[Transcript] – VSELs, Dosing Methylene Blue, Melatonin For Inflammation & More: Ben’s Q&A At Elements Of Vitality.

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Transcripts

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/elements-of-vitality-panel-qa/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:50] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:47] Elements Panel Q&A

[00:07:45] How are VSELs administered for the hearing loss treatment?

[00:12:45] Does eye protection need to be worn when using near-infrared light?

[00:15:31] Methylene blue – How much daily? Cycle on and off? In what form?

[00:25:27] From a physical medicine and rehab perspective, what are the top 3 devices for acute pain relief and healing?

[00:33:29] Podcast Sponsors

[00:37:30] cont. Acute Pain Relief And Healing

[00:39:28] How to activate pathways to balance circadian rhythm?

[00:49:30] Oral hygiene

[00:58:39] Post-COVID bleeding gums

[01:01:50] Melatonin – How much to take? Cycle? Form?

[01:09:16] End of Podcast

Ben: My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

John Augspurger:  That was the first thing that woke me up as a dentist that I just realized that it's incentivized disease care, it's not healthcare. Let's stop calling it healthcare, it's disease care. So, to get the conditions right in the body, it's really boils down to the gut, and the gut and the gap junctions, okay, and the leaky mouth, leaky brain, leaky gut, leaky sinuses, leaky tonsils, leaky teeth, okay? So, it's leaky everything.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Alright, it's time for you to start hacking your sleep. And, a big part of that is choosing the right equipment for your desired outcomes. That's where this company called Essentia comes in. It's an organic mattress that's the only mattress to score Best in Class on eliminating all sleep-interrupting stimulants. They have a patented beyond-latex organic foam technology, so you get these deep and REM sleep cycles that are unparalleled allowing you to wake up being recharged and ready for anything life's going to throw at you. They make these things in certified organic factories packed with technology that allows you to get performance sleep benefits unsurpassed by any other mattress tested by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. These mattresses are allergen-free. They've got these packed technologies that allow you to experience things like active cooling, EMF blocking, accelerate recovery, and really good deep sleep cycles. A lot of pro athletes are sleeping on these things now just because sleep is so important to pro athletes, but it should be important to anybody who's concerned about central nervous system repair and recovery.

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It's a great multivitamin and I worked out a special deal with HIYA to give you 50% off. So, to claim that, you go to hiyahealth.com/BEN. H-I-Y-A-health.com/BEN. This deal is not available on the regular website. H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H, hiyahealth.com/BEN and they get your kids the full body nourishment that they need to grow into healthy adults. 

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So, go to levels.link/Ben and they're going to give you two free month of Levels measurement when you use my link, levels.link/Ben. 

Well, folks, I am backstage right now with my friend Dr. John Lieurance after having just recorded a big Q&A panel at the end of a fantastic day, the Elements Event. What do we have, John? Air, light, fire, water, earth, fire, all the elements. We were doing PEMF and ozone, and grounding, and earthing, and sound therapy, and IVs, and methylene blue, and you name it. But, at the end of the day, we did a really fantastic Q&A in which we got into all the fringe corners of biological dentistry, methylene blue protocols, melatonin protocols, circadian rhythm and lighting. It was a pretty good.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. With biological dentist, one of the originals that's been practicing for 30 years–

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, that guy was amazing. Yeah.

John Lieurance:  Yeah, it was amazing.

Ben:  So anyways, the reason I'm telling you all this is that is what you are about to hear. Now, I'm going to create shownotes for you guys, which you can find at BenGreenfieldLife.com/ElementsPanel. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/ what, John?

John Lieurance:  Panel.

Ben:  ElementsPanel, baby. BenGreenfieldLife.com/ElementsPanel. It's okay, we've had a long day, folks. So anyways, go there. You'll be able to access the shownotes. You can leave your questions, your comments, your feedback and access, any and all of the resources that John and I talk about. I usually don't really record an intro with my guest, but John, you walked in at the right time. 

John Lieurance:  Yeah, here we are. We did it.

Ben:  We did it. So, BenGreenfieldLife–

John Lieurance:  Are you going to sing for us again, Ben?

Ben:  Did I sing at the end of our other podcasts?

John Lieurance:  Yeah.

Ben:  Name it. Give me a request.

John Lieurance:  Amazing Grace.

Ben:  Didn't I sing that last time? Alright, [Ben Singing]. 

That started to go downhill fast. Well, folks, that's John Lieurance and me and we will not start a band, but we are putting out a good podcast for you. So, I hope you enjoy this one. Here we go.

Male Speaker:  So, I'm going to point the first question at Dr. John. And, the question is this, how are VSELs administered for the hearing loss treatment? And then, it says, direct injection question or IV infusion question.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. So, VSELs stands for very small embryonic-like stem cell. And, it's something that I think is probably one of the best forms of stem cell therapy. They discovered that you have all of these tiny stem cells that are pluripotent, meaning that they can turn into virtually any type of cell and they're small enough where they can go everywhere. So, they can go through the blood-brain barrier and they can literally go wherever you want them to go. So, they're trapped in your blood.

Really interesting point that I bring out in the recent book that I released, “It's All In Your Head,” it's mostly on endonasal. But, I get into some concepts of meditation because Joe Dispenza is doing some research on why these meditators are having these spontaneous healings. There seems to be this activation in some sort of life force where people have a short-term healing and then more long-term, so people, their tumors will melt away or you have people in wheelchairs with strokes that get up and start walk. So, they've looked at the blood and they found that there's just tons of these tiny little particles. And so, their initial ideas with that is that they're exosomes.

And so, the way stem cells work is that when a stem cell is homed into an area, so when we have an injury, it attracts, it sends out a beacon for the stem cell to migrate to the area. And then, once it gets there, it has a stickiness and it attaches there and then it starts to shower these exosomes, which then shower the existing cells and tissues, which then go into a youthful repair phase. And, that's really how it works. It's not as much as what we thought were the stem cell then starts to turn into different cell lineages. If that does happen, it's more through the exosomes. So, they're kind of thinking more that it's this exosome effect.

And, once I started to–I met Todd, Todd Ovokaitys out in the Carlsbad who's really pioneered the use with this laser. It's like a zero-point laser. They call it scalar, but it's very unique in the way that it works. And so, the laser, we pull the patient's blood, we spin it down in a certain way and then we activate that blood, which liberates and grows all of these VSELs. So, it's from your body, it's completely safe and we can run it as an IV, and then we can take that same laser and use right angles to basically home them into specific areas of the body: the ear, different parts of the brain, pituitary, the thyroid, adrenals. We did a whole protocol on, Ben.

So, this question is kind of asking how do we use the VSEL with the inner ear? My answer would be both. I had to kind of give you the background, so you kind of understood exactly the context by it. So, we directly injected it. It's called a trans tympanic injection, which is a typical injection that an ENT would do for a steroid for a kid. Very common. So, it's an injection like that. And then, we take the laser, activate it, and home it in after an IV.

Male Speaker:  Yeah. Thank you for that. And, do any of the panelists have anything you want to add on to that?

Ben:  I'll threw in a quick clarification. I actually had somebody super concerned reach out to me when we were doing the Instagram video yesterday. But, the VSELs that these were embryos that had somehow been killed, human embryos, but it's very small embryonic-like stem cells. So, first of all, I'm concerned about the ethical nature of these. They're not harvested from embryos. And second, John's actually lying about the exosomes, they're actually government nanobots. I also wear tinfoil hats. Yeah. And, we'll repeat questions that are asked in the audience because we are recording this. The question is, what is the source of the stem cells? It's human-derived tissue. John, do you want to expound?

