Podcasts about so lucas

Hello gut check project fans and KB MD health family I hope that you're having a great day. It's now time for episode number 60. Soon to be joined with my awesome co host Dr. Kenneth brown board certified gastroenterologist and we are digging in to my colony Yes, kicking it off to fun guys talking about fun Gus so let's get straight to it. I think that you will really like the series which we are about to kick off So with no further waiting let's get into the people that pay the bills are trying to get your daily polyphenols and artron to go to love my tummy.com slash KB MD. Get your very own polyphenols from artron to love my tummy calm today. Second, of course go and feel like great food. Don't forget that you can always head over to unrefined bakery calm or you paleo eater. You can't tolerate gluten you want just some great bread but you're worried about the way there's gonna make you feel unrefined a bakery, take 20% off your entire first order it unrefined bakery.com use code gut check and save 20% for your entire first order unrefined bakery.com And last but not least, head over to KB m d health.com. For your very own Dr. Brown signature packages artron teal CBD from KB MD health as well as the only professional curcumin added to broccoli. That's right so if you're feigns for you, your health use code GCP for 20% off of any order a short intro because we're kicking off an awesome series here no guest today so we're going to get straight to the to the information for about mycology and fungus. There's over a million different types of mushrooms which you may or may not be aware of, however, does tune in Episode 16 starting now.Hello KBMD health family and gut check project fans. It's time now for Episode Number 60 with my awesome co host here, Dr. Kenneth Brown. I'm Eric Rieger. Dr. Brown, I think with this episode number 60 we must be a couple of fun guys.that's a that's a pretty good pun. Because today we're talking fun guy.We are talking aboutmushrooms. So we're it's pretty exciting. I was watching on Netflix of a show called fantasticfungi. logs. It was talking about that.Yeah. And so a lot of people if you get a chance go and take a look at this. Paul Stamets I learned about this pre COVID when Paul Stamets went on Joe Rogan. And at that time he was talking about it and they're trying to raise money. So I rent or I purchased the movie, sure through Amazon Prime or one of those and watched it. Because they're supposed to go to various locations and show it at theaters like yeah, like in like in really cool locations, and outdoor theaters and stuff like that COVID hit, didn't get a chance to do it. And now it's on Netflix so you can see it. It's great. But what it does show is just how complex fungi are and the whole kingdom of fungi, which includes the mushrooms, which everybody thinks of them as mushrooms, and we're gonna get into that a little bit. But today we're gonna talk about that and not just kind of what they talked about. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in the medium right now about magic mushrooms and different things like that. But we're gonna talk the nutritional aspect, because an article just came out recently and I think you're gonna start seeing a big push of people discussing Well, how do we use this as a functional food, and that's what I want to get into today.That's huge and interesting, because growing up, I think that my only exposure to mushrooms were if they happen to come in a soup or if it was a you know, a portabello or a baby Bella or just a traditionally a white Texas mushroom and really didn't know much else than if they grew in the yard. And of course your mom was like, don't touch those are probably poisonous. So I I think it's kind of amazing how people kind of transitioned on this is actually something that can be very, very beneficial given the right circumstance.Absolutely. It's so cool. There's so much science with it. And you're right like it could be poisonous. Unfortunately, a good friend of ours, Dr. Rusev, Ron, a gastroenterologist in San Antonio, if you're anywhere in that area, make an appointment with him. He's amazing. His chocolate lab ate a skullcap I believe in cause liver failure. And his poor dog is really close to his dog and so that happened to our pig.Oh, that's right. Snoop hoggy, hoggy,hoggy hog you have pig wedid and Snoop Doggy hog a to death cap and it's very sad but it literally followed the the timeline of what happens when a mammaleats exists. skullcap or death tap is a call to death camp.I was assuming skullcap was another one I didn't really know butI'm barely getting into the one You can eat, let alone a boy,but you're not supposed to. So they, I think the death caps, at least in Texas, they'll follow the tree roots of oaks or post Oaks. And we've got a lot of okay. And so we're where we lived at that time. And so he was kind of lethargic for a day or two. And then there was about three days where he was really energetic and hyperactive. And I hated to see it, but it's almost like there's this turn, it's about a six to seven day rule. There's not a lot he knew.Regardless, I was just sitting there this morning, actually, this morning, I was doing the like news feeds. And of course, something always makes it up on Reddit. There's a woman in Taiwan where her landlord won't fix the leaks. And she was showing pictures of her bedroom, where the leaks are coming down to the wall. It's becoming a whole wall. It's a mushroom growing apartment, Natalie. Yeah. And she was just showing it's just like strips of mushrooms. And you know, it was getting a lot of comments, like if you you know, is that this will, if that's that, then you can eat it. And that's good news. And other people are like you're just breathing in spores. Pretty sure. Not the best place to have mushrooms all over your bedroom, but it is part of it.I don't know if it is or if itisn't. We'll get into all of this about the beneficial aspect of mushrooms. This is not a show about what what mushrooms can kill you. We're going to talk about how you can utilize mushrooms for your overall health benefit. And I was blown away by how healthy these are like people aren't talking about it. I always thought mushrooms were just something to add texture. And she didn't really think much about it. No. Now, this is really cool, because we're going to even sample a mushroom dish that has the nutritional value of this is pretty cool.Yeah, I'm excited to sample it again.Speaking of cool, yeah. I want to give a shout out to the wonderful Dr. Christian mill vilem you're that's how you sayOh, yeah, last guess. Yeah,yeah. Kristin. Well, she did something really cool about this now, and she sent us signed copies biohack your brain your Eric says right there dear Eric, left a little message for you. biohack your brain on our last episode Episode 59. Dr. Kristen, it's it's spelled Willem here. It's pronounced the villa Muir, PhD super smart, fantastic woman she sent us both signed copies of biohack your brain. And I think she's gonna end up coming out with addition to after she hears this episode, because I think we can help even biohack your brain more with these mushrooms.They are amazing. Thank you, Kristen, this is this is a very, very nice gift. And I mean, the feedback from that episode alone is really kind of amazing and ongoing. And people are are wanting to learn from her book because we referenced it. But yeah, she'sa smart cookie. And a study just came out today, sort of verifying everything she has in this book study just came out with a huge, huge number of people that showed those people that eat flavonoids, which she discusses correct in her book, significantly decreased dementia later in life. Oh, we talked about polyphenols all the time. But today we're going to come off the whole polyphenol thing and talk a little about mushrooms because I'm just excited. I feel like we're kind of pulling the lid off of this whole mushroom thing, the way that we did with polyphenols, and we keep getting deeper and deeper. Let'sdo it. I'm ready to learn.Yeah. Let's go ahead and jump in. Before we jump in really quick. I was just thinking about this. I I have not seen Mac or Murray around. And just it's odd not to see them or they did everything going okay with Mark and Murray. They are alive. Okay. And they are not in the countrywasn't as in the United States. They are in a country. So everyone is I mean, everyone's susceptible, I guess. And as a family, we took a trip to Panama the country onaverage on the news, those vacation trips look amazing, man, thatis great trip. I mean, it really wasn't wonderful family vacation. And we, we we weren't trying to go around crowds. Unfortunately, we we did have to go through an airport. So I'm assuming that possibly that's where the infection took place. But I don't I don't know. No one knows. But all four of us flew in to Panama City, we immediately get to a rental car. And we drove five and a half hours deep into the jungle down to this whale peninsula. There we served had a great time. And then we set up a test for us to be tested outside of the Panamanian International Airport at the tocumen Airport and we were advised that Be sure and do it outside of the air. Because if someone happens to be positive, you can then quarantine yourself, and then schedule your own subsequent tests to come back. So we did that. The other problem was is when they called to give us our results, we were already in the airport, we didn't realize that there was that caveat. So when informed that Mac was positive on his antigen swab coach that I said, well, do we need to leave? And they basically, we were informed Well, you're already on camera. And you're there. You got to stay. So essentially, Mac was was COVID positive, the pain could have any symptoms. 00 nada, no, no fever doesn't doesn't feel bad. But he and since he's only 17, and not 18, that meant that a parent had to stay. Fortunately for us, Murray does all of her work digitally, almost. And she's able to stay with him. But they are in a hotel room until the end of this week.Did they get to choose their hotel room that sounds neat wasn't necessarily a choice.Wasn't a choice at all. And they are only in the room and Reid and Mack both deserve huge credit because they've kept a great attitude. I don't think I could have pulled it off. But she she took some funny videos when they first got there because when they get their meals, they either flash the lights in the room or they buzz their room and tell them that they can go down the hallway. And this is a this is a very nice hotel. The hotel is not old at all. It's very brand new. It's brand new.It's so it's a Panamanian, COVID Hotel, that's where their quarantine all visitsare seven nice hotels that are quarantine for visitors currently. And they they didn't have to walk down the hallway and then an unmanned elevator appears with their food Emory took a picture of is a very Stephen King. Yeah,it sounds like a horror film. Yeah. They're waiting for two little girls and tricepsto shine. And I think I think if only for you know, five days, it would be kind of funny. As we're approaching 14 days, no one's really laughing much. You come home,I say on the news, because all my employees I showed up to work and they're like, Hey, we saw Eric's family. And like you didn't see the whole family.Yeah, just just just half. But does read it and re gave him pictures. She was contacted from a local affiliate, because I think it could be wrong, but I think she has a client who has a connection. They reached out to them and, and Mac and Maria, both good sports. And they went along with it. And I want to say just like they did, the Panamanian people, wonderful, this is very little to do with them. We're not above anybody's protocol, we went with exactly it happened. We thought we were being cautious. And, you know, we're we're still going to enjoy ourselves as a family. That's what this is the risk that we took.I think it's and I think that's great. I think the lesson here is if you're when you come into a country, you have to be COVID negative, and we're all getting used to taking those tests before we go. And then when you leave at least do it a day or two before so that you don't have to be part of the governmental process. Yeah,it's there's a couple of lessons certainly in there about the way to handle it, just simply because of the the way the bureaucratic rules are. And it's it's no one's fault, who's who's necessarily down in Panama. However, that being said, you know, would we have traded in the vacation in the time that we guys are family to tonight ever have those experiences? I still say no. Yeah.And so when that those, those pictures were amazing. The Panama just looked absolutely beautiful.Yeah, it was nice.anything going on with you personally, sides spending all your time trying to figure out how to get stuff to them inPanama. Oh, man, that was not very much fun. Everything is kind of pales into comparison. where lots of work and that's enough. Self well, because you got something coming up with you got a young one that travels.So this is relevant. So Lucas had a really good showing at one of the largest tournaments of the year called the qaiser tournament in Kalamazoo, Michigan. him and his partner, Nico godsick won the doubles. Awesome. And then he made it to the finals unfortunately didn't pull it off because the winner gets to go to the US Open. So didn't quite but still huge bracket 250 some kids the best in the country. And he made it to the finals. So super proud of him.But your son also overcame in the semi finals, a six one loss in the first to come back and win the next two. Correct?Correct Yeah, so in the semi finals, he came out a little but it just shows the caliber of play that's out there. If you don't have your game face on, you can or if you're just not firing on all cylinders, and you know he's playing two matches a day, every day for whatever seven days in a row. pretty wild and really cool to see that that level. We'll play they streamed it online. So I was able to watch these matches and you know, and love that my son was able to give a very gracious and appropriate loss post loss speech afterwards where they kind of hand the mic to you and you kind of get the you understand what it's like when you you miss out on something you want so bad, they're like, okay, that's great. Hey, what do you think about that? Put a mic in front of it, I think if the Naomi osaki stuff that's going on, and how the media stuff but so super proud of him. And we'll see what what goes on. He's gonna be doing some international traveling. And so we had a long talk about what makin Maria going through and how we're going to do the testing now and how to make sure that you cover your bases and how to prepare that if you have to stay for an extra two weeks,I will say gauge when we when the news broke that, that some people were going to have to stay because of quarantine gage was obviously negative. And he looked at us and he said, Well, I'm getting on the plane. So he is back at his back and luck attack and getting ready for the fall semester. He's looking forward to just having a fall semester where they actually go to classlike it like a real college experience. Yeah, yeah, totally. super proud. Carla's taking tennis, serious enough that now she's going to do online school. So she's joined the what I guess the more competitive group at the legs where they practice in the morning stuff. And so she's doing some fun fitness. This is the only thing she came home. And she was like, yeah, that had this fitness guy. And he's talking about fast twitch muscles in doing this and explosive power. And we're doing all the exercises that you make me do. I'm like, I'm telling you. Yeah. You guys think I don't read? I mean, I'm not telling you. Just because I'm a country, but doctor doesn't mean I can't at least read some stuff on sports performance. Yeah, I'mlearning that parents don't always get the same credence design.So Well, I think Dan is up to speed here. That's been an interesting week that you've had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk mushrooms that. Alright, so I want to talk a bit about the nutritional value of mushrooms and the effects on the microbiota. We always talk about the microbiota and I had no idea that mushrooms and factories very little in the literature about this, about the effect on our gastrointestinal health, okay, through mushrooms, we'll eventually get to that. Before we do that, we got to talk the mushrooms, the beautiful mushroom that everybody thinks about which is the fungi. The actual thing is, this right here is the cap. Mm hmm. Underneath the cap, you've got these gills underneath that you've turned a mushroom over and seeing the little lines that are there. And then below that is the is the basically the stock or the stem. And then beneath that you have the mycelium. What you'll learn if you watch fantastic fungi is that it's all about the mycelium, this that we eat that we think are mushrooms. This is basically a sexual origin, as they call it, fruiting fruiting. It's the fruiting body. underneath those gills right through here is where all the spores are made. And I remember what was his name that we had in the podcast that knew everything about mushrooms. Oh,that was early on.Cooper Reed Cooper read, talked about it like it just flowed off his tongue and I was like, what's he talking about? He used the word gills spores mycelium and I'm like what? Well, the mycelium is fascinating because that's basically without the mycelium. We don't exist. The mycelium is it's so cool, just watch fantastic fungi. But we're going to talk about the fruiting body right here. Because this is what we know more about mushrooms about what's going on. underneath here are the spores. They release trillions and trillions of spores, you actually breathe them in. Whether you know it or not all the time. We live in harmony with this organism. It's not a plant. It's not an animal somewhere in between. and we exist because of this. Yep. And I had no idea that this fruiting body is so good for you in so many different ways. So that's what I want to talk about.Let's do it.Alright, from a nutritional standpoint, you were we were working today and you're like you know, I hear all this stuff people throw out names and you hear things and gnocchi should tacky and you know, criminy and oyster and all these other names of mushrooms are some really cool names also Reishi Reishi lion's mane, but then there's like, I mean, just really wild ones. If you watch the Netflix special, he just starts rattling off purple headed dragons and things like that. It's there's over, I'm gonna get it wrong. I'm gonna get all this wrong, but 1.5 million different species that we've identified.I do not know that. It'slike some crazy number like way more than plants and everything. So from a nutritional standpoint, that's what I want to talk about today. And because we don't want to have a few other experts on to discuss some of these other aspects, but I've always kind of viewed mushrooms as just this filler that you just put into soups. Yeah. Or Whatever it is you want to do salads, it just adds a little bit of texture to things. So I pulled the nutritional facts of a few mushrooms very, very common ones, brown mushrooms, also known as crimini mushrooms. total fat is zero, total cholesterol is zero. Total carbohydrates is four grams. Protein is two grams. And the fiber content is point five grams, which is 2%. So four grams carbohydrates, but point five of it is fiber. Then you go to pataky mushrooms, which you'll find in Asian food all the time. And same thing about cholesterol and fat. That's the same process. This one also has two grams of fiber 12 grams of carbohydrates. And then oysters, oyster mushrooms, it's got two grams of fiber as well protein three grams. Now the aspect which I was unaware of, is the incredible micronutrients in it, it's one of the only ways to get vitamin D. Outside of Sunlight, sunlight, wow, it has a significant amount of selenium. In fact, a small serving of crimini mushrooms which would be like five small mushrooms is 31% of your daily Selenium that you need. And we have a hard time getting Selenium in our diets. That's actually why I eat like a Brazil nut three times a week just a pecans, yeah, to try and get that in. And then other nutrients like copper that you don't think of zinc, potassium, thymine. All of these things, and even iron are in slightly different, very slightly different concentrations of these different mushrooms, they're all slightly off. But the micronutrient component of this is incredible. Copper is one that I don't really pay much attention to. But then I realized, well, it's part of a cofactor in a lot of different things in your body it is. And so that is the mushroom content, or some of the nutritional values of some of the more common mushrooms. So if you're going to take these mushrooms, make a stir fry or a soup out of it, all you got to do is put five of these mushrooms, five of each kind into whatever it is. And what you're going to end up with is a total of 100 calories, no fat or cholesterol 4.5 grams of fiber. So that's 70% of the fiber that you need in a in in your whole day. six grams of protein. So for me 200 pounds, somewhere around point eight grams per kilogram, so slightly north of 70 grams of protein, I get six grams just in the mushrooms nice. And that's kind of what I aim for is around 72. But the real key to these are the micronutrients. It's like 64% of your daily Selenium 64% of your daily selenium, a ton of vitamin D and a lot of B vitamins that I didn't talk about before, along with copper, like we're talking about. Okay. So learning about this. We had a little bit before we started the show we Diego couldn't resist honestly, what we did is we made a basically it's kind of I don't know what would you call it a saute of. Number one, ittastes incredible.So with this in this, let's let's call the stir fry. In this stir fry, there is half a pound of grass fed grass finished meat, we have half a bag of spinach. There's those mushrooms that we discussed in those ratios. And what this comes out to is that with the grass fed meat, the spinach, and this doesn't include the nutrients from the onions and the other things to add a little bit of flavor onion, garlic, the zucchini, you're going to end up with 30 grams of protein, you're going to have 6.3 grams of fiber. Well I should break it down the meat is 30 grams of protein, you add the spinach, that's 6.3 grams of fiber, eight grams of protein and 50% of your potassium. So you put the mushrooms end with this and this little bowl here, which we're gonna take a bite of altogether is the bowl with a little bit bigger when we started. It's 500 calories, 11 grams of fiber 45 grams of protein and like 90% of the micronutrients that you would need in a day. Mushrooms, spinach meat, so take a little bite here.It is quite tasty. I'm gonna let him bite so that you're not just sitting in silence while we chop. But kids has a little bit of hot sauce on the top which I had some earlier with it and it's also delicious. But all I can say is it's fantastic. And I'm a creature of habit I can easily see myself doing thisevery day. So I would like to take credit for this. All I did is add the mushrooms but there are this is kind of a Kind of a staple in the bodybuilding world I didn't realize I started reading about this is what people will do this is they'll put spinach and meat. And they will use this for the whole week because then you add the mushrooms and now you've got the micronutrients. This is essentially a two bowls of this and you're done with all the protein that you need, all the micronutrients that you need and all the fiber that you actually need.So and to be fair, I would say for some eating mushrooms sometimes is an acquired taste. And I don't I don't know that feeling because I don't remember a time of not liking mushrooms. But I would say that this is this is a dish that I would say is not heavy and mushroom flavor. When you when you agree like the way that it's kind of salted and put together definitelyit's almost hard to distinguish what is mushroom? Because they're so finely chopped. What is mushroom? And what is me every minute. You asked meto kind of describe what are the and then you throughout the stir fry. But it's almost kind of like a super