Heather Moday || Functional and Integrative Medicine

have doctor Heather Maday on the show. Doctor Maday is a board certified physician who is passionate about changing the way medicine is practiced in this country. She currently runs the Moday Center for Functional Integrative Medicine and Philadelphia, PA, which focuses on cutting edge approaches to functional medicine along with education about healthy eating, exercise, stress reduction, and other life style interventions to empower people to live better lives.

Thanks for being on the show today, doctor Bodee. Oh, thanks, and I'm sorry. If you hear your dog, I hear your dog. Yes, yes, he gets excited. Well, he can be on the show if he wants. Thanks for having me. Well, a cat might walk across you never know. They tend to do that. You have cat too? Oh yeah, I have animals. Love them. Do you find animals help with your health at all? I think they do absolutely well. I mean I think there's been studies to share that.

Of course, they help you with your mood. Of course. The only thing they do disrupt is your sleep. So that's the one disadvantage of having animals. They tend to do that. And sleep is very important. It's obviously very important. But in your own practice, have you come up with any things that you would recommend for people that have trouble sleeping? I thought we start right there. Oh gosh, so many. I think a lot of it depends on

what's going on with their sleep, you know. I mean the first thing they have to do, of course, is look at their sort of sleep hygiene. And that's sort of a general thing that people talk about all the time, you know, they like, well, first of all, what's your schedule? Do you have a regular schedule or you sort of all over the place. Do you, you know, turn off all the electronic devices and things like that before you know,

an hour or two before bed. Because it's known that a lot of those blue spectrum light that comes from TVs and iPads et cetera interfere directly with our pineal gland, so it literally shuts down your melotonin production, so it throws off your circadian rhythm. And then of course there's all the stuff that you're reading, which is usually like you know, upsetting news and things like that that really

get your mind going. And then a lot of people just you know, they tend to have stimulants before bed, or maybe they eat too close to bed, or maybe they have alcohol to try to put themselves to sleep, and that usually backfires by interfering with their sleep later on.

So you know, sleep hygiene is like crucial. And if you've got all those ducks in a row, and you know, if you're like trying to go to about the same time every night and you've made your bedroom you're sanctuary, and you're still having problems with sleep, then you know,

it could be like a myriad of different things. I would say the biggest issue I probably see is blood sugar problems, mostly because when our blood sugar dips during the night, it actually tends to wake us up, and that happens a lot of people don't have really good, you know, blood sugar management throughout the day and the night, So I see quite a bit of that. That's really interesting. What other things wake us up? Like does our heart pressure, does our heart beat wake us up? I think, you

know it potentially. Can I wouldn't say generally, though again I think a lot of times it's either medications or things that become stimulants later on, and then of course, you know, the blood sugar issue. For some people, though, their problem is not waking up in the middle of the night. It's actually going to sleep, and that's a slightly different problem, and it's still insomnia, but that usually comes from you know, more ruminating on thoughts or having

sort of an underlying anxiety and things like that. So you know, there's different types of difficulties sleeping, you know, sort of sleep onset or problems during the night. Another thing that can actually interfere quite a bit with sleep is hormones, both in men and women, but particularly in women. They tend to have issues with waking up early, especially sort of like premenopause and in menopause, so that can

be a problem too. Yeah, these are good points, and I do find personally that once I'm asleep, I don't really ever want to wake up. That's true, you're a lucky guy. A lot of people struggle with sleep and no, no, I'm saying once I fall asleep. Oh yeah, no, sometimes it takes a while. Yeah, I mean, and things like that. I think is linked to just you know, we're busy and sort of running around and we have a lot going on, and you know, we want to go to sleep. We want to sort of just shut it off, but

our body doesn't work that way. We have to sort of like let go of the day and sort of just you know, relax and fall away, and we get very aggressive about our sleep, like we want to fall asleep right now, and that's just not how the human body works. And that's why things like you know, meditation and body scans and things like that before bed are so helpful because it literally just sort of like brings your body down like a you know, very slowly and

allows you to just really slowly fall asleep. Sorry, I just just fall asleep. So doctor, you have a very soothing voice. So can we back up a second and let's talk about your path into functional message before we get into what is functional message, I want to back up a second. Now, you did you complete a residency in internal medicine in New York City. I mean you're a real doctor. Yeah, yes, you're for real. I mean you were not completely satisfied. Is that fair to say

that with the modern day medical approaches? While you were completing that, did you releas you notice it? Yeah? You know. I think residency, of course is hard for any doctor going through. It's a tough time. And I think then I just really was on I had blinders on, and I was just trying to make it through the day and it was hard. It was tough, but it was it was fulfilling. I think it wasn't until after I completed my residency and my fellowship and I was working.

