Dr. Josh Axe (0:00)

Hey, everyone. Today is our 250th episode and we're in a brand new set, as you can see. And we've got so many great things coming out here in the near future. So I want to say thank you to all of you that have subscribed to the podcast and made it such a huge success. You know, we've had so many incredible guests on the show. Everyone from Carrie Underwood, Dave Ramsey. We've had some of the best doctors in the country. People like Vani Hari, Dr. Will call, Jordan Rubin, Chris Motley, David, Dave Asprey, Gary Breca, and so many more. And again, just want to say thank you for all of you that have subscribed. If you're not subscribed, you are missing out big time. Make sure to subscribe here to the show for this 250th episode. And on today's episode, it's a special episode. I wanted to go through one of the biggest asked questions I had. And that's people asking me, why am I not experiencing a breakthrough? You might be one of those people out there where you have tried diets and exercise and a lot of different things and you still can't lose the weight. Or maybe it's hormone imbalance, have an issue like hypothyroidism. For some reason you can't get off your medications. Or maybe you're one of those people saying, I do want to get off all my medications and I still haven't been able to do it. Even though you're taking supplements, you're following a healthy diet, you're doing a lot of these things. So today is all about how to experience a breakthrough and experience a higher level of health and healing. And there are going to be a lot of surprises in this episode as we go through the top 10 things you need to do to experience a health breakthrough. Boost your energy, breakthrough your hormone plateaus, and so much more. And I just want to say welcome to the new Dr. Josh Axe Show. So the first thing almost everyone is doing wrong, that is keeping them from balancing their hormones, losing weight, healing their gut, boosting their immunity, and so much more is combining high amount of fats with high amount of carbohydrates during the same meal. Now you do or you can consume more carbohydrates in the morning. You can do high fat diets like ketogenic. But here's what the clinical literature is showing us. When you consistently eat meals that have both high fat and high carbohydrate, you gain weight, you overstimulate the reward centers of the brain. And this combo confuses your hunger hormones, making it easier to eat past feeling full. One of the biggest reasons this is a problem is when you're combining fats and carbs together in high amounts, you tend to spike insulin and over consume carbohydrates. And this leads to fat storage. Because your body typically has one of two things that's going to burn for fuel. Your body can burn carbs or it can burn fat. Now, when you're eating both at the same time, here's what happens. Your body says to itself, okay, well I tend to burn carbs first, so I'm going to burn those. But there's also a lot of fat here, so your body will store the fat. Okay, your body will store more body fat when you're consuming high carbs and high fats during meals. So there are three main reasons why eating a high fat and high carb meal together really wrecks your metabolism. Number one, it enhances reward signaling. So combining fats and carbs amplifies dopamine related pathways. It's like being on a slot machine or that doom scrolling on your phone, you get sucked in. And what this does hormonally is it makes it harder to regulate appetite and you feeling full. So you don't feel full. When you eat a lot of carbs and fat, you keep eating and eating and eating. This is how. Have you ever sat down and you ate an entire bag of potato chips or an entire pizza yourself? And maybe even later you thought, wow, I ate all that food, but I still feel hungry. Okay, well, because what happens hormonally with high carb and high fat together is that it throws off your hormone signaling in something called nutrient sensing. And it's like this dopamine reward center allows you to keep eating. The second thing is this. It reduces something called metabolic flexibility. Now, being metabolically flexible tends to be where your body can be burn sugar or burn fat, and it goes back and forth. So when people do a keto diet, or people tend to do more low carb or alternate between keto and non keto, like doing carb cycling as an example, their body can go in and out of burning fat or carbs either way. But if somebody is just a carb burner and they don't have carbs per meal, they feel exhausted, they might even have some get a headache. That tends to happen. So when you eat high fat and high carb, it reduces your metabolic flexibility. And when both these macronutrients are high Your body doesn't know what's to burn, and it really causes a major, major issue with insulin. So if you have insulin resistance, and you know that's you, it could be you're consuming too many carbs and fats together during meals. And here's the other thing that happens, just increased total caloric load. You're getting way more calories this way than if you tend to eat something like a high protein meal. So again, pizza or pasta with a cream sauce or french fries. These are examples of really common meals that are high fat, high carb, which damage or alter your metabolism and hormones in a way to where you keep eating. Now listen, this also happens, or can happen if you are eating very healthy. Here's an example of one I've seen a lot of people do oatmeal with almond butter, okay? You think you're doing great, you're eating oatmeal, and you have two or three big heapings of peanut butter or almond butter. Well, that many fats and that many carbs will tend you to gain weight. Okay? Now listen, if you've got a really strong metabolism and no insulin