118. Holistic Approach to Skin Health with Chris Gibson

Thomas Pennel 0:00

I call this your immune timeline. It's essentially a timeline of what created you because if you think about your immune system is not something that is just happening in this moment it starts from the day you're born.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:16

Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. You're about to hear from Thomas Pennell. My patients have been asking me what they should take for immune boosting and how they can keep their kids from getting sick this back to school season so I decided to devote an entire episode to immune health. Let's get started.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today I've decided to bring back Thomas Pannell who I interviewed on episodes 108 and 109, where we discussed why micronutrients are important why we need to supplement and ultimately learned what makes a good supplement. I highly encourage you go back and listen to those episodes. There's going to be minor overlap with today's content, I'm sure but today is specifically all about immune health and what supplements we should be taking to boost immunity. So let me read his bio here before we get started. Thomas Pennell is an account executive who has worked in the supplement and nutrition space for a company called orthomolecular products. After receiving a degree in Integrative Biology from the University of Illinois, a little health scare with his now fiance gave him his first interaction with functional medicine. After seeing firsthand how functional medicine impacted her life. This drove him to seek out professional nutrition companies for the opportunity to work with providers and help shape patient care. He's worked with over 1000 clinics across the Midwest, including ours, which really includes practitioners, clinics and pharmacies. He's previously worked with practices across Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania and now resides in Iowa, where he currently works with over 400 active practices. He uses his experience to help providers consult and bring functional medicine to their patients with a strong focus on improving clinical outcomes. So welcome back to the show. Again, Thomas,

Thomas Pennel 2:05

This is great. I feels like I was just here. You weren't literally excited.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 2:11

So as mentioned today is all about immunity. And I want to get to immune support of products. But I think we better briefly start discussing why purchasing supplements from professional channels is so important. And obviously we did an entire episode on this before we get to the supplements talk about why quality of supplements is so important and why purchasing from the professional channel is key.

Thomas Pennel 2:31

I encourage like you said anyone who wants to take the really deep dive into kind of who we are, who I am and what we do as a company and why you've chosen to partner with us. If you really not that deep dive there's a good 45 minute first part, and another 45 minutes second part that really gets kind of the nitty gritty. But I think that this is an area of we talk about the immune system, which is what this episode is primarily going to be focused about. We talked about the immune system, there's obviously something really major that happened in the last couple of years here that got people's interests perked. And excitingly perked towards their own health. It's not only a really good thing, right, we get really excited in the southern space. And now we see as practitioners get really excited that people are really starting to take a good investment in their own personal health. But with a it also brings around like this, Nikolas kind of brings around some of those bad players. Right? So if you want to talk about like I said how nitty gritty you can get on that there's a really good episode about it recently, but the main focus, and the reason that we're why we're talking about professional nutrition is that people are looking for this stuff now more than they ever have been. So there's a lot of companies that have been working for a very long time, or even just recently popped up who either had their supply chain shortened or kind of squeezed tightly because certain raw materials became in such high demand that they weren't available. Or there's these companies, there's these companies that popped up that didn't or haven't, and aren't putting in any of the quality measures that we put in to kind of step in and say, Hey, are we making the highest quality product for patients to be taking? Right, so what I'm talking about a good example I like to use is something like elderberry. Right? So elderberry is a raw material that we're probably going to dig into a little bit here, but elderberry is a raw material that's used for our immune system. And what it does is is able to boost some of our C for CD and cell counts, in addition to that also helps inhibit viruses, which is fantastic. But the elderberry itself it's an actual barrier. It's a barrier that's grown on a tree, right? It's grown on a plant and that plant, you can't just create more plants out of thin air, right. So as people are starting to take more elderberry, right, they want to boost their immune system to their immune system, the best fighting chance that supply chain shortened incredibly, right, that was one that we had significant challenges with getting and for a long time, there was a product that we weren't able to carry that kind of features and stars, elderberry, right. So if you look at there's a lot of companies that are saying, hey, I want to make this stuff. They're they're using some form of elderberry that's got stuff added to it. So the actual amount of elderberry that's in there is not necessarily the amount that we need or want where you start to wonder what else is in that raw material. Right? What else is in that product? What else are they adding? And this is true for vitamin D. It's true for vitamin C is true for zinc It's true for pretty much anything that we're going to talk about elderberries, just a really good example that we like to use. So what I'm getting at is that if you're a patient who's ever been interested in immune system health or taking something for immune system, this is probably the most important time ever to seek out professional nutrition. Because if we're not doing professional nutrition at this point, we're really I hate to say it kind of rolling the dice to see what's left, or what companies kind of stepped up and just made products to make products essentially, is what I'm getting at. So

Dr. Stephanie Gray 5:26

I didn't really think about the supply chain issues in this business. I mean, we have supply chain issues with other aspects of the art care at the clinic. But I didn't really think about that impacting the supply chain of nutraceuticals. But I guess it makes sense. So yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So with orthomolecular, which I read your bio, that's who you work for, right? That's where we get many of our products from, they really focus on a couple of different aspects when we think of quality. So one, I think of sourcing, can you just briefly mentioned where you guys source your products from? What how you stand out in that department?

Thomas Pennel 5:58

Yeah, so a good example, actually, is still elderberry, right, because a lot of the elderberry that's grown is in a lot of parts of the world where maybe we start introducing certain toxins, right, because if you think about it, if I grow, we'll just stick with elderberry. If I grow elderberry in a very clean area where there's not a lot of environmental issues, we're talking about factories and plants or run offs, or whatever it may be, it's going to be unlikely that the end product that actual berry that's produced, the plant will have absorb any of that, right. But instead, if I grew that elderberry in a place like China, or some of these other countries where you can get a relatively inexpensive, which is what a lot of companies do, there's obviously higher amounts of foods, there's higher amounts of runoff, there's higher amounts of these things that we don't want to end up in a very, because what are we going to do with that Berry, is we're going to take that extract, and we're going to concentrate it as much as possible, or not depending on what the company is doing, but concentrate as much as we possibly can. So we can get specific compounds in there that we know are going to boost our immune system. Right. So there's obviously there's an entire world, right that we can choose, you know where supplements are coming from. But that's one really good example of where we do that. And if that's not available to us, we're kind of company who wait, I think we talked about that in the last episode. And you know, it actually it did affect us with the product I'm referring to that has elderberry in it, but we'll wait, that product went on backorder for quite some time. And we had essentially what was functioning as a waiting list for it. Because we don't sacrifice, we don't wait, there's nothing that's forcing a company to continue to use the same raw material, or to basically sit around and say, like we do, hey, we're gonna wait until we know that we're getting something that's safe and effective. Pretty much any company that's looking to make money off of this is going to say, hey, let's get something in our hands as quick as possible. So we get that product made as quick as possible. Right. So a lot of places we choose to source from will be things like the US, we look in the US for a lot of different things, because of the really high quality companies here that make a lot of raw materials. One of them that we talked about, it's actually made here in Ireland, which is great. We will look in Europe a lot. There's a lot of really great companies in Germany and France and Spain that spend a lot of money and a lot of time and effort testing and producing really high quality raw materials, because their regulations are just a little bit different. So they have to do that if it's going for human consumption, which is awesome. So we've spent a lot of time looking for raw materials were either a the studies were done, we know that it's a clean area to clean environment, or that we know that these companies are places that we can trust. And oftentimes it's it's kind of that China last which we talked about, yeah.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:11

