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

Dr. Gez Agolli has spent nearly 30 years using integrative medicine to treat cancer, autoimmune disease, and chronic illness — and what he's found challenges almost everything conventional medicine teaches about healing. Josh calls him one of his top two mentors in functional medicine, and this conversation covers the full protocol: terrain, toxicity, advanced therapies, and why testing matters more than guessing. In This Episode:- Why toxicity — not just genetics — is the #1 root cause of cancer right now, and what 3.3 billion pounds of environmental chemicals are doing to the body's terrain - How hyperthermia, high-dose vitamin C (the right kind), and hyperbaric oxygen work together — and which chemotherapy drugs make hyperbaric oxygen contraindicated - What insulin potentiation therapy (IPT) actually does: using fractionated chemo alongside glucose to target cancer cells directly - The circulating tumor cell tests and liquid biopsy markers (including Signatera and ctDNA) that can predict cancer recurrence 6–12 months before a scan shows anything - Why leaky gut is the root cause of autoimmune disease — and what Dr. Agolli's testing protocol reveals that most doctors never order - The glutathione, F2-isoprostane, and GGT markers that measure oxidative stress at the cellular level, and what happens when you address them Chapters: - "00:00:00" – Intro: Cancer Stats & Meeting Dr. Guez Agolli - "00:02:47" – His Origin Story & the Broken Healthcare System - "00:06:50" – What Cancer Is: Cell Biology & Root Causes - "00:13:46" – Sponsor Break: Heal Yourself Book - "00:14:31" – Parasites, Immune System & Terrain Theory - "00:19:57" – Advanced Cancer Testing: The RGCC (Greek) Test - "00:25:38" – Top Cancer Therapies: Hyperthermia, IPT & the 40-Day Protocol - "00:39:26" – Sponsor Break: Health Institute Bloodwork - "00:40:27" – Testing Philosophy: Micronutrients, Food Sensitivities & Glucose - "00:54:44" – Glutathione, Longevity & Reversing Autoimmune Disease - "01:05:12" – Mitochondria, Closing Thoughts & Closing Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → http://mybloodwork.com *Disclaimer: The bloodwork our team runs at mybloodwork.com covers a handful of the biomarkers listed in the guide above — including critical thyroid and metabolic markers — plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor, but does NOT cover all 25. You will want to consult your primary or functional doctor for the entire list. Thank you to our sponsors! Sunlighten Sauna: https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast Manukora Manuka Honey: https://manukora.com/axe Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: / @drjoshaxe 🎧 Early Access! Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners → Spotify: https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3JDvWcS Order my NEW BOOK, Heal Your Cells → www.healyourcellsbook.comWatch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram → / drjoshaxe Facebook → / drjoshaxe TikTok → / thedrjoshaxeshow X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → / joshaxe Website → http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST Instagram → @progressivemedicalcenter TikTok → @progressivemedicalctr LinkedIn → Gez Agolli YouTube → Progressive Medical Center / Rethink My Health Website → Progressive Medical Center DISCLAIMER This content is st

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The American Cancer Society last year reported, and they're predicting this year, 2.1 million cancer cases in the United States, and over 620,000 are going to lose their battles of cancer in this year alone.

• 0:12Josh Axe?

  But when we look at the root cause of cancer, there are several things. Excess sugar, lack of oxygen to the cell, not having enough nutrients, you know, your body being deficient in vitamin D and zinc, and the biggest one of all that I found was parasites. If somebody had a parasitic infection, their risk of cancer went up dramatically. Why is that?

• 0:28Speaker 00

  We've seen so many people suffer. Two million Americans, that's a lot of Americans, they're going to get cancer this year.

• 0:35Josh Axe?

  By the way, I think I heard this from you first, I think you've been saying this for almost 20 years, is test, don't guess.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  What's the best way to treat cancer? Prevent it.

• 0:57Josh Axe?

  Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Gez Agolli to the show. He's spent nearly 30 years practicing integrative medicine, and he's really one of the first in the medical space to focus on helping people heal all naturally. And if you want to know who I've learned from in my career, probably the top number one person, or at least top three people in my life, Dr. Gez Agolli here, who's practiced functional medicine for nearly 30 years. On today's show, we're going to talk about how to fight cancer naturally, we're going to talk about how to reverse autoimmune disease, heal your hormones, and so much more, using the most advanced therapies in nutrition, in herbs, and advanced therapies, he's an expert in ozone, high dose vitamin C, hyperthermia, and some other advanced technologies you

• 1:41Josh Axe?

  possibly have never heard of before. Hey, Gez, welcome to the show.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Josh, great to be here. I'm really excited to share this information, and it's always great to be here with you and spend some time.

• 1:50Josh Axe?

  Well, now, this is your second time on the show, because the first episode was, people raved about it, it was so helpful. You know, we had Dr. Pete Stulak with us as well, we talked about fighting cancer naturally, and a little bit about the way that you've practiced in your clinic, and I just want to also let everybody know how Gez has impacted my family's health as well. So I had my own, two family members, one come to you who had Graves' disease, helped reverse it, another who had hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's, you helped reverse it. I've had my mom visit your clinic before, just to naturally support her from, you know, in cancer prevention. I've been there myself and had my blood work done. I've had almost every family member who's been to your clinic in Atlanta, had their

• 2:33Josh Axe?

  blood work done, and you've helped facilitate and create a program for them to just optimize their health or reverse a condition. I'd love to hear from you first, what got you into the integrative medicine space?

