Structured water - with Dave Asprey; Methylation Meets Gut Health with Dr Lynch, fibromyalgia Thread by Dr. Kohilathas.
Sun tea & yak butter monastery tea is structured water. Women churn the tea for ten minutes to create a blended structured water beverage. interview with Dean Asprey. *post barely too long for email.
Making Structured Water: Dave Asprey mentioned that MCT oil or ghee, clarified butter used in India, promotes structuring of water when blended. Research by Dr. Gerald Pollack. Modern blenders or smoothie makers would save the ten minutes of slower churning that the women do by hand. That sounds awfully meditative - I wonder why the monks don’t participate in making their tea instead of just drinking it? 20 seconds at high power or a minute with a smaller powered frother. Shaking it with a mixing ball also works but takes a longer time, closer to the ten minutes of traditional churner.
Women’s work is underappreciated. I digress. Maybe the male monks are tending the yaks.
Dave says use a glass container to make sun tea and the polyphenols in the tea help the infrared warmth of the sunshine to structure the water of the tea. Another commenter here had told me that leaving water in the sun three days will structure it. I was using plastic jugs to try that and it seemed to work. The sun tea is really good though. I used rooibus for a lower oxalate content. I will look for another glass jug for water.
That story was part of a video interview of Dave Asprey by Jesse Chappus.
This is a clip from a longer interview, link to that is in the info of the video. This clip is focused on structured water more than the full interview but also wanders through our need for sodium, and how acidity and alkalinity in the body is regional and shifts during the day along with the need for a little more sodium in the morning to get going. A little lick of sea salt followed by a glass of water is a first thing in the morning habit recommended by Dr. Batmanghelidj also. The clip includes the yak butter tea story.
He charges his water with a laser, an arc light, or some other things I missed - it promotes the change to the quantum flow form of water that seems a little smoother and thicker or slippery on the tongue - more mucilaginous or slightly Jello-like in feeling. Read more about Structured Water in a post by Dave Asprey: What Is EZ Water and Why Do I Have to Get Naked In the Sun to Make It? (daveasprey.com/EZ-water) (*note, you can wear clothes too and the infrared warmth from the sun will also increase the body’s structured water.).
Timothy Winey is a Substacker and scientist who works with structuring water and one of his experiments used a wine judged very poor quality, structured it, and had the wine tasters review it and the rating s changed significantly. A good liquor or wine is likely structured water and the bad ones changed to standard liquid.
What does structured water have to do with methylation and gut health?
Our mitochondria and microbiome need to live in a structured water environment for optimal health and function (and so do we).
This video popped up next so my spirit guides who reside in the Youtube algorithm may have intended it for me.
Methylation Meets Gut Health, Dr. Ben Lynch, ND, (Youtube). President of Seeking Health line of supplements and author of the book Dirty Genes - lower functioning genes which can occur for many reasons, environmental inhibition, not just gene alleles or epigenetics. (Not recently active, but the Twitter: @SeekingHealth, and website seekinghealth.com.)
Yes, it is an excellent video. I encourage watching it if interested in the topic of health as methylation and gut health impacts everything else in the body and brain.
Dr. Lynch mentions that he has lived experience as someone with gene allele problems that make histamine related problems more likely, he had to work through many chronic symptoms while seeking his own health. Dave Asprey also mentioned an early history of being chronically unhealthy with fibromyalgia and other diagnoses when he was focused on his computer/tech career before he started seeking to optimize or biohack his own health.
The list of things that may be wrong with methylation and/or mitochondrial function is long; and the list of daily self-care habits needed is also long. It may require that lived experience of being a human knockout mouse or modern life guinea pig in order to struggle through all the stages needed to find health, in order to be able to understand that it really isn’t easy and that the list of things that may need to be fixed is really quite long. That may sound discouraging but the positive is that these other people, and I, have worked through a lot of issues and have left a trail of bread crumbs or potentially helpful products that other people can use to save the years of trial and error that Dave Asprey, Dr. Lynch and I have all likely went through in our own pursuit of restoring health during modern life conditions.
*Addition, and Timothy Winey commented that he also recovered from “debilitating fibromyalgia using Dr. Paul St. Amand’s protocol, and it worked like a charm! https://melissacongdonmd.com/guaifenesin/” I am unfamiliar with that protocol but also used guaifenesin daily during part of my recovery journey. It is a decongestant. Per the link, Dr Amand also had fibromyalgia and was able to improve or reverse it with the guaifenesin which helps the body remove more phosphate. Excess inorganic phosphate can become deposited in cells throughout the body along with calcium in “nodules” that cause inflammation ~ nodules ~ lumps of mineral collected together like tiny rocks made of phosphorus and/or calcium scattered throughout the body.