So you're sourcing appropriately, you're essentially sacrificing sales waiting to make sure your products are not compromised. And then once you get those materials and talk about the testing that orthomolecular does on the products that arrive in your warehouse, whatnot, the

Thomas Pennel 8:26

testing, I kind of embarrassingly get a little excited about it, you're kind of nerdy and excited about it. But basically, whenever we get raw material, it doesn't matter what the raw material is, it could be ascorbic acid, it could be vitamin D it can be elderberry, doesn't matter, anything that we're talking about this is true for so when that product comes to us, we do have a list of vendors that we know are approved based on either previous relationships with them, or we know that they're testing quality raw materials, we sometimes will physically go out and tour the actually audit some of those companies as well on our end to make sure that what they're sending us is what actually tests on on our so there's a lot that goes into a raw material before it even shows up at our door, which is really cool. Once we launch essentially cylinder metal cylinder, and we stick through otherwise, it's sample all the way through that raw material. So what we do that as they go straight into our lab, and we actually have the second biggest lab in the US for testing raw materials, which is really exciting. And then we take that and we take that raw material and we mix it together and we test everything right so we're testing for the presence of heavy metals are testing for the presence, I've seen them they'll actually spread it on little agar plates, they're actually testing to see what organisms grow if it's potentially contaminated with anything, we actually take that and that raw material will perform in there chromatography mass spectrometry, we're actually shooting things at this that will bounce back and tell us a at the chemical electron level, what is that? What are we looking at, right? Because you and I elderberries purple powder. If you and I were looking at it, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an adulterated elderberry or something else. So you have to do this type of testing. But the really interesting thing and it's kind of unfortunate is that nothing really tells a Southern Company that they have to do this. Right there are a lot of ways that something can companies and they should, but some companies can just pop up and just start making things. But this is something that we pride ourselves on because we always talk about profits over patients. We're a company that focuses on patients, because we work with licensed health care, exclusive or licensed health care providers, we're exclusive to them, we have an expectation for ourselves that when you guys are trusting us to work with your patients, which is who is listening this podcast, right, when you trust us to create products for your patients that it's going to have a guaranteed basically quality and expectation for yourself as well. So we hold ourselves to a higher standard, because we have to write if we want to continue to operate in this space, we have to.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:34

And that's what we're talking about when I'm mentioning, you should get supplements from a professional channel, right? Someone who really only we'll just say, sells or distributes to licensed clinician offices, right doctors who know what they're doing, who have been educated on how to recommend these products. So great, good summary here. Let's move on to what lays the healthy immune foundation. I know we kind of started talking about this before we started recording, I mean, that ultimately starts in the womb, right? Let me with the health of the mother. So talk about that. And then we'll go on to some foundational products.

Thomas Pennel 11:03

Yeah, so we call this your immune timeline. A lot of functional providers that work with buyer probably have heard this term before your immune timeline. It's essentially a timeline of what created you, right? Because if you think about your immune system is not something that is just happening in this moment. It's not my immune system. Right now. Today, it's four o'clock, it's not my immune system. Today at four o'clock. It's my immune system as it's grown with me over the last 20 something years, right. So this immune system, it starts from the day you're born, where you see section, right, where you have vaginal delivery, that affects your microbiome, it affects the way that your immune system begins to develop literally from the day you were born. Right? And then you add in some other factors, you know, when was the first time you took an antibiotic? I know I drink that those little bubble gum pink liquid a couple of times, and I got ear infections and a couple other things. I was pretty young. So how often are we disrupting our microbiome? And from what early age? Are we starting to do that? Are you? Were you breastfed? Did you play outside? Did you roll around in the mud as a kid? Were you exposed to certain not necessarily pathogens, but were you kind of testing your immune system, were you putting your immune system in a test is you're spending time outside and just spend a lot of time with other kids. And it's obviously affecting kids who were maybe inside more than they have been for the last couple of years. So you add that up, and then you get you know, in your teenage years, when was the first time that you're putting on a prescription medication, pretty much of any kind, because we'll talk about that prescription medications can affect your metabolic reserves, right, which we spent a lot of time talking about the last episode of prescription medications from a depletion standpoint can affect your metabolic reserves and your metabolic reserves is basically how much do I have in my gas tank. So the more medications we take, potentially, right, the more medications we take, the more we can kind of deplete that gas tank. And as we get challenges with our immune system that can affect our body's response. And the more of these immune reactions, we have more inflammatory reactions we have the worse off our immune system ultimately ends up being like in your 20s. What kind of stressors are you experiencing? What kind of physiological stressors are you experiencing chronic disease yet? Is that happening here? 37 year 40. So basically, the longer we go, you can basically put a little if you think about like a whole timeline or whole road, how many a little markers can we put along and take a snapshot and say, Well, what happened here? What was happening here, and how then a bad effect the next step, because that makes a complete total person. It's not just me talking to you right now at four o'clock. It's what happened over the last 26 years, that's leading to how I how I'm functioning today.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:13

Totally good point. And some of us were more set up for success than others, like, you know, we can't control if we were breastfed, or if we were C section or for parents let us play in the dirt or took us to chiropractor or whatnot. So the good news is, if you unfortunately weren't set up for success, there are still things we can do to boost immunity. And I think that probably starts with nutrition. And this episode is not necessarily on nutrition. I mean, you certainly could comment on that just briefly, and then we'll get to immune products. So if you want to come a little bit on how important nutrition is for the immune system, you kind of already alluded to it saying you want to have gas in your tank.

