126. Why Gut Testing Matters with Dr. Dan Cardellichio

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 0:05

For you and I, the functional lab testing is the game changer in combination with traditional blood work.

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 Dr. Dan Cardellichio. Today we're going to dive into gut health functional lab testing and what truly makes personalized care. Let's get started.

Welcome to another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today. My guest is Dr. Dan Cardellichio, who is the Chiropractic Physician and holds a MS degree in Human Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport, where he serves as an adjunct professor, Dr. Dan is passionate about transforming our broken disease focus system to a true health care system finding the true root cause of all diseases. Dr. Dan had a heart attack at the age of 37. And since that time, He's dedicated his life's work to helping those restore balance in their life. Dr. Dan works with individuals with metabolic dysregulation such as heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Dr. Dan has become a leader and educator in the field of Metabolic Nutrition and functional biochemistry. He uses state of the art diagnostic testing, and his clinical experience is used to help determine the cause of your condition and the best course of action for his patients. Dr. Carter liketo is a dynamic, energetic, captivating and thought provoking speaker, he looks forward to meeting you to discuss your nutritional needs. Welcome to the show, Dr. Dan,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 1:40

Thank you very much. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. Usually, I am the one that's doing the interviewing. However, I'm getting more, I'm getting interviewed more. So it's always interesting. So if I started interviewing you at one point, in the conversation telling me to stop.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:57

I'm gonna call you Dr. Dan, because your last name is definitely a mouthful.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 2:02

Yeah, it was very good.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 2:03

Well, tell us your story. Your bio is very interesting. Obviously, you had a heart attack very early in life, which has fueled your passion. So let's start with your story. Tell us about that, and how you got so interested in functional medicine.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 2:15

So I'm a Chiropractor by trade. And I'm one of those type AAA driven type of individuals. And when I had graduated from chiropractic school, I wanted to set the world on fire. And I just had this grand, these grand goals of having practices with medical doctors, you know, physiatrist, anesthesiologist, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapy. And that's exactly what we did. And we did this in three different states, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. So my partners and I, we, we set these up, and we were serving humankind. And you know, when you're, when you're serving at a high level, money is coming in and so forth. And we got to be very successful in helping patients and as well as you know, monetarily. And what happened was, is that now I'm traveling to three different states from northern New Jersey, it was very stressful. And your lifestyle changes, you get married, you get that, you know, first year, 10 pounds when you get married, I just gained in a six year period of time, from traveling from office to office, again, like 60 pounds. So maybe 70 pounds, I think I was like 260. And healthcare was changing. There was a lot of stress, less stress, running big practices, we had over 100 employees. And it became very stressful. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was eating out whatever fast food restaurant was there, I was not exercising, I was not taking care of myself. And I went to the doctor's he said you got a little bit of blood pressure. You wanted to just you know, match your stress. All I know, Stephanie is that at one point in time, I remember being in the office on a Tuesday, and I started blacking out. I remember getting tunnel vision and kind of blacking out. And there's a hospital right across the street from me. I went into the hospital and there was a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon just happened to be there. And he looked at me and I referred cases over to him. And he says, then you're gonna die. I don't remember checking in. All I remember is lying down. And they had the pads that nitric oxide paste. My blood pressure was 230 over 120 ish. To me, you do feel it on the left side of your face, in your jaw and it was like a marble going down a blood vessel. I felt like a marble and it stopped in my shoulder. And I passed out and I awoke and they said I had This mild heart attack. And I just kind of looked down and I looked at my stomach and I said, Wow, I said, this is not happy and follow up visits, my cholesterol was a little bit over 500. My triglycerides were 1002 and 27. And most people don't survive. And this is how I got involved into functional medicine. I didn't listen. I'm not anti medicine, I needed to take tricore I needed to take Lipitor at that point, I gotta get that down. I remember saying to my primary care, I'm gonna go run. He says, You're not running you go chicken. If you run, he said, You're gonna walk a little bit. And I found a functional medicine doctor. And I had no idea exactly what that was.

That was a long time ago to I mean, I mean, yeah, right. I'm not saying you're old. I'm just doing...