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity. I'm so excited to share information with you, as you've encouraged me, Josh, is that I've watched your career over the past 20 years, and you make a tremendous impact in our healthcare society, because right now, our healthcare system's broken. And when I started even thinking about getting into medicine, I used to be in the Air Force, and was in college, went to the Air Force, and I want to give a shout out to my colleagues at the Combat Control, all our men and women serve our great country of ours. And what I really learned in the Air Force was teamwork. And what I see in our healthcare system is broken, not to be too critical, but we're lacking teamwork, we're lacking innovation, we're lacking creativity, and ultimately,

• 3:30Speaker 00

  what inspired me more than anything else is that my father, at the age of 46, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Now, at that particular time, I was a very young man, I was traveling around the world, I was doing a lot of crazy things I don't do anymore, such as skydiving and jumping out of these good, perfectly good airplanes, and, you know, doing all the things that parents don't want you to do in the first place, right, because of fear factor. But unfortunately, my father passed away very, very quickly, and he only lasted six months, and it was very devastating to me, very crushing. And what I remember more than anything else is that, and this is not a criticism to oncologists, because I think we need oncologists in our healthcare system, but his oncologist was

• 4:13Speaker 00

  very negative, very pessimistic, basically said, there's nothing you can do, and I read my dad's chart, and all they offered my dad was chemotherapy. No one ever talked about diet, no one ever talked about the root cause, no one ever talked about stressors, no one ever talked about helping him facilitate this cancer diagnosis, and he had to work simultaneously. And I say that for a couple of reasons, is that that galvanized me, inspired me to take action, and that started my journey. And I wanted to make a difference, and that's why I looked at all the different modalities in healthcare, and I decided, got PhD in nutrition, naturopathy before I went to medical school,

• 4:57Speaker 00

  and I knew that there was a better way. I do believe that we have one of the greatest healthcare systems in our country, but that's for trauma and urgent care. When it comes to chronic diseases, absolutely one of the worst in the world. Last year, $5.3 trillion were spent in our country on healthcare. That's 18%, 5.3 trillion. Okay, that's a lot of money, Josh, yet we're ranked probably 40 or 42nd in the world for longevity and health. And I knew then that we have to do better, and that's one of the reasons that inspired me to think outside the box and to, at that time, it was natural medicine, now it's integrative, which we can talk a little bit about that, which is exciting to me. So that's what really galvanized me to take action, is my father.

• 5:42Josh Axe?

  Wow. You know, obviously, you and I connect on this, is that, you know, we both got in this space because, in practice, the way we practice, because our family members were sick, we wanted to help them get healthy. You know, I know, and we recently had a case where, and by the way, when I say recently, I mean, last week, but almost every week, we have a case like this, where somebody goes into their oncologist, and they just say, chemotherapy is your only option, or chemo-radiation combo, that's your only option. And today, they're a little bit less negative sometimes about if they say, hey, I'm going to go do high dose vitamin C, or I'm going to do something else. Some of them are still saying no, and others say, well, or you could do that after the program, or, well, that would be okay. But none of them are cutting edge. I mean, think about how crazy it is that probably 98%, I do want to say there's probably

• 6:26Josh Axe?

  1% to 2% out there that are open to some of these things. One question I would have for you is, I know it seems like in Germany and Switzerland and certain other countries in Europe, they're much more open to some of these more advanced therapies that are non-chemo-radiation, like hyperthermia, doing, even using hyperbaric oxygen after, high dose vitamin C, curcumin, is that something you found as well?

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Well, let's take, that's a great question, by the way. Let's take a step back for just a second, and, you know, what is cancer? So I think we have to talk about that, because the human body has 30 trillion cells. On a daily basis, we actually produce over 300 billion cells, and at that same day, we actually destroy 300 billion cells. Red blood cells last 120 days, your liver, you can regenerate liver in five months, just to give you an example. It's called apoptosis. So what's happening with cancer, it's called mitosis, these cells are constantly replicating. And what I love about the Germans is that Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize in 1931, and

• 7:33Speaker 00

  he won it for cell biology, and his hypothesis in the 50s was that cancer cells are going to constantly disrupt the gluconeogenesis, is how we make energy at the cellular level. It's called ATP, for our listeners out there and viewers, going back to their biology days, we make energy and we need glucose. What's happening is that when there's too much glucose outside the cell, it rapidly divides, called mitosis, and there's a disruption. Instead of something called pyruvate, which makes energy, right, it's a normal cell, it actually disrupts it into fermentation, and that's where you get these cells, and they begin to clump, it's called the tumor. And that's one of the reasons, some tumors are benign, and some are very, very cancerous, and they're very, very aggressive.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  So if we take a look at why we're getting cancer, right, and then we take a step back in one of these other countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, they're very forward-thinking, and they're looking at cell biology. Now, I believe there's a place for chemotherapy, when it's done appropriately, but you have to prepare the body for chemotherapy, and that's why I think it's so important to find out why you got cancer. If you're listening to Josh and I talk about this, you should ask your oncologist, why did I get cancer? What was the reason? And we'll talk a little bit about that, because there are several common denominators, but I want our viewers and listeners to think a little bit, you know, why we have it, why is cancer rising?

