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The Good Question Podcast
The Inflammation Reset Dr. Josh Redd On Functional Medicine & Root-Cause Healing
00:25:17
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- [00:01]
A
You're listening to the Good Question podcast with Richard Jacobs. Our goal is to make each of our guests exclaim, hmm, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Because when that happens, it means you, the listener, may be inspired to learn more beyond the interview and to ask great questions yourself that lead to new insights. In this podcast, we cover historical and current anthropology, comparative religion, and history. Welcome. And let's get started.
- [00:36]
B
Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Good Question podcast. I got Dr. Josh Red. He's the founder of Red River Health and Wellness. He's also the author of a book he just sent me as a, you know, for free to evaluate called the 30 day inflammatory reset. So appreciate that. Welcome, Dr. Josh. Thanks for coming.
- [00:53]
C
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [00:55]
B
Yeah. Tell me a bit about your background. Why? What inflamed you to care about inflammation?
- [01:00]
C
Well, it's a great question. A long time ago, I graduated from chiropractic school and opened up my first functional medicine clinic. I never really did chiropractic. I always did blood chemistry, looked for underlying imbalances with medical testing, diet, lifestyle, all sorts of that stuff, and now end up owning one of the largest functional medicine clinics in the world. So we see a lot of really sick people who are dealing with lots of chronic diseases and autoimmune conditions. And inflammation is the key driver for pretty much all of the conditions that I see within my clinic. And so I started to realize a lot of people didn't know how to test for inflammation. They didn't know how to assess it, and then if they found it, they wouldn't know how to address it. And so over the last 17 years, we've been helping so many different patients feel better and have a better quality of life. And to see us, it can be pretty expensive. And so, you know, in order to help those that maybe aren't from where my clinics are or maybe can't afford it, I decided to put every single thing that I've learned into one book on how to really help individuals feel better and have a better quality of life. How to identify inflammation, how to check for it, how to assess it, and then once found, how to treat it. And so pretty much I, you know, that's. That's it in a nutshell right there.
- [02:13]
B
So just to, you know, I don't want to give away the book, but how does. How do you know if you're inflamed? Like, what are a couple things that a person can look for or notice to let them know Yeah, I think I may be that way.
- [02:23]
C
Yeah. These are great questions. There's a number of different things that you can do to assess if you have inflammation. Some of the easiest ones and least expensive ones are to test for inflammatory blood markers. For example, one of the most common ones is a C reactive protein that you can check through your labs. It's about an $8 test and really easy if that is, if that comes back high, it's likely that you suffer from inflammation. Other ones that you can do is something called homocysteine. This is a methylation marker, but it drives inflammation, causes a number of different problems. Ferritin and ldh, lactate dehydrogenase. You can also test if those come back high. They're acute phase reactants and they're common indicators that you have inflammation. An ironic one which is common is hdl. Most people think that HDL is a great marker, but if HDL is too high, it can indicate inflammation. Some other ones.
- [03:18]
B
Let me go back for one second. You said ferritin. Isn't that just iron?
- [03:22]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [03:23]
B
So why would that be a marker of inflammation if the iron's high?
- [03:26]
C
Well, ferritinferritin, the marker itself is what's what we call an acute phage reactant. And high inflammation will actually drive ferritin high as well. So it can mean that you have iron overload, but it can also just mean that you're really inflamed. Same thing with something like vitamin D. Vitamin D is what's called the negative acute phase reactant. And so inflammation actually forces vitamin D to decrease. And so somebody could be really inflamed. And no matter how much vitamin D they're actually taking, and it might not ever move that, that lab marker because inflammation's too high. And so those are some really easy, simple ones that you can check for. They're really inexpensive as well. And that's a good indicator to see if you're inflamed from a symptomatic standpoint. You know, you could, you could retain water, you could feel like inflamed in your hands and feet. You could have intestinal problems. You could have brain fog and depression, fatigue. Those are common signs of brain inflammation. You could end up having joint pain. You know, other symptoms like that that are common indicators that you might have some type of inflammatory process going on.
- [04:31]
B
Yeah, I should have asked at the beginning. What is inflammation and why, why should we care if we're inflamed?