I was actually an allergist immunologist. That was my fellow ship, and it was probably about a few years into that that I realized that A I wasn't really learning, I wasn't learning continuing to learn, and I also was not really using a lot of what I sort of learned in medical school. And I also started to see that I wasn't really changing the health outcomes of the people

I worked with. I mean, it was sort of a revolving door of giving people medication and putting a band aid on some of the problems that they had, and they would just come back and see me again, and you know, it just started to get very stagnant, and you know, not what I sort of had expected. So

I think that was part of it. And then also there's the whole you know, how we run medicine these days, and the fact that you have to see so many people in an hour and there's so much paperwork and insurance overhead that you know, it sort of starts to suck the life out of you. Yeah, you know, well not personally, I don't you know, personally never went through that, but I that training, But yeah, I could. I totally could believe it because you practice eleven years. I did, Yeah,

I did. And you noticed that a lot of your patients were coming in with multiple medical problems and long list of prescription drugs, And did you feel like there was an opportunity there to be more as opposed to reactive, to be more you know, preemptive. Yeah, And I think I always felt that way. I mean sort of my own personal interests were always about preventive medicine and nutrition. It was I would go home and read about it. As you know, very much interested in it, but I

just never really brought it into my professional life. And so I started going to conferences while I was still working. I went to some integrated medicine conferences and heard some great speakers who are now, you know, very big in the field, like Mark Hyman and David Peerlmutter yeah and yeah, wonderful neurologist. And you know, when I first heard them speak, I thought, oh my god, well this is what I believe, this is what I want to be doing. And then I just sort of had to figure out how to

get there. And you know, so it took quite a few years of you know, sort of behind the scenes, going back to school and doing an integrative medicine fellowship on the side, and you know, but little by little, I just got all of my training and I wasn't really quite sure what I was going to do with it.

At first, I thought maybe I could integrate it into what I was doing at the time, But the more and more I realized was you know, not only did I not want to be just an allergist, I wanted to go back and really look at the whole breath of medicine. But I couldn't really do the type of medicine I wanted to in the practice I was in,

so I had to lead, which was great. It was fine, it worked out wonderfully, but it took a long time, and then it was scary because I didn't really know what I was doing, you know, I just sort of took the plunge and did it. But yeah, good for you. I'll appreciative you took the plunge. I should tell people that doctor Manet is my functional medicine doctor and has

saved my life. So what is functional medicine? And the follow up to that is, I want to know, is there like a gold standard sort of training program for fincial mess Is there like a standardized like there is for you know other story. Yeah, so I answer to you know those questions. So functional medicine, you know, it doesn't really have like one definition, but I guess some people call it upstream medicine or basically the medicine that looks for the cause of diseases rather than just treating

the symptoms. So it also does that in a very you know, three hundred and sixty degree sort of holistic view. It's very individualized. We look at a lot of in depth biochemical testing. So it's very much about the person and their experiences and their background and their exposures, their

environment and their genetics. So I guess it's individualized. And also we are trying to figure out why people are sick, like what has caused, what has been in their life, or what have they been exposed to that maybe has affected their genes in a certain way that has then expressed whatever their symptom is, whether it's you know, an autoimmune disease or depression or you know, arthritis, et cetera.

And then working with behavior changes and of course food nutrition and really trying to get things back into balance. You know. Are as a functional medicine doctors, we're trying to not only prevent disease, but really try and reverse or at least mitigate, you know, some of the symptoms that people have. It's a wonderful I think it's really

sort of the medicine of the future. I mean, it can be applied to so many different it can really be applied to everyone, whether you're a relatively healthy person or someone who's chronically ill. So that is sort of my definition of functional medicine. It's not very succinct and to answer the second part of your question is there

are some training programs. Functional medicine is not recognized per se by any boards, sort of like you know, internal medicine is or surgery or whatever, and it was sort of I guess it was created. I would say, I don't know, twenty twenty five years ago. People started studying it.

