← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
The Dr. Josh Axe Show
The Natural Healing Swaps Doctors Rarely Talk About | Dr. David Jockers
01:09:30
Millions of people are stuck managing symptoms with medications, but what if there’s a better way to support your body’s healing systems naturally?
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Dr. Dave Jockers
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Dr. Josh Axe
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Dr. Dave Jockers
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Dr. Josh Axe
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Dr. Dave Jockers
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Dr. Josh Axe
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Dr. Dave Jockers
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Dr. Josh Axe
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Dr. Josh Axe
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Dr. Dave Jockers
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Dr. Josh Axe
your groceries every day you have a choice of whether to take a medication or take something natural. I remember growing up when I was a kid. My parents were not very educated in natural health. So every time we were sick with a cold, a flu, an ear infection, you name it, we went to our doctor and we got prescribed an antibiotic drug. Today I've brought in a really good friend of mine. I've known him for over 20 years. It's Dr. Dave Jockers. And today we're going to be talking through the top natural remedies to heal your hormones, improve your energy, fight almost every disease you can imagine. So when you are thinking about next time, do I reach for the synthetic drug or do I reach into my natural medicine cabinet? We'll talk about the top things in every category of what's natural to help you heal. So, Dr. Dave, welcome to the show.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Well, thanks so much, Dr. Josh. You know, I've known you over 20 years, the real deal. And just so proud of how far you've come and excited for this conversation.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Well, thanks so much. I was thinking back, so I want to say that I remember going and staying with you. So we have to take boards, right, to get our medical license. And I remember staying with you. This would have been back in probably 2007 and I think I probably met you as early as it was probably 2005, 2004. So it was a long time ago. So we're talking 21 or so years ago. And so I remember that, and I remember us making superfood smoothies together. I mean, I think Vitamixes just became popular. So we were putting in every concoction of these greens and red powders and a handful of spinach and all kinds of stuff in this, making these superfood smoothies every morning for a week. And anyway, so I just. Going way back, I know that you have been in natural health for a long time, but one thing I remember about you as well is you grew up more into natural health. I believe your parents were some of the first kind of people that were. Because it used to be like 1% of people were in the natural health. Now it's probably more like a quarter of people are at least interested or have some sort of focus on it. But you sort of grew up in that environment.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. My mom actually was studying to become a massage therapist and then eventually a naturopath. And so she's a nurse practitioner and naturopath. So I grew up. She always had her own garden. And. And, like, we never got antibiotics. She would just give us cloves of garlic, make chicken soup at home.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Wow.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Right. And so I remember if I felt sick, I would eat cloves of garlic, which wasn't fun. But, I mean, I got better quicker. Right. And that was just what I knew. It was natural medicine. And what was interesting was my dad. He is, like the most picky eater ever. And, you know, really, he is kind of against. Not really against natural medicine, but just against, like, eating healthy, healthy lifestyle. And my mom kind of drags him along, and I always tell people, you know, this is a testament to a persistent mom. Right. Probably a lot of persistent moms that are listening to this right now. Every one of my brothers and sisters, I'm one of six kids, is into health, right. Like, we live a healthier lifestyle than most people. Obviously, I'm a natural health doctor. Right. And that was because of my mom. It was in. In a sense, in spite of my dad's influence. And it was because my mom was so persistent about helping us adopt a healthy lifestyle, eat healthy foods, constantly educating people. I remember my older brother had acne, and she would say, that's because he's eating all this processed sugar. He's eating processed chocolate bars. He's eating French fries at school. And I was like, oh, wow. And I love French fries. I love processed sugar. And I was like, well, if he's getting acne eating that, I don't want that. I'm gonna avoid it. So I started Making nutrition changes that way. She would have kale, mushrooms, things like that on our. On our dinner plate, which I hate. I didn't like the taste as a teenager, like. Like most teenagers.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
And so I was like, why do I have to eat this? And she would say, well, it's going to help you. I was an athlete growing up. She's like, it's going to help you have more energy. It's going to help you recover better, you're going to be able to play better, your vision is going to be better, you know, And I was a pitcher, baseball player. And so I was like, well, if it's going to help me be better, I'll eat whatever, you know, I'll eat. I'll have seconds of that. Yeah, right.
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Dr. Josh Axe
It's all about incentives. And by the way, I see this. It was very similar thing, you know, up until. But until my mom got cancer her second time. And it wasn't until then, till my dad really started to change his diet as well. Because one thing was my mom is making most of the meals, not all. My dad does some cooking. My dad's actually a pretty good cook. But my mom probably makes meals, I don't know, five of the seven nights a week. My dad probably would make them a couple nights a week. But eventually my mom's like, this is what I'm making. And my dad adopted to it. But the thing that we found over time, too, and I saw this, I learned this and then taught this to my mom and dad as well, who then started implementing it. It's like, we still eat chocolate cake. We just use coconut flour and almond flour and raw honey and monk fruit. Right. Like, we still eat chicken parmesan. We just found the way to make these natural. Like, growing up, we made a lot of things, like salmon patties. We lived, grew up in the Midwest in Ohio, did a lot of Midwest dishes, but now we just found the way to eat almost the exact same thing. We just use the healthier version of the ingredients and everything works out that way. But it's so common that a lot of times it's the. The female, it's the mom who kind of brings the family into that. That form of sort of like that feminine leadership of sort of the home, of getting the home healthy internally. And it's just. It's so important. So. And we didn't really have that until we had the major crisis in my family. In a similar way, I'd love to dive into some of these different categories of natural remedies. One Drug I've heard you speak out on before, I've seen you write articles on are statin drugs. You know, share with me your thoughts on statin drugs. What is the root cause of the real way to heal, the reason why people take it for typically high cholesterol and what are some of those natural remedies that can start to fix it?
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, for sure. So you and I are both, you know, we're, we're advocates of emergency medicine, so life saving medicine when it's needed.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yep.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
But the problem is that most medications out there, I would say probably 90% are prescribed when it's not a life threatening circumstance and they never actually get to the root cause. And statins are a great example of that because statins, what they do is they lower cholesterol. And so basically there's this idea that high cholesterol equals heart disease. Right. Cholesterol gets oxidized, causes damage to our endothelial lining, the inner lining of the blood vessel, which then ends up leading to a blood clot, plaque formation and a blood clot and a heart attack. And so it's only part of the story though, right? Cholesterol is actually like when we look at ldl, which is called the, the, the bad cholesterol, right. LDL is a bus. It's actually carrying, it's carrying key lipids, it's carrying phosphodidylcholine, all these key things that cells need, fat soluble nutrients. It actually carries vitamin D, vitamin A, all those types of things to the cells so the cell can heal and repair. When LDL goes up, what it tells me is the body's trying to burn fat and it's also trying to heal. Right. The cells are actually trying to heal. Doesn't mean that there's something wrong. It can be. Right. And I've got to look at some of the other biomarkers, right? Triglycerides, hdl, things like that. So if we're just saying, and there are some medical doctors out there that actually believe we should put statins in the water, they think everybody needs to lower their cholesterol. Isn't that crazy? And so really when we look at what's actually causing damage to the blood vessel, it's going to be high blood sugar, which causes ages, advanced glycation end products that damage the endothelial lining of the blood vessel. It's inflammation. Right, I know you talk a lot about that. So high circulating immune complexes like, like C reactive protein, Right. If that's up in our bloodstream, that's damaging. It's like shrapnel going through the, the bloodstream, damaging those, those blood vessel walls. It's lack of nitric oxide. Right. Nitric oxide helps dilate the blood vessel. When we have low nitric oxide, which is usually correlated with more inflammation in our system, then the blood vessel wall is not able to open up properly and there's going to be more damage on that endothelial lining. So we've got to actually get to the root cause. Just blanket lowering cholesterol isn't getting the root cause. And then when we look at what statins actually do, they actually poison our mitochondria. I know you talk a lot about mitochondrial and cellular health. Mitochondria are what produce all the energy within all the cells of our body.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
And so we want healthy, vibrant, stress, resilient mitochondria. What statins actually do is they actually inhibit the respiratory complexes in the mitochondria and shut down mitochondrial energy production. This is why some of the key side effects of statin drugs are things like muscle pain, because we know the muscles are loaded with mitochondria. Early cognitive decline. So cognitive decline because the brain is so mitochondrial dense, that's one of the key side effects of taking statin drugs. And so basically it's damaging our energy producing factories right. Within all the cells of our body and leading us to chronic disease. In fact, taking statins increases our all cause risk of mortality.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
So dying of all causes. So the two things we know about statin drugs, they will lower your cholesterol.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
But they'll also kill you quicker from all different types of causes, cancer, everything.
