Ep.83: Functional Medicine with Evan Brand

Robyn: Hey everyone, it’s Robyn Openshaw, and welcome back to Vibe. And I have someone I’m going to interview today. I know I always say that I’m excited about it, but I’m really excited about this because I’ve been trying for a while to get Evan Brand on the show. He’s super busy, I’ve never done a podcast episode this early — people shouldn’t even have to get out of bed this early — but it’s what he had available.

What’s exciting and interesting is he’ll actually get on the phone with you for free for 15 minutes. He’s a longtime podcaster. If you’ve been podcasting since 2012 (I always say I’m a grandma in the blogging space because I’ve been doing it for 11 years) then he’s a grandpa in the podcasting space, even though he’s really young.

He’s actually really young; he has a two-year-old. But, he’s been podcasting since 2012 and has had 7 million downloads of his show. But the thing I like about Evan is that, like many of the people we interview here, he got well and then took that knowledge base that he gained and dug even deeper, and now he helps others.

He’s a certified functional medicine practitioner — a nutritional therapist — in addition to being an author and a podcast host. He really jams out on working with people who have chronic fatigue, or obesity, or depression. And he came by his knowledge because he has or had IBS and depression issues himself.

If you work with him, he’s going to use at-home lab testing and customized supplements to help you figure out what’s wrong, and then get to the bottom of it and get well. Welcome to the show Evan Brand.

Evan: Robyn, thanks for having me.

Robyn: We’re doing this interview, and we’re using some parts of it on the Vibe podcast. But the original intent was to talk to you about how you got well, your story; and specifically talking about pathogens, talking about parasites, and bacterial infections.

People who do our 26-day detox often will get on a pathogen protocol. We really like systemic formulas: a pathogen protocol or their parasite protocol. But talk to me a little bit about how you became an expert at this: what’s your own personal story that led you to so much knowledge about this?

Evan: Sure. Well, the more and more interviews I do, the further back the timeline goes. I used to say that it was when I was in business school that I realized I was depressed. But the more I do interviews and I think back, I realize I was depressed since I was a kid.

I remember seeing other kids that were just so happy, they seemed so bubbly, so vibrant. And I wasn’t like that. Something would go good in my life and I wouldn’t get the same pleasure that someone else would get from it. It was almost like I had this governor or some sort of a cap on my neurotransmitters even as a kid.

And it makes sense, my parents divorced when I was three years old. And I think that was probably a big part of it because I’ve spoken with Dr Dietrich Klinghardt and he told me that a lot of kids have traumas before they can even remember. You’re talking one-year-olds, two-year-olds, three-year-olds. They can’t remember the stuff, but the trauma still affects them.

And that’s the first time I’ve actually mentioned this on an interview, but I think that’s probably maybe when it all started. And then it just progressed into teenage years; I wanted to drive fast and seek out things to boost the adrenaline. And then I got into business school, and my sleep schedule was messed up. I was working third shifts at UPS to try to pay for my college.

I quickly realized I didn’t want to be a bean-counter, I was going to be in accounting or marketing or something like that. But I realized that’s not what I wanted to do and I wanted to figure out my health issues instead. I dropped out of business school and moved down to Texas, and started studying nutritional therapy: trying to figure out how to use food as medicine.

And then I made huge progress, I probably got 80% better just by the diet alone. Lots of good green veggies, organic as much as possible, getting away from chemicals because we know those damage mitochondria and gut bacteria and other things.

I got a lot of progress, and then I lost a bunch of weight. I thought I had cancer; I lost about 25 pounds without trying in about six months. And many women joke and they’re like, “Oh, Evan, I’d love to have your problem.” It’s like, “Look, you don’t want to lose weight that fast not trying.”

I ended up finding out I had parasite infections. I had a couple friends who had looked at me and said, “Evan, you’ve probably got some infections. Let me see your fingernails.” And I looked at my fingernails and sure enough, I had some vertical lines, these vertical ridges on my fingernails. And that indicated some sort of malabsorption.

And then the question is, “Okay, do you take digestive enzymes?” And the answer is: maybe. But the question is, “Okay, well, why is there malabsorption? Why is there issues with your skin, your hair, your nails, your sleep, your detoxification? You’re sensitive to perfumes and fragrances and car exhaust, why is this happening?”

And long story short, it was the gut bugs for me. I had a yeast overgrowth, I had parasite infections, bacterial infections. I had adrenal problems, thyroid problems. I had mycoplasma pneumoniae and a couple other infections from tick bites. I had the full whammy. And all of that was compounded by me moving to Texas, leaving my family behind, working for a supplement company, getting married — that’s a stress, but it’s a good stress, having a kid.

All those things add up in your stress bucket. For me, the bucket was full and it overflowed. And then finally, I realized, “Okay, food as medicine is great, but you’ve got to have functional medicine.” That’s when I took as many functional medicine courses as I could without being a medical doctor and then got certified.

Now, I’ve helped and tested over 2,000 people. And what I found is that, look, what happened to me is not rare, it’s actually very common. In fact, 95% of the people that I’ve tested using urine organic acids testing have a candida overgrowth, just like me, due to antibiotics and sugar in the diet and other things. And I’d say 60 to 70% of the people, they have infections of some sort, whether it’s bacterial.

People throw around the term SIBO a lot, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. I don’t really like that term because it doesn’t tell you what the species of bacteria are, because when you’re working with a patient with autoimmune disease, it’s more important to know the species, like Klebsiella pneumoniae. That’s a common form of Hashimoto’s. Prevotella copri is a common bacterial infection that triggers rheumatoid arthritis. To me, it’s more important to know the species. That way, you can identify what’s the possible autoimmune disease rather than just say, “Hey, it’s SIBO, here’s a generic SIBO protocol.” I don’t like to do that.

Long story short, I fixed all those issues and I’m better than ever. Now, I just told you off-air, my daughter pushed herself off the table and fell out of her high chair, and busted her head on the floor and had a concussion and was throwing up and all that. That was a stress for me. And now, I’m doing all the tools I can to try to recover her.

Life is unpredictable, but I think if you want to make it in the modern world in the 21st century, you’ve got to be adaptable, whether that’s using adaptogenic herbs, whether that’s doing meditation and yoga and doing retreats and setting time for yourself, getting energy vampires out of your life, removing toxic people from your life, toxic things from your home, which I know we’ll talk about a bit. To me, this is the foundation. You must have these pillars in place to exist and thrive in the 21st century.

