Gut Check Project

Almost 800,000 people in the US will suffer a stroke this year. Approximately 87% of those will be labeled as ischemic or caused by lack of blood flow leading to lack of oxygen. For many, stroke is somewhat inevitable. But preparing your body to be in the best position to prevent serious damage and even recover quicker leading to better outcome is something that we can all do. The information may be new to us all, but mother nature has had these systems in place for as long as humans have been around. Join us on the GCP and find out what you can do to increase your favorable odds at dealing with stroke.

Show Notes

Eric Rieger  
Alright, we're going to get down to the gut check project starting on episode 34. It's gonna be a quick one, but you're gonna love it.

Ken Brown  
Yeah, we're gonna try and do this a little bit quicker because what I've gotten some feedback is when you guys get all sciency that sometimes it's it's cool to hear the fun stuff, but the reality is that the science gets a little geeky and it gets almost like a lecture. So I apologize to everyone out there if I've been some weird professor but so my only thing so let's do the personal stuff is your family good? 

Eric Rieger  
Family's Great! Awesome. 

Ken Brown  
My family's great also awesome. And that's up for the personal stuff. So like I said, I was called by a good friend, Tim, our good friend his father had... 

Eric Rieger  
Tim Power been on the show. 

Ken Brown  
Yeah, Tim power been on the show. His father had a stroke. And he messaged me and he said, Hey, man, my dad had a stroke, and they don't seem to be talking diet. They don't seem to talking supplements. He's in rehab. He's getting better. I'm doing my own stuff. I'm trying to fix this. But do you have any recommendations? And rather than just knee jerk and go, Oh, I'm going to go ahead and yeah, just do this and this and this. I started thinking about it. I went Holy cow, my hospital. Medical city Plano.

Eric Rieger  
Right. 

Ken Brown  
Is a level one trauma center and is designated as a magnet hospital for stroke, acute stroke rehabilitation. 

Eric Rieger  
Okay. 

Ken Brown  
So they have a whole team that if you show up with a stroke, it's just like a heart attack. They're badass. Yeah, they show up with like this team of interventional neurologists, and they get in there and they do all this stuff. So I'm sitting there. My quick side note, I'm picking up my family from Mexico, because Luke was just playing tennis. You know, that was the the personal part of it that we didn't get into, but just assume it's tennis. 

Eric Rieger  
Assume it's basketball.

Ken Brown  
Yeah. So I called. I called the stroke rehab unit. And I spoke with them with the nurse. The manager, nurse and she was so cool. She's like, She's like, hey, yeah, blah blah blah Yeah, we were our rates are this. This is the protocol. I'm like, what's a protocol for diet? We don't have one. What's protocol for supplements? We don't have one  i'm like, Oh my goodness, let's look at this. So I called our secret weapon. And I started to get into it and it's a much bigger bite to chew off then we can do in this sort of quick episode. So this quick episode, I want to just focus on the endocannabinoid system and stroke. Because what we do with stroke victims is that we basically do everything wrong. 

Eric Rieger  
I believe it. 

Ken Brown  
In the hospital. 

Eric Rieger  
Yeah. 

Ken Brown  
And when I asked him, like, what is the typical diet? She's like low fat. 

Eric Rieger  
What's the science behind that? 

Ken Brown  
Exactly. And we know that the carbohydrates increase inflammation and this and that. I'm like, Well, what else and she's like you had traditionally everybody gets put on a Staten, which causes some brain inflammation, because we're chasing numbers on cholesterol. Anyways, keep listening, because we're going to end up doing another episode on we're going to develop a protocol that I hope everybody adapts, and the nurse was like, that would be amazing. nobody's talking like that. Because everybody has this hammer. I mean, we bring these people in, they have a stroke. And one of the most important things is sleep and what do we do just disrupt sleep, check vitals blood sugar, and all this other stuff. So basically, we focus up we focus on all this stuff. So I called a couple neurologists, and was like, Hey, man, what's the or Hey, woman? I don't want to be sexist here. I'm like, Hey, what are we doing here? What's going on with the you guys are crushing it. So basically they focus on the awesomeness science of clotbusters like tpas and blood thinners. And then they rush in with this incredible technology that is amazing. Where they get in and they do like cardiac clot, like the same thing that the cardiologists have been doing. That they end up just sort of extracting these clots and they just crazy stuff. It works, but then they don't think about anything else,. So here a gut check project. I feel like we check our egos at the door and we look and go, how can we do things a little bit better? I feel like that this conversation that we're having could be the beginning of something bigger. Sure. I feel like we're missing a ton of stuff. This is not to bash traditional medicine at all. This is just a glorious example of how medicine save lives. But unfortunately, if all you have is a hammer then everything's a nail. So we're going to go ahead and look at that today. 

