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Season 2, Episode 15: Natural Strategies to Boost Gut Resilience with Evan Brand, NTP

By Jodi Cohen

Promotional banner for the "essential alchemy" podcast featuring a discussion on natural strategies to boost resilience with guests jodi cohen, ntp, and evan brand.

With Evan Brand, you’ll learn about how gut infections hamper your resilience, the impact of environmental toxins like heavy metals, mold and glyphosate on resilience, and natural strategies to boost resilience.

  • How Gut Infections Hamper your resilience
  • The Impact of Environmental Toxins like Heavy Metals, Mold and Glyphosate on Resilience
  • Natural Strategies to Boost Resilience

 

About Evan Brand

Evan Brand is a podcast host, certified functional medicine practitioner and nutritional therapist. He became passionate about healing the chronic fatigue, obesity and depression epidemics after solving his own IBS and depression issues. He uses at-home lab testing and customized supplement programs to find and fix the root causes of a wide range of health symptoms. His Evan Brand Podcast has over 7 million downloads and counting. He is the author of Stress Solutions, REM Rehab and The Everything Guide to Nootropics. He offers 15-minute free consultations at his site, evanbrand.com, to discuss your health symptoms and goals.

If you’re enjoying the Essential Alchemy podcast, please leave Jodi a review on iTunes.

 

Jodi: I’m Jodi Cohen. I am your host. And I’m super excited to be joined by one of my favorite people, who’s also one of the smartest people I know. Evan Brand is a podcast host, certified functional medicine practitioner, and nutritional therapist. He is passionate about healing chronic fatigue, obesity, and depression epidemics after solving his own IBS and depression issues.

He uses at-home lab testing and customized supplemental programs to find and fix the root cause of a wide range of health symptoms. His Evan Brand podcast has over 12 million downloads and counting.

He’s the author of Stress Solutions, REM Rehab, and The Everything Guide To Nootropics. He offers free 15-minute functional medicine consultations to discuss your health symptoms and goals at his site evanbrand.com. Welcome, Evan. It’s nice to see you.

Evan: Hey, Jodi. Nice to see you too.

Jodi: So I start every interview by asking everyone how they define resilience.

Evan: My definition is able to tolerate a crazy modern world without ending up in the ER because you’re having panic attacks, or you’re having hives because you’re reacting to your environment, or you’re reacting to your foods or other toxins and pollutants.

To be able to sleep at night without tossing and turning all night. To be able to wake up rested. To be able to handle bad news occasionally without breaking or what we’ve talked about in previous interviews together, the freeze response of the nervous system.

If you’re not resilient, then you can’t handle stress. You do shut down. You do freeze under times of stress. And I think we need a tribe of resilient people on the planet because working with people clinically, I question whether there are any resilient people left.So I’m really happy you’re doing this event. And I hope that we can shed some light and empower some people and teach them how to become resilient because I do truly believe we need a lot more wolves out there to really help keep the tribe healthy.

Jodi: No, I totally agree. And it’s interesting because people come to you, I know, for fatigue, anxiety, depression, and they might not see how the gut and environmental toxins are impacting their mental health. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Evan: Sure. Well, I’ll start with a quick story about me. My resilience was broken. And I moved down to Austin, Texas, in 2013. That was before Austin was super cool. Now it’s like the cool place to be. There’s probably too many people there for me now, but back then is when I moved down there. And I’ll tell you. My stress response was broken. I remember hearing sirens in the middle of the night.

We lived 200 yards away from a cell tower because we basically rented a place that we rented without looking, which was a terrible idea. And I was up every night. I had to go pee. I would have anxiety. I would have panic attacks. I would have skin rashes. I was having food sensitivities. I was not resilient at all. And so, I really had to learn how to build myself back up from ground zero.

I mean, I was to the point where I remember one night I was just lying on the floor. I had my legs up in an elevated position, and I was just trying to slow my heart rate. I had major tachycardia. My pulse was like 160, and I was just lying on the floor.

Luckily, my wife thought to carry me basically to the bathroom and throw me in the tub with some Epsom salt and some lavender essential oil, and put on some classical music. And then I realized, crap, I really got to start working on myself. I really have to start building up my resilience because the stress of moving and new career and leaving the family behind and all of that, it was too much loss and too much grief, and I wasn’t able to process it all. So I think that’s where working on brain retraining really came into play.

I know that’s totally a different tangent than the question you asked, but I wanted to just make the point that a lot of us we have to get to rock bottom before we can learn to be resilient. And I hope that our conversation today can save people, meaning you don’t have to get to the rock bottom.

