The Crackin' Backs Podcast

Non Negotiable supplements to take during the flu/cold season - Dr. Jonny Bowden

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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Welcome to the Crackin' Backs Podcast! Today, we’re thrilled to have Dr. Jonny Bowden, a renowned expert in nutrition and longevity. In this episode, Dr. Bowden reveals the top strategies to power up your immune system ahead of flu, COVID, and cold season—without relying on vaccines. From essential dietary tweaks and breakthrough genetic testing to the role of exercise and natural remedies, we’re uncovering practical tools to help you stay strong all season long. Plus, don’t miss his insights on living to 100, inspired by the wisdom of Blue Zones. Let’s get started!

 

Description:

In this must-listen episode of the Crackin' Backs Podcast, we welcome the legendary Dr. Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS—a certified nutrition specialist and bestselling author known for his evidence-based approach to health and longevity. With flu, COVID, and cold seasons fast approaching, Dr. Bowden breaks down the most effective nutritional strategies to help strengthen your immune system—without relying on vaccines. Whether you're curious about the foods you should prioritize or avoid, or how long it actually takes to prepare your body for optimal immune function, this episode offers practical advice for staying healthy during the colder months.

Dr. Bowden also delves into the power of genetic and nutritional testing, sharing insights on how these tools can personalize your diet for peak immune health. He explores natural remedies and superfoods that can help fend off respiratory viruses, the role of exercise in maintaining immunity, and how too much exercise might actually impair your resistance to infection. Plus, learn about the fascinating research behind Blue Zones and the 3 key secrets for living to 100.

Key Topics:

  • Nutritional strategies to boost immunity against flu and COVID
  • The timeline for adjusting your diet to strengthen your immune system
  • How genetic and nutritional testing can tailor your health plan
  • Natural remedies for respiratory virus defense
  • Balancing exercise and immunity
  • Blue Zone insights on longevity and reaching 100 years

Dr. Bowden has been featured on major platforms like The Dr. Oz Show, CNN, and Fox News, and is the author of numerous books, including The Great Cholesterol Myth and Living Low Carb.

Want more from Dr. Jonny Bowden?
Check out his website www.jonnybowden.com for more information about his services, books, and nutrition consulting.

Join us for this enriching conversation and take control of your health this flu season!

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Welcome to the cracking backs podcast today, we are thrilled to have Dr Johnny Bowden, a renowned expert in nutrition and longevity, in this episode, Dr Bowden reveals the top strategies to power up your immune system ahead of flu, covid and cold season without relying on vaccines from essential dietary tweaks and breakthrough genetics testing to the role of exercise and natural remedies, we're uncovering some practical tools to help you stay strong all season long, plus don't miss the insights of living up to 100 inspired by the wisdom of the Blue Zones.

Unknown:

Hey, let's get started.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

All right, man, we

Dr. Terry Weyman:

got, we got our, our buddy back, dr, Johnny Bowden, which a lot of my friends are gonna be jealous. I get to talk to him twice. Yeah. So I'm really excited for you. You know,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

what was that? Again? Could you like that? I'm

Dr. Terry Weyman:

from SoCal Baby Show. Shut up. Reason we wanted Dr Bowen back is we got the flu and cold season coming around, or some people call it the covid and flu season coming around. And I wanted to get people prepared. You read, starting to read articles about vaccines, you're starting reading articles about prepare, all that kind of stuff. So hey, we gotta jump right in and get people prepared and on a more natural standpoint. So we have back our nutritionist, Dr Johnny Bowden, who's very famous with all his books he's written, and we want to kind of talk to people about, uh, strategies of how to get people healthy so they have a great holiday season. So welcome back. Dr Bogan, very

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

happy to be here. Spencer, good to see you. Terry, good to see you, as always. All

Dr. Terry Weyman:

right, so let's talk about some of the most effective nutritional strategies to boost your immune system. Immune system is what we how we fire cold. So can you talk about kind of the strategies you start employing around that, the time of the season changing, going from summer to fall to winter? And can you kind of bring us into that so we can get this conversation started?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

