Eposide 92: Why Unimportant Molecules are the Key to Your Health with Dr. Joe Pizzorno, ND
Show Summary:
Dr. Pizzorno is a transformational leader in medicine. As founding president of Bastyr University in 1978, he coined the term “science-based natural medicine,” and has authored impactful books such as Textbook of Natural Medicine and The Toxin Solution. Today we are shedding light on the unsung heroes in the nutrition world, so-called ‘unimportant molecules’, the topic of Dr. Pizzorno recent article in Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal. In this conversation, Dr. Pizzorno walks us through the hidden depths and remarkable impact of these unimportant molecules on our health and wellness and gives practical tips for improving your nutrition. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
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Full Transcript:
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
A lot of the research was done on animals. And it was done based on water as we keep animals alive, or if there's some really obvious real severe deficiency thing. And same thing in humans. In humans, it was water, so keep them alive or because we experiment on humans, it's while there's some gross deficiency diseases, we can we can detect. So what happened then is we ended up Detroit deciding that what was important, or these molecules and elements in the food that are necessary for life unless there was a really severe obvious deficiency disease. So we then add up all the vitamins and minerals and
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
amino acids and fatty acids and things like that turns out to be 42 molecules and total molecules and almonds and total. But then we look at food in the wild state. And you ask the question, well, how many molecules in food in the wild state? Turns out there's 50,000 molecules? So we decided that only point 1% of what was in food was actually necessary for human health, and the other 90% was, quote, unimportant.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Welcome to another episode of the capital Integrative Health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Huang, and today we have a really important episode in store for you with Dr. Joe Paterno. Dr. Persona is a transformational leader in medicine recognized nationally and internationally with his pioneering work in naturopathic medicine and functional medicine. As founding president of Western University in 1978. He coined the term ScienceBase natural medicine, and has authored many impactful books, including the textbook of natural medicine, and the toxin solution books that we use in our clinic here today.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Today, we're shedding light on the unsung heroes in the nutrition world called unimportant molecules by Dr. Joe. And this is a topic of his recent article that was published in the integrative medicine clinicians journal. In this conversation, Dr. Persona walks us through the hidden depths and remarkable impact of these quote unquote, unimportant molecules, which are actually some of the most important molecules that affect our own health and wellness, and gives practical tips for improving your nutrition. So this is a bit of a mystery of what these unimportant molecules are. If you'd like to know more, please listen on. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Welcome back, Dr. Joe Pisano. Thanks so much for coming on. Again.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Thank you for the invitation, I look forward to our conversation. So
Dr. Andrew Wong
in round two, we're really excited to have you back for conversation all about unimportant molecules. And I know that that word sounds unimpressive. But but I'm sure we're gonna really dive into the importance of that here. We have you back on episode 21. About how toxins are making us sick. And we really recommend for listeners who haven't listened that conversation with Dr. Joe, please go ahead and listen to that. Mike, give a good background to to this highly recommended. So today we're talking about a really important topic, actually unimportant molecules. And that's a topic of an article you published in 2021. And integrative medicine, a clinicians journal. So let's start with the obvious question, Dr. Jeff, that's okay. What is an unimportant molecule? And what led you to want to bring attention to these molecules?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
So obviously, that's, it was facetious to use the term unimportant, but I thought it would be a way to grab attention. Yeah. So you know, I've been studying nutrition research now for over half a century. And now I've used a therapeutically a lot. But as I was looking into the research a few years ago, I had a sudden revelation. And that is that so much of the core research that was done to determine what humans need from the food supply was done over 100 years, 100 years ago, and 100 years ago, our understanding physiology of the time was limited. And the technology we have for determining what was in food was limited. So a lot of the research was done on animals, and it was done based on water as we keep animals alive. Or if there's some really obvious real severe deficiency thing. And same thing in humans. In humans, it was water, so keep them alive or because we experiment on humans, it's while there's some gross deficiency diseases, we can we can detect. So what happened then is we ended up Detroit deciding that what was important, or these molecules and elements in the food that are