ATHE_Transcript_Ep 505_Dr. Jeff Bland
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert here. I put the Power of Health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So if you wanna get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry-go-round, I’ll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast.
Always an amazing podcast when I have Dr. Jeff Bland as a guest. You may have heard him on my What to Eat, Wendy and Why Summit, or heard another podcast I’ve done with him. He is one of my favorite all time guests and human beings. He is known as the father of functional medicine, created ifm. [00:01:00] Now has founded the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute, but really he is for so many of us practitioners, he is the, our number one mentor out in the field.
And he just continues to shape the field of nutrition and metabolic health and functional medicine and. Especially now. This was a couple years before the pandemic hit. He started focusing on immune system and immuno rejuvenation, and we’re gonna be talking about this today. Some mind blowing stuff.
He’s also going to share about his immune quiz that you’ll wanna take at jjvirgin.com/immunequiz. See how easy I made this? Right now he is the founder of Big Bold Health. And he, again, is really focused on the immune system and this concept of immuno rejuvenation. He’s also the author of the Disease Delusion, conquering causes of chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, Longer and happier life.[00:02:00]
And he also has the podcast Big, Bold Immunity. So, I am super excited about this podcast today. I can’t think of a more timely thing than to really understand what you need to do to have an immune system that can carry you through after what we’ve been through. You know, kind of showing you, showing you the impact of why we need to focus on our immune system and It’s gonna give you some tips that are quick to put into practice, so we will be right back.
Stay
Dr. Jeff Bland: with me.
JJ Virgin: Dr. Jeff Bland, one of my most favorite human beings on the planet. I’m so excited to have you here with.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Well, JJ Virgin, I think this goes reciprocally. You know, there’s certain people that just have whatever that is, that native skill to create alliance and vision and sense of future that that [00:03:00] you embody.
That gives all the rest of us hope that we can get better as we move down this road of life. So, So thanks. What a privilege to talk with you. Ah,
JJ Virgin: so you have helped a lot of people get better. You’ve helped a lot of, of practitioners over the years with all of your training through IFM and the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Medical Institute, and now you really have taken on the immune system.
I mean, what perfect timing too. Like, do we ever need to be really looking at this, this whole concept too, of immuno rejuvenation, which I know we’re gonna dig into, but I’d love to just start with, you know, here we are on what appears to be the tail end of Covid. I will tell you too, I just got over Covid like last week and I was excited that I did cuz I was needed, needed the new immunity,
I was like, perfect timing. What did. Let’s unpack what, what we just went through. Like what did we learn from all of this and how do, how do we make sure that we don’t, you know, we learn from history here.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Yeah. Thank you. I think [00:04:00] there’s, there are many, many lessons, but probably because I’m looking at, through the lens of immunity that’s kind of where my wakings and sleeping hours are spent the last few years is trying to understand this very complex thing that’s more complex even than the number of stars in the universe called the immune system.
That lens, that perspective when I look specifically at covid 19, gives me a sense of opportunity also a sense of sobriety because we’ve gone through a pretty horrendous experience globally here, but I think there is a learning curve out of it that leads us into hopefully a better place. So what is that?
Well, I, you probably have spoken to your group over the last few months about the fact that the last three to four years, our mean. Mean average life expectancy in the United States for the first time in the history of this country has gone down and actually it’s gone down almost three and a half years.
Over the last three years now, that’s been rationalized as a result of two major factors. One is covid on [00:05:00] the deaths of Covid, and the other is unfortunately the deaths to drug overdose. And so people have kind of. Said, Well, gee, this is just like an epiphenomena. It was just really because of the SARS Covid-2 virus and you know, little bounce back.
But if you really dig more deeply into the statistics, what you find out that yes, there, there is an a connection and certainly a contribution that’s made to our lower life expectancy from those two events. But beyond that, there is something more that we should be looking at and that is that mean average health, the resilience of our population is not what we thought it was.
And in fact, if you look at the number of deaths to covid in the United States, not just in older age people, but across all age groups, what you find is that we actually, as a developed country, had more deaths to covid than on a, on a per population basis than any other of the developed countries. And so it begs the question, you know, why, what was the the proceeding or the antecedent that could lead us to have this [00:06:00] more dramatic adverse outcome from the exposure to the sars COVID-2 virus.
And when you start to probe deeply and, and unpack that question, what you come to recognize that we just weren’t as healthy as we thought we were, we were kind of as a country. Thinking that because we had all this modern medicine and we had all this available stuff to our resources that we had to be the healthiest country, but we were not, we were not healthy at all.
Our immune systems were compromised, Our resilience was low. We didn’t have the head space to be able to manage a new challenge that was put on our immune system. And that if you start looking. The immune system connections to SARS Covid-2
you find out that yes, there undoubtedly are genetic relationships to different prevalences of infection, but it’s more than genes.
It’s actually how our immune system, what its status was as we went into the exposure to this virus and. When you start examining that question and teasing that apart, what you find out that we can do so much more to learn really [00:07:00] how to put our immune system back in order. Because even though we might have a certain number of age and birthdays, our age of our immune system seems to be greater than our age of birthdays.
And this is particularly true as we’ve gotten, you know, new technologies that allow us to assess immunological age things that are now coming available, the, the horvath clock mechanisms for doing immune age determination based upon methylation patterns of the immune genome. And when you start looking at immune age, what you find is that our immune age is greater than.
