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

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 gonna lose their battles with cancer in this year alone.

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?

We've seen so many people suffer. 2 million Americans That's a lot of Americans, uh, they're gonna get cancer this year.

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.

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

Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Gez Egoli to the show. He 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 wanna know who I've learned from in my career, probably the top number one person, or at least top 3 people in my life, Dr. Gez Egoli here, who's practiced functional medicine for nearly 30 years. On today's show, we're gonna talk about how to fight cancer naturally. We're gonna 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 possibly have never heard of before. Hey, guys, welcome to the show.

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.

Well, I know this is your second time on the show because the first episode was, uh, 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— 2 family members, one come to you who had Graves' disease, help 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 I know you've had a lot of people come to you in Atlanta, had their 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?

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. 'Cause right now our healthcare system's broken. 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, what inspired me more than anything else is that my father, at the age of 46, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Hmm.

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 outta these good, perfectly good airplanes. And, and, you know, doing all the things that parents don't want you to do in the first place, right? 'Cause of fear factor. But unfortunately, my father passed away very, very quickly.

Hmm.

And he only lasted 6 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, 'cause I think we need oncologists in our healthcare system, but his oncologist was 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, no one ever talked about helping him. facilitate this cancer diagnosis, and he had to work simultaneously. And I say that for a couple reasons, is that that galvanized me, inspired me to take action, and that started my journey.

Wow.

And I wanted to make a difference, and that's why I looked at all the different modalities in healthcare, and I, I decided, um, you got a PhD in nutrition, naturopathy before I went to medical school, 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.

Yeah.

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 40th or 42nd in the world for longevity and health.

Wow.

And I knew then that, that we have to do better. And, 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.

Yeah.

Which is exciting to me. So that, that's what really galvanized me to take action is my father. Wow.

You know, I 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, 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 1 to 2% out there that are open to some of these things. Well, 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-chemoradiation, like hyperthermia, doing— even using hyperbaric oxygen after high-dose vitamin C, curcumin. Is that something you found as well?

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—

That's good, yeah.

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 5 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 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. 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? 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 battles. cancer in this year alone. So we got to do a better job on diagnosing and also some treatment options and philosophy.

Well, let's hit on some root causes and let me know what I missed. And I think you're going to 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 for So, you know, so that's all cancer prevention as well, but also fighting cancer naturally. That's big. Cells that are toxic or 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, that, you know, I found over the years.

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, for the root cause of cancer in in the United States in 2026 is toxicity. Toxicity is all-time high. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 3.3 billion pounds of chemicals are emitted in the water, in the air, in the land.

Wow.

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 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 nutrition. 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.

Yeah, absolutely.

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 their residency. They're very well-meaning, and they're just focused focused on the cancer and they wanna 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 chose 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.

Yeah.

You talk about exercise with oxygen and oxygen deprivation. Visiting Germany really inspired me. I went to this group called the Von Arden Group. Why is that name important? Dr. Manfred von Arden, A-R-D-E-N-N-E. He was the founder and he was a very well-known scientist and he actually developed exercise with oxygen.

Oh, wow.

And he was actually in Germany when the wall was built. So he was 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? 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, it's contrast exercise with oxygen. And what ends up happening is you're flooding the body. And as you mentioned, when you have a tremendous amount of oxygen, 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 got that oxygen-rich environment.

Mm-hmm.

And, and this is important. Now, I wanna be very clear. Even if you do all these right things, Josh, cancer's 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 rise in cancer is because of some of these viruses.

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 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. 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?

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.

Yeah.

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 onto this, and then you 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 rectum, your digestive tract is the size of a tennis court. It is massive.

Wow.

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 that are destroying 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 1 to 2 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.

Yeah, absolutely.

And they allow that fear to overwhelm them and it affects their, 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 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.

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 I— and they're considering doing both conventional and natural. But I think the idea there is, hey, do 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 it's incredibly high, the number of people that die from secondary cancers versus the first time they get them. It's incredibly high.

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 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 got to kill the cancer. But a functional integrative doctor takes a step back and say, number one, why did you get it? We talked about that. What are 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.

Yeah, absolutely.

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 when it's done appropriately, when the terrain is recovering and becoming more resilient, you can handle certain chemos.

Yeah.

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 it 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, uh, they're gonna get cancer this year. And there's a lot of things that we can do to prevent it. So, 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?

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.

Yeah.

