What Would You Do? 9 Real Health Cases Solved | Dr. Josh Redd

26:07Mine was the lowest on the index. So really the only way I'm getting EPA, DHA is fish and fish oil. Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. I love that. Another interesting one, which is crazy, but we see this pop up a lot more is just red blood cells, hematocrit, and hemoglobin. And why I say this is that oftentimes we'll see these three higher. And all it essentially means is the patient isn't drinking enough. Like we see a lot of patients come into our clinics and they're just severely dehydrated. We'll ask like, what did you have for, like how much have you drank today? They'll be like, I had a Diet Coke in the morning.

26:46And a coffee. Yeah. I had a fresca at 4 p.m. and that's about it. And it's like, well, I have the best thing that's going to help you the most. It's called water. Drink more water. And just by being hydrated, all of a sudden the patient has more energy and things like that. But here's the cool thing is that instead of just guessing, you can run the labs, even basic labs. And if I know how to read them or you have a practitioner that understands functional medicine and functional blood chemistry, you can see patterns and problems where the patient might have an imbalance, but it's not quite a severe pathology yet, but it's definitely driving symptoms.

27:23And that's the key. Well, especially if you have multiple going on. And one of the great things about blood work, you know, one of the things I just came to mind was ApoB, of course, for heart health, when we're talking about inflammation. But there are, you know, when you start to see these patterns, like, okay, I'm seeing a liver problem or I'm seeing a problem with insulin over here. And this is why, to your point, I mean, again, blood work is so valuable, especially running multiple markers. Because the thing that you and I have seen too, when we're looking at these functional medicine ranges versus the conventional, a lot of times, you know, they would have gone into their doctor as, you know, this question I posed and their doctor says, hey, everything's normal.

27:56But you and I might have, run our lab and there's maybe nine markers that are borderline or off, but those together are all pointing to maybe one or the same thing. And then, I'll share a personal story here. I had the spinal infection I had about three and a half years ago, didn't walk for a year and I had to get on antibiotics for a month. And I was able to cut down the time by, I was supposed to be on it for three months, but because I was in a hyperbaric chamber, like living in there every day, really cut down the time, everything I did. But afterwards, I was fatigued, Josh, for about a year and a half.

28:31And I was just so tired. And I hadn't run blood work on myself. I mean, I did then. And of course, so many things were off that it was like, well, okay, I just need to do everything right. And I was just really tired. And I went and finally I did a blood work panel, really looking more at cellular micronutrients. And I really just had one marker off. And it was vitamin B2. but it was like zero. I mean, it was absolutely at the very bottom. And then my also mitochondrial score was very low because of this. I started taking that one supplement and about two weeks later, I went from a six out of 10 energy, tired all day to 10 out of 10.

29:08It was that one thing. But that's the thing. If you do the right blood markers and that was another point is that, so you brought up the ranges. One of the other issues today is most doctors not running the right markers to start. It's like, hey, we're going to run a CBC and that's about it. Versus most people have never been to their doctor. They're not even testing for magnesium. Yeah, vitamin D, maybe iron, but they're not testing for most of these nutrients. Yeah, I love that. One of the things that we see when somebody is tired all the time and they come back normal, one of the most common things that we see too is just simple blood pressure.

29:44So most people think their blood pressure is really good. Let's say they've been tired since they were 16 in high school and they've been tired for 25 years up to this point, always tired. Oftentimes, we'll look at that patient, we'll do labs, and their blood pressure is like less than 100, over 60. And their blood perfusion's so poor. What this does, though, is they'll go to the doctor. The doctor will be like, oh, your blood pressure's great. No, you have a blood pressure of a dead person, right? Of course, you're going to be tired. Of course, you're going to have energy issues. Of course, you're going to be depressed.

30:14You're not going to be motivated because your brain is literally starving for glucose and oxygen and nutrients because your blood pressure is not pumping to the brain properly and distal tissues, right? And so oftentimes we'll just check their blood pressure really consistently. And if their blood pressure is really low, we'll do things to optimize blood perfusion and to increase their blood pressure. And almost overnight, you see their increase in energy just like that. They go from having fatigue for 20 years to within one week, you improve blood sugar levels and improve and optimize blood pressure.

