Functional Medicine, Hormones & Root Cause Health | Dr. Justin Marchegiani | EP66 The Josh Button Podcast
Functional Medicine,
Hormones & Getting to the Root Cause
& Getting to the Root Cause
15 Years. 5,000 Patients. One Question: What Is Actually Causing This?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani started as a personal trainer watching the conventional nutrition recommendations fail everyone he worked with. He moved into functional and chiropractic medicine — got called a quack for it — and spent the next 15 years building a practice that asks the question conventional medicine is structurally incapable of asking: why do you have this problem?
He has seen the end-stage outcomes up close. He worked in a surgery center holding diabetic limbs during amputations while the surgeons around him smoked cigarettes and ate processed food. He watched specialists treat each body system in isolation while patients bounced between them, never getting better, accumulating medications, never reaching a root cause. That radicalized him. He went the other direction entirely.
This is one of the most practically dense episodes of this podcast. Dr. J covers why both vegan and carnivore diets can produce real results — and why you may be misattributing the reason. His framework for dietary templates. Why 90% of men chasing testosterone could double it naturally without ever touching a needle. The high-intensity sprint protocol that doubles HGH in a single day. His first-principles analysis of vaccine safety studies and the questions nobody has been able to answer. The antibiotic alternatives that work. Water quality, hydrogen water, electrolytes, and what to actually take daily. And his unambiguous read on MAHA and the incoming shift in federal health guidelines.
The gut issue can easily cause a hormone issue. The hormone issue can cause a neurological issue. The neurological issue can create a joint issue, which can create an energy issue, which can create a kidney issue. One issue can spiral up. But each specialist is siloed. No one is getting to the root underlying cause.
— Dr. Justin MarchegianiWhat We Cover
What This Episode Covers
What to Walk Away With
- The reason you feel better on a vegan diet has almost nothing to do with plants. If you go vegan and feel better, the most likely cause is that you cut out processed sugar, soda, refined grains, and conventionally farmed junk. You also likely went organic. You decreased glyphosate residue. You increased vegetable density. But you could add chicken, fish, or eggs back in and still feel just as good — or better. Ask the right question: am I feeling better because of what I added, or because of what I pulled out? Almost always it's the latter.
- Carnivore works for a specific set of reasons — and can fail for a specific set of reasons. The benefits are real: inflammatory fatty acid profile improves dramatically, fat-soluble vitamins increase, FODMAP load drops, lectin and anti-nutrient load drops. The pitfalls are also real: carnivore requires serious acid, enzyme, and bile production to actually digest all that protein and fat. If your digestion is compromised — and most people's is, because stress suppresses digestive function — you'll hit problems. Electrolytes and organ meats are non-negotiable add-ons. Lean cuts will wreck you. Know why the diet is working and watch for the warning signs that something's off.
- A dietary template is not a diet. Dr. J doesn't prescribe diets. He builds templates — frameworks with levers you can pull in any direction based on your actual current physiology, goals, and known conditions. The template has criteria: nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory, low-toxin. Then you apply the Pareto principle — 80-20 or 90-10. Then you assess your known vulnerabilities, whether that's autoimmune, leaky gut, or SIBO, and tighten accordingly. If you have Hashimoto's or lupus, the levers are pulled tighter. If you're healthy, the 10-20% off-template matters much less. And the cheat matters — good, better, best. Not Domino's. Think: what is the least damaging option that still feels like a treat?
- 90-95% of men can double their testosterone naturally without ever touching a needle. The list of levers available before TRT is long: sleep, nutrient density, interval training, resistance training, eliminating processed food, adding organ meats and quality fats, using zinc, magnesium, ashwagandha, fenugreek, tribulus, tongkat ali, horny goatweed, sapamedto to block DHT, dopamine amino acids, glandular support from grass-fed animals. Dr. J has doubled testosterone naturally in patient after patient. Men in their 20s and 30s going straight to exogenous testosterone are making a fertility decision without realising it — FSH suppression from TRT reduces sperm production, and the longer you're on it, the harder reversal becomes.
- Two 30-second all-out sprints will double your HGH for an entire day. That's it. Two sprints, 30 seconds each, with a 90-second rest between them. The data exists. Who doesn't have three minutes? Dr. J does this on a rowing machine or a Rogue Echo Bike. Hills are preferable to flat sprints for joint preservation — the forward angle distributes impact better. This is the single highest-return time investment you can make for hormone optimisation. Stack this with 10,000-15,000 steps of daily movement and you have a training protocol that requires almost no gym time.
- The government's dietary recommendations were written by lobbyists and special interests in the 1970s. This is documented history, not conspiracy. Gary Taubes covers it in detail — McGovern's commission was captured by food industry representatives who wrote the food pyramid. The fluoride-drops-IQ data has been replicated across dozens of studies in other countries. The high-carbohydrate grain recommendations correlate perfectly with the explosion of metabolic disease. Dr. J's operating heuristic: when the government tells him to do something, he does the opposite. Twelve servings of grains — he eats zero. Bugs — he eats more grass-fed meat. This is not reflexive contrarianism; it's pattern recognition from a career of watching the recommendations fail.
