0 (1s): Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast. 1 (4s): The biggest key factor I think is having fun. Whether it's like singing, dancing, listening to your old music, doing the old sports you used to do playing can't play tennis play ping-pong so you might have to modify it a bit, but I didn't like having games and fun time or music like any kind of playing music or dancing or listening to music is really good for your brain. And composers are the longest living profession. Our conductors, sorry of orchestras. Are they like the longest living profession? They usually can work into their eighties or nineties because conducting an orchestra is so brain stimulating and challenging intellectually for so many parts of you. And they have to like stand and move their arms and stuff. It's good. Cardio exercise. 0 (45s): Hello and welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin. And I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed my holistic physician, Dr. Brad camp. We discussed the importance of addressing the root cause of disease. The problem with our current healthcare system, along with Dr. Campbell's pillars of health, his daily healthy eating routine is alcohol good for you. We address adrenal fatigue and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. 0 (1m 29s): I really enjoyed interviewing Dr. Campbell. He has a ton of great info and tips for you to take back and apply. And I know you'll enjoy this. So thanks so much for listening and have a great day. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. And my guest today is Dr. Bradley Campbell, a holistic physician out of Chicago. Welcome to the show. 1 (1m 53s): Hi, thanks for having me, Brian. Glad to be here. 0 (1m 56s): Glad to have you on I've actually, Dr. Campbell has helped me out cause he's pretty close to where I'm at and wanted to get him on the podcast. He's created quite the following and just has a ton of knowledge. I actually was doing some research and I, you know, I know, I always noticed he had a bunch of degrees. Where are you at right now? I know I saw it's a 10 degrees. 1 (2m 19s): Yeah, I think I got six down and two to take board exams for, and then two more. I'm finishing working on and in natural health care. 0 (2m 28s): Yeah. And I, anything from, you know, functional medicine to, I wrote a few down master tongue acupuncture And organic whole food nutrition. What do you, how do you go about choosing what to, you know, what to study and, and, and how it applies to your practice? 1 (2m 54s): Well, I'm one of those people that like gets fired up by anything new, like anyone who recommends a I'll go buy it like right then and there and read it soon as I have a stack of books, like the, to read pile. And for me though, it's usually when I'm seeing practitioners that are getting miraculous results, that's when I'll really like jump in harder. And it's like, okay, they're fixing things that I don't know how to fix. So like, how did they do that? So for me, it's results based medicines, whether it's like Pearl on therapy or a surgery like PRP or stem cells, like that's really cool, but I don't do that. Or whether it's herbs or acupuncture or a certain type of even like Qigong or Tai Chi or functional movement systems with working on, like, how did they get someone better when the traditional system had no answer? 1 (3m 41s): That's when I really go down the rabbit hole into the, like all of the special degrees, like I wasn't sure I saw people getting better with applied kinesiology and chiropractic and muscle testing and acupuncture, but then I wanted to prove it. So I went into the functional medicine world into blood work and data to really like, prove to people here's what's going on. Here's your pre and post doll biter scan showing no more stones. Here's your pre and post cardiovascular coronary artery calcium test showing like you had a bunch of plaque now you have less, now you have none. So like, for me, it was a lot of like what works and then also a couple of degrees to justify the hard data to prove to people that it really was working. 0 (4m 21s): Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. And I think, you know, the hard data is so key. I mean the blood tests, I know we'd done some blood work together. What, what type of blood work do you usually do or does it depend on the individual? 1 (4m 34s): So it always depends on the individual, but there are always some key factors I look at, like I'm always pulling on the immune system, inflammation, almost always cholesterol and their overall metabolism, like their adrenal and thyroid hormones. And then just the standard, CBC CMP, red and white blood cells, standard vitamin D B12, fully an iron panels. Then I add things depending on what someone's history or family history looks like. Whether it's further into the immune system, full big auto-immune panels, detox panels, mold panels, functional stool testing, kind of whatever. They're curious about sometimes a whole micronutrient panel to look at all of their vitamins and minerals and just seeing like what they're interested in because you in functional medicine, one of the big downsides is you can overwhelm someone and spend like 1000 2, 3, 4, $5,000 in testing, and then their whole cash savings is burnt out and they don't have anything to spend on buying a trainer or on buying vitamins actually fix the problem you just found. 0 (5m 36s): Yeah, no, you can go down that rabbit hole probably and sort of get lost in it. And I think it's sort of like, it's, it's a bit of an art you've been doing it for awhile and you've got to sort of find what works for each individual, which I'm sure it can be difficult at times, right. 