Episode #235: The Inflammation Mystery- Why Your Body Still Hurts When Your Labs Are Normal

In this episode of The Berman Method Podcast, Dr. Jake and Jenni Berman discuss why you can still experience inflammation even when your lab results come back normal. They explain that chronic inflammation can show up as joint pain, stiffness, headaches, digestive issues, and fatigue, and that these symptoms often have underlying causes that routine testing may miss.

The conversation explores how blood sugar imbalances, chronic stress, gut health, food sensitivities, and vitamin deficiencies can all contribute to inflammation. Rather than masking symptoms with medication, the hosts emphasize the importance of identifying and treating the root cause to achieve lasting relief.

They also share practical strategies for reducing inflammation through better nutrition, improved gut health, stress management, and regenerative therapies. The episode encourages listeners to take a proactive approach to their health by looking beyond standard lab work and addressing the factors that truly drive inflammation.

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Transcript

Welcome And Going Against Goliath

Speaker 0:09

The red lights on. Are you ready? Our second go at this. We're all the baby with the Berman Method Podcast. Dr. Jake Berman here, my beautiful co-host.

Speaker 3 0:35

Jenni Berman, physician assistant.

Speaker 0:37

We are dated going against Goliath. Goliath being the corporate medical system, big pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance companies, they do not have your best interest in mind. They will choose profits over patient outcomes every single time. And that's what we're all about is there's another way.

Speaker 1 0:55

Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 0:57

So we've got an exciting day today, but we're still trying to get into the groove of this video thing. Like, this is fun. We've got a different setting here today. Jenni gave me some good coaching before we press play. I'm like, have you been doing research?

Speaker 2 1:13

Just watching others, that's how we learn. That's how we learn. Coaches, watching, learning. That's why you tell everybody that you learned it on YouTube.

Speaker 1:22

I learned it on YouTube.

Speaker 2 1:24

Just watch a YouTube video and I got it.

Speaker 1:26

I watched it last night. I'm like, okay, this is what we're gonna do.

Speaker 2 1:29

So you told my parents the first time you ever got up on the wake board, like behind their bone. Is that what I said? They were like, have you done that before? You're like, no, I just watched it on YouTube once and I got it. I'm good to go. As he's like jumping the wings.

Speaker 1 1:46

Natural athlete.

Speaker 1:48

I don't doubt that those were the exact words that came out of my mouth. I'm 100% sure it was.

Speaker 2 1:53

I'm like, yeah, I just watched it last night. I got it.

Speaker 1:56

Yeah, that's me being as humble as I can possibly be.

Speaker 1 1:59

Just natural.

Speaker 2:01

Yeah. So we're in the heat of it. This is coming out in July, and we're in the heat of summertime. We're literally figuratively having some fun. A lot of boat days. Yeah. Yeah. We visited some friends over the weekend on the East Coast, got on their boat. Completely different boating in the ocean versus

Summer Stories And Injury Setup

Speaker 2:20

the Gulf.

Speaker 3 2:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2:21

That was a lot of fun. Put some miles on it.

Speaker 2 2:23

Yeah. And the 4th of July week is one of our favorite weeks of the year.

Speaker 2:29

Yes.

Speaker 2 2:30

Got to experience that.

Speaker 2:31

Yeah, Go Team America. Happy 250, baby. Let's go!

unknown 2:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:36

Speaking of wakeboarding and water skiing and potential injuries. Oh! And inflammation. Oh. Is that what we're talking about?

Speaker 2:44

That's what we're going over today.

Speaker 2 2:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2:46

Inflammation.

Speaker 2 2:48

Talking about inflammation and even though your labs are normal, you still feel this inflammation. So you're having joint pain, you're having abdominal gut issues, you're having headaches, you're having, you know, these like achy joints

What Inflammation Really Feels Like

Speaker 2 3:05

or tight muscles in the morning when you wake up, and the first thing you do when you go to the doctor and tell them about this is they say, We gotta run some labs. And you run some labs, and the labs that they run are normal. But you're like, okay, everything is normal, but I'm still feeling this inflammation and joint pain and stiffness and muscle tightness and gut issues and headaches and migraines. So what's the problem?

Speaker 3:28

Isn't it you're just getting old?

Speaker 2 3:31

Oh well, if you want just like to deal with it and take the cop out.

Speaker 3:38

Isn't that the most common uh excuse though? Is I guess this is just what getting older is like.

Speaker 2 3:45

Yeah, and unfortunately, it's not the fault to the clients a lot of times. It's that's what they're told when they go to their primary care and they say, Well, your labs are normal, and you know, you are getting older, you are having hormonal change, and sometimes you might just have to slow down a little bit.

Speaker 4:01

Oh, I hate those words. You're getting older, just slow down.

Speaker 2 4:07

Yeah, but unfortunately, but there's over but. Oh my god. Unfortunately. Do you hate that one? Oh my god.

Speaker 4:15

But, like, I think um is the worst. We don't even know that you're saying um. Have you ever just listened to people talk these days? Everybody starts a conversation now by saying, um.

Speaker 2 4:30

Even Walker does.

Speaker 4:32

I'm going, what are we doing? What world do we live in now that we can't be in any silence anymore because it's too awkward, and we just have to fill that silence with the word um.

Speaker 2 4:45

And I think.

Speaker 4:46

I think. Well, do you think or do you know? Like, I don't want somebody that thinks dealing with my healthcare. I want somebody that knows.

Speaker 2 4:54

Okay, so getting off of your of your jigisms here and getting back to what the doctors are telling you. So the point is, is your labs can

Normal Labs And The Aging Myth

Speaker 2 5:05

be normal, but you're still experiencing this inflammation, and it is something. It's not just that you're aging, it's not that we need to slow down. There is something going on. You just need the right provider to help you dig into it and figure it out.

Speaker 5:17

Okay. Tell me more. You got my attention now.

Speaker 2 5:21

Well, there's a lot of different causes to inflammation, right? Kind of depends on what you're complaining about. Are you complaining about headaches and migraines? Are you complaining about joint pain, your gut health, your bowel movements, your reflux, your heartburn? All of this is inflammation. It's not just swelling of the joints, although that's inflammation too, and that's something you see every day is people actually physically show signs of swelling, which is inflammation. And I see more of the symptomatic inflammation where they're coming to me with symptoms, and we actually have to dig a little bit more to find the problem. I think you have to dig to find the problem too, right? There's always digging. Where it is, it ain't. Where it is, it ain't. Which I think we talked about last time. Yeah, wherever the pain is ain't where the problem is. Or the swelling isn't always exactly where the problem is either. There's usually something contributing to that.

Speaker 6:09

Yeah, perfect example. A lady just came in last week, her right knee was swelling. She goes, why is my right knee swelling? Well, because your right glute ain't doing its job. That right ass cheek is not doing its job, which is placing increased stress on the right knee, causing it to swell. Right, right. So we could spend years treating that swelling knee, but if we just go to the root of the problem, which was the hip, one level above.

Speaker 2 6:34

We'll do it a hundred times faster.

Speaker 6:36

Million times.

Speaker 2 6:37

Million times faster. 110 billion. Oh, I thought it was a hundred. But it's simpler when you actually figure out where the problem is. It's not so stressful on you, it's not as frustrating. We see faster results, and we can actually feel better and move better and live better. But anyway, so let's talk a little bit more about inflammation. It's more talking about acute versus chronic, right? So I see a ton of chronic inflammation where it's been going on for a long time. Started actually back in your 20s, but maybe you didn't actually show signs and symptoms until you were 45. But chronic is going to be your more long-term inflammatory process, the systemic inflammation, meaning inside and out head-to-toe inflammation. Versus the acute inflammation is more what you experience when you actually have an injury, right? So you step wrong off the curve and you twist your ankle and it swells up. That's acute inflammation. You probably don't see a ton of acute inflammation.

Speaker 7:33

Very rare.

Speaker 2 7:34

Unless it's post-knee surgery, right? Where they have a knee replacement.

Speaker 7:38

Yeah, I mean, even then, it's probably 99% chronic. It's it's probably 1%. I just tweaked my back, I just tweaked my knee, I twisted my ankle. It's just so rare.

unknown 7:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:53

But even the case where we talked about last week, where are a couple weeks ago, where I twisted wrong in the chair helping BRE and my back stazzed up. Like that was acute pain. Why do you laugh every time I bring it up?

Speaker 8:07

I just think it's comical because it was so dramatic.

Speaker 2 8:13

So bad. I was really broken. But that was like an acute onset pain. It wasn't acute inflammation though. It was chronic inflammation that built up to that threshold where the threshold was reached, and then I had acute, really, really bad pain.

Speaker 8:30

You just brought up a great point right there. Think about this for a minute. Let's think about the continuum, the spectrum of inflammation. Zero to ten. Zero, there's zero inflammation. 10 out of 10, my back is killing me, my knee is killing me, my gut is killing me, I'm bloated, whatever it is, the symptoms are screaming at you 10 out of 10. Just for simplicity's sake, you can have zero, one, two, three, four on the inflammation scale and feel no symptoms at all. But as soon as you go from four to five, that's when the trigger gets sent to your brain, where your brain goes, oh, there's something going on here. There's an issue here, there's some discomfort in your knee. But then when it goes from five to six, it's like, okay, that's not discomfort anymore, that's pain. Six to seven, yeah, that's more pain. Ten out of ten, I can't walk on it anymore. So knowing that inflammation is a spectrum, a continuum of zero to ten, just because you don't feel something doesn't mean that it's not there.

Speaker 3 9:34

Right.

Speaker 9:34

Which makes sense why you've just twisted in a bar stool and thought you broke your back.

Speaker 2 9:41

Right. Because it had been building. And we see that all the time on the wellness side where people are like, I've eaten like this my whole entire life and haven't ever had these issues where I am running to the bathroom, I'm having such severe loose stool or the bloating abdominal pain, but then you go back and for the past 10 years they've had reflux and taken reflux medicine. So they've just been masking a problem that is actually causing an inflammatory reaction, and it just got to this threshold, that point of inflammation where the immune system's like, I'm out, and now we are coming up with other symptoms that we can't exactly avoid or just take a medication to fix.

Acute Vs Chronic Inflammation Spectrum

Speaker 10:21

Did you just say that taking a pip? Is that what it's called?

unknown 10:26

Yeah, PPI?

Speaker 10:27

PPI? Did you just say that taking a PPI is not a normal thing, and even though it's a little tiny pill that you don't even think about taking every day, that there's actually a real problem that's occurring, and that's not fixing anything, and that's not normal.

Speaker 2 10:41

Correct. And it's actually causing side effects, it's causing vitamin deficiencies, which then make your problems worse. Yeah, so hold on a second. You're taking this the wrong way. It is a small pill, and they are not good for you, but we don't need to go down that track right now because we're talking about just inflammation, okay? Okay.

unknown 11:00

Okay.

Speaker 11:00

Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 11:02

So we go to the we have these symptoms, we go to the doctor, our CRP level, our sed rate level, which are two broad spectrum inflammatory markers, are negative. So do I actually have inflammation when these inflammatory markers are negative? Yes. It's a different type of inflammation that we're testing there versus what your body is experiencing in regards to having symptoms and pain response. So we have to dig a little bit deeper, understand where the inflammation is coming from. Now, so frequently on your side, the physical side and the chemical side, we're seeing that blood sugar and cortisol, which we've talked about so many times on this pat on this podcast, but blood sugar and cortisol are actually impacting the inflammatory cycle and the inflammatory system. When blood sugar is dysregulated, meaning it's going up and down all the time, or it's hitting lows, it's hitting highs, it's unregulated, that's actually increasing a stress response and inflammatory response on the body.

Speaker 12:08

So when I black out and I just eat 12 cookies, and then I wake up and I'm like, what just happened? That's not good. Like that could be causing or contributing to my back pain or my knee pain if I had it.

Speaker 2 12:24

Yeah.

unknown 12:25

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 12:26

And your gut health and your headaches and your muscle tightness.

Speaker 12:32

Now that we got a video podcast, I do have to go back and reference that statement when I black out. That's actually a reference from old school when Will Farrell was in the um some type of intelligence competition and he's on stage and he said some answer and it just wakes up. He's like, What did I say? I don't know, I blacked out. So that was supposed to be a funny thing, not literally alcohol-induced blackout.

Speaker 1 12:58

Correct. Yes, that's not the blackout we're talking about.

Speaker 13:02

So, anyways, coming back to it, we could go and we could eat pizza and drink beer, spike our blood sugar, and then it crashes at two or three in the morning and rinse and repeat throughout the entire weekend, and then Monday rolls around, and we wonder why our knee pain, our ankle pain, our bloating, or whatever it is, is significantly worse than it was on Thursday.

Speaker 2 13:26

Yeah, not to mention probably what you're eating that um is spiking your blood sugar, is cause is our toxins, right? Whether it's gluten or dairy or carbs or sugar or alcohol, like yes, those are toxins and absolutely can also contribute to the inflammation, but it's the blood sugar regulation itself that actually stimulates a stress response, a cortisol response on the body. Cortisol is that stress hormone that we've talked about on many podcasts before, but cortisol is a steroid hormone and it actually causes the body to react in an inflammatory way, it sends the body into that fight or flight mechanism, which can increase that stress response.

Speaker 14:08

Okay, so like a self-fulfilling prophecy, downward death spiral of pain

Blood Sugar Swings Fuel Inflammation

Speaker 14:15

or inflammation.

Speaker 2 14:16

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and whether maybe your blood sugars is regulated and you eat very clean and you're getting your protein, you're having your fiber and your vegetables, but we're enduring this cortisol response from external stressors, your job, your husband, your kids, or wife.

Speaker 14:33

Wait a minute.

Speaker 1 14:36

Your husband running a business. Being an employee of an employer.

Speaker 14:46

Holy pivot.

Speaker 2 14:47

Taking care of your parents, right? So finances. We have all these external stressors, but then we also have internal stressors where you may be eating super clean, but you have an egg allergy or sensitivity, and so you're consuming egg whites because it's healthy, but this egg sensitivity is actually causing an internal stress response on the body, too, which is leading to an inflammatory cascade. The immune system is struggling. So because we're consuming foods that's stimulating an immune response all the time, the immune system can't keep up with all the antibodies, these inflammatory markers that are now housing in your joint and causing your joint pain or in your gut and causing gut issues.

Speaker 15:33

That's a big one where so many people think that they're eating healthy and on paper it is healthy. But if your body has a sensitivity, notice sensitivity is not an allergy, but if it has a sensitivity to that healthy thing, eggs, for example, is a big one. You think you're doing the right thing. There's so much protein and eggs and good cholesterol and all the great things this year. We're allowed to eat eggs.

Speaker 2 15:59

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 16:00

But you're actually creating inflammation.

Speaker 2 16:02

Right. It's the same thing. Almond. Almond is so popular right now because it's low carb. It's a replacement for gluten-containing products, but it can be so inflammatory for people.

Speaker 16:14

That's you.

unknown 16:15

Yeah. Almond issue for sure.

Speaker 16:18

Man, it is almost instantaneous. Yeah. Like within minutes of consuming almond, your s your throat swells up, and you can't swallow anymore.

Speaker 2 16:33

Jason, what is wrong with me?

Speaker 16:37

Just had almond. That was almond creamer, wasn't it?

unknown 16:40

Yeah.

Speaker 2 16:40

I feel like an elephant is sitting right on my trachea when I consume almond. And it didn't used to be like that. It started pretty much after I had Walker, which means like my body went through a stress response. I mean, we all know how my delivery with Walker went, right? We podcasted on that too. So if you have a listen to it, you should go back. It talked a lot about experiencing corporate medicine in the hospital and getting answers five days after I was complaining about concerns, right? But that was an that was a stress response. I had a CSF league who was in the hospital for days, got out, went back, was told that my symptoms didn't align with a CSF league when we kept telling them it is. Anyway.

Speaker 17:28

Oh my gosh, let's not go down that road.

Speaker 2 17:31

Yeah. But that like sent me through this stress response for sure. Between the trauma of having uh C-section, and then that happened after, and Walker had some um testing that he had to have done at birth, like it was stressful.

