Back Clinic Remedies. Herbal medicinal products are medicinal products where the active ingredient consists exclusively of herbal substances or herbal preparations. Natural remedies are medicinal products where the active ingredient comes from a natural origin and consists of an animal part, a bacterial culture, a mineral, or a salt. El Paso, TX. Chiropractor Dr. Alex Jimenez shows natural medicines and remedies for various ailments without having to resort to prescription medications. The term herbal substance denotes the whole or parts of plants, algae, fungi, and lichens.
The material is usually dried but sometimes fresh, and is defined by specifying the species’ full scientific name and or the plant part used. Herbal preparations, such as powders, extracts, distillates, and pressed juices, are products obtained by processing herbal substances. Living things have an innate ability to heal themselves. The vital force promotes self-cleansing, self-repair, and self-healing. This process can be achieved by focusing on the immune, hormonal, nervous, and detoxification/elimination systems of the body. Once these systems are in balance, restored health is a possibility. For answers to any questions you may have please call Dr. Jimenez at 915-850-0900
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja discuss the importance of the body’s genetic code and how micronutrients provide the necessary functional nutraceuticals that the body needs to promote overall health and wellness.
What Is Personalized Medicine?
[00:00:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Welcome, guys. We’re Dr. Mario Ruja and me; we’re going to be discussing some essential topics for those athletes that want the advantage. We’re going to discuss fundamental necessary clinical technologies and information technologies that can make an athlete or even just the average person a little bit more aware of what’s happening in terms of their health. There’s a new word out there, and I have to give you a little heads up where we’re calling. We’re actually coming from the PUSH Fitness Center, and that people still work out late at night after going to church. So they’re working out, and they’re having a good time. So what we want to do is bring in these topics, and today we’re going to be talking about personalized medicine, Mario. Ever heard of that word?
[00:01:05] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, Alex, all the time. I dream about it. There you go, Mario.
[00:01:12] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There you go, Mario. Always giving me a laugh. So we’re going to be talking about is the personalized arena of what we have now. We’ve come to a state where many people tell us, Hey, you know what? It would be best if you had some more proteins, fats, or they come up with some convoluted idea, and you’ll end up with your eyes crossed and, most of the time, more confused than anything else. And you’re pretty much a lab rat to all these different techniques, whether it’s the Mediterranean, low fat, high fat, all these kind of things. So the question is, what is it specific to you? And I think one of the frustrations that many of us have, Mario, is that we don’t know what to eat, what to take and what’s good exactly. What’s good for me doesn’t mean that it’s suitable for my friend. You know, Mario, I’d say it’s different. We come from a whole other type of genre. We live in a place, and we’ve gone through things that are different from two hundred years ago. What do people do? We’re going to be able to figure this out nowadays in today’s DNA dynamics; though we don’t treat with these, it gives us information and allows us to relate to the issues that are affecting us now. Today, we will be talking about personalized medicine, DNA testing, and micronutrient assessments. So we’re going to see what it is that how are our genes, the actual predisposing issues, or they’re the ones that give us the the the workings of our engine. And then also, if it’s good for that, we want to know what our level of nutrients is right now. I know Mario, and you had a very dear and near question the other day with one of your, I think, was your daughter. Yeah, so what was her question?
[00:02:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So Mia had had a well, excellent question. She was asking me about utilizing creatine, which is very predominant in athletes. You see, it’s the buzzword, you know? Use creatine to build more muscle and such. So the point that I talk to you about, Alex, is that this is something so important that we cannot let in terms of the sports environment and performance environment. It’s like taking a Bugatti, and you’re saying, “Well, you know what? Do you think about just putting synthetic oil in it?” And well, is it the synthetic oil necessary for that Bugatti? Well, it’s good because it’s synthetic. Well, no, there are lots of different synthetic forms, you know, it’s like five-thirty, five-fifteen, whatever it is, the viscosity level it has to match. So same thing for athletes and especially for Mia.
[00:04:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let the audience know who Mia is, what does she do? What kind of things does she do?
[00:04:08] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh, yeah. Mia plays tennis, so her passion is tennis.
[00:04:13] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And she’s nationally ranked?
[00:04:15] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Nationally, and she plays internationally on the international circuit ITF. And she’s right now in Austin with Karen and the rest of the Brady Bunch, as I call them. You know, she’s working hard and through all this COVID kind of disconnect. Now she’s getting back into the fitness mode, so she wants to optimize. She wants to do her very best to catch up and move forward. And the question about nutrition, a question about what she needed. I needed a specific answer, not just general. Well, I think it’s good. You know good is good and better is best. And the way we look at it in that conversation of sports performance and genetic, nutritional, and functional medicine, it’s like, let’s get really functional, let’s be on point instead of buckshot. You know, it’s like you can go in and say, you know, generalities. But in terms of this, there is not a lot of information out there for athletes. And that’s where the conversation is linking the genetic and linking the micronutrients. That is phenomenal because, as you mentioned, Alex, when we look at the markers, genetic markers, we see the strengths, the weaknesses, and what’s at risk and what is not. Is the body adaptive, or is the body weak? So then we have to address the micronutrients to support. Remember, we talked about that to support that weakness in that DNA, that genetic pattern with something that we can strengthen. I mean, you can’t go and change your genetics, but you surely can increase and be specific with your micronutrients to change that platform and strengthen it and decrease the risk factors.
[00:06:24] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s fair to say now that the technology is such that we can find the, I wouldn’t say weaknesses, but the variables that allow for us to improve an athlete at the genetic level. Now we can’t alter the genes. That’s not what we’re saying is that there’s a world of what they call SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphisms where we can figure out there’s a specific set of genes that can’t change. We can’t change like eye color. We can’t do those. Those are very coded in, right? But there are genes that we can influence through neutral genomics and neutral genetics. So what I mean by my neutral genomics is nutrition altering and affecting the genome to more adaptive or opportunistic dynamics? Now, wouldn’t you like to know what genes you have that are vulnerable? Wouldn’t she want to know where her vulnerability is as well?
Is My Body Receiving The Right Supplements?
[00:07:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: What do we all want to know? I mean, whether you’re a high-level athlete or you’re a high-level CEO, or you’re just a high-level mom and dad, that’s running around from tournament to tournament. You cannot afford to have low energy that, when we talked about the markers, you know that methylation within the body we want to know, are we processing or how are we doing in terms of the oxidative pattern within ourselves? Do we need that extra boost? Do we need to increase your knowledge of that green intake detoxified pattern? Or are we doing well? And this is where when we look at the patterns of genetic markers, we can see that we are well-prepared or we are not well prepared. Therefore, we have to look at the micronutrients. Again, those markers to say, “Are we meeting our needs, yes or no? Or are we just generalizing?” And I would say 90 percent of athletes and people out there are generalizing. They’re saying, Well, you know, taking vitamin C is good and taking vitamin D is good and selenium, you know, that’s good. But again, are you on point, or are we just guessing right now?
[00:08:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Exactly. That’s the thing when we’re in that store, and there’s a lot of great nutritional centers, Mario, that are out there, and we’re looking at a wall of a thousand products. Crazy. We don’t know where we have holes, and we don’t know where we need them. You know, there are certain deficiencies. You’ve got bleeding gums; most likely, you’ve got some scurvy or some kind of issue there. That unit may need a specialist, but let’s assume if we look at things like scurvy, right? Well, we know that gum starts bleeding. Well, it’s sometimes not that obvious, right, that we need certain things. There are hundreds and thousands of nutrients out there. One of the things that we call them, we call them, is cofactors. A cofactor is a thing that allows an enzyme to work right. So we are a machine of enzymes, and what codes those enzymes? Well, the DNA structure. Because it produces the proteins that code those enzymes, those enzymes have code factors like minerals like magnesium, iron, potassium, selenium, as you mentioned, and all different components. As we look at this, this hole that we’re we’re facing a wall. We would love to know exactly where our holes are because Bobby or my best friend says, you know, you should take protein, take whey protein, take iron, take what may be so, and we’re hit or miss. So today’s technology is allowing us to see precisely what it is, where we have the holes.
[00:10:00] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And this point that you mentioned about the holes, again, the majority of the factors are not that extreme like scurvy, you know, bleeding gums. We’re not, I mean, we live in a society where we’re gosh, I mean, Alex, we have all the foods that we need. We’ve got too much food. It’s crazy. Again, the issues that we talk about are overeating, not starving, OK? Or we’re overeating and still starving because the nutritional pattern is very low. So that’s a real factor there. But overall, we are looking and addressing the component of what subclinical issues, you know, we don’t have the symptoms. We don’t have those significant marker symptoms. But we do have low energy, but we do have a low recovery pattern. But we do have that problem with sleep, that quality of sleep. So those are not huge things, but those are subclinical that erode our health and performance. For example, little by little, athletes cannot be just good. They need to be the tip of the spear top. They need to recover quickly because they do not have time to guess their performance pattern. And I see that they don’t.
[00:11:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as you mentioned that, I mean, most of these athletes, when they want to, they want to assess their bodies. They want to know where every weakness is. They’re like scientists and laboratory rats for themselves. They’re pushing their bodies to the extreme, from mental to physical to psycho-social. Everything is being affected, and put it in at full throttle. But they want to know. They want to see where that extra edge is. You know what? If I could make you a little bit better? If there was a little hole, what would that amount to? Will that amount to a two more second drop over a while, a microsecond drop? The point is that technology is there, and we have the ability to do these things for people, and the information is coming faster than we can even imagine. We have doctors worldwide and scientists around the world looking at the human genome and seeing these issues, specifically at SNPs, which are single nucleotide polymorphisms that can be changed or altered or assisted in dietary ways. Go ahead.
Body Composition
[00:12:21] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I’ll give you one: the Inbody. How about that? Yeah, that’s a tool right there that is critical for a conversation with an athlete.
[00:12:31] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The Inbody is the body composition.
[00:12:32] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, the BMI. You’re looking at it in terms of your hydration pattern; you’re looking at in terms of like, yes, body fat, that that whole conversation everyone wants to know, you know, I’m overweight my belly fat again. We had discussions on metabolic syndrome. We talked about risk factors, high triglycerides, very low HDL, high LDL. I mean, those are risk factors that put you in a pattern in that line towards diabetes and that line towards cardiovascular disease in that line of dementia. But when you’re talking about an athlete, they’re not worried about diabetes; they’re concerned about, am I ready for the next tournament? And I’m going to make the cut going to the Olympics. That’s yes, I mean, they’re not what they want to do that Inbody. They’re the micronutrient, the combination of genome nutrition, that genomic nutrition conversation on point allows them to honor their work. Because I’m telling you, Alex, and you know, this here, I mean, everyone’s listening to us, again, the conversation I share with people is this, why are you training like a pro when you don’t want to be one? Why are you trained like a pro when you are not eating and have the data to support that pro-level workout? What you’re doing? If you don’t do that, you are destroying your body. So again, if you’re working as a pro, that means you’re grinding. I mean, you’re pushing your body to little miss neuromuscular. Furthermore, we’re chiropractors. We deal with inflammatory issues. If you’re doing that, you’re redlining that, but you are not turning around to recover through micronutrition-specific chiropractic work. Then you’re going to damn it; you’re not going to make it.