John Lieurance:  Well, the exosomes that are typically used in doctor's offices are they take placenta and they stress them in a way that the stem cells and the placenta kind of butt off and shower the exosomes into a sterile saline solution and then they use those. The VSELs, like I said, it's a blood draw, so it would be no different than if you got PRP. So, a lot of people by now are familiar with platelet-rich plasma. It's a blood draw, it's spun down, and then it's activated with this specific laser.

Ben:  So, if you were to do a VSELs procedure, the first thing that's going to happen is you'll give a bunch of blood, and then that blood is treated to activate the VSELs and then they go wherever it is that you want them to go.

Male Speaker:  Right. So, the next question we have here is, does eye protection need to be worn when using near-infrared light? And, I'm going to direct that down to Ben if I can and then we can follow up.

Ben:  I'm certainly no expert on infrared light and the interaction with the eye, but I do know that about 600 to 800 nanometers is actually something that can be good for myopia, can be good for retina. And, I think that the fact that a lot of these manufacturers are covering their butts by sending out the little tanning glasses with the red-light devices is kind of like spread this rumor that you got to be careful with them. But, it's a lot different than the concentrated lasers like the FDA or the Class II medical devices that John might use here in the clinic, like the home light panels, infrared light panels, stuff like the Joovv, things along those lines, you don't need to wear eye protection. I suppose I should probably have a little asterisk [00:13:43] _____ —

John Lieurance:  Disclaimer, yeah.

Ben:  But, yeah, I've never used eye protection unless it's an actual concentrated laser medical facility.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. When we do the VSELs and we do our protocol especially if we're doing brain, we go right into the eye. Remember when we did yours?

Ben:  Yeah.

John Lieurance:  You state your stare, right, if the laser goes in the eye. And, it's really amazing, the response that we've had with patients with vision.

Ben:  Yeah, you feel your brain just turn on. Who use the Vielight today? The infrared light for the head and then it also has a nasal probe. And, that thing you very, very similarly, you can feel that photobiomodulation coming straight into the neural tissue through the nose and on top of the head. And, that company, by the way, they have a newer device called Duo where you put on the cap, but then they've got a second device that attaches to the back of the head to do the vagus nerve and then the second probe goes in the other nostril. You got to probe in both nostrils, the light on the back of the head, and they also ship it out with a gut device. So, you can literally do a full body treatment [00:14:50] _____, which is pretty cool according to my wife and children, makes me very hard to snuggle with in the mornings.

Male Speaker:  Any other comments?

John Lieurance:  I would just add that in general, the LED seem to be very safe for eye consumption. I would also say that one of the major laser manufacturers, they're working on treatment for glaucoma right now using laser, actual laser directly into eyes. So, I think the jury still out right now, but like he said, Ben, to recover your butt in the clinic is probably worthwhile. But, I think we'll see in the next couple years that that stance changes and we're using it more and more that way.

Male Speaker:  Alright. The next question is methylene blue, how much daily cycle on and off? In what form? Capsule? I'm going to ask John to start with this one, but maybe we can go down the line.

John Lieurance:  So, methylene blue, the dosage is 1/2 a milligram up to 4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. So, 80 milligrams is a pretty roundabout number for most people, 40 to 80. We have the Lumetol Blue, which is a square and it's half of that is about 80 milligrams. That's pretty often what I recommend to a lot of my patients. And, that seems to be really helpful. 

You do want to take a break every so often. Typically, I'll recommend people do 10 days on and three days off. There's some variations that you can have within that. I mean, it's not a set-in-stone thing. But, what happens is the methylene blue has an affinity to the mitochondria. And, that's why they use methylene blue for staining like brain tissue because the nerves become super blue, so you can see them in contrast to other tissues. It rushes in that mitochondria. And so, if you're taking it every day, there's a buildup that can occur in the mitochondria. And, I've hit that threshold myself and it's kind of like you get a little fatigued and then you take a couple days off, then you take the methylene blue and it's like, boom, everything's working again. So, it's not like you get into a dangerous situation in like life or death but it'll begin to start to have an opposite effect.

Male Speaker:  What might be useful too is just to ask, give an example of maybe how you've benefited from it.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. Well, it has been profoundly helpful for me personally. And, I like to do things myself before I start recommending it to my patients. So, all the stuff that you guys have experienced, I've delved deeply into and find it to be beneficial personally. But, with methylene blue, I just feel I have a lot more focus and attention and it's from a place of just being happy and optimistic. So, it works kind of like an SSRI in that sense. And, the reason that it helps mood is that it mops up nitric oxide. And, they've done studies where they've found that people that have depression, if they raise their nitric oxide, the depression and the mood gets worse. If they lower the nitric oxide, it's completely related. So, nitric oxide and for a lot of people working out, I'm not opposed to it. I think it can be beneficial to cycle it, but I don't think that it's something that you should take every day all day because it has a lot of negative consequences to it.

Ben:  Yeah, excess nitric oxide can certainly cause a little bit of an excess free radical response. A couple of thoughts about methylene blue and John, don't kill me for saying this, but it's like a fish tank cleaner. It's kind of like ozone, these are cleaning agents to a certain extent. And so, I think that overuse, people who are doing frequent let's say rectal insufflation of ozone, which I know everybody in here does every day or regular oral use of methylene blue or rectal use of methylene blue, I think you could reach a point where you can actually clean out the biomes too much, almost essentially create a situation which you might not have enough good bacteria that's theoretical. But, because of that, I'm a little bit careful with excessive use of ozone, excessive use of methylene blue, kind of this whole healthy hygiene hypothesis, the idea that exposing a child to a wide variety of fermented foods and farm animals and things like that help to build up dirt and bacteria and gunk in the body that renders the immune system stronger. I think you should be a little bit careful with excess cleaning edges of the body. But, like John mentioned, it is fantastic, especially when combined with photobiomodulation as kind of the ultimate smart drug combo.

The other thing you should be aware of is that when we're talking about things that interact with light in a favorable manner, I don't recall the book on melanin, but there are certain melanin precursors that also work really, really well when combining infrared light or sunlight that could also be combined with methylene blue namely shilajit and chlorella, the dark greens, the dark blacks of the plant kingdom along with the dark blues seem to interact really, really well with red light. And, I think that we'll probably see over the next decade a lot more research done on this concept of photobiomodulation, what's a stack with it.

And then, the very last thing is John did mention that the methylene blue can act a little bit like an SSRI. So, if you're using other SSR-like compounds, you could risk excess flooding of the cell receptor with serotonin in the cleft. So, you would want to be careful with what you combine it with especially if you're on some type of SSRI-based medication. Just make sure that you don't take the methylene blue simultaneous to that.

Male Speaker:  Alright. Any anything else?

Jason Sonners: I would just say I use methylene blue more as needed. So, if I have a lot of writing to do, if I have a lot of studying to do, I love it as a sort of a focus and concentration piece like that. I might take it for five days or ten days sequentially and then I might not take it for two weeks or three weeks. That's just my own personal use. I definitely cycled it more what John's saying with certain patients, especially mitochondrial dysfunction and we're trying to run the machinery of the mitochondria in various ways. So, we might do some methylene blue red light cycles, then we might do some hyperbaric oxygen and hydrogen cycles. So, we're running different systems in that mitochondria purposefully and we take breaks between different pieces of that so that we're not running any one of them sort of into the ground too much. 