Our chronologic age as a society and that we are actually in a state of immunosenescence. And what Immunosenescence means is an imbalanced immune system. We’re into a state of chronic inflammation that we call inflammaging. That’s kind of a contracted term, and that sets us up then to have much less resilience in head space and response to a new offender, be it SARS or any other.
Potential offender in not just viruses or bacteria alone, but also other things that challenge our immune system. Chemicals toxic thoughts traumatic experiences. [00:08:00] All these things that travel through, or even poor quality diets that travel through our immune system to get translated into our body’s function are at a state Because of the compromise of our immune system, we’ve been taking outta the bank account and putting nothing back in return.
That when we get those events occurring, they become potentially catastrophic. They lead to much more serious illnesses, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, arthritis. All of those are immunologically related disorders. And if we can say one thing that you have so brilliantly broadcast and communicated, we’re seeing a
just a virtual pandemic of pre autoimmune disease happening in our culture. And where does that pre autoimmune disease come from? We didn’t just suddenly get born with autoimmune genes. It’s because our genes of our immune system are not able to tolerate the kind of new chemical information that’s coming into our bodies chemical that comes from all sorts of, of sources, including our behavior, thoughts, attitudes, and belief systems, all of which get translated through our immune system into our function.
And right now we don’t have. [00:09:00] The resiliency to be able to manage those additional things that create then the dysfunction that we try to pack together with modern medicine. So, Where I’m spending my time right now. I think there’s a solution there that we can learn from the covid that’ll help us in the future.
Yeah, cuz
JJ Virgin: I look at it and, and I was talking to our buddy, Dr. Mark Hyman and you know, pre pandemic, I think it was 2018, they said that our metabolic health, that 6.8% of the population was metabolically healthy. And what they were using to gauge metabolically healthy, I think we’d argue. It’s kind of on the edge, right, with some of these things.
And then he said, post-pandemic, the new numbers had just come out at 5%, and that’s a huge shift in a very short amount of time. And now 5% of the population metabolically healthy. As you were talking about that, I’m like, all right, I, I didn’t know there was a test to look at immunological age. Is it similar to what we’d look.
For like when they’re looking at your biological versus your chronological chronological age or is it something different? And I [00:10:00] would imagine they all kind of would jive together just like metabolic health would jive with, with your, how well your immune system functions. But how, what are we looking at when we’re looking at your.
Immunological age, what are the biggest factors that are
Dr. Jeff Bland: driving it? Yeah. Thank you. And, and by the way, you, you said some really, really important things in that last statement, and because it turns out that metabolic health and immunological health are very tightly wired together. We’ve only started to learn that in the field of immunology in the last decade, that you’re, you know, you’re, a metabolic status is really closhe said, post-pandemic, the immune status.
It’s, and vice versa. It’s a push pull. Your immune status is tied to your metabolic status. So, How do we actually measure this? And I think that’s a. Interesting question cuz even a non-scientist I think can understand the, the principle. The principle is when we have events that our immune system has to deal with, our immune system is designed to be able to remember those events and to.
Have a pretty good elephant memory about things [00:11:00] that it was once exposed to. So traumatic events, be it chemical or behavioral or psychological, all get captured by our immune system. So that we’ll have a memory of those, so it will be better prepared, presumably to respond the next time it’s exposed to something like that.
The difficulty is that if you’re exposed to many, many different things that are all. Creating a very significant adverse impact upon your immune system function, that leads to what are called immune scars. You actually end up with pretty dramatic memory effects that last, that then keep your body on guard all the time.
You’re in a state of hypervigilance. Your immune system is in hypervigilance, and that’s a state. Of inflammation, it’s chronic simmering inflammation. And how does that actually occur? I mean, how does the immune system actually have that kind of memory effect? It does. So by what, what you and and I and others have spoken a lot about, which is the currency of our age called epigenetics that you put actually marks on your genes within your immune system genome.
Because every immune [00:12:00] cell has its own collection of genes that are responding to its own environment. And so those marks that go onto the genes, those could be methyl groups or they could be oce groups or different ways that the genes can be marked by epigenetic processes, but they then lock those genes into a certain state of function and that state of function.
As it comes to trauma that we’ve been exposing ourselves to, trauma is even things like being in a food desert and only in empty calorie foods. Those particular events then can be measured by an immunologist or a technologist when you do gene sequencing, cuz you can actually take immune. And just to remind people that if you have your blood taken generally what what is done by the laboratory is they’ll spin that blood down in a centrifuge and it’ll separate it into a liquid fraction, which is called the plasma and serum.
That’s kind of clear. And then there is the packed cells below the red cells, which are your red blood cells. But there’s [00:13:00] a, a kind of a frothy barrier in between the pack cells at the bottom of the tube and the clearer liquid above, and that is called the buffy coat. And the buffy coat represents 10% of the volume of your blood and the buffy coat are your immune cells.
There are hundreds of different types of immune cells that are in that buffy coat in between the plasma of your blood that carries all the proteins and so forth, and your red cells in that buffy code in that white blood cell matrix. Our immune cells that have undergone certain experiences that have been marked, they can either be marked with bliss and joy and, and a sense of fulfillment and all the love, and, and, and those immune cells are celebrating life in a different way than immune cells that have been marked with hazard and trauma and pain.
And. Injury. And, and those are different epigenetic marked cells that have different memories. And you can actually analyze this chemically if you do a gene assessment. And you start looking at how these various regions have been marked within the immune system. This is, by the way, fairly new science that I’m [00:14:00] talking about.
