30 Years of Treating Cancer Naturally: What Actually Works | Dr. Gez Agolli

24:03It stops working. because cancer evades the immune system and cancer will look for other sources of fuel. And that's how it spreads. It's because it's very, very resilient and it actually has this ability to evade treatments. Yeah, yeah, it's so powerful. You know, the thing about this question, I think about my own family members or myself. It's like, okay, if I want to be a condition like cancer, I want to know the exact foods that are going to be most helpful, the exact supplements. And if I am going to do conventional, I want to know which one of those is the most effective and what's the lowest dose I can do.

24:42You know, one of the things that was so valuable as we've been doing this Greek test is being able to actually look and see, for instance, there's somebody who we've wanted to work with on this. And so they want to do some conventional, but less, you know, the minimal amount they can get away with. and one of the things that came back on their Greek test was doing hyperthermia was the single most effective natural treatment. So they know, hey, if I do hyperthermia with this, I can probably bring down some of the conventional and I can do all of these other things as well. So again, I've been such a wild fan of the Greek test.

25:16Again, it's called an RGCC test and it's something I know that certain integrative clinics will do around the country. One of the other things I wanna talk to you about just is blood tests in general. I wanna move out. we can talk a little bit more about cancer. Actually, let me close up the cancer loop. What are some of your favorite treatments, if you give me your top five to seven, that you think tend to be very helpful for those who are fighting cancer? That's a great question. Let me go back to the hyperthermia. So hyper, more thermia, heat, more heat. This is not a sauna, although I'm a big believer in saunas.

25:49Hot baths could be very official. This is medically supervised by a trained practitioner on hyperthermia. You have localized where you can actually localize the heat. And so you're raising the body's core temperature from a physiological perspective. It could be 101 to up to 104 in a very safe environment. And what happens there is that it's not a standalone treatment. It's used in conjunction. So heat therapy increases something called heat shock proteins. It's a vasodilator, which basically means I'm putting blood flow there. So whatever treatment that I'm doing, whether it's chemo, radiation, or high-dose vitamin C or ozone, it's going right to the cell.

26:32The cells actually become weakened. So now you have these weakened cells, and this is the knockout punch with chemo, high-dose vitamin C, curcumin. It's a fantastic strategy. Now, if you're battling cancer and you can't get this fancy localized hypothermia or full body, which we're bringing in with a study from Germany, believe it or not, taking a hot bath, believe it or not, a hot bath, or better yet, get into an infrared sauna or even a traditional fitness sauna. But you're not raising that core temperature, Josh. What I read via some of the research is if you're doing a sauna, you can get your body up around two degrees, but you need to get it up closer to at least four to five, but even up to six to seven degrees higher in order for this to be the most effective.

27:21So I witnessed the Von Arda, it's called Irotherm. It's a very unique technology because it physiologically raises the core temperature. How does it do that? How does it raise the core temperature in that? Yeah. So they have these very specific radiant heat coils that they have a patent on it and they have this water coolant. So there's no way you can burn the skin. So it's completely monitored axillary temperature, rectal thermometer. You basically are monitoring everything, heart rhythm, heart rate, blood pressure. As a matter of fact, the Germans actually did a study. This is fascinating. They had probably about 30 hypertension patients.

27:57Systolic was 185. Diastolic was 130. These are uncontrolled hypertension patients with medication. They did a study with eight hyperthermia sessions twice a week, and literally it went down 30, to 40%. So the systolic, which measures the pressure of the vessel, right? The human body has 60 ,000 miles of vessels, like a super highway. And then the diastolic measures in between heartbeats. And the study found out that even six months later, the blood pressure went down. Now, how can I explain that? Heat shock proteins, vasodilator, right? So it opens up the blood vessels. It allows the immune system to function better.

28:40So you have that controlled heat. And there's something called, when it comes to cancer, when you do chemotherapy or radiation, or you go into something called apoptosis, which is natural cell death, there's a mechanism in the immune system called phagocytosis. I find that a funny name, phagocytosis. But basically, phagocytosis is like a Pac-Man. It's grabbing that dead cell, like we have these zombie senescent cells, and it's pulling out of the body when you don't do that properly. And this is what heat therapy does. And it also can help activate P53. So I'm going to have to say that hypothermia is one of my favorite go-to right now with all the research.

29:19Dr. Charles Meek, and I interviewed him, and he's a retired board-certified oncologist. And he basically talked about the beginning of his career, he was doing radiology oncology at Stanford, they actually had localized hypothermia. And when he used it, he shrunk the tumors much quicker. So this is not new science, right? Unfortunately, in our country, sometimes a lot has to do with reimbursements, cost effectiveness, and I understand that as well. But when it comes to the most effective treatments, I think hypothermia is going to be up there as well. I'm also going to say that we're seeing a lot of benefits with high-dose vitamin C, but it's the right type of high-dose vitamin C.

