Eric Rieger
0:00 All right, welcome back to COVID files. This is actually an extension of COVID files number nine, so we used to call them 9.5. When we brought in Dr. Ackerman, we just call it nine plus,
Ken Brown
0:12 man, I think we ought to call it COVID file 10. It actually deserves its own thing. Now I understand that you've gotten some, some listeners that maybe were a little bit dismayed by how we ended the last podcast. Can you go ahead and get everybody up to date in case they didn't see it?
Eric Rieger
0:28 So there's there's actually a lot of things to attack number one, we had covered phone number nine, and COVID File Number nine, we talked specifically about the NRF two pathway. And we laid it all out there leading people up to the fact that how do you supplement the NRF two pathway because of how beneficial it is. If you've missed that. Don't watch this episode yet. Go back check out episode number nine. It's going to really lay the groundwork for this episode of COVID file number 10. Second thing, this is our first time this is my co host by the way
Ken Brown
1:00 But why don't you can write a long time since we've been together this close without without a mask on? We work together with a mask
Eric Rieger
1:05 No kidding.
Ken Brown
1:06 But you know, thank goodness, it's easy to get tested now. So at least I know as of this moment your test was negative. My test was negative, we can be this close together.
Eric Rieger
1:13 at least for as good as the test was. Yeah, it says that we're negative.
Ken Brown
1:17 And I'm super excited that you're able to multitask during this podcast.
Oh, yeah.
With you being so Eric, as you can see by the headphones, that he is a dual timing is a air traffic controller. Is that correct? You're getting feedback there. Is that why you're wearing headphones? And I'm not that is why I'm wearing them. Go ahead and raise your altitude.
Eric Rieger
1:37 Bet Yes, that's we're doing a little bit of double duty. Here we are in the studio. But we're all alone. We don't have anybody helping us. Paul is still doing a fantastic job of doing the production after we get finished recording. But for right now, we're keeping our exposure to a minimum because this is the first time that we've been this close.
Ken Brown
1:54 Yeah,
Eric Rieger
1:55 We've got a mask on
Ken Brown
1:55 It really is. And you and I have worked together this whole time. Yeah. Several times a week. But we have a Had a 95 mass on and so at some point you got to start to, you know, push the boundaries a little bit, we've got to get the studio, let's go ahead and do this. And why do I feel comfortable about this because what we're going to talk about today is an extension of last podcast, check it out. It's about the NRF two pathway. We'll recover that really quick, just briefly go over it. But I'm going to tell you how the NRF two pathway can be very effective in overall health right in multiple ways, but also the possibility that there is compelling evidence to show that if you do not have a healthy NRF two pathway, then you are at risk for getting COVID-19
Eric Rieger
2:39 Yes.
Ken Brown
2:39 So you and I are trying to do everything in our power to make sure that we have optimized our bodies in case we get exposed. Last episode we talked about how Joe Rogan's always saying why don't healthcare workers talk about how to prevent getting it that's what that whole show was about? Definitely. So it was about the last episode we talked about the NRF two pathway. And so today, what I want to discuss are some papers that I have found that show how to use certain natural products to improve your NRF two pathway. And that's right where we ended, we ran out of time last time, but specifically how this could be a new target to actually prevent SARS cov. Two, which is the virus that causes COVID-19 and reduce oxidative stress and inflammation while improving your immune system overall, and down regulating these two receptors, so it's kind of crazy, because it's like the panacea when we start talking about this pathway. And I started looking into these different papers. I'm like, why isn't anybody talking about it? Right? And I think that frequently, you and I have kind of pushed the boundaries a little bit and talked about stuff before everybody else was because we're, well, because we're just two turntables and a microphone. Because we have the access to some microphones.
Eric Rieger
3:52 It's just yeah, access to microphones. But even more importantly, it's science based. What we're doing is we're staying true to the whole order. Have the origination at origin ation origination of the program which is we're finding compelling evidence to talk about as it applies to not only our but your health
Ken Brown
4:10 yeah and so I think something that we have the ability to do is that been in healthcare and having access to wonderful people that help us out like Angie cook where we can get these articles that say Angie I want to talk about NRF you know, just unloads incredible articles on me and then we go through and sift through this. It's essentially what we're not making any claims. We're not saying anything to run out and this is what's what you should go do remember the disclaimer is, although I'm a doctor, or crna, we are not your crna and your doctor if you do have anything unusual going on if you have that weird rash or if you believe that you need to dogmatically look at something that we're talking about here and say I'm gonna do this, it's gonna protect me that's not what I'm saying. Talk to your doctor. What we're giving you is information. We're giving you science backed information. You do with that what you want. Ideally, I want you to take it to your doctor. And say, look, these guys are talking about this right? We should be talking about this. Right? So that's sort of the disclaimer right there, but it's all based on science. So, recap. We did talk about the NRF two pathway and we discussed how ridiculous the acronym is the acronym is nuclear factor, e two factor related related factor. I'll say that one more time nuclear factor, e two factor related factor, hence the f2, which is really funny. All right, it's the master regulator of cellular health, and it detoxifies all your cells. It stimulates cellular defense, and if any type of insult starts happening that protects the cell, specifically when we're talking about SARS, cov two, it actually down regulates the h2 receptor which allows