It didn't really have a name at the time. But over the years it's evolved and there are some organizations that have training programs and the one that's sort of the most well known is the Institute for Functional Medicine, and that's the one that's headed up by Mark Hyman. It's also the institute that has opened up a huge center at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. So you know, it's really getting a lot of attention because of really

the effectiveness of it. But their certification program you have to finish seven different training modules and then you have to do a case study and then do a test you have to be certified. But this is something that's just coming about. It's only a few years old, and so there's many practitioners out there that maybe have been practicing for years and don't quite have that certification yet, so you have to really sort of look around and vet your practitioner a little bit and find out what

other trainings have they done. I've done a couple of different training programs, so I'm sort of a mishmash of things. But I think over the years we'll see that it does reach a more standardized process. What are the prerequists? Do you have to be a medical doctor to go into functional medicine? You actually don't. So what's interesting is you'll could be a functional medicine doctor with a with

a PhD and psychology. You actually could, I think, so you can be what they call a functional medicine practitioner. And there are people there are nutritionists that are functional medicine practitioners, there's acupuncturists. So in some people study it and you know, they just sort of use part of it in their career. You know, obviously you're limited by your licensure and what you can do as an MD. I can you know, write prescriptions and order labs and things.

A nutritionist obviously can't do all of those things, but they can still help people tremendously with sort of an and a functional a medicine approach. To diet, et cetera. So, yeah, it's really something that's open to a lot of different backgrounds, and you know, you have to understand a lot of the biochemistry, which is sometimes a struggle for people, but

it does lend itself to a lot of different areas. Fascinating. Okay, so let's get into some of the juicy stuff about the kinds of topics that you cover in your practice. One big one which I know you're an expert on, is gut health. And this is very hot top I mean, I have more advertisements in my Facebook feed it just because I clicked once, you know, on something regarding gut health. Now I get this doctor and that doctor constantly, every

in my face every day. Now, Look, it's hard to sort out what is the good information from the because there's just so much information calling at me. Can you set the listeners straight a little bit, give them some tips on the connection between gut health and cognition and mood and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, and this is probably something that we've known about for a long time. I think that there was a doctor I think's Russian. I think it was Menshakov back in

the I think a ballet dancer, right exactly. I'm probably totally butchering his name, but he actually said something, and I think David Pearlmetter says this in his book, that death begins in the colon and this is back in like the eighteen hundreds, and even Hippocrates had, you know, said something back in the fourth century that you know, basically,

health begins in the guts. This is something it's not like a new concept, but there's just realms and realms of data over the past you know, few years relating the health of the digestive system to just about every chronic medical problem. And it's starting to be recognized by

you know, the more the general public. And you know, of course, modern conventional medicine that I the world I grew up in is always about twenty five years behind research because unfortunately there's not a lot of thinking outside of the box these days. But you know, this is something that we're going to keep seeing. And what we know is that, you know, our digestive tract is not

just a place where food goes in and food comes out. Literally, it's an endocrine organ So we make hormones there, we make neurotransmitters of course that affect our brain health and brain chemistry and mood. And it's also where a lot of our immune system lies. In this area they called the gut associated LIMPOI two and that's only about one

cell layer from our digestive tracts. And so you've got all these immune cells that react to whether it's food, infection, toxins, everything that's going through there having immune responses causing inflammation which then set off you know, sort of problems throughout the body. So there's linkages of course to autoimmune disease, cognition, as you said, neurologic issues like Alzheimer's, MS, Parkinson's, and

definitely anxiety and depression as well. So it's immensely fascinating, and you know, I would say in terms of finding good information for people that are interested, I think obviously the Institute for Functional Medicine is a great place to start,

you know, if people are interested. Of course, lots of different resources that they have to sort of respected physicians, but you know, you can also people are really interested, they can do PubMed searches and you can find a lot of you know, articles that are being written in sort of major medical journals that are now starting to talk about this. So, yeah, it is sometimes hard to navigate,

you know, what is real and what is not. So you know, I always tell people try to stick to one or two specialists, and I would say that those you know, definitely IFM is a good place to start, you know, I mean, there are so many people, these doctors I'm playing, doctors and quotes who market constantly, relentless marketing of their five step plan or their six step How come you haven't come up with like I said, you could easily write you you actually know that, like