necessary for life unless there was a really severe obvious deficiency disease. So we then add up all the vitamins and minerals and amino acids and fatty acids and things like that turns out to be 42 molecules in total molecules and elements in total. But then we look at food in the wild state. And you asked the question, well, how many molecules are in food in the wild state? Turns out there's 50,000 molecules. So we decided that only 2.1% of what was in food was actually necessary for human health and yelling 99% was, quote, unimportant. I didn't say it was that important, but by implication, it was important because it wasn't important. So then you look at what happens to food when it's grown chemically rather than organically, I no longer use the term conventional growing, I'm using the term conventional chemically growing foods, we can grow foods, where you do lose some of the vitamins and minerals, you definitely lose trace minerals. It's not dramatic, it's real, it's not dramatic. But if you look at the other molecules, well, when you grow food chemically around organically, these other molecules are left. And not that you then add to it, the hybridization and GMOs, which are all done for a specific purpose of creating higher levels of some particular molecules in the food, or necessarily, when you make a plant grow more one molecule in the food, it's gonna grow less of other molecules in the food. So you want more protein, that's fine. But we're not gonna have as much flavonoids and carotenoids and things like this. So now we compare, we do really careful studies comparing organically grown foods to chemically grown foods, you'll find that many of these crock note and flavonoids, these things we call miraculous phytochemicals, well, they're down 90 to 100%. Mean, some have disappeared from food supply entirely. So what was maintained in the food supply was just enough of the color, just enough of the characteristic taste that you would know it's a tomato, for example, if you compare the tomatoes grown chemically to tomatoes grown organically to tomatoes growing in my own garden, you would think they're different foods. Because tomatoes and my garden have way more flavor, which tells me they have more modules, just what produce flavor in the foods is two different molecules. So organic foods tastes better, because they have all these other diverse molecules that turn out to be really important for health. Okay, that was a long answer. But that's the whole thesis.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah. So that that is a great answer. Just to kind of piggyback on what you just said, about chemically grown foods versus organic beef or something grown in Duck Joe's garden? Is there a difference between the molecule concentration in your own garden tomatoes, let's say versus a, you know, quote, unquote, industrially grown organic type of tomato?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Yes, it is dramatic. Now, obviously, I have not analyzed my own tomatoes, I have to compare it to other organic tomatoes. Maybe
Dr. Andrew Wong
you had a mass spec machine in your backyard as well. I'm sure
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
your listeners would like to find that my undergraduate degree happens to be an analytical chemistry. There it is to test my garden for the nutrients and also for toxins to do everything I can to avoid the toxins. But, you know, the environmental statutes hard, it's hard to avoid them.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, yeah. So you're talking about these unapproved molecules like flavonoids, other types of phytochemicals that are not necessarily prevalent in the research, and we know that things that are researched are deemed important. But these other things are almost, if anything, would you say between the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids versus these quote unquote, unimportant molecules? What is the balance of importance in them in terms of human health, in your estimation, between the things that are researched versus
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
to differentiate between life and health? Okay, so all those 42 nutrients are required for health for life, okay. They're also required for health as well. But these other molecules are really the next step in promoting health. And there's just so many examples, because I think one reason why it's been not recognized is because differences can be a little bit so for example, Florida. So 14 is a flavonoids. That is last week real foods chemically look at tomato, say leaves 9% of the floor 10 When their foods are grown chemically. So why is Florida important? Well, Fortune does things like helps us detoxify arsenic more effectively, help protect our DNA from arsenic damage. So we add to we do the combination, then, ever increasing levels of arsenic population, while losing these other molecules that body utilizes for detoxification, you get more disease was hard to make a one to one correlation, okay? Because this is the subtle thing. So we would say, well, your 14th floor was not just floor 10 1000s, or there was a lower as well. So the all Laurene it. So it means that was hard to say, Well, this one molecules can cause all the trouble. We look at all the molecules be more Yeah. Huge physiological impacts.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So Dr. Joe, thank you and let's say, you know, listener out there that is asking, well, it's so great that you know, we're talking about these different flavonoids different, but a chemicals that are are really important. What is the evidence that that shows that if you eat more of those flavonoids, that that people will do better and thrive more and you know, have better health?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