When I say new, I mean within the last 15 years we have this flow cytometry and this these genomic methylation sites being able to be measured in the laboratory. This is not simply by the way you go to your normal doc and say, I’d like to have my, my immune system measured. This is more of a, a research tool
JJ Virgin: that we’re okay.
Yeah. I was like, Please tell me if my buffy coat cells are joyful. Yes,
Dr. Jeff Bland: exactly. But, but, but I think we’re gonna have that happen soon because the the technology itself is becoming miniaturized and, and automated such that I think this will become something that can be more routinely incorporated.
But presently, I would call this in the, in the, in the spectrum of what I would call functional assessment, right? Because we’re not looking for an immune disease. We’re looking. Function of the immune system as it relates to the messages and the memories it have. Now, some of those memories lead to cells that have given, been given a name called zombie cells, that the name alone kind of says it all these, these zombie cells are cells that carry bad messages and they perpetuate themselves over time and they can [00:15:00] accumulate with age and the zombie cells kind of not only take up space, but they also.
Create this, this memory effect that is this hazard response, this inflammatory response. So they produce this data perpetuating chronic inflammation, which is associated with these pre autoimmune diseases that we are, we are seeing many, many more people present with and the, the good news. And here, and I, this is unlike a one, one way street to bad news.
But now we’re gonna talk about good news because this is a cyclical opportunity. You know, I’ve learned in, in human physiology over my years of studying. For everything that goes one way. There’s another process that goes the other way. That’s the remarkable thing about human physiology. So for every process that leads to immune senescence or aging immune system, there is another process that goes the other way that I’m calling immune rejuvenation.
Now, the problem in our society today is that we have too many things happen that are causing immune senescence and not enough things that are activating immune rejuvenation. So the net effect of that, Is our immune system is aging and our resilience [00:16:00] is going down and we’re more susceptible to all sorts of things.
And by the way, this ties even to things like well chronic fatigue syndrome. It couples together with post covid, it even couples together with posttraumatic stress in conditions. Cuz we now find that the cells in the immune system that are marked by a very serious post-traumatic event are also carrying these messages of inflammation.
So,
JJ Virgin: well, this could happen, I’d assume in the. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. So like I’m listening to all this going, holy smokes, like this. You look at the impact of trauma. I, I did this interview with Dr. Amy Apigean and I don’t know if you’ve talked to her yet, and like, she’s just, what her work on trauma is amazing and, and just what it’s doing to our bodies.
But you think now of these, you know, kids who were born during covid, the stress, the parents were under. What was transferred over to these babies. And then I’m also thinking, Jeff, of of as you were talking about this, I’m like, you know, is this why laughter? Remember when Robin Williams played that [00:17:00] doctor in the hospital and was going in and as a clown, I’m like, Is that why that was working so well with these kids because of that?
Anyway, all right. Back over to this cuz I’m assuming then if you can take it, just like you said, if you can, if you can cause these problems, then you could also. Create solutions, maybe doing the opposite.
Dr. Jeff Bland: That’s exactly right. And, and I’m calling that, and I’m, I’m actually, I’m gonna give credit for the person who I think coined this term.
And that’s Randy j the father of Nutritional epigenomics Environmental epigenomics. He calls this the Science of Hope. And I think that is so powerful because if you think of what I’ve just said about immune senescence and, and picking up zombie cells and, and having your body get worse as you grow older, that’s not a very optimistic outlook.
But if you think of the alternative, the converse of that, which is immune rejuvenation, which is the. Also a process in our body that can be activated. Now, it’s the science of hope. It means we can [00:18:00] go the other way, we can reverse, we can improve, we can get rid of damage and, and replace it with new, more flexible and resilient cells.
And that process of immuno rejuvenation has really only recently been discovered as it relates to the biological nature of how that works. It’s it’s tied to something that you’ve spoken about, but it’s now getting much more detail, and that’s the process of autophagy and Mitophagy of how these cells can be repaired, getting rid of damaged cells and, and allowing the opportunity for new cells to replace them.
And the fascinating thing about this process and, and I think probably one of the reasons that it’s captured me 24 7, is that the ways that you actually can activate your immunorejuvenation process are the. You and I and our colleagues have been talking about for decades, which are living right thinking, right, acting right, eating right, being right.
That those processes actually activate specific regulatory functions at the genetic level that purge the [00:19:00] damaged marked immune cells. And allow them the replacement with immune cells that have the chance to form their own memories and their own experiences and have much more plasticity and, and much more resilience.
Now, it turns out to take this one step farther, and here’s what led me actually into this thing I thought in my life I’d never be involved with, which is Himalaya tartary buckwheat with agriculture. How in the world did Jeff Bland end up owning parts of organic farms in upstate New York? The way that that happened, just to summarize it, was that I had three different experiences all coincidentally happening about the same period of time.
One was with an investigator at Vanderbilt University who had been studying a molecule that was only found in tartary buckwheat called two hydroxy Benzalamine. That he found activated the immune system to lower blood pressure. And I thought, Wow, that’s really interesting. I never heard about the immune system and blood pressure.
That’s kind of interesting. Then right after that, I met I was asked to go to China and I [00:20:00] was up in Harbin China, my host there, and I gothydroxy Benzalamine. That he just asked him on the bullet train going from Harbin to Shanghai. Do you know anything about Himalaya tartary buckwheat And he said, Oh, my word, Jeff.
He said, I can’t believe that you brought that up because my research group are the expert group in China on Himalayan tartary buckwheat and it’s a fix on, on, on health. And we’ve been looking for someone in, in the United States that’d be interesting collaborating with us. So then I get home. And my colleague of more than 25 years now, Trish Yuri says to me, Jeff, do you know that there’s only one farm in America that seems to be growing?
