I became chronically ill when I was 20 years old. Every single allopathic medical doctor that I saw told me that I was depressed. And prescribed me that I'd be depressed. So that led me to developing this really, really severe eating disorder. And I was sick for the next 16 years. Over the course of those 16 years, I just continued to seek knowledge and I wanted to learn more. I wanted to try to figure out how to fix myself.
You didn't get your life back from biohacks. I didn't either. I didn't get my life from doing cold baths when your body's requiring energy for healing because it's trying to heal. And you're running, exercising, doing all these things. You're taking that healing to adapt to the stress of exercise, and you're not putting it towards healing. And therefore you're impeding your own healing.
It's so amazing when you start to picture what's happening on a cellular level.
That innate intelligence that can heal our body, it's in your everything.
If you are looking to heal, you need to improve energy production.
I can tell your attention to the stuff because your hair, your skin, your eyes, you look younger than you are. You just look healthy. There's a glow. That's I cannot wait for you to hear this conversation. Few people in functional medicine in our space know more about the cell membrane than I do. Well, I don't say that arrogantly. I just love the cell membrane, and I know it's the key to health and the key to why people don't feel well. Well, this next guest knows more than I do.
I can assure you. Now, I don't want to bore you because the cell membrane, like who cares about the cell membrane? You care about your hormones? Okay, you should care about cell membranes. Detox, you better care about your cell membranes. How you feel in general? Well, you better care about your cell membranes. But there's so much more that this guest brings than cell membranes. So I'm not going to get stuck there because she is an icon.
She is a leader in functional medicine and has been for many years. So, that case, I'm going to introduce you to Justine Stanger. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Dan, for having me.
Yeah, I can't wait to get into this conversation, right? Because I mean that when I say it. You know, the only reason few, there's many scientists that know more about the cell membrane than I do for sure. But in our space, I would say very few. And so that's why my conversations with you have been very rich. There's a saying, life and death begins on the cell membrane, you know, and it's not my saying. I don't maybe you know who said that, but it's true.
And I always like to back up and say, well, hormone health begins on the cell membrane. Just how you feel in general begins on the cell membrane. So if someone's watching this has anxiety, you know, they can't lose weight anymore. Uh, you and I go, oh, cell membrane issues, right? Just how people feel in general, cell membrane. We're not gonna lose you in the science. I'm telling you, this is uh, you know, an important topic. And also there's a lot of myths out there.
We're gonna bust the myths, perhaps what you think about fish oil, perhaps what you're thinking about omega-6 fats and all that. We're gonna bust through all that. Okay, but this is from pain to purpose, right? Something brought you into this in a deep way, like me, right? What put you into the books? What put you into this? Everything. So I want to hear your story, and they do too.
So I became chronically ill when I was 20 years old. I had played uh a very high level of basketball. I played for the University of Alberta and on junior national teams and summer leagues, and I really trained myself into the ground. I just completely and totally plummeted any resilience that I had in my body.
And so a lot of physical stress because you weren't adapting to the physical activity, perhaps.
Well, and you know, Dan, also just understanding the cell so much uh better now, today, than I did before. Understanding too that over-exercising is a major, major stressor, right? It's oxygen of it.
There's another place her and I lie. You know, when when I take on someone who's really sick, right? I how many of them are over-exercising?
So many.
And you know why? Because when they after they're done exercising, they actually feel normal. And I I would argue this for even cold baths. They go, Oh my gosh, I feel so good, but they're not realizing what's happening that night or the next day.
Yeah.
So true what you just said.
Yeah, it's I hope you all heard that.
That's write that point down right there.
It's like everything that's that's taught, right? We teach things and then people take a very extreme stance and they think more is better. And I was that was ingrained in me right at the age of eight years old when I started playing basketball. It was like the more that I practiced, the more that I trained, the better that I would be. And I ended up living in a moldy basement suite uh in my second year of university. And that just completely and totally wiped wipes me out.
And I want to be very clear when I say it wasn't the mold that made me sick. It was the accumulation of the toxic loads that ended up creating a scenario where it's a little bit more. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Yeah, you know this. I teach the perfect storm, meaning it's never one thing. Yes. Right? You your body will be tolerating the mold, right? Or whatever it is, the cavitation, the pathogen, the heavy metal. And then you have these other big things that are happening at the same time. Boom, gene gets triggered. Yeah, that's what you just said.
And you hear it all the time, though, right? How many people come to you and say, I have mold illness? I was diagnosed with SERS. I have Lyme disease, and that's why I'm sick. It's it's just a complete understanding. It's so much more than that.
Yeah, the reason you're reacting to the mold is because your bucket was overflowing.
And the fix is not a mold detoxification protocol, right?
Oh, just like the fix isn't just kill lime.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's building back that resilience, which we'll get into and and redox potential, which we'll get into.
Um okay, what you just said right there. Like I hope everyone heard that because I sometimes feel like a lone voice saying what you just said. So I'm so glad you started there, right? Because so many people out there are looking for an answer, but they want it to be that one thing. It's not, it's not. It's, you know, the fact is now you're not adapting to any neurotoxic, you know, that you're exposed to or any stress for that matter. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
I just wanted to stop there because when there's an important point, that's one of them, like that's well, and we'll go down a million radicals because it's really when you striff it all down, it all comes down to redox potential. It all comes down to the voltage in the membrane. And when we lose that voltage and we lose the flow of the electrons moving through the electron transport chain, we become sick.
That's right. Toxins interfere with that. And in a nutshell, that affects cell energy, and that's one of my R's. You know, it's like re-establishing cell energy, and the membrane plays a critical role in that.
So, where do those mycotoxins embed themselves in the membrane?
Yeah.
So every single allopathic medical doctor that I saw told me that I was depressed and prescribed me an antidepressant. And intuitively, you know, when you think that, you know, these physicians in white coats have all the answers? I was definitely in that. And I, but there was still this intuition, this knowing that that's not really what was going on. So that led me to developing this really, really severe eating disorder. Uh, and I was sick for the next thir 13, no, 16 years.
Not with an eating disorder. I recovered from that shortly after. Uh, but I think it was just the cascade of all of the toxicity that completely changed the wiring in my brain. And I became so obsessive about exercise. I was over-exercising like crazy and lost so much weight. I mean, at my lowest weight, I weighed 108 pounds.
Oh, wow. And you're tall.
So yeah, it was uh really scary. And so over the course of those 16 years, I just continued to seek knowledge and and I wanted to learn more. I wanted to try to figure out how to fix myself. So I pursued all this education. I did my functional medicine training with IFM, I did the GAPS practitioner training, I was really into nutrition. My my background, my university education was in nutrition.
Uh, and then I had proceeded to uh do an education with Bowman College and therapeutic chef and holistic nutrition. So I really felt like food was the piece, right? It was food that was going to fix me. It was just the dietary changes. I was really stuck in that paradigm for a long time. And we both know that that's not gonna fix anyone.
A certain amount of years ago, someone changed their diet, they'd have more energy, feel better, right? And I'm not telling anyone not to change their diet, but it's not that simple today. That's what you and I built. I was eating great when I got sick. I I grew up on a good diet, and yet I got sick with neurotoxic illness.
You know, and I think Dan too, the messaging around that I feel is really harmful because I think it creates this mindset that you just need to do more, you need to make more dietary changes, you need to restrict more. It's it's this you end up on this pursuit of perfection, dietary perfection, that is never going to fix membranes that are damaged, never is never gonna fix poor redox.
And here's one of my sayings is uh the the perfect diet, if there is one, right, won't get you well. But you may not get well without a perfect diet. You know what I'm saying? If there is one, you know, meaning like you you're not gonna get well if you're just eating crap, right? You know, because it's bringing in a level of toxins, like stress that you're, you know, you need to clean it up.
But cleaning up your diet, to your point, it's not the next diet, the next diet, the next diet, if I just do this, because that's the road people are macros, micros, the the and it's like if it's just not like that. It's not, yeah.
Yeah, and I mean now I see food through a completely different lens. I really see it all through the lens of light now, like food is light information, which we can get into if we have time. Yeah, but I so I did all of that and I still was struggling with insomnia.
I was amenorrhec, I didn't have a period for 16 years uh and ended up with very, very low bone density and you know, all the problems that come with that and infertility, you know, these really dire consequences of overtraining ultimately, you know, and that's where um I feel really passionate about that message, uh, especially in women with we have these hormonal systems that are so fragile, and the body was designed to move, uh, to be in flow, but not to be like forced into I was overtraining
was one of my perfect storms.
I was putting in two, three hundred miles a week on my bike, training very hard. And obviously, my other neurotoxic low-grade moldy home, a lot of metal accumulation. Uh yeah. And again, I wouldn't have got well just by addressing one of those things, like most people.
Yeah, it's all the things. And so I uh was connected with Dr. Bruce Hoffman, who was practicing integrative medicine in Calgary, and he was practicing membrane medicine. He was using lipid phospholipid therapy in his practice. And that there was something about seeing these patients, just uh giving these patients what they needed to do the work that the body was designed to do.
Yeah.
That I was asking, why are we not talking about this?
Exactly.
Why are we why are we loading people with all of these supplements, these baskets of supplements, when it's so clear that all we need to do is just give the cell what it needs to do the work that it was designed to do.
Everyone, people know that know me and know my message right now, they're like, oh my gosh, like, you know, her and Pompa are so aligned, right?
And so that led me to uh pursue an education in phospholipids and fatty acids and membrane medicine that I was so grateful to be able to do because of Dr. Hoffman. Uh, I most uh most people that are able to um enroll in those trainings, you have to be a medical doctor. And so because of my relationship with him, I was able to uh complete those trainings and and that totally opened my eyes to the miracle of of the cell, the miracle of the human body.
Yeah, you know, it's amazing is that's what got me well. It's like um all of that, right? And unfortunately, would you say that functional medicine seems to have taken a turn? Like instead of going in that direction, it's going in a different direction.
I have no patience for functional medicine anymore.
Me either.
It's yeah, I think that's a good idea.
