Back Clinic Video. Dr. Jimenez brings a variety of videos that include PUSH Rx testimonies to help people see what CrossFit is and how it has helped them get and stay in shape and those who have suffered an injury and have begun physical therapy. Also presented are videos that show Dr. Jimenez performing spinal manipulations, adjustments, massage, proper form when lifting or exercising, and discussions about various conditions, treatment options, and nutrition.
A licensed D.C., C.C.S.T, clinical pain doctor who uses cutting-edge therapies and rehabilitation procedures focused on total health, strength training, and complete conditioning. We specialize in restoring normal body functions after neck, back, spinal and soft tissue injuries. We take a global functional fitness treatment approach to regain complete functional health. To change, teach, fix and empower all my patients with what is possible is my relentless and never-ending passion.
Dr. Jimenez has spent over 30+ years researching and testing methods with thousands of patients and understands what truly works. We strive to create fitness and better the body through researched methods and total health programs. These programs and methods are natural and use the body’s own ability to achieve improvement goals, rather than introducing harmful chemicals, controversial hormone replacement, surgery, or addictive drugs. We want you to live a fulfilled life with more energy, a positive attitude, better sleep, less pain, proper body weight, and educated on how to maintain this way of life.
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents how hormonal dysfunction can be assessed and treated through various therapies specializing in hormones and how to regulate them in this 3 part series. This presentation will provide valuable information to many people dealing with hormonal dysfunction and how to utilize different holistic methods to optimize their health and wellness. Part 2 will look at the assessment for hormonal dysfunction. Part 3 will look at various treatments available for hormonal dysfunction. We refer patients to certified providers incorporating various hormone therapies to ensure optimal health and wellness. We encourage and appreciate each patient by referring them to associated medical providers based on their diagnosis when it is appropriate. We understand that education is an excellent way when asking our providers intricated questions at the patient’s request and understanding. Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., only utilizes this information as an educational service. Disclaimer
What Are Hormones?
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: Today, we will look at utilizing foundational PTSD treatment strategy steps. As a treatment strategy, it is about the production, transportation, sensitivity, and detoxification of the hormone in PTSD. So let’s start with how interventions and major factors that influence these pathways within the access impact other body areas. How does an intervention on one hormone affect other hormones? So did you know that thyroid replacement can change the HPATG access in the body? So when people are dealing with hypothyroidism or subclinical hyperthyroidism and are being treated with suppressive thyroid hormone replacement, it induces changes in their bodies. This means they will become hypersensitive from ACTH to CRH or corticotropin-releasing hormone.
What this means is that they will produce and release more ACTH. When the patient becomes hypersensitive from an influx of hormones, it could lead to various issues with the other body systems that affect organ and muscle functionality. This is another reason patients feel great on even low doses of thyroid replacement; it stimulates the adrenals. Many patients tend to overrun their adrenals, and when they get treatment, they get a little hit to their adrenals when their doctors are helping their thyroid. So looking at the thyroid, we see the thyroid gland is producing t4, forming reverse T3 and t3. So when doctors look at the thyroid pharmacological doses of glucocorticoids, which is what they give for anti-inflammatory therapy to their patients, or if people have elevated glucocorticoids as in Cushing syndrome, what that does is it inhibit thyroid secretion because it reduces the TSH response to TRH, which makes less TSH. When there is less secretion in the thyroid can lead to overlapping issues associated with unnecessary weight gain, joint pain, and even metabolic syndrome.
To that point, stress inhibits the thyroid. In contrast, estrogens have the opposite effect, where they increase TSH secretion and the thyroid gland’s activity. So that’s a reason why women feel so much better on even low doses of estrogen replacement. So just like thyroid replacement in low amounts that bump the adrenals, if we’re giving low estrogen doses, it can bump up thyroid function. However, many doctors have to go slow when providing hormone treatments to patients because the additional hormones will affect the other hormones in the body. When it comes to hormone replacement therapy, it is important to learn how interventions within the communication node impact other nodes in the matrix. So, for example, let’s look at how the communication node affects the defense and repair node in the body. Research studies reveal HRT’s effects on inflammation markers and look at 271 women who used conjugated equine estrogen alone, who had a 121% increase in CRP after a year.
And if they used that in addition to synthetic progestin, they had a 150% increase in CRP after a year. So synthetic estrogen is not bioidentical; this is synthetic pregnant mare’s urine, and synthetic progestins are pro-inflammatory. What about the communication node and the assimilation node? This is an interesting study because many doctors are trying to help their patients and the future generation in society. So it’s important to know when the mother is stressed during pregnancy since that can change the baby’s microbiome. That means doctors have an opportunity to support early intervention in microbiome support. Knowing this is vital for prenatal stress based on questionnaires or elevated cortisol was strongly and persistently associated with infants’ microbiome and colonization patterns.
So we’re also here to learn how interventions on the matrix affect the hormone node or the communication node. So as an example, we’ll look at what happens in the assimilation node involving the communication node, as this affects antibiotics on the intestinal metabolome. Everyone knows about antibiotics’ impact on the microbiome, but a metabolome is a change in the metabolic function of a particular organ, the intestine. To that point, when there are so many metabolic pathways that antibiotics affect, the metabolism of steroid hormones was the most profoundly impacted. So eight metabolites that are part of this hormone pathway, which gives us PTSD, were increased in feces after antibiotic treatment. Then we have another way that the gut affects hormones, and this is looking at metabolic endotoxemia. Many doctors learn about metabolic endotoxemia in AFMCP, which mentions leaky gut or increased intestinal permeability. When many individuals are dealing with gut issues affecting their well-being, like problems in their joints or muscles causing them pain, we provide various solutions and develop a treatment plan with our associated providers based on the diagnosis.
Endotoxins Affecting Hormones
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: Endotoxins or lipopolysaccharides are from the cell membranes of bacteria. So bacterial endotoxins are translocated from the gut lumen because of increased intestinal permeability. So with that increased permeability, those endotoxins are translocated, which starts an inflammatory cascade. When endotoxins cause GI issues, the inflammatory markers can affect the upper and lower portions of the body and the gut-brain axis. When the gut-brain axis is affected by inflammation, it could lead to joint and muscle pain associated with somato-visceral and visceral-somatic problems. To that point, the inflammatory cascade from the leaky gut affects the ovary, reduces progesterone production, and contributes to luteal phase deficiency. That’s incredibly important for doctors to take care of patients that are there to optimize fertility. It is especially important for patients to let their doctors know when they have excess estrogen and that they are producing as much progesterone as possible. So we must worry about gut permeability in ovulation, luteal phase deficiency, and estrogen-progesterone imbalance. What about the biotransformation node? How does that affect the communication node? In preschool children, phthalates and thyroid function have an inverse association between the metabolites or the amount of folate and thyroid function in the system measured in children at age three. When inflammatory issues affect thyroid function in children, it can affect cognitive outcomes, thus reducing phthalates production in the thyroid, leading to mental problems.
How do mental, emotional, and spiritual considerations contribute to the communication node? We want to start with the bottom of the matrix like we always do, which involves functional medicine. Functional medicine provides holistic approaches to identifying the root problem affecting the body and developing a personalized treatment plan for the patient. By looking at the lifestyle factors at the bottom of the Living Matrix, we can see how hormone dysfunction affects the communication nodes in the body. A recent paper found that there was a positive relationship between menopausal symptoms and social support and that menopausal symptom decrease as social support increases. Now let’s talk about how stress impacts HPA access. By looking at how stimulation from the sex hormone-producing parts of the body or the goads, the thyroid access, the adrenals, and the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) can add up all the stressors affecting us, called allostatic load.
And allostasis refers to our ability to respond to those stressors through stress-coping mechanisms. Many patients are asking us for guidance. They’re asking how they can frame their personal experiences and stressors. Still, they’re also asking how they prepare the societal events in a larger context, And many of us as functional medicine practitioners are seeking the same thing. And so, we’re going to show you in detail what stress does to the body and how to find ways of decreasing anxiety or stress in the body to prevent future issues in the organs, muscles, and joints.
How Stress Inhibits Estrogen
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: Does stress creates adrenal stress, and does it affect our fight or flight primary response hormone (adrenaline)? Stress can cause the sympathetic nervous system to increase blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and general alertness while redirecting our blood to increase our adrenaline. So when you are in a situation, your adrenaline can cause you to fight or run, which causes your muscles to get blood, which decreases blood to your core or your non-essential organs. So the functional medicine model would identify various triggers or mediators, whether acute or chronic, that can act as an instigator of hormone dysfunction that can create overlapping issues that can disrupt adrenal function in the thyroid.
So, looking at these responses can help us see the physical problems that are happening if adrenaline is chronically increased over the long term, leading to anxiety, digestion problems, et cetera. Now cortisol is our vigilance hormone that helps maintain the emergency response to back up or support the adrenaline. An example would be a fire truck or police that come in after the immediate first responder. So cortisol facilitates the quick adrenaline response to keep the body going as needed. And it has many other roles as well. It helps with increased blood sugar and causes fat storage. So when people come in with weight around the middle and dealing with overlapping issues in their body, think of cortisol since it’s anti-inflammatory and regulates the nervous system. Cortisol can be both good and bad for the body, especially when an individual is dealing with stressful events affecting their health and causing issues affecting their mobility.
So now, let’s talk about how stress impacts the entire body and the immune system. Stress can increase susceptibility to infections, increasing their severity in the body. So here we see stress affecting the defense and repair node, leading to immune dysfunction and stress-induced immune dysfunction. An example would be if a person is dealing with a disorder that affects their gut, like SIBO or leaky gut; it can increase the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and causes joint and muscle pain to the lower back, the hips, the knees, and overall wellness. When the pro-inflammatory cytokines affect the gut system, they can also cause thyroid dysfunction, disrupting hormone production.
So if someone’s taking that hormone replacement therapy (HRT), it can increase their inflammation, especially if they are stressed. So, as functional medicine practitioners, we’re always thinking and looking for pattern recognition as we start thinking about things differently from conventional methods regarding health and wellness.
What is it when you see a person dealing with chronic stress, and what is their response? They will usually answer, “I sweat a lot; I get nervous and anxious just remembering what has happened to me. I’m afraid of experiencing that ever again. Sometimes these pathways give me nightmares. Whenever I hear a loud noise, I think of carbon rings and get nauseous.” These are some tell-tale signs of someone dealing with chronic stress associated with PTSD, which can affect the hormone levels in the body. Many functional medicine providers can utilize available treatment regarding hormonal dysfunction in PTSD. So the general strategy for treating hormone dysfunction is the production, transport sensitivity, and detoxification of hormones in the body. Remember that when you have someone dealing with hormonal issues, it is best to devise a strategy to deal with this issue.
So what can we do to affect how hormones are produced or have been over-produced in the body? We want to look at how hormones are made, how they may be secreted within the body, and how they’re transported. Because what if they’re transported in a way that the transport molecule is low in concentration, allowing them to be free hormones? So that’s the interaction with other hormone sensitivity, and how do we change or look at cellular sensitivity to the hormonal signal? For example, progesterone affects estrogen receptors which cause detoxification or excretion of the hormone.
So before we think about giving or replacing a hormone, we ask what we can do to affect that hormone in the body. Specifically, how can we influence the hormone’s production, transport, sensitivity, detoxification, or elimination? So when it comes to hormone production, what are the building blocks for thyroid hormones and cortisol? So if we’re low on thyroid hormones, we want to ensure that we have the building blocks of serotonin. So what affects synthesis? If a gland is inflamed with autoimmune thyroiditis, it may not be able to make enough thyroid hormone. And that’s why people with autoimmune thyroiditis have low thyroid function. What about hormone transportation? Do the levels of one hormone in the body impact the levels of another? Estrogen and progesterone are often in a dance in the body. So does a hormone transport from the origin glands to the target tissue, which can impact its effectiveness?
If there is an overproduction of hormones attached to the transport protein, there won’t be enough free hormone, and there can be hormone deficiency symptoms. Or it can be the opposite if there needs to be more transport protein, then there will be too many free hormone molecules and hormone excess symptoms. Therefore, we want to know if we can impact the free hormone level and see if it is transformed. So we know that T4 becomes the active form of T3 or a thyroid inhibitor, reverse t3, and can we modulate those pathways? What about sensitivity? Are nutritional or dietary factors influencing the cellular response to cortisol, thyroid hormones, testosterone, estrogen, et cetera? With many cell membrane binding proteins, the cell membrane is involved in hormone metabolism. And if the cell membranes are rigid, insulin, for example, has a hard time getting in it now as we look into hormone detoxification. How do we alter the metabolism of estrogens or testosterone?
And what can we do to affect estrogen’s binding and excretion? So, can estrogen have to be eliminated healthily? And that depends on whether there’s hydroxylation on a particular carbon, but it also has to be excreted in terms of total amounts. So constipation, for example, will decrease the quantity of estrogen excreted. So we use the vault as a metaphor and the theme, as we said, is to treat the matrix first before directly addressing hormone dysfunction.
Cortisol Affecting The Communication Nodes
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: In the Living Matrix, we have to unlock or treat all the nodes to open the vault to get inside and address hormones. This is because the endocrine system is so complex it often self-corrects when other imbalances are addressed. And remember, hormonal imbalance is often an appropriate response by the body to imbalances elsewhere. That’s why treating other imbalances often addresses the hormonal issue. And also, remember hormones like picograms are in very low concentrations. So it’s very hard to be precise when we give patients hormones and allow the body to auto-correct. That’s why we say to treat the matrix first. And when we get inside the communication node in the body, we look at the center of the matrix and discover the body’s emotional, mental, and spiritual functions to help normalize hormones. And while these are addressed, how can we fix the hormonal communication nodes?
When inside the communication node, the treatment must follow an order: adrenal, thyroid, and sex steroids. So these are important concepts to remember, treat adrenals, thyroid, and finally, sex steroids. And the way we depict the pathways will be consistent. So here you see the standard representation we will use for the steroidogenic path. And you see all of the different hormones here. The enzymes in the steroidogenic pathway are color-coded, so many doctors can know which enzyme affects which step. Next, we will look at the modulation of the steroid pathways through lifestyle, like exercise, and how stress affects aromatase, making estrogen.
Now, as we get into the real, heavy part here about the steroid pathways, we inform many of our patients to take a deep breath as it shows that taking a deep breath can increase a person’s cognition and provide the ability to understand everything. So the big picture here is everything starts with cholesterol and how it affects the hormones in the body. So cholesterol forms the mineral corticoid aldosterone, which then develops cortisol, ultimately creating androgens and estrogens. When patients are given consultation on what is going on with their bodies, many don’t realize that high cholesterol could potentially lead to chronic stress, which is associated with cardiovascular issues that can ultimately invoke visceral-somatic disorders.
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: When a female patient is dealing with fibroids or endometriosis, many doctors devise a treatment plan with other medical providers to reduce the formation of the estrogen hormones by inhibiting and modulating the aromatase enzymes. This allows the patient to make small changes to their lifestyle habits by ensuring their zinc levels are normal, not drinking alcoholic beverages constantly, finding ways to reduce their stress levels, and normalizing their insulin intake. Each treatment plan caters to the individual as they find ways to reduce their cortisol levels and regulate healthy hormone production. This will allow the body to increase estrogen production while decreasing the aromatase. So when we are discussing stress, it can negatively impact the hormone pathways directly by increasing cortisol, thus causing the pituitary glands to increase the CTH when stress is responding to the body. Many individuals are dealing with chronic stress in their bodies, which can cause overlapping risk profiles to the musculoskeletal system, causing muscle and joint pain.
So the pituitary system produces cortisol when the body calls for it directly when the individual is dealing with acute stress. However, chronic stress can indirectly increase cortisol levels; it causes the enzyme 1720 lyase to be inhibited in the body, causing a decrease in anabolism, thus slowing down the body’s energy levels. So stress inhibits this enzyme. So when stress inhibits the 1720 lyase enzyme in the body, it can cause the pituitary system to produce more cortisol and cause more issues like joint to affect the individual. So those are the two ways that stress leads to more cortisol directly through ACTH and indirectly by inhibiting 1720 lyase.
Inflammation is important in the body as it also has a two-way path, as it can impact these pathways the same way stress does. Inflammation can inhibit the 1720 lyase enzyme, causing the body to be pro-inflammatory and can stimulate aromatase. Like stress, when the body is dealing with inflammation, the pro-inflammatory cytokines stimulate aromatase enzymes to cause an increase in estrogen formation. When this happens, it allows the doctors to notice why their patients are overly stressed and have inflammatory markers in their gut, muscles, and joints. To that point, inflammation can also increase an enzyme called 5alpha reductase. Now, 5alpha reductase causes the formation of a hormone called dihydrotestosterone (the active form of testosterone in the body cells other than the muscles, causing hair loss. So insulin, stress, and inflammation contribute to hair loss because insulin has the same effect. Insulin or blood sugar gives the body energy to move throughout the day. When individuals have too much or too little insulin in the body, it can lead to insulin resistance, correlating to metabolic syndrome associated with hair loss.
Holistic Methods For Hormones
Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., presents: How do insulin, cortisol, and inflammation play their part in the thyroid? Well, all of these hormones help make the body functional. When the thyroid has an underlying condition like hypo or hyperthyroidism, it can cause the body to over or underproduce hormones to regulate healthy normal body functions. So this forward feed cycle can cause the individual to have various issues affecting their body due to hormonal dysfunction. This combination of insulin resistance, high insulin, weight gain, and stress affects many patients, causing metabolic syndrome. To normalize hormonal function, we must look at all these factors driving hormonal dysfunction in patients.
When going for hormonal treatment, it is important to know about the different nutraceuticals and botanicals because before, it was called a lifestyle change back in the day. In a health clinic, specific neutraceuticals and botanicals can affect estrogen formation through the enzyme aromatase. However, various factors like diseases, medications, toxins, and elevated insulin can also increase aromatase enzymes, leading to more estrogen in the body. And then diseases, medications, and toxins do the same thing. A research study reveals that when men and women interact, the men’s cognitive performance declines, followed up with a mix-sex encounter. This can change how hormone function in the body when there are changes in formal function that can affect the central nervous system’s cognitive function in the body.
When middle age patients get examined by their doctors, the results can show if they have elevated insulin, an increase in stress and if there is inflammation in their bodies. This allows the doctors to work with associated specialists to develop a treatment plan that caters to the patient to begin small changes in their health and wellness journey.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja discuss how health and immunity play a role in the human body to achieve overall health and wellness.
How To Protect Our Health & Immunity?
[00:00:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And it is going live, Mario. How are you doing, man? Today we’re doing a presentation, my brother on health and immunity. How are you doing, my brother?
[00:00:12] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Excellent. You know what, this is a topic that everyone’s talking about, and we all deserve to have a great conversation and, most of all, to support each other with knowledge and with positive intent. Absolutely.
