When Good Training Stops Working

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you're thinking about running, but not sure how to take the first step. My name is Brian Patterson, and I'm here to help. Welcome to Brian's ROM pod. Welcome back to Brian's Run Pod, the show where we dive into the miles, the mindset, and everything in between that makes us runners. Now, today's episode is going to hit a nerve for a lot of you listening because we're talking about something that almost every runner experiences at some point, but not mainly truly understand. You're training consistently, you're eating well, you're doing all things all the right things, but your performance is dropping. You're feeling exhausted for no clear reason. Maybe your pace is slowed, your recovery feels off, or you're stuck in that frustrated cycle or feeling wide but tired. Sound familiar? Well, today we're good we're digging beneath the surface. I'm joined by Dr. Jess Armin, a functional medicine practitioner who works with athletes and everyday runners who are doing everything right yet still hitting fatigue, plateaus, and even burnout. What's really interesting about this conversation is that we're not just talking about training plans or nutrition tweaks. We're getting into what's happening at a much deeper level. So if you've ever asked yourself, why am I so tired when my training isn't that intense? Why has my performance suddenly dipped? Or why don't I feel as strong as I used to? So this episode is definitely for you. Dr. Jess is going to help us connect the dots and more importantly, start thinking about how to rebuild real sustainable energy from the inside out. So let's get into it. And so let's give a Brian's Rom pod welcome to Dr. Amin. Hi. How are you doing? That was great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience. Thank you very much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Um I just want to go back to basically, I don't know if you don't mind. I mean, um in in in high school. How do you always wanted to be a doctor? You always wanted to go into this field.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Um I come from a I I'm from Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. I come from a very poor Italian man.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

And at the time, I I went to an academic high school and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Yeah. Uh and then believe it or not, I I joined an ambulance corps when I was a senior in high school and became interested in healthcare. I became the most mole in the EMT paramedics. And then um didn't think I could be a doctor, so I went to nursing school in the 1970s, which was a a little bit of a rough ride for if you were a male. I got my Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and I also got my commission in the Army and was an Army nurse for four years. I I I was a captain and I had experience in emergency care and in um critical care in uh consultation doing, I'm sorry, critical care.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I was a head nurse of a carinarian tes of carat. Beyond that, I decided that I wanted to be a doctor because I'd met a lot of doctors that said to myself, they're no smarter than me. And I decided ultimately to go to chiropractic school uh as opposed to medical school because I had to bend towards the alternative side. When I graduated there in 1986, by the way, I've been a healthcare provider for 50 years now.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

A lot of eclectic training. Um standard chiropractic, the manipulation stuff really uh was fine, but I didn't fulfill my desires, and I started bending towards alternative things.

unknown 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

And by and by, one of my children developed a mental illness.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And being a good dad, I uh you know, brought him to the doctor, and this very bright, intelligent young man who at ten years of age read Dante's Inferno and explained it to me.

SPEAKER_03 4:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

I'm like, are you sure you're from this planet? I mean, but he was a kid, you know? Yeah. And um the medic medications made them anonymous. And and frankly, I got quite angry. And I started um diving into all the things that could help him. By the way, he's 38 years old now, and he's a full-time graphic artist, and he's a brilliant man.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

But uh what I learned by learning to help him was all the different things like genetics. I was in the forefront of doing that. And um, I got the first certification in a specialty called neuroendoimmunology, how how those interactions have the systems, mitochondrial function, and some membrane integrity, and developed a method or practice that allowed me to look at conditions that were not identified, or people who had multifactorial chronic conditions that hadn't been um fixed elsewhere, or even why are you sick? I don't know why I can't find out what's wrong. That's where I shown. And have a lot of eclectic training in a lot of different areas that I brought to this, and then applying it to chronic illness, post-viral syndromes, people who are not flourishing, who are not progressing the way they want, who are not the person they want to be. I developed a method of thinking and of practice that addressed that.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

So were the people that were sort of coming to you, I mean, they were kind of like at is I mean, uh at at any age, and they were going through various sort of well, I suppose not debilitating, but they were the feeling that they they just did they kind of had that lack of energy.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Regardless of the condition, that that chronic fatigue or the fatigue of that wired but tired is the worst way of feeling.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Because you're tired, but you you're like this, and you wanna, you know, you're you're even if you're mature and you're handling it cognitively well, your insides want to jump to your outsides. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

And you and when running doesn't even help that, ooh.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah. Because obviously, you know, we're all put to a certain extent um in modern day life, we're put under pressure for most of us who are either in uh nine to five or working, you know, we're sitting down most of the time. And so we're putting under pressure, we're having to to to keep healthy, you have to exercise, or you know, for my audience it would be for runners. Um but obviously for some people and and also some people there would be uh a family life to juggle sort of thing. So some people would think that, you know, if we're not able to, you know, there must be something wrong with me if I if I'm feeling I'm not able to do everything I want to do, and I'm feeling absolutely shattered by the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Exactly. You feel when you constantly feel rubbish, when you constantly feel terrible, we tend to treat because we've been trained this way from the outside in. A pill for this, a diet for that, you know, following whatever guidance you have that many people in whatever your particular activity is are doing, and you're doing everything right, but you still don't feel well. You know, and the conclusion you'll make with yourself is that it must be in here.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