And then, I think over time, to some extent let's say high dose blue too much, you don't want to clear that out periodically. But also, there's pieces of this with oxidation factors the body gets more resilient, the whole hermetic effect. So, there's a balance between pushing the envelope too far where you're starting to clean things out too much and starting to over-oxidize and break things down. But, if you reel that back a little bit and you just get enough of that stimulation where at the end of the day now the body starts upregulating [00:21:53] _____, the body starts upregulating glutathione catalase, all those natural antioxidants it makes us more resilient to all the other stuff in the world that we have less control over.

So, I think it's like anything else just a delicate balance, everybody's going to be a little bit different that way. And, it's important to spend the time to figure that out with each person.

Ben:  The question is what sort of cycle length are we talking about when we're talking about a course of methylene blue.

John Lieurance:  Well, if you get sick, you feel like you're coming down with something, that could be a good time to even possibly take significantly more than what we mentioned. As I mentioned, you can even go higher than 4 milligrams per kilogram, but if you have cyanide poisoning, you went to the hospital, they would run an IV with exactly that dosage. We've done IVs with even higher amounts of that. So, the safety is actually higher than that. There are certain procedures such as a thymectomy and they give intravenous methylene blue at 1,000 plus milligrams. And, this is where the whole controversy with SSRIs came about because there was five cases that have these massive doses of methylene blue and they died from serotonin storm. 

So, although I appreciate Ben's comment because it's probably a safe comment to make but there's a little controversy with it, the Mayo actually came out and retracted that concern about SSRIs with methylene blue except for just with this surgery and the whole country of Canada did as well. So, it may not be as much of an issue as was thought.

Ben:  The question is what is the dosage being used in the IV versus the rectal form. I realize you can hear them but it's still recording I'll repeat.

John Lieurance:  Thank you, Ben.

Ben:  Yeah.

John Lieurance:  So, we go up to as high as 500 milligrams between 300 and 500 milligrams with some of our IVs. We do a slow IV. We like to prime that with silver. Both silver and gold have been shown in the research to greatly enhance the photodynamic aspect of methylene blue. And, silver just by itself with anti-inflammatory, it's very antimicrobial. So, a lot of the patients that we see are sick. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've seen that have been really, really ill with the current virus while the IV is running. They're like, “What the heck's in this stuff?” So, it can be quite dramatic. And, it's sad to me because this stuff should be at the hospitals. What we do here, IV Ozone, I mean these things have been around for so long, there's so much research backing them up, and it's just bizarre to me.

Ben:  Pros and cons of a troche versus a capsule versus other delivery methods of methylene blue. What do you think, John?

John Lieurance:  Well, the IV obviously is definitely getting in there. The suppository is nice because it's a slow release. So, there's some benefits of that. The oral delivery really works great. In fact, when it's mixed with stomach acid, it enhances absorption. So, if you don't want your mouth to get blue, you want to take something that can get into your throat and down your mouth, the sublingual dose don't seem to have the absorption. This is according to some of the experts when they're asked all the delivery forms seems to be oral is the recommended.

Ben:  How many days on and off for the oral–

John Lieurance:  I would recommend 10 days on and three days off as a rule of thumb.

Male Speaker:  Alright. Let me go to the next question here. From a physical medicine and rehab perspective, what are the top three devices for acute care, pain relief, and subsequent healing? And, I think I'd to go to Alan first since we've underutilized you here my friend.

Alan Macy:  I think I'm going to defer that question to somebody else.

Ben:  So, the top three modalities for pain relief?

Male Speaker:  And healing.

Ben:  Okay. Should we just rapid-fire each of our top three?

Male Speaker:  Yeah.

Ben:  Alright. I'll go with things that I personally use at home for injury, for inflammation or for relatively rapid pain relief. Let's say things that wouldn't fall under the category of supplements or medications because obviously there's everything from opioid mimics kratom, the tumorosaccharides, curcumin, all sorts of things you can take orally. But, I would say as far as modalities to have around the house, I think that pulsed electromagnetic field therapy is fantastic especially if it's at a high enough power. I realize it's expensive but I own one of those pulse centers, PEMF tables that has the ability to attach coils and pads into it. And, that thing is just like lifeblood for me when it comes to management of injuries and little aches and pain. So, that's one that I use probably every day.

The second would be cold therapy, cold soaks, cryotherapy, or anything involving cold. It just seems to do a really, really good job not only with pain management but also some of the nervous system resilience that allows you to kind of manage your pain a little bit better.

And then, one that kind of flies under the radar, there's a light sound stimulation machine called the BrainTap. And, the BrainTap has 800 different recipes and sessions on it but there's one section if you were to own it and scroll through the library within the app called Pain Management and it literally teaches you how to use your brain as its own painkilling pharmacy. I kind of scoffed at this the first time I heard it and then I went through the sessions and it teaches you some really cool breathing tactics and almost a little bit of self-hypnosis to manage pain. And, that one because it's a versatile tool, I think it's a really good unit tone anyways. I assuming you never used the BrainTap before. And, it combines well with a lot of the modalities here like hyperbaric and sound therapy and all sorts of things.

So, anyways, I would say PEMF, ice, and the BrainTap.

John Lieurance:  So, Alan, if I were to ask you if you sprained your knee and what would you do at home, the top three things.

Alan Macy:  The temperature cycling, I will probably start there like hot/cold would make sense. I really like the idea of the area needs to be agitated, so it'd be helpful to introduce a kind of vibrational patterns into the area, I think, and kind of application of energy. So, I could imagine photonic therapy being helpful there, vibrational therapy, mechanical vibration, hot and cold, I think, and then, kind of gently be stretching it and relaxing it.

Male Speaker:  [00:28:44] _____

Jason Sonners:  I would say for pain, I would separate those categories. So, I would say for pain, I would look at PEMF, cryo or cold of some kind and then mechanoreceptor stimulation block helping to block the actual pain messages. For regeneration, I think I would say to me that's an energy production issue. So, the two things that saps, so salamanders–I love salamanders, I'm sure you guys do. So, salamanders have two things that they do better than we do. The first is they mobilize stem cells way better than we can. Actually, there's three things. They lower inflammation better than we can and they upregulate their oxygen better than we can. They actually have algae that grow on them and out to your photosynthetic, so they create oxygen. 

So, the algae migrates to the area of injury and produces oxygen in the area while they're upregulating stem cells and reducing inflammation. So, I would look at that and say clearly that's a regenerative model we should try to mimic. So, oxygen. So, for me, that would be hyperbaric obviously. I might be partial to that. Red light therapy from a mitochondrial cytochrome C, all the good things that that would do for us. And then, I would just look for other mitochondria, either methylene blue or hydrogen, things that help generate the energy concentration required for massive ATP production, energy production.

John Lieurance:  It seems like there's two ways to answer this for me. There's one like what would I do in the clinic that might be difficult for people to do at home because I've got access to really expensive equipment and then something I could do at home. So, I would just go to John's office. I'm just kidding.

John Augspurger:  I'm here.

