In this episode, Drs. Beth Bagley and Frederick Schurger bring you the most valuable take-homes from their journey to the Blair Upper Cervical Conference in Las Vegas. Together, they reveal the health discoveries and practical tips that can empower you to take control of your well-being right now. They dive into fascinating discussions on topics like the gut-brain connection, the importance of magnesium, the intricate dance between genetics and lifestyle choices, and more. Tune in now to start living your healthiest life.
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Blair Conference Highlights That You Can Use Today!
We’re back from Las Vegas. You will not believe how busy it was the entire time that we were out in Vegas. We didn’t even have a chance to sit down and talk. We planned on saying, “I brought my stuff. We’ve got everything ready to go and to be set up.” There was not an hour in the days that we had to sit down and chat. It was great that way.
We got to do and learn a lot of things but we would’ve had to miss something to do this show. We could do it back here in the old Midwest.
I was running busy. You had your family there. I don’t think you and I had more than the first day when I got you adjusted. You’re like, “Please put my head back on straight.” Other than that conversation, that was the longest we talked the entire weekend. It was a fun weekend. There’s lots of great information, which we’re going to share with you here without getting into the weeds. There’s a lot of weeds that we can get into. You got it on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday and Thursday, it’s you and your family. It’s nice to do that.
We went and saw the Hoover Dam, which I highly recommend to anyone who is visiting that area if you like history and dorky stuff like that. I thought it was amazing. It’s an incredible feat of engineering marvel. It’s unbelievable. It also has to be haunted because tons of people who died are making it. This was before OSHA standards.
Your husband and I were both geeky nerds as far as engineering stuff like that goes. We’re like, “How much of the concrete is still liquid and hasn’t solidified yet?” That is an engineering thing. Technically, all concrete is still a little liquid. That’s the nature of concrete. It’s one thing when it’s inches. You’re like, “It’s mostly crumbly after about 30 days.” Sometimes, you have feet of it. How many skeletons are trapped because somebody tripped?
I wonder because there has to be at least one.
I wouldn’t be surprised that there’s more than one. You have to remember. It’s also Vegas. It was built how many years ago? What were the dates?
It was built during the Great Depression. It was before Vegas was Vegas. It allows Vegas to be Vegas.
Bootlegging was a thing back then. The mobs and the mafia would’ve said, “We don’t like you.”
We took the extra special tour where we got to go through tunnels. It was claustrophobic but super cool. It’s highly recommended. It’s unbelievable that we were able to do such amazing things in this country before computers. This was all engineers doing things by hand calculations. According to them, it’s over-the-top engineered and should last 5,000 years. It’s going to be good.
It's unbelievable that we were able to do such amazing things in this country before computers. Click To TweetThere is a dam in China that is not doing well. It’s not even twenty years old.
That was not over-engineered.
While you were having fun, I got on Thursday morning. I started at 1:00 AM Central time. I didn’t end until about 9:30 or 10:00 PM West Coast time but I spent my time getting into board meetings and testing people for proficiency. There was instructor testing as well but I wasn’t involved with that one directly.
Let’s talk about somebody who doesn’t have any idea about the technique. What’s proficiency? What does that mean?
We had three levels of testing in 2023. The student testing was all done before the conference. At the conference, we had our level one testing, which was our old proficiency, which is what I have. I tested for all of it but then the second level is a little bit more advanced and a few more films. The last level of technique proficiency is the instructor. The instructor means that you’ve worked with another doctor. You know how to teach and you understand the principles that we are teaching within the technique, how an adjustment is supposed to be done, and what things we agree upon within the technique.
The first level of basic proficiency involves submitting your five best films within about 60 days. It’s revolving around the technique and demonstrating that you know how to do the adjustment properly. It was interesting because we had several people who tested who, this time around, didn’t make it. It shouldn’t be a rubber stamp. You should know your stuff and be able to do it. One was a classmate at Palmer. The other is his associate. I’ve taught both of them over the years. They did great. We were joking about testing styles as we were prepping for this episode.
A real thing is how we learn and how we could know something but not be able to explain it well because of the way it was asked.
You were talking about how you were helping your daughters with percentages.
I was even having trouble with it because of the way the question was asked. The only way I was able to understand it was I had to rewrite the question in my hand. I was like, “I get it.” What’s important for people is that if you were to ask me a technical question about adjustment, I know the answer to that. The way you ask it is hard for me to understand. I would need to write down how you asked it, look at it, reread it, and maybe ask you, “Is this what you meant?” Answer it.
If it was on paper for me, I might take a couple of notes on the paper but I would be able to understand it more. It’s the same thing with how I learn. I rapidly take notes while I’m studying or reading. I almost never look at the notes again. It’s not because I don’t care about the notes. It’s because by actively taking them, I put them into my brain.