the SARS cov to to attach and I'm gonna throw in a new term that we did not talk about last time because now it's relevant. The in normal conditions your NRF two pathway remains suppressed and kind of controlled like a cage using something called the cytoplasma repressor protein keep one that is the KE AP one. Talk about bad acronyms that's ever decided the NRF two decided that the keep one. The acronym stands for kelch like erythroid cell derived protein with CNC homology associated protein one cannot make that up. Like whoever was discovering this did not go to any acronym training at all. Now, we thought the NRF was bad. Now I'm going to tell you that there's something called the keep one protein, which doesn't allow your NRF to become activated. This is going to be relevant when we get into the next interesting. And so in response to any type of damage or attack or oxidative stress, the NRF two will actually separate from the keep protein which is controlling it, dive into the cell, hop into the nucleus and then turn on On 250 jeans, that's what makes it so amazing. Wow. So it says one thing that does this. That's why it's the master regulator. So in the last episode we discussed about how the role of the NRF two pathways beneficial in brain inflammation, cancer prevention, autism, environmental toxins and pollution, all based on studies and we discussed all that anti aging, dementia. In addition, we discussed about how if you do not have a properly functioning NRF two system, this can lead to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and we know that if you are obese, older have high blood pressure or diabetes, you're at significant risk of having a bad outcome from SARS COV2 COVID-19. Yeah,
Eric Rieger
7:45 And don't forget premature aging
Ken Brown
7:48 and the whole premature aging I thought. On our last episode, we discussed how obesity comes down to cellular oxidative stress. You may be a little overweight because your cells are struggling to get rid of the oxidative inflammatory process early on, right. So all right. So we also discussed how SARS COV2 make ourselves more vulnerable, because that nasty little virus, the pandemic that's screwing us up, actually works to suppress the NRF two pathway, it knows that NRF two is going to kick its ass. So it does this whole thing where it tries to overwhelm your NRF two pathway. That's why we believe that certain people are at higher risk for having bad outcomes. It it's a bully it picks on you know, I'm going to find somebody with a weakened NRF two pathway.
Eric Rieger
8:38 What was the what was the analogy? We came up with cutting the phone lines before you break into a bank? Basically, we're stopping the ability for the rescue mechanism to work. We're not allowing it to work.
Ken Brown
8:49 Yeah. So the biggest question we have here is that all these people are being exposed. Why do some people go through these horrific things? Why do some people have long term residual bad outcomes like pulmonary fibrosis and stuff, right. And now I'm learning step two that nobody's talking about. The virus seems to do this much more effectively and have much more deleterious outcomes when people have these other diseases, which could be related to the NRF two pathway. So in other words, NRF, two super important, and now we're going to bring it into 2020. Right now, during a pandemic, how does this affect us? So
Eric Rieger
9:25 that's a lot,
Ken Brown
9:26 but it's that's what the whole episode was about before.
Eric Rieger
9:28 Yeah, that was just the summary. So we just crammed
Ken Brown
9:30 a full hour into just there. So Alright, so now we ended the show with saying, Okay, this is your NRF two pathway, hopefully, you listen to it. If not just know that it's super important. You can keep listening to this, the NRF two pathway master regulator and will at least have some built in mechanisms to fight viruses that are going on. So I want to talk about two natural ways to keep your NRF two pathway in great shape. Okay, let's do it. All right. So first one. This is very very dear to me. This is why I like how everything starts coming together at some point. first topic sulforaphane, sulforaphane. I have talked about sulforaphane for years. Yes. All thanks to Rhonda Patrick and a YouTube video and her going on Joe Rogan and discussing it. I've gotten super into sulforaphane. It is one of my favorite topics. Briefly, sulforaphane. If you're a geek, and you want to really know what's going on is an isothiocyanate. And what this is, is the molecule that is found in cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, things like that. And when these cruciferous vegetables are in their sprouted form, meaning it's a little teenager, a juvenile, okay, a juvenile broccoli, they tend to have much higher amounts of these precursor of the precursor that our bodies can then make sulforaphane and we get in So this was actually really exciting discovered by doctors at Johns Hopkins in 1992. Since then, thousands of articles have been shown documented the beneficial effects of sulforaphane and they have shown 39 distinct health mechanisms including blocking inflammation, like we talked about promoting brain health, promoting anti aging, General glossy things, but there's so many studies on this. The problem is this. The precursor to sulforaphane is a molecule called Glucoraphanin Glucoraphanin and then become sulforaphane. When the broccoli sprout is chewed, it releases an enzyme called murasa kinase. So basically the broccoli sprout sitting with this molecule called Glucoraphanin. Okay, when you eat the broccoli sprout, you release this enzyme called murase kinase, which converts glucoraphanin to sulfur a thing. Easy enough right? So far, so Bottom line is we have known that the second that sulforaphane was discovered by Johns Hopkins, people have been chasing that idea because they're like, that's something that nobody else has tapped on.
Eric Rieger
12:11 It sounds to me like what we're alluding to is a little bit of a stability issue probably long term and how to deliver this if someone isn't going to directly eat juvenile or adolescent broccoli sprouts, right?
Ken Brown
12:24 Correct. So what has been shown by the Johns Hopkins people is that the amount of glucoraphanin which can actually be absorbed to then be converted, right, so now we're talking about just absorbing the glucoraphanin and then converting it is somewhere around two to 15%.