John Lieurance:  If I was at home, I would say cold would be number one and I have a cold plunge. So, if you don't have a cold plunge, you get one. Even if you get a freezer and turn it on the side, it's something I use every day and I absolutely love it. So, if I have pain and I want to get rid of pain, cold therapy, 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off. If you alternate that with heat, it can really help flush the area. And then, one of these photons would probably be my top choice as far as a light. It's very healing. You could do ice and then apply the photon to it. I think that would be a really good system. 

And then, melatonin because that's when your body's going to really repair itself that'll address the mitochondrial issue. We prefer that as a suppository. That's the best delivery. It delivers slowly throughout the night, so SandMan. And, if I were to come to the clinic, I would probably say laser, like a class 4 laser treatment, and then the sound wave device that we talked about the soft wave device. Then, I would probably say some probably chiropractic adjustment or some sort of manipulation to the area if that was indicated.

Ben:  I have a few more thoughts real quick. I recently had a toe inflammation. And, to manage pain at night, I literally just use those lidocaine patches. So, that's another one that flies under the radar is really just a lidocaine patch, you can slap on pain flare if you need to sleep without having to take a pharmaceutical. 

And then, this is an old-school tactic I learned from a doctor he sought a bunch of Tour de France cyclists. I learned it 10 years ago. I kind of forgot to mention it in my earlier response, but I just use it all the time when I was racing Ironman and I still use it if I get some kind of chronic repetitive motion injury and stuff I talk about in my book. It's three steps. A, you apply a transdermal anti-inflammatory topical. I like magnesium lotion. CBD lotion would be another example or a Traumeel would be another example. Then, you slap electrodes on top of that. I think one of the better devices out there is called the Marc Pro. It's like a home device. It'll do transcutaneous nerve stipulation then also electrical muscle stimulation. And then, you wrap that with ice, so it's basically transdermal plus the electrodes plus the ice. And, the way that works is the electrodes helps to drive the transdermal deeper into the tissue. And then, the ice allows you to jack up the intensity of the electrical stimulation a little bit higher. And, that done a few times a day. For me when I [00:33:05] _____ seems to work really, really well. 

And, the only thing I'd throw in there is if you do have access to injectable BPC 157 into TB-500 is peptides, you can do that beforehand as well. And, I realize it's a lot of stuff but as anybody in here who's active knows, if you're laid up, you have pain, you want to get back in the game fast, sometimes it's a matter of stacking some of these things and you can just do that while you're eating a salad for lunch or whatever.

I'm pretty stoked because this is now something I can do when I'm on the go and it's based on this idea that the human body being mostly water. But, what you probably don't know is everything else in your body is 50% amino acids. That means basically water and amino acids are two of the most important things that you can have in your body. And, some amino acids are essential. You have to get them from food, from breaking down steak and chicken and eggs and everything else. But, this stuff called Kion Aminos is a plant-based full essential amino acids profile backed by over 20 years of clinical research with the highest quality ingredients; no fillers, no junk, rigorous quality testing, taste amazing with all-natural flavors. I got on the amino acids bandwagon way back when I was racing Ironman triathlon. Started with branch chain amino acids, realized those were wasted time, switched over to essential amino acids and it has been a game changer ever since.

Now, what did I mean when I said travel? Well, these Kion Aminos, which are the essential amino acids that I take, they have for the watermelon flavor, the lemon-lime flavor, the berry flavor, and the mango flavor, they got stick packs now, so you can take them on the go. I honestly have a couple packs in my fanny pack now. I can dump them in water when I'm at a restaurant, have that instead of a bread basket that comes out or a cocktail. They satiate the appetite. They accelerate recovery. They're amazing pre-workout or during a workout. The list goes on and on. Fact is if you haven't tried essential amino acid, you're a miss now.

And, you can save 20% now on any monthly deliveries and 10% on any one-time purchases if you go to getKION.com/Ben. That's getK-I-O-N.com/Ben to get my fundamental supplement for fitness. Kion Aminos, getK-I-O-N.com/Ben.

Just imagine a hotel surrounded by nature, vineyards, and gardens, this forest classified as a historical garden in a very special country at a hotel located in the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Imagine this place has a state-of-the-art spot, 2,200 square meters, 10 treatment rooms, an indoor pool with underwater sound and chromotherapy. Imagine a kitchen team that brings to the table not just delicious food at this place but values environmental sustainability and wellness and local sensitivity and global sensibility. Imagine being able to be bathed in luxury and being able to be local, to buy a local and to eat local, not caged off of some fancy tourist but it's a part of the community and part of the Torah of the region. 

Well, that's exactly what you experience in Portugal at their Six Senses luxury retreat. And, I'm going to be there for a special event that you can read up on at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. It's called the Boundless Retreat. And, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses, you can see everything we're doing. Every day starts with a healthy farmhouse breakfast, morning movement session with me, you get access to three different 60-minute spa treatments that you can choose from throughout the day, indoor pool and vitality suites, meditation, sound healing, an alchemy bar with Kokodama and yogurts and pickles and sprouts workshops, retreat meals all made from locally sourced organic produce, Q&As and sing-along sessions with me. This is going to be an amazing remarkable once in a lifetime experience. You get four nights full board accommodation in a deluxe room there at the facility. And, this thing, as you can imagine, is going to fill up fast. It's in Portugal at the Six Senses retreat in Portugal.

Again, all the details are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. And, the dates are February 27th through March 3rd, 2023, February 27th through March 3rd, 2023. I hope to see you there.

John Lieurance:  That kind of brings me to some thoughts too of CBG can be really good for pain, CBD. But, I think CBG is better in a full spectrum CBG, so it's kind of they call it the mother of all cannabinoids. And so, some of it turns into CBD, but it's activating more of the cannabinoid receptors than really any other substance.

The other thing. There's a substance, it's a Chinese herb primarily for pain. It's called corydalis yanhusuo, I think. I don't think we sell it like on the site, on the MitoZen site, but we do give it to our patients. I have never seen anything work this well for pain. And, even I mean, severe pain throbbing pain–

Ben:  Could you repeat that one more time, John?

John Lieurance:  Corydalis yanhusuo.

Ben:  Corydalis yanhusuo.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. I might be getting–

Ben:  Alright. [00:38:19] _____ with this panel discussion on the podcast, I'll hunt down the spelling and put it into the podcast shownotes for people. 

John Lieurance:  Yeah, we have it in a suppository called Solace. And, if anybody wants, they can just reach out to us or email us–

Ben:  Called Solace?

John Lieurance:  Solace, yeah. So, when we do regenerative medicine, we give patients the suppository. They can either take it orally or rectally. I mean, you could be just suffering in pain and 20 minutes later, you're like–

Ben:  Did you have that Chinese–

John Lieurance:  And, there's no hangover. You take it, there's no constipation.

Ben:  Wow.

John Lieurance:  But, honestly, like Percocet and some of those pain medications, you don't really feel good on them and they don't really get rid of your pain, they just kind of distract you from it. But, the one caveat is that it will make you a little drowsy. So, it's more ideal for nighttime, it's not something that you can take during the day.

Ben:  Do you sell that on the MitoZen website, Solace?

John Lieurance:  No.

Ben:  So, someone need to call your clinic to be able to get–

John Lieurance:  Maybe we ought to get it up there.

Ben:  Yeah. It sounds fascinating. Raise your hand if that's something you might keep in your medicine cabinet. Yeah, yeah, this is the first time I've heard about it. It sounds intriguing.

