What is Redox and What Does it Have to Do With Healing?

Foreign.

I'm Dr. Sandhya Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body. As we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy. So take care of it in the most natural way.

Welcome everyone to today's show. I'm your host, Dr. Sandha, and I'm very excited to talk to you today about a topic that we really don't talk about. I wasn't really thought about this in dental school. It was mentioned maybe in a phrase, but we're talking about redox. And what does redox have to do with healing? So with me today is Dr. Leonard Nathoo. Welcome to the show.

Good afternoon. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for invitation.

Yeah, exactly, My pleasure. And you know, we're both Romanian and I'm glad we share that. And you know, your journey was very interesting to me how you ended up with. With a redox. And you were there at our dental biological conference, helping us understand this electron transfer. And what does it have to do with healing? Because I have to tell you, I have patients that are picture of health eat, and they do everything right. And I've had a couple of ladies, actually, both in their 50s and 60s, interestingly enough, and the site looks great, but the implant did not heal. So why, you know, I'm scratching my head. It's like, why is this happening? And I think it very much has to do with this redox.

Correct.

And actually can't wait to measure them to see where they are on the spectrum. So. But I'm gonna talk first a little bit about you because you obviously grew up in Romania, you went to school there. And did you end up. What was your journey like to. To even be so passionate about this redox topic?

It's a good question. It's kind of interesting twist in my life, you know, this coming into this redox biology. After graduating the school, you know, I took residency program in emergency medicine for three years. And you know, given the circumstances in the country, I decided to get out of the field, you know, the hospital field, and start the entrepreneurial journey. Okay. And I made my first medical company selling actually dental supplies. And the first company that I worked for, with, with, you know, as a distributor in Romania was a dental implants company. Okay. From Florida. So this is how my entrepreneurial journey started with dental implants, titanium, from a company named Biology International. The company is not anymore in business but they sold some of the company. And years ago, we expanded our portfolio of dental companies, mostly from the United States, both in the dental field, but also in the, say, mainstream medicine, and started to, you know, do large projects. Like we did the first hospital in Romania, private hospital. You know, we built some other large projects in the same time. You know, I received my green card from the United States, and I said, I have to have a bridge toward the U.S. you know, to expand the business. And I made a company of nutraceuticals, okay? So in 2003, when I developed a line of nutraceuticals, mostly taping into the field of oxidative stress, okay? So I studied these field is, okay, I want a line of antioxidants. And it was my first touch with oxidative stress field. So. Because in. In the school, you know, you don't learn this, okay? You don't learn redox, okay? I. I was trained in the same classical medical school in Bucharest, and I started to study more into this Redox biology. Oxidative stress, reductive stress. And at a conference in. In Dusseldorf, I saw a banner show showing oxidative stress measurements in minutes, frass for the device, okay? And for me, it was a strike. For me, you know, this is absolutely amazing. You have in minutes, okay? Measurement from the fingertip, two, three drops of blood. You know, in office, I said, that's brilliant. Nobody is doing this on the market today. And I contacted a company in Italy and I started negotiating with them, representation for the United States, because, you know, I needed a bridge to a business bridge to move here, okay? And long negotiations. And we finally signed an agreement. And then, you know, I moved here in the United States with this contract for the FRAS 5 and the reagents, okay? Coming here, of course, you know, you have to do the sales process and convince the customers that your product is good and they need it. So I faced a lot of resistance, okay? As you can imagine, because it's a new product, it's a new concept. You know, the medical schools, they don't teach redox biology. So somehow you have to have today from ground zero, okay? And faced with this kind of resistance, I started to dig more into the. In the science to see, okay, what arguments, you know, should I bring to the doctors, to the researchers to say, hey, look, this is good for you, but why is good for you, okay? And taping into this, you know, started like, in 2008. It took me into a journey, like, 10 to 12 years into exploring the area. And, you Know, a lot of collaterals, not only oxidative stress, but then, you know, you move into enzyme kinetics, you move into nuclear physics with all sorts of nucleosynthesis reactions. And they're all related, you know, to redox biology. Okay. But they are kind of approach differently in different disciplines. And step by step, I started to make a kind of new frame of understanding of the process. Okay. And out of this frame of understanding, I. Two concepts for restoration of redox homeostasis were born. And I form a new company, Redox Therapeutics, where I tried to put these two concepts to market to develop the prototypes for extracorporeal plasma and cerebrospinal fluid cleaning treatment. You know, aiming to restore redox homeostasis, remove excess deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, and heavy metals and other factors, you know, that influence, you know, this equilibrium of redox.