30:46Overnight, they're way better. That's so good. You know, a little bit of, you know, well, a little bit of electrolytes will go a long way. Which is, here's the thing. So check this out. People wonder, well, how do electrolytes help you? Well, most of the time with blood pressure, you're going to have cortisol and adrenal issues. Guess what helps that? Electrolytes. Electrolytes are vital to help with the adrenal glands. And all of a sudden now you have this more optimal, you know, blood pressure. Licorice root is a really common one that we'll have. increase their sodium content have them eat more frequently if these patients skip meals they're going to have lots of problems but these simple strategies the patients that have had chronic health issues for a prolonged period of time they're typically frail, typically skinny they just don't look as they don't look like they have as much vitality as they should these are the patients that have been suffering for 20 years that you make these subtle changes and within in one week, they went from zero good days a month to 30 good days a month.

31:48Yeah, and probably the simplest fix too with that is just more sea salt. You know, I mean, it's just that really, I'm one of those people that would be more prone to that if I wasn't very conscious of it. And a lot of these people I found as well, they're craving salt, but they're not using it. You know, and that's a problem. When we talk about rewiring the brain, we usually focus on things like mindset or neuroplasticity, but one piece that doesn't get talked about enough is inflammation. And even something like honey can matter here because not all honey is created equal. Certain types of honey can actually help support the gut environment where much of that inflammation starts.

32:27And your gut and brain are constantly communicating through what's called the gut-brain connection. So when your gut microbiome is out of balance, it can influence mood, focus, and overall cognitive function. And that's why I choose Manucora Manuka honey to balance this. Manuka honey contains antibacterial compounds that can act as prebiotics to help support beneficial gut bacteria. And if you want to try it, check out Manukura Manuka honey. It's become a staple of my daily routine. Head on over to manukura.com slash ax to get 31 % off plus$25 in free gifts with their starter kit for my exclusive listener discount.

33:09All right, I want to jump to the next one here. Okay, here's a case. A woman has bloating after every meal, constipation, brain fog, struggling with anxiety, and even some food sensitivities. Okay, she's already tried probiotics and certain elimination diets. What makes you suspect SIBO and what would you do for that patient? Any other testing, any supplements? How do we start to reverse and improve and even discover if it's SIBO in the first place. You just described 70 % of Americans, right? Bloating and distension after meals. Now we think it's okay. As we age, this gets worse and we're like, oh, the bloating and distension is not normal.

33:51Like if you ask most of your patients that they have bloating and distension after meals, they'd probably say yes, right? SIBO is one of those things that can have kind of multifaceted as well. So just kind of explain this. When somebody has SIBO, they have built up bacteria in the small intestines. And when somebody eats, that bacteria kind of ferments the food that they're eating. Starches are likely to be fermented more. And then that causes more gas, more bloating, more issues. You really shouldn't have that much bacteria in the small intestines. But what happens is when this starts to occur, you're going to have a valve called an ileocecal valve.

34:31When the gas and distention occurs, it opens up that valve. And then also you have what's called translocation of bacteria from the large intestines into the small intestines. And this is like a vicious cycle. But this ends up causing brain inflammation. This ends up causing systemic inflammation. This causes a lot more problems than just bloating distension, right? Yeah. A lot of the times too, so there's a few things is we can do a lot of things to help kill the bacteria in the small intestines. That's pretty simple. Yeah. But we have to look at the mechanisms that drove this patient to get SIBO to begin with.

35:08One of the most common things that I see SIBO patients have is just brain inflammation and poor frontal cortex firing. And so let me explain this. The frontal cortex, when the frontal cortex fires to what's called the vagal nuclei, it increases digestive enzymes, which is huge for SIBO. If you have improved digestive enzymes, it's great. It increases gut motility. It increases blood flow to the gut. It improves HCL. HCL is one of those things that sterilizes the small intestine so that you can't have bacterial overgrowth. And so at first, when we're treating a patient, we'll improve HCL because it sterilizes the small intestines.

35:52We'll improve digestive enzymes. We'll have them do things to improve gut motility. When somebody has severe constipation, if your gut's not firing properly and you have slow gut motility, then your food can start to ferment and rot in the small intestines and that can cause SIBO as well. But most of the time patients will just, or doctors will just focus on the intestinal tract and they fell all day long because the mechanism wasn't that. The mechanism was the brain. Yeah, I totally agree. And so sometimes we'll have somebody with like, they'll get a concussion, they'll have trauma, they'll have brain inflammation, and then that ended up causing the SIBO.

