8 Science-Backed Therapies to Upgrade Your Health

Health is about more than us just feeling good. It's about us being able to go out there and fulfill our calling in life. And so these next 8 therapies can help you be your very best and help you stay younger. Welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast, where we uncover the science of how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career and relationships to the next level.

I am Dr. Josh Axe, so excited to be with you today. We've got a great episode. I'm going to be going through 8 advanced therapies that can help take your health to the next level. Again, just as an introduction, I'm Dr. Josh Axe. I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. I'm the co-founder of Ancient Nutrition and founder of draxe.com and leaders.com.

And today, we're going to be going through 8 advanced therapies for healing, including things like cryotherapy, contrast therapy, infrared saunas, vitamin IVs, and a whole lot more on today's show. And even, you know, a lot of things that have been coming up as being extremely popular, like cold plunges.

In fact, you know, we've seen all over social media, all over the place, people jumping into cold ice baths. And I'm going to talk about how that can be of great benefit to some people, but also may be bad for others. And that's the thing I think we've got to understand about some of these things is They are, even though they're natural medicine, they are a form of medicine.

And so you want to know when you should use it and when you shouldn't, which we're going to get into all as part of the show today. So again, I'm so excited to be with you. One of the things I really like about these therapies we're going to get into today is that they tend to be mostly free of side effects.

And so when you think about what people tend to turn to, which is more conventional treatments, you're going to see that there's going to tend to be a lot of side effects of conventional medications and surgery. Those are oftentimes things you can't go back from, and there are side effects.

Most of those side effects are negative, uh, that maybe go along with the one positive effect that might be happening on the body. Um, but one of the things that we've seen over the years is more and more people are using these natural therapies.

In fact, when I share with you some of the people that are using these, you're You're going to recognize people like LeBron James, Michael Phelps, Justin Bieber, Victoria Beckham, and a lot of celebrities who have found that they want to age slower, they want to feel younger.

And so if you're one of those people saying you've dealt with an injury for years, or you're an athlete, you want to perform more, just generally, you want to improve your longevity, you want to live longer, you want to be in your 80s running around, still fit and healthy, Then many of these therapies are going to be for you.

You know, one of the things that I've seen over the past few— couple years is rather than people going to get something like a massage, they're now signing up for memberships to clinics that do a lot of these therapies together. So for instance, you might be able to find a clinic in your area and you might be able to get— do a cold plunge and then an infrared sauna session.

And And then get into a hyperbaric chamber. And what that does for your body in increasing oxygen and blood flow and improving your cell of your cells or your mitochondria, so it slows that aging process down to where rather than, you know, over a 10-year period, you're aging 10 years compared to the average person, you're only aging 8.

So, you're able to live longer and really stay younger with many of these therapies. And we're going to get into the science today. Behind why they work and why they're so effective. Now listen, according to my alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, about 40% of Americans utilize some type of complementary or natural medicine therapy to help them stay physically and mentally healthy.

Now think about that, 40% today. When I first opened my functional medicine clinic in Nashville years ago, which I No longer operate, but when I did, I want to say that number was probably closer to 20%. I mean, it has doubled. It is crazy to think about the number of people now who are doing natural therapies at home or going and getting memberships at clinics.

But it's definitely very positive because if you think about it, it's going to save you money in the long term. You know, when you look at how much you spend for yourself or your family on insurance, or later on in your life in medical bills.

By the way, there's a quote I love, and it goes something like this: Most people spend the first half of their life spending all of their health to gain wealth, and the last half of their life spending all of their wealth to try and get back their health. And I love to pose this question for you to think about this. I know my answer, but would you rather have just an abundance of wealth?

You know, let's say you have $100 million, you could have pretty much anything you want, but your health was just, it was terrible. You know, maybe you could barely walk, something that was really keeping you from being active. And you know, when you were 40, you felt like you were 95. Okay.

Would you rather have that, but have all the money, everything that you could ever want, or would you rather have very little to no money, but have perfect health? I think most of us realize that health is a form of wealth. It's incredibly important for us to fulfill our God-given mission in life.

You know, I once had a, uh, A man come in and very— he was, he was a missionary and he came in to see me. I said, hey, you're one of my most loyal patients. I said, you're in here all the time. He— we had him doing physical therapy and nutri— you know, him buying supplements and a number of things. And he said, you know what? He said, because I want to still be a missionary when I'm 90s.

I said, I want to be saving souls. I want to be helping people. And I just love that because again, health is about more than us just feeling good. It's about us. Being able to go out there and fulfill our calling in life. And so these next 8 therapies can help you be your very best and help you stay younger. The first therapy I want to talk about is hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is when you get in a, uh, you get in a big round tube. It tends to be about 30 to, let's say, 40 inches wide, and then it's about Let's call it 80 inches long. So it's a little bit longer than most people's body. It's maybe 7 foot long or so. And you get in this tube, and what it does is it's hyperbaric. So you're getting a lot of oxygen.

You have something— typically wear something over your face where you're getting oxygen. And then there's an increase in pressure. So those are the 2 things. You're getting a lot of oxygen, and then you're in this tube that's increasing pressure. And so what happens is, Your body, that pressure is driving oxygen deeper into your body.

So it's driving oxygen into your blood, it's driving oxygen into your cerebral spinal fluid, it's driving oxygen into your cells and into your organs. And everything in your body, for the most part, functions more optimally when it's getting more oxygen. In fact, a lot of medical conditions today are due to lack of oxygen.