You must not really love your family. You know, you start because you have these feelings, it is human to backfill in um rationale. Otherwise, you know, free-floating feelings for no reason is uh is a it's a terrible way to feel. So, and then you go along that and you see their healthcare providers and they're not providing answers because they're doing what they do best, but it doesn't fit in their algorithm.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

All the tests are normal, everything you're okay. I don't see any one practitioner to another, to another. God forbid you're with the NHS. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yes, I know a lot about the NHS, even though I'm in America. It's okay. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's like Italy is like, yeah, don't worry about it. You know, everything right. I'm like, okay. Nevertheless, um, it's a it's very disconcerting. It affects every part of your life when you cannot resolve these things and get constantly tired.

unknown 8:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

And all the different things that come from what you see in front of them. Yeah. Even though you're disciplined.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

And I think the worst thing is that you may compare yourself to other people where they're able to juggle things, and that kind of perpetuates a continual cycle that, oh wow, there's m there must be something wrong with me. So it's it's not just obviously you're you're feeling that, but comparing yourself to other people and they're and they're feeling fine and they're able to do, you know, maybe 101 things at the same time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Okay. And uh they would have this one 24-year-old guy in this cockpit, very well trained, yeah, but had so much on him that he started he started dropping the lowest tasks mentally. They call task shedding.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Now, corporate America tends to use that particular phraseology. Also, when you overburden someone, they start innately dropping tasks.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

And this is really what happens when you're overburdened, your nervous system's overburdened. You start trying to balance yourself by dropping tasks or dropping things. And the when you see that you're doing that, you say to yourself, Other people can do that. Why can't I? Okay. Um on the surface, it looks like that's what they're doing, but let's face it, they have their own challenges.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

And it's very, very not good for you to compare yourself to others because um, you know, the base reasons for all this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So was it, I mean, just going back, is it something that when you were training, is it something that you kind of found, you know, the more people you met that were going through this particular condition, then it was something that you felt wasn't being addressed by the medical profession. And then you felt, well, you know, maybe this is something I need to do more research in, and then I can sort of it it would be my way.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Exactly it.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Exactly. And and essentially I took care of a lot of chronically ill people.

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

And I'm not saying roaders are chronically ill, but no, no, no, no. I'll show you how it how it relates. Okay. I was taking care of a lot of chronically ill people, and noticing there was an area that was ubiquitously ignored. I know why it was ignored, because it felt that if we took care of the root cause, the body will take care of itself, but that's not true. Uh and there's scientific evidence of that. I've done a lot of research, published a lot of papers. Yeah. And what happened was I started looking at that area and saying, hmm, if that's the stone left unturned, what Sherlock Holmes would say, if you rule out the impossible, yeah, whatever's left, however improbable, must be the truth. And when you see it consistently with everyone, I said, okay, let me attend to that as happens. And I started doing that with its own line of research to go into see how people sell and so forth. And as you did that, people who were up until that time not progressing or not healing, we had to heal.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Taking its runners or athletes, yeah. I saw the same pattern in athletes, even though they're doing everything right.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

There was stuff at the foundation at the core that was not being properly addressed. Remember, running is a stressor. Yes. As much as the mental stress. As much as the physical stress. It's it's hard on your body.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Even though you're feeding it right, nobody was paying attention to the real core of things, the function of the cell, the function of the gut.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

We would do things kind of halfway. And I do an awful lot of blood freedom to other doctors. Yeah. And what I teach them almost seems simplistic. And they look at me and say, Well, that's too simple. What it can't be true. And I'm like, but are you doing it? And usually not. Usually I give it a little bit of, oh, here's a multivitamin take it. Yeah. Okay, it's not absorbing, you know. But nevertheless, I called it foundational treatment as a starting point or fundamental treatment. Uh you'll see it in the literature now as terrain treatment or bioterrain treatment. I invent, I created and started hammering my colleagues there. The way that I share information, I don't have a Dr. Jess protocol out there. I don't have anything with my name on it because I didn't need the ego show, the ego piece. I let everybody else, I teach it to people and say, you want to put your name on it? Do it. Make sure you do it right. Otherwise, I'm just alien from Brooklyn. I will show up with two men about now. Okay. Speaking, you know, okay, you know, things. Fuck you messing with the doctor.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

With golf bulls in your mouth.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Exactly. Yeah. Why are you doing it the incorrect way? But I really did, you know, and the the fact was for many years I was ignored and laughed at, but now you see people identificating this stuff. And I sit there and I giggle inside, but I'm so happy.

