Be Organic Podcast Season 1 – Episode 13 – Dr. Josh Axe: Ancient Remedies
“The person who takes medicine must recover twice; once from the disease and once from the medicine.”
-Sir Wiliam Osler, excerpt from Ancient Remedies
Today we sit down with expert Dr. Axe to learn all about traditional Chinese medicine and discuss the inspiration for his new book, Ancient Remedies. It’s packed with medical research and thousands of studies on traditional methods to help you get to root causes and take control of your health.
“Nutrition is one of the top two things that can help heal, but if you are dealing with emotional root cause, which most people are, they won’t fully heal until they start focusing on faith and hope.”
-Dr. Axe
Dr Axe Store
Ancient Remedies on Amazon
TIME STAMPS
0:50 Dr. Axe’s Inspiration for his career (jump to section)
6:00 Organic versus non-organic food (jump to section)
10:50 Chinese medicine & the 5 elements (jump to section)
15:49 The importance of gut health (jump to section)
31:29 Supplementing for your needs (jump to section)
39:57 The Collagen Diet (jump to section)
Transcription Below
Landon: Dr. Axe, welcome onto the Be Organic podcast, powered by Clean Juice. We’re so excited to be chatting with you today. Full transparency, this is our first ever podcast and quite honestly, I couldn’t have picked a better guest to join us for our first podcast. So thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule.
Dr. Josh Axe: Hey, thanks. I appreciate you guys having me.
Kat: Yeah, I’m a little worried that I don’t want to come off like a fangirl, host-girl here, so I’m gonna keep my cool and get through all these questions. I guess I’d just like to start for any of our listeners that might not have heard of you, just kind of your background. How you got into this health and wellness, your education. All of that kind of interesting stuff.
Dr. Axe’s Inspiration For His Career
Dr. Axe: Yeah, so for me, my career in sort of the natural medicine space was born out of passion. Growing up, my family lived in what I’ll call the medical model. Anytime anyone was sick, we took a drug or medication. I got put on antibiotics constantly as a kid. That’s sort of the world we lived in. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer at 40 years old, breast cancer. She went through all the traditional medical treatments with that. She had a mastectomy. She went through rounds, and rounds, and rounds of chemotherapy. I remember one day seeing her hair fall out, and how sick she got. Fortunately, she was eventually going through all those treatments, and she was eventually diagnosed as being cancer free. Her doctor said, “Hey, you’re healthy now.” But really one of the things I noticed about my mom is after her chemo treatment, she really seemed sicker than ever. My mom was then diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. She had major digestive issues, chronic constipation, hypothyroidism, just all these different problems growing up. During that time when I was seeing my mom go through chemo, I remember thinking to myself, “There’s gotta be a better way.” That really turned me on to health. At 14 years old, I said, “I’m gonna stop drinking soda.” Because I knew nothing about health at 14, except for I knew soda was bad. So I stopped drinking soda at the time. Then my mom kept getting what seemed to be worse. I really started studying and researching and learning more about health. I was a year away from graduating and becoming a doctor in chiropractic college. My mom calls me and she says, “I’ve got bad news. I’ve just been diagnosed with cancer again in my lungs. The oncologist is recommending I do surgery and then we do radiation treatments. What do I do?” I flew home. We sat down, we prayed together. We felt really led to take care of her all naturally, and I’d been really blessed at the time to have a lot of doctors in the functional medicine space who I’d been learning from. I’d been working in one of their clinics at that time. I was working as a nutritionist running all the blood work in a clinic. So I flew home and sat down with my mom and we said, “We’re gonna change your diet.” She started juicing vegetables every single day, drinking bone broth, using ancient herbs that were used in China in mushrooms. She did a lot of reishi mushrooms, turmeric. We started using essential oils like frankincense and myrrh. She worked on reducing stress, did meditation. She did all these different things. We did this for a period of probably four months, and we went back to her oncologist, and they redid a CT scan. They called us the next day. Their exact words were, “This is highly unusual. We don’t typically see this, but the tumors had shrunk in half.” They said, “Hey, come back again in four months, or come back again in nine months.” She went back nine months later in complete remission. Today my mom is 67 years old and she said she feels better in her sixties than she did in her thirties. Really that’s what led me into seeing my mom’s health transformation, both the first time in the medical system versus sort of a functional medicine natural approach. That’s really what led me to practice the way I practice. I then founded a website called draxe.com. I had a clinic for about five years in Nashville where I did functional medicine in chiropractic and fitness, and all kinds of stuff. More recently, about three or four years ago I founded a supplement company called Ancient Nutrition, where we put out some of the world’s healthiest vitamins and supplements, and that type of thing. So that’s really sort of my health journey that led me to where I am today.