Himalayan tartary buckwheat? That’s Sam and Luha. Biris Angelica, New York Hobby Farm. He’s an ex ag professor, researcher from Cornell University that’s now has this little retirement farm. And they’re the only people we can find in the United States that’s growing Himalaya, tartary buckwheat so that started me down this path of looking at what are these unique features of the unique mixture that, of this crop that’s 2,500 years old as a food.
Where,
JJ Virgin: where did it come from? It’s 25. I mean, it’s the Himalaya, as I’m [00:21:00] assuming. Well,
Dr. Jeff Bland: yeah. There’s two, there’s two variations. There’s a Northern Himalayan variation and there’s a southern, the northern is become the more hostile environment and those. Cultivars that come, the seeds that come from the Northern Himalayan version have the highest level of these immune strengthening polyphenols.
And so, you know, these are actually developed by the plant over time to be able to, to live in the most hospital regions of bad soil climate is horrible. You know, no fertilizer, no irrigation. They know obviously bio sites. So these plants have evolved over millennium. The extraordinarily frost resistant live aluminum toxic soils to basically thin themselves off bugs and mold and, and rust because they have such high level, these immune active phytochemicals.
So it, it’s been, it’s nature’s experiment that’s a biochemical factory for us.
JJ Virgin: Which groups were using this? , you know, Cause I’m assuming for thousands of of years someone found [00:22:00] this and was using it.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Yeah. So the reason it’s called tartary is that the Tartans, that’s a region in China and the Himalayan Mountains were the first that were reported to use this about between 20 503,000 years ago.
They started to. I guess you would call it cultivate, It’s a little bit, probably a misnomer. Not like waving fields, but they would start to plant the seeds and start to harvest the, the seeds and make it into bread and other, other products. And so when you think it, think back 2,500 years ago, it’s really kind of at the crucible of how.
Standing agriculture started to be used rather than just hunting and gathering. And it, it’s a, just a, a really remarkable story culturally, but it’s also just a remarkable food. Now, why is it a remarkable food? Let me just go back to my story about these marks on the immune system. It turns out that as more studies have been done on the process of immune rejuvenation there are regulatory.
Factors that control how the genes are [00:23:00] undergoing this autophagy process and renewing themselves. And there is a family of specific polyphenols, flavonoids within certain food products that are uniquely capable of modulating those cellular processes associated with immune rejuvenation. And they fall into the family of flavanols and flavones, things like Rootin, Corin, Heparin Diaz, and Lola.
They’re really actually in himalayan tartary book book. We threw over 50 of these different polyphenols at very high level. And when I talk about high level, that
JJ Virgin: wait 50 in this, like is there any other plant that has 50. Polyphenol varieties in it. I mean that seems,
Dr. Jeff Bland: yes, there are plants that do, but there is no plant that I’m aware of that I can find that’s an edible plant that has calories and protein and omega-3 fats that has the levels that this particular product has.
And just to talk about levels. Common buck wheat, which by the way, I, I need to [00:24:00] emphasize, these are not wheats. I don’t know how the name wheat ever got stuck on these. They’re, they’re, they’re not related to grains at all. They’re fruit seeds. And so they’re no gluten and they’re, they’re not really grass, grass related.
Common buck wheat has always been thought of as a, as a very strong polyphenol rich root and rich food. Himalayan tartary Buck Wheat, which only shares about 50% of its genome with with common buckwheat so it’s 50% difference in its genes. It has 50 to a hundred times, not percent, 50 to a hundred times the level of these phytochemicals.
Now think of that 50 to a hundred times. So that means when you’re eating this food, you’re actually eating polyphenol therapy. , it’s, it really is. Food is medicine. And, and that’s probably one of the reasons why this food has been eaten by people that are in the Blue Zone, one of Dan Butner’s areas.
They, the people you know, have a lot of modern medicine. They don’t have drugs and so forth, but they live out very healthy lives, often into their a hundred years, which blue zone?
JJ Virgin: In that, that [00:25:00] these people were
Dr. Jeff Bland: eating this, this, this is the Himalayan region of the, the foothills of the Himalayans. Where, Cause it almost
JJ Virgin: sounds like, you know, with, you’d still need some b12, but like you could almost live off this.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Oh, you can. And B12 actually is interesting because you probably know that when they did studies on these individuals that really had. Pretty much vague diets and they were not suffering from pernicious anemia. They found that there was enough insects in their range. Oh, wow. Because it doesn’t take much B12 to prevent, Right.
Having anemia. So Yeah. If, if you, if you eat insects, that had B12 , you can, So as
JJ Virgin: long as you have your, your Himalayan tartary buckwheat with a side of bugs, you’re fine. .
Dr. Jeff Bland: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not advocating that. Good to know. But I think the important thing, and the thing that for me has just captured my interest is that when you start looking and, and I’m, I recognize I’m a geek.
There’s no question about, I’m a biohacker geek guy and I like to know mechanistically at [00:26:00] levels that probably most people could care less. But when you start looking at how these flavonoids that are within himalayan tartary buckwheat we serve as an orchestration. And I think you said it very well, saying, Why would they make 50 different compounds?
I mean, does a plant have nothing better to do other than just make a bunch of random. Polyphenols and the answer is no. It does that specifically to create the orchestration that is occurring that modulates these processes associated with immuno rejuvenation. So it, it’s like you could say, what happens if you had only one of those flavanoids at high level?