Okay, so my question to you is, like, before we go on, it's like a lot of people don't even know you mentioned oxidative stress, so.

Correct.

Can you explain to us listeners like, what. What is oxidative stress and why is it important to measure?

Yeah. So oxidative stress, it's an imbalance. But I. I will start first with a description of what is redoximostasis being in the center. Okay. And oxidative stress being to the left and reductive stress being to the right. Well, more like ph, which is like 7.4 or 35. And you have acidic, then you have alkaline. Okay. Same here. It's in the center. It's redox homeostasis.

Okay.

Where you have these processes of redox, processes balanced. Meaning, what is redox? It's a transfer of electrons from one molecule which has the electrons. One other molecule, the one that has the electrons, has the. The reductant. Okay. The other one who is lacking the electron is the oxidant. Okay? So it's a transfer of electron from the reductant to. From re. From redox to the oxidant. Okay. Red. Okay. Oxidant. It's a redox. It's a transfer of electron, meaning also a transfer of energy from one molecule to another. It's is how energy flows in the body from continuously flowing from one molecule to another. It's one of them. It's not the only one, but it's one of them also. In the process, its energy is released because the reductant has electrons with very high energy. The oxidant is lacking electrons on an orbital, which is a very low Energy. So in the process of electron transfer from a high orbital energy to a low orbital energy, photons, you know, are emitted. Okay? So it's one of the ways biophotons are produced in our bodies. Okay, so this is pretty much the rhythmostasis in a nutshell, is continuous flow of energy and of electrons between the two molecules. The reductant in the oxidant, obviously, when there is an imbalance between the two of them, you either have oxidative stress or reductive stress. Oxidative stress is that imbalance. When you have too many oxidants, meaning molecules lacking an electron and too little reductants, molecules having the source of electrons to fill those orbitals, what happens then is those oxidants. So normally the redox homeostasis, you know, are processor made between pairs of oxidants, reductants, you know, like, let's say hydroxyl radical and glutathione is a pair of the oxidant is the hydroxy radical, the glutathione is the reductant. So they make a pair, okay, so what happens in this reaction, a hydride ion from glutathione ion is moved to hydroxyl radic and make a molecule of water and energy. When this pair is imbalanced, okay, so you don't have enough glutathione, hydroxyl radical becomes, it's, let's say, reckless, okay, Meaning it's very reactive, okay? So he has a strong pull for the electron, okay, from the substrate. And what happens, it attacks biological substrates like lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, other macromolecules, and create the first class of reactive oxygen metabolites called hydroperoxides. Okay? So when you have hydroporoids in your system, it's a marker, it's a witness that these redox processes, okay, are not balanced, meaning the hydroxyl radical is not paired by glutathione, for example, okay? And you have. What happens when you have, let's say, an attack from hydroxyl radical on lipids, okay, Membrane, you know, lipids, it's called lipid peroxidation, okay? So you have, instead of having integrity of lipids, you have lipid hydroperoxides. And lipids are very important part of cellular membrane. One of the effects of lipid peroxidation, okay, is leaky gut when you know the enteric membrane is not integral anymore. So you have those leaks. Also very important, the blood, brain barrier. So integrity of lipids in the body is critical, okay. When you have excess oxidation, you have lipid hydroperoxides. And we have to understand also that the basic principle, that it's universal structure gives function. Correct. So unless a macromolecule is not in the native structure that is intended, its function is compromised. Okay, so let's say oxidized lipids, they cannot fulfill their function. Leaky gut. One example, okay. When proteins don't have, let's say, their native structure become oxidized hydroperoxides, they can add, let's say, another group, carbonyl proteins. Okay. Carbonyl group is also very important. It's a more advanced step of oxidation. Or another, let's say, byproducts of oxidation are when the attack center is sulfur atom. Okay. What happens? Those proteins, they cannot fulfill their function. One example is recent. You know, came across a study about ceruloplasmin, which binds copper. And it showed. The study showed that oxidized ceruloplasmin in the cerebrospinal fluid cannot bind copper. So structure gives function. Right. So it goes back to restoration of molecular structure and how you do this, reducing oxidative stress. That's why, you know, homeostasis gives the body a place where the macromolecules are kept in their nature, native molecular structure. Therefore they can fulfill their function. Okay, makes sense.

