Table of Contents
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, Health Coach Kenna Vaughn, and Astrid Ornelas discuss a variety of natural treatment methods and techniques in treating inflammation that occurs in the body.
[00:03:49] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And we are live, hey, guys, hey. Welcome to the show of inflammology. Today we’re going to be talking about inflammation at its core. One of the things that we have focused on is giving our viewers a level of understanding that they can take home to them and offer their families a change that actually can matter. Today, we’re going to discuss the root cause of many pathological disorders, not all but the majority of pathological disorders, whether they are heart-related, diabetes, or neurodegenerative disorder. At the core, they deal with inflammation. Inflammation is the bad word that we have learned over the last decade through many research studies that when inflammation deals with the body, it works in many, many mysterious ways. Understanding what it is and how it begins in our bodies is a great insight into our abilities to heal and prevent diseases and help us live a long life. We can assess what has happened over the last century or so in the year 1900s. The average age of individuals was actually about forty-five, and that’s kind of striking to many people. But the Social Security system was built to assume that most people wouldn’t live far beyond 65. Today, we live in a world that we have a longer extension of life with all the advances of medicine at the core of it, our heart advancements, and metabolic issues. And suppose we can kind of realize that many of the pathologies that struck us down back in the day were inflammation at its core, whether it’s afler sclerosis or some sort of pancreatic digestive liver disorders, intestinal issues. In that case, we can find that the commonality behind many of these disorders, even neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer’s, is things that sometimes don’t make sense or have yet to be discovered. Inflammation has a lot to do with it. So why don’t we go ahead and cut to the chase and go in deep and understand inflammation at its core? Today, I’ve put a panel to discuss ways to naturally affect inflammation and assist the body through inflammatory preventative methods. Now, as we discuss these particular things, we’re going to break it down. But I want to clarify that our goal and focus here are to understand that the kitchen to the genes has to be described. Meaning from the choices we eat to the genetic transcription of the DNA, today we have an issue of the majesty and the power of DNA. Today, we’re actually at a time where the world is being affected by viruses and designs and what is at the core of a virus. It’s the DNA. It’s the DNA of a molecule that wants to survive, and it travels through the planetary system unphased and has great dynamics and intelligence. So if we can understand how we can assist the genetic expression of our bodies through anti-inflammatory methods, we can prevent a lot of diseases before they become subclinical before they become clinical, and before at the end of clinical because pathogenic and to the point of actual disorders have a great impact in our lives. So one of the first things we want to start is understanding what inflammation is? The inflammation you have to put on the white coat. You’re going to say you have to kind of go deep and understand that you have to be an inflammologist almost to that extent. A cardiologist becomes an inflammologist, a rheumatologist, an inflammologist, an internal inflammation. So as we look at this, we deal with the immune system at its core, and it’s got different names from immunoglobulins to IGF IGAs, all these kinds of neat acronyms. But what we were dealing with is a process that is the way that the body protects itself. Inflammation is good. God designed it to be good, and it’s OK. But if it goes astray or changes, it causes autoimmune disorders. It causes, you know, thyroiditis, Hashimoto’s, and it causes many disorders that affect us today. It causes metabolic syndrome. We’ve been talking a lot about metabolic syndromes, and I want to do is I want to bring in and discuss and take it down a notch and to understand that we’re basis is based on a functional medicine approach. It’s a physical medicine type of practice, and we have to bring the kitchen to us. And one of the things is that a doctor, we as clinical professionals, have a team of people to win the game, and the game is against inflammation. Now we have Astrid Ornelas and Kenna Vaughn, who will also discuss inflammation topics. But I want to be very clear that what we’re doing is we’re taking the understanding of the intestinal biome. We’re going all the way through the immunological system, and we’re going to all the way goes somehow. Somehow, we’re going to end up talking about the DNA in the nucleotides and the transcription process that happens in the DNA. All of which directly affects the body’s processes, so as we go over these things, it will rock your world; we go through this process because today is not an all-answer thing. It’s the beginning of inflammology. The basis of our work is put together by a doctor named Dr. Alex Vasquez, a premier inflammologist, and the scientists evaluated the greatest techniques out there to prevent inflammation naturally. Also, in a way that affects a lot of people throughout the globe. His science in his studies has been put together in many directions, from immunological to natural medicines to the deep medical approaches that have that pretty much everyday change. But at the basis of this is understanding inflammation, what he termed the coin inflammation. That’s what we’re doing, and I’m bringing it to you guys as best as possible. And maybe one day, he’ll be out here. He’ll indirectly connect with this and elaborate on these technologies because not only do the doctors need to know this, but the people, in general, need to understand what inflammation is and how inflammalogy is so you can make a difference in their direct aspects. So the first one I want to bring in today is going to be Kenna. Kenna, I was hoping you could discuss a little bit about the inflammation pathologies and the inflammatory philosophy of what we’re approaches and how we can help people. So we’re going to leave it for you to bring it in, and then we’re going to bring Astrid in, and then we’re going to touch base on how inflammation can be prevented for our loved ones. Now, this is going to have a big impact. So go ahead and give us a little point of view as to your direction on how to stop inflammation.