About running all this blood work and then giving supplements based on, oh now it's the SNP test, and oh, giving all these supplements based on your genetic SNP test. If it were only so easy, yeah, no.
Well, and I would say that in doing all of those things, it overcomplicates things so much and it removes the you know this about me, I'm like a total vitalist at my core. And so all of those things, those procedures, those pills, those potions, those powders, uh they it feels so misaligned. It feels like we believe we're teaching people that healing means force and healing is flow.
And from there, I so I became so passionate about learning about phospholipids and fatty acids and all their properties and how they get integrated into the membrane and how they really act as these semiconductors and how they're able to absorb light and transduce that light. And it's just this beautiful, like this is I mean, it's so amazing when you start to picture what's happening on a cellular level.
There's nothing more beautiful than the cell membrane when you really see what's going on there.
And the intelligence of it.
That's where the intelligence is.
Yeah.
Right? I mean, that innate intelligence that can heal our body, folks, it's in your membranes. I mean, you know, that's crazy to think about. But it is how your body communicates cell to cell with everything, even your microbiome. Way more important than microbiome, way more important than anything, the cell number.
It's still, yeah, it still comes back, you know, the the all the gut issues that we talk about, this these still come down to uh, you know, they're a cellular issue.
Yeah.
And then I was kind of introduced to this whole world of biophysics and quantum biology. And then I just can't get enough.
And you kind of merge those worlds, right? Yeah. And uh that's this is gonna be an exciting conversation. I but before we even get there, I you know, what was the lowest point of your illness? Like when you look back and be like, yeah, that was the scariest part, the lowest part. Tell me about that.
You know, Dan, I don't even know if I could pick a a specific low point because there was just so many years that were so painful and so challenging, and I felt so unwell that I almost, you know, I forgot what it felt like to feel well because every single day was just a struggle and a push, and I felt depressed and I couldn't sleep. And you really just start believing that this is what your life is gonna look like.
Yeah, I know. And by the way, for me, that was the scariest part because dying was not my fear, it was living my life like that. That scared the hell out of me.
And you know, being a woman that wanted so desperately to have kids, then it was like this constant reminder every single month that I didn't menstruate, that I wasn't getting better. And so I I mean, every month I felt like I had this low point where I just felt I was in the fetal position on the four floor, just crying and crying out to God to just heal me, a miracle. And and now, you know, understanding it has has helped so much with that whole healing process.
And I'm grateful um to be in a position now where I can talk about it and not break down into tears. Uh, and also just understanding that that whole leptin melanocortin pathway that is that is so intimately connected to our fertility, how that gets damaged when we over-exercise, we over-train. Uh and so I think just the more and more that I've been able to understand the body, the more I just want to take care of myself now. And I just want to be gentle with myself.
And that's why I'm so passionate about teaching this, because I believe with all my heart that that every single person has an amazing capacity to heal. We just have to, we just have to give our body the right things, the right inputs.
And remove the interference. Yeah. I mean, that's it. Give it the right things and remove the interference. That's what functional medicine has moved away from, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah.
Is that I'll tell you that uh I I went to only a couple talks, and not that I want to be disparaging here, but I went to a couple of talks and at a recent functional medicine conference, and both of those talks were talking about smart devices, like tracking devices, and how we want to use these tools to help patients to heal. And I'm just the disconnect. You want to put a Wi-Fi router on somebody's body and completely disrupt the flow of those electrons? And you think that that's healing?
Completely damages the membrane and the interference, you're adding an interference, it's a violation.
You know, I mean, like the biohacking world, it's fun, but let's face it, you didn't get your life back from biohacks, right? Uh, I didn't either. I didn't get my life from doing cold baths. Matter of fact, when I was sick, I couldn't even go outside. Like in the cold, I'd get headaches. I couldn't even adapt to like cold weather with a jacket on. Uh, you know, it's like horrible. I couldn't adapt to too hot of a sauna or even sit in one for more than 10 minutes because I couldn't adapt to that.
The point is that when your body's requiring energy for healing because it's trying to heal, and you're running, exercising, doing all these things, you're taking that healing to adapt to the stress of exercise and you're not putting it towards healing. And therefore, you're impeding your own healing. I hope people hear that message. So, what out of all the symptoms you had, what was the worst one for you? I and I'm asking this question selfishly because I want to see if it lines up with me.
I'll tell you mine. But like, meaning like looking back, right? There, we had all these different things that were going on. What was the one that you you hated the most? If you could exchange it, you'd exchange it.
It was insomnia.
That was it. That's mine. I wish I got I just go goosebumps. That was mine, insomnia.
It was hell. It was living hell.
It was living hell. I dreaded the nights.
And then you dread the day because you feel so terrible all day because you haven't slept all night. It was it was absolute hell. And it was how long did you have insomnia for?
I mean, I I would say four or five years severely, you know. I mean, and then even then coming out of it, it was off and on, right? It's like it would come and go. And by the way, when it would come back, it was oftentimes more scary because if I had a night, yeah, it's the two. I even still have a little PTSD. Like, let's say that I have something and I have a night where I like wake up between two and four, because that's always what happened.
I like I almost have to be like, you know, PTSD, okay, yeah, it's it's cool. It's just because, you know, I had too much wine or whatever it is, right? But I I it I hated it. I hated it. Yeah.
So tell me about that feeling that you had in the seven years speaking of a functional medicine doctor who overdosed me on thyroid hormone because she wasn't able to read a thyroid lab properly. Uh, it was a nightmare. And I'm sure that it was, you know, the accumulation of of so many things, but it it completely threw my whole HPA axis out of whack.
My HPA axis was a disaster. And I And by the way, the folks, that's like your control tower, hypothalamus pituitary, that controls your thyroid, your adrenals, the hormone balance, feedback loops, and everyone's trying to balance it downstream when it's the whole control tower.
Yeah, take ashbagonda.
Yeah, yeah, take ashbagonda, take adrenal support. Okay, yeah. Okay, it's like it's so much more complicated than that.
The the the number of doctors that told me your your cortisol is high at night. So just take 600 milligrams of phosphatidyl serine. It's like my cortisol is high at night because I am living indoors, I'm never seeing the sunlight, and I'm getting exposed to artificial light at night. That is why my cortisol is high. Yeah, it's just so mixed up. But that was definitely the worst. And I'm right there with you.
I had this experience last night in the I really, really uh struggle in environments that are rich in EMFs. And I just feel like I'm buzzing all night. And as soon as I can't sleep, I'm taken back to those years where it was so traumatizing, and I was crying hysterically for hours in the night, crying out to God, begging.
That's when I would cry out. And I remember my wife asking me, What does it feel like? You know, and I said, I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. And she, you know, and I said, I it's like, I know that doesn't sound too many, but I just wanted to cry.
Yeah.
It was and I would get a feeling of dread oftentimes. And I just wanted to be a good thing.
Well, you completely lose resilience too, right? You have no resilience. I remember getting pulled over by a police officer, like I got a speeding ticket and just weeping, like the littlest little the little, the smallest stressor, the littlest thing.
Because our buckets were full. Yeah. And one more little stress, we can't handle it.
Yeah, so that was definitely the worst. And I can say that learning uh circadian biology and really, you know, doing it a hundred percent, uh, and have ever since I started learning about it, which was almost three years ago now, I I feel better than I ever have in my entire life. Me too.
Now it's understanding, you know, the the whole um world of redox and the membrane and the mitochondria and teaching mitochondrial medicine and understanding that these symptoms that we have, these diseases that we get diagnosed with, these are uh bioenergetic failures.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so if instead of focusing on the pathology and focusing on the protocol that you get put on that is not going to work, that may make you feel better temporarily, but it's not fixing the root of the issue.
Yeah.
Let's actually focus on a membrane level. Restoring redox, restoring that voltage so that you can make the energy you need to heal.
And we're gonna get we're gonna get into some of the how-to's on that because we both really did the same things. Um, you know, unknowing didn't know you at that time, you know, but uh meaning this is what works. Uh life and death does begin on the cell membranes. You know, um, how did your illness affect your family, your loved ones? I I hid mine for a while as best I could because I was super embarrassed about it. But did how how did it affect your relationships?
You know, I was on my own for a good chunk of that time. And so I might have been better.
I mean, bet that's good and bad. Like alone is not good, you know, but it it mine was really stressful.
Well, it was also stressful being alone, so it's probably yeah, both you know, ends of this spectrum would be really hard because you also feel that you're I mean, I remember feeling almost daily because I was worried about not being able to work. I was worried about my brain because my brain was not working. I was worried about being able to provide for myself and I didn't have anyone to fall back on, right? I didn't have anybody to catch me or to say, you know what, you're gonna be okay.
Uh, and so that was really hard. Also going through that season where it was you want to call it the prime of your life. I don't really subscribe to that. But those were the years that you know most people are dating and meeting somebody and starting a family. And you couldn't.
And I was just so how did that make you feel? Meaning like not being able to do those important things. What what was the feeling you got?
It was hopelessness. Yeah, it was complete and total hopelessness, and so of course that impacted, you know, my parents were very worried about me.
I tried to go home to um did could they understand what was going on, or could they did they just think maybe we're losing, you know, my daughter might be a little crazy. I don't know.
You know, I do think that they I think that they understood because they they saw who I was prior to all this happening. And they were very, very supportive. I they just didn't know what to do. You know, there was and nobody did. I mean, I was seeing every doctor that anyone recommended to me. I was trying to connect with people that could give me some kind of direction.
And and now looking back, all the direction that I got, I remember working with this one doctor out of California, and he recommended that I take between 200 and 400 milligrams suppositories of melatonin every night to reset my circadian rhythm. And you know, it's a good thing.
They're only that simple.
And now looking back, thinking, oh, the things that we did to our biochemistry, you know, based on really irresponsible advice and recommendations. And, you know, Dan, I see that even in this whole field today. I mean, the number of people that reach out to me and say, you know, I'm seeing X, Y, I'm seeing Dr. X, Y, or Z, and I'm doing, not to throw names out, but let's say the shoemaker protocol. And I'm doing the shoemaker protocol because I was diagnosed with SERS.
