[00:00:01] Luke: Dr. John.

[00:00:04] Dr. John: Luke Storey.

[00:00:04] Luke: Have you ever listened to the musician Dr. John from New Orleans?

[00:00:07] Dr. John: I have.

[00:00:08] Luke: Oh man, I forgot about him. One of my favorites. Mac Romanek, I think was his name.

[00:00:13] Dr. John: Well, our common friend, mutual friend, Doyle Bramhall was friends with Dr. John.

[00:00:19] Luke: Was he really?

[00:00:20] Dr. John: He would tell me stories about Dr. John. He said that he walked up to Dr. John and said, so Dr. John, are you a doctor? Where'd you get your degree? He said, you don't need no degree to be a doctor.

[00:00:35] Luke: That's classic. Actually, just reminded me of something. Dr. John was a sober guy, former alcoholic or addict or whatever, like myself and Doyle. And I saw him. Since 12-step programs are anonymous, there's no rules, but it's really uncool to talk about someone you saw at a meeting. Because there's a lot of famous people in meetings and things like that. And I would never talk about them, but since he's passed, I feel it's probably okay to break his anonymity, hopefully. But yeah, he spoke at a meeting once out in LA, and I was super starstruck.

[00:01:13] When I first got sober, it was one of the things I struggled with because I was playing in rock and roll bands and stuff. And I thought I was like Mr. Cool, which I was very uncool actually based on how I was living. But I felt really lame. Being sober was like lame.

[00:01:29] If you're very ego identified with being a druggie and rock and roll and Hollywood and all that, it was like really lame. And when I first got sober, I was homeless and jobless. And one of the first jobs I got was working for Aerosmith. And they were the first band ever in history to be publicly sober and talking about how they went to the Betty Ford Center and, we're all clean, man, and we're having a big comeback.

[00:01:52] And they had a hugely successful comeback. So over those first few years, if I would see someone who was cool that I looked up to that was sober, it really helped my sobriety because I felt less lame about it, which is funny. You would be proud to be a total loser drug addict, but I was. Yeah. And Stevie Ray Vaughan was also someone who was in 12-step groups and became wildly successful after he got sober and stuff.

[00:02:20] Dr. John: So it was the flow for me as a child, was growing up in Hawaii, everybody was partying. There was so many drugs associated with my very early childhood. I think I was 12 when I did mushrooms the first time.

[00:02:38] Luke: Wow. You're lucky.

[00:02:41] Dr. John: LSD wasn't too far behind that. And so I had an older sister that was really into it, and it was the cool thing. We were having the best time ever back then. And then, of course, it's all fun until it's not fun.

[00:02:58] And so I look back now, and it's a lot of my friends that I grew up with. They passed, and a lot of the crystal meth thing really tore Hawaii up pretty significantly. A lot of people are still really into that. And so that was actually a part of the culture in high school for me, was--

[00:03:16] Luke: Smoking that ice. The blue ice.

[00:03:20] Dr. John: Yeah, but it was cool. It was the culture of us as like, we had no idea the significance of it. Nowadays, there's a lot of information out there for kids and adults to know like, hey, this is really a bad idea. But back then, there was nothing that was preventing people from really going into that culture.

[00:03:47] The luckiest thing that happened to me and my parents got divorced when I was 15 and my sister stuck back in Hawaii with my father, and I went with my mom to Florida. And we moved to St. Pete, and I just got away from all of that. I think if I didn't-- if I stayed in Hawaii, I don't know if I'd be here today.

[00:04:14] Luke: I've always thought that was so sad because Hawaiian culture and those islands and just the magic of the energy there, it's so sad that in particular crystal meth has gripped those islands so much. It's really weird. I wonder sometimes because I'm a conspiracy analyst, like how did that infiltrate there, and why it's so weird.

[00:04:41] One thing is you can make it in a bathtub with very little chemistry experience. You might blow yourself up, but I understand it's not that difficult to make crystal meth, so maybe that's part of it, because you don't have to import it. There's maybe not a big coke problem because you have to import coke, whereas you can just make crystal meth on the island.

[00:04:59] Dr. John: They were importing it, and it was coming from California.

[00:05:02] Luke: Oh, really? So people weren't making it in sheds out in the jungle or whatever?

[00:05:05] Dr. John: No, I witnessed it firsthand with folks coming in from California with lots of it. I'm not a big historian on crystal meth, but from what I understand, it was made by chemists in the California area. And that's where they had some really interesting breakthroughs in the study of Parkinson's.

[00:05:32] Because the people that were using a lot of the crystal were developing Parkinson's and they actually were able to understand the development of Parkinson's, and some of the different takeaways that they have have been incorporated into some of the ways that neurologists are dealing with Parkinson's patients. So that's one positive aspect. And if you wanted to promote Parkinson's with laboratory animals that are actually using high doses of meth for that.

[00:06:08] Luke: Really?

[00:06:08] Dr. John: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:09] Luke: When I was in rehab, the one and only time, thankfully-- for many people, it doesn't stick. For me, it stuck. Thank God. But I was in there, and it was in Northern California in 1997. And there was maybe 30 people in there, mostly men. And a lot of them were in there because their insurance paid for it. So there was a lot of heavy equipment operators and construction workers, and it was a blue collar crowd in there.

[00:06:42] And the vast majority of them were meth addicts. And I was one of only two heroin addicts that went in there, and it was me and this other guy, I forget his name, but he was a tough customer. He was from Oakland, and he was a bad [Inaudible]. Yeah. He had a wild past. And so he and I bonded because when people come off a meth run, they sleep for a week straight.

[00:07:12] When you come off heroin, you have insomnia for a week straight, if not longer. So he and I couldn't sleep. We were just sweating it out every night. So we would bond over that. And one of the things that he shared with me was-- actually shared two funny-- it's weird the things you remember. One funny story that he shared with me is he said he used to be a cab driver in Hollywood back in the early '90s, and that he was, I don't know if I should say this. Eh, who cares.

[00:07:38] He was Chris Robinson's of the Black Crowes. He was his driver. And I don't know why I remember this, but he said Chris used to cook up heroin and keep it in a Visine bottle and snort it. And I was like, damn, I wish I would have known that you could do that. I would have been doing it.

[00:07:54] Dr. John: Oh yeah.

[00:07:55] Luke: Yeah. It's pretty convenient versus needles and all the other things. But the one thing he told me that stuck with me is he was a cook. He cooked meth. That was his main gig. And he cooked for the Hells Angels, so he was a big distributor. And I said, what's in that stuff? Because I never liked meth.

[00:08:13] I would still do it, but I hated it. It's better than being sober. So I said, what's in that stuff, man? It's so toxic. And he said, dude, you have no idea. He said, all of the ingredients that you use to cook the cleanest, best possible meth, every ingredient has a skull and bones poison warning on the bottle.

[00:08:35] I'm like, no wonder it burns your nose so bad and makes you so sick and paranoid. And it's just the worst drug. I just never understood how someone could get addicted to that drug because it's the worst high ever to me. But anyway, I digress. Had no idea we were going to go down that road, which is why this show is always so fun.

[00:08:58] Dr. John: Yeah. Well, we're about to embark on some really interesting topics here.

[00:09:04] Luke: Yeah.

[00:09:05] Dr. John: I'm excited about some of the things that we're going to be talking about.

[00:09:10] Luke: So I want to let people know that toward the end of this conversation, we're going to talk about your super cutting-edge prostate treatments. And for women listening that think like, oh, I don't need to hear the end of the show because I don't have a prostate, I want to let the women know that if you have any men in your life, whether it's brother, husband, boyfriend, dad, especially dads, because older guys are really prone to prostate problems, which you're going to share with us, please, women, listen in because if you have a man who's having problems in that area, this is by far the most cutting-edge advanced treatment that I've ever heard of.

[00:09:48] And many men, and especially the women who don't have a prostate, are unaware of what a pervasive issue this is. And so we're going to talk about that a little bit later, and I'm really excited because I've been having problems in that area and going to your clinic in Sarasota has been freaking amazing.

[00:10:08] And I've seen a lot of improvements with it. So we'll talk about that later, but the first thing I want to talk about is the latest development in stem cells. And I've done a number of shows on stem cells more in the traditional vein adipose-derived stem cells, bone marrow derived stem cells, etc.

[00:10:27] I've done a lot of those treatments over the years. And seeing a little improvement, but nothing that really met the promise or the hope that you hear about, the miraculous healing power of stem cells. I think it's improved some things for me, but nothing that's noticeable until I did the second most recent treatment with you where you did my hip.

[00:10:51] My right hip has just been problematic for 20-plus years or something. And that was the first thing out of all the things I've done where there's been a lasting change-- less inflammation, less pain, a little more mobility. That's my fault because I don't do a lot of mobility drills that would help it in that area because I'm lazy. So I want to talk about that, and let's just dive in.