If you can see yourself headed towards rock bottom now, it’s okay to just pause. And let’s just try to get you out of that hole now because if you get to the bottom, it’s much harder, and it takes longer to pull you out.

But back to the gut piece, so when you have gut infections, which I did. I think that was part of the reason I was so stressed and anxious when I was down in Texas is because I had multiple infections. I had H. pylori, which is a bacterial infection that damages your parietal cells.

This is how you make stomach acid. So essentially, you’re putting a blanket on your digestive fire. And when that happens, now you have hypochlorhydria, which is low stomach acid. And you’ve got all this fermentation of your food, feeding bacteria, and feeding candida.

So I ended up with massive gut problems. And those bacterial infections, along with parasites, I had Giardia, and I had Crypto, which I may have had from childhood, swimming in lakes and creeks and streams, but it could have also been from Barton Springs. That’s a super commonplace, like a swimming hole in Austin.

It’s a wild spring, though. So if you jump in there and you get the water, you swallow it, or you get it in your sinuses, it very well could be contaminated with parasites like most surface water in the US is. But anyway, those parasites wreck your gut.

They create leaky gut. They’re producing internal toxins. They’re robbing you of your amino acids, which then affects your neurotransmitters. So now you’ve got low dopamine, so you have no drive or energy, or focus. Now you’ve got low serotonin, so you’re irritable and anxious. Now you’ve got low GABA, so you’re ending up with panic and heart palpitations, and you can’t relax. You have a hard time relaxing, and you’re emotionally eating.

So what really happens is gut infections can come in. Those weaken the immune system. That then opens up the gut barrier. Toxins get into the bloodstream. This creates more systemic inflammation. They rob your nutrition, so you are starving from the inside out.

Then you get the neurotransmitter problems. Then you’re depressed. Then you’re anxious. Then you end up in the emergency room with a panic attack. They send you home with Xanax, and that’s it. And then you go back to your general practitioner, and he just puts you on a daily dose of some Benzodiazepine and says, you’re just stressed. And that’s as far as the conversation goes in the mainstream world.

Jodi: Yeah, that was a really great explanation of how the gut impacts your mental health. The people that are coming to you, what are other environmental or physical conditions that are throwing them out of balance and out of resilience?

Evan: I would say heavy metals are huge. And I know it’s played out, and heavy metals sound trendy, and they sound sexy. It’s where people point the finger, but it really is true. And we’re exposed to heavy metals even before we’re born. I mean, we know that a lot of placenta and breast milk samples are contaminated. We’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of chemicals in newborn babies.

I’ve tested children that are two months old, and they have higher levels of toxic chemicals and heavy metals than my 90-year-old clients. They didn’t have as much exposure. So I can tell you that heavy metals are going to affect the gut. They’re going to affect the brain, the blood-brain barrier as well.

I would say mold and mycotoxins are huge. We live in an epidemic society of mold problems, partly due to how tight our homes are ever since we had the– I don’t remember what the name of it was, but basically, an energy bill that forced our homes to be tighter, and they don’t breathe as much.

That’s good for energy efficiency, but now we have these indoor toxic boxes that don’t breathe. And I know you’ve heard Dr. Klinghardt talk about this since you’re real good friends with Christine.

And Klinghardt says something which I think should be easy to prove, but I haven’t seen anybody prove it yet. But I think he’s right, which is that when mold is exposed to EMF, that it creates 600 times more mycotoxins.

And that makes sense because some of the sickest people I see they’re in super urban environments like Manhattan in an old, moldy apartment building with a cellphone tower on top of their building. And those are the people that are just absolutely wrecked.

So I think EMF has a role. I know a lot of people they’ve been concerned about Elon Musk’s satellite, the Starlink project, which is like 42,000 satellites, which are going to be up in space.

I’ve talked with a couple of really smart people in the EMF industry. They don’t think it’s a huge deal. I know Mercola’s talked about it, and he’s pretty concerned. But I’ve talked with several people who are building biologists. They say that’s not a big deal as big as the 5G towers because of the distance.

So the satellites, those are going to be hundreds of miles away versus 5G, could potentially be on every other street corner or every fifth house, depending on what article you read. So I know that EMF is a factor because if I put on a Bluetooth, which I don’t like to do, but I’ll do it in short doses. I’ll put on a Bluetooth heart rate monitor. And if I go into the city, I’ll look for those little– it looks like a little cylinder. Those are the 5G.