And the first thing that I think about is, okay, you're you're assaulting your membranes even more. You the the last thing that you need is to be depleting yourself even more than you already are. And then they run a red blood sulfatty acid test. And I have the privilege of being able to review a lot of these red blood cell fatty acid tests with um with physicians.
Uh, and you look at their tests and you think, you're this patient is completely and totally depleted in the fats that they need to build their membranes. So it does not matter what you give these patients at this point.
Right.
What they need is the materials that they need to go in and rebuild their membranes.
Absolutely.
And so, and that's where, you know, I know that we'll talk about the omega-6 and the, you know, I love the body biobalance oil, that perfect balance of six to three, to help support those two essential parent oils. And so many people say, oh, well, linoleic acid is inflammatory. I was told to reduce my linoleic acid intake to less than 2% of my total calories because it's inflammatory.
Yeah. It's like people think omega-6 is inflammatory. It's like adulterated, rancid omega-6 is right.
It's like, no, this is an essential nutrient. I mean, I learned in my very first nutrition class in university. You deprive the body of essential nutrients, and that results in disease and death. And we have this entire wellness world, this entire field of like wellness gurus that are telling people to avoid an essential nutrient.
Yeah.
Under the guise of health.
Because people don't understand. It's uh seed oils are bad. Well, okay, not all seed oils, rancid seed oils, yes, and processed food. We're gonna get into all this. You know, it's like an omega-6 is bad. Avoid it. Omega six is bad. I hear it all the time. It's like, well, no, it's not like that. You know, it's like, but yet the world's being taught that right now. And by the way, in functional medicine, doctors are are speaking the same language.
Oh, oh, I know. I know. I know. I hear it all the time.
Yeah, so this is the opposite. Okay, before we get into some of those specifics, you I have to go back to the anorexia portion because you said something. You said I really felt like a lot of the exposures that you had, your bucket being full, led to that. Kind of explain that because I bet there's a lot of people struggling with that, right? So kind of bring some light to that for those people.
So I don't know if I am able to accurately state exactly what led to that. I know that's a good thing.
Yeah, I appreciate that. But you know, you do have a theory.
I know that I did become very addicted to exercise based on the level of training that I was required to do every day. And that became what felt safe to me. So even in the midst of feeling very, very dorphin rush is addictive to, yeah.
So there's a physical component to that too. Yeah.
I was still waking up every morning, lacing up and running six miles. And then going to the gym and doing my weight session. And I think what happened, and again, that the that hour of running or the hour of weights that I did, it was it was such a push. I remember waking up in the morning thinking that it's the last thing that I would ever be able to do is run those six miles.
And there's something about this, these addictive behaviors that you just you do it and then you get into it, and I finished it every day. And halfway through, I started to feel really good.
Well, number one, you feel good about yourself after you're done, right? You do get the endorphin rise. So you feel good from an emotional standpoint, psychological standpoint, and physical standpoint in the moment. Unknowing what happens later when you depleted that energy to go to healing, you didn't adapt to the stress, exercise is a stress, cold baths are a stress, saunas are a stress. Now that doesn't make them bad. It just means we have to adapt to get the good.
Yeah. And also, you know, again, knowing what I know now about leptin and and how to support leptin and leptin's role in fertility, I was doing the very thing that you shouldn't do to support leptin. And so getting up first thing in the morning and running. Yeah. By the way, leptin' exercise.
Leptin is known as the fat hormone, right? It's um, it tells our body to burn fat. It's released from our fat cells and it communicates with our hypothalamus. And the body goes, Oh, we have more fat cells. Okay, great. Let's burn them. And it keeps us lean and mean, but it also communicates with a lot of other hormones. Explain that to them.
Oh, well, leptin is like your master energy regulator. So people really underestimate the power of leptin. And I will go so far to say that I believe that leptin melanocortin pathway is connected to all disease.
Oh, wow. Okay, so I don't know that. Tell me about that.
If your body doesn't know how much if your brain doesn't know how much energy is available, think about that when it comes to your liver health, your cardiovascular.
So let me just stop there. Leptin, again, produced in fat cells. It's communicating with the brain. Hey, we have more energy down here. Think of fat as energy, it's stored energy. So let's use it, right? So you're saying when you become leptin resistant, meaning those you can't hear the hormone.
You're you're the door is not available.
It doesn't know how much energy is available. Okay. I just wanted to, because that's a the key point, I feel like, to what you're gonna say. So I wanted to make sure people got that.
And low leptin would be, I mean, I would have been in that category of having really low leptin. And so the brain would be the signal is there's not enough energy.
Most anorexic would have low low leptin.
Yeah.
And over time it can uh move towards leptin resistance.
But which would be high leptin, like insulin resistance, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily you're fat or skinny. But anyway.
Yeah, typically if you're leptin resistant, you're gonna be 20, 30 pounds overweight. Yeah, it's it's a telltale sign if you have if you're carrying 20 or 30 extra pounds.
But in neurotoxic illness, sometimes you see these like thin people with high leptin, you go, what? Yeah.
Yeah, but this is where I don't know if we want to go there, but this is where ask yourself the question is it the mold toxicity or was it already the breakdown of melanin in the brain and the lack of sunlight exposure, the poor light environment that we're now just picking these markers that are easy to measure to say, oh, everyone with mold illness has low alpha MSH.
No.
Well, what activates alpha MSH? The leptin hypothalamus POMC cleaves into alpha MSH so that you can make you know melanin and you can regulate your immune system. And it does a whole bunch of other things as well. So it's interesting how you know we we fixate on these like single markers and then we say that that marker is bad or not.
And it happens all the time. It's so much more complicated than that, isn't it? Okay, but let's get the full point out of this concept. I so I'm selfishly asking the question. I I and try to make it as simple as it can so all everyone can understand it.
So to support left and so when I said that getting up first thing in the morning and running, that, you know, when we get up in the morning, we're supposed to watch the sunrise. That's the first thing that we should do. That light coming in our eyes, signaling to our brain that it's daytime, is setting the stage to optimize a TCA cycle, to move in that clockwise direction, optimize energy production. You're getting bathed in red and infrared light from that sunrise.
You that's the number one thing you can do for your health. That is letting because when your brain knows what time it is, it can tell your 37 trillion cells also what time it is. And every single thing that happens in the body on a cellular level happens according to timing mechanisms.
Okay, so do you try to get up every day and watch the sunrise?
I every day.
That's amazing.
I don't miss the sun.
Do you have um any like I uh I have a light in my office space that mimics, you know, I mean, because I'm very aware of this myself, but I I don't do as good as you as getting up every day and watch the sunrise. Let's just say that.
Well, I will say, Dan, when it when it was the single most important factor in getting you well, it's not a non-negotiable, you know, it's a non-negotiable.
And then because you noticed such a difference, it's like, you know, it's reading something is one thing, experiencing it as you did is another. So therefore, hey, I'm getting up every day and watching the sun come up. What about on cloudy days?
If you've been in clouds, snow, sleet, you're you're getting the sun still comes with the sun, so bright. Yeah, I knew the answer. You get all that information through the clouds. Yeah. Uh, you you know this. There's no mistakes. No, it's all perfect.
That's right. Absolutely.
So just going back to the whole anorexia story, I suspect what happened, and I was told uh that there was a psychiatrist that shared this with me years after, which kind of just confirmed my hypothesis. That when you drop to a certain body weight, your brain chemistry does actually change. And so it can actually induce anorexia. And I do feel like that happened because I can't tell you those years I tried so hard. I I was like, why am I thinking this way? Why am I measuring my food?
And why am I so obsessed with getting in X number of minutes of cardio every day? It was, it was like the most insane OCD. And it impacted, I mean, it impacted relationships because you you start lying about where, you know, my parents would be worried. Like, why are you going and exercising or running? You're, you know, you're wasting away. And so then you have to drive into the city and lie about where you're going because you're so obsessed with making sure you get in this workout.
And you live with that guilt. I mean, now just even that the that frequency of guilt, knowing what that does to this beautiful body of water that we're made up of and how that impacts our cellular health. And it was just it was it was living hell. And I don't even know. I mean, I say it was by the grace of God that I was able to come out of that and get to a place. It was about at 28 that I was able to get out of that state. And I don't have any residual.
You know, it's like I don't think about it. I don't, it's, it's, it's like I never even lived that season of my life.
And by the way, I can tell your attention to the cell membrane because your hair, your skin, your eyes, like, and and it's I mean that because it you can tell. It's just when people have good fatty acid balance, it shows you know, you look younger than you are, you you just look healthy, there's a glow. That's membranes.
That's all the phospholipids that I think.
That's the point.
That's the point. That's the body bio PC. I uh and essential fatty acids, yeah. I am very, very um diligent about that for sure. And I think too, the more that I have fallen in love with the design, the more and more I want to provide safety signals at every opportunity that I can. So it's no longer this obsessive. You see a lot of people in this field that are obsessive about health. It's like this rigidity.
And um, I'm sure my loved one would say that I have a little bit of rigidity when it comes to this stuff, but I don't feel that internally. I feel like when I come traveling, I can go and get my almond milk latte and not stress about it.
Yeah. Yeah, I I I'm that way. I mean, I I live a really balanced life because I, you know, I grew up that way, but around health, not obsessive.
Yeah. And I do my very best, you know, when I'm in an environment that I can't control. Uh and it's also, you know, this deep love and desire to change what is happening today in the whole, not only just Dan, in this whole field of wellness and functional medicine and integrative medicine, but the world as a whole. Like how amazing.
I was thinking last night, how amazing would it be to be able to go to a hotel that had windows that open, that you could go out on a patio, that had a cable that you could plug your computer in and hardwire, that you could just, you know, turn off the breakers at night and have a peaceful sleep. I imagine that had street lights that were.
It's the future. Hotels are waking up to this.
That had street lights that, you know, were all the lights on buildings, they had to they have to be like amber or red.
Yeah.
So that you weren't, you know, assaulted every second of the day by these toxins that most people don't even recognize are toxins.
They're toxins. Yeah.
And so my vision is so much greater than I will probably ever be able to accomplish. But right now I'm just starting with I just want to teach people how to be human again.
