In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with independent researcher and health enthusiast Matt Blackburn. They talk about what lipofuscin is, what it does, and supplements to lower lipofuscin. Check it out and let us know what you think below!
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Full Transcript
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast, I'm your host Jayton Miller, and today I have a very special guest on, Mr. Matt Blackburn, he's an independent research and health enthusiast, he had a little bit of some audio issues, but it's very good information so just bear with it and I think you'll get a lot from it, so let's do it. Matt, how's it doing?
Matt Blackburn:
Doing great, Jayton, thanks so much for this opportunity to come on, I'm really excited.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So, for the listeners who might not know who Matt Blackburn is, could you kind of give them a brief background of who you are and where you came from?
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah, definitely. So I don't have letters after my name, Ph.D., or a doctorate or any of that stuff, I do listen to people that have those behind their name, but I don't think they know it all just because of that. So, I did have a lot of schooling, went to college, community college for many years, switched majors multiple times, and I ended up figuring out that I wasn't going to learn in school what I wanted to know because they don't teach you it, and it's very just basic. Similar to what's shared in the alternative health community, it's very just surface-level information and I don't find a lot of people digging deeper, or being humble enough to admit that they're wrong like I have done with omega-3s, and connect the dots in different innovative ways.
Matt Blackburn:
So, all that to say that I've learned most of what I know through failure, and I started experimenting with nutrition and alternative health protocols in 2010, and for the last 10 years I've just been trying different things, different diets, I don't diet anymore, different protocols, detox protocols, health devices, really underground, what you would call bio-hacking tech, and just experimenting like crazy. Spent a lot of money, wasted a lot of money, but I [inaudible 00:02:41] today and I've come to this really grounded perspective I think, of health, which is not really about restriction because I went down that path as far as you can go with restricting, whether it be fats, or restricting carbs, or restricting protein, I did it all, I even restricted food, and I was a liquidarian for a while.
Matt Blackburn:
I've found what works, and what works for most people, and there is a level of bio-individuality, but it's mostly we're all on the same planet and so we're all exposed to the same toxicity. So, in that sense, everybody has the same protocol, so to speak. What I mean by that is iron overload, taking care of that, calcification, taking care of that, PUFA poisoning, lipofuscin, fibrosis. Generally, every single person on the globe has those issues going on.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I mean, especially whenever you zoom in on the mammalian cell, I mean, it's the exact same cell, so I don't think a lot of people put that together. So, one of the topics that I'd really like to talk to you about is lipofuscin specifically because you're the first one that I actually listened to that talked about that, and then I started to dig around in the other kind of resources that are out there. But you put it in a very good way, so can you tell you what lipofuscin is?
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah. So, lipofuscin is a yellow-brown pigment, it contains mostly lipids, or lipid residues, so fat residues, oxidized fat residues specifically. But also, proteins and so, what's interesting about that, there's no carbohydrates like, "Sugar is the devil, carbs the devil." There's no carbohydrate or sugar aspect to lipofuscin, it's oxidized proteins and fats complexed together with some metals, you have some aluminum in there, you have a lot of iron in there, which is a major component. You even have excess estrogen in there, which is increased by PUFAs and eating a pure protein diet, like a carnivore diet. These pigments accumulate mostly in the liver, the heart, and the brain, but they'll be found everywhere throughout the body, the kidneys, the adrenals, the nerve cells, the skeletal muscle, everywhere.
Matt Blackburn:
My friend Atom Bergstrom calls it the Omega-3 barcode, so if you look at an elderly person, you'll see on their forehead, a place that gets exposed to a lot of sun, on their forearms, especially on their hands, and everybody's seen it, we've just never made the connection to that word lipofuscin. But that's literally what it is, and they're often called age spots, liver spots, ceroid pigment, and there's all these nuances, and people will say they're slightly different things, and people always ask, "Are moles lipofuscin? And is this spot lipofuscin?" It could really go into any area of your body, and so can a mole contain lipofuscin? Probably, and what's interesting is there's not really a book on it, and so it's kind of fun to research something like that because it's not like calcification there have been books about or scar tissue.