Male Speaker:  Alright, so got another question here and it asks how to activate pathways to balance circadian rhythm. So, I think Alan.

Alan Macy:  Yeah, circadian rhythm is triggered primarily because we evolved here on the planet and we kind of shared a lot of DNA expression with other creatures that we've evolved this system that orients us to the day as a consequence of sort of first light. And so, there's a cycle that is developed. If you look at that cycle, that's a 12-hour period, this one. And so, the full cycle is 24 hours. There's a whole cascade of hormones that happen with production of cortisol in the body, everything right down to estrogen and testosterone for males. And, it's exactly this cycle is exactly the same cycle that is in a fruit tree for photosynthesis. And so, that's also an orienting response for the tree in terms of how it produces food and everything. And anyway, these kinds of mimics, they are very broad as a consequence of all of us, all the living things having evolved here on this planet.

So, the question was really about the sensory input. It was a question about how to drive that circadian rhythm. So, primarily with sunlight, however you can, it's what you call an experience that it's emphasized like any rhythmic function in the body if you time additional stimulus to occur at the time of specific points in the cycle. You can emphasize and lock it down. So, there was the subject of Agnihotra came up today. And so, this is an ayurvedic ritual. It's very ancient. It involves the burning of cow dung, the bee on top of it you do exactly at sunrise and exactly at sunset. And, this is a circadian rhythm synchronizer is what this is. It's a very visceral experience. It's multimodal. You have the heat of the fire. You have the flickering of the fire. You have chanting. It's about 12 minutes in total and it's very precise. You do it very precisely at these times of the day. Anyway, it's understudy right now at UCSB and the Psychophysiology Department, this particular modality.

And, there are other traditions too like yoga traditions like sun salutation might be a good example. Another one of a multimodal, a kind of process or methodology that's associated with the rising or the setting of the sun. Anyway, that's how I think I would go about doing it if I was interested to really define clearly identify the circadian rhythm or specify it.

Male Speaker:  Thank you, Alan. Any other thoughts on the panel?

John Lieurance:  It's a complicated question because that rhythm is pretty delicate and it is driven hormonally: cortisol, melatonin. I mean, there's so many pieces of that. And, for the most part, maybe not here because you guys are such perfect human specimens but out there in the world, sympathetic drive, stress drive is out of control especially now more than ever. And, it's been that way for as long as I've been here. So, cortisol is driving that, and people, if you start running labs on people and you start looking at their hormone levels or cortisol levels, their pregnenolone levels, you just start understanding how depleted we all are. And, I do believe, I 100% agree, I'm a early to bed, early to rise. I catch sunrises. I love trying to connect that way. I think that that's a big piece of my attempt at managing my own stress levels and cortisol levels, connecting to the earth. But, that also could be using PEMF to connect to certain rhythms electrically.

So, I think there's a couple pieces: reduce your stress/become more resilient. The stress is like in this bucket. Your bucket is filling up and eventually, most of us are overflowing. So, in a lot of ways, we're all looking at how do I empty that bucket? How do I remove these stressors? And, in some cases, that's very easy to do, but in most cases, it's not. And so, sometimes 16 ounces of–let's just say 16 ounces of stuff in a 16-ounce bucket that's full. But, are you as healthy as you could possibly be because 16 ounces of stuff in a 32-ounce bucket doesn't feel so bad? And so, your health and your resilience, your ability to get healthier in spite of the stress that you're all facing and we're all facing helps shift how our body starts to respond to those levels of stress even if we couldn't reduce the actual amount of stress. 

So, I think like everything else that we're doing, it's a multi-dimensional approach. Get healthier so that you're more resilient. Find the stressors that are easy to address and figure out ways of reducing them. Connect with people who have strategies. Connect to devices that help fill in the void that we can't do because of the life in the world that we live in. And, I think eventually you might get a little closer to connecting to that circadian rhythm.

Male Speaker:  Beautiful.

John Lieurance:  Yeah, I love the Agnihotra suggestion. I remember when I first met Alan, we were in Santa Barbara and we sat there and I just was blown away. I'm sorry?

Male Speaker:  You burned cow poop together?

John Lieurance:  No, we were at a hotel. Was it the Ritz or something? They're in Santa Barbara. And, they were going to send a tech out for the chair that you guys experienced and they couldn't find a text so they sent the top guy, the guy that developed it. And so, we had just a wonderful conversation. And so, for me, doing that ritual would be ideal. But, let's face it, we have busy lives. So, what I started to play around with was the photon and putting that on in the room. And, I think that that's a good compromise because the essence of that is this strong signaling that, “Hey, it's time to wake up,” and then also, “Hey, the day's winding up and it's time to switch into more of a parasympathetic.” So, your cortisol is your stress. That wakes you up, it gets you going, it allows you to get things done. At night, melatonin is what cortisol is during the day, what melatonin is at night to put us in a parasympathetic state. So, you have sympathetic during the day and you want a strong parasympathetic activation, which is darkness. And, that's why you don't want a lot of bad light in your house. I don't use the can lights. I have lamps with red lights in them. I have a red rope light. I think I got you on that deal as well. Looks like a submarine in my house and it's so calming. And, when you start doing this, you start to go to other places like you're at a friend's house, you're like, “How are you dealing?” This is crazy. I'm so activated.

So, I think after the age of 40, I think everybody should really seriously considering supplementing with melatonin, not just for the sleep, but for that powerful activation of the parasympathetic nervous system because we're also sympathetically activated. This is one of the primary causes of a lot of diseases right now because it's a stressor that we just haven't adapted to. I mean, we're just too busy, there's too many toxins, our guts aren't healthy, you just go down the road, EMF, light pollution. The best thing I would recommend is when you wake up, one of the easiest things to do is go out and sun gaze, look at the sun directly. And, that's going to be a really powerful. And then, you can start getting into using the photon in the morning, in the afternoon, or at sunset. And, that can be really helpful maybe supplementing with some melatonin. Those would be my suggestions.

Ben:  Yeah, I would agree with everything. Well, I was actually going to mention before John did the idea of your light environment and the concept of light pollution and everybody [00:47:46] _____ right now and tell me that that looks just like sunlight. Not really, right? Stare at it for a couple seconds, go ahead. Tell me what you're retina doing. Did it kind of start to jam a little bit? At low-level flicker? Even if you're not looking at it, you're bathed in that in many lighting environments, that overhead fluorescent lighting. How many of you in here actually know what lighting is in the cans in your home? Yeah, a few people, maybe 20%.

Alright, so basically, you need to go through your house and it needs to be either incandescent, preferably red incandescent in areas of the home where you're sleeping although Biden, bless his heart, he's now trying to outlaw incandescent. I think start here in a few months. So, stock up on your bulbs. The main reason is that they're energy hogs, but I think it's worth the circadian rhythmicity, the trade-off for a little bit extra money you'll spend on your energy bill.

Halogen is also really good as are some of the newer forms low flicker OLED lighting, whether that'd be your computer monitor like BenQ or EIZO, E-I-Z-O, are two good brands for computer monitors. Apps like iOS on the actual computer itself and then basically going through all your sleeping areas preferably master bedroom, master bathroom, kids sleeping areas, et cetera to place everything with a real nice soft red light or amber light. And then, in all the other areas of the house, incandescent, if you can do it, or halogen or OLED preferably with no dimmer switches because the dimmer switches kick off a lot of EMF.

