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B12 and Chinese Medicine

Janet Lewis: Hello, and welcome to this week’s show. I’m Janet Lewis.

 

Dr. Lewis: And I’m Dr. Lewis.

 

Janet Lewis: And we are Green Wisdom Health, home of your low cost lab work and knowledge beyond comparison, so educating you today with a very fun show about B12 and the tongue called B12 and Chinese medicine.

 

Dr. Lewis: I wanted to name it B12 and B-52. They’re both the bomb but I got outvoted.

 

Janet Lewis: Yeah, figured he’d have to talk about B-52s and I’m not sure he knows a whole lot about those, other than he likes war movies, so I thought we better stick with B12 and Chinese medicine, and what’s going on with the tongue, because we’ve noticed that some people have different issues with their tongue, and we didn’t know if you knew it or not, but there are correlations between the tongue markers and different organs of the body, so Dr. Lewis is going to educate us about both today. So Dr. Lewis, I’ll let you take it away and tell us all about it.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, where do you want to start, B12 or the tongue?

 

Janet Lewis: Whichever one comes first, the chicken or the egg.

 

Dr. Lewis: Okay. Okay. I got something to say about that but I won’t go there. I was doing a podcast as a guest yesterday, and the guy knew that Janet and I’d gone to China, and he wanted to know about our experience there, and he wanted to talk a little bit more extensively about traditional Chinese medicine. Of course, a few days over in China does not make me qualified to be a traditional Chinese doctor, but we did learn a lot while we were over there. We actually attended some lectures and went to the world’s oldest herbal pharmacy, and did all sorts of things, but-

 

Janet Lewis: And actually took courses in Chinese medicine as well.

 

Dr. Lewis: Yeah, that’s true. I must’ve forgotten because B12 is so important in memory. We’ll get to that. I don’t know where this idea about the tongue came from, that we should talk about it, but it does tell a lot about your general health, and I don’t care. It’s always gut related, GI related, how your GI absorption is going and what to do from there. One of the things that it’s important to keep your GI tract in perfect health is because it’ll bind toxins. It’ll bind microbes and we have a very large percentage of people that have intestinal dysbiosis or too many bad bugs versus good bugs. So there are things that we can do that will help bind those toxins, and there are immunoglobulins and we’re getting into some more new, better different extensive but not expensive lab work to talk about intestinal permeability. But it’s very important that you maintain the gut barrier protection and balance inflammation. And I like to tell people inflammation is not a bad thing because if you weren’t having inflammation, you wouldn’t even be alive. Your physiology would be fizzled out and then some.

 

  And that will optimize nutrient absorption. What’s that got to do with the tongue? Hey, good question. I sounded like my brother when I said that, the smart one. The tongue can give you a big, big hint as to what’s going on in the GI tract, so back to traditional Chinese medicine. You look at the color of the tongue, whether it’s pale, pink, or red. You look at the condition, whether it’s withered or swollen, which is actually normal. You have something called geographic tongue, and I have seen people. They’ll say, “we’ll my tongue did this …” I’m tongue tied. “It does this” and it’s oh, my God. I’d look at it and I’d try not to cringe. The moss coating. Now, most people have a light coating. Some people have none, a few, and many, many people have heavy which is more indicative of a slow moving bowel that has a tendency to have that intestinal dysbiosis or generally just too much yeast.

 

  There’ve been good books written 20, 30, 40 years ago about yeast, and it’s still a problem in society because our GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, which is the plants that we eat actually makes it really hard on the good bacteria, and it makes it more prevalent, or a better environment for the pathological bacteria and yeast to grow. So then you look at the moss color, the coating, but then you look at the color, white, yellow, or other. I’ve seen some that were very, very dark. And then whether it’s dry, moist, or damp. Yeah, this is a lot to look at, and you know, after you see enough tongues-

 

Janet Lewis: How do you tell if your tongue is dry, moist, or damp?

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, those are the people that are always sipping water because it’s kind of too dry and generally, not always, folks, but it can be related to something called Sjogrens, and that is an autoimmune disease that we actually see, and I don’t diagnose since I’m a chiropractor, but when you see these things or people come in and say, “Well, the doctor says I have Sjogren’s Syndrome.” I said, “Yep, okay.” Dry eyes, dry tongue, dry mucus membranes, and one of the best things for that is not just fish oil but fish oil with borage oil, and that helps moisturize things.