[00:12:13] Kenna Vaughn: Of course. So to follow your point, Dr. Jimenez. Inflammation is everywhere. It’s all around, even if we don’t think it is. And what we’ve been learning for years now is that inflammation is inside the body. So at first, when you feel inflammation, we’ve all felt it. We might not have felt it inside, but we have felt it at some point. An excellent example would be when you roll your ankle. Everyone knows what that feels like, and it’s swelling; it’s painful. It hurts to touch. It’s hot, and that’s occurring inside our bodies and around our organs. And even though we don’t feel it the same, our organs do. So that’s where we want just to say inflammation is essential. It’s something that needs to be discussed. We want to bring knowledge to something that we can provide those natural cures and remedies to reduce inflammation. We’re never going to get rid of it. We don’t want that. We need it, but we just want to get it down to a manageable level.
[00:13:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, you mentioned that about manageable level. It is the chronic over-excitation of the immune system that causes pathology. Again, I said, it’s natural, and it is good. I want to bring Astrid in, and we’re going to be going back and forth between individuals, and I’m mediating here. But Astrid is going to get some concepts in terms of nutraceuticals that are important. And she’s also going, to begin with, the kind of idea of where she wants to take this fundamental inflammation journey. Go ahead.
[00:13:44] Astrid Ornelas: OK, well, first of all, I want to discuss, you know, inflammation in itself. So like Kenna was saying, first of all, inflammation is a natural response of the body, and we need it. Like, Kenna and Dr. Jimenez mentioned, we do need inflammation. It is a natural response that the immune system triggers to protect us against harm, defend us against injury, or protect us against infections. And it also protects us against environmental toxins. You know, as Kenna said, when you roll your ankle when you get a muscle strain or a muscle sprain, the area will get inflamed, and it’ll get red, and it’ll get swollen. Now see that the immune system. Whenever we’re injured, or there’s an infection or exposure to toxins of our immune system, we will release a series of proteins and antibodies to cause all of these symptoms. You know, the redness and the swelling and that hot sensation that we feel around the area to prevent other health issues from, you know, from happening due to this injury and infections and toxins.
[00:15:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What I want to elaborate their inflammation is the launch of the healing process. It is the beginning when someone gets hurt; immediately, blood goes to the area, almost like a wild call. Every cell is notified of the danger from the pain, from the brain to the cellular to the fibroblast. Everyone comes to the region in the way they come to the region by lowering the pressure to that area, swelling it, bringing fluid, and bringing stuff to get it fixed. Because they’re called cytokines, the fibroblast is a whole different concoction of dynamics that occurs to begin the inflammatory process. So what we’re talking about here is inflammation gone too far. OK, so go ahead. Go back to that.
[00:15:59] Astrid Ornelas: So inflammation is like I said before, inflammation is good. What we call acute inflammation. It’s normal inflammation the last of a couple of hours or a few days, you know, it’s following an injury or following like when you have a sore throat, you know your throat feels swollen, and it’s painful. That’s inflammation that your immune system has created to protect you from, I guess, from the infection getting any worse. And to start up the healing process. But we want to talk about what we want to emphasize here: when inflammation goes, I guess it goes array when we have chronic inflammation, this inflammation that lasts more than a couple of months. And for some people, chronic inflammation can even last a couple of years, you know, and that’s when inflammation itself is terrible.