If I go next to that, my heart rate variability decreases, indicating that I’m being shoved into a sympathetic state of my nervous system. So when you look at all of it, you look at the mold, you look at the pesticide and herbicide, glyphosate, you look at the heavy metals, you look at car exhaust if you’re real close to highways. You look at poor buildings with no ventilation and toxic building materials. It’s no surprise that we have a mess on our hands.

Jodi: Yeah, it’s a perfect storm.

Evan: It is. Well, and then people don’t know how to get out of it because what’s the effect of all of this? Well, they lose their resilience because now you can’t respond to the threat of, let’s say, a guy cutting you off on the highway and brake checking you. You can’t respond to that because your nervous system is so focused on all the toxins.

Whether it’s your internal toxins, whether it’s the 5G tower next to you blasting you 24/7. You’re so sympathetically stressed. You literally can’t downshift. And it’s in that parasympathetic, that rest and digest, that downshifting mode, that’s when we really get our thinking done.

And you can’t think about what you’re going to do next year or in five years or 10 years. You can’t plan your future if you’re running from a bear.

And so when we’re talking about resilience, you’re like, well, what do we do? How do we get ourselves out of this? I think it’s really important to try to create that downshifting effect. The problem is no matter how much meditation and yoga and even essential oils, which I love and I know you love. No matter how much of that we do, I don’t think you can fully pull your nervous system out of that sympathetic overdrive unless you fix as many of these things in your toxin bucket.

So the toxic foods, the toxic pollutants, the gut infections constantly releasing lipopolysaccharides, the Candida releasing acetaldehyde, which is like an alcohol molecule that creates a lot of brain fog. I don’t think you can fully get out of this until you clear some of that other stuff out.

Jodi: Yeah. They’re all additive and cumulative. And any stressor that you can take off of your plate gives you more energy and more resilience.

Evan: And I had so much that I was up against. I mean, when I look back at my labs, it’s like, no wonder I felt like crap. And then I had the lifestyle stress and all of that too. So I think the important thing for people is to try to get a baseline of where you’re at.

So I would definitely encourage people, if you’re not working with a practitioner, find a good functional medicine person that can help you and get just some, what I consider basic. It’s not basic to a medical doctor on the corner, but basic to me since I do it hundreds of times a year. Get an organic acids test done.

I like Great Plains. Get a mycotoxin test so you can look at your mold toxin and see if you’re a reservoir for mold toxin. At least 25% of the population has a genetic defect where their bodies don’t recognize the mold and therefore can’t detox or create a detox system, if you will, for the mycotoxin.

So if you have been told you’re crazy by your husband or your wife or your mom or your dad or your brother and why are you sick and I’m not? Well, it could be that there’s a different process. The husband may detox the mold well. And we’ve seen couples that live in a moldy house. For example, the wife tests really high. The husband doesn’t test with any mycotoxins at all.

Well, how the heck does that happen? Well, number one, she’s a stay-at-home mom. She works at home and does consulting or whatever at home. And then he’s out at the office. So he’s already out of the home 8 or 10 hours a day. That already reduces his exposure by over half. And she’s at home with the kids or homeschooling or whatever. So, that’s one reason. But the other reason is the genetics.

So you really got to test this stuff and not guess because you could listen to what I’m saying and say, well, do I just need to go do a parasite cleanse? The answer is I don’t know. Do I need to go do a heavy metal detox with Chlorella and cilantro and charcoal and zeolite? The answer is I don’t know.

But you can answer that question for less than a couple of $1000. You could get an incredibly comprehensive workup with an OAT test, a Myco. You can do what’s called a TOX, which is a chemical test. That’s where I look at gasoline additives.

We look at paint. We look at xylene, nail polish, chemicals, herbicides. Did I say plastics already? You could look at plastics. You could look at dry cleaning chemicals. You could look at water pollutants, and then you could do a stool test, which I like the GI MAP.

That’s a DNA-based stool test. You just poop in a tray and scoop it into the tube and ship it back to the lab. And you can rule in or out all these infections. You can rule in or out C. diff and Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Blasto, worms like whipworm. You could look at gut inflammation. You could look at your pancreatic enzyme function.

I think that’s where the magic really is because I guarantee you 99% of people listening and watching this, I’m going to guess they have a cupboard or a pantry or who knows, maybe even a whole room full of supplements that they bought, and they heard it on a podcast or a blog or a webinar.

They thought it might be the magic cure. They spent $100 or $1000 on it. And now they don’t know what the heck it’s going to do. It’s sitting there expiring in what I call the supplement graveyard. And they could have saved all that money if they would’ve just tested and figured out what they actually needed and what was actually wrong.