resistance, you might be able to do that meal. Or if you're a triathlete or crossfitter and very active, you might be able to do that sometimes, but you can't be doing that all the time because that will absolutely throw off your metabolism in that way. And so what you want to do instead, which is point number two here, is you want to stop under eating protein. And during your meals, you want to be high protein and then either choose mostly carbs or mostly fat along with pairing it with protein. And so typically what you want to do in the morning is you want to do high protein, moderate carbohydrate, and if you're very active, you could even do high carb for that meal right before, after a workout. But you're going to do high protein, moderate carb in the morning, for lunch, high protein. And maybe you do moderate carb or low fat and low carb. So you get a little bit of fat and carbs in there too, but they're lower, they're not high amounts. And then for dinner, what you tend to want to do is more protein and fat. And when you do that, it's going to really support your metabolism, support your hormones. And it's based on the Chinese method model of eating, which is when your organ systems are the strongest. So did you know that your stomach and your digestive system tend to be stronger, according to Chinese medicine, with greater nutrient absorption in the mornings. However, at night, your liver and gallbladder are more active and better able to digest and break down fat. So that can be better in the evenings. But one thing across the board is you want more protein. You want to take your body weight and consume at least half. But for many of you, almost one gram of protein per gram of body fat. So for instance, or per gram of body weight. So if I weigh, let's say £170, I want to try and get probably about 140 to 150 grams of protein a day. So for myself, if I'm really fit and active and working out several times a day, I will get actually 40 grams of protein four times daily. Now that's if I want to build muscle and get really fit. And so what I'll do is I'll do my superfood smoothie in the morning, I'll work out, then I'll do a shake with 40 grams of protein, Then I'll do lunch and then I'll do dinner and I'll get 40 grams of protein during those meals. What you at least want to get for most of you is 30 to 40 grams of protein three times a day. Okay? So if you're missing out on that high protein meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner, you are not doing your body justice. Listen, there is a study done, this is an analysis, a meta analysis done on 74 different studies. And they found that increasing your daily protein intake, especially if you're working out, leads to very meaningful gains in lean body mass, in strength throughout your entire body and looking fitter and leaner, okay? Better metabolism, better weight loss. So again, think about this isn't one study, 74 studies found that you want to increase your protein intake, especially if you're looking to get fit. And if you're working out along with it. And what protein does is it triggers your body, telling you that you're both full and to burn fat, okay? So it helps you stay full and burn more calories simultaneously. And most people. Here's the other thing I do want to share though. Not only do you want to get protein, you want to get balanced protein and peptides and amino acids. So for most of us, when we consume protein, we're only consuming muscle meat. And there's an ancient principle in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and Greek medicine says this, like, supports, like. So if you want to build muscle and support your muscular tissue and look more muscular, eat more muscle meat. Well, that's what almost all anyone gets because if you're consuming a chicken breast, that's the muscle of a chicken. It's the breast muscle, like your pectoral muscle, that's that of the chicken. If you're eating a chicken thigh, well, that's your legs. It's like the muscle of your quad or hamstring. Very similar. What is a beef filet or a fish fillet? Again, that's the muscle of a, of a cow or fish. So if you want to build muscle, you want to do that. But what about many of you who also want to heal your organs? Let's say you want to heal your thyroid or your liver or your pancreas or your reproductive organs, or your skin, hair and nails, or gut lining, or arterial walls, which are all made of collagen, well, then you need to consume those sources of protein and peptides. And so when you're consuming bone broth, for instance, or chicken skin or fish skin, you're getting loads of collagen. So that's going to support skin, hair and nails and the protein and peptide synthesis of those tissues. However, you also want to support your organs. This is why you should consume organ meats like liver, or at the very least, take an organ supplement in a tablet or capsule form. Because there are certain peptides that are only found in organs. So when you eat those organs, it helps your body heal. The reality is this, all of our ancient ancestors drank bone broth and ate organ meats, okay? They did not discard any part of the animal. And if you would have gone into an ancient apothecary, which means an ancient pharmacy, they wouldn't have had NSAIDs and synthetic drugs or any of those things in there. You went in there, they had herbs, spices, mushrooms, and organs and glandulars. That's what you actually took as a form of medicine, or you would make up or use some of those as part of your meals. So all that being said, make sure you're getting that high protein intake, but in addition, make sure you're also getting the peptides that are found in organs and found in things like bone broth. Even if you're just taking it as a capsule or tablet, what it tends to be labeled as