Think, of course, about— there's a lot of issues regarding respiratory issues or lung issues, we know, but also even cancer has been linked to a lack of oxygen at a cellular level. If you are not healing properly, you have wounds or infections or something that's not healing like it should, that tends to be because there's not enough oxygen.

In fact, When you look at hyperbaric oxygen therapy and what it's commonly used for, it's most commonly used to treat infections. In fact, there was a recent study, this was just in 2023, a review found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can result in rapid healing of various wounds and burns. It also has the potential beneficial effects of fighting infections because it acts as a natural antibiotic.

So think about that. Oxygen acts as a natural antibiotic. By the way, not just an antibiotic, it's a natural antiviral, antiparasite, antifungal. And so a lot of these things, even cancer cells, in fact, there are many physicians who believe that cancer really acts in a very similar way to a fungus or a virus within your body.

And so when you get more oxygen in the body, It can kill off a lot of these pathogens that you might be exposed to. And I want to share how I experienced this personally. So many of you know that in 2022, I went and just got a routine stem cell injection, which I'm going to do a future episode on that. Now, I got— I had stem cell done once before. Both times it had helped tremendously.

I noticed, okay, my back pain's like 90% gone. I just had a little bit of an, of a, of an, of an ache left. And so I thought, I'm going to get this done one more time. Got an injection. Somehow bacteria got on the needle, my disc got infected, and my bone got infected. So I actually had infection in my bone.

So I started doing an extreme amount of research to look for how can I naturally heal from an infection that's in my spine, in my disc, in my bone.

And so as I did all the research, some of the most compelling studies were around hyperbaric oxygen therapy, because if I had this bacterial infection in my disc, if I get in a hyperbaric chamber, this oxygen is, is pressed deep into my bone bones and my blood and into my disc in this area where I had infection.

In fact, one study found that people with a spinal infection were able to decrease antibiotic time. So if somebody gets a spinal infection or infection in certain areas of the body, they recommend taking antibiotics via IV to get it into the area. Doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in the one study I read, cut down on antibiotic time by about 30%, sometimes even more.

And so that's what I did when I was in that situation with an infection. I said, I don't wanna have all of the side effects of long-term antibiotic use. And so I was able to cut my time of what I would need to be on there. And by the way, I'm not recommending if you have an infection to do exactly what I did, this medical disclaimer here.

But what I did is I was able to cut the time in half because of all of the therapies I did with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Some of the IVs I'll talk about later, like ozone and silver and some others. But all that being said, hyperbaric oxygen therapy can act as a natural antibiotic. And typically, there are 2 types of hyperbaric oxygen therapy units.

You have soft-shell units, which you can have at home. And so, you could buy one. In fact, I have one in my house. And it can typically get up to about 1.3 to 1.5 ATA, What that means is how much pressure and how deep it's driving oxygen into your body. And so you can get a soft shell.

Now, if somebody has a major, a very, very serious condition, like a spinal infection, or you've had serious burns all over your body, now it's still beneficial to get in a home unit, but sometimes you want a more powerful unit, and that's called a hard shell, and it can get up to 2.5 ATA. Now I wanna mention 1.3 ATA and 2.5, It might sound like 2.5 is twice as powerful as 1.3.

It's actually not the way those numbers work. It's actually probably 10 times more powerful. So if you can get in a hard chamber, it might be anywhere from 5 to 10 times stronger than a soft-shell hyperbaric oxygen therapy tank or unit that you're getting in. But overall, again, it is incredibly powerful. You know, some of the conditions it's best for, again, I want to mention some of these.

One, It's very beneficial for infections, okay? No matter what type of infection you have, but especially a bacterial infection, Lyme disease. If you have a viral infection like Epstein-Barr, CMV, even possibly even just, you know, many other types of viral infections. So if you have any type of infection, it could possibly benefit you in a great way.

The other thing is if you ever get a major burn or gangrene, I have a very close friend of mine, he's a medical doctor who works at He's a researcher at the University of California, and he was doing some lab research, spilled chemicals all over his hand, and he was going to possibly lose 2 of his fingers because the— because of the damage was so bad from the chemical burns.

He went in and got in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy tank every day for 30 days, and he was able to keep his fingers. And so you can see there, I mean, it is incredibly powerful. If it wasn't for that, he said it 100%, According to him, uh, and he knows this, he's a, he's a physician that studies this, he studies these chemicals, he would have lost his fingers.

And so you can see it's extremely powerful. Now, I want to mention too, when I did run my full-time clinic and when I— anytime I've worked, uh, over the past many years with, with children who are on the autistic spectrum, I've had many of them do oxygen therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And what it does is it helps bring oxygen to the brain Which can help with development.

It can also help reduce brain inflammation. In fact, if you've ever been in a car accident or if anybody's ever had a concussion, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, getting more oxygen to the brain can help.

If anybody has had any sort of injury where they've been cut off from oxygen for a period of time or had a stroke, this is probably the single best therapy by far for many conditions, including if anyone or you have a family member that's had a stroke. Also good for things like Alzheimer's, dementia. More than any other therapy you can imagine, It helps get oxygen to the brain.