Thomas Pennel 13:44

Lifestyle. Step one. Right if we talked about you know, what we're doing from a nutritional are talking about from a functional perspective lifestyle, step one. And we'll talk about how that plays a role with all that. But we talked about our immune timeline, if you think about it, people always say if you go outside and it's raining and it's cold, you're gonna get sick. Well, what's happening with that, right? Are you being exposed to pathogens in the rain, maybe, but what you're doing is basically your, your body is being stressed how healthy you weren't going into that event and putting healthy in quotes, right? Healthy you were how physically or physiologically resilient your body was going into that event is going to determine how you come out of it. So obviously, like you said, there's some things that we don't have control over, right, I was an emergency C section as a baby, no one had an option and that I had to come out, right. But we talked about, you know how I was given antibiotics, I didn't have a choice in that either. That's something that was a decision that was made because my health was obviously at risk and was something we needed to do, right. So there's a lot of things that we don't get an option over. And obviously that's led to the scenario where I'm at now and I've got horrible allergies and some other things. My immune system is being tested daily, but what we can do is exactly what you're saying is focused on the nutritional aspects focused on the lifestyle changes because there is stuff we can do. It's not a lost cause. We can build up our metabolic reserves to make sure that our resiliency is as good as possible as possible as we can get it back.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 14:58

Yeah, well, that's good. to the good stuff. So patients are always asking me just, you know, what do I take? What do we take to not get sick or when I get sick, what do I take to lessen the duration of that illness, whatnot. And so I want this episode, I want listeners to come out of this episode knowing kind of what supplements exist. And we have mentioned a lot of these on other episodes, but we're going to just put them all in one episode, one stop shop here. So one of my favorite products that we carry, right, is mitochondrial complex that really is a comprehensive multivitamin with antioxidants helps fuel our mitochondria give us great energy, but it also helps support our immune system. So I'm going to give the mic back to you and let you kind of talk about that. And if you agree with me that that is kind of part of this, you know, foundation on nutrition for the immune system.

Thomas Pennel 15:41

That's my favorite day, if we talk about why there's going to be a lot of overlap. I was thinking about this before we started recording this episode and digging through some literature that I have, the reason that there's a lot of overlap is foundation and nutrition is really a good starting point for your immune system. Because if you think about it, that foundation for anything is where we build the rest of the house on. And like I said, with our immune timeline, there's things that we can't control, but we can't control how good our foundation is how good everything else that we're building on top of that can be, right. So that's why we want to start with a good product like mitochondrial complex mitochondrial complex at face value, when you just look at it looks a lot like a multivitamin, right, we spent a really good time digging into why that is. But the analogy I use, and kind of the reason why I'm gonna do this is we're trying to fuel mitochondria. That's why we call it mitochondrial complex. But if we look at our body, and I was I think at jokes, even on the last episode, I was a bio major, you're gonna get a little nerdy here, but as a bio major. So if you look at that single cell diagram, you always see the one little mitochondria and the one little endoplasmic reticulum and the one little everything, right, your mitochondria and concentration are anywhere from 500 to 2000, depending on the cell. So depending on the cell that's in your body, there are potentially 1000s of mitochondria in each individual cell that are producing ATP for your systems. And when these mitochondria suffer, now our foundation suffers because ATP, that little energy molecule is what our body uses to fuel everything that it's doing from a biological perspective. So if we're not able to optimally create ATP at the starting point, then we're going to have problems at the finish line. So everybody's looking for energy to create, if we're looking for energy to use, it's just not going to be there, it just isn't going to happen. So the reason we want to supplement mitochondrial complexes, we want to give those mitochondria a fighting chance, we want to give those mitochondria all of the micronutrients that they could possibly need to keep themselves built and keep themselves healthy and happy. Right. So the analogy I use, which I say all the time, it's super cheesy, but I love it, because it's like we're building the car, right is that all of the micronutrients that are in there, from the vitamin A and vitamin B's, C, D, E, everything that goes down those lists, right, all of these that are in there, what they are is essentially like the glass and the metal frame and the rubber and the plastic and everything that we need to build this car. Because before we even put an engine in there before we even think about sitting in the driver's seat and going somewhere, because we need a car for this to actually function. So we need to use all these micronutrients to make sure that the mitochondria have all of the building blocks that they could possibly need to build themselves and maintain themselves. And then from there, we want to make sure that we're putting good clean fuel on there, and that we're cleaning it up as it comes out with a good carburetor. Right. So when we put that fuel on there, that's like using things like a CL carnitine, Alpha Lipoic Acid and acetyl cysteine. The reason we do that we call those the power trio. That's kind of our marketing term for it, but then in air quotes, but essentially what it is those three work together to maximize mitochondrial input and output, and the way that they do that is acetyl l carnitine. I'm sure if you look up some of these workout supplements, sometimes you'll see our current team, right our current team what it does, the reason people like it is and helps draw free fatty acids, which are basically fuel sources. It's like the coal or the gas or whatever it may be, helps draw those into the mitochondria helps draw them across that mitochondrial membrane. And when they do that they become more available to the mitochondria. When the mitochondria become damaged, they have a harder time getting those in, they have a harder time putting the gas in the gas tank essentially. So what we're trying to do with the CL carnitine is draw more those free fatty acids into the mitochondria. So we start burning them quicker, and we start burning them quicker. This is like we're pressing on the gas, right, we're putting our foot down and pressing on the gas and getting that car movement. But we want to make sure that when we're pressing on gas, we're not exposing ourselves to the toxic fumes that come out of that car, right because that's not good. We want to make sure that we're cleaning those up. And we can do that in our body as well because there's mitochondria. as awesome as they are right? They create their own toxic fumes, which are essentially at the cellular levels, oxidative stress free radicals. And when they do that they can cause other damage and free radicals are essentially these unbound electrons, a little electrons at the chemical level that float around when they hit things, they can cause problems and they cause damage, and they oxidize and they cause oxidative stress. What we can do to prevent that is anti oxidants. So the antioxidants, they basically D oxidize the oxidative stress if you want to think about it that way, right. So an acetyl cysteine, which I know we're gonna talk about quite a bit. It's a precursor to glutathione glutathione is the master antioxidant found in our body which is used at the cellular level, very, very complex ways, but it's used to help reduce oxidative stress to a very high capacity. It's very, very, very effective at doing that. And the reason that we're doing that is we Want to help include all these antioxidants, so when the mitochondria make oxidative stress, they're not hurting themselves. They're not hurting themselves, they're not hurting themselves, they basically stay happy and stay healthy so they can keep making more ATP. And we also include things in there like trans resveratrol, which is a potent antioxidant found in red wine EGCG sulforaphane coming from broccoli seed extract, all of these are potent antioxidants, where they activate things in ourselves that help the body create more antioxidants naturally. So what we're doing in summary is basically building I think we talked about an Escalade, right, building a nice, big Escalade, they're all gonna jump in and go for a ride. And then we want to make sure that we're including all of the high quality gas, we're getting the, you know, a nice driver in there, making sure things are going properly, and then we're cleaning up everything coming out of that car. So that's essentially how mitochondrial complex works. And the way it helps boost our immune system is when we're able to help these mitochondria. Where does every system in our body draws energy from mitochondria, right, some of these mitochondria are functioning properly, our immune system functions properly as well.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:55