[00:14:26] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We’re going to show that we’ve been able to see in a lot of times cities come together for specific sports, such as like wrestling. Wrestling is one of those notorious sports that puts the body through massive emotional and physical stresses. But a lot of times, what happens is individuals have to lose weight. You’ve got a guy who’s 160 pounds; he’s got a drop-down 130 pounds. So what the city has done to avoid these things is to use body-specific weight and determine the molecular weight of the urine, right? So they can tell, are you too concentrated, right? So what they do is that they have all these kids line up all the way to UTEP, and they do a specific gravity test to determine if they’re able to lose any more weight or what weight they are allowed to lose. So someone who’s about 220 says, You know what? You can drop up to about, you know, x y z pounds based on this test. And if you violate this, then you do that. But that’s not good enough. We want to know what’s going to happen because when the kids are in a load and are fighting another person that is just as good of an athlete, and he’s pushing his body, that’s when the body collapses. The body can handle the load, but the supplementation that the person has had, maybe their calcium, has been so depleted that suddenly you got this kid who was 100 injuries; the injuries, the elbow snapped dislocated. That’s what we see. And we wonder how did he snap his elbow because his body has been depleted from these supplements?
[00:15:59] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And Alex, on the same level, you’re talking about one on one like that pugilistic, that intense three minutes of your life on the other level, when it comes to tennis, that’s a three-hour conversation. Exactly. There are no subs there. There’s no coaching, no subs. You are in that gladiator arena. When I see Mia playing OK, I mean, it is intense. I mean, every ball that’s coming to you, it’s coming to you with power. It’s coming in like, can you take this? It’s like someone fighting across a net and looking at it. Are you going to quit? Are you going to chase this ball? Are you going to let it go? And that is where that definitive factor of optimal micronutrition connected with the conversation of what exactly you need in terms of genomic conversation will allow someone to scale up with a decreased risk factor of injuries where they know they can push themselves more and have the confidence. Alex, I’m telling you this is not just nutrition; this is about the confidence to know I got what I need, and I can redline this thing, and it’s going to hold. It’s not going to buckle.
[00:17:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? I’ve got little Bobby. He wants to wrestle, and he wants to be the biggest nightmare is the mom. Because you know what? They’re the ones that wish Bobby to thump the other Billy, right? And when their kids are getting thumped on, they want to provide for them. And moms are the best cooks. They’re the ones who take care of them, right? They’re the ones that make sure, and you could see it. The pressure on the child is immense when parents are watching, and sometimes it’s incredible to watch. But what can we give moms? What can we do for the parents to provide them with a better understanding of what’s going on? I got to tell you today with DNA tests. You know, all you have to do is get the kid in the morning, open his mouth, you know, do a swab, drag that stuff off the side of his cheek, put in a vial, and it is done within a couple of days. We can tell if Bobby’s got strong ligaments, if Bobby’s micronutrient levels are different to provide the parent with a better kind of a roadmap or a dashboard to understand the information that’s affecting Bobby, so to speak, correct?
[00:18:27] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Because and this is what we’ve come a long way. This is 2020, guys, and this is not 1975. That’s the year when Gatorade came over.
[00:18:42] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Come on; I got my tub. It’s got a lot of things on the side of it. I will have everything you look like Buddha when you develop diabetes with so much sugar from those protein shakes.
The Right Supplements For Kids
[00:18:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We have come a long way, but we cannot just go in and go; oh, you need to hydrate here drink these electrolytes, Pedialyte and all that. That’s not good enough. I mean, that’s good, but it’s 2020, baby. You got to scale up and level up, and we can’t use old data and old instrumentation and diagnostics because the kids now start at three years old, Alex. Three years old. And I’m telling you right now at three, it is unbelievable. By the time they’re five and six, I mean, I’m telling you the kids that I see, they’re already in select teams.
[00:19:33] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario…
[00:19:34] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Six years old, they’re in a select team.
[00:19:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The thing that determines if a child is ready is their attention span. Yeah, I got to tell you, you can watch this. You got to see a kid who’s at three years and six months, and he isn’t paying attention. Three years and eight-month, all of a sudden, he can focus.
[00:19:50] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It’s on like a light switch.
[00:19:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: In front of the coach, right? And you can tell because they wander and they’re not ready. So we’re bringing the kids and exposing them to loads of experiences. Then what we need to do is give moms and dads the ability to understand and athletes of the NCAA and see how I can see what’s happening in my bloodstream? Not a CBC, because the CBC is for basic stuff, like a red blood cell, white blood cell. We can do things. Metabolic panel tells us a generic thing, but now we know more profound information about the susceptibility of the gene markers and see this on the test. And these reports tell us precisely what it is and how it pertains now and progression.
[00:20:37] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So this is where I love. This is where I love everything in the world of performance is pre and post. So when you’re a sprinter, they time you. It’s electronic time; when you’re a wrestler, they look at you. Do you know what your winning ratio is? What’s your percentage? Anything, it’s all data. It’s data-driven. As a tennis player, a soccer player, they will track you. Computers will track how strong? How fast is your serve? Is it 100 miles an hour? I mean, it is crazy. So now, if you have that data, Alex, why is it that we do not have the same information for the most critical component, which is that biochemistry, that micro nutritional, the foundation of performance is what happens inside of us, not what happens outside. And this is where people get confused. They think, “Well, my kid works four hours a day, and he has a private trainer. Everything.” My question is that is good, but you’re putting that kid at risk if you are not supplementing on point, say precisely when it comes to the special needs of that child or that athlete, because if we don’t do that, Alex, we are not honoring the journey and the battle, that warrior, we’re not. We’re putting them at risk. And then, all of a sudden, you know what, two-three months before a tournament, BAM! Pulled a hamstring. Oh, you know what? They got fatigued, or all of a sudden, they had to pull out of a tournament. You see, I see tennis players doing all of that. And why? Oh, they’re dehydrated. Well, you should never have that problem. Before you go in exactly where you are, you should already know what you’re doing. And I love the combination and a platform that we have for all of our patients because, within two or three months, we can show pre and post, can we?
[00:22:39] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We can show body composition to the Inbody systems and the incredible systems we use. These DEXAS, we can do bodyweight fat analysis. We can do a lot of things. But when it comes down to predispositions and what’s unique to individuals, we go down to the molecular level, and we can go down to the level of the genes and understand what the susceptibilities are. We can go on once we have the genes. We can also understand the micronutrient level of each individual. So what’s pertaining to me? I may have more magnesium than you, and the other child may have depleted magnesium or calcium or selenium or his proteins or the amino acids or are shot. Maybe he’s got a digestive issue. Perhaps he’s got lactose intolerance. We need to be able to figure out these things that affect us.
[00:23:29] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We can’t guess. And the bottom line is there’s no need for that. Everyone has that beautiful conversation, Alex, about, “Oh, you know what? I feel OK.” When I hear that, I cringe, go, and feel OK. So you mean to tell me that you are putting your health the most precious thing you have and your performance based on a feeling like, wow, that means that your urine receptors and turns the pain tolerance are dictating your health. That’s dangerous. That is completely dangerous. And also, so clinically, you’re not able to feel your deficiency in terms of vitamin D, your deficiency in terms of selenium, your deficiency in vitamin A, E. I mean, all of these markers, you can’t feel it.
[00:24:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We need to start presenting to the people out there, the information, it’s out there because what we want to let people know is that we’re going deep. We’re going down to these gene susceptibilities, the gene understanding as it is today; what we have learned is so powerful that it allows parents to understand a whole lot more of the issues pertaining to an athlete. Not only that, but the parents want to know what my susceptibility is? Do I have a risk of bone arthritis? Do we have issues with oxidative stress? Why am I always inflamed all the time, right? Well, believe it or not, if you got the genes for, let’s say you got the gene that makes you eat a lot, well, you’re likely going to gain weight. You can raise 10000 people’s hands who have that same gene marker, and you’re going to notice that their BIAs and BMI are way out of there because it’s the susceptibility to that now. Can they change it? Absolutely. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about understanding the ability to adapt and change our lifestyle for the predispositions we may have.
[00:25:26] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, this is wonderful. And I see this quite frequently in terms of the conversation about losing weight, you know, and they go, “Oh, I did this program, and it works great.” And then you have 20 other people doing the same program, and it doesn’t even work, and it’s almost like hit and miss. So people are becoming disillusioned. They’re putting their bodies through this incredible roller coaster ride, which is like the worst thing you could do. You know, they’re doing these unnecessary things, but they cannot sustain it because why? At the end of the day, it’s not who you are. It wasn’t for you.
[00:26:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You may need a different type of diet.
[00:26:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes. And so we, again, our conversation today is very general. We’re starting this platform together because we have to educate our community and share the latest in technology and science that addresses the needs.
[00:26:26] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Personalized medicine, Mario. It’s not general; it’s a personalized health and personalized fitness. We understand that we don’t have to guess if a diet is better for us, such as a low calorie, high-fat diet or a Mediterranean style food or a high protein diet. We won’t be able to see that these scientists are putting information together from the information we are continuously gathering and compiling. It’s here, and it’s a swab away, or blood works away. It’s crazy. You know what? And this information, of course, let me be mindful of before this starts. My little disclaimer comes in. This is not for treatment. Please do not take anything; we’re taking this for treatment or diagnosis. You got to talk to your doctors, and your doctors have to tell you exactly what’s up there and what’s appropriate for every individual we integrate.
[00:27:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: The point is that we integrate with all healthcare professionals and physicians. We are here to support and champion functional wellness. OK. And as you mentioned, we’re not here to treat these diseases. We’re here to optimize again when athletes come in and want to be better. They want to get healthier and help the recovery rate.
Can Stress Age You Faster?
[00:27:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, that’s it. Do you know what the bottom line is? The testing is there. We can see Billy’s not been eating well. OK, Billy has not been eating well. I can tell you, well, he eats everything, but he hasn’t had this level of protein. Look at his protein depletion. So we’re going to present to you some of the studies out here because it’s information, though it’s a bit complex. But we want to make it simple. And one of the things that we were talking about here is the micronutrient test we were providing here. Now I’m going to present you guys to see a little bit here. And what we use in our office when a person comes in and says, I want to learn about my body. We present this micronutrient assessment to figure out what’s going on. Now, this one was, let’s say, just it was in a sample for me, but it tells you where the individual is. We want to be able to level the antioxidant level. Now everyone knows that, well, not everyone. But now we understand that if our genes are optimal and our food is optimal, but we live in an oxidative stress state…
[00:28:45] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Exactly
[00:28:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Our genes will not function. So it’s important to understand what the problem is.