Matt Blackburn:
This is something where it's like the Wild West, where you're looking at clinical research and trying to connect the dots, and a lot of books, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, their book Life Extension, I believe came out in the '80s, it's a really thick book, a lot of info in there that I don't agree with. But there's a really great section on PUFAs or Omega-3s and they do talk about lipofuscin to a small degree. A lot of these older health books are where the info can be found, and all the books I've read on vitamin E, they'll mention that vitamin E prevents the formation, or even reverses, possibly, these age spots. So there's always a vitamin E connection in every vitamin E book I've read, they're going to specifically say age spots somewhere in that book and say vitamin E helps to prevent it or reverse it.
Matt Blackburn:
So, the info is out there, it's just really spread out, and if you Google lipofuscin, Google's not your friend, it's called search engine optimization and it's really hard to figure out what's the cause because according to Google, Omega-3s are the savior, but there's kind of a money trail you have to follow there with fish oil and krill oil, and algae oil, and seed oil, and squid oil, there's so many, cod liver oil is the big money maker. If you follow the trail enough, you see that, "Hey, wait, it's called lipid peroxidation, and these PUFAs break down in the process of lipid peroxidation, and oxidize in a tropical body, or 98.6." Unless you're fasting, and then you're colder, but the average human is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and when you ingest these supplements, not to mention canola oil, but nobody's talking about the bigger problem which is all the Omega-3 supplements that were bought and sold to us, and those accumulated in our tissues and broke down, and complexed with iron, and estrogen, aluminum, and all these other things to make lipofuscin.
Matt Blackburn:
So I really focus in on the Omega-3 supplements as a primary cause, also a heavy seafood diet, which is touted, another thing that people don't touch those because it's too controversial, you've got pescatarian diet and Omega-3 supplements. I speak out against both of those because it's not just seed oils, I would say that's actually the third, it's not as harmful as a pescatarian diet, and Omega-3 supplements because I've seen people going out in the sun, unmitigated sun exposure, I was there, just cold baths, noonday sun, unlimited sun, just the more the better. While eating coldwater seafood every single day, and coldwater fish have more polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs, than warm water fish. So to me, coldwater seafood diet, AKA a pescatarian diet is equal, equivalent to supplementing high-dose Omega-3 supplements, or high dosing canola oil, and that's highly controversial, but I think the proof's in the pudding, the proof's in the skin, and the proof's in the forehead and the forearms, and the hands. You see it, you go on an airplane, you can spot the lipofuscin, play that game with your friends, it's really fun.
Jayton Miller:
So, what does lipofuscin actually do when it begins to cause these issues? What's actually happening, and why is it actually a bad thing?
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah, great question. So, its most damaging effect is that it accumulates in the lysosome of the cell, and the lysosome is pretty much the recycling center of the cell and so it digests junk or things that the cell doesn't need anymore, oxidized fats, proteins, and it's supposed to remove it. In the alternative health community, you have this word that's been trending, I believe for the last decade, and it's just grown in popularity, everyone knows it, even if they're just surface-level into health. It's autophagy, but guess what? Autophagy is impossible with lipofuscin present in the lysosome of the cell, and it primarily accumulates in non-dividing cells, and so those are supposedly the heart and the brain, these are cells that cannot divide, and that is kind of scary because those are extremely important systems of the body.
Matt Blackburn:
I mean, the heart goes, you have heart failure, you have a heart attack, I mean, heart disease, all of these different issues, the brain goes, you have Alzheimer's, you have dementia, Parkinson's, all sorts of diseases, I mean, if the brain goes, all of your hormones go, and then goodbye, good night, you're done. So just the fact that it's targeting those areas is a huge problem in itself, we could just even talk about the brain, not even the heart, that's like the master supercomputer and if it's shutting [inaudible 00:12:28] part of your brain cells, then that is a huge issue because what happens is it just fills up the lysosome 40-50%, and it's just garbage. It's actually crowding out the enzymatic activity in the lysosome because it's these enzymes that digest the oxidized proteins and fats that are supposed to be excreted out. So if it's full of lipofuscin in there, the enzymes can't do their jobs, there's way less of them and autophagy will slow to a screeching halt.
