Joe Rogan Experience #2060 - Gary Brecka

1. 0:00 – 1:57

   Dana White’s health turnaround and the “life expectancy wake-up call”

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drum beat plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

   3. GBGary Brecka0:12

      Fired up.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      What's up? How are you, man?

   5. GBGary Brecka0:13

      I'm doing amazing, man.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Thanks for being here.

   7. GBGary Brecka0:15

      Dude, you're welcome.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      And thank ... Thanks for saving Dana White's life.

   9. GBGary Brecka0:19

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:19

       (laughs) 'Cause th- that's what he credits. He credits talking to you and taking your advice as completely changing his life, and now he feels infinitely better.

   11. GBGary Brecka0:27

       Yeah. I mean, he did a lot of the work himself.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:29

       Well, he had to, but you had to tell him what to do. But luckily, he listened.

   13. GBGary Brecka0:33

       Yeah. I mean, I think, I think giving him a life expectancy just kind of validated it for him, it just really put it in his face.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Uh-huh.

   15. GBGary Brecka0:41

       And, you know, 'cause that's something you can calculate. He's like, "Okay, well, I'm 53 now. 63 doesn't seem that far off."

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Right.

   17. GBGary Brecka0:48

       You know?

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       A lot of like high-stress individuals that don't take care of themselves, their ticker checks out-

   19. GBGary Brecka0:55

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       ... around 65-

   21. GBGary Brecka0:56

       It, it ... I mean-

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       67.

   23. GBGary Brecka0:58

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       That's pretty standard.

   25. GBGary Brecka0:59

       It just takes its toll. I mean and-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Yeah.

   27. GBGary Brecka1:01

       And the funny thing is, you know, uh, when you go back and you look at the, the pictures of him prior to-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:08

       Oh, yeah.

   29. GBGary Brecka1:09

       ... he does kind of look like he was about to pop, you know?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:12

       It's not good.
2. 1:57 – 3:56

   What the genetic methylation test measures (and why it’s foundational)

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:57

      What is this test?

   2. GBGary Brecka1:58

      It's a genetic test. It looks at, um, genetic methylation pathways. So-

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:03

      Methylation pathways?

   4. GBGary Brecka2:05

      Methylation pathways.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:05

      What's that word mean?

   6. GBGary Brecka2:07

      So, think about it like this. Um, you know, we pull crude oil out of the ground, right?

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:11

      Mm-hmm.

   8. GBGary Brecka2:11

      But, but you can't put crude oil into your gas tank, right? Because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. So, what happens is crude oil has to be refined into gasoline, and then the car can run. Okay, so in human beings, there's a similar process called methylation. There's not a single compound known to mankind, not one, there's no vitamin, no mineral, no amino acid, no nutrient, no protein, no nutrient of any kind, that enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in, without a single exception, everything we put into our bodies has to be refined into the usable form. If you can't make this conversion, you have a deficiency. It's this deficiency that leads to the most common ailments that we suffer from.

   9. JRJoe Rogan2:58

      Mm.

   10. GBGary Brecka2:58

       So, that process is called methylation. And there are several genes that govern it. Um, this is where a lot of the misconception about genetically inherited disease comes from, right? People say, um, "Well, Joe, you know, your father-in-law has ..." Uh, not your father-in-law, your, your father on your mom's side had hypertension. Your grandfather had hypertension. Now you have hypertension. So, you have genetically inherited hypertension, or you have familial hypertension. Well-

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:25

       And hypertension's commonly known as high blood pressure. Is it the same thing?

   12. GBGary Brecka3:28

       High blood pressure. Yeah, high blood pressure. But 85% of all high blood pressure is what we call idiopathic, right? It's of unknown origin. So, we say that things are genetically inherited because they run in families. But it's rarely the disease that's passed from generation to generation. What we pass from generation to generation is the inability to refine a raw material, which causes a deficiency, which leads to that disease.

3. 3:56 – 8:03

   Hypertension explained: homocysteine, inflammation, and vascular narrowing

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:56

      And what generally leads to hypertension?

   2. GBGary Brecka3:58

      So, um, if you look at, um, a Dana White s- case, right, is a perfectly, uh, common case. In fact, The Journal of Hypertension published an article in, uh, November 19th of 2017, um, if you wanna look that article up. And essentially linking an amino acid in the bloodstream, um, called homocysteine, uh, to hypertension. And the reason for this is you got homocysteine in your blood, I've got it in my blood, um, everybody listening to this podcast has homocysteine. But if you have an impaired ability to break homocysteine down, right? To take that amino acid, homocysteine, and convert it into a harmless amino acid called methionine, if you can't make this conversion, homocysteine rises. It causes something called hyperhomocysteinemia, high homocysteine in the blood. When homocysteine rises, it becomes one of the more inflammatory compounds in the human body. As it's cruising by the inside lining of the artery, it starts to irritate the artery and actually reduces the artery's, um, elasticity and can even cause it to constrict. So, think about this. You got 63,000 miles of blood vessel roughly in your body. It doesn't take much narrowing to drive pressure up. Think about it, 85% of all hypertensive diagnosis, diagnosis of, of high blood pressure, um, primary hypertension or essential hypertension are idiopathic, right? Unknown origin. Only 15% of them are secondary hypertension of, of where we know the exact cause. And so, what we do is we take people that have high blood pressure. We, we run a bunch of tests on them. We- EKG, it's normal. EEG, it's normal. Heart and lung sounds, cardiac cath, dye contrast study. We do all these cardiovascular tests, and they all come out normal. Yet the person still has high blood pressure. And that's largely because the high levels of homocysteine are causing vascular narrowing. I mean, this is a fixed system, right? So, if I make the pipes smaller in a fixed system, pressure goes up.... so in, in Dana's case, specifically, in his, y- you know, he's thrown in his, uh, blood work out on the internet, so, um, you know, we can talk about his labs. But, um, in his cases, he, he had one of the highest levels of homocysteine that I'd personally ever seen and our clinical team had seen.