Let’s take an example, Corin. Well, president has a positive effect. It’s not, I don’t want to dis president, but if you had the best first violinist, but you didn’t have the rest of the orchestra, you still wouldn’t have a very, nice symphony. So the rest of the orchestra, all those other 49 polyphenols work together to give rise to the texture that plays the music.
Of immuno rejuvenation. So as we’ve studied this in much detail, we’re [00:27:00] actually are just finishing up. I’m very excited in the results and keep my fingers crossed. The results of our first clinical trial intervention trial, which we’re doing complex genetic sequencing of immune cells in people that have been on our program for three months after baseline studies.
This is at clintrial.gov registered trial, and we will have produced. Something like a terabyte of data from this particular study on how these tartary Buckwheat Flavanoids influence immune system function through epigenetic modulation. It’ll be, well,
JJ Virgin: how do you know how long it’s gonna, like, That was my, one of my questions was, Okay, what’s the dose?
You know, what’s the length of time? I guess some of it would really depend on where they’re starting.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Which, well, no, but I, I think your point is very well taken because most people don’t recognize it in a person that’s not ill. So you don’t have an infection. You’re making about 80,000 white blood cells a second.
80,000. Wow. Per second. Yeah. So it’s a very, [00:28:00] very rapidly turning,
JJ Virgin: Turning over. Yeah. So then you could do this pretty quickly.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Every, about, about every three months you turn over your immune system. Wow. The cell three months are different than the cell you had before. Now the question is, are they as good as.
Better than, or worse than the ones they’re replacing. That’s always the question, right? And so what we want is to turn the clock back. We want to make them better than by, by rejuvenating the immune system. And that’s what we’ll be, we’ll be learning when we actually do the sequencing of the immune system’s genes to see exactly what were the low side that we’re able to replace on their epigenetic modulation through whatever the scars that they had had through their life.
Experiences.
JJ Virgin: Gosh, wouldn’t that be interesting if you could turn the clock back on actual like trauma, which I know there’s so much around trauma work and how to get through trauma and ptsd, but if this could. Turn that back. That’s,
Dr. Jeff Bland: well, well just second, you’re right on it because there are three well known investigators now who have been [00:29:00] sequencing the epigenome of immune cells in trauma victims.
This includes, as you probably know, the ice storm babies that were born up in Quebec. That’s some mus where it includes second generation Holocaust survivors. That looking at the epigenomes of their marks, it includes individuals that have, were involved with nine 11. And all of these studies are starting to show that actually.
There are marks that you can find that are resident even at second generations. They’re transgenerationally transferable, but they can be repatterned by this rejuvenation mitophagy process. So this is, this is the frontier to me of the Sciences of hope. That’s what I’m saying. This is the new biology of hope.
JJ Virgin: Okay, so the big question then, like, so. Three months total turnover now. Now it’s like, well, what would the dose be? What’s the minimal dose you need to do to do to to affect this? And then once you’ve done it, I’m assuming you’ll need a [00:30:00] maintenance dose as well. Yeah.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Thank you. Now you’re, Because
JJ Virgin: it’s not like things stop happening.
No, you’re exactly right. I’m never stressed again. It’s all life and sunshine and butterflies. Yeah. So like what did, how did you decide the type of doses to start with? And, and a couple other questions around this cuz you’re only doing on this intervention. Himalayan and tartary buckwheat. Right, Right.
Mm-hmm. , That’s it. I mean, just imagine if like you also did some meditation, little exercise, like just imagine all like what you could truly do, and this is just one thing. So what, how did you decide the
Dr. Jeff Bland: dose? Well, let, let, let me. Let me jump in there because you’re, you’re absolutely on target. So we we asked ourselves the question, do we wanna study our Immunity Plus program in this intervention trial?
Which is including all the things you talk about, sleep hygiene, stress management, exercise time restricted feeding, all those things are part of our Immunity Plus program. Or do we want to start in our first [00:31:00] step studying? Thing that one variable. So people won’t ask the question, Well, what do you know?
What worked? So we’re starting first with, with the tartary Buckley, but our plans are to build out a whole model based upon this kind of comprehensive immune rejuvenation lifestyle. That’s the Immunity plus program. And I think that’s where the secret sauce is. You’re right, that’s where you get synergy among all these various factors.
JJ Virgin: And.
Things like, you know, when they do some of these studies, I’m like, do we really need to do a study that walking, you know, , you know, walking after you eat has a positive, like, you know, some of these things, it’s just self-evident. But boy, if there is that one big needle mover. Like this is holy smokes.
Because what it can do is get the nose of the camel in the tent so that all of a sudden people feel better and they start to do all these other things too. Sometimes when you feel so rotten and hopeless, you’re just like, Forget it. I’m not doing anything. What for someone listening who’s not in the trial, what is, what are you guys using as the dose of this and this Himalayan tartary [00:32:00] buckwheat?
Is it. seed, Is it a, like what’s it considered to be in the plant family? And I know my son made some muffins or pancakes or something with it. What are the different ways people use it and how much would you be using on a
Dr. Jeff Bland: regular basis? Yeah. Thank you. Those are really great questions. So, fortunately for us there is a wide body of.
Experience in literature on tartary buckwheat. It’s mostly in Asia because this food has been incorporated with, in Asian China, Japan, and Korean. Culture is much more obviously than the west, although it was a colonial food. A lot of people don’t realize this. It was brought over by a clinical ancestors because it’s so, it was such a fit product and it could grow so easily and, and, and, but then it fell out about 200 years ago.