• 9:00Speaker 00

  The American Cancer Society last year reported, and they're predicting this year, 2.1 million cancer cases in the United States. That's pretty high, and over 620,000 are going to lose their battle to cancer in this year alone. So we gotta do a better job on diagnosing, and also some treatment options and philosophy.

• 9:20Josh Axe?

  Well, let's hit on some root causes, and let me know what I missed. I think you're gonna agree with a lot of this. But when we look at the root cause of cancer, there are several things. One is, to your point, excess sugar, right? Your body is feeding off of sugar. These cancer cells are feeding off of sugar. So eliminating sugar, and part of this is it being a metabolic issue. When I think about the primary issue related to cancer, there's a metabolic issue. Another issue is lack of oxygen to the cell. This is why, I mean, I'll tell you, I spent thousands of hours looking, how do you reverse and heal cancer naturally? And one of the things I came across in terms of the natural treatments that had the most scientific evidence, this really surprised me. It was exercise and things like exercise without oxygen was the number one natural cancer fighter, long term,

• 10:05Josh Axe?

  for cancer prevention as well, but also fighting cancer naturally. That's big. Cells that are toxic are toxins, increasing cancer risk, not having enough nutrients, you know, your body being deficient in vitamin D and zinc. So these are some of the root causes that, you know, I found over the years.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  I totally agree with everything you're saying. Cancer is a multifactorial disease. There's multiple reasons. But I want our viewers and listeners to understand that the terrain, to me, is the most important thing. When we talk about the terrain, it's the terrain is the body. And the number one reason that we're finding right now for root cause of cancer in the United States in 2026 is toxicity. Toxicity is all time high. According to the Environmental Protections Agency, 3.3 billion pounds of chemicals are emitted in the water, in the air, in the land. It goes into the human body. We're a sponge. And we have to do a better job on not only cleaning our environment, there's not much we can do when it comes to the chemicals, but you can do a tremendous amount with the

• 11:00Speaker 00

  environment. That, to me, is like the number one cause. Obviously, when you look at other causes of cancer, a lot has to do with nutritional deficiencies. You touched on it. Right now, our soil is devoid of nutrients, and the body isn't resilient. The body can't handle the assault of these chemicals. We need good nutrients. We need to have the ability to detoxify. And, you know, the other aspect of it is hidden infections. This is a big one. You know, a lot of times, a patient gets cancer, they get on this protocol, it's protocol driven, specific on the disease factor. And I understand that. Listen, oncologists are very busy. They spend a lot of time in the residency. They're very well meaning,

• 11:41Speaker 00

  and they're just focused on the cancer. And they want to just do this protocol, but yet they're not looking at the terrain. So if we can just take a step back, and really understand the terrain to become resilient. You mentioned Dr. Pete. Dr. Pete shows a path of getting his body resilient. He had everything going for him. He changed his diet. Change your diet, you change your life. He looked at toxicity. He looked at some of these strategies. You talk about exercise with oxygen, and oxygen deprivation. Visiting Germany really inspired me. I went to this group called the Wernher group. Why is that

• 12:18Speaker 00

  name important? Dr. Manfred von Arden, A R D E double N E. He was the founder, and he was a very well known scientist, and he actually developed exercise with oxygen. And he was actually in Germany when the wall was built. So he's on the East German side. It's interesting, if you take a look at the Olympics, who did the best in the Olympics at that particular time? East Germans and Russians. And they all exercised, it was called contrast therapy. Low oxygen, right? So you're exercising with low oxygen, and then you load it up. So it's contrast exercise with oxygen. And then what ends up happening is you're flooding the body. And as you mentioned, when you have a tremendous amount of oxygen,

• 13:03Speaker 00

  you've changed your terrain. A cancer cell may not actually thrive. A cancer cell may not rapidly grow, which is called mitosis, because you've got that oxygen rich environment. And this is important. Now, I want to be very clear. Even if you do all these right things, Josh, cancer is still a high risk, right? Because cancer cells mutate something called P53 gene. And that's a very important gene. That's called the anti tumor gene. And some of these infections can affect, like a spike protein, a lot of research scientists are talking about that, right? And that's why I think we're seeing a rising in cancer is because of some of these viruses.

• 13:46Josh Axe?

  I am super excited to announce that Heal Your Cells is now officially live. This isn't a trendy health book. It's a resource you'll come back to for years. And I truly believe the future of healthcare is cellular health, and this book is where you learn how to build and maintain that foundation. If you've watched this show for a while, and my content has helped you in any way, I'd really appreciate your support on this book launch. You can grab your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you get your books. You'll also get hundreds of dollars in free bonus material when you enter your email at healyourselves.com. Again, that's healyourselves.com. Thank you so much for your support. I'm so grateful for you.

• 14:31Josh Axe?