Eric Rieger
12:41 Okay,
Ken Brown
12:41 so extremely poor bio availability. And the biggest problem is that sulforaphane is extremely unstable. So you can't just get a bucket of sulforaphane and just put it there. Yeah. So if you go to Amazon, and I've done this, because when I was looking at sulforaphane got super excited until I started listening to a bunch of other doctors describe all this in scientists, you're gonna find a ton of products out there that say broccoli sprout extract, or they're gonna say sulforaphane. You read the label, it says gluco raffin. Right. Some of them will throw in murasenase and so on. And Johns Hopkins did testing on a lot of these. And Surprise, surprise, most of them did not have even glucoraphanin, let alone sulforaphane. So they came to the conclusion that it's really, really difficult. And we've got these products that are out there, but probably people are wasting their money on most of these
Eric Rieger
13:36 breaking this down. Isn't it possible that maybe even some of those companies that wanted to have the rossin Ace and the gluco would have always butchered
Ken Brown
13:45 glucoraphanin
Eric Rieger
13:46 glucoraphanin. If they wanted to have those available in a delivery system, the instability of these delicate molecules, even if it was tested and shown, it wasn't there, it's probably already changed. It's probably just not stable enough to survive the packaging.
Ken Brown
14:01 Correct. And so even these guys even went so far as to say, Okay, well, maybe the rate maybe they're trying their best maybe they're raising the broccoli sprouts and then they started looking into the broccoli seed business.
Eric Rieger
14:11 Oh, okay
Ken Brown
14:12 oh yeah super cool on this one also. So, Rhonda Patrick goes on a YouTube video and describes all this and says you need to make your own broccoli sprouts. So everybody ran out and started doing this. Awesome. I've even done it myself. Try to do it. And then you find out that Oh, a lot of broccoli seeds that are out there. Don't even have any. They're even not broccoli seeds. They're actually like alfalfa, sprout seeds and really cheap ones. So it comes into that whole thing again, one more time, the supplement industry when you talk about this, unless you're doing third party testing, and looking at that there's a high likelihood that what you're taking is a marketing ploy.
Eric Rieger
14:47 That's unfortunate.
Ken Brown
14:48 Yes, super unfortunate.
Eric Rieger
14:50 It's wastes a lot of people's time. They're trying to get healthy and they're given the wrong thing. Yeah. Now what we want to do here,
Ken Brown
14:55 all right, so this is what gets really exciting. So now really cool. So all of this has been going on up until 2017. So there happens to be one stable sulforaphane product in France called prostu Fein. It is considered a drug and it is used to treat prostate cancer. Right? So in 2017 the only real way to get sulforaphane was to eat broccoli sprouts. Now we have a mutual friend David Roberts, who unfortunately, he is extremely intelligent man with very close ties, but his wife Maura got breast cancer,
Eric Rieger
15:29 yes.
Ken Brown
15:30 And so he took her breast cancer cells took it to his good friend john Gill day and I won't get into the story of this because we're going to have them on as guests right? So I'm just gonna say briefly, why this got developed. It was developed in the most altruistic and cool way they took her breast cancer cells, and they realized that what natural molecules could actually help curtail the cancer, what could kill the cancer and one of the molecules they found was sulforaphane, right? So then it was that's great. So David went out and did the same thing that I would have done he bought a bunch of them. And then since he has the capabilities, he tested them and found out that none of them had sulforaphane. Right. So his good friend, PhD, john Gill day, figured out a way to make the world's only stable and bio available sulforaphane product, which is on the market. And in fact, they have shown through third party testing, that is exactly what they say. They have done this with every single batch and they have the ability to check. This is what I love about this. They have the ability to check on themselves on coworkers on anybody that will come in what the effect was in the bioavailability was and so john, when we met with him, he said, Oh, no, we were checking the dosing, I would just check to see what my NRF two level was. And it would go up within an hour which shows the bioavailability of this. It's doing what you wanted it to do. And what's so cool about this is that it isn't like oh, I took it. It isn't like caffeine where you take it and get an hour's worth of bite. Hit. They showed that when you turn this on, it stays on.
Eric Rieger
17:03 Yes.
Ken Brown
17:03 So what it's like a sinusoidal type wave where you're going to keep this thing going as long as you start supplementing, so that was amazing. And then they started looking at individual markers. So when we talked to john, we said, well, what else have you guys looked at? He's like, Oh, we looked at interleukin six. interleukin six is one of the cytokines which starts the cytokine storm in COVID-19. is like it actively decreases this and we checked it in many different ways. It lowers something called NF Kappa b. Nf. Kappa b is the start of the inflammatory process by controlling that you don't allow a cytokine storm to happen. Obviously, they're looking at things which are related to inflammation. Sure, and then he threw out one little curveball there he's like, Oh, did I ever tell you that it increased BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor another dear to my heart molecule,
Eric Rieger
17:51 definitely neuroplasticity,
Ken Brown
17:53 neuroplasticity, and they were able to measure the rise in NRF2 directly at different dosing at different times. So the science is just absolutely beautiful. And then if you start looking at sulforaphane regarding COVID-19 It is well known that sulforaphane, specifically down regulates the docking protein called tmprss two, regardless, the docking protease because right now we're talking protease inhibitors, right? What sulforaphane has actually been shown to do in vitro definitely in vitro is that it can actually prevent if the virus sees the h2 receptor, and it comes here, it has to get close. And then it needs this thing called the TMPRSS to to actually touch the virus and then dock it to the h2 receptor. It Down regulates that.
Eric Rieger
18:53 So it gives the virus less opportunity to infect the cell.
