Supplements and Food Sensitivity Testing for Digestive and Overall Health

Hi, this is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. Before I introduce my guest, I want to ask a favor of you. If you know someone who has gut issues or an autoimmune disease, or if you're a member of a Facebook group that discusses gut health that you haven't seen me post the podcast to, will you share the podcast with your friend or your group? Podcasts grow mostly by word of mouth., and I'd love to reach more people with useful information to help them heal their gut issues. So today I'm talking with Dr. Russell Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe has more than 40 years of experience contributing to molecular biology and clinical diagnostics. He received his BS, MD, and PhD from the Boston University School of Medicine, completed his residency training in clinical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health, and at senior staff before pursuing other interests. He's founder and chairman of Perk Integrative Health LLC, which is composed of Perk and ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies, a company that offers the world scientifically proven integrative health solutions that speed the transition from sick care to healthful care. Just in case you're wondering, this is not a sponsored podcast. I invited Dr. Jaffe to come on the podcast because of his experience as a doctor, researcher, and product inventor. And all of the supplements he mentions in the podcast, and I know you're gonna be tempted to get some of them, can be purchased via my Fullscript dispensary, which is linked in the show notes. And do compare prices there and elsewhere. And if you purchase through my dispensary, you will be supporting the podcast, so I really appreciate it. And he also mentioned some lab tests you can order yourself, and I did go ahead and set up an affiliate account there after we recorded. So please use my link if you're interested in ordering tests, as that will also support the show. Now on to our conversation.

Welcome, Dr. Jaffe. How are you?

Quite well. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. So I actually heard you speaking on another podcast before your folks reached out to me, and I realized that I was already taking a Perk product. It's the, the Lifeguard multivitamins and minerals. And I was really happy because when I heard you talk about the way you talk about your supplements, it made me feel like I'd be a fool to be using products from any other company if you offer those same types of products.

We have been pioneers in novel delivery systems like tabs, not tablets or capsules. Yes, we did a double-blind placebo-controlled trial to show that our Lifeguard Super Multivitamin, which actually replaces more than one product for most people, is more bioavailable because it has more active more enhanced uptake and less what I would call binders, fillers, flowing agents, glues, and other stuff that is in most supplements for reasons of profit, not reasons of value.

Yeah. And it's not unreasonably priced either. So it was a good choice for me. And I think the reason I selected it was that it had a high level of the active B Vitamins, right?

So it's a super B complex, complete B complex, and a super mineral, which is usually a separate formula. It's got 40 active ingredients in meaningful amounts because you need them all.

Yeah, and I take 2 a day and I feel good about that.

So, and hopefully you keep your urine sunshine yellow while being well hydrated.

It's the B vitamins that turn your urine yellow, right?

Oh yes, it's specifically riboflavin, but it's the B vitamins that turn your urine yellow. And I want your urine to be sunshine yellow. If it's glass clear, deficient in something.

Right. So that's just what you're seeing is the excess B vitamins coming out in your urine that you don't need.

Not excess. No, no, not excess. The B vitamins that protect your kidneys and your bladder and your genitourinary system. There's a lot of problems that happen in later life in the genitourinary system, and you can avoid them if you bathe it in the right kind of nutrients for life.

Ah, okay. So I always thought that that was sort of like, oh, I was taking too much, but you're saying that's just like a good healthy thing.

Yes, I'm saying that you want to protect your kidneys, your bladder, and, and the rest of you. And the answer is yes, most of us are deficient. And when deficient is common, well, we go around saying, well, everyone's deficient, who cares? I do care, and it makes a difference.

And it occurred to me just the other day that the reason a lot of the people I deal with and myself may be deficient in B vitamins is that we are gluten-free, and a lot of the places people get their B vitamins is the, the enriching of flour or from whole grains.

Well, you raised two very important questions, one having to do with hard-to-digest glutens and gliadins, and the other one have to do with enrichment. I will tell you that if you talk about enriched flour or enriched salt or enriched anything, It was a bad trade-off. I will tell you that nature, nurture, and wholeness— I will tell you that physiology before pharmacology— I will tell you that the things I went to debunk that I now advocate for have prolonged the life of my parents, my children, and hopefully myself.

Okay, so I wanted to start with a question about an area that comes up with a lot of clients of mine, which is food sensitivities. So can you start by explaining the difference immunologically between a food sensitivity and a food allergy? And then tell us about the technology that you invented to test for delayed reaction sensitivities, including food sensitivities.

Right. So the reason that we brought together cell culture and amplified reactions in a single system, after many people tried and didn't, the reason we brought that together was we needed an ex vivo. Now, ex vivo is a Latin term. Ex vivo means outside the body but reacting in the laboratory just as things happen in the body. So we needed an ex vivo specimen, we needed to validate the procedure, we did that in the early 1980s, we've done over 80,000 cases, we've done over 25 million cell cultures, we are the gold standard for functional immunology, especially T cell, as I said, T and Tom cell, T-cell reactions, which turn out to be more important than the antibody B-cell reaction.

Okay, and so that's, that's the technology that you use for the ELISA test?