you could easily start be like doctor Witte is five step right, Yeah, why have you not done that yet? Well, part of it is that's just not my thing, but your style, it's not my style. But also you have to realize that the five R program that is not something that these people meet up. That's something that's taught to all functional medicine practitioners. You know the idea of remove and replace and repair and so let's give it away for free to tell us. It's also things that

you would recommend people do well. So the five RS of gut repair basically, this is what functional medicindox exciting. Okay, here we go. The first of course is removed, and that means remove things that are bad that you know, So those would be things like infections, you know, viruses, fungus. I mean, these are things that we look for when

we do stool tests. A lot of people have inflammation, but also remove inflammatory foods and also remove say you've got an analogy, say like hey, wheat, right, gluten, So removal of those things that are problematic. And I'm not going to say these in order, but this is the way I do it. Secondly is repair. I mean this is where a lot of people get tripped up because they do the removal and then they feel a little bit better, but then you know, they don't really get better.

So you have to get in there and you really have to repair the GI system with certain botanicals and some nutrition and nutraceuticals and things like that that can be very helpful in you know, getting that process going. The third would be too, and we call restore. So a lot of times people they're digestquestion gets so thrown off that they need maybe extra enzymes, they need things to help them with their digestion, maybe some help with

production of hydrochloric acid and things like that. So adding those in for a few months or even longer can sometimes be really helpful, just getting people to digest their food again. So then we see that's three. That would be then the fourth would be reinoculate. Some people say, so,

this basically comes down to the microbiome. You know, that's the living you know, one hundred trillion organisms that we have in our body, but specifically the microbes in our gut that do everything from help us absorb food and make vitamins, but also really you know, direct a lot of different processes, and so making sure that that's balanced, using probiotics, using fermented foods, things like that to get

that back on track. And then the last one, which is hard for a lot of people, and that is really to rebalance. And you know, so, and this is something I struggle with with a lot of my clients, is that, you know, we get sick for a reason. We get sick because we live stressed out lives. We sometimes don't eat the best food, We've been exposed to

different things. But in order to restore things and rebalance, we have to sleep right, we have to exercise moderately, we have to destress because you know, cortisol and all those hormones can damage our immune system and damage our gut. So it's not just enough to eat the right things and take some probiotics. You have to work really hard at managing stress and rebalancing your life because that's something that will sort of carry you through. But that's the

hardest thing for most people to do. Thank you so much for going through that. It was very generous of you. Sure. Absolutely, So it's a whole process, and anyone could probably benefit from it, from some of this stuff, even if they aren't suffering yet. Right. Oh yeah, And I mean I think that's true. A lot of people think, oh, I don't need to you know, I don't need to go

to a functional medicine practitioner. And you know, I think that a lot of the people who come to work with me are really just trying to do damage control.

They're trying to make sure that, you know, when they're seventy five eighty years old, that they have a sharp mind and they feel good, and you know, they know what the risk factors are for different diseases, and they're trying to prevent, you know, chronic problems because we all know that wouldn't it be better if you could prevent disease rather than become sick and then be trying to backpedal.

So there obviously conflicting opinions on that, and I very much'll you know, I like data and I want to prevent as long term as I can. But I see my I'm going to put mainstream in quotes. You know, doctors and they are very very skeptical of functional medicine, and they're skeptical of that approach. Like they'll say like, no, you don't need that test. You don't need that test. You know. It's like, okay, yeah, I don't need it. Now. I constantly I'm getting you don't need that. You know,

I won't order it for you. You You know, like there's no but it's it's a different approach. It's it really is a differ approach. It's one that I excites me more because, like I said, I'm a scientist. I you know, I'm curious. I'm ravenously curious. Maybe there are different like personality traits that are attracted the different to a functional medicine. I don't know, defficult I think also, you know, I think part of it's the training after having gone through

sort of conventional medicine MD training. You definitely are trained sort of with blinders on. They don't really teach you so much to think creatively anymore, which I think is terribly unfortunate. In medicine. Doctors should be creative. I mean, some of the best, the best discoveries came out of people,

you know, being creative and thinking outside the box. And you know, we would never have penicillin or you know, some of the things that you know, some of the things that people have created over the years if we weren't doing things that were a little bit off the cuffs. So you know, I think that's unfortunate to be thinking

that way. But I also think that, you know, the human body is the most powerful anecdote to just about anything that we have, and I think that we have forgotten how incredibly self healing we can be, and if we can just harness that, it's so so powerful, and instead we look to suppressing things with other drugs which give us side effects, and we forget that we have an amazing arsenal of things in our body that we can use to our benefit. So, you know, I disagree

obviously wholeheartedly with right A conventional approach. And it's not that I'm anti medication. I think it can be extremely helpful and you know, wonderful and if it's used judiciously. But also the most important thing is to try to support everybody's own amazing ability to be healthy instead of focusing on, well, let's just wait until you get sick and then, you know, put you on ten medications. I don't really think that's what anybody ever intended medicine to be.