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Dr. Josh Axe
I mean, I really think if there are doctors out there that are just prescribing statin drugs without changing diet, first, recommending supplementation, recommending exercise, it's really a form of malpractice because it's first doing harm. You're harming your patients, you're increasing their mortality. I mean, that's the first thing we should be trying to focus on preventing. We should be focused on longevity there. And that's a real problem. So here's how I would like our conversation to go. I think this will be fun. I would like for you when we go through these, because we're going to go through a lot of categories, we're going to go through everything from low testosterone, hypothyroidism, pcos, diabetes, a lot of different conditions today. Go through the natural remedies. I'm going to have you share your top three in ranking order, natural Things people can do and it can be lifestyle, it could be certain foods, it could be supplementation. I want you to give me your top three and then I'll add in and lay on my additional top three onto that as we dive into natural remedies. When my patients ask how to add more nutrients to their diet, I advise them to be selective about quality, sourcing and transparency. And that's why I trust Manukora Manuka Honey. It's harvested from remote regions of New Zealand, it's independently tested and it's packed with nutrients like MGO. Not only that, but also their honey is third party tested, glyphosate free, non GMO verified and 100% traceable. Back to the hive. This high quality honey also contains flavonoids and antioxidant compounds that support your body's stress management. If you're looking for a more elevated and high quality honey, get Manukora Manuka Honey. Head over to manukora.com/axe to get 31% off plus $25 in free gifts with their starter kit. When it comes to the cause, root cause of high cholesterol and heart disease, what are your top three recommendations and prescriptions for patients in ranking order?
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. Number one is you got to get your blood sugar stable. Right. So we start when it comes to blood sugar. We start with diet. So when I'm looking at cholesterol, the key biomarkers I look at are triglycerides and hdl. HDL is considered the good cholesterol. Triglycerides are the amount of fat circulating in your bloodstream. And so basically I want that ratio triglycerides to HDL under 2 and close to 1. So ideally triglycerides are under 100 HDL somewhere around like 50 to 80, somewhere in that range. And that ratio is close to one. One part triglyceride, one part hdl. And so in order to get there, we've got to create good insulin sensitivity and blood sugar stability. And so what do we do with that? Well, high protein diet. Right. So I always recommend when it comes to your meals, prioritizing protein, making sure you're getting at least 30 to 50 grams of protein in each meal and then making sure you've got healthy fats on board. Usually your protein foods like grass fed steak, wild caught fish eggs, they usually have the fat. In some cases you have things like chicken breast which is really lean. You might add some extra virgin olive oil or like a little guacamole or something like that. So you get Good healthy fats in.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
And then colorful fruits and vegetables. So when you're setting up your meal plan, think protein first, healthy fats and then colorful fruits and vegetables. You want lots of colors, lots of smells. I know you're big on herbs, so using things like Mediterranean herbs, basil, oregano, thyme, things like that, all fantastic. And then if you're going to have more starchy carbs or fruit, which I'm a big advocate of, have it at the end of the meal. So eat your protein and your healthy fats first. Then have your sweet potato, then have your, you know, pomegranate, your berries, your apple, orange, you know, whatever it is. And so my kids eat all of that kind of stuff. Like we give them all, you know, natural foods. They eat lots of fruit. But what I do is I have them eat it at the end of a high protein meal and that helps stabilize their blood sugar. And then we. And then you got to move. Right? So getting out, walking on a regular basis, getting 10,000 steps a day, and
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Dr. Josh Axe
this is big for nitric oxide, right?
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Dr. Dave Jockers
That's important, what you just mentioned, 100%. One of the best things you could do for endothelial health is just move your body on a continual basis. And there's good research on just taking like a 20 or 30 minute walk every day. But the best research is just staying in an almost in a constant state of moving, like getting up every 30 minutes and just walking around. Even if it's just walking to the bathroom or walking out your front door and then coming back in, just getting out and getting like a hundred steps every 30 minutes or so can be really helpful. And then I recommend resistance training. So doing strength training to build muscle. We call muscle the organ of longevity. And the more muscle you have, the healthier your mitochondria are going to be. And then also that's going to help. Muscle actually acts as a glucose sponge, meaning that when your blood sugar goes up. So let's say you are at a party and you have, you know, a piece of cake or ice cream or whatever it is, you're. The more muscle you have, the more you're going to actually pull the sugar out of the, out of the bloodstream and into the muscle. Right. We can actually store that glucose in something called glycogen, a storage form of sugar, and get it out of the bloodstream. Remember, high blood sugar, real high blood sugar is toxic. It creates these advanced glycation end products, ages. So if something is a age, what do you think that does to Your body ages, ages you. Right. And that's what they do. That's what these ages are really. They're, they're, they're really damaging to the blood vessel wall. They actually damage the endothelial lining of the blood vessel. That's going to elevate oxidative stress, plaque formation, you know, in, in the blood vessel and increase your risk of a blood clot.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
So that's key. So you got to move resistance training, build muscle. Okay. We talked about the right diet.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
And then there are a couple things that, you know, research has shown are pretty good. Right. When it comes to good cholesterol, garlic can be really helpful.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Amazing. Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
So that lowers platelet aggregation. Not only can it lower cholesterol, which I'm not as concerned about lowering cholesterol, I'm more concerned about platelet aggregation. Right. So platelets are your blood clotting cells. They're really important. Yeah. Some people, like myself for example, I have a, I have a tendency, a genetic tendency towards bloody noses. And so if I eat too much garlic, I get like these. Yeah. So. So garlic has this platelet de aggregation effect. Right. It actually reduces plate. Platelet aggregation and it's really powerful.