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:18

      What ... So when you say high blood pressure, could you define ... Like g- ... I'm, I'm not good at that. Whenever I get my blood pressure, they tell me the number and they say it's good, and I go, "Okay."

   4. GBGary Brecka6:25

      So like-

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:26

      But I don't know what ... What's a good number?

   6. GBGary Brecka6:27

      So, um, 120/70, 120/80.

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:30

      And what's high?

   8. GBGary Brecka6:31

      130, 140, 150, 160.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:34

      When does it get dangerous?

   10. GBGary Brecka6:36

       140, 150 starts to get dangerous.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:38

       Really?

   12. GBGary Brecka6:38

       People walk around at 140, 150, 160 all the time.

   13. JRJoe Rogan6:43

       And they don't know it?

   14. GBGary Brecka6:44

       It's the silent killer. You don't feel it. You think you would h- feel high blood pressure, but very often it's the silent killer because you don't feel it. It's not like you hear your blood rushing in your ears, although you may. It's not like you feel pressure in your head, or pressure in your neck, or pressure in your chest. That's why high blood pressure, hypertension is, is one of the silent killers in cardiovascular disease.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:05

       Mm.

   16. GBGary Brecka7:06

       Right? In fact, one of the, one of the first primary symptoms is sudden death. Right? So we, we often put people on hypertensive medication before we actually look at whether or not they have high levels of homocysteine or whether or not they might have a gene mutation that's specifically called MTR. And you could test for it. Or MTRR. And what this gene codes for is it codes for the enzymes that break down homocysteine and turn it into an amino acid called methionine. Right? And so if this conversion is impaired and this homocysteine starts to rise and your vascular system constricts, it can drive your pressure up. And it drives your pressure up without anything being wrong with the heart. So then we start standing on the heart, which is what happened in Dana's case. Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, diuretics, all of these things. His blood pressure was still through the roof. Um, and I think-

4. 8:03 – 11:39

   Dana’s numbers, medication limits, and the TMG intervention

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:03

      And what was his number?

   2. GBGary Brecka8:05

      I think he was 160, 160/110. I want to say it was very high.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:11

      Mm.

   4. GBGary Brecka8:12

      Um, and it was consistently high. Um, we were actually ... You know, our clinical team was taking his blood pressure two or three times a day, seven days a week, and it was consistently very elevated, even though he was on blood pressure medication.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:25

      Really? So statins. Is that ... What was he ... What was he on?

   6. GBGary Brecka8:29

      So statins were just ... What you'd use on, uh, cholesterol.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:32

      Oh, okay.

   8. GBGary Brecka8:32

      Like, like a Repath or anything. So those are trying to lower-

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:34

      So what is a, um, what's a hypertension medicine?

   10. GBGary Brecka8:37

       They're, they're, uh, they're called beta blockers, like Inderal.

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:39

       Mm-hmm.

   12. GBGary Brecka8:40

       Calcium channel blockers. We call it ACE inhibitors. Um, sometimes we use diuretics.

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:45

       And so he was still jacked up even though he was on those?

   14. GBGary Brecka8:49

       Oh, he was still jacked up even though he was on medication.

   15. JRJoe Rogan8:51

       And what are the other factors? Like what are ... What other things cause hypertension?

   16. GBGary Brecka8:55

       Well, I mean, cardiovascular disease. And there are certain, you know, direct genetic links to cardiovascular disease, but they're, they're very rare. Um, but diet, atherosclerosis, you know, narrowing of the arteries, arterial sclerosis, hardening of the arteries, calcifications in the arterial wall, um, can cause pressure to go up. Um, you know, um, regurgitations in the, in heart valves can cause, you know, pressure to increase. But when you think about the heart as a muscle, right, and all four chambers are circulating blood normally and it's got a good vascular supply, but it's beating into constricted pipes, think about what happens. That pressure's gonna back up.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:34

       Mm-hmm.

   18. GBGary Brecka9:34

       Right? And so we rarely go outside the heart to diagnose whether or not ... And, and for the record, I am not a physician. I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I'm a human biologist. Um, I didn't, you know, learn my trade in, in, in medical school. I took eight years of undergrad and, and post-graduate education in human biology. But for, for 20 years I was a mortality expert in the insurance industry and I just read medical records for a living. So the vast amount of what I've come to understand about modern medicine has just come from reading thousands and thousands and thousands of medical records. And you can see very often that when people were being diagnosed with high blood pressure, they were always looking at the heart. They never looked outside the heart to say, "Well, could it possibly be beating into a dysfunctional arterial system?" And so in Dana's case, and I, I should have brought the numbers 'cause I had the week over week numbers. It was astounding. You know, we, we just put him on a simple amino acid called trimethylglycine, you know, an amino acid you can get off the shelf. And what it did was it made up for this genetic deficiency, this lack of code to break down homocysteine. And his body started to methylate, to break homocysteine down.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:48

       And is this a amino acid that pretty much everybody should be taking?

   20. GBGary Brecka10:51

       It's an amino acid that everybody with, um, uh, hypertension should consider if they have high homocysteine.

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:58

       And s- explain. Say the word again. What is it? What's the amino acid called?

   22. GBGary Brecka11:02

       Trimethylglycine. TMG.

   23. JRJoe Rogan11:05

       Try-

   24. GBGary Brecka11:05

       Capital T, capital M, capital G.

   25. JRJoe Rogan11:06

       Is that the s- Similar to regular glycine?