So, a lot of people would be healthier and they would sleep better if they just did a lighting audit of their home. It'll take you one Saturday afternoon to do. And then, you've got a really good setup for the rest of your life.

Male Speaker:  That's good. So, one of the questions was about oral hygiene. And, John, I'd like to kick that over to you.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. So, we talked a lot about that and it's kind of on and off throughout the day. And, you mentioned about how important that was with some of your fillings and root canals. And, it's really such an important part of health and healing. I have this idea of taking care of your doorways. So, Ganesh is the Hindu Lord of doorways or new beginnings, so I call it the Ganesh protocol. And so, this is basically taking care of your nasal, your oral, and your colon. These are the three primary doorways that create inflammation in the body. So, what happens is you have microbial growth that release something called endotoxins. And, these endotoxins are incredibly inflammatory. You could almost point to just about every disease and have some connection with this influx of endotoxins. We don't really talk much about sinus hygiene. And, people talk about brushing your teeth and flossing, blah, blah, blah. But, who's talking about nasal hygiene? So, that's why I think using a neti pot, I formulated something called GlutaStat and we have it where it's in a mist. And, I recommend a 30-day sinus protocol when I first start working with people. And, they'll use this mist four times a day.

We actually test people for something called MARCoNS. We find it on 70% of the patients we test. It's a really nasty infection. Probably a lot of you here have it and just don't know but it's hard to get rid of. So, you got to do something somewhat intense for 30 days. We have the 30-day sinus protocol that we can make available to everybody. Well, in fact, we'll email it to you as a follow-up and we can also attach it with the podcast. And so, after you do that 30-day sinus protocol, you got to do something to kind of do a daily practice where you do it once a day. You keep it in your car. 

And then, for oral, I'm going to bring a friend up in a second here that can talk a little bit more about it. But, what I have is this essential oil blend called Boca Zen. And, I have people put it in their mouth, move it all around their gums and then take a toothpick and kind of push it between all of the teeth. And then, obviously, for the gut, you have to look at your microbiome. I think one of the best ways to address that is with the probios and yogurt recipe. And, we'll also make that available to everybody and make sure that that's in the shownotes.

John, would you come up? John Augspurger, he's one of the top biological dentists in the country. He's got a 20,000-square-foot facility. I thought mine was pretty big at 15,000 and has a similar set up here where they have cooking classes and they have events and anyway.

John Augspurger:  Chef in a garden. Food is our model. Yeah, so my wife, Holly, and I were from Denver. We have the Human Universal Health Institute in Denver, Colorado. It's huhinstitute.com, I am biodentist.com. I've been a biological dentist over 30 years now. I became a dentist because of my dad. He was an orthodontist, so I started out as a lab technician and became a dentist, realized that I am nothing but an insurance-driven tooth mechanic. To me, it seemed like earlier in my career that it was all about the repair, it is not about the disease. So, choose your dentist wisely.

So, where I'm at right now is I'm training doctors and dentists and healthcare professionals to see the mouth in a way that is in a coherent way with the rest of the body. The question is about oral hygiene. So, I'll say this, the one thing about oral hygiene. When you go to the hygienist, get your teeth clean, what I call that is removing the evidence. Okay? So, if you're having biofilm build up in your mouth and you're going to get that all scraped off over and over and over again, and for some of us, it comes back a lot faster than others. And, that is because the body is in an acid state. Acidity acidemia is going to have a calcification effect where if you have tartar buildup on your teeth or whatever the other calcification diseases in the body, cataracts, gallstones, kidney stones, breast cancer, the list goes on. 

So, when I see a patient that's got all of this inflammation in the mouth and all these biofilms, what it's about is really getting the body and harmony with the mouth and getting the conditions right, okay? Because if the conditions aren't right, say that whatever is creating inflammation–inflammation is an acid-producing event. So, you're going to have dental disease if you have inflammation in the body. It becomes this vicious cycle because then if you go to the tooth mechanic and you get metal in your mouth, you get the dissimilar metals creating the battery effects. That's what a dissimilar metals in a wet acid environment. That's battery. Okay. And then, we had to talk about the root canals.

Male Speaker:  [00:54:32] _____.

John Augspurger:  So, this is a patient of ours on the cover. I'm Tom Levy's dentist, I've been working with Tom for about 25 years. I was one of the 12 dentists that did the research on root canals. I used to work for a guy named Hal Huggins. Anyway, long, long story, I got involved in biological dentistry a really, really long time ago because I really felt like I noticed I was harming patients because I would do something routine to one patient and get great results like a filling and then I do exact same procedure for somebody else and they'd have pain. Okay. So, what's the difference? The conditions in the patient's body.

So, that was the first thing that woke me up as a dentist that I just realized that it's incentivized disease care, it's not healthcare. Let's stop calling it healthcare, it's disease care. So, to get the conditions right in the body, it's really boils down to the gut and the gut the gap junctions, okay, and the leaky mouth, leaky brain, leaky gut, leaky sinuses, leaky tonsils, leaky teeth, okay. So, it's leaky everything. We developed a protocol. 

My wife and I trained in Switzerland. We found a private health care system in Switzerland where it's all biological medicine and it's really about getting the biological conditions right in the body while we're doing the process of getting the hostage situation out of the mouth with dead teeth. When I became a naturopath, I did my thesis on how to keep teeth alive. And, that's a conversation. Tooth is the only body part that can't swell. Alright, so the swelling is a tool the body uses. Just like pain, just like fever, these are tools, okay, and these need to be upregulated and they need to be steered instead of suppressed. Okay. 

So, that's why I'm training dentists and doctors right now to really understand what it is we're doing for our patients and then working with doctors that are biologically minded to have a protocol to work with a patient as we go through a septic experience taking the death out like pulling root canal teeth and a thing called jaw bone cavitations, which is a whole another conversation about where you get your wisdom teeth pulled. It's a stagnation disease that is in the jaw bone. And, it's a really, really, really big deal, okay. And, if you've had teeth pulled and not had it properly taken out, like if you had a tooth pulled and they had an open hole, well, that's kind of a gunshot wound. That's a hole in the depth of the bone marrow. 

So, it's really what does the body do and what can we do as surgeons, as biological dentists do when we do surgery in jaw bones and we go to that level and we get in there and we're knocking all the biofilm that's out of the gangrene that's down inside the jawbones, how do we protect our patients through this so they don't have–our patients really just don't have pain and very little swelling and the patients that's well are the ones that really have more work to do on the excretion pathways and things like that.

So, to make a long story short, the mouth and the body are intimately connected. And, getting the conditions right means that your mouth just really stays clean, so it's really getting to that harmonious place inside your body. So, that's a long, long conversation.

Male Speaker: Ben you want to chime in a little bit on that?

Ben:  I'm pretty sure he covered it.

Male Speaker:  Yeah, I agree.

Ben:  I guess last thing I threw is that book and stuff that John makes I usually put that in a little bit of coconut oil in the morning just squish it all over for about 10 minutes and then spit in a trash can at the sink of the toilet because it clogs stuff up. But, that's amazing for coconut oil.

John Augspurger:  Yeah, the oil pulling is really amazing. It's another ayurvedic method. Olive oil is usually typically what's–

Ben:  Yeah, way easier than burning ghee on top of [00:58:19] _____. Should we have John back up here to respond–

Male Speaker:  John, come on back up. Did you hear the question?

Ben:  Bleeding gums in the presence of COVID.

