Let's Talk Wellness Now

What if the medications you take every day are quietly draining the nutrients your body needs? Dr. Deb sits down with Ross Pelton, RPh, PhD, CCN, known worldwide as the Natural Pharmacist, to talk about drug-induced nutrient depletion, what your gut bacteria actually need, and the science of aging well.

Ross is a pharmacist, certified clinical nutritionist, author, and educator who has spent decades studying how medications affect nutrition, the microbiome, and cellular health.

In this episode:

• How common medications can deplete key nutrients
• Why so much of today's diet is ultra-processed, and what that does to your gut
• Why your colon can become a "food desert" for good bacteria
• What a healthy gut really looks like
• Can probiotics feed SIBO?
• How much nutrition is really left in your produce

Grab your coffee, settle in, and let's get started.

This episode is for education only and is not medical advice. Talk with a qualified professional about your own health needs.

[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let's Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today's content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let's Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

[01:24] DEB: What if a simple urine test could reveal hidden clues about gut health, nutritional deficiencies, mitochondrial function, and even factors contributing to neurodevelopment changes. Today, we're speaking with William Shaw, PhD, a pioneering biochemist whose research has helped shape the field of functional laboratory testing. We'll explore autism research, the organic acid test, and why understanding metabolism may be one of the most important keys to personalized health care.

[01:55] DEB (Book promo): What if your body wasn't betraying you? It was trying to get your attention? We've been trained to silence symptoms. Numb them, shrink them, hide them. But symptoms are not enemies. They're messengers. They're the language of your biology saying, "Look deeper." Every woman I've treated who's been told to accept normal labs but still feels unwell, she's living proof that our system doesn't define health. Your body does. Seen at Last is about learning to translate your body's signals into truth and action, not just suppression.

[02:30] DEB: Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm Dr. Deb and today's conversation explores the fascinating intersection of biochemistry, functional medicine, and personalized health. Our guest is William Shaw, PhD, biochemist, researcher, author, and the founder of the Great Plains Laboratory, now known as Mosaic Diagnostics. For more than three decades, Dr. Shaw has researched metabolic disorders, autism, gut microbiome imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and environmental toxicology. His work helped popularize the organic acids test known as OAT, a laboratory assessment used by many functional and integrative medicine practitioners worldwide. So, as normal, grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind and settle in to another amazing episode. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I have the pleasure of having Dr. William Shaw, PhD with me today. And I'm excited for this conversation. We were just chatting before we went live and we've got some great topics for you. But I want to first start by hearing his story about what got him interested in this type of medicine. So you've been a biochemist for quite a while. Tell us your story.

[03:56] WILLIAM: So the story was I was doing research at the Centers for Disease Control to try to find out about a really abnormal thing, which was: all the thyroid testing in the whole world gave falsely elevated values. And so I was given the mission of finding out why. It was bizarre. At the CDC, I was given the direction to find out this was why all the thyroid testing in the whole world gave falsely elevated values, so that nobody got the correct thyroid value, no matter where they were in the world. They were getting erroneous values. And the strange thing is if you put purified thyroid hormone and you stored it, it would go down with time, but if you put serum and then measure the thyroid, it increased with time. So there was the blood was giving high values whereas purified thyroid hormone declined. So there was something about the serum that was making the values go up. And so I found the cause was fatty acids, fatty acids that were not attached to glycerol or some other things. So in other words, free fatty acids, not fatty acids that were part of triglycerides. They were okay, but fatty acids that were separated, if you added them to serum, it made the values go up. And so I wanted to find out what the mechanism of that was. And it was that the free fatty acids denatured all the proteins in the body. And the protein that measured thyroid hormone was also being denatured. So the way it worked, that made high values occur. So that was a major thing. And of course, this was before the internet. So nobody in the world knew about this, except the people who read my scientific paper, you know? But so everybody, probably for a period, maybe of five years, everyone who did thyroid hormone tests got a falsely elevated value. And this finding put an end to that. And so shortly thereafter, a new neighbor moved in next to me and I went over to the neighbor to introduce myself, and the woman — she and her husband were mid-20s, and she said, "I've been meaning to come over, but my husband is extremely sick. He has juvenile diabetes. And he has extreme kidney failure." And the physician has told him, "If he doesn't get a transplant, he's going to die soon." And so what I thought about was the same phenomenon was going on in her husband. So her husband had juvenile diabetes so he had no insulin and his kidney function is measured by something called creatinine clearance, which is a measure of the filtration ability of the kidneys. So a normal value, a good value is about 120. His value was 0.5. So it was less than 1% of the normal. And he was already on dialysis. He was far down on the transplant list, so it was in effect a death sentence. And I said, I think I know something that might help. And I said you could take high doses of niacin. So niacin has no effect on glucose. So almost every medical practitioner in the world, if you ask them what does insulin do? They'll say it helps to control glucose. Probably less than 1% of them will know it also helps to decrease free fatty acids. But that was my focus of my research, so I knew that. And I said, if you take high doses of niacin, it won't do anything for your husband's glucose, but it'll dramatically decrease his free fatty acids which is probably the thing that's destroying his kidneys. So I told her to give him 500 milligrams three or four times a day. And so this was the first time I'd ever recommended any treatment for any patient. And then I didn't hear anything from her. So I thought either her husband had died or that was the most likely scenario, but I thought maybe she would have come over and told me about it, but she didn't. And so I got extremely agitated wanting to know what happened. And so after about three weeks, I couldn't stand the suspense anymore. And so I slowly started walking up to the front door. And I knew if I saw her crying or something, I would know that he didn't make it. But when she opened the door, she had a big smile on her face. So she said, "I was meaning to come over and tell you, but I've just been so busy, but my husband's completely recovered. So, he recovered so much, his kidney function went completely back to normal, and his kidney doctor told him he didn't, he was taking him off the kidney transplant list because the kidneys were completely functional now." So I felt like a baseball player who has never been in a game before and they put him in the World Series with three men on base and they put him up. He's never swung a bat before and he hits a home run. That was what, so I thought, "Gee, I'm pretty good at knowing how nutritional therapy can be extremely helpful for some people." And I still think that's something that almost no physicians know about, and fatty acids are at high levels are one of the most toxic things there are, that almost nobody pays attention to. And that's one of the things that niacin is very good at doing. It does nothing for, won't affect blood sugar at all, but it has a profound effect on reducing toxic fatty acids.

[10:34] DEB: Wow. So you've spent some decades studying complex chronic conditions. What led you to focus specifically on autism and metabolic abnormalities.

[10:45] WILLIAM: Well. So I guess partly it was that experience I had previously. And what happened was I was working at the Children's Hospital in Kansas City and a colleague of mine had a test for organic acids at the medical school that was across the border just a few miles away. He was a pediatric neurologist and he had a family come to him. It was a mother and two children, and both of the children had severe autism. But they also had other abnormalities as well. They had kidney problems and they also had muscle weakness, extreme muscle weakness that even though they were three or four years old, sometimes they would get out of bed and their legs would just collapse underneath them. And they had been tested at almost every medical center in the United States. Their medical record was about this high. There was... They'd been tested at Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic and nobody could find what was causing it. I was originally focused on the severe muscle weakness and actually I didn't find out until later that they also had the severe autism. And so Dr. [Chavez] at the KU Medical Center had a mass spectrometer, but it was an old model and he knew I had a new, fancy, up-to-date model for the time. And so he said, "...

[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let’s Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

[01:22] DEB: In pain, depressed, 100 pounds overweight, and in his words, nothing was working. So he did the one thing he had been told for years not to do. He built his plate around meat. Today, the guy who owns a small town movie theater doesn’t touch the popcorn. But I had to ask the question every clinician is asking and thinking already. What about your heart? His answer, and exactly where the evidence stops, is coming up.

[01:51] DEB: Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and give you the tools to heal. I’m Dr. Deb Muth, and today we’re talking about the carnivore diet, eating mostly meat for weight loss, inflammation, and chronic illness. With a guest who says he lost a hundred [pounds — audio cuts out] doing it. And if you’ve been told your labs are normal, but you know something isn’t right, if you’re dealing with the weight that won’t move, joint pain, reflux, and low mood that nothing seems to touch, this episode is going to be for you. So as usual, grab your cup of coffee or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let’s get started. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m so excited to have my guest with me today. It’s Kerry Mann. He is a co-director of Healing Humanity. This is going to be a great conversation. And as you guys know, I love hearing personal stories and he’s got one that is going to blow your mind. So, Kerry, welcome to the show.

[02:59] KERRY: Thank you, Dr. Deb. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and share my story.

[03:03] DEB: So, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us how you got started in all of this. Where did you start?

[03:09] KERRY: Yeah, well, I guess if we go back about 19 years, my wife and I, well, my wife and I have been together for 32 years now. We met at age 14. My health issues started shortly after that in high school. I started gaining weight. I started experiencing mental health issues, depression, anxiety. And then 21 years ago, we had our first daughter. And then two years after that, we had triplets. And it was, yeah, it was a moment. It was unexpected. It didn’t run in the family. It wasn’t planned. We actually found out at the five month ultrasound, the ultrasound tech said, uh-oh. I’m like, I’m pretty sure you should be trained not to use that word when you’re doing an ultrasound. But she said, there’s another one in there. There’s three. Oh, wait, there’s four. No, there’s just the three of them. So that’s how we found out we had triplets. And that was 19 years ago. And I just remember at that moment in my life, that was a moment when I’m like, I need to be a provider. Things just got really serious. I need to work hard. I need, there’s like so much responsibility. Amazing blessing, like the biggest blessing in the world, but also kind of a very scary time. And unfortunately I just wasn’t there. My health was bad at that point. I had really bad depression, anxiety, and just this sort of general fatigue. I was kind of plopping down on the couch. I used to think I was just lazy, like this is just me, but in retrospect I realized I was just metabolically unwell and I had brain fog and I couldn’t find my words. I could just kind of go along to get along. So when I needed to be a really good provider, a really good dad, a really good example to my girls and to my family, I wasn’t. I was just — and I just kept getting sicker over the last 19 years. My weight continued to go higher and higher. I had IBS. I had arthritis, I had the depression and anxiety kept getting worse. I finally went in and got the help for that. I was the best patient in the world. I took all the medications that they told me to exactly as they told me to take them but my depression and anxiety never got better. And I just kept getting rotated through medications. I’m showing on the screen here, a big bucket of my medications. At one point I was on most of these. I was on 10 or 15 medications. I had stomach pain every time I would eat. So they diagnosed me with IBS and then they tested my gallbladder and they’re like, it’s borderline. We could leave it. We could take it. And I was just like. Take it like I’m in such pain that maybe that would give me some relief. They removed my gallbladder, didn’t change anything for me. My stomach was just always heavy and hurting and every time I would eat it was just discomfort. Then I started getting arthritis and then I had two kidney stones, which was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced my entire life. I thought I was having a third one about six months after that. And so I kind of just. Tried to suck it up. I was at home and I’m like, I’m gonna just have to pass this kidney stone. Like what am I gonna do? Go to the emergency room? And I was wrong — it wasn’t a kidney stone, it was my appendix. And eventually the pain became so agonizing, I went to the emergency room and my appendix burst on the operating room table just before they were going to do the surgery. Probably saved my life because they were able to get in there, but it turned, it went from a simple procedure to a much more complicated one because they had to then clean it all out. And so yes, I just had health issue after health issue. And then the biggest one for me came in my mid 30s. I’m 46 now. I believe I was 35 at the time. I was at home. I was on the couch. I stood up and I didn’t know where I was. I was confused. I couldn’t find my words. My lips started drooping. My wife started panicking. She called 911 and I took an ambulance ride to the hospital. And I spent about four days at the stroke unit in the hospital and they diagnosed me with a TIA mini stroke. And they did a whole bunch of tests because they’re like 35 years old on all of that medication. Like what is going on with this guy? And they diagnosed me with congestive heart failure. They said, “Your heart can’t keep up with the needs of your body.” When they told me that too, Dr. Deb, I was like, “I’m dead. I need my heart.” And they’re saying my heart is failing. Like, it’s kind of a scary diagnosis, but–

[07:09] DEB: Is that your lowest point, do you think?

[07:12] KERRY: Almost. Almost.

[07:13] DEB: Okay.

[07:13] KERRY: Yeah, just about because they, what they explained to me that day was your heart can’t keep up with the needs of your body, but then it got a little worse. Like, okay, I’m not dead right now, but they told me, congestive heart failure is chronic and it will never get better. They said at the best you could keep it at a baseline. It’s never going to improve. It’s only going to get worse or maybe you can keep it the same. So that was a bit devastating, but I was kind of thankful in some ways because I was so tired and fatigued and I’d stand up and I would get dizzy and all of what they were saying made sense. So at least I have an answer for some of this and now maybe they’ll give me some medications or things that’ll help me with the congestive heart failure. But to kind of bring this, wrap this story up, they gave me medications more added to the bin. It didn’t help. Like I was still having the issues. My ejection fraction was 44 at that time. They checked, they did a heart echo. They checked all of the metrics on my heart. And then I started getting arthritis in my foot. And they said it was gout. I went to another specialist. He said, it’s not gout. That guy was wrong. Trust me. It’s just a bunch of inflammation in your toe. They wanted to do surgery on my toe. It was to the point where it hurt so bad. I could, I couldn’t even walk on it at certain times. I was using crutches for a while. I’d go to the grocery store. I was riding around on a mobility scooter. And that was probably my lowest point because at that point, this was about [four] years ago, at that point, my depression was just overtaking everything. The depression was the worst of all of the suffering and trauma my body’s been through. The unexplainable, just hopeless looking at life through this negative dark lens. Everything’s negative. It was the worst thing for me because Like as a man, I’m like, well, I can suck it up and get through it. But what it did to my family was the heartbreaking part of it. And I would try to fake it. I would try to just act like everything’s fine and it never worked. I’m not a good actor. And then I felt even worse because then I’m just, I’m a big phony. I’m just lying to my family and they, they, they could know within a second. Why is dad sad? Why is dad mad? Why is dad not talking to me for weeks as I’m just plopped down on the couch. So that was really kind of the lowest point for me. And then, well, You introduced this by talking about stories. Then I saw a story on YouTube of a man that found incredible healing by changing his diet. And that was kind of the, I guess the light bulb turning point moment for me.

[09:31] DEB: So all these abnormal diagnoses. None of them actually pointing in a direction that’s making you better and your family didn’t notice as much because you were able to hide it. Right? I think people get really, we get good at hiding how we feel. And we think that nobody notices, but underlying, everybody’s noticing a little bit of something. But I also think people are afraid to say something. They’re afraid to call it out, right? So they’re watching you. They’re maybe talking to people that know you, that love you, asking little questions, but nobody’s giving suggestions. So nothing’s working up until this point all the things that you have tried, all the medications, all the surgical interventions, nothing really works. Which one of those things felt the most unfair to you? Where did everything, everything that was right, that was not right, that nothing was going right, what was the biggest thing that felt unfair to you?