[00:00:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario, what we’re going to do today is you and I, as we discuss, we want to present this information for the public so that they can understand that first of all, this is by no means any treatment, this is a disclaimer. I have to say that a licensed doctor must perform all treatments. This is only for educational purposes. It is not treated and is not used for diagnosis and treatment as standard disclaimer would go. Typically, I’d had that presented, but what we’re going to be doing now is going to be doing a webinar series, Mario and I. We’re going to be doing a four-series webinar where we will discuss health and immunity and how we can improve our immunity in getting our bodies strong enough. Now we’ve been going through this process of COVID 19 and the SARS and all the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. And what we want to do is give ourselves a better option, a better treatment protocol that is there for us so that we can kind of come up with a plan to help our body support itself. So Mario and I put together these program protocols here. And what we want to do is we want to present an excellent presentation where we’re going to go over natural approaches and natural forces to help in immunity. Now, Dr. Ruja practices on the central side of town. I practice in the far east of El Paso, and what we provide our patients is quite a bit of information, but people often want to know what they can do. So what we’re going to start doing today is we’re going to start talking about what we can and cannot control the virus. One of the things that we’ve learned is that separation is probably the best key, and we’re using social distancing as one of the things that prevent us from getting close now. I like to give people some insight into what we’re doing in our offices to prevent the virus from spreading. Mario, tell us a bit of what you’re doing in your particular practice when you’re doing prevention for treating patients, and you’re working through your protocols with your patients?
[00:02:33] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: In my office, we have a system through which we use the enviro masters in each of the rooms that fumigate each room, and then we utilize U.V. light for the specific use of disinfectant from bacteria, virus and fungus, U.V. light. And the other thing that we use is the masks. We wear masks inside we space patients, and we also ask them if they can wait in the car until they get to be seen and they can call us directly. And that way, they feel more comfortable. So if we get more than, let’s say, three patients at one time where we can’t place them in different rooms and we like to put everyone in separate rooms, so they’re not together next to each other, we ask them to wait in the car and then we will call them and let them know we are ready for you. And then they walk in. They go directly into the room and do a procedure is done. And so those are things that we’re doing. And then, of course, you know, we’re, you know, disinfected tables. We’re doing all of that. We use a lot of U.V. lighting that is positive in terms of prevention. You know, when everyone washes their hands, when they walk in, the first thing they do is wash their hands. And we’re encouraging people to do the same thing when they get home. So we want to be a model to our community to say, Look, don’t just do this because you come to my office, do this at home with your family. How about that?
[00:04:29] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We’re likewise in terms of our office; we’ve taken the no-touch approach. One of the things that we do is we don’t have any sitting areas in our office, no more. We have quite a few rooms. So what we have is the ability to open the door. And we make sure that everybody has a mask when we walk them in. Now they don’t touch anything. We are touchless. We walk straight into the room. We have them lay down. We have the tables covered with special paper that prevents viral static. And also, once we work on them, they get up, walk out a different door, and don’t touch anything other than the table. So one of the things is that we don’t allow anyone to get near each other and they walk in, walk out almost in the design of our office. It’s a flow-in and flows out process. There’s no treatment in the sense of touching the diagnostic treatment protocols, such as the computers. None of that goes on. We ask all the questions and the moment before the patient comes in. We sterilize a room, and after the room, they’re also sterilized. So it’s a great process because if we look at the area of contact, the doctors are wearing gloves, our face masks are protected. We have masks on and provide the mask for the patient itself. So we try to give it the most comfortable thing like yourself. We also do the process by which we had them wait in the car until they were ready. Once they call, we go, OK, we’re ready. And as soon as we got the room ready cued, it allowed us to bring in a patient. So one of the most important things is to do the pre-post-treatment protocols on the viral static processes. And that’s the way we control the host. You know, sort of we are the potentials, right? So together with the doctor, the mask, and the staff with the mask and gloves. This prevents all the processes from occurring, at least in our area, because in your side of town, we’ve noticed that there’s also there’s this predisposition as well as on our side. My side of town has a more significant number, so many shows up. So we have to be very careful to control those hosts in that capacity now. I want to go over and begin the presentation, and we’re going to talk about the things that create our predispositions, and you and I were going over this. We coronary vascular disease is one of the highest predisposing factors. Diabetes, we’ve talked about things like obesity, hypertension, age. Tell me a bit about your situation with Mario. When you look at this list here, when you’ve seen that in the studies, what have you learned about the predisposing factors that are also out there causing dramas to our patients?
[00:07:23] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You know Alex, that is something that we all have not just to be mindful of, but we need to motivate people towards the highest level of health, which means decreasing your inflammatory process or inflammatory state of your body. OK. So when we’re talking about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension. I connect that with metabolic syndrome, which we’ve had other shows before I can remember. And this is unbelievable because we talked about that before three or four months. I mean, do you remember that, Alex?
[00:08:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, we were talking about it.
[00:08:10] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, we talked about it before anything COVID 19. And we wanted to inspire our community and everyone to decrease their risk for metabolic syndrome again, which is one of the biggest ones because obviously, you know, 150 plus triglycerides, the belly fat about obesity, and type two diabetes. So that is huge. So this is such a, I should say it’s a connection. It’s follow-through with our insightful conversation you and I had three or four months ago, Alex. Absolutely.
How To Protect Our Health?
[00:08:54] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, the studies were presented, and it became evident early on in the COVID 19 saga that it’s still going on that those that were unhealthy were the predisposed ones. It’s seamless when you are the, I hate to say, but you could sometimes tell people were morbidly obese; it wiped out the whole family. And in one case where you could see that many were, you have to ask yourself, Well, why does the entire family? But then we found out there were underlying issues regarding their health, whether they had diabetes or had hypertension issues. One of the ones that are also really big is chronic kidney disease. I heard the number, and then the statistics show that up from two percent higher increase mortality to over 16 times more mortality rate with kidney disease. There’s a clear link between the blood pressure, the ability for the body to profuse that gets limited when the oxygen level goes down, that the failure of the kidneys and the heart and the liver gets compounded by this disorder that affects the alveoli of the lungs. From what we’re understanding, it’s not so much the virus that kills us. It’s the inflammatory cytokine storm that causes this drama. So they’ve learned that people with radiation therapy, people with predisposing chemotherapies, their lungs are predisposed to injuries, autoimmune conditions like lupus. Some disorders like even chronic neurological diseases like M.S. Those people are predisposed because their immune system is in a different, responsive state. So when we talk about these treatment protocols, one of the things that we have to do is how do we squelch? How do we deal with these reactive oxygen species that cause this cytokine storm? So our goal and our emphasis are until we have an inoculation or a vaccine for this process as we develop it, our job is to mitigate the inflammatory reaction. And there are quite a few things that naturally we can do to minimize this inflammatory response. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to continue with the hearing, and we’re going to take a look at specific areas here. We talk about co-morbidities. Mario tells us a bit of what we’ve seen here regarding co-morbidities. And by the way, we have all the studies here. So as we do this presentation, all the links will be provided at the bottom so that you can look at these studies individually, and they make more sense to you when you pull them up.
[00:11:29] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Alex, as we spoke earlier, three or four months ago, when we started going…
[00:11:38] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Across the aisle…
[00:11:43] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Thanks for the intro music, Alex,
[00:11:50] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No problem.
[00:11:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Was that Van Halen or what?
[00:11:53] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, Alexander’s music is actually.
[00:11:57] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, I’ll tell Alex. Thank you. So getting back to what we’re talking about again. Again, our natural innate immune system is that blueprint through our DNA, RNA in our recovery resilient pattern within our cells. We can adapt and thrive and get through all of these variables in life; I mean, we’re dealing with viruses all the time, Alex. I mean, last year it was again influenza. You know, 50000 people again, I don’t have the exact numbers, but 50000 people die. OK. And you know, through that, we’re looking at who the risk factors are? What are the co-morbidities? What are those things that set us up for the most significant failure rate? So when we’re looking at 71 percent and 78 percent of those cases that are not working through and creating that resilience and working through the COVID 19 or other things? I mean, again, that’s what we spoke about three-four months ago. I mean, I want to say like, we’re psychic, you know, like, wow, you know.
[00:13:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It affects it, you know? And one of the craziest things is that the school’s out, and you know, as well as I do, is that every time we hear about this, we may find out that this virus is present in our population way before we’re even talking about it. We’re talking about it’s gone from March to February to now, early January. We’re going to hear about facts that this thing was present even in mid-December. You’re going to see.
[00:13:56] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I was not surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised.
[00:13:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There is no logic behind the fact that it keeps on in Greece other than the fact that this thing got out of hand way before even there were notifications.
[00:14:08] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And you know what, Alex? Just to, you know, beyond the point with what you mentioned, the three things whether it’s COVID 19 or whether it’s influenza or whether it’s anything, you know, stressing our immune system, we will fail if we have these predispositions. Alex, which is one diabetes just like diabetes, gives us a predisposition for cancer. Yes, it does. Diabetes provides us with a predisposition for cardiovascular disease, correct? Yes. Diabetes gives us all that. And then you’re looking at chronic lung disease, obviously, because the ecosystem where COVID 19 thrives is that respiratory environment. So, of course, if that is at risk or altered or at a shallow resilience pattern, of course. I mean, you will know people who have asthma. Like my wife, Karen has asthma and chronic health issues. I mean, my gosh, you know, it’s critical that we are aware and we are mindful again; let’s not panic. OK, but we’re aware, mindful, and strategic planning to deal with and work through these times. So if you have diabetes, type two diabetes, or type one diabetes, please be extra cautious. If you have asthma and any chronic lung disease, please know. I mean, you know what? You’ve got to decrease your exposure because your body cannot deal with it, right?
[00:16:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And when the craziest components of this virus are that it’s very silent in most cases and most of the situation as we see the numbers come in. Those in the 70s and 80s range are suffering the most significant amount. So many times, it’s the kids who are bringing it to their homes. And when we look at places like Italy, we look at places like Pakistan, where there’s a high concentration of populations and youth; it’s almost like they’re inoculating their homes. And then those with these predisposing issues become the victims. So clearly, we’re seeing that the individuals who may have nothing to do with being exposed are indirectly exposed by those who visit them. So that’s why we, as a population, you’re going to hear it everywhere in the news; as you listen to it consistently, we have to be mindful of those that we surround ourselves with.
[00:16:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I want to jump in and make this correlation that you just mentioned right now, the youth with the elderly and the secondary morbidity risk factors within our population. And I honor and respect the fact that we as a nation, as a society and a city, I’m just going to verbalize this. I know it’s not comfortable. I know it’s very irritable. It has economic effects. It has emotional consequences. It has all of these things. But let me say this, OK? Number one. The youth, the children, they’re not going to school. The child care facilities are shutting down. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, Alex, because now the symptoms were children. You don’t have any symptoms. I mean, we have seen a study right here. Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of CDC, March 31, 2020. We’re talking about less, you know, 25 percent have symptoms. So for children…
How To Protect Our Immune System?
[00:18:02] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And the studies, 25 percent, as you said, 20 percent of people.
[00:18:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: What happens is those children have they’re very resilient. They’re very strong. So now, if they are exposed, they have multiple exposures with other children and teachers. With all that, they go back to their parents, and then their parent is either diabetic or has, you know, Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia, or asthma. They are actually putting their own family at risk. So, it’s such a sensitive area, Alex. And nobody wants to stay at home, and we want our kids at school. I mean, I can tell you right now, you know, it gets to the point where it gets irritable. But I think for the greater good right now, and it’s absolutely good.
[00:18:54] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When we got this on the fact that these underlying issues, you know, as the studies are 60 percent of the people, as you see right, there has one underlying issue. Even if these one, just one, whether it’s heart disease, kidney disease, a chronic liver disorder, these are the underlying diseases that basically and asthma and asthma is an issue, OK? So these are of the three.
[00:19:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Let me ask you what the percentage is? OK, you may or may not know this, but it just came to mind. What percentage of our population is dealing with asthma or asthma-related issues? What are they?
[00:19:33] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s a pretty good substantial amount. I mean, I don’t know the percentage; it’s at least about five percent of the population is chronic or has a predisposing issue with asthma, and if not there in the triggering zones as they trigger that area, let’s assume they get it. Their body becomes distressed in some capacity, and they launch themselves into an asthma attack. That’s just the asthma of not including the inflammatory response of this virus. In terms of the cytokine storm, you know?
[00:20:03] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You know, Alex, earlier this year, my wife Karen had to go to the E.R. due to respiratory issues and things like that. And I mean, it was a trigger again, December, January. You know, it’s like the flu. You know that that time where if you’re on edge, that’s it. OK, that’s it. You won’t recover. And it’s like, Thank God that that happened then instead of now, Alex. Absolutely. I think it, I mean, and then my oldest son, Gabrielle, he’s always had challenges, you know, kind of like that. It’s like, man, it’s so frustrating for children. But I could just imagine this is devastating for people 50 and older.
[00:20:54] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Exactly. It is. It’s an issue that what we have to do is we have to figure out what’s going on. We’re noticing it’s most likely males are 1.3 times the chance to see this.
[00:21:07] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: More males again. Why is it, males?
[00:21:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, yes. We’ll look at this percent smoking two point five times a morbidity risk COPD congestive obstructive pulmonary disease 2.5 to 11 times. Smoking is almost devastating. If you’ve done it and you’ve been ill overnight.
[00:21:30] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is a game-changer. And I want to advocate and motivate and support and show love. Suppose you are smoking, not just smoking, but vaping. Also, I’m just going to throw that out. Absolutely not. You have to agree with me, but hear me out again for the greater good. OK. Vaping, smoking, any of those things, please, it will put you at risk, and of course, certain people need to, you know, again, medications, I mean, I have, you know, patients that are using cannabis and CBDs and all that for chronic pain. And you know what, I understand. Again, it’s for the greater good. But the thing is, do you notice Alex within our conversations that we started five months ago, six months ago? Do you notice the same culprits showed themselves over and over and over again? Do you see that? Look at this. I mean, metabolic syndrome. Did we have the same conversation four months ago? Look at smoking males. Do males remember smoking in overweight? Remember that one? Yeah, crazy. Yeah, it’s crazy for me.
[00:22:47] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: With the kidneys, I mean, if you can see the disparity between two and 50 percent, that’s one that kind of is. It’s perplexing because of the range. But when you understand kidney pathology, there are five stages of kidney disorder from kidney stage level one, which is a mild amount of kidney issue to the severe extent. Usually, we have a blood test going to test that. But if you’re in stage five or stage four…
[00:23:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You will have kidney dialysis, I mean, come on, Alex. I mean, this is going to…
[00:23:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Affect…
[00:23:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Your liver.
[00:23:19] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, the ability to break down the the the byproducts and to purify the blood, so to speak, and to clean it, so to speak, is going to be diminished if the kidney function is impaired in any way. So these are things that we have to look at in terms of what we’re doing now. We have some studies here in China, and they’re already coming in and saying that three percent of the 80-year-olds were the first reports. Of this, 87 percent of the people live between the ages of 30 and 79 years of age, eight percent, 80 percent, only eight percent are in their 20s. Moral OK. However, it’s a negligible mortality rate in the 20s, teens less than one percent. We live in a very culturally similar environment, such as we’re like in Italy, where the children and the grandparents do co-mingle, and specifically, we rate we stay. And, commonly, grandmas live with their families, and the young are involved in that situation. It’s like the perfect storm if the kid gets it and brings it to the parent. Well, that’s precisely what’s going on, the love of the passion of hugging those children, though they carry it, and they don’t have the presentation of the symptoms, which most, you know, a large number of people don’t have this presentation at all. They don’t have symptoms. Eighty percent of people don’t even have symptoms. So when they get that 20 percent of that of mortality, that’s the ones that associate with people with issues. And when they’re in their 80s and 90s, that’s what happens here. We have fatality rates averaging in the U.S. Go ahead, go ahead of two point three percent.
[00:24:57] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: When you threw this out, we’re talking about China now; we’re not talking about the U.S.
[00:25:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, but this was China, but if you look at this, this is the fatality rate in China, so this is the same, very similar to what’s going on in Italy, right?
[00:25:13] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: What I’m thinking about it because I’m looking at three percent, 80 years old and older. Right. And then huge 87 percent, 30 to 79. And I’m thinking. It should be a lot more for a more senior right, Alex. I’m just thinking, you know? Oh, sure.
[00:25:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The reason is I say, Well, no, it’s not so much. At the elderly age, the immune system isn’t as vigorous as when you’re younger. So as what they’re seeing is that the immune system when you’re younger is a much more explosive potential, right? So in that situation, someone in their late 80s and 90s, because we’re having even in our own town, we’ve only had one person over over 80s that passed away. The majority of our people are again in exactly these ranges, which is what they say.
[00:26:07] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And Alex, they said this because I want to understand the article from February with JAMA. Are they saying that the mortality is three percent death or three percent survival?
[00:26:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No mortality percent is mortality. The death rate.
[00:26:24] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, so that’s what I’m saying. I was expecting 80 and older to have higher mortality. That’s right.
[00:26:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. OK, so that makes sense.
[00:26:34] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, I mean, it’s expensive for them to be like 90.
[00:26:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, and actually, if you look at El Paso Times and the Apostle presentation, you’ll see that the parabolic curve actually happens between the 70s and 60s. So that’s where a significant number of people pass away.
[00:26:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Obviously, there’s more. You know what? I’m trying to like, understand the y factor, Alex. So what I’m thinking about is those people from 30 to 79, they have more interaction, social interaction with diversity, people who are 80. Again, I hate to say this; they’re pretty much secluded, like on their own, if we visit like grandma once a month. Exactly, yes. So that’s one thing that’s got to play into, right?
[00:27:19] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s got to play into it. Because the reality is when I see my elderly, many of them want to live on their own. And many of them do. And the perfect storm is having the elderly come cooped up together. And that’s where we have the rest homes where people are actually in the health care, in the hospice areas, in the elderly are sick homes. Those people have high numbers. And you see in the news where those areas are huge, and we see that happening. So I think there’s a lot to be learned as we’re going in this. One of the things that we’re trying to do here is to give people a heads up about what’s going on. And we’ve noticed that an early sign of susceptibility or that you’re being exposed to this is anosmia. Do you believe that Mario? Anosmia, the lack of smell.
How Inflammatory Factors Affect Our System
[00:28:10] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That was very surprising. For me, like the inability to smell if you’re OK because of the damage, like, you know, what’s happening? But again, I’m thinking because of the pathway, the pathogenic path, you’re breathing in all of that. And then there is taste.
[00:28:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: As they both go into effect in the match of the smell is what we taste on. So we see that these kinds of parables or parallels are being noticed. One of the things that we’re witnessing is high inflammation burn induced by vascular inflammatory myocarditis. So in the inflammatory response, we’re seeing if the person is having some sort of inflammatory response. It goes from the lungs to the heart and the liver; these people have myocardial issues in inflammatory areas because they work on the type two receptors, the type two receptors easy to remember type two, there’s two lungs, two valves, two kidneys. OK, so those areas that have the two in there. Type 2s are the ones that are going to get pounded really hard. So when we see that, we understand that there is an association with inflammatory vascular issues for that. Now we also noticed that there’s a lag time. Now we’ve seen here that there’s a five-day lag time. Now the influenza virus hits two at a rate of almost two days. We’ve had a range between actually it’s nearly seven, but they’ve averaged the number to five days, meaning by the time the symptoms are present, you can know that someone’s affected you. The influenza virus nails you at two to three days, a very fast-moving bug. This one doesn’t move as fast, but it has symptoms within five days.