So that's where we started starting all this I don't nutrient research. Well, it's just so exciting look at this final nutrients is gonna help with that this Daniel the disease? Well, it's only been helpful because those molecules left the food supply. Okay? Yeah. So, example after example, let's look at something like curcumin, miso waitwait procurement nessa spice. Yes, but procurement is similar to many other flavonoids they've been lost. So why don't we get people to Kerman clinically? Well, they have less cancer, they have less inflammation, they have lot better longevity. I mean, there's example after example, there's molecules that promote the healthy function in the body. And now Oh, we're so excited to put in the pill and sell to people? Well, that's fine. No problem with that, but specifically in the food supply. Okay, let's fix the food supply.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Let's let's let's fix it. Let's start fixing it now. So how has the food supply change over the past 100 years? And then, you know, what, what other kinds of compounds, if you would mentioned some other compounds that are found in whole foods that don't exist in processed foods that that may have been lost?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
So again, a good example. So there's actually research as compared the nutrient content of food over time, a number of studies that typically are only doing it back to the 1950s. Because before then the technology was so poor, we don't have good data on food, although there have been some examples where foods have been stored for long periods of time, and then analyze using crude technology. So let me start right there. So there's one study that was done, where they had what's called hard red wheat, that was used to be that that the US has been shipping to Europe for over 100 years. Okay, we're, as you know, we're at kind of the new it's the breadbasket of the country of the world, I use the term bread intentionally because we ship a lot of wheat over the world. So they looked at the wheat, trace mineral content of the wheat 123 years ago, compared to now and the trace mineral content was down by 1/3. Okay, not dramatic, not huge. But, you know, as we evolve as a species, we were expecting those minerals to be in the food. So you decrease those minerals and break out from from somewhere else. Alright, we're gonna have more disease. So there are many examples. No, many examples that typically show traditional content of chemically grown foods has decreased significant compared to organic to grow foods. Now, the vitamin levels aren't that much different. protein levels tend to be higher in commercially grown foods, chemically grown foods, because they were hybridized to do more, more protein, okay, so you see more protein, but all the other stuffs can be kind of be a little bit lower. Now we can look at other molecules as well, let's look at what's no one that I looked at that was important. Eliminate, now eliminate hasn't decreased that much. Because we can, we can get eliminated and Scifest, proximate and things of this nature. So it's decreased a bit. But what's fascinating is, there's a lot of research now looking at chemical derivatives of limonene to be used as anti cancer agents. So eliminate physiologically active blocks. Last time I read was cute diagram. In one of my lectures, there were 22 different steps in the initiation of cancer that were blocked by limiting. Okay, so now we're allowing eliminate to decrease this levels in the food supply, so that we can then chemically modify eliminated, give it back to people to treat the cancer that was caused by removing lemonade from food supply. Yeah, circular process that produced a lot of profit to
Dr. Andrew Wong
do it is logic. Yeah, yeah. Removing it, then we're all flavonoids and phytochemical deficiency. So then we need to consume those in a supplement form. And I think I'll, I'll serve up a softball question here. So maybe this is taking a supplement of flavonoids or phytochemicals? Is that as good as eating the real food? Or what's the difference there?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Good. Good. Good question. So yeah, obviously, the real food is always going to be our best choice. Now, having said that, we can see areas where we might use supplements or flavonoids to help make up for that problem for the food supply. But there's also some situations where a five no will have a specific physiological effect that we want. And so we'll get people large doses of it, and also in a form that's more easily absorbable. So this is kind of interesting. Actually, I'd love your thoughts on this, because I've been looking at the absorption of most flavonoids is only three to 5%. And the half life of the flavonoids in the body is are typically 12 to 24 hours. So no one's the wiser not absorbed flavonoids very well. It gets through them very quickly. But yet floodlights have huge physiological effects. So classic as we evolved as a species, we have a way to diagnose a lot of flavonoids and that and because they had so much control over our physiology GE were to make sure that they didn't hang around for too long period of time didn't do anything. We didn't really want just cut anthropomorphizing what what he was trying to figure out. So these things, it's clear, we don't want too much of them. That's kind of hard to do, though.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, yeah. So we eat them fairly constantly, but but also intermittently. And in moderation. You know, in terms of