healthy stroganoff. It's kind of like a beef. stroganoff taste. Yeah, without strong mushroom tastes at all. AndI mean, I don't know, I think it's delicious. If I were to sit there if you're trying to watch your weight, and want to make sure that you eat healthy or even if people with intestinal problems. A lot of people can't handle gluten and a lot of people can't handle some some starches, which can result because of what we work in CBOE IVs. That can make it worse. This can be a very tolerable thing. And one of the things I really like about it is that you can get your body used to a certain thing every day. Yeah. And then you can start expanding your diet a little bit.Yeah, I mean, it's really good. It's very, very clean. Like it's the the fullness that you get just from the the natural fat and protein that's in there is is noticeable. So you, you probably won't overeat it, you'll feel satisfied, and you won't have a letdown because there's not a bunch of high carb sugar content inside.So let's talk about that. Why is this so satiating? Well, in on the Huberman lab, he talks about how your body your vagus nerve, actually sends an immediate signal that when it has reached a appropriate fat and amino acid content, that's the key here. So when you have a food that has a high amino acid content, and then in addition to the micronutrients, there is a immediate signal that sends to your brain and it turns on a hormone called leptin, leptin tells you that you're full, it's the exact opposite that happens in the food industry, which very highly processed packaged foods, they purposely make it with the emulsifiers, that it actually with the most fibers that make it shelf stable, but the emulsifiers actually do micro damage to that nerve. And that signal gets lost. So instead of turning on the unfold hormone, it turns on the I'm not getting enough nutrients called ghrelin, and you get hungrier, which is why you can eat a whole bag of Fritos or whatever your whatever, your crappy chip crappy chips or anything. Yeah, they the food industry hires PhDs, to figure out how to make it so that you will eat more of what they're making. If you're still hungry, you're still buying more products, because you're rifling through whatever they just sold you. So really simple way if you're fighting, I'm not gonna get so far as saying you're fighting food addiction, because I think that's a whole separate deal. But if you are somebody that fights cravings, a really good idea is to have something like this on hand, eat a cup of it, and then wait 15 minutes, then open up whatever device that you feel necessary that you have to do, because you're gonna end up eating less of it, because you've already turned on this hormone that says we've had enough.Yeah, I agree. It makes sense. I mean, quite honestly, when I was much younger and coming out of college, I didn't have the best eating habits. I would say I was I was falling into the pattern of being an overeater because I wasn't satiated. What wasthat crap that you would you would eat like a Yoo hoo. WhenI was in college, yeah, it was called a milk jug. milk jug and a fried pie. I can't believemill, chugging fried pie and now we're talkingabout chugging a five pie or sometimes I get a package ding dongs. Was that was the pinnacle health.So the package ding dongs are there to make you eat more ding dongs that is for sure. And the nutritional value is essentially that's that So today, we were you were like we're gonna talk mushrooms. I'm like yeah, I want to talk mushrooms. let's get let's get into this. And first thing you said is you know, I hear these names, but I don't Is there any science on this? Or is this just people saying oh, you should eat Reishi or Lion's Mane or, or whatever. I think Chagos is another one that people always talk about in all these different ones. corta seps as one.Sure. And how are we quantifying how I quote Find what we're measuring, and how do we qualify that the data is real. And it's we do that a lot.So it fit in perfect. I'm so glad that you asked that today, because one of the reasons why I wanted to do this particular topic is because a study just came out not too long ago, like a few weeks ago, on in the Journal of functional foods, and the title of the study is the role of dietary edible mushrooms in the modulation of gut microbiota, right in our wheelhouse. Definitely. So how do these mushrooms affect your gastrointestinal tract? And how do they affect your microbiome? So that's what we're going to cover today. And it's really cool, because I learned a lot. They they're so powerful. And I mentioned earlier how we pulled the lid off of polyphenols. There are so many similarities in a different lane. Nice. So we talked so much, we've got so many episodes where we talk about the innate immune system, we talked about the adaptive immune system. In relation to polyphenols, we talked about the how the polyphenols will increase the diversity of your microbiome, how polyphenols get broken down into post biotic, anti inflammatory, anti aging products. And this is all based on the science of these PhDs who've shared with us their brilliant work, right? This is when I started reading this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, they're saying something so similar by a different mechanism. So let's just jump right in. This is a super sciency article. So I'm, if I get too weird with it, you know, dumb it down and come back because it's, it's really complex. It's equally complex as the first time we were discussing the policy and also Yeah, if you look back, we did an episode with Sylvia, Sylvia Molino, and her research was just insane. It talked about how she took these complex polyphenols that are in our trunk to the kabocha in the horse chestnut, and she showed that they get broken down into smaller phenolic compounds like ecgc, which is green tea extract and light course attend and these different things. They didn't get into how the mushrooms do this, but I suspect it would be something quite similar. Yeah, through a different arm because these aren't polyphenolic compounds, the same ones that we're talking we'd have to find a fungus Silvia, we would have to find a fungal equivalent of Silvia correct. So it's very sciency. I'm gonna try to cover just some highlights of certain types of mushrooms, some of the more common ones that you may have heard of, and they're it's very complex, but these mushrooms have a wide range of constituents like things called glycoproteins polysaccharides phenolic compounds, and tri terpenes. Okay, so we're talking about terpenes when we're talking about CBD and cannabis and things. Yeah. Alright, so the first one that they covered was Reishi. Now Reishi has been well known for its anti inflammatory, anti tumor, something I didn't know acetylcholine esterase inhibition. So we talked about that when we looked at the the the episode with Angie, what was the title of that one? Anyways, when we talk about dysautonomia, acetylcholine has a big role. If you read biohack your brain she's got supplements to increase your acetylcholine, they do that by decreasing acetylcholine, esterase. And ratio has significant anti allergic properties. So what these team of scientists did, and this is out of China, where mushrooms have been used for ever, so it's it's more widely accepted that that is a functional food. These guys summarize that Reishi influences the gut microbiota by improving the intestinal barrier, okay, improving the intestinal barrier function, increasing microbial diversity. And it does a shift where it reverses bad bacteria and increases good bacteria very specifically, Reishi consistently would decrease bacteroides and increase from from from acuities for MC teas anyways, for me, Curtis, remember, I'm gonna mispronounce it might get all over me for doing the the reservatrol versus resveratrol. So let's just assume that I mispronounce a few things once in a while. Alright. So what it does, by doing that is that significantly increases the short chain fatty acids and anti inflammatory post biotics. They don't describe it as that what they do describe is molecules are then converted from the polysaccharides into anti inflammatory constituents also, they're describing post biotics while using the term. So all of these things in the literature has been shown to help with sugar control, lipid control, weight management and immune regulation. So when you said earlier, is there any data on these guys that's what they did in this article, they summarize the data on Reishi and showed this is what it's used for. This is how it does that. And this is why it helps with sugar weight management lift an immune regulation.Now well, I mean, you can even stop with this it'll Coleen be able to increase by stopping acetylcholine esterase. And that would be a benefit even by itself.So that's Reishi. Lion's Mane is another super common one that you'll find in supplements. It's one of the more popular supplements for mushrooms. And it's mostly due to lion's mane. Some studies were shown, I think it was in the 90s. That Lion's Mane can actually help with nerve regeneration. So it's been used a lot in the neurology world. And the reason is, is they believe that the beta glucans that are in lion's mane, show an anti aging and neuronal regeneration property, the prebiotic component of the lion's mane has been shown to have a positive influence in changing the pH in the colon, which increases the ability of other bacteria to produce butyrate. And in inflammatory bowel disease models, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. It decreased the inflammatory cytokines intraluminal, that have been shown to cause the damage and we've talked a lot about cytokines and a ton about cytokines. While once again, it improves the microbial diversity. And specifically, it has been shown to control the amount of Clostridium difficile that has been produced c diff is something really bad. If you don't know what it is good. If you know what it is. I'm sorry, you probably had it. That usually takes place when your microbial diversity gets shrunk down due to antibiotics. And then the C diff takes off unchecked. Now studies also show that Lion's Mane proteins are similar to immunoglobulins, like ag G. So structurally, these proteins look a lot like well, you might know it as SBI or colostrum. That's the immunoglobulins. And so those are the things that your body produces to help fight infections. Correct. So it looks like that. And this can result in this anti allergy anti tumor effect. And so there's so many studies going on with Lion's Mane right now. Not so much in the Western world. But there's a lot of studies going on in the Eastern medicine world looking at that. I mentioned shittaka earlier, do you have something to say about life? I wasgonna say I mean, we've all young gone in to and both from Reishi to lion's mane, there's a little crossover. And when you mentioned neurogenesis possible neurogenesis with lion's mane, it reminds me there's there are other mushrooms, too, that we're not going to cover today.Oh, no, no, no, we're gonna cover all of them. We only have 1 million for a really long episode. But it's cool though, just like just like traditional plants that we that we're that we're used to talking about, there's going to be some crossover and benefit from the way that certain fungi performs. I guess what I'm trying to say because there are other neurogenic or Yeah, neurogenic properties of other mushrooms or other acetylcholine boosters and other mushrooms. Anyway, I just kind of point that out there. There's absolutely complimentary aspect. And they kind of get into that in the fantastic fungi about how there's this symbiotic, sometimes competing, depending on what needs to be done. Some mushrooms will augment each other, some mushrooms will repel others. And this is kind of what it's showing that from a nutritional value these things do kind of the same thing in a slightly different way. Yeah, well, they're all kind of doing it. Like for instance, shotoku mushroom in colon studies, is a potent anti inflammatory specifically, the studies that they referenced, it showed that it decreased interleukin six, TNF alpha inducible nitric oxide, and we know that these are all things we've talked about in prior episodes, usually related to polyphenols and Cox two, while it increases the anti inflammatory cytokine called interleukin 10. Very similar to what the polyphenols have been shown to do, they've just been studied a little bit more over here.So Cox two just as a reference, if you've ever taken aspirin or anything similar to aspirin, you're, you're you're basically blocking coxy with that this is a this is nature's way of at least injecting itself into stopping that kind of inflammatory process.Exactly. So she Taki also, what's really cool about photography is that the studies have focused on its effect on the brain. More specifically, multiple studies have shown that it can help with anxiety and depression. Now this is through something that you're very familiar with. It increases BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor. Yeah, brain derived neurotrophic factor and decreases something else. You're very familiar with. Nf Kappa beta?Oh, yeah. Are you talking about those two?So these so NF Kappa beta is like the first domino that starts a whole process of inflammation. And if that's always being tipped, that's chronic inflammation. BDNF is a Protein mood says it's a factor. So let's just call it a protein. Yeah. So it's a protein that crosses the blood blood brain barrier, and helps decrease inflammation in the brain and helps clear out toxic aspects of it. So BDNF is one of the reasons that have been shown that eating a diet high in polyphenols increases your BDNF. Now we've got a shotoku mushroom here that actually has been shown to do something similar. That's super cool. It's really wild. Now as well, it increases nerve growth factor. So Dr. philomela will love this because she has a whole section in her book about nerve growth factor, and increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus. In biohack. Your brain she explains what the hippocampus does, and how important it is and how relevant it is to memory. And how you can regrow these nerves and people didn't think that we could forever I was taught in med school once you once a nerve dies, you're done.So what are we dealing with today with our aging population increase in incidence of dementia? So possibly an early intervention with shotoku mushrooms could be could be something that could be arming your body to help that.Yeah. The one another one that they discussed, which I'm unfamiliar with, but it was listed in this nutritional roundup that I found on mushrooms, it's called my Taki. Otherwise known as hen of the woods. You've heard of Yeah,all of the time. My dad often talked about my turkey. And I always knew he was talking about his hand that was always stuckin the woods. While he named his hand, my talkie.Yeah, well, he didn't want it to be your talking. So yeah, something like that. Terrible, stupid joke. Really, youknow what? It's okay. You don't have Mac around to listen to your bad dad jokes. It's okay. You can call me out mostly just by complete disinterest. So in other words, your dad's talkie. Yeah, show that it was it's it's Richard and phenolic compounds. So it actually has some of these problems. Not the ones we talked about ones that I've never heard of, but they're phenolic compounds nonetheless. And it has high levels of these beta glucans, which are very unique to cell walls, but it's the beta glucans that make these mushrooms functional foods. Studies have shown that has an increased and profound effect on increasing anti inflammatory microbial species. So basically, they show that it will increase the species of your microbiome, which will keep bad bacteria in check, right? It's kind of that whole yin and yang type thing. And increases short chain fatty acids producing species of bacteria. So it was really cool about the my Taki is that it seems to focus more on the surrounding environment of bacteria, so that these other mushrooms can let those bacteria break them down into good things. So it's all about signaling and getting the bacteria to grow, kind of like we talked about with spore based biotics, where they signal to have more of these less of these, it's it's trying to manipulate this stuff after after we get further and further into it, trying to say, oh, we're going to turn this into a drug. So it does this one thing, you start realizing this is way more complex than we could ever single handedly manipulate 100%. So basically, it still works as a prebiotic, and it helps produce all these other beneficial bacteria. So we're not actually going to cover the other 1,000,499 94 or whatever we did. But to summarize, these were the only ones that they actually looked at in this article, because the articles thick and they went into tremendous detail in each one. But to summarize it, edible mushrooms like this have a very positive effect on regulating dysbiosis. So your microbiome, maintaining the balance of good to bad bacteria ratios, increasing short chain fatty acids, specifically butyrate. The searching fatty acids result in all kinds of benefits across your body, including blood sugar control, blood pressure control, weight management, and brain health all of this together. So now, if you think about this, these mushrooms work different than the large stable polyphenols, like I was saying, but there's a lot of overlap.Sure. So it's a compliment. It's a compliment.I'm starting to see this beautiful Venn diagram. So our food right here, amino acids in the meat. We've got a bunch of polyphenols, colorful plate being in there with the spinach and the zucchini and then all those mushrooms are in here. That is a Super Bowl.Yeah. And it's it's super good. Period.So that is our first take on mushrooms. We've never done a mushroom episode.Now we haven't and I'm just gonna go ahead and reveal it. We've got a series of some pretty awesome guests lined up to come in and really kind of school us on some really cool deep aspects of mushrooms, the applications, how to find out what to look for If you're utilizing mushrooms to improve gut health are similar.So this whole mycology world is really neat once you start showing a little interest. There were, I mean, we've got people were emailing people right now like I would love to come on the show, can we talk about this? I'm like, wow, that's wild loved fun, eventually work our way through to whatever. And if you guys have any things you want to find out, like, you know, talk about what the How would you go about? What's the best way to things? I'm thinking about? What's the best way to learn how to find mushrooms in the wild, what's the best way? What are the best supplements that would, you know, augment if I'm trying to achieve certain things? What are the side effects? Yeah, so we've got a great natural path, who's dealt with this a lot uses mushrooms as a consultant. And he goes, I would really like to talk about some of the cons because all you hear is, you know, the pros. And that's great. Also, I want to get into that we've got all kinds of stuff. I thinkit's really cool that we're catching up on this subject matter, too, because actually, when we did have Cooper on it was fascinating. And at the same time, I felt just really inadequate to keep up on the subject matter because he was he was a completely different country. And we were stuck here going, I'm not sure I'm following every single thing that he's saying. Butall the way just from him saying, remember, it's the mycelium. It's the mycelium, and I know we're alive at the time. So it's likeyeah, it was it was like that. And since that time, we've we've actually were inspired by Cooper to kind of really start digging in deep, and it's paid off. And it's, I'm excited to have the next two, maybe even three guests. Join us here.I mean, eventually, if I can talk you into it, I want you to get another pig and we're gonna go truffle hunting.Oh, can we truffle hunt here? I don't know. That that's what we're gonna have. We're gonna have a truffle expert. Join our Yeah, I don't really I don't know enough aboutI mean, the way I see it, if you're if you're thinking about this, you're like, Okay, I've never really thought about mushrooms. If you're like me, never really thought about mushrooms. Now I'm realizing, if I've got my poly phenol ring here, and I know quite a bit about the endocannabinoid system over here, you need to fill that in. And now we're going to bring into third circle to form this Venn diagram kind of feels like they all augment each other in different ways in synergistic ways.Definitely, yeah, no, it makes sense. The The proof is in the pudding. I think that the choosing the right things to complement what you eat and how you live your lifestyle, of course, still getting good sleep. But what's crazy is when you eat right, you select the right kinds of foods to eat, sleep actually becomes easier. functioning throughout the day, becoming more productive becomes easier,for sure. And even when we've met with other experts, like the owners of four sigmatic and stuff, I didn't know what to ask. Yeah,yeah, that actually that's that was really funny also, because we, we had just had Cooper on the show by the time we met Marcus. And I can remember I sit there Go, man, this is fantastic. What do we say to him?Well, because we've heard we've heard all these people like like for SIG Matic for SIG Matic did a great job of advertising on different podcasts.Yeah. But then, but they brought valuein doing it. Yes. 100%. And then I'll even hear Rogen talk about different, you know, defenders, there's mushroom coffees, and all this other stuff. This is the stuff I want to know. Yeah. Like they want to, like this is the stuff that you say, just go Do you want to improve your microbial diversity? Do you want to decrease inflammatory markers? That's not making a claim? Now, that's referencing studies that have been done? And I'm like, Well, yeah, I do. Yeah. So that makes sense. I'm going to start using so grass fed meat. Bag of fresh spinach, some spices, onion, zucchini, garlic, zucchini. And then really, every any mushroom you can get your hands on. Yeah, it adds bulk and adds micronutrients and picks that up and you got yourself several meals,maybe pretty soon and I don't think we'll have it in time for production. We should throw the the recipe of and one of the show notes or something like that. Just to get some feedback on what people think of it.Yeah, and you know what we'll do we'll hit up Gabrielle Lyon. Who, who's she's a great, brilliant doctor. I heard her on cell dinos podcast, and then her and I were talking one time where I was like, Hey, man, I heard you talk about that. She does this but without the mushroomsnow okay. She's a bodybuilder.She's bodybuilder in great shape. And yeah, so yeah, if I can just take the time to do this. It's just a just I love it. It tastes so good.It does taste very good.And it's got the fiber in it and it's got the protein content and the micronutrients once again the fiber fiber fiber we do not get enough fiber in our dietsnow now and this this is an easy way to make italmost like a sneaky way to make it happen. It's like the anti food industry meals like Haha, yeah, you think it tastes good? You're not getting anything out of it.You don't have to keep buying anything from you. Yeah. Well, that's gonna be it for that's going To be all for episode number 60. Be sure and tune in for our follow ups like and shared kin, anything to add.Yeah, so we're really gaining some traction right now and having some fun, it would really mean a lot. If everyone just go to iTunes and like it, share it. Make some watches on YouTube because that getting some traction, there's a big deal. At Spotify, we're having some great guests lined up. And it's because we're getting a little attraction and I learned a lot from this. I love the questions that we get. So fire him our way, and we can help out. I know somebody is gonna ask, Well, wait a minute, I thought you're gonna talk about mushrooms. You didn't say anything about hallucinations or anything like that? No, no,they are some of the 1.5 million that we haven't gotten to. Yeah,just one of the 1.5 million. That's all y'all Great Day.We'll see y'all soon. Have a great one episode60 stay safe.