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Dr. Josh Axe
This would be really important not just for this sort of condition, but also things like long Covid. I mean it's really important for that.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Well, I mean it has, it's, it's a multi therapeutic approach with garlic. Right. Because it's anti viral. Totally. Right. So great for the immune system. Ye. But also has that kind of natural blood thinning platelet aggregation effect. So you're not going to get the clotting. Right. It's going to help with good quality circulation. You want that, you want your bloodstream to be like a river, not stagnant, like a pond. Right. I mean, you know from Chinese medicine, stagnicity, that's the root of chronic disease.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, absolutely. So let's hit on these. So we talked about, listen, if you're on a statin drug, the first thing you want to do is a diet high in protein, healthy fats, a lot of antioxidants, full colored vegetables and fruits as Dr. Dave talked about, talked about exercise, everything from walking to weight training and garlic. Let me add on just a few things here. I just kind of want to. The next thing I would say, and these are going to be just a little bit more simple. Doing higher dose omega 3 fatty acids. When you look at the clinical research, high dose omega 3 fats. Now the best place to get this is eat wild Caught fish, eat sardines, eat salmons, eat black God, eat fatty fish is a great way to get your omega 3s. But just generally supplementation with a high quality. I mean, it could be everything from a cod liver oil to a fish oil, to herring roe oil to algae oil. But you want to do typically higher EPA. But omega 3s are really important. And then this is just sort of jumping on what Dr. Dave said here. Number two for me is increasing your fiber intake. And that's part of what he mentioned with the fruits and vegetables. Fiber acts as a mild binder to LDL and certain types of cholesterol, helping flush it out of your system and keeping those levels balanced. And number three for me would be, I would just say magnesium. Part of what that's gonna do is kind of relax those blood vessels that we talked about. When those get hardened and stiffed, that increases your risk of a cardiovascular event. So that's a very important mineral for that. But those are some things statin wise. The next thing I want to dive into, Dr. Dave, is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. You know, when you and I were coming out of school, I taught a lecture here at my clinic, the Longevity Clinic, in Nashville this past weekend. And I was telling the patients there, I said, you know, when I graduated school about 20 years ago, none of our professors told us that nearly every woman that came into practice would have a hormonal problem, whether it be hypothyroidism, menopausal symptoms, pcos, infertility. I mean, so many women today have hormonal issues. And one of the most common is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. When you think of that condition as a functional medicine practitioner. And by the way, I want to mention here just a few things about Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave has run a functional medicine practice now for about 20 years. He has a really popular newsletter and podcast. He's one of the best practitioners in the entire world. So he has worked with a lot of patients. So when you are working with a patient and they come in and whether it's their blood work or their history, and you're looking at it, and they have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. What do you believe the root cause is in most cases? And then what are those top three things you typically recommend to almost all those patients?
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, for sure. Hashimoto's super common. So we've got elevated antibodies. It's an autoimmune condition where the body's actually attacking the thyroid tissue. So a couple things we see with that with autoimmune conditions across the board, I see vitamin D deficiencies.
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Dr. Josh Axe
Okay.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
In general, vitamin D deficiency tells me a sunlight deficiency. So getting these people. And you think about thyroid issues, right? The thyroid helps warm up our body, right. So it activates the mitochondria. It's the hormone that says mitochondria produce more cellular energy. And so getting out in the sun, getting infrared, getting UV light, getting red light, all the different wavelengths of light from the sun is critical. And particularly like that midday sun where you're getting vitamin D elevation there, right. And getting as much of your body in that as possible. Now, there are certain times, you know, times of the year where, for example, winter, northern months, you're not going to be able to do that. That's where you can get like a red infrared light device. And there's actually good research on actually 10 minutes a day of red and infrared directly on the thyroid tissue.
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Dr. Josh Axe
I want to just pause there because that study that came out. Yeah, that blew my mind. I mean, it was something like, like 75% of the women were able to reduce or get off their thyroid medication with red light therapy. I mean, now, again, this was a sample size of 74 women, but still was. I mean, just. I'm glad you brought that up. And of course, the sun. Red light beds are amazing. You should do red light beds. You should do, you know, a device at home. But still, nothing's more powerful than the sun.
- [21:17]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, exactly. So getting out in the sun, I mean, you're gonna get all the wavelengths, you're gonna get the vitamin D elevation. Right. And that, that was what's interesting about the, the study on red and infrared was that that's not elevating your vitamin D. Right. And so, but infrared's able to penetrate in, increase circulation in that area, downregulate inflammation into the system, increase nitric oxide, which we talked about earlier. So you get better circulation, increase mitochondrial melatonin. We think about melatonin as a sleep hormone, but inside the mitochondria, melatonin is the most powerful antioxidant to protect the mitochondria. So when somebody has Hashimoto's thyroiditis, I think the mitochondria are damaged, right? They're in cell danger response. There's too much danger signals. So how do we elevate mitochondrial antioxidant production? Well, one way is infrared light. So red and infrared light directly on that is going to help stimulate that, but also elevating vitamin D, whether it's getting it from the sun or Supplementation, that's going to be key. Also with Hashimoto's obviously blood sugar stabilizing diet, all the things that we talked about already getting exercise in. But then some key supplements. Selenium.
- [22:25]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
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Dr. Dave Jockers
Okay. About 200 to 400 micrograms of selenium has been shown to reduce the antibodies, thyroid antibodies pretty significantly. And then zinc. I see a lot of zinc deficiency across the board. But particularly women with these hormone problems or autoimmune conditions, right. They tend to be very low in zinc. Why is that? Because, you know, we're exposed to a lot of different toxins, including heavy metals, and a lot of those compete with zinc for absorption. Right. And so a lot of times we're using up zinc. Plus if you've had like a bad infection, maybe a cold, Covid epstein bar, something like that, all those things deplete your zinc. And zinc is really critical for your immune system. Balancing your TH1 and TH2, the 2, 2 arms of your immune system. Zinc is critical for that. Right. Zinc is also really critical for steroid hormone production, like, like testosterone, estrogen product production, progesterone. It's also very important for progesterone. So zinc plays just such a critical role. It's antiviral. Right. All these different things. So typically that's what I'm seeing is zinc, selenium, vitamin D. As far as
- [23:28]
Dr. Josh Axe
nutrients, that's so good. And I couldn't agree with you more. If I was going to pick my top three, those would have been my top three as well. And you know what's interesting too, I think one of the reasons why selenium is so low has to do with the importance of it in glutathione production. Right. I think there's just, I think so many women who have. By the way, there is an interesting study on this and I'm sure you saw this, women who took birth control pills for 10 years. So long term birth control pill use increased hypothyroidism chances by 287%. And why? It's because when you look at what birth control depletes, it's selenium, zinc and B vitamins. And especially if a woman has MTHFR gene mutation, well, I mean now they can't methylate properly and so it's so hard for their mitochondria and their methylation to actually function properly that they end up with hypothyroidism. And to your point, I love that you mentioned this, you know, in Chinese medicine, the way that they would describe the way that they would describe hypothyroidism is a combination of a mitochondrial. They call it qi. But mitochondrial deficiency combined with a lack of being anabolic, so you can't regenerate well or generate enough heat, to your point. And that's really the problem there. And so what I would add on to what you shared, which again, I think yours are the top three, I would probably add in some adaptogenic herbs to help lower cortisol to support melatonin, to your point. You know, ashwagandha is probably the most clinically researched. I think rhodiola rosea would be another one that would be up there drinking tulsi tea, but generally getting some adaptogenic herbs in I think would be fantastic. And from a dietary standpoint, don't eat soups, don't eat salads, don't do ice cold drinks. Warm your body up, do a lot of like chicken vegetable soup. Let's really warm your body as much as you possibly can internally. Ginger herbal tea. But do a very warming diet that's also immune friendly. A lot of organic meat, a lot of well cooked vegetables, a lot of healthy fats. Really focusing on that is where I would focus. And I don't have a lot to add on top of that.
- [25:32]
Dr. Dave Jockers
I think, yeah, I would say liver support. Some liver support would be helpful, like milk thistle, something along those lines.