Robyn: When you’ve had to address all those different pillars, you’ve had to, I’m sure, learn how to manage the stress because stuff like that is going to happen. If you have kids, you’re going to have one fall out of the highchair and bang her head. You cannot be watching and catching her every second. That’s one of the most terrible realizations of being a parent, I think, is the trouble they’re going to get themselves into that you then have to help them, get them out of the jam. But learning to manage those stresses and like you said, be adaptable is part of it.

I’m glad to hear your story, and I’m sorry that you went through all that. But I think you’ll relate to when I fixed my own health, and I was obese and had 21 different diagnosed diseases and was on five different drugs, and my first child was dying — in and out of hospitals, emergency rooms, on all kinds of steroids, antibiotics, bronchodilators every four hours.

The process of turning that around, I really thought it was about him, and then I thought is about me and him. And then I thought it was about our family, and then I thought it was about our neighborhood because I started having classes and teaching people stuff and they started doing it. And now, I see that those things that I learned were for so many more people that I have the great honor to influence.

And I think you’re the same, and you’re young. I was having my experience in my 20s too and it changed me forever. And just bad habits I had back then, I’ll never go back to because I don’t want to pay the price that I was paying back then.

Evan: I know. It’s not even worth it. You’ll go out to social events and people will make fun of you for your dietary choices, it’s like, “Oh, just eat the bread or just eat this.” And it’s like, I don’t seek pleasure from food anymore in the way, not a hedonistic way. I still love everything I eat, food is delicious, you can make amazing food.

Food can taste good and be good for you. But a lot of people tease us for the things that we’ve done. I’m sure you’ve had people make fun of you for the choices you’ve made. And I’ve had people say, “Oh, Evan, you’re trying to live in a bubble.” And it’s like, “Look, glyphosate is bad news. If I can avoid it, I’m not going to use it on my yard, I’m not going to put it in my food, I’m going to stay away.”

I don’t understand why trying to be an optimal person should get shunned. I don’t know if it’s jealousy or envy or what it is. But I think ultimately people have to find their why, I think that’s what makes me a better practitioner too is because many people come to me after they’ve been to conventional doctors, and I had all the prescription pads written for myself too (I had acid blocking medications and antidepressants and all sorts of other drugs prescribed).

I never took them, but many people say, “Look, these people are recommending things they’ve never done.” And I tell people, they’ll ask me about, “Hey, Evan, what do you think about this supplement?” And if I haven’t taken it, I’m going to tell them, “Look, I haven’t taken it, I don’t know. It looks pretty good, but I haven’t taken it.”

I don’t like to do things with people that I haven’t done myself. I don’t know where that drive comes from, but I’ve been in the trenches and I want to help people get out of the trenches. You gave me goosebumps telling me about you thought it was about your kids and then you and then your neighborhood because this really is a whole, it’s a planetary issue.

You have to help people one at a time though, that’s the thing. And what do they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. We’re leading you guys to the water, but it’s up to you when you’re ready to drink. And I just want to say a quick note about that, which is don’t wait until you hit rock bottom before you try to start making changes because people like Robyn and I can help dig you out of the hole, but it’s so much easier if you just notice something is off and then you want to start fixing it.

Let’s say you’ve got some depression or some anxiety or you had a panic attack or you’ve got mood swings or PMS or a little bit of issues with sleep or energy problems or sugar cravings or brain fog or joint pain, let’s not wait until that’s to a catastrophic level where you’re dialing the emergency room and you’re getting in for urgent care. Let’s try to figure out, okay, something’s not right.

Let’s figure out what’s going on under the hood, let’s investigate these body systems. Let’s look at the adrenals, let’s look at thyroid, let’s look at mitochondrial function and liver function and neurotransmitters. And let’s look for fungus and yeast and parasites because for me, I had no choice. Like I said, I thought I had cancer. I literally went from 160 pounds, I’m about 5’10”, 5’11”, and I went down to about 130 pounds. That’s almost 30 pounds without trying. I almost looked like a concentration camp victim. I was so skinny people were asking, “Evan, are you okay? What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”

And the answer for a long time was I don’t know, I don’t know what’s wrong. Don’t do what I did, I had to do it out of choice plus necessity because I was so scared. But it’s much better to do this out of optimism rather than fear. If you’re in a place of fear, it’s really tough.

Robyn: Yeah. I think you are probably having the same experience I am where it’s a huge win if we get any kind of pattern interrupt on these lifestyle changes that we’re teaching. And I think it’s important that we be friends, all of us out here in the wellness space. And I consider part of my job listening to your podcast because I learn something from every episode.

I’m a huge Evan Brand show listener, and I learn something new in every episode. And I feel like that’s my continuing ed and it keeps me current, all the reading that I do. If I’m working out, I promise you, I’m listening to a podcast and I’m learning something about health and wellness. And sometimes I don’t agree with what I’m reading because it conflicts with something that I think is more evidence-based. But I like to always have those questions going in my head.

You and I will probably get really excited if we can get access to a mom before she has gone over the waterfall, before her kids have gone over the waterfall, and she starts making changes before the catastrophe. That’s when it feels like a big win, although, I’m perfectly happy to start with someone wherever they are. A dietary change, like you said, it’ll do 80% of it usually.

Evan: Yeah. Well, I’m so glad you brought up the moms too. I don’t really market myself as a pediatric functional medicine guy, but I’ve had to gradually evolve into that just because a lot of these doctors that are in the naturopathic field, they’ll just throw a homeopathic remedy or something at a child and that’s it. And it’s like, okay, well, the kid obviously has food intolerances and asthma and these other issues for a reason. It’s not a deficiency of homeopathic remedies just like it’s not a deficiency of antibiotics or something else. There’s a root cause.

I’ve had to learn this the hard way that a lot of these infections are passed throughout the family. You brought up kids, we’ll just go down this avenue for a minute if that’s okay, which is that I’m seeing two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year-olds and five-year-olds with many parasites.

I had a mom with two kids, they were five years old each. And she took the kids out of school because they were about to get kicked out of school due to their attitude problems. And we ran their stool tests, and they showed up about 30 different infections between the two twins. We’re talking five parasites each, seven different species of bacterial overgrowth, yeast, fungus, inflammation off-the-charts.