Eric Rieger  
Let's do it. 

Ken Brown  
I'm gonna do one brief thing. Because we always do in in the news, we always do our personal lives in the news, mostly because it's a win for me. So I'm just whenever I find news that is pertinent to me, I'll talk about it. And I'll just kind of, like most people just sort of ignore the stuff that bothers you. Bottom line is a study just came out. Looking at coffee. 

Eric Rieger  
Oh, I love coffee. 

Ken Brown  
So February is Heart Month, right? 

Eric Rieger  
It is. 

Ken Brown  
So everyone talks about Heart Month, and we're strokes are almost parallel to heart. So the same vessels that can ruin your brain can ruin your heart. You're gonna die either way. Let's start fixing it. 

Eric Rieger  
Yeah. 

Ken Brown  
So a study came out this last Thursday. So just a few days ago, in a journal called PLOS biology that I follow, which always looks at like new and upcoming research, as it find it. As it turns out, we know that coffee is good in 2017. There was this big meta analysis that show that help with diabetes. And also helped with cardiovascular disease and different things like that. But we really never, we always thought it was the polyphenols. So these guys looked at this and they took mouse models. And what they showed is that the caffeine plays a role. 

Eric Rieger  
Nice. 

Ken Brown  
Yeah. In case you haven't guessed that I drink just tons of coffee. 

Eric Rieger  
I didn't have to guess I see it all the time. 

Ken Brown  
Alright, so anyways, they took mouse models, and what they showed is that when you drink four to five cups of coffee equivalent in caffeine, you actually improve the mitochondria in the heart cells. They even show that the mitochondria is that you know, it's the powerhouse of the cell. It's what makes you walk around. It's what drives every single cell they found a protein called p 27, which is stimulated by caffeine. And when they gave heart attacks to mice, and then they gave them coffee, the mice that got the coffee, or the caffeine equivalent, recovered quicker, knockout mice that they took away the P 27 protein or whatever, they all died of heart attacks. So quick little thing in the news, coffee good, helps diabetes helps heart disease. And now we realize that it improves mitochondria. So I got to thinking and I was like, wow, the whole mitochondria is our aging thing. I found an article where they looked at old an aging mice, the more caffeine that they took in during the day, the more that their mitochondria were younger, and it was an anti aging molecule. So polyphenols plus caffeine, it looks like.

Eric Rieger  
it's really interesting, brief note, and maybe we should even do a show about caffeine and the systemic effects because during anesthesia school, we talked about why caffeine does what it does, and the jitters. And essentially, the way it was explained to us and shown to us is that they didn't know the exact mechanism, but they could tell that the threshold that it took for like a neuron to fire was lessened. So what it does is it lowers threshold to elicit an action potential. It would make sense that somebody who's a little bit older, basically you're taking down the barrier. And now you've got demand making the mitochondria useful. I mean, it's...

Ken Brown  
Yeah, I like where you're going with that.

Eric Rieger  
It's all kind of systemic, we'll get to that. That sounds like a an interesting... 

Ken Brown  
So that's just basically in the news Heart Month now we're doing this... 

Eric Rieger  
And if you think this episode's fast, wait til we do the caffeine one.

Ken Brown  
So this is just one of those things where we're, we're trying some different stuff out but one of the biggest problems I had is I called the stroke center and they do not have a protocol. And then when I called the neurologists and and I said one thing I was like, have you guys ever thought about the endocannabinoid system, in your specialty.

Eric Rieger  
No, they haven't.

Ken Brown  
Not only No, it was a hard no with that BS. 