You know, so I mean, being proactive like that is so helpful. Uh, you know, one thing I did wanna ask you about, and this is one of the things I love, is that Yeah. 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 in 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 called an RGCC test, a Greek test. And this is, 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 oncologist. And their oncologist, 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 ourselves 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?

Well, you know, one of the most exciting things, Josh, is that we have forward-thinking scientists in our country. 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 to find out. Why is this oncologist recommending this particular chemotherapy because I have colorectal cancer? 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.

Yeah.

What we found out, functional integrative doctors, is that cancer cells outsmart the treatment.

Hmm.

There's a, there's a resistance. It's not getting to the, to the root of the tumor, that, that root. And that's why you hear somebody say, and, and I wanna 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.

Hmm.

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 there's a lot of radiation as well. You know, use them when you need them to monitor. But these circulating tumor cells, they can predict 6, 9, 12 months before. There's also another test called Signatera.

Yeah.

It's looking at ctDNA. So these are wonderful advancements. It's called the liquid biopsy. But because functional integrative doctors are, are more about protocol-driven precision, this test will tell you, does vitamin C work?

Mm-hmm.

Does curcuminoids work? Does oxygen work? And, 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, 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. It's because it's very, very resilient and it actually has this ability to evade treatment.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so powerful. You know, thinking about this question, I think about my own family members or myself. It's like, okay, if I want to be a, 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. 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, 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 5 to 7 that you think tend to be very helpful for those who are fighting cancer.

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

Yeah.

So hyper, more, thermia, heat, more heat. This is not a sauna. Although I'm a big believer in saunas, hot baths also 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. 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 hypothermia or full body, which we're bringing in with a study from Germany, believe it or not, taking a hot bath— believe it or not, a hot bath— or better yet, get into an infrared sauna or even a traditional Finnish sauna, you're gonna get— but you're not raising that core temperature.

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 2 degrees, but you need to get it up closer to at least 4 to 5, but even up to 6 to 7 degrees higher in order for this to be the most effective.

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

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

Yeah. So, they have these very specific radiant They have a patent on it, and they have this water coolant, so there's no way you can burn the skin.

Okay.

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 8 hyperthermia sessions twice a week, and literally it went down 30 to 40%. So the systolic, which measures the—

Wow.

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 6 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 we have that controlled heat. And there's something called, when it comes to cancer, when you do chemotherapy or radiation, or you go into something called apoptosis, which is natural cell death, there's a mechanism in the immune system called phagocytosis. I find that a funny name. It's a funny name, phagocytosis, but basically phagocytosis is like a Pac-Man. It's grabbing that dead cell, like we have these zombie senescent cells, and it's pulling out of the body. When you don't do that properly, and this is what heat therapy does, and it also can help activate p53. So I'm gonna have to say that hyperthermia is one of my favorite go-to right now with all the research.

Yeah.

Dr. Charles Meeken, I interviewed him, and he's a retired board-certified oncologist, and he basically talked about the beginning of his career. I was just talking to a colleague of mine in 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?

Yeah.

Unfortunately, in our country, sometimes a lot has to do with reimbursements, cost-effectiveness. And I understand that as well. But when it comes to the most effective treatments, I think hypothermia is going to be up there as well. We're seeing a lot of benefits with high-dose vitamin C, but it's the right type of high-dose vitamin C. 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.

Mm-hmm.

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.

Yeah.

We like to use cassava root or tapioca from a licensed compound pharmacist because ascorbic acid, unfortunately, is corn-derived, and that's something that we don't think is good for us. Going to be healthy unless it's non-GMO corn. And that's something that we also— and I'm going to say the third thing is oxygen. You mentioned that earlier. Oxygen to me is critically important. Even if you can't have access to hyperbaric oxygen, doing interval training, getting your lung capacity up is very beneficial. And, you know, but if you can find a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, I'm going to highly recommend that. You know, there's a few contraindications. There's certain chemotherapies you should not do high-dose hyperbaric oxygen at a high level. Doxy-Rubinson is one of them. So you have to really check, check, check with a licensed practitioner. They're going to know the contraindications. When a patient comes to our clinics, we have licensed practitioners that check to find out the half-life of chemo and when it's appropriate to do these therapies. And I think that's a wise thing to do.

Yeah.

And my number one go-to besides the top 3 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.

Yeah.

And I've got to really applaud my team because they're thinking outside the box. Because, you know, a patient says, hey, I'm changing my diet, I'm doing this, but literally, um, they're not getting better. And a lot has to do with these hidden foods. It's called postprandial glucose.