Modern Life And Hidden Stressors

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Just I mean, just uh before we moved on, sort of to move on to the kind of the science bit about it, um just just talk about sort of more the the problem. Do you think this has been a much more prevalent problem in the 20, 25 years compared to let's say post-war, you know, um like 50s or 60s? It's just that because our life and the work and and the pressures and work-life balance has become so different in the last 25 years compared to what it was in, you know, 40, 45 years ago. I know you, like you said, uh you studied, you know, in the um, or you did a lot of your studying within the sort of like 70s and 80s, but obviously you've seen over time how the work uh workplace has changed.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

It has. It has. Um one of the stories I tell my patients is that, you know, when I was a child on Sunday, the only things that were open were church and a bakery.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Everything was shut down. We had a t we had a television with three channels. That was it. It turned off at 11:30 at night. Yeah. Okay. It was a blind.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

We had the national anthem at like I don't know if you had national anthem. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I always remember that flying over and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. But but it showed off. And families were more cohesive, and that had its positives and negatives, but also positives. It didn't have as much stimulation. And frankly, not as toxic to the environment.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Since then, things have rammed up and rammed up and rammed up. The family has become decentralized. You know, the blended family is a norm now. Okay, which again is not bad. I'm just, you know, adding up the stresses.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Our foods, you know, we there was never an uh a you know 24-7 food, fast foods.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

One all-night diner, but it was the anomaly. The people with insomnia or the truck drivers died. Okay. And those diners, they cooked food. It wasn't like what the L is, they're just throwing food at it, and the more processed it is, that's true, the less the value they have. Or we live we live in a toxic environment where um they're spraying organophosphates on the food, the GMO foods. I know many countries don't allow that, you get used. But here, and I believe in England also you have to be quite careful of it. But even so, organic foods are grown in mineral and vitamin deficient soils. And when they do add stuff, it's chemicals that they're adding to, even though it may be organic. It's not like they're getting tons of manure and send them back. You know, they're doing what they can. So with all that, we have minor injuries to our bodies. And what's allowed in the food, especially a good example the COVID vaccine, the COVID jet, the COVID jazz.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

A lot of people were reacting like because of pH engages, uh, which is a believe it or not, a derivative of anthrophrase. Polyethylene glycol is a derivative of anthropes. And I can show you the chemical, but it's amazing. But our FDA says, oh, you can use that. What does it do? It in foods, it it keeps the moisture in it. The same thing. You have Lovicol, we have neurolab. That's PEG. What it does in your gut is suck in fluid so you can leave your constipation. But when you're eating it, you're getting little doses all the time. And some people were getting an injection that had PEG in it and haven't got horrible words for that. Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

And our guts have, you know, we're not used to this rapid of a change. This is a BC body in AD times. Our genome hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

We haven't changed.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

We're asking our bodies to do all kinds of changes. Wheat was a good example. When wheat was first around, it was wheat.

unknown 18:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Gliodin, it's protein weed. And they created high protein, which was a GMO product that had 400 times the amount of gliodin, which was protein. Our bodies couldn't handle that. It was getting really gut, and people started getting reacted. There's so many different things that in this time frame, yes, we have gotten not really used to, we put up with.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Had to adapt to. It's not true adaptation.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

So moving on to sort of the science bit, and I know something that we've talked about, uh rather you talked about earlier on, the what the mitochondrial dysfunction. Now, are you able to plain talk to about so explain that in plain English?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Absolutely. Absolutely. I tell you what, if if you'll indulge me for a couple of minutes, that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Explain to your audience exactly what happens at the cellular level. Remember your cell, they drew it in school, it was a big circle, and then the nucleus, and then they had a little dots, and it was a cytoplaza. And then you had little, you know, circles that said, these are the vacuoles, that gets rid of the junk.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

And this little thing looked like a racetrack. And I said, okay. And the dot and the um teacher would say, that's the mitochondria, that's your powerhouse, and then go on to the next thing. Okay. I don't blame them because it was complex.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

I was in school, they didn't know that that much about ambitivity. Our cells uh we have a perfect system that works that supports the function of our cells. Why is that so important? Because if you put cells together, you get tissue. If you put tissues together, you get organs. If you put organs together, you get a body.

unknown 19:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

So what have what you express at the outside is really starting to have the cell. Now, for cellular function, you need a substrate, you need stuff that you eat to get into the cell so it can be processed to what your body means. There's a bunch of genetic stuff going on that all the genes mean is that those are your enzymes that help you create things you need to live and to get rid of your toxins. That's what your genes do. The genetic pathways are biochemical pathways. I'm also genetic answer. You know, I explain all this stuff to people. Or if I can I can look at somebody's genetic pathways and say, okay, these are the possibilities. Not you're gonna get that, but these are the possibilities. So everything needs energy. Everything, all the biochemical and biochemical pathways need energy. Your body needs energy. And it's not an on-off thing, it's a percentage of how much of produce. Mitochondria are your batteries, yeah, they're your powerhouses. So to show you how enormous this thing is, you have 30 trillion cells in your body, and you have between 200 and 2,000 mitochondria per cell, depending on what that cell has to do. I'll let you do the math. That's a lot of cells to heal. Yeah. So over time, because of oxidative stress, which are things like you know, allergies and and toxins and so forth, when that starts becoming a feature, the mitochondrial function, if cell batteries don't recharge very well. And we've all had you know batteries that you can recharge, and then after a little while they don't charge as much, unless they become old and dysfunctional. Okay, and you end up having to change the battery. This is a common thing. Okay, we have to change the battery type of battery. But in the mitochondria, if normal mitochondrial function, let's say 95%, I'm just gonna pull numbers out for example, and you get ill, that mitochondrial function may drop to, let's say, 85%. Maybe 85%. But once the illness is gone, and I'll explain what that illness really is, then you return back to that 95%. When you have a chronic illness or many illnesses or many stressful or stressor type inputs that stress your cells, oxidative stress, okay, that mitochondrial function may drop to about 75%. Now, for you, this is gonna look like I'm tired all the time. I'm just getting old. Yes. Okay. I don't have as much energy. It's normal for me to feel like this. Yes. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Right. Okay.