30:01Unfortunately, a lot of patients are being told by their oncologist that vitamin C you should not take when you're doing chemotherapy. Why? Chemotherapy is such a powerful drug that it causes oxidative stress. And this oxidative stress just kills. And the reason why they don't want you taking vitamin C is it's an antioxidant. Well, the research shows that anything over 25 grams is oxidative. So basically using this in conjunction is a great strategy as well. And there's been several studies with high-dose vitamin C, but it has to be the right vitamin C. We like to use cassava root or tapioca from a licensed compound pharmacist because acorbic acid, unfortunately, is corn-derived.

30:47And that's something that we don't think is going to be healthy unless it's non-GMO corn. And that's something that we also—and I'm going to say the third thing is oxygen. You mentioned that earlier. Oxygen, to me, is critically important. Even if you can't have access to hyperbaric oxygen, doing interval training, getting your lung capacity up is very beneficial. And, you know, but if you can find a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, I'm going to highly recommend that. You know, there's a few contraindications. There's certain chemotherapies you should not do hyperbaric oxygen at a high level. DoxyRubin's is one of them.

31:27So you have to really check with a licensed practitioner. They're going to know the contraindications. When a patient comes to our clinics, we have licensed practitioners that check to find out the half-life of chemo and when it's appropriate to do these therapies. And I think that's a wise thing to do. And my number one go-to besides the top three here is nutrition. You know, when you change your diet, having a whole food diet, we can debate whether it's vegan, keto. So, you know, I'm more of a modified keto guy, but I do see there's benefit as well on certain cancers. The key really is consistency.

32:03And what we've been doing, Josh, recently is that we've been putting glucose monitors on every cancer patient. Yeah. And I've got to really applaud my team because they're thinking outside the box. Because, you know, a patient says, hey, I'm changing my diet. I'm doing this. But literally, they're not getting better. and a lot has to do with these hidden foods. It's called post-prandial glucose. Yeah. So just by doing that is a great strategy. Yeah. Yeah, I love the philosophy here of, you know, not saying no to every conventional treatment, but really looking at, hey, what are the natural things?

32:38Or how can the, I mean, integrative really means how can we integrate the best from natural and what's going to be the most effective from the conventional world in treating somebody? I do want to mention, you know, I know years ago, I don't know if you're still doing this, you used to have somebody, you know, You're used to sometimes, as you mentioned, chemotherapy, have people do something called IPT. There's low-dose chemo. What are your thoughts on that today? I think it's a fantastic strategy. And I think what - And what is it exactly for you to explain? So let's go back to Otto Warburg, the Warburg effect, of course, is that there's a disruption in gluconeogenesis.

33:11You know, let's talk about glucose. Without glucose, we're not going to survive, right? It's glucose in the cell. What's happened with cancer is that some type of genetic mutation, something's going on, it just disrupts that glucose metabolism, and it turns it, instead of pyruvate going into ATP, it turns it into a fermentation process, and you've got these rapidly growing cells. So there's something called a PET scan. Have you heard of a PET scan before? Yeah. Okay. So Otto Warburg is kind of responsible for this because when they do this scan, they give them a substance that's glucose. That's right.

33:44So it lights it up so you can find out where's the tumor, where is it going, is it metastasized? So it's kind of interesting when an oncologist or another traditional doctor says, ah, sugar has nothing to do with cancer, yet they're using this as a scan. Literally sugar, yeah. It's sugar, which is great, by the way, because it's going to really pinpoint, and I'm a big believer in that scan. It's fantastic to find out what's going on with the disease process. But, you know, it's very interesting is that IPT, insulin potentiation therapy, what it basically does, it's actually putting in insulin because how does the body respond to glucose that's elevated?

34:27Your insulin receptors, right? Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas. And its job is to bring glucose into the cell. And I remember when I was, one of my professors in medical school, Dr. Afouri talked about when glucose is outside the cell, it's sticky. So I want everybody to visualize if I take orange juice and I tell you to take your socks and shoes off and I put orange juice on a wooden floor and I want you to step on it, what's it feel like? Well, I mean, it feels wet early on, but the more you step in it, it's going to feel stickier and stickier. You got it, sticky proteins. The last thing you want is sticky, sticky proteins.

35:04So what ends up happening is that that's glucose outside the cell, and that's because of something called insulin not doing its job. So what does IPT do? IPT, in a controlled environment, insulin potential therapy, brings down your glucose as low as 40, sometimes 50, depending, in a controlled environment. And then what they do is they take fractionated chemo, 10, 20, 30%, depending on where you are in the disease process. and they simultaneously put in D5W, which is glucose. And guess what happens? All the cancer cells go to the glucose and the chemo, it's targeted. So that's an area that we used to do at our clinic.