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
diet, flavonoids love has gone down pretty significantly. Yeah, yeah. I can't prove it. Okay, because n Haynes has not been tracking flower night levels. That's extremely interesting. So there's no tracking but where I can find a traditional study, it shows the flatline levels are lower, and chemically grown foods. How
Dr. Andrew Wong
easy is it to research flavonoids, right? We have data for heavy metals from in Haynes, we have probably data for other things, right, but
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
flavonoids in and just put flavonoids into PubMed and do limit humans, that you'll get 10s of 1000s of articles. There's a lot so
Dr. Andrew Wong
so we could we could study we could actually study it. Yeah, yes. That's
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
why I wrote the article. Okay. Yeah. Look, all this research on these things are important for health. Let's get the food supply effects. So we get them back into our food supply.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So Joe, how do we fix the food supply? You know, it's been kind of declining in terms of mineral content, flavonoid content. There's different you know, pesticides, glyphosate, you know, all that stuff? How do we how do we actually start to restore that? There's
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
no substitute for organic farming. Now, the people the apologists for the farmer, you'll say, Well, yes, but how you can feed the world's millions. If you don't use all these chemicals, and all these GMOs, things of this nature, it's a valid question. Growing foods organically rather than chemically is indeed, some of more difficult and somewhat more expensive. But the problem with that answer that with that, with that assertion that we need to feed all the people is because this is the pathway we've taken, we now suffer the highest burden of chronic disease in every age group ever in human history. So yeah, we make the food a little cheaper. We make healthcare way more expensive. And we now count, at least in the US, for what we're now up to 22% of gross domestic product. One out of every $5 spent United States is for unhealth care. Do you think it's because we're giving people food that don't support health? Yes,
Dr. Andrew Wong
we're pouring money into health care and taking health out of our food. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But Nicolas? Yeah, so investing upfront and that? Yeah, and I think there's probably, yeah, the yield question is interesting, but I wonder if using a more nutrient dense, if someone had more nutrient dense diet, they would, they would be, you know, able to thrive. You know, more than a nutrient poor, calorie rich diet, you know, that kind of thing.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Every day, you look at the compares standard American diet, the SAD diet to a whole foods diet or plant based diet, it always shows the more whole foods and organic growing the foods, the healthier that people are. Their study after study shows anything less cancer, greater longevity. And, you know, frankly, my own personal experience. My wife and I, we're in our mid 70s. And family and friends in our age group are either dead have major disease, or they're done with life. They're a bit too sad to see.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So so it sounds like we need to farm organically, shop organically, maybe grow some of our own vegetables and things in our garden. Yeah,
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
all your transport containers, the happy little toxin that B class, or other little toxin of forms, because if you grow fruits organically, you put it into a canned well the cans can be lined with this phenols and you get this feeling
Dr. Andrew Wong
besides glass, any other recommendations for storage of food? Is there anything else besides glass?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
My glass clear my preference? There are some plastics that are less toxic than other plastics. And I'm actually it's Wednesday, so I'm actually working on it at trial now where I'm looking at the plastic see on plastic have these little numbers on them? I'm not going through the the numbers to say which ones is it gonna be okay for the fruit to be stored in it? Which ones is not okay. I
Dr. Andrew Wong
know that I attend taught us with the three, six and seven are the ones that are the ones that are not as good potentially.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
So I'm this one my strengths and my one my weaknesses. One of my weaknesses is I don't tend to accept other people's opinions
Dr. Andrew Wong
on what Yes, trust but verify, which is to say do your own research. Oh,
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
I know this is where I'm actually directly looking at the research myself. And I don't like review articles, because you look at the biases for the inclusion exclusion criteria. So I just do a brute force I just look at it but the studies not abstract by the way. 65% of abstracts have errors in them ranging from minor to report the exact opposite of what the data showed, okay. So you got to look at the data. Now. If the data has been fixed, not much you can do about that, but some fake research out there now it's it's really scary.