Matt Blackburn:
I don't know if it'll stop 100%, from my research, I don't believe that's the case, but it'll go down to 90% inefficiency to where it's only 10% operational, or less. So, yeah, the lysosome filling with lipofuscin causes a cascade of effects, the lysosomes will spill enzymes into the cytoplasm, and that triggers apoptosis or programmed cell death which is a huge issue. If the excess iron that we're getting from guzzling spring water, or bathing in tap water, or eating heavy amounts of vegetables that are grown under acid rain, and the NPK fertilizer and all of the issues, the iron-fortified foods, there's so many ways that iron is coming into our bodies, the cereal that we all grew up with, I grew up with Honey Nut Cheerios and Lucky Charms. One cup of that cereal is an insane amount of iron, it's like 30-40 milligrams, we only need one per day, and so just like the PUFA accumulation, the iron accumulation has been done over a lifetime.
Matt Blackburn:
You have to bleed a lot to get rid of it, in menstruation, women, is not enough, and most people have not donated enough to dump that iron. So, lipofuscin, if you want to simplify it, it's mainly a problem of three things, PUFA, excess iron, excess estrogen, and estrogen is a stress hormone, which everyone's under extreme stress, especially if you're into alternative health because you're extreme and you're trying things, and you're constantly detoxing, and you're just push, push, push, over-exercising. So, mostly everyone has excess estrogen, and they're not balancing their metabolism with carbohydrates, so those three things, to simplify it, lipofuscin are caused by excess PUFAs, iron, and estrogen. We could throw aluminum in there, aluminum will cause it to spread, it's like giving it firepower, but lipofuscin will damage the telomeres, it'll reduce redox potential, it'll damage chromosomes, nuclear envelopes, which holds the DNA. It'll damage the mitochondria directly, and it's really a key measure of aging.
Matt Blackburn:
I remember using a machine back in the day, and I was, I think, 25 at the time and the practitioner said, "Matt, you're 18 years old, biologically." Looking back, I think that was BS because that's when I was the most lost, I was taking Omega-3s, I was on a high PUFA diet, so I don't know if that's accurate, but I don't really think you need a machine to measure how old you are biologically. You take your clothes off, and you look in the mirror, and you see how many age spots you have, and even if you don't have them on the skin, it doesn't mean you don't have them inside of you. But if you can see them on your skin, you have a long way to go, and a lot of the time, these aren't just conventional people, these are alternative health people, and you look at these brain docs, all of the brain docs at the clinics and they're often in the Omega-3 market and they have a product to sell that's Omega-3, or they're recommending a high seafood diet.
Matt Blackburn:
The proof is there, and they're usually balding, receding hairline, these things go together, hair loss, balding, thinning of hair, any hair issues, this is an epidemic right now, forget COVID, hair loss I get questions on every day from males, and I don't think they all did testosterone therapy or hormone therapy, they're like, "Matt, how do I get my hair back?" And I say, "Well, look at PUFAs, look at lipofuscin." And that really causes hair loss, and I mean, that's evident, you'll see the spots and the hair just falling back, and usually, they get a bald patch, like the older guys, right in the center of their head there.
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so there's three things that I have talking through that, the first question is, do you know the biochemistry of it? So is there a certain amount of magnetism that's happening between the iron, the PUFA, and the estrogen?
