Shownotes
Digging In On Health Impacts of Cortisol Levels, Stress, and Adrenal Fatigue:
Your host, Scott Mulvaney and today's guest co-host Dr. John Neustadt discuss the importance of balancing health, business, and lifestyle. Dr. Neustadt, an expert in integrative medicine, emphasizes the impact of chronic stress on health, particularly cortisol's role in bone loss and gut health. He advocates for personal responsibility in health, highlighting the inadequacy of traditional medical approaches. They discuss the benefits of whole foods, protein intake, and the pitfalls of ultra-processed foods. Dr. Neustadt's company, NBI Health, focuses on high-quality supplements, particularly Vitamin K2 (MK-4) for bone health, which has shown to reduce fractures by over 70%. They stress the importance of reading labels and understanding bioavailability. The discussion focused on the differences between MK-4 and MK-7 forms of vitamin K2, highlighting that MK-4 has been clinically proven to stop and reverse bone loss, while MK-7 only slows down bone loss and may even increase it. Scott Mulvaney emphasized the importance of consumer education and informed decision-making. John Neustadt discussed the significance of clinical trials and the need for transparency in supplement marketing. They also touched on the benefits of vitamin C, the importance of genetic testing, and the role of dietary supplements in stress management and overall health. Neustadt shared his commitment to reducing fracture risk and improving bone health through evidence-based products and pro bono consulting.
Quote: "Cut through the confusion of alternative medicine’s promises, conventional medicine’s failures, fad diets and dietary supplement hype to help you get empowered, get energized and unlock your full health potential."
Your Co-Host Today:
With us today is Dr. John Neustadt, ND, the Founder and President of Nutritional Biochemistry, Inc. (NBI). Dr. Neustadt earned his naturopathic medical degree from Bastyr University where he was awarded the Founder’s Award for academic and clinical excellence. Dr. Neustadt has published more than 100 medical articles, written four health and wellness books and is now a #1 Amazon Best Selling Author in the field of Osteoporosis. His most recent book is, Fracture-Proof Your Bones: A Comprehensive Guide to Osteoporosis. Dr. Neustadt was also an editor of the textbook, Laboratory Evaluations for Integrative and Functional Medicine, which was used across the United States to train and educate physicians on using functional medicine with their patients.
Today’s Top 3 Takeaways:
- Understanding the impacts of stress on your health.
- Exercise and its' benefits on stress management, along with nutrition and supplementation.
- Role of Functional Medicine vs the Healthcare System challenges.
Today’s Guest Co-Host Links:
Website: NBI – Delivering Health - NBI
Facebook: NBI
YouTube: NBIHealth
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-neustadt-nd-1553576/
Twitter: Dr. John Neustadt (@JohnNeustadt) on X
Watch us on YouTube:
Timestamped Show Notes:
08:46 – Chronic stress is absolutely devastating to your health. I mean, even the research has been done with cortisol levels and normal "healthy people", and just the high end of normal, meaning that they were not pathological. They didn't have any disease. They were losing bone mass faster than the people whose cortisol levels were lower. Cortisol also changes the gut microbiome. When it's elevated a lot of the researchers with medications like prednisone, which is basically cortisol on steroids itself, and high doses, but even low doses of short term create osteoporosis and increase fracture risk. But they destroy muscle microfibrils, and it decreases your body's ability to produce collagen. The stress also makes the collagen that is present there even more fragile. So it's just this recipe for this systemic breakdown throughout your body of the connective tissue, not to mention the gut health, and, you know, it's drag on your energy and damage to mitochondria.
13:15 – If recovering from all this chronic stress, if they've got symptoms of adrenal fatigue and or we've tested it and it's shown it, I like to have them exercise just to the point where they are sweating and then to stop. That way you get the cardiovascular benefits. It gets the heart rate up, it boosts the immune system, but it doesn't over stress the the adrenal glands any further.
17:30 – A really insidious effect of cortisol and that chronic stress research has shown it actually shrinks brain size. It decreases the volume of your brain.
37:52 – In Japan, they actually prescribe forest bathing, grounding, i.e. go out into nature. It's prescribed. The other thing is when you're in that stressful situation, back to cortisol in a stressful position in your house, or you're just wound up, it changes the blood flow in your brain. Your prefrontal cortex is for decision making and being able to understand the results of your actions. So if this is comprimised, it will impact your ability to gauge which is going to be the best decision, it decreases the blood flow to that area, and it increases the blood flow to other areas of the brain, where it's more fight or flight, where it's let's get out of here. In fact, research has shown that when people are under stress, they cannot anticipate how the negative consequences of their behaviors, because they just want to escape, and so they make worse decisions.
01:01:20 – Bioavailable, so, what does that mean? It means you can absorb it better, and that's true, MK7 is more bioavailable than MK4, but that doesn't mean that it works better in your body. Does that guarantee a utilization? Not at all. So MK7 and MK4 are both forms of Vitamin k2 but they're different molecules. So you know, as we know, in biochemistry, if you change just one carbon atom or one atom on a molecule, you can get overlapping but you also get very different effects. So I already mentioned, MK4 has been shown to stop and reverse bone loss and maintain bone strength. MK7, in all doses tested, has never been shown to stop bone loss or reverse it, only slow down how fast somebody loses bone?
01:14:00 – On the topic of accurate supplement labeling, I love that topic, and that's we have three versions of that product. Each have the highest dose of MK4 available, 45 milligrams per day, with 2000 I use a vitamin d3 the dose shown in clinical trials to work, and then different amounts of calcium, because not everybody needs the same amount of calcium in a dietary supplement, and a lot of people don't even need calcium as a dietary supplement. So that's got the full dose of calcium, 1000 milligrams per day. Take two servings a day, osteo K minis, which is, I think, a better formula for most women. It has less calcium. It has 400 milligrams per day, right next to that. And the osteo MK4 has no calcium, just the MK4 and vitamin d3 for people who don't need extra calcium.
01:27:00 – Final Words
Our Final Words of the Show:
The reason I started, aside from getting frustrated by not having the supplements that I needed for my patients, where I started focusing on bone health and osteoporosis, is because my mother in law, at the time had osteoporosis. I thought I was doing a good job with her and my patients. I was, you know, helping her with some dietary supplements and nutrition and exercise advice. And her doctor had her on fossamax. Her physician her bone density was going up. So she was happy. Her physician was happy. I was happy. My patient's bone density was going up. So I was happy. Then my mother in law fell, tripped on a throw rug and broke her hip. And I thought to myself, something is wrong with this picture. So I started diving into the research on osteoporosis and bone health, and I was shocked by what I found, that a bone density test only predicts 44% of women with osteoporosis who fracture only 21% of men, and yet that number on that test is almost exclusively what's treated and tracked conventionally. And in fact, when it comes to the Osteoporosis medications, the change in bone density is not even an indicator that that medication is reducing their fracture risk that's well documented in the clinical trials. And so my passion for continuing to research on osteoporosis and bone health, lecture at medical conferences, write my book, create products to help people support their their bone health and their physiology in that way, if I can have an overarching legacy when I'm when I'm gone, my hope is that it will move the needle nationally in terms of how clinically doctors approach this condition, and the entire focus of it changes from just being addressing a number on a test to what can we do to reduce people's fracture risk, because that's the most dangerous thing with this condition, and fracture risk depends largely, mostly on factors other than bone density.
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