I have always been an A+ student. I could have been valedictorian or salutatorian if I cared to work that hard. At a certain point in time, I realized that was not the priority. I had other things. I needed to be able to get a good night’s sleep, as opposed to ulcers, to get all the A’s. You have to set your priorities. Where’s your health?
I always did great in school. I didn’t need to ask any questions. When the teacher would present a question that I didn’t understand, I had to learn that I needed to ask them to phrase it in a different fashion to help me get my head around it. For a lot of people, it’s a hard thing to realize. It’s not that you don’t understand what the concept is but you don’t understand what they’re asking. One of my biggest pet peeves in the world is a lot of teachers aren’t smart enough to be able to do that.
They’re going through the motions and reading off a piece of paper. Whether they don’t care or don’t know, it is how to rephrase something they can’t. Not all teachers are like that. There are fabulous teachers that can do that.
As a teacher and instructor, as I’ve had to learn it, how do you rephrase it so that people can understand it simply? I got complimented twice by two different people saying, “I love your teaching style.” I was teaching one of the adjusting stations on Saturday morning. A couple of the vendors who were listening and watching saw me. I’m sitting on the floor, trying to help people out. I’m barefoot.
Me too but I’m at my house. I’m not in the hotel in Vegas.
It’s hard to sit on the floor in those shoes that I was wearing. Even though they’re barefoot shoes, they still don’t sit right. You have to get comfortable if you’re going to be there for four hours like I was.
I do appreciate all the instructors who were at each station. I got to go to each station, which was fun. Most of them know me. They were like, “Help with this.” I was able to help with that even though I’m not officially an instructor.
This was my next comment. The reason that most of the instructors know Dr. Bagley is because she is such a good adjuster. She should be proficient and have gone through the advanced testing and be an instructor. This is going to be the needle that she’s going to do in 2023.
I won’t be able to be an instructor in 2023. It’d take three more years to become an instructor.
No, we take you two. We’re going to get you through the first two phases. She’s already done in the third phase multiple times with me. She can teach it as well as I can. I’ll put you in front of Gordon.
It’s one of those things that I don’t want to be rude but I will say it out loud. I always look at stuff like that. I’m like, “How is that going to make my practice more successful?” The answer is it’s not. It will help me help students. That helps society. The more Blair doctors, the better.
You can train your associates so that they’re the best. I know you do.
I will. When you get to the office on Monday morning after a big conference like that, you’re all hyped up, and 40 patients hit you in the face. I hope not. It was an incredible day. We saw 45 people in 4 hours.
You didn’t do it on Monday. You did it on Tuesday.
No, I did it on Monday. I got home on Monday morning. I went straight to the office.
I knew you were coming back on Monday. I didn’t realize you were going straight into the office. You’re a little insane. I don’t know if I could have done that. I would’ve waited until noon.
I didn’t start seeing the patients until 2:45 but we stayed until 7:00. I did take a smidgen of an app at home before I went to the office. The thing is I get there and we are busy. I love it. It’s adding one more thing to a busy practice, which is like, “Let’s get five films.” That’s like three days’ worth of films, especially with CBCT. They’re not hard to take anymore. They’re hard to analyze. It’s the act of doing it and looking up exactly what I have to do. It gets overwhelming when you add one more thing.
The more Blair doctors, the better. Click To TweetI’m not saying that men can do more but women are in charge of our families more. I homeschool my twins. I’m totting them around here or there. I have the time in the office. When I’m out of the office, it’s my family time. What that is I have to take time out of the family time to do stuff like that. I don’t know how much I’m willing to do that. That’s where I get into trouble. That’s okay. I’m not guilty about it. It’s the opposite. I’m more guilty about when I take time away from the family to do something that I want to do and how much I want to do it. My kids will be in college before I know it. I’ll have lots more time.
They still like you.
They still do. They’re good girls. They had fun in Vegas. They got to gallant all over the whole place. The Green Valley Ranch is such a beautiful hotel.
My only complaint was that the smoke was way too intense.
It’s nasty. I can’t believe that many people still smoke. The casino wasn’t even that busy. I was like, “This is gross. Stop it, people.” We have so much evidence that that is the worst thing in the world for you. It proves to me that people do what they want. We get that with patients too. We oftentimes care so much more about their health than they do. It’s so frustrating.
That’s a good transition over to talking about some of the stuff we learned from Dr. Dan Murphy.
That stuff on fibrosis is incredible. I can’t wait to talk about that.
There is so much deep-level stuff we can go into with what Dr. Murphy says. We’ve done some of the stuff in the past where we hit the high points of what he goes into. His presentations are chock-full of things. One of the things he said right off the bat is, “The end of inflammation is fibrosis. When it stops, it is fibrosis and fibrotic tissue.”
The end result of inflammation is fibrosis. Click To TweetLet’s talk about if you want to see a whiplash or an injury. Take the readers through that. Not all the technical terms because as much as we love those, they’re not going to like them.