Yes, it's ex vivo, which means in the laboratory cells react just as they do in the body. It's a cell culture. It's not red and blue and dead. It's not stained. It's not dried. It's not something you can just put out your hand and take a specimen and get a result because A number without a meaning is meaningless. We produce meaningful results over 30, 40 years now. I'm not as young as I seem. Hopefully my voice is young. And yes, my children have survived their parents. That's another whole subject for another time. But in the meantime, we want to provide the meaningful results for what you should eat and drink, what you should think and do, based on what each of us needs, cuz that is kind of personalized.

Mm-hmm. So can you touch a little bit on the difference between a food sensitivity and food allergy?

Oh no, very important. And thanks for asking again. A food allergy typically means an immediate reaction. For example, the bee stings you and you drop in anaphylactic shock. And I say, well, you must have a hymenoptera. Venom hypersensitivity. That's type 1. But then there's Jelen-Koons, two guys who are— basically articulated the language of the immune system along with a guy named Lejeune. They all got the Nobel Prizes, so dumb they were not. And they pointed out that there are antibody reactions. These are from B-class cells, B like bursa, B like B cells, become plasma cells that produce antibodies. Now, are those antibodies helpful and neutralizing and memory, or are they complement fixing and harmful? When you do a serum test, you don't know. Only when you do a cell culture test do you distinguish good from bad B cells, but more importantly, you also get immune complexes and T cells all in the same cell culture. And that was our pioneering effort so that we could open up the black box of the immune system. Because what we knew when we started was that if the immune system is happy, you're happy and, and you live long and well. And if your immune system is unhappy, we can whack it like with dexamethasone, which may or may not be helpful.

So would you recommend the ELISA LRA test to a person who has a highly reactive gut and seems to be reacting to everything they eat? Or would it be better to try and heal up what's likely a leaky gut before testing for food sensitivities using the LRA?

I think that's a very appropriate question for someone like me, because you would think I would say everyone needs what I do, but I'm not going to say that. I think you can start with 4 self-assessments. You can start with betterlabtestnow.com, which is a consumer portal to get information, inspiration, and accurate interpretation. Of where you are. What if your hemoglobin A1c, for example, is less than 5%? What if your high sensitivity C-reactive protein is less than 0.5? What if your homocysteine is less than 6? Well, then I would interpret your results differently than if the only thing I had was food sensitivity. Now, we have the gold standard of delayed allergy But delayed allergy is only a big part, not the entire part, of digestive issues. And John Hunter, a very important guy in the United Kingdom, pointed out that there are intolerances. For example, let's say you acquire a lactose intolerance to milk sugar. That's not immune, but it will make you unhappy.

That's for sure. I've got, I've got that, and I can tell you it makes me unhappy.

Aha, yes, unless you take lactose-free milk. So you could put an enzyme called lactase on a column, pass the milk through that, the lactose becomes something else but not lactose. And now it's okay. And I'm pretty sure in most, at least healthy markets, there is a little section called lactose-free milk. And by the way, I actually recommend you make your own almond milk at home or cashew milk after you ferment your own cashews.

Yeah, I had a friend who was making her own almond milk, but it just seems like all too much trouble given all the other things I'm doing with my diet.

See, thank you for saying that because that's exactly the response. Me, you, we, we only have a few minutes a day. If you tell me I have to spend 100% or 50% or even 25% of my time on nurturing myself and so forth, I'll tell you no. I don't come from that culture. I have to make a contribution and have meaningful moments. I therefore have to do something other than take care of myself. But if you don't take care of yourself, you're a fool.

It's more of a, well, okay, I'm making my own homemade sauerkraut and I'm making my own homemade this. And it comes down to what are you going to spend your time on?

No, no, but all good. It's easy to have fermented whole foods. I urge you and recommend that you do that. But the more important thing is what do you think, what do you eat, what do you drink, what do you do? And we have balanced ways of helping people speed the transition from today where they feel stuck and unable into a future where they are enabled and given resources, starting with the 4 self-assessments, continuing with the 8 predictive biomarkers interpreted at best outcome goal values.

At best Outcome.

Goal values.

Goal values. Oh, okay. That's not a website. That's just a—

No, it's betterlab— it's betterlabtestnow.com. But when you get there, we want your hemoglobin A1C less than 5%.

Okay. So you've got tests or what should people look for at that website?

Well, I think where they should go is predictive biomarkers. Tell me where you're strong and I'll celebrate. Tell me where you're weak and I'll tell you what to do.

I actually found on that website the LRA test and saw that they ranged in price from about $397 to $1,725 for the most deluxe one, but all of them included foods, environmental chemicals, food additives and preservatives, molds, and food colors. So—

No, no. If you want the everything test, it's at the higher end. If you want selective testing, that's an option. We provide the best quality of the best testing. You decide how much testing you need.

And so do you do those other tests for the A1C and the C-reactive protein, or do you just want people to come from with those information already?

Very good question. Generally, we do not do tests that other people do just as well as we could. So hemoglobin A1C, HSCRP, even homocysteine, vitamin D levels, omega-3 index. These are things we could offer and hopefully make, you know, some revenue off of, but we don't because we want you to get the best quality directly without any overhead.