I think if you looked back at the great you know thinkers in medicine, you know, they would never think that would be the future, you know, of medicine. And it's a really great point. It's a really great point. It's definitely a different approach. And there are probably plenty of doctors practicing in prior practice that not probably there are increasingly a number of them that are now coincorporating functional medicine into their interness practice right or into their

own you know, family doctors who are taking this on. Yeah. I think the thing is people have this idea, you know, they like to call some doctors quacks, and you know, I always like to say this goes way back, right, it does, and you know, or like you know, snake oil or whatever. You know, nothing that I do, or I think that functional medicine doctors do, I think is

quackery or snake oil. In fact, I think I had to go back and relearn science and medicine when I started along this route, because you know, I now I look at all these biochemical tests, and I'm looking at what's going on in the cells of people and genetics and hormone pathways, and you know, these were things I

went I wasn't even looking at these before. And most of the treatments that we give are natural, you know, working on diet, working on behavior change, working on stress reduction, working on nutrition, and maybe giving people supplements and things to get them back to where they should be. But it's not all about you know, throwing people on umbilion supplements, just like it's not a lot about putting people on medication.

So I mean, I think that you know, maybe there are some crazy there are some other practitioners out there that are doing some wacky things. I don't you know, I'm not saying that those people don't exist, but unfortunately, I think, you know, functional medicine gets thrown under the bus, and it's not the case at all. Yeah, thanks for clarifying that. Another thing that I think a lot of

medical doctors are skeptical about are supplements. That's another you know, that's another one that I get whenever they're all telling me you get off supplements that they're not regulated by the FDA. Now, this is what I hear. Can you talk a little about your own personal view and supplements and your experience with your patients and how they may it may have helped. Sure. Yeah, Well, you know, there's

a couple of issues with supplements. Well, the first there's the idea that you don't need them, with which unfortunately I do a lot of I do a lot of looking at what people's you know, sort of micro nutrient or what we call, you know, vitamin and mineral levels are and some people are just woefully low. And if you've got nutrient efficiencies, you're going to have problems because we know, you know, of course, everything from vitamin D, vitamin C, I mean, these are all things that we

use every day in biochemical processes in our body. So if you're lacking in some of these areas, you're going to have symptoms and problems. And one of the reasons why that is is, you know, most people have the so called standard American diet devoid of a lot of different nutrients. People certainly don't eat enough you know, vegetables, They don't get enough of these things, enough antioxidants. But also we live a much more stressful lifestyle, right, Like

we're using a lot of this stuff up. We use a tremendous amount of micro nutrients for putting out fires, you know, for inflammation, for our immune system to work correct. So we may also be over using what we're able to get in through our food. And then there's the other problem with the you know, issues with our food system, which is a whole other story. But you know, obviously our soil is not as nutrient rich as it used

to be. A lot of our food comes from miles and miles away, it gets irradiated, it's been sitting on the shelf for the while, so you know, yeah, you know, it's so difficult to have like a perfect diet, and most people don't. That being said, I do agree that the supplement industry, of course, it is a unregulated industry. I mean it's not regulated i would say, by the FDA.