1 (5m 53s): It definitely can be difficult. And it's a little differently. If you're a personal trainer, you usually have more sessions with people. So you can kind of like slowly get them to where you want them to be in knowledge. But most people will only remember one to three things you say in any visit, whether it's 10 minutes or two hours long. So I think the big key is repetition and kind of like you wouldn't expect to go to the gym twice and get huge muscles. You can go to the gym twice and figure out what exercises a trainer might have you do. And you can try to like, copy it down and write down, go home and do it yourself. But it won't be quite the same as if you did it with a trainer for like months and months. Same thing with functional medicine. I try to find like the big key root cause or a couple causes and tackle those first because if they fix their gut where they fix their sleep or they don't have as many drugs or whatever, the big key factor is whether it's like a fungal overgrowth or it's a sinus infection where their teeth need to be fixed. 1 (6m 47s): Whatever the big picture takeaway is, I try to really home people into one or two, like big picture factors of what's causing their health problems. Even it could be their stress or like their childhood trauma or an anxiety or depression issue or their job. That's making them fatigue and rundown. So you've really like look at their whole life, their whole current life and their past life find the one or two big things and hone in on that. And it is an art to figure out what those pictures are. But most of the times, if you just like shut up and listen to someone, they'll tell you their whole story, their whole life story. And they'll start to say exactly what they need, but most doctors will interrupt after less than 10 seconds. So you don't really get to know someone if you're interrupting them after five or 10 seconds, it's like the big key takeaways. 1 (7m 31s): Like you need a doctor who will listen to you care about you and try to figure out like what the big picture is in your life at the moment. 0 (7m 37s): Yeah. And we need more of that. Don't we, I mean, I, I feel like just a general family physician, they're just trying to see as many patients as they can. And as quick as possible, what would you say some of the biggest faults of just, you know, not the knock on health practitioners, you know, not holistic physicians, but what would you say the biggest issue with, you know, our sort of health healthcare system? 1 (8m 5s): So biggest issues are probably that it's insurance and pharmaceutical company driven, and that we have a lack of primary care practitioners. Part of that is because specializing is really cool. It's intriguing, it's more advanced. You get to save people's lives a little bit more and you make a lot more money as a doctor. Whereas primary care, general internist, internal medicine, people like pediatricians and, you know, geriatric doctors, they don't really make nearly as much, maybe half or less of what a specialist would make. And it's the hardest form of medicine. So being a primary care doctor that has to kind of know everything's screened for everything, they have to know little bits or like the top 10 to hundred, 100 major diagnoses and how to diagnose them and treat them basically before they would maybe refer to a specialist. 1 (8m 56s): Those doctors have the hardest job get paid the last, and there's not enough of them. So we're actually like 10 to 20,000 doctors short in the United States alone. And soon we're about to be 50,000 primary care doctors short. So instead of going to doctors who have a four to eight year training, we're basically going to nurse practitioners or PAs, or even like a medical assistant, sometimes who's just like that first round of defense. So we're kind of like lessening our knowledge base for the first round of like who you screen through. And it's the hardest thing to do. So not only is it like the hardest field of medicine, it's also the people with the less education are becoming those practitioners. 0 (9m 38s): I see. 1 (9m 40s): Oh, I didn't mention too. I guess the, because of the way you were talking about before the insurance model works, doctors are pressured into five to 15 minute visits. So they don't really have time to take a whole life history or a whole like get the whole patient's story, which is often why they probably interrupt. It's sort of like, what do I need to know? It's like my shoulder hurts. Okay, great. I don't want to know anything else now, does this hurt? Does this, or does this hurt? Okay. Go see the orthopedic. So it's sort of like, they're trying to screen it as like a gatekeeper, as fast as possible, rather than trying to figure out what the root causes and it's really not their fault. It's just like, that's the system and the model that they're in and a lot of doctors don't want to practice that way. They just don't yet know how to break out of it into a primary care functional medicine treat the root cause kind of system. 1 (10m 27s): But you usually have to go into a cash based system and get away from the insurance model, which does limit who your patient base will be. 0 (10m 36s): Right, right. No, that was well said. What got you into functional medicine? I guess I, I, we didn't even touch a little bit about how you got sort of gotten into a functional medicine and helping individuals with, 1 (10m 51s): So for me, a lot of it was asking those bigger questions of like, why does this happen? Because a lot of people will have a skin issue. They'll have asthma, they'll have a chronic knee pain that doesn't seem to be caused by an injury. They go like, why is that happening? And for me, that was the big question was always like, why, why, why I was that kid in school that the teachers either loved or hated because I would always ask, like, why does this happen? Like the little three year old, he was like, why, why, why, why until you go, I don't know. It just is like, why is the sun so big? I don't know. It just is like, why is the sun so hot? Like, I don't know, look it up. Like, you know, as a parent, you get that where your kids are just asking all those why questions. But as a doctor, the why questions lead you into really deep levels of like root cause and diet and lifestyle, looking at the bigger picture. 