is known as a nose to tail diet. So you're eating every part, the broth, the skin, the organs and tissues of the animal for ultra health. And, you know, I believe you probably have heard this before, you want a balance of omega 3 to omega 6 fats in your diet. So you want a balance of certain types of fatty acids in a very Similar way, I believe you want a balance of peptides and amino acid sources like a collagen base or a muscle building base, proteins in your body for ultimate longevity and health. Now if you're watching on YouTube, you can see here on this graphic what this might look like. As we've been talking about the diet so far, you want to consume primarily right there in the middle, right there in the center, high quality protein via wild caught fish, grass fed red meat like beef and venison and lamb, also things like chicken and turkey eggs, raw fermented organic dairy. These quality protein sources are smack dab right in the middle. And then on the bottom we're seeing leafy green vegetables, fiber rich vegetables, fermented foods, getting very, very high fiber foods as well, and some fermented foods. And then on the top it's gonna be you're choosing healthy carb or healthy fat, right? And ideally eating seasonally with that. So berries are in season, eat more berries. Sweet potatoes are in season, eat those sweet potatoes. Right? And so I think if you can think more about, okay, are you getting primarily organic wild meat, steamed and cooked vegetables in most cases, or you're choosing a super fruit or whole grain or sweet potato, or you're choosing something like avocado or extra virgin olive oil or coconut. And that's what you're building your meals around. That is the ultimate longevity plate for healing your body in terms of what you should be doing on a regular basis. But the reality is this, most people are under eating protein and they're also eating too many fats and carbs together in their meals. And if you can make those little switches, it is going to make a massive, massive difference in your metabolism. And so what that might look like for breakfast is doing a superfood smoothie, where you are doing maybe a sweet potato smoothie or a blueberry smoothie. And so you're doing a half a cup of blueberries or a half a sweet potato in a smoothie or applesauce, something like that. And then you're adding, and so maybe you're getting like 30, 30 grams of carbs there. And then you're gonna add in one big scoop of a vanilla plant based protein, maybe that's 30 grams. You're gonna add another 20 grams of a collagen or a bone broth type based protein. And then maybe you're gonna add in with that some other sort of superfood or fiber, whatever you wanna do like a super green powder. And that's what you're doing for Breakfast, okay. And that's great. And then maybe you're doing a liver capsule or tablet with it. But that is an ideal sort of meal there in the morning to support your metabolism there in that way. And then at night you're getting more of the healthy fats. Maybe you're doing some dark chocolate for dessert. Avocado, cacao pudding, something like that would be a good option. Now, number three thing that you need to do to experience a breakthrough in your health is support absorption of nutrients. The reality is this, you are not what you eat, you are what you absorb. For many of you, you may not be absorbing your nutrients properly. And I can tell you from working with tens of thousands of patients, most people aren't absorbing nutrients properly due to dysbiosis, where there is a big imbalance of good and bad bacteria in their gut. Microbiome could be gut inflammation, like leaky gut, could be low stomach acid. But so many people aren't absorbing nutrients well. And then a lot of people are taking vitamins and supplements that are isolated which decrease absorption. An example of this is if you're taking magnesium by itself or vitamin D by itself, you're not absorbing them very well versus if you're taking magnesium and adding vitamin D to it, you're going to increase the absorption. Very similar studies show that for vitamin D to be absorbed, you need magnesium. And same thing with zinc and copper. You're taking zinc by itself. No, it should have copper in there as well to optimize absorption and keep these nutrient levels from being imbalanced. This is why taking whole food based supplements or actually just eating foods in a supplement form tend to be better than taking isolated supplements. And so if you're a person saying, okay, I want to get copper and zinc or I want to get zinc, you probably are better off eating some pumpkin seed butter at night or taking a liver supplement where you're getting zinc and copper together, because you're going to at least get all the CO factors with it that allow your body to absorb it and better utilize it and within the body. That's why I love organ meats, is they are so loaded with nutrients, they support methylation and they are, they have all of. There's so many nutrients in there that you just, you can't get even in a multivitamin or by just eating your ordinary diet because most people are not getting organ meats. So getting those as tablets or capsules is absolutely. It's one of the biggest things that helps address these deficiencies that so many people have. According to a recent study, a very high percentage of the US population does not meet the daily requirements of essential nutrients, in part due to malabsorption because they're not absorbing the nutrients. Listen to these deficiencies. According to a recent study, 94% of people are vitamin D deficient. Think about that. Almost everyone is deficient in not only a vitamin A pro hormone. Why do so many women have hypothyroidism? Why do so many men have low testosterone? Why do so many people have immunodeficiencies