Ken Brown
18:58 It gives the virus less ability to Land, right? It's just like the virus is going around doing this. So keep that in mind because it's super cool. So when the NRF two pathway is on, then you have all aspects of your innate immune health, meaning your immune system starts paying very close attention. So if you have an invader, it knows what to do immediately. So it increases your immune health. It mitigates the cytokine storm by decreasing aisle six, NF Kappa beta and all these other things, right? And that's how you end up protecting your organs. That's how the when the NRF two pathway goes up, this is so cool. So the NRF two pathway sees it and goes, wait a minute, this virus is attaching to the h2 receptor. Everybody downregulate h2. I mean, you want to talk about like a cool sci fi movie. Yeah, go down, follow the NRF two pathway into the cell. It's almost like the Star Wars style where it's like they're actually we are being invaded. We have got tie fighters coming in. They are all able to enter through the h2 receptor downregulate, always to receptors.
Eric Rieger
20:05 So part of the problem of getting sick is when a bunch of cells, they encounter a pathogen quickly, right? And they all become inflamed far quicker than the body can effectively respond, right? That's when things kind of spiral out of control. Correct. So I could I could if we could all picture like the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium, we call it new, because it's 10 years old now. But all 100,000 people want to go inside. They all need to get inside, they all have a ticket. They're ready to go inside. But suddenly, let's just pretend that the stadium is the cell and all of the people come in to watch the game happened to be the virus. Suddenly, the Cowboys say, No, no, no, all of these people might get sick. Let's shut down all of the gates to maybe one or two. And now if you had to funnel all 100,000 people, not from the 60 gates that are all around but just through one or two doors. That's downregulation that's what What our cells are doing in NRF? Two is taking away the availability for that that virus to get into the cell.
Ken Brown
21:06 Yes, that's exactly it. So now imagine you're in a stadium, and you've got 10 entrances, and there's 100,000 people trying to come in. And the stadium happens to be somebody that the stadium does not have a properly functioning NRF two pathway, which means before the game even happened, the stadium probably is bloated and obese. Sure, with some hypertension, sure. I don't know stadiums could do that. And then this one does. And then so what ends up happening is instead of having just 10 designated entrances, yeah, they've just got holes everywhere everywhere.
Eric Rieger
21:39 There's no one's taking tickets,
Ken Brown
21:39 no one's taking tickets you just walk in whenever you want. That's what it is. And that's why when people have unregulated amount of h2 receptors, then that's how you can end up getting so sick so quickly, so fast. So your I love your analogy. The first episode was cutting the the phone line to a bank and this one is football. I don't really know how your mind works, but that's just all
Eric Rieger
22:01 I don't know either. No one knows how this mind works
Ken Brown
22:04 I'm so getting, you know, kind of like I mentioned we're gonna have David and Jonathan we're gonna let them really geek out about this
Eric Rieger
22:11 Great guys too
Ken Brown
22:11 Great guys but the bottom line is that is not sulforaphane is just a molecule that I love. They developed a product called Brock elite BROCELITE which I need to talk to them about that because I recommend it to so many of my patients, and especially when I'm doing telemedicine visits, I say I really need you to just pick up some BROCELITE we need to do this. And without fail, they'll be like okay, Dr. Brown told me to get this broccoli How much do I do? And I'm like no, it's Brock elite. I need to talk to those guys but Brock pause elite Yeah. So but we're gonna have them on to talk about that. So what I love about this show, Eric is that we do these shows and I just start going down these rabbit holes but I'm I'm a better doctor because of it. I learn a lot more because of this. Angie sends me just by Get some buckets of articles. And so I can go through this. So it just got me thinking, like, wait a minute, whenever we talked about the NRF two pathway, whenever anybody's ever talked about it, it's always sulforaphane.
Eric Rieger
23:13 Is there anything else that could help that NRF two pathway?
Ken Brown
23:17 I'm really glad you asked. Because if you didn't, then I'd have nothing else to talk about.
Eric Rieger
23:21 Yeah, we can talk about golf, because you teed it up.
Ken Brown
23:27 Alright, so no more dad jokes. All right, so, um, and so every single show we learn more and more with this, but then I started going down the NRF two pathway and working backwards and deconstructing this, found this incredible article that talked about and this is the actual title of the article published just last month, the potent anti viral effects of the NRF two pathway and how to naturally raise it using polyphenolic compounds.
Eric Rieger
23:55 Okay.
Ken Brown
23:56 All right. So what this article showed is that they first and we've done discuss this on the show. They looked at the potent antiviral effects of polyphenols. They looked at compounds like quercetin and green tea extract. Specifically, they wanted to know that although these polyphenols we've shown multiple times do amazing things to mitigate your immune system. They too are anti aging molecules. And they actually are potent antioxidants. They said, Well, what if some of the benefit of polyphenols is actually due to the NRF two pathway?
Eric Rieger
24:27 That's interesting.
Ken Brown
24:29 Yeah. Interesting. I'm over here. Everyone's looking at sulforaphane. And these guys are like, well wait a minute, which we just got done describing anti aging effects, anti blah, blah, blah, of the NRF two pathway. And what if some of the benefits that we're seeing with these other molecules like polyphenols, right can actually increase the NRF two pathway so these guys looked specifically at that. What they wanted to know is if these polyphenols can increase the NRF two pathway, which will help fight COVID-19 bold statement, love these guys. It's huge. What these researchers were able to show is that these polyphenols can increase the NRF two pathway by blocking the keep one repressor protein. In other words, they allow they get the Think of it this way your NRF two is tied up by a security guard by I don't know, your your the analogy guy, what would it be here?
Eric Rieger
25:29 It just seems like that this is now a second instance of where polyphenols have demonstrated that they run. They're blocking they're blocking for things to continue to happen beneficially, because it also blocks that that particular enzyme that breaks down CBD and or I'm sorry, Nandamind, right.