Cell Danger Response And Energy Crashes

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Okay. You read about the press of the 90-year-old guy climb climbing Mount Everest and stuff. And yes, of course, that's an anomaly. Okay. In any bell curve, there are people outside of there, right? So nevertheless, nevertheless, we have been taught to say, oh, as you're getting old, this is what should happen. You should feel this, you should have aches, you should have, you know, you shouldn't be able to run so much. You know, you'll be able to tell the weather by how your joints. Yeah. This has been visited upon us. Okay. So let's say that happens because you've got several things going on, because you've lived life. Difference between a kid and you. Okay? Because a kid, they haven't lived life yet, so they don't have all these challenges. If we get something like COVID, and I'm I'm a real I've been doing lots of research and written papers, and I treat a lot of long COVID patients.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

What happened with that is that there was something called the spike protein that occupies certain and that cut down your mitochondrial function even further. So it went from the average of 7580 down to 50 and stayed there. That directly affected the batteries. That directly affected the mitochondrial function in batteries, and whatever was your genetic predisposition was then allowed to express because you didn't have enough energy to give your body the ability to fight. So people with who've gotten the jabs, there's a higher per uh percentage of lung problems, heart problems, arthritis arthritis problems, uh even down to higher incidence of cancer in even younger people. Because you know, stress in our stressful society, stressful meaning physical, emotional, everything else, yeah, you know, our normal function is less than it should be. How we know this? Well, there's something called a cell danger response. And what that is, is how the cells act when they're assaulted. Uh Dr. Navio, Dr. Rob uh Rob Navio, who's an MD PhD, quantified this and he taught him, he taught that there's three areas that injure a cell toxins, as you might expect, okay, heavy metals, plastics, microplastics, microbes.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

And all the emotional, psychological, and spiritual traumas that you're that you're faced with will injure your cell in equal measure as those other guys. So it's not in your head, it's in your body. Okay. If you've had if you're under constant stress, it's in that circle. And we added in the spike protein in this area.

unknown 25:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

So when you are assaulted by whatever, your body, your cells will go, okay, they will shut down, they will make the inside of the cell inhospitable for the attacker until it dies. And then but it cuts out a lot of cell function. You can't use your vitamins, it makes it acidic in there. Uh you you you hold on to heavy metals, but at some point, you reboot, if you will, the cellular function and go along. Let me give you a good example. Everybody's maybe had strep throat or something. You feel completely rubber.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

Yeah.

unknown 25:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Your doctor gives you some antibiotics.

unknown 25:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Medicines are not evil. I'm not anti-medicine, I'm not anti-anything. Yes. I'm pro the proper use of it. So for the first couple of days, you still feel pretty bad, you start getting better, look better, you know. And then a Sunday you turn the corner and you get better quickly. That's when the cell danger response has reversed itself. Sadly, when you have multiple inputs, multiple injuries, multiple whatever, the cell danger response becomes chronic and it doesn't reboot the cells, and you have consistent dysfunction, where that happens is at the batteries. Okay. In order for your mitochondria to work, that has to be reversed, and the way it gets reversed is by feeding the cell or treating the cell itself.

unknown 26:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

No way, don't go in with a microscope and treat each cell. You have to know the parameters of what the body needs to absorb this for. But postviral fatigue, nervous system overload, which is constant stress constant stress, training, and burnout, being watered but tired. This is all happening at that mitochondrial level. It is a percentage. Yeah. And you can't just do one thing. You know, you could look at something, oh, let's say take some CoV 10. Well, if that's the equal itch, then that's going to work. But it's never one thing. Yeah. And when you're at this point and you're tired and you've been fatigued, you can't train, or you're cramping, and no matter what you're doing, you're just not resolving like you're doing your 25 or 20.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

It's not because of your age, it's because of the accumulation of the stresses affecting your cellular function, specifically at the stores at the battery cell.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

They simply can't recharge.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

At the end of the day, that's what it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

That's the end of the day. Right, exactly. And I like that, I like that example. I'm glad just at the end of the day, because I'm always struggling to translate from medical lease into English. I want everybody. No, no, no, you're doing very well. I still I still have to practice.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah.

unknown 28:00

You know, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Because I know that obviously with with with runners that, you know, you're you're you're following, um and I've been guilty of this, you're following a particular program, and you know, it's saying you should do, you know, three, four times a week or whatever, and you have to, you know, you've got a set number, you know, you're doing a particular program which is gonna progress to an endpoint, which could be a race, or it could be uh uh a marathon or whatever, and then you know you miss a week, and then suddenly you're feeling guilty because you missed a week, because you haven't felt right, but you're you're not uh you're you're constantly tired, um, and but you're thinking, well, maybe if I go, if I take the week off and then I go and train again next week, then may you know I'll I'll be able to sort of catch up. And then that's kind of forever, this constant cycle of your mind is is saying, and and your and your guilt. Um, when maybe and when you haven't allowed, like you said, with these stresses on your battery, and and it it hasn't been able to reboot. And I know we'll be coming on to how we can go about rebooting that, but I know it's just uh a constant cycle of of guilt and also feeling you know, having to balance everything in in your life at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Just remember that third circle, the psychological, emotional, and spiritual. Yeah, everything in your body is interactive. Okay, all systems interact with other systems, specifically the nervous system, the immune system, and the hormone systems, which is your adrenals and your thyroids and the sex hormones and so forth. Okay, they all interact. And the fact is, when one is dysfunctional, the others become dysfunctional. Um so it's even though you're following a program, you also have to realize that the program is not etched in stone.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yes, correct.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

