Aminos, which is all nine of the essential amino acids. If you're going to take a protein in the morning, make sure it is a complete protein, meaning it has all nine of the essential amino acids. So take a supplement that has all nine of the essential amino acids, and supplementing with a good omega 3 fish oil or something like a black seed oil in the morning will cover your bases. If you're not getting enough sunlight, you may also want to add a vitamin D3 with K2, generally 5000 IU's, international units of vitamin D3 with about 80 micrograms of K2. Can you explain the misconceptions surrounding cholesterol and its impact on health? Well, cholesterol has been vilified for years as the genesis of heart disease. Now, think of it as the fireman. Firemen are called to the scene of a fire because something has gone wrong. There's inflammation, there's a fire. So they're called to put the fire out. Cholesterol is kind of like the fireman. It gets called to the scene of inflammation to help repair the lining of your arteries and repair damage caused by inflammation. So inflammation is what makes the phone call. Firemen just don't show up for no reason. The thought that if we had fewer firemen, we'd have less fires is kind of absurd. So the link between simple LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease is not as strong as the link between the type of cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. So remember that only about 15% of the cholesterol in your blood comes from diet. 85% of the cholesterol in your bloodstream is made by your liver. And if you want to lower your cholesterol, you can do so naturally with things like red yeast rice. You can also do it by changing your diet to a whole food diet and reducing your intake of processed foods and high glycemic sugars. If you want a deep dive on cholesterol, I did an absolutely deep dive with Dr. Aseem Malhotra. You can look this podcast up. It's entirely free. One of the most published cardiologists in the United Kingdom, a phenomenal physician and a cardiac surgeon, he is an amazing individual and we actually did an entire podcast just on cholesterol. So google around for the ultimate human and Dr. Aseem Malhotra. It should answer all of your questions about cholesterol and I'll link the podcast for you below. What are your recommendations for naturally boosting testosterone levels? Well, nothing beats regular sunlight and exercise. Exposing your skin to sunlight first thing in the morning and exercising, especially weight training, is the fastest way to boost your testosterone levels. The next best way is to actually look at your blood. Pull a full hormone panel, take it to your doctor and have them look at your testosterone, your free testosterone, and then some of the other things that impact your hormone levels. Things like shbg, sex hormone binding globulin, a protein that's in everybody's blood but when it rises too high can suppress your free testosterone levels. Look at your nutrient deficiencies. Things like vitamin B12, vitamin D3, and specifically something called DHEA dihydrate, EPI, androsterone. That's a mouthful, but just remember the acronym DHEA. Deficiencies in these nutrients can actually leave the body unable to break build the hormone testosterone. Very often we are nutrient deficient and that nutrient deficiency leads to an inability to properly build hormones. What are your recommendations for managing autoimmune conditions through diet and lifestyle? Well, autoimmune conditions are a vast category of issues that affect the body. If your doctor cannot tell you why you have an autoimmune condition, then a very good idea in my opinion, is to talk to your doctor about viral testing, heavy metal testing, mold and mycotoxin testing and viral testing. You look for viruses, mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals and parasites and you may find what is triggering your immune system to attack Your tissue. I am by no means saying that autoimmune diseases are always caused by one of those four things. Getting those things out of your body as potential triggers is a great place to start. The other thing to manage autoimmune conditions and just manage your health in general is switch to a whole food diet, focus on your sleep and stress is a major contributing factor to autoimmune. You may not know that 82% of all autoimmune diseases are found in women. So why would autoimmune disease prefer females over males? It's not a sex related issue. It's an issue related to stress and very often how women put the needs of other people first before the needs of themselves. They have a tendency to put themselves in the backseat, which we call caregiver syndrome, and not take the time for self care, sleep, rest, relaxation and actually de stressing. So one of the ways you can do this is find a simple routine that you can add to your lifestyle like breath, work, morning sunlight, dry saunas, cold plunging or reading in bed. Something that you can do that is just your own individual method of de stressing. How can individuals optimize their vitamin D3 levels safely and effectively? Well, I think the best way is to get natural sunlight. If you're worried about UVA and UVB rays damaging your skin. Morning light, or what they call first light, which is about the first 45 to 60 minutes of the day, has no damaging UVA or UVB rays. It's a very safe time to expose as much of your skin as possible directly to sunlight. Nothing beats all of the metabolites that come in conjunction with vitamin D3 when you expose your skin to sunlight. Remember, human beings only make one vitamin. It's called cholecalciferol, vitamin D3. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. So just think about how important that must be to human function if it's the only vitamin that human beings make. On our own. Deficiency in vitamin D3 is linked to all kinds of conditions, including increased rates of breast cancer in women, brittle bone disease and autoimmune conditions. So how does alcohol consumption affect long term health and what are your recommendations? Well, my recommendation is no alcohol, but I know that that's tough for a lot of you. If you are going to drink alcohol, please don't drink it within two hours of bedtime. It is 100% going to destroy your sleep. Remember that alcohol. Alcohol becomes something called acetyl aldehyde, which lowers the PH of your blood, making it more acidic and as you become more acidic, you become more disease prone, you put the body in a disease prone state. So keeping your blood ph towards the alkaline side is always, always a good idea. So my recommendations to negate the effects of alcohol long term or just to wipe it out entirely. If that's not for you, control your drinking at least within two hours of bedtime or or it will wreck your circadian rhythm. Can you discuss the importance of hydration and the best practices for maintaining it? Yes. Make it a habit every single morning to drink a minimum of 8 to 10 ounces of water right out of bed. Get up in the morning, brush your teeth, do your tongue scraping, your oil pulling, use your hydroxyapatite toothpaste, head over to your kitchen, and even before you have your coffee, fill up a nice glass of filtered water. Put a healthy pinch of Baja Gold sea salt in there, stir it up. If you're like me, you'll add perfect aminos. You'll add something like a hydrogen tablet so you can actually hydrate, detoxify, mineralize and reduce inflammation. But hydration practices are best done first thing in the morning. Why? Because it will turn back on the response for satiation. So many of you that are watching this podcast right now have been dehydrated for so long, your body has lost the sensation for thirst. If you can go an entire day without your body reminding you to drink even a single glass of water, you are clinically dehydrated. It takes four days to turn this back on just by adding a little mineral salt and a big 8 to 10 ounce glass of water to your morning routine. What are the implications of mold exposure on health and how can we detox from it? Wow. The mold exposure. First of all, great question because mold and mycotoxins goes missed on so many different labs and it's one of those underlying chronic conditions that people just learn to live with and rarely do. Our primary care physicians test for mold or mycotoxin exposure. I live in Miami. It happens to be the mold capital of the world. So we won the mold lottery down there. There are several tests you can do for mold. One is called Vibrant. I have no relationship with them, but it's a great test for mold. Lots of tests that you can do for mold or mycotoxins and exposure, but here's how it manifests in the body. If you have a child that has recurrent sore throats, that has swollen glands in the back of their throat, and you're considering actually a tonsillectomy where you actually take the tonsils out or take out the adenoids to try to widen the throat. You may want to do mold and mycotoxin testing first. Mold and Viruses Mold and bacteria have had a war going on for centuries and so flare ups often come from the mold. Sporulating mold also causes a sensation of brain fog, hormonal disruption, sleep disruption and a flattening of mood. So if you have these kind of unexplained symptoms, one of the things that you should be tested for is mold. And then talk to your doctor about a mold detox. One of the best ways to remove mold from your body is to activate your own natural detox pathways. Things like glutathione binders for your gut, charcoal binders, zeolite or silica clay binders, and sweating as often as you can 20 minutes three times a week in a dry sauna is a great way to activate your natural detoxification pathways. Stay hydrated. But the number one thing if you believe you've been exposed to mold or you are certain you have mold toxicity, nothing else matters but this. So if you don't remember anything from this podcast other than this next statement, please write it down. Nothing matters if you have mold toxicity more than getting yourself out of the environment where you were exposed. So have your house tested and remediate the mold. Have your car tested, your boat, wherever you are spending time, your office where you think you might be gaining this mold exposure, find it and eradicate it because you will not ever address your mold toxicity while you are constantly inoculating yourself. Hope you found these helpful. Please continue to submit your questions. I love answering these in short form format and if you're interested in more one on ones, live Q&As, private podcasts, and my 10 month course to becoming the Ultimate Human version of yourself. All of this I've put into my VIP group. You can become a VIP for $97 a month by going over to theultimatehuman.com forward/vip and signing up to be one of my VIPs. Do your health. And that's just science.