I am a little bit stuff.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 5:52

I'll say you're older than me. So. So back then I imagined there really weren't as prevalent as they are.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 5:58

No.The functional medicine doc was a chiropractic friend of mine who has a master's degree in nutrition. And he ordered some of the interesting blood work of the day. And he sat me down, he went through all of this, he changed my entire life, and changed my entire life. This is how I got into this. He looked at me, he says, you're really into this go for a master's in nutrition, you can do this in your office. That's what I did. I didn't see him for three years. I just started eating appropriately. I was taking targeted nutrition supplements, the weight went down. And I'm 60 and maybe 61, and a couple of months, and I can keep up with my son in the gym. And most exercises, not all, and this is how I got into it. And it's really a game changer. I just love being a functional medicine physician.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 6:51

Awesome. Awesome. I want to ask back then I kind of have my own story. We all do. Right? I had my own kind of personal health crisis. I had tachycardia, very fast heart rate. And I was very stressed out. Also, I only had 10 employees, not 100. But that was stressful. It is no looking back. Now. That was years ago. Right. But looking back now I can see how my body was probably sending me signals. So I guess my question is, was your body sending you signals? You mentioned you had put on some weight, right. But in the moment, I was clearly blind to those. I was just off full speed ahead. Just keep doing what you're doing. You're getting through your day?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 7:25

That is a great question. That is a really interesting question. Because I will tell you the month leading up to the heart attack, I knew I was having a heart attack. I knew it. I couldn't stop myself, though. I was addicted to food. I was addicted to fast foods to processed foods, all of that stuff that you and I talk about to our patients now. I couldn't stop it. I mean, I remember driving home. And for those of you listening from New Jersey on Route nine south, and I pull into a fast food place and I get a burger. And I get large fries and a sugary cola. And I took one bite and I threw everything out the window because I said, I'm gonna have a heart attack and I felt myself. Your hands were clammy? You know, I was my face was white. I was sweating. You know, I would wake up in the morning and my heart was pounding. And you know, it was it was a struggle, literally to walk upstairs. I was like, out of breath. I'm sitting there saying to myself, I ran marathons, I played football, I play basketball, high school, college things. And you know, I'm having a difficult time. I mean, I remember one time, literally, I'm watching TV. And I used to have cereal at like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, because now I'm starving again. And I have a box of cereal. And then to walk up the stairs, my head is dizzy. I'm having difficulty breathing. And I said this is not the way it should be a healthcare provider.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:56

Right, that sometimes health care providers. I mean, I remember working in the hospital, I one day I kind of looked around. And I'm like, most all these nurses are significantly overweight. Like what is health care turning into? Like, what literally what is it turning into? So not a health care model?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 9:10

And yeah, it is a sick care model that we're into. It's a situation where we look at symptoms. It's a situation where we're looking for entities to help us. And that model is not working. So you and I are kind of disrupting that model a little bit or a lot of it because I think that that is not the way healthcare should be. Don't look to something on the outside. Don't look to whatever I mean, mutual friends, and they would sit there and say to you, oh, you're going to use your insurance company and you're going to have your insurance company dictate your health. No, that's the worst possible thing. You can possibly in your life. But we've become accustomed to this right. We've become accustomed a cup of coffee, maybe you're doing a shift and it's 10 o'clock at night cup of coffee a little little cake to get you through the next three hours. Five o'clock was coffee and cake for me in my office, the secretaries, we just make a little coffee, they had a little cake, I go in a couple of bites a little bit, you know, then you go see patients and then you just got notes. It's not a lifestyle that is smart.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:17

I think a lot of individuals maybe feel lost also and that they maybe don't even know functional medicine exists, like you knew something's wrong, I'm gonna go seek out find a functional medicine doctor who clearly helped you, right. But I think a lot of individuals are not aware that functional medicine even exists. So I actually want to stay maybe on the topic of heart disease, metabolic syndrome here for a moment, I want to get into gut health practices, whatnot. But since you're just sharing your story about heart disease, do you want to share some of the functional lab tests actually, and I don't even know back then if no advanced lipid testing was available, or whatnot. But can you share for our listeners?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 10:49