The difference between treating or giving general advice and then applying it to an individual. Okay, I call my my system bioindividualized medicine. It's just a name I put on it because I wanted to point out that everything should be individualized. Sometimes you have to look at your particular situation and treat that. Okay, and I understand the motivation problem. I understand how guilty you can feel. Yeah. But but I I once had an Olympic athlete as a patient. He's a weightlifter. Okay. And he was constantly hurting himself. And basically I said, Listen, cut back on your weights. He's like, because he was training for an event. Yeah. And I said, Cut it in half of and pay attention to your form, which is what he did with his trainer, and he went up, he went out to, he was a parallel again.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Uh once a week in his career, uh 88. He went to go because he dropped back, he started training with looking at things correctly. Yeah. He built his uh the weights back up and went beyond what his previous because he wasn't injuring himself. And of course, we talked about you know how to support him.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

So we we've talked about sort of the problem itself, and then we're talking about the science. But of it now, we'll we'll kind of I think maybe move on to, let's say, the maybe the more positive side of the the podcast now, is that what can you give? I know it's a very general thing, and I know it's you you obviously deal with patients on an individual basis, and everyone has different needs, but what can we do to recharge that mitochondria and to help boost ourselves so you know we don't have that brain fog, we don't have that fatigue.

Rebuilding Energy With Better Absorption

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Well, it's really comparatively simple to give yourself a basic box. Okay. So let's talk about what your biochemical pathways need. They need vitamins and minerals, which are called cofactors. Your genes create enzymes, and your enzymes are what turn one thing into another until it's either something your body needs or your body wants to get rid of. But those enzymes need various vitamins and minerals to work. That's you know how they charge themselves and how they work it. Plus, you need the energy from the mitochondria because let's talk about that. Now, we all know that that's important, but our foods are vitamin and mineral deficient, so we tend to need the supplement. What we don't talk about a lot is the absorption factors. In other words, can I just go to the pharmacy or the chemist and get a you know regular multi-button, it looks pretty good on the label, pop it and be okay. Not necessarily. Okay, let me tell you why. Okay. When you take a medication, those companies are required to show bioavailability, which means they're testing to make sure that what's in your mouth gets into your bloodstream. Supplement companies are not under the same constraints.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

Oh, right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Take a tablet that barely gets broken down. It can give you forms of vitamins that don't give you what you're looking for. Like if you take calcium carbonate, which is a common form of a calcium supplement, uh within within vitamins, and it hits your stomach, hydrochloric acid it interacts with, and it becomes a bicarbonate ion, which is what neutralizes the acid, but it becomes calcium chloride, which is limestone, it's a rock. So you're not going to get a lot of ionic calcium from that because if you did it in a test tube, you see it all come down in this white powder.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Yes. Yeah.

Leaky Gut Basics And Simple Fixes

SPEAKER_01 33:40

So the various forms of the vitamins are important, but mostly your ability to get it through the stomach into the circulation, which has to go through the liver, then it goes released into circulation, and then it's got to get from the circulation into the cells. And most things you take do not do that. Right. So you're not getting the full vote of what you need. And, you know, at the beginning of all this genetic stuff, you used to look at things like, you need more B6, you need more B5. And I was telling everybody, listen, look at that. You need B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, yeah, B5, B6, B7, talk about it. I said, why don't we just give somebody everything? I look at body disorder, which is what the body does. Yeah. So if you're looking to supply yourself with the necessary vitamins and minerals, look for the word liposomal, L-I-P-O-S-O-M-A-L. Okay. Now, liposomal vitamins are encased in a little fatty thing and gets directly into the cells. Okay. They used to be incredibly expensive. And then Bill Downs, who's a PhD at Nutrition International, created with the best multivitamin in the world, absorption wise, created a process that could make a dry liposome that was equally well absorbed. And that technology came out, and now you see a lot of companies making liposomal vitamins that are in powder form that actually do work. And of course, when more people are making it, the price has gone down. So you can get liposomal multivitamin multiminerals, okay, in Amazon or whatever, wherever you're, you know, you're going to see it. Just type it in and you'll see it. And there's some liquid ones, okay, which are also very good. The problem with liquid ones is that they don't last very long. In other words, once you open it up, you have between 30 and 60 days to use it. Otherwise, the liposomes break down. Whereas the dry ones will hang out for quite a long time. So that's one basic thing you can do that will get what you need into your cells because it bypasses the gut. No matter how bad your gut is, it's going to go in through the vagus membranes. One simple thing. Most of the brain fog and tiredness, which is chronic inflammation, okay, what generates that almost all the time is leaky gut syndrome. Okay, which means that you're not breaking down your food soil. Anyone past 35 usually doesn't have enough hydrochloric acid. So as we get older, we're usually not producing as many digestive enzymes. And the surface of our guts tend to become inflamed depending on what we are intolerant to. You may not have symptoms of that, maybe have them just in the gut. But mostly with consistent damage, the mucus layer, which is our first layer of defense, starts degrading. And the actual cells, actually, if a cell starts dying, it creates an opening where antigens can get in. Those are the things that create allergic reactions. They come from. Right. If you let's take a protein, which is just a long chain of amino acids, we need you to break that down to your individual amino acids so it can get through the cells, and the body can reconstruct it the way it wants. But if you don't break it down completely, you're breaking it down to short chain proteins, which are antigens. So we're the greatest creator of our own antigen. And the more damage that gets created, when it gets through that barrier, the immune system starts trying to fight it. And there's this we've heard of antigen antibody reactions, okay? It creates a lot of antibodies. That is chronic, that's chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation. Right. I'll talk slower because I'm from Brooklyn and I can talk really fast. So the more that happens, the more cells that are put there that are sentinel cells that look at you and say, okay, and the and the more it happens, the more inflammation you build up. The more inflammation you build up, that's when you start getting symptoms like brain. Because of the fact that that kind of inflammation is damaging cells and over overcoming the ability of your cells and your mitochondria to compensate for it. So even clean diet, even doing everything all right, you may be at a point where you need to do certain things. So what do you do about that?