Matt Blackburn:
I'm not sure if magnetism is involved, I guess that would make sense, it is a form of crosslinking, and so we've often heard of advanced glycation and product-related inflammatory fibrosis, and that's the crosslinking of, supposedly, sugars and proteins. But nobody talks about the fact that fats and proteins cross-link more than 20 times better or faster, and so again, it's really not carbohydrates that is the issue, it is more of the unsaturated fats. So, yeah, the exact biochemistry of how they cross-link, I would imagine there is some electromagnetic property that draws them together. I mean, that's definitely the case with metals, monovalent or divalent metals, there's that electronegativity that differs between them, but yeah, I'm not sure of the exact mechanism. But it is a fact that they are definitely attracted to each other, and iron and estrogen will actually cause it to spread, or aluminum, which is in melted cheese, it's in pretty much all the food that we eat when we go out.
Matt Blackburn:
You just have to assume that you're getting some aluminum dosed, and I don't worry about it, my solution for aluminum is shilajit magnesium bicarbonate, and I sleep on magnets, 20 gauss Magnetico, and I don't sweat it, I know the aluminum's just going to go right through me. So for me, it's about mitigating, not avoiding, but definitely limiting or completely avoiding Omega-3 supplements, that's easy, limiting seafood consumption, that's easy, and of course, seed oils. But yeah, that's a good question about how they attract to each other, I've never seen that in the research, I don't think there's a lot of money being thrown at this because I believe it's the root cause of disease, similar to calcification and lipofuscin because you're really shutting down the ability of the cell to generate energy because that's what happens when you start to shut down the recycling center of the cell, I mean, apoptosis, cell death, that's the beginning of the end.
Matt Blackburn:
In another interview, I actually talked about, if someone wants to explore it, there's a graph that's really good on legendarypharma.com/furberchart.pdf, and it's a really large chart, my girlfriend gave me a huge printout, it's on my wall right here in the office that's the whole thing, and it's the Systems biology of human aging, so this guy pretty much drew it out in a chart with lines connecting everything of how it's connected. It actually starts, the number one is the lysosome, and he goes through it that all the lines connecting, lysosomes go to macroautophagy, and that connects to different things, and there's some things I don't agree with. But I don't think anyone has tr whole picture, he's a fan of niacin and NAD, and I think Resveratrol and interment fasting, and it's funny because, to me, all those things make the situation worse.
Matt Blackburn:
So it's kind of like taking inventory of what supplements you're taking and realizing that some could be damaging you, and most people, I mean, in the alternative health community especially, they're taking a multi-mineral supplement that has iron in it, that's insane, and they're taking a PUFA on top of it. People are supplementing things that are causing lipofuscin, forget the diet, forget the nutrition, forget the UV and the sunscreen with metals in it, and all the other issues that people talk about, the supplements people are taking are toxic, and to me, that's the biggest contributor to it. Maybe they're eating salmon three times a week because they think it's good for their brain health when it's actually harming their brain.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, and then whenever it comes to the hair follicle, the inability to produce ATP at the hair follicle is going to lead to that hair loss immediately.
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah, and Danny Roddy, a colleague of mine, I've had him on my podcast, he has a book on hair loss called Hair like a Fox, and he's been studying hair loss for years, and he has a theory that increased prolactin is a primary cause of it, which is a stress hormone. I think there's multiple aspects going on here, and he says that as well, with hair loss, but it's largely a hormonal issue, so likely a drop in testosterone in the master steroid hormones, pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone, and guess where all those hormones are made? Well, you have the anterior pituitary gland, you have the pituitary, you have the hypothalamus, and these pump out hormones, pineal gland of course, and these get lipofuscin because they're in the brain. So they're going to get that accumulation, and one thing I didn't mention is that for every spot you see on the skin, there's 10 to 100,000 beneath the surface.
Matt Blackburn:
So that's just a sign without getting any test because people are obsessed with getting blood tests, I would say before getting a blood test, see if you have these spots and work on that first because that's probably the primary cause of your symptoms.
Jayton Miller:
So, whenever it comes to trying to reverse lipofuscin, are there specific strategies that you've found most useful? You've mentioned vitamin E, do you usually take that internally, or do you take it topically as well?