- The first-principles vaccine questions no one has satisfactorily answered. Dr. J's framework is not about being pro or anti-vaccine. It is about applying the same standards required for any other medical product. The vaccine schedule in the US has two to three times more vaccines than the healthiest Scandinavian countries. Hepatitis B at birth is given for a disease primarily transmitted through intravenous drug use and unprotected sex — and the mother is already tested for it. Safety studies for many vaccines do not use inert placebos; they compare to other vaccines or to the adjuvant itself (aluminium), which means the safety signal cannot be detected. Clinical trials of weeks are inadequate for detecting signals that may not appear until years two through five. Liability protection since 1986 removes the incentive to make the product as safe as possible. These are not answers — they are the questions.
- You can stay off antibiotics for most respiratory infections if you act early enough. Dr. J has not taken an antibiotic in over 20 years. His protocol: at the first sign of sickness, saline nasal spray with a drop of iodine or silver — flush the sinuses, stop the infection before it progresses to the lungs. If it goes deeper, a nebuliser with preservative-free saline, NAC powder, glutathione, silver, or food-grade hydrogen peroxide clears the lung environment without systemic antibiotic disruption. Natural antimicrobials — berberine, goldenseal, silver, reishi — run concurrently. Most antibiotic courses come from upper respiratory infections that started in the sinuses. Deal with the sinuses and you prevent most of those courses.
- For BJJ athletes specifically: 10% sulfur soap after every session. Volcanic ash sulfur soap at 10% concentration has 50+ years of literature behind it for bacterial, fungal, and viral skin infections. Combine with tea tree or salicylic acid. This is the preventive protocol. For mat hygiene: hydrogen peroxide spray is preferable to vinegar because it bubbles diagnostically on contact with organic material — you can see what you're cleaning. The bubbling tells you there's something there; wipe it, spray again, confirm it's clear.
- Water quality is foundational and most people are getting it wrong. Reverse osmosis removes microplastics, PFAS, homeopathic pharmaceutical residue, and most contaminants. It removes minerals too — but that's solved easily with a quality electrolyte product and a good sea salt. For sparkling water, Mountain Valley has no PFAS. Topo Chico's PFAS levels have been trending down but are not zero. Add hydrogen water tablets or a hydrogen water device for the additional anti-inflammatory and antioxidant load the evidence supports. NAC supplementation daily is also worth adding specifically to counter ongoing environmental toxin exposure — it raises glutathione and improves oxidative stress capacity.
Dr. J's Practical Stacks
Daily Baseline Supplementation
Natural Testosterone Optimisation Stack
Antibiotic Alternative Protocol
The Full Conversation
Why Conventional Medicine Failed — And What Functional Medicine Fixes
Dr. J's origin story is the surgery center. He was the person holding diabetic limbs as they were amputated. The surgeons doing the amputations were smoking, eating processed food, not healthy themselves. And nobody — not one person in that environment — was interested in preventing the amputations from happening. The system was organised entirely around the end-stage outcome. Prevention was not incentivised. Prevention was not even in the conversation.
The specialist silo problem compounds this. A gut issue that triggers a hormone imbalance that creates a neurological symptom that manifests as joint pain that produces fatigue that eventually stresses the kidneys — that chain will be treated by five different specialists, none of whom know what the others are doing, all of whom will prescribe within their specialty. The patient accumulates medications. They never get better. They get more expensive. And the root cause — whatever started the chain — never gets touched.
The Dietary Template — Why Dr. J Doesn't Prescribe Diets
The cleanest framework in this episode is Dr. J's distinction between a diet and a dietary template. A diet is a set of rules. A dietary template is a set of criteria with adjustable levers. His criteria: nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory, low-toxin. Within those criteria, he pulls levers based on the individual's current physiology, known conditions, and goals.
The classic example he walks through: a vegan walks in feeling great. He asks them to describe their lunch. It's vegetables, avocado, coconut oil — and they cut out soda and bread. His response: great. Now add chicken. Keep everything else the same. If you still feel great — and statistically you will — then what was producing your improvement wasn't the veganism. It was cutting out the junk. That changes the conversation entirely. Now you can choose what to do with that information rather than remaining dogmatic about a diet that may have been partially misdirected from the start.
Testosterone — 90% of Men Are Skipping the Work
Dr. J's frustration with the TRT trend in men's health is specific and documented: men in their 20s and early 30s going on exogenous testosterone before addressing any of the lifestyle factors that are suppressing their natural production. FSH is the hormone that drives sperm production in the testes. Exogenous testosterone suppresses FSH. The longer you're on it, the more that function atrophies. Men who want to have children and have been on TRT for years are discovering fertility problems they didn't know they were creating.