Yeah.
I want to teach them the miracle that they are and how amazing their cells are. And that's what we want to nourish. And I think that when you look at what's happening again, not to be disparaging, but when you look at what's happening in this whole functional medicine world, it's just become this way of medicine.
It makes people believe, first and foremost, that health is outside of them, that they're missing something, that they're not taking the thing, they're not doing the procedure, they haven't followed the protocol hard enough, they're not with the right physician, whatever it is, they think that healing comes from outside of them.
Yeah. That's it. It always comes from inside out, not outside in. Yeah.
So and to just open people's eyes to that, I I've it's a privilege and an honor to be able to do that and for people to see just how miraculous they really are and how capable the body is built into the design to heal.
Absolutely. All right, let's get into this membrane. We've opened up this door so wide. Let's walk into it. Um, okay. The key talk about the key to the membrane, right? Meaning, um, first of all, let's start really broad. Why is the membrane so important as we just described? And think about the person out there just in the basic things of life that they can relate to, right? Because that's the most people watching. You know, relate it to that.
And then we'll get into you know the components and then how to fix it.
So let's maybe start with the number of cells that are in the human body. So we are made up of about 37 trillion cells. And then out of those 37 trillion cells, I swear this number always changes.
There was a time where it was 70, then it was 50.
Then it's and it's like no, so I just like say this range because 37 is is as far as the most most current research is 37.
All right, so I'll I'll go with that then.
And we have 200 different cell types, and we have 500 trillion mitochondria. And so every single one of those cells has a double lipid bilayer on the outer membrane.
Two layers of fat.
Two layers of fat. Phosphatidylcholine, we'll get into the phospholipid. So phosphatidylcholine is your most abundant phospholipid on that outer membrane, and phosphatidyl ethanolamine is the most abundant phospholipid on that inner membrane.
Meaning the inner membranes, the mitochondrial membrane, the um endoplasmic reticular membrane, yeah, in all these membranes in the cell.
So that's that's my next part. So when you think about the body, if you close your eyes and think about your body as this beautiful communication system, and every single one of those cells, and every single one of those cells has all these organelles within it, every one of those organelles also has a membrane. And if it doesn't have a membrane, so we're talking about the peroxosome, the mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum, your lysosomes, your ribosomes.
And if an organelle doesn't have a membrane, a biological membrane, it's interacting with one. So what does that tell you? That the membranes are everything. What happens when we have a breakdown of the bio, um, you know, the membrane? We think about bioenergetics. So think about the mitochondria. Oxidative phosphorylation occurs on the inner mitochondrial membrane.
So our mitochondria have two lipid bilayers as well, but the outer membrane is phosphatidylcholine, and that inner membrane is phosphatidyl ethanolamine. And then we have this beautiful membrane that says on top.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Phosphatitocholine that is imperative for the membrane to function correctly, is 70% omega-6.
Or is it so phosphatidyline?
Yeah, that's what I said that right, I think. Yeah.
So phosphatidylcholine, when we look at the molecule, uh, so it has a polar head group, that's the choline component. There's a phosphate group. It sits on a glycerol backbone, a three-carbon backbone, and then it has two fatty acid tails. So those two fatty acid tails are identified by a different position. So SN1 is one of the fatty acid tails that's almost always a saturated fat. So palmitic acid would be most commonly.
That gives structure, right? That's how important saturated fat, rigidity, exactly.
And the SN2 position, that would be a polyunsaturated fatty acid or a monounsaturated fatty acid. So that SN2 position, the fatty acid that is put there is going to be dependent on the cell type. So think about your skin cells. You have great skin. Your skin cells are rich in linoleic acid. So then in a skin cell, you'd have palmitic acid.
And let's always say, just for simplicity's sake, omega-6, omega-3. That's what people know. Okay. They don't even understand alpha linoleic acid, allenolic acid. So let's keep it. Yeah.
So omega-6 uh is rich in skin cells.
Yeah. And people don't know that. If omega 6 is so bad, well, the it's like, wait a minute, it's the number one fatty acid. I know.
I just I just saw a post on social media where somebody was eating a tin of sardines and she's like, you gotta eat your sardines, the DHA for your skin health. I'm like, uh no.
Wait, uh yeah, it doesn't even interplay there, actually.
Like DHA is in your neuronal membrane and in your retina, actually. Um, very, very low concentrations in other cell types. Uh and so depending on the cell type, so I'd mentioned those 200 different cell types, it's just gonna determine what fatty acid is put on on that SN2 position. So on a neuronal membrane, that's gonna be rich in DHA on that SN2 position.
Um, so it's position matters where it is matters, right? Okay.
In white matter, uh, in the lipids in white matter, is white matter is rich in arachidonic acid. Liver cell membranes, also very rich in omega-6 or linoleic acid.
So it just depends on the cell type that's gonna determine what fatty acid we need there, which is why it is so important that your body has all the fatty acids that it needs, because if it doesn't have those, it's gonna slot a fatty acid that isn't supposed to be there in that cell just to compensate because your body's always working.
And that's the problem with these rancid fatty acids. They end up, you know, in there where they shouldn't be. But, anyways, okay, so continue on. So that we were talking about the function of the membrane, how important these membranes are.
So The I was on the mitochondria. So, and you know this, I think, better than anyone. The cardiolipin is that phospholipid bilayer that sits on top of the ethanolamine membrane. So think about if you go back to just anyone that's watching that's not really well versed in in biochemistry or biophysics, to go back to you know high school biology where we learn about those protein complexes being embedded in the membrane. So the membrane is the house for those proteins, right?
So and then what happens within those proteins? We have electrons. So we eat food or we ground, we we put ourselves barefoot on the earth or we get exposed to sunlight and we get we collect electrons. And those electrons come in to the electron transport chain on NADH or FADH2, either complex one or complex two, and those electrons move through those protein complexes. And that's how we make metabolic water on complex four, and that's how we make energy or ATP on complex five or ATPAs.
So that that membrane that sits on top of that phosphatidyl ethanolamine membrane is called the cardiolipin, and it has four fatty acid tails that are all, they're supposed to be all linoleic acid or omega-6.
Yeah, I yeah, and that fat is so important uh that innate intelligence will utilize, they'll oxidate that fat if it wants to kill a cell. I mean, it'll oxidize that fat. Boom, cell's dead right there.
Well, and those, those, you know, the fatty acids that are found within the cardiolipin, the linoleic acid is critical for maintaining that curvature of the intermitochondrial membrane, for maintaining the structure, from for maintaining these redox centers. So it's really underestimated the importance and the power of supporting the membrane when it comes to healing. Because if you have a breakdown on the biological membrane, good luck making energy.
And if you are looking to heal, you are looking at improving, you need to improve your bioenergetics, you need to improve energy production. And that is going to be by improving the voltage. And remember that that membrane is like an insulator, it's separating charge in the mitochondria.
And so if we don't have a membrane, and charge is how the cell gets the good stuff in, the bad stuff out, and everything works. The hormone, I mean, charge, everything is charge, right? Yeah. And that's energy, and that's why it's one of my R's. You know, Otto Warburg, um, he turned of the 19th century. I mean, he was the guy that really spotted of why cancer is happening. People think he talked about, like, oh, we're in too um acid of an environment, right?
And, you know, it's like, that's not exactly what Warburg even meant. But cardiolipin, he felt, is was the big problem of why these cells went into this primitive glycolysis and led to cancer. He he really, if you've read his work, cardiolipin, he knew, he just didn't understand it fully, was the issue. That's how important this fat is.
Well, and the cardiolipin is going to become damaged when we have poor redox, right? When those those we're not able to move the We'll get to redox in a minute.
I know that's a word many people probably don't understand, but we'll get there. Okay, so the the membrane, right? It sets up the energy of the cell. It sets up how the cell communicates with every cell in your body. It sets up how your hormones work, the getting the good stuff in, the bad stuff. I mean this the membrane does it all. You know, and most importantly, as you pointed out, it really regulates the energy of the cell. And without energy, we're done. We're nothing works.
I mean, meaning low energy, you know, people that don't feel well just can't figure it out, have hormone imbalance. It's a cell energy issue in some respect, but it's a membrane issue. My R number two is regenerate cell membranes, R three is restore cell energy, right? It's like, because you can't have one without the other. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now we understand the importance of it. Okay. You already said the phosphatidylcholine. Can we get that in foods? Where do people get that?
You and I definitely take supplements with high phosphatylcholine. And then let's talk about some of these other fats. We mentioned saturated fat. Everyone thinks saturated fat's bad. You and I realize it actually stabilizes and gives structure to the membrane. Without it, we're dead. So talk about, let's talk about some of these building blocks.
Yeah. So I, you know, it's funny that you asked this question because I was just asked this question uh after teaching my module on phospholipids and fatty acids just last week. Because so many people that are, you know, like us that are that are in kind of this holistic world, we're wanting to do things naturally, we're wanting to make sure that we're leaning into whole foods to get these nutrients, which I 100% subscribe to over, you know, using supplementation.
And so I'll answer the first part of your question and then I'll answer um this the it a second way. So we can get these phospholipids uh through dairy, through fish, through animal foods, red meats, organ meats, egg yolks are an amazing source. So uh think animal foods when you're getting an abundance of these uh phospholipids. Now, often in those animal foods, uh the and sunflower seeds rich in in uh phospholipids too, soy beans rich in phospholipids.
So we can get those uh lipids from food, absolutely. But I will say that clinically, in the last 14 years, I have never once been able to see people restore their mitochondrial or patients restore their mitochondrial function leaning into food alone.
I I agree with that, actually. It's because the levels that we need and targeting certain ratios is going to be much easier done with supplementation.
And I, you know, I uh you know I'm I'm the biggest fan of the body biophospholipid complex. It's actually what was the catalyst to me going and pursuing my education in phospholipids and fatty acids. And I, and we can talk in about all the properties of these phospholipids if you want to, uh, but when you look at the environment that we're living in today, like we are not living in the same environment that our ancestors did.