Eric Rieger  0:00  Hello gut check project fans and KB MD health family. I hope you're having a great day. This is your host, Eric Rieger, soon to be joined by my awesome co host, Dr. Keith Brown. It's Episode 57 of the gut check project. And today's topic is kind of, well, it's a few different things. Let's just put it that way. We let our guard down a little bit, we get a few emails say don't be so tight. So we're not. And Anna, if you're listening, thanks for the feedback. She's an awesome technician that we have at the GI center. So without further delay, let's get into the sponsorships Of course, are trying to get your daily polyphenols that are trying to calm it's a lot easier just to go to love my tummy.com slash KB MD. Get your daily polyphenols It doesn't matter if you're an athlete, or if you have IBS, like symptoms, or if you just simply want to make certain that your body has the tools necessary for your gut microbiome to give your body things like your living and course attend etc. It's all inside the large cup broncho poly phenol molecules and I slowed down there for a little bit because we talked about it quite a bit. But again, the cook broncho poly phenol molecule specifically and almost exclusively found only and I'll try and do so get yours today. Love My tummy.com and of course unrefined bakery, unrefined bakery.com amazing food doesn't matter if you're keto paleo gluten free vaid got it unrefined bakery.com that's on refined bakery.com they delivered to all 48 states continuous sorry, Alaska, Hawaii. They just don't have the means to transport. Some of these very perishable yet delectable items. They're far away. So what's that say? It says that they only want to deliver fresh, great tasting food, go to unrefined a bakery.com use code gut check and save 20% off of your very first order. And last but not least, KB MD health comm go there and get your very own CBD endorsed by my partner Doug brown as well as his baby artron deal and also Brock elite you can get all three of those at KB MD health calm around the clock because it's online. It's an online store very very easy to order. Use code gene CP to save 20% Okay, let's get into it. It's Episode Number 57Hello, go check project fans and KB MD health family. I hope you having a great day it is now Episode 57 This is my awesome co host Keith Brown. I'm Eric Grenier what's up Ken?Ken Brown  2:58  Oh man, I'm excited Episode 57 so we did our little three part series tried something interesting but didn't want to make a three hour podcast over one topic erectile dysfunction. That seems like it'd be a little heavy after a little bit.Eric Rieger  3:10  three hour Boehner talk.Ken Brown  3:14  There's, there's some science behind that one, maybe a little too sciency. I don't know. That's, uh, I feel like sometimes I go down rabbit holes. And I apologize if I'm too much of a nerd. But you know,Eric Rieger  3:24  we're gonna call this episode two scientists one lab.Ken Brown  3:30  You're doing a reference on the two bears one cave.Eric Rieger  3:34  Bert kreischer and Tom Segura our get familiar, but we're going to try to not get too sciency today, have a little fun with some health science and probably show a little bit more of just how we talk in the lab. That's really what.Ken Brown  3:49  Yeah, so we're sitting there scoping and one of our great texts on I was sitting there saying, hey, sometimes you guys get a little too sterile, like you're too eager to talk about the science and I'm like, Okay, and then you and I got to talk and because this past weekend, it typical things. I'm driving Lucas, up to Melissa, Texas, which is like 45 minutes north of where we live. And my son 16. Lucas goes, Oh, on this great podcast. I had never heard it. So I'm listening to two bears. 1k with Bert kreischer and Tom Segura. Just like, This is nuts. I spent like hours preparing these guys literally are like, I'm gonna get out of bed, not brush my teeth and show up and there's a whole episode on just that not brushing your teeth.Eric Rieger  4:35  Kind of pisses me off a little bit because Joe Rogan and all of his comedy guests talking about how hard stand up comedy is, and what I see them do is just stand in front of a microphone andKen Brown  4:46  like, whatever thought pops in their head does that. Sorry. Anyway, so Okay, so we're two scientists, one lab, two scientists one lab,Eric Rieger  4:52  at least for Episode 57. Email us as we go through here, and let us know what you think. Oh, just do a quick recap. Though, Episode 55 through 57, pretty, pretty awesome. Talking about certain viral infections and erectile dysfunction if you haven't seen 56 or 5556 57 get caught up. And I think we're kind of being shadow banned a little bit by YouTube. And suddenly,Ken Brown  5:18  because now we're looking at these different podcasts like,Eric Rieger  5:23  everywhere we go.Ken Brown  5:25  It's fascinating because now we're seeing all this stuff. When you look at Dark Horse podcast, Brett Weinstein's, and he is blatantly open, he's like, I'm gonna put this up, it's gonna last for a little bit, and then it's just gonna disappear, because what I'm talking about is controversial. And we were talking about some viral infections, that can actually cause inflammation, resulting in long standing, erectile dysfunction, which I think is extremely important, because we're going to be seeing a lot more of this, even if it's not important, irrelevant to you at least hope that this can be passed on to a urologist in the future that looks and goes, Oh, this is why I'm seeing younger men with this. But it's really interesting because I tried to search it in different ways, and it's not popping up, then you search our poly phenol ones. It's like, well, right there.Eric Rieger  6:04  Yeah, man before, before the pandemic, hey, you can search any of our topics on the show, and it will pop up immediately. And that's, that's, that's what's happening. So if you like what you hear, just try to like and share share with a friend. And then obviously, we just we're just wanting to share information. It's not it's not medical advice. It's just, it's just stuff that we read. And we feel like it's important. It's how we talk to the patients when they come to the clinic.Ken Brown  6:27  Yeah, exactly. You and I both did something recommended by Mike Logsdon. for business. We both read the same book this week. This is almost a book club right now. Yeah, start with why by Simon Sinek. So I'm gonna ask you everything that we do. And it's really fascinating, because so much so that Jr. Actually texted me and said, Hey, you should consider getting this for your family. And you should for yours also. But really, it plays into everything. It's a book by Chris Bosh that says letters. For a young athlete,Eric Rieger  7:03  something like that. But that's the one that letters through young athletes. Pat Riley in it. Yeah,Ken Brown  7:07  it's Pat Riley, it's letter three athletes. What's fascinating is that the guy was on a podcast, the author and he was discussing. When you go into something, whatever skill you're trying to do, there has to be a why because eventually you achieve what you want. If you're an athlete, if you're a pro athlete, you get the fame, you get the money, you get that but if you don't have the why, then everything falls off as a physician. You go into school and you say I need to get four oh, I need to get four oh, I need to get through high school. To get through college. I need to get into med school. I need to get in good residency, I need to get into a fellowship. And then all of a sudden you're there and you're like, I'm here. Yeah. What's my Why now? And I think that that is it was such an interesting read because it's a business book. But really, what is your WHY? Your why to do things? What is our why for doing this?Eric Rieger  7:52  Oh, this this podcast? Yeah. I can't believe nobody even watched I think one of the coolest why's is each week or each sometimes every other week. But we are kind of just forced into immersing ourselves into new territory, which is awesome, because it's actually the part that drew me into healthcare in the first place. How can I help? How How can we help it's not just me, it's it's a collaboration, you get a lot of information, you do the research, read things online, you talk to patients, you get the feedback you you see what works and sometimes, unfortunately, see what doesn't work, but we're just we're forced to learn so that we can hopefully help someone get better. And that's it.Ken Brown  8:33  Yeah, that's the bottom line. Like I've realized how much I've researched how much I've learned how much we're unearthing and today's episode will be just like that eventually when we get to the but that's what happens when you show up to two scientists one's labEric Rieger  8:45  no yes all the time. Now logs in had a good idea that read that book and I liked it because it had you separate what why is because sometimes you may say oh yeah no why is why is I need to get down the road No, that's that's how that's the how Yeah, you've got to figure out what the goal or the purpose really not even the goal the purpose of a goal could just be a mile marker but the purpose of what you're doing and why you're doing it and yeah logged in good findKen Brown  9:17  I love it because I believe that everything about my life has been about a why including developing on Tron to including getting into the CBD world including trying to do yeah, there was always a why behind it. But if you're not always thinking about that you get bogged down by the ones.Eric Rieger  9:34  As a witness I can remember if you never set out and said I want to get into CBD. You said I wonder if CBD will help the patient and we you came up with I won't go through all of them but a few different scenarios. And it was never we need to shoehorn CBD in to help make it work. Yeah, it was never that which I found to be. We set it on the show before I actually thought that we would be led down by the use of CBD. I was like Man who knows I hear people say all kinds of stuff. Suddenly the lie was more or less realized just by sticking to how do we best find the right people to do this with? Yeah.Ken Brown  10:10  And then even like without try until the why was I need to find something in a natural way to treat people that there's no pharmaceutical solution. Oh yeah. And now the wires become holy cow. There's so much more to this. And there's so much untapped potential of these beautiful molecules. And if you look at other episodes where we hit you, Sylvia Molino, Charlene, I will then hit and then beaten Charlene rambutan brilliant scientists, PhDs. And they're teaching us about stuff that I had no idea about a molecule that I'm wrapping, you know that I'm going all in on on this, and we've got it. But when you get away from the why, then it becomes the wire sales like this this month, why don't you know and you just go, Okay, let's just take it let's take a step back. That's the what that is a focus on the why metric is what your metric is, uh,Eric Rieger  10:59  what you know, what's cool is he can come back and benefit you directly. And I'm just gonna use your most recent example. You hurt your neck. And you went in to go see Wade McKenna. And I would say the now you're feeling great are much, much, much,Ken Brown  11:14  much better, much better.Eric Rieger  11:14  That being said, if we hadn't been on the pursuit of that, why, how do we help people? How do we share that information? I don't think that you would have been nearly as gung ho to go and see someone like Wayne.Ken Brown  11:25  Alright, so bring that up. The only reason why I knew to call Wade is because he came on our podcast. Why did Wade Come on the podcast? Why did he take a day off of a busy schedule? You called him up and said, Hey, do you want to come on? And it's uh, you know, doesn't matter how big you're doing something. But when somebody has a why his Why is to educate about stem cell? Oh, yeah. When he gets an opportunity, he took the time off his day, showed up at our studio, and just kicked some crazy knowledge, the most knowledgeable guy in stem cells, I'm going to put my I'm going to say it. He's been if you watch the podcast, you go, yeah, I could see that. Outside of maybe a couple doctors in Germany that have a few more liberties on what they can do. Wait is one of the most intelligent people about stem cells. And by the way, spoiler alert, that's what today's eventual science podcast about will be stem cells and how to improve your ability to have a better response, which I found out when I went so I got my third and IV infusion, one injection, three IV infusions, great team over there, had a long talk with Dr. Philips, his his associate that helps doing the IV infusions, and we get to talking about how can you make this better? How can you make it so that if I'm going to spend this kind of money that I get a absolute perfect response? And they have not developed a protocol yet to do that? There are no protocol exists? Got it right here. Yeah. So if you're gonna go get stem cells, or if you're somebody that has a doctor that does stem cells, they need to listen to this episode.Eric Rieger  12:55  I think it's awesome. And it's just another point of collaboration, like, Wade will never tell you that he has all the answers. But he will take great information and see how he can incorporate it to basically just help all the people he's that he's trying to help patients and otherwise, so yeah, I think it's, it's a lot like the podcast.Ken Brown  13:11  Yeah. So yeah. So anyways, what's going on with you in the family? How's everything?Eric Rieger  13:18  renovation? I don't really want to talk about that. It's not any fun. Wait, you wait for deliveries, because there's just certain parts of the country that aren't even producing stuff. And I'mUnknown Speaker  13:29  making glass and I'm making tiles, so you just sit around in any way. So we're doing that. We can't get glass for the windows, but we can't get tiled. Would you mind if we put tile up?Eric Rieger  13:40  Actually, this point, we find the heavy window no sunlight. But, you know, gaging Mac of both to kind of flex in some of their entrepreneurial spirit this summer. They're building, building some smaller companies. We'll see how they do. Maybe we'll talk about in some time, but haven't quite gotten that point to do that point, excuse me to get it all off the ground yet, but it'll be interesting. Emory's very, very busy. That's, that's pretty much what's happening. Summertime. Yeah,Ken Brown  14:10  totally. Oh, so typical stuff is a big tournament season. So the kids read a lot of tournaments. I got to tell you a funny story, though. So Lucas, got into this unusual tournament where if you win, then you get into this next level, like a Junior Pro tournament. And it was in Little Rock, Arkansas. And so loida and Lucas drove a Little Rock, Arkansas, and I had the funniest conversation with him. Because the first round he went pretty easy second round. And to hear Lucas tell it, it was great. And I loved hearing the way that he's trying to mimic the accent everything. He's like, Bobby Bobby, he's like, he's like, This is so funny. I literally lost two. I lost two games because I was laughing. That he shows up as tournament and this guy shows up with two rackets and Water Bottle, which is usually people have a bag and they've got a hole in it. Yeah, like it's level. Yeah. He said the guy had a little belly on the whatever. And it sits down. He's like, yeah, me and my friends we were drinking and they said, we're gonna buy an entry into this thing. I didn't think I'd win, but I won that first round. And now we're going to play you. It looks. It's laughing he's like you were you were drinking and your friends and rodeo and he's just like, Yeah, he's like, they parently think I'm a good tennis player or something. Which makes it funny because he probably was like, some point like, like, like an elite tennis player because look, as I just said he played really well. Yes, out of shape.Eric Rieger  15:35  15 years a Daedric it'll do that to you.Ken Brown  15:40  Because it was like it was the funny thing. I couldn't stop laughing. It's like I would I like a song a few times. And he goes yeah, if y'all if he can just slow that down a little bit might be able to get get one of them back. Okay.Eric Rieger  15:54  This was mocking him or not mocking Oh,Ken Brown  15:57  yeah, Lucas was imitating good old Little Rock, Arkansas. He goes on the changeovers, the guy comes over and goes, goes, Hey, how old is you? 16 is like shit. I shouldn't ask that. Now. I feel even worse.Eric Rieger  16:12  But he's there.Ken Brown  16:12  Yeah. Buddy show up there drinking beer behind the fence. Lucas was about ready to serve serves today's and here's one of the guys go. Yeah, he's legit. Love the story. I could not stop laughing. And he goes up because you had lost these two games because I did a body serve. And he tried to get out of the way and just kind of like instead of, you know, didn't get hit and somehow blocked it with his frame. And it was a winner. And I looked at him and I was just like, he was Wow, great shot. He's like, Oh, come on. Now. I didn't mean to do that. It's just a funny, cool story. Then the next round he played a really elite kid that from the division one player and they went for our match for our mouse Lucas loss and a third set tiebreaker real close. If he would have won that one. He would have played a guy named Sam Harrison, who is a ATP tour player right now ranked a little lower due to injury but he was ranked 35 in the world. Yeah, he was Lucas was looking so forward to trying to just at least see what it's like to get served by guys.Eric Rieger  17:17  I'm gonna I'm gonna steal a phrase from some Arkansas people and say, Hey, boys, legit.Ken Brown  17:22  That boys legit. Carlos and Lloyd are touring everywhere doing things? Oh. I, because of our last three episodes, I'm trying to leave my own science behind this. Remember the article where we talked about how Argentine plus CBD synergistically opened up? If you look at that, what happens is Arjun Nene is what's needed to make nitric oxide, which veza dilates. vasodilation helps. And so I was looking at it from a workout perspective. So I do I do what I do. And I ordered an excessive amount of arginine and citrulline from Amazon shocking. Yeah. I started doing arginine and citrulline every night like so I do. I do l leucine for which is for muscle memory I'm trying to get I'm trying to gain back the muscle that I've lost since my neck injury. And oh my gosh, I wasn't putting two and two together. And I started having the worst heartburn. I immediately turned into one of my patients where like, I wanted to like call somebody and say fix this. Now some reflux, some reflux, nausea, just felt justEric Rieger  18:31  yeah, that does not sound fun.Ken Brown  18:33  And I do have acid reflux. And I do take medicine for it. I've tried to get off the medicine for years and years, and I just can't and I've accepted that. And that is what it is. So it was a last week. Last week. I'm sitting there. I'm just like, God, I'm talking to an architect. And we had a cancellation. And then the way that I do things too extreme, I was like, go ahead and load up a scope. She's like, No, don't do it. Like we got to try. Well, I'veEric Rieger  18:56  already heard about,Ken Brown  18:57  I'm worried that I've got like, like, like, I think I've cancer. Cancer. Like you don't have cancer that round. You don't have cancer. You just have some. And I'm like why in the world would I suddenly have all this reflex and then she points out? Did you do one of those weird things where you want some weird supplements. But that can't be it. That can't be it. Just go just go get a scope. So I took the endoscope and I'm staring at our monitor. And I'm trying to get this thing in and I'm holding it like this. And it's like right there. And she's like watching it she's going cuz I was like stop my eyes are watering just goes hard. This is why we sedate people, right?Eric Rieger  19:43  No, no, no can.Ken Brown  19:47  I eventually just got it down and I did my own enough.Eric Rieger  19:52  So those are never seen one those are as big around as probably what a pinky probably maybe a little bit larger than a pinky. Imagine that going all the way down your throat, not you, you don't have to imagine you just did.Ken Brown  20:04  eyes water looking at it, and I got an over here just gonna I'm gonna throw up stop. And I'm likeEric Rieger  20:12  this may be the last two scientists one lab.Ken Brown  20:17  Yeah, I think it is. Speaking of science, do you see what's going on with that? acetylcysteine?Eric Rieger  20:25  Yeah, I did. I don't really like it. I think it's ridiculous. And I hate the category of conspiracy theorist and, you know, tinfoil hat thoughts, all of that kind of stuff. However, for a supplement in acetylcysteine, which is acetylated and acidulated amino acid. Two have been on the market over the counter for almost a full 60 years. 