Yeah.

So just by doing that is a great strategy.

Yeah, yeah. I, I, 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 going to be the most effective from the conventional world in treating somebody? I do want to mention, you know, I know years ago, I don't know if you're still doing this, you used to have somebody, you know, you used to sometimes, as you mentioned, chemotherapy, have people do something called IPT. There's low-dose chemo. What are your thoughts on that today?

I think it's a fantastic strategy. And I think what—

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

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 gluconeogenesis. You know, Let's, let's talk about glucose. Without glucose, we're not going to survive, right? It's glucose in the cell. What's happened with cancer is that some type of genetic mutation, something's going on, it just disrupts that glucose metabolism, and it turns it, instead of pyruvate into going into ATP, it turns it into a fermentation process. And you got these rapidly growing cells. So there's something called a PET scan. Have you heard of a PET scan before?

Yeah.

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

That's right.

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

Literally sugar.

Yeah, it's sugar, which is great, by the way, because it's going to really pinpoint And I'm a big believer in that scan. It's fantastic to find out what's going on with the disease process. But, you know, what's very interesting is that IPT, insulin potentiation therapy, what it basically does, it's actually putting in insulin because how do you respond? How does the body respond to glucose that's elevated? 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. So I want everybody to visualize, if I take orange juice and I tell you to take your socks and shoes off, and I put orange juice on a wooden floor, and I want you to step on it, what's it feel like?

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

Sticky proteins. The last thing you want is sticky, sticky proteins. So what ends up happening is 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—

Oh, wow.

It's targeted. So that's an area that we used to do at our clinic. We used to have an oncologist, uh, 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, um, 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 needs 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, 'cause Jordan took 40 days off. If you have the ability—

I did.

Every time I talk to a cancer patient, I want to be very, very sympathetic and empathetic as much as possible. I've never had cancer, but I've had family members that had cancer, so I can relate. 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.

Yeah, yeah. I know with my mom, it was very similar. Uh, you know, my mom was a teacher And then during that summer, she spent, I mean, really focusing on healing as much time as possible. And I think I wanna say a few things here with this. Number one, I was really blessed to have my mom. My mom went through conventional therapy the first time with breast cancer, the second time with lung cancer. She followed a completely all-natural approach and was able to heal and reverse cancer. We know Jordan Rubin was able to do that. I will say this, no matter what you're deciding, whether it be completely natural or integrative where you're doing both simultaneously, you want to have a protocol and plan. 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. It's like, hey, here's some ice cream and some, you know, sweetened Jell-O. It just— it's, it's not ideal. So I want to 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 RGGC Greek test and other things to say, hey, what are the things I need to do to heal, get a very specific diet plan laid out for you, including what to eat every meal. Should it include fasting? Should it 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. One thing I do want to mention as well is if you decide to go natural, natural alone, uh, you would need to do that at 100%. You would never want to go natural and say, I'm going to change a few things. You would want to change every last part of your day, to your point, for months of going all in and healing your body. 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. 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. I was sort of the, the protocol along with a lot of the other things 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. And I'm going to tell you, I've been on a lot of medications. The system I've created for helping people heal is so effective that you could go and read the hundreds of 5-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, but it all starts with a cellular bloodwork 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. 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, um, where you've done lab testing for years. What is the difference you've seen in testing versus not testing? And then also, what are your favorite tests to do on patients that you think really make a difference? Yeah, that's a great question.

You know, For starters, you mentioned that if you don't test, you just guess. And that's not kind of tongue-in-cheek. And, you know, a lot of patients come in and they do their annual physical. And I don't wanna be critical because the family practitioner is very busy, their PCP is very busy, but they come in and say, oh, whoa, oh, Dr. Ghez, look, look at this. I've got the most extensive test. And they come in with something called the CBC, complete blood count.

Yep.

And a CMP. And they think it's the most extensive. Now, that's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. Those are basic tests. We're talking about looking at the cell. We're talking about looking at the microbiome. We're talking about looking at toxicity. I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the interview, what's the best way to treat cancer or any disease for that matter is don't get it, prevent it. And really looking at your terrain is probably the most important thing. So from my perspective, I want to find out inflammation. If I can find out what's causing my inflammation, I really believe from a chronic disease perspective, I'm going to make the most impact for my health. We know that there's certain tests called food allergy, food sensitivity. We know that the microbiome, looking for infections. And why is this important? Because even if you are disciplined, even if you're well-meaning, if you don't have a plan, You, 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 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?