   26. GBGary Brecka11:08

       No. This is trimethylglycine. It's a little bit ... It's a little bit different than the amino acid glycine. So trimethylglycine will actually help to metabolize, to help give the body the raw material it needs-

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:20

       I feel like I should write that shit down.

   28. GBGary Brecka11:21

       ... to ... (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan11:22

       I'm gonna write down trimethylglycine.

   30. GBGary Brecka11:23

       He's gonna be on trimethylglycine tomorrow. (laughs)
5. 11:39 – 16:30

   “Look at the soil”: nutrient deficiency vs disease-first medicine

   1. GBGary Brecka11:39

      And so, you know, som- sometimes I use the analogy that, you know, when I was, when I was getting my second human biology degree, I was in grad school getting my human biology degree, I had to take all these plant botany courses, um, which I hated, but you have to take them. Morphology of thalloglaphites and all these crazy courses about plants. But the one thing that really stood out to me by taking all these plant biolo- biology courses is that if there's ever anything wrong in the leaves of a plant, like, the tree, the, um, you know, the trunk, the leaves, uh, or the branches, and you call a true arborist or a true botanist out to your house-... they won't even touch the leaves or the branches or the trunk of the tree. The first thing they'll do is they'll core test the soil. And they'll go, "You know what? This soil's deficient in nitrogen."

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:26

      Mm.

   3. GBGary Brecka12:27

      And then they'll add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf will heal. But we don't think about human beings like this anymore. I feel like there's such a paucity of understanding of, of deep human physiology in, in a lot of the medical community, not all of the medical community. And we don't actually have faith in mankind and humanity and the body's ability to heal itself. And whether or not they might, someone might be deficient in a raw material, not pathologic or diseased. So for example, in Dana White's case, he was diagnosed with idiopathic hypertension, which he essentially did not have. He was being medicated for it, he had been medicated for it for 15 years. And he didn't really have hypertension, there was nothing really wrong with him. It's that his body couldn't break down homocysteine. It was deficient in the amino acids needed to break this homocysteine down. As soon as we put those back in his body, it started to function normally.

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:15

      And where would you generally get those amino acids if you wouldn't, weren't taking them?

   5. GBGary Brecka13:19

      Um, I mean, you can get them online. I mean, there's lots of great manufacturers-

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:21

      No, no, if you weren't taking them, would, is, is it, are they in food? Is it-

   7. GBGary Brecka13:26

      Oh, yeah. They're in, they're, they're in foods. That's why if you look at certain diets, like high folate diets, like carnivore diets, um, diets that are high in dietary folate, leafy greens, um, um, grass-fed meats, um, um, eggs, dairy. You'll find that they have lower incidences of, um, cancer, diets in high dietary folate. So this is a raw material that we can get from our food, but very often our food is just so nutrient deficient, right? We update the macros on the back of a lot of labels, but if you look at the micros, like how much spinach, uh, how much iron is in spinach or calcium is in spinach or how much, um, nutrients are in the, on the label of most foods, I mean, it's a fraction of what's actually listed there.

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:10

      Mm.

   9. GBGary Brecka14:10

      And so we're nutrient deficient, right? Human beings are not as sick as we have been led to believe we are. The majority, in my opinion, of pathology and disease as we know it today are nutrient deficiencies, missing raw material in the human body. And we just accept all these things as a consequence of aging, weight gain, water retention, you know, lack of sleep, poor focus and concentration, lack of waking energy, hormone imbalance. And we think that the body has all of these different pathologies and diseases, but the truth is, it's usually nutrient deficient. It's astounding what happens to human beings when you give their body the raw material that it needs to do its job.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:49

       Mm.

   11. GBGary Brecka14:49

       I mean, it really is. And so if, if you are just supplementing for the sake of supplementing, then there's only a marginal chance that you're getting what you need. If you're supplementing for deficiency, that's when magic happens in the human body.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:04

       But you have to understand what those deficiencies are and you have to go to someone like yourself that's gonna-

   13. GBGary Brecka15:09

       You don't have to come to me. I mean, there's lots of people that do genetic tests, but-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:12

       But someone like yourself-

   15. GBGary Brecka15:12

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:12

       ... that is gonna understand how to read this stuff. 'Cause if you ha- uh, if you talked to me and said, "Uh, what's the cause of high blood pressure?" I would probably say, "Someone's fat. They're overweight, they eat too much, maybe they drink too much."

   17. GBGary Brecka15:26

       Yeah, those are very obvious causes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:27

       Or-

   19. GBGary Brecka15:27

       Type 2 diabetes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       Right.

   21. GBGary Brecka15:29

       Um, you know, being morbidly obese, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis.

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:32

       What are the other factors that could be?

   23. GBGary Brecka15:35

       Um, obesity. Um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:37

       Yeah, we talked about that.

   25. GBGary Brecka15:38

       Yeah, obesity, stress, um, sleep dep-

   26. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       Stress?

   27. GBGary Brecka15:41

       Oh, stress and sleep deprivation.

   28. JRJoe Rogan15:43

       Hm.

   29. GBGary Brecka15:43

       High levels of cortisol. Um-

   30. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       Interesting.
6. 16:30 – 26:35

   MTHFR, folic acid fortification, and behavioral/mood effects

   1. GBGary Brecka16:30

      That, that's why I say I think everybody at, once in their lifetime should do a genetic methylation test. And the reason for that is that you do this test once in your lifetime. You never have to repeat it. The genes you're born with are the genes you die with. And based on, there's five major genes of methylation. Based on how these five genes are working or not, you supplement for their deficiency. So for example, one of the most common gene mutations in the world is called MTHFR. It's called the motherfucker gene. (laughs)

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:00

      Hm.