It gets oxygen to the blood and to your organs. And so, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is an incredible therapy. And there are so many people as well who get in it to slow the aging process. Remember what oxidation is. If you get a big— if I take a bite of an apple and all of a sudden it starts to decay and eat away, there's an oxidation happening. This may even help with that. To a degree.

But all that being said, it's important to recognize this is something that, you know, you could do at home. You can go to clinics and get it done. In fact, LeBron James, I mentioned— listen to this— LeBron James spends around— he's quoted saying this— he spends around $1.5 million a year taking care of his body. And he does a combination of hyperbaric chamber, cryotherapy, and compression boots.

And we're going to get into some of these others right now as well. So the number 2 type of natural therapy that you may consider to slow the aging process and help your body heal is cold plunge or cryotherapy.

Now, these treatments basically involve an exposure to extremely cold temperatures such as water that's about 50 to 60 degrees as we touch on cold plunge early— right now, and then cryotherapy is actually much colder, but of course, the effects of being submerged in water cools your body much more than even cryotherapy in terms of the— if it was at the same temperature.

So cold plunges, getting in water that's typically about 50 to 60 degrees. Now, some people get in water that's cooler, but I recommend about that 50 to 60 degree range. This is incredibly value for treating lesions that can add up due to sports injuries.

In fact, you may have seen, you know, whether it's on a movie or An interview of a professional athlete, many professional athletes, especially football players and professional cyclists, they will get in ice baths right after they work out. And the reason they do that is when you submerge your entire body into cold water, you reduce muscle soreness and promote recovery.

You're reducing inflammation is what's happening. And listen, I do want to say this. A little bit of inflammation is good. Too much inflammation though can slow recovery and cause excess muscle and tissue breakdown. There was a study that was published in the Journal of Pain and Therapy, and they found that cryotherapy specifically is a great treatment for chronic pain and degenerative diseases.

And so if you've got chronic pain in an area, doing a cold plunge can be a great option. And cryotherapy can also possibly help with weight loss, and here's why. When you get your body submerged in cold water, whether it's cryotherapy or cold plunge, your body now has to heat itself back up.

And so your body warming itself up, that has an effect on your metabolism, which that heat uses up energy, which your body can then use to burn fat from. So most cryotherapy sessions and cold plunge sessions can be anywhere from typically 5 minutes to 15 minutes. That's what I would say sort of the average there is, 5 to 15 minutes. Now, I mentioned this with cryotherapy earlier.

Cryotherapy, you can get as low as -200 degrees, so very, very cold for typically about 5 to 10 minutes. And as I mentioned before, this is something that, again, we've seen LeBron James, a lot of NFL players will do this on a regular basis. It's been shown to help reduce lactic acid, muscle soreness, and also your body starts to release endorphins.

And it gives you this sort of euphoric effect, these feel-good chemicals. I mean, think about it. It's really invigorating. If you've ever, I remember growing up, my dad and I almost didn't matter where we went, we would go to Florida or certain places in the winter. And the water, if you'd go where we went in January, you would go to sort of the areas of Florida like Tampa or Daytona Beach.

The water was still pretty darn cold. It was probably about, you know, maybe in the upper 50s, maybe lower 60s. So, it was really cold. But we would get in and, you know, it's invigorating, it's energizing. By the way, one of the best studies I've seen on cryotherapy, cold plunge therapy, and here's the next one, just taking a cold shower has been shown to improve your sleep greatly.

One of the biggest reasons why people don't sleep well at night is due to they get hot. And I'll ask you that question. Have you ever got overheated at night? And sometimes it wakes you up and sometimes it just disrupts your sleep. You don't sleep as deeply.

And so the studies have shown if you can do cryotherapy, cold plunge, or even a cold shower, it improves your sleep because it drops your body temperature.

The study done on showers showed that even if you just took a regular shower with warm water, for your last 60 seconds in the shower, if you turned it down to cold and you stood there under cold water, for about 1 to 2 minutes, that also improved your sleep at night. So, even if you can't, you might say to yourself, listen, I'm not going to go and submerge myself in, you know, in an ice bath.

You don't have to do that. By the way, my brother-in-law, Noah, he bought a freezer. You know, those kinds of freezers that you put frozen food in? I want to say he filled that up. Actually, he's here with— is that what you did? You bought a— Yeah. So, he's one of the co-producers here of the show.

He got a big freezer and him and his friend who's a semi-pro baseball player, they get in there for recovery after their workouts as well. And so, listen, there are all kinds of ways to do this. So you can buy the freezer, you can buy the professional tubs, you can go and spend money on a cryotherapy session at a clinic. But also, listen, sometimes it's not all or nothing.

Even if you just for 1 minute a day, As part of your shower, turn it down to 60 seconds of cold. Clinical studies have shown that too will improve your sleep and has health benefits. So, so my challenge for you this week based on this show is do this. Try my 60-second cold shower challenge. So just 60 seconds, turn that cold shower on before you get out and see how you feel.

And by the way, if you're listening on iTunes, Hey, go to my social media page and say, hey, Dr. Axe, I took your 60-second cold water challenge this week. If you're watching this on YouTube, hey, let me know if you're going to do the cold water challenge. And after you do one, come back here on YouTube as well and let me know how it felt.

Let me know if you felt like you slept a little bit better that night or if you felt a little bit more energy for the next 2 hours afterwards, because that's one of the things we'll see too. You either sleep better Or generally have more clear thinking or have a little bit more energy if you do it in the morning. And so again, I think this is a tremendous, has tremendous benefits.