[00:11:15] And I also want to let people know everything we talk about will be in the show notes at lukestorey.com/drjohn. And for potential patients or practitioners that want to learn more about the stem cells, we're going to create a link for that. For now, we'll just make a hyperlink. It'll be lukestorey.com/xcells.

[00:11:38] And you can speak to how practitioners can get involved in this because there's a lot of people doing stem cells out there, and I think they're making it a lot harder on themselves in terms of practitioners and probably having to charge way too much money to their clients and maybe not getting the best results and so on.

[00:11:54] So this is going to be great information, not only for people that want to explore stem cells for their own healing, but also practitioners that can adopt this into their clinics. So anyway, tell us about the stem cells. What have we been doing, and why do I feel so awesome?

[00:12:11] Dr. John: Yeah. I'm really happy to hear how well you're doing. And hips are notoriously the most difficult area of the body to treat. And we've had a few patients that we've done other types of stem cell regenerative treatments on their hips and not had quite the complete healing. And so you're not alone. We've got a few other people.

[00:12:30] And that really tells me that we're really on to something, when you can really move the needle on hips. We started as a clinic, utilizing regenerative therapies in over 20 years ago, and it all came after I got an injury to my back and I was told by a neurosurgeon that I'm going to need surgery. And he told me it was my disc.

[00:12:56] And then a friend of mine got out of osteopathic school, and he was talking about this treatment called prolotherapy, which is the early days of stem cells where it's like a dextrose solution. It's not nearly as strong.

[00:13:09] Luke: And it's brutal. I used to do that. This isn't very painful.

[00:13:13] Dr. John: Yeah, they can be. But what was nice about that treatment for me was that it really opened my eyes to the fact that most of our pain and dysfunctional aspects of our joint is from the connective tissue. So it's those supporting structures of our joints that become the problem. And so when you really look at the quality or the type of tissues that are more vulnerable to injury where they don't repair, where stem cells really shines is they're very dense cartilage, connective tissues.

[00:13:47] Luke: Where you don't get blood flow.

[00:13:49] Dr. John: You don't have blood flow. The body can't bring in the groceries, take out the garbage. So then moving forward, we started using blood, and PRP came on the scene maybe about five years after we started with the prolo. And then we were one of the first clinics to actually start pulling bone marrow and doing liposuctions on patients.

[00:14:10] And we were even putting them both together. We called that maripose. And boy, we were seeing some amazing results. We still are. However, the FDA told us we had to stop using the adipose because when we took that fat into our lab and added an enzyme to dissolve the fat, what that left was something called the stromal vascular fraction, which is all the stuff in the fat besides the fat cells.

[00:14:36] And so then we would take that stromal vascular fraction, and we would mix it with their PRP, or we were doing IVs with some people with that as well. And so it's an incredible regenerative product, but the FDA came and said that because we were using an enzyme and we were doing something to it in the lab, it was more than minimally manipulating.

[00:14:59] And that's the language they have in the laws, that you can't more than manipulate anything from the body and put it back into the body because they consider that a drug, which would require approval.

[00:15:13] Luke: And this is why people will go to Mexico, or Panama, or Germany, or wherever and get culture expanded stem cells where they start to multiply them. In this country, it would be considered a drug. Is that why people will fly away and spend a bunch of time and money to do that?

[00:15:30] Dr. John: That's exactly right. And so that's really the next thing that really came on to the market, was all of a sudden we get just inundated by companies using different aspects of perinatal tissue. The Wharton's jelly, the amniotic fluid, the amniotic sac, the cord blood, all these are perinatal tissues and very rich in growth factors and stem cells. And so there's a number of companies that have isolated certain lines of stem cells, lineages of stem cells from these perinatal tissues.

[00:16:06] And these clinics are the Riordan's Clinic in Panama. BioXcellerator is one that a lot of people are talking about that's in Colombia. People going to Mexico. But there's a variety of these different companies that will now culture expand a specific stem cell line, and they can't do it too many generations.

[00:16:29] So the more generations they go the weaker those cells are. So usually, the first couple generations are the strongest. But that allows them to be able to take and expand them into large numbers of stem cells to then be able to do treatment on people from running an IV, treating a variety of different diseases. There's injecting it into joints and into tissues. There's sexual rejuvenation. There's hair. There's skin. It's really expansive as far as all the things that you can do with it.

[00:17:05] So I jumped on board not with the expanded, but in the United States we could get things that were directly from the placenta. They weren't taken to a lab. They were just a company that was getting the placentas from the hospitals that were donated and then they would process these tissues and then make them into doses and we would buy them.

[00:17:27] And this is primarily the treatment that most clinics in the United States offer. Unless they're using bone marrow or unless they're using adipose tissue in some way, they're buying these doses from a variety of different companies that make them from some of these perinatal tissues. Now, out of the country is those specific stem cells are culture expanded. That's not allowed in the United States.

[00:17:55] And I would say that if you were going to receive a treatment with perinatal tissue, probably that would be an advantage to have it expanded into these millions of stem cells. What I've found, though, is that the treatments that we were doing with patients with bone marrow and adipose tissue always did better.

[00:18:19] And we're going to be talking about this new option called X cells. But before we had that, we were still doing a lot of patients with bone marrow. And I might have put a placental-based stem cell with a bone marrow to boost it in peptides and things like that.

[00:18:41] But if I had a moderate to severe arthritis or a large rotator cuff tear, an injury hips, I would often say, I'd like to do bone marrow with this case. So my team would agree that we wanted to use bone marrow because ultimately the results were always better.

[00:18:59] And they were better in a few ways. One is the patients seem to produce more cartilage visually, when we would follow up with them on MRI and ultrasound. And number two, I would see some patients years and years later, in some instances, it was 10, 15 years later that some of the cases that we've done, I'd seen them where they're still doing great.

[00:19:20] So the durability of those treatments, I really felt comfortable with. With regards to these culture expanded stem cells that are done out of the country, I've seen a lot of cases that have come to me that have gone and done those treatments and maybe felt better for a period of time, but it wasn't durable.

[00:19:41] And I think that what I've discovered, because I've really dove into all the different options in stem cells, and I think I understand why that's the case, is because ultimately these perinatal tissue stem cells are very fragile. And so they have a very high ability to reduce inflammation. So they're very good at augmenting inflammation. And so oftentimes people will feel better for a period of time.

[00:20:10] However, they don't survive for longer than even an hour, Luke. And so one of the things that happens when a stem cell is transplanted into the body is that they will adhese to an area that's damaged, and they'll start to secrete exosomes. And so anybody that's studying this field has been looking and seeing people talk about exosomes because that's another option that we haven't mentioned yet where they can stress these different perinatal tissue and trigger them to secrete a bunch of exosomes into a solution and then take that solution and freeze it.

[00:20:46] And those can be pulled out of the freezer at doctor's offices to utilize for a variety. And we've also used those quite a bit. When those came on the market, boy, that really created a lot of excitement, but ultimately, I would say the results still weren't as good as what we were getting from taking the patient's own, like I said, bone marrow and adipose tissue.

[00:21:10] When I really started to dig into some of the advantages of what I would call these reservoirs that God made with us, creation made two main reservoirs of regenerative substances, is our bone marrow, where all of it's produced and made. That's where all of our stem cells and our red blood cells, all of our white blood cells. Our cells are made in our bone marrow.

[00:21:36] And then adipose tissue is really unique because one out of every 100 cells in your fat is a stem cell. And so they've looked into adipose tissue, and most people when they're referencing the adipose tissue, they talk about adipose-derived stem cells. And that's mostly because in the beginning, that's all they really thought was there, is these mesenchymal stem cells called adipose-derived stem cells.

[00:22:04] But then the recent research is coming out with these other stem cell lines that's called the fraction. Because earlier I'd said the stromal vascular fraction. So when you take the fat out of there, you have this collection of about 10 to 12 different types of stem cells. And one of the groups of stem cells is called MUSE stem cells, which is multilineage-differentiating endurance cells. How's that for a name?

[00:22:33] Luke: I don't know how you remember all this stuff.

[00:22:35] Dr. John: Yeah. Well, I was practicing before we started. I'm in there.

[00:22:39] Luke: You were reciting your notes.

[00:22:41] Dr. John: Yeah. It's a mouthful, but you listen to the end of it, it's endurance cells. And that's really what really shines, when the research has compared adipose-derived stem cells with the fraction in particular versus stem cells. People that are into health and wellness, it's pretty well understood that you're better off getting nutrients from a whole food source.

[00:23:09] They did a study in 2007 in London, in England, regarding the difference between a synthetic vitamin C and getting the same amount of vitamin C from blood oranges. And they found that the antioxidant ability with the blood oranges was significantly higher than just the synthetic isolated vitamin C.

[00:23:31] And so when you look at the orange, the study concluded, we have bioflavonoids and polyphenols and rutin, and there's all these different cofactors and enzymes that are synergistic. And I think that's why when they're looking at these studies and they're comparing even bone marrow, but the adipose-derived stem cells with the fraction in particular, it's far exceeding, what it looks like a lot of the perinatal tissue can offer.