36:28And so on top of that, we'll do a number of things that get the frontal cortex to fire. And some of my favorite things to help the brain fire to the enteric nervous system. So just to give you an idea, if I was going to dissect your brain and I had it like out just like this, you would see this, let's say neurological tissue. You would see this like huge webbing of net neurological tissue and golfing the whole intestinal tract. That's called the enteric nervous system. It's pretty much just one organ. So much of it's called the second brain, right? If we were to dissect your brain and all the neurological tissue with it, you would see it's all connected.

37:04Like this enteric nervous system, this neurological tissue is all connected to the brain. And the frontal cortex of the brain fires to this enteric nervous system. And then we have all those really beneficial things to help improve digestion, absorption, gut motility, all that stuff. So what's fascinating is I have to do things from a clinician standpoint to get the brain to start firing to the synthetic nervous system more effectively. One of the easiest ways that you can do is just gargling water aggressively for two to three minutes. That's such an easy thing. We had a patient with severe constipation.

37:39She would go weeks without going to the bathroom. And she started seeing us like the second day and she's like, hey, can I take a depository? It's like, hey, don't do that. Just gargle water aggressively every hour for the next five hours and let me know if that works. She texts me like three hours later and she's like, Dr. Red, I pooed. And I was like, ew, that's nasty. But like she was so pumped, but all she did was she gargled water aggressively and that caused the frontal cortex to fire to the vagal nuclei and to the entire nervous system. We know so, this lines up exactly what I see in SIBO patients.

38:12And so I think what I found is the single biggest thing that typically caused, and there's other causes, is just living in that fight or flight state. People are living in it all day long, cortisol is being released. And so basically you're living in sympathetic with no parasympathetic. You mentioned the vagus nerve. And this is a lot of people that where, and I see this with a lot of moms, it's like they have something scheduled every moment of the day. Their brains never have one second to rest. And so this vagal response just isn't happening in the body. And the great thing about gargling and humming is that it is the fastest way, to your point, to just literally go right into that vagal state, right into parasympathetic.

38:53That's so good. So right. It's fascinating too to think that where I can just be overly stressed. So I can be this fight or flight and that's going to inhibit my brain from firing to the vagal nuclei and to the entire nervous system. By the way, most of the time patients, when I tell them things like box breathing or gargling or these things, most of the time instead they want to supplement. Totally. But the reality is this, to your point, This is what you're sharing is the most effective way to actually heal SIBO. And you want to do all the other things. But this, when you're thinking about root causes, the highest things upstream, this is at the top of breaking the cycle.

39:32It's so good. It's exercise, right? You have to now go. So here you have the sympathetic dominance. It's almost like me having a massive bicep and me having zero triceps. That's pretty much what's happening to the patient's brain, right? And so we have to physically go in and you have to put in the work every single day to get this to activate and get this to fire and to strengthen this parasympathetic response in order for this to function properly. And so gargling, humming, there's a machine called an alpha stim, which you can clip to your ears. Yeah, I've got one. I think it's called Neuropod.

40:07Oh, yeah, the Neuropod. And I've been using that. And it's fantastic. I love the Neuropod for sure. That's a great one. but anything, any machine that you can clip to your ear and it stimulates the vagal nucleus is going to be important. One thing that people don't realize and this is kind of a funny one for people but there's a massive amount of research is coffee enemas. Coffee enemas, the caffeine, you don't absorb it but the caffeine will stimulate the nicotinic receptors and then fire it back up to the brain and get this pathway to function properly too. That one's actually really beneficial because it helps liver detoxification, gets the brain to fire more effectively.

40:44We'll typically have our patients do it one to two times a week and that's really effective too. Yeah. All right. Next question here. So a man comes in. Finally getting to the males. Yeah, I know. Exactly. 39 years old. Okay. He's unmotivated. His libido's low. Just doesn't feel like he's able to put on muscle anymore. Just doesn't feel as strong as he used to be. And just low grade depression. not really depressed, but kind of low-grade depression constantly, and just feels just a lack of sort of vigor. Yeah. What do you think? Here's this, and it's unfortunate for the females because their hormones are a little bit more complicated, so it takes time to get them to improve.