   3. GBGary Brecka17:00

      Um, stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase, but we call it the motherfucker gene. This gene is estimated to be compromised in somewhere between 40% and 60%, depending on the study. 40% to 60% of the population has this gene mutation. And what this gene mutation does is it interrupts the ability to convert folic acid into the usable form called methyfolate. And while that might not sound like a big deal until you realize that folic acid is the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet. Folic acid, by the way, is an entirely man-made chemical. You can't find folic... We've been, we've been lied to about folic acid. I mean, it's, it's entirely man-made and synthetic. You can't find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the Earth. It does not occur naturally in nature. Folate does, but we make folic acid in a lab. And then what we've done since 1993 is we've sprayed all of our grains, all white flour, all white rice, all white bread and grains of any kind are sprayed with this chemical folic acid. It's called fortified or enriched. So when you, when you spin a box of crackers around and it says fortified whole wheat flour or enriched bleached white flour, that means it's been sprayed with folic acid. Well, 44% of the population can't convert that into the usable nutrient.

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:18

      Why do they spray it with folic acid?

   5. GBGary Brecka18:20

      Well, I mean, without going down the whole road of conspiracy theory, I mean, you look at the same, you know-... pharmaceutical companies that produce folic acid, and you look at some of the, um, you look at some of the downsides of having a synthetic form of a vitamin like folic acid in the diet, and how it's correlated to higher incidences of ADD, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, bipolar. Um, it's correlated to poor gut motility, mood imbalance, anxiety. And because when you put this raw material into the human body, if you can't metabolize it, if you can't methylate it into the usable form, first of all, you now have a deficiency in the form your body needs and an excess in the nutrient you can't process. And this causes things to go haywire.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:10

      So instead of folate, it's folic ac- folic acid. And what does your body try to do with that?

   7. GBGary Brecka19:16

      So your body tries to convert folic acid into, eventually into something called methylfolate.

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:23

      Right.

   9. GBGary Brecka19:23

      There's a few steps in between, tetrahydrofolate, dihydrofolate, but essentially folic acid and folate, which c- you can find all over the surface of the earth, gets converted into the usable form called methylfolate. Okay, now, this is one of the most, uh, common util- commonly utilized methylated nutrients in the human body. It helps down regulate neurotransmitters. It helps improve the intestinal motility of our gut. Um, it helps degrade thought. It helps b- actually break down catecholamines, which are fight or flight neurotransmitters that can actually stimulate thought. And so people will go a lifetime eating white bread, white flour, white rice, white pasta, uh, you know, um, breads and cereals of all kinds, and they're reading the label and they're like, "Wow, it's fortified, it's enriched."

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:13

       Hm.

   11. GBGary Brecka20:13

       But fortified or enriched for 44% of the population means you can't break that, that nutrient down. This is why there, there, there's a lot of evidence that getting folic acid out of the diet has immediate behavioral changes. I mean, if you're a parent and you're listening to this podcast and it's a full contact sport to get your kid in the car to go to school in the morning, look at what you're feeding them. The standard American diet is gonna be like a Pop-Tart, a white bagel, a bowl of cereal, right? And all of those are fortified with folic acid. Well, there's a 44% chance your kid can't process that, and you're amping them up in the morning.

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:49

       Hm.

   13. GBGary Brecka20:49

       It can literally be like cocaine for a six-year-old, right? It could make their mind race. So now this kid gets up and he goes to the breakfast table and he has a Pop-Tart or he has a white bagel or he has a bowl of cereal, he dumps all this folic acid in the body, and now his mind starts to ricochet, right? And, and it's a full contact sport to get him in the car. And then by the time they get to school, this, you know, the call is coming home saying, "Hey, little Johnny can't pay attention. He doesn't focus, he can't concentrate, he doesn't follow directions, can't pay attention."

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:15

       Get him on Adderall.

   15. GBGary Brecka21:16

       Yeah. Get him on Adderall or Ritalin.

   16. JRJoe Rogan21:17

       Hm.

   17. GBGary Brecka21:17

       And you know, essentially what that does is it says, all right, well if the mind is racing, um, then let's put an amphetamine into the body to race the central nervous system to match the pace of the mind.

   18. JRJoe Rogan21:30

       Dude.

   19. GBGary Brecka21:30

       Which is a horrible solution. How about we just quiet the mind, right? Because you know, it, it... In our brains, we, we don't just create thought, right? We also dismantle thought. We break thought down, right? We transfer methyl groups from neurotransmitters and break them down so they no longer have an effect, right? Or else you'd always be in the same mood. So when we start creating thought at a faster rate than we break thought down, we call this ADD or ADHD, right? But it's not an attention deficit at all. In, uh, in many of these cases, it's an attention overload disorder. It's too many windows open at the same time, right? So if we're opening too many windows, now all of a sudden we can't pay attention. So, uh, it is not that the majority of people with ADD or ADHD lack the ability to pay attention, because they actually can hyperfocus. They lack the appen- uh, ability to pay attention to so many things, right? So, you know, you're thinking about a job you're working on and your friend walks up and you're thinking about a job, and you start talking to your friend and you notice a logo on your friend's jacket that reminds you of a vacation you want to take. So now you're thinking about a job, talking to your friend, looking at the logo, thinking about a vacation you want to take all at the same time. And why is this? Because very often it's because you have slow breakdown, slow methylation of neurotransmitters. So thought, thought, thought comes in, and now all of a sudden we're like, "This kid can't pay attention. This guy's all over the place."

   20. JRJoe Rogan23:00

       Huh.

   21. GBGary Brecka23:01

       If you look at the link between that simple gene mutation, MTHFR, and its incidents in, um, its incidents in, uh, stroke, cardiovascular disease, its incidents in, um, ADD and ADHD and OCD, you'll find not a direct causal link, but enough of a prevalence to say, "Why wouldn't we just take folic acid out of the diet, add methylfolate and take a shot at correcting the course of these conditions?"

   22. JRJoe Rogan23:34

       So folic acid, when did it get introduced into the human diet?

   23. GBGary Brecka23:40

       1993 is, I think, when the federal government signed a deal to spray our entire grain supply with folic acid. I want to say it was 1992 or 1993. And I forget if it was Monsanto, I forget the pharmaceutical company that convinced the US government to, um, spray our entire grain supply. But before that date, like you ever notice when you go to Europe and you eat bread in Europe, you don't feel like shit?

   24. JRJoe Rogan24:02

       Yeah.

   25. GBGary Brecka24:02

       Or you go to, you go to Italy and you have a bowl of pasta and you're like, "Man, normally when I eat pasta, I feel like shit. It just sucks."

   26. JRJoe Rogan24:07

       Yeah.

   27. GBGary Brecka24:07

       Okay, that's because it's not sprayed with folic acid.

   28. JRJoe Rogan24:11

       Really?

   29. GBGary Brecka24:11

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan24:11

       Because I'd always been told that it's heirloom grains and that our n- uh, the wheat that we have today has been modified, uh, for higher yield, for smaller acreage-
7. 26:35 – 29:02

   Prenatal vitamins, methylfolate vs folic acid, and postpartum depression claims

   1. GBGary Brecka26:35

      Remember, 44%. This happens to pregnant women too, right? You know, postpartum depression, which, for the record, can begin before the pregnancy is over. Sometimes I get slaughtered online for saying, "Oh, you're talking about postpartum depression before the pregnancy ends." Yes, the diagnosis of postpartum depression happens very often before the pregnancy, before the pregnancy is carried to term. So 44% of women have this gene mutation. What's the first thing their OB-GYN tells them to do when they get pregnant? Take high doses of folic acid. Well, 44% of them can't process this folic acid. So what happens?

   2. JRJoe Rogan27:07

      Why do they tell them to take high doses of folic acid? What's the logic behind it?

   3. GBGary Brecka27:10

      Because they're told that folic acid prevents neural tube defects, which is patently false.

   4. JRJoe Rogan27:14

      Hm.

   5. GBGary Brecka27:14

      Folic acid doesn't prevent anything.

   6. JRJoe Rogan27:16

      And are they-

   7. GBGary Brecka27:17

      Methylfolate prevents neural tube defects.

   8. JRJoe Rogan27:18

      Are they told to take it in supplemental form? Are they told to take it in form of foods that are sprayed with folic acid?

   9. GBGary Brecka27:24

      They're told to take it in supplemental form. If you look at the majority of cheap prenatal vitamins, right? The good ones, like Thorne, Pure Encapsulations, some of these b- you know, really good big brands, they will have methylated versions of vitamins, right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan27:38

       Okay.

   11. GBGary Brecka27:38

       They'll take the folic acid out.

   12. JRJoe Rogan27:39

       Right.

   13. GBGary Brecka27:40

       Because what happens if you're pregnant, you have this gene mutation, MTHFR, um, number one, you have a skyrocketing incidence of miscarriage. But then because you don't have the methylfolate that your body needs for the adhesion of the egg into- implant into the uterine wall. But now she's pregnant and she starts to take a prenatal vitamin with 1400, 1600% of the daily allowance of folic acid. She starts to go nuts, right? Develops postpartum depression. Eventually, the pregnancy ends, she stops taking the prenatal vitamin, and the symptoms go away. But she still blames it on the pregnancy, not on the vitamin.

   14. JRJoe Rogan28:16

       Whoa.

   15. GBGary Brecka28:16

       The truth is, I have yet to see a peer-reviewed published clinical study linking pregnancy hormones to, to postpartum depression.

   16. JRJoe Rogan28:24

       Now, is there a benefit to taking methylfolate as supplement form?

   17. GBGary Brecka28:27

       A huge benefit to taking methylfolate.

   18. JRJoe Rogan28:29

       And what, uh, how do you get methylfolate? Is it-

   19. GBGary Brecka28:31

       So you, you, you buy methylfolate. You get the methylated form of that nutrient. This is why I say if you, if you look at five particular genes, MTHFR, MTRR, MTR, AHCY, and COMT, dude, if you find that you have one of those gene mutations and you supplement for their deficiency, magic things will happen in your body. You know, because if you have that, for example, there's a gene mutation called

8. 29:02 – 32:55

   Anxiety, COMT, racing thoughts, and sleep: physiology-first framing

   1. GBGary Brecka29:02

      COMT, catechol-O-methyltransferase, and, you know, we all know people that are suffering from anxiety. If, if, if we haven't suffered from anxiety ourselves, chances are we know somebody who's suffered from anxiety. And if you really break down what anxiety is, right? A fear of the future, um, you know, we have to understand that it doesn't require the presence of a fear for us to feel fear, right? So you could drive home tonight and pull into your driveway, and when you get outta your car, somebody's standing in front of you with a knife, right? So that's a real fear, right? Your pupils are gonna dilate. Your heart rate's gonna increase. Your extremities are gonna flood with blood. You're gonna start to have a fight or flight response, mainly because an area of your brain has dumped catecholamines, fight or flight neurotransmitters, into your brain. Boom, now you start to have a fight or flight response. But you could also be laying on the 30th floor of a condo in bed and you could just start thinking about getting eaten by a shark.

   2. JRJoe Rogan29:57

      Yeah.

   3. GBGary Brecka29:57

      Okay? And the chances of a shark getting out of the ocean and coming up a 30-floor elevator, right, are zero. But you can have the exact same reaction. So how is it that I can have the same reaction to the presence of a real fear as an entirely perceived fear? Because it doesn't require the presence of a fear for these excess catecholamines to leak into the brain.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:19

      Huh.

