August 17, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/anatara/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:23] Who is Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz?

[00:04:08] What is EBOO device?

[00:15:34] Laboratory testing

[00:29:56] What are hormetic stressors?

[00:36:32] The influence of genetics on longevity

[00:43:33] The continuation of Ben’s blood oxygenation and ozonation

[00:50:35] What is Weber laser?

[00:52:52] Dr. Ahvie’s background

[01:07:04] Early detection of cancer

[01:13:18] End of Podcast

[01:13:50] Legal Disclaimer

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

Ahvie: Light energy or photo modulation as it's called is something that's underserved. I mean, the public doesn't know very much about it. The device on your left is called the Weber Laser, and it's from north of Frankfurt in Germany.

Ben:  It's quite the machine.

Ahvie:  And, it's probably the best-studied laser device. And, there's two or three different components to it. You have the different frequencies typically between 500 and 1,000 nanometers. You have red, blue, green, yellow, UV light, and infrared. So, you'll get all of those in what we call a rainbow, a rainbow IV session. It photomodulates, so it interacts with the yellow and the vitamin C and the magnesium and the drips. So, it activates the energy drip more.

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

Alright, folks. This is a pretty epic show. I've been aware of some time for this hot spot down in the Bay Area right in downtown San Francisco called Anatara Medicine. As a matter of fact, I was there four years ago. I recorded this intriguing podcast with Dr. Ahvie Herskovitz there. I met him at a longevity conference called A4M in Vegas. A few months later, wound up at his facility and he has this crazy east-meets-west medical approach. He did, the last time I was there, a constitutional Chinese-based analysis of my body type and metabolic type and set up this whole diet and did a live blood cell analysis and a bunch of testing using some interesting inflammatory markers a lot of doctors aren't doing. And, it was so interesting and I will link to that original podcast in the shownotes, by the way, which are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara, A-N-A-T-A-R-A, his clinic Anatara Medicine.

Anyways, it was so interesting I found myself back there at his facility a few weeks ago because he's been up to a lot since that original episode in the realm of integrative and functional medicine. We got into a ton of stuff while I was there including extracorporeal blood oxygenation, ozonation, plasma filtration, detoxification, metal chelation, some details on some very early cancer detection protocols via liquid biopsies, acupuncture and qigong style treatments, stem cells, just covered a host of topics on this show. So, it's super interesting and we had a videographer there the whole time. So, if you want to see the visuals, definitely check out the video on YouTube on the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara and a whole lot more.

Ahvie works with some of the Bay Area's top biohackers and celebrities and actors and longevity enthusiasts and patients from all over the world. People flower the scene from China looking for eradication of issues like mold and spike protein and fungus and viral particles. We even had a chance to bring in via Zoom, as a part of this podcast, Dr. Shawn Tierney to talk about nerve hydro dissection for stress and vagal nerve resets. It's some really interesting things regarding tweaking your nervous system. And, even getting instant elimination of headaches and colds and other issues via nerve hydro dissection protocols, which I haven't talked about in as much detail as you're going to hear him talk about on today's show.

So yeah, this one's a doozy. So, strap yourself in, get ready for wild ride, check out the video version if you can because there's a lot of visuals on this one. And again, it's all going to be over at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara, A-N-A-T-A-R-A. Alright, let's do this.

Man, it's been, I think, four maybe almost five years since I've stepped foot into the beautiful Anatara Medicine up here.

Ahvie:  That's right.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. And, every time I walk in here, it seems right off the bat, I get hooked up to all these crazy tools. And, I got a tube in one arm, I got a tube in the other arm. You've already drawn a bunch of my blood, Ahvie, so my first question for you here is, what the heck is going on here? I've got blood coming out both arms and this weird machine off to my left. Can you explain this to people?

Ahvie:  Well, this is called the EBOO device, E-B-O-O, extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation.

Ben:  Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  Okay. One of those tubes is going out from you into the machine itself. 

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  The machine has two components. One component is where it receives the ozone and the other component after it's ozonated, it goes upstream into that filter that's off to the left, off to your left. That filter is controversial in the sense that if you ask AI to talk about EBOO, it only talks about the ozone component.

Ben:  You mean, literally if you go to GPT and inquire with EBOO–

Ahvie:  4.0 GPT and you ask it to talk about EBOO, it only talks about the positive effects of ozone.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  That's because there haven't been published studies as to what's found in the filter. So, there's a debate going on the community. Is it filtering anything? So, I can tell everyone here now that there are credible studies that we've reviewed that show in the filter when you study the filter after a treatment, you find a variety of things that you don't want in your body. You find bacteria, viruses, fungi, mold, and heavy metals. 

Ben:  Do you do that with every procedure with the filter or is this just something that researchers will do occasionally to see if the filter is actually picking anything up?

Ahvie:  Well, we didn't do the testing. The testing is done by third-party sophisticated groups.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  But, we know after looking at all the data and we presented the data at a course that I ran about a year or so ago before the ACAM meetings and were very impressive data. So, they were also trying to find clues as to whether you could find the spike protein because it was the pandemic time.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  That couldn't be documented.

Ben:  What's an ACAM meeting?

Ahvie:  ACAM is the president of the oldest integrative society in the United States. It's going to celebrate its 50th anniversary in our next meeting in the spring of 2024. It's the group that brought chelation therapy to the United States.

Ben:  You mean, for heavy metals and toxins and things like that?

Ahvie:  So, this is the group that brought it to the forefront. It's the group that will bring it again to the forefront because the second chelation study will soon be published by the end of this year or Q1 of 2024. So, when we have our meetings which draw very solid functional medicine and integrative medicine folks, mold experts, experts in ozone, experts across the spectrum of all chronic diseases, we also have another focal meeting, focused meeting and we focus this meeting on EBOO.

Ben:  What's ACAM stand for?

Ahvie:  American College for the Advancement of Medicine.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, got it. So, this controversial filter that the blood goes through that's not even theoretically but it sounds based on research, filtering out bacteria, viruses, fungi, possibly mold, spike protein, et cetera.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay. And then, what happens to the blood after it goes through the filter?

Ahvie:  Well, then it returns back to you. So, you can see if the camera could focus on it or in the b-roll–

Ben:  By the way, if you if you guys are listening and not watching, I'll put the video at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara, A-N-A-T-A-R-A. So, go to BenGreenfieldLife/Anatara because it's actually a pretty funky looking machine and a very, very slightly violent-looking protocol because there's blood in a lot of tubes. But, the machine that you were illustrating here obvious off to my left, that's where the blood is getting ozonated and then it goes to the filter.

Ahvie:  The ozonation is occurring below.

Ben:  After it passes through the filter. That's when it gets ozonated.

Ahvie:  No, before the filter.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  Before the filter.

Ben:  Alright, got you.

Ahvie:  Before the ozonation, the blood is darker red because it's venous blood.