- [25:38]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Because to your point there, if you have excess estrogen, it's a big disruptor of thyroid hormone. So doing maybe a lot of steamed cruciferous vegetables. Right. Would be a good option there. I love that. So those are some of the best natural cures and remedies for Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And Dave knows this too. When we have somebody come in with a thyroid issue, it's never the thyroid from a cellular standpoint, it's the mitochondria. From an organ standpoint, it's almost always the liver, the gut and the adrenal glands. And so those tend to be the issues. The thyroid's just kind of the innocent bystander. So if you can fix those other areas, you can reverse hypothyroidism. Let's talk about the common cold and flu. Okay, so today, what doctors tend to do. And by the way, this is my family growing up, anytime we were sick, no questions asked. Antibiotic, antibiotic, antibiotic. I had Dr. Marty Makery on here who's head of the FDA and he told me he believed, and I want to say his number was around, it was 90 or 98% of drugs, antibiotics Prescribed should not be prescribed because the kids were struggling with a viral infection, not a bacterial infection. And antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses. So we are doing so much damage to our kids today. Dr. Dave, when you have a patient come in as a child or you have kids at home, what do you do for your family for the common cold and flu?
- [27:06]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, this is really important. So antibiotics can be life savings in a certain emergency crisis situation. But like you said, most of the time they're overprescribed. Most of the time it's a viral issue. And so really we just need to support the immune system. And so a couple things that we always do. So one is typically we'll get, you know, all sugar out of the diet. Right. Other, you know, we'll, we'll still do like, fruit, things like that, but, but, you know, certainly no processed sugar. So that's, that's a big, a big element of it. And then when it comes to different nutrients, we like things like elderberry.
- [27:38]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [27:38]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Quercetin. Elderberry is actually a natural source of quercetin. Okay. But we'll also do quercetin and zinc. Right. And so zinc is very, very antiviral.
- [27:48]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [27:49]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And quercetin is an antioxidant. Right. So we can find quercetin naturally in things like, like onions, for example, elderberries, cranberries, stuff like that. And so we'll do higher dose quercetin, which actually helps get zinc into the cell where it can stop viral replication. So that's really key there. Another big thing that I actually do is I'll actually take garlic and ginger and I'll tape it to my kid, bottom of their feet. Okay. And I'll put a little bit of extra virgin olive oil on their, the, the sole of their foot. Okay. Tape that, put socks on it and then put them to sleep. Right. Or if they're like. Sometimes we have a PEMF mat. So this is, this is interesting because my kids, my kids recently got sick. My girls, my young girls got sick a few weeks ago. And so I was doing this. So during the day they were just really, really tired. So I put them on a PEMF mat where they, where that was also heated with infrared.
- [28:46]
Dr. Josh Axe
Right.
- [28:46]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And these are things you can get, you can purchase that. But I would say that the major magic here was we did garlic and ginger. So I would cut it fresh cut. I'd rub some olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, which is rich in something called oleuropens, Right. Particularly oliocanthal, which they call nature's ibuprofen okay. Because it's so powerful at reducing the COX1 and 2 enzymes in your system, that reduces inflammation. And so nature's ibuprofen there and then the olive oil on there actually helps get the sulfur compounds out of the garlic. So I fresh chop the garlic, the allicin compounds, put it on their foot, and then the ginger with the gingerols, which are also very powerful for your immune system. Right. And powerful anti inflammatories. I put that, I taped it. So I just put tape around their foot. Okay. And then put a sock on. Right. And they would just lay there. Right. And they would sleep with that overnight. We change it basically about every 12 hours. And they were able to get well quickly and so simple, easy things. I was giving them zinc lozenges. Right. And then also liposomal, vitamin C and vitamin D as well with, with K2.
- [30:00]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's so great. I mean, it's great advice. And here's the reality is like the body can heal itself. It just, it tends to be deficient. I mean, if your body, if your body can be well rested and has what it needs nutritionally, your own immune system, it just needs things like vitamin C and zinc and quercetin and D in order to activate and get your immune system to where it needs to be. So absolutely love that advice. Let me add a few things here. I would say, and you kind of already mentioned this diet. Chicken soup. Chicken soup. Chicken soup. Like when you look at Chinese medicine, they would say if you've got any type of virus or immune issue, eat a lot of light yellow foods. And you mentioned these. It's garlic, it's onion, it's chicken broth, it's miso soup. It's. Those types of foods tend to be very immune activating and so those can be fantastic for strengthening the immune system. So really eat a really clean diet of a lot of things like chicken vegetable soup. The other things I would add in are mushrooms have so many great benefits. You know, when you look at cordyceps or maitake or shiitake. So just even adding those to the soup along with a lot of garlic. I mean, what I would do is I would make a chicken vegetable soup. I would load it up with garlic, load it up with onion. I would also throw ginger in there. I would throw mushrooms in there and some vegetables like celery, carrots, and then of course some chicken and chicken broth and that and a tablespoon of miso. Like that is a powerful immune boosting soup. So I would do that along with the things Dr. Dave talked about. And listen, there's a lot of great immune boosters. I'm a big fan of echinacea as well. I will say this, and this is so interesting. You know, I never thought about this until I really started studying Chinese medicine. But there's almost always two different types of viruses in Chinese medicine. One they would say it's cold wind, and another one is hot wind. So if you have. If your body is more feverish and really hot, they would recommend you do more of the cooling herbs like andrographis and echinacea. Things that are bitter drive out the cold. If you've got the chills and you're cold, they would then recommend the ginger and the cinnamon and the hot toddies, maybe if you're in the South. But whatever you can do to warm the body up, an infrared sauna actually can kind of help with both, actually, just depending on about the amount of time you spend in there. But. But they would say, you know, some of the remedies are a little bit better if you're a little too hot or a little too cold. So there's some. Some thoughts there as well.
- [32:22]
Dr. Dave Jockers
You know, what I found is the more that I practice this, the more my body naturally craves certain things at certain times. Like, if I feel like I'm getting, like, a little bit of a sore throat, it's like, I crave broth. I want, you know, cooked onions or something along those lines. My body will literally crave it. If I'm feeling, like, overheated, I want, like, sliced cucumbers. Right. Things that are cooling, I just naturally start to crave this.
- [32:45]
Dr. Josh Axe
100% agree. Yeah. And there's so much wisdom in that. Just listen to your body. It's talking to you. It's telling you. Now, sometimes we have to learn to decipher, because sometimes you're like, I want carbs. What your body's really saying is, I want cinnamon or I want sweet potato. Not, you know, not processed sugar there. I mean, that would be a whole nother episode. Maybe we'll do that sometime in terms of, you know, like, if you have this certain taste in your mouth or where the white dots on your nails or how those are shaped or like, you know, your body is telling us this is what you need. Hey, so if you've ever thought something is wrong with me, but I just can't prove it, then this is for you. Now, you might be eating clean. Even what you feel like is perfect. Working out, taking all of the Right supplements. But you're still exhausted, still foggy, gaining weight, and you're not sleeping. And every time you ask for help, you hear the same thing. But your labs are normal. Here's what that actually means. Standard blood work only shows what's in your blood, not whether your cells can actually access it or not. You can give your body all the right inputs, but if your cells are in danger mode, chronically stressed or inflamed, they can't absorb or use those nutrients properly. If you're finally ready to heal, go to mybloodwork.com, you'll get an at home cellular bloodwork panel shipped straight to your home and reviewed on a private call with one of my senior health advisors at the Health Institute. And this will help you finally connect the dots between your symptoms at the cellular level. We'll also determine if you're a good candidate for one of our cellular healing protocols so you can finally experience lasting healing once again. Go to mybloodwork.com to check it out. I want to dive into low testosterone because this has become such an epidemic.