Now, I do want to talk about this for a minute in terms of when to do cryotherapy and when not to do it. You know, I think generally cryotherapy works best if your body's producing a lot of heat. So if you are a fitness enthusiast and you work out regularly, cryotherapy, especially for people who work out regularly or after, even if you work out just 2 days a week. Yeah.

You don't want to do cryotherapy typically the hour after you exercise. Let's say you exercise in the morning, then you're best off doing it that evening. Okay, so what they found is, is that if you do cryotherapy or cold plunge, I want to say within 8 hours of your workout, it may actually reduce just by a little bit, but it may reduce the amount of muscle you build.

So a little bit of the anabolic effect in the body versus, let's say you get your workout done in the morning and then you go and do cryo that night, or you do cryo in the morning and then you work out in the afternoon. You want to typically split those up by at least 4 hours, and that way it doesn't impede your muscle-building effects.

Now, with someone like a professional cyclist, when you look at Lance Armstrong and a lot of these cyclists, they will do cryotherapy or cold plunge even right after they work out because in season, they're worried more about recovery and less about building muscle. If you're just worried about recovery, then you can do it right after, you know, very soon after your workout there as well.

But again, so I would say when you don't want to do cryotherapy is if your body is very cold internally. And so if you have pneumonia, you don't want to go and do cryotherapy. If you have a— if you're in the middle of a severe cold or flu, I typically don't like people doing cryotherapy then.

Now listen, sometimes it could actually help you if you have a very high fever, It may benefit you, but I just, I would recommend you remain cautious and do research or talk to your practicing physician if you're going to do it when you're in the middle of having a viral infection.

I tend to actually like infrared sauna, which is what we're going to get into next, if you're in the middle of dealing with a cold or flu. All right, so let's talk about that, infrared saunas. Now, The use of infrared light, which is a— it's actually a type of electromagnetic radiation that has benefits.

What it does is it creates heat inside your body that helps your body sweat and really boosts your circulation. Now, many people claim that this will also help your body detoxify, which it may. I've not seen any research on its ability to actually cleanse your body of heavy metals or certain chemicals.

Because it's increasing your body's circulation and bringing heat to certain organs, thereby it may in fact help your body detoxify in that indirect manner. It can also help with relaxation, weight loss, relief from sore muscles, and help with any sort of joint pain that you're having. But again, what infrared sauna does— so we talked about what hyperbaric chamber does.

Is it drives oxygen deep into your body. What cold plunging does, or cryotherapy, is it drives coldness deep into your body. Infrared sauna, those sort of lights, they drive heat and some of the benefits of light, red light specifically, deep into the body. Now, I want to mention something interesting about different light therapies.

So right now, we are most attuned to this red light therapy, which has, again, tremendous benefits. But there are actually other light therapies that have differing benefits, such as blue light therapy or green light therapy. And you can read all about light therapy. I'll do a future show on light therapy here. So, and by the way, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe.

I'm going to get into a lot more of these therapies here in the future. So the way this works is the heat from the sauna can also increase your heart rate, which improves cardiovascular health, similar to— similar to, but very different still than if you're exercising. Also, there are many people who have claimed they've really noticed an improvement in their skin health when they've used this.

In fact, a couple individuals specifically, I've read articles on Victoria Beckham and Julia Roberts, who have a whole red light skin therapy treatment. In fact, there are a lot of estheticians and a lot of skin therapy clinics that are now doing red light therapy because of its benefits for the skin.

In fact, my wife, Dr. Chelsea Axe, she has this device where before she goes to bed, she will do red light just on her face for a couple minutes because there is research around it reducing aging of the skin, the red light therapy.

Now, another study I want to go through here, and this is a 2023 study that was published in the Biology— it's called The Biology of Sport, and it found that using an infrared sauna after exercise Decreases muscle soreness, enhances mood, improves readiness, so you're more prepared for your next event. So it improves or speeds up recovery and improves physical performance among athletes.

So there's a lot of benefits. And if you think about it, what cold does is cold shuts off inflammation and it really actually allows less blood flow to get to an area. However, Heat actually increases circulation, increases blood flow, increases nutrients being brought to all your organs and cells and tissues in your body.

And if you've ever studied and looked at ancient Chinese medicine, by the way, they would probably not be big fans of doing a lot of cold plunging. Now, a little bit of cold here and there to test your body, like the cold showers, they would've been okay with, but they tend to like a lot more heat if you look at Asian medicine. Reason being is they know that it's improving circulation to the body.

And this is especially important as you age, as you start to get, you know, over the age of 25. Every year that you're past 25 years old, your body tends to slow down naturally, your body's ability to circulate oxygen and nutrients to your system. Now, all that being said, what I want to share with you now is probably my favorite of all these therapies.

And that is a combination of cold therapy and heat therapy. And so it is where you would do, let's say, a cold plunge or a cryo session, and then get in an infrared sauna and go back and forth with this. Now, I first got turned onto this when I was in high school. I was a, I played soccer in high school. My senior year, I had a major ankle sprain.

And so it was like a grade 2, but really bad grade 2 ankle sprain, lots of black and blue. And bruising. And so the first day I put ice on it, but we had a really great trainer and they said the best thing you could do to speed recovery is twice a day do contrast therapy where I put your foot in a bucket of— your ankle in a bucket of ice water, and then we're going to put it in hot water.

