Learn True Health with Ashley James 389 Natural Pain Relief Using Nootropics, The Safety, and Efficacy of CBD, Kratom, Pine Bark Extract, Holy Basil, Tulsi, Melatonin, Tart Chery Juice, PPQ and Torien To Support Nerve Health, Sleep, Inflammation, and Tissue Healing with David Tomen
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Sunlighten Sauna: Call for more info and mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James for our special listener discount!
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Ashley's favorite CBD tincture: Jay Hartenbach is giving Learn True Health listeners 15% off on his CBD products, so be sure to type in the discount code LTH at checkout. https://medterracbd.com/ Listen to my interview about MedTerra CBD: https://www.learntruehealth.com/cbd
Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH to get 10% off your jug of concentrated magnesium soak at LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com Listen to Ashley's interview with Kristen Bowen about the therapeutic powers of soaking in the right kind of magnesium: https://www.learntruehealth.com/magnesium-foot-soak
Order link for the jug of mag soak (coupon code LTH) https://livingthegoodlifenaturally.com/product/magnesium-jug
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David's Site:
Nootropics For Pain Relief
https://www.learntruehealth.com/nootropics-pain-relief
Highlights:
- What Nootropics and different Nootropics for pain relief
- Different natural pain relief supplements
- Benefits of using lion’s mane and where it’s from
- Benefits of encapsulating own supplements
- Benefits of kratom and other uses for kratom
- What rhodiola rosea is and other uses
- Benefits of using PQQ
- Benefits of using CBD oil and its difference hemp oil
- How NAC works
- How to get consultation from David Tomen and what you get from his consultation
In this episode, David Tomen will share with us today about different nootropics for pain relief. He shares where each nootropic is from and what other benefits does the nootropics have aside from pain relief. He will also share with us different scientific studies and researches that support the use of nootropics for pain relief.
[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health Podcast.
Today’s a really exciting interview for those who are looking for pain relief naturally. David Tomen, the Nootropics Expert is back on the show with us. We do mention a bunch of supplements and herbs that you can use to support yourself. One of them being CBD. My favorite company to get CBD from is medterracbd.com. I had the founder on the show. You can listen to that episode by searching CBD on my website learntruehealth.com. We have a coupon code from them. They’re very generously giving us a big discount to all the listeners. So go to medterracbd.com and use the coupon code LTH at checkout.
Why I like their CBD? It is organic, it is very clean and they guarantee that you will pass a drug test because it is just pure CBD. Now they will be coming out in the future with a whole plant supplement which has all the other wonderful phytonutrients in it that are also very healthy and supportive. So just go to their website, check it out medterracbd.com. You can also listen to the episode I did on that. I have several episodes with doctors and experts in CBD so you can fully dive into understanding that whole wonderful world. David Tomen talks a lot about different herbs. Some of them are controversial and that’s okay because he is all about the science. So on his website, , he sites every single scientific study and research paper when he discusses different herbs and supplements so that he can site exactly the dosages that you can safely take. Thank you so much for being a listener.
If you haven’t heard already, because I have mentioned it in the last few episodes, we are coming out with a very exciting membership the Learn True Health Home Kitchen membership. You will be able to join it and learn how to cook delicious, healthy whole food plant-based meals for you and your whole family. So if you’re looking to go completely plant-based, that will be a fantastic resource for you. Or if you just love to learn how to introduce more wonderful vegetables into your diet and eat even healthier, you will absolutely love our membership. Go ahead and join the Learn True Health Facebook group by searching Learn True Health on Facebook and go to learntruehealth.com and join our newsletter so you will be abreast of all of the news that comes your way as we launch the new membership. We’ve been filming and it has been so much fun. I can’t wait for you to learn all these delicious whole food plant-based recipes. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.
Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 389.
[0:03:29] Ashley James: I am so excited today to have back on the show, David Tomen. He is the NootropicsExpert.com. He was on the show in episode 362 and 374. If you haven’t listened to those episodes, you definitely have to go back check out David Tomen’s story as to why he became the nootropics expert. For those who don’t nootropics are and are just getting into, this is their first taste of the David Tomen experience. David, can you start by sharing what are you nootropics?
[0:04:00] David Tomen: Hi Ashley.
[0:04:02] Ashley James: Hi.
[0:04:03] David Tomen: Thank you for having me back. Nootropics are any type of dietary supplement that helps your brain.
[0:04:09] Ashley James: Exactly. So, all the good stuff that supports the cardiovascular system to the brain that supports the balance of chemicals in the brain. Everything that just supports the neurological system
[0:04:22] David Tomen: What makes your brain work. Yeah. Our brain is, as far as I know, is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of. The deeper I get into the neuroscience the more, I’m no longer blown away just because it’s just so incredibly interesting and deep and we’re a long way from figuring it out. But the little bit that we have figured out, the neuroscience that I have available now and that I’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of links to clinical studies and all the stuff that I’ve done on NootropicsExpert.com is just supporting what we already, we know that this stuff works and now we’re starting to understand why it works.
[0:05:17] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s so cool. I love it. Well, people have been using for thousands of years, have been using herbs, natural nootropics. Now we’re understanding why they work. That’s pretty amazing. Everything from mushroom and herbs, minerals to how now we see why these supplements are supporting the body and supporting the neurosystem in a really positive why. I think they just recently came out with some discovery about the brain that I found fascinating. You probably already heard of it but there’s a type of cell in the brain that is responsible for cleaning up the old tissue. We really want these cells to be happy because when those cells are not happy, they actually start to digest healthy tissue in the brain. One thing that causes them to go haywire and digest healthy tissue in the brain is lack of sleep. Have you heard of this, that lack of sleep causes the brain to basically eat itself? So something as simple as sleep is highly supportive of brain health. So, of course, that’s one thing that you teach is all the things on your amazing website nootropicsexpert.com, how we can maintain a lifestyle to promote the best brain health possible.
[0:06:45] David Tomen: Including how to get a good night’s sleep.
[0:06:47] Ashley James: Yes. Exactly. Because there are nootropics to support help us –
[0:06:51] David Tomen: To help us sleep.
[0:06:52] Ashley James: Yeah. Something as simple, almost everyone know what melatonin is, is melatonin a nootropic?
[0:06:57] David Tomen: Yes. I consider it a nootropic but I wouldn’t use melatonin. The reason why is because melatonin is, well it goes 5HTPN then serotonin and then melatonin. So your brain naturally produces melatonin, but when you go to buy a melatonin supplement, almost every single melatonin supplement on the market is synthetic. The chemical process that they go through to make melatonin is just scary reading the thing. The other thing that they found out, well a couple of other things. The melatonin supplements, they’re dosed too high because you only use like 0.5 to 0.8 of melatonin naturally. These things are like 3 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg so they’re way, way overdosed. But the other thing is that the label doesn’t jive with what’s in the capsule. Somebody actually did a clinical study and they bought a bunch of melatonin supplements. I actually linked to this in one of my posts. They bought like 25 different melatonin supplements. Then they tested them in a lab to find out how much melatonin was in each capsule. What they found out that it ranges anywhere from -75% to 450% more than what was stated in the label.
[0:08:24] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:08:26] David Tomen: So, if you buy a 3 mg melatonin supplement and the thing is actually got 50 mg of melatonin in it, you can really mess yourself up. The other thing that they found is some of these manufacturers were actually putting serotonin in the supplement which is not even legal.
[0:08:47] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:08:51] David Tomen: Yeah. So don’t buy a melatonin supplement. Use something natural like tart cherry juice which is a natural source of melatonin. It’s a lot gentler and it will help you sleep.
[0:09:01] Ashley James: That is so true. I love tart cherry juice. It really does knock me out. That’s so funny. I also found that chlorella and spirulina, they also help the body produce melatonin because of the amino acids in it I guess. That’s pretty amazing that if I eat them I get better sleep or if I take tart cherry juice I get better sleep.