  One of the things that was most shocking to me as I started doing more cancer research was looking at the increased risk if somebody has a prior infection to their increasing their cancer risk. And the biggest one of all that I found was parasites. If somebody had a parasitic infection, their risk of cancer went up dramatically. Why is that?

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Well, that's a great question. Certainly, we all have parasites, and we come across different parasites. But if you take a look, I mentioned earlier that the human body has 30 trillion cells. Well, guess what? The microbiome, 36 trillion bacterium. We have more than our cells. And if we start thinking this way, that we are nothing but a bunch of cells, and microorganisms, and so, you know, the immune system, that immune system is an invader in looking for pathogens to destroy, something called macrophages grabs on to this, and then you've got these natural killer cells, T cells, B cells, probably 70 to 80% of the immune system is in the digestive tract, from your mouth to your

• 15:30Speaker 00

  rectum. Your digestive tract is the size of a tennis court. It is massive, massive. So what happens is these parasites, right? You are the host, and these parasites become undetected. They rob your body of nutrients. So once again, nutritional deficiency, one of the causes of your terrain, allowing cancer to invade. And it affects your immune system. We have two immune systems, humoral and cellular. Cellular doesn't have a memory, humoral has a memory. So now, this parasite, which you may or may not know that you have, is bringing your immune system down very, very low, in addition to these other cells that are destroying

• 16:11Speaker 00

  the P53, which are infections and viruses, it's the perfect storm. You hear of individuals say, how did I get cancer? I lived a healthy life. I did this. And it just could take one to two different of these components that you now have got the cancer disease. And, you know, to me, when someone hears the word cancer, there's a fear factor. And they allow that fear to overwhelm them. And it affects their rest, because I was going to mention this part of the terrain, we have something called structural blockages. And these structural blockages affect our lymphatic system. So we're not clearing all of these cellular debris and infections, the way God designed our body to handle this. And that's

• 16:54Speaker 00

  why it's so important to look at the terrain, and to look at all these causative factors as you approach the healing process, and how you attack your cancer.

• 17:04Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, it makes sense for, if somebody has cancer today, you know, and this is, this is my focus with my own mom and other people I care for, is we want to do everything in our power to heal it, right? And hey, if chemo and radiation makes sense, which I think most of the time they don't, but there are some cases where I think they do. I think that, you know, you want to do everything you can in your favor. I'm working with somebody right now, and they're considering doing both conventional and natural. But I think the idea there is, hey, would you want your best chance of survival? Everybody says yes. Okay. Well, eating properly, exercising, getting good sleep, taking the right supplements or IVs, I mean, all of these things are going to help your body heal, and also prevent it coming back. I mean, I think, I don't know the exact statistics around it, but

• 17:49Josh Axe?

  it's incredibly high, the number of people that die from secondary cancers versus the first time they get them. It's incredibly high.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  It's very, very high. It's a very high percentage. And unfortunately, listen, for those battling cancer right now, it's very disruptive for their life, right? It disrupts almost every component. It disrupts, if you're a professional working, it can disrupt your family life. It can disrupt your overall outlook and your ability to survive and thrive. It's just very disruptive. And I think when you're, when you're sitting back making a decision, there's so much information out there. And I think it's called the paralysis of analysis. And then you've got an authority figure, well meaning oncologists that are trained differently, and they're trained to kill the cancer. Well, I gotta kill the

• 18:36Speaker 00

  cancer. But a functional integrative doctor takes a step back and say, number one, why did you get it? We talked about that. One of the root causes. Where are you body, mind, and spirit? Because, you know, I was talking to our good friend Jordan Rubin, and cancer is a spiritual disease. And we have to really look at the spiritual aspect of it as well. And now you have, and Jordan talks about this, as demonic, right? Demons. And it attacks the body. It attacks your ability to fight this. And now you have this fear factor, and you have this authority figure saying, you need chemotherapy, or you're not going to survive. Now, once again, I think what it's done appropriately, when the terrain...

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Is recovering and becoming more resilient, you can handle certain chemos.

• 19:24Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  To me, I'm going to encourage all of our viewers and listeners out there is what's the best way to treat cancer? Prevent it. Don't get in the first place. And I'm not trying to say that to be sarcastic or to make light of this is that we've seen so many people suffer. You know, 2 million Americans, that's a lot of Americans, they're going to get cancer this year. And there's a lot of things that we can do to prevent it. So we talk about changing your diet, changing your lifestyle, stress reduction, doing these oxygen therapies. You know, why can't we do this now? Right?

• 19:57Josh Axe?

  Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I've said for quite a few years is I try and eat like I have cancer every day.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:01Josh Axe?