[10:32] KERRY: I think in retrospect, the biggest thing that was unfair was positioning by the doctors. I don’t want to throw doctors [under the bus]. I believe most doctors are great and they want to heal people. The thing that upset me the most was in many cases I was told, we just don’t know. Like it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain. Maybe it’s genetics. We just don’t know what the cause is. And it left me really kind of hopeless, but almost just blaming myself. Well, then it just must, I’m defective. There’s something wrong with me. But conveniently in all those cases where it’s like, we just don’t know, but we have a solution and it’s medication. And in my head and in retrospect, it’s like, how can you not know what’s causing it, but then have this medication solution. And now it’s so crystal clear to me that, well, that makes sense that those things never work because they weren’t actually addressing the root cause of it.

[11:21] DEB: Yeah. In all of those appointments, how often did anyone ask you what you were actually eating?

[11:27] KERRY: I love this question. None? Zero? Maybe one, to be fair. I probably went to hundreds of doctor’s appointments. I’m not even exaggerating. Over my adult life, so many of them, when I was diagnosed with IBS, they talked about diet. They put me on the low FODMAP diet, and I followed it religiously. I did everything they said. I still had stomach issues and bloating and all sorts of problems. So that was the only time in no other case did they [ask]. And it’s funny to me afterwards. I’ve heard someone say this before, but it’s like, we have a little, I live on a homestead here in Wisconsin. We got goats and chickens and animals, and we do vet visits. The first thing the vet asks every time you go, there is, what are you feeding them? What’d you feed the dog? What’d you do this? And it’s like, we ask that for our animals. Why don’t we ask that for humans? And then you look back to it’s like Hippocrates thousands of years ago, all disease begins in the gut. Many doctors take an oath — let food be thy medicine. Like it really does all start in the gut. I never would have believed it before, especially with my mental health. Like that’s a, that’s something up here. That doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m eating here, but it turns out-

[12:32] DEB: Yeah, that brain connection is so powerful.

[12:34] KERRY: Yeah.

[12:34] DEB: You know, I see this constantly in my office as well. People get a separate answer and a separate supplement or medication for every symptom they have. So there’s a pill for reflux. There’s a pill for mood. There’s another one for joint pain and nobody steps back and asks what might be connecting all of these things. We see them all individually. We see every specialist individually and none of us in the world of medicine talk to each other to talk about the patient as a whole person. We’ve kind of parceled everybody out and this is my specialty, this is yours. The family practice person or the primary care is supposed to be the person that pulls it all together, but oftentimes they don’t. And food is one of the first places that I think we need to be looking at. It’s not only the root cause, but it oftentimes is overlooked. So back then, what kinds of things were you regularly eating?

[13:27] KERRY: Yeah. So I tried everything. I tried every diet and years ago, I think this was probably 20 years ago, I saw a documentary on Netflix. It was called [title unclear], and it was all about a ketogenic diet. And I had never even heard of a ketogenic diet before. And I tried it. Like it was very, the documentary was very interesting and eye opening. It made a lot of common sense to me. So I’m like, I’m going to give this a try. And it really helped me. It helped me more than the medication ever had. In fact, I remember it, it helped me with my mood. Like, wow, I feel, my sleep a little bit. And I was able to lose some weight. My problem with it at that point was I didn’t truly understand the ketogenic diet. And so I would yo-yo, I would lose 40 pounds and I would gain 70 pounds and I would go on and off and I was constantly negotiating and moderating my addiction to carbohydrates. And it’s impossible to successfully overcome an addiction through moderating an addiction. Like any other addiction I would have, I would just abstain from. But I did the standard American diet. I did ketogenic diet. I counted calories. I did one meal a day, intermittent fasting. Literally, I think I tried everything and the most success that I ever had was with Keto but yeah, it was just up and down. And I really didn’t realize the impact of certain foods. And I will say this too, when I was doing keto and for most of that run, I was very diligent about eliminating any sort of animal fats. So I would do a ketogenic diet and I would eat chicken breast. I can’t have fatty meat because that’s gonna clog my arteries and give me a heart attack salad and green vegetables and things like that. And so the amount of fat in my diet was almost none through most of that journey.

[15:09] DEB: So if you could give me one sentence, what do you think most people are getting wrong about food?

[15:15] KERRY: Oh, that’s a great question.

[15:17] DEB: I know I’m limiting you.

[15:18] KERRY: Yeah. Well. All disease begins in the gut. Literally all of it. I think all of it does. The biggest thing people are getting wrong with food is almost all of the health issues we have. Here’s the answer. We should all be concerned with two things when it comes to food, insulin resistance and inflammation. And almost nobody is. Like I believe that’s the root of almost all of these major health issues we see. Heart disease being the biggest one. The number one killer in the world is heart disease. You talk to some people that really know what they’re talking about. Insulin resistance, inflammation, damages your arteries, blood vessels, the cholesterol goes into repair, the cholesterol gets the blame. And my whole life I was concerned with the cholesterol and the fatty meat. I was completely oblivious to inflammation, insulin resistance, and my body was riddled with inflammation. So much of the issues I had. Like when we say itis, I learned this too. If it ends in itis, that’s inflammation. So appendicitis, I lost my appendix, gastritis, arthritis, I had it in my elbow, my leg, my foot, that was just arthritis. It was just inflammation. I was this close to getting this crazy surgery on that toe I mentioned earlier. They were gonna like put like a ball bearing joint in there, and it was just inflammation from the foods I was eating. So that’s the biggest thing I think people get wrong with food. We’ve been so misled to worry about the wrong thing when there’s much larger things we should be worried about. Like you look around in the world right now, nine out of 10 people are metabolically unwell. 70% of people are overweight. There’s an epidemic of fatty liver disease going around. Like you look at children right now and children are walking around with fatty livers and pre-diabetic. It’s just so much of this is from eating ancestrally inappropriate food that’s causing insulin resistance and inflammation. And I think everyone should understand that I didn’t, I didn’t even really know what it was. I kind of knew what inflammation was, but didn’t know what insulin resistance was or any of those things. One other thing you said earlier on the medications was so true. You end up with it’s these, they would send me to this specialist and this specialist and they were never talking. But the other thing I just wanted to add to real quick was that happened for me. And I think many people is, I ended up with symptoms from the first medication that I then went to see a specialist. They put me on a second medication, but it was actually treating the symptoms that was caused by the first medication. So at the end of it, a bunch of these pills were just to treat the side effects and symptoms from pills they took earlier. It’s just this cascade of pharmaceuticals. And then you’re at the end and you’re like, I don’t even know what is this symptom from? Something I ate or is it from another pill I took or I don’t even know where it’s from because there’s so many inputs.

[17:47] DEB: So true. It’s so that’s what we do. And we rarely take away pills. We just keep adding more in the industry. So who do you think is responsible for us creating this new lifestyle of obesity and fatty liver and, you know, insulin resistance and all of that. Do you think it’s the food companies, the guidelines of the foods? Is it the doctors? Is it us as people? Who’s responsible for this?

[18:10] KERRY: Great question. I, I don’t, I’m not like, I don’t have a conspiracy theory that it’s just like a big, bad corporation. I think it’s just overall the incentives are wrong. Every single incentive is only for profit. This is where you end up with. You end up with cartoon characters on cereal boxes and you end up getting children addicted to sugar and carbs at a young age because they become a lifelong consumer and you’re completely blind to all of this when every single motivation and incentive is solely profit. And it’s the same way with the medications as well. When I was put on these medications, like the statins, for example, that is a drug I’m supposed to take for the rest of my life. It’s one of the most profitable drugs in the world. Their goal wasn’t to heal me or treat the root cause. The goal is rather, how do we maximize money? Now it’s not just one like evil doctor saying this. It’s just the whole system on both ends, the food system and the healthcare system and the pharmaceutical system. 100% solely kind of heartlessly, maybe without any regard to people’s health is set up for incentives. It’s just the way business is, unfortunately. A food company’s job is to make food that’s going to be profitable. And then they found, well, if it’s more addictive, we make more money. And then before you know it, they’re making the most highly addictive food in the entire planet without any regard to our health. And we kind of end up where we are now. Interestingly, I don’t blame big food companies that make addictive food. I don’t blame grocery stores. I don’t blame movie theaters that sell junk food because ultimately it’s up to the individual. I could protest outside a big processed food manufacturer until I’m blue in the face for the rest of my life is not going to do anything unless the individual decides they want to take their health into their own two hands and change their life. And as I’ve said on my YouTube channel before, kind of become the captain of your own ship and take control of things and start steering the ship yourself. That’s the only way things are going to change.

[20:02] DEB: Absolutely. You know, we vote with our dollars, right? If we don’t like something, we don’t have to buy it. And if we don’t buy it, there’s no incentive for them to make it because they’re not getting a profit and they’ll start turning the food over. And I love what Bobby Kennedy is doing, trying to get our food cleaner and get the dyes out and all of those things. But at the end of the day, if we as consumers continue to make bad choices and spend our money on these crappy foods that are out there, they will continue to make them. And this will not change for our betterment. You know, if we try to tell the community you can only eat this and we’re only going to make that, well, then we’re not any different than a communist country telling people and dictating to them what they can and cannot do. And that’s a slippery slope as well. And for me too, I think it’s really hard. Like when we make healthy foods so expensive and we make crappy food really cheap. And when you have a family that’s struggling and you know, it’s the difference between I’m going to buy this organic food or I’m going to buy a bag of Cheetos and the bag of Cheetos is going to go further and fill my kids up better. Unfortunately, some of their choices are like that. But at the end of the day, when we’re sick and it’s costing us more money to get healthy down the road. That is more expensive than what we could do on a day to day basis as well.

[21:21] KERRY: Yeah, 100%. I’m with you on the government and changing the food pyramid and things like that. I think it’s amazing for awareness. But like you said, it’s up to the individual if they want to change. One thing that sort of reframed for me that helped me that maybe will help your audience as well is I’ve just. I’ve always hated bullies. And I feel like in some ways, this is kind of like a bully situation, not to be dramatic, but I was kind of bullied before, like these big food, processed food companies, their wallets were getting bigger and bigger and bigger as I was getting sicker and sicker. And I was falling for it over and over again. And unfortunately, A lot of people are falling for it and they don’t realize it. They’re just, they’re addicted, they’re hooked. Or like you said, they think this is the only food I can afford. But when you’re able to take a big step back and do the honest, true math on that, that cheap food comes at a much larger cost than people really realize. Like, for example, I was able to safely get off all this medication with the help of my doctors. The expense of all of this.

[22:18] DEB: Yeah.

[22:18] KERRY: I’m just paying for the prescriptions, but going to the doctor and then the side effects from it that cause fatigue and brain fog and all sorts of downstream issues. The other thing that I found too that’s so interesting is I consider what I do now eating a proper human diet. And when I’m eating the proper foods that my body needs, I’m satiated and I’m full and I’m eating so much less than I would before coming from the perspective of a standard American diet a lot of people will see how I eat and they’re like, I could never afford to eat that way. And I’m just like, I get it because you’re, you’re on that mindset of where you’re eating three meals a day with snacks in between and you go to Starbucks and you get dessert. You’re doing all of these things. You have all of the sauces and side dishes and spices and all of these things. When you do the honest math and you look at how I’m eating, it’s actually a lot less expensive. I eat less frequently because food I’m eating satiates me. My body’s like, I’m good. It’s the most foreign feeling for me and most people because we’re just not eating the way that literally we have been, I believe since the start of time. We’ve eaten mostly a proper human diet since the start of time. It’s only in the last 100, 200 years that we’re eating multiple times a day even the fruits that we’re eating. They’re a million times better than Doritos and junk food, of course. But we were never intended to eat them three, four, five times a day out of season. And many of these fruits are just genetically engineered to be big balls of sugar. They’re nothing like they used to be before. And a lot of that is just completely inappropriate. And when people worry about intermittent fasting, or eating a proper human diet. It’s like, you should really be worried about the state of humanity right now where people are grazing six times a day, blood sugar, insulin resistance, just through the roof, all of these things going on that most people are oblivious to.

[23:59] DEB: Yeah. It’s really hard. You know, it’s interesting. You were talking earlier about fatty liver and some of the things that are going on. And my husband was diagnosed with fatty liver. His mom had fatty liver. Her mom had fatty liver and died of non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. And I went to my mother-in-law when this happened and I said, “He doesn’t drink, so what’s going on?” And my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease at 17. And I said to my mother-in-law, “You know, this came from somewhere genetically and I can see it comes from my husband’s side of the family. So it comes from your side of the family.” And we know that quote unquote silent celiac where you don’t have the symptoms creates cirrhosis of the liver, I said, so maybe that’s what happened with [your mom]. And my mother-in-law decided to get tested and sure enough, she had celiac disease. And she followed a diet for a while, then stopped because it was too expensive and it was inconvenient and she didn’t want to eat that way, didn’t want to deprive herself of those things. And now she’s older and she’s developed fatty liver and my husband has fatty liver. And I said to him one day, I said, you know, you really need to give up gluten. And of course that was not the thing to say, right? To the guy that likes Italian food every week. And when I said that to him and I said, this is getting worse, like we can see your liver is getting fibrotic and you’re young, you’re only 61 years old. And I consulted with a colleague of mine that was really good with fatty liver. And he said, you need to put them on this medication. I said, I can’t even get the insurance to cover an ultrasound for him to look at it. [He said,] “Oh, that’s ridiculous. They’ll do it.” I’m like, I’m telling you, I’ll prescribe this med for him. Prescribed the medication didn’t get covered. And I said, that’s good. I’d rather not. So what do you think about doing retatrutide? It’s a peptide. No, no, no, don’t do that. That one’s terrible. Do tirzepatide or semaglutide. And I said, yeah, but the research on retatrutide is really good for fatty liver. Like that is one of the things that it does the best for. “Oh no, no, no, no, no.” Okay, fine, whatever. I didn’t listen because I’m a rebel too and I don’t listen. I follow my own research. And so I put him on, retatrutide. And four months later, we retested his liver enzymes and he no longer has fatty liver. He no longer has a fibrotic liver. And if people don’t know what retatrutide is, it’s a GLP-1. It’s not FDA approved yet. So you have to get it from a specialty pharmacy, but it is meant to lower the insulin, get rid of that insulin resistance that we have, control some of those things. And to see it work that effectively, it’s a natural compound. It’s a small branch chain amino acid. So it’s not going to hurt him like that other medication that they would have given him. And I think a lot of times people just don’t understand if they’re not in a world where there’s alternatives to them, they don’t understand and they follow this world of medication, which just causes more and more problems. And it was a good example of controlling the insulin, controlling the blood sugar, controlling the diet a little bit more. This medication helped him to be able to do that and reverse the damage that was occurring. And we just don’t do that enough, unfortunately.

[27:08] KERRY: Yeah, yeah, it’s the default is what kind of quick medications can we put people on, what sort of pills and…

[27:14] DEB: Yeah, exactly. So let’s get back to you a little bit. So tell me, give me the biggest change moment for you. Like what was the moment that changed everything? Was it a photo? Was it a doctor’s visit? Or was something someone said to you? What was that moment that you were like, I have got to make this different now?