I’m looking for one more thing because I can’t remember if he put that on day 1 or day 2. He had a pre-thing and a post-thing. I don’t see it here.
I see UC Neurology and Traumatology. That’s a new word for me. Is that a real word?
It is.
I have never heard that word before.
Let’s talk about what’s happening. I’m going to broadly classify whiplash as not limited to a car crash where you walk away, nothing’s broken, and you’re not bleeding. Those are higher levels. It’s an average whiplash where you’re in a fender bender. You might not see any damage but you got jarred a little bit. Your adrenaline’s running high. That is basic whiplash, stress, and trauma to the body. If something bad happens, don’t let it get any worse. You have other levels that are slightly below that.
Sports injuries, playing around on the playground, falling, and slips and falls are lesser degrees to that but still in that same group as what I’m going to call whiplash trauma. One of the things that happens is when you do have that fall, certain ligaments that are weaker than others are going to be able to tear a little bit, maybe not completely but enough that it causes some trauma. There are a couple of different effects that happen with that. The inflammation cascade comes in.
Within 48 hours, that cascade could be potentially damaged. It has replaced the strongest collagen fibers in your spine and the proper connective tissue with some of the weakest collagen fibers in your spine. If you decide that you’re going to cut your thumb instead of slicing bacon, there is some stuff breaking down right there that may leave a little bit of scar tissue. That is the fibrotic change at a visible level.
I want people to start visualizing what Dr. Schurger is saying. I’m looking at a scar on my arm from a burn. When we have an injury like a whiplash or a twisted ankle, the collagen fibers of the connective tissue, which are the ligaments and the tendons, are all nice, juicy, and wonderful. They’ve become scar tissue because they’re being replaced with different types of collagen. It’s not an instant change, which is one of the things we should talk about and why I care is important in the beginning after a whiplash or an injury like that but also nutrition. Do we want to talk about nutrition or go into fibrosis?
Let’s stick around with fibrosis because fibrosis will go into the nutrition and all the stuff that gets broken down. You have this injury. A lot of people say, “I’m moving great.” In about 2 or 3 weeks, everything feels stuck because all of that fibrosis has come in and you have a limited range of motion. My thumb is a great example. Don’t worry about the blood blister. That’s not too bad. My thumb, especially the way I’ve got it taped up so that this piece doesn’t work its way off.
We could argue that I could’ve gone to get a stitch but a little bit of new skin and a Band-Aid is going to do what I needed to do, aside from sitting for 3 hours for 1 stitch in the ER. I found that this tape wrapped around like this helps keep it in place. I’ve got it not only wrapped around the bandage here but also around this other second joint.
That’s to keep this in place. It’s not even doing a good job of it. You can see, comparing my thumbs, I’ve got a good range of motion here on the right but I’m limited here on the left because of the tissue that I put on top. It’s not like I have an actual limitation there but I was able to do my entire workout. That’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is over on this hand.
The other part that’s going on here is something called a Piezo effect. That is a real problem. This Piezo effect is a neuroelectrical current that fires to our brain, telling us where all this connective tissue in our body is. It’s not just the muscles. It’s everything else involved. This one picture is fantastic because it hits a lot of things. The Piezo effect is a mechanical receptor in the body that sends signals to the brain. It gets effective negatively when you have fibrotic stress. You start having other things coming in.
They’re in the membrane of the chondrocyte. Chondro is connective tissue. Cyte is growing con tissue. When it’s been overloaded, it causes Piezo one receptor to allow too much calcium into the system. When we get too much calcium coming into any of the cells, that can lead to cell death. That is a problem because these are happy cells. One of the things that helps slow that process down is magnesium.
The other side of this is that the excessive calcium inhibits glutathione, which increases oxidative stress that leads to osteoarthritis. Glutathione is the other side of this. We’ve talked about glutathione in conjunction with NAC in the past as a supplement. We’ve also talked about magnesium. Magnesium is a great supplement.
The only reason I got a halfway good sleep when I was out in Vegas was because I took my magnesium supplements every night. I’m running low on the one but that has been a game-changer because I’m taking a little bit more. I’m taking some magnesium threonate and my other magnesium at night. I’m getting better sleep.
I recommend people to take magnesium in the evening. You can take it during the day but it does help improve sleep outcomes. It also helps you poop sometimes.
It’s a different magnesium. Magnesium blocks the channel that allows all of that stuff to fire through. If the calcium fires through rapidly, the cell dies. Magnesium blocks that channel so that you have fewer problems with that. This is why we need more magnesium but we have two problems. It’s all bound up in the soil by Roundup, which is called glyphosate. That’s one of the two problems. When glyphosate gets into our food, it’s everywhere in our body. We’ll hold off on getting deeper into glyphosate and collagen here for a few minutes.
One thing I did remember Dr. Murphy talking about was, and I’ve heard people hit on this but he was big on it, he’s talking about how calcium is not that great for us. We need some but we don’t need a lot.