SPEAKER_03 37:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

If you're beyond 35, it's never a bad idea to use digestive enzymes with your digestive bitters. You need to break down your foods well. Okay. And if you decide to take a digestive enzyme, you use the capsules, not metablets. Okay. And there's a lot of them out there. Look for a multi-enzyme, like uh it has etin hydrochloride, pancreatinox bile. And if you're a vegetarian, there are loads of plant enzymes. Have a, you know, you have a uh combination one, like something called superenzymes that has both in there. Um, but the trick is to take it with each meal. So I usually tell people take one with a small meal and two with a large meal.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

So basically, this will help you break down.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Oh, yeah, yeah. There's enough to break down your food. When you break down your food, you're not only doing it doing two things. You're not creating those antigens, but uh and you're actually giving your body the everything that it needs. Yeah. All of it needs in the form that it can absorb. Yeah. Uh the easiest thing to do without getting ostentatious about leaky gut is to help recreate that mucus layer. You do that with various fibers. Okay, and then I just did a bunch of studies out, and I'll send it over to you, Brian, and you can publish the chart if you'd like. Okay, but the simplest one and the best one to use that has the less less reactivity, like no bloating and stuff, is acacia powder. A C A C A A C A C I A? Okay. Right ACACIA powder. Okay. That has the least reactivity, and what it does, the demulsive dirt, it creates mucus. So you start with like a teaspoon and a glass of water and that bring it up to a tablespoon. You do that once a day, and you start recreating that mucus layer, which is the first layer of defense. Okay, so what happens is the ante just gets stuck in there, and the body comes over and hug ties it, which is literally what happens. You know, and then your microbiome, your probiotics that you take to help the microbiome, that's where they live. And even the fact that you may have other things going on, the gut function interacts with all the other systems. You've heard of the gut brain axis. Yeah. The stuff going on in the gut can affect the brain. There's certain signaling, if you will. And I just did a lecture in Ireland on the gut brain axis and its relationship to neurodiversity, like ADDA, EHD. Okay. And there's a lot of things that go on. Now, the rest of leaky gut, you know, you can give yourself butyrate or glutamine to help the cells heal. And probiotics are a hot topic. But let me tell you, give you a little advice. Okay. Look for a general probiotic that has a lot of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria. Just look for those words. And the spore probiotics are better than most because they root better. So you're going to take a probiotic. The more expensive words are not necessarily better. Okay, if you're looking for just a general good probiotic, just look for those words. Between the fiber that creates the mucus layer, and that will also help you create something called butyrate, you can start healing. Okay, now you may need to go beyond that, and that's when you need professional assistance, but you do those couple of things. And of course, hydrate. We all know that that's important.

SPEAKER_03 41:17

Yeah, it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Now, for the non-runners, butyrate is not a good thing. Okay, because that's that it's got too much sugar in it, and it's hyperos molar, which means that it was made for the Florida Gators um football team, uh, American football. Okay, yeah. In Florida, which is a very hot environment. Okay. Manchester in Manchester City.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Oh, it just so happens I support Manchester City as well.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

So I have a young man that that known since he's been free, and he's passionate about that. So every Christmas I send him something to Manchester. Oh, brilliant pajamas and stuff like that. And so of course I had to learn a little bit about it because I want to be able to talk to him about it. Simple as that. Okay, I'm a I'm a stupid.