[0:09:26] David Tomen: It’s just a gentler way of introducing melatonin into your system.
[0:09:32] Ashley James: I love that. We weren’t even going to talk about sleep but I was just so fascinated by what I heard that when we don’t get enough sleep our brain digests itself. Since we’re all concerned about dementia, so many of us have seen our grandparents or are parents go through dementia or aunts and uncles. It is something that we want to obviously avoid and prevent. We can prevent it with natural medicine and understanding the nootropics that we can use to support the brain. Now, one thing that I’m interested in is helping the listeners who are in pain. Because when we are in pain, we are willing to do anything to be out of pain. I know you have a personal experience of that. Would you like to share to the listener what has happened recently?
[0:10:19] David Tomen: Four weeks ago I had my second major back surgery. It’s a laminectomy. The neurosurgeon did a couple of other things where five years prior to this I had a spinal fusion. So they put two rods attached by two screws each. So two rods and four screws in my lumbar between L4 and L5 to fuse those vertebrae together because they had degraded so much that I almost ended up in a paralyzed in a wheelchair because it had just worn out. So five years later, well this started about two years ago, the pain started to come back. Went and did the scans and discovered that the section right about that is falling apart. You know how you can look at a CT scan and an MRI of your spine? You know how your spinal column comes down? It’s nice and clear all the way down. That’s the nerves come down from your brain. The section between L3 and L4 was black. Completely black. I was in excruciating pain. So, what the surgeon did is he went in and he went in and scraped that all out and he cut off some bone. You can imagine the kind of pain that leaves you. Now, fortunately for me, I had extraordinary sciatic pain dealt down both legs down to my toes. That’s gone. But now I’m just dealing with where the surgery was done and that’s getting incrementally better a little bit day by day. I honestly think that I’m recovering a lot faster from this kind of major surgery than most people do just because of the stuff that I’m taking.
[0:12:12] Ashley James: Oh, I bet. Has the surgeon noticed that your healing has been faster?
[0:12:17] David Tomen: I haven’t talked to him since he did the surgery four weeks ago. I see him in a couple of weeks. It’s just never occurred for me to ask him.
[0:12:30] Ashley James: Well, that would be interesting. Did you expect me to have healed this far along or how many weeks did you expect this to heal? Because I have heard of other people that have been on really good supplements and really good diet and that they’ve impressed the surgeons greatly with their quick ability to heal. I even know a guy who broke both legs. He changed his whole diet to make sure it as mineral-rich, vegetables, and he healed his legs weeks, weeks before the doctors expected him to make a full recovery. He made a full recovery weeks and weeks before. It was funny because all the doctors were saying, ‘you can’t speed up your bones healing by eating better.’ Yes, you can. That’s so funny.
[0:13:25] David Tomen: I’ve got a friend in Los Angeles that owns a nootropics company. It’s one of my favorite nootropics stacks. Within the last year, he was in a major traffic accident. He just broke a lot of stuff. It was supposed to take him, the doctors told him it was going to take him eight or nine months to recover. He did in seven weeks.
[0:13:51] Ashley James: Nice.
[0:13:53] David Tomen: Just using the supplement that he sells. One of the things that I love about the supplement that he sells is it’s loaded with lion’s mane. Lion’s mane mushroom and lion’s mane mushroom just heals nerves. That’s one of its big claim to fame. They actually did a, there was a lion’s mane mushroom, I think it was someplace in Malaysia. They studied on rats in the lab. I kind of cringe when I think about how they did this, but they cut the gluteal nerves crippling the rats so the rats couldn’t walk. Then they fed them lion’s mane-laced water for the next two or three weeks. Within two weeks, these rats were walking again because their gluteal nerves had mended back together again and healed.
[0:14:53] Ashley James: That is so cool. It’s so cool. The animal cruelty is horrific but the results are great that they made a full recovery because of lion’s mane. Yeah, I just yesterday made a soup. I was shopping at our local coop called PCC. The beautiful mushrooms. All the wonderful mushrooms they have this time of year. Fall is so great for mushrooms. So, I’ve got lion’s mane. I’ve never had lion’s mane fresh before and I got lion’s mane, shiitake, oyster and chanterelles and onion, carrot and celery. I went home and I cut everything up and put it into my big, big, big, big soup pot. I simmered it for a few hours and I added some herbs like sage and thyme and rosemary. Oh my gosh. This soup is amazing. It felt so healing and so supportive of the immune system. That’s why I was doing it. It was immune system tea or like a soup. That’s like an immune system soup. Now you’re talking about how it’s healing or a startup to the nervous system so that’s even better. Maybe I’m a little smarter today.
[0:16:07] David Tomen: You probably are. Absolutely.
[0:16:12] Ashley James: So what did you do after the surgery to support yourself in decreasing the pain because obviously, your body is going through healing a wound, a big wound. There’s a lot for your body to heal and in the process, you must be in pain.
[0:16:28] David Tomen: Incredible pain. One of the things that I found is extremely effective it was kratom, which is really really controversial these days because the states are trying to ban it because they say it’s an opiate and it’s really. But it acts like an opioid receptors. I find that for me, kratom affects different people in different ways, for me it takes about 8 grams of kratom equals about 10 mg of an opioid, a prescription opioid. That’s how powerful it is. But people use kratom for not only pain but they use it for insomnia, they use it as an anxiolytic, my wife uses it to help her sleep. Then she uses a different strain to help her wake up in the morning. There’s a lot of different things you can do with this herb. The thing is that it’s completely natural. It comes from a tropical deciduous tree that’s native to the coffee family in Southeast Asia where they’ve been using it for thousands of years. The workers there use it as a natural remedy. They make tea out of it. They use it throughout their workday for energy and for pain relief.
[0:17:50] Ashley James: It’s related to the coffee plant so there’s some natural caffeine in it, right?
[0:17:56] David Tomen: There’s no caffeine in it.
[0:17:57] Ashley James: Oh, there’s no caffeine. That’s very interesting.
[0:17:58] David Tomen: There is not. But what it does is it affects the dopamine D1 receptors in your brain which helps boost energy. It also affects serotonin in norepinephrine pathways in the central nervous system. So that’s where you get relief from anxiety and depression. It’s an agonist of three different opioid receptors in your brain, which is where the pain relief comes from.
[0:18:29] Ashley James: Fascinating. Yeah. I was a little wary about kratom when I started to see these signs pop up in all the smoke shops. Not that I frequent smoke shops but you know, I’m driving by them. They have this sign outside that says, ‘Kratom sold here.’ I’m thinking, anything that a smoke shop sells is probably not good for you, right? So my red flags were up. But then I watched the documentary, A Leaf of Faith on Netflix. It’s still on Netflix. I really recommend watching A Leaf of Faith for anyone who is battling pain or has a friend or family member that’s battling pain or opioid addiction because it is a fascinating dive into the political fight on kratom and how many people are seeing results. Then, we question why if it’s all-natural and people actually get off of pharmaceutical drugs, because they get relief from kratom and there’s no deaths and overdoses. It doesn’t harm people like drugs do so it’s safe and natural and doesn’t profit the pharmaceutical companies. Then why is the government trying to shut it down but totally fine with pharmaceutical drugs that might hurt people?
[0:19:41] David Tomen: Because it’s a direct competitor to prescription medication.
[0:19:46] Ashley James: There’s a little conspiracy theory there. We got to question everything. We should always do our research and look into things to see if it’s right for us or not.