1 (11m 36s): And for me, functional medicine was, it's kind of a rebranding of just good medicine. Functional medicine basically means you're looking at finding the root cause. And you're looking at lab work in functional ranges. So rather than looking at your red blood cells from a scale of like four to, let's say like five, you're looking at it at a tighter range of like, when I looked even closer from like 4.3 to 4.7, that's like where you should optimally be. Or if you're looking at vitamin D levels, should optimally be maybe like 70 to 80, but the plastic model is anything below thirties. A deficiency when really 30 to 50 is okay. Below 30 is really bad. 1 (12m 16s): And then 50 to 80 is good. But 70 80 is like, where research shows the most benefit comps you're looking at like tighter ranges. You're trying to find the root cause. And I found that most doctors who did practice functional medicine, they didn't always get the best results, but they were usually the best at finding out why a problem started and finding out like on a deeper level, I guess what the root causes were and then educating that to the patient. So they were really good usually at education and diagnosis, not always great at treatment. So that's why I ended up getting more degrees in just the functional medicine stuff, because I think the first step is the awareness of why. 1 (13m 1s): And the functional testing can tell you that, but then you have to go down the path of like, okay, we know you have no muscles. Now you have to go like work out and do the work to really get better. And that's sort of like phase two, where a lot of people drop off, but that's where the real gold and the secret is in natural healing is like to get past the what's going wrong. And then I'm going to actually put the work in to really like heal over time. 0 (13m 28s): Yeah, no, that's great. And you know, finding the root cause is not always so easy. What are some of the big pillars of health that you, you, you recommend for your clients? Obviously I know everyone, everyone's a little bit different depending on their background, but w what are some of the big sort of pillars that you look towards, or that you give advice to your clients? 1 (13m 49s): Yeah. So lot of times I'll talk about is like clouds and dirt and dirt is like, what do you order at the menu when you're out to eat in the clouds is like, how do you look at the big picture perspective of health? Like you're saying, like, what are the big things that are important? And the big things are more of like philosophical principles, I would say. And the big factors are usually sleeping, eating, moving, and thinking. So it's sort of like, how is if someone's sleeping and resting enough, I find people need at least nine hours of rest. Whether that's sleep meditation going for a walk downtime, eating can be like stressful. If you're like watching TV or news, or it can be very like relaxed if you're having a family meal together or a breakfast where you're like doing a crossword, watching the sun rise. 1 (14m 36s): So I think at least nine hours of just restful time, even if you're doing something, it should be somewhat restful. So sleep combined with rest during the day of nine hours, someone's thought processes how their mental health is, what their self-talk is in their head. And just their general mood and outlook on life is critical. And then principles of movement is, are they moving? Are they getting their like 10,000 steps in a day? Do they work out or have an exercise routine? Are they sitting all day at their job, like hunched over in a forward posture? Or do they take breaks to like sit back up, sit straight. What's their posture like when they are walking, standing, sitting, and what's their bed. 1 (15m 17s): Like a lot of people have an old 10, 15 year old bed that could be replaced or pillow it's not working. So looking at kind of like what their daily movement is like is critical and people can do kind of that self analysis to say, what am I doing? And just being mindful about it. Then the last one is the eating part, which is perhaps the most hotly debated. And people like to say like, eggs are good. Eggs are bad, this is good. This is bad. And every year it sort of changes and people get confused. But I think a big part of the eating is, is someone connected with their own intuition and their own sense of what feels good for them? Like, are they listening to their body is probably critical. Do they slow down enough to be mindful to choose food at the grocery store? 1 (16m 2s): That's like what they truly are wanting or needing on a energetic or nutritional or physical level, or are they kind of just going off of some meal plan that someone either eat them that they feel horrible on? Or are they going off of like a recipe book they've been doing for the last two years, or do they eat the same thing every day for months on end? So I think tuning into what their bodies are actually asking them for changing up what they're eating and the general principle of eating more natural, less processed, less ingredient food are probably key, critical steps. So basic education on like less processed sugar, less bad fats, less simple carbs, and more healthy fats, ref complex carbs and natural sugars, and like listening to their body, whether they're doing in rent or longer fasting or whether they're doing more short meals for various reasons. 1 (16m 57s): I think just like making sure someone's really like listening to themselves first is probably the first critical step in the food side of the pyramid. 0 (17m 6s): Yeah. We can definitely spend probably an hour talking about food. Cause that's my, that's my area. I have a lot of guests and we talk about that. We won't go quite down that rabbit hole, but I'm curious as to what's what do you like to do? Like what's your routine a morning and, and like how, how do you go about the way you eat? 1 (17m 28s): Yeah. So for me, I kind of do a mix between like keto or carnivore in the morning, and then I eat more like paleo or Mediterranean at night. I found I had three sinus surgeries and tonsil surgeries before I realized that dairy was causing sinus problems and allergies for me. So I do gluten free, mostly gluten-free and dairy-free always, dairy-free almost always gluten-free unless it's like a really good quality sourdough or like ancient grain, gluten. And I generally like was just listening to my body and I was trying things and seeing what felt best. And for me, I have a very fast metabolism and a lot of Americans don't have, but for me, when I was eating like oatmeal and berries, or like a fear or a coconut yogurt and some veggies or fruit in the morning, I was hungry within two or three hours. 