Kat: You mentioned your faith. Landon and I are both believers, and our company Clean Juice is founded on Christian principles. I just think, I’m sure you can relate to this, it’s so beautiful that God gave us all these things to heal ourselves. You know?
Dr. Axe: I’m sorry, I’m just putting two and two together. So the people who book my interview, Alex who I love, I didn’t know. So we have a Clean Juice on the corner. Chelsea and I were there… we were actually there yesterday. She was getting an avocado protein toast, I think. I was getting wheatgrass and a turmeric shot. So it’s good to hear. I love your guys’ stores. I’ve been to a couple now and I love that you guys do things organically. You do it right, and it’s very inspirational. So now I’m a fan.
Kat: That’s cool. That’s actually kind of why we even thought about having you on here. We were so humbled. I think you posted about Clean Juice one day, or your wife did, and we were like, “Okay. If Doctor Axe is eating what we’re putting out, we’re doing something right.” That was something that was just so important to us when we were starting this concept, was organic produce. I remember we looked at a couple different things and sourcing options. It was a whole lot easier to go with conventional produce, but it was just something that I really believed in, just because I was learning so much about these pesticides and what they can do to your body. I know you talk a lot about that, how they can really disrupt your endocrine system. What can you speak to about what you’ve seen in your studies as it relates to organic versus not organic? You know, produce of course, but meat, dairy, all that kind of stuff?
Organic Versus Non-Organic Food
Dr. Axe: Yeah, so I think a few things to remember too is that there’s a whole spectrum here in terms of the best foods to buy organically. The ones that aren’t as important. When it comes to buying things organic, I do want to say my view is, when you look at the studies there’s something called the law of bioaccumulation. But really, when you’re buying something organic, the first meat and dairy are the most toxic foods if they’re conventional. Because these animals consume tons of food over time, like genetically modified corn that’s been sprayed, and other foods that are really toxic to the body. So I really think if I’m having somebody go organic, the first thing is sort of the meat and dairy. The next thing is, especially things like lettuces and a lot of those types of foods that have a big surface area tend to hold a lot of pesticides. Lettuces and things can be more sensitive too compared to some of the root vegetables out there. I would say that I would put those near the top. And there’s a whole Dirty Dozen Clean 15 list. We just came out with another one here recently on draxe.com. That being said, I really think that, organic here, the big benefit there – and there are studies that prove this – one, those foods do tend to be more nutrient-dense. There are more vitamins and more minerals. When you buy a plant that’s organic, the general farming practice is not only not used in pesticides or chemically laden pesticides, but also the general farming practices and somebody being conscious of the health of the soil tends to be improved as well. So I do think that organic is important in a lot of areas. I think again, it’s more important in some areas than others, but generally speaking, in the Axe household we do consume mostly organic foods for sure. So again, I think organic is important. Just to talk about another crop that I think is really important is coffee. Coffee is probably the most sprayed crop out there today if we’re talking about plants. Coffee beans already, one, they’re a stimulant. I think coffee can be really healthy for people. The other thing I want to say is I think it really depends on the individual. Some people will tolerate coffee very well and do very well with it. Other people don’t do very well with stimulants. There’s even 23AndMe and different genetic tests to say, “Hey, I think I’m better at processing coffee, metabolizing caffeine versus other people.” I can tell you I do okay with a little bit of coffee. I do okay if I’m doing like a single or double shot of espresso one time a day, and not even every day, just every other day. Then outside of that, maybe I’ll do some matcha, or I’ll do some veggie juice. Something like that to sort of support my body. Coffee is so heavily sprayed with pesticides that the number of people today that are going to stores, and I’m not just calling out one of the big ones that starts with an “S.” I don’t like calling out specific names of companies because sometimes I’ve gotten a cease or desist letter or two over the years. Anyways, all of that being said, people are going through and getting this most popular coffee company or other coffee companies that are not organic, and they’re getting loads and loads of pesticides. It’s really harmful to our health. We know pesticides are linked to especially conditions like ADHD and different neurological conditions. So again, all that being said, I do think personally that organic is very important and everything from meat to dairy, to plants, to coffee, to CBD, all of these things I think are important to consume as organic.
Landon: Yeah, that’s awesome. Back to your point about how coffee affects people differently. It’s funny, I can literally drink a cup of coffee and go to bed, and she drinks a cup of coffee past 3:00 PM and she’s up all night. So it’s definitely a good point.
Dr. Axe: So my wife, Chelsea, she was a barista for five years and she’s really into natural health. Of course she’s very into natural health. For me, if I have it a little bit in the morning, I’m okay. But if I would have it at three o’clock, if I would have too much, I’m the person I just get jittery and can’t sleep. So I’m with you there.
Landon: That’s awesome.