Yeah, but I'd like to first just comment about the idea of boosting our immunity. Perfect. We really can't do that. It's kind of a misnomer. You don't even want to boost your immune system. If you boosted your immune system so it was constantly on high alert, you'd have autoimmune disease. What we want is to get the you know, what, out of the way of our immune system so it can function optimally. We don't need to put it on speed. We just need to get it off of slow down drugs. And what are the slowdown drugs for the immune system, inflammation, oxidation, mitochondrial dysfunction. So what we really need to do when we're talking about boosting your immune system is cleaning it up and and getting all of these things that slow it down out of the equation. Now, you know, I understand what people mean when they say, boost their immune system. When the pandemic started, every nutritionist and doctor in the country got a million questions, what can I take? How can I boost it? What we mean is, how can we get it better in fighting shape? And I did. I don't know how many YouTube videos with a list of supplements, which I'm going to tell you what they are right now, but I do want to just give the context to that, that you're not just necessarily taking things to boost it. What you're doing is to try to give it the fuel it needs to just function normally, and that's the problem. When it's not functioning normally, that's when you feel run down. That's why any little opportunistic virus or bacteria gets a hold. And you we all know from ever having worked in an office or any kind of environment, something's going around. You've ever heard like, oh, something's going around. He's out with something. Some people are out for two weeks and some people are out for two days. Why is that? So we have to look at it's not all about the virus. It's not all about let's keep the virus out no matter what which was the policy of covid. It's also about the host, the receiver, the person who has to deal with those stresses. You can't, you can't stop the world from being stressful. You can deal with your response to the stress. It's like an old Chinese proverb, you can't repave the road in the world, but you can wear more comfortable shoes. So let's talk about how we can wear more comfortable shoes and get our immune system. And then the second thing I want to say, I know I'm taking you far off course here. I want to say is, whenever I'm asked about this, I'm going, Oh, cold and flu season, what should we do differently? And my answer. For me. I don't always say this, because I go on TV all the time, and people want to know like, what do you take? What do you do? It's cold season. How do you keep your family healthy? We're going to talk about that. I'm going to I agree to all that. But you know what I do differently in cold and flu season? What's that? Nothing, nothing. Let me tell you why. Every one of these supplements I'm going to tell you about, I take every day, every one of these activities that we might talk about that might be helpful to immunity and to general health. I do 12 months a year, so I don't see this as a special strategy. I say, okay, I get that most people don't take the 58 vitamins and supplements. I know that's crazy. I know that's way out of the Overton window for most people, but what I'm saying is that what you don't need vitamin C all year round. You don't need zinc all year round. You can't use NAC all year round. Of course you can. So I am. I'm more of the belief, kind of like Floyd Mayweather, the boxer, yeah, you know who I can't, who I despise as a human I mean, everything about him I just dislike. However, you know what he did? He never got out of shape. It was none of this, like, Oh, I'm in the off season. I'll get no, he trained 12 months a year. Now, you know, one could argue that it's good to take some time off, and it's good to cycle and all that. But what I want people to start to think about is being healthy all year long, in which case, cold and flu season is like, oh my god, no. It's not Oh my god. It's like, okay, I got this. So let's talk about how we can I got this. So the nutrients I always my go tos for immunity and for immune health, for this health of the immune system, always start with vitamin D. Actually, there's no hierarchy here. Vitamin D is like, it's like a thermostat for the immune system. You know? It tells you if it's going too high, too active. It tells you if it's going too low, it just keeps it right where it's supposed to go. Nothing works right without vitamin D. And so it's my foundational, uh, supplement. And even during covid, when I was talking to all these people who don't take vitamins, don't do anything, what's one thing I can do? Vitamin D, great. And that would be followed by C zinc. I'm a big fan of NAC and acetylcysteine, which is a powerful anti it has two things that you need to know about it. One is it's a powerful antioxidant that has an affinity for the upper respiratory system. The second thing you need to know about it is that it stimulates the making of glutathione in the body, which is the body's most powerful master antioxidant, and it is they've been trying for as long as I've been in the field, over 30 years to get an oral glutathione that you can absorb. And I have heard rumors that there are some that might actually be better absorbed orally, but that's always been a challenge. It's much better if you can do it to get your body to make it and what, what are the precursors to glutathione? Two things, NAC, whey protein. So another, another immunity, support, nutrient that no one thinks about. I'll bet you guys can't guess this. You'll never guess it. Melatonin, really, melatonin is not only a powerful antioxidant, but it is. It is just triple fuel for the immune system. So that's another one that a lot of people don't think about. Now, what

Dr. Terry Weyman:

doses are you talking about? What what doses are you talking about? I

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

don't know that that's been studied, and I don't have a top of mind to know exactly what the dosage, but the substance itself functions that way. You know? I mean, I've seen dosages as low as point three milligrams and as high as 20 milligrams. I mean, it's a huge range there, and there's a lot of controversy about what the best dosage, but people can experiment with that. The point is it's quite good for immunity as well as an antioxidant. Now here's the one of the the emergency cocktails, like somebody gets sick. In my family, Michelle gets sick, I almost always suggest vitamin A in high dosages for three days. And I learned this, I don't know, 2530 years ago, from Ann Louise Gettleman. She was like the first lady of nutrition, very, very smart woman. She had a lot of great ideas. And she would do the cocktail of, like, maybe 50,000 30,000 IUs of vitamin A three days in a row, along with. Zinc along with extra we haven't talked about botanicals or anything like that, but Astra astragalus, and that's kind of like a stat, you know, we you're kind of loading up on that stuff. I would not take vitamin A in high dosages for a long time, but you can do three days of it, and it gives a nice little boost, if you will. And again, I'm using that word advisedly, but it gives a nice little pop to the immune system and to its ability to do its its work. So that that's, that's kind of, Oh, what have I left out elderberry? So one of my go tos in in cold and flu season. And I know this because I used to do morning TV shows all the time, and this part of the years of Tim Barclay, they would always do. When we come back, we're going to talk to nutrition mythbuster Johnny Bowden about how to keep your family healthy. And I'd have a table full of stuff, and I know we're going to probably talk about foods, and in there I would have a over the counter product, which I do not sell, represent or make any money on. They don't even know me. Simbuko sambuccal Is this terrific elderberry extract. It actually has research on it. It will not stop colds, it will not end coals, but it will shorten the duration and shorten the severity of symptoms. And that dude, that's often all you can do. Nobody has figured out how to stop the cold. But wouldn't it be better if instead of being out for seven days, you're out for three Yeah, and that's what the research showed on sambuc. So I would definitely add elderberry. And I will admit I don't necessarily take elderberry every single day. That's, that's, that's a kind of a one that keep around for for this season. So I modify what I said in the beginning, all of these all the time, but elderberry is one that I would definitely add into the stack at this time of year.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, got that. I got elderberry. I love that stuff. I wanted to add, you actually started to mention, you know, now that's a great lineup of supplements that people can adhere to. What about foods should they stay away from? What should they