1 (18m 20s): So for me, and if I intermittent fasting, I would lose like 5, 10, 50 pounds really fast. So I couldn't really do a lot of fasting, like had to generally go to Horace higher fat and protein. And when I would have like 4, 6, 8 eggs or a whole pack of bacon or some chicken sausage, I would actually feel satiated in my like, mental function was better all the way through like 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM. So for me, I do like a high protein, usually meat or eggs for breakfast, sometimes a little side, if I'm feeling that that morning. And then I usually do more meat veggies for lunch, with lots of like meat, with a lot of veggies for lunch. Sometimes I'll do fruit. It's like a little afternoon snack or a homemade smoothie as like a post-workout or split snack splurge, and then splurge and then dinner, I'll kind of mix it up. 1 (19m 11s): Sometimes it's vegetarian vegan. Sometimes it's meat based. It's all over the place. 0 (19m 17s): Yeah, that that's great. And I, I do think like you got to figure it out yourself a little bit, right? Like I was the same way. I fairly keto carnivore. And before that, I used to have like this big salad in the middle of the day and they used to put some type of protein on it. I actually, at one point I wasn't eating any meat, so I would put like a fish or something out of it. But even the big sale in the middle of the day, I felt like that was sort of weighing me down a little bit. And so like, I try to do like keto carnivore throughout the day and I do some fasting as well. But like you said, a little bit, I, you know, I gotta be careful. I can't fast too much because my have a decent metabolism, even though, you know, I am getting older, so it's slowing down maybe a little bit, but, but yeah, no, I mean, it's so individual, and then I, if I have carpet, I sort of do it in the back end of the day. 0 (20m 9s): And you know, when I don't have to think about anything, you know, and I don't have to do less demanding things, I'd say so. Yeah. It is just sort of about figuring out what works, you know, 1 (20m 20s): Totally agree. I love the carbs at the end of the day for me as well. 0 (20m 24s): Yeah. And, you know, with your, with your clients, I'm curious, is this something that you touch on with try to touch on with your clients or, you know, I'm sure this is something that obviously comes up along with obviously sleep like you mentioned and movement. 1 (20m 42s): Yep. Yeah. I do touch on this with almost everybody. Some people sort of like come in with that vibe of like, don't touch my food. This is by food. It's working for me. I've been doing this smoothie for the last 30 years and I feel great. I have no problem. Okay, great. Let's just like work on the problem you're coming in for other people are more open, they're wanting, you know, to lose way or have sleep shifts. And we definitely touch on that a lot though. I would say what I touch on even more than that is people's drugs, whether it's illegal or legal drugs. So like alcohol caffeine now that marijuana is illegal. A lot of it for me is figuring out how many drugs are they doing? Either like socially recreationally or daily, if they're having more than a cup or two of coffee, I'm always going to address that. 1 (21m 27s): And almost always, it will be making sure that people aren't relying on caffeine, alcohol, or marijuana, trying to get it so that they're not using them on a daily basis, but just using them when it's truly needed. Like they all have purposes. Like if you're tired driving, it's actually more dangerous than drunk driving. So if you're driving like really tired sleeping on the road, then like caffeine will probably save your life. So there are purposes for caffeine. It can help you get a lot done. It helps release a bunch of ADP. Some people will use it as like a pre-workout. It increases muscle function at times. So there's benefits and downsides to all these things. But I think when people start to rely on, especially more than like one cup of caffeine in the morning to wake up and get going, it might mean that they have another energetic mitochondrial, adrenal, thyroid deficiency that they're covering up. 1 (22m 15s): A lot of people just aren't educated on the downsides of the ones like caffeine that are super accepted, like people with thyroid medication, if they have their thyroid medicine with their food, and then they have some coffee before or after, you're actually going to absorb 30 to 40% less of their thyroid medication just by having one serving of caffeine. It's like 50 to a hundred milligrams. So I think it's important to like educate people just so they know that, you know, best is helping you, but there are downsides and it might affect your sleep or your medication. Caffeine will sit in your body for 24 to 48 hours before it's fully out. So some people even say, once they cut out their caffeine, like all day, their sleep does improve. So there's all these like things that I try to educate people on because at least north shore Chicago, we see a lot of caffeine to wake up in the mornings for like overwork, trying to raise a bunch of kids, making much money. 