Transforming Men's Health: From Low Energy To Peak Performance With Dr. Jerry Bailey

Posted on August 04, 2024

 

Watch the episode here

 

Are you tired of feeling sluggish, unmotivated, and less than your best? You're not alone. In this episode, Corinna Bellizzi sits down with Dr. Jerry Bailey of Lakeside Holistic Health to tackle the often-overlooked issue of men's health. Discover the root causes behind common male health challenges like low energy, weight gain, and decreased sex drive. Learn about the importance of hormone balance, the dangers of the "PHAT syndrome," and how to optimize your health through diet, lifestyle, and targeted interventions. This episode empowers you to take control of your well-being and unlock your full potential.

Key takeaways from this episode:

  • Uncover the hidden link between fat accumulation and hormonal imbalances.
  • Learn how to optimize your testosterone levels naturally.
  • Discover the power of a whole-food, plant-based diet in improving overall health.
  • Understand the importance of personalized care and lifestyle changes for long-term well-being.

Guest Social Links:

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Transforming Men's Health: From Low Energy To Peak Performance With Dr. Jerry Bailey

Welcome to another interview episode of Nutrition Without Compromise. We’re going to dig into the topic of men’s health as we reconnect with Dr. Jerry Bailey. Dr. Jerry is a certified nutritionist, acupuncturist, chiropractic, and functional medicine physician at Lakeside Holistic Health with over two decades in his field. He is a prominent expert in men’s medicine who has seen tens of thousands of patients over those two decades of practice. Dr. Jerry Bailey, welcome back.

How are you?

Good. It’s so good to see you again.

Good seeing you too.

I understand that you run your practice with your wife who’s also a physician. I wonder perhaps if you could share with our audience the common health complaints that you serve men with.

Common Men’s Health Complaints

For men, what happens often is they come in and they have fatigue. They are lost in life. They’re feeling stuck in a pattern that they don’t see a way out of. They don’t want out, but they want to see things better for themselves. They want to have better energy and a better sex drive. They want to be interested in their marriage and life again.

That’s a lot of the overviewing stuff that guys will say. As you dig deeper, you start seeing they are having issues with memory, brain fog, and potential erectile dysfunction or performing sexually. They’re noticing that they gain weight in the abdomen and throughout the body. They don’t feel like they used to anymore.

In that state, they are less likely to potentially tell a female physician that they’re encountering some of these challenges. I would imagine they are more comfortable with guys.

For sure. Particularly when you get into the sexual aspect of issues they have going on, they don’t want to open up that can of worms often with a female doctor, a nurse practitioner, or whoever their seeing. Some do, but a lot are like, “I don’t want to share that or talk to a guy about it.”

Low Testosterone

It would be a sensitive topic in a way as they might even feel like they’re perhaps less viral and less manly if they’re encountering these issues. This brings to mind common health issues that men face. We talk about menopause and women’s hormones all the time, but many men suffer from low testosterone levels and they don’t even know it. What causes low testosterone, first off? Also, how would you identify that even if you hadn’t gone through testing yet? How might you approach treating that?

There’s a three-pronged approach there. The first one is the testosterone itself. How do they feel about it? What do they notice? They notice they’re not working the way they used to. Energy is low. The body fats accumulate through there and muscle mass has gone down. They’re not as strong and balanced as they used to be when they try to do things. They’re stumbling and bumbling through movement or other things that are going on for them. That’s the main thing there. What was the second question again, the second portion of that?

If you’re looking at how you might identify that if you haven’t gone through a battery of tests yet. I should preface this with the fact this is offered for educational and informational purposes only. We’re not here to treat, diagnose, or cure. There’s no patient-provider relationship formed between myself and Dr. Jerry, or you and the audience. What we’re here to do is to help you see a clearer path or even identify when you might need to ask for help.

One of the things that I heard when we interviewed Dr. Shawn Tassone, who introduced us both in the first place, was that even women will often suffer from low testosterone and feel much better when they get some of these supplements. There can also be an issue when a male is getting testosterone as a topical treatment and then having intimate relationships with their partner. Their partner is getting overdosed on testosterone without knowing that was happening in the first place.

This can be a complicated thing. This is hormones, and hormones react in a number of ways in different people and also in different sexes. We both have testosterone. I have testosterone and you have testosterone. You have estrogen. I have estrogen. They aren’t completely exclusive to one sex or the other. The root of my question is, what would be your first signs? As you said, you’re feeling low energy. You might not feel as strong as you once were.

Often, we’ve got this perspective, “That’s part of aging,” but we don’t have to age that way. Part and parcel of the reason that a lot of people in their 40s look much younger than they’re in their 40s is that they’re taking better physical care of themselves. I’ll leave that in your court. You’re identifying how you might have an issue or where to look, and then how you might start that treatment whether or not it includes drugs.

It often starts with how they’re feeling. As I said, they’re not feeling themselves anymore. Their energy is gone. They’re feeling funky there. When they come in for that, we talk about looking at how we define that via lab work because we need to know. We’ll run blood work. We’ll look at your testosterone and your free testosterone. Both are important to know.

Often, docs and even the TRT clinics that do TRT testosterone therapy will just run a total testosterone. As long as you’re above the low, which is around 250 to 280, depending on the lab, you’re considered fine. That’s not optimal. Ideally, we want you between 6 and 800 for the most part in your blood levels there. That’s key to look at. It’s good to know the amount you have, but you want to look at the free that’s there, which is your available to use.