It stopped being cultivated in the United States. There are probably reasons for, for that. Suggest as we went into monoculture of just a few grains for fat, sugar and salt. You know, Yeah. That worked out well. Exactly. So so the, the Asian literature, and there’s many clinical trials [00:33:00] on actually the Himalayan tartary buckwheat flour incorporated into cookies or into various cereal products.
They’re actually not cereals into various whole, whole flower products and. It seems that there’s a threshold of clinical value when you get up around a hundred grams a day of whole Himalayan tartary buckwheat flour. Now, what is a hundred grams? You know, that’s about a quarter of a pound. And how many Milligrams, does that mean of the active phytochemicals somewhere around the, in, on the range of 1000 to 2000.
So, you know, I, I tend to push the envelope and say 2000 and so that’s where we did our clinical trial for us. Then we used four capsules a day of our. HTB Rejuvenate, which is the concentrated form of the Himalayan tartary buckwheat flavanoids. So that’s about 2000 milligrams a day which would be equivalent to somewhere about a quarter pound of flour a day.
Just to give you some, So if, if a person is a baker and they [00:34:00] love baking, you know, we have a food lab now, and, and we, we produce all sorts of recipes. We’ve had recipe contests, we have a variety of chefs and I. Experimenting with this in different configurations. So he can go to our website at thebigboldhealth.com and they can find all sorts of recipes.
Or they can take the shake mix or they can take the capsules depending on which of the
JJ Virgin: ways market. Ah, there’s a shake mix. So again, is it a, what is it considered to be? Is it considered to be a seed? What, what is it?
Dr. Jeff Bland: Yeah, it’s a fruit seed. Fruit seed. And actually if you look at it under a magnifying glass, these seeds are, they look like little helmets.
They’re very, that’s probably why they’re so tough. You can run over these with a Sherman tank and it wouldn’t break ‘
JJ Virgin: em. Is it kind of like a tiger nut? You know what a tiger nut is?
Dr. Jeff Bland: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a mini, a mini tiger nut. Yeah. I had to
JJ Virgin: do for, for the nutra bullet infomercial, they had me like, Crack tiger nuts with a hammer.
I’m like, that’s great . That’s what I’m gonna get remembered for. So yeah, and it seems like, you know, I was doing the calculations and I would assume the dosage, this is [00:35:00] for adults cuz 400 cal, like that’s 400 calories you’d be adding into your diets. Gotta displace something. So would be so much easier to take pills you.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Well, I think for, for some, you know, it’s fair, you know, this, you’re an expert in this, but we have foodies fortunately in our community that are very, very committed and advocates for restoration of complex diets and, and eating by the rainbow. And you know, I, I learned recently there are 20,000 edible products of which humans on the planet Earth today get 90% of the calorie from less than 10 of those products.
I know, isn’t it that? Well, that’s
JJ Virgin: why we have food intolerance. I just came back from Peru. With 192 micro climates and so I’ve just eaten, you know, they have 3,500 different types of potatoes alone, , so it was quite shocking to to eat there because the food’s so different and so diverse. And not once did my stomach hurt either, I must say.
Like, you know, here you are in massive high altitude and I was like, I can’t believe how much better I feel here not eating [00:36:00] this food, even when you’re trying to eat healthy United States. But I digress. So we’re going over to this stuff. Foodies can incorporate it in bake with it. You said you have like a shake powder with it.
Which is really interesting. What’s the composition of it? Is it like cuz you said something about the protein in it, like just the composition of the flour or the mix. How much is protein, carbs, fat? Well, that.
Dr. Jeff Bland: That’s another really exciting thing about why I call this a food and not just kind of a supplement because for a seed based product, it’s about 15% protein, which is pretty high for a plant, and it is very high in essential amino acids.
It, it’s actually a complete protein. It, it fills. Kind of the Francis Barlo pays concept of, you know, essentiality of of both sulfur amino acids and, and and lysine and, and nitrogen containing amino acidsyou know, essentiality a it’s a complete protein. It’s also very high in omega-3 fatty acids. It’s very high in prebiotic fiber, one of [00:37:00] which is the highest of any food I’m aware of, which is, Called the Dechy Acetol, or dci, which is a very, very good prebiotic, but it’s also been shown clinically to help improve women with P C O S, probably helping to normalize their blood sugar and, and hormones.
So it’s just one of these magic things that the deeper you, and it’s very high in B vitamins, high in magnesium high end potassium, no sodium. So you know, it’s got all these virtues and low glycemic load. We did CGM studies on it. We published a paper. Showing it at complete flat holy
JJ Virgin: smokes. But if you took the pills and you didn’t, if you took the, the, the product itself, like you’re not gonna get some of the, like, you definitely would wanna also do.
The actual flour or the shake mix, because you’re not gonna get all that prebiotic, et cetera, just in the capsule. Correct. Like what is the capsule you’re condensing for?
Dr. Jeff Bland: You’re right on the, the tip of what [00:38:00] we have recognized over the last couple years that we need to have this concentrate form of the polyphenols, but we also need to take advantage of the extraordinary other nutient
qualities, particularly these probiotic and, and favorable GI effects. Therefore, we are just coming out with our second product, which is HTB product that is composed of those ingredients that we’re calling Microbiome Rejuvenate. So it’s Microbiome Rejuvenate and HTB Rejuvenate is kind of the companion products for the full spectrum of, of ingredients.