So tell me about some of the products that you designed for gut health and the research on their ingredients.

Well, in regard to gut health, we're talking about prebiotics, probiotics, and symbiotics. Prebiotics is fiber. Probiotics are bugs, but alive. Symbiotics is recycled glutamine. And now I'm gonna paraphrase Dr. Dennis Burkitt. He first won the Nobel Prize for Burkitt's lymphoma, and then he had so many invitations to talk to journalists and others that he actually disconnected his phone and he went to Kenya. He became a missionary, a medical missionary, Nobel laureate. How many Nobel laureates do you know who decamped to Kenya? And what he noticed, and this is what he taught me personally, he said, you know, when people there, like East Africa, when they live a traditional diet, which is high fiber, it's somewhat subsistence, it's feast and famine, it's what it is. There's no irritable bowel syndrome, there's no ulcerative colitis, there's no regional enteritis, there is no leaky gut, there is no digestive problems. It's when they move to the city and they have the challenges and the toxins of urban living, that's when these problems occur. So we need 40 to 100 grams of fiber. That's the prebiotic fiber, 40 to 100 grams a day of unprocessed fiber. And we need 40 to 100 billion healthy bugs. Isn't that interesting? 40 to 100, 40 to 100. Different a little bit, but not much. One is fiber and the other is bugs. And then we need recycled glutamine.

And what is recycled glutamine?

Well, glutamine is a very important amino acid. It's a source of energy for your enterocytes, for the cells that line your intestines and make your leaky gut go away. But glutamine goes to glutamate unless you recycle it. So we actually pioneered how to recycle glutamine about 10-fold. So now you give 1.5 grams rather than 15. You give that on rising and before bed because it's an amino acid recycled by PAK. PAK is called paradoxical alpha-ketoglutarate if any of you are biochemists.

Okay. And so what is the product that you sell that is the recycled glutamine?

Yes, thank you. It's called PERC and DuraPak Guard.

PERC and DuraPak Guard. Okay. I'll, I'll link to that in the show notes cuz I'm sure people will be interested. And if you are eating plenty of protein, would you need something that provides glutamine?

The amount of protein that an adult human needs is 60 to 70 grams a day. And when you go above 60 to 70 grams a day, you add acid because the excess amino acids become keto acids. You lose ammonia. That ammonia is lost in the urine, sweat, and stool. It's part of why people sweat in ways that are, shall I say, unpleasant.

So your probiotic product, I noticed that it doesn't list the strains, but I presume that you're using those strains that are numbered and researched.

First of all, we do have 10 active CFU, colony-forming units, 10 active strains between Acidophilus and Bifidus and Streptomyces thermophilus. What we do not include are the individual, proprietary, and shall I say manipulated strains. Because we follow nature, nurture, and wholeness. We don't follow vogue. And I don't mean just Vogue the magazine. I mean scientific vogue. I mean the fact that today people are looking for the magic probiotic that they can patent. I don't think that's actually a good idea. I think that probiotics, prebiotics, and symbiotics should be available to promote healthy intestinal digestion, assimilation, and elimination.

Okay, so in other words, the strains that you're using are more sort of general?

Not only are they more general and more active, we actually harvest our strains in what's called log phase, which means doubling. Wouldn't you like a more potent Probiotic? Well, most of what you get in almost every other probiotic is yogurt freeze-dried or dried and then powdered and then put in a capsule. And by that time, by the time you get to plateau, by the time you get to too many organisms and too little nutrition, they're cannibalizing each other. And when you cannibalize each other, you immunize the probiotic. So many people who are taking probiotics, who need probiotics, are actually getting immunoprobiotics, which we really, really, really don't recommend.

And so you said they're in the log phase. Can you explain a little bit more what that means?

Log phase means doubling. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. I can't go much above that, but doubling. There is a point where when you grow the organisms in the culture medium, they double, double, double, double, and then they plateau. When they plateau, it's easy to harvest the maximum number of bugs, but they're mostly dead. And not only dead, they're immunizing dead. And that's a double harm.

What does that mean, they're immunizing?

Oh, immunizing means that they're cannibalizing each other to the point where they leave remnants behind that will burden your immune defense and repair system. Including endotoxins that my friend Ron Aline pioneered in the '70s. If you know about endotoxin, look up Limulus crabs. My friend Ron, who still is a friend and a colleague, would go out once a year to San Diego, La Jolla, which we all thought was a nice place to visit, in order to harvest Limulus crabs to get their fluids so that he could have a year's worth of endotoxin assays back at the National Institutes of Health.

What are assays?

Oh, assays mean tests. Now, tests produce results. Hopefully the results of the tests have meaning. Someone should ask.

What's the prebiotic product that Perk makes?

Prebiotic that Perk makes is multiple sources of unprocessed fiber called prebiotic fiber because it's prebiotic. It nourishes the beneficial bugs in your gut. But it's not bugs. Those are the probiotics.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And there has been some research of late that pointed to the idea that taking probiotics after antibiotics might not be a good idea because it takes longer to return to your, your base microbiome. But the people that I'm dealing with as clients already have a very disturbed gut microbiome that probably we don't want to return to. So can you just comment on that research and when it's appropriate to probiotics?