Ken Brown
25:52 Oh,
Eric Rieger
25:52 and so if we're blocking there, we're also blocking this.
Ken Brown
25:56 Oh,
Eric Rieger
25:56 this little guy here. Keep one.
Ken Brown
25:58 Oh, so cool. I'm glad that you made that leap so quickly. Your mental agility sometimes just impresses me, and just just sports sports analogies. Alright, so I'll say this again, these guys looked at it and they said it does definitely raise the NRF to pathway. We believe it does it in a different way that sulforaphane does. So for fame directly releases NRF two through this crazy biochemical wave. And definitely it is the most effective way to turn on the NRF two pathway. sulforaphane, but these guys showed, hey, when you add polyphenols to it, they take care of the security guard that's holding on to your NRF two and they go, Hey, come here, and they hug they hug the security guard. And so it allows the NRF to to get free, hop in the cell and turn on 250 genes. That's right. When you're under stress, chronic stress, you have more security guards you have more keep one, the more inflammation you have when it Hips, the scale, a little bit of inflammation turns on your NRF to too much inflammation. And for whatever reason the keep one doesn't let the NRF two out. So you spiral downhill quickly.
Eric Rieger
27:11 Interesting. It's almost like a medical term. It's called a negative feedback loop. It's almost enhancing the bad effect, almost enhancing the bad effects.
Ken Brown
27:20 And in addition to the antioxidant properties that they showed with the polyphenols, by keeping the reactive oxygen species lower, that negative feedback loop doesn't happen because the keep one protein doesn't realize that there's chaos going on. So in other words, the polyphenols go, Hey, come here, go ahead and give me a hug. And then the other polyphenols go clean up the mess, clean up the mess. So this guy doesn't get all eager and be like this over aggressive bouncers, security guards.
Eric Rieger
27:48 What a great compliment though, so now we not only know how to enhance the activity of the NRF two, but now we also know how can we allow the NRF two wants the pathways activated to do its job. Better. Oh yes.
Ken Brown
28:01 So if you haven't put it together yet, I'm giving you a secret recipe on how to turn on your NRF two. So once the NRF two is turned on, it'll maximize the effectiveness. And especially when the polyphenols are around and they take care of the antioxidants, the NRF two doesn't have to worry about that. And it turns on more cells saying just go down. Let's let's get all these cells in line, let's really ramp it up, we are ready to do battle. So in conclusion, what they said was the author said that we should be taking certain polyphenols to work as both a direct antiviral, a direct anti inflammatory, and for the first time ever written in literature directly increased the NRF two pathway. That's amazing. It's the first time I've ever come across this. Ultimately, the authors are quoted as saying these results may provide a new method for discovering NRF two activation.
Eric Rieger
28:57 It's just it's quite impressive because we we are feel like we're pressed for information right now because we're living in a pandemic. And we're all trying to find our ways to return to normal. But this stuff doesn't end with the pandemic. This is this is protecting your health and your life and the cells from over inflammation. Anyhow, it just so happens that they're saying, keep this system in your body enhanced, it still works for you do these things. It's still here to protect you.
Ken Brown
29:23 Absolutely. So that was one incredible article. So kudos to those authors. They said, Hey, does does the NRF two pathway help with COVID? Yes. Oh, what are other things that we can do to take this? because very few people even understand that brocelite exists, right? So you've got all these people buying broccoli sprout extracts, which is doing nothing. And now they're saying okay, since now we've got this ability to have a stable so for pain and now we have this ability to have this polyphenol which can actually help free up the NRF too. So it got me thinking, is anyone else looking into this? And as it turns out, I found another super cool publication. Specifically on I'm gonna love this olive oil and wine polyphenols. And it's modulation of the NRF two pathway. That's nice. That's good. That is awesome because these guys showed significant increase in the NRF two activity from the polyphenols in olive oil and in wine. These are the polyphenols that that we work with because they're large, stable polyphenols. The first article was looking at smaller phonology compounds, meaning they're looking at very little small branches, coarse attends a small branch of a larger polyphenols, right, and green tea extract. ecgc is a smaller branch of this large green tea molecule. These guys said, Hey, you know what? We're seeing the same thing. The conclusion is that it's not just the antioxidant effects of these polyphenols that make them incredible, but it's the ability to turn on the NRF two pathway is a novel and new concept that needs to be further investigated. I kind of feel like we're saying stuff. Like, I don't think other people reading these articles because this is nuts what I just said, I just said that large stable polyphenols can turn on your NRF two pathway. Nobody has ever said anything like that to me.
Eric Rieger
31:15 No, I haven't heard that either. But it made me think of something though. We talked about what constitutes a high level CBD source. And one of the things that we've that we've not only talked about, but we've seen clinically, is that full spectrum. CBD tends to be the best method. This is almost like we're endorsing a natural full spectrum, polyphenol source.
Ken Brown
31:39 Ooh, we're gonna get to that. All right. So now at this point, I'm just like, there's no way I'm preparing for this show. I could stop right here and say this is the mic drop, pow. There it is. But I'm like, No, no, there's when you start going down these rabbit holes of research. Then you start looking at the references that other people do and then you start looking at the author's and then Andrew will be like, you're not going to believe it. Check this out. Then she sends me this one, that she found an article looking at alcohol induced liver damage in mice. And if improving the NRF two pathway will help attenuate that. Now this one is relevant. It's relevant for this discussion because although it's not about COVID, these authors are looking at improving the NRF two pathway to improve a chronic disease, alcoholic liver disease. So what these researchers did is they did the same thing that most researchers do when they look at polyphenols they looked at using curcumin curcumin is a polyphenol well known and Baicalin and BAICALIN. Bruce Burnett, which is a PhD that has worked with us. That was one of the molecules he worked with. He's probably saying you're saying it wrong. Probably saying that. Sorry,
Eric Rieger
32:49 sorry Bruce.