[0:20:00] David Tomen: There’s tons of misinformation out there. They’re saying they’re trying to ban it because it’s an opioid. It’s not. It’s a partial agonist of certain opioid receptors but it’s not a true opioid. In fact, it’s not an opioid. It doesn’t cause the respiratory effects that a prescription opioid does which is the reason why you can overdose on it. People do get in trouble with it for a couple of reasons. One, because its popularity has exploded that everybody and his brother is selling it. You can buy it in the local gas station which I do not recommend that you do because people are putting into these capsules stuff that should not be in those capsules. Yeah. It’s scary. You can physically get yourself in a lot of trouble if you don’t get the real stuff. So you just have to be very, very cautious about where you get it from.
[0:21:02] Ashley James: Where do you get it from?
[0:21:04] David Tomen: I use a company in Oregon called Phytoextractum. There’s another company in Pennsylvania that my wife gets it from and I can’t remember the name of the company, but I’ve got a link to Phytoextractum in my kratom review on the website. We’ve been buying it from them for years and years and they’ve been consistent. They test their stuff every which way because they’ve gotten into trouble one time. You know when one stuff is contaminated with salmonella? They said, “That will never ever happen again because our reputation is too important.” So now they test everything. They’ve got several different strains of kratom but it’s all absolutely pure. So, we buy the powder and make capsules out of it. But people also make out of it. When we first started using kratom, I didn’t know how to make capsules. So I would just put two or 3 grams in a yogurt and that’s how I would consume it which is fine. Now we make our won capsules.
[0:22:19] Ashley James: Right, because you get a jar of this powder. It’s a leaf, right? Or is it a –
[0:22:25] David Tomen: No, it’s a leaf. It’s just the leaf. So they just grind up the leaf so it’s a fine powder. Some people say you can smoke it. I wouldn’t smoke it. I don’t see the point in smoking it. I don’t know why you would smoke it. I don’t see any benefit in smoking it. You want to swallow the thing and digest it. That’s how you get the most benefit from it. Yeah. Just stick it in some yogurt or put it in some juice or a smoothie or make capsules of it. Learn what the different strains are and what they do. Then choose the strain that other people say helps them with the sleep or helps them with anxiety or helps them with pain. I find there is one strain in particular that helps me with pain.
[0:23:16] Ashley James: What strain is that?
[0:23:20] David Tomen: It’s just called Bali. It’s called Green Bali. The one from Phytoextractum. There’s another one called Red Bali that my wife uses to help her sleep. She doesn’t like using Ambien so she uses that instead. You see testimonials over and over and over and over again where people are using it to withdraw from opioid addiction, which is amazing. It really is amazing. I’ve actually got a link to a clinical study wherein the lab, they help people withdraw from opiates with a lot fewer withdrawal symptoms just by using kratom.
[0:24:11] Ashley James: Is that because it comes in and attaches with some opiate receptors? So it helps in that way?
[0:24:18] David Tomen: Yeah. It just attaches to them in a different way. I think on a different area of the receptor. A neuroreceptor is just not a neuroreceptor. There’s actually different attachment points. Kratom seems to attach to a different part of the opiate receptor than what prescription opiates do. According to the studies that I’ve seen, that’s how it works. I’ve never ever gotten high out of it, ever.
[0:24:50] Ashley James: That was my next question. What does it feel like to be on kratom?
[0:24:54] David Tomen: Less pain and less anxiety. You’re just in a better mood. You know, people talk about getting high off of it. I don’t know how to do it. You would have to use so much of it that I just like they’re talking 25 grams kratom and I just can’t imagine consuming that much. You take a 00 capsule. If you cram it, jam it jam it really really full that’s a gram. So that it’ll be like swallowing at least 25 or 30 capsules all at once. Why you want to do that, I have no idea.
[0:25:45] Ashley James: What’s the dose that you take for your pain right now managing your pain for the surgery that you’re recovering from?
[0:25:53] David Tomen: 8 to 10 grams.
[0:25:55] Ashley James: So, you make your own capsules. It’s about the size of your regular supplement capsule?
[0:26:01] David Tomen: Yeah. A large capsule.
[0:26:03] Ashley James: Okay. So a large supplement capsule. How many of those a day do you take and how long does it last?
[0:26:08] David Tomen: It lasts for about four hours. Depending on the level of pain, anywhere from 8 to 12 capsules.
[0:26:16] Ashley James: Every four hours?
[0:26:18] David Tomen: No. I do probably twice a day. Sometimes once a day.
[0:26:20] Ashley James: Maybe two to four capsules twice a day?
[0:26:25] David Tomen: No. I would do like eight capsules at once. Like in the morning maybe in the afternoon another eight capsules.
[0:26:37] Ashley James: That sounds like maybe a tablespoon of the powder I mean just to give us an idea.
[0:26:44] David Tomen: You know, people talk about tablespoons.
[0:26:48] Ashley James: I think a tablespoon is half an ounce like a shot glass, I think.
[0:26:54] David Tomen: I got a little scale by Blade that measures milligrams so I know what a gram looks like in powder piled on a scale. But if you fill up one of this 00 capsules, you’re looking at about 750 to 800 mg if it’s not packed too tight, 800 mg of powder. So, how much would that fill up a tablespoon? I don’t know. I never tried.
[0:27:20] Ashley James: Or like a regular-sized soup spoon. I’m just thinking like if someone could have an understanding of how much they’d put in their smoothie if it would be like just a spoonful.
[0:27:31] David Tomen: The best thing to do Ashley is to get one of those little scales.
[0:27:35] Ashley James: Got it.
[0:27:36] David Tomen: They’re $10.00 on Amazon, $10.00 or $12.00. The one that I have is made by, yeah it’s called Blade. It takes two AAA batteries. You switch it on and you pile some powder on it. It tells you how many grams it is or how many milligrams. Right down to the milligram.
[0:28:06] Ashley James: Got it.
[0:28:06] David Tomen: So I used to measure stuff like that but now I just kind of eyeball it because I know how much would a gram looks like.
[0:28:14] Ashley James: Right, and you figured out how much of that goes into the capsules. So it’s about eight capsules every four hours.
[0:28:22] David Tomen: I started out with a 20, what is it 20 or 25 capsules? Just this little capsule machine. That’s what I used for years. Now I’ve got one that does 100 capsules.
[0:28:33] Ashley James: You have a machine? Wow. I used to, when I was a kid, my first naturopath was Dr. D’Adamo, the creator of Eat Right for your Blood Type Diet. After seeing him, our whole family changed the whole diet and went dairy-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, yeast-free all that. He sent us home with a big powder because he had a compounding nutraceuticals clinic basically. So he compounded all of the nasty tasting, he just said drink it and I couldn’t handle it because it was raw B-vitamins you’re trying to get a 6-year-old to drink raw B-vitamins. I was brave. I chugged it and it felt it’s the most horrible taste ever.
[0:29:18] David Tomen: Well, that’s another reason why you want to encapsulate because it tastes like crap.
[0:29:22] Ashley James: Right. So he said, ‘you’re not going to drink it? We’ll make capsules.’ My entire childhood I made these capsules by hand. There was no machine back in the 80s to make our capsules for us. So I’m just laughing now that you can go on Amazon and buy a machine to make your own capsules because I sat there by hand for hours making our supplement capsules.
[0:29:42] David Tomen: You can get a 100-capsule machine from anywhere $14.00 to $20.00.
[0:29:51] Ashley James: That is so great.
[0:29:52] David Tomen: You can buy the capsules now. You can buy the capsules either joined or separated. The separated capsules are a little bit more expensive because they have the short end in one bag and the long end in the other bag. So you just dump on one side of the capsule machine, you just dump a pile of the long part of the capsules and you shake it around and it slides into the holes. Then you dump off the excess back into the bag. Then you do the same side for the short end and then you just dump the powder on top of that. Use a credit card or something like that to spread it around to fill up the capsules. You get a little tamping thing to tamp it down then you fill a little bit more, tamp it down, fill a little bit more. Then you just put the top on and you squeeze it together. Take it off and capsules.
