The Best Alternatives To Popping Pills: Injections, IV's, Nebulizers & Beyond - The Dr. Lauren Noel Podcast With Ben Greenfield

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

I really believe that the body is designed to be healthy, but when we get, when we throw crap in the way, it's going to muck up the system. So the physiology doesn't work at its optimal. So removing the toxins that can interfere with the proper function, that's going to allow the rest of everything else to work better. The flu this year has been gnarly, and it's something we've been using a lot in our practice.

They always say that the flu this year has been gnarly. It's like El Nino.

I know, right?

Seriously, big, big this year.

Yeah. A broken record.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And today I have one of the few physicians in the world who has ever injected substances into my right butt cheek on the call. I believe that one of the first times that I met this particular physician, she was standing there with a needle, with her beautiful smile, getting ready to shove something like glutathione or Mayo's cocktail or I don't even remember, right into the flesh of my butte. And her name is Dr. Lauren Noel. I call her Dr. Lowe. First of all, for those of you who don't know about Dr. Lowe, not only does she have a great podcast called, of all things, Dr. Lowe radio, and I'll link to that in the show notes for this episode. All the show notes, everything we talk about is going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Dr. Lowe, as in Dr. Lowe. BenGreenfieldFitness.com D R L O Dr. Lo actually completed her medical degree at the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, which is considered to be one of the like, creme de la creme schools for a naturopathic medical education. And what she does is now works down in the San Diego area and she does everything from nutritional counseling to supplementation, detoxification, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, intramuscular injections, intravenous therapy, whole host of things. And her areas of expertise include fertility and Digestive disorders, hormone imbalances, and also autoimmune disease. And I have plenty of questions for her today. So, Dr. Lowe's, welcome to the show.

What up? Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Yeah. Do you remember what. What we were injecting into me? I don't even remember.

I believe it was at the Bulletproof conference, I want to say. And I think we were doing a Myers push, I think. And then I believe we also did a shot for you. And I know that since you're an endurance athlete and just you run hard, you know, we wanted to make sure we were giving you a lot of the main nutrients that tend to be deficient in that situation. So I think we gave you some extra Bs and B5s and Glutathione and.

Yeah, okay. So. So I'm. I'm curious for. For people who are wondering about this. There's. There's, like, the IVs that are the long drip IVs, and then there's what you call the push, which is where you push an IV over, like, pretty. Pretty small amount, like over, like, 30 or 60 seconds into. Into a vein. And then you have, like, a subcutaneous and you have an intramuscular. Can you take a dive for me into, like, what. What kind of approaches you'd use and when? I know it's kind of a loaded question because there's a ton of different IV recipes and injection recipes, but we've got time, so fill me in on this stuff.

Well, there's a lot of factors. For one, it just, you know, depending on how much time someone has, because like you said, an IV drip will take a lot longer. So we have longer IV drips that will take an hour and a half to two hours. And then we also have IV drips, the ones in my office. I don't really like to IVs that long because the average person just doesn't have that much time and they don't like to sit there that long. So usually our longest IV bags will be about 45 minutes or so, and then kind of goes down from there, timing wise. Now, with, like you said, with the push, a push can be a smaller amount. So it could be like, you know, 30, 60 seconds, like if we're doing glutathione, for example, just on its own. But we can also do a larger push, which takes about 15, you know, 10, 15 minutes. And sometimes we'll teach the patient how they can do that on themselves if they like to adjust the Rate, depending on how they feel. So, and then we'll go down from there, you know, shots, and just depending on the case. And it also just depends on how much depletion we're. We're suspecting in that patient. So I love doing a lot of extensive testing prior to doing IVs, if we can, to see what deficiencies that person has. And then we can decide from there what kind of treatment and how often they need to be coming in just to make sure they're getting their deficiencies turned around.

Okay, so first of all, when you're looking at iv, it's gonna take like one and a half, two hours to push in. I even did one in actually there in San Diego that was nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide nad, and that one took like eight hours.

Yeah.