Makes sense. And actually what, you know, what's interesting, what you're saying, you know, doctors right now basically just check your blood work to see how many vitamins. Yeah. What's going on. But they're really, you're going down to the atomic level, to the electron transfer. So from there, you know, doctors are really looking at the macro, so to speak, but you're really getting down to the atom size. And we're all energy, we're all created on energy. And that's what you're measuring to see is there basically homeostasis, for those of you that don't know that term, listening is just stability. We want to be in equilibrium. Exactly. So how is right now, do we have a way of measuring? I mean, this equipment measures it in minutes. But is it measured at all right now through blood work at all the. The redox or. No.

So there are several methods for measurement in a lab. Okay. That I'm aware of, but none of them do it in office. There is no method, to my knowledge, that measure hydroperoxides that our method measures. And there are several methods that measure glutathione lipid peroxidation. The difference between alkali, other methods, ours is that what we measure with DRAM test. It's our test for hydroperoxide measurement. The name says determination of reactive oxygen metabolites. Okay. Hydroperoxides are the first line of oxidation. Okay. Meaning when a molecule become oxidized, the first marker, the first degree of oxidation, it's witnessed by hydroperoxides. If the oxidation continues, there are other late stage molecules that are developed, like Malon, Dialdehyde, 4, Hydroxynol. There are many other late stage molecules that are developed, but the first one are hydroperoxides. Therefore, we are considered hydroperoxide as the first witness of redox imbalance in the body. They're also the precursor of inflammation. Okay. Oxidative stress is often called the silent inflammation because it's not clinically evident yet if you discover it. So going back to your patients with implants, I guess they are not clinically evident yet as an inflammatory status, you know, but if you measure oxidative stress, for sure they're somewhere in oxidative stress.

You know, kind of balanced out.

Yeah. So it's a, it's a very good matter of screening, you know, and early screening and also monitoring follow up. Okay. To see.

Yeah. And I think this is so, so important to, to really, you know, unfortunately in today's society, we like to label things diseases, but this is really getting to the root of the problem before that clinical diagnosis happens.

Correct. So our system in biology, it's all about measuring the terrain, okay? It's the theory of terrain is theory of macromolecules.

Okay.

So in today's society, people are more focused on molecules, okay? Vitamin D, vitamin that, you know, that molecule, that molecule, you know, And I always, you know, try to say, guys, you can replenish this, replenish that. But what about the terrain, you know, so if it's an oxidized terrain, those molecules you add, for example, more glutathione, okay, it's fine. But what happens, it gets oxidized, if the environment is actually oxidized. So how do you recycle that kind of glutathione? Okay. So when the focus becomes of establishing redox immunostasis, you know, when you administer macromolecules like peptides or all sorts of other treatments, the predictability of outcomes, it's a lot better, okay? Because the environment, it's stable, okay. Therefore the treatment, as I said, the predictability of outcome, it's a lot better. Like in implantology, a patient with, let's say implants done on a redox immunostasis, redox balanced environment are More likely, okay, to have implants stable and healing in less time, you know, than in a redox. Imbalanced, like oxidative stress. Okay. Environment sure.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

So I know we have some dentists that are listening to our show. And how do they. So how. Test is pretty easy, by the way, because I saw you doing this. You take a blood spot from the fingertip, you put in the machine, few minutes, you get the result. So let's say somebody's out of balance. How can we as dentists or physicians, how do we take that information and put it into practice? Or how can we bring people into balance?