60 years. Yeah. Two weeks ago, the FDA declared it a drug. Now there's a bunch of different pathways that can happen efforts to Claire to drug it can remain a drug over the counter, much like Tylenol, or what the fear is, is that it will then slowly migrate over to just being prescription or at least controlled in the way that it's dispensed, like ephedrine or anything else like that. And it doesn't quite make sense, other than the fact that you've got MSC doses, the Mac in August or September, I think there was starting to be some leaked research about any acetal cysteine was actually proven once again, and it made sense. You know what lay back a little bit further. About four months or five months before that news came out, we put together a protocol of supplements that we felt like could benefit people who were suffering from COVID,Unknown Speaker  21:45  Episode Three, I think, or something. And in acetylcysteine, or nak, was was a part of that.Eric Rieger  21:52  And it makes sense, because just a quick refresher, instead of cysteine, you take it and the body converts it to glucose ion ion is basically your body's you making now your body's best antioxidant defender it scavenges rrs, or reactive oxygenation species throughout the body. And when it does that, as we've covered in many different episodes, you're stopping long term inflammation. Inflammation by itself can be incrediblyKen Brown  22:24  necessary inflammation necessary long term chronic inflammationEric Rieger  22:27  not That's dangerous. In fact, it leads to many, many things disease and cancer etc. So in a single system that was being highlighted, because the issues of the lung, turn into cascading inflammation. And that's why the way in the early days of COVID, people were rushing, putting people on ventilators, they're losing them. However, the problem became that it was just out of control inflammation, and it almost became a point where the inflammation was beyond the acute infection of the virus. Now it's the body just attacking itself. And it is in a single system was seen or observed to be a part of a recovery mechanism by helping your body produce enough glutathione and basically getting the lung tissue to not be so inflamed. nak is known as both a pulmonary protecting as well as as well as a hepatic protected and you know a lot about this, of course you can speak to it. People who have acute Tylenol, toxicity or people who are long term alcoholics. It's recommended. Well, that's whatKen Brown  23:33  I think that's what the FDA is hiding behind. After 60 years of being over the counter. The FDA says Oh, no, this you this actually started out as a drug. And we're gonna make it a drug again, 60 years later, because n acetylcysteine is it's it's a great antioxidant increases your glutathione. We could do a whole episode on glutathione. It's an amino acid. It's an amino acid. It's It's incredible. But then they came out and said this, so then they immediately pulled it. So I wantEric Rieger  23:57  to be clear, Amazon did, Amazon Amazon did and maybe a couple others. There are still Walmart still actually did this morning. Walmart still has neck available. I just wanted toKen Brown  24:05  add that. And then I talked to one of my patients who's a very high level pharmacist and she said, Yeah, I believe that. It appears that some drug company may be using it in conjunction with something else. So they're trying to get it so that they can garbage. I man I panicked. I totally panicked. And I'm like, Look, I use it for so many things that I need to get my hands on a bunch of N acetylcysteine. So it's the first time I've ever done it. But I went to the dark web. You flirted with the dark web? Yes. What's the dark web and I ordered a bunch of an acetal system. And I give it to my employees. So I gave it to his green who's who's my medical assistant, fantastic employee. And amber came in grabbed me my other medical assistant and she's just like, Hey, can you come and look at this. And I walked in and is was just holding the phone. It was just caressing it. And she was just like, Remember, you are loved and we can't wait to do your colonoscopy? No, though. That's, and I was like it. She's really friendly. But that's way too friendly, and way too friendly.Eric Rieger  25:10  And then amber goes,Ken Brown  25:13  can you go look at the bottle you gave her? was right. I, it's my first time on the black web or the dark web, whatever it's called. And I ordered her MDMA for Molly or ecstasy. Oh, yeah. Thinking it was an acetal cyst. It's not. It's not. It's the opposite. Now, here's the real dilemma that I'm in my life. My patients loved it. I know. Yeah. So many great Google reviews based on that.Eric Rieger  25:39  Yeah. Unfortunately, they hung out in your waiting room for four hours.Ken Brown  25:45  Yeah, she only that was surely up to one patient. I did get a bunch of bad reviews, and everybody else has done. So you know, that's my bad on the whole and acetylcysteine. So probably shouldn't I probably should not just randomly knee jerk stuff. As Anna said, you just seem to overdo everything. And don't always push the Buy Now button. I did not do that. Please. I did not drug my employee. I just thought it was a funny story. When you were just talking aboutEric Rieger  26:12  this. This is what happens when we break character a little bit or actually, this is exactly what how we talk.Ken Brown  26:21  I actually told news, I was gonna do this. I was like, I'm like, I gotta prepare for this podcast. She's like, what do you talk about? Like, I don't know. And I'm like, you were really nice. That last patient and then my mind just went there. Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that. I'm gonna pretend like I bought you MDMA. And she looks at me and she's like, what is in your head? I'm like, you just heard what was in my head. You got to start hearing.Eric Rieger  26:45  Well, that was interesting. But I do think it's, it's kind of wild and you referenced him earlier, the Dark Horse podcast. they've, they've been amassing tons of information, not on an industrial 16. But on ivermectin and how more that they had an incredible guest on two days ago. His name wasKen Brown  27:10  Cory Horry, pure coreEric Rieger  27:11  and he is a medical doctor who is infectious disease and has served on multiple boards where they deal with protocols for viral outbreaks and pandemics and has served on the COVID board. And, dude, he's got incredible data on how ivermectin not only works, he's got the scenarios he talks about why he doesn't understand why it's been covered up. And he gave scenarios in Mexico, multiple people, these aren't small, one off studies, multiple people their 1200 healthcare workers 1200 healthcare workers, I'll leave you this 700 something 700 change of the 1200 agreed to take ivermectin all of them, highly exposed to two COVID 100% of the 700 and change, never diagnosed with COVID. The other 500 and whatever is leftover of the 1200 healthcare providers 58% 58% of them developed COVID COVID symptoms, etc. And they didn't take ivermectin prophylactically so we'll go down that rabbit hole. Check out Dark Horse podcast with Brett Weinstein and appear Cory it's it's great. I think the publish date was June 1. IfKen Brown  28:26  there's anything to say about those two guys, they have a why. Death Row Weinstein's? Like I have to get this stuff out here. Yeah, that guy pure Corey, his wise. I'm, I'm the guy in the trenches. I'm a, I'm a critical care doctor. Why in the world is a politician telling me what to do?Eric Rieger  28:42  I don't I don't understand. I eat politician or not. We're standing in the way of we've heard for a year now trust the science. I want to trust the science. But trusting science doesn't mean stop asking why?Ken Brown  28:56  Oh, and that doesn't mean that in what they were talking about is exactly this. We bring up a lot of studies, and I'm going to do it today. Yeah, that is not this large, randomized drug funded study, because that's the only way to do a study that big that randomized that multicenter all that stuff. But he did so much better. He said, there's so many other studies that you can make a meta analysis out of and he said when he started talking about that he's like, the data is there. And yet, the government saying the data is not there. Like every time if you look at any of our podcasts, it's it's completely based on studies. Everything is based on studies from it is it is not conjecture. It is not opinion. It is. This is the study. Yeah. And that's what we do. And that's what he was saying.Eric Rieger  29:44  I think that's the responsible thing to do. I mean, if we're going to if we're going to talk about subject matter, and it has, and there happens to be hypotheses around them or what's going to happen. Let's talk about what we actually know or have observed. Then you man, yeah, sometimes you're going to find a paper that later on is going to be found either wrong or not exactly on the nose. But as long as the data in there is, is honest, it's worth talking about, and what's crazy is vaccination or not for for COVID. I think that's a personal decision. And they talked about it on there that you take a risk analysis. And, and there there are some people that it may be perfect for there may be some that aren't. And Brian, I'm getting into that today. However, the the narrative from the government or politicians specifically seems to be trust the science, get the vaccine. And then when you turn it around and say, well, I've mentioned has this high safety profile. And it may work also, their retort happens to be, there's not enough data. But there was never enough dataKen Brown  30:54  on a brand new MRI. I mean, I don't want to turn this into that. But this is stuff we talked about, called day long. We talked about it constantly. Like look, why why can you say there's not enough data there, but then you could say that, you know, just do this, and I get it, we have to get our country back working. And I get that we all have to have some assemblance of comfort. And by saying that you've What did I just see? I just saw something that you can, like so many places are saying the mask mandate is still in effect unless you've been vaccinated. If you don't wear a mask, we're assuming you're not vaccinated that you've been vaccinated. Like, this is like the new rhetoric everywhere. Yeah. So it's basically saying, Well, I'm, anyways, I don't want to go there. But it's just weird. It's just weird. Yeah. It's plain weird. Doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense. It's like give me given your employee, MDMA. Molly, instead of N acetylcysteine. Or some weird part of someone doing what else is weird? Since we're talking podcasts. So I was watching Joe Rogan not and he had on his I actually liked the jujitsu podcast, I know that you kind of prefer the the non MMA stuff. I kind of like that where he'll have john Donahoe and these people. Well, he has, he had this guy named Gordon Ryan. Gordon Ryan is currently the world of the world, world, and many people consider the best and nogi Jiu jujitsu submission specialist. He gets on there and starts talking. And Joe's like, Oh, so Gordon, tell us about your gut issues. He's like, like, had a bad staph infection, like, you know, a year ago, and I took like, rounds and rounds and rounds of antibiotics. And then I just started developing the severe gi issues. And now I've been diagnosed with this thing called gastroparesis, and which is your stomach doesn't empty. And it's horrible. Because every time I eat I bloat like crazy, and I stay full for hours. And it's like, and I've been all over, and they just tell me, well, that's just part of, they say, I have irritable bowel and things like that. And Joe's, like, if there's any good gut doctors, let us know. And I was just screaming, I felt like that stupid, progressive commercial with flow in them or on the beach and seeing that now, it's really stupid. We have a Roku now, and you can't fast forward the commercials, you know, on some of the shows. So it has the whole progressive team hanging out on a beach and flow sitting there. And everybody's like, yeah, it's nice to not work and just hang out at the beach. And then like, there was a man and a woman talking and she's by her boat, the other guys by his camper. And she's just like, man, I love my boats. I love my camper is like, Yeah, but, you know, I just wish I could put them together like in a, like in a bunch or something. And she's gonna, it's called a bundle. It's called but like, she couldn't hold back and she ran out and tried to sell insurance. And so that's how I felt I was like, I'm screaming into the thing. I'm like, this could be CBOE Gemini. I'mUnknown Speaker  33:47  talking about CBOE yet. YouKen Brown  33:48  haven't even discussed it. That's what's causing your gastroparesis. So when you have gastroparesis, it could be if you don't have diabetes, or another neurological reason to have it. It could be that your small bowel when it dilates, because you eat and it becomes distended. It tells your stomach not to empty. Yeah, I have all kinds of patients that actually are diagnosed with gastroparesis. I treat their CBOE and then the guest presses goes away. That's nice. And so I was just sitting there and then on the most recent episode, I just cringed, Joe's like, yeah, my friend Gordon Ryan was on here and and he's gonna go somebody stepped up to the plate to help them. Even though I know that Mike logs and tried to offer him I'll try and do it a seminar once, and I dm them on Instagram, and haven't heard back yet. But anyways, so he goes, Yeah, my friends. what they're gonna do is stem cells, and BPC 157 peptide. We'll we'll eventually do a whole show on peptides. And I was just Saturday I went because of that statement. I'm looking at this and I'm like, stem cells for gut health, which could be fixed by taking polyphenols. What is the relationship huh? What if we developed a protocol pre and post them? So is there any science on it? Yeah, we kind of kicked that around a little bit. And that's where the two scientists in one lab comes in. Right? So I got some pretty cool stuff to talk about today. So even if you're gonna ignore my dm Gordon, you should at least at least listen to this part here. Because if you go get stem cells, I can make it so it's better for you. So alright. Stem cells, which we've talked about for my neck, which we had one of the world's experts on Wade McKenna, if you go on like DuckDuckGo, or someplace where it isn't really kind of controlled, you'll find studies on Alzheimer's, autism must, multiple sclerosis, congestive heart failure, erectile dysfunction, liver disease, hypertension, pulmonary issues goes on and on and on and on. And one of the things that I was looking at, and then you go to the FDA, and you're like, Why in the world? Is this not being talked about more? Why in the world? Is this not being discussed more? And you could look at the political reasons as to why because stem cells, and I won't get into that today. But if you go to the FDA website, what they do state is there's no science behind it. And then the one thing that even Andrew Huberman talked about on his podcast was stem cells. The problem with stem cells is they can also make cancer cells grow.Eric Rieger  36:25  Yeah, there's a caveat to that. But yeah,Ken Brown  36:26  so that's what I want to talk about. So what is the biggest risk of these stem cells? Now if you look on Netflix, there's one of those documentaries where they discuss how stem cells caused infections that all came out of one lab and it was 18 people, millions of stem cells done, so I'm not going to throw the infection thing out there. So let's just address this whole thing of stem cells, and how can you make them better one? And how do we decrease the risk of promoting tumor growth? Okay, so that's what today's podcast really is, after we've discussed a lot of random things. So, Wade, and any other person that actually does stem cell therapy, listen up very carefully. If you're somebody who's going to get stem cells listen very carefully, very easy, based on science once again. Alright, so let's look at this, I found an article where it looked at condensed tannins from cinnamon, where what they did is they showed that by taking condensed tannins, cinnamon tannins, like cube rochow, it promotes migration of stem cells and accelerates wound healing in mice. So what these guys did is that they showed that the it's called mesenchymal stem cells, which means the stem cells from the bone marrow, this is an exogenous bone marrow stem cells migrate in accordance to the location based or aided by the condensed tannins. And what they do is they analyze the effects of the cinnamon tannin on mesenchymal stem cell migration in vivo, meaning that they unfortunately caused an injury in a mouse. They caused a skin injury. And then they demonstrated that the mice that got the action, I think they stimulated stem cells, they did something where they could show that stem cells did this, either they gave it to him or they stimulated it. But they showed that in the mice that the stem cells from the bone marrow more readily went into the blood and then accumulated in the area where the injury was okay, more so than the mice that did not have the cinnamon tannin given to him.Eric Rieger  38:42  So just a second, follow exactly what you're saying. Obviously, if you're trying to heal an injury with stem cells, you want to make certain that they concentrate where you where you want them. And you're saying that using a natural tannin enabled the stem cells to aggregate where I metKen Brown  38:58  where I wanted to increase the stem cell production and mobilization even better.Eric Rieger  39:03  So I got more of them more in the right area and more efficiently.Ken Brown  39:06  Exactly. And what they what they showed is that once in the animals that they give the cinnamon Tannen to, they showed that following the condense 10 and treatment, there was more angiogenesis increased blood flow, blood flow increased blood not just blood flow, but that led vessels granulation tissue formation and remodeling were accelerated during the wound healing process. And what they believe is that the cinnamon tannin promoted tissue regeneration attributable to the mesenchymal stem cell induced tissue repair. So in other words, they believe that the tanan resulted in greater stem cells going to the proper area. Which is exactly why when I got my neck injection I did a five day fast leading up to it followed by eating and I took condensed tannins the entire time and continued to take them So I'm super excited to see this. So the conclusion of these scientists were, the results demonstrate that that the cinnamon tannin promotes mezen kaimal, stem cell migration in vivo and accelerated wound healing. And the key here is that the structural features of the flavonoid that type of poly phenol is the key, it is critical to their effects in both the migration and the location of it. So, not just any tanam, not just not just any polyfill. But it has to be a flavonoid comprised of proanthocyanidins. In other words, groups of flavonoids, we say it all the time, large stable poly phenol helped wound healing Yeah, through stem cellsEric Rieger  40:47  Make sense? Once again, it's a it's a demonstration, I believe, of your gut bacteria, taking apart the large molecule and using the the aquaponics the the post biotics as the body needs, correct?Ken Brown  41:03  Yeah. Make sense? The sciences are very congruent with where we then here recently. Yeah, I know. And I can just see somebody that's in the stem cell medicine just standing up and screaming at us. Like I screamed at Joe when I was like, it's just like, but you can't give it to everybody, because that'll just increase the effect. And the stem cells will migrate to cancer and the cancerEric Rieger  41:25  grow more. Oh, I bet you there's something more to that.Ken Brown  41:29  But wait, there's more. So Wow, that's amazing. But let's get back to the whole cancer thing. Why would you augment the stem cells, if you could potentially augment the growth of cancer Make sense? So I went down this rabbit hole or mouse hole or whatever hole you want to call it. And so then I found this great article called the therapeutic effective anti cancer phytochemicals through suppression of cancer stem cells. The why on why we do this is we learned a lot we learned a lot that nitric oxide Oh yeah. And the nitric oxide synthase are different version. They'reEric Rieger  42:02  three different ones.Ken Brown  42:03  So it turns out stem cells, not a stem cell, there's actually something called a cancer stem cell, which I did not know. So, we cancer stem cells are tumorigenic, meaning that they make tumors tumors grow. And cancer stem cells are unique in that they have a very high potency for initiating tumor growth, tumor, neurogenesis, cancer stem cells are postulated to be different than traditional mesenchymal stem cells, and that they proliferate with unlimited potential exhibit high resistance to therapy and have the ability to fuel tumor regrowth post treatment. Now, think about that for a moment. We're talking about why do tumors come back? Why do I have lots of cancer doctor friends, oncologists? I guess that's a good way to call them cancer doctor.Eric Rieger  42:58  cancer doctor friends.Ken Brown  42:59  Yeah, cancer doctor guy. Yeah, this is about cancer, Dr. cancer doctor, friend, oncologist, I have a lot of friends who are oncologists. And I've never once said, Well, why do tumors come back? Because, you know, it's like, oh, just if you get a tumor, it comes back, we believe, and you can go into all this other stuff, p 453. Gene, blah, blah, blah, cancer, tumor gene, whatever. Whoa, wait a minute, what if your cancer, your cancer stem cells, I keep trying to do this. So you have AI nos going on, you have inducible, nitric oxide producing bad nitric oxide or not, it's the same nitric oxide, but producing information is in the wrong spot. So this is really interesting. There's, there's cancer stem cells. And they did this whole review in this article where they looked at the influence of phytochemicals, surprise, surprise, as it turns out, when they refer to phytochemicals, they're talking about complex polyphenols, on cancer cell populations. And what they did is they highlighted the importance of those known to selectively inhibit the cancer stem cell. Wow. Think about this for a moment. Yeah, we talked about this, but these guys showed in a lab. As it turns out, that large poly phenols actually target cancer stem cells in multiple different ways, such as inhibition of self renewal, induction of differentiation into mature cancer cells, and sensitization to anti cancer agents. Wow.Eric Rieger  44:30  So so that makes them more susceptible to the drugs thatKen Brown  44:34  are more susceptible to the drugs that we use. Wow. Now, the article is nauseatingly thick and was a lot there. Oh my gosh, it's super sciency. Yeah, super complex, but it's so complex that the bottom line is they showed multiple different ways in which large stable polyphenols can turn off cancer stem cells in multiple different ways. It was so wild. So polyphenols are good polyphenols. Good. And then I never thought about that, that when we talked about stem cells. cancer stem cells are different than mesenchymal stem cells.Eric Rieger  45:15  Yeah. I hadn't thought of that at all. didn't know that.Ken Brown  45:19  I know. And so but I know that maybe not the same guy cuz he's already I don't know, what did you do? Throw it on his glass and scream it