[27:34] KERRY: Yeah, so I saw a YouTube video. And it was from a man named [Dante Ferrigno] and he was talking about doing this strict ketogenic diet carnivore diet and I’m like this is insane. This is crazy. You’re gonna die. I can’t do that. Like I have heart disease. I’m gonna clog my arteries. But he had all of my health issues and he wasn’t a doctor. He was just like me. He was basically like me. He was overweight and he had IBS and he had all sorts of inflammation, and when he started saying this — I think it was one of the first times I ever heard of a carnivore diet — I just thought it was completely crazy like even if it made sense like it’s gonna be expensive It’s gonna be boring like just eating meat. But then I started thinking about it more and I thought about the success I had with the ketogenic diet. Like, well, what he’s describing is just like a strict ketogenic diet and sort of an elimination diet. And so the video I saw from him, he was like a hundred pounds overweight. He looked like he was dying. Like he looked horrible. He just was not doing well. And then my wife and I noticed that video was two years old. Very cynically, I’m like, there’s no way this guy’s eaten meat two years later. Let’s go look at his most recent YouTube video. And we did that and my jaw just dropped. I could not even recognize him. He lost all the weight. Of course, we humans are kind of visual and that’s the first thing we look at, but it was so much more than that. I watched his most recent video and he was just glowing, overflowing with joy and excitement, just describing all of these things he had reversed with his mental health, with his brain fog, with his inflammation. And he was just so passionate about it. And I was like, we talked about incentives earlier and a lot of them are wrong. They’re just for profit. I was questioning his incentive. Like, why is he sharing all of this? Like, what’s this dude trying to sell me? And then I’m like, this is still crazy. There’s no way I could do something like this. And I started doing more research. I found Dr. Ken Berry online who was advocating for a carnivore diet for healing. He also advocates for ketogenic diets more sort of long-term. And I watched like 500 Dr. Berry videos and I was trying to find where’s the coaching program I got to pay $10,000 for. What’s this guy trying to sell me? Like this is some of the stuff he’s saying is crazy. And I never found it. I just got to the end of it. I ended up getting to a video that he did about type two diabetes and it was titled how to reverse type two diabetes. And I’m like, I’m going to get him on this one because you can’t reverse type two diabetes. My aunt has had type two diabetes her entire life. My cousin just lost his leg amputated to type two diabetes. That’s not a reversible condition. That’s like a genetic fluke. Like all the doctors were telling me like, this is just you, we don’t know. I had no idea it could be reversed. And I watched that video and then I read the comments. The video had like a couple million views. I think it had about 3000 comments. And the first one was, “Dr. Berry, you saved my life.” That’s kind of crazy. And I’m like, well, it’s just a one-off or maybe it’s a bot or something. And then I started reading more of the comments. I read a couple hundred of those comments and there were endless comments of Dr. Berry, you saved my life. Dr. Berry, you reversed my type two diabetes. There were people saying, I reversed my type two diabetes in under a month. This was my A1C before, this was it after. Thousands of comments, 3,000 comments on there. Almost all of them were like. One said, Dr. Berry, listening to your 10 minute video did more for me than going to my family medicine doctor for 25 years. Like I’m healed now. All of these stories of healing. And then long story short, I was still so reluctant and I’m looking for I’m like, yeah, great, great, great. But I have congestive heart failure. I can’t eat fatty meat. And then I saw Dr. Philip Ovadia. He was on The Diary of a CEO, which I think is like the third largest podcast in the world right now. And he was he’s a heart surgeon. He’s on this podcast and he says, I performed 4,000 heart surgeries. This man has literally held people’s hearts in his hand. And he said he’s been eating a carnivore diet for like nine years as a heart surgeon. And he wrote this book, Stay Off My Operating Table. His whole book was just about eating a carnivore or keto diet to heal yourself. And his whole thing is heart disease is caused from insulin resistance and inflammation, but we’re blaming cholesterol. Does cholesterol play a role? Yes. It’s a much smaller role. There’s all sorts of studies that show this. There’s a big women’s health study that was done. It’s a huge study. And it shows that you are six times more likely to suffer heart disease if you’re pre-diabetic if you have insulin resistance and inflammation, then if your cholesterol numbers are slightly high. But everyone in the world is only concerned with cholesterol and the basic lipid panel and they’re completely ignoring what is six times more likely to give you heart disease: inflammation, insulin resistance. So when I saw Dr. Ovadia, I was almost convinced. And then the last thing I saw was Joe Rogan. Jordan Peterson was on Joe Rogan and he was talking about how his daughter found this miraculous healing and he was doing this carnivore diet and he lost 70 pounds. The floaters in his eyes went away. And then he said, “And Joe, I have been off all my antidepressant medications for one year now.” That was what sealed the deal for me because I had no idea this whole thing could affect my mental health. And at that point, like so much of this medication and this bin was various types of antidepressant medication. I ran the course on so many of them. I would take them, the doctor would say, you gotta take this for three months before we know if it [works]. I took it religiously for three months at the end of three months, did nothing for me. They’re like, okay, We’re gonna up the dosage a little bit. You’re gonna take it for three more months and we’re gonna see if it works or not. So I did one SSRI for like a year, got to the end of it, maximum dosage, and they’re like, we’re gonna try another one, three months. So I was on every SSRI. So when I heard Dr. Peterson say that, I’m like, well, he’s an anecdote. Maybe this was just him, but I would do anything. I would do anything. I’d mortgage my house and give everything up in the world to have some relief from this horrible hopeless depression I was putting my family through. Maybe I could do this. And so I positioned it for me because I still couldn’t wrap my brain around carnivore. I’m just going to do this as an elimination diet. I’m going to get rid of sugar, seed oils, carbs, all this junk. Ultimately, the only thing that’s left is beef, butter, bacon, eggs, and meat. I’m only going to do it for 30 days and then I’m going to go into just a more appropriate ketogenic diet, add salad back and greens and things like that. And that’s what I decided to do. I said, I’m going to do it for 30 days and sorry if I’m rambling. I just experienced healing so quickly after I started doing that. I stopped snoring almost immediately. That was one thing I didn’t mention before. I was on a CPAP machine for like 15 years. I did that thing so much. I had permanent red marks on my face from that mask. I would literally stop breathing throughout the night. And I was told from the sleep doctor that, well, you’re like a hundred pounds overweight, Kerry. Do you want to stop snoring? We got to get this weight down. Never told me how to do that. But turns out it wasn’t the weight that was causing me to snore. It was the inflammation. My body was inflamed. My airway was inflamed. I was snoring. So I stopped snoring almost immediately on carnivore. And that was almost worth the price of admission alone because Then my sleep was better. I woke up feeling rested. I felt great. My mood was slightly better. I remember saying to my wife, Could you imagine if I was able to sleep this good every day? What would that do for my mental health? Just that little component alone. And yeah, I just kept experiencing more healing after that for that 30 day period.

[34:46] DEB: So I’m curious before you started this, what did your wife and kids say when you told them you were going to go carnivore or eat mostly meat, especially since one of your daughters was vegan I hear, right?

[34:58] KERRY: It was a huge collective eye roll of, “Your dad goes again with another crazy diet. He did the one meal a day, the calorie counting, the Weight Watchers, the keto diet.” My daughter was not happy. [She thought,] “Great. More animals are going to die.” I was watching nonstop content on the TV, YouTube. So she saw Dante’s story and saw some of this. So she, she was like, on one hand, maybe this is hope for dad. But on the other hand, now more animals have to suffer because she was at that point, my daughter, Emma was vegan for almost four years or five years at that point. So yeah, they kind of weren’t happy and I was going solo. I was off on my own doing it.

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[36:09] DEB: All right, so thanks, everybody. We’re back. Kerry, I want to hear what about your heart? So you’ve listened to this doctor who’s held thousands of hearts in his hand. He’s eating carnivore. Everybody’s telling you it’s okay. I’m assuming you’re still a little skeptical, still a little nervous about it. You get through that 30 days of eating carnivore. You’re starting to see some differences. What happens then?

[36:34] KERRY: Yeah. So within that 30 days, I stopped snoring, which was great. And then around week three, I had this, whoa, something’s going on different here moment. Not that I’d overcome my depression and anxiety — that took longer — but my mood was noticeably improved more so than I had noticed in decades. I felt so good and my inflammation started going away. I noticed that because I’ve had this pain in my back since high school. I always thought it was a disc or something. I injured by lifting something foolishly years ago. Went away and I was like, what is that? It feels so good. And then on week three as well, my stomach, I said to my wife, I can’t feel my stomach. I’m like, I don’t know how to describe it, honey, but I can’t feel my stomach. My entire life I would eat and my stomach would be heavy or bloated or hurting. And it was just like, it was just air there. There was nothing there. And so that was within the month. Shortly after that depression anxiety just tapered down to where it was just gone. I was no longer depressed anymore. That was one of the most incredible things for me. The pain in my foot, that took around 70 days. Um, it slowly got better, but by day 70, I had no more pain in my foot after months of this hobbling around on that toe and then for the heart. So I can’t say precisely other than… I was like two months into carnivore and I felt like I could run a marathon. Like I’m not hyping this up. I could barely stand up before I was so dizzy and fatigued. I started exercising for the first time in my life, just out of this excess energy. I would get up in the morning. I’d go for a walk outside and get the morning sun in my eyes. I started doing these other weird things I never would have done. Like put my feet in the grass and grounding and getting fresh air and started to exercise. And so one year on carnivore approached, I was only gonna do this for 30 days, by the way. On day 30, I was gonna do just, I was gonna add salad back and do keto, but I’m like, you know I’m feeling so good and I’m not wanting for any of those things. Like I eat some bacon and eggs or some ground beef or I’m satiated and I’m full. And I had a doctor on early, Dr. Chaffee that explained to me, he said, “Kerry, you know, there are no essential carbohydrates. You get everything you need in the proper proportions from fatty meat.” And I’m like, “That can’t be right, Dr. Chaffee, what about the vegetables? What about all of the vitamins, minerals, all the good stuff in the vegetables?” “Kerry, the animals that are designed to eat those, eat those. They extract those things, you eat the meat, you get it from the meat, plus you get the meat and the fat and the protein and everything you need from it in the proper proportions.” I had blood tests done, I had work done, I’m like lacking for nothing, my blood work, everything is looking amazing. So I’m like, I’m gonna just keep going on day 30, I’m gonna go to 60, and then I went to day 60, I’m gonna I just kept on going until I got to one year. That one year, I had nothing wrong with me. I literally felt better than I had my entire life. I’m down like a hundred pounds since my heaviest. No longer fatigued. No, I’m like there for my kids and family. I’m being a good example. Everything was great, but. I felt like I could have run a marathon. And so I’m like, I want to go into the doctor and see if anything changed with my heart. And the thing that prompted me to do this just before one year was my wife and I were watching a movie. We were laying in bed, watching a movie. She had her head on my chest and she said to me, she looked at me and she’s like, “Your heart sounds happy.” for the first time. I’m like, what does that mean? That’s crazy. And I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier. I have had a lifelong irregular heartbeat since birth. I have worn every iteration of heart monitor you can imagine. In kindergarten, it was this huge vest. First grade, second grade, third grade. Now they just have this little heart monitor, Holter monitor you wear. I’ve worn all of them. My heart was highly erratic, highly irregular since birth. I know this sounds crazy, just stick with me She said it sounded normal. I’m like, that’s impossible. That’s crazy. And then I went to Walgreens. I bought a stethoscope. I listened to it. It sounded normal. I’m like, this is nuts. I’m like, I got to go to a doctor because of this reason. And because I’m jumping out of a chair, I could run a marathon right now. I don’t have those symptoms of fatigue. I had a heart echo done And the results that came back just blew my mind. My ejection fraction before was 44. It was 65 now, which is perfectly normal, by the way, for your audience. You’re probably aware of this. I was disappointed. I wanted to get 100%. And the doctor said, “You would be dead if that was 100%.” 65 is normal. He literally wrote, and I’ve shared this on my YouTube channel, ’cause people are listening, I get it, it’s unbelievable. It just doesn’t make any sense. He wrote in my medical records, I’ve shared this on my YouTube channel, “I no longer have evidence of cardiomyopathy. “I don’t have congestive heart failure.” He told me like, “If another, if the best cardiologists in the world “look at your heart right now, they would never know “that you were diagnosed with congestive heart failure before.” and my ejection fraction went from 44 to 65 and my heartbeat is completely normal. In my medical records, multiple doctors have tested it and checked it. And the other thing that’s crazy with all of that, I still can’t wrap my brain around the irregular heartbeat changing, but that heart echo that they did, the only thing they ever really told me, I’ve done three heart echoes before I did one after, they only told me about my ejection fraction. Which is like, how much can your heart keep up with the needs of your body So that had normalized. They didn’t tell me about the other dozens of metrics they look at when they do a heart echo. It’s more than just the ejection fraction. They look at the size of the heart, the thickness of the wall of the heart, the volume, the stroke, the pumping, all of these different metrics. I had no idea. I’m not a doctor or expert. I actually plugged all that into AI. I’m not recommending AI for a lot of things, but I’m just like, show me the differences between these two. It was simple math, but. Every one of my metrics improved, including the fact that my heart was enlarged before from so many years of the congestive heart failure and damage. It was down to like its normal size. And so yeah, that was the craziest thing for me. I’ve since talked to Dr. Ovadia actually about this in our documentary, but blows my mind. He explained to me that this is unusual. This doesn’t happen for everyone, but he has seen people reverse [this] multiple times he’s seen this. And he explained to me that. It is in the literature. This isn’t like a keto carnivore thing that the heart performs more efficiently on ketones versus on glucose. The brain does as well. There’s a lot of evidence to show that. So he’s like, that’s one thing. You also lost a bunch of weight. So that’s going to put less pressure on your heart. So that’s another thing. You’re also getting proper electrolytes that maybe you weren’t before through the standard American processed diet that you’re missing out on that are important to your heart. But Long story short, my heart, like it’s, I did a video on my YouTube channel with a recording of what it sounds like now compared to what it sounded like before. And it’s remarkable. The change is like perfectly normal heart now.

[42:50] DEB: That’s awesome. So let’s dive into diet, right? So a lot of people are hearing carnivore. They picture someone eating a stick of butter, a half a cow, you know, eating steak every day. Clarify for us what a human diet that is strictly meat looks like on a regular basis every day.