and long Covid and all of these issues? Well, part of it is due to 94% of people are vitamin D deficient. So your body can't produce the right amount of hormones and your immune system is weak. Here's another big one. Vitamin E. 88.5% of people are vitamin E deficient. Now you're going to get vitamin E in eating healthy nuts and seeds, especially something like walnuts, okay? When was the last time you had some walnuts or a good source of fat like that? Not often. You can. And then here's the other one, 52% of people are magnesium deficient. So more than half the population, 44% of people are calcium deficient. Now here's something a lot of people do, they'll take calcium supplements. Did you know that there are studies showing that if you take synthetic calcium supplements that are isolated, you can increase your risk of heart disease because it gets lodged in the cholesterol that's in your arteries and then calcifies. Calcium calcifies, hardening your arteries, increasing your risk of a heart attack or stroke. This is why if you're taking calcium, you should never just take calcium by itself. You should take a supplement that has magnesium, vitamin D, calcium, boron, phosphorus, vitamin K2, all those things you need. Or even better yet, just eat raw cheese in steamed spinach, okay? And get more of those foods. Or eat more celery, which is going to help alkalize your body so you lose less of these alkaline minerals. And then 43% of people are vitamin A deficient. 40% nearly are vitamin C deficient. By the way, one thing you'll notice here, this is also why so many people have dental issues. You know what you need to build strong teeth? Collagen. Most people are deficient in that. Vitamin D, Magnesium, calcium, vitamin A. Fat soluble vitamins and minerals are what you need to build strong teeth and bones. And many these are the top things people are deficient in. When you look at this, you need vitamin C To build strong bones too. This is why so many people's bones and arterial walls are weak as you need that too. Vitamin E as an example. And so you want to really focus on these. Now here's the big thing I want to mention. Why is it that we're so deficient in these fat soluble vitamins? Well, one is, you know what a great source of those is? Wild organic animal meats, especially organ meats. Okay, organ meats. Where are you getting a lot of vitamin A? Liver. Right. So again, fat soluble vitamins. And for most people, we also have poor bile flow and gallbladder health and so we're not absorbing our fats. Well, now there are actually some things that can really help that when it comes to fats, you can take something called tudka, that's a taurine kind of bile. It was actually used in ancient Chinese medicine as actually bear bile. So they would actually take it from bears, the gallbladders, and they found that it supported fat absorption. There's another supplement called ox bile, but doing different forms of bile or lipase enzymes will help you better digest your fat. So that's one thing you might do. So again, you could take tudka or oxbi with your meals if you know you have a fat absorption issue, but also just eat more healthy fats, eat organs like liver, or take those as supplements, eat avocados, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, ghee, fatty fish, especially like wild caught salmon. These are going to be incredibly helpful. But for many of us, we're not absorbing our nutrients properly. And the single greatest supplement you can do to fix this is take a probiotic. Take a probiotic supplement. Most of you aren't getting enough probiotics. You can do a very high dose, like 1 trillion daily is ideal, or at least 100 billion daily to optimize absorption. Here's another one that we found in a lot of clinical studies. When you take your supplements, take them while drinking an herbal tea that has ginger and or black pepper. These warming herbs and spices like ginger and black pepper open up your capillaries so your arteries and allow nutrients to better get into your blood and then circulate in your body. This is where you've probably seen the studies around. If you take turmeric, you oftentimes want to take it with black pepper or a compound called piperine. It increased the curcumin bioavailability, the absorption by over 2000%. So we see this. So principle number three here of why you're not getting the results. You want is you're not absorbing your supplements very well and increasing your probiotic rich food intake. Increasing your probiotic supplements, taking things that support fat absorption like tudka, inox, bile or lipase or digestive enzymes are very, very good for helping out with those issues. Hey, have you ever felt like you're playing whack a mole with your symptoms? You fix one thing and another one pops up. Well, if that's you, you're not alone. You might try a new supplement, a new diet, a new prescription and you think, okay, I'm good now. But then something else is wrong or that original thing just never fully heals. And the reason why those things aren't working is you're treating only the things you can see and not what's actually underneath the surface. Because the real root of your first fatigue, your brain fog, your gut and your hormone issues, it's happening at a cellular level and normal blood work does not test for what's going on inside your cell. Your doctor might say, hey, you're doing everything right, great job. But you don't feel great because if your cells are damaged, inflamed or stuck in stress mode, no symptom relief is going to last. Stop chasing symptoms and start solving the source of all of your your problems. Go to BeyondBloodwork.com to finally see what's happening inside of yourselves and make all your efforts actually work starting today. This is something I've had