[00:24:04] And I got to tell you. At first I was a little skeptical because this wasn't coming from the same patient. And so I was thinking, well, is there a possibility this could contaminate my patients? What's the deal with if they were vaccinated and there's spike proteins? Could that be in there?

[00:24:25] Is there any possibility that there could be any type of disease transmission? And so I really dug into it, and the company that I'm partnering with that's producing this really went through everything. And they highly vet these people. It's mostly young females that donate their fat, and they're highly vetted, and they're tested literally three times.

[00:24:49] And they test them for the spike proteins. And then when they process the fat, they take the fat out. They take any cellular material like blood or anything like that, and then they take something called the endothelial cells which actually have the ACE receptors and the spike proteins, which, by the way, if you're getting placental-based stem cells in the US, it's impossible for them to remove those endothelial cells. Because they'll destroy the Wharton's jelly.

[00:25:23] Wharton jelly type of stem cells, the majority of I think what clinics are using, that's what we've used. So there is a risk, and the best most companies can do is have a questionnaire and say, have you been vaccinated? Say no. And some of these people get money. They get paid for donating their placenta and whatnot.

[00:25:42] So there's a motivation. They might not be honest. So that really gave me a lot of confidence, is the testing and the way that it's filtered. But the other thing that was really shocking to me is the way that they're able to extract these stem cells is so safe on these cells. There's no chemicals at all. There's no enzymes. It's all using gravity.

[00:26:09] And so he's discovered a way to so safely pull that fraction and those adipose-derived stem cells out of the fat. And there's no way I could have done anything that well in my lab, any doctor. So the consistency of this product is really exciting. And so they've also done studies with IVs with these X cells.

[00:26:37] The company, they've gone through FDA studies with osteoarthritis and a variety of different types of indications. And so it's been highly studied. The FDA is overseeing what they're doing with this for safety and efficacy. And so basically, the way it seems to me is that this is more like a whole food option.

[00:27:01] And because you've got all of these different cofactors and different types of stem cells all together that they're supporting each other, there's been a few studies that have come out looking at the survivability of these X cells, which is up to three weeks. It's a minimum of three weeks they're sitting in there.

[00:27:19] So think about this. If exosomes is a big part of the healing that a stem cell is going to do, so stem cell goes into the body. It starts to emit all these tiny little vesicles, which shower your existing cells and tissues to get them to go into a regenerative phase, and each stem cell produces 17 million exosomes per hour, that's on average, if a stem cell only survives for one hour, it's only going to produce that 17 million, and then it's done. But can you imagine what an X cell can do if it's going to survive for three weeks and it's producing all those exosomes? It's almost over 4,000 times potentially stronger.

[00:28:05] Luke: Damn, son. One thing that I think is interesting about the X cells is the IVs. We did my hip under ultrasound guidance, and I actually had an MRI and I had a torn labrum and some arthritis in the joint. So super cool to be able to guide it under ultrasound and get them right where you want them. And the fact that this particular stem cell is active for so much longer, 4,000 times longer, so make sense to do that.

[00:28:43] Dr. John: It's 4,000 times exosomes' secretion potential over time.

[00:28:50] Luke: Okay, got it. So that's super cool, obviously for localized injections when you're dealing with hips and knees and stuff like that. But the IV to me is really interesting because you have all these IV clinics popping up everywhere, which are great. I go get vitamin nutrient IVs from time to time. We have one down the street that you know, Alive and Well, where they're all the time doing that stuff, especially after flying or if you get start to get sick or whatever. But it seems like a major missed opportunity for them to not be integrating the stem cells in the IV form.

[00:29:27] Dr. John: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:28] Luke: Is there any special licensing or anything that a clinic like that would need? Or would this be classified just like a vitamin, a Myers cocktail drip or something like that?

[00:29:39] Dr. John: Well, I think it would be up to the individual clinician and the clinic. And in our clinic, we have a PA that administers these, and it's under a medical doctor's supervision and oversight. Most clinics have a PA. I think some IV clinics have just nurses that are on staff, and I think that might be probably not the best way to go about this particular treatment.

[00:30:11] But yeah, I think it could be a great option for a lot of clinics that might not be offering a lot of the fancier things like what we're doing at our clinic, the ultrasound guided orthopedic stuff. You have a potential to be able to offer something like this. It could be really interesting.

[00:30:31] Luke: What's a PA?

[00:30:32] Dr. John: It's a nurse practitioner, a physician assistant, both. Either one of those in the same league.

[00:30:41] Luke: Got it. Okay. So what are some other things? Because I've done two of the IVs with, I think, what, 20 million stem cells or something crazy. Sounds like a lot. I like that. The more, the better, I figured. Both times I've done it, I felt freaking amazing for quite a while afterward. I don't even know how you describe it. I don't know. Feel younger. You know what I mean? Just more vital and mental clarity, energy, better sleep.

[00:31:11] Just a very obvious palpable upgrade. That's just general. It's just like, wow, damn. I feel like I got a good night's sleep for the past three weeks in a row or something, that kind of feeling. But I'm always looking at ways to improve it, so there's things like water fasting for the senescence capacity to get rid of those zombie cells.

[00:31:36] There's urine autotherapy, which I talked a lot about with Ed Group yesterday. I think he's the most knowledgeable person I've ever talked to about that, which is to some people totally insane. I think I'm already getting trolled. Yeah, I am. Because I posted the interview. Someone in my telegram group is like, oh, he's the drink-your-own-pee guy. And I'm like, dude, there's so much science behind it, which I was unaware of until I talked to him.

[00:32:00] But one of the things is your own urine is full of stem cells. With MitoZen, you have all these different, well, we're now calling them bullets, which you put in the backside, which has history in the pharmaceutical industry because there's better absorption when you put something in your rectum than when you swallow it.

[00:32:25] So it's like, maybe even, to me, better than an IV because you get the longer plasma saturation of whatever the nutrient is, but you have this StemZen, and I've had it in my fridge for a while, and I take them here and there, but I've never really had a strategic protocol with them. So with something like StemZen, or urine autotherapy, or dry fasting, or water fasting, would that be something that would maximize the effects after someone did an X cell therapy treatment?

[00:33:02] Dr. John: Yeah. One of the things that I think is nice about the X cells is that they do survive in harsher environments. And so when you start getting into all of the different aspects of improving the patient's health and terrain, the internal terrain, and what in essence that is, is just bringing down inflammation. Because when you're toxic, when you have overgrowth of different microbes in the body, it's inflamed.

[00:33:33] And so that's when we're transplanting these stem cells into these more chronic injuries. They're very harsh environments to the most extent. There's a lot of oxidation happening in there. So that's one of the reasons that these X cells work so much better, is because they can endure that harsh environment where a lot of the perinatal tissues don't.

[00:33:54] So when you start to get into putting together plans for people that are going through stem cells and things that will support it, it might not be as necessary in order to get a good result, but then you have this whole idea of biohacking and really maximizing the benefit of them, which you and I really share that spirit of, yeah, let's just maximize the benefits.

[00:34:22] And so with stem cells, one of the challenges is they go senescent. And so when they're in a harsh environment, there's a percentage of the stem cells that are going to survive. They're going to survive a certain amount of time and then there's going to be an attrition to eventually they're all dead.

[00:34:40] And so when they go into a senescent state, that's a permanent state of sleepiness. And this is the big concern in stem cells, and they've been doing a lot of research trying to minimize this senescent aspect of stem cells. And so when I looked into the research, I found that coenzyme Q10 and fucoidan, which is a brown seaweed from Japan, had really good research showing that it minimized mesenchymal stem cell senescence.

[00:35:09] So we like to have people dose with that. And both of these nutrients, and a lot of nutrients aren't very well absorbed orally. CoQ10, your liver first pass through your liver, digestive enzymes. It breaks it down, and there's really nothing left. Same thing with melatonin and NAD and glutathione.

[00:35:32] You can go down. A lot of polyphenols aren't really, like curcumin. And so that's why we started to produce a lot of these different types of suppositories or bullets, because that rectal delivery bypasses the liver and the gut, and you're able to get these nutrients fresh right into the bloodstream. My suggestion would be that you would take that for at least a week, but it would probably be a benefit to take it even for that three weeks.

[00:36:01] Luke: You just reminded me of a funny story in rock and roll history. There's a famous story, which may or may not be true. I remember when I was a little kid, I don't even think I had Kiss music. I don't remember having any Kiss records, but I had a poster on the wall. This is when I'm five or six years old, and I just thought they looked cool.

[00:36:22] And there was a rumor going around that Gene Simmons had cut off his dick with a chainsaw and we all believed it, this funny stuff like that when you're a kid, but a rumor that came later, which is probably closer to true is, because people did this in the '70s, they would blow coke up each other's butts with a straw because their noses were blown out from snorting too much.