Hydration Without Overdoing Sugar

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Well, I've supported them for fifty plus years, so we've gone through thick and thin. So anyway, moving on.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

So anyway, forward those those kind of people, when they when they're taking something like Gatorade, they're using that sugar. So if you're not a you know in heavy duty activity, the best way to hydrate yourself if you're gonna use stuff like that, is either half and half with water or one quarter Gatorade or sports drink and three-quarters water and sip it. That will hydrate yourself. And it's easy to do. Not sitting around, when you're at work and stuff like that, you can sort of continue to hydrate. And always remember coffee, tea, dehydrate. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Alcohol, don't overuse it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Moderation.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Those are the few things that will work.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah. So um, but obviously, uh I've I've got down here sleep. Is that that's gonna help um in terms of sleep, uh, rest, um, and yeah, I think sleep both, you know, more than anything, um, as well as nutrition and gut health, that's gonna help as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

We have a difficulty with sleeping in this environment because of all the stimulation.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Uh when we have when we're looking at our cell phones at night, yes, right through our eyes, and that's how your body wakes up when you're asleep and and light happens around you. Okay, it creates glutamate, actually, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter to wake you up. Uh, that's happening all the time. And our bodies, again, BC body and AD time, have not adapted to that. So we end up not really sleeping. You know, the only population that I've run into that has no insomnia is the Amish.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Yeah, yeah, they don't use a lot of you know, they usually back to agrarian time, you know, don't have a lot of uh you know electronic stuff around. And they basically work with the sun. So like it used to be way back when nighttime came, things were like slowing down, you know, and yes, maybe the teenagers went out, but they were you see them going crazy. They were back by eleven o'clock at night. That's when their curfew was, that's when they had to be back. They weren't up all time at night. Now, you know, you have a type of scenario, especially a teenager. You know, they wake up in the morning like uh at about noontime, they're beginning to wake up and about three o'clock, they're like hi. And then by the time evening comes, they're ready to go. It's a reverse cortisol. Cortisol should be high in the morning and working to go down. They're low in the morning and workers way up. I call it a vampire battery. I stopped using that because there was a little kid one time. I was telling my dad about it. My brother is a vampire. With the garlic hanging and the crosses and holy water and a gun. Yeah. It's like, oh dye, I ruined somebody's life. But the reality is what we do to ourselves because of the because we have children, is consistently stimulate our eyes, and we don't have the same circadian rhythm. Therefore, we don't get the type of sleep we should. But we need to retrain ourselves to do that. By the way, the best way to do that, I'll tell anybody, is uh camping. Not camping with everything that you have in the house, but nature camping, like go. And within a few days, mostly a week, you've re- and as long as you don't use any electronics, you re-establish your normal security visit. Uh things like melatonin or breaks for short-term stuff, there are reasons that your neurotransmitters can be imbalanced that will cause insomnia, but it's sleep quality over sleep length.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

I meant it it makes a it's well for me, it makes, you know, to have a good night's sleep or and I know as we get older men, as we get older, then we sort of wake have interrupted sleep. Um but you know, to have that, it's uh it it kind of s completely sets you up for the following day, and then you feel more energized, um, and you know, be it for work or whether you're going to be training or or um anything like that or just doing daily life, it it it does um definitely from a personal point of view, it's it it definitely makes a di a difference.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Just remember if you're watching uh big TV until 11 o'clock at night, and turn it off and expect yourself to go to sleep because you turn it off and you're going to bed at midnight, that's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

No.

Fighting Doom Scrolling Stress

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Uh our circating rhythm requires that at some point, usually around six or seven o'clock at night, for us to stop the stimulation so that our cortisol or adrenal function starts calming down, so that as the cortisol drops, our pineal gland, which is pumping out melatonin on its own, yeah, takes over. And then you get tired and you can go to sleep. But you know, if you're sitting with your phone like this, especially kids, and you're having all that light hitting you, and that's like sunlight almost, uh, even if you've cut it down, even if you're wearing those glasses, okay, that's better, but not perfect. You have to kind of adopt a lifestyle, you know, and doom scrolling is the worst thing you can do, especially now.

unknown 47:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Very tough in the in the world today.

SPEAKER_03 47:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Okay, it's easy to do scroll. So that now you're adding more factors in that.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

I know people who have taken news vacations, they simply don't listen to the news anymore. Because unless it affects your personal like as your business, you're just seeing a lot of posturing and a lot of yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

No, I agree. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

You know, it's it's tough. But you're adding to your stress levels. Yes. You're adding to the real fight or flights. And remember, our bodies are adapted to having a fight or flight every six weeks. Not four, five, six times a day. We used to have, you know, if the cybertooth tiger came into our encampment, we'd all go crazy, break his neck, and then start cooking him. Fight or flight. Okay?

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

But we happens to us many times a day. That's gonna exhaust your adrenal, which is your HPA axis, you know, how to reach your adrenal axis, which is gonna affect your thyroid, gonna affect the sex hormones, which is gonna affect the gut, which is and it's a whole mishmash. If you take control over certain areas, you can improve whatever conditions significantly. And those areas are making sure you get proper vitamins and mineralism to the cells, considering leaky gut and doing some basic stuff, uh, and controlling certain factors in your life that are outside your circle of control.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Even though you may be concerned about it, it's outside your circle of control. Letting that go, at least practice.