[00:28:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It’s rust. I mean, when you’re looking at this, and I see two markers, I see the one for oxidative, and then the other one is the immune system. Yes, right? So again, they correlate together, but they are different. So the oxidative I talk about is like your system is rusting out. Yeah, that’s oxidation. You see apples turning brown. You see metals rusting. So inside, you want to absolutely be at your best, which is in the green in that 75 to 100 percent functional rate. That means you can handle the craziness of the world tomorrow, you know?
[00:29:31] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, we can look at the stress of the human body, Mario. What we can see actually what’s going on, and as I continue with this kind of presentation here, we can see what this individual is and what is his actual immune function age. So a lot of people want to know this stuff. I mean, I want to know where I lie in terms of the dynamics of the body, right? So when I look at that, I can see precisely where I lie, and my age is 52. OK. In this situation, OK, now as we look down, we want to know.
[00:30:02] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Hold on. Let’s get real. So you mean to tell me that we can get younger through this incredible system? Is that what you’re telling me?
[00:30:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It tells you if you’re aging quicker, OK, how does that sound, Mario? So if you can slow down, if you’re in that top 100, the green, you’re going to be looking like a 47-year-old man when you’re 55. Right? So from the structure, immune function, and oxidative stress in the body, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to be able to see exactly where we are in terms of our body.
[00:30:37] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So that is correct? Yes. So we could be our birth certificate could say 65, but our functional metabolic markers can say you’re 50.
[00:30:51] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. Let me make it real simple, OK? People often understand oxidative stress; yes, we hear about antioxidants and reactive oxygen species. Let me make it simple, OK, we’re a cell. You and I, we’re having a family meal right where we’re enjoying ourselves. We are normal cells. We’re happy, and we’re functioning where everything is appropriate. All of a sudden, there’s a wild-looking lady. She’s got blades and knives, and she’s greasy, and she’s slimy, and she comes on. She hits the table, boom, and she kind of walks away. You know, it’s going to unsettle us, right? It’s going to be, let’s call her an oxidant, OK? She’s called a reactive oxygen species. Now, if we got two of those walking around the restaurant, we kind of keep an eye on her, right? All of a sudden, a football player comes and takes her out. Boom knocks her out, right? In that situation, this greasy, slimy weapon-looking lady, correct, that’s scary. That was an antioxidant. That was vitamin C that wiped her out, right? There’s a balance between oxidants and antioxidants in the body. They have different purposes, right? We have to have antioxidants, and we have to have oxidants in order for our body to function. But if you got 800 of those ladies like zombies all of a sudden.
[00:32:02] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*:I could see them as zombies.
[00:32:07] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It is. You know what you’re going to want. Where are the football players? Where are the antioxidants, right? Take them out. The football players come in, but there are just too many of them, right? Anything that you and I do in a conversation could be healthy cells, and we’re having this conversation at the dinner table. We’re disrupted totally. We cannot function in an oxidative stress environment. No. So basically, we may have all the supplements, and we may have all the nutrients, and we may have the proper genetics. But if we’re in an oxidative state, right, an elevated level, we’re not going to be aged. It will not be a comfortable night, and we will not recover.
[00:32:46] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We will be at a higher risk factor for injuries. Exactly. And the other thing is we also have the risk factor where we will age faster than we should.
[00:33:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That night would be rough is there’s like a hundred of those people around. So we need to know the state of the balance in life, the antioxidants we see, and all the antioxidants foods like A, C, E. That is what this test does. It shows you the level of oxidants in the body.
[00:33:19] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Hey, Alex, let me ask you this. Everyone loves to work out. When you work out, does that increase or decrease your oxidative stress? Please tell me, because I want to know.
[00:33:30] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It increases your oxidative state.
[00:33:31] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: No, stop it.
[00:33:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It does because you’re breaking the body down. However, the body responds. And if we are healthy, Mario, right? In that sense, our body first has to break down, and it has to repair. OK? We want to have antioxidants because it helps us go through the process. Part of healing and part of inflammation is oxidative balance. So, in essence, when you’re working out too hard or running hard, you can overburn the bar, and those are the things that you and I have to kind of look at, and this is the balance.
[00:34:08] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now this is like the paradox, right? You know what, if you overwork, you’re going to look fabulous. But you know what? You’re actually breaking down. And if you don’t work out, there goes your cardio. There go other risk factors. So this is where it is so critical that we need to balance and know precisely what each person needs to be at their best. And we can’t guess; you can’t take the same supplements as me and vice versa.
The Right Cofactors For Your Body
[00:34:41] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I can, we can. But it’s to me, I may not be a lot of waste of money, or maybe we’re just missing the whole process. So in this entire dynamics here, just looking at this test, Mario, just using it at this particular assessment, we want to see also what our cofactors are on. We talked about proteins; we talked about genetics. We talked about things that make these enzymes work, our body functions, and pure enzymes in this particular model that you’re seeing what the cofactors are and the metabolites are. Well, you see amino acids levels and where they are in your body. If you’re an extreme athlete, you want to know what those things are.
[00:35:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh yeah, I mean, look at that. Those aminos. Those are critical.
[00:35:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You think Mario?
[00:35:21] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, I mean it’s like every athlete I know, they’re like, Hey, I got to take my aminos. My question is, are you taking the right ones at the right level? Or do you even know, and they’re guessing. Ninety percent of the people are assuming you’re looking at antioxidants. Look at that. That’s the beast right there, glutathione. That’s like the granddaddy of antioxidants right there. And you want to know is, is that football players, that linebackers are going to crush those zombies, you know? And again, vitamin E, CoQ10. Everyone talks about CoQ10 and heart health.
[00:36:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Coenzyme Q, exactly. A lot of people take cardiac medications specifically to lower their cholesterol.
[00:36:10] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: What does CoQ10 do, Alex? I want to get you started.
[00:36:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Because you know what? Many documentation came out early on when they did many of these medications. Yeah, they knew they had to end it and put coenzyme Q in it. They knew, and they patented it because they knew that they had it. Because if you don’t give coenzyme Q right, you have inflammatory states and neuropathies. But these people have issues, and now they’re starting to understand. That’s why you see all the commercials with the coenzymes. But the point is that we need to know where our present state is right. So when we understand those things, we can look at the tests. And we can look at the dynamics of it. Wouldn’t you like to know which antioxidants? It’s so clear.
[00:36:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I love this. I mean, look at that. You know what? It’s red, green, black and that’s it. I mean, you can see it right away. This is your board. This is your command center. You know, I love the command center. It’s like, everything’s there.
[00:37:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I know Mario, you know, with those athletes, they want to be at the top level. Yes, it looks like this person’s floating somewhere in the middle, but they want to top it at 100 percent, right?
[00:37:19] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Alex, they’re on the bench.
[00:37:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. And when they’re under a lot of stress, who knows what? Now, these tests are straightforward to do. They’re not complex to go in. Take a lab test sometimes are these are urine tests, something we can do.
[00:37:33] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And we can do those in our offices in a matter of minutes, precisely in a matter of minutes. Crazy.
[00:37:38] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s crazy.
[00:37:40] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is why it’s so simple. It’s like my question is, what color is the red bus? I don’t know. It’s a trick question.
What Supplements Are Right For You?
[00:37:50] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, going back into our topic today was personalized medicine and personalized wellness and personalized fitness. Doctors around the country are starting to understand that they cannot just say, OK, you’re pregnant. Here’s a folic acid pill. OK, here are some nutrients, though every doctor has to be taking care of their own clients. They’re the ones that are doing this. But people have the ability to understand; where are the other holes? Wouldn’t you want to make sure you have suitable selenium?
[00:38:17] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Before you have symptoms. That’s the thing, and this is why we are not treating. We’re not saying that issues, diagnosis issues, what are you doing to optimize and decrease your risk factors?
[00:38:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There’s the issue of longevity, too, because I mean, the issue of longevity is if you’re providing your body with the right substrates, the right cofactors, the right nutrition. Your body has a chance to make it to 100 years plus and actually function. And if you have a depleted life, well, you’re burning the engine, so the body starts having issues, you know, so as we look at those kinds of things…
[00:39:00] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Can you return to our two markers? Look at that immune system.
[00:39:12] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, there’s a reason they stop here at 100 because that’s the whole idea. The entire idea is to get you to live 100 Centennial. So if we can do this, if you’re a person who’s, let’s say, 38 years old, and you’re in the midst of your life, and let’s say you’re a business person and you’re a junkie for business. You’re a junkie for entrepreneurship. You want to throttle you against the world. You do not want a kind of Nicholas the worm weakness, so to speak, taking you out of your football run in life. Because otherwise, you can trip up on things. And what we want to be able to provide people through nutritionists who registered dietitians to doctors through the information out there to supplement your lives better. And it’s not just about little Bobby; it’s about me, it’s about you. It’s about our patients. It’s about every single one of them who wants to live a better quality of life. Because if there’s a depletion in certain things, it’s not now. But in the future, you may have a susceptibility that will bring out diseases. And that’s where those susceptibilities are. We can take it to the next level because we can see what’s going on. In terms of this, I’m going to go ahead and bring this back up here so you can just see what we’re looking at. You can see the B-complex is now we have a lot of B-complexes, and we got people texting all over the place here, and I’m getting zapped with messages.
[00:40:42] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Your oxidative stress is going up, Alex.
[00:40:45] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, it’s crazy that we’ve been here an hour, so we want to be able to bring information out for you guys as time goes on. I want to go through this and talk about the individual antioxidants now; those are your football players, man, those are the ones taking those people out. Making your whole life a lot better, right, Mario. This is the kind of stuff that we look at. You know your glutathione on your knees. Your coenzyme Q selenium is your vitamin E’s carbohydrate metabolism.
[00:41:10] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Look at that, I mean, glucose and insulin interaction called energy. The last time I checked, it was called turbo.
[00:41:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We got to listen; we got a lot of good doctors. We got like Dr. Castro out there. We got all the great doctors out there that are running over.
[00:41:30] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I mean, we’re going to get in trouble.
[00:41:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All right. Facebook is going to knock us out.
[00:41:41] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It will put a time limit on this.
[00:41:43] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think it’s our views. But the bottom line is to stay tuned. We’re coming. This can’t cover everything. Hey, Mario, when I went to school, we were terrorized by this machine called the psycho cycle.
[00:41:58] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*:How many ATP’s, Alex?
