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Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC, has served thousands of patients as a Nurse Practitioner over the last 22 years. Her work in the health industry marries both traditional and functional medicine. Laura’s wellness programs help her high-performing clients boost energy, renew mental focus, feel great in their bodies, and be productive again.... Read More
- Understand the significance of certain supplements and exactly which ones are supportive for mitochondria energy production and mitochondria biogenesis
- Reveal how organic acids lab testing can help you figure out which nutrients you are deficient in
- Learn the exact dosing of the top supplements that restore mitochondrial health
Related Topics
Acetyl-l-carnitine, Acetylcholine, Brain Cells, Brain Protection, Cancer, Carnitine, Carnitine Shuttle, Chronic Fatigue, Coq10, Dairy, Energy Supporting Supplements, Fatty Acids, Fish, Focus, Freeze Dried Organs, Fruits, Glucose, Gut Health, Heart Disease, Mental Energy, Mitochondria, Mitochondria Function, Mood Balance, Multiple Sclerosis, Nervous System Health, Nuts And Seeds, Occasional Stress, Olive Oil, Organ Tissues, Oxidative Stress, Supplements, VegetablesLaura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Welcome back to the mitochondria conversation. I’m your host, Laura Frontiero and in this talk I’m gonna be covering energy supporting supplements that give you results. And I’m joined today by Daniela Giangiorgi. Hi, Daniela.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Hi.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
You’re my lead coach and right hand at Bio-Radiant Health and Daniela, you’re a mindset empowerment health coach who is also a Pilates instructor and a muscle activation technique, certified. And at age 41, you were diagnosed with breast cancer and this interrupted the breastfeeding of your one year old baby boy. And the reason I love doing these talks with you is because if anyone understands the power of cellular health and cellular healing, and why I stand for restoring mitochondria function and gut health, it is you because this is how you restored your body. So welcome and thank you for being here today to help facilitate this discussion about supplements.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Oh my gosh. No, thank you so much, Laura. I, you know, this is such an important discussion and you think, I’m always so thankful that I found you because I was really needing certain supplements and I was walking around this world unhappy not even knowing about it. So you really you’ve really supported me. So it’s a pleasure to be here. And, you know, Laura, I know that for literally over 20 years you’ve been a nurse practitioner, you’ve specialized in preventative and functional medicine. And through this time you’ve gotten to work really close and study with a long list of some of the most respected, functional, natural health oriented doctors and experts. It’s incredible. And now here you are, and you’ve built your bio-radiance health brand, and you’re helping high driven, high performing people every day. You’re helping them reclaim their energy, you’re helping them with brain stamina and productivity. And so you’ve become this trusted resource for people.
And what these people have in common is they want to build back their health so that their bodies can keep up with their ambition ’cause sometimes we want this, but we just can’t reach it. And you really help people reach it. And it’s always saying earlier, you supported me and I was in a difficult state of mind. I was having anxiety, I had brain fog. I wasn’t being the mother that I wanted to be and my work was suffering. And through some testing, through some organic acid testing, you discovered that I had some really massive deficiencies and you know, you helped me. You helped me figure out what supplements I needed. So I know there are many people out there just like me and you talk about this that have a graveyard drawer full of supplements and don’t know how to coordinate them all, or don’t know what to do with them. So I’m wondering if you can help our viewers understand the significance of certain supplements. And if you could specifically talk about which ones would be really supportive with mitochondrial energy projection, as well as mitochondria biogenesis.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, thank you, Daniela. And you did have an extraordinary recovery once we figured out what your body needed and we gave it to her. She felt a lot better.