I’ve seen normal-looking total testosterone in the 6 to 800. I’ve seen their freeze at 6. Ideally, you want to be around 18 to 20 for your free level. That’s a particular lab that you look at. Some may look a little higher low, depending on the ranges there, but right around 18 is where you want to be, and 6 is super low. If they ran total testosterone, you’re going to miss the whole picture that the person is not converting to active testosterone or free testosterone there.

That happens typically in the liver as that conversion happens. If something is going on with nutrient depletions or the liver is a little bit sluggish from either alcoholic fatty liver disease or from the new term, which is used to be called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Now they call it metabolic dysfunctional associated fatty liver disease. The metabolism itself is messed up from fattiness in the liver. If there’s something like that going on, you’re not going to convert to the free testosterone that you will be able to use.

We’ll also look at estrogens because that’s very important to look at in men and see where that level is. Often, we’ll see low testosterone and a higher estrogen. In that case, what we’ll see is more brain fog and more brain memory issues. We’ll see more adipose growth around the abdomen. That apple appearance in the guys, the belly looking, or even into the chest tissue. The breast tissue there will grow also.

Those are the key things, looking at labs there. We go a step further and look at what’s called the DUTCH Test in particular to look at how you metabolize your hormones. That becomes very important to know because if we’re going to prescribe testosterone to a guy, whether it be through a cream or injection or pellet therapy itself, we need to know how your body is metabolizing the hormones itself. That way, we know how to put key nutritional pieces in or potentially a medication to block the conversion to estrogen in those guys.

Nutrition Without Compromise | Dr. Jerry Bailey | Men's Health

 

If they get over-consumption of testosterone, it can convert to estrogen. That’s the issue that you’re talking about.

Even if it’s a normal level or not simply too much testosterone, they naturally convert to too much estrogen. I’m one of those guys. I naturally produce a higher amount of estrogen because I have a lower testosterone, but I convert over to estrogen. I have to take an aromatase blocker so I don’t convert over to that estrogen metabolism.

Isn’t this problem also exacerbated once you start to develop a lot of excess adipose tissue? My understanding is that fat is estrogenic. The more fat you have, the more estrogen you’re essentially producing. Is that accurate?

Yes, fat is now considered its own endocrine organ where we have testes, ovaries, pancreas, and the adrenal glands. Now, adipose tissue in the body is considered its own endocrine organ. It has its own array of hormones that it releases to feed itself essentially. As that fat gets more metabolically active, it starts growing more and starts releasing more hormones to pull to it, which in turn increases the estrogen metabolism.

Isn’t that all so true of muscles? Muscles are now considered an organ that has something to do with our hormone levels. Is that correct?

Yeah, for sure. As we age and we tend to have sarcopenia or loss of muscle mass, it becomes less metabolically active. The more muscle mass we have, the more longevity we can potentially have, or what we call an organ reserve there. If something catastrophic happens, we have the ability to fight it off and survive because we have larger muscle mass. The more muscle mass we have, the healthier we age, and we have increased longevity from that.

The more muscle mass we have, the more longevity we can potentially have.

Does it impact our testosterone levels if you have more muscle mass?

Yes, for sure. The more muscle mass you have, the more it can drive the body to produce more testosterone.

In a way then, the body dictates a portion of what our hormone balance is going to be. This might be part of the reason that people, like women in particular when we go to the gym and put on more muscle, we suddenly feel like we have more energy and things along these lines too. It’s one part physical fitness. It’s also one part muscle.

Yeah because the muscle is more metabolically active as tissue. It’s not hanging out there doing nothing. Your metabolism does speed up your energy. It does increase because mitochondria become more hyperactive. In turn, the cells become more soft and supple, which is what we want. When the body is truly inflamed, the cells become very rigid and the information going in and out does not happen very well. The healthier we are, the more muscle mass we have, the better our metabolisms and the better our hormones are balanced, the more soft and supple our cells are, and the healthier we are. Fish oil does help with that. Omega-3 fatty acid helps suffice that within the cells.

I’ll put one point of correction there because it’s not necessarily fish. It’s the Omega-3, EPA, and DHA, right?

That’s right.

Omega-3s And Hormones

People think fish oil first. We did a good job of drilling in that we didn’t mean flax oil when we said Omega-3. Now it’s gone to the other extreme of saying fish oil instead of the source, which is EPA and DHA. I wonder if you could share with our audience the reality of how Omega-3s impact our hormones because it’s my understanding that they are part and parcel of the creation of hormones in our bodies.

Essentially, it’s a fat. Fat becomes cholesterol in the body. The cholesterol itself is the precursor for all of your reproductive hormones, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and DHEA. Even down the line of your stress response, the cortisol within there, then the cortisol metabolites, and aldosterone also which is a marker for your blood pressure regulation.

Omega-3s and omega-6s fatty acids have a huge amount of effects on cholesterol and on hormone levels in the body too. There’s been quite a good amount of research that shows that having a good Omega-3, DEPA, and DHA combination in the body itself and having higher testosterone levels promote testicular growth and decrease erectile dysfunction issues. Those main three things are because the body becomes inflamed. Those cells get rigid and those EPAs and DHA help to soften those cells. Those metabolites and metabolism will start working where it’s supposed to.