Dr. Andrew Wong
I know. Did you read the Dr. Gabby's article on that? I think there was an article about how he was talking about how there's a lot of nutrition research sets that's fade in and things like that.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
I think I published published one of his articles on that. Yeah. If you go to PubMed, I have two articles in PubMed. Why looked at? Here's an example of fraudulent research that's being used to support public policy. I mean, it's stunning how bad it is.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So we do know that that you know, vitamins and minerals found in whole foods have a better, it sounds like a better outcome for us can help us thrive not just survive, really? Are there certain foods that that's more important to focus on, you know, Hey, eat regeneratively. And for this, these particular kind of super foods,
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
so it's really pretty straightforward. Now, this will miss something, some things but in general, the more colorful the food, the more flavonoids and carotenoids it has. And this can be healthier, pure and simple. Eat colorful foods, like blueberries, for example. Blueberries are great, particularly when they're wild, wild or farmed. But even better a bilberries because bilberries are blue all the way through not just so there's anytime you eat a food that's likely to be healthier for you.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Alright, what about taste? I know that sometimes a lot of the fruits now are, you know, cultivated for sweetness for the sugar content, you know, let's say so. So you can have a really plump, quote unquote, organic blueberry and it tastes like of eating sugar, right? Just like the wild blueberry from Maine or something like that. or Canada or something? Is there a is there a difference in like the taste of a food, you said color that makes a lot of sense. The difference
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
in the taste in the food is due to the unimportant molecules like sweet, sweet, salty, salty, things like that. But in general, most of the things that give food have a flavor, a characteristic flavor. Those are all these other molecules. I have great anecdote on this. So way back in the late 70s, had a patient who had just opened a new restaurant in Seattle, and it was getting all this praise for this wonderful restaurant, create food, incredible chefs, etc. So he, he was my patient, he came to see me he says, Well, you know, one of my secrets said, Well, yeah, he said, all my food is organic. I don't own foods. So I'm struggling with food that itself case better. So all my chef needs to do is kind of tweak it, rather than to cover up the lack of tastes with with all these spices and such. So you didn't just the
Dr. Andrew Wong
number one rule number one for restaurants is start with good food. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Number one restaurant in Seattle. Good chef,
Dr. Andrew Wong
no good food. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the chefs are just taking that wisdom from nature. They're that bounty. So we can bring unimportant molecules it sounds like back into our diets by by reviving the RE fertilizing, if you will, the farming system, maybe growing some of our own foods. Educating which is what you're doing here is the thank you very much for that. Are there any other I guess, I guess I have a question more more clinically, which, you know, obviously, we're a clinic as well. If if our food system is not, you know, healthy right now, as we're building this up, should everyone be on a, you know, phyto multivitamin kind of situation? Or, you know, what do you think about that? Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Actually, Mike Murray, I just finished writing a new book, tentatively titled The Case for supplements. And we point out that first off, the food supply is so depleted. We need nutrition, nutritional supplements to take care of that. But the other problem, as we've talked about before, is the environment so polluted. And the way that many of these toxins worse is by competing for cofactors and enzyme systems. And those cofactors and enzyme systems are typically vitamins and minerals. So you'll have a higher level of a toxin, e more the vitamin or mineral to compete with a toxin for the enzyme system, so it'll work properly. So it's not only replacing what's missing from the food supply, it's protecting itself from the environment. So
Dr. Andrew Wong