1 (23m 5s): And then at night they're stressed out. So they use marijuana or alcohol to kind of like tone their brains down and fall asleep at night. So that's usually the most common factors I see there for me. I think when people cut that out and start to like deal with their life stress or deal with their energy in a more natural way. That's when I really started seeing people becoming more mindful, slowing down, exercising more like everything else, kind of like have it stacks off of that. If they get that philosophy, like, okay, I'm not going to do my drugs every day. Just do it with a purpose. That's the key critical factor for me. So when people can start to do that, things will shift for them. 0 (23m 43s): That's such a good point. Like people overuse those way too, too often. You know? I, I, I'm not a big, I don't really drink much alcohol at all. And caffeine, like you said, I try to use it strategically. I actually, like you said, I, I sometimes use it like as a pre-workout a little bit. Is that something you do? Sometimes 1 (24m 3s): I have done that before. I don't do it any more because now I'm wildly sensitive to caffeine. So I get major amped and then I actually get like depressed and think the whole world is like, the sky is falling. The world's ending 12 hours later. So for me, it's like, not as worth it anymore, but I do like, like I can still tolerate some cocoa or cow powder. So I'll use that as a little pre-workout 0 (24m 28s): Yeah, no, I find that too. I'm actually pretty sensitive to it as well. And so I got to, you know, watch myself on that. I mean, overuse of caffeine, I'm sure as an issue that comes about and what about alcohol? What about even just a cup or two, a wine at night. Every night. What could be some downfalls with that? 1 (24m 48s): So the album Paul will interrupt your sleep cycles. So people won't get as restful sleep. I like the dog running around in the back. Yeah. Yeah. I think people will look at those big meta analysis studies and say like, but one glass of wine is healthier. Four ounces is like the ideal amount of health. And it's like, really? No, because when they look at those studies, the people who in America who don't drink any alcohol usually are so sick that they're not drinking alcohol because they're on medication that they aren't even allowed to drink alcohol or they're super elderly. So if you let you look at like people who choose not to drink any alcohol and live a healthy lifestyle, your brain and your nervous system, your liver are much healthier than people who have that four ounces or one or two glasses. 1 (25m 39s): So alcohol is a poison civilizations though, have survived on it for years. If there was like a drought and it couldn't get water, they would survive on beer and wine. It's like, you can definitely survive off of alcohol, but it is still a toxin. It does still kill brain cells. It damages like a whole bunch of different body tissues, dries people out and is harmful on your liver harmful and your sleep cycles, which is harmful on your mitochondria and energy function. Tough on your lymphatic system, tough on your immune system. So like all the things people probably care about right now, it's not so good. So I think if you're having it on weekends, like a glass or two, one or two days a week, that'd be the better way to consume it. 1 (26m 19s): But as a daily use, it's probably not healthy. Unfortunately, like I wish I could say yes, but the research is pretty clear daily use it. It's helpful in a holistic sense, if that helps you to relax. Like if you can't relax at night, but you're able to either have a social environment with caffeine or alcohol or you're able to relax with or alcohol, then it's more good for you. But if you can relax or have social community without those things, it's even better. 0 (26m 53s): Yeah. I'll set. I'm sure you disappointed a lot of people. 1 (26m 58s): Yeah. I've tried like the biggest downer. I have to tell people like, 0 (27m 2s): Oh, you can't drink every day. What about, what about THC CBD? I noticed you, I think you had a conversation not too long ago with a woman who regarding, you know, obviously now it's legal and you know, gummies are like everywhere. What, what about strategically using that? 1 (27m 24s): So same sort of thing. I think CBD is fairly safe. It's closer to like a vitamin or mineral. So the friend who has talking to was about a company called fringe and it's a water-soluble CBD, which is very similar to a lot of the drinks that have CBD in them. There's like sparkling beverages that have CBD and the water-soluble one gets absorbed a lot faster and a lot better than the oil based CBD products. But CBD is also in <inaudible> it's in a lot of fruits and vegetables and small amounts. So booboo who do have a more plant-based or like rounded diet or your car consuming, a lot of different herbs, we actually have pretty normal CBD levels already, but someone who's not in a super healthy lifestyle or is more stressed, will get those CBD reserves depleted. 1 (28m 11s): There's also many types of CBD, but in basic CBD is good for stress and sleep and pain kind of as like a primary model of what people notice when they take it. I think CBD does have a lot of useful purposes. And usually, especially if it's the water Sagal type or if someone takes enough of the oil based type, people should notice something within, if they're in that like sleep pain, stress kind of way, they should notice something within a couple of days to a week or two, if they don't, usually they, I would say it's affecting your immune system. It'll still affect you in a positive way, but it's, you probably don't have a major deficiency in the cannabis Isles or cannabinoids, whereas THC, which is the psychoactive part of marijuana or that is going to be more helpful for stress and sleep more helpful for pain as well. 1 (29m 5s): There's obviously people using it for different like immune lumps and bumps, cysts, and tumors and things, and finding good benefit from that as an augmentation to their treatment protocol. But it does have more risk kind of like chronic alcohol use. I think it's Dr. Amen or amen. A M E N who has brain scans showing people with like chronic THC use showing shrinkage of different parts of their brain, whether it's like alcohol or THC. So I think chronic use, if you overdo, it can be quite harmful for your brain longterm. And I find those people, they're nurses and tends to heal a little bit slower and they also end up with energy issues and mitochondrial sometimes adrenal thyroid issues as well. 1 (29m 50s): So I think just like anything, it's kind of like everything in moderation and some people will actually have THC or marijuana and get very like paranoid, or they have a history of family, history of split personality or bipolar, and it'll negatively impact them. Whereas someone who is like more type a and pretty grounded, they sometimes will like, it's can be good for their type a personality to sort of like make them a more type B chill out a little bit, slow down. So again, it's like, you have to customize it to the individual, but both can be helpful when used appropriately. We just have to have respect for the drug and its downsides. 