It wasn't it wasn't exactly available. But for you and I, the functional lab testing is the game changer in combination with traditional blood work, right. And if you're going to do an advanced lipid test, it's really an interesting situation, because everybody talks about cholesterol. And cholesterol has some positive aspects to it, right? It's good for hormone balancing and development. But I like to do the advanced testing. And I'd like to, you know, add in what we call a big word APL lipoproteins, right? There's a one and B. And we take a look at these. And it's a situation we're looking at inflammation in the body, the A fo B is the bad cholesterol, and we want to make sure that we're working on that and includes LDL is it who's the the very low density lipoproteins, VLDL. And when those are high, we want to we want to do strategies, we have strategies to help bring that down. People like but Protein A one good cholesterol is cardio protective, we want to make sure that we're raising that up, I like to do that I'd like to do an inflammatory biomarkers, I like to do the C reactive protein, it just gives a very overall picture of inflammation in your body, you know, it could be coming from your food from your stress, your diet, your lifestyle, those are the ones I like to do. And I like you know what the other one I like to do is the Omega6 to the Omega3 ratio. I love that one. I really liked that a lot. arachidonic to EPA, we all hear about Omega3's and Omega6's. Omega3's are good. They're anti, they have this anti inflammatory effect. And we want to make sure that we have a proper portion of the Omega3's to Omega6's should be one to one. But in today's society, it's 15 to one where we're eating the inflammatory foods, the processed foods, the ultra processed foods. And those are high in Omega6's, which increases the inflammation in the body. That's a root cause right there is looking at that inflammation in the body. So people are just eating junk food, I don't like that word term, it's either junk or food, you know. So what we're coming out of over the last two years, you know, so many people are eating the cakes, the candies, and things of that nature. And that's all Omega6 fatty acids, which increases inflammation in the body. And that, that just sets the whole situation up that just sets everything that's like a root cause. And now everything starts falling apart from there takes a period of time, it takes a period of time. But if that's your lifestyle, that's what you're doing habitually. So I love those advanced lipid panels because it gives so much great information to help treat and to sit there and say, Okay, now we need to do X, Y, and Z. When it comes to that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:49

A lot of patients who seek me out and listen, and maybe you too, they want to avoid statin medications or just medications in general. But we have to assess their personal risk, right. So by not just looking at a lipid panel that their doctor said, you know, you need they need medication for we can look beyond that to see kind of what you were saying the particle sizes to see how inflamed they are we can see if they're building plaque we can see if the cholesterol is oxidized. And I think a lot of patients...

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 14:14

and other LDL right are available, but

Dr. Stephanie Gray 14:17

They are available and we can use them to then personalize... their exist...

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 14:22

And then what you and I do is we put together that program based upon that blood work. Listen, as I said, I'm not anti medication. If a patient comes in to me, and I run just a regular lipid panel, and the triglycerides are 800. I am going to refer them to you so that you can further assess them. And maybe they do need some medication at that point to help bring it down. But let's also Let's also get you off of that medication. And let's also take a look at your lifestyle. And let's take a look and how can we get you off of that medication. And what are you doing to bring this about, I'm sure you find the same thing. And when I teach at Bridgeport for the, for the graduate program in human nutrition, and I always say this, it's a situation if you're eating poorly, you're smoking generally. And if you're smoking, generally, you don't have any exercise. If you're not exercising, generally, you are drinking a little bit too much, and you're eating poorly, maybe Friday nights kind of go into the bar, and you have a hamburger, you get a double bacon cheeseburger, and you're having a couple of drinks. And next day you get up, you know, feel good, now you have to have a little coffee, little sugar to settle it. And then you're gonna have some, I don't know, some, some type of dough night or whatever. That's, that's, that's very normal for individuals. And I find that those individuals, you know, they don't drink a can of sugary soda or an iced tea, because it's made from the best stuff on earth, of course, right? Remember that commercial, they're having a dozen of those in a day. That's bad. So all of this bloodwork helps out with all of this.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 16:09

Totally agree. And I want to go back to those inflammatory oils. So I mentioned to you before we started the interview, I'm from Iowa. And so soy and corn are, you know, on my right and left hand side everywhere, I'm driving like, those are in everything. Literally, I took my son to a pumpkin patch, because we're gonna run our holiday season here. And the man who owned the pumpkin patch said, you know, this is corn, you know, corn isn't everything like he was proud corners and everything. And I'm thinking, No, this is not good. hyperco scoring syrup, isn't everything. Yes, I see. You're proud of that. But that's not healthy. And it's also I think, very addictive. Yes. So individuals, like you said, who are living this lifestyle with these bad habits, those habits are hard to break. And I get that...

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 16:48

They are, there was a study done in 2016. I think it was New England Journal of Medicine. And it indicated that corn, wheat and soy, they're fillers, they're using them for fillers, 53% of Americans that consume this, I think it was like 35, or 33 to 35% of those are in excess. And they have high lipid markers. They have high waist to hip ratio, which is which is bad. And they have pre diabetes, I don't know what pre diabetes is to be honest with you either diabetic or not, as far as I'm concerned, they have all of this Metabolic dysregulation going on when you're cooking with these oils. But another interesting fact is that if you cook at high temperatures, these oils become rancid. They become very rancid. And we talked about the omegas. Now you got the Omega6's going on, which further increases the inflammation. It could be anything that you're cooking. I mean, we use oil for everything, right? So foreign oils and soy, maybe not the best, you got to take a look at that. And that's what you and I do, we'll take a look at that, you know, how are you cooking? What does that look like? And what can we do to take that away from you, right? And say, Hey, listen, maybe you should try this, instead of doing this. And you know, by golly, next thing you know it, six weeks goes by you're down 12 to 15 pounds, you're looking good, you're feeling good. You want to be in Hollywood, and you got more energy and you feel good. And you look good. It's just it's just, it's just a great way to serve humankind.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 18:24