35:46We used to have an oncologist, he retired and we had some great results. It's a great strategy. So I'm a big believer in it. I do believe there's different strategies now with fractionated chemo. And I do believe a lot of oncologists are becoming more open-minded to this. So it's something that there's a little more research need to be done. But none of these therapies are standalone, like hypothermia. You need to do this in conjunction with some of the therapies. I find the patients that do the best, do a combination. They prepare the body. They find out the root cause. They get rid of the stressors.

36:20And I love what Jordan Rubin says because Jordan took 40 days off. If you have the ability, every time I talk to a cancer patient, I want to be very, very sympathetic and empathetic as much as possible. I've never had cancer, but I've had family members who had cancer. So I can be empathetic because I've walked that journey with them. I know it's difficult, but I always tell everybody, if you have the ability, if you can afford to take 40 days off, okay? It's like a sweet spot, right? 40 days and devote everything, body, mind, and spirit to your healing process. Even if you do conventional, you should have a good outcome.

36:56Yeah. Yeah, I know with my mom, it was very similar. You know, my mom was a teacher. And then during that summer, she spent, I mean, really focusing on healing as much time as possible, you know, and I think I want to say a few things here with this. Number one, you know, I was really blessed to have my mom. My mom went through conventional therapy the first time with breast cancer, the second time with lung cancer. She followed a completely all natural approach and was able to heal and reverse cancer. We know Jordan Rubin was able to do that. I will say this, no matter what you're deciding, whether it be completely natural or integrative, where you're doing both simultaneously, you want to have a protocol and plan.

37:31I think what happens with a lot of people is they go in and a lot of times they just listen to their doctor. They say, just do chemo radiation. And even when you're in the hospital, you're doing certain things. You're actually eating worse. It's like, hey, here's some ice cream and some sweetened Jell-O. It's not ideal. So I want to encourage you, no matter what you do, go in and get a protocol. Work with somebody. to get the right testing done, to look for nutritional deficiencies, things like the RGGC Greek test and other things to say, hey, what are the things I need to do to heal? Get a very specific diet plan laid out for you, including what to eat every meal.

38:03It should include fasting, should include vegetable juices. If you work with a really great team, they'll lay that out for you. The supplements that are most effective. I know for my mom, she was doing a lot of medicinal mushrooms, high-dose vitamin D, lots of curcumin. You get that laid out for you. And then a lot of these natural therapies, finding out what is most effective for you. One thing I do want to mention as well is if you decide to go natural alone, you would need to do that at 100%. You would never want to go natural and say, I'm going to change a few things. You would want to change every last part of your day to your point for months of going all in and healing your body.

38:42And by the way, I'm not recommending that either. But I am saying, you know, and I always encourage patients with this, spend time in prayer. You know, the first thing you should do, get down on your hands and knees and pray and ask God for guidance and wisdom on what therapies you should use, how to move forward, what to do there. But again, I do think it's so important that you have a very specific protocol. And that's what my mom had. And that's what Jordan Rubin had in terms of what to do. Because like my mom's day was laid out on exactly what she was doing. Wake up with prayer, lemon juice, vegetable juice, you know, then fast for a while.

39:15And then pretty much salmon and vegetables, you know, like every meal. It was sort of the protocol along with a lot of the other things she did.

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40:27I want to now move into other testing, right? This is one thing I actually learned a lot from you on over the years is to test, not guess. You own a lab, which is pretty amazing, where you've done lab testing for years. What is the difference you've seen in testing versus not testing? And then also, what are your favorite tests to do on patients that you think really make a difference? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, for starters, you mentioned that if you don't test, you just guess. And that's not kind of tongue in cheek. And, you know, a lot of patients come in and they do their annual physical.

41:01And I don't want to be critical because the family practitioner is very busy. Their PCP is very busy. But they come in and say, oh, whoa, oh, Dr. Guest, look, look at this. I've got the most extensive test. and they come in with something called the CBC, complete blood count, and a CMP, and they think it's the most extensive. No, that's not a bad thing. Don't get me wrong. Those are basic tests. We're talking about looking at the cell. We're talking about looking at the microbiome. We're talking about looking at toxicity. I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the interview, what's the best way to treat cancer or any disease for that matter?

41:32Don't get it. Prevent it. And really looking at your terrain is probably the most important thing. So from my perspective, I want to find out inflammation. If I can find out what's causing my inflammation, I really believe from a chronic disease perspective, I'm going to make the most impact for my health. We know that there's certain tests called food allergy, food sensitivity. We know that the microbiome, looking for infections. And why is this important? Because even if you are disciplined, even if you're well-meaning, if you don't have a plan, you're actually going to fail to plan is going to cause you failure.

42:14And that's why we want to have testing because when you see testing and it's in front of you, it's going to motivate you. If I tell you, Josh, stop eating broccoli, don't eat garlic, right? Are you going to look at me and you're going to think I'm crazy, right? Because number one, garlic has allicin, which is fantastic. I mean, it's going to help with certain infections. It's going to help with your blood pressure. Aged garlic is one of the best things, right? You're going to think I'm crazy, but what if your tests show that you have a sensitivity? My wife actually, believe it or not, is allergic to garlic.