So and there are problems with a lot of supplements out there, because it's really on the company to prove that their supplement is good, that it contains what it contains, and so really you have to again vet the supplement company. I am very particular with the ones that I use. I only use companies that have third major third party oversight. They actually police themselves, they have you know, extremely high

quality control. One of the companies I use actually puts cerial numbers on every single one of the bottles that they put out. They're all free of any you know, gluten soy fillers, you know, and so naturally they're going to be more expensive. So you think about the zymogen, right, yeah, so I use zymegen products. I use other products too, but that company in particular has been relentless in making

sure that it has a pure product. But there are some other great companies as well that I like, and also you know, they have excellent oversight. I do tell people one thing they can, you know, if they're in the grocery store, you can look for a stamp that

says GMP, which just stands for good Manufacturing Process. And that's sort of a one way to know, you know, do they have some third party oversight, so you definitely have to be a little careful, and as much as you can, you should try to buy directly from the manufacturer, not through a third party, because there is quite a bit of relabeling of different supplements, and so you have to be definitely careful, and in the end you get what you pay for, because if the raw material is good,

it's going to be slightly more expensive. Yeah. So it's a good point. Are there like five particulo or somethings that you think are like the most essential to live a healthy life if you're on a desert island and you can only pick it. Yeah, you know, I think about this a lot. Actually you do, I actually do. I would say, well, there's a couple of things that I would say that I put a lot of people on because it tends to be devoid either devoid in their diet or it is very very important for health.

Try to get one right off the batom. I try to guess then, Okay, so this is five, right, Okay, so I know that for three for sure, So yeah, go ahead, No, let me try to guess one. Okay, let's see if I get right. I'm only going to do one. Vitamin D yeah, very good, goody okay. So vitamin D three yeah is you know, unfortunately, we don't spend much time outside anymore, especially if you live in this part of the of the world, basically above the equator.

You know, our absorption of ultraviolet light is in the winter is almost negligent. So in vitamin D is something that we create in our bodies. It's technically a hormone. So unless you're drinking or eating fortified vitamin D foods, which many people don't anymore, you know, because a lot of people don't tolerate milk and other dairy products, we don't get a lot of vitamin D, and we see

rampant that people are just severely deficient. And it's so important for immunity and mood and of course bone strength and health. So vitamin D is the big one, I would say. The other one I really push is fish oil. And the reason is is that it's almost impossible to get the omega three fatty acids in your diet if you don't take it. People just don't eat enough fish for multiple reasons. But it's so important for inflammation and

heart health and brain health. So I'm a big fan of omega three fatty acids, and then the other is probably a probiotic. And the reason, of course, is because many of us have had lots of steroids in the past or antibiotics that have really affected our gut health of course, things like vaccines or other medications, and we don't really ferment our food anymore, so we're not getting

this beneficial sort of bacteria, the Lactobacillus and Biffidobacterium. You know, there's lower rates of breastfeeding, lower rates of vaginal births now, so we aren't really even starting out life with a lot of great, good gut bacteria. So I'm a big fan of people just having a good quality probiotic. So that's three. Those are like my top three. These are good.

These are good. Let's think one other ones that see vitamin C. What you think of MC is that kind of like it's nice, but it's like, yeah, so vitamin C is great. I think you can get by without it as long as you're fairly healthy, and as long as you're eating plenty of vitamin C containing food, it's fairly easy to get that. As long as you're eating lots of fruits and vegetables you know, of course, like

red pepper, strawberries, kiwis. You can look at the list of what you know, basically you get vitamin C in and then quite you'll see quite a bit. So I would have to say the thing. I will say what I am seeing More and more are problems with B vitamins, and so I do often advocate people taking a B complex, and I think part of it is because again we use B vitamins and detoxification. We use it in chronic stress.

We would just blow through our B vitamins, and if you're exposed to any toxins like if you drink alcohol, or if you're exposed to any chemicals and food, we tend to get low. And so when I do a lot of my nutrient testing, I see a ton of B vitamin deficiencies. So that's a good thing I think to have in your arsenal. You may not need to take it every day. There are some people who do need extra B vitamins for different genetic issues, but so those I think are all pretty important. So that was

that three? Technically five because you added vitamin C in. Oh wait, oh wait, I'm sorry, Okay, what was what I'm only thinking for. It's the B vitamins, the D, the fish oil, the G yeah, the probiotic, oh, the probiotic yes, in the BA yes, okay, what about Okay? It was something really hot right now? Is ubiquinol? Ubiquenol? Now would you put that as like in the top ten? Well, I would put it in the top ten, especially as

we get older. Okay, So we create ubiquenol or what you know, it is more commonly known as co q ten. Ubiquenol is actually a slightly different version, more highly absorbable. But for people to understand what co q ten is, basically, we create it, but we use it every time our cell makes energy, which is all the time, right, So when we're making energy in our cells, it's sort of like a furnace that also creates a lot of free radicals along with making the energy. But those free radicals