[00:42:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I mean, how many miles? Is it glycolysis or aerobic or anaerobic, right? So when we start looking at that, we start seeing how those coenzymes and those vitamins play a role in our energy metabolism, right? So in this individual, there were certain depletions. You can see where the yellow comes in. It affects the whole metabolic process, energy production. So the person is always tired. Well, we kind of understand the dynamics of what’s going on. So this is critical information as you and I kind of look at this, right? We can see what is it that we can offer? Can we provide information to change how the body works better dynamically? So this is crazy. So, in terms of it, we can go on and on, guys. So what we’re going to be doing is we’re probably going to be coming back because this is just fun. Do you think so? Yeah, I think we’re going to come back to what we’ve got to change the way that all El Paso is and not only for our community but also for those moms who want to know what is the best for their family members. What can we offer? The technology is not. We’re not going to allow ourselves in El Paso to be ever called the fattest sweaty town in the United States. We do have unbelievable talent out here that really can teach us about what’s going on. So I know that you’ve seen that, correct? Yeah.
[00:43:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Absolutely. And what I can say is this Alex? It’s about peak performance and peak ability. And also, getting the correct specific customized genomic nutrition pattern for each individual is the game-changer. That’s the game-changer from longevity to performance and just being happy and living the life that you were meant to live.
Conclusion
[00:43:51] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario, I can say that when we look at this stuff, we get excited about it, as you can tell, but it affects all our patients. People come in all depleted, tired, in pain, inflamed, and sometimes we need to find out what it is. And in our scope, we are mandated to be responsible and figure out where this relies upon and where this lies in our patients’ problems. Because what we’re doing, if we help their structure, the musculoskeletal, neurological system, their mind system through a proper diet and understanding through exercise, we can change people’s lives, and they want to be able to fulfill their lives and enjoy their lives the way it should be. So there’s a lot to be said. So we will come back sometime next week or this week. We’re going to continue this topic on personalized medicine, personalized wellness, and personalized fitness because working with many doctors through integrative health and integrative medicine allows us to be a part of a team. We have GI doctors, you know, cardiologists. There’s a reason we work as a team together because we all bring a different science level. No team is complete without a nephrologist, and that person will figure out precisely the implications of all the things we do. So that person is very important in the dynamics of integrative wellness. So for us to be able to be the best kind of providers, we have to expose and tell people about what’s out there because a lot of people don’t know. And what we need to do is bring it to them and let the cards lie and teach them that they had to tell their doctors, “Hey, Doc, I need you to talk to me about my health and sit down. Explain to me my labs.” And if they don’t, well, you know what? Say you need to do that. And if you don’t, well, time to find a new doctor. OK, it’s that simple because today’s information technology is such that our doctors cannot neglect nutrition. They cannot neglect wellness. They cannot overlook the integration of all the sciences put together to make people healthy. This is one of the most important things that we got to do. It’s a mandate. It’s our responsibility, and we’re going to do it, and we’re going to knock it out of the ballpark. So, Mario, it’s been a blessing today, and we’ll continue to do this in the next couple of days, and we’ll keep on hammering and giving people the insights as to what they can do in terms of their science. This is a Health Voice 360 channel, so we’re going to talk about many different things and bring a lot of other talents. Thanks, guys. And you got anything else, Mario?
[00:46:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I’m all in.
[00:46:12] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*:All right, brother, talk to you soon. Love you, man. Bye.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, chief editor Astrid Ornelas discuss about metabolic syndrome from a different point of view as well as, different nutraceuticals to combat inflammation.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Welcome, guys, welcome to the podcast for Dr. Jimenez and crew. We’re discussing today’s metabolic syndrome, and we’re going to be discussing it from a different point of view. We will give you excellent, useful tips that can make sense and are easily doable at home. Metabolic syndrome is a very vast concept. It contains five major issues. It has high blood glucose, it has belly fat measurements, it has triglycerides, it has HDL issues, and it pretty much has a whole conglomeration of dynamics that have to be measured in the whole reason we discuss metabolic syndrome because it affects our community very much. So, we’re going to be discussing these particular issues and how we can fix them. And give you the ability to adapt your lifestyle so that you don’t end up having. It’s one of the most important disorders affecting modern medicine today, let alone once we understand it. Everywhere you go, you’re going to see a lot of people having metabolic syndrome. And it’s part of a society, and that’s something you see in Europe as much. But in America, because we do have a lot of foods and our plates are usually bigger, we have the ability to adapt our bodies differently by just what we eat. No disorder will change so quickly and fast as a good mechanism and a good protocol to help you with metabolic disorders and metabolic syndrome. So having said that, today, we have a group of individuals. We have Astrid Ornelas and Kenna Vaughn, who will discuss and add information to help us through the process. Now, Kenna Vaughn is our health coach. She’s the one who works in our office; when I’m a practicing physician on physical medicine and when I’m working with people one on one, we have other people working with dietary issues and dietary needs. My team here is very, very good. We also have our top clinical researcher and the individual who curates much of our technology and is at the cutting edge of what we do and our sciences. It’s Mrs. Ornelas. Mrs. Ornelas or Astrid, as we call her, she’s ghetto with the knowledge. She gets nasty with science. And it’s really, really where we are. Today, we live in a world where research is coming and spitting out of the NCBI, which is the repository or PubMed, which people can see we use this information and we use what works and what does it. Not all information is accurate in PubMed because you have different points of view, but it’s almost like a finger on a pulse when we have our finger in. We can see the things that affect it. With certain keywords and certain alerts, we get notified of changes for, let’s say, dietary sugar issues or triglyceride issues with fat issues, anything about metabolic disorders. We can kind of come up with a treatment protocol that is live adapted from doctors and researchers and PhDs around the world almost instantaneously, literally even before they’re published. For example, today happens to be February 1st. It’s not, but we’ll be getting results and studies presented by the National Journal of Cardiology that will come out in March if that makes sense. So that information is early hot off the press, and Astrid helps us figure these things out and sees, “Hey, you know, we found something really hot and something to help our patients” and brings the N equals one, which is patient-doctor equals one. A patient and therapist equal one that we don’t do specific protocols for everyone in general. We do specific protocols for each person as we go through the process. So as we do this, the journey of understanding metabolic syndrome is very dynamic and very deep. We can start from just looking at someone to the bloodwork, all the way to dietary changes, to metabolic changes, all the way down to the cellular activity that it’s actively working. We measure issues with BIAs and BMI, which we have done with previous podcasts. But we can also get into the level, the genomics and the changing of the chromosomes and the telomeres in the chromosomes, which we can affect by our diet. OK. All roads lead to diets. And what I say in some weird way, all roads lead to smoothies, OK, smoothies. Because when we look at smoothies, we look at the components of smoothies and come up with dynamics that are abilities to change now. What I look for is when I look for treatments, I look at things that make people’s lives better, and how can we do this? And for all those mothers, they understand that they may not realize that they do this, but a mom doesn’t wake up saying, I’m going to give my kid food. No, she’s kind of doing a mental lavage of bringing the whole kitchen because she wants to infuse the best nutrition for their child and offer their best kind of options for their baby to go through the world or daycare or elementary school, through middle school, through high school so that the child can develop well. Nobody goes out thinking that I’m going to give my kid just junk and. And if that’s the case, well, that’s probably not good parenting. But we won’t talk about that well; we will talk about good nutrition and adapting those things. So I’d like to introduce Kenna right now. And she’s going to be discussing a little bit of what we do when we see someone with metabolic disorders and our approach to it. So as she goes through that, she’s going to be able to understand how we evaluate and assess a patient and bring it in so that we can start getting a little bit of control for that individual. Kenna, it’s all yours.
Kenna Vaughn: All right. So first, I just want to talk about the smoothies a little bit more. I am a mom, so in the morning time, things get crazy. You never have as much time as you think you do, but you need those nutrient nutrients and so do your kids. So I love smoothies. They’re super fast. You get everything you need. And most people think that when you’re eating, you’re eating to fill your stomach, but you’re eating to fill your cells. Your cells are what need those nutrients. That’s what carries you on with the energy, the metabolism, all of that. So those smoothies are a super great option, which we give our patients. We even have a book with 150 smoothie recipes that are great for anti-aging, helping diabetes, lowering cholesterol, controlling inflammation, and things like that. So it’s one resource we give to our patients. But we do have multiple other options for the patients who come in with metabolic disease.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Before you go in there, Kenna. Let me just kind of add that what I’ve learned is that we have to make it simple. We got to take homes or takeaways. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to give you the tools that can help you in that process. And we’re going to take you to the kitchen. We’re going to grab you by the ear, so to speak, and we’re going to show you the areas where we need to look at. So Kenna is about to give us the information in terms of smoothies that will assist us with dietary changes that we can provide our families and change its metabolic disaster that affects so many people called metabolic syndrome. Go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: OK, so like he was saying with those smoothies. One thing that you should add to your smoothie is, which what I love to add in mine is spinach. Spinach is an excellent choice because it gives your body more nutrients. You are getting an extra serving of vegetables, but you can’t taste it, especially when it gets covered up by the natural sweetness that you find in fruits. So that’s a great option when it comes to the smoothies. But another thing that Dr. Jiménez was mentioning is other things in the kitchen. So there are other substitutes that we’re kind of wanting our patients to use and implement. You can start small, and it’ll make a huge difference just by switching out the oils you’re cooking with. And you’ll begin to see an improvement in your joints, your kids, and everyone will just improve immensely. So one thing we want to get our patients into using is those oils, such as avocado oil, coconut oil, and… Olive oil? Olive oil. Yes, thank you, Astrid.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That was olive oil. That was Astrid in the background. We’re getting the facts out excellent and continue.
Kenna Vaughn: When you switch those out, your body breaks things down differently with those unsaturated fats. So that’s just another option that you have in that kitchen besides making those smoothies. But like I said before, I’m all about quick, easy, simple. It’s way easier to change your lifestyle when you have a whole team around you. And when it’s easy, you don’t. You don’t want to go out and make everything super difficult because the chances of you sticking to it aren’t very high. So one thing we want to do is make sure that everything that we’re giving our patients is easy to do and it’s attainable for everyday life.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I’m very visual. So when I go to the kitchen, I like making my kitchen look like the cocina or whatever they call it in Italy, the cucina and I have three bottles there, and I have an avocado oil one. I have the coconut oil one, and I have the olive oil right there. There are big bottles there. They make them pretty, and they look Tuscan. And, you know, I don’t care if it’s an egg, I don’t care. Sometimes, even when I’m having my coffee, I grab the coconut oil one, and I pour that one in and make myself a java with coconut oil in it. So, yeah, go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: I was going to say that’s a great option too. So I drink green tea, and I also add coconut oil in that green tea to help boost everything and give my body another dose of those fatty acids that we want.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question for you when you have your coffee like that; when you have the oil in it, does it kind of lubricate your lips.