- [04:36]
C
Well, inflammation, when it, when it happens in short term, inflammation is fantastic. It's life saving. It helps with viruses, bacteria, injuries, all sorts of things. That way, when inflammation becomes more of a prolonged and chronic thing, it's, it can be really bad for our body. And it's when our immune system just kind of goes haywire and doesn't shut off, that's essentially chronic inflammation. And when that happens, it drives a ton of different physiological imbalances. For example, in males, inflammation degenerates the lydic cells of the testes so that they can't produce testes testosterone effectively. It also causes insulin resistance. Inflammation can cause testosterone to convert into estrogen. There's a number of different things that inflammation just on its own does from a physiological standpoint. Inflammation can cause neurotransmitters in our brain to not synapse properly. It can cause the intestinal lining to break down so we don't digest food properly. Inflammation in females can make perimenopause and menopause worse. It can cause infertility, it can cause hormonal problems in our children. It's really sad because inflammation can cause the brain to not develop properly. It can cause neurobehavioral type problems, it cause adhd. Inflammation is a key driver for autism, a number of other conditions like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. It's, it's one of the most common things that drives disease in our country, for sure.
- [06:04]
B
I was going to joke and say, what are you doing to combat misinformation?
- [06:10]
C
That's great. I love it. I love bad jokes.
- [06:12]
B
So if someone's inflamed, you know, for, I don't know, months or years, what, what does it do to them? What's, you know, the accumulated longer term effects of being like this constantly.
- [06:21]
C
Well, you're going to have a lot poor quality of life and then it can turn into autoimmune conditions, it can turn into cancer, it can turn into cardiovascular risk, it can turn into dementia, Alzheimer's. So many different things. Right, right. But what really stinks a lot of the patients that we deal with when we ask them how many good days they have out of the month, a lot of them will say anywhere from zero to five. I mean, their quality of life is really poor. One of my first patients who was struggling with autoimmune conditions and a lot of inflammation, her son was asked to draw a picture of her at school. And he drew a picture of her in bed and he brought that home. She pulled it out of his backpack and she said, what's this, honey? And she's like, that's you mom, because you're always in bed. And you know, these are a realistic, these are realistic circumstances, circumstances that we see every single day in our clinics. We see patients who are really, really struggling and they can barely function. Their quality of life is really poor. A lot of patients don't even realize how bad they feel at times. And when it comes to the medical model or conventional model where they're just giving pills for symptoms and not actually addressing the underlying inflammatory triggers, there's really nothing that you can do to help these patients feel better. And so these patients are herded around like sheep. They feel like they're crazy, they've lost hope, they go from doctor to doctor and nobody knows what in the world's going on with them. And in reality, they have these underlying inflammatory triggers and problems and imbalances that are really making their condition way worse. And if they could really just get to the mechanism and do simple strategies to help calm down the inflammatory process, their lives could completely change.
- [07:54]
B
If someone that comes to you, I mean, I don't know if this is common, do they say to you, how come my normal doctor didn't say anything about this or didn't test for this, or didn't, didn't bring this up if it's so important?
- [08:04]
C
You know, back in the old days, we would see that often, people would often question, why are other individuals not seeing that and why are they not testing for this, why are they not treating it this way? However, since COVID there's kind of been a massive shift of the mindset of people from a health standpoint. And now we're seeing a lot of individuals who are more educated than most of their doctors when it comes to their condition. They're doing their own research, they're doing their own investigation onto all this stuff. And so we receive that question less than we did before. Now it's more about patients know why their doctors aren't checking for it. They kind of know that they live this model of here's a pill for your symptom and, and oftentimes it's not the doctor's fault. They're kind of trained this way. But then at the same time, insurance companies handicap these doctors in a way that you can't really help these severe patients with a 10 minute appointment. You can't really help these patients with simple lab tests. You have to be more complex. You have to investigate thoroughly, you have to spend a lot more time with these patients. You have to actually do a physical workup and assess what's going on, you know, to really get them to the next level. And insurance companies now, they just don't cover that.
- [09:16]
A
Right.
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C
They'll cover a 10 minute appointment. They'll, they'll even at times dictate what medications the doc, these doctors can give these patients. It's pretty alarming. And so we don't want to blame it all on the doctors. I think there's lots of great conventional doctors now that are starting to learn this. It's just they're not taught this in school. And so, and I, and you know, back then it was kind of a secret, now it's not a secret. I think, I think a lot of, a lot of people nowadays understand this concept. And so we have, they don't ask that question as, as much anymore.
- [09:43]
B
So when people come to you, what, what does your intake look like? Are they doing like food diaries? Are they, you know, how long until they're asked to make changes and what kind of changes? I know, I know it depends on the person, but in general, what can you, can you say about your treatment method?