can go back and actually damage our own cells. So we need things to dampen that issue, and those are the antioxidants. Those are C and E. But co q ten is very particular in that it dampens this free radical damage. It's particularly important for people who have heart problems, any brain issues or any chronic fatigue because those you know, little cells or I mean batteries inside our cells, which are called mitochondria, are most richly found in our heart,

our brain, and our skeletal muscles. So you know, I use co q ten quite a bit. The other thing is on a lot of medications deplete it, the most common being the statin drugs or the cholesterol drugs. So statan drugs actually compete for coq ten. And so if people take a statin, I say, everyone on a stat and should be on coq ten. And I don't own any stock in co q ten companies, but you know, there's like I think it's a quarter of the United

States takes a statin. So this is a big issue because once you deplete that co q ten, you can start having fatigue, you can have damage to the cells, and people can get muscle pain, et cetera. So it is a pretty important thing to have on hand. Cool and new bicconol is better than just co col ten. It is it is. It's just a more it's a highly absorbable form. So, well, I've learned a lot from you, obviously, Yeah. No,

Well I've learned a lot from you. So, so you know, another thing you really do in your practice is detox You know a lot about detox and do you'd recommend any particular supplements or things programs to kind of maybe even like every day if you want to make sure that your liver is goodification milk fist or something. Yeah, so there's you know, the thing about detoxification that people don't really understand is that it's not a it's not

something we just sort of do occasionally. It's something that we're constantly, you know, doing twenty four to seven. I mean, everything that comes through our body, including the things that we make, you know, like our own hormones, including things that we're getting rid of, like you know, old blood cells, or if we're you know, we're constantly killing parasites and viruses and bacteria. You know, all of these things are

considered waste to our body. And then of course there's all the toxins that we breathe and eat and drink, and you know, over time that can be a huge burden on our detoxification organs, which of course include our liver, gallbladder if you have one, your gut, kidneys. So really there are multiple steps in detoxification way too complicated to get into, but there's certain things that are sort of crucial to happen, and if you're low in certain nutrients,

you're going to have a harder time. So just generally, obviously, you know you want to cut down on toxins, right, I mean, that's detoxing itself, right, But there's several things that are really important. One is cruciferous vegetables. So you know, through diet we use a lot of sulfur actually as part of the detox process. It creates some of the most important things we need, and so you know, things like broccoli and things like cabbage and all those sorts

of things really really really important. Kale, it's really amazing. These are so so so important for detoxification. So that's why you'll see a lot of times those will be in products or people will make these shakes with green you know, all these green vegetables in there. So that's

one thing you can get from nature. And then the other thing there's again these are related to sulfur, but there it's something called glue to thione, which is a it's sort of the major antioxidant detoxifying chemical and it's made up of a sulfur molecule which we often call it is called cysteine. So you can take glutathione. You can also take an acetyl cysteine or knack is what we call it, to help, you know, sort of help our body regenerate that glue to thione so that we

have enough we don't run out of it. Now, you mentioned milk thistle, which it's also called silly marin, which is the botanical name. And you know, obviously this is a very safe thing to use. It's been around forever. But that particularly is a liver protectant and so you can take that on a daily basis and there's absolutely no harm to doing that. And that's also very helpful, especially if you tend to to you know, drink any alcohol, take anything like tail and all, if you you know,

or if you're exposed to a lot of toxins. So there's a lot of things you can do there, and of course the B vitamins are crucial as well, you know, so there's lots of things you can do with detox. Also, just making sure that your GI tract is working. You know, people are chronically constipated in this country, so if you're not moving the waste out, you're not getting the toxins out. That's how we get them out. So that's just you know,

really lots of fiber. Loss of soluble fiber is really helpful and it's amazing when people start doing this, they feel lighter, their brain feels better because those toxins, when they're not being removed from the body, they're just gonna either sit in tissue or they're going to recirculate in our bloodstream and really start to affect our health. Well, that's really really quite interesting. Look, I really thank you

for talking to me with me today. I think that you know, you've really touched on the importance of the mind body connection and how these physical aspects really do influence our mood, anxiety and things of that nature. And I just really appreciate the work you're doing. Well, it's been great, Scott, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to come on and talk with you anytime. Doctor made

have a great day you too, Fine out. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott barrk Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com