42:48And we didn't know, and she was not feeling well. And then every time she eats garlic, she has certain different histamine reactions. We tested her. If we didn't test her, she loved garlic. Who doesn't love garlic, right? Garlic's in everything. Broccoli, right? I had a patient that basically had intestinal problems. She had IBS. She had headaches. And she went to numerous doctors. You know what showed up? Broccoli. If I said don't have broccoli, broccoli is one of the healthiest foods, especially for cancer. It has something called sulforaphane. But we tested her. She eliminated it from her diet.

43:23She started to heal her gut. The symptoms started to slowly dissipate and go away. And that's why I think the testing is important. I'm going to say a thorough blood test, right, looking at your hormones. Most doctors today only do something called a TSH, right? That's thyroid stimulating hormone. I truly believe you should do a full panel, free T3, free T4, looking at the TPOs, the antibodies, something called reverse T3, and you add the adrenal function. So from a hormonal perspective, I like those. from an inflammation perspective. I like the allergy sensitivity, which we can talk about in a second and looking at the microbiome.

44:05Yeah, it's an investment, but it's something that I believe that if you at least do once every two years, depending on what you're suffering with, you can make a big impact in your health. I love that. Yeah, and I agree. I think some of my favorite tests, the one that you didn't mention, which I know you do a lot, you do sometimes in your practice. I love micronutrient tests, especially that look at things like RBC, magnesium, of course, vitamin D, MMA, selenium. I mean, I can't tell you how many people, omega-3 index. I can't tell you how many people, I think that probably the most out of balance I've seen has been vitamin D and omega-3 index on blood work.

44:38And these are things that if people wouldn't have tested, they would have never known. But I do agree. I think the hormone panels, I think looking at gut microbiome, a GI map is incredibly beneficial. Now, I do have a question for you about the food sensitivity, because here's what I found. I've done a lot of food sensitivity testing over the years. I have found more than any other tests that I've run, there tend to be some false positives. And I'm curious if you'd agree with that. And here's how I started using it, is I would do a food sensitivity test. And if foods were in the red, we were definitely careful of those.

45:16But some of them were more in the yellow that weren't as bad, I would say, hey, eat that food. I just really want you to pay attention on, especially if it was a really healthy food. Let's say it was salmon or chicken breast or something like that. See how your body responds. And if you notice a symptom, if not, we may not remove that one. But I'm curious, your thoughts on the false positives, especially when we're talking about an IgG. Yeah, that's a great question. There are some false positives there. I think, depending on the laboratory, it can be anywhere from 87 to 95 sensitivity and specific So yeah, there's some problems.

45:48But here's really what's happening. So when you run a food allergy, and that's why I like to use something called an IgE first. So these are your immune system. I mentioned earlier that you have two immune systems, one inside the cell, one inside the cell called humoral. So this particular test is looking at the humoral. It's looking at the memory. So your immune system has a memory. So if you have a virus or something, let's say you have Epstein-Var virus, and your immune system remembers it, it could be in the convalescent and it just sits there dormant. But when then your immune system goes low, it comes out.

46:21When it comes to food sensitivities, these IgG, which basically these immunoglobulins are delayed. It can be anywhere from a couple hours up to 72 hours. That's why a traditional allergist doesn't do the IgG because they're focused on anaphylactic reaction, right? This is something that could be a medical crisis. An IgG is not a medical crisis, right? But it causes inflammation. And the antibodies change every 6, 9, and 12 months, depending on what you do. So let's just hypothetically say that you love strawberries and you eat strawberries every single day and you love strawberries. Forget the fact that some of them could have pesticides.

47:03That's a different conversation. Let's say you had organic raw strawberries, right? You could develop an antibody and it may be elevated, right? So it really depends. I'm a big believer that if you use it properly and you're counseled properly and you eliminate the high ones and you rotate those. For example, me, I had a reaction to cashews. I love cashews. I had cashews every single day. Cashew, ice cream, all kinds of stuff. I'd make my all kinds of different foods with cashews. And once I found out, I eliminated the cashews. I noticed a significant difference within about 30 days. I had less inflammation.

47:40I felt my joints felt better. And I have not had a cashew for like six months. I retested, cashew went down. Now I have it maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, no problem. So that's how you can utilize it. It really depends on what testing. I think if it's straight IgG, it's a mistake. I think you should look at IgE and something called IgG4. IgG4 actually measures the blocking agent of IgE. So you literally can have someone have an IgE reaction to a food and the IgG blocks it. So you've got to look at both of those together. Oh, wow. So it's how you interpret it, how you look at it. Yeah, you know, I feel like for myself, I've done, I don't know, probably, I've probably done six food sensitivity tests over the years, six different times in my life.