Eric Rieger  
Sure. Yeah. 

Ken Brown  
So rather than get an argument and like, we'll just do a show on it.

Eric Rieger  
Yeah, we will. 

Ken Brown  
So this show should be titled the anti bs side of endocannabinoid system and stroke. 

Eric Rieger  
Let's do it. 

Ken Brown  
Alright. So, once again, geeky sorry, we've done two geeky shows in a row. We're gonna have to start having, you know, just playful things. We have to have a comedian on like Joe Rogan or something like that.

Eric Rieger  
Eventually.

Ken Brown  
Yeah. It's probably a little premature. Alright, so let's talk about the endocannabinoid system really quick. I'm gonna throw it to you, and I'm gonna let you just to describe to everybody what is the endocannabinoid system. 

Eric Rieger  
The best application that we know today that I understand is it basically functions as a great communicator, between our nervous and our immune system. So you have these two systems and basically it functions as the regulator. It's the one that prevents one from being overstimulated and driving the other one to do something that you don't want it to do.

Eric Rieger  
100% So the way that I describe it to my patients, our endocannabinoid system is like any other system in our body, you have a cardiovascular and neurologic. The endocannabinoid system works like a traffic cop. And what it does is it says we need more inflammation here. Whoa, you're overreacting. Why don't you just calm down right over here? So keep that in mind, because as we talked about the endocannabinoid system, now we're going to talk about how does the endocannabinoid system relate to stroke. So unfortunately, we got to talk a little bit about strokes. And I like history you like history. So, Hippocrates, the father of medicine first recognized strokes over 2400 years ago, we got 2400 years to figure out how to fix this. At that time, they called it apo Plexi, which means struck down by violence. So 2400 years and to this day stroke still kill 140,000 Americans. That's one out of every 20 deaths. 

Eric Rieger  
Wow. 

Ken Brown  
Someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds. That means every four minutes someone dies. Every year more than seven Well, let's just call it 800,000 people in the United States have a stroke. About 87% of all strokes are ischemic stroke. Which means it's decrease of blood flow. And $34 billion are lost every single year due to strokes. Stroke is a leading cause of serious long term disability, stroke reduces mobility in more than half of stroke survivors. So the, if the actual death is not shocking enough. It's your health span is reduced. And you and I always talk about lifespan versus health span...be healthy. So what I'm going to talk about right here is crazy that this is not being implicated. This is not are not implicated not not being used in the traditional sense.

Eric Rieger  
Gotcha. 

Eric Rieger  
All right. So, right now, the cool science going on is that we've got all this intervention, we got labs, we got stroke centers. We did we're, I feel like we can do a whole episode on just the diet, the supplements, everything around lifestyle on a stroke. And we're going to do that just like we're gonna do the butyrate episode coming up and just like we're going to do, every time we get into a topic, we start digging deeper, and we learn a little bit more. So today, the fact that these neurologists are saying, oh, food is Bs, well, I'm just taking on the big 600 pound gorilla. I want to say, Well, I want to know what you're not even thinking about endocannabinoids are you? And they're like, that's really bs. Now we're gonna get into it. So it is there's tons of research in the animal model of how to target so this topic of this podcast is the endocannabinoid system and strokes. Holy cow, there's tons of data on this and we're not even talking about it. I'm at a, a world class Stroke Center. Where we save more people than like anyplace else. We've been given national recognition. If if you're the CEO of who owns our house, the old colombia The HCA HCA if you're the CEO of HCA, pay attention because I can say more people for you, because as it turns out, there's lots of confusing data out there. And I took the time to go ahead and look at some of this. It's really cool. Basically, we've already reviewed the endocannabinoid system. Now in this endocannabinoid system, there's two primary receptors. We're learning that there's more for the Wil Clydens of the world that are super smart, and they understand that there's a lot more than that or the Chris Kressors and people like that. But for the general public, there's two receptors, cb one and CB two, there are the traffic cops, right? So that's what we have to realize. So as we alter the endocannabinoid system through different things, we know that the endocannabinoid system is associated with Parkinson's disease. It's associated with Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. The only drug approved is epidiolex for seizures. This is part of the problem. It's the confusion of what's going on? People say what does the FDA say? Well, did you know that the FDA just missed their mark to present to Congress on February 20? No? 