[00:30:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Getting back to what you’re saying about, can you move back to the previous one, please? Absolutely. So again, I just want to reiterate in our conversation, the first five minutes of the conversation when we talked about was about inflammatory processes of the body. Yes, that reaffirms that anything in your body is at a risk factor of inflammation, whether it’s your heart, your lungs, or your kidneys. Those are direct, specific markers, risks, and morbidity factors, all of our outcomes with COVID 19. Absolutely right. There’s no question, so if you are dealing with heart issues, on heart medication, or beta-blockers, please be not just mindful if you’re in that conversation. Again, don’t panic, but listen to our discussion on our podcast and in our, you know, future presentations because we want you to plan and understand, but not to panic and, you know, be all over the place. You see, we want to make it through this time, you know, and not just buckshot, you know, wear a mask. And because I wear a mask, I’m going to be OK. No, you’re not.
[00:31:53] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario, we talked about the common symptoms presented because there’s a lot of confusion about I’m sneezing, and I got it. Right? Yeah. So one of the things is is that we have to look at the common presentation. The virus stimulates interleukin six and interleukin nine interleukin eight to these particular ones, affecting the hypothalamus through the prostate gland and approaching what that does. That creates the immediate response for temperature. So the body, once the body releases those are inflammatory cytokines. It causes the immune system to kick off. So at the immune system gets kicked off. It’s usually done at the launching of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus raises the body temperature, the first one of people’s very first signs. So when we look at this, it’s not. It’s not uncommon that the most common symptom in this presentation is a fever. The fever is the thing that we assess, which; you mentioned that one of the things that we also do is to assess these dynamics to determine if you have a fever. In the beginning, people were sneezing, and it caught us at the same time as the hay fever stuff, you know, in the sneezing that happens locally. So almost if you sneeze, you feel like you were exposed to it. But the reality of sneezing is not the presentation that is noticed on this virus. This virus starts replicating. And by the end, it makes its heyday when it hits the lungs. So by the time it hits and causes a reactionary thing at the lung wall or the alveoli, it causes the inflammatory reaction to spilling out the cytokines that trigger the temperature change. So it’s like it does not like normal. Like, I got hay fever, I got nasal congestion. These people are being affected in a much more drastic way. It goes directly to the lungs. It enters the blood system. It goes, and it trends later does translations of the DNA. And once it starts producing that the body identifies it, the cells die, and then the immune system kicks in. By that time, you begin having congestion. So the cough and the fever are somewhat kind of misplaced sometimes. So we had the one that usually tipped us off the earliest is the fever.
[00:34:13] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And this is where again. It is the same pattern, the same pattern as the flu. Exactly. It would be mindful. I mean, this is not something; it’s not a different animal. No, it’s another species, but it’s in the same family. OK, so we’re talking about fever as the body’s response to fight the virus, correct? Correct. So that’s what it’s doing. Your body responds to fight and increase temperature and look at the correlation again. I want to make things simple because sometimes we get so complicated and things like that. I want to kind of bring it down to the common conversation. Number one, what do you hear in the news and media? The higher temperature in your environment, once it goes over 80 degrees, the COVID 19 decreases. Is that what we’re hearing?
[00:35:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Absolutely. That’s it.
[00:35:15] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Matter of fact, it escalates with fever. So now the body is attempting to do the same thing. The body is fighting to increase its own heat for lack of better words to fight the virus. OK. And then with that, you’re talking about coughing now. Again, cough, shortness of breath. Now it gets a little more specific because, again, it’s not just a runny nose. Many people, you know, all have runny noses and say, Oh, I have COVID 19. Well, that’s not such a significant marker because I have shortness of breath and I have a fever. OK, with coughing. Now that one, we need to get real. Because just for you, coughing without fever and shortness of breath is a different conversation, Alex.
[00:36:08] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: One of the common things is that people have headaches. They have dizziness. These are all the chills. That’s a big one that people sometimes start feeling overall aches. They start having shortness of breath. Once the lungs are involved in the pulmonary exchange of oxygen is limited. That’s where the body starts trying to produce. The heart kicks up the same receptors, and temperature increases to tachycardia. So these are the areas that are being identified so we can see a correlation between those coronary issues that are secondary sputum production. So from here to here, we can see that we got the majority of symptoms from this area. We do end up having headaches. But look, where you notice nasal congestion, it’s way down there. Two percent to five percent of the people have the presentation and COVID virus of nasal congestion. OK? There are cases where we’ve noticed that the method and mode of transmission sadly is hand-washing touching the face in the triangular region of the eyes and the nose area in the mouth. This is an area. Also, oral-fecal is a place with the virus propagates. So when we’re looking at that, we have to make sure that we wash our hands very well when it comes to oral-fecal. It seems disgusting, but the reality is in our population, people may sometimes not wash their hands, or if they do wash their hands, they touch the faucet before they wash their hands. Does it make sense? So at that point, someone comes in after and handles the faucet in a public restaurant. And bam, you got it, and you touched your face.
[00:37:48] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It makes sense, and you don’t want that, Alex. This same conversation, again, is nothing new. So people need to use common sense. They need to be mindful and focused. When you and I go to the gym, OK, let’s forget COVID 19, forget all this stuff, OK? You know, going to the gym to work out. You have everybody’s stuff on the bench, on the dumbbells, on everything. Correct? It will get everyone very aware. So let’s look at it this way again. Go back to the basics of life. Number one, wash your hands before you eat. Wash your hands after you go into a different environment. Wash your hands. Sanitation. Hygiene. Let’s step it up, everybody. Step up your hygiene. Don’t take it for granted, OK? And just because you wear a mask, but you’re not washing your hands. Well, let me tell you, you have your mask over your nose in your mouth, correct? Right. Happens to your eyes. Exactly. That’s a conversation, right?
[00:39:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So you realize that it comes in through the eyes as well.
[00:39:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And then let’s say you eat what you’re going to have to take your mask off to eat. So this is where that exposure is if you don’t wash your hands. And many people are using these hand sanitizers like crazy, right? And they’re dumping it. My point is to wash your hands, correct? Absolutely. And do that. So that’s an excellent point, Alex. Again, when we go to the gym and work out, how often do we wash our hands after leaving the gym? How many times, Alex?
[00:39:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Every single time we don’t leave. We don’t leave until we wash our hands.
[00:39:42] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We wash at least three times before leaving.
[00:39:44] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We wash it the first time, the second time you get the bugs off, and then spend a little bit cleaning the arms and the elbows down because you have to.
[00:39:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And then we are finished? No. Three times, you want to get that movement in and wash it all the way here. You know, like all the way to this, not just here. Don’t just rinse your fingers.
How To Stop Inflammation?
[00:40:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The virus protects itself by an outer coating that is liposomal? So one of the crazy things is just thinking about it. How do you get grease off your dishes? You wash them with soap. Soap destroys the cell wall of the bacteria. So in a situation, you can see that just hand-washing. That’s why everyone talks about it is one of the main reasons we can discuss that. We noticed that the eyes we heard early reports that that the eyes would be like almost they’d all have, like bloodshot eyes. In the beginning, it was a very common presentation. Well, the reason is the immune system is protected very much at the eye level, at the conjunctival level. So one of the things, if something enters through the conjunctiva, you will have a reactionary response at that level. So often, you’re going to see many people producing kind of eye weeping, and because it enters through the eyes as well, it’s not as common as it does in the nose, in the mouth. But it is an area which is which goes to your point. We have to have eye protection. So in that sense, the best thing we can do if we’re in an environment such as a clinic is to have at least some sort of face coverage to prevent that stuff from occurring from floating around anywhere that it goes. Did you want to add anything to that particular point?
[00:41:25] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah. You know, what I wanted to add is, again, the connections with other viruses. You see, I remember what we were dealing with AIDS, right? Fluid exchange eyes. You know, again, aids, HIV, those things need to be renewed in our daily usage and function. Likewise, be aware that just because you’re not touching your mouth, you’re touching your eyes. That’s an open portal. Going to see it is it’s an open portal to our blood-brain barrier. It’s an open portal to our system. And so with that, we mustn’t be only aware of it, but we protect ourselves in those areas. And what I would say is overall, the distancing, you know, I think this is the distancing. I mean, we’re not going to wear goggles everywhere we go, OK? The distancing is essential. And again, that spread, that coughing, OK, you’re not going to catch it by walking next to someone, and all of a sudden, it jumps into your eye. That’s right. Is that OK? To say yes, I’m going to jump into your eye?
[00:42:55] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No. But yeah, that’s what they’re talking about.
[00:42:58] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So what we’re talking about is we’re talking about those things. So I don’t want people to get confused and go, Oh my gosh, I got to wear goggles all day everywhere.
[00:43:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So in terms of once it breaks into the cells and once it does that, one of the great is that once inside the cell, the virus can make up, then 10000 copies itself per hour. 10000 copies. Mario, the cell, once it enters the liposomes in the ribosomes, it takes over the system. It uses an Android system where it just recreates its body parts and creates all the parts to propagate 10000 per hour. That’s per cell.
[00:43:40] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Hey, Alex. And I love this quote by Andrew Pecos. I love that guy, John Hopkins, who knows exactly what is going on. I love this quote. It’s like, you have these unexpected visitors breaking into your house, and they’re there for a while, and they’re going to eat your food. You know what? They’re going to use your furniture, and they’re going to produce 10000 babies and just trash it. And there it is. I love that because that’s where our own immune system has to block these unexpected visitors; say, No, you know what? We’re going to quarantine you, and we’re going to kick you out. And that’s where the older we are, the more susceptible we are, the less resilient we are. And with our secondary morbidities of CVD, diabetes, obesity, stress, sleep, we didn’t talk about that; Alex, lack of sleep we seeing right now. Are you? You and I haven’t come up to deal with these guys.
[00:44:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We will be discussing at length the things that we can do, Mario, regarding the treatment protocols because what we’re just doing is the beginning of this process. But here we discussed, and we discussed this earlier. We talked about the ranges. You can see here that the fatality rate is one point thirty-eight, but you can see that the ratio is the highest in this particular group here. And as you look at that age group between the 60s and the 70s, that much falls in line with our town. And what we’re seeing is that in ours, ours is more like this in this town, and it’s going like this in our side. We don’t have this because we’ve usually done an excellent job, and we were able to identify early that the carriers of these things were non-symptomatic. So we’ve been able to hold that number of the elderly.
[00:45:45] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We are doing a great job. Yeah, in our town. So you know what I mean? We looked at the ratio from the Chinese model earlier, Alex. But again, I want to elucidate and complement the mayor, Mayor Margo, and all county and city officials working diligently. Veronica Escobar and the other representatives, you know what? We are doing great. We’re doing a great job, are doing exceptionally well compared to Houston, Dallas, Austin. We’re doing tremendous, and we need to pull together, work together, support each other to do this.
[00:46:38] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got to tell you this Mario, at that point, Dee Margo, had like a linear cut to this day as soon as we had 65 that were positive. He shut the downtown. He shut the town down. He just basically shut it off instantly. He put into the effects of the greater order, which was the governor’s orders. He put that into effect, closing down the schools, closing down all the aspects, closing down the parks, closing down everything. Because he knew then that his job was before us having one loss of life, just one loss of life, that’s before all that happened. Our mayor jumped on it, and we’re actually fortunate in this particular town where we live that we’ve been able to stop the massive hits that happened because we triggered the parachute push or the pull to slow down the city way before most towns would ever. I doubt there were very many towns that, after 65 people, positively shut it down. We are the 17th largest city in the United States. We are bigger than guess where? We are bigger than Miami. Mario, do you realize that we are bigger than Miami, and we were able to stop it? So to your point? Our mayor did very well by shutting down the city and threatening those promises during those tough times.
[00:47:55] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Leaders have to make tough decisions. Period. You know, we have to they have to step up. May not be popular, may not be, you know. Warm and fuzzy. But for the higher good.
[00:48:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The higher the good, exactly,
[00:48:16] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Exactly. We have to do that. And in another component, I’m not sure if you have a slide on this one, but in terms of our exposure, you know, with our sister city Juarez, Mexico. It’s a different conversation, isn’t it? Yeah. If that were to be considered delineation because they shut down the border.
[00:48:44] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What happened in terms of, let’s say, our sister city has a lot to do with the awareness, also the proximity and the close quarters of how people live here. We’re probably a little bit more spaced out. We closed down the city and did many mitigating factors to prevent distinct from getting out of hand on us. So as we looked at this, we have been able to respond in a bit much more aggressive fashion than what most people would have been able to do. So why does it spread so quickly? This is what we were talking about earlier we were talking about. This is getting to the mechanics of the ACE2 area or receptors. This virus has these tiny prongs and these little spikes they call, and it’s engulfed. It’s a bilipid layer area that protects it. And inside, it has an RNA molecule, a chain that will deploy on you. But the question is, it will land on some body component. And what we’re learning and this goes to the treatment protocols that we’re going to be discussing a little bit later than when we discussed these areas, we can see that the receptors in these areas are the ones that receive it. And from there, it deploys its pod. And once it deploys its pod, the virus actually enters the system through that area. This area, through the membranes, typically through a membrane wall, usually at the alveoli or the tissue that it affects. So these are the areas where the body works on it. So the Antigua’s antibodies treatment disrupts the interaction between the virus and the receptors. So what we’ve been trying to do is to stop it here. We’ve been trying to vaccinate against it directly. And then now, when we do natural effects, we go from the insides’ ability to mitigate the messy reaction in this area. OK. So those are the dynamics of what’s going on. It’s not so much that the virus itself makes the killing, but the inflammatory reaction that the body strikes against it causes the direct response to the virus. So because once the virus kills the cells, the cell membrane dies. Then what? Because macrophages, granular sites, and all the cool things we’ve been talking about actually cause inflammation in the body. This is the virus that we have seen. We talk about the spikes. This is the spike. This is where the ACE2 blocker or the receptor is received, which would be the cell in this area. So in that particular region, that’s how the science of soap, because this right here, this is what you and I were talking about that layer. There is a bilipid layer that gets disrupted with Mario, soap. So just hand-washing would be very useful in this area. I know you’ve been doing a lot of hand-washing in your office, correct? Yes. To avoid certain foods. OK, so you know, we have a DNA of foods, anti-inflammatory diets. We talked about that, you know, one of the things that you and I were discussing: the metabolic diet, the metabolic syndrome diets. You know, these Mediterranean diets, when we’re dealing with anti-inflammatory dyes, are what we would be focusing on. And what we’re going to be talking about now is explicitly focusing on anti-inflammatory foods and foods that prevent sensitivities to our body that cause immune reactions. Because if we mitigate the inflammation, it’s almost like we slow down the inflammatory process in our body or almost create a body that is less susceptible to inflammation. That’s the kind of treatment protocol we want to focus on. Now, when you look at these diets, what sort of proper diets would you recommend in terms of helping with the immunity of your patients?
What Is The GPS In The Body?
[00:52:45] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Very simple. If you can, go back to the previous slide. So let’s look at this one. Let’s look at that GPS conversation. Can you circle that one right there? Excellent check. Yes. Number one. Get rid of gluten foods. Gluten, again, really simple. Gluten is all about the glue that is the glue in your foods, in your breads, preservatives get it out. Eat raw. OK, there you go. Or gluten-free? You can’t go wrong with popcorn. It’s going to be all right. The other thing that we’re looking at again is to decrease the processed foods, Alex. P is for processed. So if it’s in a can, if it’s in a box and it’s been sitting there for more than twenty-four hours or 48 hours, you know what? Let’s not put in your body because obviously those artificial flavorings, those preservatives, which are what chemicals preserve the taste and the process of that food right for storage. That is not something that your body needs. It’s not. You know what? I just need more preservatives to my body because I want to be stronger and increase my immune system. So that’s the P. The P is for preserves. Get rid of them, OK? And then the S is our favorite, and it’s not for supersonic. It’s sugar. Sugar. Get rid of it because sugar is the most potent inflammatory sizzle. It’s that atomic nuclear bomb. OK.
[00:54:48] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You see, and this is when you and I go to the store. We’ve noticed that everything is gone in the process and the sugar aisles.
[00:54:55] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes. From there, the shelves are empty. If it’s a box, it’s gone. And then you go, and then you go into produce man guacamole, you got tomatoes, and you got the spinach is there, but we got the boxes.
[00:55:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, that’s amazing.
[00:55:19] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Of course, the feel-good foods. And we need to be mindful of that because the longer you stay in your house, you will start to munch and crunch and start to have snacks. And usually, those snacks are not baby carrots and celery sticks. No, they’re not. There are those snacks that you buy the Dollar General. For a dollar, and they have a lot of sugars, so that is what we call emotional foods, balanced emotional foods, you want to feel good, you know, drink some wine. Let’s not forget about the wine. You’re emotional. Yes, I did throw that just because I love you.
[00:56:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I don’t do wine.
[00:56:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Anyway, I know you used to be part of it. We want to be mindful of red wine, especially.
[00:56:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, stop the inflammation. And as we’re looking at those anti-inflammatory foods, the same kind of approach to a metabolic-free diet, even a ketogenic diet, is the whole focus is stopping inflammation, and inflammation is at the core of this. If we can squelch the inflammation in our bodies, we prepare our bodies in the event that we become exposed to this virus. So it is a simple approach to almost whenever you prepare your body for an event, a competition, you want to allow it to be as ready as possible. You don’t want it to be beaten down with processes that are inflammatory or reactionary that can burden itself. So it’s a critical component that what you’re saying, no, we have to look at a proper diet equals increased enhanced immunity. It’s as simple when we look at it. A poor diet impairs the immunity reaction, which will cause a more reactive oxygen species. Our processes, known as the body, are a way to destroy things that are reasonable winning control, but anything in excess causes the issues. Suppose our body is already cued up if we have inflammatory foods. If your BMI is above, the main number we’re using was 26, if your BMI, and that’s a measurement of waist versus hip and height. So we have to look at those numbers, and you start to notice that people that are not as healthy, that don’t exercise to a certain extent, those are the people that are more predisposed to this event when it happens. So it’s wise now, under a doctor’s watchful eye, to exercise, do cardiovascular exercising, drink the right amount of water, and make sure you get the proper sleep? Simple things like that will go very far in the healing process or prepare your body for it. Let’s say an event where, as they’re saying at this point in New York, they did a sample of the population. They said that at present, even of the non-symptomatic population that they’re testing in the suburbs, thirteen point nine percent only 14 percent of people already have been exposed to it. So when we’re looking at that, if this thing is going to go throughout a population at the rate that it is, it is wise to prepare our bodies. It is wise to prepare our bodies in an anti-inflammatory way. It is wise to get sleep. It’s wise to get the body mentally prepared and give ourselves this opportunity to eat appropriately to actually prevent a massive assault in inflammation or an inflammatory way that helps the body so things that we can do here to support our immune system. Take a look at that, Mario, so we have that.
[00:59:04] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You love this stuff, Alex.
[00:59:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So when we look at, you know, wild, you know, smash fish, OK, so we look at that…
[00:59:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: What is smashed fish, Alex? Is it like salmon?
[00:59:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It is basically organic fish.
[00:59:23] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: When you look at organic, wild salmon.
[00:59:34] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, we call it smash fish.
[00:59:34] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Call me on my hotline. We all put my hotline at the bottom, Alex; I think we need to.
[00:59:42] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I will ensure that. And by the way, we’re going to get to this one in a few minutes. So in terms of the plant-based diet, we want to make sure that that goes on too. So what kind of things do you do for a plant-based diet, Mario?
[00:59:54] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You know, I will say this. I am basically vegan, Alex, with this wonderful COVID 19. I have become vegan. Yes, that’s right. So I am doing lentil soup. I am doing spinach with balsamic vinaigrette. Oh man, I’m telling you, I’m going crazy.