Daniela Giangiorgi
It was only two weeks. It was so short for me, I was so blessed.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I know it was really extraordinary. So as you’ve been learning, you know, as the audience has been learning on this summit, mitochondria are all about energy production plus they do a whole bunch of other things in the body. And then there’s this whole concept of mitochondria biogenesis, where mitochondria reproduce, grow new ones and so you get new mitochondria. And so there are some particular supplements that are actually really helpful in this process. And my goal here today is to help people make sense of kind of those, I know everybody’s got bottles of supplements at home and which ones may be supportive for mitochondria. I’m a fan of trying to use what you already have. So definitely get a pen and paper and take notes as I go here because I’m gonna give you a whole bunch of information about certain supplements and try to make this as interesting and fun as we can as well. And I am also a big fan of trying to do as much as we can with food, but I will tell you that I love the concept of let food be thy medicine. However, if you are already in a place of low energy, brain fogginess, you know, autoimmune conditions, gut dysfunction, inflammation, you know, chronic symptoms, then you probably need more support than food to get you well. And then once you’re, well, let food help keep you there. And you know, I’ve been known to say, you cannot eat your way out of some of these chronic health conditions. You simply couldn’t eat enough food per day to get the nutrients, the extra nutrients that your body needs to recover and repair. And so, yes, it’s important what you eat and supplements can go a long way in supporting you as well. So with that, Daniela, are you ready to jump in?
Daniela Giangiorgi
I am ready. Yes, so good.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Okay. So the first supplement I wanna talk about today is CoQ10 and CoQ10 is something that probably a lot of people could have in their supplement drawer, supplement cupboard. It’s also something that you might actually get recommended to take from your Western medicine or allopathic practitioner. CoQ10 is really an incredible, it’s incredible supplement. It supports energy production inside the cells and it’s actually a component, a co-factor of the electron transport chain which is where mitochondria make ATP energy. And it also fights oxidative damage and low levels of CoQ10 are associated with chronic fatigue. So when you do, when you look at CoQ10 levels on people with chronic fatigue, you’ll find this commonality of it being low, and then many other diseases like heart disease and multiple sclerosis, you’ll find that it’s low. And oftentimes, you know, cardiologists will consider recommending this to their heart patients because it protects heart. It also protects other organs like pancreas, liver, kidneys, and the usual dosing, and that’s another thing that I wanna share on this talk today is I wanna help people with dosing and also let you know where you can find these supplements naturally as well. So, and that’s why I say have a pen and paper handy. You might wanna go back and rewind and watch this. So usual dosing is 150 to 300 milligrams per day.
Depending on what someone needs, you can go in higher, you can go higher. I would say, you know, work with your practitioner on that, but you can find CoQ10 naturally in foods. So it’s in pasture raised chicken and beef liver is a big one, heart and kidney. So those organ tissues. And then a lot of people don’t like eating organ so you can do freeze dried organs. That’s something that I do and it’s, ’cause I don’t love eating liver either or heart or kidney, but freeze dried organs are fantastic. It’s also in fish and dairy and some fruits like strawberries and grapefruit and apples, avocado, some vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower and sweet potatoes, nuts and seeds, olive oil. But like I said, you’d have to eat, if you’re already in a high oxidative level, if your test are showing high oxidative stress and you’ve already had some heart disease or some, you know, known inflammatory diseases, you probably can’t eat your way to the amount of CoQ10 that would be supportive. Okay, so the next one is carnitine and this one is a really fun one. So carnitine is an amino acid that shuttles fatty acids into the cell.
So there’s a process called the carnitine shuttle. I like to think of it like a bus that goes into the cell and the carnitine, you know, jumps on board and the bus takes it, you know, through the gates almost like, you know, if you’re driving onto a military base or you’re driving onto if any of you’ve been to like a Hollywood back lot or something or like Universal Studios, you gotta have like a shuttle to get to the back lot, right? Or you gotta, you gotta have like special circumstances to get onto the military base. So it’s kind of like that, the carnitine shuttle. So what it does is it helps these fatty acids get into the mitochondria and you use these fatty acids for fuel and to make energy. And if you don’t have enough carnitine you won’t burn fat and instead you’ll burn glucose, which causes more oxidative stress and it’s not a clean burning fuel, glucose. Fat is your clean burning fuel. So you can think of it like the difference between putting high octane gas in your car versus regular.