Sure.

Because number one, garlic has allicin, which is fantastic. I mean, it's going to help with certain infections. It's going to help with your blood pressure. Aged garlic is one of the best things, right?

right?

You're gonna 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.

Yeah.

We tested her. If we didn't test her, she wouldn't— she loved garlic. Who doesn't love garlic, right? Garlic's in everything. Broccoli, right? I had a patient that basically had She had headaches, and she went to numerous doctors. You know what showed up? Broccoli. If I said don't have broccoli, broccoli is one of the healthiest foods, especially for cancer. It has something called sulforaphane. But we tested her. She eliminated it from her diet. 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 gonna say, um, I'm gonna say, um, a thorough blood test, right? Looking at your hormones. Most doctors today only do something called a TSH, right? That's thyroid-stimulating hormone. I truly believe you should do a full panel— free T3, free T4, looking at the TPOs, the antibodies, something called reverse T3— and you add the adrenal function. So from a hormonal perspective, I like those. From an inflammation perspective, I like the allergy sensitivity, which we can talk about in a second, and looking at the microbiome. Yeah, it's an investment, but it's something that I believe that if you at least do once every 2 years, depending on what you're suffering with, you can make a big impact on your health. I love that.

Yeah, and I agree. I think some of my favorite tests— the one that you didn't mention, which I know you do a lot, so you do sometimes in your practice— I love micronutrient tests, especially that look at things like RBC magnesium, of course vitamin D, MMA, selenium. I mean, I can't tell you how many people— omega-3 index. I can't tell you how many people— I, I think that probably the most out of balance I've seen has been vitamin D and omega-3 index, uh, on, on, on blood work. And these are things if people wouldn't have tested, they would have never known. Um, but, but I do agree. I think the hormone panels, I think looking at, um, gut microbiome, a GI map, is incredibly beneficial. Now, I do have a question for you about the food sensitivity, because here's what I found. I've done a lot of food sensitivity testing. Over the years, I have found more than any other test that I've run, there tend to be some false positives. And I'm curious if you'd agree with that, that sometimes— 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 that 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. 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.

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'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 IgE first. So these are your immune system. I mentioned earlier that you have 2 immune systems, one inside the cell, one outside 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-Barr 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, 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?

Yeah.

But it causes inflammation.

Right.

Right. And the antibodies change every 6, 9, and 12 months depending on what you do. So let's just hypothetically say that you love strawberries and you eat strawberries every single day and you love strawberries. Forget the fact that some of them could have pesticides. 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. And once I found out, I limited 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 6 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 gotta look at both of those together.

Oh, wow.

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

Yeah, you know, I feel like for myself, when I've done, I don't know, probably, I've probably done 6 food sensitivity tests over the years, 6 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. Milk. And then, and then I'll, and then I'll have other things here or there. I remember I was eating hummus a lot and it showed up one time very, very high, and I felt like it was just because I was eating it so much. Um, 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, uh, a really, really wise thing to do. And you know what 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+ markers, but a lot of the mark— 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, um, 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.

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 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?

Yeah.

Because you're gonna get into trouble, you're gonna misrepresent yourself, and you need to become an expert in that test. And do not be a hypocrite. Don't tell somebody to do a test that you've not done yourself, right? So you need to learn that test backwards. I can literally tell you that there's certain tests that I've gotta 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.

Mm-hmm.

It's very, very time-consuming. And, you know, you have to know exactly what tests to run, when to run it. And I think when someone's dealing with chronic disease, I think they should do a deep dive. Gut markers. I'm a big, 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 zonulin levels are elevated, your histamine diamine oxidase is off, you need to be on this peptide, these amino acids for 90 days, 120 days.

Yeah.

Otherwise, you're just sporadic. You know, you don't know what you're doing. I like the testing 'cause it also motivates a patient to take action. And that to me is more important 'cause 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 postprandial, which means glucose after you eat. It's not, you know, your hemoglobin A1c could be normal, your glucose could be normal, but literally if you're eating a food and it's spiking up to 200, that's a problem.

You know what's just surprising is, you know, I wore a continuous glucose monitor a couple 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, 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.

That's interesting.

Yeah, no, I was surprised. Sweet potatoes mostly. Uh, 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 caused it to spike? Driving. Driving a car. I'm like, what? 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.