- [34:33]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Oh, yeah.
- [34:34]
Dr. Josh Axe
And there are so many things today that are just taking testosterone. I mean, I want to say the latest research is, you know, over the last 50 years, men's testosterone is 33% lower. If you go back even further, back to World War II, it's even further diminished than that. So, like, there are men today in their 30s that have the average testosterone of what men should have in their 70s. I mean, that's the reality. So when you see a man come in and we're looking at the blood work, we're looking at free testosterone, some of those issues, and you see that, what do you think tends to be the biggest root cause of that? And then what are your top three recommendations for those men, for sure?
- [35:10]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Well, there's a couple of things. Number one is some of the medications we already talked about, statin drugs deplete testosterone. Metformin, 2024 study just came out, you know, a few years ago, showed it lowers testosterone. And so for men and women, this is why some women with pcos who have high testosterone actually feel much better and get better results on metformin. But in general, other than if you do have pcos, you don't want to lower your testosterone. Testosterone is critical for muscle mass. For men, it's really important for our mood, right. For energy, for drive, for boosting dopamine. I mean, really across the board for men and women, it's, I mean, longevity, it is huge.
- [35:49]
Dr. Josh Axe
Huge.
- [35:49]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, absolutely. So that can be one thing. Medications also just exposure to microplastics in general. Right. That is really critical. So if you're drinking out of plastic bottles, if you're using plastic cutting boards, even plastic blenders, like we, we switched out, you know, a few years ago, my family, we were using the Vitamix. Right.
- [36:09]
Dr. Josh Axe
Now you have the stainless steel.
- [36:10]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, the stainless steel.
- [36:11]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, so Vitamix just came out with a few years ago and we switched over to the stainless steel.
- [36:14]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Stainless steel.
- [36:15]
Dr. Josh Axe
So anyway, yeah, you got to look
- [36:16]
Dr. Dave Jockers
for ways that you can, you can't, you can't get rid of plastic, but you can reduce your exposure and that's important. And then getting moving and then building muscle. You know, we talked about the importance of muscle, muscle as the organ of longevity. Well, actually doing strength training is really critical for testosterone production. So that's for men and women, really. Men and women should both be doing strength training on a regular basis, at least I would say three days a week, and doing full body exercises. Some of the best exercises for testosterone are squats, deadlifts, lunges, things where you're using a large amount of your muscle mass. Compound exercises that's going to naturally increase testosterone. And then high protein diet like we already talked about. And so things like grass fed beef, wild caught salmon, that's going to help. Getting enough protein is going to help your body produce the testosterone that you need. So that's really important. And then when it comes to nutrients, zinc is really important. We already talked about zinc for, for steroid hormone production. Vitamin D is really critical. If you're low in vitamin D, you're not going to be able to produce enough of these key hormones, these sex hormones. And then I would also say, like there's some different herbs. Like for example, tongkat ali.
- [37:27]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [37:28]
Dr. Dave Jockers
That is probably the most powerful herb that I found for increasing testosterone production. Right. As a man in my mid-40s. Okay. You know, I do all these things, right. But I also take tongkat ali from time to time because I notice, I cycle it and I notice that I just feel like I've got better drive, better strength and energy in the gym. I take cordyceps as well. I'll kind of cycle those. And that's one of the keys with some of these herbs is if you go two weeks on, one week off, you tend to notice better benefits than if you just stay on it prolonged.
- [38:02]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, this is great advice. And I think you hit on the three biggies. There's. Listen, if you did these three things and one, you didn't hit on, but it was going to be the fourth thing you'd probably say. If you do these three things, your testosterone is going to go way up. Number one, eat this diet that Dr. Dave's talking about, okay? You want to eat very high protein, moderate fat, low moderate carb. It's a lot of grass fed red meat. It's extra virgin olive oil, it's nuts like Brazil nuts and walnuts and pumpkin seeds. It's that sort of diet, high in vegetables and organic meat, very high protein. Number two, it's weight training. You gotta lift weights. And number three, I would say sleep. Okay? If you are not sleeping, your testosterone is just gonna totally tank. And so you wanna make sure you're getting those eight hours of quality sleep a night. And if you can do that, that's gonna make a big difference. And stress does play a key role. Listen, man, we're meant to go hard, but you also need to rest. You need to work hard and play hard and rest well, okay? Getting in those right daily rhythms is really important. And Dr. Dave, everything you hit on is pretty much what I was going to share. Tongkat Ali is amazing. There are others out there I think that are good to cycle in. He mentioned cordyceps. I mean, Panax ginseng would be another one. I think that has some benefits. There's things like deer antler, there's tribulus. So there are a lot of good ones. If I had to add in one more though, I would probably add in just to go with your weight training. Creatine. I think just 5 grams of creatine with your workouts has loads of benefits. But Dave, I really think you nailed it there. And of course, again, staying away from the microplastics. But if a man can do that, they're going to see massive benefits in their testosterone. I'll mention this. I've noticed I saw a bump in my testosterone markers by doing a red light bed and just getting more sunshine. That was the other thing I've noticed. And that probably has to do with the vitamin D that you talked about. And when I looked at the clinical studies, the two things that shined always were, to your point, vitamin D and zinc. Those are the two nutrients you gotta pay really close attention to if you want to keep those testosterone levels up. All right?
- [40:00]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. And actually getting red and infrared light, like in your genital region for a man will actually also help boost testosterone.
- [40:07]
Dr. Josh Axe
You know, I saw this. I don't know if you saw this. Did you see the Saturday Night Live skit where they did the Maha hospital. I mean, I sent it to Jordan Rubin, I sent it to Will Cole, I sent it to a lot of people. And the part where I laughed the hardest was, you know, they, there was this part where there was a person on life support and then he said he's a vegan and they just pulled the plug. Anyways, I just, I literally, there were parts there I just laughed out loud because there were a lot, there were, there were some truths in some of that in terms of like, yeah, that actually worked. And then there were some things like that were so ridiculous and out there you're like, but it was, it was funny and it was well done.
- [40:43]
Dr. Dave Jockers
So that's so funny. One thing I wanted to add is I always talk about the two biggest deficiencies linked to autoimmune disease and cancer.
- [40:50]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [40:50]
Dr. Dave Jockers
They're not actually nutrients, they're sunlight and darkness. So getting good quality sunlight. Right. Or if you can't, getting in infrared, red. Right. Getting in a bed or a box that has that. And then darkness at night. We need to be in darkness. And most of us have artificial lighting on in the house. We're on devices at night. When it's dark. We need to be putting on, we need to dim all the lights in our house.
- [41:13]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's right.
- [41:14]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Put on blue light blocking glasses. If you're going to be on a device, right. You can listen to an audiobook or you know, read or have a casual conversation with your spouse. All that's great. You don't have to go to bed immediately, but you need to be, you need a certain amount of darkness on a regular basis and that's going to release melatonin, which is your sleep hormone. And that's going to increase your growth hormone. Right. Which is your quintessential anti aging hormone. And growth hormone is going to help you elevate your sex hormones like testosterone.