Which I guess is pretty common because it's such a powerful. That's like an anti aging molecule. For those of you listening in who don't know what NAD is. Very, very efficacious in terms of improving what's called your NAD to nadh ratio, which is almost like an anti aging strategy. And a lot of people use addiction, fighting inflammation, et cetera. But there's that super long iv like that. Do you miss out on anything when you do a shorter, like a, like a push IV where you're going straight into a vein for 30 to 60 seconds versus this long drip? Why wouldn't you just go with like a short injection for everything?

Well, with something like nad, from what I understand, because I have done some training with it. We don't administer that in my office. You have to do it slower so that the body can tolerate it with our ingredients that we're giving. It's not something that has to be done as slowly to toler. So that's probably the main reason why we do IV iron. And sometimes for some patients, we have to drip that pretty slowly because let's say in a woman who has been severely iron deficient for her whole life to all of a sudden have an influx of iron via intravenous. It's a lot of. It's a big, big change to her physiology. So we'll have to do really slowly and do a longer drip. So typically, the longer the IV treatment, it's because it needs to be done slowly in order for the body to tolerate the ingredients.

Okay, all right, got it. So in terms of the IV push versus the like the longer drip, they're still both kind of like into a vein, right?

Yes, exactly. They're both into A vein.

Okay. With the idea being that the vitamins and the antioxidants and the minerals or whatever else you're injecting, you're bypassing the gut and you're reaching the bloodstream and instead.

Yep, exactly. Yeah. And the thought process is, because there's many reasons why you wouldn't want to do oral supplementation, and it just skips that. And it's 100% absorption, so it's super efficient.

Have you run into people who have, like, leaky gut syndrome, oror, Other issues with the gut who simply are not absorbing, let's say, a multivitamin that they take? And the reason that I ask that is because, like, even me personally, like, as an endurance athlete, and especially I've noticed this during race season where I'm competing in hot weather, you've got higher amount of leaky gut, higher gut permeability, some gut damage I've noticed. I can do like a. Like a push iv, like a Myers cocktail. And I feel that stuff surging through my veins right away, and I don't even feel a multivitamin at all. Is that pretty common?

It's so, so common. And I. I'm finding that, I mean, the majority of the people who come in to see me have intestinal permeability. And we. We confirm that on lab testing. We can actually do a blood test and determine do they have the particular antibodies or proteins in their blood that would suspect that they have leaky gut. And most of the time, when I'm suspecting it, they do have it. So that's why I love having this tool for them. Because if you are, let's say someone has been taking just supplements for a period of time and they have leaky gut, they're not going to be able to absorb those nutrients until their intestines heal. So for someone like that, if we get them on a protocol of IV nutrition, let's say once or twice a week for about a month or so, it allows them to actually heal kind of from the outside in, because it's the bloodstream that's actually healing the digestive tract, and then they're able to absorb the supplements that they're taking. So it's nice when you can put the two together. The oral supplementation with the IV approach.

Okay, got it. Now, what about, you know, kind of like in between, especially for people who don't like needles. A patch. Do you ever do much with patches?

You know, I haven't really gone into that area. I haven't. I have a couple patients who have said that they use them and they. They like them, but I just haven't. Then, yeah, I don't know. Are there any patches that you like?

Well, the folks at the NAD clinic gave me a patch, like an NAD patch that they said is pretty efficacious for the people who leave who want to kind of like continue to get the benefits of the iv, but maybe can absorb what might be in, let's say, like an NAD pill. Right. There's companies like Elysium making a supplement called Basis, which is like an nad, but it's in a capsule form versus a patch. And I did definitely notice the patch. I've also used in the past a melatonin patch for mel. Like a slow release melatonin delivery during the night. And that also seems to work pretty well. And obviously, you know, not to overuse the phrase, but, you know, the skin is a mouth. Right. And so you can obviously absorb a lot of stuff with the patch. But I was just curious if you'd use that in your practice at all. It sounds to me like you're more a fan of the needles.

Well, I use a lot of transdermal supplementation in other ways. Like we do transdermal glutathione quite a bit for those who, for my distant patients, and that really changes their levels really well. And we'll use DHEA or Bioidentical, a lot of transdermal stuff, but haven't used the patches yet. I would actually love to maybe run a test and see the before and after. If it does change their levels, that would be really a good experiment.