[43:09] KERRY: Yeah for me I learned from Dr. Ken Berry who he talks about this brilliantly. He covers so many different health topics but he advocates for beef, butter, bacon, eggs. You hear bacon and a lot of people get scared. He’s done videos on that as well. I believe we’ve been misled on many of these things. My diet on carnivore that first month, for example, it would be instead of eating breakfast cereal, I would have scrambled eggs and sometimes ground beef, sometimes just scrambled eggs by themselves, sometimes bacon. That would be one meal and then usually around one or two I would have another big meal which would be just meat. Sometimes a chuck roast. Sometimes burger patties. Burger patties have been a big go-to for me. Sometimes just ground beef. To your audience, I know this sounds crazy and it sounds boring and expensive and all of these things, but you feel satiated on eating so much less. There’s all these unexpected benefits that come from it, including this liberating feeling. It’s just this food freedom sort of thing when you’re no longer — before it was like, what side dish are we gonna have? Go to the store, we got this recipe, we gotta have this sauce, we gotta have this. And I was just like, I eat some eggs and bacon and my body’s full and I’m good. And it’s not like a, every time before it was straining or stressing or moderating or negotiating with myself. Like I’m still hungry, I gotta eat more. The food noise just went away completely eating this way. So beef, butter, bacon, eggs. Basically any animal products. When people hear this, they’re like, it’s nuts, and they hear it from me because I’ve chosen to continue to do it I’m four years now into this. What I advocate for people and what we do in our film is this is a therapeutic diet and elimination diet to heal yourself. Don’t look at it like I’m gonna do this the rest of my life like, “Kerry is, he’s a little crazy.” But could this be a potential way to reverse your insulin resistance and inflammation and help with some of those health issues so that you can get healthy and get back to a baseline and then maybe you go to a keto diet or change it. Or maybe you end up like many people do that I tell this to you, I’m like, just give it 30 days, go back to whatever you’re doing. Most people get to 30 days and they’re like, I’m gonna keep doing this. Or maybe mostly keep doing this, but add in some avocado or salad or things like that.

[45:16] DEB: Awesome. So you talk about cravings disappearing. What did that feel like for you from the very first day? Were you fighting those food cravings initially? What was that like for you?

[45:26] KERRY: I was absolutely fighting them initially. I believe it’s one of the hardest addictions to overcome. And part of it’s in our brain. I mean, part of it’s like you eat sugar or carbs. A lot of people don’t realize this. I didn’t either. I’m like, well, I’m not eating candy bars. What’s the big deal? But when I eat an apple or I eat a potato, those carbohydrates convert in my blood to glucose. And then a half an hour later, I’m hungry again. Those addiction pathways start lighting up again. And so I did have those addictions. Early on, it was hard to overcome those. For me, what helped was realizing that I maybe needed to eat more. I found that on days when I was doing carnivore early on, if I wasn’t getting enough fat or the fat to protein ratio, ’cause a lot of this is about fat. It’s not just protein. Like you could say, “I’m carnivore and eat chicken breast six times a day.” You’re not gonna do very well. It’s really more about the fat. And when I wasn’t getting enough fat, those cravings would be higher. The thing I’ll say that was so amazing, I’m so glad I went through it is when I was able to get over that hump of those cravings, they just went away forever. That food noise went away forever. Some people will say, “I’m gonna do this for 30 days,” but they’ll do it for a week. And then they’ll say, “I did good all week, kind of like counting calories. I did good. I deserve a cake or something. I’m gonna have some fruit now,” or something like that. And then those cravings come back like crazy. If you’re able to do this, my advice for people is do it strict and proper for 30 days. Do it till you heal yourself. And then think about adding some things back in, but the people that suffer the most with those cravings are the ones that keep a little, maybe they keep diet soda or artificial sweeteners in or some of those things. And that’s just gonna perpetuate those cravings. I always just use the analogy. It’s like if you, if I was a lifelong alcoholic and that ruined my whole family. And I was finally able to overcome that. I wouldn’t do that and then be like, well, I did good all week. It’s Saturday. I’m going to have a beer now. Like it would completely derail things. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the same way. Unfortunately with food, it’s a lot harder because we have to eat and we’re exposed to so much of this. But when you get over those cravings, it’s, it’s the most amazing feeling. You can put a cupcake or anything. I was the biggest carb addict in the world. I have none of it anymore. It’s just, it’s completely gone. I get everything I need in the proper proportions. I’m full and I’m good.

[47:31] DEB: That’s awesome. So you own a movie theater. Tell us how you walk past the movie theater popcorn and not crave it.

[47:37] KERRY: Yes. It’s funny you mentioned popcorn. That was one of the hardest things for me to overcome because I make the popcorn at our theater and I would always test a handful of it partially because I’m addicted to popcorn and partially because I wanted to make sure the popcorn was good for people. So that was [hard]. I found myself in the first days of carnivore a couple times, like almost getting a little, my little cup of popcorn and doing it. But yeah, I was able to overcome that addiction and it’s a tricky thing at the movie theater. We actually offer several clean options. We’ve got like some grass fed, organic stuff, some beef sticks. We had cheese for a while and things like that. So if I ever get a craving, I’ll go to one of those, but for the most part, I really just don’t get cravings anymore. I usually eat twice a day and I’m pretty much good.

[48:21] DEB: That’s awesome. You know, if we paint a picture for people that are listening, if you think of your body kind of like a bathtub, right? Highly processed foods, sugary foods. It keeps that tap water running constantly. Your blood sugar spikes like you had talked. Then you crash. Then the hunger comes after that. And then when you turn off the tap water, whatever you replace it with, A lot of people will find the water level finally stabilizes and then that stops. So the hunger gets quieter, the energy evens out. And you know, it’s not a promise that if you do this, you’re going to feel this way or you’re going to eliminate those cravings, but everybody’s tub drains differently. And that’s why you have to test it. That’s why you have to start slow, go slow, see how you do, and then see if this is right for you or not. It’s so individualized for so many people, but I’ve seen so many people do carnivore and do extremely well. Chronic illness that we’ve been trying to treat for three, four, five years gets so much better once they change their diet, whether it’s keto or carnivore or a combination of the two. They do so much better.

[49:26] KERRY: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what I witnessed too. My wife and I have a YouTube channel for our homestead and we do homesteading videos, chickens and goats, but on day 30, I was feeling so good. I’m like, I’m going to do one video on this topic. Cause this is just crazy. The healing I’ve experienced in 30 days. And I did that video and it got like a million views, which was great. But it got thousands of comments from people that are like, “Kerry, I was hopelessly depressed like you, and I’ve been doing this carnivore for five years now. It’s completely gone. Like I’m healed.” The first person that gave me that comment was in their 80s, by the way, which just blew my mind that some of their 80s would change their diet and go to a carnivore diet. But they overcame like their lifelong battle with depression. I started getting so many more comments like that. And I’m like, how is this not front page news? People reversing type two diabetes that are mad about it. They’re like, I reversed my type two diabetes in a couple of weeks. Why was I on that medication for decades? I could have just changed my diet. Why didn’t I know this? So many health issues I started hearing about that I never would have imagined were related to food. And so yeah, I just kept doing more videos about it. My homesteading channel turned into a channel about healing through fixing your metabolic health. And then on day 67 of carnivore for myself, I’m like, we need to do a documentary about this. Like why isn’t this everyone? My thing was just how many other Kerrys are there hopelessly depressed in the world right now? That would give anything for this message. Like we got to get this word out far and wide and we’re just reaching a small number of people on YouTube. And so that was when we decided we should do a documentary on this. Like how hard could that possibly be?

[50:55] DEB: That’s awesome. Tell us a little bit about your documentary.

[50:58] KERRY: Been working on it. Well, we’re done with it now, but working on it for three and a half years. Hardest thing I ever had to do. The purpose of it was let’s just capture the truth, these real stories, people had multiple different health issues. They decided to do a strict carnivore diet as a way to heal from that. Maybe it’s just temporary, but they wanted to heal from that thing through the strict elimination diet, carnivore version. And let’s track several people over the course of a year and let’s cover as many health topics as we can as possible and just show what happens. And by the way, also have some doctors that are doing this as well. And so we ended up filming 60 interviews nine doctors and experts, including Dr. Ovadia, who I mentioned earlier. I was able to get him involved in this. A Harvard-trained psychiatrist who has treated thousands of patients, fixing their metabolic health, overcoming all sorts of horrible mental health issues. We’ve got a guy that’s done brain surgery, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, a neurosurgeon, in the film. All of the doctors, all nine of them, by the way, they all eat a carnivore diet, except one. Professor Thomas Seyfried, our cancer doctor, he tinkers, but he’s not quite carnivore. But yeah, and so many of the people, we followed one guy, Bill in Alaska. He was 700 pounds stuck in his house for four years. Horribly depressed, started carnivore. We filmed him on day one. We waited an entire year and then we went back to Alaska, filmed him on year one, to see his results and… We covered just so many stories of healing. And I guess the last thing I’ll say is our documentary is really different than a lot in that we’re really focused on the stories supported by the science. There’s a lot of documentaries out there, great ones on a ketogenic diet, but a lot of them are just science, science, science. The science is critical. It’s so important but I really believe the stories are what will inspire people to then research and look into science more. And so we focus on the individuals and the stories, making an emotional connection. Like I have type two diabetes, that person in the film Healing Humanity has type two diabetes. I can relate, I can resonate with them. So that was kind of the approach we took.

[52:54] DEB: That’s awesome. So where can people find your documentary?

[52:57] KERRY: Yeah, so you can watch two trailers at HealingHumanity.movie. And depending on when you watch this, you can pre-order the film. It’s $10 and it’s available for everyone to stream everywhere in the world on October 23rd. And we’re so excited. We just had this big meeting. We are, the whole goal with this film was I want to reach millions of people. None of this, we talked about incentives before. You don’t make money on documentaries. I’ve talked to several successful documentary filmmakers. They’re like, you’re lucky if you make gas money. This whole project is a passion project. Let’s just do it for the good of it. Let’s try to help as many people as we can. We want to reach millions of people with this, not just the subset on YouTube. In order to do that, we had to get on Netflix or a big distributor. The idea of getting on Netflix is kind of audacious. We’re actually really close to doing it. In order to get on Netflix, you have to show them that people are excited about your film. This whole thing, Dr. Deb, has turned into a movement. It is crazy. We screened the documentary in 17 cities all over the world. I was in the UK recently. I was in Canada. We sold out the majority of them. People are sick of being sick. We were in Dallas, Texas. On a Tuesday night, we had 235 people sold out the theater, a line of people down the sidewalk that wanted to come see the film. So I’m not saying this to brag, I’m just very excited with how this has turned into a movement, but that data from those screenings, and then every one of you that decides to pre-order this, all of that data is going to Netflix. We have a meeting, we’re gonna be meeting with them. They look at that data to, they don’t care about the miraculous healing at all, they just wanna know, can we fill seats? Are people excited? We’re on a trajectory to do that, so we’re so grateful for everyone that’s pre-ordering it because that’s going to put us over the edge to potentially get this in front of millions of people that need this message.

[54:42] DEB: That’s awesome. And I think you’re right. Like this is a movement. People are sick and tired of being sick and tired and they’re sick and tired of being seen but not heard by their healthcare practitioners, right? And this is awesome, I’m so excited for you guys. And I would tell all of our listeners, you know, please contribute to this project. We need to get this information out to the masses. If you even learn one or two things from this documentary, it will make it worth your while. And tell us, Kerry, too, what’s your YouTube channel? Where can people follow you on YouTube?

[55:14] KERRY: Yeah, absolutely. So my personal YouTube channel is Homestead How. I have some homesteading stuff on there, but it’s all basically I interview people similar to this and we talk about stories of healing and reversing every single health issue you could imagine. We talk about that on my YouTube channel. And then for the movie, Healing Humanity Movie is our YouTube channel for that where you can see some behind-the-scenes footage and some interviews with some of the doctors and things like that.

[55:41] DEB: That’s fantastic. So for any of you that are listening to us and you didn’t catch those because you’re driving or walking or working out, don’t worry about them. We’ll have them in the show notes below. Let’s support Kerry. Let’s get this movement going because healing and health and healing humanity and healing our children is so important. We deserve to have a healthy population in this country and we deserve to feel the best that we possibly can. Kerry, I always ask this last question of all of our guests. If there was one thing you could do to change healthcare as an industry, what would it be?

[56:14] KERRY: Educate the masses that all disease begins in the gut and food is the root cause of almost all these health issues we’re experiencing. Without a doubt, we need to look at our diet. We need to look at nutrition so much more closely.

[56:27] DEB: Thank you so much for being with me today.

[56:29] KERRY: Thank you for having me, Dr. Deb. I really appreciate it.

[56:32] DEB (Outro): Thank you for joining me today on Let’s Talk Wellness Now. If this episode has helped you, send it to one person who’s still looking for answers about weight, pain, gut issues that won’t quit and leave a rating so that the next person who’s been dismissed can find us. Please help Kerry Mann join this movement so that we can heal humanity. If you’re in Wisconsin and this sounds like you, you can text us at 262-522-8640. Book an appointment with my team at Serenity Health Care Center. If you’re out of state, visit us at EllieMD.com/drdebmuth. And next week, we have got a great episode coming for you. And if you’ve missed any, go back and listen to our previous episodes. Until next time, I’m Dr. Deb. Take care of your body, mind, and spirit, and be well.

The post Episode 287 – Carnivore Diet for Weight Loss, Inflammation & Depression: Kerry Mann’s 100-Pound Story first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let's Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today's content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let's Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

[01:22] DEB: In pain, depressed, 100 pounds overweight, and in his words, nothing was working. So he did the one thing he had been told for years not to do. He built his plate around meat. Today, the guy who owns a small town movie theater doesn't touch the popcorn. But I had to ask the question every clinician is asking and thinking already. What about your heart? His answer, and exactly where the evidence stops, is coming up.

[01:51] DEB: Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and give you the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb Muth, and today we're talking about the carnivore diet, eating mostly meat for weight loss, inflammation, and chronic illness. With a guest who says he lost a hundred [pounds — audio cuts out] doing it. And if you've been told your labs are normal, but you know something isn't right, if you're dealing with the weight that won't move, joint pain, reflux, and low mood that nothing seems to touch, this episode is going to be for you. So as usual, grab your cup of coffee or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm so excited to have my guest with me today. It's Kerry Mann. He is a co-director of Healing Humanity. This is going to be a great conversation. And as you guys know, I love hearing personal stories and he's got one that is going to blow your mind. So, Kerry, welcome to the show.

[02:59] KERRY: Thank you, Dr. Deb. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and share my story.

[03:03] DEB: So, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us how you got started in all of this. Where did you start?