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

again? Spencer, it to me, it's the same prescription. I'm going to say sugar and vegetable oil. But what you're going to eat those the other 10 months of the year? I don't think anybody's reading that stuff ever. So yes, of course, you want to get the most inflammatory things in the American diet out of the diet during this time, because one of the accompaniments of every virus, we're talking about, every bacteria, every infection, is inflammation. So you don't need to be adding to the fire with more inflammatory food. So you want to get sugar, ultra processed food, as much processed food as you can out of your diet. Get rid of the vegetable oils. My beloved mentor in nutrition, the great Robert crown, who taught half the people that are out there that we all know, but he died. Robert used to say, if you want to kill somebody, I got a great scheme for you, sneak into their kitchen. This is back in 1998 when nobody was talking about to sneak into their kitchen, take out all their their beef tallow and lard and all of those things, and replace it with sunflower oil, safflower oil, corn oil and soybean oil, they'll be dead. And it was an exaggeration, but he was onto this thing about seed oils, vegetable oils, so called vegetable oils. And it's really one of the big mythologies that we you know, when I talk about being a nutrition mythbuster, that's one of the first things we've all been taught, get rid of the animal fats and go to the vegetable oils. They're really good for you. No, they're not good for you at all. And and so I would definitely cut back on all those inflammatory, high omega six, low Omega three cooking oils that we use every single day, way, way, way, way, way, too much. Are you good with ghee? Of course,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

yeah, I thought so. All right, cool, cool, kidding. Make sure I just started using all

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

that. So yeah, there are. I'm going to use immune boosting just as a as a conversational kind of shorthand, but I already explained why. I don't really think boosting is the right word, but there are foods, Himalayan, tartrate, buckwheat flour is amazing, absolutely amazing. Jeff bland makes it and big bold, health ginger, turmeric, lemon. I mean, these are the ones people kind of are hip to this by now, because there's ginger shots everywhere in beaches, but ginger turmeric and garlic are and lemon. They're really, really powerful additions. And again, I think. Try to get those in the diet as often as possible. I put ginger in my freshly made juice. I put lemon with the peel in my freshly made juice. When I'm not making fresh juice, I'll just, you know, add some to a tea or whatever I mean, but you want to get that stuff in there, because it's really, really good. Garlic is a wonderful immunity food. Yeah,

Unknown:

you know Johnny, what oils should people cook with?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I like avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee, macadamia nut oil. And believe it or not, here, let's bust another myth on olive oil. So extra virgin olive oil is a medicinal food. I have had two different cardiologists, Steven Sinatra, who wrote the great Cholesterol Myth with me, and Dr Douglas Triffin, who's head of the lipid clinic at Scripps, both recommend a quarter cup of olive oil a day, four tablespoons of olive oil a day as medicine. I was talking to Dr Tripp on just the other day, and he was just giving me a list of the research on what olive oil does, cognitive, longer lives. I mean, it protects against so many things, and this is in the research. This is not made up. So olive oil is a fantastic food for immunity, and for any other time, I keep a bottle of it on on the right, on the counter, and literally swig it every day. It's not hard to do.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So let me ask you, you know some of these, you know, oils? Oh,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I didn't finish. You asked me about cooking. I'm so sorry. I before you got please hold that thought. So the myth is that you can't cook with olive oil. That's

Dr. Spencer Baron:

what I was gonna ask you. Okay, does it change?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

Huh?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Does it change with heat?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

Well, heat, you know, he generally not. It's not across the board. There are some vegetables that you actually absorb better if you steam them like broccoli, we have to break the cell walls down because they're just, you know, it's tough. But olive oil comes in, regular olive oil, virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil. You don't want to cook with extra virgin. That's the one you want to drink, and you want to Squirtle on salads, and you want to really use like that. But as you go down in the Virgin scale, right from regular to Virgin to as you go down, you lose some, not many, but some of the polyphenols and antioxidants and all the stuff that's in the olive oil. But you gain the ability to put it at heat a little bit, it's a little heartier. So you can actually cook with olive oil, or virgin olive oil, just keep it at a relatively low I mean, you can saute with it, you know, I put it on the pan sometimes to just before I make a burger, you know, just and, and even if you were to use extra virgin olive oil, which you probably don't want to cook with that it's certainly not at high heat. But even if you were, and I got this from some some actual olive oil manufacturers from Italy, and I went to a I was invited to an olive grove, and they showed how they actually press it and how they taste it, and these old guys that have been doing it for 75 years, you know, they come in and they talk to you. But what, what I learned there was that even if you cook with extra virgin olive and you lose 20% of the powerful polyphenols, you're still so far ahead of the game in terms of what's in there, then you're still ahead of the game. So you can use olive oil for certain cooking applications. Avocado has a very high smoke point. You can use that for everything. Macadamia nut oil has a very high smoke point. It's kind of an olive oil on steroids, in terms of being able to stand up to heat coconut oil. I'm a big fan of

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I am going to joke for a sec because I feel a little ignorant over here. I haven't heard of ghee. Talked about this ghee was something I wore in on a karate Yeah. So

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

it's clarified what's called clarified butter.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Okay,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

you melt the butter and you take out all the solids, what's left is ghee.