[01:00:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Fruits and vegetables?
[01:00:24] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh, all the time.
[01:00:26] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Grass-Fed meats?
[01:00:28] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I don’t know if they’re grass-fed, Alex, but I’m still looking for those.
The Gut-Lung Connection
[01:00:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What we’re talking about here is we’re also going to be talking, and we’re going to have a unique addition to this process because one of the areas we’ve learned that the gut-brain is a well-connected organ system. The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal connection is established. Now we’ve known of a great one, which is the intestine two long connection. OK, so we’re starting to see that the intestine and the flora in the intestine have much to do with the reactionary or inflammatory response in the lung. I’m going to be discussing that, too. Here we got a lot of amazing stuff that we will be talking about.
[01:01:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: The gut-lung connection.
[01:01:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The gut lung connection, right? So we’re going to be discussing that. So when we’re dealing with things like high fiber, the whole purpose of the fiber is to feed our bugs right to provide our probiotics or our bacteria that are evident at different stages of the colon. So what we want to make sure is to establish that a high fiber diet does not have roughage. But a variety of fibers is not good to have one type of kale, but different kinds of vegetable green leafy to different hard celery. All other fiber types assist different stages of bacterial growth in the intestinal colon. So we must do this in terms of the nuts and the seeds. The oils. Chicken soup? Yeah. Yeah, you know, chicken soup. Why would chicken soup be so good? We’ve learned that when we look at the ingredients in chicken soup, it has everything from the enzymes to the bio mechanisms that help our body heal better. The bioflavonoids, all those things that help our body heal properly, are in the chicken soup.
[01:02:29]Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I hear this; I don’t know if it’s correct, but it’s an excellent old wives tale, and it goes something like this. Chicken soup is Jewish penicillin or Mexican penicillin. I’m not sure. But you know what? It’s powerful. Yeah, because I mean, you hear that it’s like all of a sudden.
[01:02:56] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It allows the body to react to all these things, right? So when we look at these kinds of things, we see that these foods are all put together in chicken. You know, it’s great. It’s got everything it needs, man. So when we deal with snacks, we deal with ginger. We deal with turmeric.
[01:03:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Turmeric is awesome. Turmeric is what I call liquid gold for your immune system. Anti-inflammatory liquid gold.
[01:03:27] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, organic coffee. And one of the things about coffee is that when we look at the coffees if it doesn’t say organic, it’s full of pesticides. So we need to make sure that all are our coffee and your tea is very organic. The oils, the avocados, the macadamias. These are important because they establish normal inflammatory responses.
[01:03:54] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I love guacamole. Avocados. Great fats, plentiful, I mean, I’m telling you that one, I can eat that for like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
[01:04:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I can too. And there’s the problem that it’s too good; actually, it’s kind of really good. We got all these things like the turkey tail. Mario, do you like that turkey tail? Now, why would turkey tails be so good, huh?
[01:04:19] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Turkey tail is so good when you think about that.
[01:04:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Culturally speaking, my parents would love that. They eat that as the essential part of the rest of the turkey. Oysters, lion’s mane. We’re going to have to kind of figure out where to get these kinds of things.
[01:04:36] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, I’ll go with this one. And you can circle this one. Shiitake mushrooms are my favorite. They’re awesome. And why is that? I just like, say it’s right there. There it is. I like saying its name.
[01:04:57] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Shiitake.
[01:04:58] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I don’t know. It’s cool. I mean, Turmeric. I don’t know. It sounds kind of deadly, man. Like that tomb turmeric. What are you going to do? Shiitake is cool. You got to eat fun foods, Alex.
[01:05:12Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario, you said right here, clean eating. Clean eating is one of the most important foods.
[01:05:20] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Red peppers, blue peppers, green peppers, purple eggplants. I mean, the more color, the better. More the rawer, the better. I mean, keep it simple. And, of course, there are so many things like Golden Seals. You can go into the many herbs like crazy. Yeah, this I’m telling you. Just go to basics. I mean, you may not find my grass-fed meat. I mean, I don’t know if you have a farm or something, where are you going to go after the chickens, but just make it simple. And I would say during this time of quarantine, being at home with your family, spending more time than you ever have maybe wanted to spend with your husband or wife and children, perhaps. But also, there are no more excuses for you not to eat healthily. Yes. Not to cook your meals. OK. There are no more excuses. And, and I would say again in our prior conversations, the blessings of COVID 19. I know people probably like, Whoa, what’s he talking about? Which was Dr. Jimenez, and not talking about this is risky or crazy guys. OK, well, let me tell you. Make put this into your testimony. Yes, utilize this time to come closer together to your family. Start to cook together and eat together. You have no excuse, then you can’t say, well, I have a meeting at seven o’clock. And you know, you have a meeting, maybe you have no meeting. How about that one? You have all day to cook. Look at this video, go on YouTube, go somewhere, and cook your own meal with your wife, daughter, and son. Like, start cutting some stuff. Make sure you don’t cut your fingers because I know that’s new art for you. OK. And fix it in like, eat over it. And I like, you know, hey, how does it taste? I think it needs more salt. Do you know? And you know what? Let’s make it spicier. This is such an unbelievable opportunity to take advantage of it, guys. Yes, you may not see this time ever in your lifetime.
Conclusion
[01:07:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I want to say, Mario, I get that. You’re absolutely right. You hit it on point. It is a very important time to retool our bodies, fix them, and replenish them. It almost seems as if the reports are coming in because the world has been different since that first presentation we made. The carbon footprint is a whole lot smaller in the skies, and the seas are clearer than they’ve ever been before. If that pause is good for the Earth, that pours is good for us as humans. So we need to take that moment and appreciate it. We’re going to be coming across with these, you and I, we’re going to be doing these presentations. We will be doing this webinar will stand the next one next week, particularly. We’ll probably do more this week on other subject matters with this particular report on health and wellness and specifically on immunity. We need to hit it’s a four-part series. We will be hitting this in as we have many more components to discuss. We’re going to be going deep into the actual things that we can do because from what we gather, the initial onset was to give us some list of supplements that we could take. We gave those on our prior presentations and our and our YouTube presentations, and they’re there for you to review. But the and it’s under the antiviral strategies that we did. But this will elaborate on the things that we can do to supplement our immune system and make our immune stronger, not just the supplementation but the nutraceuticals. We’re looking at it from a neutral genomics area, a neutral genetics component. We’re going to be talking biochemistry, but we’re going to be dealing more realistically. So today was the beginning of our new presentations that we’re going to be doing here with Eventbrite and through Eventbrite protocols. We’re now going to discuss our topics and present them to the population out there, not just to El Paso. Hopefully, we can help change more than just the clinical components and the biochemistry and people’s lives, but also the spiritual components of their lives because that’s the functional medicine approach. Our whole goal is to prepare the body to heal itself to deal with complex degenerative issues and holistically assist the body. So wellness components and natural medicine are a very important part of what we’re doing. So we look forward to doing that. And Mario, thank you so much for being part of this because you and I will make an impact. Little by little, day by day, hour by hour, we’re going to be making some impact. So it looks very good in terms of our presentation, and we look and see if you can share this out there, and I’ll give it to the people. Anything else, Mario?
[01:10:34] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, I want to reaffirm and enlighten you, Alex, and the vision you started and being so gracious and inviting me to the party, as they say, this is not a conference. It’s fun. Yeah, it’s not about us. This is about. Impactful health, functional medicine. It’s about motivating, inspiring, and supporting life change and legacies. And I am happy and look forward to connecting with as many people as possible, not only in our community but also in the viewers. We are here to share. And we’re here to be authentic. And we’re here to create the simplicity of life function. So please take the time for yourself and your loved ones. Take the time because you have it now to let them know how much you love them, how much you forgive them, how much you care for them. And then I will say this. Cook a meal together, eat it, and share the love.
[01:11:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Amen, brother. We’ll catch it there. We went a few minutes over, but we’ll be ready for next week. Brother, I love you, and we’ll keep on going forward. OK, but so I ended. I’ll call you in the back end. Bye-bye, brother.
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 and Dr. Ruja discuss why chiropractic care is important to the body’s overall wellbeing.
Why Chiropractic Care Is Important?
[00:00:01] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario, hi. We’re talking here to Dr. Mario Ruja. We are the power chiropractors; what are we calling ourselves, Mario? What are we going to say?
[00:00:12] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You know, I’m going to tell you right now it’s called the Bad Boys of Chiropractic.
[00:00:16] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The Bad Boys of Chiropractic. Yes. All right.
[00:00:19] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So we’re going to get nasty up in here. We’re going to talk about stuff that people don’t want to bring up, Alex.
[00:00:26] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, we are live.
[00:00:27] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Well, we’re live. Good. I love it live. I hate dead.
[00:00:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, we’re going to discuss the power of chiropractic and why people have chosen around the world to choose chiropractic as a great option for treatment protocols and things beyond most people’s experiences. But in our new modern world, we understand what chiropractic is. Mario, I know this is an excellent topic for you, and then you and I have discussed this on many occasions. And tell me a bit of why chiropractic has been impactful in your life?
[00:01:07] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I’ve gone through many experiences, especially in the area of sports. Again, I played high school, college soccer. I have always enjoyed being active, from CrossFit to marathons, biathlon, and other things. That chiropractic synergize is synergistic with the movement of life, and life, in general, is straightforward. Number one, it is simple. We don’t need technology. No batteries are required, no facilities are required. You can receive chiropractic anywhere at any time with our hands. These are the instruments. These are the power tools from ancient China to the Mayans to the Egyptians. They had chiropractic but by different names and different presentations. But in those ancient worlds, chiropractic was only for the upper class. The kings and queens and their families only because they knew that chiropractic opened up and optimized the body’s energy, the energy of life and movement. So it wasn’t for the everyday folks; it was for the elite only. And so that’s the beauty of it. So when we look at chiropractic, we look at the cycle that went through, and in the beginning, it was for the elite, and then it was lost. And then with Didi Palmer and BJ Palmer and the whole lineage of chiropractors, the founders, the pioneers, the warriors, you know, that went to jail. Yeah, they went to prison to stand for the art and science of the healing art of chiropractic. And that’s amazing. I mean, it is incredible how people don’t realize that. And then coming full swing 360 to now out of that, it is accepted by all insurances, all providers. The VA is covering chiropractic. 101 percent. All I would say is every pro team in the world. OK, maybe that’s taking a little far, but I know for sure the pro teams in the U.S., all of hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, and such volleyball, every one of the high elite athletes, they all have chiropractic in their corner. They all have chiropractic in their toolkit. Armstrong had it all of the tops. I mean, Phelps had it. I can go on. Bolt had it. You name atop gold medalist, and I’m going to tell you that they had some hands put on them to calibrate their spine, their energy. And most of all, Alex, I’m going to tell you this is what I want to share with our viewers and listeners. Chiropractic is one of the most potent tools and instruments, not just for healing when you’re hurt, but it is for optimizing energy, function, and recovery. I can tell you, and I’ve worked with powerlifters with Olympic lifters, and after the adjustment, they could squat more and bench press more immediately. I have people coming off the table. Olympic athletes come off the table, and they jump up and down. They say I feel lighter, jump faster, and run faster. So that is unbelievable. We are here to empower everyone, and it is cost-effective. Like, let me tell you, we don’t need to high instrumentation. We don’t need $2 million worth of equipment and all of that. This is the power to the people, Alex. And you are an incredible athlete and both of our families. We have astonishing athletes for children. I want to ask you this because you dealt with bodybuilding, and we have so many chiropractors that are bodybuilders, former athletes. How has chiropractic impacted your performance and recovery in terms of sports?
How Chiropractic Influenced Dr. Jimenez?
[00:06:13] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Stepping back a little bit, Mario, one of the things when I first decided to become a chiropractor, when I first had to assess what type of profession was in line with what I believed, I was an athlete. I was a bodybuilder, was a powerlifter, and we’re talking about in the 80s. And yeah, I got to say that I had my buddy Jeff Goods, and we were like the strongest guys at 16. I played in South Florida, so it’s very competitive in football in South Florida, and I was a big boy. Now, I played against Bennie Blades, Brian Blades. I played with Michael Irving. I played at Piper High School, and we dealt with high-performance athletes. Every day. I got to see up close the Miami Dolphins. I got to see Andre Franklin, Lorenzo White, who worked out in my gym. This was an amazing kind of world I lived in. When I decided to look into a profession, I was looking for a profession focused on health, mobility, agility, and things to touch people. And that’s what I was. I was a health care provider. I had no idea that the day I decided to be a chiropractor and met a chiropractor, he told me what he did, and I had no idea what one was, what I did was I asked them, Hey, can I do this? Can I do nutrition? Can I do weightlifting? Can I do plyometrics? Which was the new thing back in the day. They didn’t call it CrossFit. It was a dynamic movement. It was agility training. In that process, what I did was I asked them a couple of questions, and he checked mark every one of my boxes. I go, I can I touch people? Can I work on people? Can I do things? Can I help people become better? I was passionate about the elderly. I loved that I came from a health care background, so I enjoyed that kind of stuff. But when I went into chiropractic college, believe it or not, I had not seen an inside of a chiropractic office other than the philosophies that I had read on what there was in books. I could say LAPD of Britannica career books on what chiropractic is, but there was no such thing as the internet in 1985 to find and reference stuff and search it as we can today. I think Prodigy began around the nineteen nineties. So this is where I got the idea. When I walked into the school, I was hit with a required class, the course on the history of chiropractic. I had no idea that I would go into a profession where the leader had been thrown in jail about 60 times. You know what we learned, and we can try to figure out why only 60 where did it stopped? Why not at the sixty-one time, 60 first time that he stopped getting arrested. The world changed when they figured out what we were doing, and the arts of mobility impacted the world. We understood the dynamics of the movements. We had not understood embryology to that level. Today, we’ve learned that the first notal cord of the neural groove becomes the spine. It is the central circuit. You drop the wires, cables, and infrastructure when you look at a formed city. That’s what we were designed, and our creator designed a system that starts at the spine. And from there, it builds in the dynamic movement of the cells as they develop and grow, creating a structure that is designed for motion. It is designed to move. It is not a surprise that many of the diseases and pathologies that you and I treat are in some way linked in co-mingled together with motion itself. Now the world’s waking up to this, and as they wake up, we’re going to be the bad boys of chiropractic, and we’re going to teach people about what we do and what it is that we articulate. Because every day I get the the the the privilege to touch people in an area where they’re not supposed to be touched, their neck, their spine, their joints. You and I do that every single day. We have the pleasure of assessing and treating the dynamics of human existence and understanding that the creator loves motion. He’s got a; I’d even say a fetish. Everything moves from planet spin; light moves, joint moves, roots grow, birds sing, and the wind blows. Motion is part of all existence. So the closer we get to motion, it becomes the most important thing that we associate with God’s intention. And that’s the huge thing. So when you asked me that question, where did I begin? We have to go back and step back and kind of begin at the beginning and ask ourselves, where did this freak come out from? Which is BJ Palmer, Didi Palmer comes up with the philosophies these crazy guys that came up with that, and we’re here to kind of tell the story, at least from about 50, some almost 60 years of chiropractic treatment between you and I. We can tell the story about that, but I hope that gives you an idea of what started my belief in motion in chiropractic because it’s a passion for who we are and what we do. Our children are athletes. We have given our children to the arts of motion. No child in our families is yours, and my family has not lived with motion as part of the thing that they wake up, and they got to do something. Whether it’s volleyball, tennis, baseball, whatever they do, soccer and judo.
[00:11:39] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes. And you know, Alex, that is the reason why we are the bad boys of chiropractic because you know what, B.J. Palmer, Didi Palmer, and the whole crew. I mean the founders of National College in Chicago, St. Louis, Logan Chiropractic, all of those. They were the bad boys. They were considered outlaws. These are not real doctors. What are they doing? You know, they’re messing up the stuff, you know? And let me tell you, just like we talked about in the last conversation, you know, in the beginning, the people will look at innovative technologies and innovative thought and healing as being terrible and abusive. So if that’s bad, they try to put it out and criticize it. Then after a while, they see that it works in the results. Chiropractic is about results. The bottom line? It cannot lie. It can’t, Alex. This is the beauty of chiropractic. It either works, or it doesn’t. There’s nothing to cover it up. We cannot cover it up. We can’t give you a magic pill to make you feel better.
[00:13:02] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, you and I got to get out of its way. You got to get out of its way because it’s steam. It’s past me. I jumped on it as a young chiropractic student, and when it took me on for a ride that I didn’t know, we got to get out of this way because it’s an intense motion is what life’s about. And this is what you and I know, and I believe that you and I have experienced a love for this science, and we probably developed it more passionately. The more the years we had, huh?
[00:13:30] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh, absolutely. And we’ve gone through a lot of what I call the roller coaster of life, the ups and downs and sideways the rocket launches and the slamming on brakes and your story. I love your story, Alex. And mine is much different, and I think every chiropractor has their own story because this is not something you just pick up. After all, someone said, Oh, you know what? I think you should be a chiropractor. Like what? We hold on. We need to pray for you. Don’t do that.
[00:14:01] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, chiropractic chooses you.
How Chiropractic Chose Dr. Ruja?
[00:14:02] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is it. I got smacked head-on in a car collision. Yes, I was hit in a car, spun around, and went through six months of rehab and orthopedic and all of that. And at the end, I had residual pain. I had residual issues, and I did not want to accept those limitations. I was a college athlete, and there is no way that I’m going to go, “OK, well, let’s take a pill for the rest of my life.” It wasn’t going to happen, Alex. And somehow, my buddy said, “Hey, my grandmother will see this doctor, and she feels fantastic, and she’s moving. She’s walking every day.” I said, “OK, who is this guy?” Dr. Farense in Savannah, Georgia. If he’s around, give me a call now because I love you.
[00:14:53] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: How do you spell Dr. Farense?
[00:14:54] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I don’t know how you spell it because I can’t remember, but I’ll look it up. But let me tell you that guy. I walked to his office and said, “Look, I’m banged up. I’m jacked up. I need some help because I’m not happy. I am just not happy. I want to get back to my performance, my biking.” I cycled, I ran. I did marathons, half marathons. I couldn’t sit still. I can’t sit still even today. I’m 54, and I’m just getting warmed up.
[00:15:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? I don’t know him, and I probably have never heard of his name. But you know what you did say that you referenced a chiropractor who influenced your life. This is correct. This is a profession that we were about the fifth generation, and we honor our leaders, our teachers. And it’s nice. I mean, Dr. Farense may not have ever realized that one day, 30 years later, a chiropractor was going to mention his name because we have to honor B.J. Palmer, Didi Palmer, the teachers, and the professors that made it an influence on your life. Amazingly, we were following through with this. We have a purpose that is beyond even time itself. It’s incredible what you’re doing.
[00:16:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It’s growing, Alex. It’s building momentum. This is about momentum, and what is momentum? Movement. You can’t build momentum sitting down. You cannot build momentum, just accepting average, accepting mediocrity, and accepting, well, that’s just how it is now. So this is where the power of breaking barriers of crushing limits is all about chiropractic. I just want to bring in that thought is that movement, that calibration. And this is where I get passionate. You know, I’ve been doing this for 25 years plus, and everywhere I go, I just got back from Chihuahua. Yeah, I just got back from Chihuahua, and I was there for four days.