Jodi: Yeah. It’s a delicate balance between the test, not guess, and the lowhanging fruit of what seems to help everyone. Like a lot of the toxins that you mentioned, if they just remove them from their current interaction, at least they’re not adding to the burden.

Evan: Yeah. Now, if I had somebody who just literally had, let’s say they only had like $500 to their name and it was an option of doing a test or actually starting some sort of protocol, I think with a really good assessment, a really good intake and history on somebody, you could probably just do a good guess and check protocol. And you could say, hey, based on it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

So in the case of gut infections, if we saw that there was diarrhea alternating with constipation and bloating and burping after every meal and food intolerances, we could assume there’s probably some gut infections going on, creating maybe the histamine intolerance or salicylate problem or IBS. And so, we may come in with just some gentle antimicrobials. Like I’ve got one called Microbiome Support 1.

If I had to guess, I’d probably just give someone that for six weeks. It’s got berberine and some wild indigo and some other antimicrobial herbs in it. See how well they do. If you could get somebody 50% better just based on guessing, that’s still a win.

So I don’t want people to be frustrated and say, well, Evan thinks everybody’s got to be rich, and you got to have $20,000 to get this done. You really don’t. I mean, a couple of grand could go a long way. But if it’s a matter of, do you buy the groceries for the week, or do you buy some herbs to help you or the test? I think in that case, I probably would go for the herbs. And I would try to, just like you said, lighten the low. We assume that most people are toxic.

I’ve rarely found a non-toxic person unless they’re doing a sauna all the time. It’s always interesting to look at those people on paper. It’s like, whoa. Saunas do work. Some of them, like 80-year-old clients that I have, I’ll look at their urine, I’m like, what are you doing because you have no toxins? Like, well, I’m in the sauna four times a week. I’m like, wow. And how long have you been doing that? 20 years. I’m like, whoa. Okay. So that’s cool.

Jodi: And in case people don’t understand, the skin is the largest organ. And by being in the sauna, you’re helping toxins go out of the skin, which is a huge pathway.

Evan: Yeah. And it sounds too good to be true. Like a sauna just sounds like something for a fancy French guy to have in his mansion or something. But no, I mean, saunas can be so small that they can fold up and be stored under your bed. I mean, they have all sorts of portable infrared saunas on the market.

Now I know there’s one called a Therasage 360. It’s like $800, and it’s foldable. It’s like a little tent where your head sticks out. If you’re on an extreme budget, you could do something like that. And people may be listening and going, well, what the heck does this have to do with resilience and building resilience?

Well, because you got to get the toxic load out. Or your nervous system is going alert, alert, danger, danger, but it’s not external danger. It’s just responding to all the internal toxins that are creating this danger response.

Jodi: You can’t mow the lawn when the house is on fire. So we’re helping to put out the fire of the house so that you have more resilience for other things.

Evan: Totally.

Jodi: So with the sauna, I think there’s confusion. Do you have to be sweating profusely? Can you speak to that?

Evan: So I’ve seen hundreds of people. I’ve looked at their chemical profiles. I’ve looked at their mold profiles. This is going to trip you out because it trips me out. And I didn’t even think about it until you, and I just brought it up together. But we’ve had people that completely eliminated heavy metals, pesticide, herbicide residue, and mycotoxins, and they never sweat in the sauna.

They’re just doing 15 minutes because that’s all they can handle before they get dizzy or woozy or spacey. And they’re doing like 120 to 130 degrees. So I don’t know the exact mechanism. This is just observation. I don’t have any clinical study to back this up. I’m just telling you what I’ve seen. But I’ve had clients who are like, yeah, I never sweat. I just get hot. And then I get out, and that’s it.

So my guess is that it’s just a combination of the glutathione, which is kind of a provoking agent that’s pushing the toxins and mobilizing them. And then the sauna is heating those up, making those more water-soluble, and pushing those toxins out of the fat cells. Maybe the lymphatic system is catching up with it—the liver’s helping. You’re increasing blood flow because we know that the sauna helps to create easy water, which is structured water within your cells.

So I think it’s just a few of those underlying mechanisms that help flush toxins out but without you actually getting to the point where you sweat. So it’s still good to sweat if you can get there, but I don’t want people to be discouraged or to stop using it if they don’t sweat. It’s kind of a learned response. And it took me many months to be able to get to the sweating point, but I still had significant benefits.

Jodi: Can you tell people that are listening like for sauna, what would you recommend? How many minutes, what temperature, and how often?