41:26Men are so much easier. Men, if a male patient is somewhat motivated, he will dominate rapidly. And it always drives the wife crazy. But in this case, this patient clearly probably has testosterone issues, probably has blood sugar imbalances, and has inflammation. And here'd be another thing with it. Actually, regular testosterone is just, it's somewhat low. But free testosterone is absolutely just tanked. Yeah. So here's the thing. In males, they have a number of problems. is blood sugar imbalances or insulin resistance will cause testosterone to turn into estrogen. And then that will cause further insulin resistance.

42:09And then that causes more testosterone to change into estrogen. And so this vicious cycle. So now this male has more of a higher estrogen, lower testosterone pattern, which is really bad for males. And then they're tired, moody, depressed, have these issues, right? Right. That's that's problem one that we see quite often. So just stabilizing glucose in males can make a huge difference so that testosterone doesn't aromatize faster into estrogen. The other thing is that when you have insulin resistance, it will also cause problems with inflammation. Inflammation increases when inflammation is high in males.

42:46It degenerates the lytic cells of the testes, which are the very cells that produce testosterone. So just calming down inflammation will inhibit or diminish the lytic cells from degenerating, which will allow those cells to produce more testosterone naturally. And then all of a sudden, this male has a lot better pattern. A lot of times, too, when you see these males with lower testosterone, they typically have like a sedative lifestyle. They're sitting at a desk all day long. their caffeine, which is their adrenal glands are shot because they're consuming a massive amount of caffeine. Their blood sugar levels are really unstable.

43:25They're not getting sunlight first thing in the morning. They're circadian rhythms off and just improving that towards say, hey, let's get out first thing in the morning when you wake up, let's get sunlight, let's exercise, let's get your cortisol awakening response up. Let's start to stabilize glucose levels. Let's calm down inflammation. And all of a sudden that patient in 30 days feel better than they have in five years. If men did three things, eat a diet where to your point is good for blood sugar, eat a lot more protein and fiber. If men then would go and lift some weights and if men would then go and just not overwork and have a little bit more fun, boom.

44:02Done. It's unfortunately, And now with men, now we have peptides. As you get older, there's lots of things that we can do for longevity. We always want to optimize testosterone. We want to improve certain things. Now with peptides and with other things, if you can do diet, lifestyle, find the underlying mechanisms for that male patient, in 60 days, that patient, if they're motivated, will look like a human specimen where they're just like complete transformation really quick. Yeah. I'll say, I had somebody come up to me in the gym recently, a guy, and he had said, hey, listen. He said, we're trying to get pregnant.

44:45He said, I lift weights. He was a college athlete, really great college athlete. He said, I'm eating really good. He told me he was dying. I'm like, man, that is really good. He's like, my testosterone is still low. But he was a type A achiever working 50, 60 hours a week nonstop. It's like, well, that's... Yeah. Just like females, when we are constantly consumed with stress and we're constantly going in this fight or flight, in females, progesterone will be stolen away into cortisol, right? Yeah. With males, when we're in this fight or flight response, our testosterone will be completely taxed.

45:21And so we have to get out of that fight or flight response in order to optimize testosterone. Well, in a very similar way, there's this whole pathway that you're talking about, but typically it's called this cortisol steal, right? We're basically cortisol. It's like your body's making a decision. Do I make stress hormones or sex hormones, right? Sex hormones, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. No, but cortisol is stealing all of these materials to make stress hormones rather than the sex hormones. Which that's the number one cause of infertility right now, right? What you just described is literally, now we have infertility rates exploding.

46:00exploding, that's the number one cause of infertility right now. If they just fixed that pregnenolone still is what we called it. Then all of a sudden, now we have optimal sex hormones and now having babies, kids, and all that stuff becomes so much better. But it's shocking how many people miss it. Yeah. I had another patient recently came in with that same pathway and it was for fertility. And the other thing that was high though, was a sex hormone binding globulin. And that was basically just, I looked at the diet, it was so mineral deficient. It was like no zinc, no boron, like those were coming low on labs.