Now, you've got a whole host of recipes like, like, you know, I saw you at the Bulletproof conference a couple of years ago. I've seen you at some other events that, that we've been at together, like JJ Versions, Mindchair Summit. I think you had a. A booth there as well, where you were. Where you were hawking your IV wares. And you've got a whole bunch of different recipes. Like what. What are some of the. The perhaps more, you know, a lot of people know the basic Meyer's cocktail. You know, just like a whole bunch of different vitamins as a cocktail that you can get injected into your bloodstream. But what are some of the more maybe fringe or lesser known helpful things that people can get in a shot or in an IV that folks might not know about?

Yeah, I love getting creative with IV formulas. So we have our basic shine bag, which is a modified Meyer's cocktail, and it has a Blend of the main B vitamins that tend to be deficient. So B1 through 12. And we always use the methylated forms of those. So it's higher absorption. As we know, a significant amount of people have MTHFR defects. So, you know, the quality of the ingredients is really important. So that's kind of our basic shine bag. It also has minerals and with it we use a glutathione additive on this. So the push, like we talked about, just separate, since it allows it to be more potent that way as opposed to just putting it in the bag. So that's kind of our standard. And that's a formula that people can use, can do when they just drop in. You know, we don't. We do a quick intake with the doctor, but most people can do really well with that formula. And then if we can do some testing, we can modify that depending on the individual patient. And then there's the iron IVs. We do those quite a bit. And then a lot of what we treat in the office.

Iron iv?

Yes.

An iron IV is iron pretty well absorbed. When administered intravenously, it's absorbed.

I mean, if someone is deficient in iron and they do an iron iv, it is like a miracle. The change that we'll see in them, it's amazing. And that's one of those that I pray that the FDA never takes from us because it's always kind of tricky with what we're able to actually get our hands on for supplies. It's been a lot more difficult lately. But the iron is one of those. I'm like, oh, I hope that we can always keep our hands on that because it just helps people so much, especially if there is intestinal permeability and someone's been taking iron for a long time. And then let's say a woman is doing that and she has very heavy periods. She just can't get on top of it because she keeps losing so much iron with her cycles. So the iron really allows them to kind of break that cycle and start to heal. It's amazing.

Yeah. And especially by the way, you know, a lot of people are low in iron or have some kind of iron deficiency anemia, but they still want to have things like coffee or tea or in some cases, you don't like it, or they're eating a healthy whole grain diet. But a lot of those things can interfere with iron absorption. Whereas if you were just doing an iv, you could still perhaps have your cup of coffee and your green tea and still get plenty of iron absorption.

Exactly. In a lot of cases, when a woman is coming in and she's iron deficient or for a man, sometimes we don't want to give them oral iron because if they have some dysbiosis or bacterial overgrowth, that iron can actually feed the harmful bacteria. So in cases like that, that would interfere with them getting better. So that's. So, yeah, like little cases like that, it's really, really amazing to be able to offer it, you know, not via the digestive route. Also, a lot of what I treat is chronic infections. I treat a ton of Epstein Barr virus, which is mono and IV therapy, is one of the best tools to recover from chronic Epstein Barr infections. It's really common with Epstein Barr that there's a lot of chronic fatigue that comes with it and the body just can't seem to get on top of the infection and just heal. So that's where we'll use, you know, high dose vitamin C IVs. After a certain dosage, it becomes actually a pro oxidant. So it's kind of like giving your body ammunition to fight infections.

Now when you say high dose vitamin C, like how high dose are we talking?

Yeah, I believe above 50 grams is when it starts to become. It might be 75. I have to double check. But that's where it starts to change its activity from being an antioxidant to a pro oxidant.

That's a lot that. Because, Because I know gas, gastric absorption, like you can max out at about, I think, I think, 1500 milligrams. And you could do that maybe three times a day, like 1500 milligrams orally before you get a, you know, diaper pants.

Yeah.