You know, it's interesting. I had a conversation with Dr. Bennett. 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 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 5 times higher. And Dr. Badet was pulling up studies that cortisol actually will enhance more than testosterone the prostate.

Wow.

Cortisol itself. So what was happening with you when you were stressed out driving, there, there is a, 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 Yeah. 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 can do is some of these lifestyle modifications. And that's what's great about the testing. The test 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 know how 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 6 days a week? No, I have a trainer, right? someone to tell me what to do, even though I know what to do it, because it's habit-forming and the benefits, uh, are, are tremendous in doing that.

So one of the therapies that I have started using myself and with patients a lot more often over the past 3 years is, is using glutathione. And I've been incredibly impressed with the results. And I want to share, I started— we started doing, um, some blood testing here at the local clinic and, 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, increase cancer risk, heart disease, even oxidative stress is a huge deal. So I've loved that. There's also the— what is it? OH-8—

8-OH-DGG.

So looking at those markers in particular and 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?

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 8-OH-DG, deoxyguanosine actually is an oxidative stress marker. And that marker usually goes elevated when your body is 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, 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 then I get tremendous benefits of cascade of 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.

Wow.

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 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. We do that with a test called InBody. And you look back when you test these athletes, they got the highest level of glutathione, right? They got the highest level of vitamin D, nutrition, They are so nutritionally dense that they can recover quickly, and that's why I think glutathione is just fantastic. It's a master antioxidant, and we should be actually looking at more glutathione. You can do it IV. You mentioned N-acetylcysteine; that is also available in 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. It also helps the lungs. They do a nebulizer.

Yeah.

So, you know, it actually was interesting during COVID I do believe that the FDA or the FTC was trying to restrict NAC supplements, and there was a big uproar because they want to have NAC become a drug, which really it's a naturally occurring. And, you know, you get a lot of NAC from other food sources as well. Eggs is one of them. and some other good ones. But listen, glutathione, it's something that we should incorporate. I encourage all functional integrative doctors— if you're going to an integrative doctor and they've not checked these markers, F2-isoprostane looks for oxidative stress in the vessels, and 8-OH-DG is looking at the cell. I mentioned that the human body has 30 trillion cells. If 8-OH-DG is elevated, that patient has tremendous oxidative stress. And just by supporting them, you start to see the benefits, right, how the body recovers.

You know, there's so many people into longevity today and anti-aging. I mean, these tests, you know, the, the 2 or 3 we mentioned, and boosting your own glutathione is so critical for that.

No, 100%. I mean, you know, when it comes to these biohackers, right, and listen, uh, you can say I'm doing biohacking as well. I think it's fantastic, right? But the research is very, very clear. I want to be 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.

Yeah.

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. my friends, Dr. Christine Blanche, she actually got appointed to the NIH of the integrative complementary advisors. And she's talking about now, there's 18 of them appointed right now, and they talk about different things. I believe they're going to talk about some of these tests, that they should even allow Medicare to pay for them. And unfortunately, a lot of insurance companies don't pay for this, right?

Yeah.

And our elderly population need this the most. Yeah, right. This is how we're going to help them not only live longer, but live healthfully.

So I mentioned to start, Dr. Ghez, that, uh, you know, when I first met you— I mean, I probably have known you for maybe 17 years. It's been a long time.

A long time.

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 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?

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, uh, took a course in the late '90s with Jeffrey And we went to this course and he came back and, and Dr. Paquette 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 going to make a huge impact. And by addressing the infections, that to me is the key. You can change your diet. You can go on a 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 components to addressing because these infections, I don't care if it's a virus. I don't care if it's going to be a bacteria. a parasite, a protozoa, a hook, whatever it is, it's going to affect the body's ability to heal and it disrupts the immune system. And this immune system is so intelligent that if it disrupts it in any capacity, it's not gonna heal.

Mm-hmm.

So you gotta start from there. And then you gotta allow 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 Fasano clearly demonstrated this when he was doing research back in, I believe, in Massachusetts, that he was doing research on some type of gluten issues when it comes to celiac. And there's a big, big difference with our wheat compared to the United States to Europe.

Yeah.

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 microbiome. gut. And I think it's gonna make a huge impact on autoimmune. And we've seen patients not only get better, but their health has improved tremendous from what their doctor said, stop, just take this medication. Their philosophy is to shut down the immune system.

Yeah, yeah.