Kenna Vaughn: It does a little bit. So it’s also like chapstick.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, it does. It’s like, Oh, I love it. OK, go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: Yeah, I also have to stir a little bit more just to make sure everything gets it right. Yeah. And then another thing just talking about something our patients can do when it comes to at home, there are tons of different options with eating fish. Increasing your good fish intake throughout the week, that’s going to help also. And just because fish provides so many great things like omegas, I know Astrid also has some more information on omegas.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question before Astrid gets in there. You know, look, when we talk about carbohydrates, people, is it what a carbohydrate is? Oh, people say an apple, banana, candy bars, and all kinds of stuff people can rattle off carbohydrates or proteins. Chicken, beef, whatever they can rile up. But one of the things I found that people have a difficult time with is what good fats are? I want five. Give me ten good fats for a million dollars. Give me ten good fats like lard, like meat. No, this is what we’re talking about. Because the simple fact that we use and we’re going to add more to it relative bad is going to be avocado oil. Olive oil. Is it coconut oil? We can use things like butter oils, different types of margins, and not margins, but kinds of butter that are from, you know, grass-fed cows. We basically can run out of creamers, you know, non-nondairy creams, very specific creamers, those we run out of it, right? Real fast. So it’s like, what else is fat, right? And then we search for it. So one of the best ways to do it is that we’re not going to always put creamer on top or our butter on top, which by the way, some coffees they have, they put butter in it and blend it, and they make a fantastic little java hit. And everyone comes with their little ginger and oils and their coffee and makes espresso from heaven, right? So what else can we do?
Kenna Vaughn: We can, like I said, adding those fish in, which is going to help to give our bodies more of those omegas. And then we can also do more purple vegetables, and those are going to provide your body with more antioxidants. So that’s a good option when it comes to the grocery store. A rule of thumb that I love and heard a long time ago is to not shop in the aisles is to try to shop on the edges because the edges are where you’re going to find all that fresh produce and all those lean meats. It’s when you start to get into those aisles, and that’s where you’re going to start finding, you know, the cereal, those bad carbohydrates, those simple carbohydrates that the American diet has come to love but does not necessarily need. The Oreos?
Kenna Vaughn: Yes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The candy aisle that every kid knows. OK, yes.
Kenna Vaughn: So that’s just another great point there. So when you come into our office, if you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome or just anything in general, we make your plans super personalized and give you so many tips. We listen to your lifestyle because what works for one person might not work for another. So we make sure that we provide you with information that we know you’ll be successful with and provide education because that’s another huge part of it.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All roads lead to the kitchen, huh? Right? Yes, they do. OK, so let’s zoom on precisely for the fat and the nutraceuticals. I want to give you an idea as to what type of nutraceuticals are appropriate for us because we want to bust down these five issues affecting metabolic syndrome that we discussed. What are the five guys? Let’s go ahead and start them up. It’s high blood sugar, right?
Kenna Vaughn: High blood glucose, low HDLs, which will be that good cholesterol everyone needs. Yes. And it’s going to be the high blood pressure, which is not considered high from a doctor’s standard, but it is deemed to be elevated. So that’s another thing; we want to ensure that this is metabolic syndrome, not a metabolic disease. So if you go to the doctor and your blood pressure is 130 over eighty-five, that’s an indicator. But yet your provider might not necessarily say your blood pressure is super high.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: None of these disorders here by themselves are clinical states, and, individually, they’re pretty much just things. But if you combine all these five, you have metabolic syndrome and feel like not too good, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, yeah.
Kenna Vaughn: Another one is going to be the excess weight around the belly and the higher triglycerides.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Easy to see. You can see when someone has a belly that’s hanging over like a fountain, right? So we can see that you can go to it sometimes Italian restaurants and see the great cook. And he sometimes I got to tell you, sometimes it’s just, you know, we talked to Chef Boyardee wasn’t a thin guy. I think that Chef Boyardee, you know what? And the Pillsbury guy, right? Well, it wasn’t very healthy, right? Both of them suffer from metabolic syndrome just from the outset. So that’s an easy one to see. So these are the things we’re going to be reflecting on. Astrid will go over some nutraceuticals, vitamins, and some foods that we can improve things. So here’s Astrid, and here’s our science curator. But here’s Astrid, go ahead.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, I guess before we get into the nutraceuticals, I want to make something clear. Like we were talking about metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is not a, and I guess per se, a disease or a health issue itself. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that can increase the risk of developing other health issues like diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Because metabolic syndrome is not, you know, an actual health issue itself, it’s more so this group, this collection of other conditions, of other problems that can develop into much worse health issues. Just because of that fact, metabolic syndrome has no apparent symptoms itself. But of course, like we were talking about, five risk factors are pretty much the ones we discussed: excess waist fat, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, low HDL, and according to health care professionals. To doctors and researchers, you know you have metabolic syndrome if you have three out of these five risk factors.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. Three. Now, that doesn’t mean that if you have it, you have symptoms. As I see it was evident on. But I got to tell you in my experience when someone has more than three or three. They’re starting to feel crummy. They don’t feel right. They just feel like, you know, life’s not good. They have just an overall. They don’t look it right. So and I don’t know them, maybe. But their family knows that they don’t look good. Like mom doesn’t look good. Dad does look good.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, yeah. And metabolic syndrome, as I said, it has no apparent symptoms. But you know, I was kind of going with one of the risk factors with waist fat, and this is where you will see people with what you call the apple or pear-shaped body, so they have excess fat around their abdomen. And although that’s not technically considered a symptom, it is a factor that can; I guess it can give an idea to doctors or other health care professionals that this person who is, you know, they have prediabetes or have diabetes. And, you know, they have excess weight and obesity. They could have an increased risk of metabolic syndrome and therefore developing, you know, if it’s left untreated, developing other health issues like heart disease and stroke. I guess with that being said; then we’ll get into the nutraceutical.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I love this, I love this. We’re getting some good stuff, and we’re getting some information.
Astrid Ornelas: And I guess with that being said, we’ll get into the nutraceuticals. Kind of like, how Kenna was talking about what’s the takeaway? You know, we’re here talking about these health issues, and we’re here talking about metabolic syndrome today. But what’s the takeaway? What can we tell people? What can they take home about our talk? What can they do at home? So here we have several nutraceuticals, which I’ve written several articles in our blog and looked at.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You think, Astrid? If you look at 100 articles written in El Paso, at least in our area, they were all curated by somebody. Yes. All right.
Astrid Ornelas: Yes. So we have several nutraceuticals here that have been researched. Researchers have read all these research studies and found that they can help in some way and some form improve, you know, metabolic syndrome and these associated diseases. So the first one I want to discuss is the B vitamins. So what are the B vitamins? These are the ones that you can usually find them together. You can find them in the store. You’ll see them as B-complex vitamins. You’ll see like a little jar, and then it comes with several of the B vitamins. Now, why do I bring up B vitamins for metabolic syndrome? So one of the reasons like researchers has found that one of them, I guess, one of the causes of metabolic syndrome could be stress. So with that being said, we need to have B vitamins because when we get stressed when we have a hard day at work when we have, I guess a lot of you know, a lot of stressful things at home or with family, our nervous system will use these B vitamins to support our nerve function. So when we have a lot of stress, we will use up these vitamins, which increases stress; you know, our body will produce cortisol. You know, which serves a function. But we all know that too much cortisol, too much stress can actually. It can be harmful to us. It can increase our risk of heart disease.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as I remember when we did this, all roads lead to the kitchen in terms of getting the food back in your body. All roads lead to the mitochondria when it comes to the area of the breakdown. The world of ATP energy production is surrounded and wrapped around with nicotinamide, NADH, HDP, ATPS, ADP. All these things have a connection with vitamin B of all sorts. So the vitamin B’s are at the engine in the turbine of the things that help us. So it makes sense that this was the top of the vitamin and the most important one. And then she’s got some other endpoints here on niacin. What is with niacin? What have you noticed there?
Astrid Ornelas: Well, niacin is another B vitamin, you know, there are several B vitamins. That’s why I have it there under its plural and niacin or vitamin B3, as it’s more well known. A lot of several are so clever. Many research studies have found that taking vitamin B3 can help lower LDL or bad cholesterol, help lower triglycerides, and increase HDL. And several research studies have found that niacin, specifically vitamin B3, can help increase HDL by 30 percent.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Incredible. When you look at NADP and NADH, These are the N is the niacin, the nicotinamide. So in the biochemical compound, niacin is the one that people have known that when you take it the good one or the one that’s supposed to be, you get this flushing feeling and it makes you scratch all your part of your body, and it feels good when you scratch because it makes you feel that way. Right, so lovely. And this huge.
Astrid Ornelas: Yes. Yes, and also, I just want to highlight a point about B vitamins. B vitamins are essential because they can help support our metabolism when we eat, you know, carbohydrates and fats, good fats, of course, and proteins. When the body goes through the metabolism process, it converts these carbohydrates, fats, and protein. The proteins turn into energy, and B vitamins are the main components in charge of doing that.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Latinos, in our general population, know that we have always heard of the nurse or the person who gives vitamin B injection. So you heard of those things. Right. Because you’re depressed, you’re sad, what would they do? Well, you know what would inject them with B12, right? Which are the B vitamins, right? And the person would come out like, Yeah, and they’d be excited, right? So we’ve known this, and this is the elixir of the past. Those traveling salesmen, who had the potions and lotions, made a living off of giving B vitamin complex. The first energy drinks were first designed with a B complex, you know, packing of them. Now here’s the deal. Now that we’ve learned that energy drinks cause so many issues, that we’re heading back to the B complexes to help people better. So the following vitamin we have there is that one that we have the D, we have the vitamin D.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, the next one I wanted to talk about is vitamin D. So there are several research studies on vitamin D and the benefits, the benefits of vitamin D for metabolic syndrome, and just how I discussed how B vitamins are beneficial for our metabolism. Vitamin D is also helpful for our metabolism, and it can help regulate our blood sugar, essentially our glucose. And that in itself is very important because, like one of the predisposing factors of metabolic syndrome, high blood sugar. And you know, if you have uncontrolled high blood sugar, it can lead to, you know, it can lead to prediabetes. And if that is left untreated, it can lead to diabetes. So research studies have also found that vitamin D itself can also improve insulin resistance, which is pretty much one that can lead to diabetes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I just wanted to put out the vitamin D is not even a vitamin; it’s a hormone. It was discovered after C by Linus Pauling. When they found it, they just kept on naming the following letter. OK, so since it is a hormone, you just have to look at it. This particular vitamin D or this hormone tocopherol. It basically can change so many metabolism issues in your body. I’m talking about literally four to five hundred different processes that we’re finding. Last year was 400. We’re now almost 500 other biochemical processes that are affected directly. Well, it makes kind of sense. Look, our most significant organ in the body is our skin, and most of the time, we ran around in some sort of skimpy clothes, and we were in the sun a lot. Well, we didn’t stand to reason that that particular organ can produce a tremendous amount of healing energies, and vitamin D does that. It is produced by the sunlight and activated. But today’s world, whether we’re Armenian, Iranian, different cultures in the north, like Chicago, people don’t get as much light. So depending on cultural changes and closed people living and working in these fluorescent lights, we lose the essence of vitamin D and get very sick. The person who takes vitamin D is much healthier, and our goal is to raise the vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and one that embeds itself by it and is saved in the liver along with the fat in the body. So you can raise it slowly as you take it, and it’s tough to get toxic levels, but those are at about one hundred twenty-five nanograms per deciliter that are too high. But most of us run around with 10 to 20, which is low. So, in essence, by raising that, you’re going to see that the blood sugar changes are going to happen that Astrid is speaking about. What are some of the things that we notice about, particularly vitamin D? Anything?