Ken Brown  
Yeah, they missed it. That's another news article. They did not come up with a consensus statement on CBD when they were mandated by Congress to do that, because everybody's so confused. 

Eric Rieger  
Wow, you know, I didn't know that we should look into that.

Ken Brown  
And we know that in those studies of epidiolex, there was 86% side effects and all the things. So what I'm going to get into is the full spectrum, what we're looking at here, so stick with me here I know that I'm kind of bouncing around. What I'm trying to do is set the stage that the endocannabinoid system is intricately related to the disease known as a stroke or the event known as a stroke. So knowing that the endocannabinoid system is important in Parkinson's and in Alzheimer's, dementia and such like that, what we want to try and figure out is how is the endocannabinoid system related to similar things which is Parkinson's and dementia are inflammation in the brain. Well, the stroke is immediate inflammation. Alright, so CB one receptors. I say this only because the argument will come up will be like, well, I found some studies that showed that there were some studies looking at CB one receptors were when you had knockout mice, they did better. Other studies show that they did worse. Some said that this and that. And so I was going through all this literature going, this is silly. This is we don't really have a conclusion. So the bottom line is, think of it this way. And I will use a Will Klyden quote, it is a symphony. It is not one instrument. When you are looking at the endocannabinoid system, if you are just going to focus on one thing, which unfortunately researchers do because it's impossible to account for all the other variables, all I can say is CB one is intricately involved and it may be involved in a negative way. When it becomes a stroke. So if Your endocannabinoid system is not in tune. It can make it worse. Just like a symphony where you have the brass section which is just screwing it up. You've got the rest of the symphony playing Mozart and you've got some other people just kicking some cake. 

Eric Rieger  
An orchestra with only symbols is not very entertaining. 

Ken Brown  
No, it's not. So I bring this up because when you start trying to read it and debate it and look at it, you can be thrown curveballs. One of them is that and, but then you dig deeper. And there's all this literature on this instrument called CB two. Cb two is the other instrument, cb one, cb two are the two receptors. Now we're learning more about the endocannabinoid system, the data is much more straightforward on this. Basically, multiple rat models have shown that when you give an agonist or a CB two activator, both pre stroke and post stroke you decrease the amount of damage, so you can actually prevent what's going to happen. And then once it happens, you go, Oh, we need to stimulate that. Keep that in mind. Because to prove a point further, when CB two was blocked, the rats had tremendously more damage and they had residual effects. So just by saying the endocannabinoid system, and they're like, oh, it involves CB one, cb two, which is the top level that everybody talks about. The interplay is way more, you gotta let the body do what it wants to do. can't shut one off, you can't turn one on. You can't encourage you have to be able to let the body do what it wants to do.

Eric Rieger  
No, definitely. And that's, that's really not that different than lots of different drugs which they thought they pulled them out of racemic mixtures. And then what racemic mixture means is you've got two different variations of the same molecule and one's active and one isn't But then they learned that sometimes if you do one and try to isolate it, you actually caused damage. Whereas before, if you had them together, you didn't have that damage. And it's played that multiple times.

Ken Brown  
So clearly CB two receptors play a very key role. What I'm trying to prove here is that when we take these animals and we mess with these receptors, we either increase the damage or we decrease the damage. So the theory is that the endocannabinoid mediated modulation of the inflammatory process is the reason why people get better. So in other words, we always talk about inflammation. Now they're realizing that the CB two receptor mitigates the inflammatory process during an ischemic event. 

Eric Rieger  
That's pretty important. 

Ken Brown  
It's really wild. So now what actually interacts with these receptors? So if somebody's never heard these terms before, they're like, man, they're talking weird stuff. They're talking CB one, cb two, don't worry about that. Cb one, cb two are just two likeminded things that are trying to make you better. As it turns out, we can say this about every single system in the body there's going to be interactions, downplaying in the gastrointestinal system. Histamine will stimulate a cell which will produce gastrin, which will increase the acid production blah, blah, blah, we know this 

Eric Rieger  
But histamine could, the same molecule on a different receptor could cause a completely different 

Ken Brown  
100%. So why would the endocannabinoid system not be different than every other system? 