[0:30:42] Ashley James: That sounds so cool
[0:30:42] David Tomen: It takes me 10 minutes to make 100 capsules.
[0:30:47] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That is so neat. To think of all the things that we could take. One of our listeners, Naomi, bought some herbs because she wanted to do her own parasite cleanse. She didn’t want to pay the big bucks to the big companies. So she got ground up and all organic and all good stuff, all the herbs. The clove and all that stuff. She made all her own capsules. I just thought how ingenious is that? If we cannot necessarily afford to take these herbs and buy them from the companies that are obviously making a profit, we cut out the middleman and go find where we can find the organic, high-quality herb ourselves and make our own capsules. But we should always make sure that we’re not taking too much, right? We should really be careful about the quality and the chain of custody. That there’s no mold on it. There’s lots of things that we need to do. If we’re going to make our own capsules, we have to really make sure that at every step in the way, that what we’re putting in our capsules is safe and clean. That’s why I like buying from companies because they’ve done the testing. I always buy from supplement companies that have done the testing for me.
[0:32:01] David Tomen: Some of these companies you can go to their website and actually download a certificate of analysis for specific batches. The certificate of analysis is just, it’s a third-party lab that test whatever is in those capsules and they tell you on the certificate of analysis exactly what you’re getting. So look for companies that are willing to do that. Or you can either download it from their website where they say that it’s available if you ask their customer service. But I encapsulate all kinds of other stuff for a couple of reasons. One, it’s less expensive like L-Tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine and [unintelligible] adult ADD. I use stimulants so I need to raise my dopamine so I use L-Tyrosine or N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine. It’s better for me to get the powder because it’s cheaper and I make my own capsules. The other reason I like making my own capsules because I don’t want any “other ingredients.” When you take a look at a supplement label, you look down at the end of the supplement label and there is this part that says other ingredients. You see things like magnesium stearate and titanium dioxide and dicalcium phosphate and silica. I don’t want that stuff because not only is it not what I’m setting out to put in my body but this stuff is actually bad for you. Like magnesium stearate for example. Nearly every single supplement that you find on a shelf in the local vitamin shop has gotten magnesium stearate on the label. Why? It’s because it’s used as a flow agent. It helps speed up the encapsulation process. It stops the powder from sticking to mechanical equipment, right? So it’s helping the manufacturer but it’s not helping me.
[0:33:58] Ashley James: What are the negative effects of taking it?
[0:34:01] David Tomen: It suppresses your natural killer T cells which is a key component of your immune system. You don’t want to do that. Titanium dioxide is another classic one that you see on nearly every supplement. They used it to make things look more appealing color. The problem with it is that it leads to mitochondrial dysfunction. It damages astrocyte cells which prevents them from being able to absorb glutamate. So that induces oxidative stress and that causes mitochondrial damage. Another one I just came across that’s a little bit less. You don’t see it as often but it just happens to be on a nootropic stack that I’m reviewing right now that will remain nameless until I publish this thing but it’s called dicalcium phosphate. Dicalcium phosphate is used to help bulk out stuff like as a filler. So if you’re selling a supplement that’s 5 mg, you know how big 5 mg is?
[0:35:09] Ashley James: It’s small. Tiny.
[0:35:13] David Tomen: It’s teeny, teeny, tiny, right? You can’t get a 5 mg capsule. You won’t be able to pick the thing up. It’s so small. So they’ve got to put a filler in to fill the rest of the capsule. You can use things like rice flour, which is fine. But these guys use dicalcium phosphate. The thing is produced from either sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid.
[0:35:38] Ashley James: What does it do to the body?
[0:35:44] David Tomen: It’s often radioactive.
[0:35:46] Ashley James: What?
[0:35:47] David Tomen: Yeah. Well, it’s just hopefully your body just excretes it without doing any damage. But you’d really don’t want that thing going through your system.
[0:35:56] Ashley James: So besides rice gram what are some safe fillers? There’s one supplement I take that uses cinnamon as a filler. I mean it’s a blood sugar support. I don’t take it.
[0:36:07] David Tomen: Yeah, yeah. Something like cinnamon would be fine. Rice flour is fine. I mean, there’s only a couple of fillers that are natural. The encouraging thing Ashley is that this has been so pervasive for so long that now, once every two or three weeks I see a new supplement company pop up. So I take a look at their label to see what’s there. I find that a couple of them are producing a nootropics supplement that have no other ingredients which is a miracle. That’s one of the reasons why I love Opti-Nutra that makes Mind Lab Pro and Performance Lab line of supplements is because they don’t have. The only other ingredients are the capsule, which is made out of tapioca, and sometimes rice flour as a filler. That’s it. There’s no other ingredients. That is still very, very unusual. So that’s the other reason why I make my own capsules because I don’t have that stuff in there.
[0:37:14] Ashley James: Very cool. Now besides kratom, what other supplements are you taking to support the reduction of pain as your body is healing from the surgery?
[0:37:27] David Tomen: That’s the main one. There’s a lot of other stuff that is helping that too. I use Mind Lab Pro every day and that’s got lion’s mane in it. So we already talked about lion’s mane and we know how that helps your body heal. There are others and pine bark extract. Pine bark extract comes from the French maritime. It’s called French Maritime Pine Bark. It’s native to the Mediterranean region. The extract of that pine bark holds a thing called proanthocyanidins. It does all kinds of things. Improves blood flow in your brain which means your brain is getting more oxygen and more nutrients but it also helps tame inflammation. When you tame inflammation you reduce pain because a lot of pain comes from inflammation one way or another. So pine bark extract helps in that. My very first experience and I just thought of this when I was researching when I was getting ready for our talk, my first experience with a nootropic for pain and I didn’t realize it was going on at the time and a couple of years later I realize what was going on. Choline citrate. I used to go to a rheumatologist. Because I’m a writer, I have excruciating should pain. The kind of shoulder pain that massages hardly helped. The doctor used to take big needles and inject stuff into my shoulders to try to help me relieve the pain and it wasn’t working. I was just in excruciating pain. But at the time, I realize I needed to boost acetic choline in my brain. One of the easiest ways is to do that. One of the cheapest ways to do that is with choline citrate. All it is choline combined with citrate which is an isocitric acid. The choline and the citrate combined, they contribute to the synthesis of acetic choline in your brain. The other thing that it does for some reason is it helps relieve muscle pain. I find that you have to take quite a bit of this stuff. Like typically, other acetic choline precursors like Alpha-GPC or CDP-Choline you take 350 mg or 600 mg. With choline citrate, you would take like 5 or 6 grams because it’s not very bioavailable. But choline is an essential nutrient. I find that when I was using it I would have less muscle pain. I didn’t realize that until I started researching how it worked in my body. I went, ‘Oh, that’s the reason why I’m having less pain.’
[0:40:55] Ashley James: Cool. So you think your body was deficient in it?
[0:41:00] David Tomen: Yeah. I know it was.
[0:41:02] Ashley James: So, does choline deficiency cause muscle pain?
[0:41:07] David Tomen: Well it can because acetic choline is your body’s signaling neurotransmitter. When you move your finger, that signal is acetic choline. Any muscle movement is signaled by acetic choline. So if there’s not enough acetic choline, what’s going to happen? You’re going to have slow reflexes, your brain’s not going to work as well and your muscles aren’t going to work as well either. There was a clinical study that researches found that providing 2 grams of choline prior to exercise prevented a fall in choline levels and raised choline levels above baseline values for up to two hours after exercise. The researchers found that choline citrate and choline bitartrate were equally effective as well as their two inexpensive supplements that you can buy. One randomized placebo-controlled study found improvements in running times by a significant amount over a 20-mile course when compared to those that were using a placebo compared to the people that were using choline citrate or choline bitartrate. So the dosage of choline citrate is 500 mg to 3000 mg per day.