So for for people to compare what we were doing, you know, your ancestors were doing versus what we're doing today based on the environment that we're in, it's it's not comparable anymore. We are under constant assault. We are living in a soup of non-native EMFs.
Most people are not getting the sunlight exposure that they need, they're not connecting their body to the earth, they're eating bad food, they're eating at the wrong times, they're exposed to glyphosate, they're drinking fluoride in their water. They're, I mean, the list goes on and on.
You just describe the majority of people watching the show, even though they're conscious, even though my people are very, but this is what we're up against, what you just described.
All of those things damage the membrane.
Yeah.
And so our only our the only way that we're gonna be able to have any chance at having healthy cells, I believe, is to make sure that we are pouring in these deposits into our biochemical bank account, making sure that your body has what it needs to go in and repair that damage. And that's where leaning into lipid, you know, lipid therapy, leaning into phospholipid supplementation has been it's been profound. It's been miraculous to see what happens when you give people these lipids.
I call it lipid therapy. I, you know, and I would make my membrane shake with my egg yolks and all the fats, right? It's like it's because what you're saying is true. I when I learned about the cell membrane, and I realized this is why I don't feel well. This is why all my efforts to balance my hormones, everything's not working, you know, it's it's what I teach and pain to purpose.
And uh so much attention went into what was disrupt, getting rid of what was disrupting my membranes, because that's part of this, and then um fixing them.
Yeah. And I I want to say as well that, you know, there's for anybody that's watching this, this is a supplement industry, there's a vast difference between, you know, some of the products that are on the market and others. You know, most of the phosphatidylcholine products are lethosin or triple lethosin that is not even in the same universe as, you know, a liposomal, like the body bio PC, which is a liposomal form of PC. That's um Ed Kane.
Brilliant. We both really had a lot of respect for him.
Yeah.
And we both learned a lot.
In the same concentrations, right? Because we don't want to be taking isolated just phosphatidylcholine. We want to be because now we know that it's not just phosphatital choline that we need. We need ethanolamine, we need inocitol, we need serine. Uh, and so being able to support with uh us, you know, an exogenous product that is providing us with all of those lipids to help to rebuild our cellular health is huge.
That's a great product. Um, I've created several products over the years with the balance of a lot of the other fats as well. Um in my recent membrane R2 product, we actually use heart tissue to bring cardiolipin in because it's so fragile. It's so fragile and it has to be protected and keeping it in a whole form. It's like you and I would agree on this. Fish oil's great when it's in fish. That's like I hope people heard that, right? Because you were like, when it's in fish. I hate fish oil.
Okay. Again, we stand out on this. Um, but it's like, I oh, I love fish oil, I tell people, when it's in fish. I love vegetable oil when it's in vegetables, right? But you take it outside of that and you're talking about five, six double bonds. It's like, uh, yeah, you're gonna oxidize it, you know, in your mouth.
Or it's oxidized before you put it in your mouth, actually.
Of course it is. But uh well, the reason I always like to say that is because, you know, it's not meant to be in warm bodies, but people always, well, this one's perfect. This one's, you know, we uh let's hypothetically say you've kept it perfect. The moment it goes in your mouth, it's not, unless it's in fish. So there's their problem.
It's you know, I I have a a whole class that I teach on this, um, Dan, because it's actually insane that we are in this place, that people are getting are are getting recommended fish oil for every single pill and hair, face, skin.
What what it's it's not even in skin.
Yeah, and like DHA, just like you said, six double carbon bonds. It is the most oxidative molecule in biology.
Which is people are like seed oil, seed oil, seed oils. It's like, well, that's two, three double bonds. The more double bonds, the more fragile. Yeah, fish oil has five and six APA DHA.
Yeah, but then when you look at the processing of fish oil, I mean, I could go on and on about this because it's it's absolute lunacy that we are here and we believe that putting those delicate fatty acids outside of their whole food matrix is a health food.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's in it's insane. It's insane. The for they are so fragile. I mean, if people understand, I it's it's antifreeze for cold water fish. I mean, you know, it's it's not even you know meant to be put in a human outside of a fish, you know.
Yeah.
And why do people think that you need so much DHA anyway? I mean, talk about it.
Well, I mean, we yeah, I mean, I don't want to diminish the importance of DHA. Well, no, no, DHA is important.
Our body has a process to make it if we need it, you know? It's not an essential fat, but your body can make it if you need it.
Yeah, and I would I would say it is essential.
I do believe, based on my understanding of Well, when I say essential now, that means that you have to get it from your diet, but your body has an ability to make it.
Yeah, but again, I would disagree. Yes, it technically from ALA, but the conversion from so alpha-linolenic acid is our plant-based form of omega-3. That's a that's another essential parent oil or essential fatty acid. And so technically, ALA can get converted to DHA, but the conversion rate is like 1%, 1 to 2%. And that's dependent on the environment that the person is. Remember, the the environment is key for the meaning, many people don't have access.
Most people in the world don't have access to cold water fish. Yeah. I mean, today everyone has access. I'm talking about ancient. What do you mean? I it's delivered to my door. Uh, you know what I'm saying? I mean the ancient humans, if you will. Yeah.
So I I do, I am in the camp that um I teach that the downstream metabolites are also essential nutrients. We want to also focus on like egg yolks on the omega-6 side. And, you know, I'm a big fan of evening primrose oil for supporting GLA. Uh, and then on the omega-3 side side, we want to make sure that we're eating seafood, you know, at least a couple three times a week. And then dependent on the environment that you're in is going to determine how well you can recycle that DHA.
So again, if you're living in an apartment building downtown Salt Lake City.
So what you're saying is just to because, you know, and again, I'm good with being wrong. Um, you're saying that uh because of our environment, the EMFs, all the things we're exposed to, all the toxins we're exposed to, that we're converting even less. Yes. So our build, so you're saying it's become because technically, if the body has an ability to produce it, it be it is considered in the scientific literature as non-essential. Okay, just to be clear, right?
So that's why I put it in that category. But you're saying, and your point, and maybe I'm wrong, is because of what's changed, it's you put it in a category of essential more today because of that conversion is so low. Am I saying that right or am I missing it?
Yeah. And I'm okay with being wrong. I am.
I've there's many things I've been wrong on.
Partly right, yes. And I I so I've I've studied a lot um of Dr. Michael Crawford's work. So he is like the DHA guru. And his research shows that you know the human brain became developed to the size that it is today because of DHA. So, and you know, he's a big advocate of eating a lot of fish, daily fish. And when you look at his research, even uh Dan, this is really interesting on pregnant women.
Pregnant women who eat fit, the more fish that women eat while they're pregnant, the higher their baby's IQ is. And it just continues to rise, like there's no stopping. And so there's clearly benefits that we're getting from eating fish.
Oh, yeah, I'm all for eating fish. I just don't like fish oil.
Oh, yeah. No, no fish oil for sure. And then of course, DHA is essential for the brain. So living in the environment that we're in today, when we think about all the oxidation, uh lipid peroxidation of our membranes, and if we're not supplying our body with those fatty acids to go in and repair that damage, we're going to end up with membrane disorder.
Well, yeah, I mean, DHA is you need it, but that's again what why your body can produce it, because in back in ancient times, people had trip more trouble getting it, right? Meaning their environments weren't like they had access to oceans, etc. So yeah.
Again, I I think that most like when you look at where most communities were, even like from an ancient perspective, I think there's usually water, you know. Um, most people wouldn't choose.
What is the amount in a trout versus like tuna?
So tuna's very high. I would say in tuna, don't quote me on this, but you're gonna get about in in about four or five ounces of tuna, right around 500 to 600 milligrams of EP and DHA combined. Uh, trout is going to probably be in the one to 200 range, uh, so quite a bit lower. Same with like scallops and prawns, and you're still getting a little bit from shellfish. Yeah, of course, but not as much uh as you'd be getting from like salmon, yeah. Or tuna tuna is really high.
Obviously, the DHA plays a role, but we want to get it from real fish, right? And um, you try to eat real fish. How many days a week did you say?
I aim to eat fish about four times a week. Okay. And sometimes it's more than that, sometimes it's and clean fish.
We don't want to get into that. We're not eating farm fish ever.
Never.
You're not ever um I actually do caviar most of the time.
I love caviar.
Well, that's a really incredible source of all those good things.
It's like the ultimate brain food.
So DHA EPA, that's what you we find typically in algae and uh fish. You know, they play a role, right? Um okay, and then now let's get into the omega-3, omega-6 conversation. Well, it's part of that is omega-3 there, but algae though.
I'll just say algae, the the DHA is not, it's algae is not for a human consumption, that's for fish consumption because the DHA is on the wrong fish.
Then we get the fish. Okay, exactly. All right. So you don't like products that use algae as a source of DHA? No. Okay. Because you don't like how the body would convert it, or what's the it's not it's not available to the body, it's on the wrong position. So but what about products that um would sell it um as a source of DHA?
Uh I would say that it's um misunderstanding of membrane medicine. No, yeah.
Cool. Fair enough. Yeah. Okay, and then um now the omega-3, omega-6 conversation, right? So very quick, like what talk about the foods that have omega-6, the foods that have omega-3, just so people can kind of get that under their ropes and then the importance of both.
Okay, this is a great question. So omega-6, we're gonna get high concentrations from seeds. So sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds. Those are hemp seeds, excellent sources of linoleic acid. And actually, hemp seeds have a beautiful ratio of linoleic to alpha linolinic. So you're covering both those essential parentheses.
And these are considered essential fats, meaning we can't get them. Our body doesn't make them unless we eat them.
Yeah.
Okay.
100%. Okay. And then uh egg yolks are a great source of omega-6 and linoleic and arachidonic acid. So those are both on the omega-6 side.
And we'll get to arachidonic acid in a minute, too, because people, most people think arachidonic acid is bad because their doctor said it's bad, but that's not true. But, anyways, go ahead.
There's so much nonsense. It's actually, I mean, I'm trying to clear it up. I know.
Because in this topic, yeah, it's like I I I want them to hear it from you.