- [09:58]
C
Yeah, I mean for the most part, even like my book, for example, if someone actually did the 30 day inflammatory reset, they should notice that they're improving within the first 30 days. When somebody comes into our clinics, we'll do a thorough physical examination, we'll do a thorough history, we'll assess what their diet is like, we'll do a 48 hour diet recall and kind of assess how they're eating. And then on top of that, we'll look at the blood work. Once we get the labs back, the medical testing back, we'll sit down with them for about 45 minutes to an hour and explain the labs in detail and then explain what our options are from there. Typically you can't treat everything all at the same time. And so typically we try to identify the imbalance that's driving the patient's problems. And it's kind of like a domino effect. We want to pick up the domino that's going to have the biggest hormetic effect or biggest impact. And then once that's improved, we'll retest and then work on other imbalances from there. The way that we treated patients even five years ago is significantly different than the way that we treat patients now, which is really cool. We don't want to be a stagnant practitioner. We want to understand everything about everything when it comes to the newest and most up to date research. And so now, you know, we used to use diet, lifestyle, nutrition, thyroid, hormones, you know, we're not opposed to medications, we're just, we just want to correct the mechanisms that are driving it. Right? But now on top of that, now we have peptides, we have ozone therapy, we have something called eboo, which is kind of a intense version of ozone therapy. There's a procedure called inuphoresis which can completely get rid of, you know, microplastics and other things within your blood serum we have.
- [11:31]
B
Is that like a, you know, your blood is drawn out and it goes to a machine and goes back into you or how does that work?
- [11:37]
C
That's, that's called eboo. But, but yes, you're exactly right. Where EBOO is where we draw blood out of one arm, it goes through a machine, gets ozonated, goes through a laser and put it back, put back into the other arm and you can essentially filter a 30 year of blood volume in one sitting. This has a significant anti inflammatory effect. It's great for autoimmune patients. But there's another thing where we actually draw your blood over a prolonged period of time and you take out your plasma and then you replace it and you can essentially get rid. We can test for microplastics, mold, things like that, and then retest after the procedure. And oftentimes microplastics are completely non detectable, which is great. And then we have stem cells. Stem cells are incredible. We can do stem cell IVs, we can do stem cell injections. Stem cells are advancing every single year. But a lot of our patients will do stem cell IVs. And one thing that you can do with stem cell IVs is you're introducing a lot of growth factors and regenerative cells into the system. And those cells carry all of that and it helps modulate the immune response, it improves the own, your own body's healing response as well. And there's a lot of great benef stem cell iv. So you combined all the different regenerative medicine therapies that we have. Now on top of all the functional therapy, functional medicine therapies that we have, it's, it's a pretty fascinating thing for sure.
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B
So the stem cell IVs do what, what do they draw in particular?
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C
So with, with stem cell IV's what they do is they're kind of vehicles for growth factors and regenerative cells. And so when we do a stem cell iv, we're introducing those growth factors and regenerative cells into your body and it maximizes your body's healing response. It can significantly modulate inflammation which can help. You can use what's called exosomes, which bypass the blood brain barrier, can help with brain inflammation and it just helps the body, it helps speed up the body's healing response and it helps modulate inflammation. And so we're seeing a lot of really cool things when it comes to stem cell IVs as well any other protocols.
- [13:42]
B
And is it for particular problems?
- [13:44]
C
I mean, besides all of those? That's, that's what we've got now. You have peptides too, which are really cool. There's pretty cool. Peptides are gaining a lot of traction. We've been using peptides for a long time. But for example, when it comes to autoimmune conditions, you could use, you could micro dose.
- [14:02]
B
Oh, I'm sorry, I was gonna answer with the VP157 is what I've heard about, but go ahead with the.
- [14:06]
C
Yeah, that's great.
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B
So microdose.
- [14:08]
C
Yeah, you can microdose GLP1s and. And those help decrease inflammation. They help. They're kind of cardio protective and neuroprotective. And so, you know, I don't like, like massive doses for GLP1s. We use it more for a therapeutic response from an autoimmune standpoint and inflammatory standpoint. But microdosing GLP1s, there's something called GHK Copper, which we're now finding. Lots of people use it for hair, skin and nails. But we're seeing that that actually helps with mitochondria. It can help with the inflammatory process too. You mentioned BPC157. There's another one that we use with that called TB500, which are awesome to improve angiogenesis, which basically says, you know, means that it improves the cardiovascular respons to a certain area. It can help with the intestinal lining and gut integrity. And so nowadays peptides prescribed properly can have a significant impact on people's health too. I'm not a fan of just doing a shotgun approach of peptides or stem cells or any really therapy for that matter. What we like to do is do extensive labs, extensive blood work and really assess what's truly going on with that patient. And then once we understand the mechanisms that are driving that patient's problems, then from there we can kind of dictate what therapies will get that patient feel. Feeling the best, the fastest.