That's why this is one product, I don't go a day without taking I literally have obsessed with this product, I just feel like mentally too, I'm more on fire, when I'm taking it, I'm sharper, quicker, I just can function better. I mean, literally. So I know many providers, I've heard them say, you know, if there's one product my patients could take, it would be vitamin D, but I just disagree, because we're gonna get to vitamin D. Next, I would say mitochondria complex, because it includes so much, I mean, just rattle off so many different ingredients in there, I'll say it's not the cheapest product that we carry, right. But if you would add up the cost of all those individual ingredients, it would be way more costly than the price of mitochondrial complex. So I think that's a steal for what you get in those capsules. So I totally agree, I think it's obviously clearly one of both of our favorite products, which helps us lay that nutritional foundation. Next, however, I would say, could be vitamin D. So because it doesn't have a ton of vitamin D in it, and I think that's for a reason, and that many of my patients need different dosages of vitamin D. So I really like to personalize that dosage. So let's move on to vitamin D and how important that is to our immune system.

Thomas Pennel 21:58

Yeah, so if you're familiar with vitamin D, I'd be surprised, right? If you're listening to this, you're like, what's vitamin D, I've never heard of vitamin D before. Vitamin D is one of those that very quickly came to the forefront where people were saying, hey, what's something very basic that I can start taking today that's going to boost my immune system, it's vitamin D and vitamin D, as most of us know, or may not know, is something that our body actually naturally will get. When we go outside, we expose our skin to UV radiation, our body will actually create its own vitamin D create called Casa fro, which is what our body is going to use in its skin to absorb and then raise our it's called 25 hydroxy. D is what you guys are looking for one of the metabolites of vitamin D, that helps raise the serum levels of vitamin D inside of our system. And the reason that we need vitamin D is vitamin D, a lot of people look at more of a hormone than actually is a vitamin, because the way that it functions in the body, it actually activates over 1700 different genes. And these genes are actually involved with enhanced immune signaling. It's neurotransmitter production, it's a lot of different things, right? Vitamin D is foundational, if we don't have optimal vitamin D levels, a lot of other systems will suffer not just our immune system, right, there's a lot of things that can actually hurt our body's ability to create vitamin D and the big one that's glaring, that, you know, we experienced, because we live in Iowa, and we talked about this last time is in unfortunately about a month, you and I are going to basically go into hibernation for the next three, four years, nine years, three or four months, or years. Like to see to get back and right yeah, young, but basically what happens is, is the sun I mean, even if we're spending all day outside the sun is just not at a very good angle, it's that 38th parallel is actually the parallel if you guys are curious where where it kind of cuts off that 38th parallel because of the US if you're below that, you're gonna be able to get vitamin D or be able to get some more UV radiation throughout the year. If you're above that, which more than I think it's about three quarters of the US is you're gonna have a really tough time, even if the weather is warmer, creating enough natural vitamin D being out year round. So vitamin D levels, I hear this and maybe you can speak on this more. But you know, testing this and looking at this year round, it does drop for a lot of patients, or patients who are coming in in springtime have really low vitamin D levels, or I should say sub up. That's really really low, but not every month. And I totally agree.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:05

I'm that's why I try to boost patients obviously through that time. But through the summer and heading into fall, we try to get levels at 90 Very high right, to help sustain them when they're not getting that sunlight and these you know, dark high winter so but northern latitude right through the winter so that they're not you know, come March. They're not just super low. So I I totally agree with that.

Thomas Pennel 24:26

Yeah, I mean, I work with some providers. I've talked about vitamin D levels with seasonal affective disorder and some other conditions that they look at saying that, you know, obviously we're not treating some of these disease states with just straight vitamin D supplementation, but having higher levels of Vitamin D has pretty good correlation with reduced outcomes with some of these disease states. So yeah, super easy and super easy to supplement with. It's super easy to get it's relatively inexpensive, but it's one of those that as we talked about professional channel, this is one of those it's there's a cheap source and and there's a you know, obviously a higher quality source and a lot of companies want that in the market because it's super in demand. Super independent.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 25:00

Yeah, yep. And I don't even think that the higher quality necessarily cost more than that. Like, I think our vitamin D is very reasonably priced like I there's, there's just no question. Yeah, I want to go back and comment on one thing you said. So I will say like the what from what I've seen large epidemiological studies have shown, if your vitamin D is over 50, your rate for pretty much all chronic disease rapidly declines. So you at least want to get it above 50. Now, for some autoimmune conditions, you gotta want to get your cancer over, you know, 80, whatnot, but 50 to 80. Most providers say is goal. And so for many people, if we're testing their levels, and they are in the 20s 30s, they're really low, I've seen as low as four, nine and 11. and whatnot, we may boost them with the high dose packs. So they'll take 50,000, I use three times a week, for five weeks, it's only 20 bucks to get the high dose pack, right? It's not synthetic. So the real deal d3, on average, I find that boost my patients levels, about 25 points. So if they're starting at 20, maybe we'll get them up to 45. And then we'll put them on 5000 I use per day, so 1000 2000, rarely, rarely have I ever seen cut it except in children, but in adults, it's just not enough. Now, the caveat to that, and the concern many patients have is kidney stones. So we have a kind of solution to that as well. So many times we're recommending patients take vitamin D with K to to help prevent that. Do you want to expand on that real quickly? How important k two is?