Cross-Training That Restores You

SPEAKER_00 49:04

No one does it. We're coming very much nearly to the end of the podcast. In fact, I could have talked to you for ages, and obviously you've given us a ton of information. Thank you very much. But is there something that um let's say, you know, we're we're taking, you know, we're we're looking after our gut, we're getting enough sleep. Is there any tweaks that you found, maybe talking to recreational runners, that we can do in terms of tweaking their training, either being, you know, pulling back on the distances or maybe doing alternative forms of exercise that can help? I'm thinking like yoga, Pilates, that kind of thing, which can help that, uh, as I said, that uh that mitochondria, that that those battery cells and help getting those restored.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

I'm glad you brought that up because cross-training, doing different things.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

I have found the best thing for my okay. Um so the older people who seem to have balance problems, I usually send them to Tai Chi or Chikong because it's a bilateral exercise. When you run, you're using if some runners have become power walkers, you end up getting hurt because they're using maybe the same muscles in a different way or different muscles.

unknown 50:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Brush training, doing different things. And here's the real trick. Do what you feel good with. Do what makes you happy.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

Do what you enjoy doing. Okay. Uh if you're training for an event, you may want to do what I did with the uh weightlifters, cut back and pay attention to the form.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Yeah. Yeah, very agreed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Okay. Uh, but also cross-training. If you're a recreational runner, you can get the same you know, neurohormonal input, yeah. But do other things. You know something, it makes you happy. Yes, it releases endorphins, but believe it or not, you're happy, and then the endorphins get released. This is something you zen out to you're running and you're zenning. You're just, ooh, okay. That's resonance. You know, you're resonating with the environment. This is what we've disconnected. Our ability to in interact with our environment. And you can do that so many different ways. And there's a certain amount of um, you know, people getting together and stuff like that. So you start doing little things like that, yeah, that simply make you happy.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah. I mean, like my wife and I um before she was diagnosed with uh uh with breast cancer, but we used to go dancing. And I think that that helps. And in fact, it's uh um uh and quite a few people see that as kind of very good for cognitive health in terms of Alzheimer's, um, and going dancing because you're doing something together. Um, and obviously at the same time you're having to use it's it's good, it's it's good exercise, it's fun exercise, you do get to music. And and that may be a good way of uh you can be classed as cross-training, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Absolutely. And music, by the way, it uh the way that it makes you makes you feel connected, um, it it changes the or it improves the wave of energy in your brain. Okay. Um I used to belong to a choir and I loved to sing. Yeah, okay. And when I got out, I felt so much better. And then I started taking voice lessons and singing opera, which I wish I would have continued because I really enjoyed it. Even though I couldn't read the blessed notes, I I listened to something and say, okay, I'll just follow it along, you know, and the Italian and stuff. But when I was done, I was like, Yes. It made me feel good. So follow your heart your heart and follow your feelings, and remember that your training program is not etched in stone. You're supposed to be having a good time. Okay. And yes, you're gonna have, you know, you're gonna have bad days, you're gonna have good days a morning. A bad day, it's just a bad day. It's just a bad day. It doesn't mean anything. Okay, if it continues and it's a pattern, that means investigation. But a bad day is a bad day, and that's it. So calm down. Yeah. Okay, seriously. My patients go back, I'm like, what? It's a bad day. Talk to me tomorrow. I feel better.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

It's a reality for all of us, even myself. You know, it's like you know.

Three Takeaways To Remember

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Can before we go, is there like uh, as I said, you've given us a little so much information. Is there three simple things that we can take away from our discussion today? I mean, what things can people take away from this? If if if there's anything they've listened to this conversation and listened to the podcast, what three things can they take away? Um that will kind of summarize what we've talked about.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Well, thank you for asking. Um performance issues aren't always about effort, they're about what's happening internally. If you own that, all of a sudden all that angst you have against yourself goes away. And now you have something else to look at. Okay. You don't have to be retired. You don't have to be brain-drong. That is not what happens in aging. I know that nobody gets out of this life alive, but it's not how much you have, it's how much not how much time you have, it's not how much life you have in that time. Yes. And what that means is how well you feel, which is why I said do stuff that makes you happy, because it only adds to your ability to heal, your ability to, you know, it it's so much different. There's been studies of people who had cancers and then watched three Surges movies and cured themselves on the maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

SPEAKER_03 54:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

So if you realize that you don't have to be ill, right? You don't have to be tired and work and running through it is not necessarily the way to go. Yes, there are some things that we have to work our way through, but it's not all the time. And if you work your way through it and things are getting worse and you step back, look at the situation, and if anything, and this is gonna sound too esoteric, listen to your intuition. Listen to that voice inside you that says, Hey, let's look into other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 55:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

Let me let's let me talk to a friend, let me talk to my doctor, let me talk to somebody, and maybe go about this a different way. You don't have to feel bad. You're running is is what you do, not who you are. Okay. So even if you're doing good diet, even if you're you know, more miles not going to do it, even if you're tired, you don't just push through. Yes, once in a while, not all the time. No. What else could be going on? What else should I be doing to my cellular function or my mitochondrial function?

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Okay. Those are the things I like you to take away from here.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Good. Well, thank you very much. If you'd just like to hang on after the podcast, and uh I just wanted to say thank you very much um to Dr. Armin. And I just wanted to say it's been such an education. I know it's a little bit off the beaten track, uh forgive the pun in terms of the of of uh of running, but I think it's just as useful to learn about um our body systems and how we can help that can help with our training um with it where are we doing. So um, but I'd like to say uh uh goodbye from me, Brian, and uh also goodbye from Dr. Almin. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Cheers. Bye-bye.