scream at his TV, phone, whatever, the scientists that I'm playing it out in my head or somebody's yelling at us right now. Like, that's it.Eric Rieger  45:36  Okay, I just caught up with the rest of y'all. Okay.Ken Brown  45:43  I just have this image of this, this guy, because all right, it's podcast day. And I'm just gonna have a whole bunch of breakable glass here that I will just keep smashing glasses when I get a car. Oh, what's the matter? Alright, so I can just see him going. But that doesn't matter. That's not in real life. What about real cancers? So as it turns out, there's studies on real cancer. For instance, our old friend, epic gala, epic Gallo, catechin, three galley, otherwise known as green tea extract, we talked about all the time in green to extract egcg, Eg GGC, whatever, one of those egcg. But also, we know that that is a component of kabocha when it gets broken down into its various components. So which is a good way to get it bioavailable, which is a good way to get a bioavailable. So green tea extract is a bioactive poly phenol from green tea. It's been studied a ton. It happens to be. So we've talked about these other ones that have been studied before. It's like studies perpetuate more studies. I would like to just sit there and just send everybody, all the scientists go, you can do more with a bigger, more stable poly phenol, but that's but I'm just happy that you're writing about poly fit. So they've already shown that it can help block tumor including significantly bladder cancer, which I was unaware of. But the mechanism of how it did it has eluded scientists. So these guys went out to say, let's figure out how to do this. And the title of the article is green tea extract inhibits bladder cancer stem cells via suppression of Sonic Hedgehog pathway.Eric Rieger  47:17  We've heard mentioning this before, and I don't know that I recall. It's aKen Brown  47:22  Sega video game dude.Eric Rieger  47:27  Know I Know that I got that part down.Ken Brown  47:33  Alright, so there's, there's gonna be a great backstory to that I'm sure that the developer of that had bladder cancer and then survived it and then said, I will make my next game. Sonic Hedgehog. So anyways, so they actually found the place where it actually happened. And so what they what they showed is the mechanism actually remains by blocking this sonic hedgehog pathway, ultimately, down regulated stem cell markers, cancer stem cell markers, so it controlled the cancer stem cell in the bladder. Wow. Yeah. Wild stuff. So the effect of the green tea was mediated by this what's called the sonic hedgehog signaling pathway, and normally wouldn't even bring that up. But I just love saying that. And, and if they upregulated that pathway, it negated the effect. So that was clearly related to that one thing. So that's how I just love how sciency they get. And I like I'm finding these these are not like this wasn't published last month. This is like a few years old. I'm just like, this is crazy stuff. So what they did is they showed that Taken together, the results indicated that green tea extract could be an important natural compound against bladder cancer stem cells, okay, and provide new insights into the effective molecular targeting of cancer stem cells. Wow.Eric Rieger  48:55  Yeah. Why now we need to find out if there could be other body areas where other stem cell cancers could be turned off.Ken Brown  49:03  I mean, what Give me an example of like a really common cancer,Eric Rieger  49:07  a really common cancer. I don't know colon cancer. Breast cancer.Ken Brown  49:14  Breast Did you say breast?Eric Rieger  49:16  Yeah, you say give you a common one.Ken Brown  49:18  Yeah. And breast cancer is really common. And the anti cancer effect of polyphenols against breast cancer and cancer stem cells, molecular mechanisms. That was another art. Oh,Eric Rieger  49:27  really? Oh, you'reKen Brown  49:28  not making that I'm not making it up. I was just waiting for you to say breast.Eric Rieger  49:31  Oh, yes. It was on my mind.Ken Brown  49:34  No, but for real breast cancer, we know is a huge, huge issue. And well, I think one of the biggest things is when people when we have a lot of people all of us have had people very close to us that are dealing with or have dealt with breast cancer. Right? And is a very serious thing. This is interesting because looking at the therapy of Going after these cancer stem cells, maybe a really interesting therapeutic approach. So these guys what they did, and I don't know these guys, girls, whoever. This was ridiculous. It was like a 50 page review. So this one wasn't so much. It was like a meta analysis. Like we discussed meta analysis is a compilation of this. It was a review it's like it's somebody Opus clearly because they spent forever and I mean, this thing was detailed. So I just laughed because the opening paragraph says this. In this review, we will provide a brief overview of poly phenol structures and classifications as well as the carcinogenic process of breast cancer brief included nauseatingly. I really, it's like it's that insecurity a dream, I always have like a calculus test that when I'm like, super stressed, I'm like, I'm like, I'm back in math class. What that really got into and so to summarize it, and this is, if the person that wrote this article, listen to how I summarize it, they're gonna grab that glass and just smash it. And I suggest that you wear safety goggles, if you're gonna be breaking glasses that are podcasts. Yeah,Eric Rieger  51:15  yeah, yeah, don't you should do that.Ken Brown  51:17  I don't want anybody getting hurt. Alright. So what they did is they looked at the interplay between a toffee G and A pop ptosis in the anti cancer activity, polyphenols. And in addition to that, the potential polyphenols to target cancer stem cells, the various mechanisms. The next 49 and a half pages, we're discussing all those mechanisms. To summarize it. polyphenol research is considered a very promising field, we have discussed this. And I really do think that the future of medicine is heading towards these polyphenolic compounds, definitely, in the setting of a proper microbiome. Sure, if you have dysbiosis, you may not be achieving the greatest result from eating a very high vegetable fruit diet. If you have a proper and very diverse microbiome, all of these things can be achieved can actually be achieved if while having enough of these polyphenolic compounds. So these are a few of the things that they showed in tremendous detail. So each one of these things actually includes several pages of mechanisms, modulation of reactive oxygen species. We've heard that word modulation of inflammatory and inflammation related factors, okay. We've always talked about it as inflammatory cytokines. Here's why my when I say information automatically just go inflammatory. And what are we gonna talk about with the inflammatory what's causing the inflammation, modulation of estrogen receptors and aromatase inhibitors? That's one, which is really interesting, because that could be one of the reasons why polyphenols are good for sport, because you actually increase your testosterone production. If you're blocked in the aromatase, which converts testosterone to estrogen. Interesting. Yeah, that was kind of neat. modulation of a pop ptosis you always define a pop ptosis on this podcast thatEric Rieger  53:13  is programmed cell deathKen Brown  53:16  program cell death, modulation of signaling pathways related to cancer stem cells, which took up about four pages of this article describing very specifically, how these polyphenols suppress the cancer stem cells from proliferating and causing what they do is important, super important. And then I know these guys know their shit, because the final one was modulation of the hedgehog signaling.So that's for anybody who's thinking of doing doing stem cells. This one is specifically for Wade. So for any manufacturer of stem cells, this is pretty cool. This is I'm going to kick it up a little bit and get a little bit more sciency. But the way the stem cells are currently done is that they actually grow them and they it's the number that makes the most important thing Wade talked about the quality of stem cells that you get is super important, how it's grown, how it's harvested, how it's done, all this delivered and delivered. Yeah, for sure. So, these guys showed that reservatrol another poly phenol enhances the functionality and improves the regeneration of mesenchymal stem cell aggregates, specifically cell aggregate or cell sheet engineering. And what they wanted to see is that if you actually bathed these stem cells in reservatrol, that it showed reliable and extensive rejuvenate rejuvenative activities that have received increasing clinical attention, and what they uncovered was that reservatrol enhance the functionality and the numbers improve The regeneration of mesenchymal stem cell aggregates, mesenchymal stem cells would be when I did my bone marrow harvest, Dr. McKenna took my bone and mixed it with stem cells so that it would be there. So what they wanted to show is that they were able to unravel a novel method for using what they called pharmacology, but it's reservatrol based cell aggregate engineering to improve the functionality and facilitate the regeneration of these. So in other words, you can take in older So the whole idea is that the older you get the probably your bone marrow is not as good for stem cells, right? You can make it younger by according to these guys bathing it. So like if you're a 50 year old guy like me, and you do this, you bathe it in some reservatrol and some polyphenols. And that's just one that they looked at reservatrol I'm saying that maybe it could be a whole lot better if you do the, the the equivalent of a large stable poly phenol that has been broken down. But that's it's just it's fascinating science, the why the why of why these guys do things. It's cool. So to summarize, when if you're reading about stem cells, one of the main concerns is that it could stimulate cancer growth. It is a pluripotent cell, meaning it could potentially go where it needs. What these articles kind of summarize is that if you have an injury, and you take polyphenols, and you get stem cells, it goes right over here. We want all the stem cells right here. And by the way, we need more, and get them into the bloodstream to get them over here. Yeah, that's one. And then the other one is, if you're worried, at least according to this, that while I'm really scared, because I don't wanna have stem cells, and then develop a cancer. Well, one way to, at least according to these studies decrease that risk is to take these polyphenols so that you can actually suppress the cancer stem cells themselves, right? So like me, I got my stem cells, and that was actually brought up to me by several people. They're like, Oh, aren't you worried about getting cancer? And I'm like, Am I worried about getting cancer every day? Because I'm a doctor and I see cancer. And every time you do it, I remember talking to one of my cancer doctor friends. I'm calling oncologist I remember asking him, I was like, dude, how do you do this? Like you find 45 year old men all the time with pancreatic cancer. He's like, Oh, I get pancreatic cancers five, six times a year. Because it's your exposure. You're like, Oh, my gosh, that's me. Like every time you see something, it's like, oh, that's eye. Blue. Scary. Yeah. So anyways, I just thought it was really interesting, because when we talk about this, I really believe that there should be some sort of protocol, if I'm a stem cell doctor, I'm putting people on a complex poly phenol blend, like I'll try and do while you're doing it. Why? So that you get the most out of your stem cells. And we know that it's going to go to the area that it's needed. And there is at least some rationale that it could suppress tumor growth. Think ofEric Rieger  57:51  it like this, I after hearing all of this, I already kind of put it in this what I think is an easy to use box for a metaphor. If you're going to do something, let's say that you've committed to being a sport. And you know that in order to compete on the day of competition, that you need to make certain that you have a good night's rest, and that you've trained that you probably know a little bit about the opponent regardless of what it's going to be. You do all of these measures to optimize your ability to win. If you're committed on the other hand to get stem cells for a particular injury, or whatever it is that you're trying to improve. Give yourself and your body the best chance to do the best that it can with stem cells. And basically this is prepping your body. To do that.Ken Brown  58:38  I was thrilled are why for this podcast is if I can help one person get a better benefit from their stem cell. That's my whyEric Rieger  58:45  I think I'm 100%. I think that stem cells has a gigantically bright future. Just from people that not not just you, but people that we my mom, my mom gets stem cells from wait for her knee. And she's doing fantastic. And Mom, sorry, mom, not athletic. Okay. So it's not like that. She went out of her way toUnknown Speaker  59:03  do a bunch of you've seen her Instagram recently? Yes, it is ran at 1100 meter 11 second 100 meter squat and 2700 pounds. Yeah.Eric Rieger  59:11  But, but there are there are some anecdotal and then there's some some large scale studies around stem cells, they do some great, great, great work, but like anything, it's new. There are things to find out how and they're always going to try to find out how can you make it better Wade? specifically talking about how some people were screwing up by utilizing lighter cane on the injection whenever they're they're placing the stem cells. Well, he doesn't do that. That's an improvement. In the therapy. This is an improvement in the therapy potentially, potentially. Yeah,Ken Brown  59:44  yeah. I mean, I'm well, I'm the first one to say that. I've had a I would. I've no pain. Now. I'm wondering I'm like, Did I really recruit all the stem cells that I got that day and have gotten and continue but As I continue to take my polyphenols Are they really just kind of go into the area of injury because I've had a pretty remarkable recovery for such a serious injury that I went to three doctors that said you need to get an operation sure like nowEric Rieger  1:00:11  no one and you know the idea behind any physician or health care provider that's going to have a therapy they're going to give someone you want to do your best to try to induce the best outcome for the patient and mitigate either the well obviously the bad ones but the the outcomes that just don't show any improvement at all and if this can help them do that, right hugeKen Brown  1:00:33  so Gordon Ryan's gonna go get stem cells at least contact us Yeah, dude, I can get you like a $5 coupon on my tummyEric Rieger  1:00:43  calm Gordon. Man given you the friends and family discount five bucks off Yeah, man phytochemicals rather, it gets upKen Brown  1:00:54  to scientists the the first and onlyUnknown Speaker  1:00:57  lastKen Brown  1:00:58  two scientists one lab two scientistsEric Rieger  1:01:00  no coats one lab. No beakers. No Bunsen burners.Ken Brown  1:01:07  You could continue to grow that on every single episode. Episode 1022. Two scientists one lab no coats. Don't you just go on for like eight minutes,Eric Rieger  1:01:18  light switches? No audience, whatever. No one listening anymore? Because I spent an hour doing this.Ken Brown  1:01:25  Yeah, so that's awesome. Well, anyways, so we've covered a lot of ground here. But I believe in this stuff that we're talking about. If I'm going to get stem cells is what I do. If I'm a stem cell provider, I'd listen to this. I'd share it so Oh, like always, we always have to say this. This is I am a doctor Eric is a healthcare provider. crna we do treat people but we are not your doctor unless we are actually your doctor. But But what this is for entertainment, only everything that we talked about is not medical advice.Eric Rieger  1:01:58  Thank y'all so much for joining us like and share don't shadowbanned us and share us with anybody that you think might be interested in these kind of health topics.Ken Brown  1:02:06  Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to know what it's like to accidentally take a bunch of MDMA instead of N acetylcysteine. call the office.Eric Rieger  1:02:15  They are still enjoy the call, but they will not give you a real they got so much. It's Episode 57Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ken Brown  0:00  Welcome, everybody to gut check project, Episode Number 39. A super cool one because my co host is also our guest, the expert, the person that we all love whenever Eric goes out of town on a mountain biking expedition, which is what he's doing right now. So we have the super smart, super well trained Dr. Stuart Akerman as both our expert guest and our host, Dr. Akerman, thanks for coming.Stuart Akerman  0:27  Ah, thanks for having me here. I was more than happy to pay for Eric's vacation so that I can do this.Ken Brown  0:33  You are pretty sly like that. That's pretty interesting. You're sort of, you're sort of pushing him out. And so I think that's, you know, he thinks he's having fun. Stuart Akerman  0:41  I made him think it was his idea. I mean, that was really what came down to.Ken Brown  0:46  Well, in today's episode, this is really cool because when I said that Dr. Ackerman is both the co host today and our expert is because we're going to tackle a topic that a lot of people have and it is diarrhea specifically related to something called a epi exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and you're like, Huh, I saw a commercial on that. What's that? Exactly. That's what all my patients say. They're like, what is this? They come in and talk about this. So usually whenever Eric and I before we start, Dr. Akerman, what is going on with you and the Akerman family anything personal you want to share?Stuart Akerman  1:20  Yeah, could share all kinds of things. It's been definitely interesting. And the quarantine life as we now gear up at the end of the summer trying to figure out what do the kids kids are sort of excited to go back to school not sure what they're going to do, but I never thought they'd have this problem that they've actually watched all there is to watch on TV and they need something else to do.Ken Brown  1:44  That reminds me of I think I saw some funny video where somebody was sitting in front of in front of his computer and it goes, you've done it. You've reached the end of the internet.Stuart Akerman  1:54  It's kinda like that. There's nothing. You only have so many subscriptions, I guess.Ken Brown  1:58  Exactly. Yeah, well in the brown household. I took Lucas to a tournament pretty cool. in Wichita Falls, it was a well run tournament. So kudos to the tournament director out there. It was a college tournament. So Lucas out, unfortunately lost in a tough third set tiebreak to a really good player. And you know, we just kind of move on. And we got so excited to talk about what he learned from that. And then by the time we got back to Dallas, they had canceled the national tournament, which is why he was doing this to prepare for the next one. And so we're dealing with that where we try and make plans and keep these the passion up. SoStuart Akerman  2:37  And you know, when we were talking the other night, I actually realized after we hung up that I wanted to ask Lucas, I mean, I know that it's a junior tournament. So there's no betting and things like that. But there must be some sort of handicapping system right because they are rankings. Where was he ranked in comparison to this kid who's several years older than him? Ken Brown  2:58  Well, this was actually a college tournament. So it was for college players. And so he's 15 he played a 21 year old and actually they're just on ranking level is they were both on par so the two he's Lucas was the number one seed in the tournament. And that man was the second was the number two seed so it worked out perfect the bracket got the what I consider the two best players to play in the end. And funny you bring that up because him and I were in Panama right when COVID hit because we had to bust out a Panama he was doing what's called an ITF. And I happen to have a friend there in Panama who lives there and has been doing sort of digital marketing and all this stuff. And he was running a betting website. And he goes it's not he goes people from around the world will bet on anything. And then we started talking tennis and he goes the most rigged sport, like for betting where people like there's all kinds of junior level sports that people bet on because they know that they can kind of tilt the odds one way or the other.Stuart Akerman  3:55  Oh my gosh.Ken Brown  3:56  There's yeah, it was a whole new world for me. So like when you say that I kind of cringe because I was Just like oh, no, you know, we've got we're going to start like hustling you know peewee baseball and stuff like that.Stuart Akerman  4:07  I thought I thought about how he took a, you know, someone who's I think five years or six years older than him to the brink and almost beat him. Ken Brown  4:15  Yeah. Stuart Akerman  4:16  But has such a competitive spirit to be upset by that.Ken Brown  4:20  Oh, totally upset, like, on the way home just, you know, I had two match but he had two match points. I had two match points. I just, I just would have you know, I'm like, I know. I know. It's, it's life and what's really cool is that you know, you move on and do that. So I apologize a little bit if I'm a little nasally. I do not know what blew into town, but it is killing my allergies today. So and I, it's not COVID I smell great. Also two things. I don't smell great. But I can still smell things. Stuart Akerman  4:48  Smell things Ken Brown  4:49  Smell things. So let's get back at this. So before everybody's like, well, they're just gonna talk about their family the whole time, I want to reiterate something so we stole Dr. Akerman four years ago, three years ago. Stuart Akerman  5:01  Five years ago. Ken Brown  5:02  Holy cow time passes fast. We stole him from New York because he is a specially trained expert in advanced endoscopy. So he does the things that most of us