Listen to Dr. Matt Chalmers for the top things for your health. Send Dr. Matt Chalmers questions at [email protected] and we answer all questions!

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:00:04] Hey, this is Dr. Chalmers. I’m here with another wellness insights with Dr. Chalmers. Today I want to talk about reactive oxidative stress or Ros. Most of you guys are going about this as free radicals and free radical damage. [00:00:16][12.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:00:17] So I kind of want to go over what this is. I talk about this a lot. This is super important to me. So whenever I talk about stress, the damaging effects of stress, the, you know, what wellness really is about battling stress. [00:00:28][10.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:00:29] This is really what I’m talking about. If we could take a single pill and knock out all of our reactive oxidative stress, we would live a much, much, much longer, healthier, happier lives. So cancer, heart attacks, strokes, things like that. Our brains would work, our hearts are work, energy would be high, would feel fantastic all the time. [00:00:44][15.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:00:45] So the bulk of my my existence as a wellness practitioner is in figuring out ways that we can repair the damage from reactive oxidative stress, remove the oxidative stress that’s in the body and eliminate free radicals and bring the tissue back to health. [00:01:03][18.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:01:04] So that’s why this is such a big deal. That’s why you’re here. We talk about it all the time because I’m super hyper focused on getting rid of this and fixing it. So I want to give you guys a quote from the text that kind of helps kind of bring this to focus. [00:01:17][12.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:01:17] So reactive, active stress or free radicals so a free radical can be defined as any molecular species capable of independent existence that contains an unpaired electron in an atomic orbital. So basically what that means is that the the outer shell is unbalanced. And so it kind of wobbles, wobbles a washing machine with too many towels on one side. [00:01:41][23.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:01:41] The problem is, is that because it’s lost that one electron, it will either give up its electron to somebody else to make itself stable, thereby destabilizing the other molecule or atom, or it will steal one so that it can become stable at the expense of destabilizing another atom, a molecule. [00:02:04][22.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:02:05] So the problem with that is that if it makes another molecule unstable, then one of its of having is that the bonds that hold that molecule together can start to decay and fall apart. And so think of it like pouring acid on something and it just starts to just kind of melt and turn into goo and fall apart that’s basically what we’re talking about. [00:02:22][17.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:02:23] So back to the quote, The presence of an unpaired electron results in certain common properties that are shared by most radicals. Many radicals are unstable and highly reactive. They can either donate an electron or accept an electron from other molecules, therefore behaving as oxidants or reduction. [00:02:41][18.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:02:42] So either adding or reducing the electrons on the outer shell, the most important oxygen containing free radicals and many disease states are hydroxyl radical superoxide and and iron radicals, hydrogen peroxide oxygen singlet hypochlorite nitric oxide radicals. There’s there’s a list of them. So these are highly reactive species capable in the nucleus and in the membranes of cells damaging biologically relevant molecules such as DNA, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, basically everything free radicals attack important macromolecules leading to cellular damage, homeostatic disruption. That means that the normal way that things are functioning breaks down and so it goes into chaos. [00:03:28][46.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:03:29] So targeting free radicals includes all kinds of molecules in the body, among them lipids, nucleic acids, proteins are all major target. So basically what we’ve got is we’ve got free radicals acting like acid, destroying all the good fun stuff that’s going on, which damages the normal metabolic function so that nothing can work the way it’s supposed to damages DNA so cells start to divide improperly. And that’s where we get cancer. [00:03:57][27.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:03:58] So it tears up everything around it and so that’s that’s the problem. That’s why, you know, this is kind of in a nutshell is why are those why free radicals are so horrible is that’s why we have to fight so hard to get rid of them. [00:04:09][11.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:04:10] And that’s kind of the big the big piece, one of the tissues that we we talk about the most with arrows that shows up well in research is the immune system. [00:04:18][8.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:04:19] So I want to kind of go through this because I get the question all the time. Well, you know, I thought they were good. I thought they were bad. I thought that so the way I the way I kind of get into this is we talk about fire. Is fire good or bad? Well, it depends. Fire on your stove. Good. Fire in your furnace. Good fire in your fireplace, good fire in your roof. Not so great. [00:04:41][22.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:04:42] So there’s good times and bad times. So for instance, our body uses bleaches it uses hydrogen peroxide is actually a bleach. So it uses some of these chemicals to destroy cells on purpose. [00:04:54][12.