0 (30m 25s): Yeah. Yeah. I do agree. It's like with any of these things we're talking about, right. Like chronic use is, is just where you get, where you can run into some issues. And even though we hear it a lot, you know, in moderation, it could, it could, it could have some benefits I noticed on your website regarding adrenal fatigue. I know you have like a, like an ebook and why don't we touch on that? Is, is that something that you come across a lot with individuals that you're seeing on a day-to-day basis? 1 (30m 58s): Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't say a good 70 to 80% of adult Americans have adrenal fatigue. Typically at your adrenals are a little gland ad renal or on top of the renal kidney gland. It's like a little party hat trying on top of your kidneys. And it manages the four S hormones of salt, sex, sugar, and stress. So if you're craving salt or sugar, or if you have a lot of stress secretes, a lot of adrenaline like adrenal, adrenaline and cortisol, or if you have energy issues like you're tired in the morning or the afternoon, or have troubles with sleep where you're like wrapped up at night and can't fall asleep, you might have an issue with your adrenal function. Especially if you have issues in all four. 1 (31m 39s): We also have a free quiz on, in the book and on our website, health assurance, movement.org. There's a free adrenal quiz and self care guide on there for people because it's, my nonprofit is trying to help people who can't afford functional medicine. So there was like a little 90 question quiz. You can see how many symptoms you have related to your adrenals. But a lot of those patients will have been overworked. Over-caffeinated they've been having not enough sleep and lots of stress for prolonged period of time, or even a short period of time. Sometimes after pregnancies, that's pretty tough on your hormonal systems. So people, steroids and adrenal function will change after giving birth, but they'll generally like wake up tired in the morning. 1 (32m 21s): They have a cup of caffeine or coffee and it perks them up. So that actually like helps us like a crunch for your adrenals. And then they'll get that like mid-afternoon fatigue or like fall asleep after they eat a big meal. And they're just like either craving salt or sugar throughout the day. And there's generally like low energy, low motivation, low willpower, low drive. And it can cause low DHA, which then converts into testosterone. So sometimes that low T that so many Americans supposedly have is actually a low adrenal DHA function that then won't convert into the testosterone. So when someone has healthy adrenals, they have healthy willpower, nothing bothers them. 1 (33m 3s): They're super driven. They can lift lots of weights. They have muscles even without working out. And some people have that genetically really strong adrenals. And some people have weaker adrenals and thyroid glands genetically. But those people are kind of like the warriors or the CEO or the athletes who can kind of like push through anything or get sick. And they don't really feel bad because their natural cortisol and adrenaline like perks up when they're sick. So they could have a call, have a little float and they could still go to work or still function from home pretty well. Yeah. 0 (33m 31s): And why it's 70, 80% of the people probably have some type of adrenal fatigue. Wow. That's, that's a, that's a lot 1 (33m 40s): America runs on Dunkin. Yeah, 0 (33m 42s): No kidding. Wow. And are there certain markers, I know you just mentioned a few like hard markers that you look at. You mentioned thyroid. 1 (33m 52s): Yeah. The thyroid is kind of like a sister gland or like a twin to the adrenals, but I look at total thyroid panel of T3, T4 free T3, free T4 TSH, and the antibodies TPO and anti TPO anti-technology. But I also look for the adrenal gland specifically, look at D H E dash S look for that usually to be at least a hundred to 200. And then looking at cortisol in the morning can also do salivary cortisol tests that look at your cortisol over a period of a day or something called Dutch testing, which is dried urine testing, where they look at over a day or over a couple of days looking at your cortisol and adrenal hormones that you're actually like metabolizing and using. 1 (34m 36s): You can also tell in the blood work besides DHAs and cortisol, you can look at total testosterone and free testosterone to clue you into that. And S S H BG sex hormone binding globulin is useful. So blood work, you can do like a basic screen and most people's DHA will be below a hundred there. And I think that's most of the ways you can kind of tell that's the easiest way to sort of like have a yes or no from a hard data standpoint, a lot of people will be in hyper adrenal. SMOs when they're really stressed out to their DHA and cortisol levels will go up higher than the normal reference range in the morning. 