Dr. Alex Jimenez Podcast: How to Treat Inflammation Naturally

PODCAST: Dr. Alex Jimenez, a chiropractor in El Paso, TX, Kenna Vaughn, and Astrid Ornelas discuss a variety of natural treatment methods and techniques in treating inflammation as the primary focus of this podcast video. Dr. Alex Jimenez, Kenna Vaughn, and Astrid Ornelas present a discussion of natural ways to treat inflammatory cascades, including nutrition, diet, and nutraceuticals, among others. Knowing what are the best supplements are also presented as the primary focus of this podcast video. Nutraceuticals are considered to be a safe and effective alternative treatment approach that is well researched by scientists to help promote health and wellness. – Podcast Insight

[00:00:14] Hey, guys. Hey. Welcome to the show of inflammology. Today, we’re gonna be talking about inflammation at its core. One of the things that we have focused on is trying to give our watching viewers a level of understanding that they can take home to them and to offer their families a change that actually can matter. Today, we’re going to be discussing at the root cause of many, many pathological disorders. Not all, but the majority of pathological disorders, whether they’re heart-related, diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders. At the core, they deal with inflammation. Inflammation is the bad word that we have learned over the last decade through many research studies that inflammation when it actually deals with the body it actually works in many, many mysterious ways. Understanding what it is and how it begins in the process of our bodies is a great insight into our abilities to heal our bodies and prevent diseases and help us live a long life. We can assess the situation of what has happened over the last century or so in the year nineteen hundred. The average age of individuals was actually about 45 and that’s kind of striking to a lot of people. But the Social Security system was built on a system that assumed that most people would live farther beyond 65. Today, we live in a world that the reason we have a longer extension of life is with all the advances of medicine at the core of it, heart advancements, metabolic issues. And if we can kind of realize that many of the pathologies that really struck us down back in the day was inflammation at its core, whether it’s atherosclerosis or some sort of pancreatic digestive liver disorders, intestinal issues, we can find that the commonality behind many of these disorders, even neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer’s, things that sometimes don’t make sense or have yet to be discovered. Inflammation has a lot to do with it. So why don’t we just go ahead and cut to the chase and go in, dive deep, and understand inflammation at its core? Today, I’ve put a pound together to discuss ways that we can naturally affect inflammation and assist the body through inflammatory preventative methods. Now. As we discuss these particular things, we’re going to break it down. But I want to be very clear that our goal here and our focus here is understanding that the kitchen all the way to the genes has to be described, meaning from the choices we eat all the way to the genetic transcription of the DNA. Today we have an issue of the majesty and the power of DNA. Today, we’re actually at a time where the world is being affected by viruses and designs and what is at the core of a virus? It’s the DNA. It’s the DNA of a molecule that wants to survive. And it travels through the planetary system unfazed, it has great dynamics, it has intelligence. So if we can understand how we can actually assist the genetic expression of our bodies through anti-inflammatory methods, we can prevent a lot of diseases before they become subclinical, before they become clinical. And before at the end of clinical become pathogenic and to the point of actual disorders of great impact in our lives. So what one of the first things we want to start is understanding what is inflammation? With inflammation, you have to put on the white coat. You’re going to have to kind of go deep and understand that you have to be an inflammologist, almost to that extent. A cardiologist becomes an inflammologist, a rheumatologist inflammologist, internal medicine inflammation. So as we look at this, we deal with the immune system at its core. And it’s got different names from immunoglobulins to IGFs, IGAs, all these kind of neat acronyms. But what we’re dealing with is a process that is the way that the body protects itself. Inflammation is good. God designed it to be good. And it’s okay. But if it goes astray or changes, it causes autoimmune disorders. It causes, you know, thyroid issues, Hashimoto’s. It causes a lot of disorders that affect us today. It causes metabolic syndrome. We’ve been talking a lot about metabolic syndrome. And what I want to do is, I want to bring in and discuss and take it down a notch and to understand that our basis is based on a functional medicine approach. It’s a physical medicine type of practice. And we have to bring the kitchen to us. And one of the things is as a doctor, we as a clinical professional we do is we have a team of people in order to win the game. And the game is against inflammation. Now, we have here Astrid Ornelas and we have Kenna Vaughn, who’s going to be discussing also topics on inflammation. But I want to be very clear that what we’re doing is we’re taking the understanding of the intestinal biome. We’re going all the way through the immunological system and we’re going to all the way go somehow, someway I’m going to end up talking about the DNA, and the nucleotides, and the transcription process that actually happens in the DNA. All of which affects directly the processes of the body, so as we go over these things, it’s going to rock your world as we kind of go through this process, because today is not a all answer thing. It’s the beginning of inflammology. Now, the basis of our work is put together by a doctor named Dr. Alex Vasquez, who is the premier inflammologist and the science evaluated the greatest techniques that are out there to prevent inflammation on a natural way, also in a way that actually affects a lot of people throughout the globe. Now, his science is in. His studies have been put together by a lot of directions from immunological to natural medicines to the deep medical approaches that pretty much everyday change. But at the base is understanding inflammation, what he termed the core coin inflammology. That’s what we’re doing. And I’m bringing it to you guys as best as I can. And maybe one day he’ll be out here and he’ll kind of indirectly kind of connect with this and elaborate on these technologies because not only the doctors need to know this, but the people, in general, need to understand what inflammation is and how inflammoloy can actually make a difference in their direct aspects. So the first one I want to bring in today is going to be Kenna. I want you to kind of discuss a little bit about the inflammology kind of pathologies, as well as the inflammology kind of philosophy of what approaches and how we can actually help people. So we’re gonna leave it for you to kind of bring it in. And then we’re gonna bring Astrid and then we’re going to touch base on how inflammation can be prevented for our loved ones. Now, that’s going to make a big impact. So go ahead and give us a little point of view as to what your direction is on how to stop inflammation.