have not been trained in. And a lot of that involves the pancreas. So you and I got to talking and we had a patient recently who showed up to have her endoscopy done and she said, Hey, do I have this? And I called you in and you looked at that unlike epi exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, I'm like, man, if these drug companies are spending so much time advertising for it, we better just address this head on and let's just have an episode you're a pancreas expert. I'm more of a lumenologists is how I like to consider myself and so the lumen I like colons and I like stomachs and and hemorrhoids but you are an advanced trained person that everybody if you have a pancreas call up Dr. Akerman and make sure that your pancreas is okay. So hat you know, that's what I'm saying.Stuart Akerman  5:58  Yeah, so this is definitely something that's getting a lot of press. And, you know, if you look around TV, internet, I mean, it feels like the ads are just constantly jumping at you. And it's something that it gives everyone pause that has diarrhea. And, you know, there are different estimates, but more than 5% in a conservative estimate more than 5% of the population deals with chronic diarrhea in some form. And you know, 5% is a lot of people and not everyone gets to the bottom of what's going on with them and gets that relief and that, that feeling that they know exactly what it is and how to deal with it. And for years, pretty much we knew about inflammatory bowel disease and knew how to evaluate for it and rule it out. And then there's kind of a short list, you know, all we look for what we have, you don't have any of that you probably have IBS. Ken Brown  6:51  Oh the famous, you probably have IBS, so that's my world where everybody comes says, I have IBS and if you're somebody if you're 20% of the population that suffers from irritable bowel syndrome. It can be diarrhea, constipation or mixed. And you may be one of those frustrated people that you go into your doctor, you have an endoscopy, colonoscopy and some bloodwork you get pat on the head and you go good news. It's just IBS you leave and you're still miserable. And I think that's why there's so many commercials going on here where it's like, look, maybe we're not thinking hard enough on some of this stuff, my world is SIBO bacterial overgrowth, your world is pancreas, and so that's why you're the expert on this. And so, let's do let's not make this too sciency. I know that we all you're still in the office. I love that you just got done doing telemedicine. And if anybody, doc, go to Dr. Akerman's website, set up a telemedicine visit if you're concerned about this, because he's the expert. So let's hop right in. I'm going to start interviewing you less as a co host more as an expert. So what is your standard workup? I'm gonna start from the beginning on diarrhea. Somebody comes in and said I've had diarrhea for two weeks, do you care? Do you like that you call that chronic diarrhea versus the person says I've had diarrhea for a year? Stuart Akerman  8:07  Right. So that's actually a great way to start the question because what makes something chronic? And it seems to be accepted that if it's four weeks or longer, you're dealing with chronic diarrhea. So the first thing I want to do when a patient comes in, I want to get a sense of what this means to them when they say they have diarrhea. That means 10 different things to 10 different people. And that could be part of the reason why it's so difficult to get the right workup. It's it's trying to fit a square peg into a circle hole. And you got to make sure that everything lines up. So one of the most important things to do is get a sense from the patient. What's bothering them, what does it mean to them? Are you saying you have diarrhea because your stools are loose? Are you saying you have diarrhea because you go 10 times a day? How does it work? Is it when you eat if you don't eat you're fine? Do you go no matter what you wake up five times a night to go to the bathroom even though nothing else has been going on? These are things that you can tease out that might send you along different paths in the workup.Ken Brown  9:10  And when you say tease out, that's the art of somebody that understands their craft really well. This is why we can still do telemedicine and be effective because that history, the patient history tells a story, you have become a detective. And you're going to get to the bottom of this. All those questions you just asked, are all things: have you traveled? Has this happened? Do you wake up at night? Those are all the same things I ask. So you start kind of moving to this area. So all right. So I'm going to play patient, I'm going to say I've had this for six months. I don't wake up. I use the restroom afterwards. And I just feel like I'm not absorbing things.Stuart Akerman  9:50  Right. So that is definitely a classic paradigm for epi. And, you know, I think it's important that we kind of define what that means if you have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. I thought about it this morning. And I was trying to think about what would be a good way to explain it that would really resonate with our viewers as to how you might have epi. I think, I think the classic reason to have is you burnt out your pancreas, you have chronic pancreatitis, the pancreas is very scarred, it can't work. I think it's very easy to understand that if your pancreas is impaired in some way, that the function of it isn't going to be that great either.Ken Brown  10:32  So let me let me stop you right there because we're going to get into that in a second because we're gonna start with step one. Step one is you're a pancreas expert. Why are people using this acronym epi? Because the pancreas does a lot of really important things. It has the endocrine function, and it has an exocrine function define what those two are.Stuart Akerman  10:52  Sure. So the endocrine function is essentially your insulin. So if your endocrine function is impaired, that means You have a low insulin level. And that's actually what type one diabetes is, right? You're not making enough insulin. So the answer is how do you fix that? Take insulin, right? If your pancreas can't produce it for you, you can take it and essentially help it out. That's the endocrine side. The exocrine side when we talk about pancreatic exocrine insufficiency is related more to direct digestion of carbohydrates, fats, and to some degree proteins. And those are what are called lipases, proteases and amylases. And there are varying concentrations of each of them that are spit out by the pancreas in response to stimulus which is eating.Ken Brown  11:42  So I eat something I eat a hamburger, I've got bun, meat, cheese, eat it, swallow it. Stuart Akerman  11:50  Well, that's you. I wouldn't have cheese in there. But that's me.Ken Brown  11:54  But so we've got protein, fat and carbs and through really beautiful complex signaling the pancreas then releases these digestive enzymes.Stuart Akerman  12:04  Correct.Ken Brown  12:05  Known as the execution portion of it.Stuart Akerman  12:07  Correct. Ken Brown  12:08  Okay. So exocrine portion. So if I have an exocrine insufficiency, meaning maybe I'm not putting out enough enzyme,Stuart Akerman  12:18  Right? So either you're not putting out enough, or maybe you're not getting to the point of the bowel where you would do that, for instance, in surgical procedures that bypass the area where you would spit out the exocrine pancreatic enzymes, you'll end up with an insufficiency which essentially boils down to a mal digestive disorder.Ken Brown  12:45  So a malabsorption. So people don't are not getting these nutrients. So we've got an exocrine pancreatic insufficiency: epi. So when I do my workup, and I go, you know, Dr. Akerman, it looks like there's some unusual things going on with this patient that I think I need your assistance with. They are low on their vitamin K, their vitamin E, their vitamin D, they've got, they're describing oily stools. That is how I've been classically taught what epi is. What the commercials are saying is they're casting a broad net. They're like if you've got bloating, abdominal cramping, and change in bowel habits, ask your doctor about epi. And I'm gonna close this out as to why I think they're casting such a broad net in the end, but we're going to still talk about the physiology pathophysiology. So it sounds a lot like irritable bowel syndrome, these commercials.Stuart Akerman  13:42  Right, and and there's tons of overlap. So if I had to say, what's the single largest diagnosis or the largest swath of patients with a specific diagnosis that are going to overlap, it's going to be irritable bowel, right. You're bloated, you're gassy. You're having loose stools. You don't quite feel good after you eat. These are all signs of both irritable bowel because of a sensitivity issue when you eat, but also a malabsorptive this issue at the same time, so those symptoms alone won't quite make it. What you alluded to is someone who has fairly advanced disease so that when they eat, they really aren't producing any enzymes. So everything's going to come out in particular fat. So those fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, are going to be more susceptible to deficiencies, and you'll actually sometimes see what looks like fat or oil droplets in the bowl with the stool because you can't absorb the fat appropriately.Ken Brown  14:44  Yeah, exactly. I and this isn't just an issue of a gastroenterologist when I was looking this up I got on YouTube to see like what other people have said about this. And my friend and author Rob Wolf, he, he was doing a whole thing a q&a. And that was a question. I'm seeing all these commercials coming up on this on his YouTube channel. He was like this is coming up a whole lot. And so he addressed the exact same thing and discussed the endocrine the exocrine. So shout out to him for taking that on because it's, it's clearly reaching the masses right now. So, we just want to demystify this, talk about now we know what the symptoms are, which can be pretty broad. Let's talk about some causes. So you were getting into the causes before. So let's talk about causes of what can actually cause true exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. And then we'll talk about non pancreatic causes, and then talk about diagnosis and then ultimately, the treatment. Sound fair? Stuart Akerman  15:41  Right. Yeah, that sounds great. So pancreatic causes probably the single biggest cause would be chronic pancreatitis. So chronic pancreatitis is an issue where you start laying down scar tissue within the pancreas. And, you know, it doesn't in general happen overnight. I mean, you could theoretically get a major inflammatory episode or a trauma, that that could really give your pancreas a hit all in one fell swoop. But, in general, this is something that happens over time. It's kind of like laying the groundwork and the scaffolding and eventually it keeps building up. So...Ken Brown  16:19  Why...you deal with the pancreas, you deal with pancreatitis. What is pancreatitis? And why do I care about that?Stuart Akerman  16:26  So there's two kinds of pancreatitis. There's acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis, and they're not the same thing. And they're often confused and they're actually distinct entities. They can relate to each other. But the mechanisms are different. When you have severe pain, and you show up to an emergency room and they do a CAT scan and tell you oh, you got acute pancreatitis. What that means is your pancreas is inflamed. It might be swollen, there's a lot of fluid around it. It's an inflammatory process. But when you have chronic pancreatitis chronic pancreatitis means that it's scarred, it's shriveled. The word they use a lot of times is atrophied, or sometimes calcification. Now you can have both. You can have chronic pancreatitis and have a pancreas that's a little bit shriveled and then gets inflamed. And we call that acute on chronic pancreatitis and it may make your threshold to get acute pancreatitis a lot lower.Ken Brown  17:25  And people that have ever had this are nodding going, that's not fun at all. pancreatitis is a very serious issue. Stuart Akerman  17:31  Yeah, we don't wish it upon anybody. Ken Brown  17:33  No, not upon anybody. Okay, so that's what pancreatitis is. As a gastroenterologist that deals in this what, what are some of the causes of chronic pancreatitis? Actually, I think that I mean, acute and chronic, the causes are the same. It's just the repetity of insults correct.Stuart Akerman  17:52  For the most part, I'd say you know, the, the two most common causes for acute pancreatitis in America are Alcohol and gallstones. And if you continue to get like you said if you continue to get acute injury is acute pancreatitis, you're going to keep developing more and more scars as a result and you'll end up with chronic pancreatitis. I'd say one thing that has not really been shown to cause acute pancreatitis, but is very much in the conversation for chronic pancreatitis is smoking. We have patients who have chronic smoking over time. Never had an acute pancreatitis episode ever develop EPI or chronic abdominal pain and in the process of the workup are found to have chronic pancreatitis and the risk factor they have is chronic smoker. Ken Brown  18:42  That's something that I've never actually come across and do you have an etiology of why you think smoking does that?Stuart Akerman  18:48  So it's tough to say but I mean, we do know that physiologically, smoking does lead to scar it's been seen in many organs. Ken Brown  18:56  So hold on, let me write this down. So smoking is not good for you. Is that what you're saying? Stuart Akerman  19:00  I think it's something I'm pretty comfortable putting my stamp on as a physician.Ken Brown  19:04  I mean we're in a really political environment. You better feel strong about it.Stuart Akerman  19:09  Yeah, I don't know. I don't want any of the big tobacco companies coming after me. I'd say from a from a medical perspective, there's not much good that comes from it.Ken Brown  19:20  Okay. So mostly from just the inflammatory process.Stuart Akerman  19:23  It seems to be, it seems to be, but it's been it's been linked to many cancers and various organs that are unrelated to each other and chronic scar. We've seen that too the pancreas being one of them. Ken Brown  19:36  Okay, so pancreatitis of the acute can lead to chronic correct. So if you have an acute episode, you may end up with a slightly chronic one. If you continue to drink or smoke, you can end up developing this. Are there any other disease states related to chronic pancreatitis?Stuart Akerman  19:55  So there's a there's a viral states we have something called tropical pancreatitis not really seen so much in North America. More more seen in the in the eastern countries. One of the autoimmune disease. The pancreas is one of the organs that can be affected by autoimmune disease. So patients who already have one autoimmune disease be that autoimmune thyroid disease, rheumatoid arthritis or other arthritities these are always more susceptible to getting a second autoimmune disease and the pancreas and sometimes the liver are the ones that we deal with. And then actually high triglyceride levels. That's actually the number three it's a distant third in comparison to the first two but that's the third most common reason for recurrent pancreatitis is hypertriglyceridemia or high triglyceride levels and you know, I'm not talking like you know, you got a little bit of an elevation and your doc tells you that you probably should cut down on the fast food and maybe exercise a little more but significantly elevated sometimes in the thousands,Ken Brown  21:01  So my experience has been and you've seen so much more of this, but it seems like these are young people with a some sort of genetic issue and they have these hypertriglyceridemia. And it's usually really bad that first episode. Have you seen similar episode or similar findings?Stuart Akerman  21:18  Yeah. And occasionally, it's so bad that we actually have to do almost a dialysis type procedure to get the triglycerides out of their blood, just so that it stops inflaming their pancreas and they can get over it. And then from there, we can try medications to keep it down. But yeah, sometimes it's just so overworked that they're just in the throes of it and we just have to break that cycle.Ken Brown  21:43  And then last thing is that I have a large inflammatory bowel disease, population Crohn's disease, and it has been associated with that. Is that just part of the autoimmune process that you were just talking about?Stuart Akerman  21:52  Yea it seems to be that there's some some part of the autoimmune cascade there because we do know, you know, as much as we know so much about Crohn's disease. There's so much that we don't know. But it's it's fairly clear at this point that there's an autoimmune component in addition to environmental ones. And it's possible that that overlap is where the elevated pancreatitis risk comes because we do see what's called igg mediated which is another way of saying autoimmune disorders of the pancreas and bile ducts and liver in relation to Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. Ken Brown  22:26  The infamous before you arrive. Dr. Goldsmith, make sure you're checking igg four on that person.Stuart Akerman  22:32  Yeah.Ken Brown  22:32  Subtype that could potentially affect the pancreas. Stuart Akerman  22:34  There's a method to it. Ken Brown  22:36  Yeah. All right. So now I'm worried. I've got some I smoked a cigarette yesterday. I had had a drink of my buddies. I go poop and my my stool is floating. This is kind of a trick question. Is that pancreatic insufficiency?Stuart Akerman  22:55  Not necessarily. I mean, everyone's entitled to have floating poops every once in a while. More commonly, it's actually related to just some gas that's stuck in the stool and therefore it's not truly as solid as it may look. And it's floating, any kind of, you know, malabsorptive issue, even if it's transient, like something you ate that you didn't quite digest well, or maybe you had a passing viral illness can cause very similar symptoms. So the chronicity establishing that this has been going on is a really major piece of the puzzle before you go down that road to worry about it.Ken Brown  23:27  So I throw that out there because I was traveling and I got called by some men's health or something, hey, we're doing this article on stools. But we want you to comment on what is floating stools mean, so I had to like sit in an airport, you know, log into their Wi Fi and then like type this response and it was about air. And because of that I came across an article when when we were preparing for this epi that a very fun I call this my fun stool fact it's that many people believe that floating stools is related to pancreatic insufficiency or malabsorption. The reality is stools sticking to the toilet bowl have been more associated with steatorrhea or more lipid or more you're passing oil and fats. So I thought that was kind of fun.Stuart Akerman  24:09  It greases that adherence to the bowl. Ken Brown  24:11  Isn't that funny? So I have all these patients go I saw my stool floating and I'm like, okay, that's right. All right. So...Stuart Akerman  24:18  I'm curious to know what your Google searches look like now that you did that in a in an airport. Ken Brown  24:23  Oh, forget about the Google searches. You got to see the ads I'm getting. I'm being haunted by some really scary ads right now. But the good digital marketers to profile me and then track me down. So so we know what pancreatic insufficiency is. I want to know, are there some other things that can cause similar looking symptoms before I make an appointment with Dr. Stuart Akerman to really determine if I have this are there non pancreatic causes that can do stuff like this?Stuart Akerman  24:58  Yeah, and that's the idea we talk about when you see when you see any kind of provider about building what's called a differential diagnosis. So differential diagnosis being these are the, all the things in the realm of possibility might be going on. And we need to have a plan of attack to figure out which ones make more sense and which ones don't. And in this situation, you got to think about IBS, you got to think about celiac disease, you got to think about bile salt diarrhea, then there's your sort of very random ones, like neuro endocrine tumors, IBD doesn't really play in usually, in most cases, but if you have some mild Crohn's disease of the small bowel and may be essentially causing a malabsorptive problem, the symptoms might overlap. And that's where the art of medicine really comes in. You know, rather than saying, well, why don't we just test for everything and see what sticks. You really sit there and take everything into account of your patient. So that you can make a more focused differential diagnosis. How often are they going? What does it look like? Is it waking them up at night? What medications are they taking? Is there something new or different that might be causing the problem? Have they recently traveled? And you take all that into the hopper and see what comes out.Ken Brown  26:18  Now that is an absolutely great answer. So there are non pancreatic causes. So if you're having something like this, go to a very experienced board certified gastroenterologist to ask all those questions and figure out where, okay, so now the patient's seen you, you've asked the questions, you're still very suspicious. What do you do with the patient then if you're still concerned that this could be epi exocrine pancreatic insufficiency?Stuart Akerman  26:46  So nowadays, there's actually a really nice, really easy test that you can do as sort of your gateway for epi evaluation, and that's called a pancreatic elastase. It's actually a stool study. To sort of say it in a quick blunt way, if your pancreas is working, you should be making so much excess enzyme that you should be pooping it out. And we would love to test that. And basically you send a stool sample, they check for this pancreatic elastase. And your levels should be really, really high if things are working well. You should be doing so well, your your pancreatic elastase