Thomas Pennel 26:15

Yeah, Vitamin K two is awesome. So k two does a couple different things that I think we're gonna spend too long talking about right now as it relates to osteo. Calcium, which helps actually, our bones get calcium in our bones, increasing bone density, as well as protecting our cardiovascular system is not something we really get through our diet, unfortunately, unless we're eating some very specific foods that a lot of people don't need in this country. But k two is really, really, really awesome, because what we're doing is we're making sure that the calcium that's in our system is going where it's supposed to go, right. So it's activating certain components that protect our cardiovascular system, or it's helping the calcium actually get to specific parts of our bones where maybe it's not just hanging out and our cardiovascular system and causing problems, which when it goes to certain parts of our body, like kidneys, or bladder, whatever, maybe can cause problems. Absolutely.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:56

So what he's saying is, if you take d3 with k two, you're less likely to get those complications. So obviously, Vitamin D is extremely important. And it's also included in our product called immune support. So I kind of want to build on that and transition to immune support, which we also talked about in the past episode. But let's kind of break down the main ingredients in immune support, which I would say is kind of the next most important product to take for immune health. So we have mitochondrial complex D, or you can take immune support, which has the d3 in it, but what else is in immune support? Yeah,

Thomas Pennel 27:25

I mean, support was formulated, obviously, with the demand in immune supporting products, ironically enough, right. But if we talk about kind of what people are recommending to take, it's a lot of these very foundational immune supplements, which are vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, and acetyl, cysteine, and quercetin. And the reason we want to take these is, this is the prime example of your metabolic reserve, which I know I've talked about a million times, but the metabolic reserve again, is it's your gas tank, it's Hey, I don't know, when I'm going to come in contact with something, right? I don't know if it's gonna be the next time I leave my apartment or the next time I, you know, do whatever it is, I'm going to come in contact with something, eventually, I'm not saying any particular viruses, right, I'm talking about just anything that could challenge our immune system. And that when I leave and I get in contact with something or something gets brought home, or whatever it is, my body is immediately going to start having a predetermined immune response that it's going to follow these steps that are basically ingrained in our system with the end result, especially the viruses end result and making antibodies, our body wants to create some sort of protection. So the next time we see that we're ready to face it just a little bit quicker, without having attacks the entire system. And every step of that process, your body is basically going to Wagan and go out and look for specific micronutrients, it's not going to actively have a little help with that goes out and grabs them. But what I'm getting at is that the more our gas tank is full, the better off this Escalade we've filled with mitochondrial complex is going to be relieved to make that trip is that when we come in contact with specific viruses, or specific, whatever specific challenges to our immune system, we're going to have that guessing as full as possible. So we can go look for these things and they're ready to go. And we could just plug it in and boom, we're done. Because that we want to make sure that when we're getting challenges to our immune system, we have all the micronutrients ready, so we can perform this. So vitamin D, we just talked about high levels of vitamin D and correlated with reduce bad outcomes for certain things. Leave it at that Vitamin C is an antioxidant, it's a major antioxidant or body so their immune system starts to ramp itself up it to depending on the amount of energy that's driving for these mitochondria, it too will create free radicals to create oxidative stress. Vitamin C helps to do that zinc actually inhibits viral replication in certain different mechanisms. So the viruses actually attach themselves to the host cells inject their genetic material starts to replicate and it's it's a backup makes a whole bunch of other little viruses, which we don't want, right? We want those viruses to go away. Zinc is able to do that. So zinc is able to get in and basically block a the adhesion of those viruses to that self, but then zinc inside themselves able to disrupt the entire pathway of the virus making more viruses essentially. So the more zinc we can get in especially in times where maybe we might be exposed to something like wintertime coming up here, right. We're cold and flu season came around. I can't we were already talking about that. At the time is flying. But zinc is able to do that, of course it's in. It's basically like zinc is a little friend, right? Because zinc for whatever reason doesn't like to get into cell or cells don't like to bring in zinc for whatever reason. But of course, it's an X is what's called a zinc ion of four. So it's able to basically grab zinc hold its hand and say, now I'm coming with you, or you're coming with me, I'm going over here, and I want you to come with me. So it attaches itself to zinc. And then the body likes for whatever reason that the cells like Corsten better than they like sick. So it helps bring zinc in the cells basically shuttles that right across the membrane, which is really exciting. And then acetyl cysteine, precursor to glutathione master antioxidant when our immune system is ramping up and creating oxidative stress, and again, that oxidative stress has little electrons that can cause damage to other cells or to cause damage to other systems, we want to neutralize that as much as possible, we want to make sure that this immune system can basically bounce back and keep going, right stay in the game and keep flying. Right. So what we're doing is we're using an acetyl cysteine to raise glutathione levels in the body. And when we do that, we're able to help our immune system reduce some of the stress in our immune system. Absolutely. And it's all in one. It's

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:02

literally Yeah, literally. And that's why we named it immune support, because that's just basically everything you need for immune support. hypoglossal mentioned that these are the five ingredients that Americans frontline doctors has recommended over the last couple of years for the epidemic, I'll say pandemic whatnot. So I absolutely advocate for this on my patients. And I'll also just make a plan to say that this is safe for those who are pregnant in nursing. So that's why it was formulated this way. I believe there's like 2500, I use of d3 in it. So you may need a little extra. But if you're getting some from your multivitamin, whatnot, for each patient, we can just kind of add up to see what they're getting and decide if they need more. Some people still need 5000 On top of that, but at least it's giving you something.

Thomas Pennel 31:41

So this was meant to be that answer. What kind of get anyone pregnant, breastfeeding older, younger, doesn't matter. This is meant to be a good answer for pretty much anyone.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:49

Our patients are loving it. Let's build on that kind of transitioning to a little more about gut health. So I want to talk about probiotics, and then something called SB IgG. So we know that the large majority of our immune system lies within our gut. So can you expand on that and kind of talk about why probiotics can also support our immune system, and then we'll get to ask the IgG to

Thomas Pennel 32:08

Yeah, just from a functional perspective, there's really three things that we can do three main areas that we can do that help really maximize immune function, talking about taking supplementation. The first one is building good gut barrier, which is what we're going to basically hit on here, we're building a good gut barrier function, which we'll talk about why the second one is hitting our metabolic reserves. So making sure that we're including enough in our gas tank, I know I keep saying that. It's a good analogy, though, we're including enough in our driving

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:29

Driving home, the listeners will remember you literally driving.