it sounds like it's basic biology and genetic kinetics, we just need more of those vitamins to overcome the toxins in addition of the enzyme activity.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Exactly. And then we know that a lot of these things like air pollution, increased oxidative stress. So now we need more antioxidants to protect us from the oxygen Doxon stress.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, yeah, we're dealing with the wildfires right now. Oh, yeah. Good, good. Well, I mean, from Canada, you know, coming coming down, but it really affects, you know, global global situation. We're all connected. So and I do want to kind of touch on on something I think you probably have fun with HTTP. So Dr. Bland, Himalayan Tartary buckwheat, have you heard Have you tried that? Is that Is that considered a superfood here? That you would recommend? Sure. I mean, this is something that seems like it has a lot of different phytochemicals in it. Yes, actually,
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
yes, a friend of mine, we've been talking about it. And it was just another aspect of all this. So we're looking at the final nutrient content of food. What makes it go up? What makes it go down? Well, one thing Mexico down is using chemical fertilizers, and nothing makes it go down is by using glyphosate. So glyphosate is a widely used herbicide. And everybody AppSync is aware of Roundup, things like that, it damages the micro zone of the microflora of the Earth, so that the plants then cannot, can't grow properly. And it poisons what's called the shikimate pathway, the shikimate pathway, they said it's okay to poison that because it only exists in plants. That's true. But these shikimate pathway to produce polyphenols, which is what flour by itself, makes the polyphenols put out there, they're so important. Another one that this was a surprise that I that was a big surprise to me and changed my gardening technique. We all know about tilling the soil, cancels everything you do you have your crops done. Now you tell soil and bring the plant material depth down underneath it can compost well that's fine. The problem is we tilled the soil up again break up the microflora of the soil. And plants are grown until soil, even if organic have less flavonoids. So there's so many things we stop putting chemicals in, whilst we need to change how we modify our soil.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah. And just to add about the shikimate pathway, it sounds like it also affects our own gut microbiome, right? Because we have bacteria effects from our gut as well.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
I guess I'm aware of doing that I haven't, haven't dug dug into research enough now to understand what exactly has happened clinically, but we do know what is happening.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, this is talk to Dr. Stephanie Senath. On our podcast she was chatting about about that, from Hawaii, I think dev day, definitely, you know, what affects the soil, and the plants is going to affect us. And that's basically since we're, we're part of nature, you know, we were nature's with inside of us as well. That's, I think, what maybe, maybe the mind, it's a mindset thing. I mean, do we do we just consumers of food, and we're maybe not as connected to the earth as we used to be? So then we kind of see all these shiny packages at Costco, it must be good. It says organic, or, you know, or it's a lowest price. So I'm going to buy this. How can we increase our awareness of of this issue here?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
So let me answer that a little differently. I believe that the only solution to this is going to be consumer decisions. Okay. Right. So when the consumers go out, and only buy organically grown foods, and don't buy chemical grown foods, that chemical GM foods, they're going to become less frequent. I, I'm not exactly answering your question. But I'm trying to say what did we do
Dr. Andrew Wong
with that? That is it's the consumer has the the power the checkbook have the power of the checkbook? Or, you know, yeah.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Most any conventional grocery store, at least in areas that are more health conscious, and almost all of them now have an organic section of some sort. Okay, 20 years ago, none of them had it. So we were having an impact.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, yeah. And where do you see on the horizon for, like big farms? Are they also basically trying to convert some of their, or a lot of their agriculture to organic?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Well, they're supposed to, unfortunately, think too much of the work is just my opinion on what's true or not. But surely what looks like most of the work is trying to convince Congress to the simplest way to call it back, so you can slip in more and more polluted food into our food supply. So right now, the extenders are pretty worrisome. And I would, we have the event here in Seattle, where we have pizza, consumers calm, and they actually work with local farmers to make sure they're doing true organic food. So I know that when I buy from them, and why grow my own food, it's organic. I start going to the big grocery stores and buying organic foods. Their standards are clearly lower because of the many loopholes to Congress is a lot because of lobbying by agribusiness.