I'm gonna explain it, but this is my answer: None so blind as those who will not see. What I mean by that is you have very smart microbiologists and other scientists who are pathology-oriented and not physiology-knowledgeable, and they don't know their elbow from a hole in the ground in regard to what we're talking about, because the whole conversation has changed in the last 2 or 3 years because we've actually learned a bunch in the last 2 or 3 years. And so if you go back even 5 or 10 years, you can actually make recommendations that I am very sure will harm and not help. So this notion that, oh gosh, we need antibiotics— oh, let me stop at that point. I'm a licensed medical doctor, at least in several jurisdictions like New York and California. I have never had a problem with my medical practice because people have gotten better and not worse. And no, I haven't given antibiotics in the last 30 years, probably more, because people didn't have an antibiotic deficiency. What they had was a deficiency of the good stuff. So we give the good stuff in sufficient amounts to crowd out the bad stuff. And guess what? That works.

So say somebody had a urinary tract infection, what would you give them?

Again, you ask such really astute questions. Let's say you have a person, more likely a woman than a man, but let's say you have a person with a UTI, a urinary tract infection. The first thing I would give them is a simple sugar called mannose. Why? Because there is science. And by the way, there's good science and there's bad science. I only want to talk about the good science. There is good science that says if you give this simple sugar called mannose, then some of the harm of a urinary tract infection can be reduced while, hopefully, you restore the imbalance of the immune defense and repair system.

I actually have some of that mannose in my, in my cupboard, and I'm curious, what kind of doses do you need to actually begin that process?

Again, very good question. Let's say you have a UTI and you're irritable for whatever reason in that region of the body. I'm pretty sure that if you don't take a half a gram twice a day, it's almost homeopathic, which may or may not work, but forget about it. And there are people who will give you 5 grams. And I don't think that's a harmful thing because mannose is one of those sugars that's not metabolized. It's not like glucose, it's not like fructose, it's not a harmful sugar.

And how does it work? Does it attach to the bacteria and carry them out?

It prevents the bacteria from connecting with the wall of your genitourinary tract and therefore irritating it. No, it prevents, it prevents the connection. It basically pushes things away.

And so that on its own could clear a UTI?

Let me say 3 things about that. First of all, most urinary tract infections are not accurate. When you have a count of 50,000 bacteria in a urine specimen in regard to a urinary tract infection, I am 100% sure from running the labs at the NIH that that means you didn't have a clean catch. You didn't have a sterile specimen. Only when you have a lot of bad bugs, and not just bugs, you have to have a lot of bad bugs. If you have a lot of bad bugs, I want to get them out. If you only have a few bugs, I'm not sure, in fact I'm very sure, I wouldn't treat a result without a meaning.

Given, if you have an accurate test, is mannose sufficient to clear a UTI at appropriate doses?

Without question, mannose will reduce the symptoms. It is not alone sufficient.

And so would you add probiotics to that, or?

Well, since I'm a physiology before pharmacology physician, since I'm a scientist and not just a mystic, everyone in my experience needs prebiotics, probiotics, and symbiotics.

Next. And if you are eating a sufficient amount of fiber, then you probably don't need to take prebiotics. But few of us are actually doing that, right?

40 to 100 grams of prebiotic fiber means you're chewing chili and curry and a dal at almost every meal. And then you have a problem, which is I take in my calories in 6 hours and then I rest my digestion for the next 18 hours. It's relatively short, but I'm relatively healthy and it allows me to have restorative sleep. It allows me to jump out of bed in the morning and anticipate what I want to do today because I don't know. And whatever the good Lord wants is what I'm gonna do today. And I'm one of the few people who can tell you that that's true.

And do you get hungry with the— in your 18 hours of not eating?

No, no, no. Let me be very clear. I get up in the morning, whatever time, 'cause I'm a farmer. I go to bed early, I get up early. So I get up whatever time. I make a pot of coffee. This is a French press. So no paper, no residue, no problems. Of organic, biodynamically grown, shade-grown pea berry from a guy whose name is Misha in Hawaii who is nice enough to send me the coffee beans. And so I make a pot of coffee. Now, you can criticize that if you want because there are people who will say, "Oh, coffee, coffee, coffee." Okay. But I make a pot of coffee and I sip from about 6:00 AM until about 11:00 AM. And then at 11:00 AM, to be full disclosure, I actually switch to Pellegrino and Campari. Now, I'm sure you've heard of Pellegrino, but do you know what Campari is?

It's an alcohol, isn't it?

Aha. Oh my God. It's an alcohol. It's an aperitif.

Yeah. Is it like one of those anise-flavored aperitifs?