[00:17:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When we look at inflammation, it’s the call of the wild; as I indicated, it’s the way the body responds to it. We’re going to be discussing today a little bit of an offset of inflammation, OK? The inflammatory process begins in the gut because our whole philosophy and our fundamental premise are from the kitchen as we look at it. After all, that’s the food you choose. And how we process our foods to the level of as you’re from chewing down to the intestines, all the stomach in the process, in the breakdown products. And we’re going to see how our natural flora is aided by things that we can do inside of our colon that can assist the healing process. And what we have here is we have a presentation here that I think I’d like to kind of reflect on. OK, now what we have here is a presentation showing the inflammation or immune signaling processes. What we’re looking at is on the left-hand side; we can see an intestinal wall. You can see the villa, which is the little fingers there that present where the food enters. From there, it enters through little walls, little barriers that, for many of us, that if those are broken down, those are. That’s where leaky gut gets its term named as the inflammation goes. We have processes that lead to inflammatory cytokines inside our immune responses where specific cells in our body respond, producing their response agents. Now in the process here, as we go through this, we can see it. It directly affects our cellular activity because as we go down to the right-hand side, you can see a little circle that looks clear, and you can see right there that the NF Kappa B is an agent that facilitates damage to the DNA. OK. Now, if you’ll notice, things like turmeric and resveratrol can prevent inflammatory processes. Now, if these limit these inflammatory processes, we can stop them here. We can avoid circulatory inflammation in effect, different body components, such as joints and the brain, and disorders that affect the organs. A constant state of inflammation creates degenerative disorders, and this is what we’re trying to avoid. So what a process is natural in our system. A persistent condition of the inflammatory state affects not only our DNA; it affects our mitochondria. It affects the whole process of the cellular engines that keep us alive. Keep this going on for a long time, and we have a chronic disease. How it presents depends on the state of activity of our genetic genome and our phenotypes, the expression of the genes encoding. Some people can smoke for years. And yes, you’ve heard of people that can smoke till they’re 95. But yeah, there have also been people where I’m from in Chicago, a guy jumped off the top of the Chicago building and glided onto another building, and he survived. Crazy, right? The possibility of surviving a continuous barrage of inflammation in the body is improbable that the body won’t show its colors. It’s unlikely that that guy would ever have survived such a fall, but it happens. But that’s a rarity and also the determining factor. It lies in the genetic capacity handed down from our genes, phenotypes, and gametes cells given to us by our ancestors. So what we need to do is we need to go back into the story and go right back to the kitchen. OK, how are we going to fix this? So that was a kind of a general picture of what we were talking about, so I want to bring in a little bit. I’m going to hit it double-fisted here today. We’re going to go a little bit back and forth in terms of nutrition. We’re also going to talk about things we can do in the kitchen. So I’m going to start with the kitchen first, which will be Kenna, and then we’re going to go into the nutraceuticals, Astrid, who will give us a better insight. So we’ve got what goes on there. So let’s go to the kitchen for now. Let’s go ahead.
[00:20:54] Kenna Vaughn: To Dr. Jimenez’s point, I also want to say that in that photo that was just being shown, we’re always going to have little toxins that are being entered, and it’s not the little ones that are the problem. It’s one that, as we said, becomes frequent and constantly occurring. And that’s when we start to see it’s labeled as number six on the diagram if you can see it. But those are what’s going to begin to happen in your body when these toxins become like, and they’re normal like they’re supposed to be, they’re an overflow of them. So that’s what we’re trying to avoid. So I have a little quick breakfast prepared if we have a written down on a slide for everyone to view. Pull it up quickly. So this quick breakfast can be made into a smoothie or into, as you can see on the screen. A little breakfast, you know, overnight yogurt, and the ingredients are all made with things that will help our NRF two factor, which is, in turn, going to help our inflammation. And Astrid has more on the NRF two in a second. But looking at this recipe where it says your choices, and then we have these berries, flax seeds, all of that listed, all of those foods are all things that are going to help increase that NRF two and provide our bodies with the suitable fiber that we need. The right prebiotics, the right probiotics, keep us full, keep ourselves happy and keep that inflammation down. So going back to Astrid with the NRF two, I know she has some information about that.
[00:22:29] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Astrid as we go through this. What I want to do is I want to get it because we’ve been covering these nutraceuticals as we go through them. So please take it to where you think we should go in terms of this because we’re going to try this again in later shows. But at least they have a printout as to what they have or a visual of what we should be talking about. Go ahead.