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, I think certainly there's ways to debit laws that are not beneficial to human health, necessarily, but maybe beneficial to corporations. Just to touch, I think, on lists for listeners as well, this is another important point that we've said a couple of times as podcasts, but I think it's really important is there's a lot of buzzwords out there, right? There's natural, right? You go to like Target all natural cheeses or something right or something. Then there's a Ganic there's Regeneron Have what is what's the difference between? I think it's it's just a basic point. But it's probably important for people to understand this. What is natural? When it says natural, you know, what is organic? And then when is regenerative or pasture raised or something like that?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Yes, I can tell the term natural has not much meaning, meaning airway likes the idea. But what comes down to actually the definition of weight can call natural a cat to lupus is so big, I think it's essentially meaningless. So organic is going to be better. As I've met before, if you actually know the farms that grow in the foods and gone visit them by what I've done that everybody should you go business farms are growing the foods, see what they're actually doing. Okay? And you may be a little, maybe a little surprised, hopefully, positively, but there's some negative as well. Now regenerative I think is fantastic concept concept. But again, as I can tell, doesn't have much rigorous meeting. Okay, so I like the idea with the real meeting. I don't know, I don't know, or
Dr. Andrew Wong
the or the solutions to either have had a grown farm, visit the farm go to a co op that, you know, sells products from like a CSA or a farmers farmers market, things like that. That's
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
the best. So yes, grow, grow, grow. But buy organic, where we can even have this marginals to still be better. But if we can, to help the local farmers grow organically and hold them to it.
Dr. Andrew Wong
And we also know that just because a product is not USDA Organic labeled, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's not organic, we're good for you. And in fact, a lot of I remember there's a, there's a USDA organic label, it's very expensive, I believe, to, to put on their products, so a lot of local farmers may not be able to afford that
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
is a very, very valid point. And so that's one reason why it's good to just talk to the farmer see what they're actually doing. A lot of the smaller farmers can't afford tax super expense,
Dr. Andrew Wong
sometimes going to those farmers markets and eating the salad greens and meeting them. And as as I put my fork into the mountain, you know, in my mouth, I see a little bug on it. I'm like, wow, that food must be I don't get stung bug, but I'm like, Hey, that foods probably pretty good. You know, the bugs? A bunch of your food is a good time. Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, I think this is a really great conversation. Dr. Joe, thank you so much for talking about unimportant molecules. What is one thing that you wish everyone knew about these unimportant molecules, just to kind of sum that up a bit?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
The better the food case without spices, the healthier the food is likely to be. How's that sound? Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Wong
no, I think I think that's a really great. That's a really great point. In terms of supplementation, because I know, I know, we talked about that a little bit. Do you have certain supplements that you're kind of like, as an insurance policy? Or is something to kind of optimize healthy would you recommend here? Yes,
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
sure. Yeah, I mean this for a long time, attic for a number of supplements. And I've done more and more, I've tried to take a wide variety of supplements of different molecules at relatively lower dosages. So rather than done with high dose of one thing, I think it's better to do low doses of a wide range of things. So I like using supplements that are more food concentrate kinds of things. So I use a bilberry extract, I use a procurement extract. I use grape grape seed extract, Kokyu tanned, and of course, things like vitamin C.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Thank you. And I've been waiting over 10 years to ask this question. Now that you're reading a book on multivitamins with Dr. Murray, no pressure, but I've been wondering about multivitamins and how they interact with the AR two system antioxidant response system. And I'm wondering if there's any benefit to not taking a multivitamin daily and sort of allowing your body to generate antioxidants on its own? Or is it better just say, hey, daily?