46:37So sometimes there are other things, but to your point, it's the biggest thing. It's definitely the biggest thing. Okay, here is another one. A former athlete has shoulder pain, knee pain, and low back pain. Physical therapy helps some, but they are still limited. They eat pretty healthy. They still try and exercise consistently. When do you start considering peptides, PRP, exosomes, or stem cell injections? And which of those do you like the most? And what would you typically recommend for this person or how would you evaluate them? Yeah, we probably see the most professional athletes in the country when it comes to stem cell orthopedic injections in our clinic.

47:18We see a really high volume of pro athletes. It's fascinating too. we don't want to just right away inject stem cells. That's not really how I do it. The biggest goal for us is, are there underlying imbalances that's impeding this athlete or this ex-NFL player, whatever it may be, from improving or optimally healing? A lot of times we can have microadhesions in our shoulder, in our joints, because as we age, stem cells don't migrate properly. When we're younger, stem cells migrate and start to heal things really fast, right? As we age, stem cells, our own stem cells, don't migrate properly. So we end up having microadhesions, almost like where we have scabs that are constantly being ripped off, different like small little adhesions that are bleeding, causing problems and inflammation, and the patient doesn't ever improve.

48:11So typically we'll look at underlying imbalances that might be causing that patient to not heal properly. When we look at those two and the patient's willing to improve those, that's when we'll jump into stem cells and peptides as well. Now with the advancements that we have, stem cell orthopedic injections are absolutely incredible. Like I broke my back probably about eight years ago. I was paralyzed for a few days in bed for a few months. Even after a year or two, I couldn't even sit down for more than an hour. I couldn't golf more than nine holes. And I was just going to go to Germany and get a disc replacement.

48:48And I was already in the field of regenerative medicine and stem cells. And so I was like, you know what? I might as well give this a shot and see since I'm going into that anyways. And I remember I got my stem cell injections. They injected my disc. They injected my facets. They injected my tailbone. They did epidurals. And it was the guy that I was doing my residency with. And I remember I drove from Chicago to Utah after 60 days after I got the stem cell injections. And I had zero pain. Wow. It was the first time that I was able to sit for more than one hour and notice this made a huge difference.

49:22Yeah. You know, I have a similar story in terms of I had injured my back about 10 years ago, weight training. And basically, I had pain for years and years and years. First time, I really saw a big difference with stem cell. One thing I found with stem cell, though, that's really important, and you kind of alluded to this earlier, is you need to do stem cell plus other things. Stem cell is incredible. But two other things to think about. One is getting on the right diet and supplements to support and keep inflammation levels low. The other thing is retraining the correct posture and the correct function when you're exercising.

49:58Because I had a lot of sort of dominant patterns. Like I, growing up, I was a cyclist and a soccer player. So everything was about a lot of quads. And so, and I was never taught properly how to squat. You know, I'll give you an example of this. I had my weight trainer, my strength coach in high school taught people, don't let your knees go over your toes. You know? So like, but all of that was more pressure on my back. And so I literally, I found a guy, his name is Steven Shin, incredible. And he does, you know, this really advanced type of postural correction PT. And I do Zoom videos with him and I've seen him in person too.

50:39But having him do that with the stem cell together got me 100 % of pain, 100%. And that's always important. If we can send our patients to somebody who can help with the muscular side of things and the physical therapy side of things, it makes our stem cells so much better. I mean, the problem is also, I mean, most physical therapists are not, they're not trained in the right type of movements. I mean, you really have to find that top, you know, two to 5 % of person who understands that. So when I was at Johns Hopkins, my professor's lab, they could sever a mouse's spine and make it quadriplegic.

51:11and then inject stem cells and it could fully walk again. And so we're in that lab and I was like, holy crap, this is going to change all of medicine. And so I went back to naturopathic medical school, then into residency, and now we're doing the stem cells. But here's the cool thing with stem cell injections. We're clearly not there yet, but the advancements are getting better and better and better every single year. So the stem cells that I would use, like the umbilical cord stem cells that I would use two years ago, are the ones I'm using now are significantly better than ones I'm using two years ago.

51:40And five years ago, we would do like bone marrow and fat from, you know, get stem cells from the patients on bone marrow and fat. But yeah, it's stem cells every year is getting better and better. It's going to change all of health care soon. It is. I agree. I think, I mean, people think peptides are big and we'll hit on that next and they are. But, but I think, I think stem cells are the other one up there with them. It's not bigger in terms of creating miraculous results in people, which brings me to the next question. All right. Who is the ideal candidate for peptides? what symptoms or conditions make you think this person needs peptides at the forefront.