rich. But if that number is coming down, if that number is lower, that's a sign that you're just not functioning appropriately, you're not able to produce enough to meet demand. And that's where the concern for epi comes in.Ken Brown  27:40  So a couple things I love about that. Number one, you said we would love to test that. So for everybody listening, when you see a gastroenterologist, and you go, oh, I'm so embarrassed about talking about this. No, we love to hear that because when you go, doc, I don't want to. I'm super embarrassed, but when I go poop, it looks like you poured olive oil in there, I'm like, yes, do you have a picture of it? That's awesome. Let's talk about that. So when you say we love to test that, the beauty of elastase the test that researchers have figured out is that it remains essentially intact. Elastase one remains intact through the digestive process. So your pancreas puts it out and you can look at that. So when you're low, you're definitely low. It's not like your body's absorbing it. It's that it should be in the stool, one particular part of the elastase. So pancreatic elastase. That's awesome. Because for boards, meaning like when all of us take our medicine boards, they always ask the really hard questions like, hey, you're worried about chronic pancreatitis? Should you do these other invasive tests? So you've been trained in all these invasive tests, one of the few doctors in the DFW Metroplex that have I think there's just a handful or however many of you guys exist, which are the advanced endoscopists have actually been taught this stuff. So in case you're at an academic center in case you get an elastase, which is up is there ever a reason to do one of these invasive tests?Stuart Akerman  29:03  So if the elastase is up, that's normal. Ken Brown  29:05  I'm sorry. Low, yea low. Stuart Akerman  29:07  Yeah. So just to just to clarify that, so if it's up, that's where you want to be, right? Like I said, you want to be elastase rich, but if it's a low, because the most common reason for epi is chronic pancreatitis, and often on the standard cross sectional imaging studies like CT scan, and MRI, the only way they're really diagnosing chronic pancreatitis is if you have some of the signs of full blown advanced pancreatitis like shriveling of your pancreas, or calcification, so if you don't have those, it just means that you we know you don't have advanced chronic calcific pancreatitis, but it's a spectrum of disease. And we don't know if you've got mild or moderate disease just based on an MRI or CT and that's where endoscopic ultrasound comes in. Because endoscopic ultrasound where we're using endoscopy with an ultrasound probe attached to the bottom allows us to look at the pancreas from the inside sort of to get almost to...Ken Brown  30:09  Let me clarify here so you've got our standard endoscopic equipment. And on the very end, a very really cool special tiny ultrasound. So if you have ever had an ultrasound on your gallbladder from the outside or if you've ever had a baby and they ultrasound, you're taking an ultrasound inside the body which is...Stuart Akerman  30:31  And you say it a lot more eloquently than I do. I usually just say it's a endoscope with a little nubbin on the tip. That's an ultrasound.Ken Brown  30:40  Well, I mean, the reason why I think you always downplay this particular aspect but even me as a gastroenterologist, I call you up all the time and I say, hey, I've got this does this warrant an endoscopic ultrasound and I would do that with some other partners in our group, Dr. Goldsmith, Dr. Bob Anderson. People like that. I'm like, hey, I have a young man for no reason developed pancreatitis doesn't warrant an ultrasound. And the reason why I bring this up because a lot of people never talk about this. It's a very relatively safe non invasive procedure compared to other things to do.Stuart Akerman  31:13  Yeah, when I speak to patients, I pretty much tell them the risk profile is no different than having a regular endoscopy. There's no risk to your pancreas from the ultrasound waves. They're just sonic waves. So we don't have to worry that by evaluating we could potentially cause trouble.Ken Brown  31:31  Yeah. So when I see these commercials ask your doctor about epi. The next thing they should say is either I'm gonna learn about epi, or I'm just gonna send them to Dr. Akerman so that he can figure out if it's something that needs an eus or not.Stuart Akerman  31:46  Yeah, and I love talking about it. I you know, it's not to say that every single person who walks into the office and says, do I have epi. I'm going to go say, well, let's run the gamut. Let's do every test. Let's figure it out. You need an endoscopy before I can answer that, I'm gonna sit there and talk to the patient and get a sense of is this diarrhea or not? Because probably one of the more common scenarios is they don't actually have diarrhea. They might have some mild bowel habit changes, that to them feels like it's diarrhea, but you can tease out right away. Maybe it's a supplement, maybe they're taking a sugar substitute that doesn't agree with them, and they're mal absorbing it. And if by pulling that out, all of a sudden, magically, their stools are better. You know, there's not not every time is the diarrhea warranting of this large workup. But the flip side to that is patients who have carried this diagnosis of IBS for years. Well before we had good endoscopic ultrasound, well before we had pancreatic elastase and some of the other stool tests that we use nowadays, it might be that in 1995, that was the best we could do to say hey, you have IBS. And now, in 2020, we have a lot of a lot more tools at our disposal to maybe fine tune that and get them the right diagnosis and therefore a better treatment regimen that's going to make them feel better.Ken Brown  33:12  Absolutely. So I have these people that come in and we, I ask all those same questions and we go through that, did you have a significant change? Remember that some of the other non pancreatic things like bacterial overgrowth, SIBO can actually cause...also. So now this kind of comes to the point of okay, we've talked about what it is we've looked at how to diagnose it. And now I'm, I'm my question to you, because I'm obviously biased, and it's a leading question here. Why are the drug companies spending? I'm gonna say, I mean, we advertise and I know what it costs to advertise, I'm gonna say 10s of millions of dollars, saying ask your doctor about epi, why are they doing that?Stuart Akerman  33:53  Well, I mean, you know, death to leading question. You know, there's money to be made, right? Anytime. There's money to be made. But I think one of the biggest reasons is, is that it's been so low key and under diagnosed for so long that the potential for a patient base that doesn't even know they exist, is I don't want to say infinite because there's only so many people, but it's vast. So all these people who may never have been brought to get one of these pancreatic enzyme replacements, and therefore not spend money on a therapy that potentially could help them, all of a sudden, now the curtains are drawn, right, the doors are open, and they have this whole new potential patient base to help.Ken Brown  34:41  Absolutely, much like celiac disease where we said, Oh, it's so rare, and then we realize, Oh, no, we went from, you know, .04% of the population to 1%, to oh, possibly 3% and so on and so on. So I agree with that. I also did a little experiment here. The pancreas, the pharmaceutical pancreatic enzymes. which are available can be a little expensive. And that's something that I think it needs to be addressed here. Because if doctors go oh, this sounds like I think my opinion is that these commercials are drawn to say if you have change in bowel habit bloating, talk to your doctor about epi. That's a loaded question. You're telling the patient to drive the doctor and say, well, I don't know what the heck, let's try it. So on good Rx, if you pay cash, the starting dose of the major pancreatic enzymes, which are porcine and bovine derived, meaning pig, and/or cow derived, this was a little shocking to me, it's basically about averages to about $10 per pill. So if you start out the starting dose, that's going to be $2,700 a month, if you go to the maximum dose, that's going to be $5,400 a month, cash price, lots of things involved. Fortunately, we both work with these companies and they do amazing jobs of trying to give refunds and things like that. So kudos to that. I'm a little bit scared that they're going to get a bunch of doctors that knee jerk and say well try this and see what happens. That's one of my issues.Stuart Akerman  36:07  Yeah. So I do think it's important to have a diagnosis to be working with, rather than the let's throw it out them and see if it works approach, specifically for that purpose because it's expensive. But if you know that it's going to get your patient the symptom relief that they need, you're going to fight for that patient, you're going to talk to their insurance company, you're going to talk to the pharmaceutical company. They do like you mentioned, they do have robust programs for patient assistance, but that doesn't cover everybody. If you're going to them and saying, hey, I want to see if it works, it's going to be hard to justify spending $2,000 a month on that. But if you go to them and say hey, this lady has a pancreatic elastase that's super low. She's got all the right symptoms. On imaging. It looks like her pancreas doesn't quite look right. She's got mild or moderate chronic pancreatitis, this is your patient. This is the patient that's going to derive benefit from your drug. They want that because it does cut both ways. Right? You have a patient that does really well, that patient is going to tell everyone about how awesome they're doing on this drug because they got the right diagnosis. That's gonna help them just as much as any marketing they do on Facebook or Google.Ken Brown  37:26  Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm gonna ask you a question that I don't think there's an answer because I tried to look this is more of a opinion. I get asked all the time by my patients. Well, do you want me to try this I do a lot of sampling and pancreatic enzymes because I believe that there are other these extra pancreatic causes which can actually affect your pancreatic enzymes. And they will say oh, I'm already on this life extension digestive enzyme. Look, here's the label it has it says it has lipase says it has tryptase says it has amylase I have contacted them. I've contacted the pharmaceutical companies and I'm like, can you please give me a statement to define plant based digestive enzymes versus the pharmaceutical bovine and or porsine? Have you ever thought about that before?Stuart Akerman  38:17  So I have, and I can't answer it. It's gonna it's gonna sound like I'm skirting the issue. The short answer is I can't. But what I can say that I've seen with many of these, when patients come to me and say, oh, I have this naturally derived one that I'm using, very often, the amount of enzyme that they're taking is significantly lower than what we know they need. So we talk about standard dosing in the order of thousands 70,000 100,000 units with each meal. And in many of these, they'll show me yeah, I'm taking a hit. Four capsules, and each capsule has 1000 or 3000 units. So they're getting significantly under dosed. And this is not unique to say, oh, you know, plant based ones are just not quite as strong as some of the other ones that are produced by the pharmaceutical companies. I get this from second opinion and third opinion patients sometimes who say, I have chronic pancreatitis, I have pancreatic insufficiency. The enzymes don't work for me, what am I doing wrong? And eight out of 10 times nine out of 10 times the answer is really simple. You're under dosed. Because we're not trained as as as patients to think I need to take six or eight or 10 pills a day for this problem. We want the one pill or the one pill twice a day. And that's how we're conditioned to think is a standard regimen which is true of most medications. But in this situation because the problem is every time you eat you mal absorb, you need to take something every time you eat. And if we gave you the correct amount of enzyme in one capsule, you'd choke on it because it would be huge! So we got to break it down and give you smaller capsules. But it's just math. So you got to take enough capsules to give you the amount of enzyme you need with each meal.Ken Brown  40:26  That is great. That is a great answer. All right, Dr. Akerman. I think that we have taken on a pretty big topic and done it in a relatively quick expeditious manner. I want to thank you so much for taking the time. Where can people contact you because they're right now going, I have that somebody's sitting on a toilet, eating a hamburger smoking a cigarette going, it's sticking to the bowl. Oh, man.Stuart Akerman  40:50  Living life.Ken Brown  40:53  How do they find you?Stuart Akerman  40:55  So the easiest way is to go through my website. It's www.stuartakermanMD.com. And there's a an appointment tab and a contact us tab. Either one works great and my staff will get the request and contact you right away.Ken Brown  41:14  And I will say that we are part of a great group digestive health associates of Texas and we funnel or at least in this area, everyone funnels these tough cases. Dr. Akerman and you're obviously getting a great idea of his personality and he treats all his patients phenomenally but he's also endoscopically fantastic. I want to do a quick shout out once again, I mentioned him earlier but Rob Wolf, author podcaster and influencer. He, I loved that he did a whole episode on epi but more than that, I want to shout out to him because my son at this tournament in Wichita Falls, it was 103 degrees. The heat index is 110 and my son uses his lmnt element, electrolytes while he's out there hitting. So maybe that's one of the reasons why a 15 year olds taking on a 21 year old so thank you at Rob Wolf. And finally go to kbmdhealth.com. Download a free understanding your endocannabinoid system, even if you don't want to understand that the reason why is because then we can stay in touch. And you can ask questions like this like, hey, can you ask Dr. Akerman should I be worried that there's pancreatic cancer in my family? Hey, can you ask someone so we have access to experts, we can do this. Can you ask Rob Wolf, I want to do a keto diet. What do I do with this? So these are ways to stay in touch we want to interact. As always, whenever we mention anything, we're two doctors, but we are not your doctor. So this is for advice for entertainment. If you do have any of these issues, please discuss with your doctor. We are not giving medical advice. And finally, much love to everyone that listens to this, watches this. And please share, like, do a little thumbs up on wherever it's supposed to happen, like all the podcast platforms. So all in all, I think this is a great way to clarify something that has been very vague in the mainstream media. Thank you once again, Dr. Akerman.Stuart Akerman  43:13  Thanks for having me.Ken Brown  43:15  Bye, everybody. Stay safe.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Today, we think of Pixar as the company that gave us such lovable characters as Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Monsters Mike Wazowski and James P Sullivan, Nemo, Elastagirl, and Lightnight McQueen. But all that came pretty late in the history of the company. Let's go back to the 70s. Star Wars made George Lucas a legend. His company Lucasfilm produced American Graffiti, the Star Wars Francise, the Indiana Jones Francis, The Labrynth, Willow, and many others. Many of those movies were pioneering in the use of visual effects in storytelling. At a time when the use of computer-aided visual effects was just emerging. So Lucas needed world-class computer engineers.   Lucas found Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab. They had been hired by the founder, Alexander Schure, to help create the first computer-animated film in the mid-70s. But Lucas hired Catmull (who had been a student of the creator of the first computer graphics software, Sketchpad) and Smith (who had worked on SuperPaint at Xerox PARC) away to run the computer division of Lucasfilm, which by 1979 was simply called the Graphics Group.    They created REYES and developed a number of the underlying techniques used in computer graphics today. They worked on movies like Star Trek II where the graphics still mostly stand up nearly 40 years later. And as the group grew, the technology got more mature and more useful. REYES would develop into RenderMan and become one of the best computer graphics products on the market. Pioneering, they won prizes in science and film. RenderMan is still one of the best tools available for computer-generated lighting, shading, and shadowing.   John Lasseter joined in 1983. And while everything was moving in the right direction, in the midst of a nasty divorce when he needed the cash, Lucas sold the group as a spin-off to Steve Jobs in 1986. Jobs had just been ousted from Apple and was starting NeXT. He had the vision to bring the computer graphics to homes. They developed The Pixar Image Computer for commercial sales, which would ship just after Jobs took over the company. It went for $135,000 and still required an SGI or Sun computer to work. They'd sell just over 100 in the first two years - most to Disney.    The name came from Alvy Ray Smith's original name he suggested for the computer, Picture Maker. That would get shortened to Pixer, and then Pixar. The technology they developed along the way to the dream of a computer animated film was unparalleled in special effects. But CPUs weren't going fast enough to keep up.    The P-II model came with a 3 gig RAID (when most file systems couldn't even access that much space), 4 processors, multiple video cards, 2 video processors, a channel for red, blue green, and alpha. It was a beast.    But that's not what we think of when we think of Pixar today. You see, they had always had the desire to make a computer animated movie. And they were getting closer and closer. Sure, selling computers to aid in the computer animation is the heart of why Steve Jobs bought the company - but he, like the Pixar team, is an artist. They started making shorts to showcase what the equipment and software they were making could do.    Lasseter made a film called Luxo Jr in 1986 and showed it at SIGGRAPH, which was becoming the convention for computer graphics. They made a movie every year, but they were selling into a niche market and sales never really took off. Jobs pumped more money into the company. He'd initially paid $5 million dollars and capitalized the company with another $5 million. By 1989 he'd pumped $50 million into the company. But when sales were slow and they were bleeding money, Jobs realized the computer could never go down market into homes and that part of the business was sold to Vicom in 1990 for $2 million, who then went bankrupt.   But the work Lasseter was doing blending characters that were purely made using computer graphics with delicious storytelling. Their animated short Tin Toy won an Academy Award in 1988. And being an artist, during repeated layoffs, that group just continued to grow. They would release more and more software - and while they weren't building computers, the software could be run on other computers like Macs and Windows.    The one bright spot was that Pixar and the Walt Disney Animation Studio were inseparable. By 1991 though, computers had finally gotten fast enough, and the technology mature enough, to make a computer-animated feature. And this is when Steve Jobs and Lasster sold the idea of a movie to Disney. In fact, they got $24 million to make three features. They got to work on the first of their movie. Smith would leave in 1994, supposedly over a screaming match he had with Jobs over the use of a whiteboard. But if Pixar was turning into a full-on film studio, it was about to realize the original dream they all had of creating a computer-animated motion picture and it's too bad Smith missed it.   That movie was called Toy Story. It would bring in $362 million dollars globally becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1995 and allow Steve Jobs to renegotiate the Pixar deal with Disney and take the company public in 1995. His $60 million investment would convert into over a billion dollars in Pixar stock that became over a hundred thousand shares of Disney stock worth over $4 billion, the largest single shareholder. Those shares were worth $7.4 billion dollars when he passed away in 2011. His wife would sell half in 2017 as she diversified the holdings. 225x on the investment.    After Toy Story, Pixar would create Cars, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Up, Onward, Mosters Inc, Ratatouille, Brave, The Incredibles, and many other films. Movies that have made close to $15 billion dollars. But more importantly, they mainstreamed computer animated films. And another huge impact on the history of computing was that they made Steve Jobs a billionaire and proved to Wall Street that he could run a company. After a time I think of as “the dark ages” at Apple, Jobs came back in 1996, bringing along an operating system and reinventing Apple - giving the world the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone. And streamlining the concept of multi-media enough that music and later film and then software, would be sold through Apple's online services, setting the groundwork for Apple to become the most valuable company in the world.    So thank you to everyone from Pixar for the lovable characters, but also for inventing so much of the technology used in modern computer graphics - both for film and the tech used in all of our computers. And thank you for the impact on the film industry and keeping characters we can all relate to at the forefront of our minds. And thank you dear listener for tuning in to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky to have you. And lucky to have all those Pixar movies. I think I'll go watch one now. But I won't be watching them on the Apple streaming service. It'll be on Disney service. Funny how that worked out, aint it.