If you have a high performance car and you put regular regular gas in it, over time you’re gonna get problems with your engine and performance problems. And so that’s kind of like burning fat versus glucose. Glucose equals performance problems and fat equals high performance and carnitine is essential for that. And again, it’s an amino acid so it’s a protein. Now this is a metabolite of carnitine called acetyl-L-carnitine, actually also supports the synthesis of acetylcholine, which is the most abundant neurotransmitter in the human body. And acetylcholine regulates activities all over your body, in your organs, in your blood vessels and also the communication between nerves and muscles. So you can think of carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine as being really important for mental energy and focus, helping balance mood, helping protect your brain and nervous system and helps support the health of brain cells affected by occasional stress. This possibly could have been one of the things that supported you Daniela-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, no I was just that.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I think we gave you a combination supplement for mitochondria that I believe had some acetyl-L-carnitine. I’d have to go back and look at your protocols, but this is pretty amazing stuff. So the usual dose for this is 1.5 to four grams per day. So a gram is a lot, right? And you would divide this into two to three doses throughout the day. And I would say, you know, do this with the support of a practitioner. Carnitine, by the way is an amino acid like I said that’s naturally produced in your liver and kidneys, so your body can make it. And it’s mostly found in red meat and also fish and raw eggs and milk and raw cheese, avocado and tempeh, all these like really natural foods, right?
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Now this is one I know we put you on, N-acetyl cysteine, NAC and this is the next one I wanna talk about and it’s a molecule that your body creates from the amino acid cysteine. So there’s another amino acid there, the building blocks of protein. And it’s a precursor to your body’s master antioxidant glutathione. Now glutathione is one of the most important things that your body needs. In fact, you can actually predict how well people will do with a viral infection and the big viral infection we’ve been dealing with for the last couple of years. If people have low glutathione levels, that’s a pretty good indication that they’re gonna do poorly with clearing COVID and possibly need to be hospitalized. So people with high glutathione levels do much better. It’s an absolute indicator of likelihood of death from COVID believe it or not.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wow.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And so NAAC is a really efficient and cost effective way to increase glutathione in your body. Now, a word about glutathione. You can take glutathione intravenously, and you can take it liposomally, so you hold it under your tongue or in your mouth and it absorbs through the mucus membranes, and can also take it in a pill. And what I’ll say is glutathione in a pill does not absorb very well. It’s better to do it liposomally and even better just take inexpensive N-acetyl cysteine and make your own glutathione with it. That’s a really good hack is N-acetyl cysteine. We don’t even need to give you expensive glutathione because you can do NAC. And so N-acetyl-cysteine also, so NAC and N-acetyl-cysteine are the same thing, NAC for short. And it promotes healthy liver function and optimal detoxification. So when we do the organic acid test, we can see your detox pathways there. And one of the first things that we look at on an organic acid test is we look at your sulfur level and we wanna see are you having full detox collapse or is everything working well? That is a big indicator that things are going wrong if you’re in collapse and that is glutathione collapse. And that means you need N-acetyl cysteine. N-acetyl cysteine also helps with exercise recovery and it supports healthy lung function. And since we’re on the mitochondria summit, it is critical to mitochondria because it helps reduce oxidative damage And it preserves cells when there’s a genetic mitochondria mutation or when there’s toxins that are directly damaging mitochondria, so it’s really protective to mitochondria. And the recommended dose for this is somewhere between 600 milligrams would be a small dose, up to 2,000 milligrams a day. If somebody has serious decline in glutathione levels, I will give 3,000 milligrams a day, like 1,000 three times a day in divided doses. But I would do testing to see if you need that much. So I think you’ve been N-acetyl cysteine before Daniela.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, I think so.