Ken Brown
32:50 Yeah, baicalin. I don't know. Whatever. It's something. Those are two small polyphenols and what they showed is they were able to induce alcoholic liver injury tomorrow. And I don't know how they did it. I know what you're gonna say is, I don't know. I don't know what they like to drink. I don't know if it's tequila 512 probably tequila 512 the favorite, the favorite tequila of mice. So tequila five one to check it out. That's Eric's other company. So, what they did is they looked at this and they were shocked to see that each one of those increased or, number one, the mice that received the polyphenol compounds had protection against liver disease, from the alcohol, huge. Then they said, Well, is it the antioxidant effect? Or is it the NRF? Two, then they checked NRF two levels, and the ones that had the most protection had the highest rise of NRF. Two interest huge, then I'm so glad this researcher did this. What if we use both of them? Yeah, so the nine they combined, and guess what they saw better exponential growth of the NRF two, exponential decrease in inflammation and this comes back to something that you and I have talked about so many times, whole plant versus molecular pharmaceuticals.
Eric Rieger
34:07 It's been we've seen it time and time again from from isolated pharmaceuticals, on and on and on. And now we're talking about really just small natural derivatives but still better in their larger state. Right.
Ken Brown
34:18 That's exactly what it is. And so we have talked about this, that we have a very hard time beating Mother Nature. Yeah. And you know, and I realized that the pharmaceutical industry continually does this or they say that molecule does this, we can mass produce it. And I think that in many ways, it works extremely well. And in other ways, I think that we have we're just not smart enough to do this. This is a great example. So I'm gonna throw out a concept here that I don't think a whole lot of scientists are thinking enough about this. The whole plant or the large stable poly phenol. So the large stable poly phenol, knowing that this other study looked at two smaller polyphenols, they said hey, what if we put them both together? Hey, there, we have that look. A study that looked at Whole olive oil polyphenols, which contains many of them whole wine polyphenols, which had tremendous increase in the NRF. Two. So we've got a friend, Sylvia, who's a PhD in Spain. And she published in her thesis, this incredible article where it looked at large table polyphenols like to borracho and then chestnut, to bracha and chestnut. And then she showed what happens when it becomes digested. And then she took those same polyphenols and she put them in a, I guess, a theoretical microbiome. She fermented them, right allowed bacteria to do this. And then she did a mass spectrometry. I'm saying that right about the molecules produced. And it's really cool because guess what happens when they have a large stable polyphenols, you end up producing ecgc which is green tea extract, you end up kicking off course at the end, you end up kicking off these larger tannins which then get broken down in other words, give yourself body, the largest template, let your body decide what it wants to do with it. And so that's kind of my take on this. So kind of kind of thrilling. I think the future of this research is going to be large, stable polyphenols, let your body do what it wants. And it's going to increase the NRF two pathway.
Eric Rieger
36:18 I think that's awesome. And it makes sense. And it just so happens to continually fall in line where Mother Nature knows the answer. They know she knows the way.
Ken Brown
36:27 So here we are, we know that the NRF two pathway is the master regulator and probably one of the major defenses against COVID-19. And we are slowly meeting a whole lot of very influential, important people in this field and one of them is friends with Dr. Fauci. And you said, Man, we need Fauci on here, I want to pin them down and be like, Why? Why aren't you talking about the NRF two pathway or something like that? Just you know? Just why aren't we talking about IVF
Eric Rieger
37:00 idea. It's unfortunate that it took until the last year and a half for us to have these kinds of discussions. Yeah, I mean, but it's it's technically a relatively new discovery compared to other things that everyone's more familiar with. However, I think it's a critical discovery on how we control disease going forward.
Ken Brown
37:19 Yeah, right. And you've probably looked at me like why did you just throw in that weird sort of Southern accent like you don't really in what I like to do around much smarter people is just really hit the I just want to just act like I know absolutely nothing, so I don't have to live up to anything. Yeah, so if Fauci ever came here. I'd be like, wait, why aren't you talking about the NRF pathway? He's like, What in the world? This guy's a doctor.
Eric Rieger
37:40 Yeah, it's interesting how you turn into ross perot.
Ken Brown
37:44 Alright, so anyways, we know the NRF two pathway is a master regulator. It may significantly help fight COVID-19 sulforaphane directly stimulates NRF two polyphenols stimulate NRF to buy in. I didn't Spoiler alert, where you're going there, blocking the inhibitor protein called keep one. Then I went into more detail because I just went down a quick rabbit hole. Guess what else it does was that it up regulates the keep one esterase enzyme that breaks it down. Okay? So just like when you brought up FAAH Yeah. Where polyphenols decrease that this one increases that. Like it's crazy how smart Mother Nature is just crazy. So bottom line is we've got sulforaphane, which directly stimulates NRF two pathway, we've got polyphenols which decrease the inflammatory pathway, same, same sulfur thing. But the polyphenol goes oh look there. So first thing, I'm going to tie up the security guard and let sulforaphane do its job and allow the NRF to to go up. In other words, my question is this. What is my NRF two levels I would love to call up john Gill day Say, let's check mine because nobody's done a study. I just showed two three different studies on polyphenols. Nobody has shown a study on what if a guy like me who's been taking regularly atrantil which is stable polyphenols, and I take brocelite, which is a stable sulforaphane. What is my NRF? Two level? Pretty excited to see what that would be? Because theoretically, I'm, I'm, I've got it ramped up.