[03:09] KERRY: Yeah, well, I guess if we go back about 19 years, my wife and I, well, my wife and I have been together for 32 years now. We met at age 14. My health issues started shortly after that in high school. I started gaining weight. I started experiencing mental health issues, depression, anxiety. And then 21 years ago, we had our first daughter. And then two years after that, we had triplets. And it was, yeah, it was a moment. It was unexpected. It didn't run in the family. It wasn't planned. We actually found out at the five month ultrasound, the ultrasound tech said, uh-oh. I'm like, I'm pretty sure you should be trained not to use that word when you're doing an ultrasound. But she said, there's another one in there. There's three. Oh, wait, there's four. No, there's just the three of them. So that's how we found out we had triplets. And that was 19 years ago. And I just remember at that moment in my life, that was a moment when I'm like, I need to be a provider. Things just got really serious. I need to work hard. I need, there's like so much responsibility. Amazing blessing, like the biggest blessing in the world, but also kind of a very scary time. And unfortunately I just wasn't there. My health was bad at that point. I had really bad depression, anxiety, and just this sort of general fatigue. I was kind of plopping down on the couch. I used to think I was just lazy, like this is just me, but in retrospect I realized I was just metabolically unwell and I had brain fog and I couldn't find my words. I could just kind of go along to get along. So when I needed to be a really good provider, a really good dad, a really good example to my girls and to my family, I wasn't. I was just — and I just kept getting sicker over the last 19 years. My weight continued to go higher and higher. I had IBS. I had arthritis, I had the depression and anxiety kept getting worse. I finally went in and got the help for that. I was the best patient in the world. I took all the medications that they told me to exactly as they told me to take them but my depression and anxiety never got better. And I just kept getting rotated through medications. I'm showing on the screen here, a big bucket of my medications. At one point I was on most of these. I was on 10 or 15 medications. I had stomach pain every time I would eat. So they diagnosed me with IBS and then they tested my gallbladder and they're like, it's borderline. We could leave it. We could take it. And I was just like. Take it like I'm in such pain that maybe that would give me some relief. They removed my gallbladder, didn't change anything for me. My stomach was just always heavy and hurting and every time I would eat it was just discomfort. Then I started getting arthritis and then I had two kidney stones, which was the worst pain I've ever experienced my entire life. I thought I was having a third one about six months after that. And so I kind of just. Tried to suck it up. I was at home and I'm like, I'm gonna just have to pass this kidney stone. Like what am I gonna do? Go to the emergency room? And I was wrong — it wasn't a kidney stone, it was my appendix. And eventually the pain became so agonizing, I went to the emergency room and my appendix burst on the operating room table just before they were going to do the surgery. Probably saved my life because they were able to get in there, but it turned, it went from a simple procedure to a much more complicated one because they had to then clean it all out. And so yes, I just had health issue after health issue. And then the biggest one for me came in my mid 30s. I'm 46 now. I believe I was 35 at the time. I was at home. I was on the couch. I stood up and I didn't know where I was. I was confused. I couldn't find my words. My lips started drooping. My wife started panicking. She called 911 and I took an ambulance ride to the hospital. And I spent about four days at the stroke unit in the hospital and they diagnosed me with a TIA mini stroke. And they did a whole bunch of tests because they're like 35 years old on all of that medication. Like what is going on with this guy? And they diagnosed me with congestive heart failure. They said, "Your heart can't keep up with the needs of your body." When they told me that too, Dr. Deb, I was like, "I'm dead. I need my heart." And they're saying my heart is failing. Like, it's kind of a scary diagnosis, but--

[07:09] DEB: Is that your lowest point, do you think?

[07:12] KERRY: Almost. Almost.

[07:13] DEB: Okay.

[07:13] KERRY: Yeah, just about because they, what they explained to me that day was your heart can't keep up with the needs of your body, but then it got a little worse. Like, okay, I'm not dead right now, but they told me, congestive heart failure is chronic and it will never get better. They said at the best you could keep it at a baseline. It's never going to improve. It's only going to get worse or maybe you can keep it the same. So that was a bit devastating, but I was kind of thankful in some ways because I was so tired and fatigued and I'd stand up and I would get dizzy and all of what they were saying made sense. So at least I have an answer for some of this and now maybe they'll give me some medications or things that'll help me with the congestive heart failure. But to kind of bring this, wrap this story up, they gave me medications more added to the bin. It didn't help. Like I was still having the issues. My ejection fraction was 44 at that time. They checked, they did a heart echo. They checked all of the metrics on my heart. And then I started getting arthritis in my foot. And they said it was gout. I went to another specialist. He said, it's not gout. That guy was wrong. Trust me. It's just a bunch of inflammation in your toe. They wanted to do surgery on my toe. It was to the point where it hurt so bad. I could, I couldn't even walk on it at certain times. I was using crutches for a while. I'd go to the grocery store. I was riding around on a mobility scooter. And that was probably my lowest point because at that point, this was about [four] years ago, at that point, my depression was just overtaking everything. The depression was the worst of all of the suffering and trauma my body's been through. The unexplainable, just hopeless looking at life through this negative dark lens. Everything's negative. It was the worst thing for me because Like as a man, I'm like, well, I can suck it up and get through it. But what it did to my family was the heartbreaking part of it. And I would try to fake it. I would try to just act like everything's fine and it never worked. I'm not a good actor. And then I felt even worse because then I'm just, I'm a big phony. I'm just lying to my family and they, they, they could know within a second. Why is dad sad? Why is dad mad? Why is dad not talking to me for weeks as I'm just plopped down on the co

[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let’s Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

[01:23] DEB: Every cell in your body runs on the same fuel: oxygen. So what happens when your cells stop using it? Well. Well, they get tired, they get sick, you age faster. And here’s the part that should make you really angry. We’ve had a way to measure this since the 1970s. And almost no one in mainstream medicine has ever offered it to you. Today I’m sitting down with a man who holds the actual patent on measuring mitochondrial function in a clinic. He is known as the godfather of ozone for a reason. He’s been using 130-year-old therapy to help patients regenerate joints, recover from chronic infections, and reclaim their energy, decades before anyone else was willing to say it out loud. This is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. Stick around, this one gets into the biochemistry of why you’re tired and what to do about it.

[02:28] DEB (Venaari ad): What if you could have a functional medicine practitioner in your back pocket 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Without the $300 to $500 an hour price tag per visit. Well, here’s the reality. Functional medicine works. The protocols work. The root cause approach works. But access is the problem. Most people can’t afford to see a practitioner regularly. And even when they do, the appointment ends before all their questions get answered. So you go home with a list of supplements, a lab report you don’t fully understand, and more questions than you came in with. That’s exactly why I built Venaari.

[03:09] DEB: Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine and empower you with the tools to heal. I’m Dr. Deb, and today we’re diving into mitochondrial function, oxygen utilization,, and the decades-long story of ozone therapy in America with one of the pioneers who built this field from the ground up. If you’ve ever been told your labs are normal but you still don’t feel like yourself. If you’re dealing with fatigue, chronic pain, degenerative joints, or you’ve just always sensed there’s a piece of conventional medicine it isn’t measuring. This episode is for you. So grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind. Settle in and let’s get started on the journey for deeper healing.

[04:07] DEB (Book promo): I know that story because it was my story too. I spent three years being told I had MS. Three years of fear. Three years of doubt. Three years of sitting across from doctors who had given up looking. Turns out, wasn’t MS. It was something completely different, something treatable, something we could actually address but nobody was asking the right questions. That experience is what gave birth to Seen at Last, my book written for every woman who has ever walked out of the doctor’s office feeling more invisible than when she walked in.

[04:45] DEB: My guest today is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. He’s been practicing alternative and integrative medicine since 1978. Yep. I said that right. 1978. And he’s a founder and past president of the American Academy of Ozone Therapy. Dr. Shallenberger holds the only patent on using respiratory gas analysis to measure mitochondrial function, a method he calls bioenergy testing. He’s written two books on the subject. The Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough and Bursting with Energy, and he’s authored numerous peer reviewed papers on ozone therapy and oxygen utilization. He’s also the developer of ProloZone, an injection technique used to help regenerate damaged joints, herniated discs, and degenerative soft tissue and he is the editor of the Second Opinion alternative medicine newsletter. Dr. Shallenberger, welcome to the show.

[05:51] FRANK: Yeah, I was a surgical resident, an absolute neophyte to medicine. And I just happened to kind of get lucky in the sense that I found out that I happened to be in the San Francisco area at the time. And Linus Pauling was having a study group with about like 10 other people, all of whom were like, very famous people in San Francisco and I just found my way into it and I started listening to all these guys talking about things like vitamins and imbalances, and he called it orthomolecular medicine, but you know, talking about all the imbalances. And his theory was those imbalances would cause all the problems. And so therefore the way to fix the problems is not with drugs to help with the symptoms, but to actually go in and look for the imbalances and repair the imbalances. And typically the imbalances are all natural things. He was focusing mostly on vitamin C and other vitamins, but it could be anything. It could be amino acids, could be sleep, it could be lifestyle habits, whatever. And I just got lucky and it started awakening up here saying, “You know what? All they taught me in medical school was really good stuff like biochemistry and physiology and so on and so on.” But they never ever ever told me anything like this before.

[07:11] DEB: Isn’t that something I think all of us who kind of stumbled into integrative or alternative medicine, whatever we want to call it these days, we all kind of feel the same way, right? Like we’ve learned all this biochem and we were like, Oh, thank God it’s over. We don’t have to think about it anymore. And then you get into the integrative space and you’re like, Oh my gosh, that biochem meant so much. And now we know like the underlying cause of what’s causing the cells to not be healthy, to that make us sick. But we didn’t learn any of that part in medicine at all. We just learned the basics of it. And here’s how to fix people.

[07:45] FRANK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so that’s how, that’s how I got into it. I remember I just so much remember 1978, I read a book called Sugar Blues. And this book basically had the radical concept of maybe people ought not to be eating all that much sugar. And oh, by the way, taking B vitamins might be a good idea. So I said, okay, you know, I don’t think anybody died from sugar deficiency or died from taking too many B vitamins. So I’m going to go ahead and give them those. And then about like 20, 25% of my patients started getting better. And then it started clicking.

[08:18] DEB: And did you just kind of gradually start doing more and more things as you learned then? When did you stop doing surgery? Because if you were a surgical resident, that’s a big thing.

[08:28] FRANK: I did that for a couple of years. And so back in the late, late seventies, you know, I made the transition. I said, you know what, this is a whole lot more interesting than doing this other stuff. Not talking to people and just cutting on them. One thing about surgeons is surgeons, their mentality is straightforward. It’s pretty obvious. You got a swollen appendix? I’m going to take the appendix out. We don’t have to get into a big intellectual discussion about this. Whereas with the internist, not so much, it’s always this or that. We don’t always know what we’re doing in internal medicine, but I got that surgeon mentality. I’m just looking for what’s obvious.

[09:09] DEB: Right. That’s why they call it all practicing medicine, right? Because that’s what we’re all doing. So you’ve said that the body is a self healing mechanism and it’s really our lifestyle and our toxic load that breaks down, which then causes all these problems. Do you think you started learning that when you studied with Linus Pauling or when would you say that you started really noticing that as a big part of people’s illnesses.

[09:34] FRANK: Yeah, way back then those guys were on it. I mean, they were focusing to a large extent on you know, certain vitamins, niacin, I remember, was one of them. There were also, you know, Linus was an interesting guy. He came in one time in one of the groups and he said, “I want to discuss urine therapy.” Yeah, okay. If anybody else said that, probably we’d throw him out of the group. You know, Linus was — so he was open-minded. He thought about lots of things and yeah, for sure they were focused on diet back then and lifestyle choices and all that kind of thing.

[10:09] DEB: Awesome. So you are the godfather of ozone therapy, right? That is what you are known for. And ozone therapy has been around a lot longer than people think, over 130 years. But still today, you know, most Americans have never heard of it. They’ve never done it. What do you think — the reason is that it hasn’t taken off to the mainstream like it has in different parts of Europe.

[10:33] FRANK: In the early 80s, a very famous German physician by the name of Horst Kief made this statement, “If ozone therapy were patentable, it’d be at every hospital in the world.” There’s your answer in a nutshell. It doesn’t make money and it’s cheap and it’s easy to do and there’s no side effects. So obviously you don’t want it in a profit-making system.

[10:55] DEB: That is so true. Can you explain to us a little bit so the listeners understand exactly what is ozone therapy and what does it do?

[11:03] FRANK: Yeah, so listeners, ozone is pure oxygen. It’s got nothing to do with pollution. It’s true up in the pollution, there is some ozone up there, okay? But the ozone’s not the problem. Ozone is just pure oxygen. The oxygen that we’re breathing right now, consists of two oxygen atoms coming together. The reason they come together is because each oxygen atom individually does not have enough electrons to keep that molecule balanced. So they come together and they share electrons. That’s a very stable molecule. I think of it as a man-woman marriage. And they’re coming together and they’re sharing the household or whatever it is, and things are better that way. So these two oxygen atoms are, and that’s what we’re breathing. O2. O2 is a fairly stable molecule. It’s not 100% stable, of course, but it’s a fairly stable molecule because it’s so well balanced. O3 is three oxygen atoms sharing the amount of electrons that makes two oxygen atoms stable. This threesome is not stable. It’s an unstable oxygen molecule. What that means is that when you put that into a system, a biological system, it instantaneously grabs an electron. It’s going to move an electron. All life is about electron movement. As soon as your electrons stop moving around, you stop moving around all about the movement of electrons. Everything that goes in on our cells, goes in on our mitochondria, goes in the nucleus, all that stuff, everything, 100%, is initiated by the movement of electrons. And ozone initiates that. So we can take that and we can put that, it’s a gas, by the way. We can take that and we can inject that gas into a joint and it’ll start moving electrons in the joint. We can inject it into a bladder. We can inject it into the intestines, we can inject it into the bloodstream. And it’s going to move electrons wherever we put it. It’s going to start moving these electrons. And that electron movement is the issue because the reason ultimately that we get sick, I mean the very bottom line reason that we get sick is because our electron movement starts slowing down. So when a person is feeling really good, when you’re a 35 year old triathlete, those electrons are moving fast. They’re moving fast and they’re moving purposefully. But you start hitting 55, 60, 70, start smoking, start not getting enough sleep, blah, blah, blah. The electron movements start slowing down and then everything else slows down. And then we counter that with ozone. So in a nutshell, that’s basically what it’s about. It’s about oxygen therapy.

[13:52] DEB: So ozone can be used as a treatment for an illness, but it also could be used as a preventative as we’re aging so that that electron transport doesn’t slow down and then we don’t have as much disease that should occur, correct?

[14:07] FRANK: Absolutely. Mostly. You know, it depends on people and what they want to do, of course. I get an ozone treatment periodically just because I’m in the office and I can do that. But the reality is that exercise is the same thing. Exercise does the same thing. So if you’re a healthy person and there’s nothing really wrong with you and you want to do what you’re talking about, like prevent it exercise. You technically don’t need ozone therapy. Just go out and exercise. Now, if you’re sick though, it’s hard for me to tell a sick person, I want you to go do all this exercise to ramp yourself up. So I’m going to get you a jumpstart with things like ozone therapy.

[14:43] DEB: Love ozone therapy. We do it in our office too. And like you, I have the opportunity to be able to do that. So if I start to feel run down or I’m traveling too much or I’m starting to feel like I’m coming down with something. I hop on that ozone machine and it is amazing how good you feel so quickly. And even my staff will say to me, you haven’t had an ozone in a while. Your blood looks thick. It’s not looking good. You’re not doing something you’re supposed to. And I’m like, you’re not supposed to know that. You’re not supposed to tell me that. But it’s amazing that they’ve noticed the difference in the blood and how it comes out and how it looks for us as we don’t do the things that we’re supposed to do and we become more toxic.