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, okay. The next thing that I wanna talk about is alpha-lipoic acid. That’s also abbreviated is ALA. For our audience, hope you’re keeping up with me. I know you’re probably rapidly writing down information. It’s okay, you can go back and watch this again. But alpha-lipoic acid is one of the most powerful nutrients available. It’s involved in energy metabolism and anti, and it’s part of the antioxidant system. And it actually helps replenish other antioxidants and stimulates the production of glutathione. There’s that glutathione again, your master antioxidant enzyme. So alpha-lipoic acid is supportive of that. It helps reduce inflammation, stabilize blood sugar. This is really important when people do have elevated cortisol levels. When you do kind of adrenal test, when you know, I could go on a soapbox about this adrenal dysfunction is actually mitochondrial dysfunction, but it does help to stabilize blood sugar. When you have these high cortisol levels, your blood sugar tends to go up and out and alpha-lipoic acid will support that. It improves cellular energy, and it really helps with cognitive brain function, big time, and it helps prevent weight gain as well. So there’s a little bit of use for it in the weight world. And the usual dose for this is around 600 to 1,800 milligrams per day in divided doses, so like two to three times a day. You can go up pretty high on alpha-lipoic acid if you’re working with a practitioner. It is found naturally in organ meats so there’s that organ meat again.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, no kidding.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh my gosh. Organ meat is one of the most healthy things. I mean, you think about Daniela, think about indigenous cultures, how they would eat the whole animal. They did not let those vital organs go to waste, right. But we do.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Makes sense. I know we’re white washing our food intake here.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I know we just want white chicken breast and filet mignon.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, really?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I know, but you know, organ meat is so good for you. So again, freeze dried organ is wonderful and you can get it sourced from, you know, cows in New Zealand where they don’t have the problems with the pesticides and herbicides and all the chemicals getting into the cows. So basically you’re gonna get alpha-lipoic acid from grass fed animals and also from spinach, broccoli, potatoes and tomatoes, but particularly in those animals, it’s the organ meats. Okay, this is a really good one. PQQ is what we call it for short, because it’s called pyrroloquinoline quinone And that is a-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wow, that is a fancy word.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah. And nobody can say it or spell it. So PQQ is what we call it. And it’s really important. You asked about mitochondria biogenesis, so formulation or building of new mitochondria, and this is where you, the sweet spot is with PQQ. So it helps you build new mitochondria. And so, basically you’re growing new mitochondria with the help of PQQ. And it’s helpful for energy production as well, it lowers fatigue, it helps with sustained physical energy and athletic performance, so athletes use this. It does help with better sleep quality, it’s an antiaging supplement and it helps with efficient metabolism. And there’s that healthy body weight. Again, it can support healthy body weight, and also optimal nervous system function. So PQQ is pretty amazing. Now your body cannot make PQQ. It can be found in a variety of foods. Parsley of all things.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Interesting.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Green tea, green peppers, Kiwis, and papayas, but supplemental amounts may be needed for people who have more critical mitochondria decline. Remember I said, when we started this talk that you can’t eat your way to mitochondria biogenesis. In most cases, if you are in a hypo metabolic state where mitochondria are just completely declined, and we can see that from an organic acid test, then you’re gonna need more than food to get better.
Daniela Giangiorgi
What were they again? They were parsley, papaya…
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Drink green tea, green peppers, kiwi. Yeah, papaya. And the dose for this is about 10 to 30 milligrams per day. I’m almost, I just wanted to give you these few really good, I have a couple more for mitochondria just not don’t wanna overwhelm the audience. I just wanna give you some big hitters here.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, absolutely.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Now, resveratrol, this is something that has gotten a lot of lip service because it contains a powerful polyphenol and it’s an antioxidant. So this is naturally found in red grape skin in seeds and blueberries, mulberries, cranberries. It’s in pistachios and raw cacao. It’s also in peanuts, it’s in red wine because it’s in red grape skin and it’s in the Japanese knotweed plant. And I have never tried knotweed plant, have you?