Eric Rieger  
It's it sounds to me like it's very normal. 

Ken Brown  
You know what I keep saying? We're gonna have Endocannabinoid ologists I'm gonna be the first endocannabinologist. I'm gonna get myself a title. So somebody had to be the first black belt or something. I mean, why don't I just rushed to be like? I'm It! I'm it! 

Eric Rieger  
I'm the BBECS. 

Ken Brown  
Yeah. Alright, so there's two endocannabinoids. What I mean is you make your own CBD. And those two things there's we're learning that there's lots of them. But for the basics it's anandamide and 2ag. So knowing that you have these two endogenous meaning two endocannabinoids that stimulate CB one and CB two now we're just learning what they do. Okay. So 2ag goes up dramatically following a stroke.

Eric Rieger  
So trying to do some damage control.

Ken Brown  
We don't know...

Eric Rieger  
We don't know...

Ken Brown  
We do know that when anandamide is the soft light that is always on when you go through a stressful event 2ag turns on switch the flashlight. So the feeling is that that 2ag is the fight or flight Endocannabinoid. 

Eric Rieger  
Oh, okay. 

Ken Brown  
Yeah, so when you need it, It ramps way up. In situations where there's cell damage, it doesn't know the difference that there's cell damage possibly it's ramping up because it's like we're in fight or flight mode. We're dying here. 

Eric Rieger  
Where's the inflammation? 

Ken Brown  
Yeah, so these guys are postulating that when you block 2AG, the stroke damages less. My feeling is well, what if it's doing something someplace else? Like, what if you needed that 2ag burst? So when you have fight or flight, you need it for different things. Sure. Some people would say, oh, you're having a fighter flight. You're being chased by a saber toothed Tiger your blood pressure's up. We should give you blood pressure medicine. No, it's the right thing that should be happening right now. Yeah, I need the blood pressure to pump the blood. So we know that that to ag is your fight or flight Endocannabinoid think of it that way the flashlight Anandamide is the one that you want up, that is the 

Eric Rieger  
Parasympathetic, your rest and digest. 

Ken Brown  
It's the it's not quite the parasympathetic one, but it's the one that is your baseline that should always be filled, that anandamide tank should always be filled. 2aG. We're gonna learn more about it in the future because we haven't studied that as much. But when you have 2ag around, blood flow gets reduced. So the damage is worse. And this is really interesting because when your baseline anandamide is low, your 2 a G will overshoot. 

Eric Rieger  
Okay.

Ken Brown  
So they work like a seesaw. So if you can get them in balance, we always talked about balance and in sync. When your anadamide is full and your 2ag is full, they never really mess with each other. In a situation where you're depleted in your endocannabinoid system, then you will have the propensity to have too much 2Ag and your anandamide is in fight or flight and your endocannabinoids will keep producing the two AJ, 

Eric Rieger  
That is very, very interesting. So in other words, what we want is to never be in a position where our our ECS is low on what it needs to function. 

Ken Brown  
100% so anandamide we're now learning is probably the baseline Endocannabinoid that controls the day to day response that you're having. 2ag turns on when you need it to turn on. So, although the animal models show that 2ag increases significantly causes vasoconstriction and all this stuff, we're learning that okay, maybe, maybe this is my theory, the stress and the chronic disease. Listen to this one more time here, the stress and the chronic disease that led to a stroke. Meant that your anandamide was being depleted and your body was getting ready for the event. You're 2ag going up. So stress, lack of sleep, diet, all have been shown to decrease our anandamide levels, stress, lack of sleep and diet have all been shown to be linked to cardiac and stroke and every other event that we talked about 

Eric Rieger  
Time and time again. 

Ken Brown  
So when I grab a neurologist and I say, Have you ever thought about the endocannabinoid system, the religious stroke and they're like, that's BS. I'm being nice about how they said it to me. Are you kidding me? 

Eric Rieger  
Well, it's...

Ken Brown  
we're missing this huge, giant piece.