Yeah. So I just want to make a quick remark, so I mentioned one test of us. Dram test, okay? It measures the pro oxidant status, the amount of oxidants we have. Okay. The other test, it's called path test. It's plasma antioxidant capacity. So we measure the antioxidant capacity of plasma. So you have the proxy and status measured by the long test, the part of, you know, the oxidation and you have the reductive part. Fat test, you know, you have the reductant part. So the redox, okay? They meet each other. So these two tests give you the two sides of the coin to say, okay. And out of these tests, you know, the two tests, we measure what is called oxidative stress index. Okay? It's an index calculated from the values of these two tests. Drom test, the proxydon and antioxidant status, Bad test. Okay? So it's a very simple explanation. It's oxidative stress index. I mean, it can be easily communicated to the patients. Okay, we have a graph showing values in the green center. And then it's yellow and red. And it's very easy to visualize. You just get the number, okay? So you see that number on the, on the, on that graph and you see, for example, it's more oxidation that is a problem or it's more reduction is the problem. Okay? And out of this, you know, information, you can draft your protocol, okay? You know what to address. It is too much reduction. For example, if you take too many antioxidants, you risk getting into a reductive stress because you have too much capacity to reduce, meaning too many electrons, high charge electrons, and you have, don't have enough oxidants so those atoms to pull that energy, okay? So it's kind of into a situation more like suffocation, sort of. When you have too much reduction, you have to have balance. So, for example, if bad test Is too high. Okay. You have to dial down the acting oxidant treatment. Okay. Makes sense.

Interesting. Yeah. It's something we never measure. Right. People think, oh, let's just take antioxidants, a lot of vitamin C, glutathione. We never think that that in itself could be overdone. Yeah.

Correct. Yes. So. So when you have, let's say too much reduction in the system, okay. That could be means to two folds. One, you can have a diet that brings too many antioxidants in the system or in case it's a very high value, it's a signal of cellular damage. Okay. Why? Because when you have cellular destruction, endogenous, the, you know, reductive substrates from intracellular reductive substrates, they spill into extracellular department, you know, plasma, and you measure so very high B test when you'll see in the red means cellular damage. It's a high inflammatory process. Okay. Not that high, but still high. You know, it's part of the diet.

The diet, yes.

So on the other. And usually when you have high reduction, okay. Like hyper. Usually comes with low diro, meaning low oxidants, low level of oxidants. And you have what is called a reductive stress. Okay. Move from oxidative stress, which when you have too many oxidants and too little reduction, it's oxidative stress going through the center. It's rid of some. If you move into the right, you'll get into reductive stress. So all these processes need to be monitor. Okay. It's the bottom line and gives you a lot of control over the predictability of outcome. And this is pretty much, you know, what gives the clinician because, you know, so you do implants. What about. You measure before do the implants. And if it's in the red, you say, okay, let's re. Evaluate, follow some protocols and that are available, you know, and try to reduce.

The level of whatever my, my main. My go to. If somebody has oxidative stress. I would say let's look at your diet. That's the number one basic diet and water intake, sleep, you know, how are you doing here? Why is your oxidative stress? Why are you so much inflamed? So we need to bring that down. So. And sometimes that can take a little while. It can take about a month actually.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But if you manage to, to bring the patient into homeostasis, then I think it, you know, the, the final outcome, it's. It's absolutely worth it, you know. And yeah, one of the things that you definitely need to measure is the iron. You know, iron levels, you know, the reduced iron, the ferrous iron and the ferric iron. The other part is you need to measure the copper. Okay. Copper is very important as well. And there are some protocols, like root cause protocol, who proved to be quite successful in restoring ridiculous homeostasis in patients, at least. You know, these are the reports that I received from. From one of our customers who is using it with our system, and it's highly successful.

Oh, fantastic. And how often do you recommend testing for this, Especially if somebody is out of balance? Is it a monthly types or weekly?

It's probably monthly, I would say, or even. It doesn't hurt earlier than a month. You know, you will see, you know, the dynamics of that therapy. Okay. So that's why I'm saying our test, it's completely different than everything that's on the market in a sense that it's. It gives you the real time feedback. Okay.

Yeah.

For example, you measure. Malone, dial the head, you know, mda, it's a very late stage of oxidation. Okay. So to turn down around, you know, to say, okay, it's high MDA and you want to go down, it will take probably six to nine months. Okay. It's very late stage. It's very hard to. To take the body. Now, hydroporosis, on the other hand, can fluctuate from one day to another. Okay. And the idea is you need to have the test measured sometime, you know, in the morning. Okay. Without any, you know, after fasting and without interference from any antioxidants and other treatments to start to establish the baseline. Okay. And once you get. Once you see, you have a therapy for like, say two weeks or one month, and you measure and it goes down, it's a clear reflection that the therapy worked. If, for example, you have a measurement of MDA and it stays the same, doesn't mean that your therapy didn't work. You know, it's just, you know, it's very hard to. It's a very late stage oxidation. Okay. So this gives you a window of real time feedback. Okay. That's the beauty of it.