Unknown:

Got it, yeah, sorry, Spence, no, that's great,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

man. And speaking of ghee, I mean, ghee comes from Butter. Butter is one of my favorite fats to cook with and to and to eat

Dr. Terry Weyman:

butter, yeah, and we use that the Irish butter, that that's

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

because it's creates grass fed you really do want all of your animal products to come from grass fed cows. Humanely treated. Grass fed cows, it's a different animal. Got it? Regenerative farming, you know, we could get into that. But in terms of foods, those are the the. It's kind of the, I think that's the basic menu. I'd make sure to get a lot of omega threes, which I think we, you know, I try to do all year round anyway, but they're one of the most anti inflammatory molecules on Earth. So if you worried about inflammation, that's something that accompanies all these. You can't really have a cold or a flu or car without inflammation. I mean, everybody experiences it. It's even it's even something that you can experience. You can see the swelling and the inflammation, and of course, there's the silent inflammation, which you don't experience, which is what kills us. So we really want as many foods, nutrients, botanicals, to be anti inflammatory as possible. Want to load up on that. So

Dr. Terry Weyman:

a lot of people are talking now and in general, you know, we hear this, take these vitamins. Take this supplements. Some people may be allergic to some of these supplements. Have you seen the evolution of testing? You know, neural nutritional testing come around. So we can actually, as physicians or nutritionists, get more specific, to help each person as an individual?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

Well, that's a it's a great question, and it's a complex question, because there's all kinds of testing. There's nutrient deficient tests, you know, you can actually find out if you're deficient in the nutrient. There's genetic testing, which maybe we'll get into a little bit later, which is a whole other area, in terms of, like being allergic to or not a vitamin or nutrient not working. I am a big fan of just plain old experimentation. You know, I, I've had clients over the years who want to do these very expensive food allergy tests, and I was trained on them. I know there's a lot of them, and some of them have been the ALCAT. There's all these different tests that people use. And personally, in I, you know, I'm going to push back on this maybe, but I have not found them terribly useful. I've seen a lot of cases where people come back and succinct says, I'm totally allergic to pineapple. I don't even eat pineapple. And this has been explained to me by people who really understand this stuff, like the same elements in pineapple are the same elements in silicone. And so maybe they're really, it's silicone, but it's coming up as pineapple. You really have to know your stuff to be able to interpret this stuff. And generally it's it's a little vague. If you send your blood test to three different food allergy testing labs, you may get very different results, which is also too, with a lot of, you know, legitimate tests that everybody accepts you send for a calcium score can be different depending on the two labs that you go to. So certainly, the food allergy test can be, I just feel that, you know, a plain old elimination diet or a rotation diet, you can't beat that. You know, you basically, you start with, like, maybe the big, the big seven in terms of food allergens, the things that have the most number of people who are triggered by them, which would be, what, wheat, corn, soy, citrus, eggs, seafood, you know, the usual suspects. And you take a couple of them out for a couple of weeks, and you notice how you feel. You're an inner one. Remember, we're not trying to do science and publish it in the New England Journal of Medicine. We're trying to figure out what works for us. So how do you figure out what works for you. Experiment. You take this out and say, I stopped eating. I stopped beer for a few weeks ago. Oh, my new cousin. You know, I'm not. I'm a big dairy lover, so I'm not. I'm just saying that many people will try something like that and go, I had no idea how good I feel off of weed. Just try it for a couple. We know, if you don't notice anything different, that's probably not one of the things that you're sensitive to. Yeah.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So you mentioned, what? You mentioned, genetic testing. What's that?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

So genetic testing is a Oh, my God. Where do we even start? So we start with 23andme or ancestry.com Yeah. So everybody knows what those are, right? They give you a lot of genetic information, usually for the purpose in those tests of like finding long lost relatives and things. I have no idea why people want to do that. It's not something I'm interested in. But okay, but when we, when we talk about it in terms of, in the health space, we're talking about genes that well, let's back up and talk what how important genes are or are not. I think before we even talk about what we're testing, we need to contextualize. So it's really important that people know that genetics look. Loads the gun, but it doesn't pull the trigger. There are only, I can only think of two diseases, and I'm sure there are more, but they're really not more than a handful, cystic fibrosis and Huntington's Gloria, that are one gene diseases. You get that gene. Sorry, bad luck of the door. You're getting that disease. That's it. We don't have a diabetes gene. We don't have a heart disease gene. We have a confluence of genes that, taken together, may paint a picture of vulnerability in the presence of here's the best way I can explain how genes work. Let's say I Johnny Bowden, have a gene that would determine how I will react to cigarette smoke, and I am. You know, we all know that there's people who live to 100 they smoke two packs of camels a day. It doesn't seem to get them, and there are other people who don't. So let's say I'm one of the ones who ain't going to smoke, two camels a day, packs of camels a day. I'm going to smoke I'm getting lung cancer. That's my gene. Guess what happens if I don't smoke? Nothing. The gene doesn't give me lung cancer. The Gene says you got to be careful, because if you smoke, you are more likely to get lung cancer than than Terry and Spencer, their likelihoods, they are not beta complete. You got to look at them a little bit like the Cosmo Cosmopolitan magazine astrology guide. It's like you're Sagittarius today. Probably this is going to happen if you don't do anything about

Dr. Terry Weyman:

it. There's an astrology guide in that magazine.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