[00:06:46] Of course. So to follow your point, Dr. Jimenez, inflammation is everywhere, it’s all around, even if we don’t think it is. And what we’ve been learning for years now is that inflammation is inside the body. So at first when you think inflammation, we’ve all felt it, we might not have felt it inside, but we have felt it at some point. A great example would be when you roll your ankle. Everyone knows what that feels like. It swells. It’s painful. It hurts to touch. It’s hot. And that’s occurring inside our bodies and around our organs. And even though we don’t feel it the same, our organs do. So that’s where we want to just say inflammation is important. It’s something that needs to be discussed. It’s something that we want to bring knowledge to and something that we can provide those natural cures and remedies to really reduce the inflammation. We’re never gonna get rid of it. We don’t want that. We need it, but we just want to get it down to a manageable level.

[00:07:46] You know, you mentioned that about a manageable level. It is the chronic overexcitation of the immune system that causes pathology. Again, I said it’s natural and it is good. I would like to bring Astrid and she’s gonna be discussing what’s kind of a, we’re going to be going back and forth between individuals and I’m kind of mediating here. But Astrid’s gonna bring some concepts in terms of nutraceuticals that are important. And she’s also going to begin with the kind of idea as to where she wants to take this inflammation, fundamental journey.

[00:08:16] Go ahead.

[00:08:17] OK. Well, first of all, I want to, I guess, I’d like to kind of discuss inflammation on itself. So, like Kenna was saying, first of all, inflammation is a natural response of the body. We need it. Like Kenna said, like Dr. Jimenez mentioned, we do need inflammation. It is a natural response that the immune system triggers to basically protect us against harm, protects us against injury, protects us against infections, and it also protects us against environmental toxins. When you roll your ankle, when you get a muscle strain or a muscle sprain, the area will get inflamed and it’ll get red and it’ll get swollen. Now, see the immune system…

[00:09:11] Whenever we’re injured or whenever there’s an infection or exposure to toxins our immune system will actually release a series of proteins and antibodies to basically cause all of these symptoms.

[00:09:26] You know, the redness and the swelling and that hot sensation that we feel around the area to basically prevent, I guess, prevent other health issues from happening due to injury and infection and toxins.

[00:09:47] What I want to let elaborate there, inflammation is the launch of the healing process. It is the beginning when someone hurts immediately blood is drawn to the area and it is almost like a call of the wild. Every cell is notified of the danger from the pain, from the brain to the cellular to the fibroblast. Everyone comes to the region, and the way they come to the region is by lowering the pressure to that area and swelling it and bringing fluid and bringing stuff to get it fixed. Stuff because they’re called cytokines. They’re called, fibroblasts, a whole different kind of dynamics occurs to begin the inflammatory process. So what we’re talking about here is inflammation gone too far. OK. So good. Go back to that.

[00:10:32] So inflammation is good.

[00:10:37] Acute inflammation normally lasts a couple of hours or a few days following an injury or following a sore throat, you know, your throat feels swollen and it’s painful. That’s inflammation that your own immune system has created to protect you from the infection getting any worse and to basically start up the healing process. But what we want to talk about, what we want to emphasize here is that when inflammation goes array, when we have chronic inflammation. This is inflammation that basically lasts more than a couple of months. And for some people, chronic inflammation can even last a couple of years and that’s when inflammation itself is bad.