Evan: Well, so when I was a newbie, and I thought I knew what I was talking about and maybe had a little bit of ego involved, in the beginning, I’d be like, yeah, half an hour three times a week, 150 degrees Fahrenheit. But after telling that to hundreds of people and then seeing how people respond, that’s way too much and potentially way too often and potentially way too hot.

And here’s the problem is generic, cookie-cutter recommendations and protocols that I used to use even seven, eight years ago, those could even be too much now because our population is becoming so sick and so sensitive that now everything is having to be cut in half: the dosage, the timing in terms of sauna, the temperature. So now, kind of my new recommendation based on people becoming sick and toxic is I’d say about 120 to 130 degrees, and we’re talking far infrared.

So something that’s going to be, not the rock sauna where you’re pouring water and creating this steam, just the far-infrared with the ceramic heaters or the infrared heaters. If you’re in a dry rock sauna, 120 is probably not enough. You’re probably not going to sweat or get any real benefits.

So the hot rock saunas that have no infrared capabilities, those you probably do need to be up in the 160 to 180 range, but you may only tolerate five minutes, and then you got to get out.

And I’ll tell you some more details on the timing and stuff. But I think here’s a few details that people need. You can’t be dehydrated. You can’t be mineral imbalanced. You can’t be deficient in glutathione. You can’t have overwhelmed lymphatic and liver toxicity issues and then try to do a sauna and hope that it’s going to fix all those problems.

So I really think it’s important for people, whether you’re doing Quinton, which is a seawater, or you’re doing electrolytes, adaptogenic herbs, maybe holy basil, Siberian ginseng, maybe some Panax ginseng, some B vitamins, some vitamin C, maybe some liver tonifying, lymphatic tonifying herbs whether it’s red root or milk thistle or red sage or what people call Danshen or salvia for the spleen.

You may need to come in with some of that. Maybe some glutathione, 1 to 300 milligrams. You may need to start building some of that up, fatty acids. You may need phosphatidylcholine. You may need some fish oil.

Some of the baseline supplements like that will prevent you from having a big Herx or die-off reaction. The last thing you want to do is put a super toxic, nutrient-depleted, glyphosate-laden, glutathione-deficient person who’s dehydrated and drinks coffee before water kind of person–

That’s the last thing you want to do, seal them in a sauna for half an hour to 150 degrees. They’re going to feel like crap. So I really think you got to get your foundation in order, and you have to quote “prep” the person. Just like I do fertility coaching with women, like, hey, we got to get your body healthy and ready to have a baby, we got to get the body ready before we just go straight to the sauna.

But once all that’s done, then I think you could go for 130 degrees. I’d say 15, 20 minutes, three times a week. Not back-to-back days. I’d probably put a day in between that. Most people can tolerate that, but if you feel woozy, you feel dizzy, you spacey, you feel disconnected from reality. Your heart feels like it’s beating out of your chest. It’s probably time to get out and go take a cold shower and soap off.

Jodi: It’s funny when I ran my first marathon, there was– Jeff Galloway, who started the New York Roadrunners Association, had this very specific protocol. I like roadmaps, which is why I’m doing the resilience roadmap, but I trained following that specific protocol. And it was great.

And I had a lot of friends that tried to go from 0 to 10 miles, and it killed them. Slow and steady wins the race. So I love that you laid that out. Thank you so much.

Evan: Yeah. And it’s hard. It’s hard for your ego, too, because most of the sick people that we work with are type A’s. They are CEOs or executives. They are attorneys. They are teachers. They are moms with three kids. And these are go-getters. I mean, the reason people are listening and watching right now is because they’re go-getters. They’re on the hustle. They are on the grind to feel better.

These are the type of people who maybe they’re perfectionists. They’re that more type-A person. They want to get stuff done. Come on, baby. Give it to me, and I’m going to do it.

But you really get your ego checked when you try to go all-in, and you go too fast and too hard. And I’ve made that mistake. I went too high with Chlorella. I’ve gone too high with the sauna temperature in the duration. I’ve gone too high in terms of glutathione production.

I made myself busy for days on end because I did too many binders for mold detox. So I’ve learned by suffering, but I think just go slow and steady. And you got to take your time because all of us want to get better yesterday, but tomorrow is the next best day to get better. But it may take a year. It may take two. It may take three, and that’s okay.

I think people just have to remember, look, if you’ve been sick for 40 years and you get better in three years, that’s pretty damn fast. But I have some clients that they’ll say, oh, it’s been six weeks, and I’m only a little bit better. It’s like only six weeks. You need to frame it as in six weeks, you’ve got 5%, 10% better. That’s incredible. You’ve been sick the same for 40 years.