So the other things that you can use for pain is Holy Basil. Holy Basil is it’s a member of the mint family. It’s also called tulsi or the incomparable one in Hindu. I mean they’ve used it in Ayurveda and the Greeks, the Romans, the Siddha, the Unani. They all used the Holy Basil for things like anxiety, cough, asthma, diarrhea, live dysentery, arthritis, eye diseases, eye [unintelligible], indigestion. I could go on and on and on. Even snake bites. Snake and scorpion bites and malaria. But they found that Holy Basil also helps back pain. It’s probably because Holy Basil is a very very potent antioxidant. It’s a natural COX-2 inhibitor. There are studies that show that some of the compounds included in Holy Basil including eugenol and rosemarinic acid have been compared to ibuprofen, naproxen, and aspirin in their pain-relieving qualities which is pretty amazing.
[0:44:09] Ashley James: How do we take Holy Basil? Is that like an extract, an essential oil?
[0:44:17] David Tomen: You can use in essential oil but I’ve got more experience and I think that it’s easier to note how much is in a capsule of an extract than it is in an essential oil. So the recommended dosage for Holy Basil extract is 300 to 2000 mg a day. You can also make Holy Basil tea just by pouring boiling water over fresh Holy Basil leaves and let it steep for five minutes. Of course, you don’t know how much you’re getting when you do it that way but it works.
[0:44:56] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s fairly safe to make teas. It’s hard to overdose or take too much of it from tea.
[0:45:02] David Tomen: Yeah. It’s highly bioavailable when you do it that way too. But I like capsules. I like extracts because I know exactly how much I’m putting in my body. Rhodiola rosea is German researchers found that rhodiola works really well for pain, headaches, [unintelligible], hemorrhoids. They use it as a stimulant, as an anti-inflammatory. I’m trying to remember why rhodiola works so well for pain because I’ve only studied it for how it works in the brain. One research team found that rhodiola increased the number of neurons in the hippocampus in the people that they were treating. When you increase the number of neurons, of course, your cognition is better ad your memory is better. It plays a role in saving injured neurons in the hippocampus. Some of the neurological diseases that we’ve talked about earlier come from problems with the hippocampus. You can prevent it at least in part by using something like rhodiola rosea which helps save injured neurons.
[0:46:32] Ashley James: Yeah. I’m remembering that you have a whole article on recovering after stroke. Preventing stroke obviously, but with someone who had a stroke that there’s nootropics to heal the brain after a traumatic brain injury. We’ve talked about that in our past episodes.
[0:46:52] David Tomen: Taurine is an amino acid that is used by athletes. It’s also found in things like Red Bull. But most people find that using taurine, they’ve got sharper eyesight and their muscle pain is reduced and they’re less depressed. Any insulin resistance that’s present goes down.
[0:47:21] Ashley James: That makes me wonder if someone who has taurine deficiency would their insulin resistance get worse? Would their eyesight get worse? When you say things get better because someone takes taurine.
[0:47:36] David Tomen: Probably. It kind of like makes sense doesn’t it?
[0:47:39] Ashley James: It’s a nutrient deficiency that’s causing these problems?
[0:47:43] David Tomen: Yeah. So you just have to try. If you’re lucky enough to figure out what that nutrient deficiency is. If you can’t figure it out then you just start experiment with different things using a, you know doing a search of a site like Nootropics Expert and finding things like, ‘oh, okay. I’ll try taurine.’ They also found that taurine supplementation works for treating autism.
[0:48:17] Ashley James: Why is that?
[0:48:19] David Tomen: Autism spectrum disorder is thought to be associated with oxidative stress caused by your active oxygen species. So it kind of makes sense that oxidative stress is a potential target for therapeutic intervention for autism. Researchers in New York tested 66 children aged 1 ½ to 11 ½ years who are diagnosed with autism. The controls in this study were kids with their healthy siblings and parents. The studies found that 21 out of 66 autistic children had low taurine concentration in their blood.
[0:49:13] Ashley James: What about the researchers’ families? Did the families also have?
[0:49:17] David Tomen: No. They had normal. Normal taurine levels. So the researchers conclude that the data implied that taurine may be a valid biomarker for at least some contributing to autism. So will it help? Don’t know. All you can do is try it. I’ve consulted with a couple of parents with kids that have got autism and that’s one of the things suggested. I’m not sure. I haven’t got any feedback from them yet on whether it’s helped or not.
[0:49:50] Ashley James: Interesting. I just did an interview yesterday with the doctor who created the GAPS diet. Dr. Campbell-McBride, Her diet is about healing the gut to heal the brain. She’s a neurologist. She healed her son’s. When her son was 2 years old had autism. He totally healed his gut with his diet and his autism went away. So she’s had really great success having reverse autism. Her diet is so high in these amino acids like taurine because the first phase of the diet, we shouldn’t even call it a diet. It’s a really strict program that lasts 1 ½ to 2 years. Then they kind of get weaned off of it because their gut is healed. Then they go back to almost all food after that. But the first phase is just bone broth basically and meat broths high in these amino acids. She had children that has completely reversing autism. I wonder if that’s one of those things that they were really deficient in those amino acids. That was what was –
[0:51:01] David Tomen: It sounds like it.
[0:51:03] Ashley James: Yeah. Interesting.
[0:51:05] David Tomen: Another thing that you can use for pain is PQQ. PQQ is you often see it combined with CoQ10 because those two help make ATP for healing mitochondria. We also find that PQQ promotes the growth of new mitochondria in the brain. It’s the only supplement that we know that does that. It helps grow neurons because it boosts the production of nerve growth factors in your brain. But we found that if you’re dealing with fibromyalgia you might get some benefit alleviating your chronic pain with PQQ. There was one clinical that the researchers concluded that supplementing with PQQ improves C quality and duration, mood improved due to less fatigue and appetite and pain all showed improvement.
[0:52:15] Ashley James: Cool.
[0:52:17] David Tomen: Yeah. Another one that we haven’t talked about is CBD oil.
[0:52:21] Ashley James: Yeah. I was just waiting for that. A lot of people have good results.
[0:52:27] David Tomen: Yeah. A lot of people do. I don’t use it. I’ve tried it a couple of times because I’m using other stuff it kind of for me it was like eh. But so many people report benefits with CBD. It kind of makes sense. CBD is one of at least 120 phytocannabinoids found in the cannabis sativa plant. Cannabidiol is extracted from cannabis or marijuana in industrial hemp where it’s synthesized in the lab. Both hemp and marijuana are versions of the cannabis sativa plant, right? The thing is that CBD does not have the same psychomimetic or mind-altering effects as the main plant compound found in this plant THC.
[0:53:27] Ashley James: Right. So kids can take it. All adults can take. You can take it. You can take it and drive you’re not going to get high. You’ll feel relaxed.
[0:53:36] David Tomen: Actually, CBD is used to help counter the mind-altering effects caused by THC.
[0:53:42] Ashley James: Right. Yes. When people overdose on marijuana and they’re like tripping hard and they’re freaking out if they take CBD they’ll come down really fast. They’ll come back to earth.
[0:53:55] David Tomen: So, it primarily comes from cannabis flowers and the leaves of the marijuana plant. Hemp oil comes from the seeds of the marijuana plant but it doesn’t offer the same therapeutic benefits as CBD oil so don’t make the mistake of some company. Because this market too has just taken off in the last couple of years. Since the farm bill that was passed I think in December that took hemp off of, it’s no longer a Schedule I substance. People are advertising just hemp or in hemp oil as CBD oil and it’s not. CBD oil and hemp oil are not the same thing and they should not be confused. You won’t experience the same benefits with hemp oil as you will with CBD oil. SO you’ll pay more for CBD. That’s why you can buy hemp oil so cheap. CBD is a lot more expensive.