JJ Virgin: Yeah, it’d be great to talk a little bit about the gut microbiome and the immune system because we can’t really talk about one without the other. Here. So when I hear prebiotics and I hear, you know, I’m like, definitely want more of that. I think we’re just starting to get into prebiotics and talk about them more, which we really need to be incorporating them regularly into the diet.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Well, you know, it’s, isn’t it fascinating when we think back to when probiotics started to get some traction? I, I [00:39:00] started speaking about those in my seminars to health professionals in the mid eighties. And you know, it took a number of years for this concept of leaky gut and, and postprandial endotoxemia and dysbiosis and all those things to start to get traction.
But now it’s, it’s like the coin of the realm. Everybody’s talking about it. But one of the things that I. Has not been fully yet understood is that these effects that we see in the microbiome are pretty species dependent. And therefore, just because you give a probiotic doesn’t mean one probiotic will be identical in its physiological function to another, because different species of bacteria have different personalities that impact the gut immune system in different ways based upon their personalities.
And when I say personalities, I mean. They, they secrete different chemicals. It influence our immune system in different ways. Things like lipo polysaccharides from the cell walls of gram bacteria activates the inflammatory process, so that’s not so good. Whereas like the bacillus ram species of that have [00:40:00] the effect to calm the immune system by activating interleukin four, which is a, an immune anti-inflammatory.
So different probiotics have different effects upon. Immune system and different prebiotics, which are the selective food for the probiotics, have different effects on our gut microbiome because of their selective ability to influence specific types of bacteria. Like not all bacteria eat the same things.
Some are li, some are xlo xylos containing probiotics or probiotics. Some are related to fructooligosaccharides. So we have different types of. Prebiotics that influence different types of probiotics, which different infect on our immune system. And I think it’s this level of precision and specificity that we’re starting to recognize as we get into personalized lifestyle intervention, let’s give the right thing to the right person for the right need.
And we’ve tried very hard to include that because we now know. These flavanoids that I would discuss in these polyphenols and Himalayan tartary buckwheat also serve as [00:41:00] prebiotics. They’re also ingested, or let’s call it metabolized by gut bacteria, and they produce their own secondary chemicals that then influence the immune system in specific ways.
So it’s not just the. The polyphenols in and of themselves. Sometimes it’s the influence they have on our microbiome, which then influences our body. The combination of the, of the two together, that gives the, what I call synergistic value of, you know, the of a healthy diet.
JJ Virgin: And that’s what we know at this moment.
You know, you look at all this and you just have to keep coming back to. When we can, when we can do it with food, we should always do it with food first. Like I look at this and go, It makes so much sense to me to have this flower incorporate this in. And the insurance policy is taking, is taking the supplement because then you make sure you know you got those active ingredients.
because you’re probably not gonna eat 400 calories worth of this flour every single day. That’s, you know, that would be a big push in your diet, but it’s definitely something you could work into your [00:42:00] diet. And then you have the insurance policy over here, and then you’re doing the things that as we keep unpacking it more and more and more, again, we used to just think, Oh, you need probiotics?
And we’re like, Wait, you need the food for the probiotics weight. It’s different food. You know, as we continue to unpack this, realizing that even I remember Jeff, it was maybe 15 years ago. Leaky gut was, we were clearly crazy and this was a silly idea. And know your body didn’t react to foods. That’s just an now, I mean, all the stuff that just has happened over the last 10 to 15 years and we’re still at the real beginning phases of this.
So, you know, you always come back to, Mother Nature had this right. I would love you just to speak for one minute cause I feel like there’s just been a weird thing. around plants. And boy, if this Himalayan tartary buckwheat isn’t the perfect example of, you know, when a plant is in an adverse environment, it creates this, it creates a super food situation of polyphenols, of [00:43:00] chemicals that can really help your body.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten, like, there’s, there’s some messaging out there in the world that like plants are bad and they’ve got scary stuff. And I’m like, you know, the scary stuff to me is Monsanto spraying the plants. That’s, you know, Really not the plants themselves. So maybe just talk a little bit about, because what you said about Himalayan tartary buckwheat is the perfect example of when a plant’s in an adverse situation, that’s where it develops these polyphenols, you know, and trying to protect itself from the environment.
Dr. Jeff Bland: I think you hit an extraordinarily important chapter in this story, and that is you have to actually ask the question. In what environment does that seed that you’re trying to germinate into the. Find itself, what is the soil Micro rza? And this is something we’ve been very, very interested in knowing more about, and we’re, we’re collaborating with a really interesting company, Solaria Bio.
It’s an MIT tech transfer company. It’s doing [00:44:00] genomic analysis of microbes from plant foods. And looking at what are the, what’s the microbiome of plants and how does the microbiome of the plant influence the, the germination of the seed that AMI produces the final product of fruit, or in this case the fruit seed of Himalayan tartary buckwheat.
So we’ve actually done with our plant scientist, Dr. Emily Reese, up in upstate New York field trials with different plots where we’ve inoculated the, the fields with different micro rises, some bacteria, some fungi. Or combinations thereof. And we just harvested that last year and analyzed the the phytochemicals and we found out that the diverse innoculants that we put on the soil, the combination of bacteria and fungi that were unique to that plant.
Led to a significant increase in the polyphenols, in the Himalayan tartary buckwheat seed. So we now recognize it is a system. If we talk about regenerative agriculture, if we talk about healthy soils, healthy, planted, healthy people, all of these things absolutely are [00:45:00] real. And by by utilizing the tools of nature, as you’ve described it, to build a regenerative system, it regenerates human.