I believe that if we can start kids young — and that includes even prenatal stuff for moms — if we can make sure that moms are healthy before they get pregnant, that’s a goal. And the funny thing is too, I’ll work on a parasite protocol with a lady who wants to get pregnant and then all of a sudden she emails me, “Hey, Evan, I’m pregnant.” And I was like, “Oops, I forgot to tell you everything we do increases fertility.”

You’ve got all these infertility moms out there that are struggling and they’re paying 10 and $15,000 for the IVF treatment. But if you just fix the body, the body is amazing. You just have to help it fix itself and then all of a sudden, these issues just go away.

Robyn: Yeah. I don’t think people’s minds goes to parasite or a bacterial infection first unless they’re sick and they have flu-like symptoms. You’ve talked about ridges on your fingernails, and you had rapid weight loss. Those are kind of the more obvious ones, but what symptom should people be looking for? Because for toxic home transformation, for the summit, what I want you to go deep on is pathogens.

How do we know that we have? Obviously lab testing, but how do we even start with, “Oh, this symptom may be connected to a parasite”? I remember reading in John Robbins’ book, Diet for a New America, or maybe it’s The Food Revolution, literally 25 years ago when I started my thing that a cubic inch of red meat has a thousand larvae in it. I quit eating red meat and pork, I’ll never eat pork again 25 years ago, and a lot of animal products.

But I think people think that the answer is to eat sterilized food and never eat any vegetables and fruits. And vegetables and fruits can have parasites. But to me, that’s not at all the answer. Talk about some common symptoms that might make somebody wonder, “Oh, I wonder if I have this underlying chronic infection that’s a bacterial or viral or a parasite.” Talk a little bit about that and then we’ll go deeper.

Evan: Sure. People may say I’m biased because that’s what I work on so much, but I would say it’s almost anything and everything that’s not right with you. As I mentioned, energy problems.

It could be energy swings: one day you may feel good and then the next day you feel terrible and there’s no correlation or major change in lifestyle. You’re just drained for some reason. You’re waking up not feeling rested, like you’ve got to go for that coffee — imagining a day without coffee is bad or stressful. That’s something that’s not right. And I’ll explain a little bit of the mechanism just for the listeners and then we’ll kind of dive back into symptoms.

The mechanism of all this is that it’s multiple. These infections, they’re stealing your nutrients because there’s competition. Just like when we’re talking about Lyme disease and then the co-infections like your Bartonella and your Babesia, et cetera.

These things need amino acids to thrive. Your dietary protein, whether that’s plant proteins, whether that’s animal proteins, whatever your source, those proteins are supposed to get broken down into amino acids and then those amino acids then go to manufacture neurotransmitters and hormones and make all of our body systems run, feed the mitochondria, et cetera.

And when you have these infections, think of it as if you’re a gardener: you may have one of those little hose diverters where the hose can go two ways and there’s a little knob in the center. It’s almost like that knob is getting stuck in the center. Some of the water flow is going to this other direction, which is the bugs. And then some of your water flow is making it to your garden to nourish you.

When that happens, that’s when energy levels go down. That’s when sleep gets affected because you have to have certain neurotransmitters, like tryptophan to make serotonin, which then combined with vitamin B6 makes melatonin, which isn’t just important for sleep: melatonin is one of the most potent antioxidant hormones that fights cancer, which is why there’s research on night shift nurses. Type in night shift nurses breast cancer into PubMed, you’ll see that women who work night shift as a nurse, they’re 50% more likely to develop breast cancer than someone working day shift. And it’s due to the melatonin being disrupted because they’re under artificial light at night and they’re not obeying the laws of sunlight, which is get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun.

Back to symptoms though: this could be joint pain, it could be migrating, or it may be stagnant. It could be digestive issues, it could be bloating, it could be heartburn, which would likely indicate like an H, pylori infection (forgot to mention that; I had H. pylori as well). H. pylori damages the parietal cells of your gut; these are the cells that make stomach acid.

If you’re getting heartburn, you’re getting bloating, burping, indigestion, if you have rosacea, if you have eczema, you have dermatitis, you’ve got issues with your scalp, you’ve got maybe the keratosis pilaris on the back of your triceps, you’ve got little bumps, maybe you’ve just got some random spots of dry or flaky skin somewhere else. Look, it’s not a deficiency of topical steroids that your dermatologist is going to give you, it’s not.

My wife was covered in hives at one point, she had bumps all over her body. It turned out not only was she allergic to all the skin care products she was using, but she had some infections as well. We had to treat those with herbs. What else symptom-wise? Robyn, we could go on and on, and on.

I think mood issues too, depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety. I had a mom a few weeks ago, I believe her son was 9 years old, maybe 10. She lives in New Jersey and they take the subway to school, they get on the subway together. And the mom told me that the kid tripped on the subway when he was walking on and tripped. And he told his mom, “You know what, I’d rather just kill myself.” I said, “Whoa, how long has he been saying that?” And she said, “Oh, he’s been saying suicidal stuff for several years.”

And sure enough, we get his gut test back and the kid has more infections than I had. I can’t say 100% this causes this, but these are just correlations that you see in the clinic that science is not going to test. It’s like, who’s going to do the double-blind placebo study, give a bunch of people a Giardia parasite infection, and then see who of those people get suicidal thoughts or not. There’s some stuff that we have to depend on, clinical pearls versus waiting on the research, same thing with passing infections between each other.

Kind of to answer your question in a longer form: you couples, I see a lot of couples. And the literature is not 100% clear on this, but 90% of the time, the partner has the same infections or similar infections because you can pass things like H. pylori, the bacteria through saliva, oral sex, kissing, intercourse. The literature is not clear because who’s going to do that study. This is stuff you just have to figure out.

Now, 10% of the time, the wife may show up with an infection and the husband doesn’t have it. But I tell you more often than not, 9 times out of 10, you’ve got to come in and support the whole family. And then this is how the babies get infected too; is the mom maybe feeding the kid from her fork, “Hey, baby, try this, try a bite of this, try a bite of that.” And the bug gets passed (when I say bug, this is microscopic. You’re not going to see it crawling). The mom gives the baby the food, the fork or the spoon or the drink, or they share the cup, and then the H. pylori gets passed and then the kid ends up with reflux and then the pediatric doc puts them on an acid blocker and then they develop skin issues because they’re not digesting their food anymore.