Matt Blackburn:
You could do either, I believe that internally is better because it's systemic and since we're talking about a fat-soluble vitamin, we're talking about the liver, and so the liver will store vitamins A, D, E, and K when you take those supplements, 90% of those are absorbed by the liver, and the liver holds onto it. If you take enough, like I mean taking mega-doses, not of A and D, I get that from food, but of E and K, which are neglected, especially K2 menaquinone-7, or MK-7, I take those in high dose and that way I'm actually able to get it past the liver, throughout the body. That's where the true benefit lies, but most people's livers are hammered because they think, like I did for years, doing hundreds of coffee enemas is all you need or taking liver herbs is all you need and of course, always combine with fasting, which the liver hates that.
Matt Blackburn:
It's not giving the liver a break, the liver needs glycogen, or stored sugar, to perform its 500 functions, the foremost of which perhaps is converting inactive thyroid hormone T4 to active thyroid hormone T3, which is a hormone that's found throughout every cell in your entire body, and like magnesium, it's required to make ATP or cellular energy. That is hugely neglected, and so there's a whole bio-energetic metabolism piece to this lipofuscin thing because the people that are intermittent fasting, and I did it, one-hour eating window, that's insane, four-hour eating window, eight-hour eating window, we only need to fast when we sleep, in my opinion. That's plenty of time, you don't need to force it, god didn't screw up when he made our body, it was designed perfectly to perform autophagy for eight, or nine, or 10 hours while we sleep.
Matt Blackburn:
We don't need to extend that, when we extend it, we cause an increase of cortisol and adrenaline, which will break down muscle and adipose tissue, and that makes the lipofuscin situation worse because when you breakdown the fat tissue while your body's starving and is trying to get sugar because you're not giving it the primary fuel of the body, which is sugar and carbohydrate, then it will release free fatty acids, or liberate them from the adipose tissue, and your mitochondria will try to use those free fatty acids to generate energy, and while it's doing that, the mitochondria is breaking down because it's not designed to do that. You use 50% more water in that process, and you generate 50% carbon dioxide, and that is the beginning of the end for the entire cellular structure, let alone the mitochondria. It's very when you have increased reactive oxygen species or ROS and there's an interplay with lipofuscin and hydrogen peroxide, which is a substance that our body makes.
Matt Blackburn:
It'll make the hydroxyl radical, and the hydroxyl radical is one of those ooga-booga, scary, hardcore free radicals that's very strong, very damaging, similar to peroxynitrite, that's formed from non-native EMF, and peroxynitrite and hydroxyl are equally harmful, those are the most harmful. Most people have both because they don't turn off their WiFi at night, they're living in a city, period, they have their cellphone in their pocket, they have it on their groin when they're driving, I see that all the time and they have this PUFA issue. So if you have the hydroxyl radical, and peroxynitrite, you're done, I mean, of course, you have graying of hair, of course, you're accelerated aging, of course, you're always tired, of course, you have brain fog, of course, your memory sucks because you're constantly inflamed at this deep, cellular level.
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah, that's another huge issue, and the hydroxyl radical will actually perpetuate the lipofuscin formation, so that's how a lot of these things work that I've researched, like lipopolysaccharide endotoxin in the gut, the substance, this gram-negative bacteria kicks out, this lipopolysaccharide that's highly inflammatory and it can cause septic shock if it gets past the intestinal tract into the blood. A lot of these things in the body have a self-perpetuating thing to them, lipofuscin is no different, and so it will cause things that keep it moving, and so you really have to throw a wrench in the system and stop it from moving forward. Going back to your question, yes, vitamin E is a part of that, and it's tricky because since I sell the supplement, I wasn't selling it for a year while I was talking about this, people will say, "Oh, you're just trying to sell your supplement, that's why you're talking about this, it's the only reason."
Matt Blackburn:
Well, number one, people have to make a living, you have to make money, so that's one thing, but two, buy whatever vitamin E you want, I always say that in every single podcast I do, and even consults, especially people that are overseas that aren't in the States that can't get Mitolife, I would just recommend getting soy-free because if you go in a CVS or a Walgreens, or whatever store like that, Walmart, a lot of those supplements are going to be in a soybean oil base, the vitamin E. While there will still be some benefit, you're using a lot of that vitamin E to neutralize the PUFA in the supplement itself, and so a step up from that would be sunflower oil-based, and a step up from that, which is mine, is MCT oil, which is PUFA-free refined coconut oil.