[0:54:56] Ashley James: I’ve seen these companies that are like pain cream companies. They’re like, ‘Now, with hemp oil.’ I feel so angry about that. They’re just throwing in an oil it’s just from the seed, which you can go to Costco and buy the seeds. They’re great to eat. They’re delicious. They’re good to put in smoothies or on your salad. They’re great healthy fats. That doesn’t contain the CBD that we need, in the levels that we need if someone wanted to use it for pain relief. So just having hemp oil added or pain cream is really doing nothing for you. It’s like adding salad dressing to your pain cream. It’s not the same.
[0:55:44] David Tomen: It helps to know why CBD oil is more effective. CBD oil can be used as an antidepressant because it enhances serotonin and glutamate signaling via the 5-HT1A receptor which is a serotonin receptor. It also helps enhance GABA which is one of the reasons why CBD oils have been found to help in epilepsy in reusing seizures. Some of its antipsychotic effects are related to increasing levels of anandamide. It acts on CB2 receptors. They’re specific cannabinoid receptors in your body in your brain particularly in your brain that only respond to CBD, not the hemp. So CBD acts on CB2 receptors to produce an anti-inflammatory response in brain immune cells. The anti-cannabinoid system is they’re still trying to figure out exactly how it works.
[0:57:02] Ashley James: Just like we’re trying to figure out how the brain works, right? It’s all this new stuff about the brain.
[0:57:05] David Tomen: The anti-cannabinoid system is a group of receptors located throughout your body and brain. It consists of signaling molecules in the receptors. It’s CBD that attaches to endocannabinoid receptors, say that fast. There’s CB1 and CB2 receptors. CB1 receptors are found primarily in the brain and central nervous system and is the main molecular target for the endocannabinoid anandamide which is produced in your body and the THC you get from cannabis. The other main endocannabinoid is called 2AG which is also produced in your body and the CBD which you get from cannabis. So both 2AG and CBD are active at both the CB1 and CB2 receptors. CBD cannot bind directly with CB1 receptors like THC can. But CB2 receptors are mainly expressed in immune cells in your body which is probably one of the reasons why it helps boost your immune system and it helps reduce pain.
[0:58:22] Ashley James: So good take preventively now as we’re coming into what they call flu season. Make sure that we’re adding healthy levels of CBD to our regular routine. Would you recommend that?
[0:58:38] David Tomen: And NAC.
[0:58:40] Ashley James: NAC. I love NAC. Yes.
[0:58:44] David Tomen: N-acetyl cysteine. I use 600 mg of NAC three times a day and I find that whenever everybody else is getting the flu or a cold in my family, I seem to not get it. It’s probably because I’m using NAC consistently and I have for years.
[0:59:03] Ashley James: You need to start slipping NAC into your family’s smoothies.
[0:59:07] David Tomen: Yeah. Okay. Why does that work? It works because NAC is a precursor to glutathione. So it’s a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and it’s a free radical scavenger. It also modulates glutamate levels and dopamine release in your brain which also helps people with adult ADD like me. It helps reduce irritability, anxiety, and depression. This is one of these supplements that I think everybody should be using.
[0:59:43] Ashley James: Absolutely. I use it for my liver and I notice a great difference when I use it. My son, I put it in his smoothies. Our naturopathic pediatrician has him on it. What’s really interesting is he had a really stuffy nose, this was I don’t know maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago something like that. He had a stuffy nose and she’s like, ‘Oh, yeah. You take NAC.’ It blows out stuffy noses. It makes all that mucus move again. So we got him on NAC and right away, his sinus is drained. I thought that was the coolest thing. So love NAC. What is it derived from?
[1:00:26] David Tomen: It’s an acetyl group added to l-Cysteine. You get l-Cysteine naturally from eating things like ricotta and cottage cheese and yogurt and pork and chicken and turkey, duck, wheat germ, granola, oat flakes. They just add an acetyl group to l-Cysteine. L-Cysteine is a naturally forming, naturally occurring amino acid. Your body seems to readily accept it like that and separates the l-Cysteine to use to help boost all kinds of things including glutathione. It helps regulate the amount of glutamate in your brain. It influences the amount of dopamine available in your brain and it keeps dopamine receptors healthy, which is critical for somebody that’s ADD or ADHD that’s using stimulants that is not easy on receptors.
Another study with 30 adult male [unintelligible] of rats. They divided them into three groups. The control group received distilled water. The second group was given Aspartame. The third group was given Aspartame and NAC. Oral administration was done in the morning daily for 90 days. The study found that NAC affected brain deriving tropic level factors. It blocked COX-2 and PGE2 enzymes. It reduced the expression of interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor A inflammatory cytokines in the rat’s cerebral cortex. They found that NAC replenished glutathione levels. So the researchers concluded that NAC prevented neurotoxicity and improved neurological function. It suppressed brain inflammation and oxidative stress.
[1:02:34] Ashley James: So cool. We should all be on that.
[1:02:37] David Tomen: I know.
[1:02:38] Ashley James: Right. One of our listeners, Mike, wanted to know if you could talk about neuropathy? There’s different qualities of pain, different kinds of pain. You mentioned the pain like muscle pain. Now, your pain is very unique in that you’re healing a surgical injury. Other pains can be chronic. We have neuropathy where people often feel it in their limbs or in their extremities, their feet and their hands. Do you have any suggestions around helping neuropathy?
[1:03:17] David Tomen: I haven’t done a ton of research into it, but I think fibromyalgia is probably included in that area. I’m hypothyroid. One of the things that I have to deal with for years was fibromyalgia but I don’t anymore. It just went away. What I found after years and years of research was that one doctor, I think it was Brownstein, found that when they brought T3 level, thyroid T3 levels up to optimum, fibromyalgia went away. That’s probably what happened with me. When I finally got my thyroid levels where they were supposed to be, just fibromyalgia went away. I imagine, just to remind everybody that I’m not a doctor. I don’t play one on TV. I’m just an ordinary guy that has figured some of these stuff out by reading tons and tons and tons of clinical studies and trying these stuff on myself. But it seems to me that what we just talked about with NAC, things like COX-2, all the inflammatory enzymes and the expression of things like interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor A, all of these are inflammatory cytokines. They probably somehow contribute to neuropathy when they get out of wack, right? That just makes sense to me.
[1:05:11] Ashley James: Right. One of the naturopaths that I mentored with, Dr. Wallach who was a pathologist and a veterinarian and a research scientist before becoming a naturopathic physician says that. He has an interesting perspective because he was a pathologist so he’s used to looking at disease tissue on a cellular level under very big microscopes. He says that neuropathy is a combination of inflammation to the nerves and the nerves inability to regrow the myelin sheaths. So it’s a lack of the essential fatty acids, the healthy cholesterol needed to regrow the myelin and the constant bombardment of inflammation and oxidative damage to the nerves. So when we look at what is a really common illness that also has neuropathy is diabetes. Out of control diabetes either type 1 or type 2. When we have high blood sugar, and even someone who’s not diabetic but has extended periods of high blood sugar, high blood sugar causes a huge amount of inflammation and free radical damage to the body. Also, just the amount of damage over time leaves the limbs having less and less healthy blood flow. So now you’ve got nerves that have less good nutrients coming to them and constant bombardment of damage. The damage is more than the body can repair. Every time the body goes to repair it, it can only repair at 10% versus all the damage happening. So those who are able to their diabetes or type 2 diabetes are able to get their type 1 diabetes totally under control through nutrients, through good food, and through supplements are able to bring their body back into balance. They can reverse neuropathy. That neuropathy is reversible after they heal the root cause. So Dr. Wallach talks about giving the body the essential fatty acids it needs because 70% of the white matter of the brain is made of cholesterol. So we need to make sure that we’re feeding the body with healthy fats and obviously make sure that digesting and absorbing them. Because that’s a big problem that people are fat-deficient aren’t digesting. Maybe they don’t have their gallbladder. They’re not eating the right fats. They’re not digesting them and they’re not absorbing them. Then the body can’t utilize them. Make sure we’re doing things like the NAC and the other nootropics you’ve mentioned that help with decreasing inflammation and also being the free radical scavengers to mop up and soak up those free radicals so that we can put the fire out. It’s about putting the fire out instead of treating the smoke.