I want to go back, I think there are so many comments I want to make here. I do want to go back to why you mentioned corn, wheat and soy because I know there are tests to see if patients have sensitivities to those foods, but quickly. We do want patients to work to reduce Omega6's in their life, but they need to increase the Omega3's as well. And we don't have access to fresh fish. We live in Iowa, right? So eating fish isn't maybe as easy for those who are on the coast whatnot. And And yes, you can still get some that I heavily advocate and I assume you probably do, too, that patients supplement with Omega3 fatty acids. I mean, that's just almost a necessity. For many of my patients. I've tested enough people's levels. I know everybody needs more omega threes,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 19:00

it's important to supplement with the Omega3's as a matter of fact, as part of my core four, nutrition shake, vitamin D multivitamin and Omega3. That's important because it brings down that inflammation because most people it's not only in the United States to most people around the world have some type of health risk. Western Europe, they smoke like cousins out there were smoking when they were 10 years old, because that's just the accepted that's norm and that creates inflammation in your body. So to take into supplement is extremely important in order to bring down those inflammatory biomarkers to get rid of that inflammation. And to start you on regulating your biochemistry in your body so that you're functioning better. That's the important aspects supplement is very important. That's why we run those panels short

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:52

Totally agree and I do think we both agree that kind of inflammation is the root cause of all disease and inflammation starts in the gut. So let's transition to talking about Guess what creates poor gut health.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 20:04

Look to the gut. And I tell all my students look to the gut always first. So there's so many things that can create a leaky gut intestinal permeability, to get in there and cause havoc in that gut stress. Right now, everybody's stress, right? Everybody's stressed out, big contributing factor, eating improper foods for you, you can tell me that you're eating the Mediterranean diet, arguably, right? One of the best diets that is out there. However, there may be components of that diet that may not work for your biochemistry. So we look at food sensitivities, or food intolerances, environmental toxins, right? We're all exposed to environmental toxins. I'm in New Jersey, we were the chemical company of the world pharmaceutical company of the world. We were exposed to dioxin we were Agent Orange was made two miles away from me. So environmental toxins, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, right, and you're in Iowa. So they may be using some of this stuff for harvesting and farming. different medications can create this whole situation where your gut gets leaky, it literally gets leaky. So now when you're eating foods, not eating, if you have a slice of pizza with pepperoni, it's not that the pepperoni is going into your bloodstream directly are the are the mozzarella cheese, but large proteins that are inflammatory, are going into your bloodstream, creating that inflammatory process. So that's what causes this leaky gut, very important to do today, extremely important.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 21:48

I'm going to add to that gut infection. So you mentioned kind of food sensitivities or intolerances, environmental toxins, and then gut infections, I would say those three, by far are things that I'm sure we both assess with our patients. So let's, let's break down the first, did you know about food sensitivities back when you had your heart attack was that part of what your functional medicine provider helped you with a kind of identifying what you needed to take out to reduce inflammation?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 22:10

He did, it was very rudimentary back then the food, the food intolerance, testing, but the technology has just come along so much. Where the testing, the one lab that I run is 206, or 203 different types of foods, we look at everything, from salmon, to macro, to herring, to beef, to chicken, to doc to all sorts of different fruits and veggies, that's causing an inflammatory response for you, because everybody is unique when it comes to this, and I think that's important to say, everybody's different, because your food sensitivity is going to be different than mine is going to be different than your husband's and so forth. So we want to find that what you should be eating and what you should be avoiding. And if we avoid those foods that are creating a food sensitive, you know, creating this intolerance, creating inflammation, it's okay. So listen, salmon is a great source of omega three fatty acids, it may not be for you, but there's other sources of Omega threes that we can get into your diet via food or supplements, like we were talking before. So that's extremely important that is in my practice. And I'm sure in your practice, it's one of the biggest game changers because when you're putting together that diet, it's very specific, because you hear oh, you should do oatmeal for your cholesterol or you should do this or you should do. Okay. That's nice. But it may not be good for you specifically