Calcium is tightly regulated. It’s like nanomoles of calcium. You have millimoles, which is a thousandth. You have micro, which is a millionth. Nano is a billionth. It is super controlled by your body. Here’s the great thing. You need a little bit but you don’t need to supplement with it unless you are already osteoporotic.
You have to be careful because you’re better off finding all of the co-factors to make your bones stronger. Calcium by itself is not the answer. Our skeleton is made of calcium. That is a bank of stored calcium that we use day in and day out. We replace it and take it out as we need it. Osteoporosis is the result of robbing the body of too much calcium because other factors aren’t working the way they’re supposed to put calcium back down.
Osteoporosis is the end result of you robbing the body of too much calcium because other factors aren't working the way they're supposed to put calcium back down. Click To TweetWhat you’re saying, and what Dan also would agree with, was that calcium isn’t what someone needs. You need calcium but that’s not the deficiency. The deficiency might be vitamin D or magnesium.
Magnesium is very high. I did this for my aunt. We gave her a simple calcium supplement that is gentle and easily absorbed. A lot of them are not a whole lot better than a piece of chalk. The big thing I emphasized with her was vitamin D and other co-factors. Not only did it get her vitamin D level up above 50, and this was right before COVID so it was an added bonus for her, but it also got her density up. She was doing better. Those were the big things right there on that. Is there anything else that you remember from that part of the talk?
Going into the final part of the inflammation and the cascade of the calcium coming in, where does the fibrosis come from? What does fibrosis mean?
Fibrosis is going to be anything that’s going to cause stuff to break down. Instead of having nice, smooth tissue that interlaces the way it’s supposed to, fibrotic tissue is going to lay down any which way. It’s the difference between taking a look at a piece of wood that is all the grain. It is where it’s supposed to be. There are a few knots in there periodically that add strength as opposed to that particle board. It’s a cheaper piece but it’s all scrap pieces. They’ve laid them over and glued them together.
It’s strong but it doesn’t have the flexibility that a different piece of board would have. It doesn’t have the strength. It is strong the way they make it but I would get more strength out of a 0.25-inch piece of wood that is all straight wood. This particle board is called OSB, if I’m not mistaken. If you’ve got a 0.25 piece of OSB, you can start bending it and it’ll break more easily. It’s better at higher frequency.
It’s like splinters. If you think about particle board, it’s layers of the boards put together, which is what they’re trying to organize. When there are disorganization and tissues, that’s where the fibrosis comes in. That’s unhealthy tissue. The last thing I would say for the people reading is if we can catch a patient in the inflammation stages rather than in the fibrotic stages, we can slow it.
If we can catch a patient in the inflammation stages rather than in the fibrotic stages, we can slow it down. Click To TweetI wouldn’t say we can stop fibrosis because I don’t think you can. That’s part of healing. We can slow it down so that it will be more organized. The body will have more flexibility and less likelihood of re-injury. That’s when we say, “You get in a car accident. See your upper cervical chiropractor.” Do it within the first 24 hours. They’ll give you the information you need. At least we would. I don’t know about everyone else.
That fibrosis within 48 hours has set in. It’s that fast. The guy who gets the bad hit on Sunday night for a knee thing and maybe tears a meniscus or ACL might be out for the rest of the season but underneath their contract, they still want to play. The PTs will be rehabbing them off-field. They will be to go into the OR oftentimes. Some of these guys might go in Sunday night if they can get in the OR filled. Others might be in first thing Monday morning because they have to get that fixed.
These are high-level athletes with high-level contracts. They’ve got the money and the deep pockets to make those things happen to prevent that same level of fibrosis. We don’t, as average Americans but we can do simple things like, “I’m going to go see my chiropractor. We’re going to get this fixed now because that was a bad hit and fall. I need to get on top of this right off the bat.”
The last thing I’ll hit on with magnesium is why our ancestors did not have to supplement with magnesium and still lived. There were other problems. The big thing is the magnesium in our food. If we go buy some broccoli, it’s not going to have the magnesium that it did several years ago. It’s because of the chemicals that have been leached into the soil. The soil holds onto the magnesium that is there. It’s not like the magnesium disappeared. It’s there but the plants can’t absorb them. We have to take it.
Glyphosate is the chelating agent that binds up magnesium in the soil. Glyphosate is more commonly referred to as Roundup. It does a bunch of things. It’s a weeded killer. It binds the magnesium in the soil. It is antimicrobial. If it’s in your food, as a lot of it is, it’s killing your gut bacteria, which is a problem. Is it neurodegenerative or cancerous? It’s probably both. Dan Murphy’s review of this was 127 pages of this 1 article. It is going into all the problems with glyphosate, which has been outlawed in Europe. Does that seem right?