[00:36:44] And then they figured out, wow, you get much more high for much longer when you put it up there. There's a famous story about Fleetwood Mac doing that, and Stevie Nicks. That was her administration point of choice, which again, I don't know if it's true, but it's a great story.

[00:37:00] But yeah, it reminds me of that, but that's the thing. When you think about the mucous membrane of your digestive tract and your intestines and colon rectum, all that, it's like the inside of your mouth. And many of us know if you want to get molecules into your bloodstream, you put it in your mouth and hold it under your tongue.

[00:37:19] And so we're also talking about this with Ed Group, why it's so important to do colon cleansing, so that you're not reabsorbing those toxins in the mucus lining of your colon and whatnot. So from that perspective, it's always made such perfect sense to me that if you want nutrients and you want to bypass the liver and everything as you described, that part of your body, all the blood flow is right there on the surface of that tissue. It's just waiting to absorb whatever you put in there.

[00:37:49] Dr. John: And there's one other thing that's as important as the fact that it actually gets into your bloodstream, is that it's a slow release over a long period of time. And so our cells have a rate that they can bring nutrients in. The cell can only pull CoQ10 in for a certain rate. And so you have how much CoQ10s floating outside of the cells?

[00:38:13] How dense the molecules are is going to be important too. So when you do an IV, you're going to have a really high, they call it peak plasma. So it's like for an hour, it's going to be outside of the cells, and the cells are going to be pulling it in. And then after that hour, there's nothing to pull in. It's gone.

[00:38:33] Versus if you have a nutrient that is in the bloodstream and that peak plasma, which is what happens with bullets, five to seven hours, you can imagine that 500 milligrams administered in a like our 500 milligram glutathione, GlutaMax, versus if you were to do a push of 500 milligrams, you're going to have a quick peak plasma.

[00:38:56] And although you're getting it right into the bloodstream, I don't think that you're going to be getting it into the cells as well as if you did a bullet. So in some ways, not only the convenience, because you can do it on your own. You don't have to go to a doctor's office, and you can do it every day, multiple times a day if you want.

[00:39:14] So there's that convenience factor, but then you also have this extended factor where those cells, because they have a rate that they can bring nutrients in, ultimately that's what matters, is how much gets into the cell.

[00:39:29] Luke: We've done a number of shows. In fact, I think this might be your eighth appearance on the show. We'll put all the former shows at lukestorey.com/drjohn. But yeah, you were on 367, 380, 397, 408, 422, and 470. And I don't even think the one we just did with Josh Trent is on that list. So I want people to know if they want to learn more about any of the things that we just briefly touch on that we've done exhaustive conversations, especially I think the first one we did was on melatonin.

[00:40:03] Dr. John: Yeah.

[00:40:03] Luke: And you're the first guy I've ever heard of to really write a book about melatonin and do hardcore research and debunk a lot of the urban legends about it, such as, oh, if you take melatonin, then it down regulates your own production, which is proven to be false, etc.

[00:40:24] And so in terms of the slow release and that multi-hour peak, there's nothing better for stress recovery, sleep, jet lag, than the SandMan suppositories, which I think, oh yeah, we have some right here. So this is 250 milligrams of glutathione and 200 milligrams of melatonin. And then all this other rad stuff for sleep, like the magnolia bark, and the turpines, and essential oils, and all this other stuff, which you never really talk about, you're always just like, oh, it's a lot of melatonin, but it's a very synergistic product.

[00:41:04] Dr. John: Yeah.

[00:41:05] Luke: But these things, I do probably, I don't know, two or three days a week, especially if I've gotten a crappy night's sleep and I'm like, oh man, I got a big day tomorrow. I really need to be knocked out. Super epic. And I think that one of the reasons, and maybe you could speak to this briefly, even though we did a whole show on it, you have the SandMan Ultra, the oral version. And of course, a lot of companies have these very small dose, four milligrams of melatonin. But from what I understand from our prior conversations is that when you do melatonin orally, the absorption is not so hot.

[00:41:40] Dr. John: No, it's only two and a half percent absorbed orally. That's how little of that. And again, that's going to be the same thing for things like NAD and glutathione. Most of these molecules are very fragile, so a lot of it doesn't get into the bloodstream. We also have a slow released bar, a SandMan bar that we not too long ago released.

[00:42:04] Luke: Oh, yeah.

[00:42:05] Dr. John: It's really nice for travel.

[00:42:06] Luke: Yeah. These are epic because one thing that I've run into, because the bullets/depositories are made of palm oil, you have to keep them refrigerated. And so when I travel with them, which I do often, I have to have an ice pack, and then if I get to an Airbnb or hotel, then there's no freezer, there's only a refrigerator, if even that, and then my ice pack's not that cold.

[00:42:28] So it's like eventually I run out of cold, and then if they're melty, they don't go in well, and they melt too fast, and it's a whole thing. So when you came out with the Sandman bars, I was like, oh, epic. So I have these now in my travel kit, and I don't need to try to pack the suppositories.

[00:42:44] Dr. John: Yeah.

[00:42:44] Luke: Which is super handy.

[00:42:45] Dr. John: We're really excited about the new Satori bars with the paraxanthine. I know you've had Shawn Wells on here.

[00:42:54] Luke: I am obsessed with paraxanthine. In fact, 9 out of 10 shows I have an Update drink sitting right here. It's my secret weapon on mental alertness and mental acuity. It's actually replaced coffee for me. And I love the taste of coffee, but I've become over time pretty sensitive to caffeine. And so I'll pound a coffee, especially if I drink one on an empty stomach, and I feel good, I'm alert.

[00:43:25] But then there's a law of diminishing returns where I start to like, I don't know, even my hands will be a little shaky. It's like my nervous system is not that into it. So maybe speak to the paraxanthine. And the other thing about the stuff you're doing, because travel is so brutal for many of us, me included, which is why I barely travel, but I can't pack the Update drinks with me in my suitcase unless I want it to be 150 pounds and get charged $100 extra or whatever.

[00:43:58] So when you came out with that, I was like, oh, cool. Because I know Shawn Wells developed that molecule and patented it. So I was like, oh, well, it's only in the Update drink. That's my only way of getting it. So I guess you partnered with him and were able to license it or whoever that worked and put it in an oral bar. So maybe break down what it is and why it's so much more awesome than caffeine.

[00:44:21] Dr. John: Well, first off, Update's a great drink, and they really nailed it with the taste, and it's the felt experience, and that was one of the first times that I used paraxanthine. I got it from Ben Greenfield. It was like two years ago, I think.

[00:44:40] Luke: That's when you first turned me on to it. Yeah.

[00:44:42] Dr. John: And then I gave you some, and so we were like, wow, what is this stuff? Because it was such clean energy. I'd never experienced anything just that clean before. And so I was able to get in touch with Shawn, and Shawn and I had become really close friends. And in fact, he was just at my clinic and we did a bunch of stem cells on him with the X cells.

[00:45:06] So I think he's going to be releasing something on his social media about his experience because we videotaped it, and it was pretty amazing. But what I found with caffeine is that there's basically three metabolites. There's theobromine, there's paraxanthine, and then there's theophylline.

[00:45:28] And so caffeine in general is really a toxin that plants make in order to repel insects. And so what Shawn was able to discover is that if you just isolate the paraxanthine, that seems to be the part of the caffeine that gives us all of the benefit that we love, the focus, the attention, enhancing memory, energy.

[00:45:53] But literally 60% of the population has this CYPY gene that doesn't allow them to break it down very quickly. So it lasts, sometimes for some people, even multiple days. And there's muscle tension. You feel anxious. You can feel anxiety. There's negative effects that people find with caffeine, especially if you take more than what your body can deal with.

[00:46:30] Luke: The slow metabolizers, the people that have a coffee at 9:00 in the morning and can't sleep that night, and all those hours later.

[00:46:37] Dr. John: So what they found with paraxanthine is it's actually quite the opposite that your sleep actually improves if you take paraxanthine that day. Of course, you don't want to necessarily take it late at night either because it's going to give you some energy. But paraxanthine is also shown to significantly increase something called BDNF, which is brain derived neurotropic factor that allows us to learn and create new connections with our nerves. That's called neuroplasticity.

[00:47:08] So this is something that I think could really be great for people that into athletics, or they're studying, or they're learning, or they're doing therapy. If they're doing different types of ceremonies with plant medicine, I think that paraxanthine could be really interesting to be part of that because of how it works so well with BDNF.

[00:47:31] And in fact, what they found is that when people went back to different learning tasks that over time, the paraxanthine seemed to be more and more effective. Versus with caffeine, you have to take more and more over time. Paraxanthine doesn't seem to have that accommodation factor. It increases dopamine by 50%, increases serotonin.

[00:47:56] So it has all these really amazing qualities to it, and it doesn't seem to have the negative that the other two metabolites seem to be mostly responsible for. So Shawn's able to purify it. We buy that, and then we package it into, we have a suppository and we have a bar, and we have 20 milligrams of methylene blue in the bar.