It gets the inflammation under control because you have too much of one and not enough of the other and guess what? We don’t get enough Omega-3 so we tend to suffer from that side. We get more of an inflammatory cascade which means that our body produces more cortisol, which is affected. It creates more inflammation and we end up in this vicious negative cycle where we don’t get enough of the right hormones and get too much of the wrong hormone. Not to say cortisol is always bad, but when you have out-of-control inflammation, it spirals into joint pain and other issues that you might experience.

What we see often with guys and girls are sleep issues. When testosterone is low for both genders, males and females, sleep becomes a major issue. They don’t sleep the way they used to. As we supplement with either a booster that we can use or if we go to testosterone therapy, one of the first things they notice is they’re like, “I’m sleeping hard and waking up rested in the morning.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t realize there was a connection between testosterone and sleep. Might that be part of the reason that women, as they start to go into menopause, often complain about not being able to sleep through the night?

For sure. Our ladies that we do the TRT with, that’s one of the first things they notice too. It’s like, “Holy cow. I’m sleeping again. I feel rested. I feel like I’m recovering again. I don’t feel the anxiety, the rush, and the stress like I used to. I feel a little more in balance.”

Diet And Fitness

I made the decision at the end of 2023 to get myself a fitness watch again. This one is Samsung. It tracks for me my sleep at night, so I get a sleep score every night. They assign a sleep animal. At one point, I was a penguin and now I’m a lion. I can’t tell you what those things mean but I think it means I’m sleeping better. It’s possible to change your sleep patterns through diet, nutrition, and lifestyle.

I have noticed that as I lift heavier, I’m sleeping better. I’ve also noticed a shift as I moved away from consuming animal products. This is something that I found surprising. For one, I’m lifting heavier and I made progress more quickly than I was before when I was eating an omnivore-based diet. The other piece is my body temperature is normal for the first time.

What I mean by that is I’m clocking in at 98.6 and I’m hypothyroid. Since 2009, I’ve been taking a Nature-Throid style product. It’s another off-brand, but it’s desiccated poor sign thyroid. My dosage ended up feeling like too much, so it’s started to impact my sleep. I went back down a little bit and suddenly, I’m feeling great and I am maintaining my temperature at about 98.6 pretty routinely.

I tended to wake up before at about 97.2 and hover around that for most of the day like 97.4 or 97. That was my normal. I know that I’m an end of one, but by cleaning my diet and focusing on getting a lot of protein from plant sources. At the same time, I’m not probably getting as many endocrine disruptors because I’m not eating animal meats that have been grown in this conventional capacity.

Even though I would mostly eat organic and regenerative in my own home. If you go out and eat, what are the chances of getting? I do think it’s from cleaning the diet and at the same time, having that level of activity because I’ve been this active my whole life. I’ve never been quite as clean in my eating. Is this something that you see in your practice or am I just some plant-based weirdo over here?

Some statistical outliers.

I’m an end of one but I’m just curious about what you’re seeing because I’ve been in this industry for a long time and tried lots of different supplements. I have been on the extreme of eating like a keto diet and that didn’t necessarily work for me. I felt more inflamed. I had joint pain when I was focused on doing more of that keto perspective. I had never gone persistently and exclusively plant-based until 2024. I’m noticing things like I don’t have period pain anymore, I’m not getting breakouts. I’m not as craving-driven around that time of the month. While I was starting to get some perimenopause symptoms, they disappeared.

You have a more nutrient-dense diet. Much more vitamins and minerals along with your micronutrients. Even all the plant names that the scientists are coming out with, then somebody does something with it, you’re getting much more nutrient-dense foods, which is key. That’ll happen often. When you make a change from something you were doing to something different, your body is going to adapt.

When you make a change from something you were doing to something different, your body's going to adapt.

What you were doing in particular was causing some issues for you, so you changed that and you now resolve those issues. Watch yourself closely. If you’re going to continue that way over the next two years, watch and see how you feel. Eventually, you might start to feel a little sluggish again. You might start to develop those symptoms again. Add a little bit of good animal protein as best you can, the grass-fed and wild-caught ideally. You may notice just a little bit here and there. You’ll start feeling better again.

I’ll keep track of that. I have to tell you, it was a little bit of a surprise. I’ll be 48 in September and I have made this shift gradually over time. I’ve been following closely the work of Dr. Michael Greger with his work around how not to die and how not to age. He was our last guest on this show. Our audience will have heard from him.

He is focused on whole foods, plant-based, and no oil. I will tell you, I’m not giving up my oil and I am doing a lot more beans, garbanzo beans, all these things that I have ever done at any period in the past. I’m also eating a lot of super dark green leafy vegetables, dinosaur kale, and things along those lines as part of a meal. I do think the variety of vegetables I’m eating today is different than any period in the past.

I’ll have in a single stew lentils, sweet potatoes, kale, lemon, and all these different spices which are also going to have their micronutrients in them. I supplement with vitamin B12, as well as my omegas every single day. I’m not having an issue with my iron level. From what I’ve seen my B levels and my vitamin D seems stable. Again, I am going to have to continue to check these things. Ideally one day, I won’t have to take these hypothyroid meds. That has been the long-term quest and I’m feeling closer to that now than I did half a year ago. I’m pleased with that progression. Refocusing this on men’s health. When they get their testosterone levels right, what happens?