Astrid Ornelas: I mean, I’ll get back to vitamin D in a bit; I want to discuss some of the other nutraceuticals first. OK. But pretty much vitamin D is beneficial because it helps improve your metabolism, and it helps improve your insulin resistance, at least towards metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: How about calcium?
Astrid Ornelas: So calcium goes hand-in-hand with vitamin D, and the thing that I wanted to talk about with vitamin D and calcium together. We often think about these five factors that we mentioned before that could cause a metabolic syndrome. Still, there’s, you know, if you want to think about it, like what are the underlying causes for a lot of these risk factors? And like, you know, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, people who don’t engage in an exercise or physical activity. One of the things that can predispose a person or increase their risk of metabolic syndrome. Let me put the scenario. What if a person has a chronic pain disease? What if they have something like fibromyalgia? They’re constantly in pain. They don’t want to move, so they don’t want to exercise. They don’t want to aggravate these symptoms. Sometimes, some people have chronic pain or things like fibromyalgia. Let’s go a little bit more basic. Some people just have chronic back pain, and you don’t want to work out. So just you’re not choosing like some of these people aren’t choosing to be inactive because they want to. Some of these people are legitimately in pain, and there are several research studies, and this is what I was going to tie in vitamin D and calcium with that vitamin D and calcium. You know, we can you can take them together. They can help improve chronic pain in some people.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Incredible. And we all know that calcium is one of the causes of muscle spasms and relaxers. Tons of reasons. We’re going to go into each one of these. We’re going to have a podcast on just vitamin D and the issues in calcium because we can go deep. We’re going to go deep, and we’re going to go all the way to the genome. The genome is genomics, which is the science of understanding how nutrition and the genes dance together. So we’re going to go there, but we’re kind of like we’re penetrating slowly in this process because we have to take the story slowly. What’s up next?
Astrid Ornelas: So next, we have omega 3s, and I want to specifically highlight that we’re talking about omega 3s with EPA, not DHA. So these are EPA, which is the one that’s listed up there, and DHA. They are two essential types of omega 3s. Essentially, they’re both very important, but several research studies and I’ve done articles on this as well have found that I guess taking omega 3s specifically with EPA, it’s just more superior in its benefits than DHA. And when we talk about the omega 3s, these can be found in fish. Most of the time, you want to take omega 3s; you see them in the form of fish oils. And this is going back to what Kenna discussed before, like following a Mediterranean diet, which mainly focuses on eating a lot of fish. This is where you get your intake of omega 3s, and research studies have found that omega 3s themselves can help promote heart health, and they can help lower bad cholesterol to your LDL. And these can also improve our metabolism, just like vitamin D.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Want to go ahead and blanket all these things under the fact that we’re also looking, and when we’re dealing with metabolic syndrome, we’re dealing with inflammation. Inflammation and omegas have been known. So what we need to do is to bring out the fact that omegas have been in the American diet, even in a grandma’s diet. And then, like again, we hear back in the day when grandma or great-grandma would give you cod liver oil. Well, the highest omega-carrying fish is the herring, which is at about 800 milligrams per serving. The cod is next when it’s around 600. But because of the availability, the card’s much more available in certain cultures. So everybody would have cod liver oil, and they’d make you close your nose and drink it, and they knew that it correlated. They would think it’s a good lubricant. Still, it was an anti-inflammatory specifically with people, and usually, grandmothers who knew about this right helps with the intestines, helps the inflammation, helps with the joints. They knew the whole story behind that. So we’ll go deep into the Omegas in our later podcast. We have another one that’s here. It’s called berberine, right? What’s the story on berberine?
Astrid Ornelas: Well, pretty much the next set of nutraceuticals that are listed here, berberine, glucosamine, chondroitin, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, ashwagandha, pretty much all of these have been tied into what I talked before about chronic pain and all of these health issues. I listed them up here because I’ve done several articles. I’ve read various research studies that have covered these in different trials and across multiple research studies with numerous participants. And these have pretty much found, you know, this group of nutraceuticals here that are listed; these have also been tied in to help reduce chronic pain. You know, and as I discussed before, like chronic pain, you know, people who have fibromyalgia or even like, you know, let’s go a little bit simpler people who have back pain, you know, these inactive people who have sedentary lifestyles simply because of their pain and they can be at risk of metabolic syndrome. A lot of these research studies have found these nutraceuticals themselves can also help reduce chronic pain.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think the new one is called alpha-lipoic acid. I see acetyl L-carnitine. We’re going to have our resident biochemist on the following podcast to go deep into these. Ashwagandha is a fascinating name. Ashwagandha. Say it. Repeat it. Kenna, can you tell me a bit about ashwagandha and what we’ve been able to discover about ashwagandha? Because it is a unique name and a component that we look at, we will talk about it more. We’re going to get back to Astrid in a second, but I’m going to give her a little break and kind of like, let Kenna tell me a bit of ashwagandha.
Kenna Vaughn: I was going to add in something about that berberine.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, well, let’s go back to berberine. These are berberine and ashwagandha.
Kenna Vaughn: OK, so that berberine has also been shown to help decrease the HB A1C in patients with blood sugar dysregulation, which will come back to the whole prediabetes and type two diabetes situations that can occur in the body. So that one is also has been shown to decrease that number to stabilize the blood sugar.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There’s a whole thing we’re going to have on berberine. But one of the things that we did in terms of metabolic syndrome definitely made the top list here for the process. So there’s ashwagandha and berberine. So tell us all about ashwagandha. Also, ashwagandha is the one. So in terms of blood sugar, the A1C is the blood sugar calculation that tells you exactly what the blood sugar does over about three months. The glycosylation of the hemoglobin can be measured by the molecular changes that happen within the hemoglobin. That’s why the Hemoglobin A1C is our marker to determine. So when ashwagandha and berberine come together and use those things, we can alter the A1C, which is the three-month kind of like the historical background of what is going on. We’ve seen changes on that. And that’s one of the things that we do now in terms of the dosages and what we do. We’re going to go over that, but not today because that’s a little bit more complex. Soluble fibers have also been a component of things. So now, when we deal with soluble fibers, why are we talking about soluble fibers? First of all, it is food for our bugs, so we have to remember that the probiotic world is something we cannot forget. People need to understand that, though, that probiotics, whether it’s the Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium strains, whether it’s a small intestine, large intestine, early on the small intestine, there are different bacteria to the very end to see come to the back end. So let’s call that the place that things come out. There are bacteria everywhere at different levels, and each one has a purpose of discovering that. There’s vitamin E and green tea. So tell me, Astrid, about these dynamics in terms of green tea. What do we notice as it pertains to metabolic syndrome?
Astrid Ornelas: OK. So green tea has a lot of benefits, you know? But, you know, some people don’t like tea, and some are more into coffee, you know? But if you want to get into drinking tea, you know, definitely because of its health benefits. Green tea is an excellent place to start and in terms of metabolic syndrome. Green tea has been demonstrated to help improve heart health, and it can help lower these risk factors that pertain to metabolic syndrome. It can help, you know, several research studies that have found that green tea can help lower cholesterol, bad cholesterol, LDLs.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Does green tea help us with our belly fat?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah. There’s one of the benefits of green tea that I’ve read about. Pretty much one of the ones that probably that it’s most well known for is that green tea can help with weight loss.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh my gosh. So basically water and green tea. That’s it, guys. That’s all. We limit our lives that are also, I mean, we forgot even the most powerful thing. It takes care of those ROSs, which are reactive oxygen species, our antioxidants, or oxidants in our blood. So it just basically squelch them and takes them out and cools their cool and prevents even the normal deterioration that happens or the excessive deterioration that occurs in the breakdown of normal metabolism, which is a byproduct which is ROS, reactive oxygen species are wild, crazy oxidants, which we have a neat name for the things that squashes them and calms them and puts them in the order they call antioxidants. So the vitamins that are antioxidants are A, E, and C are antioxidants, too. So those are potent tools that we deal with as we lower body weight. We free up a lot of toxins. And as the green tea goes into squirt, squelch them, cools them, and gets them out of gear. Guess where the other organ that helps with the whole insulin production is, which is the kidneys. The kidneys are flushed out with green tea and then also helps. I notice that one thing that you haven’t done, Astrid, is done articles on turmeric, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Oh, I’ve done a lot of articles on turmeric. I know because, from the list that’s up there, turmeric and curcumin are probably like one of my favorite nutraceuticals to talk about.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, she’s like gnawing on a root and a couple of times.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, I have some in my fridge right now.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, you touch that turmeric, and you can lose a finger. What happened to my finger? Did you get near my turmeric? The root, right? So. So tell us a bit about the properties of turmeric and curcumin in terms of metabolic syndrome.
Astrid Ornelas: OK. I’ve done several, you know, a lot of articles on turmeric and curcumin. And we’ve also discussed that before, and several of our past podcasts and turmeric is that it’s that yellow yellowish could look orange to some people, but it’s usually referred to as a yellow root. And it’s very popular in Indian cuisine. It’s what it’s one of the main ingredients that you’ll find in curry. And curcumin, pretty sure some of you people have heard of curcumin or turmeric, you know? What’s the difference? Well, turmeric is the flowering plant, and it’s the root. We eat the root of turmeric, and curcumin is just the active ingredient in turmeric that gives it a yellow color.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Guys, I will not let anything but the top type of curcumin and turmeric products be available to their patients because there’s a difference. Certain ones are produced with literally, I mean, we got solvents, and with the way we get things out and of curcumin and turmeric or even stuff like cocaine, you have to use a distillate. OK? And whether it’s water, acetone, benzene, OK, or some sort of a byproduct, we know today that benzene is used to process many types of supplements, and certain companies use benzene to get the best out of turmeric. The problem is benzene is cancer-producing. So we’ve got to be very careful which companies we use. Acetone, imagine that. So there are processes that are in place to extract the turmeric properly and that are beneficial. So finding suitable turmeric, all turmerics are not the same. And that’s one of the things that we have to assess since it has so many products in the world is running real crazy to try to process turmeric and precisely, even if it’s the last thing that we’re discussing today on our subject matter. But it’s one of the most important things today. We don’t even understand aspirin. We know it works, but the total magnitude of it is yet to be told. However, turmeric is in the same boat. We’re learning so much about it that every day, every month, studies are being produced on the value of turmeric into the natural diet, so Astris is in tune in on the target on that. So I’m sure she’s going to bring more of that to us, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Yes, of course.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So I think what we can do today is when we look at this, I’d like to ask Kenna, when we look at a metabolic syndrome from the presentations of symptoms or even from laboratory studies. The confidence of knowing that N equals one is one of the essential components that we have now in functional medicine and functional wellness practices that a lot of physical medicine doctors are doing in their scope of practice. Because in metabolic issues, you can’t take metabolic away from the body. Does the metabolism happen in a back problem? We notice a correlation with back injuries, back pain, back issues, chronic knee disorders, chronic joint musculoskeletal disorders, and metabolic syndrome. So we can’t tease it. So tell us a bit, Kenna, as we close out today a bit of what a patient can expect when they come to our office, and they get kind of put in the “Oops, you got metabolic syndrome.” So boom, how do we handle it?