Eric Rieger
39:30 What a crazy concept. It kind of made me think of something like an application, you made the reference to the protection of the liver. Right? And for people who have alcoholic induced hepatic issues, so what if, and I'm just throwing this out there, college kids, for instance, what if part of a wellness check was to keep tabs on a college kids in our future? pathway knowing that they if they've already admitted they probably consume alcohol, but you're giving them a barometer saying, look, I, we know that you're young and you're doing this partying, but you need to make certain that you are having this level of protection. Because it seems like a lot of a lot of people understand to protect your liver. Don't don't consume too much Tylenol, for instance. Well, knowing that whatever in your back pocket you also knew, okay, yes, I do hang out with friends, right? enjoy an occasional drink every now and then it may actually consume a little too much. But I need to know that I'm giving my body the defense's, it's necessary to protect my liver that maybe it'd be interesting to use a test like that and make it where it was just the same as checking blood pressure.
Ken Brown
40:41 Oh, I mean, I like where you going with it. But I'm just going to take you to a grander scale right now. Everybody's going back to college. Wouldn't it be amazing if we had some sort of rapid NRF to test and it's like, hey, look, your NRF two is really low. Yeah, I Why don't we Why don't you or before you come to Why don't you Why don't we work on getting that up because you will stand a better chance of not having a significant bad outcome if you were to get exposed to source code to
Eric Rieger
41:10 say it's like a pandemic seatbelt almost it's almost like it's it's it's your it's your shield to go back out into the world and give yourself the best protection possible in addition to the mask.
Ken Brown
41:21 Oh, speaking of best protection, pross possible you were hinting towards the FAAH, FAAH? Ah, we've done a whole podcast on that. That is the enzyme that breaks down your body's own inanda mind right, we can get into that so Oh, yes. found an article went down another rabbit hole now. Yeah, as it turns out, an annamite into ag guess what they do, they turn on the NRF two pathway.
Eric Rieger
41:43 So we want that
Ken Brown
41:44 we want that. So you need a properly functioning endocannabinoid system. You need some polyphenols to help the sulforaphane do it. I mean, if you were to take theoretically, if you took it Broccoli, and KBMD health CBD. It's almost like a great bio hack.
Eric Rieger
42:08 It's not like a great bio hack. I think it is one. I mean, it is anecdotal but everyone I know that takes those almost daily doesn't have COVID
Ken Brown
42:23 to truly truly anecdotal but now all that being said, I mean think about this. So just to sort of recap this the first episode was about how important the NRF two pathway is. And it is super important and we get into the science of it. This one specifically discusses natural products which even if they didn't affect the NRF two pathway are extremely beneficial for you they're extremely or other anti aging anti inflammatory antioxidant we can get into the the polyphenol aspect of how it improves health performance. He increases nitric oxide. Oh no time on this one here but yeah found some articles how certain polyphenols increase BDNF in other words all polyphenols that are checked increase BDNF, BDNF we're going to do a whole episode on that because that's another one of my favorite things to talk about that is something to improve everything's about brain gut to me in everything is burned out if you protect the gut, you protect the brain. And you know, we're going to have a you know,
Eric Rieger
43:24 it should do and we were we've been pretty good about doing this but yes, we do. We do know quite a bit about artron to broccoli and KBMD CBD, but to be fair sources of getting sulforaphane obviously, just like he said, natural real broccoli sprouts, right. The next thing for polyphenols you can get it from fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, polyphenols are those really colorful or the things that make your fruit really, really colorful, and then of course, a reputable CBD. So what I'm saying here is even if you don't use any of the stuff, take that knowledge, find those to supplement your diet daily so that you can arm yourself and be safe. If you can't find one of these for some crazy reason, if you're listening this you should be able to but if you can't find the foods that Mother Nature is providing us all with. And really what we're trying to do is make certain that you're getting your daily dose of all three of those things. Yeah,
Ken Brown
44:19 so if you're sitting there if you have a rainbow light plate, and some sprouts, by the way, sprouts are super easy to grow. This is so if you're not into supplements, you're into the food. A lot of people have great evidence. A lot of people have great tutorial videos of how to make it. I've done it, it's super easy. You just have to make sure that you get the right seed. If you go to the Brocelite.com website. They actually have seeds that they have tested. So they can tell you which brands if you want to get to this kind of a fun thing to do. You got to cut them at around nine days I believe. And that's where it's at because of my lifestyle. I try to eat a healthy diet, but I also understand science like this. So Ah, augmented a little bit. And I try and just push the needle in a healthy direction by taking certain supplements. And the supplements that I take on a regular basis are polyphenols, atrantil, and broccoli, and a few other things that we've discussed on the show to help for viral illnesses, illnesses and such. So the cool thing is that everything that we're describing, about five or six months from now, somebody else will talk about, and then it'll be novel. Yeah. Is it the same thing that happened early on with when I went on wellness Mama, and we were talking about all that stuff? And it was so novel. Yeah, cuz I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm saying stuff that nobody else is talking about. I'm gonna be this pariah. But I'm standing behind the science and just, it's all about science. I'm not saying Atrantil to Brocelite or KBMD CBD does anything. What I'm saying is the molecules of sulforaphane and poly phenol have been shown to increase the NRF two pathway. That's what I'm saying. What does the NRF two pathway do? Whole lot watch the last episode that we did.