[00:48:21] There's something called Bacopa, Alpha GCP, which is really, really great for memory. It's one of my favorite brain substances I've ever tried because I really notice how much better I can remember things when I would take Alpha GCP. And it's got some other Ayurvedic herbs that are enhancing blood flow to the brain.

[00:48:41] And the difference between the suppository version of Satori and the bar is that both of them have 200 milligrams of paraxanthine, but there's more space to put more of the Alpha GCP and more of the Bacopa and more of the herbs in the suppository version versus the bars.

[00:49:02] Luke: Right. Because the bars would be too big to swallow.

[00:49:05] Dr. John: Yeah. Right.

[00:49:06] Luke: Well, funny. I took two of the Satoris this morning because, as you know, our dog, Cookie, I don't know, she busted her ass and was having a really rough night, so I barely slept. And I was like, oh man, we got to do this podcast. Oh shit. I don't podcast well on little sleep. So I was like, I'm going to double up.

[00:49:26] And it's interesting because as I'm sitting here, I'm tracking my anxiety level. If I had had two cups of coffee, I would be a nervous wreck and not chill. But maybe awake, and don't feel tired. And maybe my brain would be a little sharper. I feel totally relaxed, but I don't feel like I got a shitty night's sleep. It's pretty epic.

[00:49:48] Dr. John: You had a pretty high dose of the paraxanthine from my recollection. You did two of the bars.

[00:49:54] Luke: Oh, and I also drank like half an Update right when I woke up too.

[00:49:57] Dr. John: But Shawn is very clear that he recommends anywhere from 100 to 300 milligrams. And personally, I found that I prefer the 400 milligrams, which is basically two squares. Now, I'd say anybody that's starting out with taking the paraxanthine start with the lower dose and see how you do. But yeah, it's just such a clean, noticeable energy. There's no jitters. It's none of the frazzle with all the dazzle, I think is what Sean Wells says.

[00:50:38] Luke: Ah, I like that. It's true. It's true. Going back to the IVs versus suppositories, NAD is becoming pretty popular because people are learning more about mitochondrial function and ATP production and whatnot.

[00:50:53] So you have a lot of the IV clinics have these NAD drips. And I was doing them a few years ago in LA and at that time it was $1,500 and take about an hour. And depending on your constitution, the time spent in the level of discomfort would be basically how fast they fire up the IV. How fast the drip is.

[00:51:16] So you would get these cramps in your stomach and just start feeling weird and you're like, oh, I better slow it down. And now you've just added another half an hour to that. But more than anything, the physical discomfort is one thing, but just super expensive and just not viable for many people, especially if you want the compound effects of doing NAD for the rest of your life or doing cycles of it where you do a few a year or something like that.

[00:51:42] So it's just not sustainable. The number one crappy night's sleep or travel hack that I've ever discovered is your NAD suppositories. And that's the one thing I will travel with and do the ice pack and everything.

[00:51:59] Dr. John: Yeah.

[00:51:59] Luke: Even if I only bring a couple of the bullets, it's like, at least if I have one in on the flight there and the flight home, and I'll also do the glutathione ones, I stack those. I don't know if that's a good idea, but it seems to work because of the oxidative stress involved in travel and just the mental and emotional stress.

[00:52:17] Dr. John: Have you tried the combo with the MethylMax and the NAD?

[00:52:21] Luke: Yeah, I have.

[00:52:22] Dr. John: That's my go-to if I really need some support. The methylators are like your B vitamins and your folic acid. And so people go to get IVs. It's a Myers cocktail. So this would be our version of a Myers cocktail with the MethylMax and combining that with the NAD. And it's not surprising that it's helping you with travel so much, because stressors deplete the crap out of your NAD levels.

[00:52:51] Lack of sleep is a big stressor. You lose NAD. Any type of alcohol or drugs like these, and that's why NAD is so popular, has become popular at rehab centers because the reason that people are so miserable and they don't want to talk to anybody and they're not social is because they have virtually no ability to make any energy at a mitochondrial level.

[00:53:16] And so when we can't make energy, one of the biggest things for a really poor functioning brain is depression. If you look up just about all neurological conditions, that aspect of the brain going south really has to do with poor mitochondrial function for the most part because the brain's the most metabolically sensitive. And so it requires the most amount of energy.

[00:53:40] So when our energy levels start to diminish from poor mitochondrial function, then it's neurological issues that are going to suffer first. So things like depression and mood are going to be some of the first things that start to kick in. And so anybody that's dealing with a lot of depression, you want to start thinking about what types of things you can do to improve your energy at a cellular level.

[00:54:07] And the biggest low-lying fruit is looking for things that are causing inflammation in your body, because it's that inflammation that's going to have that negative effect on those mitochondria, because then the mitochondria go into what's called a cell danger response.

[00:54:24] And so this might sound complicated. If people have been following me or listening to me, it's starting to maybe gel. But all of our products are geared towards handling this root cause of a lot of different conditions associated with lack of support that the body is giving you to be healthy and vital.

[00:54:47] Luke: Hence the name MitoZen, going after the mitochondria. What about methylene blue? This is something you work with a lot. I've had, I don't know how many methylene blue IVs now at your clinic, which is just wildly awesome. And then the intravenous red laser, adding the gold and silver to it and all these things you do to optimize it. But you've also been innovating different methylene blue products. One of them--

[00:55:23] Dr. John: Blue Ire's.

[00:55:24] Luke: Yeah, being the-- it's difficult when you have a bunch of tiny little products. So this one, for people watching the video, Blue Ire's. Now, I'm going to be honest, this one made me a little nervous because methylene blue stains the crap out of everything. I'm sure this is diluted. It's not pure methylene blue, but I was like, I don't know, maybe John's gone off the rails with this.

[00:55:52] And I've used it a few times, but I'm nervous for some reason. Doesn't turn your eyes blue all day or anything like that, so if you just put a drop, it would probably fry your eyes out. I forget who it was. Maybe it was Ben Greenfield or someone posted about your Blue Ire's, and then I saw Jack Kruse come in and dogpile on it.

[00:56:15] And he's a really, really smart guy, and I really respect him. He's been on the show a number of times. One of my all-time most celebrated guests. His episodes are still in my top 10 after years. I think he's my number one YouTube video, in fact. And he knows a lot about mitochondria and methylene blue. He's a proponent of that. And I forget what he said, but he was like, oh, this is the worst idea ever. Who is this John guy? It's going to burn your eyes out or something like that.

[00:56:42] And then I texted you. I was like, dude, what's up with this? Because Jack's really smart. But with all due respect to Jack, he is very contrarian and his knowledge base flies in the face of a lot of things that to me have a lot of valid research. He's come in my Facebook group and be like, oh, hyperbaric oxygen sucks and ozone therapy is bullshit, and things.

[00:57:06] I'm like, but dude, there's so much research behind this and so much anecdotal evidence from clinical experience of practitioners. I'm like, what? And I'm sure it's a more nuanced issue. Maybe hyperbaric is not good for certain people at certain times. And I'm sure that's the case, but it got my attention because I respect him a lot.

[00:57:26] So I sent you a text and you're like, actually, here's the data on it, and this is how we're doing it. And it's actually not harmful to your eyes. It's really good for your eyes and so on. So maybe you could speak to how this particular product works in the eyes and to assuage any concerns that people might have.

[00:57:46] Dr. John: Yeah. So everyone's entitled to their opinion, obviously. And there is some conditions of the eyes where they want to inject a staining agent so that they can see things a little bit more clearly. But the typical staining agent that was usually used was replaced by methylene blue with this one particular case.

[00:58:12] And they came and looked at the individual, and they came to the conclusion that methylene blue was toxic to certain receptors in the eyes based on this procedure. But the procedure was a very, very large dose injected into the eye. And so what Blue Ire's is is it's a very dilute-- it's with Quinton mineral, deep sea water, and there's gold and silver and a little bit of peppermint.

[00:58:47] So there's this nice fresh feeling with it, but it's literally less than a milligram per drop in the eye. So it's a very, very small amount, but enough to support some of the cells. So you're not even comparing apples to apples with this. There's a French company that manufactures a methylene blue eyedrop, and they've been around for a long, long time.

[00:59:13] And there's no reports of any challenges that anybody's had with them. So it's something that's been around and it's been used. So I put it together for, there was a variant of COVID that was hitting some friends of mine in Miami, and so I'm like, oh. So I called my lab and I said, would you put together an eyedrop with colloidal silver and methylene blue?

[00:59:37] And I was thinking, this is going to be really good as an antimicrobial for this individual. And it worked great. And since then, I've had tons of reports back of people that have used the Blue Ire's and seen just a lot of improvement when it comes to different types of microbial issues, styes and infections and different types of things like that.