Matt Blackburn:
So, coconut oil has some PUFAs, MCT has no PUFAs, so it's a PUFA-free vitamin E, so all of it's going to support your system. I've also heard other things, Piracetam, which I've experimented with tons of nootropics in the past, I don't go that crazy anymore. Centrophenoxine's been talked about, ginkgo biloba, just a lot of general brain-supporting herbs, I'm a big fan of Ayurvedic herbs, Chinese herbs, I'll frequently take [inaudible 00:31:29], different ginseng's, American, Siberian, I'll take Schisandra, goji, tons of medicinal mushrooms. Well, there was a study on lion's mane against lipofuscin, but I think the key point here is don't just starts shoving these supplements in, it's stopping all of the things that are causing it first, and then adding these.
Matt Blackburn:
So these are more advanced things, I would say the most practical one is vitamin E because I have a study on the Mitolife site showing that PUFAs increase your nutritional requirements for vitamin E by six times, so if you look at PubMed vitamin E PUFAs, there's a bunch of studies. People have never realized the relationship between these two, god put vitamin E with PUFAs in seafood, in nuts and seeds, in eggs, in grass-fed beef, wherever you have polyunsaturated fats, and that's DHA, EPA, or ALA, those are highly unsaturated fats, which are the worst. Omega-3s are more harmful than Omega-6s, that's a whole nother story, Omega-3s really contribute to lipofuscin way more than Omega-6s do, and so that's another thing that people need to wrap their mind around.
Matt Blackburn:
But just like nature or god put calcium in vitamin D and vitamin A together, aka milk, aka butter, cheese, these nutrients are always together, they're not in isolation, and with vitamin E, it's always with the PUFAs, and so what my idea is with supplementing vitamin E, especially high dose, is to counteract a lifetime of PUFA intake. What you're doing there is you're actually tipping the scales and the vitamin E is accumulating mostly in your liver, and when your liver's good and its 500 functions can start to function again, you're going to be feeling better systemically. You're going to get countless unknown benefits, I mean, it gets interesting when people ask these questions, just very specific questions like, "I have this issue, what do you think it's caused by?" It can be caused by anything, but how about we focus on the liver, so we don't go shooting in the dark and trying to say, "Oh, supplement this, supplement this, supplement this." It's like, let's just focus on liver health because that's 500 functions, that's a major organ.
Matt Blackburn:
People are drinking alcohol in excess, they're doing PUFAs in excess, they're fasting, these are all things that harm the liver, so if we reverse all of those things, and reduce the endotoxin load, then we're actually making huge progress. Usually, it shows up in the skin, like when I started high dosing E, I had really, really bad acne for about a month, and then it got better, and so a lot of people are concerned with acne and rashes, and eczema, which I have dealt with my entire life, and there's a huge PUFA connection there with the skin. That's actually what makes sunlight damaging, is the PUFA that's stored in your tissues, and so if you're concerned about melanomas and skin cancers, and photodamage, and wrinkles, I would say limit the sun. You don't want to be cooking like a lobster all day long, that's recommended in the alternative health community, the more the better, I don't believe that.
Matt Blackburn:
There's a certain dose, and that's all you need, and then I would say cover up with clothes, but if you take vitamin E before you go out, you'll get the benefit, or if you take vitamin E and do red light therapy before you go out, or getting morning and late afternoon sun, either one, that red light and the vitamin E really protects the cells from UV damage.
Jayton Miller:
Do you notice that saturated fatty acids have a protective mechanism there as well?