[00:11:32] When we look at inflammation, it’s the call of the wild, as I indicated. It’s the way the body responds to it. What we’re going to be discussing today is a little bit of an offset of inflammation. OK. It’s the inflammatory process that begins in the gut because as we look at it, our whole philosophy and our fundamental premises, are from the kitchen because that’s the foods you choose. And the process in how we process our foods to the level of as you’re from chewing down to the intestines, the stomach in the process and the breakdown of products. And we’re gonna see how our probiotics, our natural flora is aided by things that we can do inside of our colon that can assist the healing process. And what we have here is we have a presentation here. To kind of reflect on. Okay. Now, what we have here is a presentation showing the inflammation or immune signaling processes. What we’re looking at is on the left-hand side, we can actually see an intestinal wall. Okay. You can see the vila, which is the little fingers there that actually present where the food enters. From there it enters through little quarrels, little barriers that for many of us if those are broken down, that’s where leaky gut actually gets its term named. As the inflammation goes we have processes that lead to inflammatory cytokines or immune responses where certain cells in our body, immune cells respond, producing their own response agents. Now, in the process here, as we go through this, we can actually see it has a direct effect on our cellular activity because as we go down to the right-hand side, you can see a little circle that looks kind of clear. And you can see right there that the NFkB is an agent that actually facilitates damage to the DNA. Now, if you’ll notice, things like turmeric and resveratrol are things that actually can prevent inflammatory processes. Now, if these inflammatory processes are limited by these, we can stop it here. We can actually prevent circulatory inflammogens that go on and affect, different components of the body, such as joints, such as the brain, such as the disorders that affect the organs. A constant state of inflammation creates degenerative disorders. This is what we’re trying to avoid. So what a process is natural in our system. A continuous state of the inflammatory state affects not only our DNA, but it also affects our mitochondria, it affects the old process of the cellular engines that actually keeps us alive. Keep this going on for a long time and we have a chronic disease. How it presents depends on the state of activity of our genetic genome and our phenotypes of the expression of what the genes have encoded. Some people can smoke for years.

[00:14:13] And yes, you’ve heard of people that can smoke until they’re ninety-five. But yeah, there’s also been people, where I’m from in Chicago. There was a guy who jumped off the top of the Chicago building and he glided onto another building and he survived. Crazy, right? The possibility of surviving a continuous barrage of inflammation in the body is very unlikely that the body won’t show its colors.

[00:14:36] It’s unlikely that that guy would ever have survived such a fall. But it happens. But that’s a rarity. And also the determining factors. It lies in the genetic capacity handed down from our genes and our phenotypes and our gamete cells that were given to us from our ancestors.

[00:14:54] So what we need to do is we need to go back into the story and go right back to the kitchen. OK. How are we going to fix this? So now that was a kind of a general picture there of what we were talking about. So I want to bring in a little bit. I want, we’re going to hit it double-fisted here today. We’re gonna go a little bit back and forth in terms of nutrition. We’re also going to talk about things we can do in the kitchen. So I’m going to start with the kitchen first, which is going to be Kenna, and then we’re going to go and we’re going to go into the nutraceuticals, which is going to be Astrid. Who’s going to give us a better insight as we go? What goes on there? So let’s go to the kitchen for now. Let’s go ahead.

[00:15:26] To Dr. Jimenez’s point, I just also want to say that in that photo that was just being shown, we’re always going to have little toxins that are being entered. And it’s not the little ones that are the problem. It’s, like we said, when it becomes frequent and constantly occurring. And that’s when we start to see, it’s labeled as number six on the diagram if you can see it. But those are what’s going to start to happen in your body when these toxins become like their normal, like they’re supposed to be. An overflow of them. So that’s what we’re trying to avoid. So I actually have a little quick breakfast prepared if we, I have it written down on a slide for everyone to view. So this quick breakfast can be made into a smoothie or into, as you can see on the screen. A little breakfast overnight yogurt and the ingredients are all made with things that are going to help our NRf2 factor, which is, in turn, going to help our inflammation. And Astrid has more on the NRf2, in a second. But looking at this recipe where it says your choice of. And then we have these berries, flax seeds, all of that listed, all of those foods are all things that are going to help to increase that Nrf2. And as well as provide our bodies with the right fiber that we need, the right prebiotics, the right probiotics, keep us full, keep ourselves happy and keep that inflammation down. So going back to Astrid with the Nrf2. I know she has some information about that.

[00:17:01] Astrid as we go through this. What I want to do is I want to get, because we’ve been covering these nutraceuticals as we go through. So take it to where you think we should go in terms of this, because we’re going to try this again in later shows. But at least they have a printout as to the things that they have or a visual of what we should be talking about.