Well, it isn't aperitif. It's one of the few that actually stimulates your liver to detoxify. There are multiple. So, I do Campari and Pellegrino at the middle of the day. And, if you want to know what I do at dinner, I don't eat much. Probably seeds and nuts, probably salad, probably something that's easy to chew because I had my fiber middle of the day. And, in the morning, I actually want to have what around my place were called chaffy poops. And what are those? No, I kid you not. These were bulky poops that float in the top of your commode and are associated with low disease and small hospitals. And I actually heard Dennis Burkitt say this. He says, most people produce stool that is like pencils and sinks to the bottom of the commode. And you will have a lot of chronic disease and a lot of hospitals. And he was 93 years of age when I was in the audience. No, no, I'm not as young as I might seem, but anyway, I learned from him because he was bright-eyed, he was bushy-tailed, he was present and accounted for. I think that we need to remember those kinds of people because if we forget them, we will make the same mistakes again.

So when you describe that poop, I'm confused because I always associate floating stool as one that does not have— where there's a potential bile deficiency.

Let's say you have an impaired digestion, a short transit time, and now too much fat is floating to the top of the commode. That's not what I'm talking about. Not as in not, not, not, not, not. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about high fiber from lentils, from brassica, Brassica translates into cabbage and broccoli, cauliflower. Yes, just what you said, cauliflower. It turns out you can do a lot of things with cauliflower that are really quite yummy. There are people who are trying to turn cauliflower into the base for pizza. It turns out it's not gluten-free. Don't let them fool you. It's not. It's low, lower gluten. And you can, and I do often roast mostly cauliflower, some broccoli rabe, all of the brassica from sprouts to roasting. Why not? They're yummy. What's wrong with them?

You mentioned that cauliflower crusts aren't gluten-free. Is that because of the other additives, not because of the cauliflower?

Cauliflower by definition is gluten-free. There's not a gluten molecule anywhere near any of the brassica. The problem is that people say this is the cauliflower crust gluten-free, and then you measure the crust and you find out someone threw some gluten in.

Because of cross-contamination, not because of non-gluten-based grains.

Well, grains have gluten, grasses don't. We advocate for grasses, we don't advocate for glutens. But what you said was correct. Someone had to mix in something upstream that wasn't disclosed downstream. That confuses the poor consumer. And I don't want consumers to be confused. I want them to understand what decisions they're making.

And do you think that, that everyone should be gluten-free or just people who are gluten sensitive or celiac?

Not too long ago, grains like oats and rye and wheat were the staff of life. And you may be too young to remember that, but I remember when they were the staff of life and they were not manipulated. They didn't have glyphosate. They didn't have contaminants. They didn't have too much sugar and too little protein. They weren't what we have today. And what we have today is quite manipulated. Get used to it and avoid it.

And so if you can access those ancient grains like kamut, for example, do you think that that's a healthy grain to eat?

Again, very astute question. If you can get biodynamic kamut, which I can't, I don't mean organic. I mean biodynamic because the organic kamut that I got was actually manipulated.

Meaning it had been crossbred or meaning that it had been genetically modified?

Well, it had been mixed with the genetically modified strains so that they could sell it. Don't do a work-alike that doesn't work.

We have a great baker here. I don't eat the bread because I am gluten sensitive, but he does a croissant, which is the same as the kamut loaf from locally sourced.

And if I can tell you a small story, At both of our homes in New Jersey and in Virginia, we have wood-fired bread ovens. And if you want to get up the night before and then at 4 o'clock in the morning fire up the oven and make cardamom bread or cinnamon bread or some of these aromatic breads. And we had a friend, Julie was her name. So, she and her husband, he was a Waldorf educator and they needed a place to stay. Until they found a place for themselves. So she would get up the night before and the next morning and make these breads, and she would just walk around in Hopewell, New Jersey, which is way— very close to Princeton. She would have a fabric over the bread, and she would go to the kitchen, and she would knock on the door, and people would come to the door, and she— all she had to do was open The fabric, the aroma of the cardamom or the cinnamon or whatever it was that she was making. People paid her $12 a loaf.

Oh yeah. That's what these artisan breads cost.

I didn't say they were cheap. I said they were worth the value. These are prizes. If you have access to them, appreciate it. If you don't, you can pine for them until you do. But honestly, on both of my places, we have wood-fired bread ovens. And if you want to make, because I don't, I really praise the bread makers.

It's a task.

Oh, I didn't say this was buy it frozen and just puff it up. No, it's a whole labor of love.

Yeah, I know. I tried bread making for a while and I finally gave up on it. Well, of course, when I realized I was gluten sensitive, that was part of it.

Right.

So, grasses, yes. Gluten's no. Not for now.

So you think unless it's this ancient grain biodynamic, better to stay away from any kind of gluten.

And I'm telling you, it's so hard to get that because I do that. It has to be a gift, you know, from the gods.

Yeah. Sort of like your coffee.

And that is true. And the fellow, Mischa is his name, and he has 10 acres and I just asked him for some more beans, which he roasts the day that he sends them. And he says, well, you know, I'm too popular and I can only send you half. So I said, okay, you know, I'll take whatever I can get because I want what I want. And yes, you know, from dawn to noon, I pretty much subsist on coffee.

Yeah. And so then that gets you through to 6.

Yes, that's how I get to eat my calories between noon and 6. But another point is very simple. I get up in the morning and my stomach says feed me. Me. And I say to my stomach, well, just hold on there. I'm going to have a shower. And while I'm showering, I'm going to brew some coffee. And then I'm going to give you something. And it says, what? And I said, well, coffee. And it says, what do you mean? That's liquid. And I say, yes, that's what you're going to get. And it says, no. And then I get in the shower. And by the time I'm done with my shower, it's agreed with me.