 

Janet Lewis: Oh, so when like that commercial that says, “Dry eyes,” that means those people have dry tongues probably.

 

Dr. Lewis: That’s a possibility, yeah.

 

Janet Lewis: Cool.

 

Dr. Lewis: So on the tongue color, a normal tongue is kind of a healthy pink, darker pink. If it’s more anemic it’s light pink or even white. The whiteness would indicate, as I said earlier cold, depressed condition, which would be a generally slow moving GI tract. That way if you see that, you will go on blood building and herbs that would tonify would be indicated, and if you’re anemic, think about that, but I do not recommend that you take iron unless you have lab work. If it’s bright red, like very, very bright red or scarlet, that would be indicative of the GI tract having a hot or irritated condition. You see that a lot in alcoholics along with the red nose, but it can be many things other than alcoholism too. And then you can talk about the cleansing or heat reducing herbs. In Chinese medicine, it kind of boils down to it’s a hot condition, a cold condition, a dry condition, or a wet condition, so you kind of think in those terms. Then you can begin to kind of make a decision about which way to go. The normal tongue is plump, not really swollen but relatively thick. It’s not really shriveled.

 

Janet Lewis: You know, and I think we became interested in the tongue … as many of you know, we have health issues ourself is why we do Green Wisdom Health to start with because we’re always looking for natural ways to make our health better, so naturally because we’ve figured out how to do that, we can now help you. And a lot of people go, “Well, you’re healthy. That’s why you own a health food store.” I think you get into things because you need help and that’s a passion of ours to help other people because of the issues that we’ve had. But I’ve always had really poor digestive issues, and before we started getting healthy, my tongue was white, like you said, and on the sides, they were raw. The sides of the tongue were raw because that was where the gut was.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, and on the side of the tongue also indicates what’s happening in the liver area too, the liver meridian also.

 

Janet Lewis: Well, I could never figure out why my tongue hurt all the time and when we started learning about Chinese medicine, we realized, hey. That’s a marker for your health to know whether or not it’s good or bad, and like the tip of your tongue … I know Dr. Lewis is talking about B12 but that’s heart related.

 

Dr. Lewis: Heart and mind and they’re very, very connected.

 

Janet Lewis: Yeah. Yeah, so when you’re overworked or you’re really stressed out, the tip of your tongue will start hurting if you don’t have proper supplementation.

 

Dr. Lewis: You know how the tip of the tongue, and the heart, and the mind are related? If you fall in love with your heart, your mind goes out the door.

 

Janet Lewis: Well, good. I always thought it was a B12 connection, but what do I know?

 

Dr. Lewis: It can be. It usually is. Most of us are actually deficient in B12 because even if you eat the right things, which is almost completely … B12 comes out of meat. Even if you eat that, the question is are you digesting it and did that piece of meat come from CAFO, confined animal feeding operation? Were they eating genetically modified grains? And that’s why it ell people it’s much, much better to get a pasture raised beef from your neighbor and you know they’re feeding it better stuff, mostly grass fed.

 

Janet Lewis: Well, and I know with myself, when my tongue was coated white, it meant it was a cold environment. It was sluggish. It was not circulating like it should.

 

Dr. Lewis: That song was written too, Too Cold at Home.

 

Janet Lewis: Oh.

 

Dr. Lewis: I’m sorry.

 

Janet Lewis: I thought you were going to tell me you had a forked tongue or something. I didn’t know where this was going. We never know where it’s going. But anyway, the tongue is very interesting and has a lot to do with heart and mind stuff also, which I know Dr. Lewis is talking there about B12. He was about to anyway.