Matt Blackburn:
Absolutely, yeah, I discovered that years ago after I was raw vegan for about four years, and I started to eat quite a lot of butter and grass-fed beef, and milk, raw milk, and I would do these things and then go out in the sun and especially with some fruit, which I believe is protective as well, and I definitely noticed, I took it to the extreme, I mean, I was sunbathing at solar noon religiously in my ice bath at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, grounded, naked. I would do that five days a week for almost a year, and I'm white as white, and I never burned, and that was pretty cool. But unfortunately, I was talking about two to five grams of supplemental DHA that whole time, and so I had a lot of damage to reverse once I learned this information because I was the poster boy for Omega-3s, and I looked at the literature, I said, "How could 20,000 clinical published studies be wrong?"
Matt Blackburn:
There is tons of studies, I think there's a little more on aspirin, there's tons of studies on nitric oxide, over 20,000. Nitric oxide is questionable as far as the benefits that people say, and just because something has 20K plus clinical published studies on it, I don't care if they're double-blind, I don't care whatever, follow the money trail. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily healthy for you, and this is where people I think get that authority mindset where it's like, "Oh, I'm going against 20,000 studies, that's scary." My wife's doc said that she needs to be on a prenatal, she needs to be taking that Omega-3, that folate, that prenatal, and people just get scared of that iron, and this is all information that's so contrary to what's shared, not only on the conventional side but the alternative side.
Matt Blackburn:
Because you go to naturopaths, you go to acupuncturists, and they're doing your muscle testing, bio-individuality, HRV, "Oh, you're testing positive for Omega-3s, here, take two grams a day." That's doing harm, I don't think anyone's going to test positive for Omega-3s, that's why I question muscle testing, I mean, there's certain maybe life or death situations where Omega-3s can have a benefit because it's so suppressive to the immune system. Similar to iodine, I used to supplement iodine, Lugol's, or transdermal iodine, now I keep a bottle of nascent for one reason and one reason only. If there's a nuclear fallout, I'm going to drink the whole bottle because what that's going to do is shut down my thyroid gland so it doesn't absorb any of that radioactive iodine 131, and I'm protected, same thing if there's a specific immune condition and you want to shut down your immune response, drink a whole bottle of fish oil.
Matt Blackburn:
But for 99.9% of the cases, that is not ideal, you should do the long-term work, and that's healing metabolism, all these things we're talking about.
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you notice that aspirin also plays a vital role in helping to eliminate that as well? Because it does have some iron-chelating qualities, as well as some anti-estrogen effects.
Matt Blackburn:
That's a great point, yeah, anything that helps with iron will help the lipofuscin situation. So that includes shilajit, which I'm a big fan of, I sell shilajit tablets, I actually just took five before this interview with two espresso shots, fresh ground, pristine water, the whole deal. Shilajit will chelate excess iron, and coffee will inhibit iron absorption, so coffee with a meal that has iron in it, or any meal, or after any meal is always a good idea. Aspirin, as you mentioned, lowers the absorption of iron and that will help as well. I'm trying to think of any other, those are the main things that I'm aware of other than just the basic copper, bioavailable copper, which like vitamin E and PUFA, copper and iron are connected.
Matt Blackburn:
So if you have excess iron, which you do, everyone does, whenever you have bioavailable copper, from whole foods C, so that can be camu camu, acerola, Schisandra or even blueberries, or raspberries, ideally your own, fresh-picked. We have huckleberries here, berries are awesome, seasonal local fruit is awesome, that vitamin C complex, it's not just ascorbic acid, I would not supplement AA, that's being pushed really heavily right now because that will further deplete copper and make lipofuscin worse. So vitamin C as a whole food complex that has P factor, vitamin P, vitamin J, P and J, you've got ascorbic acid, and you have copper, and rutin, which is a bioflavonoid. There's a bunch of things in vitamin C, so when you have fruit, or bee pollen, or honey, honey is a really good source of it, you're getting all of those things.
Matt Blackburn:
There's also some copper in shilajit, grass-fed beef liver is an awesome source of copper, and that's really good to focus on, that's why almost everybody benefits from taking beef liver because although there's iron in it, just like shilajit, the ratio of copper to iron is 30 to 1. So, even though it's and it, there's a lot more copper to counter all that iron. Next in my [inaudible 00:41:55] protocol, is to donate blood quarterly or at least twice a year, and that's a little tricker now with the contract tracing, unfortunately. So, that's a whole aspect of this draconian 1984 time that we're in, that it's harder for people to donate because you can be tracked and it's all weird.