Ben:  I see that, yeah.

Ahvie:  After it's ozonated and the O3 minus, which is what ozone is, binds to all the red cells and white cells in the blood. It turns the blood brighter red because it's oxygenated.

Ben:  Can you tell by the color of the blood coming out of somebody when you first hook them up to this thing whether or not they're healthy or whether you be concerned?

Ahvie:  There are ranges of redness.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  And, if you can't respond to ozone, then you're very way off the curve.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  So, at the same time, you cannot tell a person's health from the color of their venous blood. So, the darker your venous blood, it can mean that you're extracting more oxygen in the arterial sector. You're just extracting more and you can have darker blood. It doesn't mean anything negative.

Ben:  Why do they call it blood oxygenation and ozonation? What's the oxygen component?

Ahvie: Oh, it's just the ozonation produces oxygen.

Ben:  Okay, alright. So, both of those effects are happening in response to the ozone. The ozone's cleaning and oxygenating at the same time.

Ahvie:  Well, ozone is a pro-oxidant as you know. It happens in seconds or milliseconds and then induces an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, vasodilatory, membrane stabilizing effect on the whole body that it comes in contact with.

Ben:  And, does the level of ozone matter? Do you select that carefully in terms of how much ozone you're exposing the blood to?

Ahvie:  Yeah. So, when we first started using these devices, this is the third one, we bought our first device and that was calibrated at a higher level of ozone and there are other mechanical issues with the device. And, that device had what I consider serious complications. So, we analyzed it, we understood what they were and we realized that it was not for us. So then, we went to the Malaysian group that really founded EBOO therapy about 25, 30 years ago.

Ben:  In the country of Malaysia?

Ahvie:  The country of Malaysia is the epicenter of EBOO technology. 

Ben:  It's kind of random.

Ahvie:  Yeah. But, it may be an Australian doctor that moved there.

Ben:  Oh, I got you. Okay.

Ahvie:  But, they have the most experience in the world and we're catching up now because certainly more than a few dozen centers that are using it. And so, these devices, this is the second iteration of that device, are exceptionally safe, but they're much lower in continuous ozone concentrations. So, when you're using a single–last time you were here four and a half years ago, you had a 10 pass. You had 10, 200– 

Ben: Yeah, I remember that. That's different than this.

Ahvie:  200 cc amounts of blood ozonated not continuously. It was sucked into the bowl, we then ozonate it, and then give it back to you 10 times.

Ben:  Ten times that go with 10 packs.

Ahvie:  So, that's a certain concentration and we used the highest concentration, the highest gamma, so to speak, and that's the way we measure the concentration. So, we use 70 gamma on 200 cc. You come up with a calculation. The amount of ozone in this is smaller but the effect is larger because it's continuous.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  It's a continuous flow. It's continuously probably flowing two-thirds of your blood volume.

Ben:  Now, just in case a doctor's listening to this and they're interested in this protocol for the clinic, what's the name of the machine for Malaysia or the brand? Are you allowed to say?

Ahvie:  No. I know what it is, but we'll [00:13:06] _____–

Ben:  Just the Malaysian one. Just google Malaysian EBOO and I'm sure you'll find it. It's going to be the safe way to go–

Ahvie:  The art is in the tubing and in the filter, the choosing of the tubing–

Ben:  What do you mean?

Ahvie:  Because having a smooth treatment as you're having right now is a function of flow, and the flow has to be proper and consistent even though placement of the vein is not consistent and your vein valves are not consistent and eventually coagulation isn't consistent. So, we have a certain level of modification that's built into the tubing size and then more importantly into the filter. The filter itself has to be ozone resistant, can't be damaged by ozone. So, you have to be cautious as to the name of the filter.

Ben:  How big of an issue is that in this whole IV medical treatment industry where people are cowboying off all over the place in random clinics and getting these type of IVs done in terms of the type of things that might wind up in the blood from the tubing or from the machining? Is that an issue you think with microplastics and things like that? I've always wondered?

Ahvie: Yes, it clearly is. But, with ozone in particular, if it's not ozone resistant, you will deliver byproducts of the tubing into the body.

Ben:  Interesting. Now, what's the bucket on the floor over here?

Ahvie:  That's the effluent. And, the effluent is supposed to be fairly clear and it's considered to be a byproduct. And, when you test the byproducts, you have more concentration of heavy metals.

Ben:  So, that bucket on the floor is different than the filter, it's catching something different?

Ahvie:  Yes. It's catching what's gone through the filter.

Ben:  And, that's called the affluent.

Ahvie:  Effluent, effluent with an E.

Ben:  And, what kind of stuff would you find in the effluent?

Ahvie:  You'd find the similar types of things that are in the filter except the filter is made up of millions of microfilaments. And, when you cut those microfilaments and you test them, you're much more likely to find higher concentrations.

Ben:  So, you tested my blood before we started this procedure.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Would you be able to tell from that test you did on my blood whether I've got bacteria and yeast or viruses or things that this ozone would be treating or would it make more sense to take that effluent and send it off to a lab and test that?

Ahvie:  Well, what we did do, just the audience hasn't seen it, we did take a little tiny bit of your blood, and we–

Ben:  You're welcome.

Ahvie:  We did a dark field microscopy to look at the shape of your red cells and so on; they're quite healthy as I told you. But, what's going on in the plasma, is there a biofilm in the plasma, is there excess fibrinogen in the plasma, is there extra things that will clog the microcirculation up? And, yours was pristine as I told you.

Ben:  Do you do that before all of your ozone treatments?

Ahvie:  Before any of the EBOO treatments, yes.

Ben:  And, what happens afterwards? You ever do a live blood cell analysis after?

Ahvie:  That's how we do them.

Ben:  Does it look different?

Ahvie:  We show them a massive difference.

Ben:  Really?

Ahvie:  Yeah.

Ben:  Interesting. So, can you [00:16:44] _____ the blood cell analysis because I've heard some people say, “Oh, it's inaccurate” or “That's dumb that you're trying to look at blood cells on a slide,” like do you ever hear stuff like that?

Ahvie:  Well, I can tell you as a formerly trained pathologist that that's very naive kind of statement to make. There's an enormous amount of expertise that goes into reading dark field microscopy and you can make a myriad of different diagnoses. But, looking at the shape of red cells is exactly what the machines do every day at Labcorp a million times.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  But, sometimes you have to have an overlay of someone looking at it themselves.

Ben:  And, why do they call it “dark field”?

Ahvie:  Because it's not using stains and the light sources is indirect, so if you're looking at it in a way where you can best visualize the cells and the plasma.

Ben:  What else did you test when you took my blood?

Ahvie:  Well, there's two things, two major categories. One is something that you've had before, which was I knew you from this is four or five years ago, super, super healthy guy.

Ben:  Yeah. And, I'll link to that initial podcast we did.