Dr. Stephanie Gray 23:42

Agree. Yep, definitely way to personalize our approach. Yeah, to the patient's health. And I would say, regardless of what their symptoms are, whether it's metabolic disease, anxiety, acne, it doesn't really matter what their concern is, they're coming in to see me with usually assessing gut health, like you're saying everything starts in the gut, right? is very helpful. That is that

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 24:03

That's great because gut health. Once you have this leaky gut, you're looking at, in part metabolic dysregulation, you're looking at type two diabetes, you're looking at cardiovascular disease, weight loss, resistance, hypertension, you're looking at autoimmune conditions, which can lead to skin types of conditions, acne, psoriasis, you know, all of that. So skin conditions can happen along with anxiety and depression, along with anxiety and depression, because how many times there's somebody coming into your office and they say, Well, my blood pressure is high. And you know, like, Doc, ran some panels and you know, I'm diabetic, there's always some anxiety and depression that's always associated you find that, I find that so those are some big conditions that can be helped along when it comes to, you know, looking at your gut. So I love I love doing the gut testing.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:59

All our listeners what lab you use? I believe you mentioned that you use vibrant America, I know they have very specialized food testing, they have the Zoomer panels, can you explain a little bit about how I guess specific and how fancy those panels are?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 25:13

Oh, my goodness, they are very specific and very fancy, I could do a whole podcast on that. So let's take a look at something like the wheat Zoomer test, right, which specifically looks at leaky gut. So we're going to, you know, run the panel, we get the results back. And it tells us whether you have leaky gut or not, it looks at different enzymes that are in the blood, so that in different protein sources that are in the blood, because when you have a leaky gut, it literally separates the lining in your gut. And when it does, that enzymes and proteins go directly into your bloodstream, it's looking at those proteins and those enzymes to see if they're elevated, because if they're elevated, you'll have a leaky gut that's going on. And we need to what we say, deal that God, this is amazing. And this is how specific we get when we're looking at this because then we can treat it in a very specific way. So there's different types of proteins and enzymes that get dumped into the blood. And we take a look at them. And we look at they're elevated. It also takes it the next step, it looks at gluten in it looks at Gliadin, which is the actual protein in gluten that causes that gastric that gut the stress, if you will, Oh, tell me the different proteins in the Gliadin that are high, that just that Gliadin is high, but all of a subset of different proteins in there. I love this test,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:46

I would say it's so fancy, it's much less likely to miss miss a week since

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 26:50

You don't miss anything. And it's like you're sitting across from somebody and you say, this is exactly what's going on, you could say it with virtually 100% confidence, if not percent confidence and how you can help out an individual.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 27:05

Would you say that the majority of your patients you test do have problems with gluten?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 27:09

Yes, they do. They do because they're eating it all the time. And it's a very caustic compound, if you will, and caustic food component that does create inflammation, much debate on whether you should eat gluten, or should I tell my patients I'm running this test, they're getting better after we give them the program of care, because we're looking at the gut. And I find that to be all the time by the way, just about all the time, right?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 27:39

Let's go on to looking for gut infection. So again, we kind of mentioned toxins, food sensitivities, and then gut infections can lead to this like leaky gut situation. So tell me what testing you offer for looking for, I guess, another glimpse into gut health and gut infections,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 27:52

You know what you want to do the stool analysis, right? Because you're doing the stool analysis all the time, there's many different testing stool analysis that you still analysis that you can do, it's gonna give us the different bacteria that's in your gut that's in your stool, your stool is something it's elimination, everything is it just runs through your body, and it has that bacteria in there. So now we're taking a look at this and we're saying, Okay, you have this factory, Hi, this bacteria. Hi, this bacteria that's high. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to give you targeted supplementation, targeted nutrition to help further heal that gut. Because it's all of it combined. And I think that's what is so great about functional medicine, you're looking at the root cause, right? This is part of the puzzle. This is part of the puzzle. And this is part of the puzzle. It's never just one thing that's going on in your life. It's never one thing I think it's a whole array of of stuff, if you will, so doing still analysis is another game changer to help out.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 28:57

I think that's kind of where conventional medicine has has it wrong also and that I at least in my in my book, Your your longevity blueprint, kind of described the fire department approach where you needed the fire department proach when you had a heart attack, you needed them to put fire, right. But then long term, you need the carpenter, the contractor to help repair and rebuild the body. And that's kind of where functional medicine comes in. But I think with conventional medicine, many times patients are just seeing specialists, they're just their care is so fragmented, and no one's putting together you know, no one's connecting all the dots that the gluten sensitivity could be causing the acne that you're seeing the dermatologists for the bloating, you're seeing the GI for the headache, you're saying that neurologists for those doctors aren't communicating or or nor are they asking what is the patient eating either. I mean,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 29:36