[00:16:55] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, the commercial, says “Donde Jale?” “It’s a machine.” Chihuahua commercials are pretty badass.
[00:17:03] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes, I love it. So let me tell you, wherever I go, I open my mouth, and they said, “Dr. Ruja, my neck hurts. Me duele me culo, ay si.” You know what? What can you do? And that’s it. That’s my intro, Alex. That is my intro, and I start to dance. I see myself as salsa. Merengue. Yeah, I see myself doing that, and they look at me like, “What is this guy doing?” And I’m going to tell you right now, I put my hands on them, and they’re never the same again. They will never forget that. And each one of them, they get up. I don’t care if it’s on the bed. I don’t care for it; it’s on a bench. Yeah, I said it.
[00:17:44] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Mario has an international license.
[00:17:48] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s right.
[00:17:49] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: He is internationally known.
[00:17:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Absolutely. And let me tell you, the impact is clear. It’s about chiropractic. I don’t need it, and we do not need special equipment. The special equipment is care. It’s care. It’s called love. It’s honoring our brothers and sisters and wishing them the best. And it’s healing hands. And even in the Bible, it says, “Lay hands, lay hands to heal.” That’s what it’s about. We got to lay hands and don’t be afraid. And I’m not talking about laying some hands. You know, momma used to lay some hands on my butt when I misbehaved. I mean, even my dad, he used to lay some hands. He wasn’t a chiropractor, but he adjusted me. He adjusted my attitude. Do you know what I’m saying, right, Alex? Do you remember those hands?
[00:18:38] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, I remember. I remember running, and it was whatever my mom had something near her, she would throw it.
[00:18:45]Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh, it was the chancla.
[00:18:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I was talking my mouth enough, and she had a fork in her. She stuck me with a fork on my butt when I misbehaved. Corporal punishment was the way.
[00:18:56] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah. It wasn’t abused, was it, Alex. Yeah. But we learned to move away from her quickly. That’s why you did so well in football, Alex. It’s called plyometrics, and that’s how you jump.
[00:19:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, yeah, and it’s good as some of my counterparts, but they were very good. But I have to tell you, that’s it. You know what? When we look at it, I wonder about the science of chiropractic and how it’s evolved over and continues to evolve. It links so many other sciences, and there is no other word that describes what chiropractic is other than holistic. It is a holistic approach. It is a natural way of healing the body through motion. And like I indicated before, I think God’s got a fetish for it because he gives us so many damn joints, and this whole thing was our design. And in that process, we heal.
[00:19:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now, Alex, I’m going to stop you right there, and I want you to grab this thought. Chiropractic has often been limited to back, you know, like the neck and mid-back and lower back, and that’s it. But let me tell you, I got news for you. Chiropractic for the whole body. Hands, wrists, elbow, shoulders, knees, ankles, feet. OK, chiropractic is about calibrating, balancing, aligning, and optimizing the whole body. Again, this is not something that I specialize in cranial adjustments, cranial for concussions. There are chiropractors, and we will have to talk more about this in the future. But the specialty of chiropractic goes all the way from pediatrics to geriatrics to sports chiropractic, cranial-sacral chiropractic, biomechanics. I mean, orthopedic, neurological.
[00:21:01] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, there are so many branches that it does that today wasn’t present 20 years ago. No, it was present, but it was in its beginning. Today, the world wants it, demands it, demands specialization, even chiropractic for just a thing, a sport, a movement, a low back, a sacral technique, its cervical technique.
[00:21:25] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And this is what we want to empower as the bad boys of chiropractic. It’s about getting in your face and getting real.
[00:21:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: In your face.
Holistic Approaches to Chiropractic Care
[00:21:38] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*:Yes, that’s right. We will grab your attention. OK? You’re not falling asleep tonight. So in chiropractic, we have specialists. Atlas Orthogonal. They only adjust to vertebrates, atlas, and axes. Very specific. And I love this. We will honor chiropractic, all the specialties and nuances, and all those excellent flows to segments, the atlas, and axes. These are right under your cranium with the Farina Magnum. This is where the whole area of the flow of energy from your brain is. It goes from the brain, brain stem into the spinal cord; that area is so empowering that chiropractic has gotten so specialized that they only adjust special X-rays. Very unique. It’s like high level. I don’t do that, but I tell you what, I love those chiropractors to do that, and I want them to do more of it, and we want to enlighten them. And we want to support every chiropractic in the world, not just the nation. The word chiropractic is all over the world, Alex, all over.
[00:23:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Everywhere you went, I went to school like yours. It was Palmer, and yours was Palmer. I was national, not too far from each other within a few three or four hundred miles apart from each other. We would do that there was a thirst for chiropractic from different countries and these countries, from Japan, from France. They would send their students to learn in our environments because the laws differed in those days. These were my Chinese, my Japanese cohorts that spent in the dorms just to learn what we were doing out in the world of the states. Our school was welcome. Our schools were very and always have been an international attraction to teach the students. And today, now those countries have their colleges. You know, France has its own college. England has its college. This didn’t exist. You cannot stop it. No, it is coming, and it is motion. And as you said, you know, chiropractic has always been about all joints. You cannot talk about an ankle, and then you cannot talk about the neck. You cannot deal with it. And if you want to see how well connected, well, I’d like you to walk in the middle of the night and step on a tack and see how it’s all connected, and you’ll see the body dance in its dynamics, the cerebellum, the way you mentioned it sits on the foramen magnum. That is a huge, important part. The sciences developed due to understanding the connectivity between the foramen magnum, midbrain, and medulla have been unbelievable over the last two or three decades. So we are in a world of awakening, OK? An awakening of what chiropractic is. So as we go out, as the bad boys, we’re going to go deep. We’re going to get intense. We’re going to go deep into the world of science because, in today’s world, we have nothing but confusion. Misunderstanding. Yes, today, one thing some vitamin talks about this, then in the next day, it causes this. So one supplement does this. One drug starts with a better outcome. But I’ve got to tell you the story of Bextra, Celebrex within months of each other, of all of us taking it, they were pulled. You know what? We come and go. So the bottom line is natural. Approaches of holistic dynamics are the things that heal people and prevent them before they become clinical, and that’s what we do.
[00:25:35] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s the area that chiropractic is so powerful. I would say, in my opinion, I’m a little biased because, you know what? I’m going to get real with you. Yes. How is chiropractic the number one motion optimization, recovery, and maintenance system globally?
[00:25:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Repeat it. Chiropractic is the what? Yes, it is number one in line.
[00:26:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s right. Listen carefully and replay this one. That’s right. You play it and put on your favorites. And you know, what do all this stuff? Whatever you’re going to do with this video, just put on rerun, baby. We are the number one optimization system for biomechanics from the world’s movement for maintenance and recovery. In the world, we do not wait for the pain to occur. We crush pain before it happens. This is like having your Bugatti. OK, you are the Bugatti, and there are no other parts; there’s nothing to do. There are no parts to buy and to take over. Again, there are no parts of you; whatever you’re born with is what you got. The most critical, most powerful thing you can do for yourself is to utilize chiropractic art. That means finding chiropractic in your area. And I mean find the real one and sit down and say, You know what? I want to talk to you. What are you up to?
[00:27:24] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When you said real, Mario. Because there are some people out there that come on, come on, you know what, I’ve got to tell you…
[00:27:30] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We are the bad boys of chiropractic.
[00:27:31] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? Come on; we’re going to go there. We’re going to go there, Mario, because you have got to find the right one.
[00:27:37] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You got to find a real one, and you know what? This is what I’m saying. There’s deadwood in every forest. Yeah, that’s what Mama told me. Yeah, in every forest, I’m talking about chiropractic. There’s deadwood, orthopedic, everyone, teachers, and there’s deadwood. Some folks want to get some benefits, and let me tell you, get the real one. Sit down face to face, get real with them, ask them some fundamental questions, and look them up. And this is what we’re about. We’re about results.
[00:28:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, Mario, here’s the thing when you get it when you go to a chiropractor, and this is now I can say this because I am one. I would never disparage any other profession because there are significant physical medicine sciences. Physical therapists, you know, these people know what they’re doing. These people have unbelievable science. But again, physical therapists, massage therapists, orthopedics. We all wrap around the science of motion into it and embrace it. So when we look for somebody, it’s a most offensive thing for me to hear when you go to a chiropractor. Someone went to a chiropractor, and the guy pulled out a piece of paper and said, OK, do some exercises, and that guy didn’t touch. You see, we are chiropractors who touch people; we wrap around them like pythons. Suppose your chiropractor isn’t wrapping around you and working around and trying to recalibrate you, time for a new chiropractor structurally. It’s not the practice of chiropractic.
[00:29:07] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Why don’t we get real since we’re the bad boys of chiropractic and we’re going to get down and dirty, OK? Number one, Chiro means hand. Practic means this is practical. That’s right. Please don’t ask me to spell it.
[00:29:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, chiro means in atomic the carbon atoms, they’re equal mirror images.
How Does Chiropractic Compliments Other Professions?
[00:29:28] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes. So, the point is this. Again, you go to a chiropractor; they better lay some hands on you. You know what? It is highly recommended to remove some bones. They do all of that unless it is a specialty. Now here it is, like atlas orthogonal. And some other specialties like these are like high-end stuff. They need to do that, and it’s not about rubbing your back. That’s a different conversation for a different day. It is about creating movement calibration within the whole body. And also, I would like to add this complementing all of the healing arts around us. We complement orthopedics. We complement physical therapies, surgeons, neurosurgeons, allottees, occupational therapy. We complement psychologists, psychiatrists. We compliment teachers. We compliment coaches
[00:30:30] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We compliment endocrinologists.
[00:30:32] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes, we compliment the world. We don’t interfere. We are the ones who break down the interference and create clarity in the energy flow of the body. That is that parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous system, autonomic nervous system that controls and creates harmonics, and 50 trillion-plus cells create who you are. Trillions with a T.
[00:31:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. No, it’s amazing. You and I have been a part of a movement era. You know what I share with you that we’ve seen the attempts to limit the professions, whether it be physical therapists who have been determined by different forces out there. Each century had its limitations on other practices: the chiropractors, the optometrists, and the psychologists. But what we’ve learned is that you can’t hold it down. As you said initial results, you cannot stop the movement. But these chiropractors are working in Indonesia, Africa, Ethiopia, and special areas of all over Europe. They’re treating their patients in different ways. And one of the great things is the the the bringing in of other professions. The integration where the word integrative medicine has come in, integrative medicine is the form of sciences that brings all whatever it takes. All the dynamics and all the arts together to make it work. From there, we treat it in what’s the newest world of chiropractic is functional medicine. Our functional medicine is now the connector of many other holistic approaches, and it holistically looks at the body. How can we not take joints? How can we not have psychiatric issues, psychological issues, and traumas? Well, emotion is an important part of the therapy. If it’s endocrine, a metabolic disease, or metabolic syndrome, motion is in the treatment protocol. Neurological Parkinson’s neurodegenerative issues…
[00:32:48] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue…
[00:32:51] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Intestinal issues.
[00:32:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Depression. Yes, anxiety, I can tell you right now. And this is science talking to you. This is science. Number one, you don’t move. You will get depressed. You don’t move. Let me have someone let. Let’s do an excellent little test. Let me have you stay in bed for a month. Let me see what happens to you. Yeah. Let me know what happens to you. Let me have you sit down in that chair for a month, and then you tell me you’re not depressed. You tell me you don’t sleep and tell me you don’t have metabolic syndrome. If you don’t have one, you will. And this is where chiropractic compliments the power of life and movement, creating beautiful harmonies. So we can continue. The word continues to go and workout every athlete. I will say this. We don’t have enough chiropractors in the world. We don’t have enough chiropractors, period. Every human being should have a chiropractic visit at least four or five times a year, at least. Why? Because this is the problem. You know, we get into this chronic pain management. We get into all this disease care. This is the problem, Alex. We are reactive. Our society is focused on disease and managing the disease. I would like to share, empower, motivate, and challenge the world as the bad boys of chiropractic. It’s about challenging, folks. And the challenge is this. Why don’t we decrease the number of people with diabetes? Why don’t we reduce the number of people with depression anxiety? Why don’t we decrease that by movement? Movement cost? Yes. The cost is less.
Conclusion
[00:34:48] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, you know what? Welcome to our show. This is Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja. We are the bad boys of chiropractic, absolutely going to expose the realities of what we have learned and what we have understood in the physical sciences and how they correlate with different issues, diseases, and disorders. We’re going to develop protocols and advanced treatment dynamics that are esoteric, and we’re going to bring it in. And you know what? We’re going to use science. We’re going to use real science, and we as the bad boys because there will be a lot of thumbs down in terms of what we say. But there’s going to be a whole lot of thumbs up in terms of our dynamics. Because Mario, we have it. It is our legacy is; what do we have to do? You mentioned the other day that you know what this is, what you wanted to do. We need to teach people what we have learned. We not only need to teach people what we have to wake up those people that are willing to and want to teach and give of their lives for the future of chiropractic and physical medicine, physical therapies, orthopedic surgeons. We need a neurologist, anyone in the physical world. It seemed that even if we talk about the physical medicine doctors, we’re going to associate with all other professions. It doesn’t take you far drop in to throw here to realize that endocrinologists are linked to a rheumatologist. Rheumatologists are linked to chiropractic. Chiropractic is correlated to the orthopedist. Whether it’s neurology or the practicing of different dynamics, this whole thing of science will affect the future of what we have in health care. It will be a change, a movement, and we will be known as the bad boys of chiropractic, which we’re going to expose. We will do an exposé of many different topics, and I welcome you, Mario. We are brothers, and we have to teach the future people. So check-in; make sure you guys keep your ideas because we could talk forever, by the way. Yeah, Mario, I get to speak with them like we can sit here till four o’clock in the morning. Our families will not like that. We will come to you and teach you what we know and share with you. And I hope it matters. I know, Mario, you got a couple of thoughts.
[00:37:03] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, and this is the thought. Chiropractic is about optimizing movement. Optimize and move in a body, creating recovery, optimal recovery, maintenance, and complementing all of the healing arts. We are here to compliment all of the healing arts. Orthopedic, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and psychiatric psychological counseling are all here to complement educators. We’re here to complement and optimize students in their performance in school. We’re here to complement and optimize coaches and athletes to their highest level of life. And most of all, I would like to say this to create closure for our next show. There’s plenty of room at the top, the bottoms crowded, so come on with us, you got bad boys at the top.
[00:38:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: With that said, we’re all closing up here, and we look forward to making sure this works well for all of us and ensures the knowledge for all the people we’re here to come and in the future.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez DC, Health Coach Kenna Vaughn, Truide Torres, Alexander Jimenez, and Astrid Ornelas discuss and focus on a deeper look at understanding metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It is a special day, guys. Today we’re going to be talking about metabolic syndrome. We’re going to be focusing on the sciences and the understanding of what metabolic syndrome is. Today, we’re going to be bringing out some specialists and people from all over the globe in different directions to discuss the topics of metabolic disorders and how it affects people in our local communities. The particular issue that we’re going to be talking about today is metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome affects a whole lot of people now in terms of it to be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome; we have to have a couple of disorders situations that present them that are things such as blood sugar issues, high blood pressure, the ability to have triglycerides off high-density lipoproteins and also the measurements of belly fat in our diet. So today, one of the remarkable things that we’re going to be doing is bringing a panel to us to you guys to see what metabolic syndrome is now. Today is a special day because we’re going live on Facebook Live, and we’re presenting the information for the first time. So this is our first go at it, guys. So give us a thumbs up if you feel we did well. If not, let us also know because we’re learning and going through a process to get to our communities and teach them about metabolic disorders. Today, we have Astrid Ornelas, who will be talking about metabolic syndrome and specific dietary nutritional dynamics to help improve it. We also have Kenna Vaughn, which is our coach, that’s going to be discussing how we interact with patients. We also have our patient here, Trudy, a live individual who has had metabolic syndrome. And in the distance, we also have Alexander Jimenez, who’s out at the National Unity, Health Science, and Medical School, to discuss the associated and linked to metabolic disorders to give us detailed information. Detailed insights as to what metabolic syndrome is and how it affects our communities. Now what to be critical about it is, is this is a severe subject matter. It seems kind of that we chose this particular topic because that it’s affecting so many people. So many of my patients that we see today, even though I have a musculoskeletal practice, are directly related to inflammatory disorders. And when we’re dealing with inflammatory issues, we’re going to be dealing with insulin and how it affects the body. Now, as insulin goes in this process, every one of these particular dynamics that we’re going to be discussing and our future podcasts when we deal with metabolic syndrome is directly related to insulin and its effects on the body. So as we go through these dynamics, what we want to do is we want to bring out each point. I can present today Kenna Vaughn; who will be talking about what happens when we offer a patient and what we do when a patient has metabolic disorders? So we’re going to present it to Kenna. Kenna, can you tell us a bit about what happens when a patient presents with metabolic syndrome, what they look for, what we look for, how we assess it, and how we treat the issues?
Kenna Vaughn: I’d love to. So when the patient first comes in, and we see those signs of metabolic syndrome, the patient isn’t always aware because, on their own, these symptoms that make up metabolic syndrome are not necessarily a red flag. However, when we start to see them getting combined, we realize that we need to take control of this right now. So when that patient first comes in, and they’re telling us about the symptoms that they’re having, we start tracking it, and we make a detailed history on them to see if it’s something that has been going on for a long time, if it’s more recent, things like that. And then we’re going to take it from there. And we do more detailed lab work, and then we look at the kind of even their genetics. Genetics is a huge part of it. And we see what diet would best work for them and just make those realistic goals. But we also really want to make sure we give them that education they need to be successful. Education is tremendous, especially when it comes to something that can be as confusing as metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We discuss how we can give our patients take home dynamics and things of value to change the metabolic syndrome once we determine that someone has metabolic issues. Now the whole idea is to create a direct path from the kitchen to genetics. And somehow someway we have to bring science to the kitchen to understand what we can eat and what we can do and how we can avoid certain foods to change the dynamics expressed at our genetic code level. So we’re going to try to give a little bit of broad, you know, expansive understanding of the processes that can take on each of these five particular issues. One at a time. So in terms of, let’s say, the kitchen, how do we help people help themselves in the kitchen, Kenna?
Kenna Vaughn: One thing that we love to do in the kitchen is smoothies. Smoothies are so beneficial because not only are you feeding your body the proper nutrients you need. You can also provide the right nutrients to your cells, which will make the difference inside your body. And you’ll still feel satisfied and full, not going to be something that’s, you know, you’re left hungry like you just ate a little bit of birdseed. So it’s something that I recommend everybody starts with. One great thing to add to those smoothies is going to be flax seeds. So flax seeds are very high in fiber, a good fiber. So if you put those flax seeds into the blender first and blend them up, opening them up, you start adding in your healthy fats like avocados to make your smoothie nice and smooth. And the almond milk, low calorie, and low carb fruits, things like that. It’s going to just unleash a powerhouse inside that gut. So one main thing that it’s going to do is the fiber is going to stick around. So it’s going to feed your prebiotics and your probiotics every single bug in that gut. And it’s also going to help take things out of your body system that usually gets reabsorbed, such as salt, and let it be able to get excreted the way that it should be, rather than sticking around, like I said, getting reabsorbed and just causing these underlying issues.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So these dynamics and mainly when dealing with flaxseed, I know Alexander knows a bit of the flax seed dynamics in terms of how it works with cholesterol. And that’s one of the issues, the HDL component. Tell me a bit of what you’re what you’ve seen in terms of the flaxseed, Alex, in terms of our experiences with flaxseed and diminishment of cholesterol and helping out with metabolic syndrome.