 

Dr. Lewis: Oh, I will. I’ll get around to it. A little bit of light moss coating is actually normal, but if it’s heavy, it’s congestion, as Janet said, and usually these people have a tendency to be constipated, and you know from listening to us that you better check your thyroid on that one too and your digestive enzymes. If you don’t have any kind of moss coating or a dry tongue, and have that dry condition, you couldn’t be a good singer because you notice the cameras get up and get close, and I don’t know what all those singers do to make their tongue look perfect. It may have something to do with their $20,000 worth of dental work to make their teeth look perfect too. I don’t know. But kind of look at that and I guess an extreme example would be when your baby gets thrush, and it’s a yeast overgrowth, and it can go way beyond the tongue and get all around the mouth also. And any time you take antibiotics, and sometimes antibiotics will actually save your life, but you always want to immediately start massive amount of probiotics.

 

  Now, I’m kind of a big fan. We have about … I don’t know … 14, 15 different types but there’s one out there that they tout it as being 20 billion, but they never encapsulate it unless it goes 40 or better, and they say it averages about 60 to 62 billion, and it has a probiotic yeast, and it calls Saccharomyces boulardii, and we do have a lot of other ones too. And as your GI tract gets healthier, then your tongue will change colors. It will change textures. That heavy moss coating will generally go and become much lighter. Your tongue will get a darker pink. I’m like Forrest Gump. That’s about all I want to say about that or that’s all I got to say about that, but I can talk about pulse too, because the reason I want to do that is because while we were in China, we had a consultation with a traditional Chinese medical doctor and of course they couldn’t speak English, and they would talk to us through an interpreter, and they’d check the pulse. They’d look at the tongue. They’d look at the nose and maybe a little bit in the eyes, and this cute little interpreter after the Chinese medical doctors said something about cancer, and of course, there’s always a language barrier.

 

  And I said, “Does he say I have cancer?” I have the tendency toward cancer. And she spoke in Chinese and he never answered back. He just went … and then he said that I drank too much, and it’s like I really don’t drink much. I talk about it more than I do it. And I said, “Why would he say that?” I said, “Is it because my nose is a little bit red,” which is one of those irritated, hot conditions and the tendency towards high blood pressure. And once you get a really good magnesium and get it in and be steady, most blood pressures will go down, and if you clean up the GI condition, especially the cold sluggish conditions, then that will take care of itself too. But the pulse is really, really interesting and they taught much different than I was taught in chiropractic college. You pay attention to the rate, whether it’s fast, normal, or slow, but there’s other things that you need to pay attention to.

 

  It’s whether the strength is hard or strong, normal, or weak, and well, I don’t think I was ever taught that too much. Whether it’s superficial or whether it’s very deep, whether it’s hard, whether it’s thin, whether it rolls by like marbles passing by, and that can tell you a great deal about the cardiovascular system. I think I’m in better shape than I was when we were in China, but it was a good time and we did learn a lot. They talk about the catabolic and anabolic conditions, whether it’s building or whether it’s tearing down, and you can determine that and decide whether you want to build a person or cleanse a person. A lot of the people that contact us are trying to do both at the same time. “Well, I’m going to go on a eight day fast, and how hard should I work out at the gym?” I said, “You shouldn’t work out at all. You’re trying to cleanse and then you’re trying to build. They don’t compute. Don’t try to do them both at the same time.”

 

  Back to the wet or dry system, the cold or hot system. In Chinese medicine, they talk about air, fire, earth, and water, and if it’s too far into the air system, they think you need a major change. If you have fire, or the hot or red condition, think a red hot tongue indicating red hot GI tract, but if you have that fire, then you need to cleanse. If it’s earth, that means you need to activate the energy that’s there, but it’s dormant, and if it’s water and that goes with wet and cold, then you know you need to build. And if you;; start paying attention to the pulse, and the eyes, and the nose, and the tongue, then you’ll know when it’s time to build versus time to cleanse, and it does make a hug difference when you do it, how long you do it, and don’t do both of them at the same time. Off to B12, is it time?

 

Janet Lewis: I believe so.

 

Dr. Lewis: Okay.

 

Janet Lewis: B12 is not getting its place in the limelight here.