There's a perfect example where you can look at the gut for your acne. So you can go to the dermatologist, maybe you're taking a medication for it and maybe you're taking you know an antibiotic which is a very popular which is very popular drug pharmaceutical to prescribe for that your 1415 years old. Now your gut medications can cause this leaky gut Antibiotics, somebody goes on an antibiotic in my office, they're automatically taking a probiotic, all right to replenish that gut, because that antibiotic, it's just like getting rid of the bad bacteria. It's also getting rid of the good bacteria, because it's important that you have good bacteria in your stomach, not the bad bacteria, but the antibiotic gets rid of all of them. It's not it's not specific for that. That's extremely important. But they're not. There's no communication. My mother used to come from North Carolina, up to our house at this time of the year and stay until Christmas, we go back to North Carolina, she would have two big plastic bags of medications that she would bring on the plane with her. The right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. And then when one she went to one doctor for this, and then the other doctor said no. Why? Why are they giving you this? She was in her 80s. She's not telling them the whole history that she doesn't, she's not even caring at that point. It's very difficult. It's very difficult now, because you're taking 20 different medications.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:05

And a lot of the patients deplete nutrients which then they'd be more nutritionally starved and then you're tired. And

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 31:12

I could go on for hours about that. So you get nutrient drug interactions, it depletes nutrients if you deplete vitamin D, everybody's deficient in vitamin D, it helps out with your leaky gut. That's another avenue, I always do a vitamin and mineral panel at some point in time, right to make sure there's no reason to take vitamin C, if there's if you're deficient in vitamin C, right? You want to target what you're deficient in, in order to make your biochemistry work.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:42

Absolutely. What are top nutrients you find patients commonly come back low in Oh, vitamin

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 31:48

D, number one, Vitamin D is huge. Everybody's get out in the sun. You're in Iowa. I'm in New Jersey, we're not by the equator, I find patients that are snowbirds that go down to Miami for the for the winter, in New Jersey, they come back if I'm running the vitamin and mineral panel, sometimes it's still deficient, although read

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:08

Agree that I have all these snowbirds who go to Arizona or Florida, and they're like, oh, I don't need to take my vitamin D because you know, they're as tan as tn can be and they come back from down south and they're still low. So I say you still have to take,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 32:20

You still have to take your supplementation, make sure you're taking Vitamin D, Vitamin K, what are the I you know, what are what is that? 5000 10,000? Because you look at some of these guidelines and you know, 200 are in a no vitamin D is always number one. Across the board. I find Vitamin C is another one that people are deficient in. I just poor diets breaking down, they just have vitamin C that there's a deficiency and B vitamins all across the board. Those are the ones that I find you find you have that very similar

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:52

Oh, yeah, I was just thinking of the last few nutrient panels I was looking at yesterday. And I was like, what were the top and all these patients were low on everything. I mean, magnesium, they're just omega3 fatty acids. They're, they're low on antioxidants. They're just low on almost everything. Even my patients. I've said this before on the podcast, but even my patients who are growing their own organic food who are eating I would say relatively well still need a supplement. It's very rare that I find someone in this day and age who doesn't have to supplement with something.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 33:20

There's so much around supplementation, we're not talking about going to a popular store. And just patients come in they're taking the pollen Well, why are you taking bee pollen? Well, I went to the store I got I got I got sold on the pile, and there were a raspberry ketones or something along those links. Oh, that's cute. That's nice. How much do you spend per month.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 33:40

If you want to save money, do the test right to see what you have needs for and then you can supplement accordingly.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 33:45

Because you can have a $300 to $400 a month habit going to a popular vitamin store, right? I find that all the time in my office, that's a lot of money, people.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 33:55

Obviously, we're both are doing the same thing like to test patients. So then I tell them, hey, as you work to heal your gut, you may need to supplement a little bit less. So hopefully that's a motivation for them to eat clean whatnot, and to take gut healing nutrients. So for listeners, I just want to break down again, the stool test is extremely important because as Dr. Dan said, we get to see good bacteria. See if you're low in good bacteria, if you're really high in good bacteria, you could have a condition called SIBO, which we won't go into but we've had you know other episodes where we've talked about that on. We can also look to see if you are low on enzymes see if you need to take hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes, ox bile, we can see how inflamed you are we can see if you need more fiber, more short chain fatty acids and we can look for parasites yeast and bacterial overgrowth. So the stool test can tell so much and so if you're listening and you haven't had a stool test run, this may be a good next step for you with rebuilding your health. But I just had to put a plug in for stool testing. We haven't talked a lot about stool testing on the show yet. And