Why should we care about structured water? It helps proteins work correctly and stay in the right shapes to interact with other things correctly. Polyphenols help structure water and stabilize proteins, and that is likely part of their health benefits.
“Some diseases (e.g. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type II diabetes, and cataracts) are associated with the “misfolding” of proteins. Water - “restructured” as nanoclusters of the above-described type – plays a key role in the proper folding of proteins. The misfolding of proteins, making them dysfunctional and disease-causing, is likely associated with the failure of water molecules to congregate in clusters that properly interact with the protein. The development of drugs to treat such diseases should therefore consider the restoration of water clustering at the protein interfaces.” - Timothy Winey basicresearchltd@gmail.com, (slide 23, researchgate.net)
*****Modern life is really a big part of the problem, adding inflammation and adding a food and water and air supply that increases toxins more than provides nutrients. Knowledge is power, with information and effort, changes can be made that help reduce pain and restore normal function so “coping with chronic inflammation” isn’t the daily task. Enjoying life and preventing the return of chronic inflammation becomes the new goal - maintaining all the new habits, supplements or diet changes, may be critical for life, not just for a few well-behaved months or even a couple of years. Back-sliding can lead to the feeling like you have the flu every single day.
It took AMAZING work by Dr. Lynch to put together these graphics - tons of citations would be involved in supporting it all - SERIOUSLY award worthy in a world that gave Nobel Prize awards for functional medicine.
Dr. Lynch has worked a long time putting together the following graphics, which are complex and award worthy in my opinion. He has issues that may decrease activity of a gene/enzyme in orange and things that may increase activity in purple and nutrients or cofactors that are essential for the step are in green. To interpret the graphic you may need an MD or biochem degree but listening to the video helps. On steps that mention “acetaldehyde” as being a factor, read: ‘excess alcohol intake by the patient’ as the suspected differential diagnosis, question to ask. The take home point for a lay reader is simply seeing the complexity - every single highlighted step may be a cog in the interconnected gears of our energy/methyl/acetyl CoA production factory. If the factory is out of one thing, the entire line may slow down or shut down.
…and if we have issues with methylation then we are going to likely have digestive upset and increased histamine issues and sensitivity to any protein wandering by a leaky intestinal membrane at the wrong/right moment to cause autoimmune antibodies to form against something the is similar to a human protein (examples: egg albumin and human albumin or wheat gluten and thyroid tissue). Adequate vitamin D is protective against new allergies or autoimmune antibodies from forming but glyphosate may be interfering with vitamin D metabolism and magnesium availability and magnesium is needed for vitamin D metabolism along with adequate protein in the diet.
Graphic about issues that may lead to histamine excess -
Note - whether a step is being increased or decreased does not necessarily mean that is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ - in ideal function all the cogs in the interconnected gears would be chugging along at ‘medium’ metaphorically - so read with common sense or find someone to interpret it for you.
The other clarifier is that an individual’s genes are being assessed in the graphic, in this one it is his own. The little colored rectangles under a gene “DAO” or “HDC” or “HNMT” as examples are about his own gene alleles known or unknown info - unknown info simply means ~ not a lot of research.
For “DAO” the enzyme that breaks down histamine in the gut the graphic lists in purple “decreases activity” “gut inflammation, Metformin, alcohol, acetaldehyde”. Dr. Lynch mentions his company’s DAO product can help in the early stages of recovery because gut inflammation itself is reducing DAO for anyone - with normal genes or dysfunctional genes - BUT, a caveat, some people, a few, may not do well with it if they also aren’t breaking down the next step well either. If the “Imidazole acetaldehyde” accumulates, it will also cause DAO expression to be decreased. Zinc or niacin (B3) deficiency could be causing that step to be blocked we see in orange and they are also listed in green as essential cofactors for the enzyme.
Spoiler alert - lacking B6, B2, B1, B12, choline, phosphatidylcholine, betaine, magnesium, and other nutrients will also throw a cog in the works. Dr. Lynch’s book title “Dirty Genes” is to suggest that gene activity can be affected negatively by many things, not just y having a gene allele that a genetic screening might identify. The chronic inflammation sleuth needs to work through all the steps in the first graphic, with a person’s gene results, but also with knowledge of their daily habits and diet in order to see what…what all, might be causing dysfunction in the overall one carbon methylation cycles. Many issues may be present and repairing them all may be needed to really restore optimal function and energy level and pain reduction.