Daniela Giangiorgi
No, I have never even heard of it.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah. It improves mitochondrial function. It promotes antiaging. That’s resveratrol is in it’ll oftentimes be in antiaging products. Why does it promote antiaging? Because it helps mitochondria. I’m right at the crux of antiaging, right? It promotes brain and nervous system and it enhances detoxification. And it’s also a preventive for cancer and heart disease. And the usual dose of this one is around 200 milligrams, one to two times per day. So resveratrol. I have two more I wanna cover in this category of mitochondria. The first one is, the first of these two is curcumin. Curcumin is the active compound in the herb turmeric. And so you may see on a bottle labeled as turmeric, curcumin is what’s the active thing that’s in there. And this is another really powerful antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory. So this lowers the inflammatory fire, it helps put out the flames. It helps with reducing inflammation and pain, and it prevents and fights cancer. In fact, it is very well researched in the cancer world and Johns Hopkins Cancer Institute uses this regularly in their protocols. And definitely integrative cancer protocols will lean heavily on curcumin as well. It does support healthy metabolism and cellular function and healthy cardiovascular and neurological brain function as well. And it supports a healthy response to oxidative stress and a normal inflammatory response in the body. So that’s all really critical. It’s that lowering of inflammation. So here’s the thing about dosing curcumin. The usual dose is 400 to a thousand milligrams a day, but I’ll tell you that doses four to five times higher than that are used in cancer treatment. So we’re talking like 5,000 milligrams. And so you can go pretty high on curcumin. So, you know, if you get a bottle of that and look at what’s on the bottle and just double that you’re in the safe range and you know, you can get curcumins in a lot of different places. It’s great. The last one I wanna…
Daniela Giangiorgi
Popular.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
It is. The last one I wanna talk about here is d-ribose in terms of mitochondria support. And I will say a disclaimer here. I could talk to you for three hours on supplements that will support mitochondria. I just picked out some big ones and ones that are easy to get and ones that might already be in people’s medicine cabinets, okay. But there’s-
Daniela Giangiorgi
I’m sure they appreciate that.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So many more that we could go into but d-ribose is a building block of actually RNA and DNA. And this is a naturally occurring sugar molecule that your body actually produces, so you can produce it naturally. And it’s important for that ATP energy production of the mitochondria inside the mitochondria. And it’s really helpful for sleep, energy, pain reduction and even mental clarity. And so it helps boost energy in people who have suffered from conditions like heart disease or strokes where energy levels are reduced. If you give this to them, it really helps kinda give you them some get up and go. And it also supports energy and people doing regular intense exercise so on the other side, athletes can use it. And the dosing for this is usually two to 15 grams per day, divided in two to three doses and with meals. It shouldn’t be taken without a meal. Now I say two to 15 grams, and that’s a really low number to a really high number-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Because you have to work your way up from a low dose to a higher dose, because it can actually lower your blood glucose levels in some people and cause hypoglycemia. So you wanna go low, especially if you have diabetes, you wanna go low and just check your blood sugar as you do it and build up on it. And this is naturally found in poultry, dairy, beef, eggs, and mushrooms, but like I said, your body can actually make it. So these are-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Is there a way to promote your body making it, Laura?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Promote your body making it? That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that. I’d have to research more on that. I would say, you know, promoting your body making anything, like assimilating proteins, putting together amino acids, making any of these things, what is gonna support you is getting sleep because your rest and repair and restorative sleep, what happens when you’re sleeping is your body goes into making all the things while you’re asleep. And so I would say one of the main things just off the top of my head would be sleep and low stress and hydration and good nutrition. You don’t want your body trying to process foods that are harmful to you because that takes energy away from making nutrients.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
But in terms of specific pathways where it’s made, I’d have to do more research on that.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Okay, just curious.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And that’s good for the supplements that we can use for restoring mitochondria, that gives people a lot to work on right now.