The whole cascade, the whole domino effect can happen just from a minor infection, which is why I talk about it so much like a broken record, but it’s just because I see it so often.

Robyn: Blood tests: you can order them, you can work with people remotely. Telemedicine has probably really been helpful to people who can work with somebody like you, even though you’re in Kentucky. Talk about the blood test and what you learn, and then what the treatment looks like once you figure out specifically what pathogens someone’s actually contending with.

Evan: Sure. Everything we’ve discussed so far, you can find those with two different tests. One is the organic acids panel, this is an at-home urine test. You wake up or you have the kid wake up, you collect first morning’s urine, you get that back to the lab.

The second one is the stool panel; I use one called a GI map which is a DNA PCR based test. Conventional docs and gastroenterologist, what they use is called antigen-based testing, or they use microscopy, which is where they have a human looking at the poop. And obviously, human error is a big issue; they miss infections very, very often. There’s a high, high, high rate of false negatives. This is why I use those tests because they’re about a thousand times more sensitive than what a conventional test will look at.

I do run some blood just depending on the case. I don’t run it always, but I do run it a lot more because I am seeing, unfortunately, so many people with Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune diseases that we just have to run blood to check and see, “Okay, are the antibodies rising; are the antibodies coming down?” The good thing is the blood work generally goes in a positive direction once you work on the gut. I may just go based on symptoms and I may not do blood right away. I do blood for Lyme and for testing the co-infections and all that stuff too, looking for inflammation markers. But I’d say 90% of the issues that people face, you can really solve and investigate those issues with saliva, stool and urine. And then if you can’t or you start to spin your wheels, you can get blood work and look deeper.

But once again, this is going to be a custom blood panel, this is not going to be just a standard CBC because, unless you’re at a disease level, there’s not much that changes. There’s little minor things that change; white blood cell count tends to drop if you have a chronic infection. You may see ferritin dropping, which is a common issue with women that are losing a lot of hair or they can’t catch their breath.

Ferritin can go low, which is an iron storage protein. That gets affected by parasites. A lot of women, they’ll go on an iron supplement. They’re like, “Evan, why is it my ferritin or my iron coming back up? Why am I so anemic?” And it’s like, “Well, you’ve probably got a gut bug, look at your white blood cells, they’re really low, which would indicate chronic infection and a leaky gut situation going on.”

The blood does fill in a lot of the blanks. I think of it as kind of the glue for the puzzle. The functional medicine labs are the big pieces and then the blood is the glue that kind of seals the picture together.

Robyn: Are there are some specific parasites or infections that you’re seeing a lot of? When you’re testing blood of your clients are there somewhere you can say 80% of the people I get tested have this or 60% have that? Just so that someone who’s listening and has thought, “Gosh, I have not really thought much about having infections or parasites.”

I travel internationally a lot; I take my readers to Switzerland every June. I’ll be there for three weeks this June and it’s a clinic of biological medicine. You should come with us, it’s amazing and you could-

Evan: It sounds fun.

Robyn: Yeah. You should sit in, you should do rounds with them and sit in with patients. They don’t have the HIPPA laws there; they let our practitioners that we take sit in on any patient meetings if the patient is okay with it. But they have looked at my blood and year after year what’s in my blood is different. And they have said there’s parasites here and they have said there’s a bacterial infection here. And they can tell by what my white blood cells are doing how many white blood cells I have and also structures in my live blood analysis.

Talk about what you see a lot in children and adults.

Evan: Yeah, sure. I mentioned the candida; I’m doing a whole summit on it because it’s huge. I was going to call it the Infection Summit, but then I thought, well, if people hear infection, they’re going to think, “I don’t have an infection,” and then they’re not going to pay attention.

Like I said, I’ve tested over 2,000 people and here’s some statistics. Just a disclaimer, I may be biased because people are coming to me with health symptoms. No one’s coming and saying, “Evan, I feel 100% amazing, I just want to get checked out.” There are those people. And guess what, those people even show up with infections. They thought they felt amazing, we fix something and then they feel even more amazing. There is that small percentage.

But most people have an issue; they’ve been to practitioners before they get to me. That disclaimer stated 90 to 95% of the 2,000 people have candida overgrowth, meaning it’s off the charts: they’re doing what’s called auto-intoxication syndrome where the aldehyde and basically an alcohol-like compound is produced from the yeast, and it’s making the person drunk, causing brain fog. Some people think they have dementia and Alzheimer’s because their brain is so bad, but it’s just Candida. That’s the biggest thing I see.

Robyn: 90 to 95%.

Evan: 90 to 95%. If I don’t see a candida overgrowth, I’m like, “Whoa, that’s amazing. Is this accurate? Do we need to retest? What the heck’s going on, this is amazing.”

Robyn: I realize this is what your whole summit is about. We don’t want to go too far sideways on candida, but I think a lot of people are curious about it and I think you’re going to get really good attendance at your summit because a lot of people have been diagnosed with candida overgrowth, probably just about everybody who’s been on antibiotic really ever. People who eat very much sugar and flour — processed food — they’re probably really, really likely to have it.

What’s the diet? I always say a candida-starvation diet is one of the hardest diets. What do they eat? I want to hear it from you because there’s people who are like, they’re taken off of all fruits, all starchy vegetables. Basically, they’re eating greens, some vegetables and meat. And I’m a plant-based eater, I would probably die on that diet with that much meat. But I think that a lot of the plant foods are going to feed that candida, though it might be a healthy diet for a healthy person, but not honestly someone with candida. Talk about the diet for just a minute.

Evan: Yeah. The things that I really pull out are the fermented stuff at least just temporarily. Kombucha is a big no-no at least temporarily because the woman that I saw who had the biggest candida I’ve ever seen, the biggest candida overgrowth, meaning that her arabinose and her tartaric acid, these are markers that you measure on the OAT test. Her levels were hundreds of times higher than normal and she looked like she was nine months pregnant after she ate anything. She ate a walnut and her stomach would blow up. She was drinking five kombuchas a day. That’s crazy. Now, kombucha has some benefits, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Same with your fermented.

Robyn: I think that you probably crave the kombucha and other sweet foods if you have Candida because you’ve literally got billions of microbes screaming for the food they want, which is sugar. People with candida, their candida is out of control, their sugar cravings have got to make them feel completely insane. And Evan, just so you know, the worst I’ve ever seen, it’s very similar.