Thomas Pennel 32:35

And then the last one is removing triggers, removing things that overstimulate our immune system, because for whatever reason, where our immune system keeps getting poked, and keeps running at a million miles an hour, it kind of freaks out. Sometimes it does things we don't want it to do, right. So what we're trying to do with probiotics, as well as sbig G, which also removes is build a very healthy gut barrier function. I know it's kind of weird to think about for some people. But if you think about it, your GI tract is an interface with the outside world, we have one entrance and one exit and everything that goes through there needs to be processed by the body because if that was left unguarded, if that was left unprotected, we would just let a lot of really nasty things come through our GI system that otherwise cause problems, right and otherwise would hit these pathways that cause inflammatory markers, or maybe cause damage themselves or grow out of control, a lot of gram negative bacteria would overpopulate or some of these things that would cause problems, right cause damage to our tissues. So what we're trying to do with probiotics is a very foundational protection, we're trying to say that we know that something is going to come in through our GI tract, we know that it may disrupt things because we just eat we do we consume things that are going through there, we want to make sure that we have as many good guys in there as possible to help keep the bad guys in check. Because from our functional perspective, when we look at our GI tract, I know we hear this a lot. And depending on what podcasts we listen to, or blogs, read or whatever, maybe I think you know, I'm going to say that most of our immune system in South America, what we're talking about when we talk about that is about 80 to 90% of our immune system being things like dendritic cells and macrophages sitting in our GI tract ready to catch whatever's going through and say, Is this my friend? Is this something that I can trust? Is this good for me? Or is this something that's not going to be good for me and I need to process because when I have dendritic cells, they're just sitting there waiting, the analogy is kind of like helping the ocean, but they're just sitting there waiting a little handout, and when things flow by they grab onto it, say is this good, or is this bad, and if it's bad, it's going to have a process that's that's meant to neutralize it, they're meant to address it. And it's going to create these reactions that overstimulate the immune system sometimes, as well as Dr. inflammatory processes. And we always talk about health starts in our gut. We talked about that quite a bit in the last few episodes. And I know you've interviewed documents, Padre and some of these other people, obviously, I appreciate that quite a bit health starts in our gut, that's a big way that we can make an impact in a lot of patients lives is by starting by approaching with God first. And the reason we can do that is when we reduce the amount of overactivation the immune system and reduce the amount of inflammatory signaling that's coming from our GI tract you see that happen throughout the rest of the body. So we're able to reduce that immune over activation in the GI tract we're able to basically see skin health improve neuro inflammation and groups, we start seeing things in our brain that start to improve from a neurotransmitter perspective as well, we start to see these cardiovascular benefits, we start to see all of these things that happen in our system begin to basically help themselves when we help the gut first. And the reason we choose probiotics is it's a very easy way to defend all of these basically, areas from bad guys overpopulate, right, I know I'm putting bad guys in air quotes. So we're basically saying, we want to make sure that we've got our soldiers in there. So they're, they're ready to defend. So if something bad comes in, they're not just Free Willy to take over.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 35:30

Let's talk about the sbig G. So when there are bad guys, so occasionally,

Thomas Pennel 35:34

we do get bad guys, right? It happens, it happens from time to time, and I've been a patient staking sbig myself, but I can tell you personally, from my experience, it works. But what it's doing is, let's say hey, let's assume that maybe some of these bad guys are gonna take over in amounts that maybe we don't want, or we get something that just comes through even temporarily, that might cause a problem, we want to make sure that we have something that goes in because the bacteria, the probiotics, what they're going to do is basically out compete, they're going to see some open space, they're going to take it over the net out compete the bad guys, or there's bad guys there, they're not necessarily doing anything to stop those bad guys from potentially causing a problem. SP IgG, on the other hand, will go in there and stop those bad guys from creating a problem. And the way that does this is it is a highly concentrated form of something called an immunoglobulin and the immunoglobulins. What it is, is it's basically a pre made immune system is every taking these immunoglobulins from a cow, and the cow has already experienced a lot of these bacteria throughout the course of its life. So what it's done is its body has created these IgG s these IgG immunoglobulins they want it's doing is we're taking those sending it through our GI tract, and anything that that cow was ever exposed to, and has these pre made ready to go to bind to them in our system as well. And because we live in close proximity with cattle, you'd actually be surprised how similar a lot of these components that come through them actually are. And we actually have a full binding list, which I believe we've gone over a full binding list that actually talks about what this binds students, it's incredible. It's dozens of different cell wall components and different cell pieces that it's able to bind to the otherwise trigger the immune system and it goes through binds to them. And when they're bound to SP IgG, they no longer can bind to our own immune system, it's physically impossible when SBI is going through, and it's bound to them physically impossible for them to engage with our immune system. And to

Dr. Stephanie Gray 37:16

My understanding when it when those are bound to SBI, we call this product SBI IgG. But to those immunoglobulins increases the size so that they're so large, they're not going to interact with our immune system, they're gonna get excreted from the body, which is really the cool part, I think.

Thomas Pennel 37:31

So the analogy I use, and you guys will chuckle I like to use analogies is if we decided that we want to play volleyball, instead of recording a podcast, right? If we set up a volleyball net, and I gave you a golf ball, and I said, Dr. Greg, I'm going to stand on the other side of the Bible that right so put your Bible now these nice big squares, I give you a golf ball, and I say Dr. Gray, throw that golf ball as hard as you can through that volleyball, that is me and you hit me square in the face, what's gonna happen is I'm gonna get hit. Because I was in this scenario with the dendritic cell, I wouldn't be the macrophage, I wouldn't be the immune cell, it's sitting on the other side of our gut barrier. And you are sorry, Dr. DE gram negative bacteria that has a toxin that you're releasing, or something that triggers our immune system that you're releasing that is now hitting me and I'm going to have an inflamed response, I'm going to have an immunological, inflamed response. So that's obviously not something I want to do, because we have spaces that things are meant to fit through in our GI tract. And we don't want these things coming through and interacting with me, I want to be left alone. So what we do is with sbig Gene was it's like I gave you a beach ball. And then I took your golf ball, and I duct taped the whole thing together or glued whatever way you want to think about it, I attached that golf ball to a beach ball. I said, Okay, doctor, great, I know you got a pretty good arm, but throw it back at me again, throw that beach ball back at me

Dr. Stephanie Gray 38:42

Again, what's going to happen, I'm going to make it through the net.