1 (35m 16s): Yeah. 0 (35m 17s): And that, and you, like you mentioned on your, on your website, I know you have a couple of websites. It's maybe say that one more time. Also put a link in the, in the show notes for that 1 (35m 26s): That's health assurance, movement.org. So health insurance, movement.org. 0 (35m 33s): So something you started to help people get some type of functional nurses, a functional medicine without actually having to pay for it. 1 (35m 44s): Right? Yeah. Basically giving people some education, we have some health quizzes for symptoms and guides and videos up there. And then this next year we're gonna be making a bunch of free courses. So like if you take the symptom quiz and you look at the self care guide, which also has some of those lab tests, you can run yourself or through a doctor, then there'll be like courses starting next year where it's like for each quiz, there will be like, okay, what do I actually do? Or some more in-depth videos to give people like a five to 14 day, little course on how to really heal your adrenal glands and going into a little bit more depth than the free self care guides have on their, 0 (36m 21s): Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. And when did you start that? 1 (36m 26s): Right before the pandemic is actually meant to do a nonprofit, to help low income and homeless people. Because I worked at salvation army as a student and loved helping that patient population, but because of the panic, we weren't able to meet in person. So we basically went to online education and rise. We could reach thousands or millions of people that way. And that kind of took off because everyone was trying to get their immune system healthier. So it started educating on that. And every question people had around the pandemic and just found the online was a much more efficient way to help people. 0 (37m 3s): Yeah, well that such a great service. And what would you say leading into the next question would be some of the top ways to help improve your immune system? Obviously this is a hot topic, but one that needs to be discussed more and more. I think, 1 (37m 17s): Yeah. I would say since 70 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut, I would say eating good quality food, whatever that means for you and possibly taking a probiotic or some classroom has shown to help as well. I really like the company orthomolecular for probiotics and claustrum, they have an SBI protect. That's a really good classroom and they have ortho biotic is a probiotic or microbiome labs has a MegaSpore biotic and mega IgG, 2000 for their probiotic in classroom. Those have shown to help people with the germs of the pandemic and just generally for their immune system. 1 (37m 58s): And then I think the second one would just be sleep. Like so many people are like, oh, I didn't get enough sleep. And then I got ill, I got sick. Like I was run down and I got sick. So I think like consistent sleep and good food are probably the two best ways to really support and nourish your immune system. 0 (38m 15s): Yeah. I think a lot of people don't realize, and I didn't for a long time, it's just how important gut health is. I mean, you know, like you mentioned 70, 80% of your immune system is in your gut. And, you know, I know that could be a sort of a tough thing to pinpoint, right? Like gut health with and w which one works and which one doesn't, w what, when you meant, when you mentioned the probiotic, what, what type of things do you look for in a good pro probiotic? 1 (38m 47s): So I look for specific strains. So it's kind of like getting a specific breed of dog from a good breeder, rather than just like getting a random dog from the pound. So you could go to the pound and get like a adopted dog, but they might have some issues. You don't know what they're going to look like or act like or behave like. And it's kind of like a shotgun approach. You throw like a thousand, or usually it's like now millions or billions of probiotics into a generic kind of probiotic where they're not telling you exactly what's in there, but if you want something for guarding your immune system, you want like a German shepherd or a Rottweiler. So the most research studied strains, which are more of those specific species that have more clinical benefit. 1 (39m 28s): We'll have little trademarks or a little Latin or numbers after the long Latin name. So it'll say like lactobacillus acidophilus, NFM strain with Metagenics we'll use, or they'll have different little like tags at the end. So I look more for that. And then the spore based Biotics are kind of coming up in popularity the last decade or so that's like MegaSpore biotic or ortho spore IgE by orthomolecular. Those are, the spores are a little different than probiotics probiotics, usually don't receipt. So probiotics are not actually like putting new grass in your gut yard. They're really like throwing fertilizer on the grass. 1 (40m 10s): That's what, like current research says. So they're, anti-inflammatory, they're helpful for growth. They're helpful for cellular signaling and immune factors, but they're not really changing your gut yard. It still looks the same. Whereas spores will actually start to see not a lot, but they will start to shift the yard. And it's kinda like reseeding some new grass, so they'll be weed a little bit. They'll pull out some candida and yeast. They'll pull out some bad bacteria, but they'll also start to put in some good grass, which is the first probiotic type product of its kind that'll do that. So I think the spores are good. Generally. People don't want to take the spore based probiotics for more than like six to nine months. It's good to kind of like take breaks for them because they are anti-microbial and killing off something, some bacteria as well as probiotic, kind of like putting in the good stuff. 