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 34:51

I agree Listen, January's coming up. Everybody's gonna make the resolutions, get some of the testing done. Get some of that testing done and see where you're at? And she what that functional medicine practitioner can do to to help you out? I think that's important to do. It's your health. It's your health. I

Dr. Stephanie Gray 35:09

Totally agree. We kind of talked about what nutrients many patients are very low in, but specifically, what are gut healing nutrients? So after doing food testing and stool testing, right, when we want to work to heal the gut, what nutrients do you use heavily?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 35:32

I have a protocol where I have a nutrition shake that I recommend out of my office that has glutamine. Glutamine is great to help starting the process to heal. Right. So glutamine having a nutrition shake with glutamine, l glutamine that's in it. Vitamin D. Okay, that is important to that it'll help start healing the gut, anti inflammatory, gut, anti inflammatory effect, it's right there into that gut steps, starts bringing all of that down as PMS, the pro resolving mediators are anti inflammatory, those are three right off the bat in combination with the very specific diet that I find really, really significantly helps out a lot. So probiotics, vitamin D. S PMS, and a nutrition shake with glutamine l glutamine along with the diet. That is great. That is that is a home run. As far as I'm concerned, do you find that similar in your.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 36:36

Yeah, and in my book and chapter one, I kind of walk patients through the Institute for Functional Medicine, gut healing protocol. So involving a lot of those supplements who just mentioned, I'd say zinc is up there also is up there wound healing, that's kind of in our shake, or that ship that what do we call it we have GI support and got shield two different kinds of products. And then turmeric, I do use a lot of turmeric permitting, they don't have a sensitivity,

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 36:58

also another great anti inflammatory, right?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 37:01

Yep, and then antioxidants. And occasionally I'll use prebiotics. I'm pretty shy with using prebiotics unless I know they need them just because I have I'm someone who has had SIBO, who fiber sets me off. And so you know, not everybody, I'd say needs that I'd like to test to know what what patients need. But

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 37:18

If you're not testing, you're guessing. That's our motto. And in functional medicine, in part, if you're not testing, you're guessing. So if your doc is not testing, and they're just kind of like going like this, yeah, and seeing what happens, I will see you in a month. No, no, no, we want to make sure that you get the best care possible.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 37:34

I want to talk a little bit more about kind of your weight loss, I guess, program strategy with your clients like how do you feel about fad diets? And like, how do you help patients? You've kind of already shared some of this. So I feel like we're kind of maybe repeating ourselves, but how do you help patients essentially with weight loss? Because so many of these patients have metabolic syndrome, and they are overweight? And and clearly you were as well, and you've lost a lot of that weight. So you want to speak?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 37:58

Yeah, sure, I lost about 70 pounds, 65-70 pounds. Again, number one is getting that food sensitivity done to make sure that you're feeding your body properly. I'm not a calories in calories out type of a guy. I don't like that. I mean, that's from Yeah, that's that's ancient. Because what happens with that fad diet that I call that is that once you calorically restrict yourself and you're working out, now you get rebound, because now your relationship with food. And I think this is the important aspect of this, that relationship with food is still the same. So okay, I'm going to eat a little fish, I'm going to have a little salad. And I'm going to do that I'm not going to have a lot of it, you know, some of these popular weight loss programs out there do this, they, you can have a little lasagna, but it's calorically restricting you. And so when it's done now you get rebound and you gain not only that weight back on another 15 to 20 pounds, because now you're just starving. So eating the appropriate foods is important. Doing physical activity is important with this also, you know and listen, you know what I recommend? I'm not a personal trainer, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. I'm just a guy that's trained all of his life, playing football and stuff. It's simple recommendation after dinner, walking out 15 to 20 minutes and coming back 15 to 20 minutes, building up some cardiovascular strength, doing some resistance training, because muscle is important. It's been called the The It's been called the organ of longevity. You want to have high, lean protein you want you want lean muscle mass, you want to bring down the percent body fat. And one thing that we haven't mentioned so far is sleep. Because without restful restorative sleep, which you've got to get rid of your stress during the day. You can't have your cup of coffee at 10 o'clock at night. Although my father would have coffee at one o'clock in the morning and then he would just fall asleep but that was a story for a different time. But without restful and restorative sleep, your biochemical functions are just not going to function if you will. And so you need that restful restorative sleep in order to make that work, getting the appropriate diet. And I find when I do the food sensitivity tests, people actually eating more, it's kind of like their body wants those nutrients from those foods that they want. So eating the appropriate diet for you doing some physical activity, sleep, water, managing stress, that's the way that you're going to help reduce that weight that percent body fat, if you will, right.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 40:38