What I'm getting at is a couple of places where genetic testing could really make a difference. So again, I do want people to understand that these are only indicators of risk. They are not you're getting this thing. There's no way to avoid it. I can think of two genes that would be worthwhile, that we could discuss, that would be cleared. One of them is the NP 21 gene, and this is a very interesting gene. My My hardcore science, Budd, will kill me for this oversimplification, but it's kind of an inflammation gene. So the way it was explained to me by one of the top bio geneticists in Canada was, this is like, you buy a frying pan with a Teflon color, and some teflon frying pans have a nice, thick Teflon coating, and you could pretty much do anything with them, and no problems. Others have a few scratches, and then some look like they came from China, and they've been used for a year, and anything you put in there is going to stick. Okay, that's the NP 21 gene. So if you have a bad copy of that, or two copies, you have a lot of scratches on your Teflon, and that means you are going to respond to inflammatory substances in the arteries. In not such a good you are more likely to have problems with inflammatory substance. So you want to be really careful about vegetable oil and sugar and cigarette smoke and all because they are likely to get through your coding ain't that strong, and that's a gene that would be useful to know. Now you might argue, Well, okay, so stay away from inflammatory things. But I think we should stay away from inflammatory things, but we have that gene or not, but that's that's something you can point to upon and say, Look, you are very susceptible to inflammation because you've got this bad copy of the gene. Here's another example, the MTF, MTHFR gene, that is a methylation gene. Many of the molecules in our body have to be methylated. We don't even have to go into what that means. I'm not even sure I could give you the perfect biochemical explanation of it right now, but basically, it's a process that happens to molecules, and it's very, very necessary. And if you don't methylate, well, there is an actionable thing that you can do, and that is to make sure that you're taking the methylated version of vitamin B 12, methylpolate, methyl methylated version of these B vitamins, because you ain't methylated, and you don't even need to understand methylation. Just know it's a process and your body needs to do it. And if you have a gene that says, Do this, so good, you got to make some compensations in your supplement and food program. So those are two places. And, you know, genetic testing is this long. We do it. We do it at the institute, right with the maxgen report, and it gives you massive amount of information. But people shouldn't be intimidated by this idea. It's great data collection for you to understand, like your strengths and. Weaknesses. It's just like, if somebody were, you were in an athletic thing, the coach was like, let me see what. I was really good at running. He's not so good at throwing. You kind of have some idea of the baseline. And then you know what you need to work on, or what you need to to, yeah, what you need to work on. So I think that genetic testing can be very, very obviously I do because we do it, very valuable addition. But it isn't the whole picture. It's just something to be incorporated, to know where the weaknesses are, to know what you might want to do as a result. You know, some people take everyone. The famous case is Angelina Jolie, who had two copies of the BRAC gene, which is the breast cancer gene, and said, Listen, I'm not taking any chances. I'm having a double mastectomy. I think it's an extreme reaction to that, but I mean no judgment, but I think that you know that, but that is certainly what happened there. And she just didn't want to the odds were very great that she would get breast cancer. She didn't want to wait and then have to deal with she just, let's get rid of it and not have to worry about it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Gosh, Hey, Johnny, you mentioned some earlier you entering, we're mentioning about dosages, but I think your thoughts on, I mean, not everybody is the same. You could and so, you know what might be on the label that would be good for Terry to take every day, or me to take less or more or something. But is that safe to say that not, not all dosages?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I think that is the, the foundational mantra for functional medicine. Oh, yeah, everybody's different. Yeah, and everything has to be personalized, yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

yeah. And that's where you come in, because you evaluate people's situation.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I help people. I help people figure out what might be a good strategy for them.

Unknown:

I love it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I have the most elementary question,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

please. There are no, I didn't be very, you know, foundational and important, the ones that we think are not important questions.

Unknown:

Go ahead, was I ever said the most stupid question? But I, I didn't want to. It's not that. And

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

also, by the way, for anybody, whoever is in a seminar, a webinar or whatever, and thinks they have a stupid question. Let me assure you with 100% certainty, there are 20 other people in the class that have that same question. So don't please ask it. Of

Dr. Terry Weyman:

course, we're gonna let Spencer ask the question. So

Dr. Spencer Baron:

your comments on exercise and immune system?

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

Well, it's a great question. I just wrote a blog on this for brain MD. As a matter of fact, exercise for whole body wellness, one of the things that exercise does that nobody talks about, that is possibly exercise. There's so many good things, it's very hard to rank them, but this is in the top three. People think about exercise as a weight loss strategy, not effective. They think about it as a way of keeping weight off, very effective. They think of it a way of burning calories or feeling better, or lowering the risk for depression or lowering the risk cancer, all of which it does. Yes, all true. The thing that people don't think about is the best way to regenerate mitochondria. What are mitochondria? They are the little organelles in this, in the cells that are the energy production factories, and in the mitochondria, everything good that you want to happen happens detoxification, fat burning. I mean the it's very long list the mitochondria are. There are some doctors in functional medicine, who actually believe mitochondrial dysfunction is at the at the root of every disease in the world. So if your mitochondria aren't working well, they can't detoxify, they can't burn fat, they can't they're just sluggish and you're not going to be in good health and exercise is a mitochondrial rejuvenation program, and that, I think, is probably it's got to be the top three of things that exercise does. So you are literally like rejuvenating the most important, one of the most important organelles in the cell that you rely on for just about everything. Wow,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

thank you for that. Yeah, exercise is not something you would hear a lot of medical doctors suggest to their patients, because they don't exercise themselves. So anyway, all

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

of them, I bet you. If you surveyed the average doctor in America, no, no disrespect intended, but they don't learn this stuff. And ask them about the connection between exercise and mitochondria, most of them would stare at you. Yeah, agreed. I

Dr. Spencer Baron:

thought you were gonna say most of them don't exercise.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I think, I mean, you know, that's changing. To some extent, I'm starting to see, you know, there's a lot of I'm starting to see more. You take an Andrew Huberman and his colleagues at Stanford, Andy Galpin. These are exercise physiologists that are in amazing they walk the walk and practice with their but you so you're seeing that more now these days, but, but I agree with you the average doctor. You know, they used to smoke during 40 years ago.