- [15:23]
B
What if someone's making, you know, they make excuses? I'm just, I'm just not in a place right now where I can really change much about my diet. But you Know, doc, give me three or four of these protocols and just kind of give me like a spa day and fix me. Do you do that or.
- [15:38]
C
Well, yeah, I mean, look, look, they're the regenerative medicine properties that we have. Patients can pretty much do those without changing their diet, lifestyle much, and it can have significant impacts now. So from a regenerative medicine standpoint, there's lots of things that you can do. However, there's, there's simp strategies that we can do. A patient doesn't. You know, my book lays it out in detail as far as like, here's what to eat, here's what not to eat, here's what in your environment causes inflammation, here's how your lifestyle can cause inflammation, here's how to check for it. If you don't want to do that extensive of a process and program. You could avoid things that spike glucose. You could avoid maybe the two highest foods like gluten and dairy, conventional dairy. Those two are probably our biggest inflammatory triggers for our patients right now. Obviously blood sugar stabilization is key, and so they could just simply work on stabilizing their glucose and minimizing foods that are ultra processed that spike glucose like crazy and just stabilizing glucose can decrease inflammation tremendously. You know, so there's simple strategies that a patient can do based off of their motivation levels. For our patients, sometimes they're so sick, they feel terrible and they're ready to make all the changes in the world possible, and so they'll do more of an extensive plan. Right. We have some, maybe longevity patients or patients that are looking for wellness, that just want to make a couple changes and there's things that they can do from a dietary standpoint to do that. And so, you know, it depends on the patient, but we have all the different therapies that could benefit. Really? Anyone?
- [17:08]
B
Do you, do you have any protocols where someone comes in literally for like a spa day and they get, you know, three to five different things done?
- [17:16]
C
We do.
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B
You know, you sell as like a package, like what would be that if it, if it existed?
- [17:20]
C
Yeah, we do actually. We have patients that travel from all over the country and world to see us. A lot of times we'll do orthopedic stem cell injections. And then, then before that they might do what's called standard ozone with a stem cell iv. And then we have hyperbaric chambers that get up to 3.0 atmospheric pressure, which is the highest that they can get. They're high medical grade hyperbaric chambers. And so they'll Come do the hyperbaric chamber. They'll come and do things like the red light bed, standard ozone IVs in conjunction with stem cell IVs and then on top of that, orthopedic stem cell injections or whatnot there too, too.
- [17:59]
B
Okay.
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C
Pretty cool stuff.
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B
In terms of the diet, what, I don't know, what are a couple things that people can do? You mentioned gluten and dairy. Traditional dairy. You know, what else can people do that would, would help them out if they did it in moderation or didn't do it in moderation?
- [18:13]
C
I mean, I mean the, the biggest impact that we'll see is obviously gluten and dairy. But we'll often give our patients what's called a continuous glucose monitor. And they'll wear that monitor and track their blood sugar levels. And our goals will be to get it between 80 to 130, no matter what they eat. If they can do that, they just significantly improve their quality of life and minimize long term damage from, from blood sugar and stabilization. Blood sugar issues in our country is rampant, right? Everyone pretty much has them, even kids. And so if we can help coach them through how to stabilize glucose, that makes a big deal. When somebody has blood sugar problems, it causes problems with hormones. It converts hormones into cortisol, which is your stress hormone. So you end up having reproductive issues, you end up having hormonal dysfunction. You have lots of issues there, there. On top of that, blood sugar imbalances cause problems with the intestinal tract, they cause problems with the brain, they cause problems with how our liver detoxifies. Just stabilizing blood sugar levels can be a game changer. And something as simple as getting the continuous glucose monitor and doing a science project on yourself can make a significant impact long term. If you can get those blood sugar levels to be within 80 to 130, most of the time they're dropping to 50 and they're spiking to 170. They're kind of all over the place. If we're just eating our standard American diet. But if, if we can be maybe more intuitive and more mindful about what we eat and how it impacts our over, you know, overall physiology, that's one simple task that somebody can do that can make a big impact.
- [19:43]
B
Yeah, I've worn a cgm, so as my wife and you know, we'll go out and get a meal and some places I'm like, yeah, probably we were just having, you know, chicken and rice and whatever and wow, you know, it's really spiked our sugar in other Places, not so much. So we learn like where to eat, where not. And yeah, we would take a walk sometimes for 15 minutes, you know, after a meal that spiked our sugar and that brought it down like 20, 25 points, which helps. So we learned a few things by doing it, but there's a lot to see.