[15:23] FRANK: Yeah. You know, if it weren’t for logistics and expense and such like that really you could make a case in this toxic soup that we live in. You could definitely make a case for every single human being getting an ozone treatment on a pretty regular basis, whether they feel good or not.

[15:39] DEB: Yeah, just as a preventative.

[15:40] FRANK: Yeah, yeah. Just do something preventatively.

[15:43] DEB: Is there anybody that you can think of that shouldn’t be doing ozone or would be contraindicated in doing ozone therapy?

[15:51] FRANK: Well, you know, there’s this one enzyme called G6PD and we teach that in the courses and such, but everybody’s supposed to make this enzyme but if you don’t make enough of that enzyme, ozone can be toxic. You can’t tolerate that electron movement so well. You have to have that enzyme to direct and temper the electron movement. And if you don’t have that enzyme, or if you don’t have much of that enzyme, the practitioner’s got to be very careful in the dose they give. And sometimes, it would be fairly rare, but sometimes you just flat out don’t give it at all because of that. Otherwise, there’s no contraindication. You could do it once a week. You can do it twice a day. It doesn’t sort of matter. A lot of practitioners use it in gigantic doses. I’m not a big gigantic dose type guy, and they get away with gigantic doses.

[16:48] DEB: Yeah, that’s what we call high dose also, right?

[16:51] FRANK: Yeah. You know, it can be real purposeful and I don’t know of any contraindication to doing it at all as long as you have that G6PD enzyme.

[17:02] DEB: That’s awesome. Now you’ve been the developer of something called ProloZone. What’s the difference between a standard prolotherapy and ProloZone?

[17:12] FRANK: Yeah, besides sounding the same, they’re totally different. The mechanism of action is completely different. Excuse me. Proliferative therapy, or what they call prolotherapy involves inflammation. So you’re going to take a substance that’s very inflammatory and you’re going to inject it normally around the joint, but you can also go into a joint. It’s going to create the inflammation in there. And then the body responds to that inflammation by coming in with anti-inflammatory sorts of reactivities. Those, those, that response is what creates a healing effect in the area. Now, so that’s the mechanism of an action and inflammation, creating a body’s response to that inflammation and that response to inflammation is what creates the healing. Ozone is different. It doesn’t cause an inflammation. It is simply moving electrons. And, and as it’s moving an electric, as it’s moving electrons, that stimulates the body’s healing mechanism in a different way. There’s no inflammation involved. And so that’s kind of good because with prolotherapy, and I used to do this. Prolotherapy. I mean, you go ahead and inject somebody’s knee with Prolotherapy. It could hurt for a good seven, 10 days. It could be really painful because that inflammation hurts. But with ProloZone, no pain. You can end up with the same sort of effect, but no pain.

[18:32] DEB: And it’s much better if we don’t have pain, right? That’s so painful like that.

[18:36] FRANK: Yeah. You know what the other thing is though. And I don’t know if you thought of this. I’d been using ozone for over 20 years before I thought of this. And that is that. Wait a second, proliferative therapy uses liquids. Ozone is not a liquid, it’s a gas. So how is that different? It’s different because when you put a gas in an area, the heat of the body expands the gas and it starts spreading all over the place. So with prolotherapy, you’ve got to be pretty pinpoint where you’re putting that stuff. But with with ProloZone, it’s sort of like you know, target practicing with a shotgun, you got to be really bad to miss.

[19:15] DEB: So you get a lot more benefit even if you’re not a master injector right out of the game.

[19:21] FRANK: Yes, that too. And also it dissects along the fascial planes. As you probably know, you can put it in over here and the patients say, I feel it over here. It went over there. [Don’t do that.] So I think that’s a huge part of why ProloZone is like the best regenerative therapy I’ve done or I’ve ever worked with because of that one simple fact, I think there’s a big difference.

[19:44] DEB: Well, and that makes a big difference for the person too, because where they’re feeling the pain doesn’t necessarily always mean where the damage is. And so for injecting in the painful area, but that injury is actually lateral to it or up or down or wherever it is you’re not going to get the benefit out of it. You’re creating more inflammation. So that makes perfect sense. Why ProloZone would work so much better than prolotherapy for people.

[20:08] FRANK: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t do prolotherapy anymore. I don’t know anybody that does prolotherapy that has tried ProloZone that’s going back to prolotherapy. It’s just, yeah, there’s no point.

[20:18] DEB: I had prolotherapy in my neck and oh my gosh, I tell you that was the worst thing I’ve ever done.

[20:25] FRANK: Pretty bad.

[20:31] DEB: I made the mistake of doing it the day before I went on vacation. I was all screwed up for the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I only did it once and I would never do it again. I was like, no. And I even used nitrous with it and it still was bad. And I was just like, I will never do this again. It was worse than the pain I was having. It wasn’t worth it for me at all. So if any of you listeners out there have had proliferative therapy and you don’t want to do that again, this is different. Yes. Do ProloZone. Do that instead. That would be much better. And you can do a ProloZone in pretty much any area, right? Degenerative joints, herniated discs, those kinds of things. Is there any place you can do it?

[21:09] FRANK: I have put it every place. Put it in bladders, joints, fingers, ears. I haven’t stuck it in an eyeball. I haven’t put it in the brain, but I’ve injected the epidurals with it. You know, I’ll put it right in the [CSF/epidural space].

[21:24] DEB: So you pretty much put it every place.

[21:27] FRANK: Pretty safe. Pretty safe. That’s just oxygen. It’s pure oxygen. There’s nothing in there besides the oxygen.

[21:34] DEB: Yeah. So that makes it very easy and very safe to use. Yeah. So you’ve also been, you’ve created something called bioenergy testing for mitochondrial function, right? And you hold the only patent on using this respiratory gas analysis. Tell us a little bit about that. How does it measure mitochondrial? What does it do?

[21:53] FRANK: A long time ago, like three decades ago, I’m trying to get it through my skull. You know, I figured out at that point, all disease is caused by poor mitochondrial function, for the listeners the mitochondria, the part of the cell where the oxygen goes in to start moving the electrons. That’s where the action is, so to speak. And we’ve known for decades: all disease, including the very process of aging itself, has to do with the decrease in the function of mitochondria to process oxygen. So I’m going through my head and I know that scientifically, not much gets done in medicine, if anything in an area where there’s no measurement. And the example would be blood pressure. If we didn’t have a blood pressure cuff or a way to monitor blood pressure, one, we wouldn’t know if there’s a problem or not. Two, if we assume there was a problem and treated for high blood pressure, we wouldn’t have a way to know if our treatment was working. So the point is if you don’t measure something in medicine, whether it’s blood sugar, blood pressure, or mitochondrial function, you have no idea what’s going on. So we’re talking about the single most important thing in health, and nobody’s measuring it. So I start to think, okay. How do we measure mitochondrial function? Now the Germans had done some work where they had — it involved an arterial stick and a venous stick simultaneously looking for the difference in the O2s. And it was very complicated and who wants to get their arteries stuck anyway as a routine test. And so I thought, well, I don’t know about that. Well. One day it just came to me. Now wait a second. What goes on here in the mitochondria when oxygen is involved? What goes on is the oxygen only goes one place. You know, all that oxygen I’m breathing in? It’s not like it goes to 20 different places. It only goes to my mitochondria. So if I’m breathing in that much oxygen, I must have that much mitochondria. If I’m breathing in that much oxygen, I have that much mitochondria. So the amount of oxygen that my body’s consuming, and that amounts to how much oxygen is coming in, subtracted by the oxygen coming out, that’s the amount that actually disappeared into my body. That directly correlates with how many mitochondria I have when the oxygen goes into the mitochondria and gets processed into that electron movement we talked about. The waste product is carbon dioxide. So the more effectively the oxygen is moving electrons, the less carbon dioxide produced, the more ineffectively oxygen is working. In other words, the mitochondria aren’t working so well. You get more CO2 produced. So I know two things. The amount of oxygen I’m consuming, that tells me how many mitochondria I have. The amount of carbon dioxide produced to the amount of oxygen that I’m consuming tells me how well they’re working. So it’s simple. I just put a mask on a person, kind of like a scuba mask. And they’re in their breathing. We do them with them sitting quietly in a chair so we want to see what their mitochondrial function at rest is. And then I put them on a bicycle and they’re on there for maybe 15, 20 minutes. And, you know, we progressively work them harder and harder and we can see their oxygen consumption go up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Well, at some point, obviously it always levels off. At that point they stop the exercise, but we take that number. What’s your maximum oxygen consumption? And then we say, is it good or not so good? So we go to a database and the database been out there for about 70 years, by the way. They did this stuff way back in the 30s. Back then the instrument was like a whole room. These days, these instruments look like a shoe box. It’s like a little computer. It’s crazy how crazy it is. But the database goes all the way back. Anyhow, we go back to that database and we can say, you know what? You’re a 50 year old person. Your mitochondria are consuming the amount of oxygen that’s typical for an 80 year old person. This is not good. You’ve got a problem. And then the patient can say, but I feel fine. I say, yeah, you’re on the road to destruction, but you haven’t got to destruction yet but you’re on the road. So it gives us a way to measure mitochondrial function. And so if somebody, one of my patients come in and we measure this on every single person I see, basically. And if it’s poor tell the patient, okay, you’re lucky, your mitochondria are lousy, and you got to find out about it early enough to make a difference. Because normally people only find out about this when they come down with cancer or heart disease or some kind of problem. So you’re lucky. So we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to do something and we could talk about what that amounts to, but we could, ozone would be one obviously, but we’re going to do, we’re going to do something to make your mitochondria better. And then we remeasure and make sure that what we’re having you do is actually working. So it’s a really remarkable system that I can tell you there are two things that really formed the basis of why we get sick. And such that if a patient does not have problem with these two things, they don’t get sick. I don’t know what they die of, but they don’t die of some illness. They don’t waste away. One of them is this, the mitochondrial function that we’re talking about. The other is endothelial function or circulation. Now they’re related obviously because the way the mitochondria gets the oxygen is through the circulation. So they’re a unit right in there. I can tell my patients. Look, by the way, we also measure nitric oxide and flow-mediated endothelial function as well. So between those two measurements, if those measurements are good, if your mitochondria are working well, and you have good endothelial function. Guess what, folks? You don’t get sick. Go about your business. Don’t worry about anything. You’re going to be 92 years old on no medications, and doctors are going to be scratching their heads and saying, “Wait, you’re not in any medicine and you’re in your 90s? What kind of crazy thing is this?” But that’s very possible if you do those two things. And by the way, folks, ozone therapy is good for both of them.

[28:11] DEB: It is. It’s great for both of them. So is this similar to — I know people that are listening might recognize this type of testing, they offer it in some of the gyms where they do the VO2 max, they put somebody on a bike and they wear this big thing and they work out. Is this a similar test to what they offer like that or slightly different?

[28:34] FRANK: It’s slightly different, but it’s the mechanism is the same. Those guys are measuring oxygen consumption. And most of them, but not all, are measuring carbon dioxide production. So we’re getting the same measurements. The difference is what are we doing with the measurements. So what we do is, and my patent is basically built around this, we take the measurements and run them through algorithms. And it gives me a whole printout of very interesting things — one of course is mitochondrial function, but I get a lot of interesting things through those algorithms. And then we don’t take people to VO2 max. Now that’s a misnomer. VO2 max is the amount of energy produced with and without oxygen. It’s a summation of with and without oxygen. We don’t care about without oxygen. So you don’t want to go to VO2 max. You just go up to the point where you start to enter into the production of energy without oxygen. We call that anaerobic threshold. So that’s one of the differences too. We don’t use VO2max, we use anaerobic threshold. All the data that’s published is on anaerobic threshold. The only data on VO2 max has to do with athletes the guys that win the race or the guys that have the best without oxygen energy production. But for just healthy people, we don’t need to know that, so we don’t do that. So that’s one difference. And the other difference is the algorithms. And then the final difference is that I don’t really want you, if you’re a 70 year old woman, I don’t want you to have the mitochondria of a 70 year old woman. I want you to have the mitochondria of a 40 year old woman. Everything we do is defaulted back to comparison to a 40 year old database.

[30:19] DEB: Oh, that’s awesome.

[30:20] FRANK: I don’t care if you’re 41 years old or you’re 81 years old, you are going to get compared to a 40 year old database. And the really cool thing is I’ve got patients in their mid 80s that are equal to a 40 year old database.

[30:34] DEB: Wow.

[30:34] FRANK: It can happen. It can happen.

[30:36] DEB: Yeah. Yeah. Like there’s investment in it, right? Like you have to be willing to invest your time and energy and money into having that type of mitochondria. It’s not going to come by eating at McDonald’s and eating sugar and all of that. There’s an investment in our health to be able to do that. So people listening, you know, realize that you’re going to have to make a commitment if you truly want to have the body of a 40 year old when you’re 80. It is possible. It just means you need to do some work to get there.

[31:06] FRANK: I’ll tell you a story and I want to tell you the story because it’s so recent for me now and it’s personal. I’m 80. I just hit 80 years old. So I’m an 80 year old dude now. Now in the old days, I used to race bikes. So back in my thirties and early forties, I’d race bikes on pretty darn good condition and so forth. And I mean, we used to go out and you know, ride 60, 80 miles, group of us, you know, and think nothing of it. No big deal, go home, have a beer and call it a day. So I thought, you know, I’m 80 years old, the Huntsman World Senior Games is held every year in St. George. And they do all kinds of stuff, but it’s all for seniors. And it’s not competitive. So I thought, you know what, I’m going to go out and I’m going to compete in the bicycle competition. So, okay. So it turns out there’s a number of factors to it, but one of them is a 25 mile road race, 25 miles. That’s like nothing compared to the old days. So, so I’m now 80 years old though. I’m not like the old days. Okay. But my test looks pretty good, really good. I mean, it looks as good as the average 40 year old, but these, these guys that race aren’t average. But anyway, so I said, I’m going to go out and I’m going to ride for, I’m going to prepare for this. Guess what? I go like seven miles and I’m out of gas. I’m like, what? I just, I struggled home. You got to go out seven miles, which means, oh yeah, unless you call your wife, you’ve got to come back seven miles. [So that’s what really helps.] And I got home after 14 miles and just laid on the lawn and just like I was about half dead. I completely ran out of gas. And what got me off on this tangent is number one, you know, I’m nowhere near what I used to be. Okay. And I’m cool with that. But the point is. So I started on a training program. So I got my bioenergy number was about like 110, which means 10% better than a 40 year old. And now it’s up to 160. Okay, guess what? I feel like a young man. Yeah. I did not expect that. It’s funny. It’s a personal experience for me, but I didn’t realize, you know, I know I had to get in shape for this bike race but I didn’t know that I have all these extra benefits. Like I’m sleeping better, my back doesn’t hurt, this and that. All this stuff is like really good. And my brain’s more [cognitive] the whole thing. It’s just extra bonuses, but it kind of goes to your points about, yeah folks, you gotta work at this. For me, it’s kind of fun because of the results. If I didn’t get the results, no. I would not want to go out and ride a bike intensely for two hours. But getting the results, okay, I can do that. And yeah, I can turn down the Twinkie. It’s not that big a deal. I can live without that Twinkie because of the results. Because of the results. And then I can look forward to, you know, unless something terrible happens to me, I can look forward to, I don’t know, 10, 20 more years of good functional living.