[00:22:46] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. So now that we’ve discussed what inflammation as we wanted to kind of touch base on that, you know, just to sort of let people know, you know, so people can understand that even though inflammation is essential in the body, having excess inflammation can lead to other health issues that we don’t want. So with that being said, I want to take my viewers and kind of give you a little bit more value into this conversation. And so this is what we were mentioning. We want to take it to the kitchen. You know, let’s take it to the nutraceuticals at home. What can we do now to lower this chronic inflammation? And in our past two or three podcasts, we’ve been talking about nutraceuticals, pretty much focusing on metabolic syndrome. But then, this time, I want to emphasize the inflammation that can cause metabolic syndrome or the inflammation that is also rendered with metabolic syndrome. So if you could see here in my list that I have up there of the nutraceuticals and yes, it’s been getting a little bit bigger, but\ I just keep adding to it because all of these pertain to metabolic syndrome, and all of these can help in one way or another. But for this podcast, I emphasize a couple of these that I added that could target inflammation. So, first of all, I want to talk about vitamin A. So vitamin A can help regulate the immune system. According to several research studies that I found on the National Center for Biotechnology Information, it has anti-inflammatory properties. And so, I’ve been talking about these nutraceuticals in the sense that you know how you can supplement them. But today I want to discuss how we want to bring it to the kitchen. So, of course, you can buy some vitamin A supplements, but what type of foods can you eat? Like, where can you find vitamin A? So vitamin A can be found in orange and yellow vegetables and fruits, you know, such as carrots, red bell peppers, mangoes, papaya, and vitamin A can also be found in most dark, leafy greens. You know, dark leafy vegetables. You can find it in things like spinach and broccoli. And so the next nutraceutical I want to talk about, about inflammation, reducing inflammation associated with metabolic syndrome, and several other health issues, is vitamin D. Now we’ve talked about vitamin D before. It has remarkable anti-inflammatory properties, and vitamin D can help reduce inflammation. Its anti-inflammatory properties are activated by regulating cytokines. Now cytokines are these little compounds, if you will, that are there inside our body. They’re inside our cells, and they’re the ones that produce inflammation now. Inflammation is essential, but when these cytokines go crazy, essentially, it’s necessary to regulate them. And vitamin D has been demonstrated in several research studies to help control these cytokines that have gone wild. And it can also help regulate our immune system. We can find vitamin D, and as I’ve mentioned before, we can find it in our fatty fish like salmon, like tuna. We can also find it in our unique fortified vitamin D dairy products like milk and cheese.
[00:26:44] Kenna Vaughn: Awesome. Sounds like we’re gearing up to make a great salad with all of the things we have.
[00:26:47] Astrid Ornelas: It’s super important. We want to eat a lot of those dark, leafy greens. Essentially, you know, colorful foods eat as many colorful foods as you want. As you can, you know, to basically and ritual enrich our bodies with these vitamins and minerals.
[00:27:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The cytokines that she spoke about, you got to just kind of try to make simple because cytokines as a kind of creepy word, it is kind of weird. But if you have a like a get together a party and you know it’s OK to have your friends, and everyone has a good time with their buddies. But let’s assume you have a get-together with some wild friends. And you know what’s going to kick up the party. Typically, it’s going to be food is going to be sweets. But one thing that kicks up the party and makes it a little bit go awry is alcohol. Alcohol sometimes makes the party get crazy. Now, if you can imagine people having a good time and they’re just good and a little bit of alcohol, when he goes too far, the cytokines get too crazy. Too much alcohol. You can see that the energy state of the party changes the dynamics. What people say may be offensive, but you know, the truth comes out, and things get a little crazy. So what we’re talking about is that cytokines stimulate cellular activity to the point where it becomes detrimental to the area. So there’s the guy who brought the cytokines, activates the cytokines, and makes the fire in part, and they are called enzymes or cytokines. So those are the names of these things. So when they present in the cells, they disrupt the DNA if it is done for an extended period. Kenna talked about NRF two factors, and NF Kappa B. NF Kappa B is like the police. It kind of keeps the cytokines from damaging the DNA as you hear that knock on the door; hey, you guys are going too far, limit the party. So it really can be related to something straightforward to understand in the cells. I know Astrid still wants to talk about some additional nutraceuticals, but I was going to make sure we get good visuals and are easy to understand.
[00:28:55] Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, no, no. That’s great because actually, the next nutraceutical I want to talk about is NRF two. Oh, great. Yeah. So it works. Health care professionals and researchers refer to NRF two as the NRF two factor, also known as the NRF two pathway, the transcription factor. But NRF two is a process. It’s not a vitamin, it’s not a mineral, not essentially a nutraceutical, but it is a process that naturally happens in the body. And health care professionals and researchers have referred to NRF two as the master regulator of antioxidative responses. The police. Yes. So what ends up happening when the nerve two processes are activated in the body, they help trigger the expression of antioxidants. You know, we need antioxidants because they help regulate the immune system. They help control inflammation. They have excellent anti-inflammatory properties.