52:16And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. So here's the thing when it comes to peptides, and this is where we've seen problems within our clinic is sometimes you have peptides in the gray or black market that can actually cause more problems than good. And we've seen that within our clinics. Our patient population is extremely sensitive to their environment, to the food they eat, to what they put in their body. and so if they're getting it from the gray or black market that's like a huge red flag and that could be really problematic because you don't even know what's in there is it yeah exactly completely you know watered down is there other things in there do they have a c of a certificate of analysis to see exactly what's in there the peptides that we use are all are all pharmaceutically you know manufactured and we have a certificate of analysis so we see exactly what is in that peptide.

53:06And that's really important for us, right? Now, there's a number of ways. I love peptides done the right way. If I'm just doing a shotgun approach with peptides, I think we fail. Just like supplements, just like medications, just like whatever, right? I love peptides similar to how I do functional medicine. I do the exact same thing with peptides. I'll do extensive lab testing. I'll identify what's going on with that patient. And if there's a peptide that could help get that patient from A to B faster, I'll use that peptide for a short period of time. Most peptides aren't to be used for long-term use.

53:44In fact, they can even be more problematic if you use them for long-term use, right? So a lot of times I'll use peptides for one to two months to help make a physiological change within the labs, and then we're done. We're rocking it all into something else, right? Yeah, so good. All right. And I know you have these people if you're taking care of a lot of professional athletes and things in Utah. Okay. A wealthy patient comes to you with unlimited resources, okay? They want your maximum longevity and performance protocol. What are the most important tests? Name three to five of those, the most important peptides, the most important supplements, any regenerative therapies that are going to be the best for longevity, unlimited resources.

54:27You're putting me on the spot there. So I did a residency, his name's Harry Adelson, where we just did full body stem cell treatments. It's the biggest thing. On celebrities and pro athletes. We literally injected stem cells in every single joint in your body, your whole spine, epidurals, shoulders, knees, toes, scalp, face. It was about a two hour procedure. But with unlimited resources, we saw massive improvements just that. Yeah. That's a really expensive procedure though. On top of that, when it comes to peptides or supplements or what tests to do, obviously when somebody is looking for longevity, we'll look at blood sugar imbalances.

55:10We'll look at inflammation. We'll look at heart disease, cardiovascular health, intestinal stuff, right? So we'll do a DNA stool test. We'll do extensive of blood work. We'll do a cortisol, uh, salivatory test and we'll literally pinpoint every possible imbalance that we can correct there. And so we'll put them into a full functional medicine treatment plan where we'll literally just find every possible imbalance that we can and then work to correct it there. Um, then from, you know, you have your options with stem cell treatments, hormones. As somebody ages, we now know beforehand, we used to think hormones were really bad for you, right?

55:53Now we know if you do hormones the right way, where you're not just guessing, you're doing the right test, and then you're implementing hormone therapy, and then you're retesting, you can optimize hormones and you can really improve someone's quality of life and their longevity if you do hormones the right way, utilizing bioidentical hormones. So as you age, I'm a big fan in optimizing hormones. And research shows that minimizes cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, dementia, all sorts of things if it's done the right way. So I love optimizing hormones if that patient is older. And then from a peptide standpoint, there's lots of really good peptides.

56:32But I usually don't prescribe peptides just as a shotgun approach. I don't mind doing microdosing GLP-1s for somebody that's looking for longevity there's a lot of research out there that suggests that can be really helpful but based off of what that patient needs will be based off of what I actually do now from a supplement standpoint let's get there as we age our glutathione demands increase and so I love glutathione for patients as they age I love things that will help decrease inflammation for patients. Things like bioavailable turmeric, resveratrol, boswellia, those types of things. Omega-3s, which you touched on, are huge.

57:16Magnesium is one of those things that it does 600 different processes within our biochemical processes within our body. If you are deficient in magnesium, we can have lots of problems. So I love magnesium. We talked about methylation and MTHFR gene mutations. Most of the population as we age have methylation issues. In fact, there's research that shows if we have high homocysteine, it's almost paralleled with our risk of Alzheimer's. The higher homocysteine, the higher Alzheimer's and dementia will be for that patient. And so from a neurological standpoint, just improving methylation as that patient gets older is huge.