It is in many European countries. The EU doesn’t allow it in there anymore and lots of other countries too but you spray it all over here in the United States because we love it. It’s fabulous.
It’s used as a desiccating agent for wheat.
Out of anything, that’s the biggest thing that makes me sick. Everyone has gut issues because of this.
Here’s what I understand. Corn and soybeans do not get a second spray. There might be a late spray but they don’t get a second spray after they’ve been harvested. On the other hand, because wheat can mold easily, they want to get it dried out as fast as possible so you can turn it into flour. What they found out was if you spray glyphosate on it, it dries it out. The problem is, at least when you’re doing it earlier in the season, the glyphosate is washed off the crops. It goes into the soil. The crop is generally clean. You have less of it getting into the food supply as it oftentimes does.
With wheat, it doesn’t get washed off. It gets ground into a powder, which means it might as well be part of the product. Most of the flour that we’re going to come in contact with is probably high-end glyphosate. If you want to do a deep dive into how much glyphosate is in every man, woman, and child in the country, don’t because it’ll depress you. It’s bad. Don’t eat. It still has problems.
It could be in the water you drink at the restaurant you’re at or the quick thing you pick up that you don’t normally eat. It is everywhere. All I can say is we can’t live in fear constantly, and I don’t. We try to mitigate as much as we can. I try to reduce the likelihood of having it in my body as much as I can with organic foods. You’re going to get exposed but there are things you can do to help mitigate exposure and help your body heal better. One of those things is magnesium. Fish oils are one of the things that he was talking about with the inflammation cycles.
When you start digging into the research, people say, “I took fish oils and it didn’t help.” It’s like, “I took this water but my house was on fire. I threw this much water at the house. The water doesn’t put out fires.” You didn’t throw enough at it. I’ve heard it takes an hour or more to put out a fire on an electric vehicle. Tesla was the one in particular but water will eventually put out fires depending on what other chemicals are going on. That’s a great idea to think about.
The average car fire lasts fifteen minutes. You burn off all the gas and oil. There are lots of plastics. You can get it put out within about fifteen minutes. With these lithium batteries, it can take upwards of 1 hour to 2 hours to put it out with constant water. That’s scary. Think about this. We are a car battery because of the energy that we create within our body, mitochondria, and power cells. We need something better and more of it longer. That’s where larger doses of fish oils come in. When we start talking fish oils, I tell people, “Take as much as you can tolerate and find one that does not give you fishy burps.”
We are like car batteries because of the energy that we create within our bodies. We have our power cells, our mitochondria. We need something better, and we need more of it longer and that's where larger doses of fish oils come in. Click To TweetThat is why I like to take them at night because if I’m going to burp, I’ll burp overnight and I don’t know about it.
It keeps you up all night long, which is a different problem.
That’s a digestion issue. People take them frozen sometimes.
Frozen seems to help. I like the protocol for Life Brand. I remember when I first tried their stuff because I was suspicious about it and they offered a bunch at this one seminar I went to. I took 5 or 6 in a sitting. One fishy burp wasn’t bad. That was it. I found that to be very pleasant. That was about a 3-gram dose. A lot of the stuff that we’re going through and we’re looking at suggest anywhere from 5 to 10 grams when we’re dealing with chronic inflammation.
If you need to take a lot of fish oil and have chronic inflammation, you also need to reduce these things called Omega-6s. These are the seed oils, fried food, canolas, and soybeans.
Grape seed oil is in between. It might be better but it still has a high Omega-6 content. If you want to fry your foods, do it at home, and get some lard or beef tallow.
McDonald’s used to fry their fries in beef tallow.
They were the best for a reason and now, they don’t. I’ve mentioned this in the past but it is not uncommon for the trucks that are hauling McDonald’s waste aprons, the aprons that they’ve been wearing all day, to spontaneously combust. That’s the amount of oils and grease that get in the cotton tissues of their materials. That stuff catches on fire.
I’ve never heard that. I don’t know if I believe it. I’m going to have to fact-check that.
Feel free but that does happen. If you have lots of inflammation, take as much fish oil as you can tolerate. I highly recommend liquids. It’s hard to take a glass full of fish oil but that’s the fastest way to do it.
If you do that, my secret is to hold your nose before it even gets anywhere close to you and have a little bit of water to wash it down. Don’t swish it around in your mouth.
I take mine and some L-carnitine liquid. I’ve got this Sambucol throat thing. They gave it to me for free. I’ve been throwing in the back of my throat for a lot of the smoky irritation that I’ve had over the past summers when we had all that extra fire. I do that combination and that seems to keep it at bay. I’m not going to say I don’t have problems further down the line. Take as much as you can tolerate. If you’re taking too much, you can back a little bit off.
There’s not a chance of someone overdosing on fish oil.
If you’re taking multiple full shot glasses at three tablespoons, you could hurt yourself. I don’t know anyone who’s going to do that.