Yeah, well, that happens. Fortunately, hunger pangs don't last forever.

If you need Cocoa Puffs or something sugary in the morning, that's a problem. It is a problem. And the reason I tried to make it lighthearted is because we're not— we're all in this together. I grew up on sugar, Wonder Bread, and we made Play-Doh out of it. And what was the other thing that we had? Wonder Bread and—

Spam?

Oh, Spam. No, no, no. We were kosher. There was no kosher.

Oh, okay. Sorry.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. No, no. We were from the minority.

I grew up on Spam.

I'll bet you did. And there were 4,000 students in my little secondary school, 1st through 6th. 4,000 students, 2 Jews. I didn't know the other one.

And where did you live?

Oh, New Hartford. This was a little— it's a wonderful suburb. New Hartford was a wonderful suburb outside of Utica, New York, midway on the Erie Canal, but controlled by the mafia. For full disclosure, in the 4th or 5th grade, I had the only fight in my life. I did win, but the only fight in my life. And it was a guy named Tommy Infanzino. You can look up his name. And when my parents found out that his father was in charge of the mafia for upstate New York, they were actually terrified. But he and I, he provoked me and then I beat the pulp out of him. And he understood that he provoked me. And if you do that, you're entitled to respond as a kid. I didn't say that I was the premier of, you know, Slobovia. No, this is really true. It actually Okay, so we got what he was asking for.

Let's get back to our topic of health. So I actually have been going through sciatica, and I noticed—

is it really sciatica, or is it— there's an alternative, which is—

yeah, it's not piriformis.

Okay.

Yeah, it's not that. It's really sciatica.

Okay. Now, if it's sciatica, you have an antioxidant deficiency, a magnesium choline citrate deficiency, and a polyphenomic deficiency for 3 weeks, and I want you to report back.

Okay, so polyphenols, magnesium, and what was the first one you said?

The first is the mother antioxidant that protects all others, ascorbic.

Okay, so I'm already taking vitamin C, but maybe I'm not enough.

Based on the weekly sea cleanse?

No, I'm not doing anything like, you know, to bowel tolerance. Is that what you're thinking?

My friend Bob Cathcart recommended bowel tolerance. I can tell you, don't do that. But do, do follow our recommendation for the C cleanse, one of the 4 personalized predictive biomarkers.

And where do I find that?

On betterlabtestnow.com/4biomarkers.

Okay. So it will describe what the C cleanse is and how much I need to take.

Well, they'll describe how to do it and tell you how to do it. Right.

And then magnesium, I'm already taking magnesium glycinate, 400 milligrams a day.

And your urine pH after rest is what?

I don't measure that.

Until you do, you're flying blind. Let me check. Flying blind when there are mountains is not a good idea.

I did notice on BetterLab Test Now there are pH test kits.

Yes. One of the four, one of the four personalized self-assessments followed by the 8 predictive biomarkers.

Okay.

So what am I shooting for on my urine pH if I'm taking enough magnesium?

6.5 to 7.5. That's only based on 1,227 studies. Okay.

Sounds like a sufficient number. Okay. And then the polyphenols, I had been taking, or I saw a product called RepairGuard and I didn't know what it was for, but I knew I was gonna be interviewing you and I just, it caught my eye and I bought it. So is that something that's useful in the polyphenol department? 'Cause I know it has quercetin in it.

Well, it has quercetin dihydrate. So there's quercetin of which you should be concerned. Then there's quercetin dihydrate of which you should not be concerned. Lindsey Parsons. So for the last 35 years, we have combined quercetin dihydrate with soluble OPC. We have published multiple requested chapters and review articles showing that you can have good or bad polyphenolics, flavonoids, and flavonols. And we want the good and we don't want the bad.

Okay, so quercetin dihydrate is the safe form of it. Is what you're telling me.

And let me give you another little anecdote. So my friend Bob calls me up and he says, well, have you ever heard of resveratrol? And I said, yes, if you drink about 400 glasses of red wine, you'll get a meaningful amount of resveratrol. He says, yes. He says, what do you think? I said, well, I think quercetin dihydrate and soluble OPC. He says, well, you know, I own the patents globally on resveratrol. I said, sell them. And he did.

Hmm. Okay. So you thought they weren't worth keeping.

When you have the better, stay with the better. If you need the worser, that's your problem. Is that clear?

Yeah. Okay. So anyway, back, back to my sciatica. So you, so you think I'm, I'm nutrient deficient, but I was just wondering about the products in terms of RepairGuard or PainGuard Forte. Would either of those be useful in, in helping with my sciatica? Sciatica.

In regard to your or anyone's sciatica, you start with the 4 personal self-assessments, you move on to the 8 predictive biomarkers, interpret your best outcome values, and then you'll be fine.

Okay. So this is all obvious if you go to betterlabtests.com.

Not only obvious, my father had sciatica. I cured it.