I see. So basically this test should be done fasting, ideally.

Yes.

Water, okay or no.

Yes, yes, water, okay. Fasting, good. It's preferred.

Okay.

Because, you know, interference from diet. Yeah, interference from diet, you know, could be a problem. Okay.

Yeah. Now, in terms of the cost to the patient, how much can somebody listening with a patient, like, how expensive is this stuff?

That's. I don't know, to answer because we.

Don'T sell like a couple hundred or is it like a thousand? It was like relatively inexpensive or I mean people always want to get an idea. It's like, you know, is this, that's something that's affordable?

I guess it's in the range of 100 to 100. 100 to 100. You know, it's not that expensive and it's not in the range of thousands of dollars.

Oh, perfect.

Absolutely affordable.

Yeah. Okay, that's great. Yeah. Because it's always like, you know, some of the tests nowadays that we have, you know, can run definitely into the hundreds of dollars. But at least this one, you know, gives us a lot of information and it really going to the root cause of how do we fix that? The right.

It's a very affordable test. Definitely.

Yeah. And how do you recommend to be implemented like let's say in a dental office? You mentioned, you know, before you actually see a patient for treatment, part of their clinical diagnosis to actually utilize this, which I think it's a great idea. Can this be run by a dental assistant or this something or you know, does it have to be done by a doctor?

It's can be run in dental office. Absolutely. By the assistant. No, it is not required to be run by the doctor. Okay. So it's a very simple procedure. Very simple. It's just finger prick and few drops of blood. Simple identification. The machine comes with all, you know, the devices are incorporated in the machine. Centrifuge, spectrophotometer, printer. We have a control panel. So everything, it's software based. You know, all the steps of the procedures are in the panel. So, so it's very intuitive, very simple to use. Okay. And the whole procedure, it takes like five minutes per test or less. So we have the results on the spot. They are printed out by the incorporated printer. And more than that, we have an option to transfer the information into a software. Okay. We have a program called OB manager, Oxidative Balance Manager, the cloud based application. And this gives the physician the option to introduce the data from the patient, the tests, the diagnostic diet, everything, all the history of the patient and follow the evolution of the oxidative stress markers in time. So for each visit, you see, you know, what's the number now was the number then you know, and it generates a report with a graph, okay, showing the evolution of the markers and you know, correlation with the treatment and diet that you diet changes that you made. So it's very important to for each visit you can generate a report that you can give to the patient with recommendations for lifestyle changes, diet changes, and of course, you know, the value of the markers. It's very friendly, very useful for both the clinician and the patient.

Fantastic. Yeah. I think also for nutritionists, you know, one of the problems, you know, I'm also a nutritionist, but there's a lot of nutritionists out there that see clients from home or, you know, they have a small office and it's very hard for them to. They can't do blood tests, but this is something that they can actually get results in minutes while they have the patient there. And I think that's a huge opportunity for, you know, any nutritionist, dietitians that are listening to this really get to really the root cause of inflammation and treat it there.

Exactly. So this is a step before loud inflammation. Okay. It's called silent inflammation. It's very important. It's critical.

Yeah.

Well, doctor, unfortunately, unfortunately, it's overlooked.

Okay, it's overlooked. But I'm so glad you're here today and to really educate us on the redox. Importance is really at the basis of all disease and we need to really start paying attention. And it's nice that it's an easy thing to measure now that we have this in the United States. And I'm glad you were here explaining everything and we're going to put some things in the show notes. If any of you are interested in learning more, you can go to redoxdiagnostics.com there's articles there and there's also some videos on the procedure, what it's like to do this test fast. Thank you so much and I really look forward to utilizing this in my practice soon.

Okay, thanks very much for the invitation. It was a pleasure.

Thank you everyone for listening and being with us today. If you have any questions, you can go to my YouTube channel where this show is posted and you can comment and give us any ideas of what other topics you would like to listen to.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram. Dr. Sanda, this is Dr. Sanda. And remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.