thousands of patients do and experience a breakthrough by finally getting to the root of their issue by doing tests that actually work to help them find the root cause of their hormonal issues, their gut issues, their immune issues. If you finally want to get to the root of your issues at end the the cellular level, make sure to click the link or go to beyondbloodwork.com principle number four that most people are missing out on and why they're not healthy is chronic dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Just drinking water isn't enough. First off, your water needs to be clean. I did an episode on this a few months back on how toxic our water supply is. If you're over consuming fluoride and you're getting chlorine and all the chemicals and additives found in our water supply today, those can bind to receptor sites in your body so you don't absorb nutrients well and also that can affect your hydration. So one make sure you at least for your drinking water that you have a good, that you're drinking good quality water that's filtered out that's filtering out the fluoride and other chemicals. Next up, you want to make sure you're getting plenty of potassium, sodium and magnesium and keeping your body hydrated. Now, the number one way you should hydrate your body is by eating more vegetables and fruits. Watermelon, for instance, especially in the summer months, is incredible for supporting hydration. It's incredible for lowering blood pressure. It's incredible for reducing inflammation. But eating watermelon throughout the summer months and around your workouts is probably the single greatest thing you can do to hydrate your body. In addition, using a little bit of sea salt on your food and eating celery is amazing throughout the year. Cucumber. But just loading up more on food, fruits and vegetables in your diet, along with drinking more clear filtered water is very, very good for hydration. And I oftentimes get people asking me about, well, hey, what about taking these electrolyte drinks? The problem with a lot of these electrolyte drinks is it's far too much sodium and it's not really balanced with what it should be. Now listen, I think adding a little Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt to your meals, drinking mineral rich bone broth, those are great options. But also eating foods like avocados, bananas, I mentioned sweet potatoes, leafy green vegetables that are steamed coconut water, these are very potassium rich foods. You should be eating magnesium like pumpkin seed butter, almond butter, dark chocolate, or even taking a magnesium glycinate or whole food spirulina brown magnesium supplement's great as well. All of these are helpful. And then even things like yogurt actually that's grass fed. Organic is good as well. And you can use these electrolyte beverages. But look for one that is actually using natural ingredients like maybe coconut water in there or watermelon juice. Look for things that are more natural. I get asked about the most popular brand a lot and it has 1,000 milligrams of sodium. I actually don't think that's good for most people. I think that's too much for most people. So I think if you are going to find an electrolyte brand, look for one that has more like a one to one ratio of potassium to sodium or something closer to that ratio, not the super high levels of sodium. Now listen, if you're a triathlete and you are sweating buckets constantly, okay, you can do higher sodium ratios and do more of the electrolytes, okay? But if you're not literally sweating buckets and you're not a triathlete or crossfitter, that Works out three hours a day or a pro athlete, then you're getting too much sodium and you're better off just getting hydration versus drinking more clean water and get it being your food. Now here is number five of the single biggest mistakes people are making and why you're not experiencing a breakthrough. You're not getting enough nature and light exposure in your life. The single greatest thing you can do to sleep better is just spend more time outside. Just go on a walk three times a day for 30 minutes. Natural light helps regulate your circadian rhythms, which then supports hormone production, which then helps heal almost every condition people are struggling with today. We need to have more balanced hormones, especially good morning light. First thing in the morning, if at all possible, you should go for a 20 minute walk. First thing you wake up, you immediately go for a walk in the morning. Okay? Like this morning I was getting my girls ready for school and you know, we went outside and just played for 20 minutes. You know, as we were getting ready, even eating breakfast, we're just outside for 20 minutes. Now listen, you can't do that all year long or if it's raining out certain times you can't do it. But every chance you get, get outside. And here's the big thing, if you can't get outside all day, then try and do it first thing in the morning or do it around your meals where you go on a walk outside and then at night, block the blue light, okay? But most people are not getting near enough time outside. Think about our ancestors. Did you know around 50% of jobs were agricultural? So people were, you know, milking cows, tending the farm and people were outside constantly all day. Today we're not experiencing that. So people are sleeping less and not healing as well due to the lack of time spent outdoors. So more sunlight, you'll heal better. Here's another big one that I want to throw out there of why people are not healing well is fragmented sleep and not getting enough deeper REM sleep. This is point number six. According to a recent study, 35% of US adults report getting less than seven hours of sleep per night. Now some of this is due to maybe it's taking you a while