Kenna Vaughn: We want to know their background because, as you said, everything is connected; everything is in-depth. There are details we want to get to know all so we can make that personalized plan. So one of the first things we do is a very lengthy questionnaire by Living Matrix, and it’s a great tool. It does take a little while, but it gives us so much insight into the patient, which is great because it allows us to, like I said, dig deep and figure out, you know, traumas that might have happened that are leading to inflammation, which how Astrid was saying then leads that sedentary lifestyle, which then leads to this metabolic syndrome or just kind of down that road. So one of the first things we do is do that lengthy questionnaire, and then we sit down and talk to you one on one. We build a team and make you part of our family because this stuff isn’t easy to go through alone, so the most success is when you have that close-knit family, and you have that support, and we try to be that for you.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We have taken this information and realized it was very complex five years ago. It was challenging. 300 300-page questionnaire. Today we have software that we can figure out. It is backed by the IFM, the Institute of Functional Medicine. The Institute of Functional Medicine had its origin over the last decade and became very popular, understanding the whole person as an individual. You can’t separate an eyeball from kind of the body as you can’t separate the metabolism from all effects that it has. Once that that body and that food, that nutraceutical that nutrient enters our body. On the other side of our mouth is these little weighting things called chromosomes. They’re spinning, and they’re churning, and they’re creating enzymes and proteins based on what we feed them. To find out what’s going on, we have to do an elaborate questionnaire about mental body spirituality. It brings in the mechanics of normal digestion, how the entanglement works, and how the overall living experience happens in the individual. So when we take into consideration Astrid and Kenna together, we kind of figure out the best approach, and we have a tailor-made process for each person. We call it the IFM one, two, and three, which are complex questions that allow us to give you a detailed assessment and an accurate breakdown of where the cause can be and the nutraceuticals the nutrient nutrients that we focus on. We push you right direction to the place where it matters into the kitchen. We end up teaching you and your family members how to feed so that you can be good to those genetic genomes, which you’re, as I always say, ontogeny, recapitulates phylogeny. We are who we are from the past to the people, and those people have a thread between us and my past, and everyone here’s past. And that is our genetics, and our genetics responds to the environment. So whether it goes in the south fast or exposed or predisposed, we’re going to discuss those, and we’re going to enter the world of genomics soon in this process as we go deeper into the metabolic syndrome process. So I thank you all for listening in on us and know that we can be contacted here, and they’re going to leave you the number. But we have Astrid here that’s doing research. We have a team established by many individuals who can give you the best information that applies to you; N equals one. We got Kenna here that there’s always available and we’re here taking care of people in our beautiful little town of El Paso. So thank you again, and look forward to the following podcast, which will probably be within the next couple of hours. Just kidding. All right, bye, guys.
The previous article talked about how photobiomodulation or low laser therapy can help improve the gut microbiome. Today’s article gives an in-depth look at how photobiomics can provide the therapeutic potential to the gut. When it comes to the gut, an individual must take care of it. Supplying it with wholesome, nutritional food feeding the good bacteria will provide outstanding results like more energy throughout the day, the feeling of being full, weight loss, and healthy brain function. By eating these nutritional foods, the body can feel good; however, when harmful bacteria come into play and starts attacking the gut, it causes the gut microbiome to have all sorts of problems that can turn into chronic pain. Some of the ailments can be leaky gut, IBS, and inflammation, to name a few. When these harmful pathogens affect the gut, it can cause the body not to function correctly and dampen a person’s ability to go about their everyday life.
Photobiomodulation Works With The Gut
So how does photobiomodulation work with the gut microbiota? Research studies show that when photobiomics are being applied to the gut, the low laser wavelength can help rebalance what is happening to the gut and maintain diversity in the gut microbiota. It can sustain a healthy production of vital metabolites, and the diversity can help the gut from getting many harmful bacteria from causing too much trouble in the gut. Not only that, but photobiomodulation therapy affecting the gut, directly and indirectly, gives it a mimicry of the circadian clock from the brain. Since the brain and gut are connected with the brain giving signals to the gut microbiota to regulate and produce the bacterial metabolites.
The Brain-Gut Connection
The brain and gut connection is more of consistent bidirectional communication between the brain and gut. Studies show that the gut and brain connection ensures the proper maintenance of gastrointestinal homeostasis and has multiple effects on motivation and cognitive functions in the body. When inflammation comes to play in the gut; however, it can affect the gut to not work properly and disrupt the signals it is receiving from the brain and vice versa. When there is a disruption in the bacterial diversity in the gut, it can decrease the brain’s circadian rhythm. The disruption of the bacterial diversity of the gut can even reduce vitamin D absorption in the gastrointestinal tract, causing inflammation and heightening the effects of autoimmune properties that the body is experiencing.
Vitamin D and Photobiomics
Studies have shown that vitamin D plays an essential role in bone health and regulating gastrointestinal inflammation. This is huge since vitamin D has anti-inflammatory properties and can dampen the effects of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and IBD or inflammatory bowel diseases. Vitamin D has many beneficial properties since it can help improve the body’s immune system and has anti-inflammatory properties. Anyone who takes vitamin D in supplement form or food form as part of their daily ritual will notice that they have more energy in their system and feel good overall. That is because vitamin D can modify the integrity of the epithelial cell in the gut and increase the composition and immune response to the gut microbiome. When vitamin D and photobiomics are combined, it can restore the vitamin D receptors in the gut and cause improvements to body immunity and bone health and dampen the inflammatory effects that were causing harm to the body.
The Vagus Nerve
Another unique fact that photobiomodulation can help is that it can improve low vagus nerves in the brain. Since the brain and gut are connected, it shows that photobiomics can help the brain by decreasing the inflammation receptors that are disrupting the brain-gut connection and causing problems to the body. The vagus nerve is a part of this connection since it sends the information back and forth from the brain to the gut. Studies show that the vagus nerve is represented as the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system. This means that the vagus nerve can oversee many crucial bodily functions, including sending information between the brain and gut. Not only that, but the vagus nerve represents an essential link to neurological and inflammatory responses to the body. When inflammation affects the gut and the vagus nerves, it can disrupt the signals to the brain, causing the inflammation to become worse and hurting the body. Treatments like photobiomodulation can target the vagus nerve and help increase the vagal tone in the body and inhibit cytokine productions.
The 4 R’s
When the body is being affected by inflammation, treatments can help the body feel a bit better and start recovering. With photobiomodulation therapy and natural foods that are beneficial to the gut can bring the balance of a healthy lifestyle back to a person. For a better gut, doctors have recommended the 4’s for gut health.
The First R: Remove
REMOVE– Removing foods that a person has a food sensitivity or allergic reaction to can help dampen the effects of inflammation to the gut. These can be common foods like dairy and wheat or processed food containing high fats and added sugars.
The Second R: Replace
REPLACE– By replacing processed food with wholesome, nutritional food that is chalked up with the necessary vitamins and minerals can give the body more energy and put the person in a good mood. Thus, helping the gut produce more enzymes to digest the nutritional foods.
The Third R: Reinoculate
REINOCULATE– Adding prebiotics and probiotics into your recovery process can help improve the beneficial bacteria in the gut. Fermented food is a great way to get the necessary probiotics and prebiotics into the gut.
The Fourth R: Repair
REPAIR– Eating certain food that can help repair the gut lining in the gut microbiota ensures that inflammation won’t flare up due to gut stress. Adding fermented foods, butyric acid, L-glutamine, and aloe vera into a person’s diet is excellent in gut repair.
Conclusion
Overall, gut health is essential to the human body as it helps the body function properly. With the help of photobiomodulation, it can help the recovery process. Since photobiomics are still providing excellent results to treat patients with inflammation, it is necessary to combine whole, nutritional foods and the proper supplements into the everyday lifestyle so the body doesn’t have specific ailments like inflammation. This new combination has opened the doors to many new avenues of effective treatments for inflammation and improving overall body health and wellness.
References:
Breit, Sigrid, et al. “Vagus Nerve as Modulator of the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychiatric and Inflammatory Disorders.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, Frontiers Media S.A., 13 Mar. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859128/.
Carabotti, Marilia, et al. “The Gut-Brain Axis: Interactions between Enteric Microbiota, Central and Enteric Nervous Systems.” Annals of Gastroenterology, Hellenic Society of Gastroenterology, 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4367209/.
Silverman, Robert G. “Photobiomics: A Look to the Future of Combined Laser and Nutrition Therapy.” Chiropractic Economics, 5 Oct. 2021, www.chiroeco.com/photobiomics/.
Tabatabaeizadeh, Seyed-Amir, et al. “Vitamin D, the Gut Microbiome and Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Journal of Research in Medical Sciences: The Official Journal of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd, 23 Aug. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6116667/.
The body has a variety of functions that work simultaneously to make sure that it’s working correctly. From the musculoskeletal system all the way to the endocrine system, the body has good bacteria that cause each system to work as it should be. However, sometimes an injury or autoimmune factor comes to play when it affects the body, causing a person to feel pain or not function properly. Many remedies and treatments can help the body by dampening the harmful effects that trigger various problems like inflammation, IBS, leaky gut, and much more. One of the treatments that physicians have used to help patients is photobiomodulation or low laser therapy.
Photobiomodulation Explained
Low laser therapy or photobiomodulation is when the body is exposed to a cold laser in the affected area. The laser wavelength targets the area through the skin to the mitochondrial. Studies have shown that photobiomodulation mechanics can help the body at the molecular, cellular, and tissue-based level causing therapeutic relief. When exposed through treatment, the laser wavelength can help give the injured area of the body relief that can last for hours to months with regular treatment.
Photobiomodulation Benefits
Another study found that photobiomodulation can heal and stimulate body tissue, thus relieving pain and inflammation, causing the microbiome to alter in the body. The study also mentions that photobiomics can indirectly affect the microbiome and cause harmful bacteria or inflammation to halt, causing the body to boot its immune system. One study has even found that even though photobiomodulation has been widely accepted to treat low-back pain, it can be highly effective when modulating the gut microbiome. This means that when photobiomodulation and nutritional therapy are combined, they can help treat gut issues, low vagal tone, and autoimmunity in the body.