[00:17:19] Yes. So now that we’ve discussed what inflammation is we really wanted to kind of touch base on that. You know, just to kind of let people know, so people can understand that even though inflammation is important in the body, having excess inflammation can definitely lead to other health issues that we definitely don’t want. So with that being said, I want to take my viewers and kind of give you a little bit more value into this conversation.

[00:17:52] And so this is what we were mentioning. We want to take it to the kitchen. You know, let’s take it to the nutraceuticals at home. What can we do now to lower this chronic inflammation?

[00:18:05] And in our past two or three podcasts, we’ve been talking about nutraceuticals pretty much focusing on metabolic syndrome. But this time I want to emphasize on the inflammation that can cause metabolic syndrome or in turn, the inflammation that is also caused by metabolic syndrome.

[00:18:26] So if you could see here in my list that I have up there of the nutraceuticals. Yes. It’s been getting a little bit bigger. I just do not want to, I keep adding to it because all of these pertain to metabolic syndrome and all these can help in one way or another. But for the purpose of this podcast, I want to emphasize a couple of these that I added that can target inflammation.

[00:18:53] So first of all, I want to talk about vitamin A.

[00:18:58] Vitamin A can actually help regulate the immune system. It has anti-inflammatory properties, according to several research studies that I have found on the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

[00:19:11] And so I’ve been talking a lot about these nutraceuticals in the sense of how you can supplement them.

[00:19:20] But today, I actually want to discuss, you know, we want to bring it to the kitchen. Of course, you can buy some vitamin A supplements. But what type of foods can you eat? Like, where can you find vitamin A? Vitamin A can actually be found in orange and yellow vegetables and fruits, you know, such as carrots, red bell peppers, mangos, papaya, and vitamin A can also be found in most dark leafy greens. You know, dark, leafy vegetables. You can find it in things like spinach and broccoli.

[00:19:54] And so the next nutraceutical I want to talk about pertaining to inflammation, reducing inflammation associated with metabolic syndrome and several other health issues is vitamin D.

[00:20:05] Now, we’ve talked about vitamin D before and it definitely has remarkable anti-inflammatory properties and vitamin D can help reduce inflammation. Its anti-inflammatory properties are basically activated by regulating cytokines. Now, cytokines are these little I guess these little compounds, if you will, that are inside our body, they’re inside our cells. And they’re the ones that basically produce inflammation. Now, inflammation is important, but when these cytokines go crazy, essentially, it’s important to regulate them. And vitamin D has been demonstrated in several research studies to help regulate these cytokines that have basically gone wild. And it can also help regulate our immune system. And we can find vitamin D in fatty fish, like salmon, like tuna. We can also find it in special fortified vitamin D dairy products like milk and cheese.

[00:21:16] Awesome. Sounds like we’re gearing up to make a great salad.

[00:21:22] It’s super important. We want to eat a lot of those dark leafy greens, essentially, you know, basically colorful foods, eat as many colorful foods as you want and as you can, you know, to basically enrich our bodies with these vitamins and minerals, you know. Right.

[00:21:43] The cytokines as she spoke about, you got to just kind of try to make it simple. Cytokine is a kind of creepy word, it’s kind of weird. But if you have like a get-together, a party and it’s OK to have, you know, your friends and the ability for everyone to have a good time with their buddies. But let’s assume you have a like a get together with some wild friends and you know what’s going to kick up the party, right. Typically, it’s going to be food, it’s going to be sweets. But one of the things that kick up the party and make it kind of a little bit go awry is alcohol. Right. Alcohol sometimes makes the party get crazy. Now, if you can imagine people having a good time and they’re just good and a little bit of alcohol but when it goes too far, the cytokines get too crazy. Too much alcohol. You can see that the energy state of the party changes the dynamics. What people say may be offensive, what, you know, the truth comes out and things get a little crazy. Right. So what we’re talking about is cytokines are things that stimulate the cellular activity to the point where it becomes detrimental to the area. So there’s the guy who brought the cytokines and activates the cytokines and makes the fire at the party. And those are called enzymes, cytokinase. So, OK, those are the names of these things. So when they present in the cells, they disrupt the DNA. If it’s done for a long period of time. Kenna actually talked about the Nrf2 factor and the NfkB. NF-kB is kind of like the police. It kind of keeps the cytokines from damaging the DNA as you hear that knock on the door. Hey, you guys, you’re going too far. Limit the party so it really can be related to something that’s really easy to understand inside the cells. I know, Astrid wants to talk about some additional nutraceuticals, but I was gonna make it really kind of like that, get visuals that are good. Easy to understand.