You honestly, Dan, this is it's so important to have these conversations because, and it's not just in this field. I mean, I feel so deeply sad for so many people that are unwell, that are looking for answers, and they are getting lied to left, right, and center.
Yep.
And nobody knows what's truth anymore. It's true. Even even in the functional medicine world, it's like a game of telephone. Like people are just passing on information.
You know, it's like I hope this is one of the number one shared shows because of all of these myths that we're clearing up. And I want to make sure it's clear because these are not just myths like, oh yeah, people believe that. No, these are devastating to people's health. People running from omega-6, right? Taking fish oil, thinking arachidonic acid bad, saturated fat's bad. This is devastating for your health. So we're gonna clear it up.
Yeah, I mean, I again, I could talk about this forever. So you can always just shush me if you don't want me to say any anything more. But the omega sixes, like even just with fish oil, speaking of the shoemaker protocol, this is a really good example of people getting put on like two, three, four grams of fish oil. And this is like long range.
These are pharmaceutical. I mean, this is like an overdose.
I mean, it is like the most insane superphysiological dose that you could give somebody, and it is so harmful. And the thought is, oh, we're gonna suppress inflammation. It's like your body actually does that when it's ready to do that, when you just give the cell what it needs, not when you try to push and force pathways. And and then you get, you know, a lab result that you can like pat yourself on the back for because you're range, you're in range.
It's like that doesn't that doesn't mean that anything beneficial has happened on a cellular level whatsoever. So the uh so the foods, so uh egg yolks, excellent source of omega-6, organ meats, excellent source of omega-6, and then on the omega-3 side, alpha linolenic acid, the the parent oil, a plant-based form of omega-3, like chia seeds, flax seeds, uh, I mentioned hemp seeds, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, and then the downstream metabolites we all know, it's from coming from seafood.
So when we take really high doses of omega-3s, which are you know very common, some people have been on fish oil for years.
Screws them up so bad.
And that because of the competition, so we have these enzymes, the delta-6 desaturated enzyme and the delta-5 desaturated enzyme, that are kind of in competition with one another on the omega-6 and the omega-3 side. So when we overdo the omega-3s with fish oil, I'm not talking about seafood intake. We are going to monopolize the delta-6 desaturates enzyme. We're also flooding the body with these fatty acids.
So that's impacting absorption, that's impacting transporters, that's impacting the incorporation into the membrane. It is displacing because it's it's plummeting the omega-6 side, it's displacing linoleic acid from the cardiolipin.
Yes. Oh, and now your cell energy tanks. Oh boy.
So we're contributing to the very problem that we are telling our patients that we're fixing.
Absolutely. And eventually it ends up in cellular inflammation.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Horrible. And now that impedes your hormones, that impedes your nutrition in your cell, that impedes cell energy as a whole. Oh gosh. Okay. So, all right. So now we have a base on the omega-3, omega-6. Now, so everyone's hearing that omega-6 is so bad. Why are they hearing that?
Well, because we poisoned the food system with oils that are toxic. And those oils are, if you want to use the word bad, they are completely destructive to the cell.
They are.
And so we take, you know, uh an oil from a sunflower seed or a safflower seed, and we heat it to extremely high temperatures, and we treat it with s solvents and deodorizers and pressurize it, and we completely destroy the fatty acids. And then we add preservatives. So we strip all of the antioxidants out of the room.
In other words, it's like the we destroy them, and now all omega 6 is bad. Instead of understanding. Understanding what man has done to these really important oils because of the seed oil industry, et cetera, et cetera. They're damaged. So if you see seed oils in processed food, they're bad, right? I mean, unless the company has done really a good job of getting a good one right. I mean, you know, but they're they're all bad.
I mean, anytime you see like sunflower, safflower, soy, corn, cottonseed, canola, rice, bran, oil, they just can't take seed oil. They're all toxic oils. So, but the thing is, this, and this is my uh I I feel even just the messaging, because we're told we're telling people to avoid these industrial seed oils, these are all in processed foods. These are coming from boxes, bags, packages. So what are we doing?
We should be eating whole real food that's grown in our local environment the way that God intended food to be grown and animals to be raised.
Like it's so if So the point I'm making we're making is just like fish oil, we love fish oil and fish. I love seed oils and seeds. I mean, but again, a seed oil though, unlike a fish oil, can be pressed, cold, pressed and be good.
Absolutely.
And so kind of explain that because that's a level of confusion because they would look at it and say, hey, your the product, Justine, you and Pomp are recommending has seed oils in it.
Yeah, and I again I get this all the time. So, and I know you're with me in this, so you get it. So, with the industrial seed oils, just to kind of finish in that vein, yeah. The industrial seed oils are poison. Yes, we agree with that.
Poison.
They contain aldehydes that directly damage your membranes, they damage your mitochondrial membranes, they damage your mitochondrial DNA, they damage your nuclear DNA. They are a disaster. It is like literally pouring gasoline on a fire and causing lipid peroxidation throughout your entire body. It's they're horrible. Pure raw oils that have come from, I mean, I'm most familiar, as you know, with the body bio balance oils. It's what we've used and the body bio evening primrose oil.
That those oils are what we've used for for I've used for 14 years now clinically. They're cold pressed, there's no hexane, there's no solvent, there's no bleachers, there's no deodorizers, they are kept in, you know, as close to their whole food form as possible. And when we look at lipid therapy, using exogenous lipids to rebuild the body to provide your biochemistry with the materials that it needs to go in and repair membranes, the oils are the most bioavailable.
Of course.
So that's the fastest way that we can replenish some of it.
Absolutely. It's like all these bad bricks in this wall, right? All these crumbling weak bricks. We want to replace those with really good bricks and mortar. And that's what these fats are.
So, and of course, we the person needs to be educated on proper use, right? So we want to make sure that we're not using, um, we're only using them in a cold application. We're not heating them. We are using the bottle within, you know, 30 days or 60 days at the most, which is very easy to do when you're using them therapeutically. Uh, so uh proper use is important because they're they're polyunsaturated fatty acids. They're susceptible to oxidation.
But it's interesting, Dan, because so I'm a big fan also of uh black cumin seed oil, seed buckthorn oil. Uh because of my very weird obsession with lipids and uh my you know passion around studying them. I the the benefits of black cumin seed oil are really profound. You know, the thymoquinone has been shown to support microglial activation and calm those microglial cells down and get them back to an evening.
What are microglial cells?
Those are like your brain's you know immune cells. They're they're always surveying uh the environment in the brain and they can get activated or primed. And when they're activated or primed, they're releasing all these inflammatory chemical mediators. And if you don't turn that off, you end up damaging brain tissue over time.
Not good.
And it's all black human seed is also really rich in linoleic acid. And you like I challenge you to go and try to find one study on black human seed oil that shows that it's harmful in any way.
Yeah, I I love it.
And people, so many people across the board, the same people that are saying to avoid seed oils, are saying, you know, black human seed oil, you know, is black human seed oil is good. It's like, well, the main fatty acid in black human seed oil is linoleic acid. So there's like all these mixed messages.
You know, so to bring ahead to it, okay, you said this, but I want it repeated. So there's no way fish oil can be non-denatured in a bottle.
I don't believe so.
Yeah, me either. Seed oils, on the other hand, can be cold-pressed, right from the source, protected. Seed oils can be good. However, in processed foods, the places where people are getting exposed, avoid them all.
Yeah, and I would also say that there's really only two companies that I recommend consuming oils from. And I'm biased, of course, because they're the companies that I use.
Yeah, but I mean, I I'm so paranoid like you. It's like I, you know, I have to know my source there.
Yeah.
Because they're they're so easily denatured.
Yeah, I only use body bio oils and activation products oils.
And the again, the the double, the more double bonds, the more fragile. Fish oil, EPA, I think five, DHA six, right? So that means they're really fragile. Seed oils, two and three.
Two and three, but you know, Dan, it's more than that too, because when you look at the whole food matrix, like in in salmon, EP and DHA are always attached to a sulfur-containing amino acid.
I love it in fish. Yeah, yeah.
And so when you look at that whole food matrix, it's not just about like, yes, the double bonds are important, but you you also see how you know nature has perfectly put everything together so that you could put a piece of salmon in the oven and cook it for a little bit. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, that's what I was saying. In fish, the double bonds are irrelevant, actually. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, it's totally protected. Yeah, it's it's only when we come out of the fish where all of those protectors are gone. Or the vegetable. Again, vegetable oil, right? It's a it's a similar conversation. In vegetables, you have all of this protection. And but when you pull it outside of the vegetable, yeah, it becomes more susceptible to oxidation for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, so seed oils can be done right, but we have to be very cautious, right? Olive oil is a monounsaturated, meaning as a one double bond. It can take more heat. But again, we would both agree that there's a lot of really bad olive oils. I would most of them on the market are not real olive oil.
Yeah, I would say the majority of the olive oils on the market are not pure olive oil. And even with olive oil, I still recommend using it in a cold application and not especially the really good ones.
I I always use them in cold.
Yeah.
You know, just because you just want those good fats just pure, all right. Okay, so now we went from five, six, two, three, one, monounsaturated. Uh, you know, let's now let's get into these saturated fats, your butters, your lards, your tallows, right? Obviously, these are the cooking oils, these are the ones that you can fry with, you know, things of that sort. But people don't understand the health benefits of them, too. Yeah, they take heat.
Um, we've been scared of them because of saturated fat and cholesterol is so bad. You and I would uh agree that arguably they're the most important fats to stabilize cell membrane. And like, and yet people are running from these fats. So let's get into that a little bit. Just clarify the myths.
Yeah. So we mentioned before that the saturated fats are what provide the cell with structure and that rigidity. And cholesterol as well, right? Oh, cholesterol, yes. Yeah. I was gonna say we'll get into that. I don't want to cross over, but I would be cheering for someone uh who has higher cholesterol over low cholesterol.
But did you hear that? Okay, you know, the old normal 300, 250, higher cholesterol is better for hormones, better for cell health. Okay. Yeah.
And I mean, I think it's a representation too of good cellular health when your your liver cells are making good amounts of cholesterol.
Absolutely.