It sounds like initially, you were put on medications because your cholesterol triglycerides are very high. So flash forward, right couple decades here, are you successfully off many medications?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 40:54

That's really awful. All medications, I have successfully come off of all medications, we do the bloodwork every six months, there are times when I do go on a statin for a period of time. And then my personal internist is also my partner, and she's a functional medicine doc. So we'll strategize and maybe I'll go on it for a period of time, but it hasn't been like this for a decade, I'm very motivated. I'm very motivated to stay healthy. And we, you know, you and I talk about, you know, what is your why when you're dealing with somebody, I have a 14 year old and I'm going to be 61, he plays hockey at a high level, I want to be around for that, you know, I want to be around for grandchildren with that. He and I went for a run last night, and he's beating me now. And when he when we're running, he can't bench as much as I can, though. So that's something that he's that he's struggling with. He says, Dad, you're pretty strong for an old guy. We'll see. So finding out that why is important, you know, in order to stay motivated. So I'm not on any meds right now, not on any meds. I work out, I find I have exercising that I do that I love to help myself out. I just think that once you start this, getting off the meds, and if you're working with somebody, such as yourself, that can prescribe the meds, you know, taking them off is a happy day. And let's go with it. Because now everything's within normal, right? As we say, well, this

Dr. Stephanie Gray 42:23

This is great, very motivating. So kind of tell us again, where you're from where listeners can find you and tell us about your discovery call how patients can connect with you.

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 42:30

So I have, I am in New Jersey, I'm licensed in a lot of states. So I see clients via telehealth and a lot of states, I have a discovery call half an hour, I'll go over your bloodwork. I'll go over your lifestyle and go over your diet. It's for free to see if I can even help you if I can help you. I'll tell you if I can't help you. Maybe I'll say why don't you try this first, you know, and then let's keep in touch. And let's talk in three months. So the discovery call is free bloodwork lifestyle, diet journal, I'll even do a pantry. Look at the pantry. They get their cell phone, and they'll walk around Sarah so me what's over here? What's that? In the back? I'll say what do you do? And what is that? Oh, I don't know if I like that. Open up your refrigerator. I'll take a look at that. The simple way to get me is two ways. Email is Dan Porter Luquillo at Gmail ca R D is in David E ll ich i o at Gmail and call me directly 917-608-5896. I'm always available to talk to help out in individual.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:35

Awesome, awesome. As my listeners know, I wrap up every show with your top longevity tip. So what would yours be?

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 43:41

This is an interesting question. And it may be a little bit different than of what other people have said, but my longevity tips people may say, you know, take the Mediterranean diet, Do this, do this do this. I'm going to say to your listeners, this is a personal responsibility, your longevity, personal responsibility. It's not the responsibility of anybody else. You need to take your health in your own hands. This is something I'm really serious about. This is something I talk about a lot. We're coming out of stuff over the last two years, it is a personal responsibility to make sure that you are healthy. It's a personal responsibility to make sure that you can fight off things. It's a personal responsibility to make sure that your biochemistry, your cholesterol, your own I mean whatever that is for you. This taken care of you need to be involved in your health care. You need to do every single day it's just not a sometime thing. It's an all the time thing. I think that Lou Holtz or Vince Lombardi said that, you know winning is not a sometime thing, it's an all the time thing. You have to do this every single day of your life. Have a cheat meal every now and again. But personal responsibility to longevity is my mantra.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 44:58

No one has said that that was strong. That was great. Thank you. So thank you so much, Dave, for coming on the show and sharing what two is my passion Functional Medicine and all the functional lab testing that we can offer patients, and how really that can save lives. So you're still setting the world on fire just in a different way. So

Dr. Dan Cardellichio 45:13

That's right. Thank you for having me on, motivate, educate and inspire. That's what we do what I hope everybody has a great day. Thank you for having me on. Take care of your health.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 45:22

Agreed Mic drop.

I'm glad Dr. Dan made the connection between poor gut health and poor cardiovascular health. It's so true that reducing inflammatory foods not only helps reduce inflammation in the gut, but also reduces inflammation through the entire body. So changing your diet can help reduce and reverse metabolic disease like it did for Dr. Dan. If you're patient at the integrative health and hormone clinic and haven't done food sensitivity testing, or had a stool panel run advanced lipid testing or a comprehensive nutritional evaluation and you think this would be a good fit for you please call the clinic and request this testing or discuss this at your next visit with one of our providers. 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.