We're going to go back and forth for 30 minutes. And I did that twice a day. And can I say, I've had— I had other ankle injuries in the past before that. This This was by far the fastest I'd ever healed from an ankle sprain because of that therapy.

And then years ago, when I first injured my back, and I talked about I rehabbed, got better before this major issue a year ago, we had a home in Florida. It was in the northern part of Florida, and it was called Watercolor 30A, Santa Rosa Beach, the Panhandle of Florida. And it was January, so the water still got very cold there. It was in the probably 50s. And we also had a hot tub.

And so what I would do is I would get my body in the hot tub and then I would get in the cold pool and I would go back and forth. And so I would do about 5-minute hot tub, 2-minute cold pool, and I would do that for about 30 minutes. And I'm telling you, I could tell the next day my back felt incredible. All my joints felt incredible.

And so if you're a person that has any sort of joint pain or discomfort in your body, maybe it's a knee, maybe it's a low back and neck, some area. Doing contrast therapy where you alternate hot and cold is one of the most powerful forms of all natural medicine there is. What happens is it improves, um, uh, the exchange of fluid. Okay?

So what happens is your blood vessels dilate and open up with heat. So your body starts bringing in more blood, more oxygen, and more nutrients. And then you go into cold, and so it restricts, and so it reduces inflammation. And then you do heat again, and it— Opens things back up. And so by doing that, your body under— with heat, it sends certain healing factors.

Your body with cold, it stops, uh, sending certain things or stops maybe with excess inflammation. And so when you do hot-cold contrast therapy where it alternates, there are tremendous benefits.

Now there's a great study, it was published in PLOS One, and after collecting the data— they did data they collected on 13 studies The researchers found that contrast therapy significantly improved exercise-induced muscle soreness. Also, it helped lessen strength losses compared to passive recovery. So sometimes if you don't do anything the next day, your body will not have as good of results.

Actually, there will be some strength losses. This was shown to mitigate that to where you still had the same strength gains. Remember I talked about this earlier, where if you do cold therapy right after you exercise, it can actually lessen some of your strength gains? Well, if you mix hot and cold, you won't lose any of those gains. So that's another big benefit there of that.

But again, contrast therapy, and again, you could do this at home a little bit, but again, oftentimes it's good, you can find a clinic that does these type of therapies, has tremendous benefits. I want to talk about this next type of therapy, and it's called compression Therapy. And this is one that's becoming very, very popular.

I first got turned onto this when I was meeting with a, with a, a physical therapist and he was telling me, I, I was actually, my wife Chelsea used to do CrossFit many years ago. And my Chelsea was an incredible CrossFitter. In fact, she was, uh, I think would've made regionals, but she had, uh, reinjured her ACL right beforehand and injured her knee.

And, um, and so she wasn't able to, but I was meeting with this physical therapist and I said, you know what, my wife's having some pain with her knee. What are some of the more advanced things that physical therapists are doing today? And this, this guy was on the cutting edge, very advanced.

And he said, we're doing a lot of blood flow restriction and we're doing a lot more with compression therapy around exercise. And, and I started doing more research on it and found out some just really, you know, started doing the research and finding some really incredible benefits.

Now, you're probably already familiar, maybe familiar with people that might wear compression sleeves on their calves or their arms. In fact, You'll see a lot of NBA players especially, they will wear compression shorts or sleeves while they're playing games. So a lot of athletes do this.

And they do it because it reduces muscle soreness and it actually helps reduce swelling and helps with getting more blood flow to those muscle groups. In fact, when I had patients in the past, anytime they would come in with varicose veins or lymphedema, I would have them wear compression sleeves as well, so it, which would reduce the swelling there.

So all this being said, for my wife's birthday, Chelsea's birthday, uh, not too long ago, I bought her, uh, these sleeves that they, she put on, on her leg. And I, and I think they're called, um, Nordic compression sleeves.

And so you, you, you, you, you put 'em on your legs and there's this, uh, sort of, uh, unit that you press and you can pick on a scale of 1 to 7 how strong you want the compression. And so I, I got these for her. And actually, a professional golfer turned me on to these exact ones, Ben Crane. He's a good friend of mine. He's a PGA golfer.

He's played a lot against Tiger Woods and some other, you know, the world's best. And so this was something a lot of people on the PGA Tour were using because the golfers are constantly walking, you know, 18 holes, 4 days in a row, and then practicing. They're on their feet a lot. And they found that these compression devices actually helped aid in their recovery.

So I got my wife these and she uses them typically. She does Peloton rides on the bike 3 days a week and she puts them on after and she's— she notices that it actually helps her recover faster from her Peloton rides. It helps golfers recover faster, cyclists, any sort of athlete. So if you exercise, this is especially good.

Or if you have lymphedema or varicose veins, doing these compression sleeves has a lot of benefits. Now, there was a study published, 2022 study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, and they found that wearing compression garments helped improve post-exercise recovery and reduce muscle damage among athletes. So you can see here these published studies, there are many benefits.

And there are some really well-known athletes that you would recognize who use compression. Again, think about the world's best golfers, many of them use it. Kevin Durant, a professional basketball player. Athletes like Rich Froning, you know, one of the greatest CrossFit athletes of all time, many of them rely and use compression boots and sleeves following games to improve their recovery.