[1:08:19] David Tomen: And also I think it’s giving your body the nutrients that it needs to regrow myelin.
[1:08:25] Ashley James: Yes. Right.
[1:08:26] David Tomen: The only way that you can create myelin is with vitamin D, vitamin B12, vitamin B9 or folate, vitamin B8 or inositol, vitamin B6 pyridoxine and thiamin. [Unintelligible] is another one contributes to the synthesis of myelin. Those are the main ones. I think ashwagandha too contributes, you know what, I just found out conditions of chronic stress and excess cortisol your brain’s neurons are coated through sheath and myelin so this doesn’t count. Those are the main vitamins that your body needs for your body to actually synthesize myelin.
[1:09:30] Ashley James: Now, we really need to look at making sure that we’re getting the full spectrum of all 90 essential nutrients. All the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. That we’re eating a diet that supports, we’ve talked about this in our previous episodes, but eating a diet that’s supportive of the neurological system and the body as a whole. Also practicing a lifestyle that supports the neurological system like getting enough sleep and getting out of stress mode. Getting into the rest and digest the parasympathetic neuro-response of rest and digest so that the body can heal and focus on healing. So there’s a lot that we can do naturally in our day to day lifestyle. Every meal we have can support our whole body. Also, the supplements that we take throughout the day. I love that there’s this resource NootropicsExpert.com because I consider you a research scientist. I mean you’re an autodidact. You’re self-taught but you pour-over, you’ve spent hundreds of hours poring over all the research. If you go to an MD or you walk into a medical office and go to a doctor, they’re highly trained but do they spend hundreds of hours poring over the latest research? They probably don’t.
[1:10:47] David Tomen: No because they haven’t gotten time too. Some of them aren’t just interested. Others just, when you go in to see a doctor, how often does it take for you? You show up for a 1:30 appointment and you actually see the doctor at 2:00 or 2:30 because he’s just slammed. When is he going to have time to research? These people just haven’t got time to spend time researching this stuff. We’re kind like on our own with a lot of this.
[1:11:20] Ashley James: That’s why we’re all listening to this interview right now because we’re on our own. I mean obviously, we want to have doctors in our corner. They’re on our team but we have to take them off the pedestal and say, ‘I’m the employer. You’re on my team. You’re not the boss. I’m the boss. You’re going to help me inform me on my health. But I need to go collect other information too like listening to this episode to support my health.’ Now, this episode’s not meant to treat anything. I don’t normally do a legal disclaimer because common sense, this is information. You take this information. You keep educating yourself. You obviously talk to your doctor before changing any supplements. Talk to a doctor that’s trained in supplements like a naturopathic physician for example.
[1:12:04] David Tomen: They do exist.
[1:12:06] Ashley James: Right, they are amazing. If there are not in your state, you can tell a medicine. I’ve got lots of interviews with naturopaths that would love to talk to you. We always want to consult a doctor especially if it would in any way interact with a medication we’re on. That’s something we’ve talked about David in our past episodes. That you also dive into the research about these nootropics, these supplements and how they can interact in a negative way with certain prescriptions. Also, there’s some that interact in a positive way.
There is a naturopath, one of them that trained me in my past, talked about whenever he had to prescribe a drug would prescribe all the nutrient cofactors that would actually make the drug more efficient. So he would prescribe a smaller dose. So let’s say for example he had to prescribe metformin, I really really really hate metformin for many reasons. But let’s say he did that. He would also prescribe, he’d look at what does metformin, for example, decrease in the body? Let’s say it decreases B12, right? So just like cholesterol-lowering drugs which do damage to the liver and force the liver to create less cholesterol. That’s how they work. They actually damage the liver. They also hurt the mitochondria and decrease our CoQ10. So you have to take a CoQ10 supplement with them. So he’d look at what does this drug reduce in the body so we have to supplement that. But then you’d also have to look at what would increase the effectiveness of the drug? So it might be certain minerals or certain whatever would help the receptors, right? He found that he could make drugs more efficient with over the counter supplements.
That’s really interesting because then it brings us back to if the body becomes more efficient when we take vitamins and minerals and essential fatty acids and amino acids. If we take these over the counter supplements from really high-quality companies obviously. And the body becomes more efficient and has less and less disease or less and less symptoms. This is where I keep going. It’s like the deficiency is causing the illness and yet we always run to a drug, this is what we’re trained to do, run to a drug to mask a symptom. This is what our MDs are trained in, masking symptoms and managing symptoms with drugs but not getting into the root cause.
Back in the 50s there’s a doctor, and you can find this on wiki really interesting, the doctor was able to turn type 2 diabetes on and off in rodents, I think it was rats, by removing chromium or adding chromium to their feed. Thus concluding that chromium deficiency, which is a trace mineral, causes the insulin to not work correctly with the cell. So chromium, vanadium aspartic acid, bitter melon, cinnamon. These are all supplements that we can take to support making insulin work correctly with the cell. I know a type 1 diabetic that was able to reduce his insulin by 75% after getting on those nutrients.
[1:15:34] David Tomen: Isn’t that amazing?
[1:15:35] Ashley James: Amazing.
[1:15:36] David Tomen: Wouldn’t it be wonderful that every doctor did this? But they don’t. So it’s up to us.
[1:15:39] Ashley James: But the information’s out there.
[1:15:41] David Tomen: It’s up to us to get this information and help the doctor heal our bodies.
[1:15:47] Ashley James: Right. Right. Exactly. So that’s my little, ‘be sure to work with your physician and make sure to do your own research before you go take any of this.’ Right? This is all just for information because we want to help you to make more informed choices. Now, on the topic of pain, I have to share something really exciting that happened the other day. Had a friend come over to do a little playdate with our kids, our kids are all the same age. I have one kid she has a bunch. She is back up and walking after being basically bed-ridden or couch-ridden for months. She was in a horrible accident and broke both of her ankles. She has this big wicked scars on both sides of both ankles. We didn’t get into the details as to exactly how it happened but she had lots of surgeries to correct it. She was on crutches for a long time. Finally, she’s up to walking but she says she can’t even clean the house or do the dishes in the kitchen because she really can’t stand for long periods of time before it is hurting again. She really doesn’t want to take any opioids and she was really clear about that. I had with me the magnesium soak that I believe in. I know magnesium is great for pain. If the body is deficient in magnesium it’s hard for the body to turn off the pain receptors to shut the channel and stop sending that signal. So I get her to soak in magnesium and she almost cried at the end of it. She said, “This is the first time I’ve been out of pain since before my accident. I have been in months and months of pain.” She couldn’t believe it. She texted me hours later she goes, “I’m still out of pain. I have to get some of this stuff. I can’t believe it.”
So something as simple as soaking in magnesium can, again it comes back to, it’s not that magnesium stops pain. It’s that if the body’s deficient in it then our pain can become exacerbated because the neuro system is not working correctly. Magnesium is what the nerves, magnesium, and calcium are needed for the nerves to send proper signals. Yeah. I know you talked about magnesium and the importance of it on your website as well.
[1:18:10] David Tomen: I do. I love stories like that. I love them.
[1:18:14] Ashley James: Isn’t that cool?