[00:23:27] Yeah. No, no, that’s great. Because actually the next nutraceutical I want to talk about is the Nrf2. Oh, great. Yeah. So it works. So Nrf2…

[00:23:39] Healthcare professionals and researchers refer to Nrf2 as the Nrf2 pathway, the transcription factor, but basically Nrf2 is a process. It’s not a vitamin. It’s not a mineral, it’s not essentially a nutraceutical. But it is a process that naturally happens in the body. And healthcare professionals and researchers have referred to Nrf2, however, as the master regulator of antioxidative responses. The police. So what ends up happening when the Nrf2 processes are activated in the body, they help trigger the expression of antioxidants. You know, we need antioxidants because they help regulate the immune system. They help regulate inflammation and they have wonderful anti-inflammatory properties.

[00:24:38] You know, the Nrf2 factor is got a great thing. If we can think of a story in our minds where we’ve seen our government go south really fast. Many years ago, we had a situation with Katrina. Katrina was a very impactful storm. But what it did is it took out the infrastructure, took out the police. That’s our Nrf2 factor. So that controls at the state of energy or the order in ourselves, remove that. And you remember people you have a visual of seeing people running crazy. Those are reactive oxygen species. Those are oxidants. They go crazy and they go crazy and they start burning on each other. Everyone starts going crazy, shooting each other. And realistically, we got a visual of that anti-oxidants assist and cool them down there. They’re the mediators, Nrf2 is like the military showing up says, no, no, no, we ain’t gonna go awry. We lose the Nrf2 factor and our body becomes a disease state. So it’s very important to understand what it is that we’re talking about. So we can when we understand, as he indicated, the word itself reminds us of math factoring, factoring what? Alpha, beta multiplied by this equals that. Right. So it’s a factor. It’s a variable. There are many things that make up the Nrf2 factors. But what we want to do is talking in general terms that we have the ability to assist it like any sort of police system. If you overload it, it gets overwhelmed and disease states occur. So she’s talking about that particular aspect. So continue, please.

[00:26:03] With that being said, even though Nrf2 is not a specific vitamin or mineral, however, there are foods that we can eat to essentially help promote the activation of the Nrf2 factor.

[00:26:17] I am dying to wait to hear this. It is important. So these foods that we can eat to activate the Nrf2 process include berries, you know, red, blueberries, grapes, citrus fruits, and juices and especially cruciferous vegetables.

[00:26:37] Like broccoli and kale. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:40] You know, again, nature did not have McDonald’s. We did not have stores. We did not have refrigerators.

[00:26:47] Basically, if you watch yourself as an early version of you back in the sixteen hundreds or the 500 A.D. or before Christ, as we were walking through the terrain, there were seeds, there were berries, there were vegetables, there were cruciferous stuff. These special things held the secret of how to prevent these things. We did a lot of fasting. We’ll get into that later, intermittent fasting because we wouldn’t eat for hours and days. We only eat when we had food. So we got to go back to the old ways of kind of considering. So continue with this important story here.

[00:27:22] Yes. And to kind of continue with Nrf2, I actually want to tie in another of the nutraceuticals that I have listed up here on my list, glutathione. So glutathione and Nrf2 actually tie in very well together with each other.

[00:27:37] Glutathione is actually referred to as the master anti-oxidant now. So you have Nrf2, which is the master regulator and you have glutathione which is the master anti-oxidant. Glutathione is actually a precursor to the Nrf2 transcription factor. You need glutathione in your body. You know, along with other compounds and processes. But glutathione is one of the ones that is basically kind of highlighted by healthcare professionals and researchers because it is very important to initiate this process of the Nrf2 factor to basically regulate the immune system, regulate inflammation, and to activate the antioxidant effect to reduce inflammation.

[00:28:25] And glutathione, you can actually find it again, just like these foods that activate the Nrf2 process. You know, broccoli, spinach, and Brussels sprouts.

[00:28:37] I want to touchback on the glutathione. Glutathione has been studied, as a matter of fact, many clinics do inject glutathione into the bloodstream because it really is, if your body is at the state of its lost control. Many people understand and they find their way towards understanding what glutathione does, whether it be through I.V. or through foods. Many of the nutraceuticals we offer and the protocols we have, whether they be I.V. related or not, are related to get the reactive oxygen species. These are energy states of oxidation chemicals. We know them as antioxidants, vitamins A, B, and C, these are all the things that we’ve always learned. But the special thing about these things that have been into our diets, they’ve been part of our diets for millennia. People know about lemons, antioxidant aspects of citrus. Antioxidant effect of certain vegetables. I know that she’s going to be discussing right now the favorite food of all children, which is broccoli. Right. And I know that broccoli is the most favorite food for all those little kids when you can see their face getting soured. But this is a reason why she’s going to discuss the reason why through the sulforaphane, through the resveratrol connection, we’re gonna be able to discuss how certain dietary changes can make an influence on our energy state or our oxidant state in our bodies.