 

Dr. Lewis: Janet and I went to a college ballgame one time where our son was doing the honor guard in the Air Force, and he said a B-52 is going to fly over. Well, they’re stationed, for the most part in Barksdale Air Force base, which is about 70 miles from here, and so we’re at this college ball game mostly just to see our son do the honor guard even though we needed binoculars to see him, and here comes the plane. It wasn’t a B-52. It was a B-25, so you have to be careful with your Bs. I’m going to talk about B12 and some other stuff. B-25 was kind of a big disappointment because it’s a little bitty plane used in World War II and B-52 is kind of a big behemoth of a jet plane, incredible, incredible. They’re older than Janet but they’re still as pretty as Janet. They’ve been upgraded. Janet has not had any upgrades and she still looks good, so B12. Let’s see. What do you want to hear about?

 

Janet Lewis: I want to know why it’s important and why that people that take iron don’t absorb iron.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, sometimes it is a B12 anemia. It can be a B6 anemia. It can be a iron deficiency anemia and it’s very, very important that you get these things balanced. Don’t say, “Oh, my doctor says I’m anemic. I’m going to go chew on nails,” because it probably won’t do it. One thing I’d like to caution you about is there are so many supplement companies out there that says, “We have B12.” Well, if you will look you can kind of judge sort of the integrity of the company if they say they have B12 but it’s cyanocobalamin, and people can take large doses of cyanocobalamin and continue to be deficient in B12, so yes. Technically they pt B12 in there but they’re, I think, lying to you because you’re not going to absorb it, and then I would question the company’s integrity completely because it’s inexpensive and that’s why they do it. The best form of B12 is methylcobalamin, and there’s other forms, and that has to be put with other B vitamins. I don’t really like a straight B12. Our B12s for the most part have things with them like B6, paroxetine, hydrochloric acid, or hydrochloride, but-

 

Janet Lewis: Well, would you explain a little bit about MTHF that goes with it in our product, why you need that, or why just straight B12 doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.

 

Dr. Lewis: I’ve heard conflicting reports on how many of us have that MTHFR problem, and that stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate. It used to be easier to say that and to remember the letters to it I’ve heard 50%, 80%, 20% of us have that genetic SNP, and the SNP is SNP. Stands for single nucleotide polymorphism, and you can have that, but you can have it to different degrees on the 677 gene or the 1298 gene. I have one SNP on the 677, which is not the worst one, but when I started taking this 5-MTHF, which is the form of folate that will be absorbed if you have these genetic SNPS. When I started taking it … I’m not always the wisest person in the world. I figured out I needed it so I thought, well, if a little bit’s good, more is better, and I started with, oh, my God, huge, huge, huge dose and I’ve told the story to a lot of you. I felt horrible for about five days, but I don’t lose my faith if I feel bad. I don’t worry about it because I know it’ll pass, and on the sixth day it was like Jesus parted the clouds, and the angels started singing because it was beginning to methylate, or clean out.

 

  Well, once I started really, my detoxification path was caught up, oh, my God. I feel so good taking this stuff, and Janet can tell you the very day I don’t take it, she can absolutely tell you. She’ll say, “Did you take your methyl CpG?” And I’ll say, “Well, you know I didn’t or you wouldn’t ask the question. How can you tell.” She says, “You’re not happy.” I said, “I’m always happy.”

 

Janet Lewis: That’s right, and that’s methyl CpG. That’s one of the things we recommend when we do lab and Dr. Lewis is talking about B12. If you don’t really know if your B12 is low, we actually recommend that you do our cardiac panel because if you think you have a B12 issue, you probably also are maybe concerned that you have a cardiovascular issue as well from inherited weaknesses or being really tired, but in our cardiac panel, it’s called GWH8 for those of you that are wanting the special pricing on it. It includes 10 lab tests. One of them is homocysteine, so it kind of takes B12 to the next degree, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Lewis?

 

Dr. Lewis: Yeah, well, the methylcobalamin, the good B12, what it does, it converts homocysteine, which is a bad thing and it makes you way more at risk for cardiovascular problems like heart attack and stroke, but it converts the homocysteine into something called methionine, which is used to build proteins, so that’s a good thing. And the one thing I want to caution you about, if you’re taking even high doses, or even moderate doses of the bad, or less absorbable cyanocobalamin, you can still test high on the B12 test. People say, “Well, it’s 2000. My doctor told me to get off of it.” It’s like, well, just because it’s there doesn’t mean you’re absorbing it, so don’t be fooled by that. It needs to be done cautiously, and judiciously, and wisely.