It was a guy and he was at the ashram where I go to water fast once a year. And he was there for a 21-day water fast. And I was there with him for nine days and we stayed in the same building. Everybody shares one bathroom, it’s super one-star. But it’s always an adventure. And he was there to starve out the candida. And I do want to say, I thought it was pretty interesting; he was successful, he went home. He had been a meth addict, no, heroin addict in and out of hospitals, got a MRSA infection in the hospital. He was on a month of antibiotics and anything at all that he ate, anything, he swelled up.           I have a picture of it, it’s in one of my video master classes. He gave me permission. His gut would swell. He was a thin guy, he was like 6’3″ thin guy, fit guy, looked eight months pregnant, fully eight months pregnant if he ate just any food at all. Anyways, a water fast is not for everyone. But he was serious about it; he was miserable enough and he did it. And it worked.

Evan: Gosh, I believe it. And you and I were texting back and forth about my issues and I told you when I got my wisdom teeth and my 12 year molars extracted; unfortunately, I did get put on antibiotics and did it out of fear. And that’s probably a big downturn in my whole candida journey. But back to some of the stuff we were talking about-

Robyn: The diet, candida diet.

Evan:  Yes. That lady, she was doing a ton of Kombucha, but she was doing the other fermenteds too. Now, a lot of people are promoting fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi and things like that, which I do believe have value. And a lot of people talk about probiotics.

Now, the funny thing is in the health space, a lot of us are do-it-yourselfers. But that can be a downfall sometimes, and then you build up what I call the supplement graveyard, which is where you’ve got a whole pantry of stuff that you’re not really taking anymore because you heard it would help or work so you bought it, and you tried it, and you didn’t do much with it. And I want to prevent people from building up a bigger supplement graveyard because, yes, probiotics can be good, yes, kombucha can be good, yes, fermenteds can be good. But what I found is, sometimes, it’s adding gasoline to the fire.

Before you throw in all these beneficial fermented things, you may need to come in and clean up the fire first — before you come in and reinoculate with the good guys. This is why some people, including myself, take probiotics and they feel terrible. They get worse bloating, they get more fatigue, they get more skin issues. And it’s because you’ve got to clear things out.

It’s kind of like if you were to use a garden analogy. If the garden is just covered in weeds and you just come in and throw a ton of fertilizer, everything’s going to grow better. That’s including the bad guy. You may need to come in, let’s pick out the weeds first. And how I do that, is systemically with herbs once you knock out the bugs, then you can come back in and go ahead and reseed and add your probiotics in later. But the order of operations is something that people mess up.

Now, I don’t believe you need to cut out all fruit. In fact, I ate berries pretty much the whole time during my parasite and candida protocol and I did just fine. I think if you’re not getting crazy with it, you’re keeping it low glycemic, you’re doing your blackberries or blueberries or raspberries, make more organic please, you should be okay.

Now, am I going to say go for like mangoes and pineapples and stuff like that? Probably not. I think it’s a bad idea, especially the dried fruits. A lot of women tell me their favorite snack is dried mango strips, it’s like, “Whoa, that’s probably a no-no.” Fruit snack, stuff like that, let’s keep it real food.

I’m a huge fan of smoothies because many people are juicing, but with juicing you’re removing the fiber. Then you’re just creating a massive blood sugar spike, and that’s affecting the pancreas. And then that affects the adrenals, and then the liver gets involved.

I would just say go for smoothies over juicing, and just throw in a couple berries and maybe you throw in some coconut or some avocado, some pumpkin seeds, have some good fat in there. Throw in your greens with it, and stick with that. But do I believe that you have to cut out all carbs, all fruits, all sugars? I don’t. I’ve seen enough success with just having people follow a lower sugar, lower fruit diet, low glycemic. And then as long as you’re doing the herbs consistently, within six or eight weeks, you can take care of it.

Robyn: Do you want to talk in any more detail about testing and treating infections in the gut?

Evan: Yeah, sure. I’ll just mention get the organic acids test if you’re working with a functional medicine practitioner. Just ask them; I’m sure they’re going to run it anyway, but not everyone knows how to read it. A lot of people run testing now because it makes them sound smart, which is cool. Testing is becoming trendy, that’s why you’ve got like 23andMe. They have 23andMe at Walgreens now, did you know that?

Robyn:  No.

Evan: Yeah. I went to Walgreens and they had 23andMe testing. I’m like, “Holy smokes, genetic testing at Walgreens. Who would have thought?” Testing is becoming trendy, which is great. I’m glad that awareness is rising. But just because somebody knows how to run a test doesn’t mean they know how to make a protocol based on it.

Make sure that whatever practitioner you’re seeking out is putting out regular content, videos, podcast, audio, blogs, something because if they have a really nice smile and super white teeth and all that, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to get you better. And I tell people, “Look, I’m not a medical doctor. I’ve had to figure this stuff out the hard way and take as much training and education and seek out mentors that are smarter than me because I don’t want to be perceived as a guru. I just want to be somebody who’s figured out enough stuff to help people.” That’s my little disclaimer about practitioners.

But get yourself an organic acids test; get yourself a GI Maps tool test and run it. You may spend 600 to 1,000 bucks to get a good functional medicine workup on yourself. But look, a diabetes medication is $1,000 a month after insurance. If you had a massive infection affecting blood sugar that was cranking up your A1C and affecting your pancreas and such, it’s like, “Man, what if we could prevent you from getting diabetes, or some other issue where you’ve got to be on pharmaceuticals, and we could find it now?” Just get yourself tested, that’s the message.

And then in terms of treatment, there’s websites dedicated to shaming herbs and saying that specifically for the infections —

(I never answered the rest of your question, let me briefly answer it. Other infections I see, Blastocystis hominis, very, very common parasite. H. pylori, very, very common bacterial infection. Dientamoeba fragilis, very, very common parasite. Cyclospora, that’s a waterborne parasite, Giardia Cryptosporidium. I see these every single day, I’ve got clients after this interview. I’ll probably see those on their labs today)

— the good thing is herbs can successfully treat these. You’ve got medical docs making website saying it’s a myth, herbs are BS, it’s pseudoscience. “You can’t get rid of parasites without anti-parasitic drugs”, not true. Look at my lab results before and after, look at the thousands of lab results before and after. I’ve got proof: here’s test A because I like data, I like science. Here’s test B, and here’s the protocol we use — no pharmaceuticals because I can’t prescribe them, and I wouldn’t if I could — and they’re gone. Yes, don’t get discouraged if you’ve been told that you can’t treat these things naturally, that’s wrong.