Kat: Totally. Well, I think my adrenals are a little more taxed than his are too. So I think that’s something that people don’t think about. Kind of to your point earlier, which this is something I really like about your website and I studied at the Integrative Institute for Nutrition. My biggest takeaway from that was just that we’re all so different and what works for person A might not work for person B. So I really appreciated on your website you had if you’re a vegan or if you’re eating keto, or all these different things for people that might want to approach their health differently.
Chinese Medicine & The 5 Elements
Dr. Axe: Yeah, one of the things that I’m most passionate about is sort of personalized nutrition. This dates back to the beginning of time in terms of, or very early when medical practices were being formed, whether it be Egyptian medicine, Greek medicine. We know today especially in Chinese and Ayurvedic, which are probably the two today that their systems still work so effectively, and are still being used today. Chinese medicine has the five elements and Ayurveda has the three doshas. Looking at those, it was very similar to looking at if anybody here has taken an Enneagram test or a DISC profile, or Myers Briggs where you learn your personality type. They did that in Chinese medicine that they found okay. It is so deep and amazing, and it’s so true in the way they work, but they’ll look and say, “Okay, you are one of the five elements.” Let’s say I’m wired as a wood element. That means I’m very lean and wiry. You can see my veins kind of like the roots of a tree. That would mean that the emotions I experience regularly if I come into conflict would be impatience and frustration, versus somebody else who’s an earth element might. They have more rounded features, very joyful, happy, that sort of person of the group, more extroverted, and they’re going to deal with worry. Worry tends to be sort of their emotion. Then that affects your organ system. So think about this, if somebody who’s a wood element like me and deals with frustration and impatience, those emotions are also the far area of that… if you go beyond that, it turns into anger and that affects the liver, right? An earth element, it’s gonna be worry. Worry affects the stomach and the upper GI. Think about if somebody gets anxiety over worrying for a test. The emotion of fear is all adrenal and reproductive systems. So somebody who has a lot of fear in their life, or maybe their fear of disappointing their parents or their spouse, or fear of failure. That can actually cause infertility. We know in kids when they’re really young, it can cause them to wet the bed. If they have a nightmare and they have fear, they’ll wet the bed. That’s because fear causes dysfunction of the kidneys, adrenals, bladder, reproductive, that lower area. The emotion of grief and depression causes immune issues of the lungs and colon. And the emotion of anxiety, which is more of a sympathetic response, tends to be the central nervous system in the heart. But anyways, all that being said, what Chinese medicine did is they said, “Okay, when you have that emotion, it affects that specific organ.” And they would deal not only with your nutrition, which they dealt with nutrition, saying, “Okay, if you’ve got heart issues, we know that there are blood building foods like beets and herbs like dong quai, so we’re gonna help you heal that way. But also we’re gonna deal with the emotional aspect.” I maybe went off on a tangent here, but all that being said, I just think that it’s important to realize – one of my passions is everybody is different. There’s paleo, there’s keto, there’s vegan, there’s not one diet for everybody. People really need to eat based on the way that God created them, partnered with the certain sort of things that are going on within their system at that current time.
Kat: Yeah, so true. Yeah. We work with a natural path and every week do something called “emotion code” where we’re just pulling off all of those bad emotions that are trapped somewhere in our body that’s not letting everything flow. I think that’s probably been the biggest thing we’ve learned in the past year about our health, is just how important that emotional health is.
Landon: That’s right, and you’ve obviously been to Clean Juice. When we came up with the idea for Clean Juice, it wasn’t just around serving the absolute best product that we could. It was around serving the absolute best product that we could in terms of the materials that we’re using to make that product. But it was also about loving on the guests when they come in, right? Making sure that, you know, they have that emotional experience, right? And that it’s a positive, happy experience. Just two things that we really try to focus on within our business is to help promote what you’re talking about.
Dr. Axe: How many locations do you guys have now?
Landon: So we have 78 open and we have another 50 or so in development. So we are open…
Dr. Axe: I had no idea it was that many. That’s incredible.
Landon: So we’re in 23 states.
Dr. Axe: Wow. I’m impressed. It’s amazing.
Landon: Well, I think it’s like how I was saying earlier. It’s really challenging what we’re doing, right? It’s challenging to source the materials and to scale, and the supply chain part of it is very hard, but it’s not impossible. That’s how we’ve gone about it.
Dr. Axe: It’s awesome. I love it.
Kat: One thing I wanted to talk about, we have five kids and our youngest had some kind of pretty serious health stuff that went on when he was about one year old. We actually used your bone broth protein almost every single day to help get him healed. I think it was at that point for us that we really realized how important that gut health is to the rest of the overall health. Because it was like as soon as we got that under control he started walking, he started talking, he started doing all these things that we hadn’t seen. I would love the bird’s eye overview of gut health and what that means to you.