48:29And I always just have one thing show up every time for me, and it's dairy. You know, it just, I mean, for me, both whey and casein, I just do not tolerate well from cow's milk. And then I'll have other things here or there. I remember I was eating hummus a lot, and it showed up one time very, very high, and I felt like it was just because I was eating it so much. Eggs sometimes as well would be the other thing, not the yolk, actually, just the white. But I do think for people, especially if you've got a lot of inflammation, any sort of food sensitivities, any sort of histamine reactions even, I think that type of thing, getting a food sensitivity test is a really, really wise thing to do.

49:04And, you know, we're seeing now, right now, there's a lot of companies out there with blood work and they're saying, we do 50 markers, we do 100 plus markers. But a lot of the markers, some of the markers are not the markers I think are the most helpful. I think going and seeing somebody where, or working with a practitioner where they know the right test to run, I think is so valuable. Because, I mean, this also steps into this personalized medicine where I think it's like, okay, when you get the test done, you want to get the tests that are right for you, that you need the most. Because I see this all the time where somebody goes and gets this big thing of a million blood markers, but they didn't run for the right markers that make the most difference for that person.

49:40And maybe they needed a GI map or a food sensitivity more than they needed, you know, 100 blood markers. Yeah. Let me just say right now, we live in a society right now where you pretty much can get anything you want. You can pretty much get any test you want. And I think that's a great thing. But at the same time, it also could be concerning because a lot of patients don't know what to do with this information. I have a very simple philosophy that I teach all my practitioners. And over the past 30 years, I've trained well over 150 different practitioners on how to practice functional integrative medicine.

50:10And here's my number one philosophy on testing. Don't run a test that you do not know how to interpret, okay? Because you're going to get into trouble. You're going to misrepresent yourself. And you need to become an expert in that test. And do not be a hypocrite. Don't tell somebody to do a test that you've not done yourself, right? So you need to learn that test backwards. I can literally tell you that there's certain tests that I've got to study and study. And some I just know backwards. I know how to apply it properly. I know the benefits. I know when to use it, when not to use it. And patients come in with like stacks of tests and they expect that practitioner to review it.

50:45It's very, very time consuming. And, you know, you have to know exactly what test to run, when to run it. And I think when someone's dealing with chronic disease, I think they should do a deep dive. Gut markers. I'm a big believer in leaky gut. A lot of patients have something called gut dysbiosis. Test for it. How bad is it? So you can look at a patient and say, okay, Josh, your zonium levels are elevated. Your histamine diamine oxidase is off. You need to be on this peptide, these amino acids for 90 days, 120 days. Otherwise, you're just sporadic. You don't know what you're doing. I like the testing because it also motivates a patient to take action.

51:23and that to me is more important because we're trying to change behaviors. And that's why that glucose control monitor is so fantastic because you're seeing real time how food's affecting the postprandular, which means glucose after you eat. It's not, you know, your hemoglobin A1C could be normal. Your glucose could be normal, but literally if you're eating a food and it's spiking up to 200, that's a problem. You know, it's just surprising. You know, we're a continuous glucose monitor a couple years ago. And I was just shocked by it of what did and didn't impact my blood sugar. I'll tell you what impacted it the most.

52:05Eating fruit by itself. Here's the thing. I could eat like a piece, but if I would do more than that, all of a sudden it was just through the roof. Potatoes hardly impacted my blood sugar at all. That's interesting. Yeah, no, I was surprised. Sweet potatoes mostly. And now typically I was eating that with a chicken breast or grass-fed burger or something like that, but potatoes didn't affect them as much. You know what else caused it to spike? Driving. Driving a car. I'm like, what? You know, and I started realizing, well, I guess if, you know, maybe I'm a little bit of a tense driver. My cortisol goes up, fight or flight.

52:38What else goes up with it? Insulin starts to go up. I mean, these hormone cascades, you know, how one affects the other. You know, it's interesting. I had a conversation with Dr. Pat. So every Thursday, we have a round table meeting with about 10 practitioners at our office talking about cancer patients. So we had this one individual with prostate cancer and we couldn't figure out why his PSA was going. Everything is circulating. Tumor cells were down, everything was down. We ran, he actually has a lot of stress in his life. He's a big executive and his cortisol was through the roof in the morning.

53:11It was like five times higher. And Dr. Bidette was pulling up studies that cortisol actually will enhance more than testosterone, the prostate. Wow. Cortisol itself. So what was happening with you when you were stressed out driving, there is a very, very common connection on the glucose-cortisol pathway. So it's going to artificially raise that glucose. But as long as your body can get back in homeostasis, let me be very, very clear. It's actually how the body responds and adapts to that glucose. and that's why taking things like berberine, looking at alpha-lipoic acid, not only is it a powerful antioxidant, it actually helps with insulin resistance.