- [20:09]
C
Yeah, it's fascinating too because the foods that you eat might not spike blood sugar levels. With the foods that I eat. If we react or have an immune reaction to food that's actually inflammatory, and when we eat something that our immune system reacts to and it induces inflammation, it will spike blood sugar levels whether it's a high glycemic food or not. And so sometimes we could react to rice or corn and our blood sugar levels could skyrocket. And if our immun system reacts to that specific food protein because inflammation increases, you're guaranteed to have blood sugar levels increase as well. Those two kind of go hand in hand.
- [20:45]
B
Is there anyone you're not able to help? And you can see they actually are trying or this always works as long as the person's trying.
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C
I mean, before we had all the regenerative therapies, Lyme's patients, and there's patients that suffer, what's called sirs. Those patients were really hard to manage. But now that we have the hyperbaric chambers, the ozone therapy, the stem cell iv, even those patients improve quite drastically. And so, you know, there's some patients we, we don't help, but for the most part, most of our patients that we bring on and accept do really well.
- [21:17]
B
No, that's good to know. And I know nothing can help every single person. I just wondered if you had some like, you know, just completely treatment resistant type people or if it's very rare.
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C
Yeah, it's super rare. Nowadays with the therapies that we have at our grasp, we can help most everyone. In fact, most of the time a patient that sees us, they've already been to 10 different doct and that's our standard patient. And we're able to get it to where they have go from 0 to 5 good days a month to 20 to 25 good days a month. We do have patients that for some reason or another we just can't help. And that's always terrible. But those are few and far between
- [21:51]
B
in terms of diet. Do you find that some people have to be really, really strict in order to get results and other ones could just kind of make a good attempt and they'll get a lot of benefit?
- [22:00]
C
You betcha. The more physiological Imbalances, somebody will have the more strict they have to be dietary wise. And there's some patients that will have 15 different food intoler is there'll be some other patients only have two or three based off of their overall immunology presentation. So we do see that for sure.
- [22:18]
B
Is it, I mean, is there any other reason why, you know, like someone eats pretty well and they just, they can't move the needle unless they're like perfect about it?
- [22:26]
C
That's a great question. Sometimes you have so many autoimmune conditions and your autoimmune response is so severe, they'll have to be a lot more restrictive because any subtle trigger can flare it up. Another really common set of population that we have issues with, with that we'll notice they're a lot more sensitive to foods is our people suffering with perimenopause. When your estrogen is fluctuating quite drastically, it causes inflammation and on top of that it causes your immune system to be not as resilient. And so our patients that are suffering with perimenopause tend to have to be really strategic and a little bit more complex with their eating habits, just a little bit more fine tuned with their eating habits because their blood sugar imbalances and things like that can fluctuate with hormonal fluctuation as well. And so you'll notice somebody that can be a little bit more resilient prior and then all of a sudden hit perimenopause and it's like the wheels came off. And typically those individuals will have to be a little bit more strategic about how they eat and focus more on blood sugar stabilization. And that might be more reactive to foods because of the fluctuation of estrogen, which messes up the immune response. Okay, great question though. Great question, man.
- [23:36]
B
Oh, no problem. Yeah. So can you help people from all over the US or only certain states?
- [23:40]
C
We have patients in 30 different countries in every state in the nation is pretty cool. We do a lot of telehealth. As long as they have access to labs, we can do a lot of things. And then a lot of people fly from all over to see us too. If they want other therapies, then they'll fly to us and stay, stay at the hotel right next to our clinic and, and we'll work with them for a few weeks there too.
- [24:00]
B
Okay, and what's the best way for people to start to engage? Should they get you?
- [24:05]
C
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean first, first we can look at the 30 day inflammatory reset and that's, that's fantastic. On top of that, you could Also we have RedRiver Health and Wellness.com which immune clinics. And then we have Palmavita.com or Palmavita Clinic.com and that's our longevity Clinic. I'm on Instagram and Facebook as Dr. Josh Red. Lots of different resources that we have that people can look through. And then obviously, if, if they need help, they can schedule a consultation as well.
- [24:32]
B
Okay, well, very good. Well, Josh, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and spending your time. I really appreciate it today.
- [24:37]
C
Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much, Richard. I really appreciate it as well.
- [24:40]
B
If you like this podcast, please click
- [24:42]
C
the link in the description to subscribe and review us on it itunes.
- [24:47]
A
Thank you for listening to the Good Question podcast. Please email supporthegoodquestionpodcast.com if you have any referrals to great guests for us to interview, visit thegoodquestionpodcast.com to hear more interviews. And please help us spread the word by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to this podcast.