So six weeks to make that significant of change is massive. So I think people lose perspective. And I think that’s part of the problem with resiliency too, is like– I think Amazon ruined us all because everything’s two-day shipping. So we want two-day results. And if we don’t have it, it’s like, I’m frustrated. Where’s my energy? I wanted to take this pill and feel better now. And if it’s not now, that instant gratification society we’ve turned into, it’s just– we’re like little kids. We’re like little whiny babies. It’s like, no, I don’t feel anything yet. It’s like, you’re two days in. Give it two months. Give it two years.

Jodi: Yeah. The other thing I wanted to delve into because you’re such an expert is herbs. Those that are listening are probably familiar with pills, with pharmaceutical drugs. Can you talk a little bit about herbs and how they’re so good for the gut microbiome and how they work? Why you pick herbs?

Evan: Sure. Well, let’s compare and contrast because I think that’d be a fun intro into it. If you go down the road to your GP, you tell them you’ve got diarrhea. Actually, I’ll tell you exactly what happens because my grandfather just did this last week. He had diarrhea for about a week, and I gave him some charcoal, and then I gave him some ginger and some herbs. I’m like, you’re going to be fine. Just hang in there. We’re going to get you through this.

He freaks out. He’s old school. He’s like, I’m going to go to the doctor. So the doctor orders a CT scan for diarrhea. I mean, this is not an x-ray. I mean, we’re talking potentially 50 to 100 times more radiation than an x-ray. Guess what? The CT scan comes back perfectly normal. They put a radioactive tracer in his body for no reason.

And guess what the doctor says? Here’s some antibiotics. Take them for a month. I’m like, okay, a CT scan, which shows nothing. And now you’re just guessing that he needs an antibiotic, and you’re going to recommend that for a month. I mean, that is insane. This is happening every day. It’s hard to believe in 2021, when we’re recording this, that that’s still the typical prescription. But I hear it every day, all day.

So that’s the conventional model. And of course, what that’s going to do, if we’re talking gut infection, still in resiliency, the bacteria, the Candida, the parasites, whatever you’re after, maybe you kill some of that with the antibiotics. It is true antibiotics do have some anti-inflammatory properties. I will admit that, but they’re not root cause.

If you use an antibiotic for parasites, it’s probably not going to treat those effectively. And if you have fungal issues, it’s probably not going to treat that either because those are antibiotics, not antifungals. Then you’ve disrupted your gut even more. Now you’ve damaged your mitochondria, even more, so you are more tired, and your gut is more a mess.

So that’s why I do herbs. So if we were to test you and you showed up with Giardia and Crypto and Blasto and H. pylori and Candida, which is a common occurrence to happen altogether, we’re going to come in with herbs that have similar properties in terms of killing bacteria that don’t belong, knocking out fungal infections. Something like a nice statin would do but in herbal form. And then also we’re going to help lower inflammation. You can do all that with herbs, and you can do it with virtually zero side effects ever unless you kill too much too fast. Maybe someone has a couple of loose bouts of stool. But beyond that, the safety profile is incredibly– it’s amazing how safe herbs are.

Even though the FDA, I saw last week or week before, they took all NAC, Nacetylcysteine, which is not an herb. It’s a nutrient. But they took all Nacetylcysteine supplements off of Amazon. And I don’t know if it’s going to get reclassified as a drug or what, but we know with viral issues that have happened, we know that NAC is an amazing way to help the body. And it’s a very important precursor for glutathione, which is your master antioxidant.

So we see the war on herbs, and we see that if you go to the doctor and you tell them you’re on herbs, their initial gut reaction is stop all supplements. I remember when I went to the hospital, when I was having– I thought I had a blood clot. My leg felt swollen. It was red. It was hot. I thought, okay, I’ve got a blood clot on my leg.

I went into the ER years ago, and they asked me what supplements I was taking. They didn’t know any of what I was talking about, any of the herbs. But they just said stop all the supplements. That may have contributed to this.

It’s like, that’s their initial gut reaction. So I just encourage people, don’t be afraid. But let’s be a little more actionable. So what herbs could you use to help resiliency? Well, adaptogenic herbs are going to be the category to go for because these are things that have been around for thousands of years.

We know that whatever culture you look at, China’s probably the most studied culture with adaptogens. They have been using them for at least 3000 years. And these are things that you can take in acute stress situations. Or these are things you can take long-term as more of a tonic resilience-building effect.