If you hurt yourself, it would mostly be like?
You’re sitting on the toilet.
It’s not in the hospital. It’s going to be gross. That’d be a good way to like yourself out.
It might be gross because you might not make it to the toilet fast enough. The only problem with oils is that if you do not have a good ability to digest oils, they will run right through you.
If someone has had a gallbladder removed, do they need to be careful with that?
Yes. You still are producing bile through your liver. You were producing abnormal bile or you had other stuff that was in there that was a problem that caused the gallbladder to create stones. I would look at things that will help produce bile better because you don’t have a store of bile. One of the things that I would look at are beets and collard greens. Collard greens wouldn’t be bad. Beets and collard greens on a regular basis. A good baked beet is tasty. I bake them like a baked potato. Other things to avoid, let’s hit on this one.
You’re saying other things to avoid if you were in an inflammatory state.
It doesn’t need to be inflammatory. It’s inflammatory or otherwise.
It tastes so good once it hits your lips.
We were talking about how calcium going directly into the cell fast causes damage to the cell. That is an absolute thing. If there’s too much calcium in the cell, the cell will die. There’s a certain way that calcium can go in and out of the cell properly. If it goes on overdrive, we have a problem. Monosodium glutamate is in food additives and natural spices.
I’m going to look up the secret names of MSG. Anyone can do this.
There are 30 of them.
I’ll go with the normal one. Glutamic acid glutamate, MSG or monosodium glutamate, mono potassium glutamate, and calcium glutamate. That’s bad.
What it is doing is kicking things into overdrive.
That’s incredible. I’ve never heard that one. Yeast extract, yeast food, yeast nutrient, autolyzed yeast or extract, textured protein, and protein isolates. Natural flavors is the one that you never freaking know. If it tastes good like a Doritos, it’s got a lot of sugar or MSG in it.
What does the glutamate do? Glutamate automatically opens up these calcium channels. If you have enough magnesium in your system, it will block that channel to not allow it to go into overdrive but that glutamate comes in and causes that channel to open wide and stay open. This is the problem. This is why you’re getting this constant hit of like, “That’s so good.” You’re doing it to death.
Blaylock talks about excitotoxins. He considers this to be one of the excitotoxins. If it is exciting, your nervous system is to death.
It’s Russell Blaylock. He’s another one of those guys out there if you want to go do deep dives. There are lots of great info.
He’s got great books. His books are not cerebral like the biology belief. You could pull one of his books out and learn a lot.
There’s a lot of good stuff out there. Is Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton?
Maybe it is.
They used to say, “The only thing that opens up these calcium channels and keeps them open like this was glutamine, monosodium glutamate, and these food additives.” What I had not heard before, which worries me a little bit, is that we’re also having to deal with the 5G signals doing the same thing. They can interfere with this calcium channel from closing the way it’s supposed to. They stay open with that frequency to allow that calcium in.
More than ever, we need more magnesium in our system to make sure that it doesn’t get blown out of proportion. If you know anybody who’s been aching more and feeling rough more, they’re starting to do weird thing things and throwing things across the room as one of my patients does. She’s got some interesting calcium issues that we still haven’t quite figured out yet. Of all those things that you can do, more magnesium is going to be the key.
It’s an easy thing to try. What type of magnesium do you recommend for people?
Dr. Murphy likes malate. That’s what I’ve been taking at night. I’ve been taking magnesium threonate for years because that one crosses the blood-brain barrier. Gluconate also crosses the blood-brain barrier. James DiNicolantonio has a great list.
The Russell Blaylock book is called Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. I love that. It’s what it is. The food companies have put the stuff in the food to make you eat more of it to get fatter and get more money. It is hurting your brain. Stop it. That’s why a lot of people are like, “I’m eating keto, low carb, or paleo.” Those are healthy ways to eat but how much of that is not eating processed foods? If you said, “I’m not eating processed foods,” you will feel better.
I was having a conversation with a patient who watched a new movie on Netflix about the Blue Zones. I’ve been following this stuff for several years. I’m like, “The Blue Zone sounds great.” These are the places where people are living over 100. The problem is the way they’ve defined the Blue Zones is these people are eating vegetarian diets. Everyone should get rid of meat. The funny thing is when they’ve gone into these places, they’re saying, “Look at these people. They don’t eat any meat.”
You have a place like Sardinia. It’s either Italy or Greece. There are two Blue Zones next to each other. 1 in Italy and 1 in Greece. They’re eating more Mediterranean. When you ask them, “Do you eat meat,” they say no, except when they hear meat, they hear beef. These little communities don’t have a space for cows to graze but they have lamb, pork, chicken, and eggs. They are still eating animal protein at one level or another but they’ve got a better community. They’re getting out and about. In one of these places, everything is mountainous.