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:04:55] So if we see cancer cells, viruses, bacteria, all sorts of stuff, what happens is that the white blood cells, the phagocytes will surround that bad thing. And then. They’ll literally squirt all this basically bleach onto the invading species, bacteria, virus, whatever, and it will tear it apart. The free radicals will literally just shred that thing, turn it to goo. [00:05:16][21.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:05:16] And then the phagocytes that the white blood cells will then suck that back in. And then there’s no because the last thing you want is to score a bunch of bad stuff on something that’s invading, kill it, and then walk off and have all that all the all the excess acid. Eat through something that we actually want to keep. So it sucks all back and cleans it all up and moves on. And so that’s kind of how this works. [00:05:35][18.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:05:35] And so our immune system uses free radicals in a very, very good way. The problem is that when they get out and about and they do, they do bad things, so they don’t just run around spraying free radicals on things for no reason. [00:05:45][10.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:05:46] So that’s kind of how the army in the body works and so when we run a mock, when when these systems kind of go all over, that’s when we have problems. And this is also why we see like autoimmune issues, when the body has to go through and starts trying to clean up damaged tissue, small viruses, bacteria, chemical damage to the tissue and the immune system goes in trying to attack that issue embedded in tissues, We that we already have thyroid, for example. [00:06:16][29.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:06:16] That’s why the immune system destroys that tissue and then even though the immune system is kind of moved on because it can’t clean everything up, it continues to eat it, the organs damage the organs. [00:06:25][9.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:06:25] So, you know, it’s kind of funny because, you know, we talk about cancer drugs that save people’s lives and how they’re basically just a just a very, very powerful free radical. And the idea is that as we’re pumping a ton of highly damaging free radicals into the body because cancer has a much higher metabolism, thus requiring more nutrients, thus sucking up a lot more chemicals that are sitting around the body. [00:06:49][23.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:06:49] The idea is that the cancer will suck up more of the free radicals and thus die faster than the tissue around. It, therefore will kill the cancer without killing too much of the good tissue we’re trying not to kill. Which kind of works sometimes, but which is also why I always I belabor this point. [00:07:10][21.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:07:11] If you have cancer and you go through cancer treatment and you’re in remission, therefore the cancer you had died, you’re not done. You’re not even really halfway through what I would consider a full treatment because you’ve got to clean up the rest those chemistry, those chemicals, you got to pull out all that, all those talks, highly toxic chemicals that were used to kill your cancer. I’m not saying we shouldn’t necessarily use them, because if you can kill cancer, kill cancer, but you’re not done, you’ve got to clean up the body. You have to add more nutrients. You got to make sure the body can function again. Remember, you don’t catch cancer, you grow it. [00:07:44][33.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:07:45] And so if we grow cancer because we have we don’t have the right chemistry in the body. And then the our solution is the poor, really bad chemistry in the body. You’ve got to clean up the really bad chemistry you put in, clean up the bad chemistry that we already had, and then create good chemistry at the end of it so that we don’t have cancer show up somewhere else. [00:08:02][16.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:08:02] This is why I always look at people who got, Well, I had this cancer and now I have that cancer where I had this cancer and then it came back somewhere else. Well, fixed the way that the chemistry of the body is, and we won’t have to worry nearly as much about getting cancer, secondary cancer, cancer, spreading, things like that. So that’s the big thing where we start looking at. [00:08:20][17.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:08:20] Now there’s other free radicals that people want to talk about all the time that are good. So this is the fire and the oven type of idea. So nitric oxide, for example, is actually a pretty powerful free radical. However, the way that it reacts on the body is kind of like it works in the car. I mean, you put nitrous oxide in the car and you get a whole lot more horsepower for a short period of time. Same idea. [00:08:42][22.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:08:42] Nitric oxide goes in the blood, blood vessels dilate, boom, lots more blood, lots more oxygen, lots more nutrients to the area. Oftentimes. This is why we we talk about the most, you know, in the bodybuilding in the athletic community, we talk about using nitric oxide to increase the pump, increase the blood, the oxygen in the nutrient flow, the muscles so that we can get the muscles to react different, turn on faster, rebuild faster, all that great stuff. [00:09:05][22.9]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:09:06] So it is great, but it’s very, very short lived. And so this is the problem we get into because, you know, lifters and everybody are all are all angry because they’re like, well, yeah, I take all this this, you know, explode. I take this nitric oxide, take all this arginine. And that’s how your body makes nitric oxide out of arginine. [00:09:23][16.9]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:09:23] You know, I take all this arginine and I go lift. I can only get nitric oxide to function for a short period of time. Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to be. You don’t want nitric oxide in your blood all the time. It will really, really mess you up. So that’s why it’s there. It’s literally they’re kind of almost exactly like the same reason we have in a car. We’re driving, we’re driving, everything’s great, you know, we’re going fast, We go a little bit faster. Boom, Hit that nitric oxide. [00:09:46][23.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:09:47] So in the body or working out or lifting hard or going hard, the body goes, Who? We need to get it out for one more thing. We got to go just a little bit harder. Boom, There’s some nitric oxide in there, but we get a little bit more horsepower, a little bit more functionality in the body. The muscles work just a little bit harder because they got a little bit more a little bit more juice to them. But it’s short lived as it’s supposed to be. [00:10:03][16.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:10:04] And then the cool thing is that the nitric oxide that is that is naturally produced ends up denature itself and falling apart so that it doesn’t actually hurt the body. So when you start reading about nitric oxide and you find out it’s a free radical, Yes. That all those things are true. But again, like I said, this is fire in the stove. This is not fire in the roof. So nitric oxide used properly is actually a good thing. [00:10:26][22.2]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:10:27] The real problem that we get into with ROS is when it starts moving through the body unchecked. So here’s one of the big pieces. When we talk about ROS, we talk about blood vessel damage or plaque, a heart attack stroke. [00:10:37][10.2]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:10:37] So think of it like sandpaper flowing through your blood vessels, just tearing up all that really soft, silky smooth blood vessels. So as it tears it up, it starts plaque it. So over time, this damage creates pathological issues that can turn into cancer, heart attacks, strokes, plaque, all that type of stuff. These. [00:10:54][16.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:10:54] So here’s the funny thing with plaque. So as it’s here, as these reactive oxidative stress issues tear up the blood vessels, creating plaque is slows down obviously because if you have a pipe and you then put plaque in it, you decrease the amount of area the blood can flow in . Its kind of like sticking your thumb over the end of a of a water house. You’ve decreased the amount of area the can flow. [00:11:16][21.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:11:17] So what does that do? It decreases oxygen to the body. What is happens then is we decrease oxygen, we increase reactive oxidative stress. So the more plaque we have, the more our OS we have, more OS, the more plaque. And so it just creates this cycle. And that’s why these things just keep getting worse and worse and worse. [00:11:33][16.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:11:34] And that’s why it’s so important that we start noticing plaque from like a calcium CT we jump on it immediately, we start breaking down the processes that create the plaque. Not necessarily just cholesterol levels, but the reactive oxidative stress that is causing the damage to the blood vessel, thus necessitating the plaque to stick to cholesterol to stick. So that’s the big issue. [00:11:56][22.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:11:57] So not only are these these these processes decrease oxygen because they decrease in two ways, but when I just say decrease the total blood volume that goes through. But your body also uses oxygen to denature our OS. So as we have less oxygen because there’s blocking, we have more or less your body is now using more oxygen to deplete, to destroy the ROS, so that’s less oxygen to the tissues. We have less oxygen in the tissues, we make less ATP. [00:12:20][23.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:12:21] ATP is obviously it is triphosphate, which is the chemistry that we use to make everything work. The brain, the heart, the muscles, all that stuff. So we end up with less energy. We feel aching, a soreness, stiffness in the body, our bodies. It’s harder to get up and move. We have more fatigue. Things don’t get they they hurt longer. All of those things kind of start going sideways. [00:12:42][21.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:12:43] The worse thing is that there’s stuff we can’t feel like the plaque, the damage to the blood vessels, the the oxidation of lipids, the oxidation of other cells actually oxidized cholesterol is actually something that I test for my inflammatory panels, because once you start having oxidized cholesterol and we’re in a bad, bad place, we’re in a place where we’ve got to push hard immediately pushing back on and denature some of this stuff. [00:13:07][23.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:13:07] So that’s when I push hard for, you know, high dose CoQ10, hyperbaric oxygen, lots of niacin, lots of lots and lots and lots of methylated B vitamins to help start clearing this stuff out, you know, that type of thing so that’s a big piece. [00:13:24][16.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:13:24] So the, the other issue is that not only can we create blocking and damage to the blood vessels, but there’s the phospholipid bilayer of the actual cellular cytoplasm the wall of the cell also gets damaged. It’ll get into the mitochondria, damage the DNA. So these again, that causes all sorts of problems, aging issues because there’s all sorts of cancer issues and things like that. So this can create all sorts of issues, shortens telomeres. [00:13:48][24.