[00:30:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, NRF two factor is a great thing. Suppose we can think of a story in our minds where we’ve seen our government go south really fast. Many years ago, we had a situation with Katrina. Katrina was a very impactful storm, but what it did was it took out the infrastructure, and it took out the police within it. That’s our NRF two factors control the state of energy or the order in ourselves. Remove that. And you remember people, and you have a visual of seeing people running crazy. Those are reactive oxygen species. Those are oxidants. They go crazy, and they start turning on each other. Everyone starts going crazy and shooting each other. And realistically, when we got a visual of that, antioxidants assist and cool them down; they’re the mediators. Nrf2 is like the military showing up says, No, we aren’t going to do that. We lose the NRF two factors, and our body becomes a disease state. So it’s crucial to understand what we’re talking about so we can when we know. As you indicated, the word itself reminds us of math factoring what alpha-beta multiplied by this equals that, right? So it’s a factor. It’s a variable. Many things make up the NRF two factors, but we want to talk in general terms that we can assist it like any police system. If you overload it, it gets overwhelmed, and disease states occur. So she’s talking about that particular aspect. So continue, please.
[00:31:30] Astrid Ornelas: With that being said, though, even though there aren’t specific like even though Nrf2 is not a particular vitamin or mineral, however, there are foods that we can eat to help promote the activation of the NRF2 factor essentially.
[00:31:45] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I am dying to wait to hear because this is important, right?
[00:31:47] Astrid Ornelas: So these foods that we can eat to activate the NRF two factor include all berries, berries, you know, red, blueberries, grapes, citrus fruits and juices, and especially cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and kale.
[00:32:07] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, again, nature did not have McDonald’s. We did not have stores, and we did not have refrigerators. If you can watch yourself as an early version of you back in the sixteen hundreds of the 500 ad or before Christ, as we were walking through the terrain, there were seeds, berries, vegetables, etc.; there were cruciferous stuff. These extraordinary things I held the secret of how to prevent these things. We did a lot of fasting, and we’ll get into that later intermittent fasting because we wouldn’t eat for hours and days. OK, we only eat when we have food, so we have to go back to the old ways of life. So continue with this important story here.
[00:32:50] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. And to continue with NRF2, I want to tie in another of the nutraceuticals that I have listed up here on my list. Glutathione. So glutathione and NRF2 tie in very well together with each other. Glutathione is referred to as the master antioxidant. Now you have NRF2, the master regulator, and glutathione on which is the master antioxidant. Now, glutathione is a precursor to the NRF2 transcription factor. It would help if you had glutathione on in your body, you know, along with other compounds and processes. But glutathione is highlighted by health care professionals and researchers because it is essential to initiate this process of the nerve to factor, regulate our immune system, control inflammation and activate the antioxidant effect to reduce inflammation. And so glutathione, you can find it again, just like these foods that trigger the NRF2 process like broccoli, spinach, and Brussel sprouts.
[00:34:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I want to a touchback on the glutathione. Glutathione has been studied in many clinics. They do types of injections of glutathione down into the bloodstream because it is. If your body is in the state of its lost control, many people understand and find their way towards understanding what glutathione does, whether through IV or foods. Many of the nutraceuticals we offer and the protocols we have, whether IV-related or not, are related to getting the reactive oxygen species. These are energy states of oxidation chemicals. We know them as antioxidants, vitamin A, E, and C. These are all the things that we’ve always learned. But the remarkable thing about these things that have been into our diets, they’ve been part of our diets for millennia. People know about lemons, the antioxidant aspect of citrus, antioxidant effect of certain vegetables. I know that she will be discussing the favorite food of all children right now, which is broccoli, right? And I know that broccoli is the most famous food for all those little kids when you can see their faces getting soured. But this is why she’s going to discuss the reason why through the sulforaphane through the resveratrol connection, we’re going to be able to discuss how specific dietary changes can influence our energy state or our oxidant state in our bodies. Go ahead, Kenna.
[00:35:33] Kenna Vaughn: I was going to add with that with the broccoli. Many children don’t like to eat broccoli, and not many adults want to eat broccoli, either. So back, if we go back to the kitchen, you can also do broccoli sprouts, and you can blend those up in the blender along with the kale. You don’t have to eat just a bowl of kale, and you can blend it up, and you can kind of hide that taste. If it’s not your favorite with those berries that Astrid was talking about to give you that added flavor and kind of minimize the vegetable taste and have it taste more fruity, more like a smoothie, but still get all the benefits.
[00:36:08] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. Just essentially, with everything that we’ve been talking about is the bottom line is like color is naturally found in nature. And, you know, all of these colorful fruits, all these colorful vegetables, like we have mentioned before, like McDonald’s, all these foods are just very, very brown, just very, very bland colors, you know. These foods, as we know, they’re not very nutritious to us, you know. With nature though, we can find these bright orange and yellow blues, reds, you know, greens and all of these foods, you know, all of these vegetables and all these fruits, they have a lot of the essential vitamins that we need just for overall health and wellness.