[00:30:02] Go ahead.

[00:30:03] I was just going to add with that with the broccoli. I know a lot of children don’t like to eat broccoli and not a lot of adults like to eat broccoli either. So if we go back to the kitchen, you can also do broccoli sprouts and you can blend those up in a blender along with the kale. You don’t have to eat just a bowl of kale. You can blend it up and you can kind of hide that taste if it’s not your favorite. Put those berries that Astrid was talking about, to really give you that added flavor and kind of minimize the vegetable taste and have it taste more fruity, more like a smoothie.

[00:30:38] But still get all the benefits.

[00:30:41] Just essentially with everything that we’ve been talking about, the bottom line is…

[00:30:51] Color is naturally found in nature. And, you know, all of these colorful fruits, all these colorful vegetables, you know, as we have mentioned before, McDonald’s, all of these foods are just very brown, very bland colors, you know, and these foods, as we know, they’re not very nutritious to us, you know, and in nature, we can find these bright oranges and yellows, blues, reds, you know, greens and all of these foods, all of these vegetables and all these fruits. They basically have a lot of the essential vitamins that we need just for overall health and wellness.

[00:31:32] We’re not that smart. As humans. We sometimes gravitate to things that may kind of flavor the right thing. But what we do know is that in nature, God has given us rods and cones in our eyes. The rods see black and white, as you can tell in the dark. That’s the one that kicks off. But in light, the cone conglomerate’s all the colors. And the reason for the colors is that each vegetable in its color has different phytochemicals, these phytochemicals are the things that make up the green, the yellow, the red. And what they do is they tip us off as humans, that we don’t have to be researchers, but it kind of guides us in the direction of the color. And the foods.

[00:32:12] And if you see red in an animal’s fur, on its skin, and you’ll know the danger, right. Well, if you see it in a fruit, you know, it tends to, like a strawberry. You gravitate towards that. Right. And the reasons these phytochemicals are so good, they’re embedded in the color and the pleasing this of these things are important that we search. So when we’re in the kitchen, our job as a provider for our families is to vary the colors and they don’t have to be red, but just throw a little red in there every so often throw a little black in there like olives, black olives. Throw a little bit of white, kiwi, different vegetables have different colors for a reason. We don’t have to understand what it is, but it’s very important that we balance that. And that’s a part of the deep component of functional medicine is to balance out the coloring of foods because it matters. So I know she’s got a couple more she might talk about. So, Astrid tell us a little bit more about sulforaphane and green tea. And I think you might discuss your favorite soon.

[00:33:05] Yes. We want to move on a little bit from Nrf2 and glutathione because these next nutraceuticals are also just as important as these other ones that I’ve previously discussed to basically promote anti-inflammatory effects in the body and therefore like improve our well-being. So the next nutraceutical that I want to talk about. That’s up there.

[00:33:28] It’s SCFA, which is actually short for, short-chain fatty acids.

[00:33:34] Now, this nutraceutical that I’m discussing, it’s essentially a byproduct.

[00:33:42] It’s created by gut bacteria, by bacteria in our gut, our microbiome, by dietary fiber. You know, when we eat and then when we eat fiber the bacteria in our gut metabolizes it. It produces these short-chain fatty acids.

[00:34:02] And I don’t want to stray away too much from, I guess, inflammation, the nutraceuticals and everything associated with metabolic syndrome.

[00:34:10] But kind of what one of the things that Dr. Jimenez discussed earlier in the podcast, leaky gut, things like when you have gastrointestinal health issues, things like that, when people don’t have the right biodiversity of gut bacteria.

[00:34:31] This itself can cause a deficiency of these short-chain fatty acids and that in itself can cause inflammation. So eating more dietary fiber can actually promote the production of these short-chain fatty acids or SCFAs and therefore promote anti-inflammatory properties in the body as well.