But the so the saturated fats are providing structure. Now, I do want to really make it clear that we don't want to be overdoing saturated fats because that's going to impact our whole profile, right? And if we are layering and layering saturated fats, that's gonna impact our absorption of these polyunsaturated fatty acids. It can monopolize enzymes like the recommendations. I'm sure you've heard from some of the big gurus out there that say to take olive oil shots.
Well, we then end up with all of these monounsaturated fatty acids like oleic acid, and then we monopolize these enzymes like the delta-9 desaturase enzyme, and that can create major problems on a membrane level.
Yeah, you know, I'm not one of those people, I you know that, uh, but I know. I I hear that and I go, gosh, like who where did that ever happen in nature, you know, where people are just guzzling olive oil? No, I that's not how it's used in Italy, anyway. Yeah.
But so the saturated fats are really important. Now, I'm not out there recommending to do the whole like bulletproof coffee where you're adding butter and ghee and MCT oil, like layering and layering them. Uh, I think that that can be really problematic. Uh, but we want to be using them. We want to be getting them from bioavailable animal protein when we're cooking foods.
And by the way, if you use them as you cook foods, that's it's really what you need, you know, you're getting enough. If you're eating grass-fed meats, yeah, if you're eating, you know, I mean, you're gonna get enough. I I think that this is the fat that's the easiest to get from nature. Would you agree?
And yeah, and and they're also fats that are made in the body.
Yeah.
So as long as we are supporting our body in all the ways that we need to be, we should be able to adequately make these saturated fats to support the membrane as well. Now, I will say, because of my clinical experience and evaluating thousands of these red blood cell fatty acid tests, I do see people that are not eating a lot of ruminant animals, four-legged animals, that they do often have low levels of palmitic or steeric acid.
But palmitic acid, like our mother fatty acid, is made in the cytosol through, you know, acetyl-CoA. And so, and that mother fatty acid is making all of the fatty acids in the body. And so we do want to make sure that we're eating, you know, ruminant animals, we're leaning into the grass-fed, grass-finished beef, the lamb, the bison. Uh, and then when we are cooking with fats, we want to be aware of temperature, right? Because any of that glycation is really damaging to the membrane.
So even with saturated fats, I say still you want to cook on a low temperature. Uh, but using like tallow and duck fat and and goose fat and ghee, uh, those are all, those are the fats that we want to be cooking with if we are, because they are much more stable. Now they still oxidize if we're cooking at a temperature that exceeds the oxidation point, right? So if we're using like ghee, which has a smoke point of about 400 degrees, and we're broiling at 500, we're gonna damage that ghee as well.
It's not invincible. Yeah, but they're much safer.
Yeah, then for sure. And um, obviously, tallows will take heat even better than ghee. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you keep stepping it up in the order. Avocado oil, people ask, where does it fit in?
I'm like vehemently opposed to using avocado oil. I put that right in the same bucket as industrial seed oils. Well, when you look at the literature, it's processed the same way. It's processed with hexane and solvents.
So you can't buy a good one?
I have never been able to find a truly cold-pressed avocado oil.
Oh wow. Okay.
And an easy way, Dan, for you to just, you know, verify whether or not the company that's selling you that avocado oil is lying or not. So a monounsaturated avocado oil is rich in in monounsaturated fatty acid.
I did a video on the avocado oil because I read something and I got a lot of haters on it because I was like, I, you know, it appears that this stuff may, you know, I was very delicate with my words, but I was like, you know, basically saying what you're saying. Like, I don't know that this stuff's a good.
It's another like one of these whole wellness industry lies. And and you can tell by just look at your bottom.
I I walked away from that exchange with people, like, you know, going, okay, you know, I'm sure maybe some of them are good, but sounds like to you you think none of them are good. All right, you maybe move me further left or right. I don't know which one. Some of the things I'm gonna do. Yeah, okay, all right, good. I because I was probably in between that of like, okay, most are bad, some are good, you're saying all bad. All right.
Well, and you again, you can just read the bottle because what does it say on the bottle of an avocado oil? This is a high temperature cooking oil. Well, a monounsaturated fatty acid can't withstand high temperatures. So the only way that they would be able to say that on the bottle is if they manipulated the fatty acids.
Okay.
They adulterated the avocado oil to make it into an oil that's not going to smoke when you cook it at 400 degrees.
All right. You took me even further over. I love that. I um I love when uh this happens. And then um, were you on coconut oil?
So coconut oil, so as long as it's not refined. So I don't know how much we haven't talked about this that much, but I'm really uh an advocate of eating locally and seasonally. So most of us are not living in a tropical location where coconuts grow.
Yeah, there's truth to this hugely, right? Yeah.
Now, because it's a fat, uh, you know, once in a while, I would say it's fine as long as it's raw and it's not refined. And most people that are using coconut oil, from my experience anyway, they're buying that refined coconut oil because they don't like the coconut flavor. Uh so that's an absolute no. Uh, coconut oil does have quite a low smoke point, and there are lots of benefits to coconut oil. It has lauric acid, which is also found in the membrane. It's antibacterial, it's antiviral.
Uh, and so very, very supportive properties. There's many others as well. But one thing that I see often on red blood cell fatty acid tests are high levels of capric acid. And capric acid is another fatty acid found in coconut oil. And capric acid becomes elevated uh when people are consuming coconut oil a lot. And elevated capric acid can really impair fatty acid metabolism.
And it's changing the, you know, when we have a massive elevation of one of these fatty acids, that's going to change the dynamic of the membrane, right? Because the fatty acids found within the membrane are so the concentrations are so perfect.
And which brings up a point of ratio, right? I mean, um, meaning that people omega-3, omega-3, omega-3, it's like, well, when you look at the wall, there's a certain amount of mortar versus bricks. And if you go past that, you're gonna end up with a bad wall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
The wall here. So that's a good example.
Yeah. So and again, it's it's this, you know, I think a lot of people they're told that something is good, so they think more is better. Uh, and medium-chain fatty acids can be made in the body as well. So they're not essential, like the two essential oils that we talked about, omega-6 and omega-3. And so if you're using it once in a while, fine. Just know that it doesn't have a very high smoke point. So you'd want to keep the temperature right around 325.
Yeah, and like you said, I mean, periodically, but if you're in a northern climate eating coconut oil every day, we'd both go, yeah, I don't know that that's good. Probably not.
Yeah, which a lot of people do.
Yeah, and periodically, no problem. Um, okay, we we're gonna get to the arachidonic acid, but um, oh, the this is the other myth, right? So the how much of omega-6? Okay, and this is a niche conversation in that too much omega-6, too much omega-6, too much omega-6. You know, my belief is that, well, the reason why America has so much is because they're eating so much uh basically adulterated omega-6, cornos, vegetable oils, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All this, you know, okay, I get it.
We're eating too much, but it's the adulterated. So how much? What what what is too much? What is too little?
So, based on Dr. Yuda's research, who he is the lead researcher in this field, he has found that a four to one ratio is is what we need.
We I use that in all my products I developed for the membrane because you he showed that that was the ratio that the membrane lights. He did say that other ratios are beneficial for other things within nature's ratios.
Yeah, and within a therapeutic window. Yeah. Like rheumatoid arthritis was a three to one, I believe.
Yeah, I think even like for certain heart disease, one to two or one to one, I I don't he was saying that it showed benefits to certain conditions, other ratios, but you have to look at what's in nature and realize here's what we're dealing with, right?
Yeah, yeah. And and again, going back to just like there's there's yes, what's in nature, and then there's the reality of the environment that we're living in today, with you know, where we are exposed to so much more than we've ever been exposed to. And so more membrane damage means we need more intake to be able to go in and repair those membranes. Uh and again, we don't want to overdo polyunsaturated fatty acids. That's not um, you know, that's not the goal either.
And I and in my recommendations, I'm always very careful with that because we we they are prone to you know uh oxidation. And in somebody that has poor redox and got lots of reactive oxygen species, we want to work on all of the foundational things that we need to do to protect the oxygen.
We're gonna get to redox too, because that's a word people don't know.
And and you know, repair that voltage in and then you know we're gonna be much more able to protect those fatty acids and incorporate them into the membrane.
Uh, but a four to one ratio is what I So when we say four to one, four to four being omega-6. One to one being omega-three. So literally, you know, meaning we need more omega-6 than we need omega-3 in a four to one ratio, which I know in his research, you know, said that was the ratio, the perfect ratio of mortar to bricks to rebuild the wall. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, for I mean, everything for from neurological function to memory, learning, cardiovascular health, uh, liver health.
Now, some people would argue, well, grass-fed meat is one to two or two to one, one to one, you know, blah, blah. You know, is there some truth to that?
So there's uh grass-fed meat, it depends on where the animal is coming. I mean, every animal is gonna have a different fatty acid program. Grass through me, for guess. Yeah, how many weeds versus and um yeah, and and the location in which they're raised is gonna play a role as well. The thing with with uh ruminant animals, so if we're eating uh beef, there's a lot of saturated fat in beef as well.
And so the intake of saturated fat, and again, this is gonna be so dependent on the individual as well, what your um kind of threshold for for fat is. Because we're getting a lot of saturated fat from those foods, that can impact our ability to absorb and transport these polyunsaturated fatty acids as well. So, but then we have seasonality, right? So for us in the winter, we you know, are we going to be able to lean more into those ruminant animals. We don't have anything growing.
I teach diet variation because you know this, right? People get stuck on the diet that helped them. I'm a vegan, vegetarian, I'm uh, you know, keto, I'm the I'm the it's like, okay, there's benefits to all those diet, and seasonal, you know, diets do matter. Meaning if you're eating a diet for a specific period of time in a certain season, it's very beneficial. But staying in that diet could be very bad.
Well, I mean, even just when you, you know, that I I have learned this, especially because I was like that food guru for so many years of my life. And I, you know, studied nutrition and now studying mitochondrial medicine, I see how the mitochondria need to move through these different metabolic switches. So we need to be in mTOR metabolism in the summertime.
We want to be eating like MTOR is an anabolic pathway.
Anabolic growth.
Anti-agers hate mTOR, bodybuilders love it, right? And autophagy is a catabolic one.