Matt Blackburn:
But you could find a mobile phlebotomist or probably a place that does it, test your blood or Corona or whatever, but that's the ideal. Donating quarterly, minimum twice a year, bioavailable copper, shilajit, and then you're really protected. For me, foundational things also include magnesium bicarbonate, so magnesium bicarbonate, shilajit, vitamin E, beef liver, K2-7, these are things I usually recommend for every single person because these are countering things that we're dealing with today. That's really, for me, the point of supplementation, it's not that we're really filling missing gaps, it's that we're countering or mitigating contextual stuff that we're dealing with at this point in human history.
Matt Blackburn:
From the NPK fertilizer, to start with Justus von Liebig in the mid-1800s, from the acid rain caused by the Industrial Revolution, burning fossil fuels and bunker fuel in the ocean, shipping things overseas, sulfuric and nitric, that destroys the microbes in the soil. From the tap water and the chloramine, and putting high levels of ammonia in the soil, and wiping out fungus, all of the earth cycles are messed up. So all of the food that we've eaten our entire life has not been optimal, you say, "What do mean? I was raised on a farm, I was raised Amish, I saw the cow get slaughtered and blah, blah, blah." Yeah, but you were drinking well water, you were drinking spring water, you were drinking rainwater, all that's contaminated.
Matt Blackburn:
That's the context that people don't get, and I've seen it, I'm here in north Idaho, I've seen people out in the woods, I'm out in the woods, and I see people breaking down. My neighbor has fibromyalgia, people can't bend, they're all stiff, their memory's going and I look at what they're doing, I look at what they're drinking. Just because people aren't in the city doesn't mean they aren't breaking down, that's key and we really want more time here to spend with our loved ones, our family and our friends. I think this kind of death wish that people get is because they're always in pain because they're full of lipofuscin, calcification, and fibrosis and so they just want to check out, they're like, "Oh, I'm ready to retire, I'm ready to die because this is just painful being here." It's not supposed to be that way, you got worked by the system, and so you have to see where these things are coming from.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. I would also add activated charcoal to that list as well, I think that has some very powerful chelating properties and tends to help get rid of a lot of the endotoxin and gram-negative bacteria that's in the intestine, as well.
Matt Blackburn:
Yeah, that's a really affordable way to do it, that has a very similar effect to the raw carrot salad as well, I tend to go more towards shilajit just because it's a little more natural, but I understand if someone is on a budget. I'm a big fan of just start where you can, I mean, that's my story, I started when I was living with my parents, working minimum wage making $8 an hour at Sport's Chalet, and just doing what I can, buying whatever supplements I can. Unfortunately, I was going through two jars of raw almond butter a week because I was on the almond butter raw vegan diet and there's people now that have done that, and now they have colitis, or they've got Crohn's disease and all these inflammatory intestinal diseases, I think it was largely caused by the PUFAs. Forget the talk about mycotoxins or, aflatoxin in peanut butter and all that, I really think with peanuts and almonds, and all these nut butters and macadamia nut butter and that whole cultures, it's the PUFAs that's really damaging the intestinal tract.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely, 100%. Well, Matt, I really appreciate you being on here, you're filled with knowledge, everybody who hasn't followed him on social media, make sure to go give him a follow and check out all of his stuff, he gives out a lot of really good information on there, and I look forward to getting you on here again sometime.
Matt Blackburn:
That'd be a lot of fun, yeah, I'm constantly researching and I'm sure I'll have something new to share the next time, so this was awesome, thanks so much for the opportunity, Jayton.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well, I hope you have a good one, and we'll talk soon. Thanks again for listening to the Thermo Diet podcast, make sure if you haven't already, to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave us a review, it helps us out a ton.