- [41:42]
Dr. Josh Axe
I mean, to your point, probably the single greatest factor influencing your hormones is light and dark. I mean, because really cortisol and melatonin, those are your master hormones. I mean, those are the ones where, I mean, if cortisol is up or down, everything else is the domino effect. To your point. So I'm so glad you mentioned that. That's, that's so key. I want to hit on now perimenopause and menopause. Okay. And that we have several others I want to get into. What do you think is the general root cause if a woman is having, dealing with a lot of the hot flashes and dryness and, and and slower metabolism. Some of those issues as they go through perimenopause and menopause. And what are your top recommendations for. For those women?
- [42:25]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, typically a big thing here. So all women start to naturally reduce their production of sex hormones. Progesterone, estrogen. There's not really anything we can do about that, but we can kind of have that drop be gentle rather than extreme. And the key there is keeping stress under control and really prioritizing sleep. So just like we talked about sunlight during the day. Right. In the morning, midday, and in the evening, ideally. So you're getting all the different wavelengths of light and then also really prioritizing good sleep, Getting good darkness at night is super critical. And keeping stress under control. Because if a woman is under stress on a regular basis, if she's constantly telling her nervous system that we're in a danger zone. Right. Like, things are really stressful. The body's always going to prioritize stress over sex. Right. Meaning stress hormones over. Or stress hormones would be associated with survival. Right. Over reproduction, over fertility.
- [43:24]
Dr. Josh Axe
Wow.
- [43:24]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And so therefore, we're going to have a big reduction in estrogen and progesterone. And oftentimes women get an even larger drop in progesterone than estrogen, even though both are dropping, which can be related to a lot of these, you know, hot flashes, trouble sleeping at night, weight gain, low libido, all of those types of things. So keeping stress under control is super important. So things you can do for that Gratitude prayer, Right.
- [43:49]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [43:49]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Reading scripture.
- [43:50]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [43:51]
Dr. Dave Jockers
You know, for my wife, talking is really important. And I find that for most women. Right. For me, I'm the opposite. For me, it's like I kind of need to just move. Right. Getting out and walking.
- [44:02]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [44:02]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Is like. Is lifting weights is like the greatest thing.
- [44:06]
Dr. Josh Axe
Release.
- [44:07]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. But for a lot of women, for
- [44:09]
Dr. Josh Axe
extroverted, it makes sense because men are more physical and women can be more verbal in that way in terms of that form of detoxification and release.
- [44:16]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Absolutely. So my wife will be stressed, and if she can talk to me for five minutes, it's like an ana. It's like she just feels so much better. Like, oxytocin is released, and oxytocin helps buffer the negative effects of cortisol and norepinephrine adrenaline. So oxytocin will help balance that. So if she feels connected. Right. If I give her a hug. Right. Or she's able to talk with me, then. And I'm able to actually listen well. Right. Which doesn't always happen as you know. Right. But if I listen well, then she feels connected now her stress hormone goes down and she feels better. And most women will say this, like, if, if so for men out there, if your wife, like if, if you guys are having trouble in the bedroom, you're probably not connecting well with her emotionally.
- [45:03]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [45:04]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Therefore her stress hormone is higher and her sex hormones are down.
- [45:08]
Dr. Josh Axe
You know, I see this with so many women when they get really stuck. It's like they've changed their diet, they started, you know, exercising, they're doing all that stuff. Right. And they're still, Maybe they get 25% better, but they start to hit a ceiling. It's always, it's always something emotionally that's really keeping them stuck. It's the relationship with their spouse. It's something that's happened 20 years ago that they haven't been able to move on from. It's a relationship with their kids have moved on. I mean, there's something there that is sort of keeping them stuck. And oftentimes it's lack of nourishment. Sometimes it's, they've their whole life been a people pleaser and they've just sort of given everything and they have nothing left. So they're, you know, going and addressing that past trauma, going and addressing and trying to build quality relationships. And some of it's out of your control, but doing everything in your control. To your point, that's really important. You know, in, in, in we've talked about some of these ancient forms of medicine. You know, the way that TCM sees it as well is they would call it a yin deficiency. Right. So Yang is more of the anabolic, the testosterone, the, the growth of growth hormone. Whereas the yin is really more the progesterone and estrogen. And that's really tied to nourishment being well nourished yourself. It's getting proper sleep, it's good self care, it's gratitude, it's prayer, it's going deep in meditation, it's doing things that are really stillness and peace and sort of building and growth. Self nourishment is really important there. And what's interesting is there are some foods, even though they're gentle in doing this, there are some foods that promote, that have some estrogenic effects. There are some that have some progesterone boosting effects. You know, soy and flax are two examples of this, right. To where you don't, if you're already estrogen dominant and you're in your 20s, you don't really want to Do a lot of that. But if you are going through menopause, and this is what they do in Japan, I mean, they consume a lot of organic soybeans and natto in their diet, especially women going through perimenopause and menopause because it can support estrogen. So there is a time and a place. I remember years ago, it was like, all organic soy is bad or all soy is bad. No, food is medicine for different people. And this is where personalized medicine comes into play. But doing some flax, doing some organic soy, doing some things that bring moisture and coolness. What estrogen and progesterone do for a lot of women is think about what happens when you have a hot flash or you're getting dryness. Your body no longer can cool and moisten itself. And that's what estrogen and progesterone partly do. So doing yogurt, doing egg yolks, doing avocado, those sort of foods are yin boosting. In Chinese medicine, a lot of steamed vegetables, those can help offset some of those symptoms as well. And you could look, Google, do a search for this. What are yin, yin producing foods? Yam, right. That has some progesterone supporting properties. So doing some of those I think would have great benefits. And then herb wise, black cohosh, probably the number one herb for supporting some of those hormones. Red clover, shatavari. There's quite a few there that are good as well. I want to dive into and I want to kind of do these together because they can be seen like this. Really, it's insulin resistance. But I want to talk about type 2 diabetes and PCOS together, and I'd like for you to share the root cause and even the relationship between those two conditions.
- [48:24]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, for sure. Well, type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance. And actually we started this interview out, we were talking about insulin resistance as a factor for heart disease, right. High cholesterol. And so somebody with type 2 diabetes, it's gotten to the point where they're insulin resistant. So insulin, what its job is, is to take glucose out of the bloodstream to prevent the ages from building up, right. And put it into the cell where it can be used for energy. And that's normal and natural, right. We, if, you know, if you and I were to go and, you know, eat a bowl of fruit, our body would start doing that. Okay. And so it's just normal, natural process. However, when our body just when we're constantly bombarding our system with glucose, right. Insulin just continues to have to push it into the cell. Eventually the cell starts sending signals saying, hey, I've got too much glucose in here. There's too much oxidative stress taking place to the mitochondria. I'm going to downregulate these insulin receptors. So now we can't get the glucose into the cell. Right. And this ultimately results in insulin resistance. When I look at blood work, when I'm looking at fasting insulin levels, which you should always ask for, anytime you're getting blood work, you should look at fasting insulin. Yeah, I always want that under six. Okay. And a lot of people, their blood sugar and their hemoglobin A1C will look great, but then their insulin is 14. Right. And that's a sign of insulin resistance. That means insulin's elevated in the bloodstream. And when insulin's elevated, it doesn't allow us to burn fat. So it actually blocks what we call lipolysis, which is the breakdown of fatty acids for fuel. And then we're stuck in sugar burning metabolism. And the issue with sugar burning metabolism, for short periods of time, it's great. But when we're in it for a long period of time, it's a dirty energy source, meaning that it's gonna create a lot of oxidative stress. And we really don't get that much cellular energy. We get it quickly without oxygen. So, like when we're exercising, we wanna burn sugar. However, when we're just sitting here having a conversation or sleeping at night, we wanna primarily be burning fat. Fat produces so much more cellular energy than glucose does, with significantly less oxidative stress, significantly less free radicals. And so it's easier on the mitochondria. So when we're burning sugar, we're damaging those mitochondria. And then high insulin puts us in a place where we don't undergo natural autophagy, where our body actually breaks down old, damaged cellular debris and in particular the mitochondria, and replaces them. So we end up with all these senescent, old, damaged mitochondria. So when some, by the time somebody has type 2 diabetes, it tells me they're, they're extremely metabolically damaged. Their mitochondria that are in the cells are very sick. They're senescent, they're old, they're damaged, dysfunctional. And so pcos, where that comes in, PCOS is also insulin resistance. So for these people, their fat, their, if we were to look at their fasting insulin levels, it's really high. So it's got them stuck in this sugar burning mode and they're not burning fat effectively for fuel.