Ahvie:  And biohacking guy, so I surmised that you had no evidence of acute and the standard inflammatory markers, the C-reactive protein and so on. I surmise that.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, and probably wasn't smart.

Ahvie:  If you're interested in longevity, you have to deal with the chronic immune system, which is not measured by the C-reactive protein. So, we go to the complement cascade, that's complement with an E, and the best measure for chronic disorders like biotoxins, like mold, Lyme, viruses, occult tooth infections, those things that are not evident to a person until it's late; well, your C4a level, which is the complement marker that we use most frequently.

Ben:  For chronic inflammation.

Ahvie:  Yeah. We also use C3a, but C4a is the most common one; came up, I think it was four or five times elevated. So, it suggested that you may be exposed from mold from your travels. We know you don't have mold in your home but you probably capture mold in– 

Ben:  Notoriously found in Airbnbs and hotels and front load washers and all sorts of things people experience on a regular basis. But, the blood test that you did for these inflammatory markers, you'll often hear people say, well, CRP might be elevated if you exercise hard the day before or something like that.

Ahvie:  No.

Ben:  So, if I'd have lifted weights or ran, would that also sufficiently elevate those?

Ahvie:  No, they would and they can. There's no way to disprove it. But, the other markers that get to the other thing, so you look at other markers for oxidative stress. That's not good. So, you look at ferritin, which is a classical iron marker, but when it rises in a normal man or woman, it's really unoxidized iron, which is rust. You're producing rust in your body–

Ben:  Like rusting your body from the inside out if your ferritin levels are too high.

Ahvie:  That's correct.

Ben:  Which can be concerning because there's a lot of–I know especially women out there who are taking both ferritin and iron, and from what I understand if there's things like an imbalanced copper ratio, not a lot of that is winding up in the cells, you can develop an induced hemochromatosis from something like supplementation.

Ahvie: So, most of our patients that have elevated ferritin don't have hemochromatosis. They have oxidative stress that's out of control. And then, you could also get some indirect information from using oxidized LDL. You could say if I'm oxidizing my iron, maybe I'm oxidizing my lipids also.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So then, you say you put the package together and you say, well, maybe I'm not really repairing well at night, I'm not detoxing properly at night and you could measure homocysteine levels and say, do I have enough magnesium? Do I have enough B vitamins to do my appropriate level of methylation at night? And, if I don't, you're more likely to be oxidatively challenged. And then, most folks are not walking around with antioxidants that are sufficient to handle their oxidative load. So, particularly your group, they may be pushing themselves and using NAD and using other things that produce more energy. The question is, when you produce more energy, you're also producing more reactive oxygen species and do you have enough of a buffer to capture those and buffer them in your body?

So, ozone for example, the few people that feel fatigued after ozone treatment because ozone is exceptionally safe, let's make that crystal clear here. We've done it tens and tens of thousands of cases here over the last 12 years. But, if you feel fatigued afterwards, that means that that oxidative burst was too much to be handled by your antioxidants stores at that moment.

Ben:  So, would it be a good idea based on that before you use ozone to take antioxidants?

Ahvie:  Well, no. To a certain extent, you want the oxidative burst to be unencumbered, but then–

Ben:  Yeah, I was going to say because with exercise if you take antioxidant it'll blunt some of the beneficial hermetic response.

Ahvie:  The hormesis is the one I want to get into a lot more in detail with you today, but you're right. So, you don't want to do that but at the same time, you want to give an antioxidant. It's sort of counterintuitive, you say, I have a pro-oxidant and then why would I give an antioxidant? Well, because the way it manifests the majority of its beneficial effects is by activating our own antioxidant systems. So, you give it a little bit more and typically we give glutathione intravenously and people just feel great afterwards.

Ben:  So, theoretically you'd get the ozone, you would possibly get a clue based on that and even verifiable data from the blood testing that you are in a pro-oxidative state and might have a higher antioxidant requirement. But, rather than using antioxidants before an oxidative event like ozone, you would then just know that you need to weave those into your daily routine on a more regular basis.

Ahvie:  Right. But, let me tell you the poor man's test for one of my antioxidant stories.

Ben:  Alright.

Ahvie:  It's an old story and we take one of the best vitamin C preparations as a powder is a few. In the office, we use PERQUE, P-E-R-Q-U-E. He's got a very nice powder. It's 3 grams per teaspoon.

Ben:  Is this a whole foods vitamin C type of source?

Ahvie:  Yeah. Well, nothing is whole food-based. This is a sodium ascorbate.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  But, it's as good as it gets. It's not vitamin C. It's not eating an orange. I'm sorry. But, to get the high level, so you take 3 grams one teaspoon, put in water and drink it. Twenty minutes later, another 3 grams. Twenty minutes later, another 3 grams.

Ben:  Why do you split it up?

Ahvie:  Well, because that's the way it's done because we don't know how much you really need. Now, when you saturate your vitamin C receptors of your body, you activate the CFTR receptor, the cystic fibrosis translocator receptor in your gut. This is the same thing that turns on when you get cholera diarrhea. It's like a water faucet.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So, you have the sudden urge to run to the bathroom. You can't do this on the street, you have to do this at home. And then, you just poop. You have a watery diarrhea movement. And, that's the number, that's the level of grams of vitamin C that was required to meet your antioxidant load at that moment in time. So, I think–

Ben:  That is definitely the poor man's test.

Ahvie:  The prize here was won by someone who needed 120 grams. The next one was 54 grams, I mean. So, you don't– 

Ben:  That's a lot of vitamin C.

Ahvie:  That's a lot but it's a tremendous–

Ben:  And, if they have to take that much vitamin C–

Ahvie:  Yeah. You can't take that much as you want to poop all the time.

Ben:  That would indicate that they were in a state of oxidation, of inflammation.

Ahvie:  These folks both had serious autoimmune disorders.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  But, the lesson was 1 gram of emergency is not going to help you.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  You have to layer in glutathione, resveratrol, quercetin, alpha lipoic acid. So, that's a rare case. For those people in your audience in particular, in my patients, I say we need pro-oxidation. It's mandatory for generation of ATP. And, for wound repair in particular, we need pro-inflammatory cytokines to walk around and do their job. We don't need to overdo it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So, the folks that come in with two suitcases into the office, two suitcases now, and they have about a hundred different supplements. There's a lot of overlap but let's say there's 30 or 40 different pathways of which there are six antioxidant pathways. I say that's not a coherent answer because you don't know whether you're overtreating, undertreating, you just don't know where you are.

So then, we go through a large set of laboratory data. We do a lot of labs here. All the patients will complain about that. And so, we say here are the validated biomarkers of longevity. There are a few that all of us know that there are more. You, I'm sure, have your guess as to which ones, but there's hemoglobin A1c, of course, the blood sugar side; vitamin D is probably the most significant one that's unappreciated by the society and certainly by the government.