Unknown:

That's a whole nother story. So,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

so Johnny, we're hearing a lot about long covid. It's that, it's that, you know, time passed, that people are still getting, you know, it's funny. When you hear not funny. I shouldn't say this funny, but you hear people say that they caught covid. I know somebody two weeks ago that got it, and I'm thinking myself, people are still getting this, you know,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

is that still a thing? Yeah, it still is okay,

Unknown:

but, but they're now having this discussion that you're reading about more about long covid. I've

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

been hearing about that from almost from the beginning. And I actually have a very close friend and one of the top nutritionists in the country who has long covid, has had it for a couple of years. And I there's no debating with him about, you know, this stuff, because he experienced near death from covid, and he has had lingering, considerable lingering symptoms for years after there's no single test for long covid. What there is is a lot of ancillary tests that can give you a hint of where you might be able to correct some things, one of which would be comprehensive blood panel. Let's start with that you could do so a CBC, a complete blood count. Definitely. Nutrient deficiency tests might be useful there, because you certainly if you're lacking, you know, your vitamin D levels are 29 dude.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Start with that.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

So we do want to know what those are. We want to know maybe inflammatory markers might be good, or your interleukin six level sky higher, your CRP 5.0 I mean, that's a lot of inflammation. So that you can treat the inflammation, not treating the long covid, but you're treating these things that tend to show up when people say they have long covid, or experiencing long covid, inflammation, oxidation, all of the usual suspects, nutrient deficiencies, hormone assessments. You want to look at all the things that make people healthy or unhealthy as much as we can. Even a pulmonary function test might be useful. So I think there's a lot. None of those are the long, oh, you're positive for long covid. That doesn't happen. But you can look at, oh, this circumstance is not ideal. This circumstance could use a little juggling. This one could use a little improvement, that kind of stuff you can do.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Johnny, I gotta, I gotta have take a moment to just compliment you on your memory, recall of some of these things and how fluid it comes, you know. And I don't want to say at your age, but at your

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

age piece, I've got an earpiece. I've got a CIA guy talent feeding me this information. You just I'm just very good at

Dr. Terry Weyman:

it. I stopped. I stopped using the word old. I use the word classic. You know, if you think about it, people take care of their classic cars, really good. They just don't take care of their old cars. They treat their old cars like crap, but they keep their classic cars fantastic.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I like that. Gary,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

so you know, John, you're a classic. Spencer's classic. I'm still a one trying to beat get to your level.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So impressed with the how fluid everything is in your memory. And yeah,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I don't experience it that way, because I am constantly forgetting things that I always knew, that if you don't use this on a regular basis, it's not top of mind. I mean, there's stuff people ask me that I used to really know. Well, any of that, I mean, I it comes back really quick. I just need you know, to remind but if I haven't used it, talk to clients about it, lectured about it, or written about it in 10 years. Sorry, even if it's in a book of mine, I gotta go back and check what it is. You know, that kind of memory I do not have, but I talk about diabetes and insulin resistance and heart disease almost every day. And. So this stuff is pretty, you know, top of mind, but you know, you could easily stump me on something that I haven't looked at in a few years. So I don't, I don't want to pretend to have some secret to memory, because God knows

Dr. Spencer Baron:

it's good, though, but it's funny. I was prompted to read two articles on on forgetfulness and talking to yourself. And these were actually a New York Times and Wall Street Journal article that I thought was really interesting, because I experienced both of those two things. And as we get older, you know, the forgetfulness thing is, is actually quite common, because we have so much information that we've accumulated over a lifetime. The talking to yourself thing, I go, man, I needed to read that about that. That's another thing. And sometimes we are in such deep thought that we actually respond out loud to

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

each other doing everybody doesn't do that. Yeah,

Unknown:

right. Oh, I'm so glad you said that all right, back back, back to nutrition and immunity. But you know,

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

I do have one thing. I don't know how much time we have, but yeah, I want to make sure I have time for my major message on this. So after we do all the questions, just give me a couple of minutes to tell you what the best thing that you can do for your immune system and for your health.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, very good. All right, yeah, absolutely. Well, actually, you want to talk about it now, or you want to leave that as the crescendo to the very end.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