   5. GBGary Brecka30:19

      And this is the- why the majority of anxiety that we have seen in our practices, um, that my clinical team treats, is coming from our physiology. It's not coming from our outside environment. In fact, if you ask most people that suffer from anxiety three questions, if you say, "Have you had it on and off your entire lifetime?"... they'll say yes. There's your first sign that it's a genetic deficiency. Um, and then you say, "Well, can you point to the specific trigger that causes it?" They'll say, "Most of the time, I can't." There's your second sign that it's not coming from their outside environment. And then the third question is, "If you've ever tried anti-anxiety medications, have they worked?" The majority of the time, they'll say, "No, it just makes me feel like a zombie." That is very indicative that this is a nutrient deficiency and not a mental condition. We have a lack of-

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:06

      Whoa.

   7. GBGary Brecka31:06

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:07

      So, do you encourage people to take methylfolate as a supplement or do you-

   9. GBGary Brecka31:11

      Absolutely. I encourage them-

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       What's the dose that they should take?

   11. GBGary Brecka31:15

       ... I think everybody shou- Um, well, it's, it's weight dependent but, you know, um, methylfolate, about 800 micrograms, um, a day is usually defi- is usually sufficient unless-

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       Is that something you take with food?

   13. GBGary Brecka31:25

       Um, you can take it with or without food. It's a, it's a non-water... it's a water-soluble vitamin, so unlike vitamins A, D, E and K, which are actually fat soluble that you need to take with food for them to be absorbed, you can actually take those even on an empty stomach, as long as you're not taking them with a bunch of other vitamins that cause you to be nauseous 'cause it changes your stomach pH. I think every single person should be at a minimum on a methylated multivitamin.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:48

       Mm.

   15. GBGary Brecka31:49

       The basic raw materials that your body needs to perform the process of methylation, because methylation is how we create neurotransmitters, right? I mean, we make serotonin from taking tryptophan and amino acid and methylating it into-

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       Right.

   17. GBGary Brecka32:02

       ... serotonin. We make, we make dopamine from, um, you know, phenylalanine and tyrosine. If, if you can't make these conversions, you have certain deficiencies. And yes, you can have deficiencies in neurotransmitters, which will lead to the expression of a mood disorder. You don't have a mental illness, you just have a lack of mental fitness. And this is- this is why I think-

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       That's crazy.

   19. GBGary Brecka32:24

       ... that we- we- we're so quick to say that we have pathology and disease or dysfunction, and then we go to chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals. And I'm not anti-pharmaceutical, but what I'm saying is, before we diagnose somebody with a mental illness or an autoimmune disorder, or with an allergy or a sensitivity, or irritable bowel syndrome, or any number of other conditions, we should ask ourself what raw material could be missing from their body that could be causing this to happen.

9. 32:55 – 39:08

   Medication overreach examples: vitamin D deficiency misread as autoimmune disease

   1. GBGary Brecka32:55

      Right? I mean, like, when I was in the- when I was in the mortality space, you know, for- for- for 20 years, you know, I was reading medical records, just horrific voluminous amounts of medical records. I would see simple nutrient deficiencies get misdiagnosed as autoimmune conditions more times than I can even remember. So for example, you know, you'd have people going to their primary care physician and I would look at their medical records for five, eight, 10 years. Sometimes we had more than 10 years of medical records, and I'd see, man, this person has single digit vitamin D3 levels. Like, they are so clinically deficient in, in vitamin D3, and vitamin D3, you know, goes from about 30 nanograms per deciliter to 100 nanograms per deciliter. 60 to 80 is a perfect range, but chronic deficiency in vitamin D3, the sunshine vitamin-

   2. JRJoe Rogan33:40

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GBGary Brecka33:40

      ... right, the only vitamin, by the way, that human beings can make on our own. I- I think it's arguably the most important nutrient in the human body. In fact, it was the second leading cause of morbidity in COVID for people that had a deficiency. And it's also why we said that COVID disproportionately affected minorities, because there's a higher incidence of vitamin D3 deficiency because of the pigment of their skin. But we would see- we would see these deficiencies in vitamin D3 that had gone on for decades, right? Now, all of a sudden the patient is going into their doctor and saying, "Doc, I wake up sore and achy in the morning like I had a workout the night before when I haven't. The soles of my feet and my ankles are sore when I get out of bed in the morning to walk to the bathroom. My knees and hips really bother me lately. And you know what? Just these past few weeks, it's kind of hard to make a fist." You would be shocked how many family medicine practitioners go, "You know what, Joe? You got, uh, rheumatoid arthritis. I'm gonna hit you with some high-dose prednisone. I'm gonna put you on something called a corticosteroid and you're gonna be fine." Well, we knew in the mortality space that if you ta- started corticosteroids, you had six years and one day until you were having a joint replacement. It was so accurate that if I saw you were misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and started a corticosteroid, I would artificially advance your age six years and one day, and I would schedule the joint replacement. And then what I would do is I would model the reduction in what we called your ambulatory profile, how well you ambulate, how well you move. Because sitting is the new smoking, right? Sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. And so as I reduced your mobility, I would bring in all the diseases that exacerbate with reduced mobility. So now if you rewind that, you had a simple nutrient deficiency in vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. You were diagnosed with a condition you did not have, put on a medication that wasn't required, which led to a joint replacement that wasn't nece- necessary.

   4. JRJoe Rogan35:30

      How does- how do these corticosteroids, how do they r- ruin your joints? How does that happen?

   5. GBGary Brecka35:36

      So eventually what they do is they upset the balance inside the joint, the synovial, um, the, the protein balance inside of the synovium of the joint. So initially they act- (clears throat) initially they act as an anti-inflammatory, right? They- they reduce the inflammation and you- you actually feel a little bit better. Um, it's like cortisone. You know, repeated cortisone injections have ended a lot of professional athletic careers, probably Joe Montana being the biggest, but, um, that's why we try to reduce the amount of cortisone that we actually put into, you know, athletic injuries now. But- but-

   6. JRJoe Rogan36:09

      H- but h- what is the mechanism? Like how does it do that?