Eric Rieger  
It's kind of sad because the research isn't it's not one paper. This is it's ubiquitous, it grows every single day. I think people have over the last 50 years have forgotten that innovation brought us to where we are now. I mean, we used to not have TPA we used to not have kumudin and we used to not have these things I mean it those were also new introductive things for us to figure out.

Ken Brown  
I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were like you know what's really skewed when you look back at like the the average lifespan when you when you factor out the deaths at birth people still live to like 60 and 70. Like, like, but there was so many things that killed babies 

Eric Rieger  
Oh, you mean long ago, 

Ken Brown  
Like long ago. So when I say that Hippocrates was describing strokes, and you know, 2000 years ago, whatever. But this is so fascinating because think about this, if you keep your anandamide levels optimal like adding Atrantil which blocks an enzyme that breaks down your own anandamide levels. That is something that we can look at, and I think that's part of the next episode. But when you take CBD, so our CBD product here, when you take a good quality CBD it doesn't even bind directly to CB one or CB two. We know that a full spectrum product has many cannabinoids and other molecules that bind to certain receptors. We also believe that CBD will play a role in helping the body to produce more of its own Endocannabinoids. So what I tell my patients is that if you take CBD, you're going to increase your own anandamide levels. You take CBD plus Atrantil, That's the signature package and you're going to make sure that you block the enzyme that breaks down your anandamide 

Eric Rieger  
So it lasts longer. 

Ken Brown  
So it lasts longer and the neurologists like there's no science in this. Okay? So I had to dig deeper, or our secret weapon dug deeper for me. In rat models, infusing CBD into the brains of rats significantly helped to decrease the amount of damage and help recover in stroke. Really CBD does nothing? They actually injected CBD into the brains of rats that they cause strokes. And it actually blocked the ischemic event. One to One. Crazy! 

Eric Rieger  
That's noticeable. That's a reproducible event.

Ken Brown  
Then in another study, they showed that the blood brain barrier sealed its tight junction and decreased brain swelling post stroke when you gave them CBD, 

Eric Rieger  
Which is huge. I mean, I know it sounds really, really technical, but trust me, that's not nothing.

Ken Brown  
Remember the whole reason that I'm even talking about this is because our friend Tim just called me and said, Hey, man, my dad's in rehab, and they're not saying anything. Well, it was shown that continued oral administration post stroke at one week, and one month reduced the volume of infarct and improved neuro behavior on autopsy. So they're taking this it showed that CBD reduced white matter injury reduced glial response, meaning that the cells did not react to it. And it increased BDNF.

Eric Rieger  
Which is what you need for repair.

Ken Brown  
You need that for repair. Shit! This is nuts. Yeah, we're over here saying that CBD isn't do anything where the endocannabinoid doesn't have it and I'm finding article after article and these guys are finding amazing data BDNF. If I the first thing I would do would be to the first thing I would do would be to put people we're going to come up with a whole protocol. And I'm gonna go to HCA and don't be like, everybody that has a frickin stroke needs ABCD and one of them's gonna be frickin CBD. This is ridiculous.

Eric Rieger  
We've got some opportunity, though. And not everybody's closed, we could probably find a couple of neurologists around here in the area that are at least willing to fairly examine data and dive in. And that's what we'll have to do.

Ken Brown  
We're gonna end up having to go into this. I mean, the fact that I called my own Stroke Center, and the nurse sheepishly said, Well, you know, they do the usual things that put them on a low fat diet, and I stopped her. Which, by the way, it's really cool, because when I called up, I was picking Lucas up and I was like, yeah, hey, it was nurse manager. And she's like, Yeah, and I said, I said, Yeah, this is, this is Dr. Brown. Do you have moment to ask couple questions. She's like, sure what patient is that? Regarding? I'm like, now I just wanna ask some questions. And she stopped. She goes the GI Doctor said, Yeah, she's like, oh, like, what do you mean uh Oh, she's like, I've seen your show. I'm a little scared what you're gonna ask. I'm like alright and so that's how we got this talk. So right now new models are looking at immediate administration of CBD and hyperthermia. So somebody out there is saying, if we make them cold and give them CBD, and it seems to be a synergistic effect 

Eric Rieger  
Wasn't that long ago, people thought that making the body cold was a bunch of Hocus Pocus crap, too, right? It really wasn't that long ago. And so now we've returned to its natural element, all we're doing is reducing body temperature. But however long ago it was, I can remember people saying, Well, you know, they're trying the cryo, and at first like, hey, maybe it works. And then suddenly, we saw lack of decrease in loss of neural function, you know, make believers.