Walking down the street, you’ll walk 10 steps and you’re going to walk almost 10 feet straight up a short little area. You can walk another ten steps. That’s the way the towns were laid out because of where it’s at. They’re saying, “All these people are centenarians. There are 100 or more.” The other problem is they get government checks. If they change their birthdate because there aren’t good records of birth dates, they get a government check. There are some problems with these areas. They’re claiming these things. There’s fraud in the data. They’re not as old as they’re supposed to be.
The big one in the States is the Seventh-Day Adventists out in California. Another one was Okinawa. They don’t eat beef but they eat a lot of pork. The Seventh-Day Adventists group in California is interesting. They have other problems. There are some health issues going on. Their sperm count is very low. If you compare Seventh-Day Adventists as a religious organization, the ones who follow the religious tenets have generally better health. They have lower cholesterol markers and lower heart disease.
I don’t know anything about Seventh-Day Adventists. They don’t eat what?
It’s a big vegan community. They were sponsors of Harvey Kellogg back in the day to make Kellogg’s cornflakes. They put him through med school. Cornflakes were made with the intention that young men and women wouldn’t masturbate as much.
I thought that was Graham crackers.
You’re not wrong. It is also Graham crackers.
I don’t feel especially in the mood when I eat a Graham cracker.
Here’s the funny thing. On one side of the spectrum, you’ve got this group that is vegan and has these health markers. On the other hand, you have another religious group here in the States that does just as well but isn’t considered a Blue Zone. That’s the Mormons in Utah. They don’t smoke. They eat beef. That is not against their religion. They don’t drink coffee and eat chocolate. I don’t fault them for saying, “These are the things we’re going to eat. That way, we can be as healthy as possible and have big families.” They do. If you compare those two groups, the Mormons win every time and they’re eating beef.
It’s not necessarily about beef.
It’s about getting rid of the processed foods. My patient said, “I got rid of all the processed foods. I cut back on my beef.” I’m like, “What meat were you eating?” She was eating processed meats, cold cuts, and store-bought bacon.
Snap into a Slim Jim. It is one of the healthiest meats you can eat. It’s a meat product. That’s processed too. With processed foods, we’re not just talking about Doritos. It could be lunch meat. There are forms of lunch meat that probably aren’t as bad as others but there are chemical additives in a lot of the meats that we consider like Lunchables for your kids. Is it the healthiest? No, it’s not. That’s not good.
Even bacon that you buy at the store. There are problems with the quality of the pig and the way that they’ve been manufacturing the pigs. I use the word manufacturing intentionally as opposed to a farmer raising pigs. I was off bacon for a while. We started making pizza with bacon on it. I’m like, “This is good.” I started saying, “I need better bacon.” I started buying from a local farmer who did nice raising practices as opposed to these big old industrial things. It was life-changing. I went from paying $3 a pound for bacon to paying $7 a pound for bacon. It’s worth it. It tastes better. We’ve picked up bacon since. It’s floppy. It doesn’t taste good.
Another not-so-great point is that eating well costs more than eating ramen noodles and pepperoni.
You’re going to pay for your health.
You pay for it now or later. I’d rather pay for it now, have better health, and grow into a better human being than, unfortunately, have to go through cancer or autoimmune treatments. The magnesium cheat sheet he threw up is the type of magnesium that this one doctor was thinking about. We’ve got magnesium taurate, which is heart and blood pressure. Magnesium threonate, which is what Dr. Schurger was talking about brain and memory.
Magnesium glycinate is for relaxation and sleep. That’s a good one to take before bed. Magnesium citrate is a good one to take if you’ve got slow digestion because that will shoot the digestion right through you. Magnesium lactate is for digestion also. Malate is for energy and fatigue. Chloride is for blood sugar and digestion. Orotate health and sulfate is for muscle soreness. I knew most of those but sulfate, I don’t even know if I’ve ever heard of that.
I’ve picked up a couple of different magnesium products. One of the popular ones out there is magnesium breakthrough. I took it in place of my other magnesium for a couple of days. It’s not like I’m deficient in magnesium by any means because I’ve taken high-quality magnesium. I didn’t see any difference. They said, “We’ve got seven different kinds of magnesium in it.” It was great but it doesn’t have threonate and a couple of others. I don’t think it had malate.
Who sells magnesium breakthrough? I’ve heard it on a podcast. It was JP Sears. That’s where I heard it.
JP has been a big advocate for it. A lot of the healthy podcast-type folks have been promoting it. If you’re not taking magnesium and you want to try magnesium breakthrough, go for it. I don’t think you need to do that. For instance, magnesium threonate, which is also called Magtein, normally runs for anywhere from $35 to $40 a bottle. I’ve seen it as low as $30 on Amazon.
Don’t buy your supplements on Amazon.
You’re cutting out the middleman.
If you’re buying it directly from the manufacturer through Amazon, that’s one thing. If it’s a Joe Schmoe’s Amazon store, no.