to fall asleep, but most of it has to do with these tech devices. You're spending too much time on your phone or watching Netflix or TV or whatever it is at night. What you want to do is eat dinner, go for a walk. If you're going to watch a show, watch one for an hour or so. But at least an hour before you try and go to sleep, listen to an audiobook instead, or just no blue light, put on those blue blocker sunglasses. Block the light. But do your best to do that, because deep sleep, when you're consuming caffeine in the afternoon and exposing yourself to blue light and not spending time outdoors and doing all of these things that wreck your sleep, one of the biggest things that suffers is deep sleep. And this is when physical healing happens at the highest level, especially with your physical body. Now, REM sleep is also important. It's important for memory, emotional balance, and a number of other sort of cognitive benefits. But more than anything, deep sleep is what we're missing. And this blue light exposure, here's another one. Consuming too many carbohydrates at night. Imbalances of alcohol intake and caffeine at night also are detrimental to that. And this is why. And you want to try and get on a good sleep schedule. Going to bed the same time, waking up the same time every day. Your body likes that rhythm. All right, Principle number seven that people are underutilizing. We're not getting enough peptides. Now the number one way you should be getting peptides in your diet and life is via organ meats. More liver, more heart, more just other types of glandulars. Taking a multigranular supplement or eating the real thing, eating liver. You know, I do this at times, I gotta admit, I haven't done it as much lately, but I used to saute up liver, chicken liver mostly with garlic and onions and coconut oil and eat it with some ketchup. That's how I liked it. And so I would get it that way once a week. Now I've got a lot of liver and glandular supplements, so I'm doing those regularly to get the amount of peptides that I need in my diet. Now here's another way I get them. There's two brands I really like. One is called Lineage Provisions and the other is called Bursky. And they have grass fed meat sticks that also have liver and heart in them. Okay? And there's also another brand called Force of Nature that has meat that has liver and heart in them as well. And so I'll eat that meat on a regular basis where you really don't taste or notice hardly at all, any sort of the organs are glandular. So I actually eat them that way now. And it's a great way for me to get more of these peptides in my, in my body. For instance, liver, you're going to get more glutathione. Did you know, glutathione is a, it's a peptide. Did you know creatine? You take creatine for building muscle and for mental health and a number of benefits. Did you know that's a peptide? So there's a lot of peptides that people aren't aware that they are peptides. These are short chains of amino acids like tripeptides. But they have numerous benefits. But your number one source of those is glands and organ meats. Now, if you've got a major health issue and you need to heal, you might also consider the synthetic versions like BPC157, TB500, GHKCU, Epitalin, some of these other peptides that are greatly beneficial. When I had my spinal infection and my spine was just devastatingly damaged, I did round after round of BPC157, TB500 and GHKCU and then also some Tessamorelin. And it really helped my healing ability in a really powerful way. So if you're a person that needs to heal something like IBS or leaky gut or ulcers or some sort of damage to your body, an injury in recovery like shoulder or knee or low back or neck, then doing that combination of that BPC157 and TB500, especially those two together is so, so powerful. Another one is MOTS C or doing one called SS31. These are peptides that support mitochondrial function and cellular energy. They also improve insulin resistance and metabolic flexibility. Major, major benefits there. But especially if you have fatigue, MOT C and SS31 are great for longevity. Really powerful. There's also some that support growth hormone like ipamorelin and CJC 1295. And some of these might sound like weird sort of names, but these are just peptides that are found naturally, tend to be in organs that you can then do a subcutaneous injection of with like a small insulin like needle and do that for recovery. But it's really the future of medicine when you're looking at a lot of these different peptides for healing. I mentioned earlier the ipamorelin, Tessamorelin blend what that does for supporting growth hormone for healing. And then like Casseptin 10, this is one for, for women who might have low estrogen can support reproductive hormone regulation. There's one for autoimmune disease called Thymosin Alpha 1, which is incredibly powerful as well. Now you can also take a thymus gland supplement and get some of this, which is really powerful for those with autoimmune disease or who have weakened immune systems. Like chronic infections or like long Covid or you know, even Lyme disease. It's a really powerful option too. But most people today are underutilizing peptides and don't realize how powerful they could be at helping you heal. The number eight thing people aren't doing enough of to help heal their body and experience a breakthrough is mouth breathing instead of nasal breathing. Now mouth breathing, which is where, especially when you're sleeping at night, you sleep and breathe with your mouth open. Did you know that's been linked to insomnia, poor sleep, snoring, facial structure changes, and overall not being able to heal as well. It's also been linked to gingivitis, cavities, risk of gum disease, all kinds of problems actually, just it weakens