[00:34:52] The process of the intestine, it has a purpose for the duodenum. There’s a purpose for the stomach. There’s a there’s a purpose for the jejunum, which is a component of the intestine. There’s a component of the small intestine. It’s a long piece. But there’s also a transition into a thing called the large intestine all the way to the sigmoid colon and out the poop chute, it goes. But the whole process is that the foods that can be digested in the small intestine can not be digested in the large intestine. So here’s what’s really cool. The bacteria break down the fiber and they break down the food products so that the bacteria down the road over the large intestine can be fed properly. So the way they communicate is to break down these fatty acids and these long-chain fatty acids and make them into small chain fatty acids of which those little bacteria are waiting to be fed. Now, the biodiversity of the bacteria at the large intestine, along with the small intestine is the thing that determines our health, it is what they call SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, again, the small intestine bacterial overgrowth means that something has gone too far. There is the bug that is gone that it’s getting crazy. It’s like having six cats and one bowl. You’re gonna have some screaming going on. Right. So the reality is, is that, well, we got to do is we got to give everyone a bowl. So everyone has been fed. So in terms of bacteria is to provide them the food so that the bacteria can produce their byproducts. People don’t know and people don’t. Until recently, is that serotonin? Things that affect everyone. Serotonin is the calming agent, but they don’t realize that it’s actually produced by the bacteria inside of the intestine. So a good intestine keeps a person calm. It’s not so much produced in the brain as it has the capacity to. But the large amounts of serotonin produced by the bacteria. So our bacteria health is a huge component. So when we deal with small chain fatty acids, we’re talking about the things that keep them around. Our body is smart. We can do an absolute total average of the intestine to clean out a bacterial overgrow situation. And if you give them the right food, it regenerates properly. And that’s the crazy part about the understanding of inflammation. We can start it there and we can fix that connection. Keep on doing this too long. What happens is any bacteria overgrowth causes a problem. It breaks down the walls of the intestine and then we have leaky chemicals going into our body causing inflammation. Right. So inflammation starts in the gut. So we got to take care of our bugs. So continue with the sulforaphane and the other story, because we’re going to be hitting on these subjects a lot more as time goes on.

[00:37:29] Yes. Yes. OK. So the next nutraceutical I want to talk about that’s up there is resveratrol. And resveratrol is a compound that also acts as an antioxidant. Now, we’ve been talking about antioxidants and how important these are to promote anti-inflammatory properties in our body.

[00:37:48] And resveratrol can actually be found in berries, grapes, pistachios. It can even be found in green tea and dark chocolate.

[00:37:59] Perfect. Dark chocolate.

[00:38:06] And the women love that vino because they have had a stressed day. So they somehow the research came out that resveratrol was produced with wine, but you have to have 200 glasses of wine to enjoy that. So that’s going a little bit too far. So you can take resveratrol supplements too, as well?

[00:38:19] Yes, definitely. Definitely. You can. As I’ve mentioned, the list of the nutraceuticals that I’m talking about, we can take them as supplements. But of course, you know, it’s always easier to just get to the kitchen, you know, and eat all of these very colorful fruits and vegetables. Before you become clinical. Yes. Yes. Yes. OK. So the next one. But I’m just going to very briefly touch upon it. Is sulforaphane, I didn’t super emphasize on it, but I did list it up there because it is also important. And it also helps regulate the immune system by regulating oxidative stress, which is basically caused by these free radicals that we’ve been talking about.

[00:39:07] And the area right there, she’s going to head over into her favorite world. Sulforaphane is activated. See, nature gives you these packages ready for it. One of the things that sulforaphane has become popular for is from the celery and the sprouts and the baby sprouts, which are called what again, the broccoli sprouts, babies. Right. When you chew them, you actually activate the enzymes. That actually creates sulforaphane. So it’s almost like nature gives you like these little packages, but you’ve got to chew them. So actually the process that gets sulforaphane out in the sprouts is the chewing process actually launches the stuff. It’s actually like you can almost see the goodness coming into the body once you chew on it because that activates it. So literally sprung into action the moment you chew it, ain’t that crazy. So OK, we have, you are going to talk about a couple more things. What is it?

[00:39:59] And yeah, just basically touching up on that. Sulforaphane can be found in cruciferous vegetables, you know, like your broccoli and your Brussels sprouts, taking it all back to the broccoli. So just, you know, bottom line, you know, a lot of broccoli to get all these anti-inflammatory properties going on in your body.

[00:40:17] There’s a reason mommy’s give it to their kids.

[00:40:19] Yes, definitely. Definitely. So, yeah. The last nutraceutical I want to talk about, you know, saving best for last. One of my favorite nutraceuticals.

[00:40:29] Can we go to the visual on that one first? Go to the big picture of the inflammation at its best. And I want to show everybody this particular picture here. If you look over here, you’ll see about number 17, resveratrol, which we just discussed. And turmeric. What it does, it actually prevents NF-kB from launching the inflammatory damage on the body. What we’ve learned is that turmeric actually has a direct effect on Nf-kB to prevent inflammation, which then stops it at the cellular level and prevents it. As you can see there, from entering into the circulatory system. So tell us a little bit about what you know in terms of turmeric?