- [51:27]
Dr. Josh Axe
Now, I want you to. If you would just explain this, too. What happens with pcos? It's kind of like diabetes plus androgens. So talk to us. How do women start producing this extra testosterone? Why does that happen in women with pcos? Because it's kind of the two things we have to fix with that.
- [51:42]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah, for sure. So basically, normally for women. So for some women, they get high estrogen when they have insulin resistance, but then for other women, there's certain enzymes that are blocked. I can't remember off top of my head. But because of that, they end up with elevated testosterone when they have insulin resistance, and then that ends up creating cyst formation in their ovaries. Right. Where they end up getting kind of this scar tissue in their ovaries that we call, you know, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which can be extremely painful, can cause infertility. Right. A lot of different issues. A lot of these women have a lot of acne as well. In fact, a lot of skin issues, whether it's acne or skin tags, that's very much associated with insulin. High insulin resistance. Insulin tells cells in our body to grow, grow and divide.
- [52:29]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's right.
- [52:29]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Which is important. Especially, you know, if we're trying to build muscle, we need a certain level of growth and division, particularly when we're young or if, like a pregnant woman needs to be, you know, there's going to be a lot of growth and cell division that needs to take place as we get into adulthood. We should have less growth and division and more cellular healing and repair.
- [52:48]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [52:48]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And so if our. If we're insulin resistant, we have high blood insulin, we're constantly sending the signal of growth, and we become deficient in cellular healing and repair. And so over time, we end up with all this scar tissue, whether it's skin tags. Right. Whether it's just damaged, aged skin.
- [53:07]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [53:07]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Okay. So skin aging, wrinkles, things like that, all can be associated with high insulin. Right. So it's going to. It's going to accelerate the aging process of your skin. You're going to get more scar tissue in your blood vessels. So we talk about atherosclerosis. You're going to get more scar tissue in your ovaries, you know, for certain women that are more genetically predisposed to that. So that's where we have our PCOs all across the board in our brain. Right. We know that Alzheimer's, they call type 3 diabetes because it's insulin resistance in the brain.
- [53:36]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [53:36]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And so now the Brain, the actual neurons are not able to get fuel that they need, and so therefore they start to die. And then when the neurons die, they actually release their contents. We call it neuroexcytotoxicity. It's almost like a domino effect. When one neuron dies, it spills out calcium, which over excites the neuron next to it. And now that neuron dies and spills out its calcium, its glutamate, and now we just get this cascade effect of neurons dying in our brain. And then, you know, over time, we end up with dementia, Alzheimer's disease. Right. Parkinson's. There's a metabolic component to that.
- [54:15]
Dr. Josh Axe
And the root of all of this is insulin resistance. Walk me through, what are your top three remedies and things you like to do for people to start to fix insulin?
- [54:23]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. So we talked about, obviously the diet, right? High in protein, healthy fats, colorful fruits and vegetables. That's the key right there. Making sure we're getting good movement. So walking, strength training, all super critical. Sun and sleep, like we talked about, really critical. And then when it comes to like herbal formulas, different things like that. Chromium is really important. Usually if you find a good quality multivitamin, you can usually get enough chromium in that. Chromium is called glucose tolerance factor because it actually activates the insulin receptor. And so if you're chromium deficient, even if you're on a good diet, you're still going to have elevated insulin. Right. We need to activate that insulin receptor. So getting good quality chromium and really only need about, you know, roughly about 500 micrograms or so a day eating healthy foods, grass fed beef, wild caught salmon, pasture raised eggs. A good way to get it.
- [55:11]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [55:12]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Okay. In some cases, especially if you've had kind of a persistent insulin resistance, just taking a good quality multivitamin with 250 to 500 micrograms of chromium can be really key. Berberine, right. Berberine is a natural herb, right? Well, it's a, it's a compound within herbs like goldenseal, bayberry, things like that. And that actually helps to regulate the gut microbiome. And the gut microbiome actually plays a really critical role with blood sugar stability as well. And so by regulating the microbiome, berberine has been shown to improve lipids. Right. Increasing hdl, lowering triglycerides, lowering LDL cholesterol, reducing fatty liver disease, blood sugar stability. Right. So you'll find a lot of blood sugar formulas that have things like berberine, chromium in them. Cinnamon. You mentioned that earlier.
- [55:59]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, so.
- [56:00]
Dr. Dave Jockers
So that's great for insulin sensitivity. That's another really good one. Apple cider vinegar. Taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and let's say 4 to 8 ounces of water, you don't want to take it straight. You want to dilute it. Taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in 4 to 8 ounces of water before a meal can reduce the glycemic impact of that meal by 30 to 40%. That means if that meal were to elevate your blood glucose levels, right, let's say from like 100 to 200. Okay. Instead it's going to only. Only elevate it to, you know, roughly like 160. Okay. So that alone is a huge change. And that's because there's something called acetic acid that's in the vinegar. Not only is the acid great for just, in a sense, keeping things in the stomach so they don't release quickly, like if you're. If you're going to have high glycemic carbs, but also that acetic acid actually helps feed the mitochondria. It's a postbiotic that actually feeds the mitochondria in your gut and creates stronger, more stress, resilient mitochondria in your intestinal lining.
- [57:05]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's so powerful. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think when we're thinking about the biggest needle movers, one of the things I've had patients do for years is I will have them get like a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice and do it once to twice daily. And that alone just. Again, that's pretty inexpensive. Get some good quality cinnamon, Add that to food. If I do a protein shake, I'll do some protein powder in there that comes from bone broth, some plant protein, maybe some coconut milk, and maybe some sort of fiber from berries or something. And then I'll do a big teaspoon of that pumpkin pie spice or Ceylon cinnamon. So to your point, that is such a great thing to add in. And listen, there's a lot of herbs and supplements that are helpful. Alpha lipoic acid, mulberry leaf, fenugreek, gymnema. There's a lot there. But I think the biggest ones are chromium and berberine. Probably the biggest needle movers clinically. And I'm so glad you said that.