When STAR WARS debuted in May 1977, it gave rise to a pop-cultural phenomenon unlike any the world had ever seen. The movie was so singular and iconic, and so technically ambitious -- that it almost never came to be.To bring Star Wars to the screen, new technology had to be invented and existing technology had to be utilized in ways never before imagined. None of the special effects companies in Hollywood could handle the blend of creativity and innovation necessary to bring director George Lucas's vision to life. So Lucas built his own studio, and forever changed the way movies are made.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

So Lucas won a map, so he was contractually obligated to be on the show!Pj's Back with Lucas and obviously.. it's worse.

What is the one piece of advice that an Apache helicopter pilot has for you? FIND OUT on C-Level: Guest Lucas Rice - So Lucas tell me, if you were to give one piece of advice to somebody in leadership what would it be? - Well I'll tell ya I got a great piece of advice a long long time ago from one of the greatest people in the world, my mother. And a that advice was what's the worst thing can happen, they're gonna say no. And so have the courage to go out and ask. Have the to go out and fight. Cause what's the worst thing they're gonna say? No. - No. _ On this episode of C LEVEL, I meet help with Lieutenant Colonel Lucas Rice Executive Vice President and COO of LDX solutions. - So Lucas tell me a little bit about your story. How'd you get started? Where you're from? - Sure yeah, I originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Grew up there playing soccer. - Indians fan? Of course. - There you go. - Indians and Browns. - Right okay. In reality is I'm just happy when they win anything. - Right, right, right? We're on a roll right now so it's good. - Yeah well my Giants aren't doing to well. - Well that's good. Cause we've had plenty of our own you know loses. - Yeah. - But born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio all my family and friends are still there. Grew up playing soccer was fortunate enough to be on a club team. That I got to travel the world playing soccer. And so it exposed exposed me to more than just Cleveland. - [Interviewer] Right. - And so I realized and wanting to go to college I wanted to go something a little bit further than right next door. So I ended up actually at the United States Military Academy at West Point. I was recruited to play soccer there. And not your normal school. - [Inteviewer] Yeah. It wasn't exactly the party atmosphere that you see here. - Was soccer with what you wanted, you wanted to be a pro soccer player one day? Or what is it? - No I enjoyed playing. I still play till this day - [Inteviewer] Yeah. in an old man soccer league. - [Inteviewer] Yeah. - But no I love the game. I guess I got pretty good at it. And so when it came, when West Point came to me it really turned the tide for me. That it became a sport I could continue to play, but I was going to West Point because of the leadership. The leadership model, the leadership experience that really is. You know folks talk about masters, talk about what their degrees are in. I've got an Aerospace Engineering Degree, but I went to school for leadership. - [Interviewer] Yeah. It really is a leadership laboratory. And so that's what truly drew me to it. - [Interviewer] Yeah. - It was going to the leadership side. So following that of course I had a military obligation. So I did 10 years active duty service. - [Interviewer] Yep. - As a helicopter pilot, I was fortunate enough to pick up Aviation. So I was H64 Apache Helicopter Pilot. - Wow. Spent several rotations through the states. Fort Rucker, Alabama where we training on Aviation. Fort Campbell, Kentucky was there with 101st Aviation. And then over seas so two years in Korea. And then came back to Fort Rucker and realized it at some point need to start a family. My wife's a West Point graduate also.

David Ralph 0:00 Join me each month as I show you how you can follow our process to start an own your own life changing online business. This is business masterclass at its best, head over to join up dots.com and book your place for the next training session. And I'll see you there. Intro 0:17 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. join up dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:42 Yes, hello there. Good morning to you. Good morning to you. And good morning, a game. I say that every show but I I like to say good morning to you. Because I'm grateful for you to be here. You know, you give up your time to press that little button wherever you click on either iTunes or Stitcher or have a website, the websites a good place to actually listen to because number one, it helps me out because you can get some of my free courses. And we're adding more and more overtime on there. I've got loads of good ones in my head, but I've got to record and I'm, I'm bringing them to the world people so that you can you can change direction and live a life on your own terms. So how are you? How are you? Oh, I'm Are you happy? Are you happy? Because I've been getting some emails from people. And one of the ones is what I'm going to respond to today from a lovely lady. I'm sure she's a lovely lady called Angela. She sounds lovely. As you're here in the email. And I've been getting a lot of emails from people saying to me, so what? Then last, their last, they're listening, they're listening. They're listening, I suppose like today's emails a little bit. And they want to do stuff, but I don't quite well, I will say to all of you just remain happy and remain focused on your life. Because when the time comes, you'll know it when you know 100% that it's ready for you and the universe is pointing you in the right direction, just like you are when you sort of sit in bed when you're doing a job you get a little bit bored, a little bit bored. And then suddenly somebody says there's a job going in this company I know. And you go Oh, all Tell me more. And I say Oh, yeah, it's it's double what you earning at the moment. Yes, that's what I want. I want that. I don't care what it is. I don't care. Well, I don't do that. I don't just try to push you into earning money because I think there's right money and there's wrong money. And I think the right way to do stuff is actually earn money by doing what you love. Yes, I'm going to repeat that once more to earn money by doing what you love, and it is possible it really is possible. Now in today's episode, I've had an email from a lady called Angela barrows from how in England hates you lol not as how h o l. a. And she starts she she doesn't actually start with you sexy man. And I'm literally every email I get now is sexy, Beast, sexy, man. Everything sexy and I love it is a bit of adulation. I don't really get adulation in my house anymore. I've seen me scratching myself in the underpants too many times to get that kind of adulation, my kids just kind of think, then come at it. It might wonder what David Bowie or like Paul McCartney's kids being I wonder if they actually think that these legends are still idiots because I've seen them sort of them, you know, just puttering around the house in their dressing gown and their slippers their kids always think their parents are idiots. Well, I don't know. But my kids certainly lean towards that. Now Angela barrows doesn't who sent his email and she says, love listening to your show. Dr. David, love listening to your show, and I'm intoxicated thought of punching my boss in the face and walking out like you did? I didn't actually do that. And I might say in the shows, you know, wouldn't it be great to do that? I know, I've never punched anyone in the face. Now that's not true. I've had two fights in my time. And one both. Yes, I can tell you who that the old Joseph, the old Joseph and Danny GIFs. And if anyone's listening and they know those people there, they would have liked it. I would have liked it because the Ralph my style beat them to a pulp. It wasn't really major fights. It was just kind of, you know, slapped around a bit. They it was kid stuff. It was kid stuff. But I'm still undefeated. Yes, I am Dean and Dean. And the rocky free that was. So what does she say? Yes. What did your boss say? Well, I didn't punch him in the face. But I couldn't because I really didn't like the idea at all. I can imagine they were really stunned and surprised. I would imagine that they would press charges. And, and my life would have changed in different ways. So now I didn't punch him in the face. But certainly I could not see eye to eye with. You know me, people. You know me. I'm lovable. I'm carefree. I haven't got a bad bone in my body. But you get me the wrong way. Danny and Phil, you get me the wrong way. And you're going to come to a sticky end. Angela says I can only earn 20 grand per year working 36 hours a week. Do you honestly think that I could replace this income online? Yes, I do. I do. Totally. I know that I will still have to work as I would be amazed that I could just magically speak it out of the air whilst walking around in the London sunshine. Well, if you're looking outside my window at the moment is paying down with rain. It's June in June everywhere, isn't it? Where we don't just live on a different sort of time frame in the United Kingdom. So Germany is everywhere. But it's rubbish. It's absolutely rubbish. It's just rainy. We're even having the heating on, which is bizarre, but this time of year. Now, Angela? I would say yes, number one you can? Of course you can. And I would love the fact that you know, there's work to be done because I do think so many people had this disbelief, but they can just throw up a website, have a few links on there and make a lot of money. And most of the people want that. And I can understand that, because that's what I wanted at the beginning. And I've certainly created that because there's certain things that I don't have to do anything with a tool. And it does bring me incoming, which is lovely. But to be earned 20 grand, you know, which is replacing it all just that way. That's hard work. doable. It is it's doable, but it's hard work. So how can we do this? Because you obviously want to know, can you replace this and I'm going to get you all to get your calculators out. Okay. Now if you were me, I'd spend time writing boobs. What was that? Five double? Oh, eight, yeah, five, double eight and turning it upside down? Or boobies. You can go boobies as well. That's a good one. And there's some other sort of quite rude ones. But no, but I was always into boobs. And I haven't changed much. Really. I've got a preference. I have got a preference. Okay, so what I want you to do is get your calculator out and think to yourself, right? Okay. 20 grand, what do I need to do to replace that income? Now imagine that you've created a product for pound, okay? People come across your website, and they just buy something for a pound. Now, first of all, you would go well, that's easy, I can do that. Now, people don't actually buy stuff really cheap. They just think it's a ripoff somehow, and I do it myself I I was on a website the other day. And it was something like $36 it wasn't anything at all. And I thought to myself, sounds too good to be true what they were offering. Now it might have been amazing. I still looked at info now I'm gonna leave that. So if you were charging one pound, you would have to service 20,000 customers a year. Okay. So that's quite hard work. 20,000 customers, I don't know what that is per day. But that's a lot. Okay, so we're not going to do that, we're not going to do that, Angela. Now, if you went for two pounds, you've instantly half your work. And you're only having to service 10,000 people a day. Okay, still a lot of work. So we don't want to do that. So let's go to four pounds, okay, four pound service, it could be a PDF book, it could be some kind of training material, it could be that you actually provide a service yourself, there are a myriad of ways. Now for pound means of 5000, right? Okay, we can into a better figure, okay? But still, it's a lot of work. Now, bizarrely in the online world, the more you charge, the easier it is to sell, okay, because there's a value piece behind it that people actually buy into. And if you did a 200 pound service, you would only have to service 100 customers a month. Okay? Now 200 pound, that's not a lot, some something in your skill set, I don't know what you do. But somebody in your skill set can definitely be transferred into a service or a resource that you could charge 200 pounds for. Now, the brilliant thing about that is if you can do it, so that people just come along to your website and click on a link and they buy vaping, then that's great. But you can also put yourself into the product. And once you put yourself into the product, it becomes more valuable. One to one service is the premium. Okay, now, oh, my courses, if somebody wants me one to one with nobody else, just been gazing into my eyes, rubbing my thighs, now we do everything on Skype and stuff. So they can even if they want to, then I charge premium for that because I can't scale it is every hour is totally for them. Okay? Now, for $200. You don't have to do 100 people, as I say, which equates to 8.33 people a month. It's not a lot 31 days, and you've only got to service eight people. Now you've got to do it constantly. So every every month, you got to do the same thing. And maybe you want to slow down on certain months, you might want to go on vacation or holiday. So you might want to play around with that. But that actually equates to naught point two, seven people a day. That's like a leg. Okay, you've only got to deal with a leg a day to be able to make that money. Now, we want to go better than that. Because we do of course we do. So let's do something for 500 quid, which is still not a lot of money. Now, there's going to be people out there listening to that going to 500 quid, that's a lot of money. But believe me, I speak to people now. But I bet there was a guy the other day, 100 grand a year, I know somebody not personally, who does 50 grand gesture, a telephone call for half hour, you know, there is money out there. And if you're thinking that's a lot of money, that is because you're in the back position, okay, you're in that position where it is a lot of money for you. But it doesn't mean it's a lot of money for other people, okay? And that's a mindset thing that you've got to cross where you've actually got to go is not what I value it as it's what other people will be willing to value it is, you know, if I, if I sold to Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea Football Club, that's, that's nothing, he spends millions, okay? And that's the kind of mindset, you've got to think, where do I find these customers that have got the big money, okay, so let's go one higher, we're going to have 500. Now, 500 is only 40 people a month, okay to get your 20 grand. And if we can go through 1000, that's 20. Now, once you get to 1000, you can easily do 40. And then you've doubled your money on 40 grand a year, okay. And so it really is doable. If you know what you can provide, you know where your customers are, and you know the value that you want to deliver to them, and then work accordingly. So I always call it my keep the lights on bigger. So if 20 grand is your salary per year, I bet that isn't what you actually need to live. First of all, that's going to be luxuries, that's gonna be Netflix, that's going to be a load of different things. But if you stripped it right down to go, Okay, I know it's going to be rubbish, it's going to be bare minimum, it's just gonna be, but I can pay my bills, I have food, and I don't have a social life, I don't have anything, you probably could go down enough eight grand and go over, all I need to do to replace the income is 12,000. Once again, get onto your computer, stop thinking about boobs and boobies. And then start putting your fingers in and seeing what comes out. I do that a lot. I love a spreadsheet. Well, I can put 4.5% and 5.6 and, and drag it down, you know, on Excel spreadsheets, you drag it down and all the formulas go all the way down it. That's what I love doing so that I can see what I've actually got to aim for and what work I have to do. Okay, so that's something that I always do play around with your fingers and see where you need to go. Because believe me, no matter what you want to do, you will look at it and think, okay, that's not as bad as I thought. hundred people, 8.33 people a month, I could do that. And that gives me breathing space to actually create more value into my life. That's the way I want to do it. So she says following on. She's still walking around in the London side shine. I don't know where you're getting that London, the sunshine from? Because it's not over my head at the moment. I guess you would say of course it is. Yes. You say Angela? Yes. I preempted you. And I have said it is possible. And it's just me being a scaredy pants chicken. Yes, you are. You are a scaredy pants chicken. She follows it up. Now she's moved through this. And this is interesting with this email, she starts off kind of really wanting to do it and punching people in the face that that's just violent, Angela, we don't want that. And then she's saying, I don't kind of believe it's true. But now now she's in the positive. She's in the practical. And she says, ooh, it's so exciting to think I'm going to do it in her voice. I don't know if this is how she talks. And this is probably deeply offensive, but I'm going to do it. Oh, it's so exciting to think that I could take control of my life like you have done. But I'm a very pragmatic and practical and I need a concrete plan. Now, I think that is a brilliant Northern accent. I think that is spot on. And I could walk around the streets of combination street, and I could just be a native, I would disappear. Nobody would know that I am the sexy podcaster. But you all talk about not one person out there. Okay. Thank you so much. If you manage to find the time to answer this question kind regards you sexy man, Angela barrows. Whoa, Ingrid. So that's something that I think he's gonna be useful for you. Okay, look at what you need to earn. Repeat back and think now what do I really need? You know, what do I really need to earn to just be out to pay my mortgage, pay my bills and stuff. And we're cutting back all the luxuries, which is, is your transition? Because the real important part is getting the free time. You know, I talked to a guy called Neil Hughes. And he's a tech writing blog posts in podcast person. He's, he's the tech writer I can never remember he shows about. And I remember him sort of connecting with me before he started becoming a global success. And we chat quite often. And one of the things that we both agree, time, time is your value point. But you cannot lose those track of the value. It gives you. The fact that on Wednesday afternoon, yesterday was Monday was actually a lovely day. And so me and my wife walked through the Country Park near us. And we sat on this bench, and we looked over the River Thames. And it was just glorious. And as we were sitting there, funnily enough, a guy but we used to work with up in London many years ago, walked past and he said, Oh, hello, you too. And he said, Hello, you see, we're polite. And he sat down by the side of us. And we also had an amazing we used to be in London on this day, on a Monday, working in our suits being stressed. And here we are sitting in the sunshine on a bench looking over the sea. And you know you want for that. But it gives you the breathing space as well to be out to put time in, it's quite difficult to build a business when you're squeezing around the evenings and kids on stuff. But if you can start earning some income, to give yourself a bit breathing space, maybe one day a week that you can be lock yourself away and start working on creating that value point for your customers, then things are doable, and new shoes, wherever you are walking your dog, aren't we right? Aren't we right? Isn't it about the time that you get, which is the big positive because when you can carry on building your business and scaling up, and then making it more what you want it to be the beginning bit is just a starting point. Well, thank you so much to Angela barrows for dropping us an email, thank you so much to there was a guy we're just going to be opening it is Lucas, Lucas Gordon has dropped us a line and he's interested in opening a group of join up dots in Denver, Colorado. So we're going to be arranging back and we will create the group and we'll start getting people in, we're here to support you guys locally, we've now got another one being built. I can't be where that is. Now it's going out my head. But we've got that six or seven at the moment, very small at the moment, a few people in them, but they're already making inroads into their their positivity and growing their future. So if you are interested in creating a group and helping us grow it and become the leader, and not a follower, making things happen in your life, but drop us a line and we will get one created. And we will work with you accordingly. So Lucas golden, thank you so much for that. Anybody else drop us a line and just say you'd like to start a group in whatever place you are, we're a range where and then we will start broadcasting into it and linking all the groups across the world so that you've got a support network everywhere, sharing good ideas and practices and success and failures. And of course, gratitude. Thank you so much as I say for listening. Thank you so much for everyone who's dropping us a line. And until now next time, I'll be waiting for you. Yes, I will be waiting for you. With me calculator, trying to work out some rude words. I didn't know when I was a kid. Until next time, see you later. Unknown Speaker 19:10 Bye bye. David doesn't want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you are wants to become so he's put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to join up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we'll see you tomorrow on join up dots.  

When STAR WARS debuted in May 1977, it gave rise to a pop-cultural phenomenon unlike any the world had ever seen. The movie was so singular and iconic, and so technically ambitious -- that it almost never came to be.To bring Star Wars to the screen, new technology had to be invented and existing technology had to be utilized in ways never before imagined. None of the special effects companies in Hollywood could handle the blend of creativity and innovation necessary to bring director George Lucas’s vision to life. So Lucas built his own studio, and forever changed the way movies are made.Support us by supporting our sponsors!The Art of Shaving - Go to theartofshaving.com and enter promo code AI at checkout to get 15% off your first orderCayman Jack- Cayman Jack provides premium prepared cocktails for those with good taste and little time. Find Cayman Jack at a store near you by visiting caymanjack.com. Please drink responsibly. Premium malt beverage. American Vintage Beverage Co. Chicago, Illinois.

Lucas asked out his co-worker Gemma by spelling "Will You Go Out With Me?" in spaghetti. They went on a date and things heated up but all of a sudden Gemma left and decided things were going to fast. So Lucas called us for helping getting to the bottom of this conundrum.