Transcription
And in terms of supplements generally, do you know, again, not to bring Mel into this for the thousandth time today, but a couple of um couple of Christmases ago, I told her that she should be having creatine because I all these people on my podcast told me it and she said, "No, it's for bodybuilders."
Yeah, that's the old school thought. When we're thinking about creatine and how it got its chops in the supplement world, we're looking at muscle performance and taking five grams four times a day with some carbohydrate to enhance muscle performance is how it started. But when you start really disseminating down into the health aspects of creatine, creatine is used in every fast energetic of the body. So that means your brain, your heart, your gut, muscle, everything that requires energy from 0 to 30 seconds, creatine is involved. Women have about 70 80% of the stores of men. And when we start looking at all the different types of diets that are out there, lots of exclusionary food diets, then the intake of creatine is lower. What we're finding in the research from health perspective is that it does so many positive things when you're able to saturate the tissues to bring it up with even a small dose of 3 to five grams a day. Our liver makes about three, but we don't necessarily eat enough to help supplement all of the tissues.
How much would it take? Like 12 chicken breasts or something?
22.
Okay.
22 chicken breast. A lot. So when we look at the supplementation and being able to saturate all of our tissues thoroughly to support those fast energetics, we see things like better cognition focus. We see a faster recovery from small brain traumatic like like a friend's daughter hit her head on the um the laundry door of the dryer and got a TBI or a small concussion from that, started using creatine, came out of it a lot faster. I mean there are things that help with braatasm. We see women who have incidences with IBS or gut issues and they're using creatine. It helps decrease the symptomology. We're seeing now studies coming out about fatigue. And this is where the 38 gram per kilogram of body weight or the equivalent of 20 grams if you're 60 kilos helps with fatigue and focus. Especially if you're under a lot of high stress. Because if you're under a lot of high stress, your body's going through a lot of blood glucose trying to keep up with that stress. So creatine isn't just the bodybuilding set. There's so many different health benefits and it keeps coming out with more and more research to show how beneficial creatine is.
Do you have to consider different supplements at different phases of life? We've talked about hormones, but if I'm an adolescent versus someone who's postmenopausal, should I be thinking about different a different supplement stack?
So in in our clinic we first have them track their nutrition and we look to see where the gaps are. Now things like iron I can easily get a blood test to tell you things like fat store like vitamin D is stored in the fat. So you know looking at a onetime level gives you a pretty good idea of what their stores are. So, two of the things that are pretty consistent are patients are struggling to get enough fiber in their diet. And so, fiber is one of the things that we tend to recommend especially if they are not a vegetarian or vegan, you know, if they're really struggling through nutrition.
And what's fiber going to do for me?
Okay, so fiber has a lot of lot of goals. So, you know, it it does two things in the gut. It there's soluble and insoluble fiber. So, soluble means it dissolves in water. Okay. Okay. And then insoluble fiber is the bulking agent in the stool. So it you ingest it and it never leaves the the gastrointestinal system and you just carry it out, you know, when you have a bowel movement. And so it pulls water into the gut. And so that's important if you're doing if you're eating a lot of fiber and you're having a fiber supplement that you are hydrating as much as possible because it can cause constipation if we're not getting enough water into our system and we're bulking the stool up but we're not adding water. So then constipation can be an issue. But that increases the transit through the colon. And people who have high-fiber diets have lower risk of colon cancer. And so part of that is probably because high-fiber diets are also high in lots of other things that are good for you, vitamins, minerals, nutrients. And so you did that decreases your risk of any cancer as well. And then soluble fiber feeds our gut microbiome. It is actually ingested by the bugs in our gut which make up 50% of the weight of our stool. And that creates butyrates and you know when these um bacteria and are going through their enzyatic pro you know their digestive processes one of the byproducts of that are these butyrates which are then rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and are very antioxidant anti-inflammatory. So
could you give me the menopause supplements d if there is such a
Okay. So in general um we're not going to cure menopause with supplements. Let me just take straight up. Okay. Most women are going to be deficient in fiber and most women are going to be deficient in vitamin D. And vitamin D is hugely important in multiple enzyatic processes in our body. And it's really hard to get enough through our nutrition, even eating stacks of salmon a day, which is really high in vitamin D. So about 80% of my patients are not only just low in vitamin D, they're deficient. So, that is one that we can supplement safely up to about 4,000 IUs international units is how vitamin D is measured a day without worries of becoming toxic or having too much vitamin D, which is possible. And so, usually I'm having creatine. Absolutely. It's like a go-to. And we're looking at her nutritional profile. We're looking at her fiber intake. And then we're adding in a fiber supplement if she needs it.