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:13:49] There’s a lot of research now that it talks about telomere length. Is the is the way that we can quantitatively measure long term health function, quality of life, things like that. And so, you know, again, allowing the ROS to get in and damage everything is a really, really big problem. [00:14:04][14.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:14:04] So we ask, okay, well, where are these things coming from? How do we decrease the amount of stuff that’s getting in our body? So we have the exogenous, which is coming from the outside the body. We are the endogenous, the things are coming from the inside of the body. [00:14:14][10.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:14:15] So one of the big ones, we come from X-rays, you know, mammograms, I think. I don’t know if you guys have all heard I hate mammograms. It’s old technology. It was the best thing to do 40 years ago. MRI’s have come a long way. They come down a lot in cost. They’re substantially better. X-rays don’t show soft tissue roll while MRI shows soft tissue really well. And so if we’re looking for cancer, which is soft tissue in a breast, which is soft tissue, we should probably be using the the diagnostic imaging that shows soft tissue. [00:14:45][30.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:14:46] I mean, maybe I’m crazy, but then again, all of my patients get our eyes for breast issues. If we’re worried about breast issues, they do not get X-rays because, like I said, X-rays create more problems than they solve and they’re also just a horrible way of looking at things. [00:14:58][12.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:14:58] Cigaret Smoking, vaping goes in this category as well one it decreases oxygen throught the body Two there’s a ton of chemicals in Cigarets and in vaping that are both really powerful free radicals. And so that obviously we’re going to see Rise of ROS from that. [00:15:13][15.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:15:14] And so we’ve got to be really, really careful with that. Plus, both of them reduce oxygen to the body. The less oxygen we have, the less aerobic respiration, ah, my mitochondria can go through and so the more ros we produce. So smoking is just bad all the way around don’t do that. Air pollutants. [00:15:31][16.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:15:32] So if you live in a city like Dallas, you’re constantly breathing stuff in, you know, the exhaust, the exhaust from cars, planes, busses, you know, the semis, 18 wheelers, the chemical bug sprays like, I don’t know, in Dallas. What they do is we’re so horribly terrified of mosquitoes, which I’m not saying we should be. Mosquitoes are terrible,. [00:15:48][16.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:15:48] But they drive around and they spray fog, which is just a chemical, you know, to kill the mosquitoes. Well, we breathed that in to everybody will stay indoors. Well, that’s not going to help our our houses, our, you know, sealed plastic bubbles. So we’re going to get some of that stuff in. It’s going to get on our cars. It’s going to get on stuff. We’re going to touch that stuff, going to get it. We’re going to get it in our bodies and in our what? [00:16:08][19.9]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:16:09] So, you know, the spray we use to kill mosquitoes the spray we used to kill weeds, you know, lie. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around where they’re building roads without that white powder they spread out there. You know, that stuff is in the air. Don’t try not to breathe that. That’s that’s bad to pesticides when they spray those, even the ones that are supposed to be organic can not hurt you very much. You still don’t want to drink, drink, you know, breathe that highly concentrated stuff. So don’t drink it either. But, you know, breathing that is going to create some issues. [00:16:38][29.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:16:38] Now, here’s the one that’s a little bit hidden. Food allergies, food sensitivity as we talk about a lot. Just because you eat something and you don’t instantly die, people think of food allergies like, oh, I eat a peanut died or some shellfish, and I swelled up and looked goofy. Kind of like in the movie. Hitch Yeah, you’ve got that. That’s that’s a real thing. I’m not trying to say it’s not. [00:16:56][18.0]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:16:57] But we also have these food sensitivities where we eat something and we just get a little bit uncomfortable or a little gassy or we get a little nauseous, we get a little sick. Those type of things are also creating inflammation and all sorts of other problems that lead to Ros as well. And then basically all medications. [00:17:11][14.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:17:12] I can’t think of a medication that doesn’t create some type of issue that’s going to lead to some type of reactive oxidative stress function. Now, that is not to say you should stop taking your medications, but what it does mean is that if you’re going to take a medication, understand the upsides, the downsides, do something better to increase the benefit to the upside and decrease the downsides to the drug. And you can be better overall. [00:17:34][21.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:17:35] So some of the internal or the endogenous functions are metabolism. So in the mitochondria, when we don’t have enough CoQ10 or oxygen, for example, the mitochondria cannot create ATP through aerobic respiration, through the electron transport system. [00:17:52][16.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:17:52] So what ends up happening is that the body starts to make it anaerobic without oxygen and it ends up producing like a third or fourth of the amount of ATP, but it also produces a ton of free radicals which further to please the body of Coke ten and further to piece the place the body of oxygen. [00:18:10][17.