Ben:  Right. Certainly certain atherogenic risk parameters too like triglyceride HDL ratio or apo-B.

Ahvie:  Yeah. Those have been validated, but even ferritin has been validated as a marker of oxidation. And, homocysteine has been validated for longevity because of its effect on methylation.

And then, the other thing that I always forgot to say being alkaline has been validated to increase your lifespan. So, early urine pH, the first morning pH, if it's not between 6.5 and 7.5, then you've been acidic the whole night and then you're making 25% less protein.

Ben:  So, if you use a pee strip in the morning, one of these urine alkaline strips–I found a company called I think it was Vivoo last year that tests a whole bunch of stuff on the urine and you hold it up to your phone and get analysis and it does the alkalinity as well.

Ahvie:  Okay.

Ben:  But, you want 6.5 to 6.7 if you're doing the morning alkaline.

Ahvie:  6.5 to 7.5.

Ben:  So, 6.5 to 7.5.

Ahvie:  6.5 to 7 is really perfect.

Ben:  And, above 7 or 7.5, that would indicate elevated acidity. And, a lot of people will hear that–

Ahvie:  Elevated alkalinity, acidity is down. So, if most of us– 

Ben:  I'm sorry, man, elevated alkaline, yeah.

Ahvie:  Most of us are running around between 5 and 5.5.

Ben:  What do you think about the people who will hear that and go out and buy one of these alkaline water generators and do alkaline diet and everything versus enabling the kidneys to naturally adjust the pH values?

Ahvie:  Well, I think that's a tremendous marketing coup by an industry that's running out of ways to sell water because it's neutralized immediately in the stomach. And, if you want to invest in a water system, then get to a reverse osmosis system and take out the crap in the water.

Ben:  What would you do if someone's acidic, if they are peeing in the morning and it's below 6.5?

Ahvie:  Well, I'd probably start with something as simple as giving him some water with lemon and some pinch of salt, and then you move up to apple cider vinegar.

Ben:  That'll confuse a lot of people who think lemons and apple cider vinegar are acidic because they taste kind of acidic.

Ahvie:  But, they induce an alkaline reaction for your body.

Ben:  Yeah, I was hoping you'd say that. That's what a lot of people don't realize. Technically, those are alkalizing fruits.

Ahvie:  It's like ozone. Why does the FDA think that ozone is a dangerous thing? Because they read a line and says it's pro-oxidant.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  Well, that's what happens in a milliseconds. So, as soon as you drink your lemon water or you take your other remedies, it's instantaneous. And then, the body responds to it instantaneously. So, the net effect is alkalinity.

Ben:  You said that you're a fan of hormetic stressors?

Ahvie:  Yeah. So, the concept that everyone's got to understand because you can mess up if you're just going to Google everything on your own. If you're listening to you, then you already have protection because you've done so much and so much good for the society in my opinion. That's why I first of all, I love having you over. And, next time–

Ben:  Thank you. There's a lot of grumpy people sitting in ice baths because of me, but.

Ahvie:  I know, I know, and I'll talk about that in a minute as a positive thing too but a little twist to it. But, the concept that, listen, I've been doing this for 40 plus years, okay? How did chemotherapy start? Chemotherapy started because somebody found that in the '50s, one child with leukemia responded to nitrogen mustard. Okay. And so, when that person died, the most famous oncologist ever doubled the dose on the next patient and then quadruple the dose on the next patient. So, if 1x is good, 4x must be better. That's the concept of traditional medicine per se, but the body doesn't work that way. So, the hormetic effect is this curve that's going up. And, you can have such a low dose of something that is irrelevant or such a high dose that induces negative side effects.

So, for ozone, for example, if you went to you're on now 6 gamma, right?

Female Speaker:  Now, we got 40% for all of that.

Ahvie:  Okay.

Ben:  Being the level of ozone that's pumping in my body right now.

Ahvie:  Ozone concentrate, yes, right now. So, if you went up to 12, you would already induce blood clotting and a reaction that's actually happening here but also happening in your body. You'll be producing microclots given the way it's given in this particular setting. The Europeans max out their ozone concentrations at 40, 50 gamma. And, in the U.S., we routinely use 70 and it's been safe. But, the reason they don't do it is they're more interested in hormetic effects than we are here, we're more cowboys here in the United States. But, if you look at heat, look at cold, look at caloric restriction–

Ben:  Exercise.

Ahvie:  Exercise in particular, you can do way too much. Now, when you compete nationally, period, you're a D1 athlete or you're a competitive athlete, you're doing too much.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  Yeah, that's the only way to compete–

Ben:  You're doing too much for health. I mean, that's a trade-off. It's glory versus health or career versus health when it comes to professional exercising or fitness.

Ahvie:  That's right.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So then, you may have to pay back some things later.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I mean, it's our mutual friend, Dr. David Minkoff. I mean, I certainly know that he's aware of the fact that doing hundreds of Iron Mans or however. I've done 40 some over the past. I don't know how many dozen of years. It's not necessarily the best thing for your body, but it is a pretty cool Mount Everest to climb. It's inspiring for people. And so, I think you just have to accept the fact and not fool yourself into thinking it's actually good for you. Last night at dinner, you and I were talking about how I have high calcium scan score and accumulated plaque most likely due to cardiac stress from excessive endurance exercise. And, James O'Keefe has shown that with some of his research on arterial stiffness and his whole law of diminishing returns or increased mortality with excessive exercise.

So, regarding hormetic stressors then, do you advise those and program them in your patients' protocols?

Ahvie:  Oh, yeah. So, over the last 20 years, we now know the genomics of aging and Peter Attia gets into that in detail in his good book and his longevity book and get into the pathways that are fundamental. Well, some easy interventions are fundamental sort of like it can do multiple things. So, ozone is one of those. NAD is the other classical example it can have multiple effects on energy cycle, which then also have effects on longevity.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  But, cold immersion, heat with the saunas, and exercise have global impacts.

Ben:  What was it you were going to say about cold? You said you had your twist cold test.

Ahvie:  Well, I think you probably know better than I what you think is the ideal timing of cold.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  But, I know that people are different from one another and your archetype would handle cold easier than my archetype. So, I may have a shorter duration to get–

Ben:  Are you referring to the constitutional typing?

Ahvie:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like the discussion we had last time?

Ahvie:  Right.

Ben:  And, by the way, if you want to wrap your head around that, Ahvie and I talked about constitutional typing and your diet and your lifestyle based on whether you run hot or run cold quite a bit. 

But yeah, I think you're right, I would say that there are definitely some people who get too much sympathetic stress in response to cold, too much of an adrenaline norepinephrine response and almost an over-training response to cold. But, I personally think too many people do these long 10, 20-minute ice baths.

Ahvie:  To me, that's too long.