Be careful what you’re getting on Amazon. If you’re buying the major brands, you’re generally going to be okay. The more that I’ve used the NOW brand and the protocol for Life Brand, which is NOW’s physician brand, the more I like it. It is fantastic and good stuff. If you’re not following James DiNicolantonio, he’s another great one to go check out. This is from his Instagram. Let’s hit this and we should wrap up.
I want to do one more thing. He brought up a study I hadn’t heard about. In 2017, there was a randomized control study on back pain and opioids. We should do maybe a whole episode on that.
Let’s plan to do that because that could be a big part of it.
I coughed a lot in Las Vegas because it was so dry. I know it’s a freaking desert but that was a big difference. My body craved more liquid.
Everyone is having problems with it. I wish I’d grabbed some beeswax lip balm over at Whole Foods because my lips were chapped within a day. I didn’t feel well enough to train either day. I was planning on doing a big training. We’ll end on cli phosphate here. This is a big problem because it’s not just destroying the environment by binding up magnesium but it is destroying our health in multiple different ways.
One of the ways that it’s doing that is glyphosate, that glycol molecule that is part of the glyphosate chain. When we get it in our system, it hits all of our tissue. It is a close match for a molecule in our collagen matrix called glycine. It is the most prominent amino acid. It’s a non-essential amino acid that should probably be reclassified as a semi-essential amino acid. Glyphosate will replace glycine in the chain and cause bad collagen formation. This may be leading to a lot of people’s problems as far as being loose ligaments. There’s a condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. In the past decades, it feels like that’s the new fibromyalgia.
The new one I’ve heard, which is they’re considering an autoimmune disease, is mixed connective tissue disease. Have you heard this one? I hadn’t put this together until I listened to Dan’s talk. I want to do more research on that. Could it be toxic levels of Roundup in people?
This is something Dr. James DiNicolantonio and Siim Land have put out a book talking about this. I don’t have it handy but The Collagen Cure is the name of the book. They are talking about some of this. They don’t get into the Ehlers-Danlos connective tissue issues there directly. This is why it is a semi-essential amino acid. It’s not essential because we can make 3 grams of it per day in our body. There are essential amino acids that we cannot make in our body on a daily basis.
Glycine, being a key component of collagen, may be required in higher dosages because one of the things they’re suggesting is you need 10 grams of it a day but we make 3. The rest you should be getting in your food. Some people and people who have connective tissue problems may need as much as 50 to 60 grams a day.
It’s interesting because glycine does two things. Glycine helps get your connective tissue back in order but also lowers your insulin. Here’s the real kicker. It is a one-to-one replacement for sugar. It is that sweet. I love my beef ribs or pork ribs. Even without any sauce on it, you want to gnaw on that bone a little bit. There is that sweetness to that connective tissue. That is glycine. That is what you are tasting in that meat. That’s part of our brain saying, “This is something tasty.” It is part of our connective tissue and collagen. It’s a little bit more complicated than that but it helps clean up your insulin.
There’s a whole book on it. That is called The Collagen Cure: The Forgotten Role of Glycine and Collagen in Optimal Health and Longevity. It was by the doctors. That is on Amazon.
As a reference, you say, “I’m going to try this glycine thing out. I’m going to order a bag. How much do I put in?” I’ve done a tablespoon at one sitting in water. I’m like, “This is sweet.” I throw it in my coffee and go with it. A half tablespoon is plenty. It’s not overpowering. A tablespoon is overpowering.
Does it mix into cold beverages or warm beverages?
It mixes great. Collagen protein and glycine, being a key component of collagen, mix well in beverages in water in any way.
I have never done glycine straight. I put collagen in my tea every morning.
I’ve only started doing it. It’s relatively new to my diet protocol but I like it.
Don’t eat all the sugar because you’re going to get sick and you’ll have to come to see us because your body will go into all sorts of toxic overload symptoms. One of them being misalignment patterns. Take your vitamin D because the sun is gone.
This is the time of the year to find other sources of light. Some people will do extra light in the morning. I like a UVB tanning bed myself. There’s a lot of options. I should go after we wrap up.
Last thing but not least, we are not your doctors but we should be. You need to talk to your doctor about any of the things we’ve talked about because there’s a lot going on in here. If you need a doctor, where can they find you, doctor?
I am in Springfield, Illinois. My website is KeystoneChiroSPI.com. I’m @KeystoneDoc on Instagram. Come find us.
I am in St. Louis, Missouri. You can find me at PrecisionChiroSTL.com. I’m on all the socials. You’ll be able to find me.
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you in the next episode. Dr. Bagley, we’ll talk soon.
Important Links
- Biology of Belief
- Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
- James DiNicolantonio – Instagram
- The Collagen Cure
- KeystoneChiroSPI.com
- @KeystoneDoc – Instagram
- PrecisionChiroSTL.com
- https://Linktr.ee/TheBlondeAndTheBald
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