[00:36:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The we’re not that smart as humans. We sometimes gravitate to things that may kind of flavor the right thing. But what we do know is that in nature, God has given us rods and cones in our eyes. The rods see black and white. As you can tell in the dark, that’s the one that kicks off. But in light, the cone conglomerates all the colors. The reason for the colors is that each vegetable has different phytochemicals, and these phytochemicals are the things that make up green, yellow, and red. And what they do is they tip us off as humans that we don’t have to be researchers, but it kind of guides us in the direction of the color and the foods. And if you see red in an animal’s skin and you’ll know your danger, correct? Well, if you see it on fruit, you know it tends to be like a strawberry. You gravitate towards that right. And these are the reasons these phytochemicals are so good; they’re embedded in the color and the pleasing. This of these things is important that we search so when we’re in the kitchen. Our job as providers for our families is to vary the colors, and they don’t have to all be red, but throw a little red in there. Throw a little black in there like olives, black olives, and a little bit white. Different vegetables have different colors for a reason. We don’t have to understand what it is, but we must balance that. And that’s a part of the deep component of functional medicine: balancing out the coloring of foods because it matters. So I know she’s got a couple more she’s going to talk about. So Astrid, tell us a bit of the sulforaphane, green tea, and I think you’re going to discuss your favorite soon.
[00:38:33] Astrid Ornelas: Yes, we want to move on a bit from NRF2 and glutathione because these next nutraceuticals are also just as important as these are the ones that I’ve previously discussed to promote anti-inflammatory effects in the body and, therefore, improve our well-being. So next, the nutraceutical that we don’t want that I want to talk about, that’s up there. It’s an SCFA, which is short-chain fatty acids. Now, this nutraceutical that I’m discussing is essentially a byproduct. It’s created by gut bacteria, by bacteria in our gut or microbiome, by dietary fiber. You know, when we eat fiber, the bacteria in our gut metabolize it. It produces these short-chain fatty acids. And I don’t want to stray away too much from inflammation, the nutraceuticals, and everything associated with metabolic syndrome. But kind of what one of the things that Dr. Jimenez discussed earlier in the podcast is leaky gut. The leaky gut is when you have, I guess, gastrointestinal health issues. Things like that are when people don’t have the right to the biodiversity of gut bacteria. This itself can cause a deficiency of these short-chain fatty acids, which can cause inflammation. So eating more dietary fiber can promote the production of these short-chain fatty acids, or SCFAs, promoting anti-inflammatory properties in the body.
[00:40:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The intestine’s process has a purpose for the duodenum. There’s a purpose for the stomach. There’s a purpose for the jejune on which is a component of the intestine. There’s a component of the small intestine. It’s a long piece, but there’s also a transition into a thing called the large intestine to the sigmoid colon, and the poop shoot, it goes. But the whole process is that the foods that can be digested in the small intestine cannot be digested in the large intestine. So here’s what’s cool the bacteria break down the fiber, and they break down the food products so that the gut bacteria down the road over the large intestine can be adequately fed. So the way they communicate is to break down these fatty acids and these long-chain fatty acids and make them into small chain fatty acids of which those little bacteria are waiting to be fed. Now, the biodiversity of the bacteria in the large intestine, along with the small intestine, is the thing that determines our health. It is what they call SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth against the small intestine. Bacterial overgrowth means that something has gone too far. There is a bug that is gone that it’s getting crazy. It’s like having six cats and one bowl. You’re going to have some screaming going on, right? So the reality is, is that, well, we got to do is we got to give everyone a bowl. So everyone has been fed. So in terms of bacteria is to provide them the food so that the bacteria can produce their byproducts. People don’t know. Until recently, serotonin things affect everyone who knows serotonin is the calming agent, but they don’t realize that the bacteria produce it inside the intestine. So a good intestine keeps a person calm. It’s not so much produced in the brain as it has, and it can. But the large amounts of serotonin are produced by the bacteria, so our bacteria help is a huge component. So when we deal with a small chain fatty acids, we’re talking about the things that keep them around. Our body is smart. We can do an absolute total average of the intestine to clean out a bacterial overgrowth situation. And if you give them the right food, it regenerates appropriately. And that’s the crazy part about the understanding of inflammation. We can start it there, and we can fix that connection. Keep on doing this too long. What happens is any bacteria overgrowth causes a problem. It breaks down the intestine walls, and then we have leaky chemicals going into our body, causing inflammation, right? So inflammation starts at the gut. So we got to take care of our bugs. To continue with the sulforaphane and the other story because we will be hitting on this subject a lot more as time goes on.