The Importance of Gut Health
Dr. Axe: Yeah. Well, you mentioned something really important. This is for people of all ages, but if we’re talking about children, the number of children today who have a compromised digestive system, or what I typically call “leaky gut,” is really high. And what happens is there’s this sort of connection that I talk about frequently. A friend of mine, Dr. David Perlmutter, who wrote a book called Grain Brain, he talks about this, that when you have a gut that leaks it actually affects your brain. Which then can affect development. It can affect how soon a child walks. It can affect all kinds of things. Now I myself was a child who was diagnosed with ADHD for my entire life. My mom worked with kids with special Ed, and then when I moved to Nashville one of the first things I did was I plugged into a group here in autistic support group and started taking care of a lot of children who had Asperger’s or had autistic spectrum disorders. All that being said, every one of those kids that I ever took care of, hundreds of them had gut issues. Part of what happened is that I would put them on a diet where we would remove gluten, we’d remove casing, we’d add collagen back in things like bone broth. We’d follow a really specific diet, and it was amazing. I mean, I had a child, Ben, who he would only say like three words and after a couple weeks was saying 40 words. It all had to do with the gut and how that affects the brain. Because here’s how this works for the audience and everybody listening, your intestinal lining is a barrier in-between your gut and your bloodstream. Your bloodstream circulates all over your body. When children are young, these holes are bigger, especially with the brain, the blood brain barrier. And so your gut acts like a net. Imagine a fishing net, and then you get a tear in it. That’s caused by inflammation. Inflammation from medications, damage from antibiotics. There are all kinds of things that can damage this gut lining. Well, when this happens, these certain things that should never be able to get in the bloodstream, like undigested food particles, like gluten, casing, bad bacteria, heavy metals, all kinds of stuff, then leaks into the bloodstream. It then circulates throughout your body. Your body can’t handle it all because it’s so much. And then it starts affecting the brain. So it will affect so many things, especially neural development. Anyways, all that being said, gut health is critical. Just because you brought up children, it is so important for kids that we get those foods that cause inflammation out of their diet, and start giving them the nutrients they need, or creating an environment to where the gut can heal. The gut likes to be warm and it likes to be dry. Here’s what I mean by this. You know, a lot of people put out books or talk about Candida. Candida is a very common issue – if you stick out your tongue, you‘ve got a white coating on it. It’s called Candida. Well, in Chinese medicine it was called dampness. Dampness is primarily caused by the same thing that would cause mold to grow in a basement, or Candida’s caused… Candida is a yeast. It’s very similar to a mold. Mold can only grow in a damp place. It has to be damp. If it’s dry and if it’s out in the sun, it’s not going to grow. Imagine your gut and GI the same way. We have to create an environment where mold, where yeast, where Candida cannot grow, and there’s a specific flavor in our diets that gets rid of dampness. There are certain flavors that feed dampness, things that are overly sweet feed dampness. The foods that are most dampening are sugar, wheat is very dampening, dairy is very dampening. Actually a lot of oils, just if you’re just pouring straight oil onto something that’s pretty dampening as well. Egg whites, they’re kind of things that look like mucus. Those things are dampening to the body. You get rid of dampness by eating bitter foods. Now in America today, we get almost no bitter. Like bitter is bad. People don’t do bitter, they hardly do sour. It’s all sweet and salty. So what we’re doing is we’re feeding these systems in our body, these flavors, they activate certain organs, but now we’re creating an environment that’s completely imbalanced. So if you look in, it’s really bad in the United States, but in areas like the Middle East and India and Asia, they’re getting a lot of herbs and spices. Which herbs and spices are primarily where we’re getting a lot of our bitterness, or at certain vegetables, whether it be watercress, or radishes, or arugula. You know, artichokes, all these foods are more bitter in nature. They’re gonna help you get rid of Candida. But anyways, all that being said, with kids or adults if you want to get rid of dampness, if you want to heal your gut, let me just go through the top things. So number one, you gotta get bone broth. Whether that be homemade bone broth, you buy frozen bone broth at your grocery store or health food store. You could buy a bone broth protein powder, a multi-collagen protein powder, but you gotta get collagen or bone broth. That’s the number one food group because your gut lining is made of collagen. So it’s like if you’re trying to build a house that’s really strong, you need the right type of materials. If you’re not getting collagen into your diet, you’re not giving your body the materials it needs to actually start to repair the damage in your gut. Number two, probiotic rich foods and vegetables. A little bit of sauerkraut juice, things like that are important. Number three, fiber. You gotta get fiber in your diet. Fiber is what probiotics feed off of. The best type of fiber is gonna be vegetables, fruits and maybe some seeds, whether it’s flax, chia, hemp, that type of thing is gonna be good. Some fruits in the form of berries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. Those are high in fiber. Blueberries especially are good for gut issues. Blueberries and probably pears are two of the easiest fruits to digest. By the way, when I mentioned vegetables as a form of fiber, vegetables, when people have gut issues are better often consumed, especially cruciferous. Now maybe it’s a little bit of raw spinach or something like that, that’s gonna be fine, but the cruciferous vegetables should absolutely be cooked because they’re difficult to digest when they’re raw. I think those are for the most part the most important foods and things we should be considering with gut health and removing a lot of the dampening stuff. There are also a few other supplements that are good. I think ginger is an amazing herb. I love whenever I stop in Clean Juice I do ginger shots, or buy ginger, turmeric, those sort of things because they’re anti-inflammatory. But also ginger has an immune boosting component that’s really fantastic and it actually acts as an enzyme. It has something called zingibain, which helps you break down and digest your food. I know I’m talking a lot, so lemme just say that there are some good things for gut health.