The natural toolkit available before any pharmaceutical intervention is extensive. He lists it out: zinc, magnesium, ashwagandha, fenugreek, tribulus, tongkat ali, horny goatweed, sapamedto to block DHT (which generates a 15-20% increase in free testosterone on its own), dopamine amino acids, glandular support from grass-fed animals, sleep, interval training, resistance training, diet quality. He has doubled testosterone naturally in patient after patient. His estimate: 90-95% of men can stave off TRT until their 50s if they do it correctly.
The Vaccine Safety Framework — First Principles Questions
Dr. J's position on vaccine safety is careful, principled, and grounded in the same logic he applies to every other medical intervention: evidence standard, study design, incentive structure. He is not anti-vaccine. He is pro-evidence. And his read is that the evidence standard applied to vaccines has not met the bar applied to other drugs.
His five core questions: the US vaccine schedule is two to three times larger than the schedules in the healthiest Scandinavian countries — why? Hepatitis B is given on the day of birth for a disease primarily transmitted through intravenous drug use and unprotected sex, when the mother is already screened for it — why? Safety studies compare vaccines to other vaccines or to the adjuvant (aluminium), not to an inert placebo — which means the safety signal cannot be detected statistically. Clinical trials of two to three months cannot detect signals that appear at years two through five. And the 1986 liability protection act removes the financial incentive to maximise safety. These are structural questions about study design. They are not answered by citing consensus.
Football analogy: it's fourth and one. You stack the goal-line defense in the middle anticipating the QB sneak. Then Mahomes play-actions and throws to the flat. Nobody's there. Pathogenic priming is the immune system prepared for the specific spike protein — but now RSV, adenovirus, and other coronaviruses have open space on the outside. The early government data showed people who received the COVID vaccine were five times more likely to contract other respiratory viruses. You set everyone for a play that didn't come.
MAHA — Why This Is the Biggest Public Health Opportunity in Decades
Dr. J has been saying what MAHA is now saying since 2006. Getting the FDA's revolving door with pharmaceutical companies closed. Getting high fructose corn syrup and seed oils out of school lunches. Getting the carbohydrate recommendations revised. Getting fluoride out of the water supply. Getting vaccine schedule scrutiny back on the table. Getting processed food out of federally funded institutions — hospitals, schools, military bases.
His operating instinct is unchanged by the political framing: he has distrusted government health recommendations since weapons of mass destruction, since the fluoride-IQ data was suppressed, since the food pyramid was revealed as lobbyist-written. But now the conversation is happening publicly, at the federal level, and the people who were dismissed as quacks or conspiracy theorists for a decade are watching their positions become the mainstream. His read: the average person is going to benefit enormously from this shift. People like him and Josh were already there. But the average person now has institutional permission to question what they were told.
Mentioned in This Episode
- Dr. Justin Marchegiani — JustinHealth.com justinhealth.com
- Beyond Wellness Radio — Dr. J's Podcast & YouTube Search: Beyond Wellness Radio · justinhealth.com/podcast
- The Thyroid Reboot — Dr. J's Forthcoming Book Check JustinHealth.com for release updates
- Good Calories, Bad Calories — Gary Taubes Documents the McGovern Commission and how US dietary guidelines were written by food industry lobbyists
- Mountain Valley Spring Water — No PFAS mountainvalleyspring.com
- Xlear Rescue Nasal Spray — Antiviral Botanicals xlear.com
- Rogue Echo Bike — Referenced for Sprint Protocol roguefitness.com
- Redmond Real Salt — 72 Trace Minerals redmond.life
- Hydrogen Water Episode — Dr. J's Podcast "The Truth About Hydrogen Water" — search at JustinHealth.com
Functional medicine clinician — 15 years in practice, 5,000+ patients seen globally via telehealth. Former personal trainer. Doctor of Chiropractic. Host of Beyond Wellness Radio (podcast and YouTube). Specialises in thyroid, hormonal imbalances, autoimmune conditions, gut health, detoxification, and root cause resolution. Has Hashimoto's himself — walks the talk. Sees patients in every time zone via Skype, WhatsApp, FaceTime, and phone. Ships labs throughout the US and internationally. Author of The Thyroid Reboot (forthcoming). Father of two boys (five and seven) who eat pasture-raised eggs and sausage for breakfast every day while their peers eat processed cereal.
Hard to Kill Starts With What You Put In.
If this episode opened questions about what you're eating, what's really in your supplements, and what the system hasn't told you — the free Ancestral Nutrition Guide is the next step.
Get the Free Guide Or comment ANCESTRAL on any @stopkillingtheplants post — we'll DM it instantly.Disclaimer — This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing discussed constitutes medical advice. Dr. Marchegiani's statements reflect his clinical experience and personal opinions. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before changing medications, supplementation, diet, or any treatment protocol. Views on vaccines, government policy, and pharmaceutical products are the guest's own and are presented for educational discussion.