Yeah, I've been having it for like 8 months, so it's kind of bit urgent. And I've been taking every supplement anybody recommends.

And they have been treating the back end of an ass. Forgive me for saying it that clearly. They're not looking at the causes, they're looking at the consequences. I understand that. Most professionals do. So throw some curcumin in that has lead. What value does curcumin from turmeric have when it has lead contamination? Negative. Oh, but I didn't know it had lead. I actually thought it was curcumin. Well, it's not because curcumin has to be heated. It has to be met with piperine. It has to be part of dal or curry or other foods. So that's why we start with what you eat and drink, think and do. And then we don't let you be dehydrated.

So if I have USP verified curcumin with bioperine, Could I feel safe that that's not lead contaminated?

Two points. First of all, when you start with a peppercorn and you grind piperine onto a food, it lasts about 1 hour. And I'm pretty sure it's been more than 1 hour before that piperine was exposed to whatever it was that you got in the supplement. And so it was a false as in illusion, promise.

So, would it be better to just grind up some pepper myself right then as I take my curcumin?

And not only fresh ground piperine or fresh ground peppercorns, which I buy, and I buy the white, the black, the pink. It's really very pretty. But, I put them in a simple copper as an Italian copper grinder. And, why do I do that? Because that keeps them away from mold. And problems. And how do I grind them? Fresh.

Okay.

Because the piperine in my kitchen, the piperine lasts 1 hour. In your kitchen, the piperine lasts 1 hour. When you have piperine in a product, it's an illusion because it's not what you want.

And the reason that they put it in, in theory, is to extend the—

Oh, no, no. The theory is that consumers are smart enough to know that the word piperine should be associated with the word curcumin or turmeric if you want better uptake.

Better uptake. Okay.

Better uptake. Except what the consumer doesn't understand is time.

And so is there a Perk product that has curcumin?

Never.

Oh, okay. So you think we should just be eating it fresh? Yes.

Make a curry once or twice a week. Make a dal once or twice a week, make a chili once or twice a week. Do it with whole foods if you can. We want you to start in the kitchen. We don't want you to start with the supplements. We have supplements, they're necessary, but they have to start after the kitchen.

Yeah, no, I do like curry. Of course, for people whose kids don't like it, it's more challenging to have it twice a week, but—

Well, no, no, let's talk about that for a minute. What I would do with children for a dal or a curry is noodles, but they would be bean curd noodles. Kids tend to like noodles, you know, like slurp, slurp, slurp. I must tell you that my children were never very neat, and we didn't care. We just wanted them to eat. We just wanted them to enjoy what it was that we were eating. And by the way, There were times when my children said, "I'm not going to eat dinner." And we said, "What do you want to do?" And they said, "Call in for Uber. Dad actually can do that." "Well, maybe Dad can, but we're not going to do that. We only have this and that and the other thing from the kitchen." "Well, I don't like you." "I don't care. I still love you." "Oh, well, then I'm hungry." and then they would sit down and eat. If the children are in charge, it's actually a problem. Forgive me.

Yeah, no, my kids eat curry, just to say. It's not my kids I was referring to. It's someone else's kids.

No, I appreciate your point. You want to make it savory. You want to make it aromatic. You want to make it something that's appetizing. You do not want to force them, to eat something that you think is healthy that they hate you for. I promise you that will not end well.

Yes. No, it's not fun to have battles at dinnertime with the kids.

No, but start with them tired and hungry and then they'll eat.

Yeah. Okay. So let me ask about the PERC vitamin C, because I heard you talking about it on another podcast and you made it sound like the way it's made that any other vitamin C supplement would be essentially useless. But I'm guessing that that's probably an overstatement. So Could you compare Perk's vitamin C to others and like why are they different in terms of efficacy, like a percentage difference or how, how would they compare?

So most of the commercial vitamin C, which is 95%+ of the vitamin C you would buy in any store from health food to other, including online, including all, is damaged. It is partially ascorbate, it's partially diketo gulonic acid, it's partly dehydroascorbic acid. It is deficient. It's not distilled under nitrogen. It is not Nature's Vitamin C. Since 1987, and for the last 30+ years, we have provided Nature's Vitamin C— the safer, uncontaminated, more effective, documented in clinical outcome studies, multiple, and documented for the last 35+ years. Safer, more effective when you use nature's form.

Okay. And by nature's form, you mean if you were, say, eat an orange, you would get vitamin C in the same form as the Perks vitamin C supplement?

Good point. However, do you know the average orange moves more than 1,000 miles? And by the time it goes from being picked to your eating it, it has almost no— it has 10% or less of the vitamin C that it started with. That's a fact, that's not an opinion. If you live in an area where you have your own citrus garden and you pick your own tangerines and you pick your own oranges and you pick your own citrus fruits, ah, that's a blessing.

Yeah.

Oh, I planted a mandarin tree 2 years ago and the first year it got decimated by a horrible— some sort of of butterfly or was the worm form. And then this year I've got 2 mandarins on it and boy, I'm watching those things grow so anxiously and I'm hoping one day I'm going to have a voluminous tree.

As long as the roots survived, I'm currently growing a nectarine and a tangerine that we think are going to survive in our zone 7.

I'm in Arizona, so we we can do, I'm in Tucson, we can do citrus.

You absolutely can do citrus, but it should be xeriscape. You have to drip the water in.

Yeah, we have to get that set up. We have yet to put in the drip irrigation.

When you're ready, I know the Israelis who do that globally.

Okay.

So they have small, medium, large. If you're a country, they'll give you the big country version. If you want 20 minutes, they'll give you the 2 square meter version.

Okay, so tell me about what you think of liposomal vitamin C.

Well, since our recrystallized ascorbate gets 100% uptake, and since most ascorbate gets a fraction of that, how much more than 100% do you think you could get on God's green earth?

Okay, so in other words, no, no point investing in the liposomal because the PERC is the best one. That's sort of the end story.

To be really clear, liposomal ascorbate includes a significant fraction of the ascorbate that is not ascorbate, it is a liposome. And it is there on the premise that you can't get the beneficial ascorbate in. And since we have documented over many decades 100% uptake of the recrystallized under nitrogen ascorbate that nature provides, we're pretty sure that compromising that is really not a good idea. In fact, we're very sure it's a bad idea. Was I clear about the liposomes?

Yes. So I'd also— I noticed that Perk's vitamin C pills are 100— 1,000 milligrams, rather. And I have read multiple times that you can only absorb 500 milligrams of vitamin C at any time.

You listen to people who don't know their elbow from a hole in the ground and are pathologists rather than physiologists, who are my friends, and I specifically mean Mark Levine at the National Institutes of Health. I specifically mean the Food and Drug Administration, who has for many years obscured, not clarified, the issue of how much do you need. Because if you want to avoid scurvy, I mean scurvy, if you want to avoid your teeth falling out when you sail on the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, Oh, you only need a dusting, as in an orange or a lime. They were called limeys for some reasons. Aha, that has nothing to do with health, as in not nothing. If you wanna know how much ascorbate you need, you have to do the C Cleanse. It's one of our 4 personalized assessments followed by 8 predictive biomarkers interpreted to best outcome values if, You want to be well and healthy in the 21st century.

Okay, I got it. So is there anything that Perk or you are working on right now? Any new products that might be coming out soon?

Again, thanks for asking the question. We have long needed and now have perfected what we call a Perk Brain Formula. Brain, like cognition, you know, like I, I'm not going to take periwinkle I'm going to take something a little more effective. And I think you know this, I'm no longer a spring chicken. So I actually want my brain to work, at least for as long as it does. I cannot control when a piano might fall out of the sky or when the good Lord is going to take me. In the meantime, I don't want to lose my memory. If you can't remember your loved ones, it's really not a very pleasant place to be.

And so is the brain formula already out then?

It's coming out very soon.

Does it have a name?

Yes, it has a very interesting name. It's called Perk Brain Formula.

Okay, so it's very, very transparent. Okay, so we can keep our eyes out for that.

And you can place orders now because it's really coming out very soon. It's in production. It's not, it's not like a future thing. No, we have pioneered a better formula, and yes, we're very proud of it.

And what kind of ingredients Everything you would like and nothing you wouldn't. Okay. I guess people can look at the label. Aha.

There's more than one thing on the label.

Yeah. Okay. It's a multi-item formula.

Right.

Synergistic.

Is there anything that you wished I had asked you about the topic of gut health that I didn't?

You've asked so many good questions. No, I think I've had a chance to say my quote truth. I think, as you know, I came as a skeptic, but I'm now here. I think physiology before pharmacology. I think nature, nurture, and wholeness. I think living in harmony with your nature. I think knowing what you can eat, assimilate, and digest and eliminate without immune burden is a stepping stone toward lifelong health and well-being. And I want to be dancing at 120 with folks like you, because if I'm the only one dancing at 120, it's lonely.

Great. Well, I appreciate your time and sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Of course.

So Dr. Jaffe mentioned a number of things in the podcast that I'm going to link to in the show notes, including how to do a vitamin C cleanse, the predictive biomarkers test, and the LRA, a list of food and chemical sensitivity tests, and a link to my Fullscript dispensary where you can find the products that he mentioned. I also looked around a little bit more on the BetterLab test site, and you can order just a food sensitivity panel for $257. That covers 46 common foods including gluten and milk. And I generally don't recommend food sensitivity testing to my clients because I don't think it's terribly accurate. But my understanding, even before having this conversation with Dr. Jaffe, is that the LRA ELISA tests are accurate and worthwhile if you're not up for an extended elimination diet. But as we discussed, if you're having major leaky gut and reacting to everything you're putting in your mouth, it's better to work on gut healing first and then do the test. And speaking of gut healing, that's my specialty. So if you're struggling with your gut health, like chronic constipation or diarrhea or both, regular nausea, or you have an actual diagnosis like SIBO, IBS, IBD, GERD, gastritis, or some other problem like an autoimmune disease that may have its origins in the gut, I may be able to help you. You can set up a free 1-hour breakthrough session with me to discuss what you've been going through and hear about what health coaching looks like. And you can set that up by going to the link in the show notes or from my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, under Work With Me. Thanks for listening, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.