Kat: That’s perfect information. So what does Dr. Axe eat in a day? Give me your typical rundown of how and what and when you eat? Because that’s really important too.
Dr. Axe: Yeah, sure. I’ll share this and I might surprise you with some things, but it’s pretty basic. I’ve practiced intermittent fasting. I’ve practiced intermittent fasting every day for probably two years. I haven’t for a while. I did a ketogenic diet for peers for a part of my life. What I found over time for me is I do really well by just eating three regular meals a day that are all very healthy. I just do well with that, and I know I could tell you, and I know some people say that, and it’s great. Some people like my business partner and one of my best friends, Jordan Rubin, he authored The Maker’s Diet and he’s my co-founder of Ancient Nutrition. He founded a company called Garden of Life, but Jordan does intermittent fasting all the time, and he’s probably intermittent fasted for 15 years. I’ll do it during occasions and periods when I feel like my body needs it. Especially around holidays, like it’s been Thanksgiving and man, I just ate a lot. We were with family and that sort of thing, so maybe then I’ll intermittent fast for a week. So I still do some, but like today I woke up and I prayed, read my Bible a little bit, and then I had a bone broth smoothie. I put in bone broth protein. I put in multi-collagen protein. I put in one cup of blueberries. I have the goji berry powder, so I put in some goji berry powder. I do coconut milk. That was it, that was my breakfast. And a lot of mornings I’ll do either matcha green tea or maybe a little bit of an espresso with some coconut milk or almond milk. Then for lunch today, Chelsea and I, we went to Whole Foods and I bought one of their organic rotisserie chickens and I just pulled some meat off of it and had that with some dijon mustard. Then we steamed vegetables and I had that with hummus. Then I had like this little, just literally a couple little bites of dark chocolate after lunch. Then let me think about what we’re doing tonight. I’ve actually got a men’s group that I lead, like a men’s leadership sort of church group, and so all the guys come over and then we typically get True Food Kitchen delivered here to the house. So I’ll do these rice noodles with salmon. Anyways, that’s probably what I’ll do tonight for dinner. That’s sort of a common.
Landon: You’re making me hungry.
Kat: Yeah. So you mentioned keto a little bit, and I would love to just go into that for a minute because I’ve watched every end of the spectrum with keto. And I think there’s so much maybe confusion about it. We’ve seen people that we used to work in an office with and they would ground up non-organic ground beef and they’d put queso cheese and sour cream and shredded cheese and avocado and, you know, call it a keto meal, which it was. I’m thinking that’s making them look great on the outside, but what’s that doing to their insides? Can you speak to what you’ve seen there as far as making sure that the keto food you are consuming are the right facts.