The Gut System
The gut microbiome is one of the important biomes in the body that plays a huge role. The gut microbiota can help the body internally by regulating its metabolism and protecting itself from harmful pathogens; thus, a healthy gut flora is mainly responsible for an individual’s overall health. Studies have shown that the gut microbiota comprises two significant phyla, which are Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. The study also mentions that a normal gut microbiome can help maintain the structural integrity of the gut mucosal barrier, immunomodulation, and metabolize xenobiotics.
The Microbiome of the Gut
Since the gut microbiome makes sure that the body is healthy, sometimes unwanted pathogens can affect the gut, disrupting the body. Studies show that the gut microbiota can ensure homeostasis while recognizing bacterial epitopes in intestinal epithelial and the mucosal immune cells. But when harmful bacterias invade the gut, either by food sensitivity or autoimmune factors, the gut takes a heavy toll, causing the body to feel unwell. These factors can cause body inflammation, leaky gut, or IBS, thus making the individual feel pain if it’s not treated, causing more problems.
Conclusion
Overall, doctors using photobiomodulation on the gut is beneficial in the overall wellness of the body. The photobiomics have proven extraordinary therapeutic effects by targeting the inflamed area and improving the area by raising the antibodies to combat the inflammation and reducing gastrointestinal wall damage. By utilizing photobiomodulation and natural food therapy together, the body can recover quickly and achieve overall wellness.
References:
Hamblin, Michael R. “Photobiomodulation or Low-Level Laser Therapy.” Journal of Biophotonics, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5215795/.
Jandhyala, Sai Manasa, et al. “Role of the Normal Gut Microbiota.” World Journal of Gastroenterology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 7 Aug. 2015, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26269668/.
Liebert, Ann, et al. “‘Photobiomics’: Can Light, Including Photobiomodulation, Alter the Microbiome?” Photobiomodulation, Photomedicine, and Laser Surgery, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers, Nov. 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6859693/.
Sekirov, Inna, et al. “Gut Microbiota in Health and Disease.” Physiological Reviews, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 9 July 2010, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20664075/.
Silverman, Robert G. “Photobiomics: A Look to the Future of Combined Laser and Nutrition Therapy.” Chiropractic Economics, 5 Oct. 2021, www.chiroeco.com/photobiomics/.
Around the world, pain, especially chronic pain, is widespread to an individual. When the body goes through a tremendous amount of activity, the muscle tissues will rip and tear to strengthen the body for the next activity it overcomes. But when the muscle tissues tear and cause pain to the body, it can take a week or even months for the tissue to recover. Many recovery treatments can help alleviate the pain that a person is in, and one of the recovery treatments that most physicians use is low laser therapy.
Low Laser Therapy & Musculoskeletal Pain
Doctors have used low laser therapy to help patients alleviate pain and repair muscle tissue in the affected area of the body. Studies have found that the effects of low laser therapy had a positive impact on the treated area. The study showed that the low laser treatment has helped with relieving pain and has promoted tissue repair. The effects of the low laser wavelength have enhanced the healing process by promoting cell proliferation, causing pain relief. One of the efficient ways that low laser therapy is beneficial to the body is to alleviate musculoskeletal pain.
Musculoskeletal pain is a variety of issues in the body. From muscle pain to fibromyalgia, it can render a person miss out on everyday activities, causing them to miss work or school. Studies have shown that when a patient is going in for low laser therapy, the effects from the laser wavelength can reduce inflammation and edema in the affected area. The studies even show that the laser light effects are photochemical and not thermal. The laser light will trigger a biochemical change in the body, causing the photons from the affected area to be absorbed, thus triggering a chemical change in the area.
Efficient Uses of Low Laser Therapy
Other studies even show that the low laser wavelength triggers chemical alterations and potential biochemical benefits to the human body. This means that if a person is suffering from chronic pain when going for low laser treatment, the laser can relieve chronic pain symptoms and even osteoarthritic conditions. Another efficient use of low laser therapy is that it can suppress the MMP or mitochondrial membrane potential in the DRG neutron while reducing adenosine triphosphate or ATP production in the body. In other words, the effects of low laser therapy can suppress and reduce inflammation receptors in the body, thus causing long-term results that last for years, improving tissue healing.
Another efficient way low laser therapy is beneficial is that it can be combined with light exercises as a staple of rehabilitation. Studies have found that the combination of low laser therapy and exercise has merit. When an individual combines stretches and low laser therapy as part of their rehabilitation, the data shows a reduction in pain symptoms and fatigue in the body.
Conclusion
All in all, the efficient effects of low laser therapy are beneficial by reducing inflammation and damping the pain receptors in the body. Since chronic pain is worldwide and can cause harmful effects to the body, using low laser therapy can dampen the pain receptors. Having low laser therapy treatments as part of their daily regime and light exercises for anyone with chronic pain can get their body moving pain-free. Since the body goes through so much, having low laser therapy is one of the many recovery treatments that can provide long-lasting results and promote overall wellness.
References:
Cotler, Howard B., et al. “The Use of Low Level Laser Therapy (LLLT) for Musculoskeletal Pain.” MOJ Orthopedics & Rheumatology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 9 June 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4743666/.
Dima, Robert, et al. “Review of Literature on Low-Level Laser Therapy Benefits for Nonpharmacological Pain Control in Chronic Pain and Osteoarthritis.” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 24 Sept. 2018, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28987080/.
One of the most common tendons in the body that gets injured is the Achilles tendon, and this tendon tends to rupture when a person is doing recreational sports. Most people have opted for treatment for their Achilles tendon through surgery; however, low laser therapy can help the Achilles tendon recover a bit faster while providing beneficial properties during treatment. Low laser therapy has positive effects on the affected area where the pain resides and has helped progress the body’s natural healing process.
Achilles Tendon and Symptoms
The Achilles tendon is a strong fibrous cord connected at the back of the calf muscles to the heel bone. When a person does recreational sports, the Achilles tendon stretches during the activity. However, when the Achilles tendon is overly stretched during the exercise, it can rupture completely or partially depending on how strenuous the body is being put through.
Some of the symptoms of a ruptured Achilles include:
A feeling of being kicked in the calf
A popping or snapping sound where the injury occurred.
Pain and swelling near the heel.
The inability to bend the foot downwards
The inability to stand on the toes
When these symptoms occur in the Achilles tendon, it is due to the lack of blood flow that the body is not providing. Studies have found that when the Achilles tendon is ruptured, it is a severe injury due to the scarce blood supply, and it could take weeks or even months before it is completely healed.
Low Laser Treatments and Benefits
Patients with a ruptured Achilles heel can get low laser therapy to help relieve the pain from the ruptured tendon. Studies found that when patients are being treated with low laser therapy has shown beneficial results. The results showed how the application of low laser treatment is very effective. The therapy provides a consequent relief from the motor function pain to the heel while also providing anti-inflammatory properties to the affected area. What this does is that the low-intensity laser concentrates on the inflammatory markers of the affected area, thus providing an increased blood flow (angiogenesis) in the treated area and decreasing inflammation. Low laser therapy can even help accelerate and enhance the repair of the injured Achilles tendon with frequent treatment sessions.
Conclusion
Overall, the Achilles tendon is one of the most frequent tendons that gets ruptured when a person is doing recreational sports. The healing process can take to about a week to a month for the tendon to properly heal. But through low laser therapy, the Achilles tendon can be repaired while providing relief from inflammation and enhancing the injured tendon recovery process.
Jesus, Julio Fernandes de, et al. “Low-Level Laser Therapy on Tissue Repair of Partially Injured Achilles Tendon in Rats.” Photomedicine and Laser Surgery, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 May 2015, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24831690/.
Nogueira, Adelmário Cavalcanti, and Manoel de Jesus Moura Júnior. “The Effects of Laser Treatment in Tendinopathy: A Systematic Review.” Acta Ortopedica Brasileira, Sociedade Brasileira De Ortopedia e Traumatologia, 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544521/.
The body is a well-working machine that can endure anything that is thrown in its way. However, when it gets an injury, the body’s natural healing process will ensure that the body can get back to its daily activities. The healing process of an injured muscle varies throughout the body. Depending on how severe the damage is and how long the healing process will take, the body can recover to a mere few days to a few months. One of the most gruelly healing processes that the body has to endure is a ruptured calcaneal tendon.
The Calcaneal Tendon
The calcaneal tendon or the Achilles tendon is a thick tendon that is located in the back of the leg. This muscle-tendon is what makes the body move while walking, running, or even jumping. Not only that, the calcaneal tendon is the strongest tendon in the body, and it connects the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles at the heel bone. When the calcaneal tendon is ruptured, the healing process can last from weeks to months until it is fully healed.
The Healing Effects of Low Laser Therapy
One of the ways that can help the damaged calcaneal tendons’ healing process is low laser therapy. Studies have shown that low laser therapy can speed up the damaged tendon repair after a partial lesion. Not only that but the combination of ultrasound and low laser therapy has been studied to be the physical agents for treating tendon injuries. The studies showed that the combination of low laser therapy and ultrasound has beneficial properties during the recovery process of treating calcaneal tendon injuries.
The study found that when patients are being treated for their calcaneal tendons, their hydroxyproline levels around the treated area are significantly increased with ultrasound and low laser therapy. The body’s natural biochemical and biomechanical structures on the injured tendon increase, thus affecting the healing process. Another study has shown that low laser therapy can help reduce fibrosis and prevent oxidative stress in the traumatized calcaneal tendon. The study even showed that after the calcaneal tendon is traumatized, inflammation, angiogenesis, vasodilation, and the extracellular matrix are formed in the affected area. So when patients are being treated with low laser therapy for about fourteen to twenty-one days, their histological abnormalities are alleviated, reducing collagen concentration and fibrosis; preventing oxidative stress from increasing in the body.
Conclusion
Overall, it is said that the effects of low laser therapy can help speed up the healing process of repairing the calcaneal tendon. The promising results have been proven since low laser therapy can help repair the damaged tendon, reducing oxidative stress and preventing fibrosis from escalating, causing more problems on the injured tendon. And with the combination of ultrasound, the calcaneal tendon can recover faster so the body can continue its everyday activities without any prolonged injuries.
References:
Demir, Huseyin, et al. “Comparison of the Effects of Laser, Ultrasound, and Combined Laser + Ultrasound Treatments in Experimental Tendon Healing.” Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2004, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15278933/.
Fillipin, Lidiane Isabel, et al. “Low-Level Laser Therapy (LLLT) Prevents Oxidative Stress and Reduces Fibrosis in Rat Traumatized Achilles Tendon.” Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct. 2005, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16196040/.
Wood, Viviane T, et al. “Collagen Changes and Realignment Induced by Low-Level Laser Therapy and Low-Intensity Ultrasound in the Calcaneal Tendon.” Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2010, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20662033/.
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