1 (40m 58s): So it's good to cycle on and off of them. But a lot of my patients and other doctors I've talked to when they take a spore based probiotics for their kids, or for themselves starting in the fall through the winter, they find that either don't catch colds or flus as much as they had before, or it's maybe once or a lesser time here, they'll get it for a few days, rather than they used to be. Their kids would be like out three or four times every year and sick for a week or so. 0 (41m 22s): Interesting. And what was the name of that probiotic? Probiotic? You mentioned 1 (41m 25s): MegaSpore biotic or micro biome lambs. Gotcha. I don't have any like financial with them. It's just like a great product. When I find new products like that, I'm very skeptical. I'm like, okay, well, I'll try it. But like, I doubt it. This is one that has like proven me wrong. I'm like, oh, this actually does work well for a lot of people, I'm going to ask him like, oh, can I have that more? I'm like, sure, fine. 0 (41m 51s): Gotcha. So mega spore, well, what, this is sort of a question I like to ask as we get towards the end here. And we've probably touched on, on a lot regarding this, but like, let's say you're getting in your forties and fifties and sixties, and you know, maybe you're looking for a way to sort of get your body back to what it once was when you were in your twenties and thirties. And this is a common goal for a lot of people. What would you give? What, like one tip would you give that individual looking to get their body back? 1 (42m 23s): I would say do useful things. So there's an old research study that took people in like their sixties to eighties. And they took a bunch of biometric markers and blood markers and like photos of them. And then they put them in their environment of what it looked like when they were in like the 1920s or 1940s. And they played the music from the 1920s and they made them dress up like the 1920s and talk like the 1920s. So they gave him newspapers that had the same newspaper from the 1920s. So they basically put them in their whole environment and their body reversed age within like, I think a few days to a few weeks. So they were in like the carnival fair, but it's one of those like classic studies people use to say, if you act young, you won't, your physical body will actually become young. 1 (43m 7s): So if you start to play with your kids or your grandkids, if you start to go ride a bike around town, like you used to, or even like skateboard or roller blade, or do something like play a little basketball or golf or like something kind of like fun, like you used to do as a kid, especially when people get into the retirement age. Like what do I do now? Like go back to your childhood, have fun. The biggest key factor I think is having fun. Whether it's like singing, dancing, listening to your old music, doing the old sports used to do playing can't play tennis, play ping pong. So you might have to modify it a bit, but I didn't like having games and fun time or music like any kind of playing music or dancing or listening to music is really good for your brain. 1 (43m 47s): And composers are the longest living profession or conductors, sorry of orchestras are things like the longest living profession. They usually can work into their eighties or nineties because conducting an orchestra is so brain stimulating and challenging intellectually for so many parts of you. And they have to like stand and move their arms and stuff. It's good. Cardio exercise music. Yeah. Music is definitely underrated. And I would say even 0 (44m 13s): Just listening, 1 (44m 14s): Even just listening. Yeah. I mean, you want to be careful what you listen to. So you're not listening to like negative hate ramp when you have snow. So that's something that like uplifts you rather than like sad music all day long, but 0 (44m 29s): That's such great advice. You know, I've all these, you know, health experts on. And you know, we talk about everything's this, if you were the first one, and this is episode, I don't know, 94, probably the first one that talked about like getting back to your roots. Right? Yeah. Which is so cool. Like I actually, part of me was thinking about rollerblading again. Cause you know, it's been awhile, but I, I would think that would be a fun thing for me to do if I was going to relive a younger moment. I mean, I'm a big golfer. So I, I, you know, I, I still play golf and stuff, but rollerblading would be bringing back the old school, you know? 1 (45m 8s): Yeah. I mean, that's so great. Whether it's like surfing, skiing, whatever is, there's certain things you wouldn't want to do. Like you probably went on to play football in your fifties, but like catcher played flag football or softball or something. But I think that getting back to your roots, everyone wants like the NAD or they want like the new diet or the new pill or the new, like this shortens your telomeres. I'm like, but just like have a good time. Cause if also, if you're having a good time, you don't really care if you die. If you're like 82 or 84, which like NAD might change give you a few more years, but like, why does it matter if you're not having fun? 0 (45m 42s): Right. Totally great advice. Great advice to end on. And this is great. And the best place for people to find you I'll put some links. I know you have quite the Instagram following and then you have the health assurance movement, right? Yep. And you have an awesome practice, which I go to just outside Chicago and Wilmette, right? Yup. 1 (46m 5s): Yeah. Integrated holistic healthcare, not currently taking new patients, but the website is integrated holistic.com. So you can find me there. The other website, we mentioned health insurance, movement.org or Instagram. Dr. Bradley Campbell as well. 0 (46m 23s): All right, Dr. Campbell, this is great. I honestly, we might have to do a part two, cause I do have some more things I want to talk about or that I want to hear from you. So I appreciate you coming on and yeah. Thanks so much for all the info. 1 (46m 36s): Thanks for having me. 0 (46m 39s): Hey, get lean equally nation. Are you a man between the ages of 40 and 60 years old looking to lose inches around your waist have significantly more energy throughout the day and gain muscle all while minimizing the risk of injuries? Well, I'm looking for three to five people to work one-on-one with in my fat burner blueprint signature program, which I've developed by utilizing my 15 years experience in the health and fitness space. This programs designed specifically for those committed to making serious progress towards their health goals. Over the next six months, we will focus on sleep, stress, nutrition, meal, timing, and building lean muscle. 0 (47m 20s): If this sounds like a fit for you, email me@brianatbriangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. That's brian@briangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. Thanks for listening to the get lean clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