Eric Rieger
46:02 Yeah, I mean COVID file number nine. incredibly important, and honestly, probably we should revisit it post pandemic and just dig even deeper into NRF. Two.
Ken Brown
46:11 I wish we had deeper pockets so that we can just go to certain like right now with all these students going to college we could just show up and be like, well, this college all got Broc, they'll get the biohack combo. And
Eric Rieger
46:23 I'll just compare like a large scale campus just
Ken Brown
46:26 yet just because right now we're seeing all these kids go back to college and they're being sent back home UNC Notre Dame saying that it's anybody back but they're making them basically do the, you know, dorm schooling at Texas Tech, I just wrote a check. So if you want to offset some of that, just by asking us to participate in that, that'd be really cool. I just had a student or I just had a patient that goes to tech today and she said that they had a bunch of cases. So she's not going back Texas Tech is gonna have to every school is gonna have to do this. They're gonna have to play this game.
Eric Rieger
46:56 Wow. Yeah, it's gonna be kind of wild. Hopefully we can just do what we can to give, give ourselves and our family the best opportunity to not get sick.
Ken Brown
47:07 So recap this episode for us, Eric.
Eric Rieger
47:12 Number one, watch episode number nine. Number two, we need our n NRF two pathway to be fully functioning and healthy, just like we talked about ECS hundreds of times, in order for us to be in the best position possible to fight off disease, specifically things similar to COVID-19. And essentially, with a highly functioning NRF two pathway, we can stave off that disease, we can decrease the inflammation and we can actually shut down the ability for things like COVID-19 to make its way to infect our cells. In addition to that, in order for the NRF two pathway to work well. You have to make the conscious decision to take either the supplements or the correct foods to arm your body to give it the tools to make that an Our f2 pathway work. Yeah, really what we said,
Ken Brown
48:02 we're going to be talking to different guests, we're going to be talking to Dr. Tom O'Brien about different diets to protect your gut to protect your brain. What I really like is that our messages is not new. It's not unique, and people are starting to starting to realize it.
Eric Rieger
48:16 Yeah, definitely.
Ken Brown
48:17 So, alright, so part one and RF two, part two. Oh, boy, we've got Natural Ways to Increase your NRF to new to me super excited that I have this information now. And I hope it's exciting for you all. I think it's really important that everyone should share this, please, that we're getting into some very scientific I get that I get it can be a little difficult to listen to, but the gist of it is you need your NRF to improved to lead a very healthy life, you stand a better chance of undergoing some sort of insult including a viral insult. Your body will deal with it better if you have a proper functioning NRF two, so like, share, get this out there.
Eric Rieger
48:58 Wait the way you kind of just said that. Maybe You think of this, we can't sit here and tell you that they a fully functioning NRF two pathway augmented by poly phenol. So if your veins and CBD is necessarily going to stave off all your disease, but I can tell you quite confidently that if you don't have a well functioning enough to pathway, your chance of being really really sick when you're exposed is probably significant.
Ken Brown
49:22 Yeah, and it's significant and if you don't have a functioning NRF two pathway, then your chances of becoming diabetic becoming hypertensive becoming obese, developing cancer, although they definitely do.
Eric Rieger
49:33 So.
Ken Brown
49:34 Awesome. Well, I'm glad that we close this out. Now you have different ways to increase your NRF. To read more about this look at the polyphenols and ultra until these are the stable large polyphenols that we talked about. Look at the science behind Brocelite. That is the world's only stable bioavailable sulforaphane, which we know that we trust these guys. They do third party testing they do everything that we do with atrantil. So that's how come we become Good friends with them and hope to continue to utilize their science they can utilize ours we can help each other we're going to augment everything
Eric Rieger
50:07 Raka lead also has a professional version which is only available if there is a physician on board and it just so happens that at KBMD health this guy is the KB and the KBMD. He is authorized to distribute the professional version of Brocelite. So if you go to KBMD health.com go to the store, you'll find everything that Dr. Brown has laid out available as a supplement to help you build up your NRF two as well as your ECS at KBMD health.
Ken Brown
50:36 Yeah, and the broccoli plus they're smart guys, they actually have another isothiocyanate in there that they figured out helps absorb and they threw in curcumin, polyphenol, right so like when when john hears this, he's just like I've been talking about this for 10 years.
Eric Rieger
50:53 Thank you, john.
Ken Brown
50:55 But that's awesome. Everybody, take care stay safe and yet like share Just get this word out. We, our biggest thing is if we can help one person if we can. I hear it from my patients all the time. Like I feel way better. I'm like, that's awesome. I love it. Absolutely
Eric Rieger
51:10 like and share. That's it. That's gonna do it for COVID number 10. And, well, sorry for the break between also nine and 10. Lots of information. He really was on call last week for the hospital. So when we broke, it just happened to be at that point in time. Anyhow, we'll we'll see y'all next time around.
Ken Brown
51:27 We're good. We're good. Everybody. Stay safe. Much love. Get your sleep, eat well.
Eric Rieger
51:32 Oh, yeah, sorry about the weird offset here. Again, we're in the studio by ourselves. So obviously, it looks kind of odd to me just kind of off the side, rock and fade in and out. But we'll be back next time.
Ken Brown
51:41 Well, fortunately, if you're watching this on YouTube, what you will see is what looks like a mane of hair coming into the picture and then eventually a face joins because Eric has yet to have a COVID haircut. Now I'm not going to
Eric Rieger
51:53 wait to see what happens.
Ken Brown
51:55 All right, everybody. Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai