Mitochondria and Menopause: Dr. Shallenberger's Guide to Renewed Energy (Midlife Wellness NP)
YouTube video by Dr. Frank Shallenberger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbE46f4L46Q). Transcript is the auto-caption track — verbatim ASR, not a certified transcript.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Midlife Wellness NP podcast. My name is Kim Gaffner. I'm a board-certified family nurse practitioner, menopause specialist, and host of this podcast. So, welcome. Well, today, get ready to dive into the cutting-edge world of integrative medicine with a true pioneer in the field. My guest today has been revolutionizing healthcare for over 50 years, developing innovative techniques like Prolozone Therapy, and bringing ozone therapy to the United States. He is a board-certified physician, prolific author, and editor of the Second Opinion Newsletter. He is known as the father of ozone therapy in America, and he has helped countless patients overcome chronic pain, boost their energy levels, and tackle supposedly incurable diseases. I am excited to welcome the renowned Dr. Frank Shallenberger to the podcast. Welcome, Dr. Shallenberger, to the podcast. Thank you so much for your time. Well, thanks for having me, Kim. I appreciate being here. Yeah. Well, you've been practicing medicine quite a long time. So, I am excited to hear all of the changes that have happened over the course of your career, especially when it comes to women's health. What observations have you made that have changed in women's health, especially with the midlife and menopausal women? So, Kim, um I've been, you know, I started practicing medicine way back in 1973. And, um back then, uh hormone hormone therapy was there. Hormone replacement therapy was there. But, it was the difference is is number one, it was only there to treat symptoms. Back then, it was not appreciated that, um that replacing your sagging hormones as you get older is is going to make you live longer, and have a much better quality of life, and and I'm going to tell you in a sec about this new NIH study that showed that it's also makes you um less likely to get just about every disease associated with aging that you can get, including interestingly enough breast cancer. But back then there was all this concern that it's going to create problems and you only give the woman hormones if she's having a difficult life and and then as soon as she's gone through the whole change thing, you take the hormones away immediately cuz they're so dangerous. Now, part of the part of the problem back then was that number one, we didn't have bioidentical hormones. They weren't available. They didn't even know about them. So what we had is synthetic drugs. They're not hormones. They're synthetic drugs that have hormone-like activities and and do alleviate hormone deficiency-related symptoms. So that was part of the problem. And and so women were immediately taken off these drugs. Now we know from a recent everything's different now. And for the last since about the late 70s, we can get bioidentical hormones. We can get molecules that are actually identical with to what's in the woman's body. So she's not theoretically she's not supposed to have any more problems than she had when she was younger and had all those hormones cuz they're this they're identical from a molecular standpoint. But there were still even in even right through the 90s and to tell you the truth even up to today, there is a lot of a lot of concern. It's diminishing a lot, but there's always concern I hear from not only women, but sometimes even from doctors who should know better that that it's dangerous and you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't replace these hormones. So what I So I what what I want the audience to to learn about is this a new NIH study and it's a fascinating study, really cool study. Uh and this is what they did is the researchers went into the Medicare database. So in that database, it's so cool. They can access almost everything that has to do with the women that are over the age of 65 and involved in Medicare. So they went in the Medicare database and they they got millions and millions of cases in this database. So it's gigantic. And what they did is they looked at women over the age of 65 who were uh taking hormones of some kind. Now they could be the synthetic drug hormones. They could be the natural hormones, the bioidenticals. They could be uh you know, topical hormones. They could be injectable hormones. They could be in patches. So the whole gamut of hormone therapy. And uh then they looked at um how long these women lived and whether or not they got all these diseases, all the diseases of aging. The results are just astounding. They're really astounding because get this, across the board, no matter even if you took the synthetic drugs, uh across the board, no matter how you took it, whether it's transdermal, injectable, whatever, uh no matter whether they were properly balanced and ever, there was a benefit across the board. Wow. When those women experienced decreased cancer rates including, interestingly, breast cancer, but they decreased all cancers across the board. They decreased the incidence of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, macular degeneration, and dementia. And maybe I'm forgetting something, but what whatever they looked at, the women that were on the replacement therapy of any kind in any way, always did better. Then they broke down the subgroups and they asked the question, well, okay, are some routes better? Are some forms of this replacement therapy better? I.E. is the synthetic better than the bioidentical or vice versa? And what they found was that the highest rate of improvement uh in women in the sense of living longer and not getting disease was in the bioidentical hormones that were properly balanced. So, this is a conclusive study now and should lay to rest even though there were studies 12 years ago that indicated this. This should absolutely lay to rest the the concept that number one, replacing your hormones is dangerous as I tell women will ask me and I'll I'll tell them you should be taking these hormones. And you know, they'll say, but isn't it dangerous? And I say, yeah, it's dangerous to not take them. That's right. It's dangerous to not take them. It's dangerous to walk around without any hormones. You're way better off even if I do it wrong. I could give you the wrong ones in the wrong way, you're still better off. Right. That's great. You know what I hear is women are still concerned about the dosing. They are set on the lowest effective dose for the shortest amount of time. When I want to they're still having some hot flashes, they're still having some symptoms and I'm like, we need to go up on the dose. Oh, no. I don't want to get a I don't want to go any higher on the dose. You know, what is your thoughts on the dosing? Yeah, so you know, these women are absolutely correct. Uh the art of medicine is all about dosing. Got to get the dose right. There's no one dose and almost anything that's good for everybody and I don't care whether it's penicillin or hormones, really. The dose is very typical very individual for each person and the dose is critical. Too much is bad, too little is bad. Mhm. So, how do you know what the right dose is? Uh Uh, I'll tell you how I do it. I I look at blood levels. That helps me. And I look at symptoms. And uh, I look at quality of life. And ideally, I want to get the uh, women's hormones up to the point that they number one have no symptoms. Everything's good. And And just for the the audience, let me just go through the symptoms so they know what I'm talking about. Uh, if if your if your hormones are sagging, here's the kind of thing you might experience as a woman. Uh, one, cognitive problems. You know, quote, "brain fog." Uh, poor memory. Can't remember where you put whatever it is you're looking for. Uh, so that's pretty common. Mood disturbances. Typically, uh, anxiety and depression. Uh, sleep disturbances. You're no longer sleeping through the night like you used to as a young woman. It's broken. It's shattered. And then you feel like, "I'm not really getting getting very good sleep." Three would be uh, uh, stiffness in the fingers. Stiff hands and fingers. Very characteristic of a woman that's not getting enough hormone replacement. Mhm. Uh, there's libido. So, the libido could be down. There's vaginal dryness, pain on intercourse. That could be a problem. And there's bladder problems. So, you have to get up at night to urinate, whereas you didn't used to have to do that. You feel that you might be leaking. Your bladder might be leaking. You might you know, have to urinate a lot during the day. You don't have quite the control with your bladder. So, any one of those symptoms, they have to all be gone. You have to not have any of those symptoms. And that's one way to tell In my mind, that's kind of the best way to tell. So, I'm trying to find the lowest dose that's necessary to get rid of all symptoms and have the blood levels look pretty good. Okay. When you say that Whatever that is, it's fine. Okay. What I I in in your book, what is the ideal blood levels for estradiol? And do you check estrone as well? I don't check estrone. I check only estradiol. I want to see it around 60. And you know what, Kim? I'm not married to that number. I like 60. I think 60's pretty good. I have some women it's 150 and they're doing great. I have some women that it's going to be lower than 60. But if it starts getting below, say 30, there's probably a problem. Okay. other thing I look at is progesterone. I want to see that progesterone at three or above. Okay. And then finally there's testosterone. Interesting thing about testosterone with women is uh that uh they you guys thrive on testosterone. There's every now and then I run into a problem when we can't take testosterone too much. If I give too much testosterone to a woman, one, she might get acne. Two, she might start losing some head hair. Coming out in their brush and such. Uh but shy of that, women do great on testosterone. And I have some women that have testosterone levels up in like the 1 200's which is super high. Yeah. You know, I think the high level on the on the blood test is something like 40 or 50. Mhm. And they're absolutely thriving. So I leave them on that. That's fine. Cuz the genetics that are involved in what women do with their hormones and how their hormones are regulated varies uh significantly. I used to do genetic testing on women uh and uh and I don't do it anymore cuz I know that the variation is great and I know what to do without doing the genetic testing. But some women just absolutely do great on high levels of testosterone. So, as long as they aren't having symptoms, I'll let that go high. The other thing I like to look at, by the way, is DHEA. Okay. I was going to ask you about that. and melatonin are I would I put I call them like controlling peptides, controlling hormones. Uh such that they balance they make everything a little bit better. Because what we're doing when we give hormones to the women, it's it's not like their ovaries are doing what their ovaries are used to doing. That's not happening. It's kind of an artificial way of inducing this replacement therapy. And um sometimes you can have little problems here with this or that. And I find if you add melatonin and DHEA into this program, you get way fewer of those complications. Mhm. I think that uh it seems there's a lot of controversy around giving women testosterone still. Um I think there was just a study came out just recently really praising testosterone for women. Yet, there's still so many issues for women getting testosterone. Um I wanted to talk with you specifically testosterone in the research helping to protect against breast cancer. What are your thoughts on that? How How would that happen when it's combined with estrogen? Um how does it actually protect against breast cancer? Uh well, let me start off by saying, by the way, Um recently, within the last year or two, uh I read an article by the American Endocrinology Society. And in this review article, it was from the society. It was a an article that they all agreed on. But, they said categorically, uh estrogen is never uh testosterone replacement is never indicated in a woman, ever. There's never an indication for testosterone therapy in a woman. Doesn't matter what the blood level is, doesn't matter what's going on, that's their position. You never give testosterone to a woman. Now, that's like blatantly wrong, but but that's that's where they're at on that. Um, I'm not aware of the study you just said. Mhm. You know, where apparently testosterone has some kind of protective action against breast cancer, but like I said that NIH study, it protects against breast cancer. Women are mostly that's the big fear. Is I'm going to get breast cancer. My mother had breast cancer, my sister had breast cancer, and if I take this estrogen, I'm going to get breast cancer. If I take testosterone, it could convert to estrogen, so I'm going to get breast cancer, and that's just flat out not true anymore. There's there's no arguing that case anymore. What about breast density? How does hormone therapy affect breast density? This is a question I get all the time. I can't find too much research on it. So, could you just answer that maybe once and for all? How does hormone therapy affect the density of breast? Uh, I I can't tell you. I don't know. I haven't seen a study looking at that. Exactly. I don't really check I don't really care about breast density anyway. Who cares? Okay. Okay. Breast If you have a high density or low density, it doesn't really matter. I mean, does it doesn't place a woman at greater or lesser risk. So, why do you even check it? The only reason The only reason really they want to focus on it, I think, is that it screws up the mammogram. Yeah. Other than that, if you're like me and you think mammograms are stupid, who cares? It's not an issue for me. Okay. Do you like therma- thermography? Not really. I I did it for years. Theoretically, it's a good idea, but more often than not, it doesn't I I found that I did it for maybe 10 years. Okay. And all different kinds of thermography, not not just one form of it. And all it did it I never I stopped doing it because I'm looking back at it and I'm saying, I can't remember one case where it was actually helpful. Okay. So, how do you feel women should screen for breast cancer? Yeah, good question. Uh number one, if they do the hormones and they do the hormones properly and the progesterone levels are high enough, I'm not even worried about it. If they take progesterone and melatonin and maybe some iodine, it's not an issue anymore. So, forget it. It doesn't even matter. You're not going to get breast cancer. Okay. Um and uh and in terms of what you should do just to check yourself out, what the studies conclusively show is that women who find the cancer themselves or their husband will find the cancer just by palpation, uh those are the most aggressive cancers. Okay. The ones that the mammograms find, and there's a lot of false negatives, as you know, but the ones the mammograms find are are not the most aggressive breast cancers. The most aggressive ones, the ones that really get you and and can give you a problem within 6 months and you're only getting your mammogram like once every 1 or 2 years, the ones that are really bad, the mammogram's not even going to help you. Mhm. Yeah. It even catches it, which it might not. So, examine your breasts. And women say, "Well, how do I know what's in there or not?" I say, "You'll know." You know, if if you just in the shower once a month, kind of feel around and and and know what's there and what's not supposed to be there. If you find something that's not there, go see your doctor, palpate it. At that point, you can do an MRI. I am not into squishing breasts, but you could do an MRI and then you can take it from there. Okay. All right, yeah. I agree with that. I agree MRI is great, too. When you mention progesterone, this is another question I get. A lot of women that have had hysterectomies they're told they don't need progesterone, not given progesterone, it's only there for uterine protection. So, could you speak to that a little bit? The benefits beyond uterine project and you know, protection for progesterone, and then the other question a lot of times I get is should it be given in a cyclic fashion or a continuous fashion? Yeah, okay. So, on the first one, how stupid is this? Uh why if if if that's the case, if progesterone is only needed for you for a uterus, okay? Why are there progesterone receptors on every single cell in the body? Including the blood vessels. it act on every single cell if it's only good for a certain group of cells? I mean, the whole question is preposterous. It makes zero sense at all. And what we know is just from giving progesterone to women that it for it it operates very strongly on the brain, stabilizes mood very well. Um and if if a woman has, say, actually has an estrogen positive breast cancer, we can't give her estrogen, but we can give her high doses of progesterone, and that will alleviate a lot of her symp a lot of her symptoms. So, high very high levels of progesterone will have the same sort of clinical results and clinical improvement in women that a low dose of estrogen would have. So, why? Because there there's receptors all over the place. So, let's let's use them. That doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah. And then the other question, what was the other question? Cyclic versus continuous. Yeah. Uh so so, I'm not the guy that wants to do cyclic. Okay. You know, I'm going to do just the same dose every day. You know, what am I trying to accomplish? You know, I'm trying to prevent disease. That's what I'm trying to do and give quality of life. And you don't have to go cyclical to do that. And you know, cyclical for the women that are listening to this don't understand, that means you're going to have periods. You'll be an 86-year-old woman with periods. You know, that's fine if it was going to do something wonderful for you, but all it is is a pain in the butt and it doesn't do anything better for the women than than just having a a little bit dabbed in there every day. Another question is you mentioned DHEA, and this is another thing. The Menopause Society, the Endocrine Society, they don't necessarily recommend women taking DHEA in menopause. So, could you just briefly touch on why DHEA would be so beneficial to add to our hormone therapy regimen and what it would do for us and what dose women should be on? Mhm, yeah. Um so, DHEA is great for men and women. Uh it's sort of a mother hormone. Uh and it can get converted to progesterone. It can be the body can convert it to testosterone. But and the body can convert it straight to estradiol. Uh and so it yeah, those three. So, it can ride herd over things. So, look, let's say well, I'm going to give a straight dose to women. Every day they can get same dose. That's the goal. Well, you know darn well things are going to change. Some some days a woman's going to need more of something. Mhm. You know, if she's going to go up for a triathlon or something. Obviously, she's going to need more of something. Uh if she's doing something else, maybe she's going to need less of something. So, I got to give the body a chance to do some regulation of some kind. That regulation can happen through DHEA. That's what I think. Okay. So, I always put DHEA in there and I just found over the years I didn't always do this. Uh but since I've added the DHEA in and the melatonin in, I almost never have to change the dose. Mhm. In the older days, I I would lean heavily on the blood levels and be fiddling around with dose here and there. These days, I it's rare that I have to change my formula. I have a very standard formula I give every woman. It's rare I have to change it. I might change the dose of it, but the balance of it stays exactly the same. And why does that work in every woman? I think it works a lot because on top of that, I'm helping the woman to regulate that in her own way with DHEA and melatonin. Okay. I want to talk about melatonin because I've watched some videos that you had on melatonin at at the higher doses for like cancer prevention. And then I was reading some studies for breast cancer prevention in melatonin. But people are it seems afraid to take melatonin especially at a higher dose. Could you just speak to what you've discovered about melatonin and how it would help us prevent diseases such as cancer? About uh I want to say 15 years ago. I'm um I do a lot of medical writing. So, I I'm always surfing the library of medicine um and seeing what's the latest and such. And I'm going through there and up pops this article. And and basically the gist of the article was uh this researcher took a bunch of mice that uh were pre or were genetically programmed. So, for the audience, researchers can buy mice that are genetically programmed to get just about any disease you want. So, you can get by a mice mouse that's going to get Parkinson's. You can buy a mouse that's going to get Alzheimer's. You can buy a mouse that's going to get macular degener- degeneration and so forth. And but what this article was, the researcher got a bunch of mice that were genetically programmed to get breast cancer. And he uh uh they divided into a bunch of different groups. One group of mice they just left them alone. Uh and 100% of them got breast cancer. Mhm. Then they had several other groups where he gave them progressively higher levels of melatonin. And at some point when he had given enough melatonin to the mice, none of them got breast cancer. Mhm. And I thought, "Wow, that's pretty crazy." Cuz at that point in time, this is something like 15 years ago, I was of the opinion that you only needed small doses of melatonin cuz the brain only produces a tiny little amount. Right. And uh and then there was the this word on the block, nobody ever showed it, but it was the word on the block that high doses are going to screw up the hormone balance and could be a problem and this and that. And um so I called called the guy up. Uh his name is Russell Reiter. Turns out that Russell Reiter is the premier uh animal researcher for melatonin in the world. Wow. He's a professor at the University of Austin uh in Texas. And uh he's published like 5,000 some papers on melatonin. Uh he does it with animals. And so so he has a ton of experience with animals. So, I asked him about that and I said, "Well, okay. What about these high doses?" And he taught me something that I don't think most people know. And that is melatonin is not just made in the brain. It's made in every cell in your body. Wow. Uh and massive massive amounts are made in the intestines. The intestines is the largest producer melatonin in the human body. So, while the brain only requires a little bit and that has to do with inducing sleep. The whole rest of the body depends on this very potent antioxidant and immune-stimulating a molecule. And the rest the testines produce in the order of 400 mg a day throughout the entire day. The melatonin in the brain is related to light-dark cycles to circadian rhythms, but the melatonin in the intestines, it doesn't care. It's producing it constantly all day long. Wow. that's one thing he told me and I thought, "Wow, that's crazy." Um and cuz I didn't know that. I don't think people know that. Um the other thing he said is that uh he has done a number of published papers where he would take animals and he would measure their ability to produce melatonin and then he would give them super high doses for a long time, take it away, and they still produce the same amount. So, there's no negative what we call negative feedback inhibition. It's not if you give too much, it's you're not going to shut down your own production. And I I happen to know this is true because in my cancer patients, I will give them 4 or 5 600 mg spread throughout the entire day and uh they might be on that for 6 months and then we stop that and they're 100% okay. They never run into problem. So, there's no negative feedback inhibition. There's no upper limit to the dose. Yeah, so Reiter told me, he said, you know, there's only about 30 or 40 melatonin researchers in the world. He knows every single one of them. Wow. He said, we've all been trying to find a toxicity level for melatonin, what they call an LD50. We can't find it. We're giving animals 50,000 mg a day, month in, month out, no problems, no toxicity. Crazier than heck. So, a lot of these myths out there are just completely dispelled. So, finally, after talking to Reiter a while and and read he's he's published a book, actually, might be two books now. Amazing researcher. But but by the way, when I talked to him back then, he was I think he was like 82. You would have thought you were talking to a teenager. Wow. His brain was bang sharp. Here we go. And I ultimately got to meet got to meet him. And sure, he looks like an old guy. He's got the wrinkles and all that stuff. But short shy of that, this guy is like a teenager. Wow. And so, at some point I asked him, "Uh how much melatonin do you take?" And he said, "I take 180 mg a day." Okay. And I said, "Well, that's a big old whopping amount. Uh why do you take that?" He says, "Cuz when you figure out what the mice needed to prevent cancer, that's the dose in human equivalents. Huh. It's roughly 1 mg per pound, I figured out. Okay. Wow. And so, these are a lot of myths that are out there about melatonin, 100% untrue. And in fact, about a year or so ago, some guy, and I can't remember his name, but he published a study about the dangers of melatonin. So, I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, this doesn't make sense, what this guy is writing. So, I call Reis Reiter up, and I said, "What about this guy?" And Reiter unequivocally told me, "The guy's a He has no idea what he's talking about." Okay. So, you know, people in the audience need to understand just cuz something's published, you know, you better better be a little critical of it cuz some of this stuff is just complete utter nonsense. And I don't even know why guys do that without doing the research, but the research is very clearly there. By the way, Reiter did that study with mice with the breast cancer. He's done a whole bunch of studies uh with mice with other genetically programmed diseases. And so, what he's found out, at least in mice, is that giving them a high dose of melatonin, mice that are programmed to get uh macular degeneration, uh dementia, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and cancer don't get them. Cancers across the board. Wow. don't have that information in humans, but we do have a lot of investigative information in humans. Um where it looks like there's rationality to support that you'll see the same thing in humans. But my my thing is, if it does this dramatically to um animals, and uh if there's no downside to it, and it's cheap, sign me up. Right. What about the difference between the sustained release and the immediate release? Does it you know, are you talking immediate release? Excuse me. You're okay. Um uh Reiter only uses He doesn't use sustained release. Okay. As far as I know, there's been no studies looking at this. Okay. And then, I guess the sustained release sounds fine sounds fine. I don't really use it. Okay. The half-life is roughly 3 to 4 hours. So, if if you take it every 3 to every five to six hours, which is sort of what you need for sleep, for example, you're covered. Okay. Um and then just kind of titrate up as tolerated, I assume. It's It's always tolerated. Okay. Seriously, you can go out tomorrow and start taking 2,000 mg four times a day. And you won't notice anything. You might sleep better. I don't know. Or you Yeah, I You didn't have any side effects. Now, let me let me qualify that, by the way. For reasons that I can theorize on, but I'm not quite clear on, there are some people that get a drug effect from it. Okay. And they'll feel like they were drugged. So, we do see that. The other one I see is there's certain people out there that has to must have to do with how they metabolize it. There's certain people out there if they take it before bed, they're wired. Okay. And they get wired dreams, in which case I just say, "Okay, take it in the day." Yeah, actually if I take more than just a little bit, I feel like I have nightmares. Yes, so take it during the day then. Okay. Yeah, that is Yeah, I'll have women say, "You know, I can't take more than 5 mg or this wacky stuff starts happening to me." Well, before I go to bed, I say, "Fine, take during the day. You're not sleeping, so you're not going to get nightmares." Okay. Yeah, that's true. And it's would It's pretty rare that somebody will take it during the day and feel drugged. They take it at night, somehow they feel drugged. It's got to do with the light light day cycle the light dark cycle the circadian rhythm. It's got to do with that cuz you just don't get the problems if you take it in the day. Wow, I never I really never even thought about taking it during the day, but I would love the protection in preventing of cancer, which we're all so afraid of. And yeah, I definitely I I had a recent breast cancer patient and I recommended it to her. I said, "Dude, look into this research on the melatonin because anything go wrong. It's absolutely benign. Uh Kim, I have done oh, like well, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of uh cases over the last 15 years since I learned all about this with gigantic doses other than the certain little minor things I was just mentioning, never see a problem. They do great. Wow. It's huge for cancer. Just huge for cancer. And I think every other disease, too. Yeah. What else are you excited in with anti-aging medicine? I know this is a big focus of your practice, so what other aspects of anti-aging medicine or the latest things that are you excited about? Well, what it's not it's not sort of the latest thing, but but I do want to make sure we talk about stem cells. Oh, yeah. Stem cells and platelets. So, let me write that down. Um Uh but you know, I guess it was back in the mid-90s. Um I'm riding my bicycle and I'm free-floating. My thinking is just going crazy and I'm thinking about how um when you get as you get older, your mitochondria don't work so well. And you and you start this process called aging, which basically means decreased function and increased susceptibility to disease. That's what aging is. Mhm. Decreased function and increased susceptibility to disease. So, I'm thinking, you know, as you get older, your mitochondrial function goes down and all this aging stuff starts happening. And just my mind did something crazy. It said, "Well, what if it's just the opposite? What if your your age because your mitochondria go down? Mhm. Up until then, the whole the whole theory of aging around mitochondria was you get mitochondrial decay and then you age. And I started thinking, you know what? Uh maybe your mitochondria stop working before they even get decayed. Mhm. Maybe that comes first. So I thought to myself, okay, it's time to measure mitochondria in my patients. Uh and quick research told me that there's no way to do that. So this is back in the mid-90s. Nobody's measuring mitochondrial function. And I thought to myself, this is kind of crazy. If you if you go to PubMed and plug in mitochondrial function and just about anything, it's all tied to decreased mitochondrial function. And yet you're telling me nobody's measuring that. That's wacky. That's like, you know, nobody's measuring blood pressure. We know blood pressure is an issue, but what if we never measured blood pressure? We wouldn't know there's a problem, wouldn't we? Right. So so I I looked into it finally I developed a system using VO2 analysis, which has to do with how much oxygen your body consumes. Mhm. The all that oxygen that we're consuming and processing it's all done in the mitochondria. So the more oxygen you're consuming, the more mitochondria you have. Now when the oxygen consume oxygen, they produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Mhm. Turns out the more efficient the mitochondria are, the less carbon dioxide they produce. It's just like a car engine. More efficient the engine is, the less carbon dioxide it produces. Yeah. And so so you can go buy a gadget. And you put it on like a scuba mask. And as you breathe through this, we put you on a bicycle, an ergometer, and we make you work out harder and harder. It's roughly 15 minutes. And as you're working harder and harder, what you're doing is you're consuming more and more oxygen and producing more and more carbon dioxide. Well, you can see the oxygen consumption go up up up up up up. You can see the carbon dioxide go up, up, up, up, up, but at some point oxygen starts to tail off and carbon dioxide starts to shoot up. At that particular point, that's your maximum mitochondrial function. Oh, wow. So, we take that point and analyze it and we can compare it to databases. These databases have been out for for decades. And so, I can tell you, okay, you're an 86-year-old woman and you're you're the amount of mitochondria you have in your body is and the way they function is the same as the average 36-year-old woman. Wow. Or I can tell you you're a 36-year-old woman and your mitochondria working like an 86-year-old woman's. So, we did So, we started back in 204. I published a paper where I did this on men and women in their 30s. Um all these men and women were health quote healthy. They were asymptomatic. They're mostly pretty um you know, health-conscious type of people. And so, we we we did uh 50 of them. And uh we measured their mitochondrial function. Well, it turns out in that group, healthy men and women in their 30s, 30% of them had severe mitochondrial dysfunction. Wow. 30% Actually, I'm sorry, it was 12%. Uh 50% of them had mitochondrial dysfunction, but 12% of them had severe mitochondrial dysfunction. In their 30s, asymptomatic. Wow. Now, if if I'm going to ask who's going to get sick in that group? Who's going to age rapidly? Who's going to get diabetes? Who's going to get cancer? In this group of 30-year-olds, who do you suppose is going to get that? Going to be those 12%. Yeah. Okay. The other half Half of those people were in great mitochondrial shape. I'm not betting on those people getting sick. Mhm. But so so what so what this taught me was and what I've subsequently learned is the mitochondrial dysfunction goes down early. Mhm. It does It's not a late developing thing. It's not like you age and then your mitochondria go bad. As you age because your mitochondria are going bad starting in your 30s. Wow. Now, most people are don't notice this. Most If you're some high-level athlete, you're going to get to be in your late 30s and you're going to say, "You know what? I can I'm great, but I can't do what I used to do." And so you'll notice that. That person will notice that. But normal human beings uh we're not going to start noticing it till we get to be about 55-ish or so. And in there we can say, "You know what? I can still do everything I used to do, but I don't quite do it as well." Yeah. They've got mitochondrial dysfunction. So so the biggest thing for me with aging is I don't care how old you are, I want you to do good on my test. So I test 100% of my patients walk in the door. Okay. 100% of them. And if they test out great, I tell them, "When you leave today, you know you're doing something right." Cuz here's what happens. All these lifestyle things that everybody knows about, how you eat, how you deal with stress, how you sleep, how much sunlight do you get, how much water you drink, what supplements do you take, what's your diet like, how how do you exercise. All of this stuff or what drugs do you take, what toxicities are you exposed to. All of that stuff, it creates problems by wrecking mitochondria. That's how it creates the problems. So if somebody comes in to see me and I check their mitochondria and it's good, I can tell them, "You're doing okay. Toxicity is not a big deal. Don't have to worry about the lead or any of that. You don't have to worry about pesticides or your diet, whatever it is. And they may say, "Hey, by the way, my diet's not all that good." I say, "Yeah, but people are genetically different. And you have genetics in your mitochondria, separate from your other genetics. And so, God blessed you with really good mitochondrial genetics. You can get at this point in time, you're getting away with your not-so-good diet." Yeah. And we can keep And we want to check a person like that like every two or three years and just monitor the mitochondria. Sure enough, there's going to be a point where this starts to become an issue because of their lifestyle things. But I have people, seriously, uh I have people in their late 80s that have the mitochondrial function of a 35-year-old. Wow. They're not going to get sick, period. They don't get sick. So, that for me is huge with respect to the aging process. Wow. The other thing is uh that I always want to mention to people, the older group, okay, the over 55 group, uh is, you know, I'm glad you're feeling good today, but I don't care that much. I'm focusing on how you're going to feel 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. That's my focus. You're feeling great today. Odds are pretty good, if you're like everybody else, you're not going to be feeling great down the line. So, let's focus on down the line. Now, what does that mean? That means we do testing, especially mitochondrial testing like every two years. Uh but, the thing that's kind of been a game-changer for me recently is uh um um proactive stem cell and platelet therapy. Mhm. So, you're giving stem cells. So, I'll take somebody like you, who looks like the picture of health, and you probably got great I you know, I'm sure you take great care of yourself, probably got great mitochondrial function, and despite that, I would give you stem cells. Wow. And I might infuse platelets and things as well. Now, why would I do that? Yeah. Because you're going to look, feel, and function better 5 10 years from now if you do that than if you don't do that. Wow, it sounds amazing, but it sounds expensive. It is. Yeah, it's it's So, if you do this right, for a younger person such as yourself, you're probably looking at six, seven thousand bucks a year. Wow. To do that. Now, that's not horrible, but, you know, it's you know, it's it's You're spending You're spending money on yourself. It's a lot of money, but maybe you feel you're worth it. Uh The other thing that that that may be a bit a game changer, too, is this uh new product called Stem Regan. Mhm. Have you heard about this? No. Stem Regan. Yes, so, um a fellow by the name of Christian Drapeau, d r a p e a u, uh wrote a book called Cracking the Stem Cell Code. Fabulous book, great read, gets a little complex in there, I have to say, some of it's over my head and I never quite figured out. But I've had several conversations with him. He's a brilliant man. And what what And I won't go through the whole story, but but you can read the book, go through the whole story, but basically found out that there's four herbs that cause your body to release stem cells. Mhm. So, here's how this thing works, and it's really remarkable. Uh we have all our stem cells in our bone marrow. When something happens in the body, some kind of damage that needs to be repaired, and this is constantly happening, we release stem cells from the bone marrow into the general circulation. Now, those stem cells have certain cell markers on them, so we can count the number of stem cells in your circulation at any one given time. So, what what he's has been able to do is find four herbs that when you take these herbs and herbal extracts, those number of those stem cells go up within 1 or 2 hours. Wow. Okay. Now, what's wild about that is not only do you get more stem cells in your circulation, meaning more repair going on, but this is remarkable. Before your bone marrow will release those stem cells, it has to reproduce them. Mhm. So, if I I have a given amount of stem cells in my bone marrow, if it once it releases a bunch of stem cells, I still have the same amount of stem cells in my bone marrow. It reproduces them before it releases them. So, in essence, I actually have more stem cells. It's stem cell therapy, but it's a pill. And it's not so bad. It's more like oh gosh, depends on the dose you take. Some like 150, maybe 200 bucks a month. Okay. Wow. That could be a game-changer. So, the herbs are in that what you just told me that regenerative or what is Yeah, it's in uh yeah, uh Stem Regen. I don't know. If you just Google that or go to stemrejan.com, you can learn more about it. Awesome. Well, say the person doesn't have good mitochondrial function, what are your recommendations? Yeah. So, uh almost always it's they're not covering the basics. Mhm. And almost always they're blindly going through their life thinking, "You know what? I don't feel so bad. I don't have cancer. I don't have heart disease. I really don't feel all that bad. Maybe I don't function quite as well as I normally do." They don't realize the the jeopardy that they're in until I show them the darn test. But, usually it's because their diet is One of the biggest problems we have, and I could tell you a great story that exemplifies this, but one of the biggest problems is too many carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates. Um there is a subset of people out there that cannot tolerate carbohydrates, and I can expand more on this, but that's for sure. Uh they need to stop eating carbohydrates and concentrate on eating fat. Which is goes completely against what we've always been told for the last 50 years, is fat's bad, carbs are good. That may be true for a subset of people, Yeah. but it's certainly not true for everybody. So, the number one problem I I've had, and I've seen it's Kim, I've had people come in, seriously, and I check their mitochondrial function. It stinks. It's like 60% of what would be good. Wow. I get them off carbs, completely, 100%, no carbs. For the next 2 weeks, I retest them, they just doubled their mitochondria output. Wow. In 2 weeks. That's incredible. Carbs for for these people, uh the analogy I tell them, I said, "You know what? In your car or you've got a diesel car, and you've got a gas car. If you put gas in the diesel car, you're going to screw it up. Mhm. You put diesel in the gas car, you're going to screw it up. And your body's like that. You put carbs in your body, it doesn't handle it. Now, if your husband, he might handle carbs just fine. Your next door neighbor, maybe just fine. But, you no, you got to stop eating the carbs. So, that's a major problem. Another problem that is is just like lousy diet, just crap. Yeah. And I I've been reflecting on this because what we know is from a a study that came out like 3 years ago where it was a historical study. First Absolutely fascinating and I we probably don't have time to get into details of this, but basically what the author went back and researched all the historical data and found out that before 1910 there was no heart disease, no macular degeneration, and no Alzheimer's. Mhm. Zero. Nothing. Wow. It wasn't It wasn't in the literature. That would be amazing now. It's crazy. So, what's changed? Uh one thing for sure that's changed is the fact that today you can eat a crappy diet and think it's a good diet. Mhm. 50 years ago you ate a crappy diet, you knew it was a crappy diet, you just didn't care. Nowadays people think their crappy diet is actually a good diet. Mhm. It's not. The diets are horrible. They're a disaster. All they eat is processed food and there's chemicals and crap in there that don't even need to be in there. Right. So, that's a huge part of it is getting them off the processed food. I tell my patients that have bad mitochondrial function no more no more food that has an ingredients label for you. It's got an ingredients label, you don't need it. Okay. So, you don't eat those foods. You know, the little chips and the rest of it. You don't eat those foods. Yeah. And I tell you what, you do that for 3 months, come back. Let's retest you, see what happens. The other thing is exercise and people either one think that, you know, playing golf is exercise or bowling is exercise. It's not. Uh and one of the nice things about doing these mitochondrial function is, you know, we're we got you on a ramped um bicycle, so I can tell you exactly how you ought to exercise. It's not like a big deal. Uh you know, if you give me about 15, 20 minutes three times a week, I'll have you covered. But we need to I need to get that through the skull. Just cuz you feel good doesn't mean you don't need exercise. You don't wait People out there don't wait till you feel crappy and say, "I ought to do something about this." Right. Wait until you feel like a million bucks and then go in and make sure you stay that way. That's true. So exercise, diet uh what else? Um and hormones. Hormones are definitely in there. And those are probably the three biggest things. Those are foundational. And almost always you can turn around the mitochondria. Now, if that's not happening, then we there's certain supplements that we can turn to. Thyroid is in there. Okay. So that's a whole 'nother story. It's the story about how the thyroid blood tests are 100% inaccurate for diagnosing age-related hypothyroidism. They're useless. So forget Don't even get them. Get them I get them for a baseline. Yeah. But uh but I can't tell you so many times cuz when we're doing that test I told you about, the VO2 testing, I get their resting metabolic rate. Okay. controlled by three things. It's controlled by how much sleep you get, the amount of lean body mass you get, and thyroid. Okay. monitoring their sleep. So I do an oximetry on them. If their sleep's okay, I monitor their body composition. If their lean body mass is okay, guess what's left? It's thyroid. So I give them thyroid hormones. Uh they feel better, the test score looks better, but the blood tests don't look so good. Especially the TSH is suppressed out. But they feel like a million bucks, everything's looking really good, and um so what I've learned is the thyroid blood tests pretty useless unless they're way over the line way under the line. But the the TSH from a diagnostic perspective useless. So, I don't even do TSH anymore other than to establish a baseline. Okay. Yeah, I can't so many people come in on levothyroxine and feel no different. They have every sign of hypothyroidism still. And do you So, do you like adding in some T3? Do you like Yeah, yeah. So, normally I'll go with that, you know, the desiccated. Okay. It was like what? 85% T4 and like 15 13% T3. And almost always fixes that. Yeah, I feel like they feel so much better just having some T3 for sure. For sure. What when it comes to your longevity regimen, what what would you share about it? What do you do for yourself? Um every every morning I haul my sorry, tired ass out of bed half an hour earlier than I really want to get out of bed. And I go downstairs in my PJs. You probably don't want to see me. And and I'm going to do my exercise thing. I've got a rowing machine down there. I've got a stationary bicycle down there. I've got a bench with a bunch of weights. I've got a power plate by whole body body vibration. And I got a whole system that I will will work out. Don't take much, but for about 15 20 minutes every morning in my life with some exceptions, of course. I'm down there doing that. I don't much like it. I'd rather just sleep in bed if you want to know the truth, but I know I'm looking again 5 10 years ahead. So, that's that's something that I'm pretty darn good about. Uh I don't eat foods with ingredients labels. Okay. I don't I don't eat bread. I make my bread. Uh I don't you know, eat canned stuff if there's an ingredients label on it. Uh you know, I just I'm not going to eat all the crap that's out there that everybody thinks is okay. Now, there's always exceptions. So, if I'm going out for dinner periodically, I know they're going to give me crap. And in that case, I don't care because I'm ready for it. But mostly, I don't eat any crap. I don't eat anything with ingredients labels. I uh I regularly sunbathe. Uh now, I've got the crappy type one skin. So, I have to be a little bit careful about how I sunbathe. Uh but I do I do definitely want to get 15-20 minutes of sun every day. Um I'm really good about water. Uh um so I'm I'm I'm at minimum, I'm going to drink a liter and a half of water a day. Whether I'm thirsty or not. Uh I take I have a mix that I put together uh of uh I make a fruit smoothie every morning. And in that, I dump a scoop of this mix that I made up called Quick Start. Now, what Quick Start powder has in there is um immune-related regulating substances, primarily astragalus. Uh it's got detoxification substances like chlorella and NAC. And it's got it's got some proteins in there, some of special amino acids. And it's got all the vitamins in the vitamin C's and all the all that stuff. So, it's sort of like a multivitamin. It's juiced up with some immune-related materials and some detoxification materials. So, I throw a scoop of that in there. I throw a scoop of uh of five collagen peptides. And I throw in a scoop of uh uh this product called Perfect Amino, which you may have heard about, but this is an amazing product with just the right amino acid balance. And I'll take that every day. That pretty much covers me. Um in addition to that, I take thyroid. Okay. Uh I take DHEA. Uh I do the stem cells. I do them once a year. I have to, you know, cough up uh six grand and I do the stem cells. Um and then I piddle around with other stuff. You know, I'll I'll go buy some pterostilbene or I'll buy some astaxanthin and I'll read something about it and I'll like play around with it to kind of ding around with stuff, but but what I just described to you is my basic stable stuff that combines lifestyle with some hormone replacement, some supplements, and and and then guess what? I check my mitochondrial function every year. Yeah, that And right now I can tell you I'm 78 years old. I have the mitochondrial function that's typical of a 32-year-old man my height and weight. It's not by accident. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be that way if I hadn't been doing all those things I told you for at least the last 20 years. Yeah. Are you a fan of infrared saunas? Yes. Uh I have several of them. Uh I have the um I have the near infrared, which I like a lot, and I have the far infrared. Uh which I like a lot. So, yeah, I'll do sauna saunas a lot, especially in the winter. During the summer, it's pretty hot anyway, so I don't really like getting in there. Uh but yeah, I think saunas are fabulous. As you probably know, lots of good studies on saunas and the way prevents disease and they definitely upregulate your mitochondria. Okay. What about like the new thing with doing like NAD boosters or you know, IV Is it NAD? Yeah. How do you feel about those? So, um I don't think they really work all that well. Okay. In other words, if I have I have somebody with poor mitochondrial function and uh and and and I give them one of those like niacinamide or niacin or something like that. Odds are pretty good I'm not going to see any change. Okay. You know, really I'm going to see the change with their lifestyle. If you throw that on top maybe it makes sense to take niacinamide or niacin. Mhm. The other NAD precursors Like The other NAD precursors are like way too expensive and I don't think they're worth it. Okay. But I will tell you a great story. So I had a guy that uh called me up maybe 3 years ago. He's in Southern Cal, which is uh you know, 12 hours away. He says, "I'm 40 years old. I've been tired, run down, chronic fatigue since I've been age 20. I'm not employable. I'm on disability. Mhm. Uh I heard about your mitochondria test. I want to come and check this out cuz I think something's wrong." I said, "Yeah, you better get up here." So he shows up maybe 2 months later. He comes in and he sits down. I'm looking at his mitochondrial test. I said, "Dude, I don't know what's wrong with you, but you have the mitochondrial function of a young person. You're looking great. There's nothing wrong with your mitochondria." And he says, "Well, that explains why I feel so great." I said, "What do you mean you feel great? I just talked to you 2 months ago. You felt like crap." He said, "What you don't understand is when I was driving up from San Diego to come and see you, I stopped by a clinic in San Luis Obispo that was there for addictions. And they were giving intravenous NAD every day for about they were giving like 800, 1200 mg of NAD IV over 6-8 hour period every day for 10 days to help people with addiction. And I thought, I'm going to do that cuz I heard about NAD. So he did that and that's what happened." Wow. So he didn't know absolutely turned his case around. He said, "I feel like a million bucks." So that's just confirms the fact that NAD is valuable. And there definitely are some subset of people out there. I don't care what you do with them. I have not been able to find a way to to bump up their NAD and improve their mitochondria function shy of giving them some actual NAD. I don't think the topical works very well. So, I don't think the pills definitely don't work. Yeah. But but the nasal spray can work. Okay. And uh and uh you know, certainly sub-Q or IM or IV will work. And it's really good jump-start. Okay. What about Do you know much about using rapamycin for longevity? I know there's some some clinical trials that a lot of people are starting to consider doing it. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I've even considered it. So, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I'm I'm going to start that myself, to tell you the truth. Okay. the the the research is compelling. Okay. It gets rid of cancer cells, get rid of senescent cells. Uh there's no downside to it. Now, you got to be careful about the dose. So, I have run into people that got crazy with the doses. Some some people out there that are saying you should take huge doses of rapamycin. Not a good idea. Okay. And they've ended up in the hospital. So, you you want that dose wants to be somewhere between 4 to 6 mg once a week. Okay. And if it's like anything else, I'm not going to do it constantly. I'm going to go in there for like 3 months, knock out some senescent cells, give myself a break for about a month or two, and then go in and knock some more out. But I think it's a great idea. Uh I don't have any real experience on it. Mhm. But I have researched it, and I'm pretty convinced that's something we probably ought to get all get into. Yeah, I was pretty excited about it. I've been looking into it and I've been thinking I want to do that cuz I have a strong family history of cancer. Both my parents died young of cancer. So, I'm anything that can help with that. What about Metformin? I feel like that's so controversial for longevity reasons. What do you think about that? Uh if you can take Metformin uh if and and by that um I mean you don't have side effects, basically GI side effects. You don't have anything wrong with your kidneys. Uh you you um maybe monitor your B12 levels. Um I don't see a problem with it. Um there are some people to whom I respect in the anti-aging movement that feel very good about taking Metformin. I myself don't take it. I don't prescribe it, but if I have somebody interested in it or wants to try, I don't have a problem. Okay. What about low-dose naltrexone? Are you a fan of that? Uh not not prophylactically, but yeah, if you've got cancer, for sure. Got an autoimmune condition, for sure. Uh autonomic nervous system kind of conditions, I I think it can be real helpful. Okay. Yeah, I've had some good success with it. Yeah. I I really like it and it's so low, it doesn't really interact with other medications. So, it's really great. Um well, thank you so much for your time. I don't I didn't really get to ask you everything. We kind of got into a lot of different things, which I'm thrilled about because I really think that people have these questions and I'm so glad that we covered a lot of it. Another thing real quick, what about GLP-1 agonist? I feel like that's so controversial, but a lot of people are taking it for all the metabolic and cardiovascular protection, but I for my women, even if they're pre-diabetic, many of them don't want to take one. So, what are your thoughts on those? They don't want to take it because of what they've heard on the online or something. Mhm. Yeah. Well, okay. It It's an absolute game changer for some people. Yeah. But, there are definitely a subgroup of people, you probably run into them, we all run into them, and they're doing everything absolutely right and they can't lose weight. Mhm. What's wrong with those people? Obviously, something is wrong somewhere. Yeah. When you give those people a GLP-1 agonist, everything is taken care of. So, I mean, it's pretty obvious there's a subset of people out there that need GLP-1 agonists. Now, why that is, I'm not quite sure. Is that a genetic thing? Is that a lifestyle thing somehow? Did the the the the some kind of problem with their genetics as they and the epigenetics as they've gotten older? Uh there's some evidence to think it might have something to do with the microbiome. But, anyway, the fact is it's a game changer for a lot of people. The The side effects that people heard about always have to do with either one, some people just don't tolerate them at any