[34:06] DEB: Right. And I think a lot of us are, we’re fine with living in our 80s and 90s. And there are some people that are striving for 100. I have a patient that’s striving for 150, go for it. But you want to have that quality of life. That’s what everybody’s afraid of. Like we don’t want to be 80, sucking through a straw, living in a nursing home where we don’t know anybody and we’re just miserable living in this existence because that’s not a quality of life. So if we want to live to be that age, we have to put forth a little bit of effort to do that.

[34:38] FRANK: Yeah. There’s a famous Stanford doctor who interestingly enough died at the age of 92, but he, he put the aging thing really, really out there in the late sixties, early seventies when nobody was thinking this way. He wrote a whole bunch of books. One of them was called, [Why Do We Die Too Long and Live Too Short? — title unconfirmed] It was just to your point. Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, why do you want to get to be 75 and then for the rest of your life be all sluggish and on eight different medications when you don’t have to be that way? You don’t actually have to be that way. The medical system tells you, oh yeah, that’s normal. No, it’s not normal.

[35:21] DEB: Yeah. I think that’s the hardest part is, you know, from 40 on the medical system start saying, well, you’re getting older. Well, you have to accept this. Well, this is normal and you really don’t have to accept it. You just have to be open to looking at health and life in a different fashion. You know, mitochondria is so important. And I think I’m glad to see that we’re talking more about it than we ever have before, but mitochondria can fix a lot of different things. Why do you think we’re seeing more mitochondrial disease in such a younger age population? I mean, so many young people in their 30s and 40s and now even early 50s, they’re, you know, type 2 diabetes. They have cancer fibromyalgia. I mean, they just, the list of what they have going on, it goes on and on and on and on. And I don’t remember this 25 years ago when I started. I don’t remember seeing this kind of list of problems in this population of people. What’s your opinion on that?

[36:18] FRANK: Yeah. So, okay. So you asked the question, well, what screws up mitochondria? Okay, now we know aging has an effect with that and everybody knows that. Right. But leaving aging, just the very aging thing aside, what could screw up your mitochondria? Clearly heavy metals. Heavy metals are known to screw up everything, the endothelium, the mitochondria, the whole package and a lot of heavy metals out there. You go get a flu vaccine, you’re getting some mercury injected in you. The dentist puts silver amalgams in you, you get mercury injected in you. You get glyphosate, you get all kinds of environmental toxins, so that’s certainly part of the problem. I think you could probably, listeners could probably name a lot of things that people do these days that aren’t so good, they don’t get enough sleep. They don’t exercise. They sit in front of a computer all day long and you know, they’re stressed out. They take medicines and drugs all the time. It’s crazy all the drugs people take. It could be over-the-counter drugs, it could be prescription drugs. They don’t think anything about it. Hey, I just read an article about the kids in Baltimore — kids lower than eighth grade — like half of them are on drugs. They’re getting vaccinated. They’re on drugs. They’re living in an environmental soup of heavy metals. Good grief. It’s amazing it doesn’t get worse than it really is.

[37:43] DEB: Yeah. I can’t tell you. I don’t think I’ve seen a 20-year-old in a long time who hasn’t been on some kind of stimulant, Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, antidepressants. Like everybody is coming in on an antidepressant that seems to be the answer that traditional medicine has for people. Let’s give you an antidepressant and we’ll give you Adderall or Ritalin, whatever it is these days. And it’s really hard and they can’t function without it, but nobody’s looking at their mitochondrial function at all.

[38:13] FRANK: Yeah. Yeah. And as you know, there’s all kinds of alternatives to these antidepressant medications, all kinds of alternatives to Adderall. Which brings me to another point, and listeners should hear about this. Our medicine system has some good sides to it some really good sides. One of the good sides is that it helps with symptoms. Because there’s going to be a point in time, folks. You’re starting to get sick now. Okay. You’re like 40 years old. Your mitochondria is starting to go bad but you feel good. But the whole time they’re going bad over the next 10, 15 years, you feel pretty good, but you’re not doing anything. You’re going like I say on the highway to destruction. What you want to do is stop that early on because there will be a point where you can’t go back. That’s the thing, that you can’t go back. Folks, you will reach a point where you can’t go back. And then you’ll say to yourself, “Hm, darn it, I wish I had not been smoking for so long,” or whatever your problem was. That’s a point you can’t go back. And we don’t want to get to that point, obviously. And that’s where the drugs come in handy. That’s the point I wanted to make, Deborah. That’s where the drugs come in handy. So I’ve got a patient now and their back so bad I can’t really fix it the way I want to fix it. Surgery’s not gonna fix it. Nobody’s gonna fix it. Okay. We got some medicine to help you with the symptoms. Now I’m not going to delude myself and thinking I’m fixing you with these symptoms, but that’s one of the handy things with medicines is that it can help you when you’re at that point that you can’t go back. But unless you’re at that point, let’s not use the drugs for the symptoms. Let’s actually fix the problem.

[39:53] DEB: Yeah. That happened to my husband recently. He had, when he was in his late forties, he had a carotid artery that got blocked. And he was 100% blocked and he knew it. And he [sat in medicine], but he said to me one day we were driving and he’s like. Hey, can you order an ultrasound for me of this neck thing? He’s like, I don’t feel well. And I looked at him and I’m like, what are you talking about? And he’s like, I think my carotid artery is blocked. And he’s not an internet guy. So he didn’t search this out. His intuition told him something was wrong. And I ordered the ultrasound thinking, ah, it’s going to be nothing. And the hospital calls and says, he’s 100% blocked. Like he needs to do something right this minute. And he’s kind of stubborn this way. He’s like, no, I got a hunting trip coming up with my boys. I’m going hunting. And he’s like, I’ll be back on Monday for the surgery. And he took the risk and he did it. And that was back in 2013. And he started getting blocked again. They put in a cow artery [bovine patch], and he’d been great since. Then he started getting blocked again. And one surgeon said, I think you should have this procedure called a TCAR done. The cardiologist said, why would you do that? That’s such a risky procedure. You could throw a clot on the table. And it was the cardiologist that the vascular surgeon sent us to. So we took a step back and went, okay. So we got another opinion, saw another cardiologist. He’s like, yeah, you could do it. It’s only 60% blocked. I think you’ll be okay. Another vascular surgeon says, I think you’re okay. Let’s just watch this. So we watched it for three months. Things were okay. No change. We go back three months after that. Now it’s been six months since they found it. He’s 100% blocked. So he went from having what looked like an hourglass carotid artery where just one spot was blocked. So now the internal and external carotid artery are completely blocked and they make no, they made no big deal out of it. They were like, well, it’s blocked. What are you going to do? We can’t do anything. And I said, what do you mean you can’t do anything? And he’s like, we can’t do anything. And he’s like, yeah, you could do a CT if you want, but nothing you could do. So of course I ordered the CT. Luckily his left side is compensating for the right side and he’s had no symptoms and that’s why he’s had no symptoms. But I [would love to try] going, okay, let’s try to be super aggressive here and see it just happen. Let’s see if we can open this up — some ozone, some Plavix, some nattokinase, lumbrokinase, things like that to see. I said, I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but we could at least try. And, and, but that, you know, we, we were waiting and part of the reason we waited is they said to us, if we put this TCAR in, it’s only good for 10 years. And so he said, I’m 62. What am I going to do at 72 then? But nobody said, if you don’t do it now, the chances of you blocking like this is higher. And nobody once said that that potential could happen both externally and internally. Nobody looked at why that happened. They didn’t care in the cardiovascular world at all. And now it’s left him going, well, what the heck? Why did I go see the cardiologist? They weren’t going to do anything anyway. And so when we talk about conventional medicine, that is really the difference between what they do and what you and I do is we’re looking for the root cause and trying to fix the problem so those things don’t ever happen.

[42:54] FRANK: Exactly. It’s reactive medicine, right? Conventional medicine, they’re waiting until everything goes to heck. And then they decide to do something.

[43:04] DEB: Yeah, exactly. That’s crazy. This has been such a great conversation. I would love to hear one more thing from you is that what’s the belief you’ve held early in your career about healing that you’ve, you’ve seen come to fruition or something that you believed when you were younger, that’s really changed how you practice or how you see medicine today.

[43:27] FRANK: Okay. I’m not sure how to answer that question exactly, but let’s see what I can do. So, so — gosh, so many things. Sometimes people say, “Well, what have you learned that’s so great?” And I’m thinking, “Okay.” You got two hours? So much, right? You know, maybe this is the answer. I don’t know if it is, but maybe this is the answer. We screw ourselves up. If I get sick tomorrow, I did it. And really, realize that, folks, realize that. If you get sick tomorrow, you did it. It wasn’t your next-door neighbor. It wasn’t that somehow illness is floating above you and it decided to drop on you all of a sudden. No, you did it. And as Adelle Davis, this is a great quote. I use this quote all the time. Adelle Davis was a nutritional pioneer in the ’50s. I don’t know if you ever heard of her, but she died in the early ’60s. But she said, every day of your life, you’re doing one of two things. You’re either producing disease or you’re producing health. That’s the statement. That means what I’m going to do today. What I’m doing today, folks, what you’re gonna do today, what are you gonna be doing? Is it gonna be doing something that produces disease? You’re gonna be sitting around drinking beer and eating Twinkies and watching TV? Or you’re going to be out on your bike with Shallenberger riding 25 miles and taking a vitamin or something. But what are you going to do today? And if you get that through your head, if you’ll accept that and get it through your head, put up posters around the house or something. What am I doing today? Am I building disease? Okay, today I think I’ll do a building disease day. So you could probably have a building disease day, you know, periodically, that’d be fine. But to do it every day, don’t do that, you know. You don’t, again, like, you don’t want to get to the point we just talked about. You don’t want to — the only thing that’s left is drugs and now you’ve got side effects and then you’ve got to take another drug for the side effects and you’re off and running and everybody’s met people like that and it’s a bad thing because they didn’t know that our conventional medical guys, they’re not going to tell you about stuff like that, like they did with your hubby. They’re not going to tell you about stuff like that. They’re going to just say, “Oh, okay, just let’s wait.” And it gets really bad.

[45:41] DEB: Yeah, exactly. So we can’t do anything and then we’re just going to say, well, that’s okay. Yeah. I love that though, because that does give you empowerment, right? It’s like the same quote. Every day you’re either living or you’re dying. What are you choosing to do? And I love though the quote that you have, it empowers you. Like it gives you the power to make the choice every single day. And just because you make a mistake at noon, doesn’t mean you can’t make it better at 12:30, right? So you have that little piece of chocolate or you have that one little thing. Okay. Then you just don’t do it the whole rest of the day. Make the choice to make a difference every moment of every day to live better than you did the time before. And that empowers you. And if you have the power to fix things, you have the power to live the life the way you want. And that’s huge.

[46:26] FRANK: The sooner you start, the better. Starting your 30s, starting your 40s. Don’t wait until your 80s to decide, okay, look, I made it this far. Maybe I’ll start cleaning up my act. You know, that’s good if you’re going to do that. Okay. I’m not putting that down, but, but early when you feel great, start doing it while you’re feeling great. That’s the whole idea. Don’t wait until you feel crappy and then decide to do it.

[46:53] DEB: So good. Dr. Shallenberger, this was amazing. I have had such a pleasure of talking to you. You’re wonderful. How can people find you and work with your team, work with your clinic if they are resonating with what you’re talking about?

[47:08] FRANK: Thank you for that, Deb. Number one, go to YouTube — I’ve got a zillion YouTubes on there. So you can plug in Shallenberger YouTube. Shallenberger, prostate cancer, whatever. Then go to Amazon and buy my book Bursting with Energy which really gets into pretty much most of the stuff we’re talking about. If people who are like 40 years old and healthy people and they read that book and live by that book, I could darn near guarantee they’re never going to get sick. So read the book Bursting with Energy and then the website. It tells you about all the stuff we do if you’re already sick. We’ve got lots of good answers for you. We can do the mitochondrial testing. We can do the endothelial testing. We can do all these sorts of things that, you know, probably most clinics in your area aren’t capable of doing. And so you can learn about that at the website, which is antiagingmedicine.com. So it’s real easy to remember: antiagingmedicine.com.

[48:03] DEB: I love that. Thank you so much. We will have those in the show notes and we’ll have links to all of your sites so that people can find it easy, especially for those of you who are listening while you’re driving. Thank you so much for being with me. It’s been a pleasure.

[48:16] FRANK: Okay, Deb. Thanks. Thanks for all the good work you do.

[48:19] DEB: Thank you. You too.

The post Episode 286 Why You’re Always Tired: Measuring Your Mitochondria with Dr. Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let's Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today's content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let's Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

[01:23] DEB: Every cell in your body runs on the same fuel: oxygen. So what happens when your cells stop using it? Well. Well, they get tired, they get sick, you age faster. And here's the part that should make you really angry. We've had a way to measure this since the 1970s. And almost no one in mainstream medicine has ever offered it to you. Today I'm sitting down with a man who holds the actual patent on measuring mitochondrial function in a clinic. He is known as the godfather of ozone for a reason. He's been using 130-year-old therapy to help patients regenerate joints, recover from chronic infections, and reclaim their energy, decades before anyone else was willing to say it out loud. This is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. Stick around, this one gets into the biochemistry of why you're tired and what to do about it.

[02:28] DEB (Venaari ad): What if you could have a functional medicine practitioner in your back pocket 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Without the $300 to $500 an hour price tag per visit. Well, here's the reality. Functional medicine works. The protocols work. The root cause approach works. But access is the problem. Most people can't afford to see a practitioner regularly. And even when they do, the appointment ends before all their questions get answered. So you go home with a list of supplements, a lab report you don't fully understand, and more questions than you came in with. That's exactly why I built Venaari.

[03:09] DEB: Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, and today we're diving into mitochondrial function, oxygen utilization,, and the decades-long story of ozone therapy in America with one of the pioneers who built this field from the ground up. If you've ever been told your labs are normal but you still don't feel like yourself. If you're dealing with fatigue, chronic pain, degenerative joints, or you've just always sensed there's a piece of conventional medicine it isn't measuring. This episode is for you. So grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind. Settle in and let's get started on the journey for deeper healing.

[04:07] DEB (Book promo): I know that story because it was my story too. I spent three years being told I had MS. Three years of fear. Three years of doubt. Three years of sitting across from doctors who had given up looking. Turns out, wasn't MS. It was something completely different, something treatable, something we could actually address but nobody was asking the right questions. That experience is what gave birth to Seen at Last, my book written for every woman who has ever walked out of the doctor's office feeling more invisible than when she walked in.