Ben:  My protocol is frequent and short. So, I have an ice tub outside the front door of my office and I jump in that thing four or five times a day and I'm in there for 20 seconds to a minute just for these brief cold forays throughout the day. And, I don't do a lot of the long shiver-your-butt-off for 20 minutes in the cold plunge.

Ahvie:  Well, that's what I wanted to emphasize. That would be my opinion too.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. I think that every so occasionally especially for chronic pain, fibromyalgia, et cetera, that you see these polar bear swimmers out here in the San Francisco Bay and lots of stories of people who eliminate chronic pain and joint issues through longer cold soaks. But, even those, I'd see the people successfully doing those, they'll go for a cold swim once a week and everything in between are these short cold exposures. Kind of like exercise, you might have one hard workout session per week but then everything else is just kind of tune-ups. And, I think that's a much, much better way to do things, more sustainable too. Yeah.

Ahvie:  So, the question is, one in 5,000 people live to 100, okay. We now know their genetic profiles. And, more so than when I first started medicine a long time ago, we know that just like in the beginning, we always thought that the centenarians only lived in Japan, only lived in the Caucasus, and only lived in–

Ben:  Yeah, Loma Linda, Sardinia. Yeah.

Ahvie: Yeah. But, now we know there's some people living in the inner city too. And, one thing we always knew about them is that they were maybe happier, they may be socially very open and they may be eating organically, but they don't necessarily live very healthy lifestyles. Some of them smoking cigars. The oldest woman in the world was smoking a cigar every day and having alcohol every night. 

Ben:  Yeah. And, a lot of times it's not just wine, we're talking scotch, whiskey, gin.

Ahvie:  Yeah, everything. I mean, whatever made them happy, okay. It's not because they lived a unique lifestyle. So then, you say, okay, I have some genetic pathways that you probably are well-compensated for, but my most profound observation in my entire 40-plus years was when I first got out of medical school, I did a residency and chief residency in pathology. I went to Einstein in the Bronx and I was blessed by having some of the old stirs that were chief of pathology when Einstein was still alive. I used to come in once a week just for fun and they used to look around the center. And so, I showed them an aorta of a 60-year-old person who obviously passed away and it was moderately severely affected. And then, I showed them another aorta of a 104-year-old person, it looked identical, and then I didn't say anything about it. So, they analyzed it and they said, this is classical, classical. I said, but this one is from 104-year-old. It looks identical to the 60-year-old. So, they said, let's have some fun with it, let's look at the histochemistry, let's look at the cell types, let's look at it under electron microscope, and let's do that. Let's have a fun time with this because we want to know if they're completely the same or not or are the cell types different and so on, other pathways different.

And, after months of all the data points coming together, they're identical. One of the people develops the full-on bore thing that ultimately kills them at days of 60. The other one has the full-on disease 40 years later but it's the same exact pathology, the same pathways just delayed 30, 40 euros. So, to me, it opened my brain to this concept that if we could understand that gap, that 40-year gap, 30-year gap, we'd be able to have the rest of us, the rest of the 4,999 of us who are unfortunate enough to have these pathways, upfront and center. And, with the genomics today, it's not difficult to organize that. We'd be able to make a real serious dent in our lifespan because the average centenarian doesn't really have any serious medical problems until the age of 93. Whereas, the average person passing away in the late 70s is already sick in their 60s.

Ben:  That's interesting. Do you actually do that kind of testing on your patients? Do you do genomics testing to see what someone's risk is?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  And, there's actual markers that you can pull up that literally translate to increased lifespan despite lifestyle.

Ahvie:  Right. So, we know what they are, they deal with senescence. They deal with insulin sensing, with glucose metabolism, cell repair mechanisms. And, are you pro-inflammatory in your genomics? Do you tend to be on the pro-inflammatory side? Do you have mutations of TNF-alpha, IL-6, IL-1 receptor? Are you in that direction or not? Are you protected against autoimmunity versus not?

Ben:  So, this is not a single mode a single or a single gene that you're looking at. And so, it's a cluster of genetic factors that would dictate that the fewer of them that you present, the more equipped you likely are for lifespan.

Ahvie: Because, for example, let's say you have multiple, there are multiple detoxification pathways, but our epigenome is now bombarded with toxicants. It was just completely bombarded. So, if you have the normal amount and you may have a little SNP in the glutathione pathways, for example, so you don't have your full expression of your master antioxidant and detoxificant, then you're going to run to trouble faster.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  Now, everybody's got heavy metals, everybody does. Everyone has toxicificants, pesticides. I mean, if you want to measure it, you can. It doesn't help me that much in the treatment because we use the heavy metals as the most tested and the most true types of data points for the last 50 years. If you get rid of them, you will feel better. You will have less coronary disease. You'll have less dementia when you get rid of them.

Ben:  And, you from a heavy metal standpoint because we had fish last night, and I ordered a poke bowl for lunch today, you don't totally avoid them from a food chain standpoint but do yourself engage in regular chelation therapy?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Like ozone?

Ahvie:  Well, ozone makes chelation more efficient.

Ben:  Okay. But, it wouldn't count as chelation.

Ahvie:  It doesn't count as chelation. That's right.

Ben:  Yeah. What do you do for chelation?

Ahvie:  Well, you use the different formulas but you use chelating agent like EDTA.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  And, you chelate it out, it takes 45 minutes an hour and you do it–

Ben:  What's that mean 45 minutes to an hour to chelate it out?

Ahvie:  Well, the IV. You can do it orally. Oral chelation works but it takes a much longer time.

Ben:  Okay, alright. Okay. So, by the way, this ozone, if you're watching the video, you'll see that they've pulled the tubes out of my arm and all the blood's going back into me at this point, right?

Ahvie:  Right.

Ben:  Okay. And, what's that bucket look like? I can't quite see without craning my neck, but did it accumulate? Can we get a picture of that on the camera?

Ahvie:  Well, the less of it–

Ben:  That's the effluent. 

Ahvie:  The cleaner you are.

Ben:  So, that's good. It doesn't look like I have very much and it's all clear.

Ahvie:  No. The heavy metals would have a color.

Ben:  Yeah, okay. And then, what's this test that she's doing right now on my fingertips?

Ahvie:  She's going to give us your blood sugar.

Ben:  Why did my blood sugar go up so much during that treatment? It was at 73, now it's at 111. Is that normal?

Ahvie:  Well, because you had your perfect amino bars.

Ben:  Oh, that's right. You did give me a bar because you don't want your blood sugar to be low during the ozone treatment.

Ahvie:  No, you don't because the rapidity of the oxidative burst is muted by having a normal blood sugar.

Ben:  And, this clear glass slide that you just held up to the blood, that's the repeat of the live blood cell?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  And, you just look at that under a microscope.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  And, you showed it directly sends it to your phone?

Ahvie: Yeah. I have the shots on my phone, but I just took a photograph of the microscope.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  I can send it to you. I can send your photos.