Cortisol Stress And Food Sensitivities

Speaker 2 17:45

And then after that, no more almonds. No more almonds.

Speaker 17:48

It's like, man, that was our go-to. Coffee with almond milk, almond creamer.

Speaker 2 17:53

And almond flour, I used it all before.

Speaker 17:55

Oh, a lot of almond flour.

Speaker 2 17:56

Yeah. One day we'll get back to it, right? We just gotta go through the healing process and yeah.

Speaker 18:04

Wouldn't you have to cut out peanut butter to go through the healing process?

unknown 18:09

Right.

Speaker 2 18:10

Peanut is not almond. We don't need to talk about my sensitivity. We don't need to talk about the Christmas tree of my sensitivity list at the moment. Now that we won't have any more babies, I can actually, I think, go through some healing. Right? Like pregnancy is so hard on you. Um, but anyway, let's talk about like what we can do, you know, as far as when we have this inflammatory cycle, we know that blood sugar is involved, we know that cortisol is involved, and 100% the gut is involved, right? Because majority of our antibodies or all of the antibodies, these inflammatory markers start in the gut. So our gut health 100% contributes to the inflammation that we have or don't have in our body. So we gotta go through the blood sugar control, the cortisol control, the gut health. But then even when it's a joint-related issue, we have to make sure that the gut is healthy and that the immune system is healthy. But then we also have the physical components and the regenerative components to help with inflammation, whether it's a joint, a gut, or a cortisol response, which we're using for a lot of our wellness clients. Yes, we are.

Speaker 19:40

Yeah, we're putting that right over the stomach, and it's healthy.

Speaker 2 19:44

100%. So EMTT actually helps with getting down to a cellular level for healing, right? To allow the cells to heal, reducing inflammation, antioxidant effects, which means it's getting rid of the bad stress, the oxidative stress in the body, and it's as simple as laying on a table and putting that arm over your bed.

Speaker 20:04

Yeah, the arm of the machine just laying, and all you have to do is lay there. It's as close to the easy button as you can possibly get.

Speaker 2 20:10

Yeah, you can't have your phone. Well, you just lay there.

Speaker 20:13

You just lay there.

Speaker 2 20:14

And then the stem pod for the vagus nerve, which the vagus nerve is um one of the nerve that innervates the most organs in the body, not all, but most, uh, and actually is the nerve that controls the stress response or the cortisol response in the body. And so using the stem pod, which helps with nerve regeneration, calming down the nerves, getting them to function efficiently right over the vagus nerve is extremely valuable and bringing down that internal inflammatory and stress response on the body while we're going through the gut healing and the physical training to strengthen the muscles around where the joints are being bothered.

Speaker 20:52

It's just a complete encompassing and all-encompassing approach to knocking out inflammation from every aspect that we possibly can. Ten years ago, I had one tool. Today, it's like, oh my gosh, there's 110 billion different ways that we can go about this thing with all sorts of different combinations where we're speeding it up at least 10 times.

Speaker 2 21:17

And getting out of the realm of the frustration of not getting answers, right? But we want to make sure we're targeting all areas of inflammation and not just taking the pill.

Speaker 21:29

Which is what most people want to do.

unknown 21:32

Yeah.

Speaker 21:32

You know what I think? A prediction that I have right now is like a hundred years ago, it wasn't normal to get annual blood work, and it wasn't normal to go to the dentist every six months to have a teeth cleaning. Those weren't just normal things, and over the years, research shows that there's a lot of preventative steps that can be taken if you do these things on a regular basis. So that's what led to To getting an annual physical and getting blood work done annually, and that's what

Gut Root Causes And Healing Tools

Speaker 22:05

led to dental or oral hygiene and going to the dentist every six months to scrape the fur off your teeth. I think what we're going to see now is that gut has your gut has to fit into that equation too. The food has just changed so much in the past 30 years alone, where it's not food anymore. It's so easy to go anywhere and look at something that looks like food, consume it, and it's really not. It's filled with chemicals. And the reality is it's not food at all. I mean, the the hamburger, the McDonald's hamburger example is the best example you can have. You put that thing in the back of your car, you forget that it was there a year from now, it looks the same. That's not okay.