So that might be something you do as well. And if you notice muscle weakness or major soreness, you can get sleeves to wear while you're exercising, but also post-exercise, you can do this compression therapy where it compresses and releases and compresses and releases. It will help bring blood flow to the area and help with recovery of the muscle group.

All right, so we're through half of these advanced therapies. Let's go to number 5, vitamin IV therapy, or just general IV therapy. We obviously get a lot of nutrients through our digestive system and even through nature, right? If you get sunshine, it helps enhance your body's vitamin D, uh, but also we, we, we get it primarily through the food we eat.

So when you're eating vegetables, Or fruits or meat, you're getting a lot of nutrients that way. B vitamins, vitamin C, D, E, magnesium, zinc, we're getting all of these nutrients. Now, for many of us, especially as we age, actually this can even happen in people that are very young.

I think about a lot of the kids I took care of who got put on prescription antibiotics or who were on the autistic spectrum. A lot of times they have leaky gut. And so, Oftentimes, we might be eating foods that are nutrient dense, but we're not absorbing those foods very well.

And where vitamin IV therapy comes in, it's getting vitamins and nutrients directly into your bloodstream, which again has a lot of benefits. Now, I want to mention, I don't want to call this the dark side of vitamin IV therapy because it does have its benefits. One of the trends I've seen recently, and by the way, this is going to shock some of you.

I split time right now living between Nashville. Nashville, Tennessee, and Dorado, Puerto Rico. And when I'm in Nashville, and I was recently at my sister-in-law's wedding, we were driving downtown and I walked into a building. Somebody was walking with an IV hanging from a metal pole. You know, the thing you'd see in the hospital, right?

You're pushing the, basically the rack that holds the IV on it. And basically I asked what was going on and somebody said, these people are staying hydrated while they're drinking. It was a bachelorette party. So when you drink alcohol, alcohol, your body gets incredibly depleted of certain nutrients.

And the, in the most, the highest degree is going to be B vitamins, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, uh, it re— and, and then also electrolytes. So B vitamins and electrolytes, that's what your body gets depleted of if you drink too much alcohol. And you'll notice that if you drank a lot of, if you drank too much alcohol and you drank a lot of water, the water helps.

Or if you drank, uh, things that stimulate or support the liver, which support, or take B vitamins, All of those things can help prevent a hangover. And by the way, I am going to do a future show on the overconsumption or alcohol, the very minor benefits, but also much more than the negatives of alcohol consumption and what that does to your body.

All that being said, I was sitting there and I saw somebody, this bachelorette party of these women who were pushing around their IV bags. While they were, where they were drinking martinis. Uh, and, and by the way, I don't, I don't recommend this. This is a trend you'll see, by the way, Nashville has become like the bachelorette capital of the United States. And I'm not kidding.

I mean, it is total pandemonium when you go to downtown Nashville now. But some people have decided, well, I don't want a hangover the next day and I want to be ready for my wedding. And so we're going to go out and drink a lot, but we're going to get these IVs. Again, I'm not recommending that.

I'm just sharing something that I've seen, and that's not the probably main way that people should be using vitamin IVs. My wife, about 3 years ago, Chelsea, got extremely sick with a virus, and she was throwing up, and it was for a couple days. And so I hired an RN to come into the house, bring an IV, and we did a Myers cocktail, so a lot of B vitamins.

Some vitamin C and a lot of electrolytes and some zinc to help her recover and rehydrate. And she just said, I mean, a few hours later, and especially the next day when she woke up, I mean, she felt a major, major difference in her recovery. And so, if your body is dehydrated, you're going to have headaches, you're going to feel lethargic and bad.

And oftentimes, I mean, vitamin deficiencies are connected to everything. If you have a thyroid issue, it can be a a B vitamin deficiency. If you have anemia, of course, it's an iron deficiency. If you have a weak immune system, it could be a vitamin C or vitamin D deficiency or a zinc deficiency. So all that being said, we need more vitamins in our— in your body.

And if you know that you're not absorbing vitamins very well, you may consider getting some vitamin IVs. And some of the most common, if you want to increase your energy, you want to do B vitamins like B12 and B6.

If you want to, you know that you're maybe dehydrated, and I especially recommend this more than any time, if you're sick with a cold or flu, you can get an IV, especially of vitamin C and zinc and electrolytes, and it can help you sometimes prevent it if your friends and family are sick, or help you recover more quickly as well.

Now, I want to share, when I had my spinal infection, I did a lot of vitamin IVs and I actually did— these aren't vitamins, but I did nutrients to help fight the infection and to help me to recover. And so, 2 in particular I did were silver along with ozone.

Now, ozone's a little bit different, but ozone, again, can help reduce oxidation and it acts as a natural antibiotic, and so is colloidal silver or Jensen silver, what I was using. And so, you can do those to help fight infections.

In fact, ozone, doing ozone IVs or a 10-pass or another one's called EBOO, what they do is they actually take your blood, oxygenate it through ozone, and then redistribute it into your bloodstream in your body. And that's been shown to be very effective for people with Lyme disease, fungal infections, if you've ever had mold in your house. Any sort of infection, or it could be parasitic.

Ozone has many, many benefits. Also, glutathione can help stimulate the liver. If you know you have major toxicity issues, doing an IV with B vitamins and glutathione is another thing that has tremendous benefits.