 

Janet Lewis: And that’s why we run the other panels with it because it’s more indicative of a heart issue based on homocysteine. There’s a C-reactive protein in it that shows cardiac specific inflammation. There’s a fibrinogen that shows the break down of whether you’re-

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, the higher the fibrinogen, the more likely you are to form a clot, which could go, cause you to have a stroke, or heart attack, or a pulmonary embolism.

 

Janet Lewis: There’s a spun magnesium in it so it’s not just magnesium at your bloodstream, but it’s actually how much you’re getting in on a cell level, so we kind of look at all of it, and not just the one test, and-

 

Dr. Lewis: Yeah, well … Go ahead.

 

Janet Lewis: I do want to make sure that we address these questions that we have here because we’re running out of time. I don’t know why.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, because I went down another rabbit trail, so let me say this real quick. B12 has been known to reverse symptoms of different neurological diseases like Bell’s Palsy, carpel tunnel … it just goes on, and on, and on. It begins to protect fatty sheaths and help protect your nervous system, assist in memory and learning, and happiness, and can help with depression, fatigue, constipation, digestive disorders, dizziness-

 

Janet Lewis: And in metabolizing fats and carbs, which is important.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, let’s have some B12 and go get some ice cream, honey. Yeah, go ahead.

 

Janet Lewis: All right. We have a couple of questions here for you. There is a guy named Tony A. That asked about tinnitus, which I guess, we need to know what is tinnitus, and how do you fix it? I guess for people that have it, they know what it is, but for those of you that don’t, maybe you have it and you don’t know that’s what it’s called.

 

Dr. Lewis: You know, I get that question a lot so I really appreciated the email. It’s a condition that, it effects a lot of people. I think it’s up into the 20, 30 million people range with hearing loss, and I’ve told a story about me shooting a gun without … I’d gotten rid of my tinnitus with something called vinpocetine. Now, does that always work? No, it does not.

 

Janet Lewis: What is tinnitus? Is it like ringing in the ears? That kind of thing? Yeah, a high-

 

Dr. Lewis: Yeah, I have it all the time.

 

Janet Lewis: High pitched frequencies.

 

Dr. Lewis: And it’s real common with people that are around a lot of noise, like many, many, many years ago, I worked at Lone Star Steel, people that work around railroads, and factories, and things like that. It used to be thought that that’s coming out of the inner and middle ear, and then there’s other train of thought that says they think it originates in the brain, and you know you’ve heard me talk about, you have to fix your guts to have a healthy brain. I’ve seen it be fixed by fixing the guy’s testosterone. I’ve seen it because it was high cholesterol. You know I don’t really worry about cholesterol much, but it can be too high if you have those other factors that Janet mentioned, C-reactive protein, high homocysteine and fibrinogen, but I’ve seen cholesterol do it. Vinpocetine can work. Coenzyme Q10, if it’s a good one. There’s a lot of really, really not good fake ones out there, can work. Magnesium, magnesium, magnesium. I don’t care who you are. You need to be taking magnesium. Really sometimes the B vitamin complex, vitamin E if it’s a good one. The D-alpha tocopherol, but I like the mixed tocopherols. The one I take has really high levels of gamma and delta tocopherols.

 

  Vitamin A can do it. Potassium can do it, but manganese. Manganese is a very common deficiency that’s been linked to that, but it’s also linked to another question that Janet’s going to ask.

 

Janet Lewis: Okay. I hope I ask the right one.

 

Dr. Lewis: I love doing this.

 

Janet Lewis: We only have time for one more probably here, so. Betsy B. Wants to know about rotator cuff torn after surgery. She had a rotator cuff torn after she had surgery.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, they fixed it and then it’s beginning to tear worse. You-

 

Janet Lewis: And what supplements help it heal?

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, the supplement is manganese, and I think the hyaluronic acid, I love, love, love the thing we have called collagen. It’s both type one and type two, don’t have time to explain all that, but that’s very important that you go to a really incredible massage therapist, chiropractor, or physical therapist that understand the muscle balance of the shoulder, and that’s a pretty complicated study, folks. But manganese and mostly the hyaluronic acid and the collagen.

 

Janet Lewis: Oh, well he answered that really fast so we got time for one more. What is the best product for bowel stimulation. This is coming from Bronda M.

 

Dr. Lewis: Well, you know, you always want to work on it with the probiotics and digestive enzymes, but the one that we … I guess our favorites is called super aloe 450 and if that’s too strong, we have a aloe 250. That seems to be the best and most easily tolerated, and I talked to a GI doctor one time, and I have the greatest respect for a medical profession. Boy, they’ll bail you out when you get yourself in trouble, but the GI doctor said, “Well, you shouldn’t give them a laxative every day.” I said, “I understand but we’re working on fixing the GI tract problem,” which probiotics and the right digestive enzymes can help tremendously. But I said, “Would you rather have them constipated where they’re growing polyps that turn into cancer?” He says, “Okay, point taken.” So folks, if you’re not having two or three trains moving through the tunnel every day like you’re eating two or three meals, you do have a problem. If you’re just pooping once a day, you’re constipated.

 

Janet Lewis: And the super aloe, the 450 or the 250, that’s just aloe. It’s not anything that’s going to be … because a lot of people worry that it’s something that their colon won’t move at all if they are not taking it, and it’s not that way. It doesn’t cause it to lose the elasticity.

 

Dr. Lewis: It doesn’t cause the discoloration in the colon, which is not pathogenic, but some people worry about it.

 

Janet Lewis: Well, and it’s not addictive, like almost all of them over the counter have a form of antifreeze in there to make them go to the bathroom.

 

Dr. Lewis: Oh, yeah.

 

Janet Lewis: We’re not giving you that. We’re giving you something healthy that just helps bowel motility, so okay. That’s super aloe 450, and the other part of that is they need to make sure that they’re doing some sort of a fiber to help pass things through so-

 

Dr. Lewis: What do you put in my drink for fiber?

 

Janet Lewis: All kind of stuff actually.

 

Dr. Lewis: Arsenic and cyanide, I think.

 

Janet Lewis: I do deeper greens.

 

Dr. Lewis: Oh, yeah,

 

Janet Lewis: The deeper greens taste delicious. I think it’s-

 

Dr. Lewis: The best we’ve ever had as far as taste. Incredible.

 

Janet Lewis: Yes, and it’s fruits and vegetables, so if you can’t eat fruits and vegetables or don’t have time, that’s a really great product to try.

 

Dr. Lewis: And it’s organic. It tastes almost chocolatey. I love it and so do the grandkids.

 

Janet Lewis: Yeah. Anything else you want to say about B12 or we can take this very last question. We’ve got about a minute and a half.

 

Dr. Lewis: B12, just call us, and okay. Go ahead with the question.

 

Janet Lewis: Lord, I can’t even keep him on track with that. Okay-

 

Dr. Lewis: Never could.

 

Janet Lewis: We have a question about what causes acne around the mouth and chin.

 

Dr. Lewis: It’s usually a hormonal imbalance, which we’re finding more and more people, or women are way, way high in estrogen because the environmental estrogen, way, way low in progesterone.

 

Janet Lewis: Okay, so if it’s not on the top of your face then it’s generally not liver. Usually when it’s all over your face, it’s a gut liver issue, and when it’s on from the nose down through the neck area, then it’s a hormone imbalance issue.

 

Dr. Lewis: You would suspect that, yes.

 

Janet Lewis: Okay. So make sure you have your hormones tested and make sure that they’re all in balance, and especially the women out there that tell us they have that going on have generally been on birth control pills at some point.

 

Dr. Lewis: And that’s not a bad thing. We’re not knocking it, but you do have to clean up your body after a while.

 

Janet Lewis: Even if you’ve not been on them in a long time, but once again, we are out of time, and hope you have learned something again on our show. If you have questions or would like to be a part of Dr. Lewis’ closed Facebook group, just shoot him a message at Shoot’n Straight with Dr. Lewis and we can include you in our daily conversations that we have on there with our patients and friends.

 

Dr. Lewis: I’ve been shot and lived through it. I must be immune to it, so don’t shoot me.

 

Janet Lewis: And we’ll catch you here next time on the Green Wisdom Health Show.

 

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