The reversal of a lot of the symptoms that they’re experiencing, the brain fog, brain fatigue, memory issues, and erectile dysfunction. One of the first things they say besides sleep improvement is they notice, “My morning erection is back.” That’s huge because most guys over 40 and beyond don’t notice the morning erections at all. They start noticing that. That’s a big change in the hormone levels and mentality, and how they’re thinking about themselves through there.

They start seeing those dramatic things occurring. They’re working out which we always say, “You’ve got to be working out. We’re not going to work with you if you don’t workout, don’t eat right, and don’t exercise because it’s a waste of hormones if you’re not doing it correctly.” They’ll start noticing the lean masking. They start gaining strength. They’re adding weights onto the bars again as they’re lifting.

They notice that pants and clothes start fitting looser and the waistline. They notice the legs of the pants. These skinny jeans that all these guys are wearing. They can’t fit in them anymore because they have legs again or legs for the first time. They start noticing those physiological changes and morphological changes that they should have noted back in their late teens.

They get potentially to their best health later in life. That sounds like what you’re saying because they could have been potentially a skinny chicken leg guy in their teens and never filled out, then just started to pack on some pounds with a reduction in their overall activity levels, like working a desk job, which happens to a lot of us. My husband is probably guilty on that one. He’s 57. He’s aging healthily and he does not have that apple issue. He’s always been skinny-legged.

There are some genetics there for guys and all can have big tree trunk legs as I’ve been teased by my friends at the gym. When I go there, they call me the tree trunk because I have big strong legs and my boys do also. Some people got the genetic gift for certain things.

Legs of a baseball player.

The running joke is I don’t have the pretty gym muscle. I don’t look like a bodybuilder, but I’m farm-strong and I can throw some weight around it. It’s key. The stronger you are is key because you have a muscle mass.

They say that as we age, simple things like a sit test can dictate how old we will live to be because if you can’t get up and sit back down quite easily without having to rely on the armrests, it’s essentially a marker for degraded muscle mass and how frail you become. It’s so important to maintain muscle mass. It’s so important to be able to grow strong muscles. I like to lift heavy and I am still on the forever quest to be able to do a pull-up without any assisted weight. I will say I am closer than I’ve ever been. I’m only using 20 pounds assisted now. I think if I work at it for another month, I’m consistently trying to do this twice a week because I usually do arms twice a week, I could probably get there.

Pull-ups are a hard movement. Some people can do them and some people can’t, but if you work on it, you’ll get it. That’s a good sign of growth and tissue growth for you. Particularly for being a lady. Women tend to not have the upper body strength. For the most part, they don’t have that body strength that guys have, but leg strength, women are just as strong if not stronger than men.

I have the thighs that you probably do. I’ve got that leg strength and have run marathons and have been able to do distance and also short burst exercises. When it comes to being able to pull your entire body weight up, you don’t realize how much. It is also your back muscles and your core muscles. Women often do not work the back muscles. It’s something you have to consistently and persistently work at if you’re going to get there for most women.

Often guys too. When we’re at the gym, we can’t turn around and be like, “What does my back look like?” It’s all about the front stuff. It’s like abs, chest, shoulders, bis and tris. Maybe legs in there, but for the most part, a lot won’t work their back at all and that’s a weakness for there. Working like you’re doing is great. Doing a pull-up is an immensely strong movement for your whole upper body to get it to move.

PHAT Syndrome

I wonder because you said you won’t work with men unless they’re all so committed to getting to the gym or being physically active in some way. I imagine that could be with a home gym or doing outside workouts that don’t involve a membership somewhere. What does that look like for you? What do you advise your patients to ensure that they’re doing the day-to-day?

We track with them. They’ll use the Apple Watch, Whoop, or the Oura Ring. Whatever they can use to track their movement and data, we’ll track with them and be like, “You get the prize if you do the work.” They have to be doing something. We track them through that process and also nutritionally. We take all of our clients through a program that we have developed that shows them how to clean themselves up, eat right, detoxify their bodies correctly, and get the right nutrients in their system based on their physiology. We’re testing from there. As we’ve been talking about, what hormones do they need if they need some or do we correct and reverse the hormonal issues by fixing their diet and their lifestyle?

Often, that works well but a lot of the time, we have to do some testosterone therapies with them too. If you’re not going to do the work, that’s where you see the negative effect of the hormones. You see the increased risk for atherosclerosis and degeneration occurring from mental instability and more anger issues sooner because they’re not burning it off or not burning the way they’re supposed to.

How does that story connect to our earlier discussion on the PHAT syndrome for Poly-Hormonal Adrenal Testosterone syndrome? That’s what we call PHAT.

Call it PHAT. It makes it a lot easier.

How does that story connect to this one? What impact does this have? What are the root causes of it appearing? Perhaps, how does it negatively impact men’s health?

This is what I see in my guys that come in. It’s not just testosterone deficiency. It’s a myriad of things that are going on with them. It’s partially metabolic syndrome, part of prediabetes, cholesterol, or early degeneration in the brain. It’s all these things going on. We’ll see them with insulin resistance and with the increased body fat. We’ll see the cardiovascular dysfunction, whether it’s atherosclerosis, hypertension, or some cardiomyopathy potentially there.