But you really think about if you're just deficient because you're throwing up or you've been through a really stressful period of time or you're sick, getting an IV can have many, many benefits here as well. And I really think it's part of the future of medicine. Now, there are some studies on this.

In fact, there was a 2022 study that found that high-dose vitamin C infusions can help prevent death among critically ill patients. Wow. So there are a lot of people who can go into hospitals or they come down with a major immune issue or infection. And in this study, they found that vitamin C IVs could literally help save someone's life.

Another study done in 2023 found that vitamin B12 IV therapy promotes vascular recovery for people experiencing septic shock. And again, there are all kinds of studies on this. And so again, you may consider getting an IV as a therapy if you know you're not absorbing things well, or you just want to take, you know, get that edge of your health, go to the next level of your health.

And there are a lot of celebrities and people that get IVs. Typically, IVs take anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. Wow. Um, you know, you can find these at certain doctors' offices. There's even some mobile services, or sometimes if you're very sick, a nurse can come to your house. But you can find these in a lot of functional medicine clinics will tend to carry these.

You know, I've seen everybody from Brad Pitt to Justin Bieber to, you know, a lot of my friends in the health and wellness space, you know, uh, Will Cole and many others who, who get these done. One of the best to get, if you don't know what to get, just get for general health, is called a Myers cocktail.

It's a blend of B vitamins and vitamin C and sometimes glutathione and other nutrients, which can really help bring a lot of nutrients you might be missing to your body. All right. Number 6 here is PEMF. That's pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. And this method uses electromagnetic fields to improve the body's ability to repair its cells. It's akin to recharging your battery.

By the way, magnetic therapy and magnetic healers have been around for a very long period of time. In fact, you may not know this, the founder of chiropractic, his name was D.D. Palmer. Before he learned chiropractic medicine in doing adjustments and helping realign the spine, he was actually a magnetic healer.

He was studying and researching things that would eventually turn into things like PEMF therapy. These magnetic energy waves, they improve circulation, they improve bone healing. Boost energy levels, improve sleep quality, and can reduce inflammation, really helping any type of arthritis. And this is something else, another therapy I did while I was sick is I actually have a PEMF therapy.

I have a— it's called a paddle, and I put it right on my low back so I can get these electromagnetic pulses through the bone. And there are studies that have been shown that PEMF therapy can help rapidly heal bones. PEMF therapy, by the way, is FDA approved to promote the healing of nonunion bone fractures, which are, again, those are broken bones that have failed to heal on their own.

It's also believed to work by allowing more nutrients and oxygen to reach those tissues that are hard to get to for healing. There's a 2022 study published in the— this was in the Pain and Research Management Journal, and it found that PEMF therapy has significantly positive effects on pain, stiffness, and physical functions with people with arthritis.

And notable professional athletes and celebrities that have used PEMF include Shaquille O'Neal and Lance Armstrong. These therapies used to be about 5 to 60 minutes long. Now, there is a type of PEMF you might be familiar with. It's a version of it called a Beamer. This is run by a company, uh, that, um, there's a company called Beamer who puts these out there.

And, and, and I think that, you know, that has benefits. So Beamer has some PEMF benefits. But all— if you have more of an issue like a broken bone or a really specific, uh, um, issue in certain joints, you might also look more to go to a functional medicine clinic and get a PEMF unit and get treatment on the area.

So if you have a young— if you think about it, if you ever know anybody who gets a broken bone And they want to heal it much faster, having them get a powerful PEMF unit and going to a functional medicine clinic and getting treated with it, it will— the research shows, and I've seen this with patients I've worked with over the years, it definitely helps heal recovery of broken bones.

There's actually a 6-time Olympic swim coach, and this is what he said about PEMF. He said, it's perhaps the most phenomenal device I have ever seen. He said, prior to competitions, it loosens up our athletes so they're able to compete better by increasing their range of motion and reducing their pain and stiffness. He said, I highly recommend PEMF be a part of every athletic program.

So this is something you'll see a lot of Olympic athletes and coaches will recommend, including Olympic swimming coaches there as well. All right, number 7 is near-infrared light therapy. Now, similar to infrared sauna, Infrared light therapy uses certain wavelengths of light that penetrate the skin and subcutaneous tissues, and it's believed to help cells regenerate and repair themselves.

Now, it does this because light stimulates— this is something in your cell, these are called cellular factories— your mitochondria within your cells, improving their function and promoting healing and growth. One of the things that happens is sometimes our cells don't work as well or as quickly as they should. This really helps with cellular repair and regeneration.

So think about if you have an area, an old injury, and it healed to a degree and it never healed completely, you can go back to that area. So you get red light therapy, you go to the area, you hold it over the area, that red light penetrates more deeply, and what that light does, it it increases the production of this energy-carrying molecule called ATP.

It also fights oxidative stress and helps reduce inflammation and promotes growth factor synthesis. And so when you first heal something, you need growth factors there, like in stem cells, to heal the area. Well, that red light therapy helps stimulate bringing more growth factors to the area, which can help with wound healing, muscle recovery, joint pain, neuropathy. And skin health there as well.

So that's what we were talking about even earlier with that red light therapy that my wife uses. And we talked about Victoria Beckham. A lot of people use this for anti-aging, but it's also very good for joint pain, whether it be a herniated disc or a knee issue or shoulder pain. This infrared light— and you tend to get this done with a laser, so something like a Class 4 cold laser.