Speaker 2 22:50

Right. And actually, you just jogged my my thought process on you who said the dentist, like your oral hygiene is one of the most important things when it comes to your immune system, your heart health, and your gut health.

Speaker 23:07

What? Maybe that's why I'm so good because I go three times a year, if not four.

Speaker 2 23:12

That's why your heart's so healthy.

Speaker 23:13

That's what it is.

Speaker 2 23:14

There really is, like a a um correlation. Correlation, yeah. Uh, to cardiovascular disease and oral health.

Speaker 23:26

Increase the plaque and um Don't they say not to go to the dentist after you have a surgery because of that? Scrape plaque off, get into your bloodstream, and cause an infection?

Speaker 2 23:37

Yeah, well, some people have to actually take antibiotics when they go to the dentist to prevent any potential infections. Yeah.

Speaker 23:46

Anyways, to get back to it, we're we're at a turning turning of the tides here. We're learning more. We're in this phase of learning and learning and continuing to learn, and your gut, it's just silly to ignore it. You think that you're fine, you're not fine. There's no way for you to be fine in the world that we live in right now. Oh, yeah. It's just not possible anymore unless you you live in Jamaica in the mountains and you don't go to the resorts, and you that's all you do is you eat bananas and whatever fish you can get from the ocean, then okay, you don't need to do this stuff.

Speaker 2 24:20

Well, even, you know, again, like the amount of clients who are fiber deficient coming in. Like, fiber is one of the most important things to reduce inflammation, to reduce your cholesterol, to improve your gut health, to keep your bowel movements consistent. Like, people think of fiber as like having a bowel movement every day, but that's not the only thing it does. It lowers blood sugar, cholesterol, helps with satiety, helps with actually getting the right bacteria, the good bacteria in the gut. So, even again, if you are eating well, you may be consuming sensitivities and probably not getting even enough fiber or protein in your diet. So, yeah, we can't just fix where the swelling is. We can't just say we have inflammation and we're getting older because our labs are normal. There's more to it.

Speaker 25:08

A whole lot more to it.

Fiber, Prevention, And Better Lab Work

Speaker 25:10

Yeah, and that's what we're here to help you figure out so much faster.

Speaker 2 25:14

Getting real labs done. That actually show things.

Speaker 25:18

Yeah, what is it? Your your GP orders six labs or four?

Speaker 2 25:22

Oh, three to four regularly, usually.

Speaker 25:25

So in your annual, they do four labs and they get those four labs and they say you're healthy. Yeah, versus when you come here, it's 17.

Speaker 2 25:38

Consistently 14, occasionally more.

Speaker 25:41

Okay, so it's 10 more things that we're looking at, and it says you're not normal.

Speaker 2 25:47

Well, yeah, and I don't want to scare people to say, like, we're gonna find a problem. But if you're coming to do, you know, if if you're coming here, you're usually coming for a reason, right? So we're gonna dig and we're gonna look at actually what's necessary to figure out what is going on. But we're not just ordering things just to order it. Yeah, this isn't a reason.

Speaker 26:12

This this isn't an example of the total body MRI.

unknown 26:15

Right.

Speaker 26:15

Right? A total body MRI, you can ethically debate why or why you should not have that done until the cows come home. This is just straight up you've got a symptom, you're coming in. We're not gonna run a panel of four, we're gonna run a panel of fourteen to try to figure out what's causing that symptom as fast as possible.

unknown 26:35

Right.

Speaker 26:36

And see results. And see results.

unknown 26:38

So that's it.

Final Takeaways And Where To Go

Speaker 26:40

Good? Yeah, I don't think so. Okay, make sure you go to bermanboomers.com to see if you're on track to arrive at 80 feeling 40, and if you're already in your 80s, kick your 90s ass. And then we also recently launched our new website, bermanhealthclub.com. So go check out our new website, bermanhealthclub.com, and click around. Let me know if you find any glitches. Don't let me know if you find any glitches or typos. Let Jenni know. I'm not I'm not dealing with anything.

unknown 27:10

Good?

Speaker 2 27:11

I think so. Chop and Yeah.