57:56So taking the right methylated B vitamins can be such a game changer. And that could be the most important thing that that patient takes every single day for the rest of their life on top of obviously eating healthy and avoiding inflammatory foods. Okay. One more question. Somebody comes in with a limited budget. Okay. What are the most important blood work markers to look at if they have a limited budget? typically the top three supplements and the things that they can do on a budget that will make the biggest difference in their health when it comes to longevity? We touched on them earlier. Stabilizing glucose, right?

58:31I'm going to look at glucose serum. I'm going to look at cortisol and stress hormones. And I'm going to look at liver markers. Those three, if they're on a limited budget, all doing a heartbeat. And ironically, a blood test for this individual might cost$40 if they're on a limited budget. Some people think functional medicine is incredibly expensive. It should save you money in the long term, absolutely. Yeah. But we could do a blood panel for$40 and know that you have blood sugar imbalances where it continues glucose moderate. Let's stabilize your glucose so that your blood sugar levels are in between 80 to 130 regardless of what you eat.

59:09Just that one change puts so much stress off the adrenal glands and decreases inflammation. So if somebody was on a limited budget, I'd say, hey, let's dial in your blood sugar levels and let's eat in a manner where your blood sugar levels are stable. Just that one thing. And then we would do things to help with their stress response. When they wake up in the morning, let's get sunlight. Let's get that cortisol awakening response high. Let's do things as we wind down for bed to keep that cortisol levels low so that you have a good restful night's sleep. And then from a supplement standpoint, again, kind of similar, but if they can't afford much, glutathione could be really beneficial, methylated B vitamins, magnesium.

59:51I'll tell you my top five supplements. You want to know my top five? Vitamin D with K2, but we have to make sure that there's MK4 and MK7. So two different forms of K2 because those two, one's long acting, one's short acting. But what that does is it pulls calcium from your arteries, follicles, lungs, and puts them into the bones. So you have to make sure that you're doing vitamin D with K2. I add magnesium as a second supplement that I'll have my patients take. If there's five supplements that I have to take, magnesium is definitely one of them. Methylated B complex. Because so many different people have methylated issues, that's in my top five as well.

1:00:35Omega-3s are huge. And we like omega-3s from like wild caught fish. What I love is omega-3s with astaxanthin because it helps so that the omega-3s don't oxidize and go into problems there. And then my last one is micronized and purified creatine. Ironically for male and females, the research now is staggering where it helps with your brain. It helps with anti-aging. It helps in so many different ways, far beyond just that. And with creatine, you just have to make sure that it's tested for impurities. That's huge. There's a lot of creatine out there that's absolute garbage because it has a ton of different things in there that will cause endocrine disruptors.

1:01:19It can increase cancer. It has a lot of impurities in there that can cause problems. So you just want to make sure that you use a creatine that is tested for impurities and contaminants. But I use a micronized creatine. Micronized will help it absorb better. It just makes it more like powdery. It's almost like powdered sugar. Yeah, and some of these too, I know there's crealcalin now. There's some that are, some people have some digestive distress. Not a lot of people, but there are some people with creatine. And so I think these forms are more absorbable, which is great. Absolutely. So those are my top five.

1:01:54For anyone, omega-3s, vitamin D with K2, magnesium, methylated B vitamins, and creatine. That's a great list. What's your top five? That's a great. If you only had to take five supplements, What's your top five? Oh, man, it's going to be hard. So, yeah, I mean, you know, statistically, vitamin D and magnesium are going to be up there. I really love taking magnesium glycinate. But let me go back to this. Knowing my own blood work, I probably don't need vitamin D just because my D level's high. I probably take magnesium glycinate as my number one. I would take a B vitamin. Actually, what's interesting is I did this whole genetic panel.

1:02:33I don't do well with methylcobalamin. So I wouldn't take a typical methylated B. I would probably take one that's B2. So check this out. This is huge. Most people don't realize this. The most common thing is methylcobalamin. You just said it. I do hydroxy and adeno. So you have the hydroxy and you have adenosyl as well. There's three different forms of B12. If you have a methylation issue, the best supplement on the planet will have all three forms, not just one, which nobody realizes. So keep going, sorry. Yeah, but I would have that because I would do the methylated with the three different types.