Ben:  Yeah, we'll put it in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara.

Ahvie:  Yeah, because you're clean, there's nothing–I can show you some things that before and after and I can send them to you, before and after that you can clearly see the difference between what many of us are walking around with because we don't have a regular sauna routine, we don't have a regular exercise routine, we don't have a regular caloric restriction routine or time-restricted routine. We don't do the xy. We're not on any, “Oh, I take a few vitamin C tablets once in a while, how come I needed a bypass surgery? I mean, I eat a banana every day.” I mean, it's not going to work anymore because it's not effective.

Ben:  Yeah, I have my oatmeal, my whole grains. So, it is kind of funny though because I'm glad my blood is looking good and my effluent is looking good because I just literally got back from two weeks of cycling in Italy eating cake for breakfast, gelato for lunch, and pasta for dinner. But, I was also riding my bike 30, 35 miles a day in the sunshine, 30,000 steps a day. And so, I was fine from a caloric standpoint. I think I lost 7 pounds.

Now, what's this IV that they just put into me after finishing it up? It says “energy on.” That must be good.

Ahvie:  It's a complex nutritive drip.

Ben:  What's that mean?

Ahvie:  It has vitamin C at its core and relatively low dose. And then, it has probably 20 micronutrients in it.

Ben:  Low dose enough to where I'm not going to be doing a diarrhea test today?

Ahvie:  No, no, no.

Ben:  Okay.

Well, we just took a little break here after ozone. And so, before we get into these new needles that I have in my arm, Ahvie, why'd you have me collect my urine in the bathroom just now?

Ahvie: Well, we wanted to rule in and rule out whether you had mold biotoxin in your urine. So, it's a standard test for mold and it'll test for ochratoxin, aflatoxin, gliotoxin, a few half a dozen other mold species which are the most toxic. And then, we'll match it to what the new level of the complement cascade number is.

Ben:  How often is it that when you do a test on some of these days they're presenting with high levels of these toxins?

Ahvie:  I think the estimate would be in the general population that around 2/3 of us are walking around with toxic mold and our systems in an environment which is wet and cold like San Francisco is. So, it comes primarily from water damage. You can have a leak in the desert, in Phoenix, and still get mold toxicity except there's a few parameters have to be important. One is, am I genetically susceptible to having once I see mold, once my body is exposed that I can't get rid of it on my own? And, you have that genetic susceptibility and so do I.

Ben:  Really?

Ahvie:  Now, I didn't have a single mold symptom in my body until I was in my late 60s.

Ben:  Wow.

Ahvie:  And, I have a genetic susceptibility. So, it was sort of an area under the curve.

Ben:  And then, it reaches a threshold.

Ahvie:  Yeah. And then, you say something's funny, something's wrong, and I'm just not sure what weight is difficult to take to lose more easily, is more difficult than before, sleep patterning is a little bit off. You measure it. It's the same type of number that you had. And then, you have to use binders.

Ben:  Yeah, or ozone, right? Ozone could also make a dent.

Ahvie:  Yeah. But, again, the real direct approach is to take a binder.

Ben:  Okay, got you.

Ahvie:  And, it's not super difficult, they're tasteless but it's like black water, we call it. And, you take it every day usually for–

Ben:  The treatment, you call black water?

Ahvie:  I mean is charcoal basically. Quicksilver makes the number one product, the–

Ben:  Okay. Yeah, I have that product. Yeah.

Ahvie:  The Ultra Binder and we use it and when you have mold in your body, you'll feel something going on on the CNS side after you take a dose but it's mild.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  And then, eventually you will feel better.

Ben:  And, do you recommend combining a binder like that with protocols like sauna, coffee, enema, trampolining, or lymph circulation, the type of things that help once that binder is in the system for the liver to actually process and remove everything via the skin, via the stool, et cetera?

Ahvie:  It's as efficient as the binder, but the binder is unique in its ability to attract the mold out. At the same time, you have to be able to be pooping because otherwise it just recirculates.

Ben:  Yeah, okay.

Ahvie:  But, the sauna, the exercise, the trampolining, and sauna is probably the single most important one.

Ben:  When someone does a urine test like that, how quickly do you get results back?

Ahvie:  We should have the results back by the middle of next week.

Ben:  Okay, interesting. Well, that'll be fascinating to delve into. And, by the way, I'll publish all these results and photos and things like that on the website if you guys want to take a look. I'll put it all at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Anatara.

Alright, so now, I've still got this energy IV, the B complex is going into my body with the vitamin C but now is this a laser in my other arm right now?

Ahvie:  Yes. My goal here when I started this around 12 years or so ago was to try to find fundamental ways of activating our energy cycle. And, oxygen is one that's why ozone has such an important role, NAD is NAD, it's a separate system but light energy, or photomodulation as it's called, is something that's underserved. I mean, the public doesn't know very much about it. The device on your left is called the Weber Laser and it's from north of Frankfurt in Germany.

Ben:  It's quite the machine.

Ahvie:  It's probably the best-studied laser device and there's two or three different components to it. You have the different frequencies, typically between 500 and 1,000 nanometers, but you have red, blue, green, yellow, and UV light and infrared. So, you'll get all of those in what we call a rainbow, a rainbow IV session, and it photomodulates. So, it interacts with the yellow in the vitamin C and the magnesium and the drips. So, it activates the energy drip more.

Ben:  So, the way this works right now, it's plugged into one different light and then you'll shift it to a different light and it kind of work your way through each of those–

Ahvie:  Yes, so we'll give 15 minutes for each of the five and it'll be over in an hour and 15 minutes.

Ben:  Okay.

Ahvie:  And, we try our best to use this regularly in a few different populations. One is cancer populations. The tumor cells are typically sensitive to heat shock protein activation. And, heat shock proteins are activated by the laser.

Ben:  When you first went through medical school, did you think you'd be getting done all this kind of lesser-known protocols that you don't see a lot of doctors doing? What do you think attracted you all this?

Ahvie:  Well, I come from a heavy European background. I was born in Israel but my parents are European. There was no question that I would probably seek to do something like medicine because it was good. It's a good thing for a good Jewish boy to do. I got into law school first. And, when I found out what lawyers did, I said no, no way. I went to medical school and then really was on the outside looking in saying everybody seems to really know what they want and I'm just sort of going to observe things for a while. And, it took me a while to find a niche, but I wanted to do it in a European style.

So, the Europeans, the old German doctors, now this is after World War II then, they're not high in everyone's list but they were always known for outstanding medical care. And, they trained in anatomy first. They had full really serious anatomical training. And then, they also did a year of pathology. So, that's why I wanted to mimic that even though I did three full years of pathology. So, I wanted to be a little bit different but more old-style because I truly believe that my general practitioner actually gave me a shot in my butt once for pneumonia and he actually came to the house and I like that idea.