Nutrition Without Compromise | Dr. Jerry Bailey | Men's Health

 

We’ll see the sarcopenia, that loss of muscle mass. We’ll see the maladaptive stress syndrome, a little cortisol in their body. They’re overly stressed and the body is not functioning. We’ll see the hormone imbalance. It’s the testosterone, estrogens, and progesterone there. We’ll see neurological dysfunction in them and then we see that pan membrane, pan cellular resistance.

The cells become resistant to everything. They're on this toxic mule of junk that they’re eating and stuff they’re exposed to. Endocrine disruptors are in the environment. All the stuff they’re doing that’s causing their body to resist every little thing going up. That’s typically PHAT syndrome. It’s the resistance in the cells, body fat, cardiovascular issues, muscle mass, stress response, hormone imbalances, and neurological. We’ll see that across the board. Nearly every single guy that comes in, we see this exact thing going on. Docs will say, “You’re diabetic. You have high cholesterol issues. You have the cardiac vac.” No. It’s one big conglomerate thing of them going up their body not doing what it’s supposed to do.

It sounds so daunting. It sounds like it’s scary and I could frankly feel for them in this situation, getting to the point where you feel like, “That’s it. I’m in poor health and this is the life I’ve got now. What drugs can I patch on to be able to solve myself or solve these challenges I’m facing?” When you hear that battery or that long list of symptoms, it sounds like pack it up and go home. It’s kind of hard. Where do you start?

If they see their regular doctor, yes, because it is. Now they’re on insulin or diabetes medication or a cholesterol medication or the complications of that some other medication or blood pressure medication. Maybe their doctor even gave them some testosterone in that. At a point, they start getting some neuropathies going on from the diabetes. Now the big thing is they give them antidepressants for the neuropathy. That combination has shown that antidepressants long-term cause neurological issues.

Personalized Healthcare

You’re talking about somebody in their 40s or 50s on 5 or 6 different drugs potentially for the rest of their lives. It may not have been necessary in the beginning just because their doctor didn’t know how to treat them through a lifestyle perspective, or perhaps, they didn’t spend the time with them to get to understand how they could help them which is so common.

I go to a medical facility as a part of an HMO. Most of the doctors I see there, they’ve got you on a schedule for eight minutes. That’s about how long they’re expected to spend with you. My personal doctor within the system, she’ll spend half an hour with me and I feel grateful for that half an hour. The reality is it takes longer to get to understand what somebody’s health challenges are than that eight minutes. Half an hour usually isn’t enough either. How does what you do differ from what people might expect from the standard medical system that so many of us have become used to in this day and age?

Sadly, that’s the case and that’s an insurance-driven model. It’s not about healthcare. It’s about sick care at that point. We’re in a sick-driven economy for health care or sick care. It’s not about a person’s health whatsoever. Unfortunately, the doctor's hands were tied. It’s the cattle call. You got to have a person every eight minutes, let’s roll and that’s what they’re going to go through. You’re allowed one thing to talk about for about four minutes and then you’re done.

We're in a sick-driven economy for health care. It's not about a person's health whatsoever.

Our model is completely different. We take the time with you. Our first visit is an hour. Our follow-ups are typically a half hour. You see our health coaches. We do heart rate variability and heart math also. You get a lot of stuff with seeing us. When we see a person, we sit down and have a conversation. We talk, “What’s going on? What’s worked? What hasn’t worked? What your goals are? What do you want to see happen? What are your fears? What do you buy?” We sit down and talk about all those things, and then we go into what we need to figure out what’s going on. What labs do we need to figure out physiologically? Is it a comprehensive blood work? Is it the DUTCH Test that we talked about earlier? Is it an organic acids test? We use the metabolic one. How is your body working?

Blood is going to show us disease processes, low hormones, and those types of things. It’s not going to tell us if it’s working or not. Organic gas is going to tell us how your mitochondria are working. What do your cells look like? How inflamed are they? How are your nervous system, and your neurotransmitters working? How inflamed is that nervous system? How do the cells look through there? Are they inflamed or not inflamed? Are they breaking down too much? Is there a lot of zombie cells hanging around? Do we have to get rid of those? How is the liver and kidney detoxifying your system? How is that digestion?

Zombie Cells And Diet And Lifestyle Changes

I’m glad you brought up zombie cells, but you can’t throw a term like zombie cells out there without telling people what we’re talking about. I don’t want people thinking they’ve got some necrotic flesh that’s like a zombie right in their body. What is a zombie cell? Why should we be worried about them?

I define zombie cells as metabolically inactive cells. They’re not serving us but they’re still pulling nutrients from us and still surviving in our system. They’re a zombie cell. They’re hanging out doing nothing but wasting our energy on themselves and not us. Part of that process is getting those cleaned out. It doesn’t take a lot to clean out. Only a couple of times a month.

Is that something that a standard autophagy process would help with? That’s essentially like a state where if you’re fasting routinely, even doing intermittent fasting, that can support the removal of these zombie cells. I understand there are also micronutrients that can support that journey. Am I correct?

Yeah. Senolytics are good to help your body to get those out. Glutathione is a good one that works well through there. There are a few other ones. The curcumin helps too. There’s a bunch of different ones that will help get those cells out of there. If you’re exercising and you’re eating for the most part, those keep those up and they break them down because your body needs to recycle the cells for growth. If you’re not, these cells are hanging out in your system itself. You need to get rid of them.

Does sulforaphane help with that? That’s the broccoli and all the brassica stuff. I’m allergic to broccoli so I do cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and all these guys. That’s the sulforaphane. The kale helps scrub the zombie cells out of your system. Also, do it with healthy foods.