Male Speaker:  Post-COVID bleeding gums.

Ben:  COVID and bleeding gums, sounds like a fringe question for a dentist.

John Augspurger:  Leaky gut, leaky gums, leaky teeth, leaky brain, leaky everything. Yeah. So, gap junctions. So, we got to shore up the microbiome. So, the microbiome needs to be diverse, okay. And, that's why if anybody–it start going off. Stop using alcohol mouthwashes immediately. Pour them down the drain, okay. Everybody needs to understand the ozone, the molecule. Really medical devices for insufflation that you want to get to the bloodstream, but really you can buy ozone machines for 50, 60, $70 and make your own water at home, 70 bucks. So, my patients, this is something they just get, they get ozone machines. If I'm their dentist, they have ozone machine. It's required, okay. It's not an option.

So, now that's a topical approach in the mouth, you're making water, you're swishing, you're brushing with it and things like that. But, yeah, ozone is such a beautiful molecule. And then, when it's done being ozone and delivering its electron, it's oxygen, it's back to that. So, I mean, when we really think about this removing dissolving biofilms and from the topical direction, that's a very important thing, but really, it's an inside job, just like beauty, just like skin, your dental health is an inside job. 

So, bleeding gums, that's a sign. It's not normal. It's not okay for gums to bleed. And, what's driving the inflammation? I talked about the hostage situation in the mouth. So, you have to have the dead teeth removed. They're not okay. We're the only medical profession that thinks a taxidermy appointment for your tooth is a good idea to get you out of pain. It's flawed completely. And, the opioid epidemic that I think my profession started quite frankly. When you have a surgical experience with the protocol and the conditions are right and the microbiome is upregulated, you see and you go through a septic experience and get this dead crap out of your mouth, then the pain and swelling later is much, much less.

So anyway, I can talk to anybody later about that, but it's bleeding gums, that's a sign.

John Lieurance:  So, the question is there's oil pulling but also what's the principle of using colostrum as a mouth rinse, or do you have any experience with–

John Augspurger:  I'll just say using it topically I don't have experience with that, but taking it systemically, absolutely.

Ben:  Because the salivary enzymes activate a lot of the growth factors and colostrum, which makes sense because when a baby mammal is suckling off the teeth, the first thing that hits its mouth is a colostrum that helps to seal its lining the leaky gut in a young mammal. And so, when you're consuming colostrum, this is how I do it is I'll put a scoop of the colostrum in my mouth and then just hold it and swish it around for about a minute or so and then swallow. But, I'll put it in smoothies too because I make my smoothies super thick, so I'm kind of working them around my mouth anyways. You're not wasting if you put it in a smoothie because the idea is don't just put in water and chug it down, it's got to kind of hit the mouth to be fully acclimated.

Male Speaker:  The final written question is on melatonin and how much should be taken daily in what form, and is there an optimal cycle between taking it and not taking it. So, let's start with–

Ben:  Yeah, there's many you can fit into your butt at one time because John's–

John Lieurance:  How many did you get up to when you–

Ben:  A lot.

John Lieurance:  10 was the last I heard. 

Ben:  Yeah, a lot. Yeah. We don't go there. Go ahead, John.

John Lieurance:  So, rectal delivery of melatonin, I think, is the best time release. So, there's a lot of time-release products you can take but they're tiny dosages, which I don't really find the best route as well. So, higher dosage I was exposed to the work of Russel Reiter who's an MD and a PhD. And, he himself at 89 years old I think was taking 100 to 200 milligrams every night. And, I watched a YouTube video, and then shortly after I went to Frank Shallenberger's clinic and did an internship with him. And, he's prescribing 200 milligrams, sometimes 200 during the day, 200 at night, having people take it day and night, cancer, a lot of degenerative neurologic disease. And, he recommended me do that because I was still after my lime and my mold. I had a lot of word-finding. My brain just wasn't working. And so, he recommended that and it cleared it up and then some. 

So, you can take larger dosages than what is typically recommended. And, the most common argument is that it's going to shut down your own production, which is totally untrue because you don't have a negative feedback with melatonin like you do a lot of other hormones. So, there's nothing to worry about there. And then, they've done studies on toxicity. And, the word “toxic” and “melatonin” should never even be used in the same sentence because if you look at all the research, if you take my book and you go through and you pull up some of those articles, what you'll see is the researchers at the end almost all of them say there seems to be no toxicity here, we should do more research. And, they state all these benefits, it seems to help everything from cancer, to gut, to infection, to healing skin, mental emotional hormone issues. I mean, you name it, it's just incredible.

So, with the suppository, it takes about 30 to 45 minutes before it really kicks in. so, I recommend people take that a little bit before they're ready to go. We have a liposomal version and I don't know if there's any other versions in high-dose liposomal available besides SandMan, but that seems to kick in quicker. And, you can take that even 20 minutes before you want to go to bed. 

Sometimes people have an effect where they wake up and they're really groggy and they kind of have that melatonin hangover. You might be a slow metabolizer. You're also going to metabolize caffeine slower, so you're going to know if that's you. So, you might want to take it at dinner time because if you've got light in your eyes and you take melatonin, you're not going to get tired because that melatonin within the pineal gets activated with darkness. So, you can be fine. And, that's why 80% of the population can literally take melatonin during the day. And, that's why if there's more significant types of issues that we want to deal with patients, we'll actually dose them day and night. And, these people do really well during the day. So, you take it a little bit earlier. And, the other thing is when you wake up, go out and look at the sun. Get sunlight in your eyes, get a photon, use a photon, do something you can get a blue light. They sell blue lights. If it's really rainy, you can turn the blue light on. So, I know Ben uses it when he travels, so he pulses it when he has more stress. So, melatonin is the ultimate stress-resilient molecule.

So, I mean, how are you more under stress than when you're traveling? You've got the plane, you're stressing, am I going to make the flight? TSA. You have some issues with TSA that you get snowed in. Are you going to make it?

Ben:  Yeah. So, I mean, in brief, what I'll do is when I'm at home in my own zone, I try not to be attached to much at all. And, once I've recovered from travel, I don't really use melatonin when I'm at home unless I've been exposed to a lot of bright light at night. Occasionally our family might watch a TV show or something in the evenings. I happen once a month and even though I wear blue light-blocking glasses, I'll sometimes take melatonin after that. But generally, what I do is when I'm traveling and I get to where I'm going, I actually take two of the SandMan suppositories the first day when I happen to be outside of my time zone. Oh, what's that come out to like–

John Lieurance:  Well, the SandMan's 200 and the Super SandMan is 400.

Ben:  400 milligrams or so. I just take it about 30 to 40 minutes prior to bed. And then, the next night, I'll typically do that again. And then, the third night, I'll typically just do one. And then, if I'm having any trouble sleeping on subsequent evenings, I'll cut that in half. When I get back home, I'll do two the first time I get back home. And then, after that, the only other thing I keep on hand is some of the oral SandMan that John makes. So, I'll kind of like peek it when I travel and then come down, taper off the dosage and peek it again when I travel. I mean it works fantastically for me. And honestly, I can stop using a cold turkey and I'm fine. But, it just takes me like my sleep latency is a little bit longer. And so, I prefer to just use it to support travel. And then, when I'm at home and I'm back into my normal circadian rhythmicity, I taper off it and that's my protocol.