- [57:54]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And then one more thing. Intermittent fasting. I should have talked about this first. I wrote a whole book about fasting. But intermittent fasting is one of the most powerful ways to bring down your blood sugar and your insulin levels. Every time we eat, even if we eat a high protein meal, we're going to have an insulin release, right. And again, if the, the meal is done properly, that's not a big deal. But we want periods of time where we're allowing our insulin levels to really drop. And that's going to be longer periods of time between meals. So if you follow the nutrition recommendations I talked about, where you're doing high protein, healthy fats, colorful fruits and vegetables, you're avoiding ultra processed foods that are really high glycemic, highly insulinic, then it becomes easier to go longer periods of time without meals. Right?
- [58:37]
Dr. Josh Axe
So good.
- [58:37]
Dr. Dave Jockers
And you got to hydrate well between meals. You'll not, you'll have natural satiation. So for a lot of people with insulin resistance, I'll drop them from three meals a day down to two meals. They get to choose if they want to do them in the morning and midday, right? Morning and night, or let's say midday and night. A lot of people will choose based on their schedule. They find it easier to fast in the morning and they'll eat from let's say 12 to 6, right. And have two big meals with high protein, healthy fats, things like that. If you're not able to consume a large amount of food in a meal, and there are a lot of women, for example, that have had their gallbladders taken out, in that case, we'll do three meals, but in an eight hour eating window, let's say from 10:00am to 6:00pm or it could be from 7:00am to 3:00pm okay. And high protein in those meals, right? Healthy far, you know, healthy fiber, healthy carbs in there, good healthy fats. And that's going to provide satiation where they're satiated. And then in the evening they can drink herbal tea. Right. But we want to give a good 16 hour fast overnight to really bring that insulin level down.
- [59:43]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's so good. All right, what I want to do now is we're going to wrap up here, but I want to do rapid fire now. My rapid fire here is you have 60 seconds to give me your top three things for these conditions. And here's the other thing I'll say, you can't just say diet. Now if there's one particular food or thing, you can include that. Okay, so we're gonna do this. So, okay, first one here, Sibo.
- [60:07]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Sibo. So first thing I think about is fasting. Fasting is really key. Cause it's Too much bacteria in the small intestine. So that will actually give us some time. Ileocecal valve massage. So it's a massage starting roughly around your belly button, just below your belly button, and. And you're going up. You're going down across your appendix and then up. Okay. And so you're helping open up that ileocecal valve, which is what separates a muscle. Muscular valve that separates the small intestine from the large intestine. A lot of people have that closed. So we're trying to open that ileocecal valve, and that can be really key there. And then I think oil of oregano. Right. To help naturally kill off some of that bacteria that's in there. If there was one more thing, I would really focus on vagal nerve stimulation or things to help increase. Increase stomach acid production. That's so good. Yep.
- [61:00]
Dr. Josh Axe
Adhd.
- [61:02]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Adhd. I think, number one, I think movement. Getting a lot of good quality movement. Okay. Is super critical for brain health. I also think about magnesium, which can naturally help calm the brain. See, with the brain, we have glutamate, which is like the gas pedal in the brain. It's a neurotransmitter that we step on for the gas, and then GABA is our inhibitory neurotransmitter. So it's gas and brake. When we're driving, we need good gas, we need good break. With adhd, we're just. We're. We're stepping on the gas pedal. We don't have a whole lot of brake. And so magnesium helps elevate gaba. Right. For natural calmness in the brain. And then B vitamins are key for that as well. B6, folate, B12. Across the board. We see a lot of deficiencies with these ki B vitamins with kids that have ADHD and adults that have adhd.
- [61:52]
Dr. Josh Axe
Totally agree. Long Covid.
- [61:54]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Long Covid. Number one, I think zinc. Right. Making sure we're getting that zinc. Antiviral hormone benefits there. Mitochondrial support. So whether it's coenzyme Q10, PQQ, NAD, different things like that to help support mitochondrial function and vitamin D. That's so good.
- [62:13]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, I want to add a couple other things on there. I think we breaking up the blood and moving the blood, turmeric, ginger, galango, nattokinase in addition to that would be an amazing therapy. Mold exposure.
- [62:25]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. So mold exposure, number one, getting out. Out of the mold.
- [62:29]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yes.
- [62:29]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Right. I find that to be obviously super important. Glutathione. Increase in glutathione levels. Right. So you could take nac. Yeah, Right. You could do an acetylated glutathione, liposomal glutathione. You could do glutathione iv. Right. Different things like that. Also red infrared is really powerful. So getting light exposure, sun exposure, and then binders. So some good ones would be like fulvic humic acids, charcoal, zeolite, all of those things can be helpful for helping bind and pull mycotoxins out of the system.
- [63:04]
Dr. Josh Axe
So good. Depression and anxiety.
- [63:06]
Dr. Dave Jockers
Yeah. So depression and anxiety. A couple things I think about, and one is walking. Actually, there was a study that came out two days ago. It's March 19th, as we're talking here. This is March 17th. There's a French study. And what they looked at was something called Nordic walking, which is this sort of. It's almost like cross country skiing. You've got poles. And what they did was they had 19,000 people in this study. And they. They had one group that, you know, didn't do any. Any major movement. They just got a newsletter about things they could do to help improve depression. The other group, they had this. They had them do this Nordic walking two days a week for one hour each time. Okay. And by five weeks, people with even severe depression saw dramatic improvements.
- [63:50]
Dr. Josh Axe
Wow.
- [63:51]
Dr. Dave Jockers
After five weeks of Nordic walks. So you think about that. That was only two days a week. Right. So if you were to go out and get like a 20 minute walk every day and get in the sun, now you're stacking some of these, you know, biohacks, you can see significant improvements. That's because we know that depression is related to brain inflammation and low circulation, low oxygenation into the brain. And so we wanna make sure we're getting out. Getting that movement is gonna be really critical for getting more circulation into the brain. So that's key. I also like vitamin D in general, sunlight in general, and then really good sleep. Getting out of the blue light at night. Right. And prioritizing good sleep. That's when your brain drains, like a lymphatic system of your brain is activated and now you're able to dump toxins out of the brain and the brain's actually able to heal and repair.
- [64:35]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's so good. Well, Dr. Dave, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I mean, we've been close friends for years, I mean, going back more than 20 years. And I want to encourage you to follow Dr. Dave on social media. He's got a great podcast. Dr. Dave is an expert in functional medicine and natural remedies and Again, he's one of those people that I go to and follow and listen to advice. He's got great, great content. Want to encourage you to follow him. This is Dr. Dave Jockers, one of the world's leaders in functional medicine. I want to say hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. You know, every week we're diving deep into how to heal, using natural remedies to promote longevity and resilience for you and your family. The number one thing you do to support the show, asking you for a favor here, is subscribe. It allows me to continue to bring on amazing, high profile guests here like Dr. Dave Jockers. Also, there are so many people out there. I think about my family growing up. We just kept living in the medical model, taking drugs because we didn't know there was a natural way. My mom ended up with cancer. We ended up having some major health crises in our family because we didn't know there was something natural. So by simply sharing this podcast and episode, we can save and transform lives together. So just know we are so grateful for you subscribers that we're locking arms together, changing the world together. I'm so grateful for all of you sharing this content as well and so grateful for Dr. Dave Jockers coming on as well. Hey, and do me a favor, let us know, jump on Instagram, on my channel, let me know what you loved here about the episode. If you're watching on YouTube. Hey, let us know. Maybe that thing that you really love that Dr. Dave shared today. And hey, if we missed a remedy, let us know what you'd recommend. We know a lot of you guys have some amazing wisdom. We would love to hear from you in that way as well. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you on the next episode.
- [66:25]
Dr. Dave Jockers
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