“HNMT” is the enzyme needed to break histamine down within the brain - so there can be two types of ‘histamine excess’ symptoms - one more gut upset oriented that also causes general achiness and seasonal allergy like nasal and itchy symptoms, and one with the hyperexcitability* within the brain that can cause mania or severe anxiety/paranoia and even suicidal ideation or impulses that end life abruptly. *I think this is part of ‘akathisia’ seen with psych drug withdrawal. I have dysfunctional gene alleles in both enzymes and have digestive issues and mental symptoms when I eat too much histamine triggering food or have mast cell activation for other reasons like flickering/strobe lights/action movies.
Regarding gene screening: Dr. Lynch stresses the point near the end that gene allele screening will not show epigenetic problems in a pathway so a screening result that says “no methylation problems” or “no histamine problems” may be true about a person’s genotype - their genes, while also being very misleading and wrong about the person’s actual phenotype - their daily symptoms and quality of life.
Aside/ Nutrigenomics looks at the things that promote or inhibit a pathway and work on improving gene function with supplement or other changes. Biohacking is somewhat similar - ‘tech’ hacking health . . . as if no one else has ever thought about the connection between what we eat and how we feel.
Methylation Meets Gut Health, (Youtube), Dec. 16, 2021. The products mentioned at the time of the video were not available to the Canadian Fullscript users, only for the US users.
This Thread by Dr. Kohilathas about fibromyalgia is pertinent: “Women with fibromyalgia show significant alterations in serum bile acids and gut bile-metabolizing bacteria. These alterations are correlated with syndrome symptom severity.” (Minerbi, et al., 2023) - @DrKohilathas, (Thread;twitter.com/drkohilathas); and I added a few replies at the end including a quote. Increased expression of Farnesoid-X-Receptor/Retinoid-X Receptor suggests that excess active retinoids are activating too much of the combined FXR/RXR receptors which reduces activity of the FXR function of bile salt production/metabolism.
“IPA analysis revealed that the top enriched canonical pathways were acute-phase response signaling, Liver-X Receptor/Retinoid-X Receptor activation, Farnesoid-X Receptor/Retinoid-X Receptor activation, and coagulation and complement systems. The importance of inflammation in FM [fibromyalgia] was corroborated by the increase in erythrocyte sedimentation rate.” (Ramírez-Tejero, et al., 2018)
Dr. Lynch stresses that patients need to be helped in phases, some things need to be fixed first in order for other steps/strategies to work. Trying some things too early may not help or may add other negative symptoms like taking DAO supplements when you are still deficient in zinc and niacin - that could just lead to excess “Imidazole acetaldehyde” accumulating.
Big note - reducing stress is part of his Step One. Stress itself causes gut dysbiosis and dysfunction.
This post of mine is pertinent regarding acetyl CoA, active retinoids or a high fat or high saturated fat diet and PDK inhibition (fibromyalgia and ME/CFS seem like astral twins to me, or siblings at least, metaphorically): Houston, we have a problem, (Substack).
Also: 1) microRNA, elevated homocysteine and is there a role for excess Retinoic Acid? (Substack) and 2) Nature loves a good design; Cancer, POTS, Epigenetics & the One-Carbon Methylation Cycles. (Substack).
**I am still learning - this is really complex.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.
Reference List
(Minerbi, et al., 2023) Minerbi, A., Gonzalez, E., Brereton, N., Fitzcharles, M.-A., Chevalier, S., Shir, Y., Altered serum bile acid profile in fibromyalgia is associated with specific gut microbiome changes and symptom severity. PAIN 164(2):p e66-e76, February 2023. DOI: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002694 https://journals.lww.com/pain/Abstract/2023/02000/Altered_serum_bile_acid_profile_in_fibromyalgia_is.9.aspx
(Ramírez-Tejero, et al., 2018) Ramírez-Tejero JA, Martínez-Lara E, Rus A, Camacho MV, Del Moral ML, Siles E. Insight into the biological pathways underlying fibromyalgia by a proteomic approach. J Proteomics. 2018 Aug 30;186:47-55. doi: 10.1016/j.jprot.2018.07.009. Epub 2018 Jul 17. PMID: 30030163. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30030163/
Thank you. Love structured water info.
Have been using encased magnets in sun teas. The 10 min stir is key. Half our yr is winter here. Make enough for ice cubes... 1 a day during sun season to last through winter if freezer space available.
I've been quite glad to have found your substack.
typically contains much interesting information I've not seen in other places. and the things you've posted that I have seen before aren't typical mainstream mumbo-jumbo.
thanks for your ongoing efforts to share data with the rest of us.