Food is number one. Food is medicine. If you’re not going to change your diet, that’s part of our program that we put clients through. That goes through an online curriculum. That’s only about 30 to 40 minutes a week for 4 or 6 months typically, depending on how they are and how much time and support they need. That teaches them all the stuff they need to know.

We can’t sit down with them. I don’t have enough hours in the day or the week to sit down to see the number of people that I need to educate all the time. You have the correct time on our visits that we need to see you, follow up labs, and do those. The coaches see you and you do the curriculum. That’s how we get so successful. We have amazing results from our programs.

That’s the key. If you can’t do that, I can’t work with you because I can’t see you once every six weeks or once every three months or once every six months and get anywhere in your life. Nobody can. That’s the model of medicine. It’s literally like, “See you in six months or a year and what are we checking for now? You’re getting worse, but here’s another med.” Look at where the health of our society is. It’s not good.

What you’re essentially talking about is a diet lifestyle intervention that’s somewhat longer term and supported through your group. I was encouraged to see some recent research published by Dr. Dean Ornish using a similar approach specifically for early-onset Alzheimer’s. He was able to run 51 patients through the system that he uses in his practice of focused on whole foods, plant-based, and no oil. That same diet that Dr. Michael Greger puts people on but with a battery of supplements. Also, physical activity and meditation.

It was an all-encompassing program that he worked with people to put them on and then monitor them over time. Now he’s working to roll this out. This has produced more promising results than any drug intervention so far to date. This is one example of diet and lifestyle impacting a health condition. The health condition is growing at an epidemic proportion. Food and lifestyle as medicine is proving to do a better job of addressing these sorts of health concerns even with the potential of reversing the progression of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Did any of us think that the results were going to be quite as strong? I was very skeptical, frankly. I’m happy to see that we’re able to prove this in a clinical setting. You’re not physically there in person with all of your patients because a lot of what you do is online. You’re able to practice the way you do across state borders. Is that correct?

For the most part. As long as we see them in person one time the first time, it’s not a problem to follow up with them wherever they are.

You’re up in the Pacific Northwest. Is that correct?

In Idaho exactly. I want to circle back real quick. You said you were surprised by Dean’s results. I’m truly not surprised at all.

I’m surprised that they were as strong. I expected them to be able to produce results because he’s seeing them in his clinical practice. That’s why he studied it in the first place, but they were quite as strong. To be able to demonstrate reversal is huge even if it’s only a third of the populus. Granted this is only 51 patients, but that’s still something. It’s statistically significant results.

This is always movement in the right direction in my book if you’re looking specifically at diet and lifestyle first. My goal in life has always been to be on zero meds all the way in my life. Now, I have not been successful in doing that because I have to take a thyroid medication but my doctors have worked with me to help me understand like, “You take vitamin D, right?” I’m like, “Yes.” It’s not that different.

A lot of our clients want to be off medications. I tell them, “Hopefully, we can get you there but worst-case scenario, you’re on a couple of supplements. You’re eating and exercising the way you should. Unfortunately, you need this maybe microscopic dose of medication just because your body has to have it the way it functions. This can’t be fixed all the way.” I’m okay with that. That’s fine because we got you to where you’re less and less medication to a point where it is a little bit. That’s okay if we start seeing you reverse what you’ve been doing, not doing the lifestyle things.

If the meds start increasing, then we have to revisit and go like, “We need to reset here and go back.” As I said, Dean has been around since I was an undergrad. That’s a long time ago. Early ‘90s. When I was in cardiac rehab, he was the one who was showing you could reverse heart disease with a vegetarian diet. Plain and simple.

Back then, it was like, “Duh,” because you get them off the junk. The fastest food, processed food, and all the stuff that they’re supposed to, which also is carbs, fats, and proteins. There’s not any nutrient density in there whatsoever. You’re going to see a change because you’re giving the body the nutrients and the vitamins. All of the plant names that scientists are coming up with now, Let them figure that out. We just say, “Great. We know it’s in there now. Keep eating it.” We see the health returned to people and it’s not surprising.

The body is in those toxic states. Those cells become resistant. They become hard basketballs versus soft Nerf balls. In the hard state, information cannot get in and out of those cells. They become rigid. They don’t communicate well. You start getting those cells to be soft and supple. Start getting nutrients into them, getting those membranes or those cells where the EPA and DHA come in. That fossil lipid bilayer softness there.

If it’s soft again, the information is going to start to flow. The brain is primarily cholesterol and fat. If it is inflamed, bad fat and cholesterol, it isn’t going to work in that same thing. The neurons need to move and create memory. If they start slowing down, that rigidity isn’t going to happen. Changing the diet, getting a healthy diet, and getting nutrient density. I agree with you that you need to have oils and fat. You’re going to see those changes. We see all the time clinically. The small studies that were done were great. In Iowa, the doc with the MS, what’s her name? She got the research studies to show dietary lifestyle changes can reverse MS.

Nutrition Without Compromise | Dr. Jerry Bailey | Men's Health

 

Are you talking about Dr. Terry Wahls?

Yes. It’s been being proven. There’s just not a lot of money in telling people to eat right and exercise.