While it’s regenerating soil health, while it’s regenerating plant health, it is a immune rejuvenation process for the planet. And this to me has been the biggest aha in my whole professional career, that when you get into the right cycle and you build things with stability and natural cycles, it takes care of itself.
You are fulfilling many things simultaneously and that, that’s one of the, for me, the beauties of what we’ve learned through the Himalayan tartary buckwheat story over the last four years is if we get the soil right with the right seed, then we produce a product that’s higher quality and we also produce a soil that is more regenerative and we, we actually then our carbon footprint goes down, we start sequestering because Himalayan
tartary buckwheat is a cover crop, so it then it, it fixes nitrogen. We start fertilizing the soil naturally. All these things happen by getting in sync with
JJ Virgin: nature. [00:46:00] Wow. Instead of trying to fight it. . It’s exactly right. But we’ve seen how that’s worked for us. , you know, you know, crazy. So I know you have a quiz cause I mean, obviously I listen to this and go, I want to know my immune immunological age and it’s right now in research project.
But tell us about the immune quiz that you’ve put together. Like what, what do people find when they take that? Cause we’re gonna make that available to everybody.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So we, we, When we started down this project, we recognized that probably not everyone was gonna have the advantage that we have of doing these complex immune analyses and gene sequencing studies on the epigenetics of our immune system.
So we thought, how do we get people least into understanding of their own unique immune status? So we, we started really assembling information about the clinical relationships between alterations in the innate. Them, the adaptive immune system, the T lymphocyte system, and trying to match those up with clinical presentations saying what would, what would a person, how would they look at and behave if they were [00:47:00] imbalance in one or more of these different components of their immune system?
That led us eventually then into five buckets of differing immuno types. Now these are admittedly gross, so I don’t wanna overstate that they’re so precise that we would call this a PhD immune system in the story. But what we have been able to do now is to introduce to the person a characteristic of one of these immune types, that they fall into one of these buckets, which then helps them to understand from a immune balance position perspective where their imbalance might be.
And then it leads us into helping them to define their lifestyle, environment, diet, and so forth that would be tailored to their own immune types. So we’ve. Immuno identities that are related to imbalanced immune types, to inflammatory angry types to what we call sleepy immunity, which are those that are immune, kind of suppressed to those that are immune naive.
And each one of those has a different cluster of symptoms and, and what we call phenotypes that we can identify from the questionnaire. [00:48:00] So that’s, that’s our first step into personalizing immunity to the individuals needs.
JJ Virgin: Well, what’s amazing about all of this is number one, I love. These self-assessments because they’re so functional and yes.
Okay, so is it exactly precise as if you were doing all the labs. You don’t have to spend the money. It makes you aware. You can start taking action right away and then you can start to connect those dots. So they’re, to me, they’re the most valuable. Thing out there. But I also think what’s really valuable, especially now, especially after what we’ve gone through over the last couple years, where people were like, Okay, what do I need to do for my immune system?
And it, you know, it’s like this like sniper approach over to things. Mm-hmm. is to let us really see that yes, there is a. Big needle mover right here. I always like the little hinge that swings the big door. Mm-hmm. and that you can start on right now and boy, like have we learned over the last couple years?
You wanna be doing everything for your immune system and then you build on it And [00:49:00] what’s of course awesome about all this is the things that help your immune system rejuvenate. They also help your body rejuvenate. They’re also gonna improve your metabolic health. Like these, you know, whenever you unpack all these things, it’s never like, Gee, I think I’ll exercise, but that’s gonna hurt everything else.
You know, , Yeah. It’s like, you know, mm-hmm. , the same things that help your immune system are going to help your energy, your focus, your, you know, your body composition, all of it. But I, I love this fact that you have something that really is a massive needle mover that can help people, and especially now more than, Get on this.
So I am now gonna work more on the food part of this with the flower. Cause I gave it to my sons too. I’m like, I need to pull it back in and have, have our real chef start to work on this with us. Cuz that is really exciting stuff. So thank you for all the work. I’m gonna put the quiz, I’ll make it super easy and I’m gonna put it at jjvirgin.com/Immunequiz. I know. Call me [00:50:00] crazy. I’d like to make, keep things simple. That’s good. And that’s just one you’ll definitely wanna get started with. Well make sure we put information too about how you can get htb, how you can start using all of this. And again, you said four capsules a day. Yep. Yeah. And then you have the gut microbiome product too.
Love that. So fantastic. Thank you so much for, for this and for everything that you’re doing. And boy, your timing with this whole thing couldn’t be better.
Dr. Jeff Bland: Well, jj, it’s, it’s just such a treat to be involved with this journey together. I think we’re doing something that I hope can be transformative.
We’ll leave this planet in a better place than we found it as my objective, and you’re doing an extraordinary job in, in being the advocate for these, these changes. Thank you. Thank you.
JJ Virgin: All right, so as a conclusion, I’m sure you’re gonna want to get started on Himalayan tarta ry buckwheat capsules and mess around with the flower. I did have my sons play around with some of the, some of the flower and do some different types of things. He does have a great cookbook too, [00:51:00] so we’ll get all that that information at jjvirgin.com/immunequiz.
And again, Talk about the important thing that you need to do for your health right now, and when you do all of the things that help your immune system, guess what? It helps your metabolic health. It helps your body composition, it helps your energy, your focus, everything else. So go to it. By the way, if you’ve not yet, hello, subscribetojj.com.
It’s so easy. I’ll see you next time.