[00:59:59] So it has a really great utility like that. I think it really belongs in everybody's medicine cabinet for that reason alone. But because I'd like to do sun gazing and I like to ground and I like to do breathwork and I have these routines that I'm in involved with, I started taking the Blue Ire's down to the beach with me while I was doing my sun gazing, and I was dropping into my eyes, and I was keeping my eyes open.

[01:00:22] I was letting the photons pick up the signature of the-- and then we added gold to it, obviously. So I've got the gold and the silver, which enhanced the photo biomodulation capacity to the methylene blue. And I was really noticing that it seemed to have an effect on my brain. And I felt more clear. I felt more grounded, and there was an alertness.

[01:00:47] It's not a anxiety alertness, but there was just this ability to really just focus, and my meditations felt more powerful. And then you look at the light going into your eyes, goes through the suprachiasmatic nucleus and then it goes to your pineal. So using photobiomodulation to support that whole situation prior to dropping into meditation.

[01:01:14] I also like to use it periodically throughout the day as just something to help with freshness. I was out with Garrett McNamara and we went to Nazare and he took me out there and he towed me into a 40-foot wave on his jet ski. And if anybody's watched the HBO special, 100 Foot Wave, this was like going to Disneyland with Mickey Mouse.

[01:01:40] And I took the Blue Ire's with me and there was some cameramen out there. And the thing about Nazare is when you're watching it, the waves are always really cranking towards the later part of the day. And so you've got this glare that's insane. So you're trying to watch the waves. And so I noticed that when I was using the Blue Ire's, it really minimized the glare.

[01:01:59] And so I started sharing it with a lot of the cameramen, the HBO cameramen, and not too long ago, we posted a video from Laurent, who won six Emmys, by the way, for last season. It's pretty epic. So he's an Emmy award winning cinematographer for HBO, and he posted a video, and he absolutely loves it. He notices that his vision's clearer. And so this is another thing that we're seeing people report back, is that they're finding that it seems to be enhancing the clarity of their vision a bit.

[01:02:33] Luke: I need that. I'm going to try some right now.

[01:02:35] Dr. John: Okay.

[01:02:36] Luke: Don't try this at home.

[01:02:37] Dr. John: So don't squinch your eyes. So drop it into your eye and let it just of soak there.

[01:02:42] Luke: Okay. While I'm doing that you'll have to keep talking.

[01:02:44] Dr. John: Okay. All right. Yeah.

[01:02:45] Luke: The number one rule of radio, no dead air.

[01:02:48] Dr. John: It doesn't sting, but there's this initial cooling sensation. And if anybody's been to Asia, if you go to Japan in particular, all the eye drops that you buy out there, they all have this little bit of peppermint in it. And I remember just loving that because it's this--

[01:03:11] Luke: It feels good.

[01:03:12] Dr. John: Yeah. It's quirky.

[01:03:14] Luke: Yeah, it's interesting that you put the Quinton isotonic in there because when I interviewed Robert Slovak a few years ago, the guy that was largely responsible, if not totally responsible for bringing that from France to the States, he told me on the download that you can fill up a dropper bottle and put it in your eyes.

[01:03:33] He didn't, I don't think, recommended it publicly or whatever because you want to keep it refrigerated, make sure it's sterile and whatnot. So I've been doing that ever since. Anytime I have dry eyes or fatigued eyes, I'll squirt some Quinton, not the hypertonic. For anyone listening, it's super salty. Not going to be fun, but the isotonic much less salty.

[01:03:53] And essentially very similar to blood plasma. It's a very bio identical substance from the ocean. And so that's my go-to. So that was one thing I noticed when you made this. I was like, that's cool. But I did want to double check on the safety of the methylene blue because I'm like, I don't want to do anything that would hurt my eyes, obviously. And not like you're going to put something out that's dangerous. But when Jack Kruse said that, I was like, wait, he's super smart. Is he onto something? I got paranoid about it.

[01:04:19] Dr. John: Yeah. Well, I always like to do things myself for a period of time, and for sure, above all do no harm. So I feel extremely comfortable that this is-- it's a really nice thing to be able to boost the eyes. There's not a lot of things out there for us to really give the eyes a nice boost.

[01:04:42] And when you're talking about something like methylene blue and gold and silver, all of them are so photodynamic, and the eyes, that's the primary sensory, is photons and light. So it's really, very, very proud of this formula. I think this is a really, really amazing gift for a lot of people that are enjoying it.

[01:05:06] Luke: The other thing that's super cool that you're doing is the Lumetol Blue, the bars.

[01:05:13] Dr. John: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:14] Luke: Now, there are some liquid versions of methylene blue out there for oral administration, but they're very problematic because they turn your mouth blue as hell for many hours, and that's not always comfortable for some people. If you're at work at a 9-5, people are going to freak out.

[01:05:32] Then you got to answer the questions of where you go, oh, it's this thing called methylene blue. What's that? It's just exhausting to explain it to people if nothing else, even if you're not embarrassed about it. And IVs of methylene blue obviously are not practical for many people.

[01:05:47] Dr. John: Well, it's very well absorbed orally. I think you and I were having a conversation last night about the microbiome. And this is a point that Mercola has been bringing up in his podcast about some potential risks associated with taking methylene blue as it relates to your microbiome, because as we know, it's antimicrobial.

[01:06:09] And so there's one study that I could find, and there's some bacteria that do really well, some of the beneficial bacteria actually increase. And a lot of the bad bacteria, in fact, most all of the ones they were looking at went down. So it was positive in that sense, but there was a couple that went down a little bit.

[01:06:34] So it had a negative effect on some of the strains. And so because of that, I believe that it is something that we need to pay attention to. And for that reason, I don't recommend that we take methylene blue, whereas it's going to get into the colon. And so that's why I think a capsule could actually make its way down pretty deep into your gut.

[01:06:58] And in the small intestines, methylene blue can irritate the small intestines, which could potentially lead to some leaky gut stuff and some inflammation. And in the large intestines, it could have a negative effect on the microbiome. So we want it to absorb primarily in the stomach. And Francisco Gonzalez Lima, who's actually, I think here in your neighborhood, foremost authority of methylene blue, he's made statements to say that it's the stomach is where it's absorbed very well.

[01:07:30] So we don't need to do IVs with methylene blue unless we're using it to do an IV and then use red light on the blood like what we did with you at the clinic and that Luma blue IV protocol that we did. So that leaves the drops and then that leaves the bar as basically a suspension in palm oil.

[01:07:52] And so when you drop that in the back of your throat, you drink something down, and it's going to all completely absorb in the stomach. So if you don't want your mouth to turn blue, some people want that. I think some people think it looks cool.

[01:08:08] Luke: Yeah, for some, it's a conversation starter.

[01:08:10] Dr. John: You can stain aspects of your teeth. You've got veneers.

[01:08:15] Luke: My friend, Kyle Kingsbury, he turned me on to my dentist, Dr. Winters, who gave me new teeth because my old ones were worn out beyond repair. But the way they do that is first they put something called an orthotic in which is just two big pieces of fake plastic teeth because they're rebuilding your bite and your jaw. They're moving all this stuff around to give you the proper bite and to ease up the space behind your jaw and your ears and all the thing.

[01:08:45] So Kyle did oral methylene blue when he had the plastic temporaries in. They stained them permanently blue. So he had to go in and have them changed because you do that for a couple of months before they put in the porcelain ones. Yeah. So I was like, ooh, that made me paranoid about the oral.

[01:09:03] But another thing before we move on, because we only have about 15 minutes and I want to talk about the prostate treatment, that people should be aware of is that not all methylene blue is created equal. A lot of this is made in some dirty ass lab in China, and it's full of heavy metals and mold, and from what I understand, there's only a couple of suppliers in the world that have true pharmaceutical USP-grade, tested, super clean methylene blue, which I think is something that's really important.

[01:09:31] So this is not the kind of thing you just go on Amazon and like, oh, I'll just look for the cheapest methylene blue. Bad idea. And I know I've talked to you about yours and it's super legit.

[01:09:40] Dr. John: We get it with testing and a certificate of authenticity, a COA. But then we also send it out and test it independently. So that's a big deal for me. I think these different substances, they're made industrially. If they're not made in more clean environments, you can get some really nasty, mostly it's heavy metals when it's associated with methylene blue. So you don't want to just go on and get your aquarium cleaning solution. That's probably not going to be the safest way to go.

[01:10:15] Luke: I agree. Another thing that I'll add to give you kudos is that even some of the other methylene blue products on the market that are, I think, safe and legitimate are hella expensive. It is one of the most expensive supplements, and your bars are the most affordable version that I've found, especially because they're made so you can break them into four pieces. And even a quarter piece is a substantial dose depending on your body weight. So it's like one of those little packs last you forever. I have three of them in my fridge or something. I can't even get through them because I only usually do a quarter or a half at a time.