  You know, so I mean, being proactive like that is so helpful. You know, one thing I did want to ask you about, and this is one of the things I love is that I think one of the biggest benefits, by the way, I think I heard this from you first, I think you've been saying this for almost 20 years is test, don't guess. One of the things that happens is people go into, whether it's cancer or autoimmune disease or any health condition, is a lot of times they go in and they might just get a standard blood panel, or they might, you know, get a PET scan done, but there's really no testing beyond that versus there is so much value now in some of the advanced therapies we, and some of the advanced testing we have and better determining what treatments have the greatest outcomes. And one of the things you do in your clinic, we do this in our clinic too, is you do something

• 20:45Josh Axe?

  called an RGCC test, a Greek test. And this is, and you know, what's funny is we had a, we recently had somebody we were working with for cancer support, doing some of the natural things while they went through and worked with their oncologists. And their oncologists, by the way, this was very gratifying to me and I was happy to hear this, they actually said, oh, this is fantastic. We're going to use this. And they actually changed the treatment. This was somebody at Vanderbilt that was like a lot more natural thinking, but one of the top people they had there who said, this is great. We may start running this ourself and we're going to actually use this for this patient's care. But walk us through, what is the Greek test exactly? And how can it be really important and helpful with, with cancer?

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Well, you know, one of the most exciting things, Josh, is that we have forward-thinking scientists in our country and, and a lot of these forward-thinking scientists are looking for better diagnostics on tracking and looking for sensitivities on how to better treat cancer on a precision, individualized. I've always been the type of individual, you know, there's certain protocols that I think are really good, right? Proper rest, proper sleep, good nutrition, all of that's fantastic. Exercise, resistance training, that's fantastic. But I wanted to take it to the next level. You know, why am I taking these supplements? Am I really deficient in this? I want, I want to find out. Why is this oncologist recommending this particular chemotherapy? Because I have colorectal cancer.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  And what's happened is a lot of forward-thinking scientists, PhDs and microbiologists developed this Greek test. It's called RGCC. And it looks at circulating tumor cells and it's measuring these circulating tumor cells. So you get a number, but it's looking at sensitivity. It measures which chemos are working, which natural substances are working. Do you have something called potential for angiogenesis? Does heat therapy work? And then you have a baseline so you can monitor that individual. What we found out, functional integrative doctors, is that cancer cells outsmart the treatment. There's a, there's a resistance. It's not getting to the, to the root of the tumor, that, that root.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  And that's why you hear somebody say, and I want to celebrate them, right? When they ring the bell, they're done the chemo, oh, I'm cancer-free, they got a clear scan, that's fantastic. But it starts with the cell. So you literally can have your tumor gone, completely gone with chemo and radiation, which is fantastic. You've probably affected the terrain, so hopefully you can rebuild that terrain. But then that circulating tumor cell may still be there, undetected by the scan. I'm a big believer in scans. I think scans are fantastic when you use them wisely, because a lot of radiation as well. You know, use them when you need them to monitor. But these circulating tumor cells, they can predict six, nine, 12 months before. There's also another test called Signatera, it's looking at CT DNA. So these are wonderful advancements.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  It's called the liquid biopsy. But because functional integrative doctors are more about protocol-driven precision, this test will tell you, does vitamin C work? Does curcuminoids work? Does oxygen work? And, and there's like 50 different natural agents. So you can design a robust plan because cancer cells do evade. And, and sometimes you can do a treatment that's working for 45 and 60 days, it stops working. Because cancer evades the immune system and cancer will look for other sources of fuel. And that's how it spreads.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  It's because it's very, very resilient and it actually has this ability to evade treatments.

• 24:21Josh Axe?

  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 beat a, 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. You 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, on their Greek test was doing hyperthermia was the single most effective natural treatment.

• 25:06Josh Axe?

  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, I've been such a wild fan of the Greek test. Again, it's called an RGCC test. And it's something I know that, that, you know, certain integrative clinics will do around the country. One of the other things I want to talk to you about just is blood tests in general. I want to 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?

• 25:38Speaker 00

  That's a great question. Let me, let me go back to the hyperthermia.

• 25:40Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  So hyper, more, thermia, heat, more heat. This is not a sauna, although I'm a big believer in saunas. Hot baths, colds could be very beneficial. 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, 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.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  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. The 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 hyperthermia 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 Finnish sauna, you're going to get, but you're not raising that core temperature, Josh.

• 27:04Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I mean, what I read on, 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.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  So I witnessed the Von Arda, it's called Irotherm. It's a very unique technology because it physiologically raises the core temperature.

• 27:29Josh Axe?

  And by the way, how does it do that? How does it raise the core temperature in that?

• 27:33Speaker 00

  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.

• 27:40Josh Axe?

  Okay.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  So it's completely monitored, axillary temperature, rectal thermometer. You, 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, systolic 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

• 28:15Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  The pressure of the vessel, right? The human body has 60,000 miles of vessels, like a superhighway. 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. So you have that, that controlled heat. And, 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.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  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 gonna have to say that hypothermia is one of my favorite go-to right now with all the research.

• 29:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Dr. Charles Meekin, I interviewed him, and he's a retired board-certified oncologist. And he basically talked about, beginning of his career, he was doing radiology oncology, that 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, sometime, a lot has to do with reimbursements, cost-effectiveness. I understand that as well. But when it comes to the most effective treatments, I think hypothermia is gonna be up there as well. I'm also gonna 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.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  You know, unfortunately, 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 acetic

• 30:44Speaker 00

  acid unfortunately is corn-derived, and that's something that we don't think is gonna be healthy unless it's non-GMO corn. And that's something that we also, and I'm gonna 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 gonna highly recommend that. You know, there's a few contraindications, there's certain chemotherapies you should not do, high-dose, hyperbaric oxygen at a high level, doxie rubinson's one of them.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  So, you have to really check, check, check with a licensed practitioner, they're gonna 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.