53:56So there's a lot of things you can do. I'm a big believer in intermittent fasting. There's a little bit of sweet spot on that and that's probably one of the most powerful things you can do is some of these lifestyle modifications and that's what's great about the testing. The testing not only helps your practitioner diagnose you from a functional integrated perspective, it helps you take action and to be consistent. If you're going to make an investment of time and resource to do testing, you need to follow through. It's like working out, right? I know how to work out. I used to be in the military.

54:27I was in a special forces unit. Now that I'm in my 60s, you really think I want to go out there and do interval training six days a week? No, I have a trainer, right? I need someone to tell me what to do, even though I know how to do it, because it's habit forming and the benefits are tremendous in doing that. So one of the therapies that I have started using myself and with patients a lot more often over the past three years is using glutathione. And I've been incredibly impressed with the results. And I want to share, we started doing some blood testing here at the local clinic and the longevity clinic in Nashville.

55:02One's called F2 isoprostanes. And I love this marker, by the way, looking at oxidative stress, all the research I've looked at, What causes us to age more quickly, increase cancer risk, heart disease, and oxidative stress is a huge deal. So I've loved that. There's also the OH8GGG. So looking at those markers in particular in GGT to see how much oxidative stress I'm under, how do I protect my body from it? And then we started doing glutathione IVs and also recommending a lot more N-acetylcysteine. And I've seen people with rosacea, people with autoimmune disease, people with other just kind of issues where maybe they were feeling older than they should.

55:42They've seen miraculous results by increasing their glutathione. Have you seen some of the same results? Absolutely. I mean, first of all, glutathione is a triaminoacid peptide, right? Glycine, cysteine, and glutamic acid. So the human body makes it. A lot of glutathione is made in the liver. And you mentioned those markers, oxidative stress. In PubMed, if you pull up 80HDG, deoxyguanazine actually is an oxidative stress marker. And that marker usually goes elevated when your body is salted with oxidative stress. Now, we as humans need a little bit of oxidative stress. I want to go back to this term called homeostasis.

56:20And when you are in homeostasis, the body internally is in balance regardless of external factors. So for example, if it's 100 degrees outside, my body is supposed to maintain that threshold, whether it's 98.6 or 98, whatever your normal is, right? When it doesn't, you have stressors on the body. Now, a little bit of stress is good, Josh. It's called hormesis. And that's something a little different where I'm either doing vigorous exercise or I'm doing a cold plunge for a short period of time. My body goes into this protective mode and I get tremendous benefits of cascade effect. But that is only, here's the caveat, if you have enough glutathione.

56:59So if you start doing these therapies and you start to say, my recovery is not that good, you know, I did too much sauna, I don't recover well, check your glutathione levels. Because without proper amounts of glutathione, when you do hormesis, you don't recover. It's all about recovery. Recovery is the key. If you look at some of these super, super athletes, you take a look at someone like Lance Armstrong, putting aside this doping issue, the guy was the most incredible. I knew somebody that treated him about 10, 15 years ago with testicular cancer. This guy had the best phase angle, right? Phase angle measures the health of the cell.

57:37We do that with a test called InBody. And you look back when you test these athletes, they got the highest level of glutathione, right? They got the highest level of vitamin D, nutrition. They are so nutritionally dense that they can recover quickly. And that's why I think glutathione is just fantastic. It's a master antioxidant. And we should be actually looking at more glutathione. You can do it IV. You mentioned endocytocysteine. That is also available in IV. As a matter of fact, in a hospital, anytime that you deal with some kind of liver toxicity or things of that nature, they talk about giving NAC.

58:15It also helps the lungs. They do a nebulizer. So, you know, it actually was interesting during COVID. I do believe that the FDA or the FTC was trying to restrict NAC supplements. And there was a big uproar because they want to have NAC become a drug, which really it's a natural occurring. And, you know, you get a lot of NAC from other food sources as well. Eggs is one of them and some other good ones. But listen, glutathione, it's something that we should incorporate. I encourage all functional integrative doctors. If you're going to an integrative doctor and they've not checked these markers, F2 isoprostane looks for oxidative stress in the vessels.

58:55And 80HDG is looking at the cell. I mentioned that the human body has 30 trillion cells. If 80HDG is elevated, that patient has tremendous oxidative stress. And just by supporting them, you start to see the benefits, right, of how the body recovers. You know, there's so many people into longevity today and anti-aging. I mean, these tests, you know, the two or three we mentioned, and boosting your own glutathione is so critical for that. No, 100%. I mean, you know, when it comes to these biohackers, right? And listen, you can say I'm doing biohacking as well. I think it's fantastic, right? But the research is very, very clear.

59:32Oxidative stress has been purported by scientists as one of the number one causes of advanced aging and chronic diseases. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, we're spending over$5 trillion a year on healthcare, and yet we're ranked like something in the 40s, 50s for longevity. It doesn't make any sense. We should be at the top, right? If we allocated some of these resources, and I do believe RFK is trying to do this. I do believe he's trying to make an impact. One of my friends, Dr. Christine Blanche, she actually got appointed to the NIH of the Integrative Complementary Advisors. And she's talking about now, there's 18 of them appointed right now, and they talk about different things.