your immune system too. Like kids who sleep with their mouth open tend to be the kids that get their tonsils really swollen. And so if you're a parent or you know somebody and the kid's tonsils are constantly swollen or they're thinking about even removing them because of it, which you never want to do, or at least 99.999% of the time you never would ever want to do. But getting those tonsils removed is a major part of the immune system. But if you have those kids that have that issue all the time, it's probably because they're mouth breathers. Now it can also be diet if they're over consuming dairy and they don't digest dairy well, or they have a lot of food sensitivities and allergies that can contribute. But also mouth breathing is a major factor. And if it's a child, they can go and do training where they work on this with a. Sometimes it's an occupational, it's a therapist, like a speech therapist will sometimes do this and they'll work on this. And oftentimes it's the same groups that might work with kids like on tongue ties if they have those types of problems. But for adults, you want to just duct tape your mouth at night. Now there's also specific types of tape, medical tape that people use. So don't necessarily do duct tape, but again, it's basically you're going to just tape your mouth shut and just do more gentle breathing and work on that on a consistent basis. Now listen, if you have a full on cold and you can't breathe out of your nose at all, well then don't do that. But generally speaking you do want to be able to do that. And, and the benefits are just tremendous. And there are myofunctional therapy exercises, which you can do as well, that help, like strengthening your tongue, that actually help this as well. But really focusing on being more of a mouth breather. And you can watch videos on this in YouTube and a number of things that really help with this. The number nine thing people aren't doing enough of to heal their body is they're not following enough of a personalized nutrition plan. So for most people, what happens is they read a book on the keto diet or they heard that their friend went carnivore and so they just do that, or they heard vegetables are good, so they just go vegan. You are a unique individual. Your diet should likely be very different than a number of other people. Now, people in the same family tend to actually sometimes thrive, maybe on a better diet, but not always. Okay, so what you really want to do is find the diet that's right for you. You can work with an acupuncturist, you can work with an advanced functional medicine doctor, cellular medicine doctor, where they're able to dial in things for you. In fact, this is something that I do with patients. I've always done it with patients, but I do it even more now. I have a virtual clinic in practice. It's called the Health Institute where patients come, they work with a practitioner, then they'll see myself on a weekly basis as part of our group trainings and everyone can ask me questions. But. But we do a very personalized diet. For instance, if somebody has inflammatory bowel disease, we really want to focus on healing and sealing that gut lining. So we'll do typically zinc, carnosine and butyrate and glutamine and more bone broth. And we'll really tailor the diet very specifically for them. Doing more soups. But then if we have somebody with cancer, I actually have them do a combination of Gerson and Budwig and some other protocols. And even the type of cancer is different. If I have somebody with brain cancer, I have them do actually full on ketogenics. But if somebody is breast, I don't have them do ketogenic. I have them do more of a diet that's focused on getting rid of the excess estrogen. So we even do things like milk thistle and certain foods that kind of help with keeping that estrogen, getting that estrogen where it needs to be, and supporting liver detoxification and boosting glutathione. But my point is this. You need a personalized diet if you're going to heal. Okay. And sometimes you can figure this out on your own. You know, you can search online and figure out what you have going on. But what I do is I do a tongue diagnosis. I sometimes, depending on the patient, will do certain forms of blood work and then do a health history and really dial in a very specific diet for that person. And that's how you get the best results. It's just how you get the best results. So finding a clinician or figuring out yourself and not just going with whatever the big trend is in terms of the diet or the food that's out there dialing in the ideal food for you. Let me give you an example. I saw this video recently of this Italian family, and they eat bean soup every meal. And it's like all the siblings, there's like three of them. They're all in their 90s. That's worked for them. They've been able to figure out over the years the exact right diet that's good for them. They do well with beans. Other people will do terrible with that sort of diet. So you really want to be able to dye in a personalized nutrition plan to heal. So that's number nine. Here's number ten. Most people over rely on conventional testing, like getting just a CBC test, like I'm testing my cholesterol, I'm testing my creatine and levels and my alt. Just all of the different. Just conventional blood work that people do today. Even just a hormone panel too. Right. So people will tend to do that. Many of these blood tests are not the best tests you can do out there to tell how healthy you are. It's the same thing. A lot of the testing today, people are still using CT scans with all the radiation. Why do that when you can just get an MRI and tell things just as well without getting the excess radiation? So there are doctors today still prescribing blood tests and testing that's 