• 31:44Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  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, 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. And what we've been doing, Josh, recently, is that we've been putting glucose monitors on every cancer patient.

• 32:11Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  And I've gotta 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 postprandular glucose.

• 32:27Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  So, just by doing that is a great strategy.

• 32:30Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah, I love, 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? Or how can the, I mean, integrative really means, how can we integrate the best from natural, and what's gonna be the most effective from the conventional world in treating somebody? I do wanna 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 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?

• 33:00Speaker 00

  I think it's a fantastic strategy, and I think what, what-

• 33:02Josh Axe?

  And what is it exactly? I'd love for you to explain.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  All right, so let's go back to, we'll go back to Otto Warburg, the Warburg Effect, of course, is that there's a disruption in gluconeurogenesis. You know, let's, let's talk about glucose. Without glucose, we're not gonna 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, into, going into ATP, it turns it into a fermentation process, and you got these rapidly growing cells. So, there's something called a PEC scan. Have you heard of a PEC scan before?

• 33:36Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Okay. So, Otto Warburg is kinda responsible for this, because when they do this scan, they give them a substance that's glucose.

• 33:44Josh Axe?

  That's right.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  So, it lights it up, so you can find out where's the tumor, where's it going, has it metastasized? So, it's kind of interesting when a, when oncologist or another traditional doctor says, "Ah, sugar has nothing to do with cancer," yet they're using this as a scan.

• 34:00Josh Axe?

  Literally, sugar.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  It's sugar, which is a great, by the way, because it's gonna really pinpoint, and I'm a big believer in that scan, it's fantastic to find out what, what, what's going on with the disease process. But, you know, what, it's very interesting, is, is that IPT, insulin potentiation therapy, what it basically does, it's actually putting in insulin, because how do you, how does the body respond to glucose that's elevated? Your insulin receptors, right? Insulin's 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. Afori, talked about, when glucose is outside the cell, it's sticky.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  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?

• 34:56Josh Axe?

  Well, I mean, it feels wet early on, but the more you step in it, it's gonna feel stickier and stickier and stickier.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  You got it, sticky proteins. The last thing you want is sticky, sticky proteins. So, 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 potentiation 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.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  So, that's an area that we used to do at our clinic, we used to have an oncologist, he retired, and, 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 other 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. And 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 wanna be very, very

• 36:28Speaker 00

  sympathetic and empathetic as much as possible. I've never had cancer, but I've had family members that 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're gonna, you should have a good outcome.

• 36:56Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah, I know with my mom, it was very similar. You know, my mom was a teacher, and then during that summer, well, she, she spent, I mean, really focusing on healing as much time as possible, you know? And I think, I wanna 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 a 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. I 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.

• 37:40Josh Axe?

  It's like, hey, here's some ice cream and some, you know, sweet and jello, it's just, it's not ideal. So, I wanna encourage you, no matter what you do, go in and get a protocol, work with somebody, get the right testing done, you know, to look for nutritional deficiencies, things like the RGDC, 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, it 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. You know, I know for my mom, she had very, you know, 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.

• 38:24Josh Axe?

  One thing I do wanna mention as well is, if you decide to go natural alone, you would need to do that at 100%. You would never wanna go natural, and so I'm gonna change a few things. You would wanna change every last part of your day, to your point for months, of going all-in and healing your body. And 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.

• 39:06Josh Axe?

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

• 39:26Josh Axe?

  Hey, listen, if you're on more medications than you ever planned on, and you still don't feel great, and nobody's actually looked at why, then there's another conversation we should have. The root cause is likely deep down in your cells, and our cellular healing protocols at the Health Institute address the issues that are lurking upstream naturally in the right order, which is absolutely key. The system I've created for helping people heal is so effective, that you could go and read the hundreds of five-star TrustPilot reviews about folks getting their energy back, balancing their hormones, dropping weight, getting rid of brain fog, but most importantly, feeling alive again. I also have so many people saying they feel and look younger.

• 40:07Josh Axe?

  But it all starts with a cellular blood work analysis, an at-home blood test kit, plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors. If you're ready to get to the root cause of your symptoms, go to mybloodwork.com, that's mybloodwork.com today, so we can help.

• 40:27Josh Axe?

  I 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?

• 40:50Speaker 00

  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. And 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. Guys, 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, the beginning of the interview, what's the best way to treat cancer? Or any disease for that matter is don't get it, prevent it.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  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 are 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. And that's why we want to have testing, because when you see testing and it's in front of

• 42:19Speaker 00

  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 think I'm crazy, right? Because number one, garlic has Allison, 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. And 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 would, she loved garlic. Who doesn't love garlic, right? Garlic's in everything. Broccoli, right?

• 43:01Speaker 00

  I had a patient that basically had intestinal problems. She had IBS. She, 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 from her diet. She 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 the TSH, right? That's thyroid stimulating hormone.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  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 hormone 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. Yeah, 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.

• 44:13Josh Axe?