[01:10:52] Dr. John: Yeah. And you can take large doses if you're feeling like you're coming down with something or if you're sick. I'm travel. I'm on my way actually to Maui to do some breathwork event with Pavel. And so in the middle of traveling, it's pretty stressful. So I'm kind of at 180, 200 milligram a day mark. But usually, I'm at 45 to 90 milligrams a day, and that's about the sweet spot.

[01:11:21] You want between 0.5 to 4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, and on a daily basis, you probably wouldn't want to be on the lower end of that. But in key times where you really need the support, it's okay to really up that dose.

[01:11:36] Luke: What about the half-life of it though? Because I've heard some say that it stays in your system for 72 hours or something. So you'll unknowingly be creating a compound effect if you take it every day.

[01:11:49] Dr. John: Exactly. It builds up. And so that's why we'll recommend people take a couple of days off every so often. And everybody's metabolism is a little bit different. You're going to pee blue after you take it. And sometimes people don't pee blue. And if you're consuming a lot of vitamin C rich foods, or if you're taking vitamin C, then it could convert the methylene blue to leucomethylene blue, which is clear. It's white.

[01:12:16] And so that can happen. But the methylene blue has an affinity to the mitochondria, so it goes into the mitochondria, and then it stays there for a certain period of time, and it can build up in the mitochondria. And when you get to that point where it starts to build up too much, you have an opposite effect, and you don't get the energizing and all the benefits, mood uplifting, all those things that were associated with methylene blue. It starts to take an opposite effect.

[01:12:42] And so then if you get off of it for a few days, you can start taking it and start getting that benefit again. Oh, I just had my book come out. It was a couple of months ago, called Magic Bullet, and it's on Amazon, and we go deep into all things methylene blue.

[01:13:00] Luke: Cool. I have it on my desk. I haven't read it yet. It's like one of 50 books that I'm supposed to read and haven't got to. We're going to talk about the prostate stuff now in the last few minutes. For people that want to try MitoZen, go to mitozen.com. Use the code LUKE STOREY for 5% off. We'll also put that in the show notes at lukestorey.com/drjohn.

[01:13:20] What's the deal with the membership thing? Because your stuff is super advanced, it can't just be over the counter. So you have a membership that's, what, $10 for a lifetime membership?

[01:13:33] Dr. John: Yeah.

[01:13:34] Luke: So people will sign up for that and then they have access to all the different products.

[01:13:38] Dr. John: Right. Only members can shop the store. And so to access the store, it's a 10-dollar lifetime membership. And that allows us to provide not just very advanced formulas and deliveries and delivery systems, but also, there's a little bit deeper education. We have what's called a Mitobrary there.

[01:14:02] And I think you and I have a breathwork session that I videoed on Siesta beach that I've put on that and how we're using the mitos and products with doing breathwork. And so I have some of events like the event that we did, Elements of Vitality. Those are all free to member. So there's all these great-- just for that alone is worth the price of 10 bucks.

[01:14:25] Luke: Cool. Okay. I just want to make that clear for people when they get there and are like, wait, what's happening? All right. So when I was two times ago at your clinic, we did some testing and found that I had an inflamed prostate and that is due to bacterial overgrowth, dysbiosis kind of thing.

[01:14:46] It's a closed system in their cavity that doesn't get much blood flow. So for a man, as you age, it's very prone to these chronic infections. And so we did ozone injections the first time. And then the most recent time I was there, you had further developed that protocol where you're doing the testing to determine the specific strains of bacteria and then applying for injection, very specific antibiotics, targeting the most problematic bacteria.

[01:15:21] And you're still doing the ozone and then you've added methylene blue, which, you said, is a really powerful antimicrobial. And so that's the most recent thing we did, which was super cool. And I got to say, from the first time I did it, it wasn't painful, but there was a couple of moments it was like, oh, that feels weird.

[01:15:41] This most recent one we did, I only had one little contraction where I felt full and just weird. So whatever you're doing with the lidocaine and the numbing situation, I literally was just laying there like nothing happened. And then it was followed up by, and this is going to sound super weird to people, but I'm super weird because methylene blue is so photodynamic that it's really exponentially more powerful if you hit it with 660 nanometer red light.

[01:16:11] So I guess someone you're working with created a scepter that goes in the rear and points and touches the prostate and shines that super powerful red light on it while the methylene blue is saturating the prostate, which is super interesting.

[01:16:29] Dr. John: Yeah, the Lumo wand. Yeah. That's right. We have it sitting right in front of us.

[01:16:33] Luke: Oh yeah. Let me grab it. Yeah, actually--

[01:16:38] Dr. John: Yeah.

[01:16:39] Luke: But here's the thing I want to say too, and you can speak to this more. Okay. Here's the wand guys. Yeah, it's not as uncomfortable as you might think, fellas. It's really barely noticeable.

[01:16:51] Dr. John: That's 750 milliwatts in that small amount. So that's really, really powerful.

[01:17:01] Luke: That is super powerful. You can see it goes right through my hand.

[01:17:05] Dr. John: Yeah.

[01:17:06] Luke: For those that think this sounds insane or extreme or why would you want to do that, you could speak to how prevalent this issue of just prostate problems as men over 40, over 50, over 60, and that it's, I think the second leading cause of prostate cancer or something.

[01:17:26] Dr. John: Mm-hmm. Yeah, over the age of 40.

[01:17:28] Luke: Yeah, prostate cancer doesn't just-- it's not a normal natural thing as it's presented to be like, oh, it's just what happens when you get older. I'm not interested in that. So I don't care if I need to use a scepter, have injections or whatever. I'm not having it.

[01:17:43] And also, it's very uncomfortable as you get older, if you have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee or what I've noticed as I've gotten older and had these infections is I'm just sitting here, and all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm about to pee my pants out of the blue. It's like, what is happening?

[01:17:59] So I don't want to live like that, and I don't want to have cancer later and all those things. So for those listening that think like this sounds wacky, this is what you got to do. In today's day and age, unfortunately, if you want to avoid having those problems, I would rather preemptively handle it than try to handle something that's much harder to deal with later. So give us the lowdown on that in our last couple of minutes here.

[01:18:25] Dr. John: Yeah. I had a friend, it was a very close friend, and he was very ill, and he came to me and said, I'm going to fly to California, and I'm going to have this doctor inject my prostate with an antibiotic.

[01:18:42] And he says it's actually a bunch of antibiotics he throws together and he injects it. And I thought he was crazy. And he just, I guess intuitively, he was very intuitive, he just felt like this was going to be the answer. Lo and behold, he comes back and he feels amazing. And he started to feel sick again. He went and did it again last time I checked with him and it worked again.

[01:19:03] So that was the first time that I had myself opened up to the fact that there might be something important there. And then I did an internship with Frank Shallenberger, who people know as the father of ozone, and he's just really amazing individual, and learned about this ozone injection into the prostate, and I think in the beginning that's what you had done at the clinic.

[01:19:29] And that's what we started with, and we started to utilize that with people with various prostate issues and then we actually started to test people. Where it really started to get interesting as we came across a lab out of Orlando in Florida, not too far from me, and they're doing next generation sequencing, which is really sensitive.

[01:19:51] So most of the research, when you start to look at, okay, what's really the deal with prostate problems, what's the root cause of these, I would offer that it's infection. And so when you look at the two common things that could be diagnosed with a prostate, and this would be a man that's having difficulty initiating a stream urination, frequent urination, urgency, waking up a lot at night, you could feel discomfort or pain down around that area.

[01:20:23] Infertility is a big thing as well. So it's normal, and it's just accepted that after a certain age, the prostate swells at a certain rate and our prostate swells and they call that benign prosthetic hypertrophy. So it's benign saying, yeah, it's just normal. This is what happens with men.

[01:20:46] And when you look at the research, the research basically tells you that it's based on androgenic receptors in the prostate. And so that's the whole thing with people with prostate cancer. They take them off of testosterone. So they even give them drugs to drop their testosterone almost to zero.

[01:21:04] These people are miserable. They got no libido at all, and DHT is another byproduct of testosterone that has an effect with not just hair loss, but also prostate issues. And so there's some interesting studies that I read that talk about how, even though the testing, whatever testing they did, didn't find a microbe, they weren't doing next generation sequencing.

[01:21:32] And a lot of these people aren't even testing for things like funguses and molds. And so there's a lot of potential things that have been missed, but what they did find is they found that there was inflammation there. And the researchers were saying, well, even with all of these benign prosthetic hypertrophy cases, the inflammation that's there is causing this oxidative stress that's changing the receptors to be more sensitive to androgenic stimuli.

[01:22:01] And so even if we're seeing this effect with testosterone and DHT with the prostate, it still could be underlying. And I would postulate it is that there is an undiagnosed infection with benign prosthetic hypertrophy, probably virtually all of them. The other diagnosis that you might get is prostatitis.

[01:22:22] And so prostatitis is typically an infection, and it's treated with antibiotics. But most of the time, these antibiotics would be taken orally, and it's not very effective, because the prostate's a separate area. It's walled off from your general circulation, and so infections can find their way into that prostate gland and just fester for years and years, and you can never really get rid of them.