   7. GBGary Brecka36:12

      It- it becomes cytotoxic to the joint because it interrupts the protein metabolism in the synovium of the joint. And so what happens is the joint begins to dry out and the friction surfaces become less lubricated and then begin to contact one another. And as they contact one another, because this protein is broken down, we wear the friction surface away and you get down to anchor cartilage, which we call bone on bone, and there's a lot of nerves there, and you start to get a lot of- of joint pain.So, corticosteroids will also, um, like methotrexate, they also block and interrupt the ability for the body to convert folate to methylfolate.

   8. JRJoe Rogan36:51

      Mm.

   9. GBGary Brecka36:52

      They artificially give you the same condition as this gene mutation, which is why one of the biggest side effects of corticosteroids is gut issues, because methylfolate is r- involved in the motility of the gut. You now start taking a corticosteroid, and it shuts your gut down.

   10. JRJoe Rogan37:09

       And by corticosteroids, are you talking about prednisone? Like, what are the ones that they prescribe?

   11. GBGary Brecka37:12

       Prednisone, methylprednisone, um, and other oral corticosteroids ............................

   12. JRJoe Rogan37:17

       'Cause I, I have a friend who had gout, and they put him on prednisone.

   13. GBGary Brecka37:21

       For short periods of time, you know, in the acute inflammatory stage, it's okay. But to take prednisone systemically, um, for a prolonged period of time, you're gonna start to hear that he starts to get low back pain, that he... Well, first of all, I'd be very surprised if he doesn't have gut issues right now. If you ask him, "Hey, do you, do you notice the incident of gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability-"

   14. JRJoe Rogan37:43

       Hmm.

   15. GBGary Brecka37:43

       "... cramping kind of going up when you started those corticosteroids?" He'll go, "Yeah, dude, my gut's a freaking mess."

   16. JRJoe Rogan37:49

       Mm.

   17. GBGary Brecka37:50

       "You know, I'm constipated sometimes, and I get, then I get diarrhea. Sometimes I blow up like a tick."

   18. JRJoe Rogan37:55

       So, to take it back to cortisone, so if someone has an injury, should, would you advise them to never take cortisone? Is it occasionally okay?

   19. GBGary Brecka38:03

       Occasionally, it's okay. I think most orthopedics now are trying to get away from repeated injections of cortisone other than at the inception of the acute injury.

   20. JRJoe Rogan38:13

       'Cause I know a lot of athletes, you know, they'll get a, a cortisone shot if they have to perform.

   21. GBGary Brecka38:18

       Yeah, I mean, if they have to perform, but remember, that, that's also gonna cause, you know, ligamentous and tendonous laxity. You know, it's actually can be cytotoxic to those, um, to those tissues. It's cytotoxic to fibroblasts, which are the little cells that are embedded in, in, in those tissues that actually help promote healing, right? Because, um, there are, there are cells in injured tissues that are essentially, through the inflammatory process, calling platelets to the site of an injury, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan38:46

       Mm-hmm.

   23. GBGary Brecka38:46

       Which is one of the ways that we heal. We call platelets to the site of the injury. The platelet itself is kind of useless, but it has growth factors inside of it. When it arrives on site, it bursts, it drops off the growth factors, and now you start this, this healing process, which is one of the reasons why PRP works so well. You know, platelet-rich plasma, 'cause you're ta- you're, you're taking all the platelets from the body, and you're concentrating them into a site of injury, right?

   24. JRJoe Rogan39:08

       Hmm.

10. 39:08 – 1:01:03

    Peptides, BPC-157 controversy, and FDA/censorship frustrations

    1. GBGary Brecka39:08

       It's why, um, man, I used to love BPC-157 till the FDA (laughs) just came down on it.

    2. JRJoe Rogan39:14

       What the fuck is that about?

    3. GBGary Brecka39:15

       Ah, fuck, dude. It just-

    4. JRJoe Rogan39:16

       Why did they do that?

    5. GBGary Brecka39:17

       You know what's, what's astounding is I read that whole report, and it wasn't for safety reasons, right? It wasn't, it wasn't because of the reporting of massive amounts of, um, anaphylactic shock or hospitalizations-

    6. JRJoe Rogan39:30

       Right.

    7. GBGary Brecka39:30

       ... or overuse or, um, um, you know, or, or, you know, somebody having some kind of illness or effect or, you know, shock because of it. It was because of the lack of safety data, which is another way of saying it hasn't been paid to be put through full-blown, you know, FDA clinical trials, which no one's gonna do, and, and-

    8. JRJoe Rogan39:50

       So, does that make BPC-157 impossible to get now?

    9. GBGary Brecka39:54

       It will, yeah, and, and a whole host of other-

    10. JRJoe Rogan39:58

        But it's so effective.

    11. GBGary Brecka39:59

        It's so effective. I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how many thousands and thousands and thousands of patients my clinical team has put on BPC-157 never with an adverse event. It is so good for the gut. It's a gastric pentapeptide. It's, it's, um, you know, it's actually synthesized from gastric juice, so it, it's actually tolerated very well orally.

    12. JRJoe Rogan40:19

        I started to see it orally-

    13. GBGary Brecka40:20

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan40:20

        ... which I never really saw before. I always saw it as an injectable, but I see it advertised as orally.

    15. GBGary Brecka40:25

        Well, site injecting it into the site of an injury, like if you have a lateral epicondylitis or something, you inject it to that site of injury is very good, right? It'll localize there and kind of help call platelets to that location. But it's also extraordinarily good for leaky gut.