Dr. Axe: Yeah. This is why I wrote a book called Keto Diet and you know, for me, just to be real transparent, I’ve followed the keto diet and eaten keto at times in my life. But the keto diet to me isn’t meant to be done as a diet in terms of a lifetime diet. Keto is meant to be done like a cleanse or a fast. In fact, it was created by John Hopkins University researchers in the 1920s as a diet to mimic fasting. Children were having epileptic seizures that they were caring for, and they said they found when they had the children not eat, when they had them fast, the seizures went away. So they said, “We need to create a diet that mimics fasting.” And it was the keto diet they found. I really think that most of it has to do with its effect on insulin and how it balances insulin. When we hear insulin, a lot of times we think, “Oh, that’s diabetes.” Insulin is a hormone that affects cortisol, your thyroid hormones, progesterone, estrogen, testosterone. It affects all of these hormones in your body, so balancing it is so important. The thing I love about the keto diet, if it’s done correctly now – what you just mentioned is – I saw a recipe on Pinterest and it was kind of called the “ultimate keto recipe.” It was where you took shredded conventional cheese, you fried it in butter and created a hard crust. You put bacon in the middle and then you topped it with more cheese and you created another. It was a keto quesadilla, so probably the least healthy meal that has ever been created. A lot of times keto is all bacon and all butter. The keto diet is for people that want to see this happen. If somebody is severely overweight, if somebody has diabetes, if somebody has major insulin issues, even conditions like PCOS, like certain conditions that are very related to insulin. Actually Alzheimer’s disease is called type three diabetes because it’s an insulin issue. Those people who need to lose weight rapidly or balance insulin, the keto diet is fantastic to do for a period of time. As you would do a fast. Maybe it’s 30 days, maybe it’s up to 90 days, but typically it’s never longer than that. And when you’re doing it, it’s loads of plants and it’s all healthy fats. The fats are coming from avocado, they’re coming from egg yolks. They’re coming from nuts and seeds like almonds and macadamia. They’re coming from wild salmon, getting lots of omega threes, coconut oil. The fats are coming from there and then it’s loads of fiber from vegetables.That’s the keto diet, it’s healthy fats and vegetables. That’s the whole diet the way it’s meant to be done. Unfortunately today people have turned it to pork in conventional beef and bacon and butter, and it is the only thing on the diet. Maybe we throw some artificial sweeteners in there. That type of keto is so toxic, but again to me it all comes down to this. It comes down to a personalized diet, which diet is right for you. And I think there’s some general wisdom used by the ancients and that is one, it’s typically good to eat seasonally. We’re moving into the fall. It’s good to eat foods that are orange and yellow, or orange and sort of reddish hue in general. So it’s pumpkin, it’s squash, it’s yams, it’s those foods. That’s when your spleen is the strongest. The wintertime, it’s foods that are that yellowish color. It’s ginger and chicken broth. Those are immune boosting foods. Then it’s the winter, and it’s really dark colored foods like kale, those cruciferous vegetables that grow in the wintertime. Anyways, all that being said, it’s eating seasonally along with what your body actually needs. People can learn by seeing an acupuncturist or an oriental medical doctor can tend to say – or people could start searching via a search engine things like a “TCM diet for” or “TCM foods for if you have Candida or if you have hypothyroidism.” Hypothyroidism in Chinese medicine was known as low chi and low yang, which essentially means your adrenals are worn out. You don’t have near enough things that really support things like testosterone, some more of those types of hormones. It’s like ashwagandha is the ultimate chi and yang booster that was used in Ayurvedic medicine for the symptoms people would have today of hypothyroidism. Anyways, I forgot what you even asked me again. I went on my own tangent there.
Kat: But that’s such good information. I think everyone is so different. Like, I wish I could be vegan. If I could be anything I’d be vegan, but I need those B vitamins that come from food and not supplements. So as many times as I’ve tried, my body tells me, “You can’t do this.” I start showing symptoms of the deficiencies and I have to eat that organic chicken and just make sure I’m getting enough good animal protein that I can. I just think that’s so important to listen to your body and what it’s trying to tell you.
Dr. Axe: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I remember this was years ago. This was when I was, how old was I? I was probably 25, and I thought, “Hey, I’m gonna try a vegan diet for a while.” And the truth is I felt good for a few weeks. Then I could tell, “Man, I’m not… my strength is not here.” Then I just started realizing, if you look at ancient Chinese medicine, you eat meat, but you don’t eat piles of meat. You eat four ounces. You eat a small fish, and there’s a tennis ball that’s part of a serving. Then there are lots of vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods around it. I’m with you there.
Landon: We talked a little bit about supplementation and some of the good things that we can take. Tell our listeners about when people really start to over-supplement their diet.
Dr. Axe: You’re talking about taking too many vitamins and supplements?
Landon: Or even protein powders, right? Guys are hitting the gym, they’re eating, you know, 12 ounces of steak and then they’re chugging a 60-gram per protein powder shake.