1:00:15I believe they're going to talk about some of these tests that they should even allow Medicare to pay for them. And unfortunately, a lot of insurance companies don't pay for this, right? And our elderly population need this the most. This is how we're going to help them not only live longer, but live healthfully. So I mentioned to start, Dr. Gez, that when I first met you, I mean, I probably have known you for maybe 17 years. It's been a long time. Been a long time. And so I had family members that were dealing with autoimmune disease. And I was doing some nutritional things at the time, but you were doing some of the best blood work in the entire country.

1:00:51And so I brought these people to you. They got tested. and then you put together a plan, we put together a plan and they were able to reverse autoimmune disease. And there's a lot of doctors today that still say you can't reverse autoimmune disease. What's your belief? How much have you seen your patients reverse autoimmune disease? And what's the biggest root cause and things people need to do in order to heal and reverse autoimmune? Yeah, so I'm gonna have to give credit to Dr. Victor Bouquet. He's been with me for 27 years and he actually took a course in the late 90s with Jeffrey Bland. And then we went to this course and he came back and Dr.

1:01:27McKenna said to me, all disease starts in the gut. It's the gut. It's the gut. It's the gut. And, you know, I looked at him. I said, well, you know, what about the cell? What about this? And, you know, looking back at it, I'm going to have to say that when it comes to autoimmune, he's 100 % accurate. Because if you evaluate the gut health, if you look at gut dysbiosis, if you look at the 36 trillion microbiome cells, which is just fascinating, it's an ecosystem. You're going to make a huge impact. And by addressing the infections, that to me is the key. You can change your diet. You can go on low anti-inflammatory diet.

1:02:02You can take pre and probiotics. And guess what? If you do not address and eradicate the infection, you're not getting better. Infections to me, Josh, are going to be one of the key components to addressing. Because these infections, I don't care if it's a virus. I don't care if it's going to be a bacterium, a parasite, a protozoa, a hook, whatever it is, it's going to affect the body's ability to heal. And it disrupts the immune system. And this immune system is so intelligent that if it disrupts it in any capacity, it's not going to heal. So you've got to start from there. And then you've got to allow the healing process in the gut microbiome.

1:02:43The great thing about what we're talking about, the body can regenerate. You can regenerate the gut lining. Those tight junctions, Dr. Alicio Fulzano clearly demonstrated this when he was doing research back in, I believe, in Massachusetts, that he was doing research on some type of gluten issues when it comes to celiac. And there's a big, big difference with our wheat compared to United States to Europe. We are just dosing it with glyphosate, and it's just destroying the gut microbiome. So that's kind of what we're looking at is repairing the gut. And I think it's going to make a huge impact on autoimmune.

1:03:19And we've seen patients not only get better, but their health has improved tremendous. From what their doctor said, stop, just take this medication. Their philosophy is to shut down the immune system. Yeah, yeah. And our philosophy is to correct it slowly and allow that immune system to work for you properly. Yeah. Yeah, I remember this is quite a few years ago. This is probably about the time I met you. I wrote an article on DrRacks.com about how to heal leaky gut. And in the article, I talked about how the number one cause of autoimmune was leaky gut. And I got so much backlash from it, from some conventional medical doctors saying it does not exist.

1:04:00Well, now, I mean, there are, if you go on PubMed, there are probably tens of thousands of studies on leaky gut, intestinal permeability, the connection between numerous autoimmune diseases. So the reality is this. I think you're absolutely right. If you want to heal autoimmune disease, you've got to go to the gut first. Get a GI map would be a great thing to do. Do food sensitivity testing. Look for the nutrients that are required to regenerate the gut lining like zinc. But you want to do everything you can to heal and seal that gut lining. And a big part of that diet is what people used to always think.

1:04:32I remember this was like 20 years ago. They think, oh, if I'm eating healthy, that means I'm doing a bunch of salads. The reality is it's a lot of soups. It's a lot of cooked meat. It's a lot of good cooked vegetables, things that are just very easy to digest, good probiotics. That's going to help the gut lining tremendously. L-glutamine, there's a lot there. And then the last thing I want to ask you about, Dr. Agoli, is mitochondrial health. You've mentioned cellular health pretty often here. Feel free, and it could be, I do want to ask you about the mitochondria, if you also want to, any thoughts around the cell membrane.

1:05:02But what is, it seems like we're looking a lot more now than ever before at improving cellular health in order to help heal numerous conditions. Yeah, that's a great, listen, we're nothing but a bunch of cells. When you really break down the human body, we're cell to cell. And the spark plug is, the mitochondria is the spark plug of the cell. And we have to pay more attention to the mitochondria. We're having mitochondria dysfunction at all time high. Even cancer cells hijack the mitochondria. A lot of people don't realize that. And that's why when you go to a functional integrative doctor, they're a strategist, right?