dose. Mhm. That's pretty uncommon. And what we I what we always do is you start off with a low dose and you work on up. Mhm. Um what you want to do is you want to uh find the lowest dose that gets the job done. And if you do that, um and always start off with semaglutide because that's the one that is the cheapest. Yeah. Easy to do, it's cheap. If they get sick from the semaglutide, which is usually nausea or some kind of GI upset thing, uh we can always go to one of the other other uh GLP-1 agonists. They're better, but they're a lot more expensive. That's for sure. Yeah. And you know, you know the mistake that's made out there, Kim, is that it's so typical the way our darn medical society works is, "Oh, look, here's this wonderful peptide. Let's just take a whole bunch of this peptide and not deal anything with lifestyle. Let's forget about mitochondria. Let's forget about all these other things." But if you if you take that person and you put them on intermittent fasting, get them off the carbs, get their mitochondria regulated, do all these things kind of what we're talking about, get the thyroid dialed in, get all this stuff, and you give them that GLP-1, they'll need a little bit of dose, they won't need a big dose, and they will just thrive on it. So, I love those things. For me, it's been a huge game changer for that subset of people that I do everything to and they're they just can't bust through that uh finish line. For me, it's the menopausal women that I care for. I mean, we're doing hormone therapy, we're trying to optimize the thyroid and diet and lifestyle, and I really believe they are trying everything Yeah. talk about, but the belly just won't budge. You know? So. Yeah. No, they're they're great. So, you basically put them on the GLP-1. Uh those people you're already covering all the other bases, so you put them on the GLP-1, and I tell them to go up uh to the point where they're losing in the order of maybe a pound every week or two. And I don't go above that. I don't want you losing a lot of weight real pronto. I want you slowly losing I want you to be regulated. This is not a weight loss thing. It's going to regulate your the way your body works, and uh and then you as a result you're going to lose weight. But go up to that go up to that dose that's just minimal, and then once you've dropped to the weight that you want and everything feels good and your A1C's good and everything's lovely, uh then you can start to reduce the dose. Uh Uh, half the people are going to need to do it in some way, or shape, or form for the rest of their life. That's what I found. Uh, but but you can get off it, or go down to a minimal dose that is of no consequence, like 0.2, 0.25, something like that. Yeah. Uh, and just stay on that for the rest of your life. Yeah. Yeah, that's Yeah, I I I've been lately just offering it to them, like, okay, we've tried this, do you want to do it? And many of, you know, like you in social media and society, they're like, everybody's on one. But when I comes to my patients, they're like, no. I'm like, okay. So, well, what are your three or four top tips to leave us with for menopausal women? Gosh, uh, top tips. Uh, probably the same as I would tell I I would say for older men. Mhm. Uh, you know, get your hormones dialed in. Obviously, for women, that's uh, more of an issue because you guys, your hormones drop out suddenly. For us, it's very slow. Um, but get your hormones balanced, for sure. Uh, start thinking 5, 10, 20 years ahead. How am I going to be 20 years from now? Mhm. Uh, do all the things I wrote a book called Bursting With Energy. Read the darn book and do what it says in there. Okay. And it's this is not rocket science. And then, uh, get your mitochondria checked. Uh, there are a number of people if they if they go to bioenergytesting.com, bioenergytesting.com, Okay. you can find uh, something like 10, maybe 15 clinics uh, around the country that can do this particular mitochondrial test. Uh, and go get your mitochondria tested. If it's great, fabulous. Stay on your game. Okay. If it's not, let's get it great, and don't be happy until your mitochondria are looking youthful. Well, do are you a fan of those mitochondrial supplements and combinations that have like CoQ10, L-carnitine? What do you think about those? They don't work. It's nonsense. They don't work. Okay. They're good in concept, but and they're good for you, but they don't bump your mitochondria. Okay. Do you take CoQ10? I do. Yeah. I'll throw throw one in there couple of times a week maybe. Okay. That's kind of how I am. I don't take the same things every single day. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Yeah. You want to rotate stuff. Yeah, that's how I am. Well, you've had a really long successful career. So, what achievement or contribution are you most proud of? Hm. Uh the mitochondrial test. I think it's a total game changer. It could change the face of medicine if people would just start doing it. Mhm. Yeah. I talk about the mitochondria a lot. I don't I just I realize that it's like foundational. They have to be working. But, think of this, Kim. Uh You We all know blood pressure's a problem. Mhm. Or potentially a problem. We all know blood sugars are an issue. Mhm. Well, how do we know that? And how do we know what to do with that? Right. We measure blood pressure. That's how. We measure blood sugar. That's how. That's how we know they're issues. So, un- unless people are measuring mitochondrial function, they're you know, throwing darts in the dark. They have no idea what they're doing. In the same way that somebody walks in your office and you say, "You know what? I have this intuitive feeling that you have high blood pressure. So, I'm going to put you on all these things to lower your blood pressure." And then the patient comes back and says, "Well, is my blood pressure lower?" And you're going to say, "Well, since I have no way to measure blood pressure, my intuition is that it's probably fine now. All right. This is bogus. This is not scientific. You want to measure mitochondrial function. Right. So, send your patients to get your their mitochondria tested or buy the unit yourself and test your mitochondria. Uh it's not that hard to do. Okay. And it's it's like absolutely critical. What what It's an old scientific maxim, what you don't measure never gets handled. Right. That's so true. That's right. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I would have? No, you done real well here. Uh I'm happy to come back and talk to you some more if something else pops up. Absolutely. I have had I'm so glad we were able to connect finally and everything got working and I really appreciate your time and I appreciate everything you do and thank you for being here. And what's your website or how can people learn more about you and what your practice is and you know, how they can follow you? Uh a couple things I'll put out. Number one, I write a newsletter. I think people I get super good feedback on this newsletter. I've been doing it for about 15 years. It's called Second Opinion. So, if they Google Second uh Second Opinion Newsletter, they'll find it and they can sign up for it and then every month they'll they'll get some information. Plus, there's a whole archive in there they can search. Um Also, I've written a book called Bursting With Energy. Really, everybody ought to read that. It's covering the basics and it gives you you know, step-by-step what you can do. Um and uh and then you they of course they can go to my website if they got have clinical issues and they want to learn more. Uh so, that's anti It's real easy. antiagingmedicine.com. They can learn more there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and it's been great talking with you. Okay. You're welcome,

Summary: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Midlife Wellness NP podcast. My name is Kim Gaffner. I'm a board-certified family nurse practitioner, menopause specialist, and host of this podcast. So, welcome. Well, today, get ready to dive into the cutting-edge world of integrative medicine with a true pioneer in the field. My guest today has been revolutionizing healthcare for over 50 years, developing innovative techniques like Prolozone Therapy, and bringing ozone th…