You can get done for an injury. Now, I also want to mention you can do a light bed or stand in front of a light unit. If you stand in front of a— and this is something my wife and I have, Chelsea, we have this big, we have this big light board and we turn it on and it's red lights. So this sort of red healing lights, we stand in front of it and we will both notice we will sleep better.

I noticed and found increased testosterone. So if you want to increase testosterone, men, Getting in an infrared light bed or having a red light unit you stand in front of has tremendous benefits. It also helps with nerve degeneration, so helping neuropathy. We mentioned joint pain recovery, but big things are sleep, hormone balance, and skin health. And I would mention joint pain there as well.

Now, there was a study done, this was published in the Aesthetics Journal of Surgery, and they found evidence that near-infrared light is safe and effective method for skin rejuvenation, even for acne, alopecia, which is hair loss, and body contouring. And so there are some benefits there, big benefits for skin, especially acne. I also want to mention my father-in-law.

He had really severe psoriasis. Now, the biggest thing he found helped him was a diet that's very clean, high in probiotics. He got some stem cell, a stem cell IV done, but he also does infrared light therapy and saw really, really tremendous benefits there with that as well. The last therapy I want to talk about here is biofeedback training.

Now, this is a technique you can use that really helps reduce stress and cortisol levels. So when we're talking about benefits of reducing stress, this is the biggest. Biofeedback— with biofeedback, you're connected to these electrical sensors.

So you kind of put something over your scalp, it has sensors on your head, and what you do is you may watch a show or listen to certain something like, uh, really relaxing music while it's connected to your head. And biofeedback training, basically, it helps train your body to be more relaxed. Oftentimes, our body gets in these neurological patterns to where we live in a high-anxiety state.

So, our bodies are constantly pumping out too much cortisol and stress hormones. Biofeedback is used to help break that pattern. Because let me ask you this, have you ever experienced this where you're saying to yourself, I know I shouldn't be stressed right now, but you can feel it? It's like this stress, and you're even trying to do things.

You maybe go for a walk or you try and pray or meditate, and you can still tell your stress hormones, your cortisol, you just, you can't seem to unwind. You can't seem to kind of break this cycle, this neurological cycle your body has of anxiety or worry or stress. Biofeedback. Actually helps break those bad neurological patterns and helps lower those stress hormones.

Listen, if stress hormones are high, it can cause hypothyroidism, it can cause adrenal fatigue, it can lead to mental health issues and a number of other problems where your body's not healing like it should. Low testosterone, that's another big one. Generally, it's also used for chronic pain, headaches, and even urinary incontinence. Many things biofeedback is used for.

And so, again, if you get biofeedback done, you tend to go to a functional medicine clinic. They'll hook you up, and you could look up biofeedback clinic in your area. But if you want to lower stress hormones, it's one of the most powerful things you can do. And I especially recommend it for people who are dealing with any form of anxiety or any sort of mental health issues or even ADHD.

It's great for kids with ADHD, really powerful. I did this myself for like 6 months. And I was amazed that I didn't even realize it. I think from just being on our— the studies show because we're on these devices all the time, computers and phones and just constant bombardment, our body gets in these neurological patterns. And sometimes you actually need to do something extreme to break it.

And that's where biofeedback comes into play. Now, I also believe that prayer and meditation and walking in nature and doing those things in combination with, you're going to get even better results. But so many of us, we will age slower and be healthier if we can lower those stress hormone levels. Well, listen, I have covered this.

I felt like I, you know, I plugged you all into a fire hydrant today because we covered a lot of information on these natural medical therapies. But again, we've seen this explode over the years. It was not too long ago, um, nobody was doing these therapies. Now it's around 40% of people are using some sort of these natural therapies to help them age slower and get healthier.

And by the way, if you want me to dive deeper into any of these, I may do individual shows on some in the future. By the way, I'm going to bring in and do some other really amazing therapies. I covered 8 today. I've got some other— I want to talk about cupping. But hey, let me know in the comments section if there are other things that you want me to cover in a future podcast episode.

Also, If you've ever done any one of these 8 therapies, hey, jump on one of my social media channels and let me know, or go to the YouTube page where this is broadcast and let me know if you've ever done, or how many of these 8 have you done yourself of these natural therapies? I would love to hear from you, or what were the big ones I missed you think I should cover here in the future?

Please let me know. Hey, also, I'm excited for these future episodes. We've got episodes, I know we've got some, a few in the past with some of the people I'm about to mention and some in the future. But again, Carrie Underwood, Tim Tebow, Patrick Lencioni, you know, Vonnie Hari. We have so many great guests we're going to be talking to, both, you know, we have and then in the future as well.

So, I'm really excited for you to continue to check out these podcasts. And do me a favor, if you're not subscribed, hey, please subscribe here to the podcast. And also, if you enjoyed this episode and you want to hear more like it, hey, do me a favor. Would you go to iTunes and leave a review? Now, listen. If you thought it was terrible, give it 1 star.

If you thought it was great and you wanna learn more, hey, please leave a 5-star review. Guys, thanks so much for listening to the Growth Lab Podcast. Remember, every week I'm gonna be covering the science of how you can grow yourself, your health, but also areas like your wealth, your career, your relationships, and take your life to the next level.

Hey, I can't wait to see you on the next episode.