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

Yeah, yeah, I remember this is quite a few years ago. This is probably about the time I met you. I wrote an article on draxe.com about how to heal leaky gut. And how— in, 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.

Yeah.

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 got to go to the gut first. Get a GI map would be a great thing to do. Do food sensitivity testing. Look for the nutrients that are required to regenerate the gut lining, like zinc. But you want to do everything you can to heal and seal that gut lining. And a big part of that diet is what, 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 lot of cooked meats, 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. Rugoli, is mitochondria. You've mentioned cellular health pretty often here. Feel free— and it could be— I do want to ask you with the mitochondria if you also want to— if any, any thoughts around the cell membrane. But what is— it seems We're looking a lot more now than ever before at improving cellular health in order to help heal numerous conditions.

Yeah, that's a great— listen, we're nothing but a bunch of cells. When you really break down the human body, we're cell to cell. And the spark plug is the mitochondria, is the spark plug of the cell. And we have to pay more attention to the mitochondria. We're having 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 resilient mitochondria, the body is going to break down. And that's why you have to look at different things. NAD is getting a lot of different research on that as well.

Yeah.

You're looking at something called NMN, which is a precursor, and something called niacin. I was part of research. I was research director, and I was looking at the benefits of niacin, which is a precursor with different vitamins and B cells and everything like that. But I think it all starts off with the cell. If we go back to just basic cell biology, how do we create energy? 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 it all starts with looking at, get rid of the infections, what's causing the inflammation, get a nutrition-based diet that works for you, and that's through the testing at the cell. I think you're going to start to see chronic disease not go away, but I think you're going to see it more manageable.

Mm-hmm.

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, Oh, hey Josh, you're deficient in lysine. Without lysine, you're not going to make the proper amino acid into the cell. And then you need to also have more zinc because it's a cofactor. Minerals are spark plugs and they're cofactors. Without minerals, you're not going to make vitamins. You're not going to make B vitamins. You're not going to make hormones. I believe minerals are very, very important. And that's where it starts off right there. And that to me is really looking at a well-balanced approach to take care of your temple. You know, my message to your audience is this: you are the CEO of your body. 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, We're here to impart knowledge and wisdom to hopefully galvanize that individual to take action, to have a long, healthy, quality life.

Yeah.

And that's the goal.

Absolutely agree. And I love closing out with this, with this idea of doctor is that it's educator, it's teacher. So you can be your own doctor and you can care for your health and your family's health and live a very, very long life. long, healthy life. I want to thank Dr. Gez Egoe for being on the show here. By the way, Dr. Gez, let people know where they can find out more about you and your amazing clinic.

Yeah, so they can just go to our website, uh, www.progressivemedicalcenter.com. And I want to thank you, Josh, for the fantastic platform and the education you've done over the past 17-plus years, you being my friend. And, 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. Yeah, um, there was a young man I had a young man who at 30 years old was diagnosed with a grade 3, soon to be grade 4 lymphoma. And they just wanted to do chemo. And I just want to give this young man a shout out. He actually owned a company that worked with Roundup and glyphosate because he was doing landscaping. And chemicals are one of those different things. But he literally is like 95% cancer-free. He did a little bit of chemo, but, but he basically turned his life around. Why do I say that? I've never seen in my 30-plus-year career how many young people are getting cancer. It is disheartening to me. And it's a lot has to do with our environment, our stressors. You mentioned that earlier, stress, having a poor diet. So if you're young and you're about to battle this disease, don't lose hope. There's always hope. And that's why taking a well-rounded approach of integrative medicine— integrative medicine is just good medicine.

I absolutely agree.

And this young man actually did high-dose vitamin C. He did the hyperbaric oxygen. He did fasting. He did curcumin IV with something called photodynamic, which is a special laser from Germany. He did everything possible. He did all of these therapies before detox, become resilient, work on his immune system before he even did his chemo. And after 6 rounds of chemo, after doing these therapies for 2 months, he's 95% cancer-free.

Praise God. I love hearing that. Well, thanks so much, Dr. Rigoli. 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. Geza'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 I 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 favor. If you're not subscribed, subscribe. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show and allow me to bring on incredibly high-profile guests like Dr. Gazegole, others coming up. 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. Ghez talked about these statistics. There are millions of people that are gonna be diagnosed with cancer and autoimmune disease, and they don't know that there are natural things they can do to improve their outcomes. So share this with one person. Think about that person you need to share it with. Do that. And I wanna say thanks so much for being on mission with us. Thank you.