Robyn: Okay. What you talked about, kissing, that every time you kiss someone, you’re kind of taking on their entire toxic body burden probably. I probably should share this with my two college daughters.

Evan: Tell them, absolutely.

Robyn: Limit your partnerships, that’s easy right there.

Evan: Investigate your partner’s too. I work with a lot of teenagers too, because a lot of moms come with teenagers having mood issues, or they can’t focus in school. And the teenager always gets embarrassed because I’m like, “Okay, do you have a boyfriend?” And it’s like, “Okay, are you sexually active with that boyfriend?” They’re like, “Yep.” I’m like, “Okay, let’s get him tested.” And then they come back with infections and then we’re like, “Okay, this is why mom spent 500 bucks on herbs.”

We eradicated the H. pylori, but then three months later you’re emailing me again, “Hey, she’s had a flare-up, her symptoms are back.” And then I say, “Are you still with the same boyfriend? Okay, you’re still the same guy. Okay, good, let’s test him.” And then boom, they had it. Then we go and we give a protocol for the boyfriend, then they’re both cleared out; then they can stay better.

And same thing with pets, a lot of people playing with their dog toys and stuff like whipworm. I’ve been seeing a lot of whipworm lately, which is about a two inch worm. The CDC says they lay between 2 and 20,000 eggs a day. If the dog has whipworm, you can test for it on a client. Not a dog –maybe you could put a dog’s poop and test it. Why couldn’t you? — but I’m testing adults, not dogs, or humans — not dogs.

But I found that people that have dogs, it takes them longer to get rid of worms. I’m guessing, I can’t prove this, but what I’m guessing is that maybe if the dog has the infection, maybe some fecal oral transmission is happening and that the eggs are maybe on the dog toy and then you throw the dog toy and then you’re like, “Oh, my nose itches,” or, “oh, I got to pick my teeth.” And then maybe you ingest a small microscopic egg and then that starts the whole life cycle all over again. Sometimes I think you need to be treating your pets too.

Robyn: Interesting. You have mentioned that relationships play into gut health; is it more than just that? The fact that you’re actually exchanging microbes affects your infection rate, affects your immune system, your relationships. Have we said everything we want to say there?

Evan: I would add one more comment. I got more emails from a YouTube video I did on energy vampires than any other video. People are like, “Evan, nobody’s talking about this.” It’s like, well, energy vampires are real. I think from the relationship aspect, if you’ve got a bad husband or a bad boss or a bad friend or somebody who’s disrespecting you, or negatively affecting your health.

And that’s the hard part because sometimes it is your partner and you’ve got to … I’m not a therapist with emotions but I’ve learned enough to try to help people walk through these situations. Some people have to go through divorces to heal. Some people have to go through breakups to heal, some people have to quit their job or get a new boss or get a new best friend to heal because there are emotional roadblocks that do affect health. We know now with the whole ACE questionnaire, the Adverse Childhood Experiences and traumas, that these do affect the immune system.

And if your immune system is constantly suppressed because you’re getting verbally abused, physically abuse, et cetera, how can you heal? All the leaky gut supplements in the world will not heal you if you’ve got a bad relationship. I just encourage people don’t be afraid. And if you do need to cut someone out of your life, if you tried to mitigate the issues and you can’t, unfortunately, you may have to cut them out. And that’s what I’ve had to do, I’ve had to systemically remove people.

Systematically is what I meant to say, systematically remove people because you can feel it. You come into the room and something happens. Your gut hurts, or you have anxiety, or you have heart palpitations, or you start to panic. You get a little bit shaky when you’re around that person. That’s a sign that something’s up. Try to fix it. And if you can’t, you might have to part ways. I hate to say that, but it’s a reality.

Robyn: I’ll tell you, I absolutely agree with you. And when I talk about this issue — because I’m a psychotherapist by background — when I talk about this issue, I get real actual positives back from people, but also some negatives because they always come back with, “I can’t.” They say “my boss is killing me” or “this coworker is killing me” or “my marriage is killing me” and I’m like “Well…”

At the risk of sounding like, “hey, this is easy for me to say,” I was a divorced person myself. I was married for 20 years. Easy for me to say, “Well, get out of the relationship.” But, I actually think there are some issues that people should work through in their marriages. 10 years ago they were completely miserable and didn’t think they can fix it, and now they’re completely happy. And I believe that there are many situations like that. But I think we all have to get over the idea that relationships sometimes have permanence… Everybody who walks in the room, we don’t have to attach to them for life.

And it’s okay to have a limited relationship, and it’s okay to have a relationship that has pretty firm boundaries. One of the people who raised me, I have a pretty thick 10-foot brick wall to that person. They’re allowed if there’s a party at my house, that’s fine. But I need the wall. I have a relationship with them, but the boundaries have to be maintained.

I feel like sometimes we have to acknowledge that a relationship has a season, and that it was there to teach us something. We had some kind of growth that happened in the crucible of that relationship. It does not mean we have to keep that relationship for life, or we fall into this dark depression and we cannot live without this one person. I don’t believe that that’s the case.

So, I agree with you; I’m glad you’re talking about that because I think getting rid of the toxic relationships in my life, or managing them when it comes to someone that I’m linked to for life by biology, is as significant in my own healing, and coming to a place where I love my life and I’m happy and healthy. I think that getting rid of those toxic relationships has been as significant in my healing as changing my diet to be a whole foods, mostly organic plant based diet has been, I really do.

Evan: Oh, God, I believe it. I think it could even be more powerful. I can’t tell you how many people are like, “Evan, I do yoga three times a week, I eat 100% organic, I eat a ton of plants, I meditate, I go to the beach. I feel terrible, my life sucks, I hate everything, I’m depressed.” “How’s your relationship?” “Oh, I haven’t had sex with my husband in 10 years. He sleeps on the couch, I sleep in a separate bedroom. We don’t speak to each other, we just live in the same house.” It’s like, “Whoa, extra yoga is not going to fix that, I’m sorry.”

Part of me thinks, man I might just do nothing but relationship work with people. I don’t have a psychotherapy background to do that. What you and I are talking about here is so huge, that you can’t go to Amazon or Whole Foods and buy some miracle supplement that’s going to out-supplement this issue. You have to face this.

And I’m sorry, it’s not going to be easy, but you have to do it. And, look we’ve been through some crazy stuff in my life/relationship stuff. And you will get through it, that’s the cool thing about humans is we’re pretty resilient. But that’s a chronic stress in that stress bucket. That’s the last thing I’ll say about it.

Robyn: Yeah. Just because you’re used to it doesn’t mean that you’re fine.

Evan: Agreed. And it’s a hole in the bucket. It’s like, okay, you throw in the yoga, the meditation, the retreats, the travel, the this, the that. That it’s like, okay, cool, but look at that big hole in the bucket. I’m sorry that energy bucket can’t fill up if you’ve got that big hole. That thing has to be patched. And if it can’t be patched, you’ve got to replace the bucket.

Robyn: Yeah. And I think that you would be wise to learn some good modalities to help people with their relationships, because I think you’re finding the same thing that I am. The last 11 years as GreenSmoothieGirl online and with 14 of the 15 books that I wrote, I’m helping people with their nutrition. But like you, I meet people who are like, they’re doing everything right, they’re probably eating a healthier diet than I do. And then this last book, my 15th book I talk about those things.

Vibe is talking about how even in psychotherapy, there is stuff we’re missing. All these energetic connections with people. I have a chapter in the book on Tantra and reconnecting sexually. So many relationships are broken because of the weird things that we do that disconnects, porn being just one of them, and how we are so very disconnected in this culture. Psychotherapists aren’t looking at the connection between what people eat and how they show up in their relationships, but I think there’s a big connection there. I think there’s an enormous connection there.

Evan: I agree. I’ll make a brief comment. It’s always interesting you have these specialists like you’ve got the kidney specialist, the liver specialist, the heart specialist, the brain specialist. It’s like, okay, I think specialty is good and important, but I’m predicting within the next 20 years that everything, just like you mentioned, all of us and the health space need to be together like a spider web.

I’m hoping that every branch of medicine starts to just merge into one conglomerate because we’re realizing over and over again that the science is clear: there’s no separation between mind and gut. There’s no separation between mind and body, there’s no separation between physical energy and emotional energy and vibrations coming from a person and how those vibrations affect you. I hope everything is going to have a mass convergence. And I don’t know exactly when or how that will manifest, but I’m putting that out to the universe. Let’s hope it happens.

Robyn: Yeah. I think one thing that — I’ll check this out with you and see if you agree with it — but I think so many people they come to us and they want the easiest fix, and they usually want to supplement.

Supplements can do a lot of work. And you work with these adaptogenic herbs and you work with things that actually sort of remove the food source from the bacteria or actually kill the parasite. And there are plant-based supplements that do that and they are evidence-based. And I’ve seen amazing things happen from using plant-based medicine. At the clinic in Switzerland, they use no drugs. The two medical doctors that run the place, they believe in the creed they were charged with, which is first, do no harm. They’re not going to go straight to a pharmaceutical and nuke the crap out of the microbiome. They’re going to use something that works with the body’s adaptive systems.

But anyway, people come to us and they want to supplement or they want to change their diet, but they don’t want to fix their toxic work situation or their toxic caretaker situation or whatever. I just find with most people that we work with that it’s not just one thing, they’re going to have to address two or three or all those different areas. Are you finding the same?

Evan: Oh, 100%. It’s a spider web, you can’t go and touch the left side of the spider web with the right side being affected. It’s like, okay, cool, amino acid you’re great. You can come in with tyrosine, and help someone’s dopamine and catecholamines, fix their energy, fix their drive. But if they’ve got an infection, the tyrosine is a crutch; or if someone’s got an endorphin issue, they’re tearing up, they’re crying easily, they’re really sensitive to emotional or physical pain, you suspect they’ve got endorphin deficiency. You can come in with DLPA, which is DL phenylalanine, and rebuild that. But you’ve got to find the root.

You could take somebody with anxiety and panic attacks and issues like that and you can give them a GABA supplement or passion flower or valerian root or cava or theanine or blue vervain or ashwagandha. But are you working backwards to figure out why the anxiety and the stuff is there in the first place?

I had a lady who — I’ll mention two ladies real quick. I had a lady who had done everything right, fixed all of her labs, everything looked beautiful on the piece of paper, but she couldn’t lose weight. And I’m not a huge fan of a weight loss goal because it usually just happens as a side effect of getting healthy. And I’m like, “Okay, I hear you, you want to lose 20 pounds.” And then I asked her one day, I said, “Hey, is there something that we haven’t discussed.” I said, “I’ve done everything for you, we fixed mitochondria, the liver is better, brain’s better, infections are gone. Is there something you haven’t discussed with me?” And she goes, “Yeah, it’s my husband.” She was like, “I’ve been thinking that we need to get separated for 10 years but I just haven’t brought it up because I’m scared to.”

And I said, “Okay, well, I’m not a therapist with relationships, but I just want you to go home and why don’t you guys just talk about it?” She went home and she talked over the issues with her husband. And I followed up with her in six weeks and she had lost 20 pounds in six weeks. And I said, “Holy crap, what did you do?” And she says, “I did nothing.” I’m like, “You had to do something.” And she goes, “Oh, well, I did talk to my husband, we worked everything out.”

Robyn: Wow, yeah, even just the energetic shift that communication creates — talking about the hard thing, talking about the wide elephant in the room. Lots of marriages get stuck for years or decades around an issue. Sometimes issues-

Evan: I had another story in my brain, but I lost it. But that one’s a cool enough story to mention.

Robyn: That’s a pretty cool story of how sometimes its energy that we have to change to lose the weight, to kill the bug, whatever it is.

Well, you’ve been an incredible source of amazing information, Evan. Tell us three other things that you did on your own wellness journey. You know a ton about a ton of subjects, what are three things that you cleaned up in your home? Just in the spirit of toxic home transformation, what are three areas you addressed? And you can talk about what brands you changed to, or whatever room in your house that you decided these specific chemicals have got to go. They were causing a reaction. You can talk about your baby daughter, any of that.

Evan: Sure, yeah. Well, the first toxin is, hey, get rid of this darn bar stool. That way, she won’t push herself off the table and hit her head again. We sold the table and chairs. Now, we’ve got a really small, low-to-the-ground table and chairs. Thank goodness. Look out for things that your kids can fall off of. That’s more toxic than anything else.

Secondly, I just built a house and we used a paint called ROMABIO, like Rome but with an A, ROMABIO. And it’s a potassium-based paint, which is kind of cool. It’s almost like they took a potassium supplement and ground it up and painted it on your walls.

(The zero VOC thing is kind of a myth in the industry, that’s kind of a buzzword like natural or gluten is. Sherman Williams and these big paint companies say zero VOC, but that only means no VOCs for certain types of VOCs. That doesn’t mean there’s no off-gassing period. You got to go beyond VOC just like certain farmers say we go beyond organic, same thing with the paint industry.)

We did a full potassium based paint in our home, we did a cork flooring from a company called Cali Bamboo. They make a bamboo floor too, but bamboo is really hard and it can scratch. Cork is a little bit softer-

Robyn: We also learned from my interview with Andy Pace, who is the Green Design Center man, and he consults with people. It’s not green building materials like the building industry calls it, but he actually looks at the health of the human occupant and the toxicity level of everything from paint to furniture to fluorine. He said, just so you know, good choice on the cork; with bamboo products, yes, it’s very sustainable because they’re weeds and all that, but they are put through a process so that bamboo flooring actually picks up a lot of the same chemicals in it that there are in the very worst floorings.

Evan: Oh, man. Well, that’s good. Yeah, I didn’t know that, I just thought bamboo was too hard so I just went with a cork instead. I’ll try not to repeat too much that the healthy home guy said.

But addressing EMF was another thing too, I made sure that there’s certain type of breakers. Now, I’m sorry because I don’t know the name of the breaker. I want to say it’s a double arc breaker, don’t quote me on the name. But there’s a certain type of breaker that you can get installed in your breaker box that I had the electrician do.

And what that certain breaker does, if there is a wire shortage or some type of a dirty electricity problem in the home, it will trip the breaker verses your standard breakers, they will not trip and you can have dirty electricity, massive EMF issue in the home and the breaker will not alert you. I think it’s called a double arc fault breaker, but I’m not 100% sure. Consultant your electrician, ask him what I’m talking about. It’s typically a white little breaker inlet versus a black breaker insert.

We did that and then we had kind of an extra coating on the wire throughout the house to try to mitigate any dirty electricity, or what’s called ELF, the very low frequency fields. And then we are doing the Stetzer filters from Graham Stetzer. And I have measured those. Some people talk about dirty electricity filters, but the caveat is you have to make sure you’re not making a magnetic field problem worse because if there is a wiring issue, and you plug in a green way for a Stetzer filter, you can actually increase the magnetic fields and you make a worse problem.

You need to make sure that you’ve got a building biologist or just do your own research if you get smart enough about it on your own. Measure the before and after with magnetic fields, because you can have some people buy dirty electricity filters to fix a high frequency noise problem, which is separate from a magnetic field problem.

Magnetic field is typically from motors and things like that. Dirty electricity is a separate type of EMF, bad guy. Reducing dirty electricity can increase magnetic fields. We could do a whole nother hour on this. But just do it before and after and make sure you haven’t made a problem worse when you think you’re making it better. EMF would be a big one, the paint, the floor would be a big one.

And then I moved out into the country. It’s kind of inconvenient because when my daughter hit her head, it was like 45 minutes to get to the hospital. But pray to God that that’s a rare situation and that the rest of the time, we can be out in the peace and quiet. And I planted a ton of trees and I’ve got 80 acres of forest behind me where my daughter and my wife and I, we watch all the birds. That’s our favorite hobby is to watch birds. We got a Baltimore Oriole the other day. That was so cool to see him come in and migrate north for the spring.

I think connecting to nature is important for your home. Try to integrate nature, the whole Fung Shui thing. I’ve got so many plants that people think I’m starting a nursery. It’s like, what are you doing? I love plants, I’ve got so many plants I can hardly keep up with. I’ve got blueberries out there in the yard, I’ve got peaches and apples and evergreens and honey berries, which is a new thing I just learned about.

And what else do I have? Service berries, I’ve got a raised bed garden out there where I’ve got some other stuff growing. I think connecting to nature, even if you live in an urban environment, you can still grow herbs or something to try to ground yourself. I’m a huge fan of being grounded to the planet both physically, emotionally, chemically, spiritually, and planting and putting your hands in the dirt.

Oh, my gosh, there’s no better thing. If I’m stressed out, I’ll just go buy a new tree and I’ll plant it. And then I come inside, I’m just like, “Oh, I feel so good.” It is therapy for me to go plant stuff. I think that’s good advice.

You said three, but I’m going to give you one more too, which is really, really take your sleep environment seriously. I’m sure people have mentioned that and they say the typical boring stuff like cool, dark, blackout curtains. But measure your bedroom for magnetic fields and dirty electricity because my daughter, when she was an infant (now, she’s almost two), all of us were kind of having some sleeping issues. And we thought, “Well, why don’t we try turning off the breaker to the bedroom?” We turned off the breaker to the bedroom and all of a sudden she started sleeping much better through the night. And she’s not susceptible to placebo effect.

It’s like, okay, we changed nothing else: flipped the switch, turned off the power to the bedroom, she started sleeping better. It’s free, it doesn’t cost anything to try this. And if your Wi-Fi router is in your bedroom or on at night, or your cell phone is charging on your nightstand… I’ve had teenagers with their cell phone under their pillow, don’t let your kids sleep with their cell phone under the pillow. Put it on airplane mode if they’re going to do that. These are simple things and it cost nothing to try it. But if you’re sleeping good, then your daytime life is going to be much better.

Robyn: Yeah. So many words of wisdom there, I love it. I appreciate you and I appreciate the show that you’re doing. Nobody pays you to do a podcast. And you’ve interviewed some amazing guests, and you’re an outstanding interviewer. I really enjoy your own depth of the way you ask questions.

It’s the Evan Brand show, everyone, friends. Make sure you check that out. And Evan, thank you so much for this conversation today. I loved it.

Evan: Robyn, thank you so much, it’s so good to chat with each other. We’ll get you on my podcast soon too, we’ll have some fun together.

Robyn: That sounds good, have a wonderful Monday.

Evan: You too, take care.