Ben:  It's a shot in your butt.

Ahvie:  Yeah, yeah, penicillin. He gave me a penicillin injection and it came to my house and had a little bag. And, that was all gone by the time I went to medical school. That was not done anymore. So, I wanted a little bit of the older flavor and concept that something old was fundamentally not as good as something brand new. It's been so fundamental in the last several decades in understanding how little genomics has changed the world. It's going to change the world, it'll take a long time, and how little the brand-new technologies always may be incremental but they're not fundamental. So, a lot of the reasons we ultimately use what we use is because they're completely safe. They can be stacked easily. So, you're going to be treated with five or six things but they're all coherent and they're convergent with your systems. We're not just only detoxing you, we're not just only oxygenating you, we're not just only trying to talk to any individual organ. 

So, I was trained there then I went to Yale for medicine and then cardiology in Hopkins. That was the pinnacle of my academic career. I stayed there for 12 years, published a lot of work, became an immunologist as well as a cardiologist, and had a big lab. And, we were the world's experts in myocarditis. I mean, there may be some groups in Germany though, tell me otherwise. But, I think we were one of the best people in myocarditis.

Ben:  And, what's myocarditis?

Ahvie:  Myocarditis is now in everyone's tongue because of the COVID-induced myocarditis. Because COVID, we knew from the very minute that it came to New York that the virus had a tropism, had a magnetism to the heart.

Ben:  Okay. So, myocarditis would be inflammation of heart tissue.

Ahvie:  Inflammation of heart tissue. In this case, due to a virus, it's not directly due to the virus, it's a reaction to the viral proteins on the heart surface, on the heart cell surface that then induces an autoimmune reaction. So, the first paper I ever wrote to the ACAM members was on lookout for post-viral myocarditis, particularly in your kids and the college-aged students and understand that it's going to go away more likely; except when it doesn't, then it's very serious. So, I was doing transplants, I was doing invasive cardiology, I was a catheterizer, and so on. But, I went to the top and I felt what it felt like. And, that is an outstanding experience for anyone in any profession to go to the best and study with the best.

But then, it was time to move from Baltimore to the Bay Area because my wife was from here and I ran a heart institute. And, the heart institute had global centers, big, big data, big clinical trials and we had a lot of centers in Germany. And, when I went to Germany, I realized the hospitals were identical but the pharmacies and the shops and the towns were completely different. The pharmacies were run by equivalents of Ph.D. pharmacists here like PharmDs here. Every pharmacist there was trained like that and they were equally as trained in pharmaceuticals as they were in homeopathic and herbal medicine.

Ben:  And, why is that important in pharmacy?

Ahvie: Because aspirin is not a pharmaceutical, hello? It's an herbal remedy. A lot of the anti-inflammatories, a lot of the fundamental chemicals, the sulforaphanes, the phenols, the ones that affect multiple pathways at the same time, it's not a targeted single assay targeted development of a pharmaceutical entity that needs to target something to be very, very, very specific, more of a global impact, they're all natural. So, they understand that and they understand that. So, they don't have a problem of overprescribing antibiotics there, they don't give antibiotics for viral illness, they give you 10, 20 different things that you can use.

So, I had that experience and I was made professor of medicine at UCSF as an honor, as a privilege, and I took it and I taught for 16 years, and then realized that none of my cardiology fellows were listening to anything I talked about in integrative cardiology. They were just not interested because they were overwhelmingly doing the technical part, which is appropriate but they wouldn't do something order CoQ10 for someone with heart failure, they wouldn't treat metabolic syndrome. They wouldn't want to understand what it was. 

So, a few of them sent their patients to me, I thought this would become an integrative cardiology center. That's what I thought when I first opened it up, but they never got their patients back. So, they stopped referring them to us.

Ben:  Why wouldn't doctors like that just implement these same protocols themselves versus sending folks to you?

Ahvie:  I think that that's the big problem that we see across every specialty and it requires you to learn new things. And, I don't think that the doctors today have a problem with that, but they have a bias that their things are much, much, much stronger, much better. And, if it's not the case, they don't want to go close to that. So, sometimes they have a family urgency or an emergency and they have to learn it through their mom, through their dad, or their children and then they come over. But, the women and men that come over frequently are anesthesia people, ER docs, and family practitioners.

Ben:  Those are the three types of doctors that wind up beginning to migrate towards the type of practice that you have.

Ahvie:  Yes, yes, yes. And then, dermatologists too because they're into beauty, and beauty is from the inside out. You have to then figure it out, but the gut doctors don't. And, even though the gut biome–everyone knows about biome and they don't come over. Cardiologists don't come over because they're electricians, they're plumbers, they're doing what they need to do and they're doing it the best in the world, but that's it.

Ben:  Is there an actual name for what you do? Is it just holistic wellness? 

Ahvie:  I think it's called sometimes integrative medicine. It's now the new name, du jour, is functional medicine.

Ben:  Okay, okay, got it.

So ,what kind of patients do you actually see? Is this mostly people who are sick? Are these the Bay Area anti-aging longevity enthusiasts CEOs, these celebrities or they're a mix of everything?

Ahvie:  So, we enjoy the celebrities a lot and we enjoy the CEOs a lot, and you went to dinner with one of them last night. And, we like healthy people once in a while to break the monotony of folks. So, this ultimately was supposed to be when I skipped in my story was that we then started the world's first non-profit pharmaceutical company, which was for disease of poverty. So, we had malaria, we produced the artemisinin and E. coli and we have the major source of the anti-malarial drug in the world is now produced in the way that we produced it with Sanofi Aventis.

Ben:  Is that hydroxychloroquine?

Ahvie:  No, this is artemisinin artesunate.

Ben:  Okay, wormwood.

Ahvie:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, grows like weeds in my backyard.

Ahvie:  But, it no longer grows, now it's an E. coli. So, we genetically modify, we genetically–

Ben:  Bacteria make artemisinin.

Ahvie:  Now they do. And so, Sanofi Aventis is now in charge of that, but we organized that and we have a new chemical entity for cholera, diarrhea, and some other diseases that we did. But, that took us all over the world, into Asia, in South Asia in particular studied with the gurus and so on and had some more exposure to the different forms and realized that certain–everyone knows that ayurvedic medicine has archetypes. Everybody knows that into certain types, right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So, which type are you–

Ben:  Yeah, we talked a lot about that in our last podcast because you had me set up on a whole diet based on my constitution.

Ahvie:  Right. So, the concept of here as you know, we're not going to do one thing, we're going to tackle the toxic load that we're all exposed to in an elegant safe but multi-layered approach and ayurvedic doesn't fit that. So, the Chinese versions of archetypal medicines do. So, they do transcend different lineages.

Ben:  What do you mean by that? What would be the main differentiating characteristic between ayurvedic and a Chinese approach?