[00:42:56] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. OK, so the next nutraceutical I want to talk about what’s up there is resveratrol. And so resveratrol is a compound that also acts as an antioxidant; we’ve been talking about antioxidants and how important these are to promote anti-inflammatory properties in our body. And resveratrol can be found in berries, grapes, pistachios, and it can even be found in green tea and dark chocolate.
[00:43:28] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Perfect. Dark chocolate and our other best buddy is wine, and women love that wine because they’ve had a stressful day. Somehow, the research came out that resveratrol was produced with wine, but you’d have to have 200 glasses of wine to enjoy that. So that’s got a little bit too far. So you can take resveratrol supplements too as well?
[00:43:47] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. You can. As I’ve mentioned, the list of the nutraceuticals that I’m talking about, we can take them my supplements. But of course, you know, it’s always easier to just take it to the kitchen, you know, and eat all of these very colorful fruits and vegetables.
[00:44:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Before you become clinical. Yes. Right.
[00:44:06] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. OK, so the next one that I’m just going to very briefly talk touch upon is sulforaphane. I didn’t emphasize it, but I did list it up there because it is also essential. And it also helps regulate the immune system by regulating oxidative stress caused by these free radicals that we’ve been talking about today.
[00:44:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And the area right there, she’s going to head over into her favorite. So sulforaphane is activated. See, nature gives you these packages ready for it. Some of the things that sulforaphane has become famous for are celery, sprouts, and broccoli sprouts. When you chew them, you activate the enzymes that create sulforaphane. So it’s almost like nature gives you like these little packages, but you got to assume so. The process of getting sulforaphane out in the sprouts is that the chewing process launches the stuff. It’s actually like you can almost see the goods coming into the body once you chew on it because that activates it. So literally sprung into action the moment you chew it in the crazy. So, OK, well, you have to talk about a couple of more things. What is it?
[00:45:26] Astrid Ornelas: And yeah, just basically touching up on that, so sulforaphane often can be found in or in cruciferous vegetables, you know, like your broccoli and your Brussels sprouts. Taking it all back to the broccoli, such as, you know, bottom line, you know, a lot of broccoli to get all of these anti-inflammatory properties going on in your body.
[00:45:45] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There’s a reason mommies give it to their kids, huh?
[00:45:47] Astrid Ornelas: Yes. Definitely. So, yeah, the last nutraceutical I want to talk about, you know, saving best for last, is one of my favorite nutraceuticals.
[00:45:56] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Can we go to the visual on that one? First, go to the big picture of the inflammation at its best? And I want to show everybody this particular picture here. You’ll see about number 17 resveratrol, which we just discussed, and turmeric if you look over here. OK, turmeric, what it does, it prevents NF Kappa B from launching inflammatory damage on the body. We’ve learned that turmeric directly affects NF Kappa B to prevent inflammation, which then stops it at the cellular level. Improvement prevents it, as you can see there, from entering into the circulatory system. So tell us a bit of what you know in terms of turmeric.
[00:46:35] Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, so pretty much like you said turmeric and curcumin, curcumin, this is the active ingredient that’s found turmeric, it’s what gives is that that yellowish, you know, orange color to turmeric for anyone who didn’t know that. But, turmeric or curcumin does have these antioxidant properties. It plays a massive role in basically decreasing, I guess, the amount of these cytokines that are, you know, they are necessary for the bar, for the body. They are produced when there is inflammation in the body, when but when too many of these cytokines are just wreaking havoc on ourselves and our tissues in our bodies. Turmeric is a fantastic root, you know, nutraceutical. You can eat it or take it in supplements, and it can decrease the cytokines. It can decrease oxidative stress. These are oxidants that can cause inflammation and, you know, basically reduce this immune system response.
[00:47:49] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know it ultimately again, as Kenna took us there if you can look in these pictures, this particular picture you can ultimately see again as we touch back upon it from the gut on the left-hand side as it travels through all the way. Suppose you can see a number 15 16, the DNA effects. So the DNA affects all of us. We want to be good parents, good people, ghost stewards of our spirit as we travel through our 100-year journeys in our lives. But we want to be as healthy as we can be. The answer lies in nature to make it happen. Our job is to bring it apart. And I know that Kenna, you got some points on this particular thing? Go ahead.