[00:41:07] Yeah, so pretty much as you said, turmeric and curcumin, curcumin is the active ingredient that’s found in turmeric. It’s basically what gives us that yellowish, you know, orangey color to turmeric for anyone who didn’t know that. But basically turmeric or curcumin, it does have these antioxidant properties Definitely. It plays a huge role in basically decreasing. I guess the amount of these cytokines that are you know, they are necessary for the body. They are produced when there’s inflammation in the body. But when there’s too many of these cytokines, too many of these just wreaking havoc on our cells and our tissues in our bodies. Turmeric is a fantastic root. You know, a nutraceutical, you can eat it or you can take it in the form of supplements. And it can definitely decrease cytokines.

[00:42:07] It can decrease oxidative stress. You know, these oxidants that can cause inflammation and, you know, basically reduce this immune system response.

[00:42:21] You know, it ultimately, again, as Kenna took us there, if you could look in this particular picture, you can ultimately see again, as we look back upon it from the gut on the left-hand side, as it travels through all the way, if you can see a number of 15, 16. The DNA effects. Mm-hmm. So the DNA effects. All of us want to be good parents, good people, good stewards of our spirit as we travel through our 100-year journeys in our lives. But we want to be as healthy as we can be. The answer lies in nature to make it happen. Our job is to bring it apart. And I want. And I know that. Kenna, you’ve got some points on this particular thing.

[00:42:59] Yes. I just wanted to mention that earlier we said we want to keep this inflammation under control and there’s no age too soon to start. So I know I personally am a parent and I want to feed myself that way. I have the great energy that I need and my immune system is great to take care of my children. But I also want my children to not have this inflammation build up from the beginning. So I know that kids can be very picky and they’re going to want things that you feed them constantly. And kids eat a lot about texture. And just like Dr. Jimenez was saying, color. It’s huge. Children are drawn to it. So what you can do is take their plate and make it colorful. Add some greens, zucchini on there, add some orange, carrots, add some slices of bell pepper, add some avocado. They have a variety of textures that they love. That’s how they explore and eat as well as color. And if you just keep feeding them these foods, they’re going to realize that these are good. These are the normal, not French fries and McDonald’s. And those are then things that they’re going to start to crave. They’re going to want the fruits and vegetables. They’re not going to want the junk. And you can really get a jumpstart on all of that. And if that doesn’t work, then throw it in the blender.

[00:44:11] Yeah. And you know what? But you don’t do that. What we do is we do maka sugar, which is a natural version of Apple sugar. That’s a sweetener. It’s not even sugar. It’s actually a good byproduct of the sugar, a panel. So you’ve got glucose, fructose, sucrose, these components that are in maka sugar or maka fruit. It’s really what it is. It makes it really sweet for the kid who has a sweet tooth. You can add it there and they’ll just love it. It’s what we teach our kids. It ultimately brings it down to the family. We all want our kids and our families to be healthy. We want ourselves to have good choices and we want to prevent future pathologies. And if we can start early in the journey, kids do more what we do, not what we say. And they’ll do it eventually. But they’re really watching as to what your choices are for foods and kids want what’s good. At that age of why, you’ll have a kid that will be a certain age. Is that healthy? Is that healthy? Is that healthy? Because they want to know what’s good for them. They want to live for what our purpose is and what their purpose is. So this is all about bringing home to children so that when we can honor our future, our past generations, that they survive, then we’re going to survive and we’re gonna make it better for them and we’re gonna make sure that the genetic expression is protected. We don’t just need the good ole Nf-kB, Nrf2 factors to protect us though. Our body prevents it from happening in that example of Katrina and the police. We have systems to protect us, but we can’t overload it because any system overloaded loses the battle and then the bugs get in us in and things like DNA transcription becomes gone awry and things like cancer or things like degenerative tissues, neurodegenerative disorders happen as a result or have a tendency to happen based on our genetic offspring or genetic expression. Sorry. Is being able to handle it. So together we’re gonna bring this to an end today, we’ve done a lot. We’re going to be bringing some more concepts here, but I want to be able to thank my peoples and all the crew behind here. And I want you all to know that we’re gonna be fighting for the anti-inflammatory movement through our inflammology programs because we are inflammologists. Most doctors are inflammologists. They may not realize it yet, but they are inflammologists and the connection between most pathological disorders can be linked to inflammation down the chain of some disorder link. Now us controlling that, understanding how we can mitigate it will make the difference in our lives and be able to change our future expression of our genetic design. So I thank you guys all and we look forward to talking to you guys in the future. Thank you.

Neurotransmitter Assessment Form (NTAF)

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