[04:45] DEB: My guest today is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. He's been practicing alternative and integrative medicine since 1978. Yep. I said that right. 1978. And he's a founder and past president of the American Academy of Ozone Therapy. Dr. Shallenberger holds the only patent on using respiratory gas analysis to measure mitochondrial function, a method he calls bioenergy testing. He's written two books on the subject. The Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough and Bursting with Energy, and he's authored numerous peer reviewed papers on ozone therapy and oxygen utilization. He's also the developer of ProloZone, an injection technique used to help regenerate damaged joints, herniated discs, and degenerative soft tissue and he is the editor of the Second Opinion alternative medicine newsletter. Dr. Shallenberger, welcome to the show.

[05:51] FRANK: Yeah, I was a surgical resident, an absolute neophyte to medicine. And I just happened to kind of get lucky in the sense that I found out that I happened to be in the San Francisco area at the time. And Linus Pauling was having a study group with about like 10 other people, all of whom were like, very famous people in San Francisco and I just found my way into it and I started listening to all these guys talking about things like vitamins and imbalances, and he called it orthomolecular medicine, but you know, talking about all the imbalances. And his theory was those imbalances would cause all the problems. And so therefore the way to fix the problems is not with drugs to help with the symptoms, but to actually go in and look for the imbalances and repair the imbalances. And typically the imbalances are all natural things. He was focusing mostly on vitamin C and other vitamins, but it could be anything. It could be amino acids, could be sleep, it could be lifestyle habits, whatever. And I just got lucky and it started awakening up here saying, "You know what? All they taught me in medical school was really good stuff like biochemistry and physiology and so on and so on." But they never ever ever told me anything like this before.

[07:11] DEB: Isn't that something I think all of us who kind of stumbled into integrative or alternative medicine, whatever we want to call it these days, we all kind of feel the same way, right? Like we've learned all this biochem and we were like, Oh, thank God it's over. We don't have to think about it anymore. And then you get into the integrative space and you're like, Oh my gosh, that biochem meant so much. And now we know like the underlying cause of what's causing the cells to not be healthy, to that make us sick. But we didn't learn any of that part in medicine at all. We just learned the basics of it. And here's how to fix people.

[07:45] FRANK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so that's how, that's how I got into it. I remember I just so much remember 1978, I read a book called Sugar Blues. And this book basically had the radical concept of maybe people ought not to be eating all that much sugar. And oh, by the way, taking B vitamins might be a good idea. So I said, okay, you know, I don't think anybody died from sugar deficiency or died from taking too many B vitamins. So I'm going to go ahead and give them those. And then about like 20, 25% of my patients started getting better. And then it started clicking.

[08:18] DEB: And did you just kind of gradually start doing more and more things as you learned then? When did you stop doing surgery? Because if you were a surgical resident, that's a big thing.

[08:28] FRANK: I did that for a couple of years. And so back in the late, late seventies, you know, I made the transition. I said, you know what, this is a whole lot more interesting than doing this other stuff. Not talking to people and just cutting on them. One thing about surgeons is surgeons, their mentality is straightforward. It's pretty obvious. You got a swollen appendix? I'm going to take the appendix out. We don't have to get into a big intellectual discussion about this. Whereas with the internist, not so much, it's always this or that. We don't always know what we're doing in internal medicine, but I got that surgeon mentality. I'm just looking for what's obvious.

[09:09] DEB: Right. That's why they call it all practicing medicine, right? Because that's what we're all doing. So you've said that the body is a self healing mechanism and it's really our lifestyle and our toxic load that breaks down, which then causes all these problems. Do you think you started learning that when you studied with Linus Pauling or when would you say that you started really noticing that as a big part of people's illnesses.

[09:34] FRANK: Yeah, way back then those guys were on it. I mean, they were focusing to a large extent on you know, certain vitamins, niacin, I remember, was one of them. There were also, you know, Linus was an interesting guy. He came in one time in one of the groups and he said, "I want to discuss urine therapy." Yeah, okay. If anybody else said that, probably we'd throw him out of the group. You know, Linus was — so he was open-minded. He thought about lots of things and yeah, for sure they were focused on diet back then and lifestyle choices and all that kind of thing.

[10:09] DEB: Awesome. So you are the godfather of ozone therapy, right? That is what you are known for. And ozone therapy has been around a lot longer than people think, over 130 years. But still today, you know, most Americans have never heard of it. They've never done it. What do you think — the reason is that it hasn't taken off to the mainstream like it has in different parts of Europe.

[10:33] FRANK: In the early 80s, a very famous German physician by the name of Horst Kief made this statement, "If...

VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let's Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today's content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let's Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.

DEB: A few weeks ago, my body stopped listening to me. Just for a few hours, my legs wouldn't move the way I told them to. After some rest, it passed, but it was a wake-up call, and it sent me straight back to the science I've taught for 25 years: what stress and trauma actually do to the human body — and, more importantly, what we can do about it. That's today's episode. Not a confession — a toolkit. I'm going to show you exactly what happens in your nervous system and your immune system when life piles on, and then I'm going to give you real, evidence-based ways to support yourself through it.

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DEB: Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb. If you've ever felt like your body was sending you a message you didn't have time to answer, this episode is for you. We're going to talk about the real physiology of stress and trauma, and I'm handing you a toolkit you can start using today. So grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started.

DEB: Before we dive in: this episode touches on a theme I explore in my book, Seen at Last — what it feels like to keep showing up for everyone else while your own needs go unspoken. It's available on Amazon, and I'm building a community around it. More on that soon, but for now, let's dive into today's episode.

DEB: I'm not going to spend this episode on the details of my month. Life has stacked up hard, all at once: business pressure, personal loss, family health crises. What matters is what happened next. My body flagged something that stress physiology has understood for decades, and I want to hand you that understanding. Here's the short version: in the middle of an unusually hard stretch, my body — which has managed a quiet autoimmune condition for years — briefly stopped cooperating. A few hours later, I was fine, but it was loud enough to make me stop and ask, "What is actually happening inside my body, with something I thought I had healed?" When stress reaches that threshold, what can we do — ideally, before it gets that loud? That's what this episode is going to share with you. Let's get into the science, and then let's talk about the tools.

DEB: Stress and trauma affect the body in a variety of ways. Stress is not just a feeling. It's a full-body, measurable physiological cascade, and understanding it is the first step to protecting yourself from it. We call this the HPA axis — your body's alarm system. When your brain perceives a threat, your hypothalamus signals your pituitary gland, which signals your adrenal glands to release cortisol. This is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis for short, and it's meant to work as a short-term burst followed by a return to baseline.

DEB: A 2025 review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences lays out exactly what happens when that all-clear signal doesn't come. With prolonged activation, the feedback loop that's supposed to shut the axis off starts to break down. Cells can become resistant to cortisol's regulating effects, and the whole system shifts toward a pro-inflammatory state. Newer research in Molecular Psychiatry describes the same pattern from the immune side: chronic stress hormones weakening cortisol's normal anti-inflammatory effect while raising inflammatory messengers like IL-6 and TNF-alpha.

DEB: So what does this mean for autoimmune conditions specifically? That 2025 review ties persistent HPA dysregulation to lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis (MS). I want to be precise here: this is well established as an association and a mechanistic pathway, documented in both human and animal research. Its exact reversibility and the full clinical picture are still active areas of study. Animal models of MS have shown measurable HPA axis and oxidative stress changes that track with disease activity. This isn't speculation — but it's also not a settled, one-to-one clinical prediction for any individual person.

DEB: Now, why your gut and your brain are part of this conversation too. You've heard us talk for years about the gut-brain axis. Chronic HPA activation doesn't stay contained to the adrenal glands. Functional neurology research — including work associated with Dr. [Datis] Kharrazian's clinic — describes how sustained cortisol elevation and neuroinflammation can compromise blood-brain barrier integrity, allowing inflammatory activity to reach further into the nervous system than it otherwise would. This is an emerging, mechanism-level area of functional neurology rather than settled consensus science, and I want to be transparent about that distinction on air.

DEB: Why is trauma different from a bad week? Acute stress is your body handling one threat and returning to baseline. Trauma — especially the kind involving betrayal, grief, or ongoing fear for someone you love — tends to keep the nervous system in a sustained state of vigilance. Here it's worth naming polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, which describes the autonomic nervous system moving through gradations: safety and social connection; fight-or-flight mobilization; and, at the extreme, a dorsal vagal shutdown response. And I want to be straightforward with you and our listeners: polyvagal theory is widely used in trauma-informed clinical practice, but it's actively debated within mainstream academic neuroscience, and some of its specific claims are considered unproven or contested by critics. I find it a very useful framework for describing what patients experience, and I'll present it that way — not as settled physiology.

DEB: So here's the reframe I want to leave you with. Your symptoms after a hard season are not you personally failing. They're your body's honest report of what it's been going through — and that report is useful information that points directly to what you need to do next. And this is where we get into the heart of today's episode. These are specific, evidence-informed tools, not vague wellness advice.

DEB: First, regulate your vagus nerve — on purpose, every day. The vagus nerve is the main highway of your parasympathetic, rest-and-digest nervous system. Research on heart rate variability and biofeedback shows that slow-paced breathing — roughly six breaths per minute — reliably increases vagal tone, and even a single five-minute session of paced abdominal breathing has been shown to significantly reduce state anxiety, particularly in older adults. So try this: inhale for a count of four, exhale for a count of eight, and do it for five minutes, twice a day. This is a legitimate, measurable physiological intervention.

DEB: When I first started this, I could never figure out where I'd find the time. But all of us drive, and all of us get stuck at stop signs and stoplights. So I started doing deep abdominal breathing while driving. When I was younger and busy running my practice, taking care of my kids, and everything else household life brings, I didn't have time when I got home. Between work and home, I was very stressed — thinking about everything I needed to do when I got home, and everything I still needed to finish at the clinic. Breathing in the car let me relax a little before transitioning from my career-woman role to my mother-and-wife role. I'm not as good at it today as I was then, because I don't have kids at home anymore. I can just keep working, do whatev...

You have a gland in your chest that trains your entire immune system. And as you age, it quietly shrinks and turns to fat.

In Episode 284 of The Peptide Files, Dr. Deb looks at thymosin alpha 1, the peptide that tries to send the instructor back to that training academy, including the big trial that said “not so fast.”

This week, The Peptide Files takes on thymosin alpha 1, or TA1, one of the most well-studied peptides in the entire series. Unlike many peptides making noise online, this one has been used in clinical medicine around the world for decades, with a safety record described in the research as excellent. Dr. Deb walks through what TA1 actually is, a copy of a signal your own thymus makes, why it works as an immune modulator rather than a simple booster, and where the genuine research strength lies, from chronic hepatitis to cancer care.

And in keeping with this whole series, she does not skip the part the sales world leaves out: the largest, most rigorous trial of TA1 came back negative on its main goal. Honest science includes the word no, and that is exactly why this peptide is so interesting.

In this episode, you will learn:

Highlighted quotes:
“It does not just boost your immune system. TA1 is an immune modulator. It pushes toward balance.”
“The sepsis trial is the proof that honest science includes the word no.”

Timestamps:
[00:02] Your immune system’s training academy: the thymus gland explained
[02:24] Where TA1 comes from: the first peptide ever isolated from the thymus
[05:00] The conductor, not a soloist: why it modulates rather than just boosts
[10:00] What the research actually shows: hepatitis, cancer care, and immune support
[13:30] The honesty centerpiece: the large trial that came back negative
[18:38] The honest scorecard: what is strong, what is uncertain, and the US status

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The post Episode 284: The Immune System’s Conductor — Thymosin Alpha 1 | The Peptide Files first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

You have a gland in your chest that trains your entire immune system. And as you age, it quietly shrinks and turns to fat.

In Episode 284 of The Peptide Files, Dr. Deb looks at thymosin alpha 1, the peptide that tries to send the instructor back to that training academy, including the big trial that said "not so fast."

This week, The Peptide Files takes on thymosin alpha 1, or TA1, one of the most well-studied peptides in the entire series. Unlike many peptides making noise online, this one has been used in clinical medicine around the world for decades, with a safety record described in the research as excellent. Dr. Deb walks through what TA1 actually is, a copy of a signal your own thymus makes, why it works as an immune modulator rather than a simple booster, and where the genuine research strength lies, from chronic hepatitis to cancer care.

And in keeping with this whole series, she does not skip the part the sales world leaves out: the largest, most rigorous trial of TA1 came back negative on its main goal. Honest science includes the word no, and that is exactly why this peptide is so interesting.

In this episode, you will learn:

- What the thymus gland does, and why immune function fades as it shrinks with age

- Why TA1 is an immune modulator that pushes toward balance, rather than a simple immune booster

- Where the research genuinely supports it, including hepatitis and cancer care as an add-on

- What the large negative sepsis trial found, and why naming it matters for credibility

- Where TA1 sits in the US today from a regulatory standpoint

Highlighted quotes:

"It does not just boost your immune system. TA1 is an immune modulator. It pushes toward balance."

"The sepsis trial is the proof that honest science includes the word no."

Timestamps:

[00:02] Your immune system's training academy: the thymus gland explained

[02:24] Where TA1 comes from: the first peptide ever isolated from the thymus

[05:00] The conductor, not a soloist: why it modulates rather than just boosts

[10:00] What the research actually shows: hepatitis, cancer care, and immune support

[13:30] The honesty centerpiece: the large trial that came back negative

[18:38] The honest scorecard: what is strong, what is uncertain, and the US status

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Two of the most respected cancer institutions in the country ran the same tests on the same tissue from the same patient and reached opposite conclusions.

In this deeply personal episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb shares a real-time update on her family member Kamren’s cancer case and the advocacy lesson inside it that every patient and family needs to hear.

Shared with Kam’s full permission as his case continues to unfold, this is a follow-up to his story. A second-opinion pathology review came back and shifted the picture in a meaningful way, reopening the question of where his cancer actually started, and underscoring why a single institution should never be the only set of eyes on a complex diagnosis.

Dr. Deb walks through what changed, why second opinions are a clinical necessity rather than a betrayal of your doctor, and why a finding that goes unexamined for years can turn out to be the most important detail in the room. This is a difficult, honest episode, and it carries a lesson that could protect other families navigating a confusing diagnosis.

In this episode, you will learn:

Highlighted quotes:“If you do not have someone in your corner asking the right questions, the system will not ask them for you.”“A normal test is only normal for what it was tested for.”

Timestamps:[00:16] Looking in the wrong place: the finding that went unexamined for years[04:18] Catching up on Kam’s case: the foundation for today’s update[07:00] When the ground shifted: a second opinion changes the picture[09:10] Why find the source: getting the diagnosis right before the treatment[31:20] Speaking directly to you: the questions every patient should ask[37:03] Why this case matters to all of us: advocacy as a necessity, not a luxury

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Subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

The post Episode 283: The Lump Nobody Looked At — A Real-Time Update on Kam’s Cancer Case first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.