Supplementing For Your Needs
Dr. Axe: I think it comes down to this, people need to take what their body needs. And here’s what I mean by this. If somebody is up North, they probably need more vitamin D. They’re just not getting much. Supplements are for supplementing something you’re missing in your diet or you’re finding very, very difficult to get. So again, somebody that’s in California laying out all the time, there’s really not much of a point in you taking a vitamin D supplement. There’s really no point there. But again, if you’re in Minnesota where my wife’s from, they don’t see the sun for nine months a year. You should probably take some vitamin D. It’s important that you’re getting that. I had a lady come in one time, this is when I had my clinic, and she came in with a Whole Foods bag and she was taking like a hundred pills a day of supplements. I was like, “Ma’am, you have really expensive urine.” It was probably not the most appropriate thing to say, and I was joking around with her a little bit. “There’s no way you’re digesting all this stuff.” So the thing is, I think people need to look at, “What do I have going on? What’s going on in my body here? Is it an adrenal issue? Is it a gut issue? Is it a heart issue?” And then taking things to support your body with that. Also when you’re taking supplements, take supplements that are in fact food. In Ancient Nutrition my supplement company, our whole philosophy is creating supplements that are in fact food, or resemble food and come from food. That really is one of our biggest focuses. I’ll give you an example, like in China they took supplements. In China 5,000 years ago. You know what it was? It was called tea. That’s what they did. It was herbs and tea. Herbs and tea were their form of supplementation. Throughout history that’s how people took supplements, in the form of tea. You would go to your doctor, they would get different types of things. “Hey, let’s grab some astragalus. Hey, I’m gonna grab some goji. Hey, here’s some dong quai, here’s some ginseng. We’re gonna put this in a pot. I’m gonna have you go home and cook it for a couple hours and then drink that three times a day.” That was sort of the ancient medicine of the time. Today I would really encourage people, I think the most powerful forms of medicine we can take today are in fact herbs and spices. If you look at the biggest things, because this is what supplements are meant to be. Supplements are meant to be what we’re missing in our diet. If you compare us to an area like Japan or Okinawa where they have the longest lifespan, you know the two things – let me throw out probably three or four – but the biggest things in ranking order that we don’t have in our diet compared to them. There is a book called the Okinawa Diet, and they found that men consume about one eighth of the antioxidants in their diet than they do. Where are they getting all of their antioxidants? They’re getting them from tea, especially green tea and matcha. They’re getting it from loads and loads of antioxidants from these areas. So number one, herbs and spices are the biggest thing we’re missing. The next thing is broth. They drink a lot of fish broth. They drink a lot of soups. It’s a lot of these veggie soups, it’s combos, it’s seaweed they add in there. They do mushrooms in their soup, all kinds of stuff. So they’re drinking broth all the time. Then there are other things. There are nutrient-dense foods, things like seaweed. Then they do natto and miso, they’re getting probiotics. Those actually contain really powerful probiotics, and so we’re missing those in our diet. All that being said, when we’re talking about supplements, if somebody’s gonna take a supplement, add more culinary herbs number one into your cooking. Number two, stop in a Clean Juice here and have a ginger and turmeric shot. Like those herbs and spices are the most powerful thing you can possibly take because they change your internal environment. Now, I do think there’s value in taking vitamin C at times and zinc. Especially if the vitamin C is a concentrated form of acerola cherry, or camu camu, or schisandra or goji, or whatever else berry it is. I do think that supplements play an important role today when you look at the nutrient density in our soil. One of the things I mentioned earlier is in my clinic when I ran my functional medicine clinic, even before that I would do micronutrient tests with patients. They used to be called organic acids test, but essentially you can do blood work and I can find out every vitamin and mineral somebody’s deficient in. It’s a really powerful test and hardly anybody ever comes up with a baseline where they’re good with everything. I mean, it’s almost never. B12 is a really common one that people were deficient in, zinc is very common, loads of them. Iron is very common in women. All that being said, a lot of us have these deficiencies. I do think there’s great value in vitamins and supplements. I do think there’s great value in taking a collagen or bone broth protein powder. I think there’s great value in taking herbs and spices in capsule form if you’re not getting them in tea or in your diet. In terms of a lot of the supplements, here is the truth though, that 90% of the supplement companies out there today are not putting out food-based supplements. I mean, it’s what we do with Ancient Nutrition. There are a few other companies that do a pretty good job in having them. When you’re buying a vitamin, even a multivitamin, it should have herbs and spices. You should be looking for ginger, you should be looking for turmeric. You should be looking for ashwagandha on the label. Most supplement companies put out something called USP supplements, which most of those supplements are coming from rock. They might sound crazy, but like calcium carbonate and a lot of the forms of calcium today, they’re extracted from limestone. There are studies showing if you’re taking a calcium supplement, it can increase your risk of heart disease because very little of that calcium is absorbed, and it’s actually getting stuck in the cholesterol in your arteries causing calcification of your arteries. So a lot of these supplements – your body is wondering, “What am I doing with this?” It’s excreting it, sometimes they’re causing damage. A lot of supplements, a lot of these conventional whey protein powders, a lot of these synthetic nutraceutical vitamins are actually harming our health. I do think there’s great value in supplements. Unfortunately, it’s like 10% of companies are doing it right now.
Kat: I totally agree. You mentioned Garden of Life earlier with your business partner, and those are multivitamins that all of us in our family take every day. They’re one of the pioneers that really did a good job with that.
Dr. Axe: Yeah, they are. Jordan did an amazing job with Garden of Life and he’s doing a great job. I mean, Jordan’s just amazing. He’s the top supplement formulator I’ve ever seen. His new formulas he’s doing now with our company, Ancient Nutrition. But if I’m putting up there, “Hey, what are the best supplement companies today?” Not to be biased, but I would say, I love our company and Ancient Nutrition. What Jordan and I are doing with all the herbs and bone broth and everything else. After that, I do think companies like Garden of Life and probably Mega Food. Those are probably the other companies I think along with us that are doing a better job with plant-based supplements.