1:03:09I can do some methylcobalamin, but higher doses, I get the wired but tired feeling. Yeah, yeah. So I would do that. I would do a high-dose probiotic. I've just noticed for myself, it's good for, I mean, there are so many studies on nutrient absorption and GI regulation, and so that would be on my list. I would probably then do two more. I mean, omega-3s, because I don't convert well. that's going to be high on my list. Creatine, you know, it could make it. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I mean, I might go for like a superfood formula that has turmeric and, you know, pomegranate extract and a bunch of superfoods.

1:03:47I love that. But creatine would probably rank six or seven for me too. But those would be the ones, those are the ones that I, now listen, I take a lot of stuff. But, you know, I probably take, I don't know, I probably take, I don't know, 13, 14 different supplements a day. That's awesome. But those would be at the top. Yeah. All right, last question. Rapid fire all day is great. I love it. Well, this may not be, well, rapid fire this as much as you can. Okay, you're the patient. Okay, you have come down with, all of a sudden your energy has dropped. Your gut's been inflamed. You have autoimmune markers that kind of out of nowhere, just all of a sudden started coming on.

1:04:26What are the top five tests you would do on yourself? and what would your own personal recovery protocol look like likely? If I instantaneously came up with something like that, I would check for mold. Yeah, okay. I would check for my environment. I would check more things outside of my body than I would inside my body to see what am I being exposed to? What changed in my environment that is now causing my immune system to freak out? Is there an infection? Is there a virus? Is there mold? Are there other environmental things that are maybe causing me and my immune system to freak out and to cause these issues?

1:05:07It's so good. It's so good. Completely opposite of it. Yeah, you know, I totally agree. I totally, yeah, if you have something come on like that, you know, it was a virus, a parasite, mold. Typically, it's going to be a pathogen causing issues. And we see this with people, right? And sometimes these people, they feel bad. They feel a little, you know, they get somewhat better, but they never fully heal. Of course, we see this with lung COVID people, but there's a lot of people out there living with these infections. What are some things in terms of just the process quickly when it comes to dealing with infections?

1:05:42One of my favorite things is obviously removing the patient away from whatever could be making it worse. But one of my favorite treatments now when it comes to mold and infections is actually standard ozone IVs. I was going to say ozone. I mean, do you guys do Eboo in your office or 10 pass? We do, but I've actually seen that like we can do high dose ozone IVs or standard ozone. And I almost see this almost just as effective. Yeah. So you're doing MAH or? Yep. Okay. Yeah. So great. We now just have TPE in our office as well, which is kind of the plasma exchange. Like you've seen the social media where they're holding like the big bag of, yeah, we now do that too, which is really cool.

1:06:23And you can test microplastics, all sorts of stuff before, and then you get it done, which is about a three-hour procedure. And then afterwards, you almost have no microplastics. All the environmental toxins are decreased. And so now we have that too, which is super cool. Super powerful. Yeah. I love it. Well, Josh, thanks so much for coming on. Again, we've had Dr. Josh Red here. And you're one of my favorite people have on. I love coming on yours as well. Thank you. I love your depth of knowledge. and I love the way that you have this really incredible root cause approach of doing this advanced testing.

1:06:55And then you have so many different therapies and tools to help people heal and recover. And so absolutely love that. I wanna encourage you to check out Dr. Josh Redd. He's got clinics all over Utah, 10 clinics. In addition, he has a great social media channel you can follow at Dr. Josh Redd. Redd is R-E-D-D. So you can find him on social media, but check out his practice, check out him on social media. He's got great content out there. He's got a great book out called The Inflammatory Reset. I wanna encourage you to check out his book as well. And wanna say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr.

1:07:26Josh Axe Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. Also, do us a favor, subscribe to the podcast. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show and allow me to bring on incredibly brilliant doctors like we had with Dr. Josh Reddon. Also, you're not gonna miss a thing. Sometimes because we cover controversial topics here, It doesn't always pop up on your feed, so make sure you're subscribed. Also, think about who's one person who could benefit from learning about some of what Dr.

1:07:58Josh and I talked about today. Share this with them on social media or as a text message. I wanna say thanks so much for listening. We can't wait to see you on the next episode.