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:18:10] So this vicious cycle of not enough ATP and a lot of free radicals being produced continues on and on and on and on, which is one of the reasons why when we start working with people on this, I put them at four to 4 to 800 milligrams a day of coke. You tend to spread out throughout the day for the first two or three weeks so that we can start kind of correcting this system and then we go back to maintenance does that maybe two 300 milligrams of coke you ten. [00:18:31][21.1]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:18:32] So so the other things, the zapping oxide, peroxidase, inflammation, phagocytosis, arachidonic pathways, exercise can actually do this. And the reason exercise does this is because as you start exercising you run out of oxygen, you have to actually function. Your body creates more free radicals you go through the ATP process, through, you know, all sorts of things. Hypoxia, creates all sorts of lactic acid and all sorts of other things and then ischemic reperfusion injuries often cause less problems. [00:19:01][29.3]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:19:01] So the I want to run through these because the big piece is that we’re not getting away from free radicals. They’re not going to just magically not happen in anybody’s body ever again. They’re going to happen all the time in everyone’s body. And we start to have we’re going to have to really, really work on getting those out. [00:19:15][13.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:19:16] So this is just some of the some of the stuff I could go on and bore you for hours with all the horrible, terrible things it does to the brain, all the horrible, terrible things it does to the heart. But just remember that the thrust of this was that we all have ROS We all have inflammatory processes, we all have the risks of oxidative stress, and that. [00:19:34][18.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:19:34] This is the real reason we’ve got to push back so hard on this this is why I do hyperbaric for an hour every day. This is why I take 600 milligrams of CoQ10 every day this is why I take some of the methylated B vitamins, you know, because I run a very, very high stressful life. Hi. Go, go, go life. And I am hyper concerned about where I’m going to be when I’m 80. [00:19:52][18.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:19:53] And so these are the things that I’m doing to focus my health. This is what I’m worried about with my kids, my family, my friends. So look at ROS look at the things that are causing it. Start getting these things fixed. [00:20:06][13.5]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:20:08] One of the things is a big, big player this is the sympathetic parasympathetic functionality. So we started about psychology. We started talking about, you know, finding ways to relax, to shut off, to calm down, to breathe, to relax, to decrease the speed, the intensity of our lives around us. That’s why this is so important. [00:20:26][18.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:20:27] So again, the fact that I have super worried about ROS and that it’s kind of one of the key factors in what I do, which is also why I’m so big on psychology, which is why I’m so big on finding ways to get out of that sympathetic state and move back to the parasympathetic rest to find ways of relaxing. [00:20:44][17.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:20:45] The reason why I want to work out the way we tell people to work out. Yeah, the reason we designed the five five workout for the whole, you know, the the full range of motion stuff, the activation of all the muscle spindle fibers to increase PTO function and decrease limbic function to just, you know, the whole like, we want you to feel better. [00:21:02][16.7]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:21:03] The way that you can now is that you’re in parasympathetic is when you just feel at peace with you like after you worked out you’re like, you know, I was all stressed out and freaking out my mind was going a million miles an hour when it worked out. I feel like everything kind of slowed down. [00:21:16][13.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:21:17] Like, I can just okay, I can breathe. Like, okay, everything’s relaxed. Everything’s going to call. I can I can. I can process the stuff that’s going on. That’s where we’re supposed to be all the time. [00:21:30][12.9]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:21:30] The problem is, is that we’re not there ever we’re stressed out or freaked out or moving too fast. Things are going too crazy. We’re that sympathetic state, which is producing tremendous amounts of free radicals. [00:21:41][10.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:21:42] And so if you’re there like I am all the time, the only option we have is to balance it and that’s with, you know, Hyperbaric oxygen, Hydro Supplementation. CoQ10 Green teas, Methylated B Vitamins, Histidine, things like that that’s super important. [00:21:57][15.4]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:21:58] So recognize that we all have way too much ROS that we need to find ways of psychologically decreasing our stress, and then we need to put in tons and tons of nutrients to balance it. Otherwise we’re going to end up at a place we don’t want to be. [00:22:12][13.6]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:22:12] So you can make the argument, and I think it’s pretty solid argument, that wellness, holistic wellness is the fight against reactive oxidative stress. So quality of life long term is the fight against reactive oxidative stress. That’s the I think the easiest way of cutting this down and saying this is what it is in a nutshell. [00:22:30][17.8]

Dr Matt Chalmers: [00:22:30] So these are some of the more important ones. Let’s kind of push back against these. I think we’re ended up in a really good place. Thanks. [00:22:30][0.0]

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