1:05:35They need to strategize for you. And without a resilient mitochondria, the body is going to break down. And that's why you have to look at different things. NAD is getting a lot of different research on that as well. You're looking at something called NMN, which is a precursor, and something called Niagen. I was part of a research. I was a research director and I was looking at the benefits of a niagin, which is a precursor with different vitamins and B cells and everything like that. But I think it all starts off with the cell. If we go back to just basic cell biology, how do we create energy?

1:06:13How do we get the ATP? How do you get that body functioning properly and turning it into a well-balanced oil machine? And that really is mitochondrial health. and it all starts with looking at get rid of the infections, what's causing the inflammation, get a nutrition-based diet that works for you and that's through the testing of the cell. I think you're going to start to see chronic disease not go away, but I think you're going to see it more manageable. I think my vision for the future is this, that a patient of the future is going to walk in. I'm kind of a Star Trek guy, right? You walk in and there's a transformer.

1:06:50or it's just checking the whole body and you're looking there. Oh, hey, Josh, you're deficient at lysine. Without lysine, you're not going to make the proper amino acid into the cell. And you need to also have more zinc because it's a cofactor. Minerals are spark plugs and they're cofactors. Without minerals, you're not going to make vitamins. You're not going to make B vitamins. You're not going to make hormones. I believe minerals are very, very important. and that's where it starts off right there. And that to me is really looking at a well-balanced approach to take care of your temple. You know, my message to your audience is this, you are the CEO of your body.

1:07:31You control your temple, right? A lot of individuals don't respect their temple, right? And not a criticism, right? They need someone to direct them. And doctors really should be more than just prescribing. A doctor in Latin is dossier and it means teacher. We're here to impart knowledge and wisdom to hopefully galvanize that individual to take action, to have a long, healthy, quality life. Yeah. And that's the goal. Absolutely agree. And I love closing out with this idea of doctor is that it's educator, it's teacher. So you can be your own doctor and you can care for your health and your family's health and live a very, very long, healthy life.

1:08:15I want to thank Dr. Gez Agole for being on the show here. By the way, Dr. Gez, let people know where they can find out more about you and your amazing clinic. Yeah, so they can just go to our website, www.progressivemedicalcenter.com. And I want to thank you, Josh, for the fantastic platform and the education you've done over the past 17 plus years. You being my friend and I've been inspired by you and all the great work you've done. I just want to finish up with one last thing. There was a young man who, at 30 years old, was diagnosed with a grade three, soon to be grade four lymphoma. And they just wanted to do chemo.

1:08:52And I just want to give this young man a shout out. He actually owned a company that worked with Roundup and glyphosate because he was doing landscaping. And chemicals are one of those different things. But he literally is like 95 % cancer free. He did a little bit of chemo, but he basically turned his life around. Why do I say that? because young people today, I've never seen in my 30 plus year career, how many young people are getting cancer. It is disheartening to me. And it's a lot has to do with our environment, our stressors, you mentioned that earlier, stress, having a poor diet. So if you're young and you're about to battle this disease, don't lose hope.

1:09:27There's always hope. And that's why taking a well-rounded approach of integrative medicine, integrative medicine is just good medicine. I absolutely agree. And this young man actually did high dose vitamin C. He did the hyperbaric oxygen. He did fasting. He did curcumin IV with something called photodynamic, which is a special laser from Germany. He did everything possible. He did all of these therapies before. Detox, become resilient, work on his museum, before he even did his chemo. And after six rounds of chemo, after doing these therapies for two months, he's 95 % cancer-free. Praise God. I love hearing that.

1:10:05Well, thanks so much, Dr. Regoli. And everybody, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Axe Show, where each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. And hey, I know we did talk a lot about blood work today and working with practitioners. And listen, there's a lot of great ones all over the country. But if you are looking at practices that do a lot of the things we talked about today, you have Dr. Gez's clinic in Atlanta. It's called Progressive Medical Center.

1:10:31You have my clinic here in Nashville, Tennessee area. It's called the Longevity Clinic. We also have nationwide. Now, this is more for general health and working with health coaches. That's called the Health Institute. But I wanna encourage you, hey, connect with a practitioner that can help you take your health to the highest level possible. And hey, do me a favor. If you're not subscribed, subscribe. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show and allow me to bring it on incredibly high-profile guests like Dr. Gazzagoli, others coming up. I know we got Gary Bruck and so many others that are coming up on the show.

1:11:00But subscribing allows you to not miss a thing. Also, share this episode. Listen, Dr. Guest has talked about these statistics. There are millions of people that are gonna be diagnosed with cancer and autoimmune disease, and they don't know that there are natural things they can do to improve their outcomes. So share this with one person. Think about that person you need to share it with. Do that, and I wanna say thanks so much for being on mission with us.