Ahvie:  I don't know, but ayurvedic medicine doesn't play well with other kids in the sandbox. You're either going to go that way and go and do the best possible, go to ayurvedic specialist. But, when you start mixing pharmaceuticals and start mixing for serious illnesses, you start using natural remedies like curcumin, resveratrol, alpha lipoic acid, all these antioxidants, and these master regulators. It doesn't work well. It doesn't work as well as it should. So, either you do that or then you have to go to another forum. So, we tried it and it just didn't work well. So, in my hands, it didn't work well.

Ben:  Yeah. Now, you talked about German medicine and there's a lot of these European biological medicine clinics like Paracelsus is perhaps the most famous. There's another one I took a group on a fantastic health tour of for a couple of weeks out in the Swiss mountains called The Swiss Mountain Retreat. Are those any different than what you do here? Can they still do stuff in Europe that you can't do over here?

Ahvie:  No, no more.

Ben:  It's just the idea of medical–

Ahvie:  The concept that you could also say–

Ben:  Traveling all that way and sitting on the airplane makes it feel more special?

Ahvie:  Well, I mean they're good at it. They also emphasize things that we're just coming to terms with now. They emphasize detoxification. They emphasize that the first doctor you see there is a dentist because the hidden infections in the oral cavity are exceptionally common.

Ben:  Yeah. I interviewed a doctor from over in that area, Germany I believe, Dr. Dom, and there is a bigger belief at least over there that disease begins in the mouth. A lot of times over here in functional medicine, you hear that disease begins in the gut. Arguably the mouth is the gut, the beginning of the gut, but I think a lot of people don't realize that. I've personally been doing a lot of work with a dentist in Phoenix who's done bacterial profiling of my mouth and does a lot of repeat labs and considers that a lot of disease, heart disease, Alzheimer's, et cetera, can be detected by bacteria in the mouth and also via things like silver sprays and oil pulling and different medical techniques and even biomechanical adjustments can be fixed by starting with the mouth and then moving down from there.

Ahvie:  I couldn't say it any better. You said it very elegantly.

Ben:  Do you have dentists that you work with here in San Francisco or do you do all that work yourself here also?

Ahvie:  No, no, we don't. We have a stable of biological dentists is the name. So, the biological dentists can either handle the infected root canals, the infected gums, and so on but also then there's biological dentists that focus on the airway.

Ben:  Okay, got it. They're also called a holistic dentist, right?

Ahvie:  Right.

Ben:  Biological holistic dentists.

Now, you talk briefly with me, I don't even know if we were on air yet or not as you were drawing my blood about your ability to also get some early detection of cancer. Is that also something that you're testing for here?

Ahvie:  Yeah. Well, we're been very interested in that because the first patient when I first opened up that asked me their opinion was the first employee of the non-profit that we ran. And, she was first diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer said, “What should I do?” And, I said, “Well, I promise you I eventually will figure that out.” I just didn't know. That was 15 years ago. And today, the field is now ready to be completely changed. So, we've known for years now, probably about 10 years here of the concept of liquid biopsies.

Liquid biopsies are the reality. It's a fact that tumor cells that are in the body are spilled over into the blood circulation. Most people believe, the ones that I've studied it for longer times than I have is that the circulating tumor cells predate when you can find the tumor in an image that it's one of the earlier findings. But, I don't know if that's true or not, I know that there's a lot of reasons to believe that that's the case but it's counterintuitive. You say, well, even if it was in the blood maybe it has nothing to do with the tissue itself, maybe they're unrelated. Well, they're not unrelated. And, in the blood, you can separate out the tumor cells as well as the conductors. The conductors are called the tumor stem cells. You can culture them out and you can study their biology and you can study their sensitivities, and again, is a whole world there except to say that you do get a numerical value. Do you have them? Yes or no? And, if you have them, how many of them per unit of blood do you have?

Well, that's generation one. And, the other generation is, well, I have–right now, that works right now as I have a tumor. You know that they run genomics on tumors themselves?

Ben:  Mm-hmm.

Ahvie:  They run genomics to express whether the immunotherapies, the newer version of chemotherapies that are targeting the immune systems, which ones will be effective. So, they take the same amount of tissue as that. It's a slice on a slide. Study the DNA mutations there and then look for those same mutations in the blood and then track it. 

So, for example, if you're on chemotherapy, why wait three months to get your PET CT scan when you can get a blood sample every month or every three weeks to see whether you're going in the right direction? Namely, are your tumor-specific DNA that is in your tumor, in your blood going down as the blood level is going down? Because most people with traditional chemo have complications.

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  They're not easy to tell whether I'm getting better or not. So, this is going to be phase two and we're in it. So, we're beta-testing two of these companies and they're allowing us to draw the bloods as often as we please.

Ben:  And, it's as simple as a blood draw for cancer detection.

Ahvie:  It's a blood draw.

Ben:  Not only for cancer detection but for cancer progression monitor.

Ahvie:  No, this is for progression. So, the test we send off to Europe is for the detection and biology. But, in the future, they'll be able to use it for detection. But, this is all going to go through FDA, everything I'm talking about will go through FDA. It's going to take its sweet time in the meantime before they get to detection, which is the largest market. They'll have to go through a lot more testing.

Ben:  So, right now someone can't go in and do this cancer detection screening?

Ahvie:  No, you can only do the screening test for the company that we send it off to Europe for. It's called the RGCC company. And, you have to be a member and so on, but that's pretty wildly known in the United States and widely known and also widely criticized because the oncologists don't believe in the test results because you can have a number. And, obviously, if the number correlates to you having a tumor, then obviously it's true. But, what happens when you have a number but you can't find the tumor anywhere and it tells you that it's lung, it tells you that it's colon, it tells you that it's prostate, it tells you.

Ben:  Yeah. Even before something like a full-body MRI or something like that.

Ahvie:  That's correct. So, the full-body MRIs are limited to 3, 4 millimeters. So, you can't always–

Ben:  So, anything smaller than that it's not going to pick up but a liquid biopsy could detect.

Ahvie:  That's correct.

Ben:  That's interesting.

Ahvie: So, this is going to be–

Ben:  That seems like that could be transformative for–

Ahvie:  This is going to be transformative for the entire industry, yeah, but also for follow-up.

Ben:  And, how long do you think we're out from these being widely available as testing protocols?

Ahvie:  Well, there's another one coming forward through FDA. It'll come in stages but it'll be from one to three years.

Ben:  Yeah. Wow, interesting. 

Ahvie:  That is very interesting and it's very specific and it is a tumor-specific DNA mutations that belong to me.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Female:  You have just heard Part 1 of Ben's discussion and in-person experience with Dr. Ahvie at Anatara Medicine. Since Ben and Dr. Ahvie spent a lot of time together at Anatara, we decided to make this a two-part episode. We will post Part 2 of this episode on our next podcast publish date. 

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.

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