No, no, no, I can talk about it now. I'm actually giving the keynote address to the National Association of nutrition professionals next year in May, and it's going to be on the subject that's fantastic, what really makes people healthy and happy? All right, so let me set it up for you, and it does relate to immunity in very powerful way. You know Peter Attia and all these guys who are biohackers, who are talking about the goal of living to 100 and being what they call a kick ass 100 year old. Yeah, not just 100 year old and assisted living in there on oxygen. What's a kick ass 100 And so Peter Attia, for those who don't know, is a very, very famous and very, very good doctor. Medical Doctor says, What could a, what would a kick ass 100 year old look like they'd be able to and he made a list of, like, 15 actions that you'd be able to take. You'd be able to lift a bag of groceries from the trunk of the car and take it into the house. You'd be able to do a farmer's carry, like, where you carry, you know, two two baskets, or just two things, and be able to walk to the corner with that. You'd be able to take a 20 pound luggage and put it over 10 pound luggage and put it in the overhead compartment. That would be a kick ass, 100 year old, right? So then Peter Attila, who's also a mathematician and a little obsessive compulsive, starts to make these Excel spreadsheets of what you would have to do each decade in order to be there at 100 because he knows how much muscle you lose, how much stability you lose, how much balance you use. So he comes came up with this, and it's just preposterously complex and difficult, in my opinion. I mean, he does something every day, some things twice a day, and it's this much training for this and this so that you would be able to maintain 60 or 70% of your abilities by the time you're 100 Okay? And you know, they do cold plunges, they do all these things which have tremendous health benefits. So researchers recently said this is a great idea, but why don't we talk to some actual kick ass 100 year olds and see what they actually do? What do kick ass 100 year olds? There are, there are kick ass 100 year olds in the world. Let's observe them. What lessons can we learn? So they go to Sardinia, which is one of the five blue zones. Now, Sardinia happens to have the highest population of 100 year old men in the world. So they watch them, and they observe them, they come away with three lessons. And again, this is a little tongue in cheek, but it's there's a gem of genius and wisdom in every one of these three. So watching Sardinia, they said, okay, the three best things you could do you want to be a kick ass 100 year old is number one. Live in a place where there's lots of stairs. Now, if you've ever seen pictures of Sardinia, you can't walk out to get a carton of milk without walking. It's like this gorgeous city in the hill, and there's tons of you have to walk everywhere. So the. Lesson there is walk every day constantly. That was Lesson number one. Lesson number two, most of these guys are shepherds. So what they do all day? They go out in nature with sheep. And the second lesson was, spend as much time as you can around gentle animals. Now think about this, guys for one second. What information do you get from being out in nature, from being near the ocean, from being around gentle, sweet creatures? What do you think is being activated your parasympathetic nervous system. You're not in sympathetic mode. You're not wanting to catch a train or getting a sheep to suffer. You're in a incredibly relaxed healing mode all the time. You haven't met a sheep or go, I mean, they just instantly, you know, soften you a dog. A dog could, yeah, I mean, you can adapt this. Obviously, we're not shepherds. We're not going to go out. But the point is, spend as much time in parasympathetic mode as you can. And here's the third lesson, and it's number one with the bullet. It's so far above the other two that it's like in real estate, where they say, what are the most three important things in real estate? What are the answers? Location, location and location. This is the location, location, location of health. You ready? Ready make your friends and family your number one priority? Yes. These guys. They sit around in the afternoon, they talk to each other, they share their feelings. They laugh. There are these pictures of them, these old men, and they're talking and they're sharing their feelings. They all there are no old people's homes. They all integrated into the community. They all have Sunday night dinners. They do, they do, gardening together, whatever they do, they help each other. There is a social network there that is like an like steel cables, and this finding has been duplicated in what's called the happiness study. It's going on. It started at Harvard. Four generations. There have been four directors of the study. It started in the 1930s it's still going on today. The current director just wrote a book about the findings of the past four generations that they have studied these populations to see what happens to them over the years. And what did they do, which ones lived long, and what did they do? Which ones died early? What did they do? Number one predictor of long life and happiness, family and friends, social networks. People may not remember this, but I urge you to google it and look it up. The Rosetta phenomena. The Rosetta phenomenon was an incredible story that happened in the early part of the 20th century. There is a place in Pennsylvania called Rosetta. It is a hard scrapple town. Everybody who lived there worked in the mines, the most difficult, environmentally horrible thing that you can imagine, doing seven hours a day in the mines. They ate the worst food. They all smoked in one day, two days. And this is a true story. This is how the Rosetta phenomena came to be discovered and researched. There were books written on it. Two doctors from adjoining counties were having a beer at a bar, and one of what kind of patients are you saying heart disease over there? Were you? Yeah, it's a funny thing. We don't have any, you don't have any heart disease. Can't even measure it, so I almost never see it. What everybody smokes, everybody's in the minds. Everybody's eating lard or whatever they thought was bad food at the time. So eventually researchers started to descend on Rosetta to figure out what the f is going on and the collective wisdom of the researchers. The prevailing belief now is that what protected the people of Rosetta, these were immigrants. They all came from the same area of Europe. They have, you know, similar kind of hard scrap all kind of, you know, resilience. They were the closest knit community anybody had ever seen. Wow. They did everything together. They gardened, they square dance, they whatever they did. It was communities. The old people were integrated into the society. Nobody felt irrelevant, and they believed to this day that that social network somehow balanced out all these risk factors that these people were doing so when people to come back to the immune. Soon, when I was getting YouTube questions about, like, what do I do for merits of covid? It's gonna tell us, you know what? I would tell them, stop watching Facebook, because the stress of that is what we're talking about here, is reduction in stress these guys that are taking sheep out into the beautiful hills of Sardinia, what's happening to their stress levels?

Unknown:

Zoom.