Ken Brown  
So I want to play devil's advocate, and we talked last time that we're going to do some sort of like contest. Here's the contest, for the listeners. All right. There is a reference when I was looking at all this stuff, one reference, there was an article on stroke in cannabis ingestion, where they said that cannabis ingestion increases the incidence of stroke. So and then I went and found the article and realized there's a lot of other factors associated with that, much like the FDA article that we did on liver failure. It's very much like that. But the FDA is using an article like that and ignoring everything that I just said. And they're using that. So what I propose is and you figured out, you're the you're the techie guy, let's do some sort of giveaway where if somebody the first person that messages us in one way or another email, Instagram, Facebook,

Eric Rieger  
Paul we're gonna need help with that, 

Ken Brown  
yeah, snail mail, whatever, I don't know. That references the article and puts the author's names down because the author's names you'll you'll really, you'll You'll definitely find the article when you find this author's names, that I think we should give them a signature package 

Eric Rieger  
Signature package if you find the well hidden, gem about marijuana, cannabis smoking and stroke causation, right? 

Ken Brown  
Yeah. So spoiler alert. So I'm going through a whole Rick and Morty Phase I should do.

Eric Rieger  
If you're not watching Rick and Morty, that's one way to decrease anxiety.

Ken Brown  
All right.

Eric Rieger  
This episode is brought to you by Rick and Morty.

Ken Brown  
I cannot believe it's took me this long to find that show I am I come home and that's 20 minutes of just complete giggle time, just total giggle time. Alright, so lots of cool animal data. I just explained what I think shows that the endocannabinoid system is intricately related to strokes and how we can improve it and in some ways if you try and mess with it, make it worse. 

Eric Rieger  
So let's I know we did a quick episode but let's just do a quick rundown to make sure that everybody who's listening or watching can make their own crib notes. So, essentially, before and after a stroke, you can prepare your body for better recovery or prevention of the stroke itself that comes from having a healthy endocannabinoid system your ECS. How can you fortify your ECS? You make sure that you have enough sleep, you make certain that your diet is rich in polyphenols, which of course you can supplement with altrantil, and you make certain that you have the correct macronutrients for your ECS to lift up which you can get with a formidable or reputable CBD which kbmd health has both of those things. So in essence, if you want you don't know how you're going to get hurt, a lot of people don't know that they're going to have a heart attack today had a patient today. 172 pounds

Ken Brown  
I thought you were gonna say 172 years old and I was like wow

Eric Rieger  
Six foot one Well built man. 172 pounds 49 years old, has been doing jujitsu and Taekwondo for 30 something years. Heart Attack had a heart attack back in 2012. Undiagnosed cad, the guy's got, which is coronary artery disease, the guy has two stents in. My point is, nobody knows you don't know when you're going to be susceptible to something. So if you can, he was doing what he could, right he was exercising. So he was doing that part, right, but maybe something else that he could have been aware of...

Ken Brown  
I'm telling you, we're going to learn that the endocannabinoid system plays a much bigger role in this and we have seen diseases start happening earlier and all that stuff. 

Eric Rieger  
KBMD health GCP code GCP save 20% on your signature package. 