Daniela Giangiorgi
I think so. I think that was like almost 10 something.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
Daniela Giangiorgi
That’s great.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, it’s quite a few.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah. No, thank you. I mean, it’s amazing how these things just regulate just so much, that they’re so vast, honestly, it’s incredible to see. Okay, so let me ask you this. Are there any nutrient deficiencies that you repeatedly see on an organic acids test? And if so, are there any basic supplements that you recommend for some of those common deficiencies?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes. So, you know, an organic acid test is a pretty robust test. It’s a urine test and it looks at kind of byproducts, enzymatic reactions, byproducts of metabolism and enzymatic reactions in the body. And it looks at many, many pathways. so we can see the mitochondria Krebs cycle, ATP production happening on there. We can see if your mitochondria are struggling or if they’re doing well, we can see what’s missing, what your mitochondria need. The test looks at your B vitamin status, it looks at your neurotransmitter status. So how, do you need support with making serotonin or dopamine? So neurotransmitters that help us with mood and productivity and satisfaction and feeling, you know, focused. This is one of the things we found on your test when we did yours and you were really struggling with anxiety and depression-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
We fixed those deficiencies that were identified on the neurotransmitters section and that’s why you had, in my opinion, such a quick rebound.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wow.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
‘Cause as soon as you had those things, boom, you were making the neurotransmitters, you felt so much better. The organic acid test has a gut section that looks at gut health as well. It has a full detox liver pathway section, it looks at oxidative stress, it looks at methylation. So you get a lot of information on this test. So I wanna cover when I think about nutrient deficiencies that I see over and over again, I wanna cover three important supplements. First being B vitamins. And this is a huge one. Almost every single person I run a test on has at least one B vitamin deficiency.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wow.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
If not multiple. And B vitamins are needed to turn your food into cellular energy and for your mitochondria to function and they’re literally mission critical. You cannot function without your B vitamins. And they support overall energy, cellular health, digestion, mental clarity. They help healthy nerve function and brain, like I mentioned, they help with hormone assimilation, cardiovascular health, muscle tone. They even help with the growth of red blood cells. So there’s a lot of different B vitamins. So thiamin is B1, riboflavin is B2, B3 is niacin, B5, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine is B6, biotin B7, folate is B9. People think of folic acid being folate. This is a problem. Folic acid is synthetic and it’s inflammatory and it causes a lot of problems. You do not wanna take folic acid. You wanna take folate, which is the natural form of B9. And that’s important for pregnant women. We tell them to take folic acid and it’s actually, sorry, itchy nose, it’s actually damaging and folate is which people should be taking. So you wanna take a good methyl B complex, which would have real folate in it. And then the last one is B12, cobalamin, and each of these B vitamins has a unique and different function. We could have a whole talk just on all these so I’m not gonna go into what each one does just know that each one is very important and they all have a very different dose, that’s important. So I basically recommend just a basic methyl B complex and methyl is important.
Methylated, that means that the vitamin is easier for your body to absorb and use and that’s important for people who have methylation problems. They can take B vitamins in and can’t use them. So this is why I do not buy my B vitamins at Costco and I do not buy my B vitamins at the grocery store because you cannot get these super high quality B vitamins. You need to go to a practitioner grade supplement. And so I think people watching this summit are pretty savvy and they understand that there is quality, quality matters with vitamins. There’s a lot of garbage out there. And one of the things that I learned, you know, with Dan Kalish, he is an absolute legend and a master in the functional medicine space and organic acid space. He does year long mentorships, where all we do is study organic acids which is what I did with him. And for a year we did organic acid after every week after week, we studied organic acid tests. And one of the things that I learned from him that was so eyeopening to me was that the B vitamin RDAs, the recommended dietary allowances are severely low, severely low, and we can go pretty high on B vitamins and sometimes people need four times or more the amount recommended on the bottle.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wow.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And the, yeah, it’s wild. So when you work with me and I see that you have a B vitamin need, I’m probably gonna dose you pretty good on B vitamins, ’cause you get a pretty good effect with them. I would recommend an organic acid test if you’re gonna do high dosing though, but everybody can take a B vitamin, you know, that’s fine. They are water soluble so you will see your urine will turn bright yellow and you will see, you will smell maybe. That’s normal, it’s normal. I mean, some is gonna come out in the urine. It doesn’t mean you’re peeing it all down the drain. A lot of it’s getting into your body.