50 years old, rather than doing what's new. I mean, today when I'm doing blood work on people, I'll do a lot more organic acid test. We'll all be able to actually tell the vitamin and minerals they're deficient in. So what most doctors are doing is they're testing for maybe your symptom. We want to go more upstream to see where is this starting. Because when I run an organic acid or a micronutrient test, and if I see in your body you're deficient in vitamin B2, B6, B9, and B12, well, now I know you have a methylation problem. Okay, well, now we can go and Fix that by taking a methylated multi along with a glandular supplement, high dose probiotics, those three things, boom, we'll fix the methylation issue. Or it might be a mitochondrial issue, okay? And that's the root issue of their hypothyroidism. And so we're able to run those tests. But the reality is most doctors today are not running the right test. Another test I love is a biological age test via a DNA methylation test or looking at your organ age. Did you know you can actually test for the age of your organs and see how well they're functioning based on certain markers? The reason why most people die is not because your whole body has aged too fast. It's because one organ is aging too fast. When you have a man who dies of a heart attack in his 60s, even though he was muscular and healthy and his brain was good, he might have had the brain and the muscular body of a 30 year old, but his heart was the heart of a 100-year-old. And if you would have known that ahead of time, we could have done all the right things with the omegas and the Coq 10 and the Hawthorne and the turmeric and. And all of those things to dial in to start reversing the age of the heart. And so this is something that's happening with a lot of people is that they're over relying on outdated exams and blood work rather than doing the most cutting edge form of testing to find out if you're healthy or not. And so there's another area that if you can start to dial these in in the right way, you can actually start to be able to tell how healthy you are. And then you can customize your supplement plan, because a lot of people are out there taking supplements. How do you know exactly what you need? Well, most people don't know. So. And this is something I feel very passionate about. Like, I was working with a patient this week, and they came in taking, you know, they came in and they were asking, they're like, Dr. Axe, should I be carnivore? And I was on Paleo diet for years. This is a woman struggling with PCOS and infertility. And she'd been struggling with it for a long time and via the testing we'd done. And I also did a tongue map, which is something that's done in ancient medicine and some other things. We did a lot of the modern Western science, but also some of the old testing is very good. And I did that on her. And we found this issue with this insulin resistance and this inflammation happening. And we were able to dial in her diet very specifically. And like, for instance, because she was on this Paleo diet, she thought she needed to do very low carb herb. When I added back sweet potatoes into her diet, and we had her start doing more herbs like ginger and cinnamon. And we got her on some very specific supplements to support. We got her on berberine and chromium and some other things. Boom. And, you know, and she's able to see results very, very quickly. And so anyways, this happens frequently with people, even a week. She was like, I'm starting to feel better. Better very quickly. So my point there is that you need to be able to dial in what's right for you and your unique body. So if you can do that yourself, great, do it. If not, get a practitioner that can run the right tests and look for exactly what you need for your body there as well. So if you're a person and you've been feeling or saying even to yourself, I feel like I've been doing everything right, but you're still not seeing those results. Well, Those were the 10 things that you might be missing. And make just some of these small shifts. Maybe it's just some subtle shifts in the way you eat, the way you breathe, the way that you're testing for things, and that can make a massive difference. I've had so many patients over the years where we've made that small shift, and then finally they were able to experience that breakthrough they'd been waiting for. And, hey, I'd love to hear from you. Of all the things I shared with you, what is the biggest one that your biggest takeaway from this episode of, oh, okay. This is the one thing that, you know you need to start doing to experience that breakthrough in your health. Or maybe there's something that you'd never heard. You know, an expert highlight in terms of the importance of something you might be doing. I also want to just say, hey, thank you to all your subscribers out there. This is my 250th episode on this podcast here, and that's why we actually built out a whole new set to celebrate it. So I am so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for so many of you. Go and share this. I'm always blown away. I've seen people text messaging groups of friends. I see a lot of you reposting these episodes on Instagram and Facebook. I just want to say thank you to all of you that are sharing this because so many people don't know a lot of these truths I shared today, and we're literally transforming the health of this world together. So thanks for being on mission with me. Thank you for subscribing. If you're not subscribed, you're missing out. We've got some great guests coming up. I'm going to have Gary Breca on again here soon. We're gonna have Dr. Mark Hyman, so many others. You don't want to miss that. So thanks so much for liking subscribing and sharing and I'll see you on the next episode.