John Lieurance:  Yeah. Well, one other way to use it just like we talked about with the methylene blue is if you're coming down with something or you have an infection, there's a huge body of research showing how melatonin basically–we talked about that mitochondrial shift, so the cytokine or the inflammation from an infection is going to shut down your mitochondria within your immune cells. So, you're not fighting that battle as robustly as you could. So, what supplementing with melatonin has shown to do is to turn that energy from the anaerobic back into the aerobic glycolysis within the mitochondria and you get this 90% boost back with your immune. 

So, anytime you have an infection might be a great time to look at doing higher doses of melatonin. So, we're talking about extra pineal. This conversation is not necessarily just for circadian rhythm. Smaller doses might be fine for that. They have it like done research on really looking at the full spectrum of dosing and how it might relate to circadian rhythm versus all these phenomenon that we're talking about with extra pineal melatonin. But, it is something that could be safe to do long term. I've probably been taking very high doses of melatonin four or five years now. And, I can stop taking it for a few days or a week and I still find my Oura Ring scores are still high. I don't fall off a cliff. So, I can tell you personally I've been my own guinea pig and the research seems to support the conclusion.

Male Speaker:  Yeah. Thank you all for this. We're out of time for this session.

Ben:  More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

 

From the energy of the earth to the sustaining breath of air, from the heat of fire to the nourishing force of water…

…the four elements are regarded as cornerstones that form the basis of different understandings, from religious traditions to philosophical theories.

The concept of those four fundamental forces dates back centuries to when the Ancient Greeks sought to explain the principles between visible phenomena and the natural world. The ancient belief was that living things required all four elements to sustain a healthy life. From mythical folklores spanning multiple civilizations to Hippocrates making medicinal use of environmental elements like the earth's dirt or sunlight, the elements have been foundational to theories of health and healing.

Last month, I had the pleasure of joining my friend Dr. John Lieurance for a full-day event in Sarasota, Florida for an event centered around the four elements called Elements of Vitality. The event gave participants the chance to hear from and connect with renowned professionals in the medical field, with presentations and breakout groups throughout the day.

Dr. Lieurance is a naturopathic physician, chiropractic neurologist, and all-around expert in medical biohacking who has been in private practice in Florida for 25 years. He's the chief scientific advisor of MitoZen Scientific and heads up Advanced Rejuvenation,  a multi-disciplinary clinic focused on treating chronic diseases, regenerative medicine, functional neurology, functional medicine, and stem cell research. He is also the founder of Out of Box Doc, an alternative and regenerative medical center that treats injuries and diseases.

Suffering from chronic Lyme and mold illness himself for many years, John has spent most of his career focused on finding solutions for hearing loss, balance disorders, tinnitus, degenerative neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's, autoimmune disease, chronic Lyme, CIRS, and mold illness, he has seen the same success and ability to recover and regain a normal life—free from the chronic inflammation and pain associated with those disorders—in himself and his patients.

A regular guest on my podcast, John has been on the following episodes:

He's also contributed the following articles:

The fantastic day at Elements of Vitality concluded with a Q&A Panel, during which I addressed a wide variety of element-related topics. That panel, with John as a panelist, is what you are about to hear (and if you tune in, you'll even get to hear John and I sing). Enjoy!

In this special episode, you'll discover:

-Elements of Vitality Panel Q&A…05:56

-How are VSELs administered for the hearing loss treatment…07:43

-Do you need eye protection when using near-infrared light?…13:03

  • VSEL treatment – laser right into the eye
  • Vielight Neuro Duo
  • In general, LED lights are safe
    • Lasers are used in treating glaucoma

-Methylene blue – how much daily, cycle on and off, in what form…16:00

  • Lumetol Blue (use code BEN to save 5%)
  • Dosage is 0.5 up to 4 mg per kg of body weight
  • Cycle is typically 10 days on, 3 days off
    • Avoid build-up in the mitochondria
  • Benefits of Methylene blue (use code BEN to save 5%)
    • Focus, attention, happiness, optimism
  • Mops up nitric oxide – excess nitric oxide is not good
  • Overuse can lead to cleaning up the biomes too much
    • Healthy hygiene hypothesis
  • Benefits of methylene blue with melanin and red light
  • Melanin precursors that work well with methylene blue and red light
  • Different forms of methylene blue

-From a physical medicine and rehab perspective, what are the top 3 devices for acute pain relief and healing?…28:23

-How to activate pathways to balance circadian rhythm?…40:10

  • Sunlight
  • Agnihotra ayurvedic ritual
  • Yoga rituals
  • Circadian rhythm is driven hormonally
  • Reduce stress to become more resilient
    • Get healthier to become more resilient
  • Sunlight in the morning and melatonin in the evening
  • Melatonin supplementation is recommended after 40
  • Sun gazing in the morning
  • We’re exposed to light pollution
  • BenQ or Eizo computer monitors
  • Household lights should be

-Oral hygiene…51:28

  • Oral hygiene is an important part of health and healing
  • What Dr. John calls the Ganesh protocol – protecting the 3 primary doorways that create inflammation in the body
  • Microbial growths release endotoxins that are very inflammatory
  • GlutaStat is recommended for nasal hygiene to start a 30-day sinus protocol
  • Boca Zen essential oil blend
  • Dr. John tests patients for MACRoNS (Multiple Antibiotic Resistant Coagulase Negative Staphylococci)
  • 70% of patients tested have MACRoNS
  • Human Universal Health Institute – Dr. John Augspurger's 20,000 sqft facility in Denver
  • Dr. John Augspurger, founder of BioDentist
    • Seeing the mouth in a way coherent with the rest of the body
    • Acidity has a calcification effect not only in the mouth but all over the body (cataracts, gallstones, kidney stones, breast cancer, etc.)
    • Getting the body in harmony with the mouth
    • Root canals, dead teeth
  • Oil pulling

-Post-COVID bleeding gums…1:02:05

  • Gap junctions – leaky gut, leaky gums, leaky teeth, leaky brain, leaky everything
  • The microbiome needs to be diverse
  • Stop using alcohol mouthwashes
  • Ozone generator
  • Dead teeth need to be removed
  • Bleeding gums drive inflammation
  • Colostrum as a mouth rinse

-Melatonin – how much to take, cycle, form…1:06:07

  • Sandman
  • Rectal delivery is the best
  • Dr. Russel Reiter
  • Taking very high doses has no toxicity and can even be taken during the day
  • Looking at the sun or blue light
  • Melatonin for inflammation
  • Oura Ring

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Elements Of Vitality

– Podcasts And Articles:

– Other Resources:

Episode sponsors:

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Levels: If you want to better understand how food affects your health by trying continuous glucose monitor, go to levels.link/Ben to learn more. They also have a really well-researched, in-depth blog that I recommend checking out if you’re just looking to learn more about topics like metabolic health, longevity, and nutrition.

 

Kion Aminos: Aminos are building blocks for muscle recovery, reduced cravings, better cognition, immunity, and more. Go to getkion.com/ben to receive 20% off on monthly deliveries and 10% on one-time purchases.

 

Six Senses Event: Join me in this beautiful 19th-century wine estate in Portugal and enjoy treatments that go beyond the ordinary in Six Senses Spa. Ten treatment rooms and an indoor pool with chromotherapy and an underwater sound system offer a unique and layered wellness experience. Try delicious food made with local sensitivity and global sensibility. Head over to  bengreenfieldlife.com/sixsenses and claim your spot today.

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