So I like to do both. And so, more acute things would be like Rhodiola. So if you’re going to do a tough mudder event and you need some extra physical endurance, Rhodiola is something that’s been shown to help reduce hypoxia. Or if for some reason you’ve got some type of illness that’s stealing your oxygen, we know that Rhodiola will actually protect the cells against hypoxia, which is basically starvation of oxygen.

So Rhodiola is something that I personally keep on hand. I recommend tincture form, and you could also do capsules. I like to do Gaia Professional. They’ve got a Liquid Phyto-Cap, so there’s liquid inside. And as soon as that cap gets to your tummy, it breaks open, and the liquid absorbs immediately.

Now, Rhodiola could also be used long-term. So we use it a lot for anxiety. It’s a very potent antidepressant too. So when we look at depression, depression is if not number one, it’s number two top leading cause of disability in the United States. Rhodiola can help reverse that statistic.

And it also is incredible for physical endurance. So if you’re someone who’s working physically, whether it’s just in the garden or whether you work in the construction industry or you’re building a tiny home or whatever you’re doing, Rhodiola is something that’s going to give you that extra physical oomph. So that’s a game-changer.

I would say my second favorite would be eleuthero, which a lot of people know as Siberian ginseng. I like to mix those. So I’ll often do about 2 to 500 milligrams of Rhodiola early in the day. Don’t do it past noon, or you probably won’t sleep because you’re going to be so energetic.

So morning Rhodiola, like maybe 8:00 a.m. You could take 200 to 500 milligrams of Rhodiola. Unless you’re bipolar, don’t take it because it can really jack up your mood. I don’t know what the mechanism is, but some bipolar people, they just go too manic.

They just get so happy, and then they crash. So that’s good, but not if you crash. So just be a little cautious if you’re diagnosed bipolar. But I would argue bipolar is probably just a made-up name, and there’s probably root causes triggering that, but that’s a whole another can of worms.

Jodi: Gut-related. Yeah.

Evan: Yeah, exactly. So eleuthero, you could probably come in around 150 to 300 milligrams. So that would be a great stack. If someone’s like, how do I increase resiliency? How do I feel better? Three hundred milligrams of Rhodiola with 300 milligrams of Siberian ginseng is a pretty good broadspectrum approach. For 99% of people, that would work amazing.

And there’s rarely, if any, possible side effects besides less fatigue, less anxiety, less depression, more energy, more drive, more motivation. I mean, that’s about the list of side effects you’re going to get.

Jodi: That’s wonderful. It’s a great hack. We won’t make them guess or test, but they can start there. What do you think of ashwagandha?

Evan: I love ashwagandha. A lot of people they are fearful about it. There’s this talk about ashwagandha potentially being a problem for people with Hashimoto’s or other autoimmune conditions. I tell you. I’ve used ashwagandha in hundreds of female clients that have Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune issues. It is not a problem at all. I don’t know who fudged what study or whatever, how that became a scary thing.

It is true that ashwagandha is a nightshade, but I believe when you’re extracting the beneficial component from the ashwagandha, I believe it’s so far removed that it doesn’t have that same nightshade triggering effect like tomatoes, and peppers and potatoes would in a nightshade sensitive patient. So I don’t think it’s a problem. Ashwagandha for some people is good, not good for others. Who would it not be good for?

Well, I’ve noticed people with chronic fatigue, it can go one way or the other. Some people with chronic fatigue, ashwagandha, it really lifts them up and helps them come out of the depression that is usually associated with the fatigue. Other people, it tends to make them more tired. I don’t know if it’s– some people, it has a cortisol lowering effect, and others, it raises cortisol.

I mean, adaptogens are supposed to balance you. They’re supposed to help you. You give the body the nutrients, and the body decides what to do with it. But honestly, I would probably go for holy basil before I would go for ashwagandha because holy basil is one that, especially on the topic of resilience, holy basil is something that makes me feel pretty much invincible. I mean, when I take holy basil, I almost walk around with an S on my chest for Superman.

I feel amazing. I feel like I can conquer the world. I’m not afraid of anything. It eases fears. It eases anxiety. If you’re facing physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress, as most of us are, to me, holy basil is something I would go for long before I would touch ashwagandha.

I do like ashwagandha, but I personally am going to use it like mid to late afternoon, and it helps with sleep. So if I take it like 4:00 p.m., I’m going to sleep so much better that night. But the weird thing is if I take it at 10:00 p.m. right before bed, it messes up my sleep.

