Posted on June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 by Green Wisdom Health — Leave a comment

Are Vitamins Just Expensive Urine?

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As more people make taking nutritional supplements part of their daily routine, some people still wonder if it’s worth the time and money. One of the common misconceptions about supplements is that you absorb very little and excrete most of it, but this isn’t always the case. Some vitamins are made with cheaper ingredients that are difficult for the body to absorb, like using cyanocobalamin instead of methylcobalamin for B12. The cyanocobalamin is much cheaper, but much more difficult to absorb. This is why it’s important to take multivitamins and other supplements that are made with high-quality ingredients. In this week’s show we’ll discuss in more detail how not all supplements are equally effective, and explain why vitamins are not just expensive urine.

Products Mentioned in Today’s Show

Active Mega Multi – Compared to common, over-the-counter multivitamin products delivered in 1 tablet daily, this formulation offers enhanced antioxidant protection, broader trace element nutrition, and augmented B vitamin support. This core foundation of essential nutrients can help provide an extra measure of nutritional protection.

D3 + K2 Ultra – Clinical research suggests that the combination of vitamin D3 plus K2 together help provide support for healthy cardiovascular function, bone health, and immune system function.

Methyl Supreme – Methyl Supreme is a unique formula that combines bioactive forms of four essential B vitamins with trimethylglycine (betaine). Vitamins B₂, B₆, B₁₂, and folate are provided in active, coenzyme forms for maximal bioavailability and function. The ingredients in Methyl Supreme work together to synergistically support methylation processes and help maintain normal homocysteine metabolism.^†

You can also listen to Are Vitamins Just Expensive Urine? on our YouTube channel here.

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Green Wisdom Health — Leave a comment

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.

Posted on February 25, 2018 by Green Wisdom Health — Leave a comment

MTHFR, You cursing me?