[01:22:49] We started to test and we started to see, wow, virtually every test that we're doing is coming up with this collection of microbes. So the test comes back and it allows us to match the antibiotics because they will tell you which antibiotics they're sensitive to.

[01:23:09] And so we're able to create a custom antibiotic mixture. We add methylene blue into that injection. We also spin the blood down and we put white blood cells in there. And so that injection's done under ultrasound. It's injected into the two sides of the prostate, the two lobes. So there's two injections done, and then we inject ozone after that.

[01:23:34] And we're seeing some really exciting results with people clearing their infection. The post results are coming back clear of the infections and then the symptoms that a lot of people are complaining about. So after we do the injection, the one challenge that we had was utilizing light.

[01:23:54] Because if you donate blood at the blood banks, the way that they sterilize the blood is they put methylene blue in with that blood and then they expose it to the 660 nanometers, the red light. And that combination is very, very great for antimicrobials like the IV that we do, the Luma blue, where we're putting a high dose of methylene blue into the veins.

[01:24:18] And then we're putting literally a catheter with a red light into the vein. And so we're able to really have a nice antimicrobial. This is something that I like to do for everything from Lyme to Epstein Barr to HIV to different types of herpes. So I know the power of combining light and methylene blue.

[01:24:35] So the problem has been how do we get light-- so we had this we call a MitoWand, which is a vaginal light, but it's fairly large. That's the problem, is the diameter. The circumference of this.

[01:24:51] Luke: Not so comfortable for the fellas.

[01:24:54] Dr. John: Yeah. And it wasn't very powerful. It was just something that we had made. But then about six months ago, I got connected with this fellow that is a total OG in photo biomodulation and light therapy and LEDs.

[01:25:14] And he was one of the people that invented, if you ever had your cavities filled where they'll take that blue light, they put the cement in and they put the blue light in it and it like cures it like in 30 seconds, so he knew the power of light acting on a substance, that photodynamic aspect, and so when he was asked to produce something for someone that had to do with actually healing a musculoskeletal complaint, he got really into it.

[01:25:42] And so he's been producing some of the most powerful LEDs and red light devices, like the Luma wand, which you have there is very, very powerful, and it's very sleek. And this is something that we're able to use after we do the injection to really light up that prostate, to get that full, complete benefit that I think we're able to get with that methylene blue.

[01:26:09] Luke: Epic. I love it. I'm not trying to get prostate cancer when I'm 80, dude.

[01:26:15] Dr. John: No, I know.

[01:26:16] Luke: I'll do whatever it takes. So for people, again, females listening, this might be something really good to share with the men in your life, especially older men, over 40.

[01:26:28] Dr. John: Well, the man can give that to the woman. So if the woman's having chronic UTIs or vaginal infections, then it could be because they're getting it from their lover.

[01:26:40] Luke: Oh, because it's leaking out from the prostate.

[01:26:43] Dr. John: Yeah. And it's interesting because we're actually getting a lot of referrals of men to at least get their prostate checked. So it's like we have a handful of men that are showing up and they do not want to be there and their woman has said, you got to go get checked. And then lo and behold, there's infection. And then they're on the table and they don't want to be there, but they're--

[01:27:05] Luke: So as far as the testing, that can obviously be done remotely. Someone can contact advancedrejuvenation.us and call you guys. And I'm assuming--

[01:27:16] Dr. John: We can do a link that goes to-- it's a kit that we send out that you can get your prostate tested and then it comes with reviewing the findings with one of our team members.

[01:27:29] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:27:30] Dr. John: And so I think it's a no brainer for anybody really over the age of 40. Even if you're not having any problems, I think the test-- so it's a semen test. You collect the semen and also your urine, and they compare the two.

[01:27:43] Luke: And it's not that expensive, the test, right? Was it 150 bucks?

[01:27:48] Dr. John: It's 150, 200 all in.

[01:27:51] Luke: And then if someone found the test results to be problematic, then they would need to come to your clinic in Sarasota in order to get the treatment, obviously.

[01:28:00] Dr. John: Yeah. So we do a series of three. And so it doesn't have to be three, but that's what we're finding the best results. So most people can get that done in a little over a week. Or some people come in, and you can separate that out four to six weeks apart as well if you're not able to stay that full amount of time.

[01:28:20] Luke: Okay, cool.

[01:28:21] Dr. John: But most people walk out. It's not a real uncomfortable procedure. You feel like you have to pee a little bit for a period of time. It's very well tolerated, and we have sedation options. I really recommend most people using the nitrous gas, the laughing gas.

[01:28:42] Luke: Yeah, that's what I did the first time.

[01:28:44] Dr. John: Yeah, it makes you-- yeah.

[01:28:45] Luke: And a little ketamine. I was pretty high, to be honest. But I totally disassociated and didn't feel anything. It's a mental thing because I never look when I'm getting an injection like that, but I did spot the size of the needle. It has to be long to get through all the tissue. So I was like, oh, don't look at that. And then the second time we did it, the most recent, I just did, I don't know, maybe a hundred milligrams of ketamine in a lozenge.

[01:29:14] Dr. John: Ketamine makes a really nice--

[01:29:17] Luke: I felt super relaxed. The thing is when we were done, because it's a really quick procedure, surprisingly quick, then I put on a playlist and an eye mask and just had a little journey with the scepter in. I kept checking. I was like, did that fall out?

[01:29:35] Because you can't really feel anything when you're on ketamine, and I would check and I'm like, no, it's still in there. And I actually didn't want to get up. I just felt like I was super relaxed, and I was just doing some healing, quantum healing, on myself and sending love and energy to that part of my body to support it. But I would say it was actually quite a positive experience with the sedation.

[01:29:54] Dr. John: People report that. We have the inHarmony cushion, and we play music and use fiber acoustic therapy and try to make it a positive experience.

[01:30:06] Luke: Yeah. Well, I think that's another unique thing about your clinic, is I don't know. You're a healer, dude. You're not a doctor. You're really a definition of what a doctor should be, a healer. And yeah, the sound beds, there's cool like shamanic music playing in the procedure room, and all your staff is very tapped into that mindset. They're meditators and conscious awake people.

[01:30:33] So there's a much different clinical experience when you have that level of consciousness and just the intentionality behind it is not just what you would find in a normal medical clinic by any stretch. It's super cool. Yeah. So I love going down there.

[01:30:50] Dr. John: Thank you. I appreciate that.

[01:30:51] Luke: Yeah, I can't wait to come back down there. And across the street, I don't know if you've ever walked in those antique shops across the street from your clinic. Dude, there's three or four in one building that are separate businesses, and they have all this mid-century modern furniture and art.

[01:31:08] It's so insane. Last time, Alyson and I were there, I was just like, get me out of here. I have a credit card in my pocket. This is dangerous. And I don't think we bought anything, maybe a couple of trinkets. But yeah, I was like, I want to come back down and actually buy some amazing antiques from that place. I've never seen that kind of collection.

[01:31:27] Dr. John: You guys stayed right at the clinic too. So anybody listening to this, just keep in mind, ask if it's available because it's a couple of really sweet apartments right there on the clinic.

[01:31:38] Luke: Yeah. And you got the red light panels in the apartments, everything's dialed in. I didn't have to change all the light bulbs. They were already red. Yeah, it's really nice. Those two apartments are super cool.

[01:31:48] Dr. John: One thing I would like to just speak to is if anybody is either looking to become a patient and wanted to explore more information about X cells or if you're a practitioner, if you're a clinician, if you have a clinic and you're interested in-- this doesn't have a huge scale. But we are open to taking some applications and possibly talking to some people about utilizing some of these in their own practice. So we'll do a link.

[01:32:20] Luke: Yeah. We'll put it at lukestorey.com/xcells. And whatever link you give us, we'll just hyperlink to that so that people find it.

[01:32:27] Dr. John: We'll pack that page full of a bunch of information and references. And I think Ben Greenfield, I'm going to write a pretty good article on this, he's going to publish on his website.

[01:32:43] Luke: Epic. I hope someone in Austin who owns a clinic hears this and gets the stem cell IVs because it's freaking amazing. I would want to do it often.

[01:32:52] Dr. John: Yeah. For sure.

[01:32:53] Luke: Yeah. All right, dude. Well, we got to get you to the airport. Thank you so much for stopping by on your way to Hawaii. I know Austin is no Maui, but I appreciate you coming through, and it was fun to have you stay over last night as it worked out. We had a spare room for you. We don't have house guests hardly ever, so it's fun waking up and see you making your smoothie and just chilling. Super fun.

[01:33:16] Dr. John: Yeah, so blessed, Luke. You're such a dear friend. I'm so blessed to have you in my life. And this has been a really fun, short but just full of-- we've packed a lot into the last 12 hours.

[01:33:28] Luke: For real. For real. Like always, man. All right. Thank you. Until we meet again.