Jodi: Oh, interesting.

Evan: So there is a timing component to this thing too.

Jodi: Wonderful. Well, this has been so helpful. And I mean, you’ve really given us so many tools for resilience. Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you’d like to add?

Evan: I think everyone could benefit from a gentle binder. I’ve tested hundreds, if not over a thousand clients. And I can tell you everyone’s toxic. And I think everyone could benefit from a gentle binder. And binders scare people because it sounds like you’re going to deplete all your minerals and all of that. It’s simply not true.

Maybe you’re losing a tiny fraction of your minerals if you’re doing something like charcoal or zeolite or bentonite clay or Chlorella or cilantro, but you have to do a risk-reward analysis. There’s so much benefit in removing toxins and so low risk of maybe depleting a tiny fraction of a mineral-like with charcoal.

So I think everyone could benefit from doing, let’s just say, 250 milligrams, which is a pretty standard dose of charcoal. Two hundred fifty milligrams of charcoal before bed, every night. Try it out for a few weeks. Try it out for a month. My wife completely reversed her sleeping issues with charcoal.

Jodi: And if people don’t understand what a binder is, toxins often get reabsorbed in the gut, and binders are like magnets. They pull them out so that they leave the body.

Evan: Exactly. Yeah. And you poop them out. So if you’re constipated, it’s possible that charcoal makes you a little more constipated. And if you have to take some sort of prescription medication, obviously, don’t take that at the same time because it’ll reduce the effectiveness of the medication.

However, most people don’t take meds before bed unless it’s a sleeping pill. And we probably could get you off that sleeping pill if we just fixed your gut and fixed all these other issues.

Jodi: Do you have any brands you love of binders?

Evan: Yeah. So Bio-Botanical Research makes a good one called GI Detox.

Jodi: That one works well for everyone. Yeah.

Evan: Yeah. It’s a good general one. Beyond Balance has a good one too. They’re a practitioner brand. So you have to have a practitioner order it, but they have one called TOX-EASE BIND®, which is like a fulvic acid charcoal blend.

That one works amazing too. But if you’re on a budget or if you just need something easy, even just a good organic coconut shell-based charcoal, we use one from a company called Vita Aid, V-I-T-A, Vita Aid. And it’s just charcoal with some organic ginger.

My wife completely reversed her sleeping issues with charcoal before bed. And I think the mechanism for her was we got exposed to mold at our previous home. And I believe what happened was the mold– I know what happened. I know one of the mechanisms. This is my guess of how I fixed it, though.

We know the mechanism of mold. It affects the gut, but it also affects melatonin production. So I believe that mold is down-regulating melatonin. So by using charcoal, she was binding up the mold toxin, then her natural production of melatonin was able to self-regulate and then hence the amazing sleep.

So that’s something easy, and charcoal is so broad-spectrum and very gentle. It will help with pesticides, herbicides. It will help with certain heavy metals. It will help with certain mycotoxins like ochratoxin. It is probably the most common mycotoxin that comes from Aspergillus, which is one of the most common molds in a water-damaged building. It works great for ochratoxins.

So you may need other things like the clays and the zeolites and the charcoal mix with fulvic acid blends. But if you’re just like, hey, I need something easy. I’m a sensitive person. I react to a lot of supplements. Charcoal’s probably your best bet. Two hundred, maybe 300 milligrams once a day is plenty.

And if you’re pooping every day, you’re in good shape. If you’re constipated, you may need to do three or four grams of vitamin C during the day. Try to make sure your bowels are moving because whether you’re using binders or not, if you’re not pooping every day, you got a big problem on your hands, and you’re not going to be resilient as a constipated person. You’ve got to be pooping.

Jodi: That’s my favorite line. CellCore makes some good ones that you can take with food too. They’re a good one.

Evan: Jay Davidson’s good. Yeah. I like all of his binders. Yeah. The fulvic acids go a long way.

Jodi: Yeah. Well, this was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing so many tools of resilience. Please share how people can find you.

Evan: Yeah. Just check out my website. It’s Evanbrand.com. I’ve got the podcast there. It’s like 400-plus episodes. It’s all free. Jodi’s been on there several times. So check her out on there. We always have fun together. And the consult information, if people need help clinically, I work virtually. So if people need help, all the info is on the site.

Jodi: Thank you so much.

Evan: Thank you, Jodi.

Jodi Cohen

Jodi Sternoff Cohen is the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. An author, speaker, nutritional therapist, and a leading international authority on essential oils, Jodi has helped over 50,000 individuals support their health with essential oils.