Daniela Giangiorgi
A myth running around for sure.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah oh, you’re flushing your money down the toilet, right?
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yes.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, yeah. So naturally B vitamins are found in liver, kidney, again, meat.
Daniela Giangiorgi
There’s a theme here.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Fish and shellfish. It’s one of the reasons that vegetarians and vegans are often deficient in B vitamins. They are found in veggies and whole grains and beans and nuts and seeds as well but your best sources are animal animal sources for B vitamins. The second nutrient I wanna cover that I see often deficient is magnesium and this is a crucial, crucial mineral that supports over 300 enzyme reactions in the body. It’s literally needed for everything and it’s important for energy calcium absorption, muscle and bone health, transmission of nerve impulses throughout your body and metabolism of foods, synthesis of fatty acids. Remember at the beginning of this talk, I said, fatty acids are the things that we burn for energy, they’re the high octane burning, clean burning. Well to synthesize that you need magnesium. Magnesium is one of those cofactors that’s really important in the electron transport chain and in the Krebs cycle inside of the mitochondria. So almost everyone I test has a high need for magnesium. I rarely find somebody who’s doing great on magnesium unless they already take it. It is critical for cellular healing and the usual dose is around 300 milligrams, one to two times a day. Now, everybody knows you can also use magnesium to help you have bowel movements because if you, if you’re low in magnesium, you get constipated.
And so you there’s different types of magnesium that you can take at bedtime to help you have an elimination. Some magnesium like, like magnesium glycinate, for example, it doesn’t cause loose or bowel movements. It’s very, it’s absorbed, it doesn’t end up back in the bowel. So there’s all kinds of different magnesium and you should work with a practitioner to find out which one is best for you. But if it’s a constipation thing, magnesium oxide or magnesium citrate is what you take at night, but a magnesium glycinate, you’re not gonna have that effect. It’s also really great to help you fall asleep at night. It does help soothe and calm so it’s nice to take it at night. Now there are sources of magnesium in cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds, peanut butter. So you’re seeing a nut and seed theme here. It’s in broccoli and black beans, bananas, oatmeal, by the way, our soil is getting very depleted of magnesium. And it is a myth that there’s no such thing as magnesium deficiency in this country. I used to say that all the time when I worked in Western medicine, I used to say the only people who are magnesium deficient are alcoholics and it’s simply not true. And the reason we say alcoholics are deficient is because they don’t eat as much as they should. True alcoholics drink, they don’t eat and so they’re deficient in lots of things, including magnesium. But since our soil is so depleted, it’s not it, we have a hard time with magnesium now. So-
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah, that’s what, I’ve heard that time and time again, that our food sources are just do not have the amount of magnesium that our bodies need.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, and you can get magnesium from more than just pills. You can take Epsom salt baths, you can do soaks and soak your legs and feet in Epsom salts. You can do chlorophyll, you can do carbonated, you can do a soda stream, like a carbonated water has magnesium in it, do magnesium sprays and gels. So there’s different ways to get magnesium.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yeah. You put on a spray and it’s been really helpful.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh, good, good. Yeah. There’s one more nutrient I wanna talk about during this talk and that’s vitamin D. And I have tested thousands and thousands of people on vitamin D in my years in the Western medicine and allopathic space. I worked in a bone clinic for 15 years and we tested D on every single person, so I test thousands of people per year. And in sunny, Southern California, where I live, 50% of people were vitamin D deficient, 50%. And we all know vitamin D is the sun vitamin, right, our skin makes it from the sun. It’s actually not even a vitamin, it’s a hormone, but we call it a vitamin. But it’s so important for bone health. It helps regulate your body’s calcium levels and when calcium level is low, D stimulates calcium absorption and reduces calcium excretion. So you don’t lose as much calcium, you retain it, and that helps your healthy helps you have healthy bones. In addition, vitamin D is critical with immune response in the body. It’s well known that if you have COVID, you should up your vitamin D. Anything that you’re dealing with in terms of infection, you should up your vitamin D. And it helps with healthy prostate and colon and breast tissue and it supports gut health. I mean, vitamin D is everywhere in your body and it goes through a very complex process to become bioavailable. It has to go through your liver and your kidneys. Once you absorb it, once you make it, you know, from the sun or once you ingest it from food or from a pill, it goes through all these complex processes before it becomes bioavailable. So it’s, and if you’re obese, it’s very difficult to maintain a normal D level.