  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 three 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 three index on, on, on blood work. And these are things that if people wouldn't have tested, they would have never known. But, 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.

• 44:54Josh Axe?

  I've done a lot of food sensitivity testing over the years. I have found more than any other test that I've run, there tend to be some false positives. And I'm curious if you'd agree with that, that sometime, now, 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, we were definitely careful of those. But some of them were more in the yellow that weren't as bad. I would say, hey, eat that food. And 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 positive, especially when we're talking about an IgG.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great question. There are some false positives there. I think, I think depending on the laboratory, it can be anywhere from 87 to 95 sensitivity and specific. So yeah, there's some, but here, here's really what's happening. So when you run a, when you run a food allergy, and that's why I like to use something called an IgG first. So these are your immune system. I mentioned earlier, they 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.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  When 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.

• 46:46Josh Axe?

  Right.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  And the antibodies change every six, nine, 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, that'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.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  And once I found out, I eliminated the cashews. I noticed a significant difference within about 30 days. I had less inflammation. I 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.

• 48:16Josh Axe?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  So it's how you interpret it, how you look at it.

• 48:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, I feel like for myself, what 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. And I always just have one thing show up every time for me, 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, and then all, and then all 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, 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.

• 49:04Josh Axe?

  And 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, 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. And maybe they needed a GI map or a food sensitivity more than they needed, you know, 100 blood markers.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, let me, 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. And 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.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  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. It'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, they should do a deep dive. Gut markers, I'm big, 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 zonine levels are elevated, your histamine, diamine oxidase is off, you need to be on this peptide,

• 51:13Speaker 00

  these amino acids for 90 days, 120 days. Otherwise, you're just sporadic. You know, you don't know what you're doing. I like the testing because it also motivates a patient to take action. And 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 it up to 200, that's a problem.

• 51:48Josh Axe?

  You know, it's just surprising, you know, I wore a continuous glucose monitor a couple of years ago. And I was just, I mean, 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.

• 52:05Josh Axe?

  Eating 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.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 52:17Josh Axe?

  Yeah, no, I was surprised, sweet potatoes mostly. Didn't, 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 causes it to spike? Driving. Driving a car. You know, and I started realizing, well, I guess if I, you know, I, maybe I'm a little bit of a tense driver, my cortisol goes up, fight or flight, what else goes up with it? Insulin starts to go up. I mean, these hormone cascades, you know, how one affects the other.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  You know, it's interesting. I had a conversation with Dr. So every Thursday, we have a roundtable 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, 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. It was like five times higher. And Dr. Padet was pulling up studies that cortisol actually will enhance more than testosterone, the prostate.

• 53:23Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Cortisol itself. So what was happening with you when you were stressed out driving, there, there is a very, very common connection on the glucose cortisol pathway. So it's going to artificially raise that glucose. But you know, 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, you know, taking things like berberine, looking at alpha lipoic acid, not only is it a powerful antioxidant, it actually helps with insulin resistance. So 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

• 54:04Speaker 00

  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 integrative 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 got to work out. I used to be in the military. I was in a special forces unit. I can, 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.

• 54:44Josh Axe?

  So one of the therapies that I have started using myself and with patients a lot more often over the past three years is, is using glutathione. And I've been incredibly impressed with the results. And I want to share, I started, we started doing some blood testing here at the local clinic and the longevity clinic in Nashville. One'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, increased cancer risk, heart disease, and oxidative stress is a huge deal. So I've loved that. There's also the, what is it? OH8.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  Oh, H D G.

• 55:19Josh Axe?

  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 I started doing, 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. They've seen miraculous results by increasing their glutathione. Have you seen some of the same results?

• 55:49Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, first of all, glutathione is a tri amino acid 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 A to HDG, deoxyguanosine actually is an oxidative stress marker. And that marker usually goes elevated when your body assaulted with oxidative stress. Now, we as humans need a little bit of oxidative stress. I want to go back to this term called homeostasis. And 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,

• 56:31Speaker 00

  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. So 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.

• 57:09Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  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, you know, 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 that we do that with a test called in body. 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.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  It's a master antioxidant. And we should be actually looking at more glutathione. You can do it IV. You mentioned N-acetylcysteine, that is also available IV. As a matter of fact, in the hospital, anytime that you deal with some kind of liver toxicity or things of that nature, they talk about giving NAC, also helps the lungs, they do a nebulizer.

• 58:18Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  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, there was a big uproar because they want to have NAC become a drug, which really it's a natural occurring. And, 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 integrative doctor and they've not checked these markers, F2 isoprostane looks for oxidative stress in the vessels and A to HDG is looking at the cell. I mentioned that the human body has 30 trillion cells.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  If A to HDG is elevated, that patient has tremendous oxidative stress. And just by supporting them, you start to see the benefits, right? How the body recovers.

• 59:11Josh Axe?

  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.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  No, 100%. I mean, you know, when it comes to these biohackers, right? And then listen, you can say I'm doing biohacking as well. I think it's fantastic, right? But the research is very, very clear. Oxidative 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, my friends, Dr. Christine Blanch,

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  she actually got appointed to the NIH of the integrative complementary advisors. And she's talking about now, there's 18 of them pointed right now, and they talk about different things. I believe they're going to talk about some of these tests that they should even allow Medicare pay for them. And unfortunately, a lot of insurance companies don't pay for this, right? And, and our elderly population need this the most, right? This is how we're going to help them not only live longer, but live healthfully.