    16. JRJoe Rogan40:40

        Hmm.

    17. GBGary Brecka40:41

        Um, so people that suffer from inflammatory conditions of the bowel, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, diverticulitis, uh, those, those sorts of things, you know, um, BPC-157 can be just a game changer.

    18. JRJoe Rogan40:53

        Hmm.

    19. GBGary Brecka40:54

        'Cause it is tolerated well, orally.

    20. JRJoe Rogan40:55

        And they're gonna get rid of it?

    21. GBGary Brecka40:56

        They're gonna get rid of it.

    22. JRJoe Rogan40:57

        Look at these motherfuckers.

    23. GBGary Brecka40:58

        (laughs) I know.

    24. JRJoe Rogan40:59

        These motherfuckers.

    25. GBGary Brecka41:00

        It's fucked up. You know, they're amino acids. They're amino acid sequences. I mean, same with growth hormone peptides, you know? Well, sermorelin's still being allowed, but ipamorelin, CGC 1295, MK-677, ibutamoren. These growth hormone peptides that kept people off of exogenous growth hormone, that worked with the naturopathic circadian release of growth hormone, that helped lots of older people fight sarcopenia, age-related muscle wasting, with virtually no side effects. By the way, so, you know, sermorelin, I think was first FDA approved in 1983, if I remember correctly. So, you know, these things have been around for decades. We have lots of safety data o- on, on these and thousands and thousands of patients without an adverse event, and we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to drop it.

    26. JRJoe Rogan41:47

        And so do you think they're doing this because they want the drugs to go through these safety protocols, or do you think they're doing it because they see that people taking peptides limit the amount of pharmaceutical drugs they take?

    27. GBGary Brecka42:02

        Well, I think, I think it's a little bit of both, right? I mean, uh, the question is, where is the impetus coming from? Is it coming from the impetus to protect the public? Because if you're trying to protect the public, then why would you look at the-

    28. JRJoe Rogan42:12

        Get rid of opiates.

    29. GBGary Brecka42:13

        Yeah, I mean, okay.

    30. JRJoe Rogan42:14

        How come those are still available? Yeah.
11. 1:01:03 – 1:19:18

    Seed oils, fluoride, and “fact-checking”: distrust of institutional narratives

    1. GBGary Brecka1:01:03

       ... it's f-... it's absolutely real. You know, I got censored all over Instagram the other day for, for posting about seed oils. It's the same thing. I was like, "Look, guys. I didn't say particularly seed oils are bad for you. What I did say was industrial processed seed oils are bad for you." If you put a canola plant in a commercial press and it comes out gummy, and then you take that gummy canola plant and you, and you de-gum it with hexane, which is a known neurotoxin, and then you take that de-gummed oil and you heat it to 405 degrees and turn it rancid, so now you have a, a rancid neurotoxic, um, um, oil. And then you, and then you take that rancid neur- neurotoxic oil and you deodorize it with sodium hydroxide, um, which is a known carcinogen, um, and then occasionally you, you, you bleach it so, so you, you clear the liquid, then you bottle it and put it on the shelf, that is horrible for you. In fact, that's the pro-... that's the problem with the majority of our food supply is that it's not the food itself, it's the distance from the food to the table. Right? I mean, everybody vilifies meats, but if you look at grass-fed meats versus in- industrial raised cattle, they're night and day. They're completely different chemicals.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:02:05

       Yeah, but, so with seed oils, what happened? You got censored on Instagram?

    3. GBGary Brecka1:02:11

       I got fact-checked.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

       Fact-checked?

    5. GBGary Brecka1:02:12

       Yeah, so if you go into my Instagram, it has that, you know, it has that little blank page over it.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

       Can we go to that?

    7. GBGary Brecka1:02:16

       Yeah.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:02:17

       I wanna see this fact-check.

    9. GBGary Brecka1:02:18

       Oh, sure.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:18

        'Cause these fact-check motherfuckers are horrible.

    11. GBGary Brecka1:02:21

        Oh, yeah. So go to my, uh, @garybrecka, and then you go to my, um, reels, and it's about 20 reels down. You'll see the little clouded fact-check thing they put over top of it.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

        Hmm.

    13. GBGary Brecka1:02:32

        And it says, um, "False information. See why." And then you have to click through and then it says, um, "Food-grade, uh, seed oils are not toxic for human beings, experts say." I'm like, "Well, I'd love to debate that expert." I really-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:48

        Can we go to that, Jimmy?

    15. NANarrator1:02:48

        Hold on. I'm, I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:50

        What would the post say? What is the post?

    17. GBGary Brecka1:02:53

        Well, y- y-... it's gonna say, "False information." It's gonna be kind of blanked out.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:56

        Right. But what is the post that you wrote? What does it say? What does it look like-

    19. GBGary Brecka1:02:59

        It's seed oils.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:59

        ... so you can find it? Just seed oils?

    21. GBGary Brecka1:03:00

        Um... Yeah, seed oils.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:01

        Recently?

    23. GBGary Brecka1:03:02

        Um, it's probably a few months ago now. But it's still on there. Just go to my, um, reels, not my stories, and you'll see it on there.

    24. NANarrator1:03:09

        How? 'Cause, you know, a few just saw it.

    25. GBGary Brecka1:03:11

        Yeah. Yeah.

    26. NANarrator1:03:12

        There's your reels. I don't know if-

    27. GBGary Brecka1:03:13

        All right, keep going. Down, down, down. Down, down, down. It's right around here. Keep going.

    28. NANarrator1:03:21

        There's seed oils right here.

    29. GBGary Brecka1:03:22

        No, that's... That one they didn't catch.

    30. NANarrator1:03:24

        Okay. (laughs)

Episode duration: 2:17:43