It gets trapped in fat tissue and never makes it through that biosynthesis into something that will become usable for you. So common sources of vitamin D are salmon and eggs and fortified dairy. It’s not naturally occurring in dairy, but we put it in there. So vitamin D milk is ’cause we put D in the milk. And then the usual dosing is now we think about the, about, you know, dosing in the Western medicine world is very different than dosing in the functional medicine world for D. The International Society of Clinical Densitometry. the American College of Endocrinology, the American College of Rheumatology, they’ll recommend about 2,000 international units per day. Functional medicine we say 5,000 a day is probably better and safe. And sometimes we, you know, we’ll recommend you take 10,000 a day or 50,000 a week, depending on if your levels are low. And that can be an add on onto some organic acid tests and you can also test D in your regular doctor’s office, but I think that’s a good start for vitamins and minerals and, you know, supplements in nutrients that can support mitochondria health and overall health. But I think you never can go wrong if you do a B vitamin, magnesium and vitamin D. I mean, that’s a easy one to take every day for good support. And I bet you, most people already have bottles of that in their graveyard of supplements or their abandoned cupboard or shelf or drawer of supplements.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Yes. Yes, probably. And I think you put me on all three of these because I just didn’t have enough of all three of these. And it’s fascinating to hear how high your intake of vitamin D can get and still be safe and-
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh yeah.
Daniela Giangiorgi
And feeded.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, you can’t do that with all supplements but vitamin D you can dose pretty high.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Amazing, amazing.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Thank you for that. You know, and I know you’ve got, this great 21 live, 21 day I should say, live journey coming up. And this is to help our summit viewers that are watching now and it’s a journey that is going help viewers become the most energetic and focused people that they wanna be with more education and more support. Can you share a little bit more about it and how to get access to the program, Laura?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, we have a live 21 day journey coming up to help our summit viewers really just feel amazing, to wake up each day feeling purposeful and energetic. And each of those, you know, three weeks, I’m gonna meet with you twice a week. And that means you’re gonna have six touch points with me as you implement the strategies that I teach during the course. You’ll have sustained focus when working on important tasks and be able to keep up with your family mentally and physically. This is the so important to everyone I talk to, to keep up with their spouses or to keep up with their kids. A lot of my clients have teenage kids or adult kids or even grandkids. You’ll know what foods to eat and which to avoid in order to maintain maximum energy levels. You know, what products to keep in your home and what will contribute to your long term success and what you should get rid of.
Sneaky toxins in your home, they’re zapping your energy. You’ll have a clear understanding of which supplements will support your energy and how long you should take them. So, yes, I went over a lot of supplements tonight, today, and I will go over even more in this 21 day, that’s gonna be very specific to supporting you with guided support from me. If you live in the United States, the program will include optional curated supplement protocols to speed up the process for you and have you feeling amazing. So I put together the best products on the market to give you the fastest results I can. And simultaneously set you up for the foundation for longterm healing, healing of inflammation, healing of leaky gut, chronic symptoms, and everything I do is with the purpose of permanent results. We don’t want temporary hacks, we want you to feel good. So you can go to easyenergyreset.com and learn more and get access.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Wonderful. So that’s easyenergyreset.com. That’s perfect.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Thank you so much, Daniela.
Daniela Giangiorgi
Thank you. Thank you, Laura.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
This has been great. And everyone enjoy the summit. There are so many incredible speakers on here. I encourage you all to find your people, find the practitioners that make sense for you, find the people that have resources that solve your particular problems and looking forward to seeing you in the 21 day energy reset. Take good care, everyone. Bye now.
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