Thomas Pennel 38:42

Yeah, not gonna make it through the net, because we're not changing the size. And there are products we can talk about, about changing the size of these volleyball squares that will help kind of close those up and make them healthier, right. But we're not talking about necessarily doing that we're not talking about necessarily anything with the immune cell, what we're doing is we're starting before that and we're binding everything together. So it's physically too large, that's a really important part is now this beach ball is physically too large to get through that space. So in our GI tract when we have these are called pathogen associated molecular patterns PAMPs, these things that trigger our immune system when they're floating through our GI tract and SB IgG binds to them, they have a really strong affinity for each other. Actually, when they bind to them. Now they're the beach ball. Now it's the beach ball size at the cellular level, it's unable to interact with our immune system, like you said, it's excreted right on out. And then the idea is that we're reducing the immune over activation as well as the inflammatory pathways. It's really really, really cool.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 39:36

So this is awesome for prevention. But also if you get sick, you can take very high doses of this and like you have experienced and also fun fact, this is one of the products that has been manufactured in Iowa right and you were alluding to earlier that which is pretty cool.

Thomas Pennel 39:51

Yeah, so sbig G, this raw material is actually coming from a company that's here in Anthony and the cows are actually living in Boone right now, which is great. So it's I have a product made in Iowa. Yep.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 40:03

So we've talked about probiotics, you talked about SP IgG, before immune support and SB IgG, were available, we sold a lot of a product called viruses, which we still sell, it's still available, it's entirely different from what we've already mentioned. So let's transition there. I know it has some herbs in it, which can support our immune system. So it's still that product still exists, it's still a great product. So let's go there. Can you talk a little bit about the virus and the virus

Thomas Pennel 40:27

Support, aka virus and for those who are a little more familiar with ortho, but virus support, what this is, is this is more of the acute virus support that we'd necessarily be wanting to talk about. So a lot of these things we talked about before is foundation and nutrition, filling up our gas tank metabolic reserves, which I think I might have mentioned a couple times to jump, obviously. But you know, we want to make sure that we were hitting those foundational buckets first. So we talked about that's kind of where we start first. But let's now let's say what happens if we encounter a problem, because the approach when we encounter a problem is not going to be the same as the thing we're doing for the entire duration, hopefully, of cold and flu season, or whatever it may be over the course of the winter. So now what we want to do is we want to talk about up regulating immune function, right, which we want to do from time to time, or can do from time to time using certain agents as a way to basically say, hey, immune system, let's give you a little kick in the butt, we have something at our front door right now that we need to address. If it gets in our house, we're gonna have a problem. So the way that virus support helps support the immune system is it has higher doses of specific raw materials like vitamin A zinc. So I talked about earlier how zinc is able to disrupt some of that viral replication, vitamin A plays a similar role, we want to give a higher doses of that and maybe necessarily be taking every single day. Reason being is that we want to make sure that if we encounter some sort of seasonal challenge, or whatever it may be that we have some of those micronutrients at a higher level. So they're working more in acute fashion than they would be a preventative or prophylactic type option. And then from there, the way that they differ significantly, because that's actually how they're kind of similar. The way that they differ significantly is now we're talking about herbal formulations, we're talking about herbal raw materials, right. So really, we talked about micronutrients, just getting some stuff in our system, micronutrients that we can use as a way to protect ourselves. Now we're talking about using herbal remedies to upregulate everything. And now we're talking about things like elderberry, which people are probably pretty familiar with right? companies, a lot of retail products have elderberry. And then elderberry syrup 's are available. same blue color is a big one, I believe. It's got elderberry in it, they can buy grocery stores. There's also some other ones to something like a straggling Kinesia that are in there that helps support the immune system. And what they do these three essentially together work to upregulate the number of immune cells that our body has available to it. So what they do is they actually kick up the number of CD, foreign CD and cell counts more in the short term as a way to basically say, hey, immune system, we need you to get going immediately get going now, because there's something again at our front door that we don't want to get in our house, because that could be a problem. So as opposed to saying, hey, let's make sure the gas tank is going now we're hitting the nitrous button, we're saying we gotta go fast.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 42:52

So if you have the flu, right, you can dose virus it every couple hours for the first 24 hours to really try to stop that viral replication and stop your cell from getting pretty sick. But because of the vitamin a concentration in this product, this is one that I will say is not safe for those who are pregnant or breastfeeding. So just FYI,

Thomas Pennel 43:10

And some of those herbal products, herbal raw materials we necessarily don't want to take as well.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:14

So a lot of listeners are going to say okay, this is all great. Sounds great. Now I know what to take the water about my kids. So I do want to briefly just mentioned for kids, and what we have in those foundational buckets. So we do have a vitamin D for kids. We have the vitamin D drops, they're at a lower concentration than the adults, we have a couple of different kid probiotic products. And there is a multivitamin for kids called Super newts. Do you want to expand on any of those and then I want to talk about any maximum envirocare. But just from a foundational standpoint,

Unknown Speaker 43:42

The good news is is from a foundational standpoint, it's actually the exact same conversation is for adults, right? Obviously, we're just talking about lower doses because the kiddos bodies are a lot smaller. So they have really cute names and they're really great. But the kids versions of all of these products, essentially it's what we've talked about before but chewable, alright, so they're in chewable tablets, and then me Max, which we'll talk about as a liquid. But these are obviously not capsules, because we don't there's a choking hazard associated, right. But what we've done is we've taken all of the things we just talked about and condense it down into Ginsburg. So we're still talking about gut barrier function. We're still talking about benefiting with probiotics. We're still talking about the importance of vitamin D at a lower dose but the importance of vitamin D through a liquid we're still talking about foundational metabolic reserves and talking about how much gas we have in our gas tank using a multivitamin like supranet all the whole conversation we just had is perfect. It applies the exact same thing.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 44:29

And even children can take SP IgG I know when my son has a little bit of a diaper while he doesn't wear diapers anymore, but little diaper rash from time to time if I give him SP IgG he asked He literally says Mom Can I have SP HCG my budget he'll he'll ask for it because he knows that it just clears it right up. It's kind of funny. When he's older. I'm sure he won't appreciate me sharing. But he takes it. He takes our probiotics as well. They are free of dairy there's a coconut based product too. bowl tastes like an orange creamsicle. It's delicious. He asks for that as well. That was I take those they're delicious, delicious. They really they really are. Yeah. And then above and beyond that there is a, I would say also a delicious kind of purple chewable product called Viagra kid, which is similar to some of the adult products we've talked about. And I think it's it's a little similar to mu max as well. So can you talk about those two products? So if you're listening and your children have been getting sick, whatnot, there are some additional products that they can take beyond the superfoods, which is the multivitamin, vitamin D. Probiotics, SP IgG. So yeah, Thomas share about those products.