But yeah, so and AMPK, right? In the winter, when we'd be leaning in for both me and you, we have these kind of long cold winters where we don't have plants growing. So what do we lean into? We lean into animal foods and good fats, maybe some stored root vegetables that don't have like a lot of that photonic information because they were grown underground. But the last thing we'd want to be doing in the wintertime is eating like blueberries or a banana.
Yeah.
Right? That's chaotic information.
Because of refrigeration, and you know, we we do these things. Yeah, we all do. I even but I hate it when I do it. Meaning, like, I shouldn't even be eating this right now. Um, okay, so we a lot of people are under the belief that arachidonic acid's bad. Um, they're told their doctors are telling them it's bad, it's inflammatory. Tell them why that is not so simple.
I'm gonna say go find a new doctor.
Okay, we're done with that conversation. It's good. No, but it it is good. I mean, it it so okay, a new study just came out. I think I did an IG on it and got hated. Um, but it was a study showing that it's anti-inflammatory. I love the study because I'm like, that's the exact opposite of what everyone's been saying. But the study showed it's anti-inflammatory. Okay, how confusing is this?
You know how, okay, so I have so much to say about this. So, first of all, but you know how we give fish oil or SBMs? People are using SBMs for specialized pro-resolving mediators. These resolve.
What are SBMs tell them?
They're they go in and resolve inflammation. So there it's a it's a glorified fish oil.
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
It's a glorified fish oil. It's a usually a CO2 extracted fish oil. Uh, and they're told that you know it's these omega-3s that have these really potent anti inflammatory properties. But arachidonic acid also makes lipoxins. Those are also in the category of a specialized protozoving mediator. Um, arachidonic acid is not just inflammatory, it is also very anti inflammatory.
But when they say inflammatory, folks, inflammation is part of our immunity. Like it's a good thing. Modul arachidonic acid modulates immunity. Yeah.
I'll tell you. So first of all, we have four main fatty acids that are found within our membranes. We have many other ones, but four main ones. Linoleic acid is number one.
Omega six.
Arachidonic acid is number two. DHA and oleic acid. Those are our four main Okay. So you have a doctor that's telling you that arachidonic acid is inflammatory. They have no idea what is even happening on a cellular level.
Yeah, exactly.
Now arachidonic acid is your number one fatty acid that's found within myelin. And I find this conversation hilarious because you see all of these practitioners that are recommending DHA for brain health. And what does high dosing of omega-3 do to the omega-6 side? It completely trashes the omega-6 side. Absolutely.
That's why the ratio is important. Okay.
And now you have no arachidonic acid. And so now you can't build healthy myelin. And so are you going to have good brain function when you have to do that?
And you're going to have more neurological issues.
It's just madness. Yeah. It's like this myopic focus on this one is good and this one is bad. No, that's there's nothing in the human body that is good or bad. Yes.
God made them, it's good. Yeah. But what man does to them makes them bad, right? Like seed oils, they're good. You know, it's what man does to them that makes them bad, and you should avoid them.
But arachidonic acid, so when uh the cell is under stress, the so when say we have high insulin levels. That's a good example because so many people have high insulin. High insulin is going to activate an enzyme called phospholipase A2 or PLA2.
PLA2. And PLA2 It's a marker for inflamed membranes.
Yeah. And PLA2 acts like scissors, lipid scissors. So it's going to clip the arachidonic acid tail. Remember, we talked about that phosphatidylcholine molecule having palmitic acid on the one fatty acid tail, and say linoleic acid or arachidonic acid or DHA or oleic acid on that other fatty acid tail. And it's going to clip arachidonic acid off. Arachidonic acid enters the bloodstream and activates LOX and Cox pathways. So yeah, inflammatory pathways.
So it's essential for you to mount a healthy inflammatory response.
Absolutely.
And you see this actually in studies, Dan, where if you look at long-term data on fish oil, where mice, these are mice and rat studies, so take it for what it's worth. But you mice and rats that are fed a high omega-3 diet long term, in the first initial phases of testing, you see a mass reduction in these inflammatory markers.
And by the way, that's why when people go, oh, I started taking this and I feel better. Yeah, okay. You move through that.
Or they go to their doctor and they get their blood work done and they're like getting claps for. Yeah, because they've lowered these inflammatory markers. And then when you follow these mice and rats long term, they die of sepsis.
Disaster. Yeah.
Because they have no ability to mount an inflammatory response. You've just suppressed it.
Yeah. That was huge because that's going to explain why you thought your fish oil might have been good for you. It's like, uh, yeah, not good. Okay. So let's finish with this. Uh, the redox. You mentioned that a few times, redox potential. Um, when I say redox to most doctors, they don't understand what it is. Like, so let's explain quickly what it is, why it's beneficial, and what how we can help it.
Well, it's everything.
There we go. It's everything. First and foremost.
So it's just reduction is reduction in oxidation is gain of electrons, reduction.
Okay. So oxidation leads to inflammation, which is good in a short term. It's immunity. So oxidation's good, reduction's good. Can't have too much. So it's this balance.
Yeah, I would say the simplest way to describe it, I think, is just your efficiency at moving electrons.
Okay. How well can you transform it? So it's a balance of inflammation chronically acutely. It's this balance, but it's also this, you know, utilizing electrons, the ability to move them. And you make energy by moving electrons.
Yeah. And when those electrons can't move or they get stuck or they get misdirected, what happens? They turn into reactive oxygen species. So that's really the simplest way to explain it. And the more efficiently you can do that, the more efficiently you can make metabolic water, the more efficiently you can make ATP.
And when you look at the data around chronic disease, so everyone that's watching this, any symptom, any disease that they've been diagnosed with, for the most part, we're looking at 95 to 99% of the conditions that we see today, these are bioenergetic diseases. These are not genetic diseases. So all these people that are going and focusing on their SNPs and treating MTHFR or treating their comp STIP or whatever it is, that is not the issue.
Did you hear that? Say it again.
That is not the issue.
Yeah. MTHFR, this SNP, that SNP. It's not the issue. And If I always say if it were only that simple, right? It's like, you know, oh, do a test and here's what you need. Oh, yeah. If it were only that simple.
And I mean, I have a whole opinion on that. I think those are evolutionary adaptations. Me too. I don't think there's any. I do too.
But you know, here's my theory on the whole thing is I got involved in this 15 years ago, you know, and I just was like fascinated with it, right? And I'm trying it, trying. And I realized, oh my gosh, clinically, it's doing nothing for people. And I realized that, you know, then you see what happens in five years. Oh, there's ways around this, there's this, there's ways around that.
It's like, you know, what you we know now is going to be like, oh my gosh, there's a thousand ways around the MTHFR. It has no concept of understanding. Oh, it's so frustrating.
It's completely, you know, it's not seeing the body's intelligence. It's thinking that we are smarter than the human body and we're not.
The body evolves. You might have that snip. I promise you, you've evolved around it. Your bodies, your grandparents evolved around it. You have other pathways that are so much more efficient because this one's not. It's just ridiculous to think we can map this stuff.
So that leads that leaves us with one to five percent of the diseases that we see today that are of true genetic origin. Of course.
Yeah. And that's totally different than a SNP, though. Yeah. Be clear. You know, that's a mutation. Okay, very different. People don't know that either. Okay, we could do a whole show on that.
And I still believe, regardless, even if you do have a true genetic mutation, I still believe that all the mitochondrial medicine principles can help to support that uh process. 100%.
Of course, yeah, no doubt about it. Okay, so re what quickly end with this. What can they do to help their redox? Because it's so that's all they care about. It's so important. What can I do to help it? Eat bananas? No, I'm kidding. I'm joking.
Oh gosh, this is like everything I teach. So optimizing light and dark cycles, watching the sunrise every morning, making sure that you are in complete and total darkness after the sun sets. You know, there's I I have all I have uh actually a member, one of my students, he calls it the Stenger method. And he has written this whole article on like, this is the stenger method. It's like hardwiring your home. It's like mitigating all these non-informations.
My home's hardwired.
Like filters on all your screens. Um, and then, you know, outside of grounding every day, you know, going and swimming in a body of water, like that's one of the most healing things that we could do for our body. Um, taking, you know, submerging yourself in water, taking Ebson salt bass, um, eating locally and seasonally, you know, the light environment in your home, um, making sure that you're getting outside for sunlight and activating like the vitamin D through UVB exposure.
And and then we want to nourish our membranes. We want to be talking about, we taught them how to do this. You know, we're supporting with phospholipids and and essential fatty acids, and we are eating at the right time of day. We are, you know, eating a nice protein rich breakfast in the morning and we are eating a nice protein rich lunch, and we are not eating late at night. We're never eating after the sunset. You know, all these are all little ways.
Like when we think about in the winter, I violate that all the time.
I'll I'll help you with that. It's um, yeah, it's I mean, these little things, and these are all the things, Dan, that I did that you know, got me from basically this place that I was completely hopeless. I never thought I was gonna be able to restore my health, to a place where I get the opportunity to teach people about this. That's all that's pain to purpose. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing.
Let's let's end right there. That is so awesome, right? Yeah, you kind of just encapsulated the whole conversation perfectly, but you wouldn't know any of it if you didn't go through the pain. All the pain led to all this purpose, and you said it best. The gratitude you have for being able to understand it and teach it now, right? Yeah, you just taught me some stuff. I love it. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. I told you, look, I gave you responsibility.
I said, you're gonna want to share this show, and you're absolutely going to want to share this show because people need to know these myths, and they are destroying people's health. And we just broke it down here. And so, like and share the show and do those few things you just said at the end. And what is that gonna do for your health? I'll tell you what it's gonna do: more cellular energy, less brain fog, less anxiety, better sleep, less pain.
Yeah, all of that with those simple things right there. From pain to purpose. Thanks for being here, Justine. Thank you so much for the wealth of knowledge. Justine, where where can people find you?
People can find me at Justine Cellular Nutrition on Instagram, and my website is JustinStener.com.
There you go. Wealth of knowledge. Look her up.
Thanks, Dan, so much.