Alexander Isaiah: So, flaxseeds are suitable not only for nutrients but like Kenna said, they’re outstanding in dietary fiber. So we have to ask ourselves, why is dietary fiber essential? We can’t digest it, but it can bind to other things that are within our gut. And one of the main things that it does to lower cholesterol is it binds to bile. Now, bile from our gallbladder is around ninety-five percent cholesterol. And I’m sorry, 80 percent cholesterol and ninety-five percent of it gets recycled and reused most of the time. So why have a large amount of fiber within the gut? The fiber binds to the cholesterol. The body’s mechanism to compensate for that is to pull cholesterol from other parts of the body, specifically from the serum of the blood, and pull it back in to rejuvenate those levels of bile. So not only are you forcing your gut to work properly that it is meant to, but you’re also lowering your cholesterol within the inner side of the body.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So the component of cholesterol can be assisted by fiber. Now, I know that Astrid got some ideas about lowering the blood pressure and bringing a little bit of control in nutraceuticals. And in that respect, she’s been going over some particular topics, and she’s the resident scientist that helps us see the NCBI, which is the national research center that provides daily information about what’s happening with metabolic syndrome out there. So she will be presenting a little bit of some nutraceutical topics that we can touch upon at this present time. Astrid, hello.
Astrid Ornelas: Hello. So, first of all, for those people who are barely coming into the podcast who are barely coming in to listen to us. I want to bring up again what metabolic syndrome is. So metabolic syndrome, as many of you might know, it’s not a condition or disease in itself. It’s more so a cluster of a collection of, I guess, other health issues that can increase the risk of things like heart disease, stroke, and even diabetes. So with that being said, the metabolic syndrome doesn’t have any apparent symptoms, but probably one of the most visible, I guess. You know health issues that are obvious in people with metabolic syndrome is waist fat. So with that being said, some of the nutraceuticals I want to talk about today, as you can see, I’ve listed several nutraceuticals that I discussed the last time. And these nutraceuticals can help with metabolic syndrome in a variety of ways. But I added several on here that specifically target weight loss. Since, as I mentioned, one of the apparent signs of metabolic syndrome is excess waist fat. So I want to bring in one of the nutraceuticals that is that several research studies and I’ve written articles on it that can help promote weight loss in people with metabolic syndrome is niacin. Now niacin, it’s a vitamin B3, and you can usually find it when you buy those supplements that have a kind of B-complex. It has a collection of various of the different B vitamins. So niacin, several research studies have found that it can help reduce inflammation associated with obesity people that have excess weight, of course. Usually, these people have increased blood sugar and blood sugar levels, leading to inflammation. So taking B vitamins, specifically vitamin B3, or as it’s well known for niacin, can help reduce inflammation. It can also help promote metabolism, our body’s capacity to convert carbohydrates, proteins, and fats into energy. So when we take vitamin B and specifically niacin vitamin B3, I want to emphasize that research studies have found that it can help burn calories much more efficiently.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When we’re dealing with niacin and the nutraceuticals, we are going. I know Alexander’s got some issues. Are you still with us, Alexander? Yeah, I’m here. It’s OK. It’s all good. I can see that we deal with and we’re learning about our technical issues as we go through them. I’m going to go back to Astrid, specifically about belly fat. Now she had mentioned the belly fat. Let’s be very specific when we’re dealing with belly fat. We’re dealing with issues where a male has a greater than 40-inch waist. OK. And for females, they have a greater than 35. Is that correct? Yes. So when we do the measurements, that’s one of the components. So as we discuss these particular issues, we want to make sure that when we’re talking about the belly fat and the weight gains and the BMI issues and the BIA issues, it’s the basal metabolic rate and impedance assessments that we do. We’re looking for those particular aspects. So she’s mentioning in the niacin and terms of niacin, what’s your experience with niacin, Alex with your dynamics that you have put in place?
Alexander Isiah: Niacin, or vitamin B3, is an excellent vitamin B because it is a free product. It reacts to a specific response precisely where it takes hold during glycolysis and the citric acid cycle. It plays a significant role in the citric acid cycle because it is used as the pre-product to synthesize NADH. Now, if someone has metabolic syndrome, this can upregulate that citric acid cycle. So if they’re trying to burn fat or use their carbohydrates at a more efficient rate, it will help upregulate that cycle and allow them to use their mitochondrial metabolism a lot better.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s awesome. Now, going back to Astrid, tell me a bit about what supplements we have here. We may not get through all of them, but little by little. We’ll break this thing down, so we’ll give you guys tidbits. So that useful information so that we can take on metabolic syndrome and change people’s lives. Go ahead.
Astrid Ornelas: OK, so the next nutraceuticals I’m going to talk about, I’m going to talk about these two together vitamin D and calcium, specifically vitamin D3. I want to emphasize that. But both of these nutraceuticals can also help promote fat mass loss. And several research studies have also found that this one, just like B vitamins, just like niacin, vitamin B3, could also help improve metabolism to make the body more efficiently burn calories. And then the next nutraceuticals I want to talk about is DHEA. Now I want to, I guess, one of the things that I want to highlight about the DHEA is that, first of all, this is a hormone. This is a hormone that is naturally produced in the body. But then, of course, you know, some people can supplement it if you talk to your health care professional. And they determined that you need more DHEA in your body because your body’s not naturally producing enough of it, then they can supplement that as well. So specifically about the DHEA, according to the Washington University School of Medicine, DHEA can also help metabolize fat much more efficiently. I guess one of the things that I wanted to discuss goes together with the DHEA. So when we consume excess calories, you know, the daily caloric intake on average, according to researchers, we need to take 2000 calories. But so what happens to the body when we eat excess calories now? These calories are stored in the body as fat. So when the body naturally produces, I guess, sufficient amounts of DHEA, our body can metabolize DHEA. I mean, metabolize fat. I’m sorry, much more efficiently so that our body gets rid of excess fat rather than storing it.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Got it! So let me ask you, DHEA is a hormone, and one of the things that I notice is that it is a hormone found over the counter. And one of the unique things with some passages of recent laws is that DHEA made it through the FDA to be used over the counter. So you’ll see the product is dispersed through all the stores and depending on the quality, you can see it more every day. And the reason you see it more common over the last couple of years is that the FDA found it, and then through a loophole, it was allowed to remain in the markets. Go ahead. Kenna wants to mention something regarding this particular component in the assessment of those specific issues.
Kenna Vaughn: I was going to add something when it comes to talking about body fat and how Astrid was saying that body fat gets stored. So what happens is when you have those excess calories, you create these things in your body called triglycerides. And triglycerides are composed of glycerol and fatty acids; and however, those in general triglycerides are too big to enter that cell membrane. So what happens is another hormone that controls almost everything, and it’s called insulin, and the insulin gets called in. And from here, we have the lipo…
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Lipoprotein lipase?
Kenna Vaughn: Yes, that one. It’s a tongue twister, so that gets called in and then kind of breaks those apart. The insulin is coming in again and activating something called the glut4transporter, which will open up that cell membrane. And now we’re going to see that fat cells get stored full of glucose, triglycerides, and fat. So that’s how those fat cells go from not having anything to then having those excess calories. Now they’re being converted through this process. Now they’re getting nice and full, and they’re hanging around your belly.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I’ve noticed that certain people have more efficient LPLs, which is lipoprotein lipase. Some people may say that you know what? I gain weight by just looking at food, and it may happen more as you get older. A whole different control system controls this particular issue. What kind of control systems are the ones that control lipoprotein lips and the glut4, along with hormone-sensitive lipase, that you have there?
Kenna Vaughn: Insulin controls everything else. And it’s like I said, it’s that hormone, and it’s going to come in. And also, on top of that, we have PH that affects enzymes, temperature, and things along that line.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, a lot of things that when we look at enzymes, we realize that the thing that determines the enzyme’s activity or sensitivity or ability to function is encoded in the genetics in terms of lipoprotein lipase and the breakdown of the fatty acids. I know, Alex, you have some points there in terms of the fat breakdown information. What do you have there that you can help the public understand a little bit more?
Alexander Isaiah: So, without going too much into the biochemical pathways, this is just showing the mitochondria’s inner mitochondrial matrix. So after I guess you’ve been well-fed and all your cells are satisfied with energy production through ATP synthesis, if you have overconsumption of caloric intake, specifically through glucose, you end up having a large amount of acetyl-CoA being produced or hanging around in the end here. So what the body does is buy high levels of insulin. This enzyme, called citrate synthase, is induced. So what citrate synthase does is use oxygen acetate and acetyl-CoA to make citrate. Now, citrate can then exit the mitochondrial matrix, and then significant accumulations of citrate will start accumulating in the sidewall of the cell. As that happens, ATP citrate lies will break them apart again and bring acetyl-CoA and auxtyl-acetate. Because auxtyl-acetate and acetyl-CoA don’t have specific membrane transporters, they can’t cross that mitochondrial membrane. Only specific ones like citrate do so as acetyl-CoA gets taken out into the cell; taking a look over here, we have acetyl-CoA, which gets turned into methylmalonyl-CoA. And it’s actually this enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylic is induced by insulin. So usually, acetyl-CoA carboxylic has a phosphate group on it, which inhibits its activity. But when it interacts with insulin, insulin turns on a protein phosphatase. So phosphatase are enzymes that take phosphates off, and then it becomes acetyl-CoA carboxylic. So now acetyl-CoA carboxylic is active to make methylmalonyl-CoA. Now, why is this important? So methylmalonyl-CoA is like putting the boulder on top of the hill; you’re going to start a different chemical process. So methylmalonyl-CoA inhibits fatty acid breakdown and begins fatty acid synthesis. So when you start making methylmalonyl-CoA, you’re going to, without going too much into fatty acid synthesis. The end goal is palmitate, which is the type of fatty acid. Now, palmitate chains will combine with glucose to form triglycerides. So here, we can see how a large dietary intake of carbohydrates, glucose levels, proteins, and insulin activates triglycerides. And if you have diabetes, you pretty much get halted in specific pathways. And that’s why you end up with too much acetyl-CoA. You have too many ketone bodies floating around in the blood, so you are going through without going too much in-depth; we can see that having a large number of dietary triglycerides, large amounts of glucose will force more triglycerides or try sealed glycerol within these kinds of microns within the lumen of the blood vessels. And this is going to cause a chain of reactions. So without breaking down too much here, we’re showing where it’s all going, so we have acetyl-CoA going to methylmalonyl-CoA, going to palmitate, and then we have palmitate forming these triglycerides. So like Kenna said, these triglycerides can’t enter the adipocytes. The adipocytes are fat cells without lipoprotein lipase. So with the combination of lipoprotein lipids allows these cells to get in there. You allow for the storage of the fat, so the cool part to notice is that by doing so, the first one will use fatty acids to be your heart. The heart relies on around 80 percent of its energy from fatty acids. Then it’s going to be your muscle cells. But this is in conjunction if you’re exercising regularly. If you’re not doing that, the adipose cells will favor storing the triglycerides or triglycerol more often. And then you’re also going to use more LDL, which means you have the potential to have more oxidized LDL, causing a higher event of atherosclerosis formation.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as you go through this process, it seems natural, but for a lot of us, it’s a deep, deep story, and it’s far, and it’s dynamic. And what I want to do is to bring the people back to Kenna as to the diets. In terms of getting this basic understanding. How is it that we assess an individual where these particular issues? I can assure you that when we first evaluate a metabolic syndrome patient. We do a lot of blood work, blood assessment, a lot of enzyme testing. We can even do DNA testing. So we got to go back to a patient and describe precisely how we can better improve their lives by our assessments. So, Kenna, you got some cool stuff in there for us. What do you have in front of you?
Kenna Vaughn: Yes, in front of me, I have a sample report from one of our patients on who we ran the DNA blood test. And one of those things that we can see is a gene pulled up right here, and it’s called TAS1R2. And what this gene does is it’s a tissue that can be found in the gastrointestinal tract, the hypothalamus, and the pancreas. And it’s known for regulating your metabolism and energy, and homeostasis. Also affects that food intake beyond the detection of your sweet taste on the tongue. What does that mean? So what that means is it is nicknamed the sweet gene. So, somebody with this gene is more likely to be drawn to sweet foods because it’s almost like their sweetness is enhanced. So when they taste ice cream, it’s a 10 out of 10, no matter the flavor, versus someone who doesn’t have this gene. Maybe it’s more of a seven out of 10. It hits them differently.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That makes perfect sense. Or some people that, you know, they love that ice cream and that dynamics, I know that I want to take a little bit of a detour because a lot of patients will wonder, Well, what are we going to do to get into being assessed and what kind of things we can? How does someone get? Where do they go? And for that, we have our clinical liaison here, Trudy, who walks patients in and first determines that the patient is qualified because we do have questionnaires that assess the determination of if someone is a talented individual or does have presentations that are predisposing to metabolic syndrome that require further assessment. And once we do in the situation that a person does have it, they want to understand what to do. So actually, Trudy, you do us help people and guide them through the process. What do we do in the office to help guide an individual through the beginnings of metabolic assessment?
Trudy Torres: OK, well, basically, you know, when people call in, we go ahead and email them a questionnaire. It does take about 45 minutes because it’s a very in-depth questionnaire. We want to pinpoint and get to the bottom of their main concerns. The main issues that we’re going to target for the process to be successful. Once we get that questionnaire back, we set up an appointment with Dr. Jimenez and our health coach Kenna, and they will go in-depth as far as the target areas that we need to address for the process to be successful. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to ask Kenna because I know it can be a bit overwhelming as far as what is it that they get? And as far as what is the following process? So once we get the questionnaire, I know that’s when they’re going to go ahead and do the different types of lab work to determine what will be successful in the kitchen.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I know you see the patients when they walk in; how do they feel in terms of that Trudy? What is it that they typically will tell you before being further assessed?
Trudy Torres: Well, they’re tired of, you know, all the different changes that you go through as, unfortunately, as we age. You know, some of the DNA genes that we have, that they’re dormant, you know, they become active. And that’s when you start to experience a different type of bad syndromes, you know, like metabolic syndrome. And that’s one of the things that we address. You know that we go ahead and do the DNA testing and see what different genes are dormant that are not dormant.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think that also, you know, whether you’ve noticed too and you’ve mentioned this to me, they’re just tired of feeling bad. They’re just tired of feeling like; I guess crap is a good word, right? So they’re tired of just they don’t recover. They don’t sleep well. They feel stressed. They feel like they’re being choked with high blood pressure. It’s not. Their lives are different. They’re in distress. They don’t sleep. So these are issues that the patients present to you, and I know you help them guide them. And then, Kenna, tell me a bit of the assessment you do to qualify an individual on the metabolic syndrome programs we have?
Kenna Vaughn: Like we were saying before, we go through that detailed history to look at that family history. And then we also decide, like Miss Trudy noted, the lab work gives us a lot of these underlying answers because the lab work we do is more detailed than the basic. So we get more numbers, more genetic codes, and more of all of these things. And from there, we’re able to take it and see what will be the most successful path for this patient. What supplements are they going to be able to intake better? What diet is best for them, whether it be the ketogenic diet or the Mediterranean diet? Everybody’s body is different because everybody’s insulin sensitivity is different, and everyone’s hormones change, especially for females. It’s different than male patients, and we create that individualized package for them because we want them to leave at the end of everything, not just that first visit. Still, we want them to leave feeling empowered and healthy and strong and not just they’re alive, but that they’re living. And that makes a massive difference to their families and their friends. And just everything gets impacted, all from the start of these questionnaires.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You touched on a subject matter there about being left alone. We go through a process, and we do keep connectivity with our patients. With today’s technology, there’s no reason we can’t have a person or an individual connected to our office and give us information such as BMI BIA information, which is basal metabolic stuff, the scale weight, the fat densities. We can have this information today. We have Fitbits that connect to us, and we can understand that that data is now available in a private way, and someone on the other side is reading that tell us what you do with individuals in terms of the coaching that we offer people; for specific metabolic syndrome?
Kenna Vaughn: Of course. For coaching, we have a scale. And like Dr. Jimenez was saying, this scale not only tells you your weight, but it also sends your weight, your water intake, how much of your weight is water weight, how much of your weight is lean muscle? And it also can track it and see the percentages of where you’re changing. So we can follow that maybe the number on the scale hasn’t moved. And some people might start to feel discouraged. But when we look at the numbers of what that scale tells us, we can see that you are losing body fat and being replaced by muscle. So even though that number is the same, your body inside is chemically changing. You’re making those differences you need to make to keep up with it and not to quit because, as I said, it can be discouraging for certain people.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So there’s a Mind-Body connection here. A mental component, teamwork dynamics, is essential when we’re working through metabolic syndrome. We can’t leave people here, here, take the football and run 80 plays. No, you have to huddle in each time to discuss and change the adaptive processes. Regarding the other areas with fat analysis, I know Alex has some additional areas and Astrid that will be discussing in a few minutes. But I’m going to focus on Alex right now to tell us a bit of what people can do with exercise or fitness that could stimulate or dynamically change their metabolic processes at the biochemical level.
Alexander Isaiah: Well, I would first, in all honesty, be honest with yourself; you will probably be the best observer of your situation. We all know what foods we do well with. We all know what foods we don’t do well with. We’ve always had some intuition as we’ve grown into the people we are today, knowing what foods work well for us and what foods don’t work well for us. For example, I know that if I consume a large carbohydrate consumption, I tend to put on weight pretty quickly. But I am pretty active. So the days that I have strenuous activity, I make sure that I have a balanced meal with proteins, fats, and a decent amount of carbohydrates. But the days that I’m not very active or haven’t gone to the gym. I make sure that most of my caloric intake sometimes comes from good fats or proteins. And that’s going to be the best thing is just be honest with yourself. See how you’re doing, find your BMI, find your basal metabolic rate, and then put numbers on paper. Because if you keep track of things. Odds are you’re going to do better and control the way your body’s responding. The next thing is I would find a health coach like Kenna, to stay on track and find any recommendations. The good part is that we have the internet out there and sources like yourself, Dr. Jimenez, that can provide information to the public on a new level and be able to understand and grasp the concept from a different perspective and give people more information that they didn’t know that they had at their fingertips.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I’m going to take it back to Astrid. Thank you, Alex. But one of the things is I want people to understand we’re going to assault. We’re going to assault on metabolic syndrome because this is a big problem and affects many in all communities around the United States. And we have to have an open forum to be able to open up. And sometimes, we don’t have 10 seconds, and this is not a 10 second, two-minute thing. We must understand that there needs to be a teamwork integrative medicine approach that helps the patients. So I know we’re going to go with a couple, I don’t think we make it through all of them, but we’re going to get through as best as we can because this is all recorded and can be dynamic and time purposes used later. Tell us a bit of the omega, berberine, and all the other supplements you had planned to talk about.
Astrid Ornelas: OK. Well, first of all, for those of you who are barely coming into the podcast right now, the nutraceuticals that are currently listed up there can all help improve metabolic syndrome in one way or another. The majority of these specifically target they specifically lower help lower the risk factors that can cause that could increase the risk of developing issues like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. But I want to emphasize several of these because they do they’re more efficient at promoting weight loss associated with metabolic syndrome. You know, if you’re going to improve metabolic syndrome, you want to promote weight loss, so that the last nutraceutical we talked about that’s up there was DHEA. The next nutraceutical I want to talk about is NRF2. So just like DHEA, it is a naturally produced hormone in our body. Well, NRF2 is also found in our body naturally. But unlike DHEA, which is a hormone, NRF2’s actual name, I guess the full name is the NRF2 pathway. It’s what’s known as a transcription factor, or it’s an element that regulates several cell processes if you will. And so I’ve done quite a few articles on this myself, and there are several research studies out there, quite a few to be exact, but NFR2 can also help improve metabolism. So if you improve your metabolism, especially in people who have metabolic syndrome, your metabolism can make it much more efficient for you to burn calories and therefore burn fat more efficiently.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The Omegas and NRF2, what we’re dealing with here, along with berberine, is inflammatory issues, OK? So what we want to deal with is when someone has metabolic syndrome, we suffer from inflammation, and inflammation is rampant. And that’s what’s causing the discomfort, the joint pain, the overall swelling, the bloating. Those are the kind of things that help, and they affect the blood pressure in insulin does happen, and we haven’t talked about that yet. But we’re going to be discussing that. I know Alex has got some ideas about Nrf2 factors and Omegas and berberine, and tell me a bit of what you’ve seen in terms of the nutraceuticals, and you read in terms of its effect on metabolic syndrome.
Alexander Isaiah: So the way we need to look at the different types of fatty acids is that most of the surface of each cell is composed of a fatty acid. It depends on what type gets incorporated based on the consumption or dietary intake that you have daily. So the main two components that your body’s going to use is cholesterol. That’s why we still need cholesterol and healthy fats that we get. But at the same time, if you’re taking in a lot of red meats, you’re also going to use arachidonic acid, which makes different types of fatty acids. And it also makes a transcription factor called PGE two, which is known for its very informative process or aspects. So what fish oils do, specifically EPA and DHEA, are by incorporating these into the cell membrane. You upregulate NRF2 and downregulate NF Kappa B, which is the inflammatory response. And not only by doing that, but as we talked about before with green tea extract and turmeric, otherwise known as curcumin. These also inhibit the pathways for inflammation. Now there could be the argument Well, do these pathways inhibit the inflammation? So let’s say I get sick or something, right? Well, the cool part is that two different pathways are stimulating the same response. By doing the dietary regimen of curcumin, fish oils, or even green tea, you’re inhibiting it from the body overexpressing these genes. Now, suppose you still get sick in a sense, right. In that case, you could still allow these cells to proliferate, specifically your macrophages, to do their job correctly, so you’re not inhibiting them by overstimulating them. You’re allowing them to be more proficient in their job. And suppose you are virally infected or with some unknown pathogen or let’s say. In that case, a cell decides to go rogue and start producing cancer cells, allowing the body to be more proficient in extracting these pathogens.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: In essence, we’ve learned that if we try to suppress inflammation, we create a huge problem. The question is, let’s stop inflammation from progressing to be too extreme. So, in essence, to keep it at a workable dynamics, and that’s what these curcumins and the green teas do. I know Astrid has something to mention in terms of this particular concept. Tell me a bit about what you’re thinking.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah. So as Alex mentioned, green tea is a fantastic drink. It’s actually in my nutraceutical list that’s up there, and I wanted to talk about green tea because it’s a very easily accessible drink, you know, for those of you who like tea. Green tea is delicious as well. And green tea has a variety of research studies demonstrated to be super beneficial for people with metabolic syndrome. So as many of you know, green tea contains caffeine. Of course, it has much less caffeine than a cup of coffee, for example, but it still does have caffeine, and green tea is also a powerful antioxidant. That’s another of the things that it’s very well known for. But just like NF2, you know that the interruptive pathway, green tea, has been demonstrated to help improve metabolism tremendously. You see, it promotes the body’s ability to burn calories, to burn fat. And because of its caffeine, I guess amount because even though it is less than a cup of coffee, but it’s just enough, it can help improve exercise performance. And you know, for those people who are looking to lose weight because of the, you know, the issues that they have associated with metabolic syndrome. Drinking green tea can help promote and improve their exercise performance so that they’re more able to engage and participate more efficiently in their exercise and physical activity to burn fat.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So basically, you’re indicating that as a good option instead of, let’s say, a whatever kind of drink or a juicy drink, it’s wise to keep sort of in the background green tea throughout the day. Is that correct? Or how much the water is good? The green tea’s good; a little bit of coffee and a little bit of this fluid is essential to keep our bodies hydrated through the process. Since it’s already available, green tea is a great option not only for metabolic processes to stop inflammation but also to help with the burning of the fat too?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, definitely. Green tea is a great drink. You can pretty much have it throughout your day. You know it has less caffeine than, say, you know, coffee, as I mentioned. And it will, you know, for those who have green tea, I love green tea, and I will have it. And you do get that little, that extra amount of energy. You feel it when you have green tea. But, yeah, you can have it throughout your day. And you know, it’s essential to stay hydrated, drink plenty of water. And you just want to make sure that if you do exercise enough, you don’t want to lose your electrolytes. So, you know, drink plenty of water and just stay hydrated.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I know that we’re going over there. I know that Kenna wants to speak something, and we’re going to go in that direction right now because Kenna wants to talk about specific dietary changes and things that we can do from a health coach’s point of view.
Kenna Vaughn: I just wanted to say that green tea is super beneficial from Astrid’s point. But I don’t particularly appreciate drinking green tea, which means that all hope is lost. They do have green tea and capsules as well, so you can still get all of those great benefits without actually drinking it because, for some people, it’s, you know, their coffee over tea. So you don’t have to drink the tea. You can still get all those great benefits that attitude was talking about but through capsules.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: yeah, we got exciting, sneaky ways to help people. To help people understand and to come into our office. What can they do, Trudy, in terms of being facilitated in the office if they want to make, if they’re going to have questions or for any doctor, they have out wherever they may be because this is reaching far.
Trudy Torres: I know this can be very overwhelming to just the regular population. You see, we went in too deep, you know, as far as all the physiology behind it and everything else. One of the things that I can tell you is that when you call our office, we’re going to walk you step by step. You’re not going to be alone. You’re going to walk out with a lot of information and know what works for you. Like Kenna was saying, everybody’s different. This is not a cookie-cutter program. We take the time and talk one on one with everybody who walks in and make sure that when they walk out and have a lot of information with them, they also walk out with just the lab work; they will walk out with recipes. Kenna is going to be constantly following up with you. It’s a highly successful approach when you have accountability from a health coach. So you’re not going to be by yourself.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know again where our goal is to make the kitchen to the genes and from the genes to the kitchen, we got to give the understanding maybe not of the deep biochemistry as Alex has taken us into or the nutraceutical dynamics, just know that there are ways that we can monitor. We can assess; we can periodically evaluate. We have diagnostic tools to determine blood assessments that are way beyond what was done ten years ago. We have dynamic metabolic testing in our office to determine fundamental critical aspects of weight density, the limb way to the body, and how much water you have. We use things like phase angle to assess the health of the cells and how they’re functioning. So there’s a lot that goes on in this process. So I want to take the opportunity to thank my guests today because from Alexander, all the way far on the north side of the United States, to Astrid, who assesses things at the NCBI because we need to have our finger right on the research that has been done. To our clinical liaison, which is Trudy, and one of our dynamic health coaches. I can be a health coach, but sometimes I’m with a patient, but she’s really with you all the time, and she can connect with you via email, which is Kenna. So together, we have come with an intention, and our purpose is to understand what the process is. A metabolic syndrome to break it down to deep levels will get down to them as you can see, to the genes, to the kitchen. And that’s what our goal is to educate people on how to feed our children. We intuitively know how to feed our families. Moms know what to do. However, today’s technology and research offer us the ability to break it down and specific to the sciences. And sometimes, when we get a little older, we realize that our bodies change and our genetics change, and that’s preordained based on our past, our peoples, our ontogeny, which is the generations in the past. But we have to realize that we can make a change and we can stimulate. We can activate genetic codes. We can suppress genes that want to get active if you improperly diet or do a proper diet. So our goal today is to bring this awareness, and I want to thank you guys for allowing us to listen in. We look forward to getting different subjects, maybe not as intense or dynamic, but this was our first run at the process. And we’re going to learn, and please ask questions so that we can kind of make it better for you and give you the information you need. So we thank you very much, and I want to tell you from all of us out here in El Paso that we look forward to offering the world information into metabolic syndrome that affects so many people. So thank you, guys. Thank you for everything.
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.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, Astrid Ornelas, Truide Torres, and biochemist Alexander Isaiah Jimenez discuss what is metabolic syndrome and the steps to fix it.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All right, guys, we’ve come to another podcast, and welcome to Dr. Jimenez and Crew podcast. Welcome, and you have a family here. We’re going to go over metabolic syndrome today. Metabolic syndrome is a disorder that ultimately affects a whole lot of people. And what happens is, is it affects one of the largest populations in affecting El Paso, pretty much in this region. And what we have is it’s not a disease, OK? First of all, it’s a combination of presentations that medical doctors and the World Health Organization have determined high-risk factors to have a stroke, kidney disorders, and even problems with dementia. But overall, it’s pretty much if you have metabolic syndrome, you feel crummy. So today, what are we going to do is we’re going to discuss the issues, and we’d like to at least present it to you so that it becomes useful for you and the information provided by us is going to be helpful for you or a family member. So if you have the opportunity and something that you enjoy, please go ahead and at the bottom area. There’s a little bell to subscribe to. And a little belt in markets so that you could be the very first person to get information in the future when we ever posted. And also allows you to present or ask us for things that are important to you in the health-related realm. Now, what are we going to do today? My name is Dr. Alex Jimenez. I have my entire staff here. We’re going to go, and we’re going to present each one of them in different moments. And we’re going to do some fascinating dynamics. We will also have our resident biochemist at the National University of Health Science, who’s going to chime in and give us a little bit of foundational biochemistry. This information is going to be helpful. We’re going to try to make it as simple but as useful as possible. Now, bear in mind everything that we’re going to be talking about in and today revolves around the metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is what the health care organizations have determined, and the cardiac departments have five major symptoms. Now you have to have three of them, at least to be classified as metabolic syndrome. OK, now the first thing is to ask… What do you feel? Pretty much you feel like crap, OK? And it’s not a good feeling to feel this way, but you’ll see that if you have of these presentations, you’re going to notice that your doctor may give you a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. Now, the first thing that happens is you usually have a bit about belly fat. Now, the belly fat that people have, people measure it. For men, it’s a belly kind of like the lonja, the belly that hangs over, and it’s about a good, I’d say, about 40 inches or greater in the male. In women is 35 inches or more. Now that’s one of the first presentations. Now the other presentation is high blood pressure. Now that high blood pressure that they use is 135 milligrams over deciliter. Sorry, yeah. Miller Mercury’s millimeters of mercury over these leaders to determine exactly on the diastolic and the systolic. So the diastolic is going to the systolic is going to be 135, the diastolic is going to be over 85. Now that doesn’t happen again; you’re going to notice something. These aren’t extreme ranges from OK. Metabolic syndrome has high triglycerides. Now the high triglycerides are going to be noted in the blood. OK, now one of the things that can be determined early on is high blood pressure, which is also so associated with metabolic syndrome. So the other final one is the elevation of or decrease actually of HDL. HDL or the good fragments of cholesterol. Alexander will be a resident biochemist and talk to us more about that in the latter part of the show. Now, bear in mind, I’ve given five things a. the fat, b. the high blood pressure, c. the blood glucose levels, and also the triglycerides, along with the lowering of the HDLs. The question is, how are we going to be able to control this now? I’m going to give you some real good basic ways that you can control metabolic syndrome. And by the time we’re done today, we’re going to be able to assess the situation. And even if you have it, you basically will be able to control it. There are rare diseases that you can be disordered. And again, this is not a disease; it’s a combination of syndromes or symptoms to be called a syndrome collectively. So metabolic syndrome can be construed. Now you’ll notice that the blood glucose level will be elevated, usually over 100; these are relatively average numbers people have. But if they’re higher than that, they do create issues now. Also, when you have the belly fat 40, and it’s not that much, many people have it. People also have blood glucose levels that are higher than 5.6 on their blood glucose A1C. These numbers and the 150 mg per deciliter of triglycerides are all normal but in combination. Together, they do ultimately create a scenario that is not favorable to cardiac issues. Cardiovascular issues do present as a result. So what we’re going to try to do is try to bring down and control these issues. Now, what are the things that cause metabolic syndrome? One of the things is stress, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, and even sleep problems and disturbances. We can be elaborating on each of these we can we’re going to be elaborating on in the future podcasts. Still, we’re going to be able to tell exactly what’s going on in a better way. We also have issues with inflammation and processed foods. At the core metabolic syndrome, the main issue is insulin sensitivity issues and high blood pressure issues, and inflammation. So what are we going to do to control that? I want you to know that every single one of these five issues, whether it’s blood glucose, high triglycerides, low HDL counts, or blood glucose, they’re all relatable to one disorder. It’s insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity controls every one of these factors from raising high blood pressure. The kidneys are controlled by insulin, causing an increase in blood pressure, and we’ll discuss that issue and its correlation. So if we can control the blood glucose, we ultimately have the fastest and the surest way to provide the fastest route to heal and fix an individual with metabolic syndrome. So let’s go ahead about the issues that are going to result from that. Now, as I’ve got this, we’re going to notice that if over some time you continue to have a lifestyle that has high levels of these particular five factors, you’re going to notice that you’re going to tend to have high cardiac risks. Now we have a team here, and I want to introduce each one. We have Kenna Vaughn, who is our health coach. Our health coach is the one that’s going to be the one that explains to our patients what is going on. I’ll bring her in. We also have the clinical liaison, which is Trudy. Trudy is the individual who will be able to bring out the questions and determine what kind of issues are appropriate for you. So we’ll be discussing those. And we have our resident chief editor, Astrid Ornelas, who will be the one that explains the studies on it. From Illinois, we also have Alexander, which we have right in the back where you can’t see him, but he’s presenting and say, Hello, Alex, can you get them there? Hello. All right. So he’s out there, and he’s going to discuss the issues and the biochemistry side of things, and we’re looking forward to explaining those issues. Now, one of the things we have to do is go back to the issue of insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is at the root of all these issues. So what we’re going to do is discuss exactly how insulin can be controlled. But what we’ve learned through these studies, and I’m going to bring in Mrs. Ornelas, is here to discuss the studies on how to control blood glucose and blood sensitivity. Astrid, what did you find out recently that shows the proof and presents the easiest way to control blood insulin and elevate HDL?
Astrid Ornelas: OK, well, first of all, just as you know, as you mentioned, metabolic syndrome, it’s a collection of health issues that can increase the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. It’s basically like, you know, it can affect our overall health and wellness. And I’ve done quite some research, and I’ve found them through the National Center of Biotechnology Information, the NCBI. A variety of research states that metabolic syndrome or people with metabolic syndrome, one of the easiest, you know, quote-unquote easiest or one of the best ways out there that can be used to help… Restore? Yeah, to help restore or reverse all metabolic syndrome would be through the ketogenic diet. So the ketogenic diet or the keto diet is a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet, which, according to research studies, offers many benefits towards people with metabolic syndrome. It can help improve or promote weight loss, and it can help reduce diabetes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I want to mention right there, I have found nothing faster to lower the blood glucose and reverse triglycerides issues and HDL issues than the ketogenic diet. So, in essence, if you want to do it fast, it’s incredible the speed at which it restores the body to what it is. What else is there?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah. So, like the human body, usually, we use glucose or sugar. It is supposed to be our primary source of fuel, our main source of energy. But of course, for people who have metabolic syndrome, people who have obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, or the increased risk of diabetes. The ketogenic diet can be very beneficial because it is a low carbohydrate diet, carbohydrates essentially turn into sugar or glucose, and we don’t want that. Like if people have metabolic syndrome, they have, you know, diabetes and insulin resistance. You don’t want sugar in your body because they produce too much of it. They have too much blood sugar. And but by increasing your height, by increasing the number of fats that you eat, and decreasing the number of carbohydrates, you keep a low amount. You keep insulin low, and you, by eating more fats, basically what you would do is make the body go into a state of ketosis.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? Let me ask you something. I’m going to feed this over right now to Kenna, and I’m going to ask Kenna in your experiences with the blood sugar issues. How is it that we contain and we learn to be able to manage someone’s blood sugar? The quick is the fastest. What is it that you do in terms of coaching individuals, helping them back?
Kenna Vaughn: For coaching individuals. I always evaluate their diet, and the main thing I like to focus on is education because so many people are not educated about, as Astrid was saying, carbs and how they fuel your body. A Big Mac might have 54 carbs, and a sweet potato might have 30 carbs, and people don’t realize that they’re that different, and they only see 20 points or something like that. But the way that the carbohydrate breaks down in the body is enormous. And that’s why the ketogenic diet works so well because you’re using those good whole carbs that are going actually to contain protein as well. And so it’s going to help to break it down slower versus a Big Mac, which is just going to spike your insulin way up.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And what part of the Big Mac is the thing that spikes the sugar? I mean, in terms of that?
Kenna Vaughn: Right. So the bread, the carbs in the bread, actually breaks down differently in your body than a sweet potato would. And so that’s what’s going to give you that high glucose level. And then after that, you’re going to have the fall of the glucose level, which is your blood sugar going up and down does not feel great. So it’s something you want to avoid.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I have a question for you. For the sugars. When you asked the types of sugars you have, you just mentioned that the variety of carbohydrates matters. Yes. Tell me a bit of that.
Kenna Vaughn: The quality, like I was saying, sweet potatoes, avocados, things like that. They’re going to have the carbohydrates that are better for you, meaning you break them down differently than you would. Faster sugars like sucrose and things like that.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So simple sugars are out, basically, which is why, first of all, metabolic syndrome did not even exist before the advent of refined foods. So refined sugars have caused this problem. So what we want to do is sugar leads to inflammation. Sugar leads to triglyceride issues. Sugar or insulin sensitivity issues are the things that are the basis of this process. All roads lead to insulin sensitivity in this process. And the organ that provides us with insulin, the most significant amount is is the pancreas. The pancreas is nonstop. And depending on how the pancreas responds to this blood sugar drama, it determines the fate of the individual. It will alter the triglycerides. It will transform the blood pressure by directly holding sodium in the kidneys, the kidneys the body prepares. It retains the sodium, and by the nature of sodium, the blood pressure soars. So the fastest way to lower your blood pressure is a ketogenic diet. And this is amazing because it is simple. It’s not that complex. We can go extreme. And I know that Astrid had an excellent research document on that. Tell me a bit of what you noticed.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, basically, like, what Kenna was saying. Before, many people didn’t know the difference between what type of carbohydrates they want to eat, like, for example, as you said, you know, a lot of people will eat a Big Mac, and they’ll eat that sweet potato, and they don’t know the difference between a good carbohydrate; basically, we want to eat what you call complex carbohydrates, which is it’s more like we want to eat like whole wheat or we want to eat like like good starches because those there break in the body breaks them down into glucose, into sugar. But they’re used much more slowly to where it won’t. The body won’t directly use them. And then you’ll get that crash, that sugar crash.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Because of the insulin spike, right? It controls the insulin spike. You know what? I want to bring in our resident biochemist here. OK, so our brilliant biochemist is Alexander. He’s got a presentation here, actually, if I can see it there and see if I pop up here. And there he is. Alex, can you tell us a bit about what you’re trying to explain here on the biochemistry side of things?
Alexander Isaiah: As you guys mentioned, just in general, glucose is the primary energy source in the way that we use it for the breakdown. Its breakdown on energy consumption is called glycolysis. So without getting too much into it, our end goal here is pyruvate, which then goes into the citric acid cycle to be turned into acetylcholine. In normal conditions, this is good to have a carbohydrate meal, but when in excess, do you produce too much acetylcholine? When is too much acetylcholine used? You end up inducing fatty acid synthesis, which is induced by significant levels of insulin. So by doing so, you have acetylcholine, which ends up turning into palmitate. And one thing that Kenna mentioned is that not all foods are of equal quality. So here, we can see all the different types of fatty acids. So without going too much into biochemistry, but just giving you an idea of what’s going on here? These numbers on the left side represent the number of carbons in a row, and then the numbers to the right of the semicolon are the number of double bonds. And usually, double bonds don’t play a significant role until you get into digestion and the way the body uses these. So by having more double bonds, it’s more fluid. So you notice the difference between a piece of lard and olive oil. What’s the difference? The only difference is the number of carbons and the number of double bonds. So here we have oleic acid, olive oil, and then we have some saturated fat. We can see that the difference is prominent in the number of carbons and double bonds. Double bonds allow for a lower melting point. That’s why olive oil is a liquid at room temperature versus fatty acids, and this plays a significant role in how the body uses these types of things.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Alex, are you saying that? We all know that the excellent work of olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil is the best thing is, this is why this happens.
Alexander Isaiah: Exactly. So the more double bonds they have, the more fluid it will be within the body and allow the body to use those fats on time versus clogging up artery arteries and creating plaques within those arteries.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Excellent. You know what? One of the things that insulin does, it pack away carbohydrates in energy in the cell. If you do that, what happens with this blood sugar? Eventually, insulin spikes it and puts it in the cells. Finally, the cell grows, hence the belly fat. Ultimately, The belly starts green and gains the fat cells, and they start getting bigger, bigger, bigger because they get injected in there. That stuff starts seeping out, and once it can’t go in anymore, it ends up in the places like the pancreas. It ends up in the places like the liver. It ends up in the intramuscular into the muscular tissue. And that’s why we have the accumulation. And when you have a big belly, that’s what tips off the doctor, not only with the triglycerides in the blood glucose levels but also the belly fat. And that’s one of the things we have to kind of assess. So are these now these fatty acids? What are fatty acids used for, typically, Alexander?
Alexander Isaiah: Fatty acids are used almost for everything within the body, especially for energy consumption. It’s like saying, would you rather be able to go five miles or 10 miles? You always want to go 10 miles, right? So gram for gram fat as an energy source is much more fuel-efficient than glucose or carbs. So carbs provide our four grams of four calories per gram and fats are around nine. So it’s almost it’s more than double the amount of energy that you’re producing from these fatty acids. The tricky part is just knowing which ones are good. So going into the good fatty acids, which will be the ones with the double bonds. So I mean, any plant oils, animal fats, depending on which ones, we tend to want to stay away from large amounts of wretched ionic acid, as they tend to cause inflammation responses through the inflammation pathway. But the rest of these are good, especially EPA and DHEA. So DHEA is used within the nervous system. It’s turned into neurotic acid and EPA as well. So getting these marine oils is going to be suitable for your system just in general.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what, as I understand these processes and start realizing the biochemistry behind it, bringing it home to this process down to the cellular component it honors. It shows appreciation in terms of what creates the fatty acid excess. Now again, what happens due to too much of these fatty acids or carbohydrates in the bloodstream? The body tries to store it. It tries to store in the form of fat, and it’s shoved into the pancreas. So you get this fat inside the pancreas. If it can’t do it there, it eventually puts it in the liver. And like we mentioned, it gets it in the stomach, or that’s when we see it as a final thing. So then I like to take the explanation and break apart one other point, the high blood pressure component. Insulin has a direct effect on the kidneys. Insulin tells the kidneys, Look, we need to pack this stuff into the fat. And without getting beyond too much of the chemistry dynamics, you can see that what’s going to occur is that the kidneys will be commanded to hold more sodium. In chemistry, biochemistry, and clinical science, we learned that the more sodium you retain, the blood pressure rises. In essence, that’s how quick the blood pressure goes. So you do that for some time, and then you force the collection of atherosclerotic plaques because that fat is in there, and it can’t go anywhere. You’re going to have a problem in the long term, in the long term future. So speaking about the oils, as Alexander just did, one of the things we ask is, Well, what oils cannot we should know? We use canola oil, corn oil, sesame seed oil. I love sesame seeds. But the problem is that sesame seed oil causes inflammation, as Alex said, with arachidonic acids. So what we have to do is figure out precisely what types of oils we can do and avocados, as Kenna had mentioned, are a great source of fats that we can use and make things more processed. Our bodies and the old pyramid of diet are really bad because it’s heavy on carbohydrates. So one of the things that we look at is maintaining all those components. So we talked about triglycerides, the belly fat, how it’s put together. And each one of these, I want to point this out again. The high blood pressure, which is 135 high blood pressure, is not considered at 135. Usually, it’s at 140. OK. So if so, why are we using triglycerides at 150 are not regarded as excessive. You know, HDL is lower than 50 is not considered horrible, but in combination together, if you have one at all, these three of these components are the five. That’s what leads to a pre-position of of of being sick and feeling crummy, let alone any prolonged period of this will end up leading to metabolic disorders, heart problems, stroke problems, dementias that occur as a result of protracted metabolic syndrome states that are within the individual. I want to ask Alexander. He’s got some fascinating dynamics, as I want to present right now, and we’re going to show his screen right here because he’s got some exciting components on what also affects metabolic syndrome. Alexander.
Alexander Isaiah: So kind of going into what it is, I guess ketosis, because everyone wonders what goes on. So I kind of got this diagram here that I drew out for you guys. We’re ignoring the ephedrine pathway over here, but just in general. So what’s going to happen first is you’re going to deplete any glucose that you have. So the body typically stores around 100 grams of glucose in the liver and around 400 grams within the muscle components of the entire body. So if you times 500 times for, that’s about 2000 calories, which is your daily limit, so you’ve got almost a day’s worth of glucose always stored within your body. But once you deplete that, your body’s going to start looking for other things. In the meantime, it takes a few days for your body to switch over from burning sugar, which is glucose, to burning ketone bodies from fat. So what’s going to happen? Your, first of all, your adrenals are going to start releasing epinephrine, its precursors, norepinephrine. And this is because of a couple of different things. You’re going to get a bit jittery first, and you’re going to feel bad for the first couple of days, but then your body and starts switching over as your brain starts to begin using these ketone bodies as an energy source. So as you’re producing norepinephrine, these are just like, this is the cell surface here. These are just different precursor markers. So we have B1, B2, B3, and A2. Doing these will mark and signal to the gas protein, which will allow aminoglycosides to activate ATP into cyclic AMP. Now, cyclic AMP is an essential component of the degradation of fatty acids. The cool part is it’s inhibited by phosphodiesterase. So when people come in and say, why is caffeine a good fat burner? The main reason why is because caffeine inhibits phosphodiesterase to a certain extent. You don’t want to go too crazy with the caffeine and start doing lots of cups of coffee.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Should I have eight glasses of coffee, or how many cups?
Alexander Isaiah: I think one glass of coffee is more than enough. So by having cyclic amp be more active, you activate the thing called protein kinase A, which activates ATP, and then it starts a hormone-sensitive life base. Once hormone-sensitive lipase is activated, it begins to degrade. It begins to break down fatty acids. Once these fatty acids enter and are broken down, they then enter into the mitochondria, and the mitochondria will then produce heat from this. So that’s why people who are ketosis are always really warm. So what do I recommend when people are starting to do a ketosis diet? Water? Keto diet, definitely water and as well as, I would say, L-carnitine. So as we’re looking at L-carnitine here, we could see that during fatty acid degradation, you use L-carnitine as the primary transporter between the outer mitochondrial membrane and the inner mitochondrial membrane. So by using fatty acids, here’s fatty asceloca; after we’ve broken down these fatty acids, it’s going to enter CPT one, which is carnitine, a seal translocated want or poly transferase one. It’s going to enter and interact with carnitine, and then it’s going to turn into seal carnitine. Once seal carnitine turns into it, it can enter the inner mitochondrial membrane through these two enzymes translocation and CPT two to be broken down back into a seal code, which does the same byproduct as glucose eventually. Also, then, your mitochondria can use these in beta-oxidation. One thing to know is you have to drink a lot of water because people going through ketosis will be upregulating the urea cycle. So you need to make sure that you pull a lot of water or drink a lot of water throughout the day. Anyone doing a keto diet today has a minimum of a gallon of water throughout the day, not all at once, but throughout the day.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s incredible, Alex, that you put that together because that makes perfect sense to me and also explains why people do say when we put them on the ketogenic diet, that they do increase body temperature and the water helps you kind of keep the whole system pumping because that’s what we’re pretty much made of. And also, the pathways that you indicated the hydrogen in the water are necessary for the process to occur.
Alexander Isaiah: Yes. Certain aspects within each of these fuel each other; it’s all an interconnected pathway. But you will upregulate the urea cycle during ketosis much more than when you’re not. For example, everyone’s notorious or cats are notoriously known for having a rotten urine smell. And we have to take a look at that from the reason why right? So general in humans there, urea content in the urine is three percent. In cats, on the other hand, it’s anywhere between six to nine percent. So you have to think about it. What is the only mammal on the planet that is a carnivorous animal that only eats meat? Since they only eat meat, the feline family upregulates their urea cycled, thus having more urea in their urine. So if you’re only a meat-eater, you’re going to have more urea. Therefore you need to drink more water to flush it out through your kidneys.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s amazing because it explains why we make sure that everybody drinks a lot of water, and then they feel better. And I guess if we don’t monitor it correctly, if we don’t do it right, we get that thing called the ketogenic flu, right? And then the body feels kind of crummy until it restores and it stabilizes the blood glucose through ketones. Now, the body can use ketones for sugar, as it’s known. So one of the things that we do is teach the people exactly how to go through the process. And I know we got some research articles here, and Astrid wants to discuss a bit of that.
Astrid Ornelas: So basically, like, as Alex mentioned, when people start going, they start following the ketogenic diet, we do want to, you know, as he said, we want to make sure that they stay hydrated, but more so than that. I guess another thing that we want to educate people on is that not many people know, you know, we need to store up the body with good fats so that as the body adjusts, it starts burning fat as a fuel than sugar or glucose. So we want to teach people, what are the good fats that we want them to like to eat, you know, because like, we need to store up in these fats of that the body can go into ketosis and we can go through the whole process that Alex just explains.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? I would like to bring Trudy here because she’s the one that connects with the patients at the moment. We do assess someone to have metabolic syndrome. In terms of the resources, how do you go through the process of presenting? Hello, Trudy. Trudy, what are we going to do there? I’m going to ask you, how do you bring that? Because she’s our clinical liaison, our wellness liaison, and she’s the one that basically will give us the information that helps the patient in the right direction.
Trudy Torres: Well, hello. And I, you know, this is all excellent information, which is fantastic that we can provide this to the public. And I know this can be very overwhelming for people that are not don’t have this information. So that’s where I come in when people come, you know, either call us or come in inquiring about their different symptoms. They don’t necessarily know that they’re experiencing the metabolic syndrome. But you know, one of their main concerns is they’re waking. Based on their concerns, I connect them to our primary is with Kenna, and they go ahead and say, OK, well, what are the steps that we have to take and Kenna certainly educate them as far as, OK, this is the lab work that you’re going to have to take. We connect them with Dr. Jimenez after we know exactly their primary concern, and we’re going to start peeling things apart like an onion to get to the bottom of things and get them feeling better. They’re not only going to walk away with the specific results, but they’re also going to walk away with, like Astrid said, what are the good fats to have? What should I be eating? So they’re going to be walking away with a lot of information, but also structure. Another thing that we’re offering is that Kenna is always going to be there, you know, to answer any questions and also Dr. Jimenez, so they don’t have to feel overwhelmed with the process as they’re going through a better, healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, that one of the things is there’s a lot of confusion out there, and I’ve got to be honest with you. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. This misinformation can be categorized as intentional or old, or it’s just not up to date, with these five elements and an individual having three of them. It’s essential to repeat precisely how to fix this issue with the individual and change their lives because there’s nothing quicker to change the body than the ketogenic diet. We also have to monitor the individuals and monitor them through the process. Now we have Kenna Vaughn that she’s got some methods that we employ in the office and are helpful to her. Doctors do this around the country, but it’s beneficial in helping guide and allow for interaction and communication between us, the providers, and the patient. What kind of things do we offer, Kenna?
Kenna Vaughn: We have one-on-one coaching, which is great for when you’re just starting something out. Like they were talking about the ketogenic diet. You might be confused, and there is misinformation. So with this one-on-one coaching, it’s great because we can connect through an app that we have, and you pull out your phone. You can send a quick text message; hey, I saw one website said that I could eat this, but another said, this, can I have this? Things like that. We can clear up that confusion fast, which can keep you on track rather than doing that guessing game. We also have scales that connect to this app, which allows us to monitor the water weight they have and the fat that they have. And we can also monitor their activity through a wristband to constantly track the steps they’re taking. Ensure that they’re doing exercise because exercise is also great to help lower that blood glucose level.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, you mentioned that about the monitoring. We do that in the office along where we send the patients home with actual scales that are the mini BIAs and their hands and wrist. We can do pretty much for patients who want to connect with our office. We can directly get the information downloaded, and we can see their BIAs changing. We also use the in-body system, in which we do a deep analysis of the baseline basal metabolic rate, along with other factors that we’ve discussed prior podcast. This allows us to put together a quantifiable method to assess how the body is changing and rapidly restoring the body to or away from a metabolic syndrome episode. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling it really can. There’s nothing that destroys the body in these combinations of issues at one time. However, it’s easy to see that the body does everything quickly. It fixes a ketogenic diet, removes body weight, decreases the fat in the liver, decreases the intramuscular fat, restores blood sugar. It gets the mind working better. It helps the HDLs through some studies, and I know that Astrid knows there’s a study out there that pulls the information upon how the HDL are elevated with and with a ketogenic diet. We have a study here. You can put it on the screen right there that I think you found that shows the HDLs. Am I correct? And the apolipoprotein, the lipid part of the HDL, also is raised and activates the genetic component. Tell me about that.
Astrid Ornelas: So basically something that a lot of researchers, many health care professionals out there, doctors, they often say, is that when people have high cholesterol, you know, and we’re usually talking about the bad cholesterol. According to several research articles, it’s generally associated with a genetic predisposition when they have bad high cholesterol or the LDL fragment. If your parents, if your grandparents had high cholesterol, there is also an increased risk of you having a genetic predisposition to already having high cholesterol plus like add that like your diet. And if you follow a sedentary lifestyle and you know you don’t do enough exercise or physical activity, you have an increased risk of having higher bad cholesterol.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I’m going to pull the information from I’ve noticed that Alexander’s pulling something information up here on the screen. He’s presenting the monitor where you can see his blood glucose and the screens that he’s going ahead and putting that up there for him. There you go. Alex, tell me what you’re talking about right there because I see that you’re talking about the apolipoprotein, the lipoproteins, and the HDL fragments there.
Alexander Isaiah: So kind of going into a little bit of everything here. So what happens when you eat something that is going to cause an increase in cholesterol? So first of all, you have these genes called Callum microns within the intestinal lumen or your GI tract, and they have apolipoprotein B 48. They have a B 48 because it’s 48 percent of apolipoprotein B 100, so it’s just a little different variation. These microns will bring these through the body and transfer them into the capillaries using apolipoprotein C and apolipoprotein E. Once they enter the capillaries, they’re going to degrade and allow for different aspects of the body to use them. So I have three tissues. We have adipose tissue, cardiac tissue, and skeletal muscle. So cardiac tissue has the lowest KM, and adipose tissue has the highest KM. So what is KM? KM is just a measurement of the way that the enzymes are used. So a low KM means a high specificity for binding to these fatty acids, and a high Km means low specificity for them. So what are the three parts of the body? They use the most energy. It’s the brain, the heart, and the kidneys. Those are the most caloric consumption parts of the body to stay alive. So, first of all, the heart relies large amounts on these fatty acids here, and transferring them to the heart uses mostly fatty acids. I think it’s about 80 percent; 70 to 80 percent of its fuel comes from fatty acids. And to deliver these, your body uses these Callum microns. So once the Callum microns exit the capillaries, it’s already an LDL. It has two choices: the LDL, It can be taken back to the liver or can switch its contents with HDL, and the seals can deliver them correctly to the proper places. So that’s why HDL is so important because they deliver them to the appropriate places if these Callum microns or these LDLs aren’t transferred correctly back to the liver. So why is LDL so detrimental to the system of our body? So here’s a couple of reasons why. So as LDL scavenges throughout the body, they are seen as a foreign object by our macrophages, and our macrophages are our cells used for immune response. So the macrophages end up engulfing these LDLs, and they turn into these things called foam cells. Foam cells become atherosclerotic plaque eventually. But what they do is they embed themselves within or under the surface of the epithelial lining, causing a buildup of these foam cells here and eventually blocking the pathways, causing a plaque. So by eating better fats, having a higher amount of HDL, you can avoid these plaques and avoid atherosclerotic plaques, which clog up your arteries.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what, actually, the link between atherosclerotic plaques and metabolic syndrome you’ve made very, very clear at this point, and that is the reason why prolonged states of the metabolic syndrome do create these disorders. I want to take a moment to thank the entire crew here because what we’re doing is we’re bringing in a lot of information and a lot of teams. And if someone has an issue, I want them to meet the face they’re going to see when they walk into the office. So, Trudy, tell them how we greet them and what we do with them when they walk in if they feel they may be a victim of metabolic syndrome.
Trudy Torres: Well, we’re very blessed to have a very exciting and energized office. You’re always going to feel at home. If we don’t have the correct answer at that moment, we’re certainly going to research. We’re not going to toss your side. We’re always going to get back to you. Everybody gets treated as an individual. You know, each vessel that we have, it’s unique in its way. So we certainly don’t create a cookie-cutter approach. We’re always going to make sure that, as I said, you walk away with the most and valuable, informed option for yourself. We’re just a phone call away. We’re just a click away. And, you know, don’t ever feel that there’s not a reasonable question. We always want to make sure that all the questions and concerns you have always get the best answer possible.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Guys, I want to tell you, thank you. And I want to also share with you that we happen to be in the fantastic facilities when we do; there’s exercise involved with returning the body to a normal state. We function out of the PUSH Fitness Center. We’re doing the podcast from the fitness center. And you can see the information herewith Danny Alvarado. And he’s the one that or Daniel Alvarado, the director of Push Fitness who we work with a bunch of therapies and physical therapists to help you restore your body to where it should be. We look forward to coming back, and as I said, if you appreciate, are you like what we have here, reach down on the little bottom, hit the little button, and hit subscribe. And then make sure you hit the bell so you can be the first to hear what we got to go on. OK, thank you, guys, and we welcome you again. And God bless. Have a good one.
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