Thomas Pennel 45:36

Yeah, is this the same thing we've been talking about, which is great, right, because now we can split it up in a foundation, put some names to it, and then say more of the acute support that we talked about. Gotta be careful what I say right, but the acute support that we've been talking about now we can put some names to it. So that foundational stuff is exactly like we were just talking about Supernus multivitamin people on Reddit down again, or whatever it may be super newts, which is going to be our multivitamin, then we have four bites and some of these other products are going to help the kids probiotics. And then we got vitamin D, right, we say the same things available to kids, which is fantastic. But then we also have products that are saying, hey, if someone's challenged, if their immune system is challenged, we want to make sure that we have some more acute support and then they can again, give a little kick in the butt because we're talking about little bodies here to give a little kick in the butt. To get some of those immune cells up regulated. We have two options we have via a kid, which is a chewable and this is probably my favorite tool just based on taste. It is delicious. I don't know if you tried them on with William.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:26

I have it's good. It's good. It turns his mouth purple but it does.

Thomas Pennel 46:30

Yeah. Which kids love right. But it's it's absolutely delicious. It has a great name, which I love. And it's essentially viruses dose down or virus support dose down for children. So it's vitamin A zinc, not at super high doses, right because we obviously want to be sensitive to our body size here, but vitamin A and zinc as well as elderberry echinacea Astragalus. It's all of the same raw materials that we just talked about with virus sin, which is virus support dose down for children, then me Max kind of follows a similar idea where we're still talking about a few different things in there. But for the most part, it's still that elderberry and echinacea, which is meant to upregulate immune function. This one's available as a liquid, it's very similar when we look at it from face value to FIRA kid. But both of them are fantastic products for this time of year

Dr. Stephanie Gray 47:11

that has bee propolis in it, doesn't it? Is that the other difference? Okay, I couldn't remember,

Thomas Pennel 47:16

There's some anti inflammatories in there as well. It's a slightly different approach, but they fall under the same umbrella.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 47:21

So for kids, there you go, there are your answers. This is exactly what I wanted to do just an episode on here are the products, here's what you should take, let's lay the foundation, right. And then if you get sick, here's what else you can take. So I'm just briefly going to add one more thing to that. And our listeners know, we love silver, we saw a lot of silver at our clinic as well. So that's something that can also be taken for prevention. Or if you get sick, it can be taken multiple times per day. If you need help with dosing, talk to your clinician, I mean, it's pretty safe to say you can take what's on the label that please talk to your clinician as well, because sometimes we will dose up or down certain products. And this was all extremely helpful. So anything else you want to mention Thomas? Or do you feel like we wrapped it all up while here?

Thomas Pennel 48:00

I think we did good. We didn't talk for two hours this time, which is great, but almost an hour. I know we get excited. And we started we started nerding out and talking about some things which I love. Yeah, I would just say, you know, for not only foundational health, and not just for your immune system, but just everything, everything that we could talk about whether it's gut health or cardiovascular function, whatever their foundational products that we can focus on. So I would say yes, it's really important as we head in, I'm not saying Cold Flu season that St. Fran particular viruses, whatever it may be. But as we head into these times, where we're going to be challenged, make sure that we're just checking some of these boxes. And if we look at coughs, we can get whatever, maybe it's much more fun to spend a little bit of money to take some supplements than it is to get sick a bunch of times over the next few months. So agreed. So

Dr. Stephanie Gray 48:41

Listeners fill up your tank. Thomas, tell us where listeners can find you. Are you on social media?

Thomas Pennel 48:46

Yeah, so really a great place to look for me is LinkedIn, I post a lot of related material as it relates to immune function as it relates to whatever it may be kind of timely topics, um, as well as some fun science stuff that's going on with ortho there. So if you want to look for me, you can obviously just search my name Thomas panel, and I'll provide the link for that. But that's probably the best way to look for some of this stuff.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 49:02

Awesome. Awesome. All right, top longevity tip metabolic reserves. All right.

Thomas Pennel 49:11

I'm keeping it the same for last time I would say that you know, you're going to be challenged I'm going to be challenged factor you're gonna be challenged Mr. Bodies are going to be challenged, whether it's physiological stress or whatever it may be over the course of our lifetime. And the best way to protect ourselves is to make sure that we're filling up our metabolic reserves and we're making sure that we're keeping that gas tank as full as possible because you never know when you need to jump in that car and start driving.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 49:32

Yeah, Mic drop! now's a great way to conclude the show. So thank you so much for your just being a wealth of knowledge and thank you for sharing what supplements are available for us right to not get sick, hopefully, but also thank you for sharing what we can take to ultimately reduce severity and duration of illness and help us not get chronic disease in general. So this was awesome. Exactly listeners wanted so thanks so much. Thank you Dr. Gray. There you have it, folks, fill up your tank, building your metabolic and immune reserves with nutrients in products like mitochondrial complex vitamin D, and immune support and add to this with probiotics sbig G virus support and silver. I will post links to all these products and the children's products mentioned today in the show notes. Use code don't get sick that's don't get sick with no apostrophes for 10% off anything mentioned today and to take your immune health up even further notched. If you're local, consider scheduling a vitamin C IV therapy session at the integrative health and hormone clinic. This is always great to do prior to or after traveling. And lastly, consider listening to Episode 96. With Dr. Benson Padre on gut health. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you learn on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. This podcast is produced by Team podcast thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting

The information provided in this podcast is educational no information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.