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

There was a book that came out a few years ago called cured C, u, r, E, D, Jeffrey, I forgot his name. He was Chief, Chief of Medicine at one of the big New England hospitals still is. And this was a medical doctor with impeccable credentials, who also happened to have a master's degree in divinity, divinity from Princeton. So he's not anti spiritual, but he's also science. People started asking him about these so called miracle cures, like going down to Brazil, and there was a guy there, John of Brazil, healer. And people were going and they were throwing their crutches away, all this stuff you hear. And these people would say to Dr, I don't remember his last time, I'll call him Dr Jeffrey, you should investigate that. And he said, Are you kidding? First of all, it's all bullshit. Second of all, even if I wanted to investigate it, I would be laughed out of Harvard or wherever this thing goes, I mean, nobody would take that is just, it's not going to No way. And there was, he had an oncology nurse who had been with him for 20 years that he had greatest respect for. And she said, you know, Jeffrey, I think there's something to I think you, I think you should look into this. There's really something here. So against all of his instincts, he did. He decided to investigate, and he looked at all these cases of people who had been supposedly miraculously cured, and put cancer into a mission, or, you know, the tumor disappeared in all of this stuff. And he did a big investigation of this, and his conclusion was 98% of this is exactly what I thought. It's bullshit, but 2% isn't. And he found cases where they could document with X rays, or MRIs, a tumor, and six months later it's gone. This was not hearsay. This was in the medical records. They all voted like, we don't understand why it happened, but it didn't. Here's here's the X rays, here's the MRI, here are the imaging studies. And he, he thought to himself, even if this only happens in 1% of the cases, could we possibly learn something from what these folks did we study? Hugely high performers, one in a million type people like, I don't know Magic Johnson and Bill Gates or who bad example, but you know what I'm saying. I mean these miraculous performers, brilliant people who just saw we study them to kind of find out what their habits are and what they do. Maybe we can learn something from the Michael Jordan used to, you know, practice basketball after the game. Or what can we learn from him? And what turned out to be true in every case he was able to identify of remission or cure from something that was supposed to be incurable. There was one commonality. Every one of these people, and some of them were uneducated. They didn't, you know, there was no Well, I'm going to do this, to do stimulate that. Now, they just did this. Every one of them made life changes in which they were able to get rid of toxic relationships, toxic jobs. Some of them thought they only had six months to live. So they said, Fuck it. I'm going to do you know this, and I'm going to go off to paradise and just be in this. And what he found to be the single predictor was that these people had gone from being living most of their life in sympathetic mode to most of their life in parasympathetic mode. Now, just for those who don't know what that is, the autonomic nervous system has two divisions. Sympathetic is get up and go. It's fight or fight, and the other one is resting to just parasympathetic is Ah, so that's the one where all the healing takes place. And these people who had not spent much time there, were now living there, and that's what happened in Sardinia. They were living in parasympathetic. Of this is what cured these people, the very few people who miraculously got cured from things. And his theory, because we can't prove it, is that when they were in this kind of sympathetic mode, all the time, stressed, all the time, not sleeping, everything like that, their immune system doesn't work well. And when they got into parasympathetic mode, it was like the immune system says, Ah, okay, now what's the problem here? Yeah, yeah. So my message, if there is one, my take home here is one of the best things you can do for yourself, is de stress and relax and smell the roses and be present and engage with your family and friends. People don't think of that as a health strategy, but do the research is black and white on this. This is what you want to do, and that's why I would tell people who are saying, what should we do? What should we do? I said first of all, turn off Facebook, because all the stress you're taking in is eating up the vitamin C that you're buying out of Costco. You got all that vitamin C and it's being eaten up by your Facebook feed. Turn it off. So that's that's my message. What do you want to know how to boost immunity? Your natural immunity? Relax. It's not the only thing to do. Obviously, you know, somebody can listen to this and say, Oh yeah, well, I'm not supposed to do anything else. And just no what I'm saying is, start to pay attention to your mental states. Start to pay attention to your bodily states. And if you can engage that and find a way to access that, you will be helping your immunity and you will be helping your health.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Johnny tells a damn good story, doesn't he? Terry,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I had more questions, but I'm like, I don't want to ask him. I mean, this was, I want to end like this. That should be what the last it's a

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

good place to it's a good place to end because I think it is really the take home you want to leave with people. I when I see clients, here's the secret to why my clients always feel better after sessions with me. I do these one session kind of power strategy, things where we really like take a look at everything. Almost all of them come to me because they have cholesterol tests that they don't understand, or they have some markers or things that they, you know, really want to work on, and their vitamin D levels this and their cholesterols. And I wind up always, because I'm functionally trained in functional medicine, functional nutrition. I believe everything you know connects to everything else. So I always wind up asking, what's your family like? We do all that. Then they wind up like, Oh my God, these two great kids, and we every Sunday, we do this, and their face lights up, and I go, You know what that is? That's the biggest deposit you can make in your health bank. Get all these test results. It's not that they're not important. It's not that we shouldn't work on them. But what that thing do more that because that's what's going to make you healthy and long lived.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Love that fantastic stock.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

It's always been an honor and a pleasure. It's so great to work with you, but also thank you. Oh

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

God, this was my it's my favorite interview.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I'm gonna go hug my kids and my wife and my dog. I'm not

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

kidding. I'm not kidding. I start every day. I make out with the dog, come over, I give him a hug. I mean, that's for you as well.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Yeah, giant, Thank you buddy. All

Dr. Jonny Bowden:

right, thank you guys so much. Thanks for everything. All right, bye, bye. You

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking backs podcast. Catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.