• 1:00:30Josh Axe?

  So I mentioned to start, Dr. Gads, that, you know, when I first met you, I mean, I probably have known you for Maybe 17 year, it's been a long time.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  Been a long time.

• 1:00:39Josh Axe?

  And, um, and, 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. And so I brought these people to you, they got tested, and then you, 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, you know, 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?

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, 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 we went to this course and he came back and, and Dr. Bouquet 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 gonna 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 gonna make a huge impact. And by addressing the infections, that, that to me

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  is the key. You can change your diet. You, you can go on low anti-inflammatory diet. You 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 component to addressing, because these infections, I don't, 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, um, 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's disrupted at any capacity, it's not going to heal. So you gotta start from there. And then you

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  gotta allow, um, the healing process in the gut microbiome. The great thing about what we're talking about, the body can regenerate, you can regenerate the gut lining. Those tight junctions, Dr. Alessio Fosano clearly demonstrated this when he was doing research, uh, back in, I believe in Massachusetts, that he was doing research on, on some type of gluten issues when it comes to celiac. And, 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. And we've seen

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  patients not only get better, uh, but they, they, their, their health has improved from tremendous, um, from what their doctor said, stop, just take this medication. Their philosophy is to shut down the immune system.

• 1:03:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  And our philosophy is to correct it slowly and allow that, that immune system to work for you properly.

• 1:03:41Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. I remember this is, this is quite a few years ago. This is probably about the time I met you. I wrote an article on DrAx.com about how to heal leaky gut. And how, 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, you know, some conventional medical doctors saying it does not exist. Well, 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 gotta 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

• 1:04:26Josh Axe?

  to heal and seal that gut lining. And a big part of that diet is what, you know, people used to always think, I 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. Dr. Goli, is mitochondria 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, if any, any thoughts around the cell membrane, but what is, it seems like we're looking a lot more now than ever before at improving cellular health in order to

• 1:05:10Josh Axe?

  help heal numerous conditions.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great, listen, we're, 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 mitochondrial 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? They need to strategize for you. And without a resilient mitochondria, the body is going to break down. Um, and that's why I have to look at different things. NAD is getting a lot of different, um, research on that as well. Um, you're looking at something called NMN, which is a precursor, um, and

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  something called NIAGEN. I was part of a research, I, I was a, um, research director, and I was looking at the benefits of a NIAGEN, which is a precursor with different vitamins and B cells and everything like that. But I think it all starts off at the cell. If we go back to just basic cell biology, how do we create energy? How 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 mitochondria health. And that all starts with looking at, get rid of the infections, what's causing the inflammation, get a nutrition, nutritional based diet that works for you, and that's through the testing at the cell. I think you're going

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  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, it's just checking the whole body and you're looking there, oh, hey, Josh, you're, you're deficient in lysine. Without lysine, you're not going to make, uh, the proper amino acid into the cell. Um, and then you need to also have, uh, 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, uh, B vitamins, you're not going to make hormones. Um, I believe minerals are very, very important. And that's where it starts off right there.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  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. You 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 docere, and it means teacher. We're here to impart knowledge and wisdom to hopefully galvanize that individual to take action to have a, have a long, healthy, quality life.

• 1:08:01Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  And that's the goal.

• 1:08:02Josh Axe?

  Absolutely agree. And I love, I love closing out with this, with this idea of doctors 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. I want to thank Dr. Gez Goli for being on the show here. Uh, by the way, Dr. Gez, let people know where they can find out more about you and your amazing clinic.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they can just go to our website, www.progressive medical center.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, 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. Um, there was a young man who, at 30 years old, was diagnosed with a grade three, soon to be grade four, uh, lymphoma. And they just wanted to do chemo. And I just want to give this young man a shout out. He actually owned, uh, 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, but

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  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, uh, having a poor diet. So if you're young and you're about to battle this disease, don't lose hope. There's always hope. And that's why taking a well-rounded approach of integrative medicine, integrative medicine is just good medicine.

• 1:09:34Josh Axe?

  I absolutely agree.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  And this young man actually did high dose vitamin C. He did the hyperbaric oxygen. Uh, he did fasting. Uh, he did curcumin IV with something called Photodynamic, which is a special laser from Germany. Uh, 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.

• 1:10:04Josh Axe?

  Praise God. I love hearing that. Well, thanks so much, Dr. Goli. 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. You 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 want to encourage you, hey, connect with a practitioner that can help you take your health to the highest level possible. And hey, do me a

• 1:10:47Josh Axe?

  favor, if you're not subscribed, subscribe. It's the number one thing you could do to support the show. And allow me to bring on incredibly high-profile guests like Dr. Gez Goli, others coming up. We, I know we got Gary Bruck and so many others that are coming up on the show. But subscribing allows you to not miss a thing. Also, share this episode. Listen, Dr. Gez talked about these statistics. There are millions of people that are going to 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 want to say, thanks so much for being on mission with us.