Kat: Yeah. I know, like I mentioned your bone broth protein really helped our family in a super dark season, you know? I think first of all sometimes you don’t get to hear the encouragement. I know as a business owner and all of that, sometimes we get hit with all of the bad stuff every day, but thank you for coming up with that because I know it really was a blessing for us.
Dr. Axe: Yeah, you’re welcome. In fact, it’s the number one supplement that I take. I mean, Jordan and I talk about it all the time. I’ve taken some for years, even when I’m traveling. I bring the packets and I bring my shaker bottle with me everywhere I go. So it’s encouraging. I love to hear that.
Kat: Totally. Well I want to honor your time. You’ve been so generous with us, but maybe just briefly on your way out, tell us about the new book that you have coming out, The Collagen Diet. Super interesting and awesome information.
The Collagen Diet
Dr. Axe: Yeah, so one of the other things I’m so passionate about as we talked about bone broth, is I’m so passionate about collagen. And the reason being, as I mentioned, the biggest things we’re missing in our diet today are herbs and spices in broth. If you look at, again, an area like Okinawa, that’s what they’re getting that we’re not here. In the book I really go through how to get these more into your diet, and the importance of collagen. We consume plenty of muscle building proteins today. Muscle building proteins are found in meat, but they’re also found in legumes and grains and beans and nuts. Actually, the proteins found in meat and plants are not that different in terms of their amino acid profiles. Collagen is very different. Collagen’s made up of proline, glycine and hydroxyproline, and these are amino acids that make up collagen. Collagen makes up one third of all the protein in our body: your skin, hair, nails, bones, discs, ligaments, tendons, connective tissue, fascia, your entire gut lining, your arterial walls. When a woman is developing a newborn baby, their placenta is made up of a lot of collagen. Collagen is so important, yet we get almost zero. Most people get zero collagen in their diet on a daily basis. We should be consuming collagen and also consuming foods that increase our bodies own collagen production, and also increase our body’s stem cells. Stem cells actually are what regenerate and create new and healthy tissues. So if anybody’s ever had a knee injury or neck and low back pain or shoulder injury, and maybe it healed part way, but not all the way. The reason being a lot of times is because your body stopped regenerating or sending stem cells to that area so it’s never fully healed. You can heal greater when you’re a kid than when you’re older most of the time because your body is producing and creating more stem cells. But there’s a way in your diet to create more stem cells so you start to heal the neck pain, the low back pain, the old injuries that never completely healed, and a lot of conditions. So in my book The Collagen Diet I really go through the top foods and diet, and I get into a lot of the Chinese herbs that maybe people haven’t heard of that people can order these ingredients on amazon.com or pick ’em up at a health food store. But there are ancient herbs like schisandra, and fo-ti, and ginseng that people can take that boost their bodies’ collagen and stem cell production. Things like matcha green tea actually protects your collagen. I go through a lot of that in the diet, really how to load your body up, and your body starts producing more stem cells, more collagen, and you could check it out. Just go to amazon.com right now and check out the book it’s called The Collagen Diet. I am super excited about that. Then the last thing I wanted to tell you guys, again, I love what you guys do. I was so excited to hear you guys do Clean Juice because Chelsea and I have been going there on a regular basis. I’m gonna actually go there for breakfast again tomorrow morning. I’ll get probably an acai bowl and a ginger shot. Just again, you guys are doing such a fantastic job with your business and I always appreciate it myself when I see people doing business with a cause, a mission, and a purpose. I really think that’s what we’re all called to do. I think we’re all called to bring heaven to earth, and make the world a better place. A lot of times people are running businesses that unfortunately are hurting the environment or hurting people. Where you guys are able to have a business that’s nourishing people, and people go in there and it’s in a positive, uplifting environment. So just know too on my end I’m just such a big fan of what you guys are doing with Clean Juice and Chelsea and I go on a regular basis. I love your merch too. We were just in there. I was looking at one of the shirts. I’m trying to remember what it was. You guys have some great shirts there at the store.
Kat: Aw, that’s awesome.
Landon: Dr. Axe, thank you so much. We really, really appreciate that. It means the world to us. Obviously likewise, we love what you’re doing. We use your products at home and we’re so passionate about this whole industry together, and we’re just so happy there are people like you out there who are promoting a truly healthy product. So thank you for what you do.
Dr. Axe: Thanks so much Landon and Kat. I appreciate you guys. Thanks so much.
Landon: All right. Thanks, Dr. Axe.
Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit.
Landon: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.
Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.
Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.
Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer. We are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you. In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.