[1:18:15] David Tomen: Yeah. I need to start collecting more testimonials from the people that are coming to Nootropics Expert and months later going, ‘Wow. My life has changed.’
[1:18:28] Ashley James: Well you have a bunch of them on your website. What I love about your articles is at the bottom it’s like blog style and that people can leave comments. It’s very active. We have that on LearnTrueHealth.com as well but yours, yours is very active. Lots of people sharing their testimonials on your website. So it’s fun to go through and read it. But it would be great if you were to kind of compile them into like a little testimonials section because it brings people hope. Hope that they can heal their bodies. I was really sick. Really, really sick like in my 20s. If I had that resource to show me that there’s hope, it would’ve accelerated my willingness to dive into this world. It would’ve accelerated my motivation to see that there’s hope. It really helps us to start behaving in a positive way and moving in this direction. So I think it would be beneficial to do that. The next time we have you on the show you could come and share some of those stories of success.
[1:19:35] David Tomen: All right. Let me do that. It’s funny, I was booking a bunch of consultations and one lady from, I don’t know where. Someplace in the world, I don’t know where she is. Russia? I don’t know where. I don’t remember. But I sent her a message saying, “This is what. How to prepare for this consultation. This is what I expect from her.” Her response back to me. The very last sentence before sincerely or thank you or whatever, I finally have some hope. Now, it just brings tears to your eyes when you see stuff like that.
[1:20:13] Ashley James: You’ve been doing a lot of consultations lately. We were talking about that before we hit record. I’d love for you to share because you were telling how cool it was. Like how many people you’re helping one on one. Can you walk us through what it’s like working with you?
[1:20:29] David Tomen: You can book for half an hour or an hour. I charge $100.00 for a half an hour, $200 for an hour. Why would you want to do this? You’ll save time trying to figure this thing out on your own. You can save yourself money because you’re going to avoid trying the wrong supplements. You just don’t blindly walk to the Whole Foods and stand in front of the vitamin shelf and ho, ‘what am I going to get?’ You stay safe by avoiding interactions with prescription meds that you’re on. And you just have more confidence in what you’re putting in your stack together or your supplements together. You just feel more confident in what you’re doing. You’ve got the peace of mind that somebody’s got you back. So that’s why you want to do something like this. People just ho to, I use Calendly to book this. There is a link on the website. If you go to the menu Store dropdown menu consultations. You just click on the link for consultations and you book a time. I ask you to send me a list of the supplements that you’re currently taking. The list of medications that you’re currently on. What your health issues are that you’re dealing with and what you would like some help with. What your goals are for that session. I spend a couple of hours after I get those notes I spend a couple of hours in research finding what the best recommendations are for that person. Then we spent half an hour, typically an hour is better for the first consultation. We talk about how to deal with whatever it is that they’re dealing with. After the consultation, usually, the next day, I send the, one or two pages of notes from that call with just notes of what we talked about so that they’ve got something to refer to. So they know if we talked about they know they need to get this and this and this, they don’t need to take notes during the call because I already have that and I’ll send it to them afterward. So that’s what you get with a consultation.
[1:22:48] Ashley James: Right. So if they want an hour with you it costs $200.00 but what they’re actually getting is about five hours of your time because you spend a few hours before and a few hours after the consultation. First, you do all your research for them. Then you talk to them and consult them. Then afterward, you compile all the information together into an email, into an actual plan for them. So that’s probably about five? That sounds like about five hours that they would get out of you for that $200.00. That seems very reasonable.
[1:23:24] David Tomen: It’s one of the reasons why I don’t promote consultations very much or very often just because it’s so time-consuming for me. But people do find it really, really, really helpful.
[1:23:37] Ashley James: Well, I know that someone’s nerves are probably going to want to talk to you now that we’ve let them know about it.
[1:23:45] David Tomen: I would love to. Just tell them that Ashley sent you maybe I’ll be even nicer. It’s just I’m nice all the time. Yeah. Just send people over and I’ll help them if I can.
[1:23:59] Ashley James: What’s that sound?
[1:24:01] David Tomen: Rain. It just started raining, pouring over here. I live in South Florida by Miami and when it starts to rain here.
[1:24:11] Ashley James: It sounds wonderful now that I know that it’s rain. I thought it was like a monster coming to attack you. I was like, ‘what is that sound?’
[1:24:17] David Tomen: When it rains here, it rains.
[1:24:19] Ashley James: It sounds like something from that, remember that TV show Lost? I was like, ‘what is going on?’
[1:24:26] David Tomen: Yeah. When it rains here it pours.
[1:24:27] Ashley James: Well, beautiful. I do have a healthy level of jealousy that you live in gorgeous, what is that Miami that you live in?
[1:24:34] David Tomen: It’s north of Miami.
[1:24:36] Ashley James: North of Miami, beautiful area. We talked about grounding and earthing, you and I. You said that you go barefoot with your dogs when you walk them because you can 12 months of the year in Florida.
[1:24:53] David Tomen: Although it does get kind of chilly in January and February.
[1:24:56] Ashley James: Don’t even. I’m sorry but you can’t say that to someone who lives in Seattle and grew up in Toronto. It gets below freezing twice in the last week here. So you can’t say it’s called there when people aren’t wearing parkas and boots and winter jackets.
[1:25:16] David Tomen: Well, you can tell who the tourists are and the snow burns are because it’s 50 degrees outside and us, we’ve all got winter coats on. These people are walking around in t-shirts and shorts.
[1:25:27] Ashley James: Yes. Yup. I remember, when I was a kid we went to Mexico and it was 15 degrees Celsius. Let’s see here, 60 degrees Fahrenheit. All the locals were wearing two sweaters. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. I’m walking around in shorts and a t-shirt going, ‘this feels so good’ because I came from -30. It’s so funny. Are there any nootropics that help people with temperature?
[1:25:54] David Tomen: L-Tyrosine
[1:25:56] Ashley James: L-Tyrosine. So if someone is always feeling cold or has cold hands, cold feet should they try taking L-Tyrosine?
[1:26:04] David Tomen: It just seems to help with when you’re in a stressful situation. Athletes used them. It helps them with endurance. Particularly weather-related stress. They perform better when they’re in cold weather in sports when they’re using something like L-Tyrosine.
[1:26:27] Ashley James: Interesting. Well, you got to get your whole family on that for the winter.
[1:26:32] David Tomen: Yeah. When it drops down to 50 degrees here.
[1:26:34] Ashley James: Yeah, 50 degrees. I dream of 50 degrees in the winter. David, it’s been such a pleasure having you back on the show. I always love it when I get to talk with you. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview or any homework you’d like to give us?
[1:26:51] David Tomen: Help your doctor help you. Really. There is just so much information that’s available now. It’s sound information. It’s real information. I mean, I mention this earlier. I’m not a doctor. I don’t play one on TV. I research this stuff. But this stuff is real. It’s available. You can find it out for yourself. One place that you can use as a resource is NootropicsExpert.com because there’s hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of pages that you can use to research. You can get my book, Head First, which is nearly 600 pages of everything. It’s like a brain repair manual. You can also get a free download of Secrets of the Optimized Brain, which is a little e-booklet, 75 pages. All that is dietary supplements that help the brain nootropics. There are probably 70 or 75 in that 75-page booklet of what they are, where they come from, how much you take, what kind you buy. So that’s free. That’s a free download. Just this help is available. Just reach out for it. You can fix yourself.
[1:28:12] Ashley James: Wonderful. There is hope. Thank you so much David Tomen for coming on the show today.
[1:28:16] David Tomen: Thank you for having me back.
[1:28:18] Ashley James: All the links are going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast. It’s my pleasure. Thank you. We can’t wait to have you back on the show.
[1:28:25] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?
You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.
We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.
So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.
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