Unknown

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, here to bring you another very educational show about, this week, MTHFR, which, if some of you are wondering, no, we’re not cursing you. We want to educate you a little bit about what MTHFR is, what you can do about it if you have it, and what is that? Because is that a disease, or what’s going on? So, Dr. Lewis, can you explain a little bit about MTHFR? I know it’s an enzyme that adds a methyl group to folic acid to make it usable by the body. But much of that is Greek to many of us out there. So, could you enlighten us with what the real deal is with it?
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, and I’d like to thank Katie for asking on Shooting Straight with Dr. Lewis. If you’re listening and you’re not a member please go ahead and join because it’s, I’ve been told, pretty informational, a good way to pass information back and forth. Shooting Straight with Dr. Lewis.
	And Katie asked about 5MTHFR. And Katie’s the sister of Fran. Hi Fran. Yeah, at least half of us have that genetic SNP, and SNP stands for S-N-P, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism. And we can have it to different degrees. It’s on one of the genes called 677, and then there’s another one 1298. And you can a double SNP or a single SNP. And I have a single, it’s not one of the worst ones, but I had read enough to figure out I had it, based on me and my family history.
	So, me being who I am, almost perfect to genetic, but I started out … This is a man thing. If a little bit’s good, more is better. So I started on the most powerful one we have, which … And I tell this story to a lot of people and I tell it the same. I said I felt terrible for five days but I don’t lose faith. So if you have a bad day keep on doing the right thing, for God’s sake don’t bail out.
	So I felt bad for five days. And on the sixth day it was like Jesus parted the clouds and angels started singing. And Janet can tell you the very day I don’t take that one capsule, and that takes care of the 5MTHFR problem that I have, which stands for Methyl Tetra Hydra Folate Reductase. Used to be easier to say that than just the initials.
	We’re going to talk about a lot of things, and as it-
Janet Lewis:	Well, wait. How does someone know whether they have it or not? How do they find that out?
Dr. Lewis:	We can do the lab test, and you can get it on 23andMe, which will tell you a lot of other things, and that’s the way Janet and I did it. I’d already figured that most things out, that 23andMe had told me. They said I’m a slow metabolizer of alcohol, and it’s like, “Well, duh.” Five Miller Lites when I was 19 years old. I figured out real quick I didn’t metabolize alcohol real quick, I never have been a big drinker anyway.
	And it said I had the tendency towards dementia, and it’s like, “Well, duh.” You look at my mama, you can tell that. Although we did put it off about 25 years and made her mental acuity much, much better. You could see it in her in her 60s. And when I say we, it’s me and my brother, Dr. James Lewis, and then Janet came along. And Janet has a way of convincing people in a sweet way to do the right thing. And my mother would do anything for Janet, because I told her, I said, “Well, I finally got a wife like my daddy had.” So my mama loved Janet after that.
	So mama took a lot of stuff, and dementia didn’t really get her until she got … You could see it pretty bad in ’88. And it really started kicking her but about ’92 or so.
Janet Lewis:	It’s interesting that you mention a slow metabolizer of alcohol because actually that’s one of the underlying gene mutations like the MTHFR.
Dr. Lewis:	Janet just thought I was cheap.
Janet Lewis:	Yeah, it’s actually lingering fatigue, fogginess, anxiety, sleep issues, and an inability to deal with alcohol and other toxins, effectively, can be a result of that gene mutations.
Dr. Lewis:	Those are bad drunks, I’m a sweet drunk. And it only takes one or two. Two is kind of an overload for me.
Janet Lewis:	Apparently stress has a compounding factor with it as well.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, stress is one of those words that means so much, it means almost nothing. But some of these methylation defects can contribute to or cause diabetes. How many people are diabetic? And that’s reversible about 95% of the time. It contributes or causes fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, like Janet mentioned fatigue, cancer. How many people know you have that genetic predisposition but don’t do anything about it. I hope you listen to our previous podcast about that. Addictive behavior including alcoholism. And I’d like sometime to get into the mental health issue, because I think that’s one of the things that’s not being talked about in some of these bad things that are happening in the country.
	This methylation problem can cause autism, or contribute to autism or Down Syndrome, frequent miscarriages, bipolar or manic depression. Y’all hang on to that because if I do get into the mental health issue, remember this can be causing bipolar or manic depression. Allergies, chemical sensitivities. How many people walk down the cleaning aisle of the grocery store and the chemical smell just drives you out of the store? It can cause autoimmune disorders. And I tell you folks, we’re getting more and more autoimmune disorders by the day.