Natalie, in terms of fertility, what is the fertility supplement stack,
Pessie? Okay. First and foremost, we're going to say that if you are trying to get pregnant, which by asking fertility, we're going to presume, we want to make sure you have folic acid on board. So, folic acid is the essential component, one very important part in cell division, but it's essential for a baby when it comes to brain development and spinal cord development. We call these neural tube defects. And the reason why I'm bringing it up is that there's a lot of chatter about folic acid out there, but it is the only supplement folic acid in its folic acid form that is proven to prevent these neural tube defects such as your baby being born without a brain. And interestingly, in today's world, a lot of foods are also fortified with folic acid, but these are some foods that are often processed and people are consuming less. So we are having less consumption of folic acid in our diet. Therefore making it even more important that we are supplementing with folic acid. As Dr. Haver said, vitamin D, vitamin D is essential for your entire body. But when it comes to hormone metabolism and fertility as well, we even see women who are going through IVF with donor eggs and we know they're very good quality, have lower success rates if they have lower vitamin D levels. This is something that almost everybody is deficient in. We do test and then target treatment to try to get you to an optimal level. But also omega-3 fatty acids are really important in your entire body, but especially in your reproductive years if you might get pregnant. And I often recommend magnesium for most patients as well. And then from a fertility standpoint, if you have infertility, there are studies that show that co-enzyme Q10 can be highly beneficial when it comes to egg quality. This is important in our mitochondrial health. And for the sake of the one question you asked, remember when we talked about eggs, we've got our genetic health, which is largely dependent on age. We have our metabolic health. The mitochondria from the egg controls all development for the embryo. And in fact, the cellular functions for an embryo, the first three days of life, solely come from the egg. The male genome doesn't even kick in until day three of embryo life. So, the function of the egg to be able to divide and do normal cell functions is very important. And sometimes we see that reduced in infertility patients. And co-enzyme Q10 is an easy thing we can get over the counter. Doesn't appear to have any harmful side effects and has potential benefits in some subsets. So my infertility patients, I add that on.
Wonder all things aging, performance, strength, bone.
Mhm.
What is the supplement stack for for longevity?
I start out with checking vitamin D and and but not for bone, for everything else that it does, right? Just to be clear, um vitamin D, magnesium is critically important for a variety of uh metabolic functions. Omega-3 for anti-inflammation. Creatine I'm a big fan of. If we move looking at uh scinsesscent cell load and inflammation, we haven't really talked about longevity, but scinsesscent cells are those b those cells left over from normal function that are so damaged that they can't flip into programmed cell deaths. So they circulate around and produce noxious um chemicals that can lead to a variety of disease. So we want to minimize those. And one way to do it is lifestyle. Another way is to use an herb called biceton. So I add that on and then also I do myself and check levels on my people of intracellular NAD+. NAD is a co-enzyme and 300 metabolic reactions. It's an it's an uh an energetic pathway. Now it's very popular right now and the critical differentiator for me is that taking whole molecule NAD such as in IVs our body needs to make it. So for myself and for my people I supplement with NMN which is the immediate precursor of NAD+ so that my body can then turn it into NAD+ and it can work intracellularly. It can also be delivered two reactions out uh in the form of NR. These are in the B vitamin categories. So that in two reactions your body makes NAD+. So the data does not show that you can IV NAD+ for efficacy because it works intracellularly. So you supplement its precursor.
I've heard so many people talking about NMN recently.
Yes, that's right. That's what I'm talking about. Is there clinical evidence to show that it's effective?
So, you know, those the lab that I work with, uh, I happen to know the scientist and he has hundreds of thousands of data points checking before NAD+ levels intracellularly, supplementing, and then after. And he can elevate those levels.
And it's associated with longevity, like intrinsically associated with longevity. A lot of the the bro science, I guess, longevity. It's intrinsic intrinsically related to lots of normal metabolic function and uh energy in the body. Whether or not it makes you live longer, I don't have that data.
Is it a tablet?
It is a powder the way I take it.
Mhm.
What about collagen? People talk a lot about collagen. It's in all the protein powders now.
I know, but it's not a protein as we think about it. Like you'll see all these collagen protein. It doesn't count as dietary protein for muscle development. Does it work as a supplement
there?
Depends on what you're looking for.
Yeah, exactly. And Mike Ornsby out of um University of Southern Florida. He has been doing quite a bit of research on collagen and joint pain um and found that there is some efficacy in taking the type 2 collagen to reduce joint pain. It doesn't help with cartilage regeneration. It doesn't help with osteoarthritis, but it does dampen inflammation and joint pain. So again, it depends on what you want to use it for.
In the first episode, we talked a little bit about environmental toxins and I wanted to before we talk about sleep and close off, I wanted to just mention environmental toxins and the role they play. The term microplastics has been very very popular of late. When we talk about environmental toxins, are we talking about microplastics and the air and maybe the water? What do we mean?
Essentially, it's anything in our world that is impacting your body and how it functions. There's a few different types, right? So we have endocrine disrupting chemicals. These are actual toxins in the environment in
cosmetics.