The part that doctors lean back on often is it’s an issue of compliance. People do want to be able to just take a pill and call it a day. Some things are not that easy. Frankly, eating whole foods plant-based or eating a whole foods diet that doesn’t have packaged foods in it is a little harder to do in the day-to-day. How militant do you want to be? How militant do you have to be to achieve your best health? That’s all going to vary on a by-person basis. Also, what your preferences and lifestyle are. I have two young boys at home. I’m not super militant either. They have their dietary preferences.

Sometimes, I eat a completely different meal than them. I’m making myself a batched stew that I have for dinner for the week that has a lot of stuff in it that they don’t like because it’s too spicy for them. I like the heat. That’s okay too, but I found something that works for my family and I still make them the chicken nuggets that they love and stuff like that because with 6 and 9-year-olds you’re not going to be able to have all the wins in the world.

What fight do I want to fight today?

Sometimes, it’s the fight to get the meal, “Eat the food.” I don’t want them running to the fridge to grab whatever else can be handy quickly for them or some snack food from the pantry. You want them to be getting whole nutrition. That’s what I’m focused on doing, making sure they get all their core nutrition needs met. I wondered if you could share this with the audience here. Dr. Terry Wahls has her Wahls protocol. Dr. Dean Ornish has his protocol for avoiding Alzheimer’s. Do you have a testosterone protocol or something simple that you could share as a starter resource for our audience?

The Hormone Weight Loss Nutrition Plan

For the audience, if they want to go to my clinical website LakesideHolistic.com/freebook, they can get my free book. That’s The Hormone Weight Loss Nutrition Plan. That takes them through a 30-day reset on how to do stuff simply, how to get easier whole foods, and a lot of recipes in there to cover for the month too, along with some simple diet and simple exercise and meditation. They can download that for free.

Nutrition Without Compromise | Dr. Jerry Bailey | Men's Health

I can tell you many of the people who potentially become clients grab the book first. They’re like, “I’m not sure I want to become a client. Let me play with the book for a little bit.” Most get the book and become a client within the first month. They notice in the first few weeks they’ve already dropped 10 to 15 pounds just because they’re eating well and starting the exercise easily, versus jumping and full-boring into a diet lifestyle itself.

That’s great. We’ve already talked about a couple of your non-negotiables, which are they have to be physically active and they have to be committed to eating better. What that better is may be defined in that book as well. Are there any other non-negotiables that you like to see from people that you work with?

Complainers or people who find every excuse. When I do talks and everything, I say, “Who do I work with?” A-players, like those who get it. They understand that they’re at a crossroads in their life and they’re staring down that barrel of what’s ahead. They’ve seen it with their families, their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, or friend’s parents and they’re like, “I don’t want that.” They understand that process. Those A-players are ready to do the work and want to do the work. It’s not a lot of work.

We talk like, “Work is this four-letter word.” It’s not. You’re changing your life for the better and getting away from that pattern that’s taking you down that road. That’s who we work with. Who we don’t work with are the ones that like, “What about this? What about that? Can I do this or can I do that?” One of my swim coaches when I did Ironman, we were all adults at the time. He’s an adult. He coached the Olympic swimmers and college NCA Champions.

He said, “You’re all adults here. Here’s what I’m going to tell you to do for the workout for today. You can choose if you’re going to do it or not. I don’t care. I’m here, you’re here, so do the workout. If you don’t want to do it, I’m not going to coach you.” I’ve taken that as my mentality too. If you’re not going to do the work, we have it laid out and it works. I’m not going to argue with you about you not doing something.

You reminded me of my horseback trainer because she’d say I needed to pull my strips up one more notch to be able to get over the higher jumps and not fall out of the saddle on the other side. Not that I was falling out of the saddle, but I’m like, “I put pressure on my knee. It didn’t feel right.” It ended up being a saddled misfit issue. Not that it was a misfit, but it didn’t fit me a misfit.

I had to get an updated saddle to be able to do the work. Sometimes you’re going to need a tool to help you get there. Maybe that’s personalized coaching or the right supplement or drug treatment for you to help you get over that hurdle. I’ve heard a lot of negatives and also some positives about drugs like Ozempic. I wonder if you have an opinion on that front.

Great medication when used correctly. We use it with clients but again, they’re in a program. They’re not just doing the drug to lose weight because what happens is you lose your muscle mass. That’s what it shows. If you’re doing Ozempic and not changing how you’re eating. You’re still eating the same way but less because it slows down digestion. You can't just eat if you are not hungry, but it works well. If you do that stuff and not anything else, what happens is you lose the muscle mass and the fat mass. When you go off of it, now your metabolism is slower than what it was, to begin with, Just like the research shows, you’re going to gain the weight back and then some.

The clients that we work with are on Ozempic. They’re doing the process. They’re doing everything correctly. We’re getting their body balance. They’re still having some stubbornness of some weight loss. We don’t have a problem adding it in, and they’ll start losing weight. We’ll titrate up, and then titrate down with it till we get to the weight loss they want to achieve. They’re still working out. We’re still tracking it. We use the in-body scanner to track your lean mass and fat mass. We see that loss of fat mass.

When you lose weight, you’re still going to lose some lean mass. If you don’t have a lot of lean mass, to begin with, we’re going to bump that up and make sure you’re getting that lean mass up in that process. We’re okay with it. I don’t have a problem with it when used correctly just like thyroid medication for yourself, or testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and DHA when used correctly.