Ken Brown  
100%. So the bottom line is that there's tons of supporting evidence that exists for the involvement of the endocannabinoid system and the pathology of a stroke. Now clearly, this is super complex and we're just getting into it. And these researchers that are coming up with conflicting data about trying to block CB one or trying to agonize CB two, don't, don't do that what we really need to do is just make sure let your body do what it wants to do, when there is sufficient anandamide, which is the one that we know really kind of helps out, it will work like a traffic cop and keep the receptors in check. 2ag is probably necessary for certain things. So if we're doing this show, and you start to well, like I'm like, okay, bottom line is if I'm looking at you, and you're talking to me, and all of a sudden you start slurring your speech and half your face starts drooping. Yeah, you look like you're having a stroke. First thing I'm going to do is run and grab a whole bottle of KBMD CBD and I'm gonna shove it down your throat because at least we know in animal models, that makes a big difference. And then I'm going to go get a bunch of other supplements that we're going to do a whole nother show on that should be protocol for every single stroke center in the US. So much like the butyrate podcast, we got another one that we're getting into and I'm gonna bring a neurologist on and I want to bring an expert so that we can talk about it 

Eric Rieger  
Small request, if I'm having a stroke and you're going to do all that CBD also get a speech pathologist to make sure I can swallow.

Ken Brown  
Yes, we will do all that if you're having a stroke, but I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but we're going to finish the show first.

Eric Rieger  
Cool.

Ken Brown  
So, I mean, if it starts happening, try to do it towards the tail end of the show. You know, do you know that I've had four heart attacks since we've started this. This whole podcast show but I just suck it up, move on. I've had all kinds of health issues.

Eric Rieger  
That Believe it or not is going to go down to the books is our first short episode. 

Ken Brown  
Well, we want to do a short episode because I feel like we're getting a little too sciency and I want your feedback. I mean, quite honestly, do you like the science you not like the science? Do you want the guest? Do you not want the guest? But when I find stuff like this, I have to let it out. And if you gave me Two hours, I'd be talking for two hours. So this is just a way to control the amount of vomit that I do right here. But it's so cool. How are we not doing this? 

Eric Rieger  
I don't know. But I think I think will change though. And thanks every single week and thanks to Paul. we're gaining viewers. We're gaining listeners. This last week was a huge spike in the last seven shows. So thank you.

Ken Brown  
And you want to know what people are reaching out on their Insta they're messaging me on Instagram and they're asking medical questions. I love that I'm we're going to do shows on that stuff. So if you've got questions, let's do this. 

Eric Rieger  
Definitely. that's gonna do it for episode number 34. That was strokes and the endocannabinoid system. We will in the show notes, go ahead and add unrefined bakery, their offer is still good. So save 20% if you want to have keto friendly, no gluten, paleo friendly, whatever kind of meal that you're after, and you feel like you can't have bread, they've got the solution for you unrefinedbakery.com use code, gutcheck and save 20% 

Ken Brown  
Yeah,so once again, please do us a big favor. What we're trying to do is really spread this message of functional health. share it with everybody, get people calling in, get people asking because we've got the resources. we're gaining a little bit of traction here and this can be really fun. This was such an eye opener for me. Endocannabinoid system and strokes. All because somebody said my dad had a stroke 

Ken Brown  
and Tim power thanks for reaching out. certainly appreciate it. gut check project. In the books go to gut check project. com share, like and share and we appreciate it.


What is Gut Check Project?

Improve your health & quality of life, find the truth between natural and medical science. Join Ken and Co-host Eric Rieger on the GCP, and get an unfiltered approach to your health as they host guests from all over the world. Nothing is off limits. Step in and get your gut checked...Ken (Kenneth Brown, MD) is a board certified gastroenterologist that turned his private practice into a hotbed of innovation. Ken has long been intrigued on how to best care for his patients. He challenged big pharma and developed an all natural solution (Atrantil) for bloating and symptoms of IBS. That lead him to dig deeper and find more answers and uses for polyphenols. Then he began to help his patients that were suffering from inflammation, not only in their guts, but their entire bodies, including neuro/brain & immune issues. Dr. Brown has tackled serious issues with natural and proven methods that his patients love him for. But he is not finished. The Gut Check Project exists to find better answers for you in all aspects of health. Experts in all fields of study, industry, and interest will be found on the GCP. Eric (Eric Rieger, CRNA) is Ken's business partner and actually met Ken while delivering anesthesia to his patients in 2012. Eric saw first hand the passion that Ken had for his patients, his support staff, and for the answers that could improve people's lives. Eric enjoys science and research swell, and has a passion for helping people find sensible means to take care of themselves, but always armed with the best information. Join the GCP and SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE!!!!