Cosmetics, our kitchen, our food that change how our endocrine system works, our hormones. There's also things like microplastics like you mentioned, which are actually going to deposit in our body and can cause fibrosis even in our ovaries, therefore changing how an organ's able to respond even if it is given normal hormone signals. And then I also lump into this category behavioral toxins, right? things like alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, the the choices that are toxic in our world as well. So that toxins is kind of a large category. There are some toxins you can control. You can try to filter your water. You can learn what is in your water. So that you can say at the, you know, EWG, this is my zip code. This is what's in my tap water. What type of filter might I need to try to have healthier drinking water in my home? You can change what you're cooking with, not using non-stick cookware or Teflon. you can get rid of plastics and especially when you're putting hot foods and beverages in because the heat is allowing those toxins to leak into those things. And then as Dr. Haver said are cosmetics, things that you use every single day that you put in and on your body are things that you're having a higher exposure to. And it's really important to decrease those because things like air quality, you might not have as much control over based on where you live. And there's so many toxins in our world in general that it's unrealistic to say, let's avoid all of them. And because of this, we have that same mentality that we see with exercise sometimes. Well, it's just there's too many. I can't avoid them all. So, I will ignore this category because it's easier to just do nothing instead of making active decisions to start to live a less toxic life. What changes have you made to remove pollutants and environmental toxins from your lives? Because we're in that fertility journey. I remember I came in one day and like all my shampoo and stuff had gone.
Yeah. So, starting to look through your products and get getting rid of things that have endocrine disruptors in them. You want to look the kitchen is probably the greatest source of exposure for most people. So, there's really no need to have any plastics in your kitchen. So, getting rid of them. But many people don't think about when you do have processed foods, the wrapping, the container, anything that's coming packaged likely has toxins in it. When you order Door Dash and it comes and you have it in a container, that's often hot food in a container that is leeching chemicals into it. So, a simple thing is take it out of that right away. Even if you're not eating it, put it into something glass or a different type of container. So, you can try to minimize that exposure. thinking about hot beverages, things that go in the microwave or the dishwasher especially. But then other things like thermal receipts. So getting receipts, uh thermal receipts have BPA in them. So getting receipts or
thermal receipts.
Yeah. So the airline tickets or that thermal paper. So just the receipt from the grocery store when they say, "Stephen, do you want your receipt?" You can just say, "No." And then if you work with thermal paper, maybe you're a cashier and you touch it over and over, I highly recommend you wear gloves because your exposure to that thermal paper is so much higher that it can become problematic for you.
Does it really make a difference if I take the receipt or not?
You know, there's a lot of things where you can do that will say that person touched receipts all day and they still got pregnant or their sperm was great or they lived a long time. We can list a whole lot of negative behaviors or habits or exposures that one person might tolerate just fine. And for somebody else, the sum of all of these behaviors add up to be something that puts them in a place that is very pro-inflammatory, not healthy for the now or for the future. That to me is an easy deci on the scale of decisions that are hard or that are easy. Trying to change the things that you're exposed to in your world, you have to spend some time to learn about it. You might have to buy some new things, but over time those decisions are ultimately easier than how you eat, your exercise, those those take longer commitment. And especially if you're partnered, if you live with somebody, then the foods that you eat, your sleeping habits depend on them. You both have to be together on this. So sometimes I always say toxins are to one place a thing you can do. You can look at your products. You can start to when they run out
say, is this one healthy for me? Should I get something that's going to have less of an impact? That one time of using very scented hand wash is no big deal. But when you wash your hands with that highly scented hand wash five times a day over and over, it is just an avenue of indocrine disruption that can add up to the litany of the other ones that you're experiencing. So, we're all saying these little changes on one hand singularly probably do not matter much, but together they do. And there's a link between environmental toxins in menopause or early menopause.
Early menopause we think so. So, you know, you were born with a shelf life, a genetically predisposition shelf life on the ovary. Okay? And we don't know a lot of things to extend that shelf life because we have a certain number of eggs. But there are a lot of things we can do to speed that process up. So, that's going to be smoking. women who smoke cigarettes or you know um even we're looking at vaping now because it's a newer thing but definitely tobacco consumption you know in the form of smoking we see earlier menopause um
the so there was this incredible study where they looked at women who were sexually abused who then had children who were sexually abused went through menopause I think nine years sooner. So, and it's the only study that looked at this and it happened to be the stress they looked at was sexual abuse in the mother and the child. And so, they went through menopause 9 years sooner. So, there is a component of emotional stress and long-term chronic emotional stress
because it does cause chronic inflammation. And the ovaries are highly sensitive to chronic inflammation. We know that BPA exposure has shown that if you have a higher level of BPA exposure, you have lower ovarian reserve, meaning less eggs in your ovary will go into menopause earlier.
And what is BPA?
BPA is one of those environmental chemicals that we're exposed to largely through plastics, but it's also one that's in the thermal receipt paper that we're trying to avoid our exposure to. And that's where some of the data even when it comes back to food where soy in taking soy products can actually be very protective because it combats BPA. So how it works. So when people say, "Oh, you shouldn't have tofu. You're a man. Soy is so bad for you." That's actually false. And we found that people who had greater exposure to soy products actually had the lowest level of BPA and improved reproductive performance because of that. So there's definitely correlation with these toxins in our world and we might say, "Oh, is it linked to menopause?" Maybe nobody's done that exact study, but it absolutely is. If you have lower eggs at an earlier time period,
that's going to give you an earlier menopause. Go menopause earlier.
You know, the flip side of fertility is menopause. So
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