Part of the anti-aging reverse aging stuff is using Metformin, an anti-diabetic drug. It’ll work but you’re going to have side effects from it and it’s not doing what you think it’s doing. You can use more natural substances to help with that or change what you’re doing and get your body adaptive as best as possible with food and exercise.

It sounds like the basic root is the same across the board, food and exercise. As far as any protocol you have for supplements, are there generalized few that you go to for most of the people that you see?

For the most part, once they’re done through their curriculum and they’ve gotten their issues resolved, then we look at what they need. Often, it’s a simple multivitamin, a good omega fatty acid, probably some vitamin D, and some B supplements. That’s about it. It’s like four things. They don’t need a lot. If they still have some issues, we will retest the metabolomics and the organic acids to see how their physiology has changed.

I do them on myself every single year, the metabolomics test, the DUTCH Test, and my blood work to know how my body is changing, and what I need to catch early and fix if anything is showing up. Those are the four basics for a majority of people that work pretty darn well across the board. Once we know from a metabolic test or blood work or DUTCH, they may need an additional, then we can modify from there.

What’s involved in a metabolomics test? I don’t think I’ve ever had one.

It’s an organic acid test, so it’s a urine test. If we think about it, it’s blood work checking what’s hanging out there. You see what your body is doing. We got to see what it is metabolizing. That’s through waste. Uranus has waste products, so we check that to see whether the Krebs Cycle is working or not working, and how the dysbiosis is if there is in the GI tract. They’re all the little markers on there that kick off in the metabolism from biochemistry. Those are going to be there, so we can see what your body is doing in particular, versus everybody else’s.

That makes perfect sense. I want to say thank you so much for the work that you do. It’s important. With more than two decades and service, your wife is also a physician and your partner. You are able to support people’s health journeys over the longer term. It’s commendable work. I know it’s a lot and I appreciate that you’ve offered a free resource to our community. If you could repeat that, that would be amazing.

Go to LakesideHolistic.com/freebook.

Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Jerry Bailey.

Thanks for having me. It’s been a blast.

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It was such a pleasure to have Dr. Bailey on the show. I will as always include the many ways that you can find out more about his work at Lakeside Holistic including that link LakesideHolistic.com/freebooks. I’ll be sure to include that link. You can always visit OrloNutrition.com for our complete blog which will include features that you won’t find anywhere else. Remember, if you’re trying to jump-start your health today and you’ve never taken an Omega-3, let’s just say there’s no time to start like the present.

You can jump right on over to OrloNutrition.com and buy a Tested By You kit, which is a six-month supply of the Omega-3 product of your choice. Omega-3, active DHA, or active prenatal DHA. With that, you’re going to receive two Omega-3 index test kits. This enables you to test your levels of Omega-3s today and again after four months.

As a reminder, this is one particular way that you can figure out where you are and also where you get by supplementing for a few months time. It takes time to get these omegas right in your system so you can flush out those lipids that make your cell walls too rigid, just like what Dr. Jerry was sharing with us early earlier. Get that fluid flexible cell membrane to be the commonplace cell throughout your entire body.

This way, you can traffic nutrients better and have better cell-to-cell communication. Your neurons and dendrites will operate better and your brain. You’ll feel clearer. If you haven’t ever taken an Omega-3, it’s a perfect time to try today. If it’s something that you haven’t been super good about, this is also a great program for you as well.

All of these omegas are in their polar lipid form. They’re up to three times better absorbed than other omegas on the market and they’re algae sourced. They’re from the original source, completely pure, clean, sustainable, and grown at our facility in Iceland. As it stands, if you participate in this, you’ll get $100 worth of free tests.

I want to go ahead and encourage you to use the simple code of NWC. If you use a code NWC check out, you’ll get an extra 10% off your order and this is already a dramatically reduced price. I believe, all in all, you’ll be spending about $170 for a six-month supply of Omega-3, DHA, or prenatal DHA. Plus, you’ll be getting those two tests. That’s an incredible value.

I encourage you to go ahead and follow us at Orlo Nutrition. If you have any questions, you can go ahead and send me an email to Hello@OrloNutrition.com. As we close today's show, I hope that you’ll raise a cup of your favorite beverage with me as I say my closing words. Here’s to your health.

 

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About Dr. Jerry Bailey

Nutrition Without Compromise | Dr. Jerry Bailey | Men's Health

Dr. Jerry Bailey is a certified nutritionist, acupuncturist, chiropractic, and functional medicine physician at Lakeside Holistic Health with over two decades in his field. Bailey is also a prominent expert on men’s medicine and leads the world in the emerging science of Poly-Hormonal Adrenal Testosterone Syndrome. He has been in practice for over two decades seeing tens of thousands of patients in that period.

His clinical experience and acute awareness of current research, as a former faculty at the University of Western States in the Graduate Studies department in the Masters of Science of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, affords him a unique ability to apply current research to clinical practice to be a truly evidence-informed practicing physician.

He, along with his physician wife, has been the top Functional/Natural medicine practice in the inland northwest for many years Their clinic is at the forefront of cutting edge evidence-informed practice along with the development of new protocols to aid in reversing most of the chronic illness and hormone imbalances seen today.

He is a dad to two amazing sons. He is also a triathlete, and a drummer, gig his day job supports. He has been featured in Bloom, Parade, HGTV, VeryWell Health, Spy, Medium, NBC News, QardioMD, Entrepreneur and Byrdie.

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