	And we do have a new product that Janet and I are just incredibly excite about that helps deal with it, and we have just started it, we being Janet and me, because we have to experiment, we don’t sell anything we don’t know in our heart is a good things. And it’s called SBI Protect, and it’s a bovine source of the immunoglobulin. And you have to, with that, increase mucosal immunity, and you have to reset the immune system tolerance.
Janet Lewis:	It’s for people with leaky gut, right?
Dr. Lewis:	Right. Because 80% of our immune system’s in our gut. So the mucosal immunity is one of the big factors in determining your immune system’s health and your body’s ability to function at a higher level.
Janet Lewis:	I’m pretty excited about it because I have that problem, I have leaky gut problems, and people have Crohn’s and that kind of thing, too, there’s a huge product for.
Dr. Lewis:	IBS, celiac.
Janet Lewis:	Apparently, our rep for Ortho Molecular talked to us about it and he said this used to be a $400 per month drug that they gave these people for leaky gut and it really did help. But because it had gone to $400 per month they decided to let the patent go on it and not make it a drug anymore. So Ortho Molecular bought the rights to make it into the natural product that originally starts out anyway as.
	It now, at a, I think it’s $70 or something like that, something around that price, a bottle.
Dr. Lewis:	So we’re having some incredible success with the people that said, “I don’t want to wait for you to experiment I want on it now.” And they’re coming back saying, “Oh my God, I hadn’t felt the peace of God, and my guts don’t hurt.” And we’re just hearing … Because some people don’t want to wait for Janet and me to experiment, they’re jumping on it with us, they’re willing to take the chance. We’re getting some incredible feedback for those that have IBS, etc., gut problems.
Janet Lewis:	And keep in mind, it can take up to two months to make a difference in the gut to heal it if you’re really, really bad. So don’t take a couple scoops of it and you’re going to be one of those people that have that great reaction. But some people just take a little bit longer.
Dr. Lewis:	Well, part of it’s your faith too. Janet feels things quicker. Yeah, you get your peak healing at one to two months. Janet’s absolutely right.
Janet Lewis:	I can tell you that it does change bowel motility.
Dr. Lewis:	In a good way.
Janet Lewis:	Yeah, it’s a good way to say it. They say the people that have irritable bowel and they’re going … I think the test was done with these people with this product where they were going to 16 times a day.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, if you’re pooping 16 times a day you need 5 scoops.
Janet Lewis:	Right.
Dr. Lewis:	Well, it’s five milligrams. And anyway, you can go down when your bowel motility slows down. Janet’s laughing. I think I said something that’s … I’m always putting my boot in my mouth.
	Immunoglobulins are very, very important, and we’ve known about them for over 100 years. There’s all kinds of immunological studies and Nobel Prizes given for people over 100 years ago that discovered this, and colostrum back in the 1990s. Colostrum’s still a really good thing. We have to get our colostrum out of New Zealand because they’re happier, leaner cows. But we’ve actually gone beyond the efficacy of colostrum. So if you want a healthy body and your kids or grandkids have issues, this is an easy thing to get into a finicky kid’s diet.
Janet Lewis:	Yeah, so can you relate that now back to MTHFR, how that has something to do with the gut health and the MTHFR gene?
Dr. Lewis:	Oh my God, she’s going to tie my thoughts together.
Janet Lewis:	I’m trying.
Dr. Lewis:	Just talked to a sweet lady, Toya, in California. And she said she loved our interview with Drew Manning. And I said, “Well, that’s the one that this other lady says, ‘I didn’t go down the rabbit hole.'” I stay in a rabbit hole or down the rabbit tracks. That’s kind of normal for me.
Janet Lewis:	Well he gets very excited about things, and so his thoughts run randomly. But he does have a method to his madness over there and going to put it all together for you.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah. A friend of mine years ago put it real well. He said, “I don’t shoot a pump shotgun because I get so excited I forget to pump the action and miss all the birds.” So, yeah, gut health is very, very, many times, at least half the time, probably a lot more, connected to the MTHFR problem. And some of the things that it can also cause is dementia and Alzheimer’s. Well, okay, 23andMe said I have that tendency, but you know if you listened to the last podcast, thank you Debbie Terri, for telling me how much she enjoyed it. She’s kind of a crazy girl from Midland, grew up together.
	I don’t know where I was going with that because I get dementia and Alzheimer’s. But it can also cause schizophrenia and anxiety. Y’all pay attention to that, we’re trying to lead into mental health, and that is very, very, very connected to the GI tract.
	Janet’s a real sweet lady. She buys me dozens and dozens and dozens of books. And one of my favorites is about the GI tract being the second brain from Dr. Gershorn, it’s actually a lot more technical than I thought it was going to be, so I really kind of enjoyed that. But you have to get the gut healthy to have a healthy mind. Some of the things that interfere with your methylation pathway if you don’t have enough zinc, which is all of us, B2, which is riboflavin, magnesium, B6, B12, which is the good ones, methylcobalamin. People say, “But I’ve got a really good product.” Well, if it’s got methylcobalamin, okay good. If it’s got cyanocobalamin they’re lying to you and you fell for their hype, because cyanocobalamin is not very convertible and it has to be done in the liver. And you can take heavy, heavy doses of cyanocobalamin and still have a B12 deficiency. So people say, “Oh, well this company says they’re the best.” Yeah, look at what they’re putting in it. If it’s cyanocobalamin and magnesium oxide run for the hills, it’s not that good.
	Then there’s folate. Now folate is what this MTHFR is about, methyl tetra hydra folic acid. You have to have a specific kind. If you have that genetic snip and that specific type is MTHFR and the folic acid, we found a new one too, because I read about something called folinic acid that feeds the HIPPA campus of the brain. And Janet gives me lots of stuff to support my heart and the brain. She says, “We need your big brain,” which is not true, but she’s just humoring me. This folinic acid is coupled with TMG, which is tri-methyl glycine, which is a methyl donor, so it helps you methylate. And I swear my memory got really, really good. I can remember codes from our condo in Branson from months ago, I can remember our room con … What do you call it? I can’t remember that. The number they give you to confirm that you have a room rented.
Janet Lewis:	The confirmation number?
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah. The confirmation. I’m going down another rabbit hole. I can remember some of those from several months ago, and it’s like this folinic acid with TMG, oh my God, I can’t believe it. And I do take a lot of the 5MTHFR, too. But one of the things that can contribute to this problem is poor diet. Well, we all have a poor diet, poor probiotic status, because that does not allow your GI tract to function as effectively as it can.
	Remember back, if y’all listen to any of our podcasts, you remember me saying that there’s certain species of lactobacillus that decreases your anxiety response and the bifidobacterium that increases your gaba, your serotonin. So the lactobacillus and the bifidobacterium are very, very critical, and it takes a very serious effort to get that into your GI tract because you’re just putting one or two capsules a day, but it’s into …
	It’s hard for a small army to overwhelm what it is going into, into the GI tract. So that’s why this SBI protect is real important because it tightens the junctions of a leaky gut so that you don’t get those pathogens, those antigens, that go through that gut mucosal lining and create more of an autoimmune system.
	Medications actually strip you of a lot of the vitamins and minerals that you don’t have enough of anyway. The conditions, like Crohn’s or Celiac, that lowers a lot of your nutrition too.
	So one of the other things is heavy metals and chemical sensitivities. And Joe from Saline, Michigan asked about heavy metals and mercury in your mouth, and I try not to get into that, it’s real controversial, but I did tell you I had those taken out of my mouth because they were in fillings. And if you smoke you’re getting tons of cadmium. We’re full of aluminum, which can create Alzheimer’s or major contributing factor, too high copper, believe it or not, arsonic. “Well my wife doesn’t give me arsonic.” Well if she’s giving you chicken she’s giving you arsonic. If it’s not organic, you’re getting arsonic like crazy. So don’t think you’re immune to this. Acetaldehyde, which is caused by candida actually, but you get the formaldehyde from your carpets, outgassing from your linoleum and things like that.
	I want to talk a little bit about the supplements that can be good, but you have to understand people. I hear this term all the time, brain fog. Well, if you get a hangover, that can be yeast overgrowth, which can go to] health, which is 5MTHFR problem. Or it can be the alcohol intolerance. And it could be that it’s just yeast, or it could be that it’s the methylation problem, migraines, depression, anxiety, irritability. There’s just tons and tons of those things.
	So, for a minute, I’d like to talk about some of the supplements that I think everybody should be taking because you don’t get it out of the diet, I don’t care how good your diet is. So let’s talk about B1, and that’s thymine. And most of the time I put them on benfotiamine, which is generally more effective that thymine because it helps control damage from diabetes, it helps with the brain fog if that’s an overload of yeast. Candida, they have the ability to offset your body’s ability to absorb it, and that’s a scary thing.
	So, if you have a deficiency in B1 or thymine you can have symptoms that can include gastrointestinal disturbances, so who knows where this comes from. Is it from the GI tract to the brain? The brain to the GI tract? Is it a nutrient deficiency? It can cause heart changes. It can cause irritability. It can cause labored breathing, loss of appetite. Well, that would be a good thing for most of us. Muscle atrophy. It can cause nervousness. Notice there’s a lot of mental issues going on here.
	There was a study I read one time about in a prison they gave all the prisoners a dose of B vitamin complex. Now, keep in mind it was probably a lower class, not the best, B vitamin complex. The violence in this bad, bad prison, it’s full of bad boys, violence was cut 50%. Now can you imagine if some of these things that’s going on today that’s horrible, what if these kids had good nutrition. Would their brain function better? Hey, all this research says it does.
Janet Lewis:	And we talk about all of these issues and getting tested. There’s also, if you have depression or, like Dr. Lewis said, any of those symptoms that he named off, there is a product that you can just take and see how it works, because it’s a very high amount of the folate and the B12.
Dr. Lewis:	The right kind of folate.
Janet Lewis:	Right. All in one pill. It’s a quatrofolic five methyl hydra folic acid.
Dr. Lewis:	Ohh, that’s sexy.
Janet Lewis:	Thank you. But you only have to take one pill of these, and you do it one in the morning and it really does make a difference for people that have this mutation. I’m also going to put on the website the testing if you’re interested in seeing which lab test to find out if you have that difficulty, because that’s really something you need to know because you’re more open to a whole lot more problems. But the product’s called Methyl CPG, it’s by Ortho Molecular. And I will put that in the show notes as well if you forget what I said. So that’s a great one.
Dr. Lewis:	That’s the one if felt bad for five days. I stuck with it and on the sixth day it’s like, “Oh my God.” Janet can tell you the day I don’t tell you, she can tell you.
Janet Lewis:	Yeah. And we’ve also promised a couple of people we’d answer some questions, because we do have our question and answer segment that is going on. One of them, because we’re still in the middle of this flu bug sick season and then coming up on allergy season, the question was from Krista R. “Sinus congestion and drainage, even after adding a humidifier. Is there a product that is great for sinus drainage?” So I’ll let Dr. Lewis answer that for us.
Dr. Lewis:	Well, especially if you’re clogged up, the Sinatrol has done an incredible job to open it up and be kind of … It kind of helps dissolve some of those things. It’s full of berberine, which is antiyeast, antifungal. And in the studies, if you read the real research, 96% of all sinus problems are fungal.
Janet Lewis:	I thought that was very interesting. So there’s things in Sinatrol that are big viral killers.
Dr. Lewis:	Berberine. And then it’s got the bromelain, which is from pineapple and it’s a really good enzyme for inflammation in general, and it’s got the tumeric root and it’s the good stuff, which is 95% curcumin, which we’ll get into in another show. Then it’s eleuthero root, which is a very good adaptogenic herb. And them thyme extract, which yeah that’s not just for flavoring things, it’s also very, very medicinal in its use. Then it’s got andrographis, which is adaptogenic herb. And then it has a pretty high dose of something called n-acetylcysteine, which is called Nac. Nac is a mucous thinner, but also it’s an incredible liver detoxifier, and it’s the precursor to glutathione. And glutathione is an incredible energy producer and immune system booster, and that’s why I tell people, “You better take care of your liver because the liver is like a woman, if the liver ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy.” Well, that’s kind of like a woman.
Janet Lewis:	1:00 to 3:00 folks, in the morning. If you’re awake, that’s the hours that it will try to repair. And if you’re just wide awake you’d better suspect mama ain’t happy.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, and people that have a drink, a small alcoholic drink, and then they get mean or depressed-
Janet Lewis:	An MTHFR problem.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, probably so. And it’s like I know people like that, and it’s like they’ve never even had their genetic testing, but it’s like, “God, you’re an idiot when you’re drunk, not that you’re much better when you’re sober.”
	But speaking of alcohol, there is one thing I want to tell you. There is a course given by a guy out of the U.K., it’s called The Truth About Alcohol by Lee Davy, D-A-V-Y. And if you’re interested in taking a course that’s different than Alcoholics Anonymous you might want to talk to Lee Davy. You can look him up on the internet. He’s easy to find.
Janet Lewis:	Okay, then we’ve got Katie L., wanted to know, while traveling, is there anything to keep the bugs away?
Dr. Lewis:	Well, I put a picture of the Shiner’s beer sign and said, “This is my flu shot.” And I got a lot of likes on that. Actually, I don’t think beer is good for sinuses or keeping the flu bug away, I was just teasing.
Janet Lewis:	There’s plenty kind of bugs when you’re traveling, you pick up stuff in the water or whatever.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, we take stuff.
Janet Lewis:	There’s a couple of things that I always take whenever we travel because you never know what you’re getting. One of them is ParaShield, because, believe it or not, parasites exist and sometimes in other places that you travel they exist a little bit more prevalent. So we take ParaShield to try to kill off anything. Olive Leaf Extract is also another great one. It’s got to have a high amount of Oliprin in it, and we carry a great one here if you’ve not ever heard of it.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, there’s good medical research on that one.
Janet Lewis:	That one’s a huge one for a natural antibiotic to carry along.
Dr. Lewis:	I didn’t get MRSA when I got the spider bite. And the surgeon sent another surgeon in and swabbed my spider bites, swabbed my nose, and they said, “You get that, and that’s called MRSA, that’s the flesh eating bacteria.” They said, “We don’t understand, you always get it from the spider bite. If you don’t get it from the spider bite you get it from the hospital.” And they said, “We don’t understand.” And I was giving literally a lecture at 3:00 to the nurses about olive leaf and the research that Upjohn did on it. And they said, “We don’t understand.” I said, “You don’t need to understand, that’s the problem in America, you think you have to understand it. All you have to do is put it in and have faith.” And we need to be a nation of doers not a nation of thinkers.
Janet Lewis:	And then the other product that I’d take along with us is N8, the probiotic, because I know it has it’s supposed to be refrigerated but many times I don’t do that whenever we’re traveling and it’s just fine.
Dr. Lewis:	It’s not that critical.
Janet Lewis:	Yes, it just shortens the shelf life down from four years to two, or something. So I figure I’m gonna take it during that time. But the thing with N8, either the 2014 or the 5014, it will help you with food poisoning, which is why we found it to start with. I actually had food poisoning and that’s how we came across that product.
Dr. Lewis:	She ate some really not so good Japanese food and she’ll never go back to that restaurant.
Janet Lewis:	We were in Mississippi at the time in a hotel, and I told Dr. Lewis, “Just leave me here, I’m going to die. Just come back at another day.”
Dr. Lewis:	You’re not dying in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Ain’t happening.
Janet Lewis:	And I did not know anything about N8 probiotic at that time. And after I could not get over it, which took me two or three weeks before we found this product. A sample was sent to me and I tried it and, oh my gosh, it was like every time I took it I felt better and better. So that’s one thing I am never without when we travel.
	Another question that came in is people keep hearing these shows and they don’t really know what we do. For those of you that don’t know what we do, basically we run low-cost lab work, and we run it across the United States. We have it drawn at a facility close to your home. It’s a special contract that we have, and it’s with Quest Diagnostics across the United States. But now some of you probably know that we do this because we have the lab panels on the website, which has been a huge blessing for everyone because they can look and see what they want.
	The problem is they don’t know what to pick, so one of the questions was, “What panel should we pick when we get started?” So, there’s a couple of ways you can do it. Our favorite is to have you fill out a health survey, and it actually will recommend to you, based on what you filled out, what panel is the best one for you. If you’re not comfortable with that Dr. Lewis actually reads every one of those surveys that come through, and he can make recommendations. And either he or I call you either one and tell you which one we recommend. The safe one, if you don’t want to talk to us, which I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to do that, but some people don’t want to talk to us, they would rather just do it their selves and order. It would be the comprehensive panel. And I’m telling you that the ones that come with Dr. Lewis’s complementary consultation and a recommended supplement sheet and a functional medicine report as well as a copy of your lab, we have exclusive pricing on.
	So we’ve bundled it all together to save you a whole lot of money. And all of those lab panels start, they’ll have numbers in them, they all start with a GWH for Green Wisdom Health, and they’re numbered one through eight. And the easiest, probably simplest one to get started with is the comprehensive, which is GWH3, because that’s just the basic panels. When we say basic, that’s 12 different lab panels. And I know at your doctor’s office basic’s about 1 to 3, but our basic is 12.
Dr. Lewis:	And I would suggest you add the hormones too.
Janet Lewis:	Well, if he’s suggesting to add the hormones you’ll see that it’s either GWH1 or GWH2, depending on whether you’re male or female, because that is a really special price. If you’re not having hormone problems and you want to start in the cheapest way, is the comprehensive one. So hopefully that answers some questions and clears up some confusion about how to get started with all of that.
Dr. Lewis:	And I didn’t get around to a whole lot of things, which is typical. When I write these things I always have about 4 or 5, 10 times more information than I get around to. And that’s why I talk sometimes fast, which is really not in my nature. I bet you Debbie can tell you about that one.
Janet Lewis:	But you get right to the point, that’s what we always enjoy.
Dr. Lewis:	Yeah, right down that rabbit trail and that rabbit trail and that rabbit trial. So, thank you for helping keep me a little bit straighter. But I hope you get a lot out of it and there’s so many other things I’d like to say and I just can’t get around to all of it in 30 minutes. But we have so many opportunities to get our mental health back, to have better function, and to take care of some of this crazy stuff that’s going on. And it’s not that hard, it’s not that expensive, and we give advice about that. I was asked the other day if I’d go to Dallas and give a talk to a church. And I looked at her and said, “Yeah, for you I will.”
	but there’s so many answers out there. And listen to different podcasts. But for goodness sake, get on it and do it, and we can help guide you if you have any questions. My number here is 903-663-1008. Or get on the website greenwisdomhealth.com.
Janet Lewis:	And we’ll have another entertaining and educational show for you next week. Bless you.