[00:48:26] Kenna Vaughn: Yes. I just wanted to mention that earlier; if we keep this inflammation under control, there’s no age too soon to start. So I know I am a parent, and I want to feed myself that way. I have the great energy I need, and my immune system is excellent for taking care of my children. But I also want my children not to have this inflammation build up from the beginning. So I know that kids can be very picky, and they’re going to want things that you feed them constantly. And kids eat a lot about texture. And just like Dr. Jimenez was saying, color. It’s huge. Children are drawn to it. So what you can do is take their plate and make it colorful. Add some green zucchini on there. Add some orange carrots. Add some slices of bell pepper. Add some avocado. They have a variety of textures, which they love. That’s how they explore and eat, as well as color. And if you just keep feeding them these foods, they’re going to realize that these are good. These are the normal, not french fries and McDonald’s. And those are then things that they’re going to start to crave. They’re going to want the fruits and vegetables. They’re not going to enjoy the junk. And you can get a jumpstart on all of that. And if that doesn’t work, then throw it in the blender.
[00:49:39] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And you know what? If it’s no, I would say, put sugar on it now, but you don’t do that. We do mocha sugar, which is a natural version of apple sugar. That’s a sweetener. It’s not even sugar. It’s a good byproduct of the sugar panel. So it’s got glucose-fructose across these components that are in mocha, sugar, or mocha fruit. It’s what it is. Mocha fruit makes it sweet for the kid who has a sweet tooth. You can add it there, and they love it. It’s what we teach our kids. It ultimately brings it down to the family. It’s we all want our kids and our families to be healthy. We want our cells to have good choices, and we want to prevent future pathologies. And if we can start early in the journey, kids do more what we do, not what we say, and they’ll do it eventually. But they are watching your food choices, and kids want what’s good at that age of; why? Why? Why? You’ll have a kid that it’ll be a certain age. Is that healthy? Because they want to know, they want to know what’s good for them, they want to live or what our purpose is and what their purpose is. So this is all about bringing home to our children so that we can honor our future, our past generations, that they survived and we’re going to survive. We’re going to make it better for them, and we’re going to make sure that the genetic expression is protected. We don’t just need the good ole NF Kappa B or the NRF2 factors to protect us, though our body prevents it from happening. In that example of Katrina and the police, we have systems to protect us, but we can’t overload it because any system overloaded loses the battle. Then the bugs get in us, and things like DNA transcription becomes gone awry and things like cancer or things like degenerative tissues. Degenerative neurodegenerative disorders happen as a result or happen based on how our genetic offspring or genetic expression. Sorry is being able to handle it. So together, we’re going to bring this to an end today; we’ve done a lot. We will be getting some more concepts here, but I want to thank my people and the crew behind here. And I want you all to know that we will be fighting for the anti-inflammatory movement through our informal allergy programs because we are an inflammologist. If we’re, most doctors are informal allergies, and they may not realize it yet. Still, they are inflammologist, and most pathological disorders can be linked to inflammation down the chain of some disorder link. Now us controlling that understanding how we can mitigate it will make a difference in our lives and change our future expression of our genetic design. So thank you guys all, and we look forward to talking to you guys in the future. Thank you, guys.
Professional Scope of Practice *
The information herein on "How To Treat Inflammation Naturally | El Paso, TX (2021)" is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional or licensed physician and is not medical advice. We encourage you to make healthcare decisions based on your research and partnership with a qualified healthcare professional.
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Our information scope is limited to Chiropractic, musculoskeletal, acupuncture, physical medicines, wellness, contributing etiological viscerosomatic disturbances within clinical presentations, associated somatovisceral reflex clinical dynamics, subluxation complexes, sensitive health issues, and/or functional medicine articles, topics, and discussions.
We provide and present clinical collaboration with specialists from various disciplines. Each specialist is governed by their professional scope of practice and their jurisdiction of licensure. We use functional health & wellness protocols to treat and support care for the injuries or disorders of the musculoskeletal system.
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Our office has reasonably attempted to provide supportive citations and has identified the relevant research studies supporting our posts. We provide copies of supporting research studies available to regulatory boards and the public upon request.
We understand that we cover matters that require an additional explanation of how it may assist in a particular care plan or treatment protocol; therefore, to further discuss the subject matter above, please feel free to ask Dr. Alex Jimenez, DC, or contact us at 915-850-0900.
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Dr. Alex Jimenez DC, MSACP, RN*, CCST, IFMCP*, CIFM*, ATN*
email: coach@elpasofunctionalmedicine.com
Licensed as a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) in Texas & New Mexico*
Texas DC License # TX5807, New Mexico DC License # NM-DC2182
Licensed as a Registered Nurse (RN*) in Florida
Florida License RN License # RN9617241 (Control No. 3558029)
Compact Status: Multi-State License: Authorized to Practice in 40 States*
Presently Matriculated: ICHS: MSN* FNP (Family Nurse Practitioner Program)
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC, MSACP, RN* CIFM*, IFMCP*, ATN*, CCST
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