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Guy? That's a great question. I think there's research showing that if you take high levels of antioxidants, when you have an oxidant stress, you won't upregulate your own Percocet hormetic
Dr. Andrew Wong
effect, right. It's kind of a hormetic effect.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
You know, it's a good question. And that's also one reasons why I use a wide variety of these things rather than high dose for one thing. Okay, so yeah, as much as possible to say, Okay, well, here's all the tools you need. And when we should all those tools are there for you to use your wisdom to make be healthy, and I won't force you to do something that day you may not want to do and actually with me, I'd love to hear people can recite now about activated sub nutrients. So for example, wound up be six is not particularly active until becomes P five P. Well now we have a lot of people just taking large doses of P five p that makes me nervous. Because usually, the body has a regulatory system for a reason and I predict It takes b 16, right to purchase certain parts of P five p. So if you start putting a lot of P five p in there, why now you're superseding the buyers decision on how much P five P is going to produce. I'm not saying don't take P five p, why I'm saying this only take P five p, if we know we have a genetic reasons why we can't convert B, six to P five p, the way we should. So just fair warning folks, high doses of the activate nutrients may not be an optimal strategy. So low doses, if you activate nutrients properly, just fine. I
Dr. Andrew Wong
think that probably goes the same way for things like you know, they activated folate activated Kabbalah, and it would be something similar to that, in terms of methylation
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
is a different story. So one thing nobody should be taking folic acid, because that is not a normal molecule. It's actually at high doses can can become toxic. So folic acid is one useful when it becomes methylated. And then it goes into helping remove homocysteine. Well, food sources of folate are already methylated. They don't have to go through MTHFR. Okay, so when it first is to be taken a fully supplement, that's the example I do recommend you get the methylated folate, not the folic acid. Okay, you might say that's actually a form of the version neuter? No, that's actually the normal version of the neutral. So I'm okay with activate fully, because no more just normal version. Got
Dr. Andrew Wong
it? Okay. Great. Well, as you know, part of our mission here at cabinet, integrative health is making integrative health care more accessible, which we're doing with this podcast, thank you very much tighter Joe, and focusing on the small steps, little tiny ETL steps we can take to improve our health. So we'd love to hear from you, Dr. Joe, what is one thing under $20 That you feel personally has transformed your own health. And we talked about supplements, I don't know how many are under $20. So we'll just go with maybe other things.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
I just bought a 25 pound bag of organic fertilizer for $20.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Nice, I mean, that that that would that would do it, that's actually going to generate a lot of a lot of grain worth more than $20.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
My wife, my wife and I are doing our garden is we're not planting just one version of plant like kale, we're planning six different cows, they all take different. The fact that they all taste different meats, they all have different molecules in them. You want them to be the same, but each can have their own distinct different molecules.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So variety is the spice of life or we should say the variety or the way to help your house. Yes, thank you so much. Well, we look forward to your next book coming out. Thank you so much for coming on today. If you would just ask for Pete, your website or other resources that you know people want to learn more about your educational content and everything. So my
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
websites currently down because I'm updating that it's Dr. pizarro.com. And my I think my two most important books now are the toxin solution for consumers, where I tell people how toxic causing damage and how to get them out of the body. And then of course, good old Encyclopedia of natural medicine. It still contains huge amounts of indirectly relevant research to help people get healthier. Now if it's a doctor listening to this, and you're interested in environmental medicine, my textbook clinical Environmental Medicine lays out the most advanced information we have now about how to assess toxic load and how to get toxins out of people.
Dr. Andrew Wong
And for the clinicians out there. I have the book at home. It's a great book. Thank you for reading it. And thank you so much Dr. Joe, great to see you.
Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Take care.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the capital Integrative Health podcast. A quick reminder that the information we share in this podcast is meant for educational and informational purposes only. It's not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. We highly recommend that you speak to a qualified health care provider before making any medical or healthcare decisions. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a few moments to subscribe and leave us a review. Your reviews help us reach more people and continue to offer innovative insights and information to better optimize your health and wellness.