And a lot of upset stomach. And so you're putting 50,000 milligrams of vitamin C in.

Exactly. It's like giving your cells machine guns to just blast infections.

And when you say it acts as a pro oxidant, what's. What's the advantage of that again?

Well, you know, part of your immune system activity is actually oxida, it's actually oxidation, your reactive oxygen species your body uses to fight infections. And so you need to have the proper balance of antioxidant and oxidative activity in your body. And that's where we use things like oxidative medicine like, you know, hyperbaric oxygen chambers or doing hydrogen peroxide IVs. The thought is it's giving you oxidative activity to blast the infections because you use ROS as part of your infection fighting.

And so that's Right. There's good reactive oxygen species. Right?

Right, exactly.

Okay, can you, can you overdo that? Can you overdo pro oxidation?

Absolutely. You can overdo anything. So yeah, that's one of those you don't want to tinker with on your own. You for sure want to work with someone who's doing it in a balanced way. So what I love is to do is alternate it, you know, doing like, like an IV therapy protocol for a patient, let's say, who has chronic Lyme or Epstein Barr virus, you know, doing an approach where let's say 1, 1 IV of the week will use a vitamin C formula. So you know, we really load them up with. And especially if they are deficient, it's, it can be just miraculous for them. So loading them up with, with more immune fighting effects. And then we can alternate it with hydrogen peroxide IVs. Now that was one of the other ones that I was going to go into is using actual hydrogen peroxide. Yes. Just like we used to, you know, cut or to clean cuts, you can use that in a very diluted amount, obviously a sterile form of it, and put it into an IV treatment. And it helps to increase the oxygenation of the body which can help fight virtually any infection. So it's great. Especially for bacteria infections. Especially.

Interesting. So hydrogen peroxide. And it's just hydrogen peroxide all by itself. And you're putting that in via like a drip iv.

Exactly. So using it in a bag of saline and adding 0.5 to 3ccs, typically of a 3% dilution. And that is used all people, when they first come in, we'll start them at the low dose and then as they come in, we'll work up to the full dose of the 3ccs. And it's amazing. I've had patients say I've had fatigue for decades until I did the peroxide IVs.

And hydrogen peroxide acts as an oxidative agent similar to vitamin C. Uh huh. Okay.

Well, vitamin C at a high, high dose, right? Yeah. But the vitamin C lower is going to be an antioxidant. So in cases like that, when someone has an infection, I'll usually do antioxidant as a. As. Sorry. I'll usually do vitamin C as an antioxidant and I'll alternate it with the peroxide. That has a very good effect for chronic infections.

So for people with like Lyme or Epstein Barr, chronic fatigue. These are the type of, of things that could be a game changer, particularly for those folks.

Absolutely. Yeah. And one of the other additives I love to add in is germanium. Germanium has some good research, especially in Japan, using it to increase natural killer cells. So especially with chronic infections. Like I was saying.

Did you say germanium?

Uh huh.

What is germanium?

So germanium is a mineral that is very antiviral and if. And it's. It's actually quite hard to get our hands on. Hands on it now as a supply. So I'm not able to use it as often with my IV treatments. But when I'm able to get my hands on it from suppliers, it really can help to increase the immune effects of the IV treatment, especially when it's a virus in particular. And there's also silver too. We can add silver into the IVs. One of the other ingredients I love to add is glycerrhizinic acid, which comes from licorice.

Yeah.

It's another extremely antiviral ingredient. And then we can add in lysine, which is a antiviral amino acid. So lots of additives we can add to a formula to just make it like this immune. Just blaster.

I was talking the other day with somebody about mistletoe. They were talking about it for anti cancer. But I'm curious if that's something that you've ever looked into that this idea. I'd never heard of mistletoe as a therapy, but apparently folks are using mistletoe extract now. Have you ever experimented with that?

Yeah. One of my mentors prior to going to naturopathic school, a big focus of his practice was cancer treatment. So he would use mistletoe for patients injecting it subcutaneous as an immune booster. I haven't used it myself in practice, but he was happy with the results. Yeah.

Wow. Interesting.

I know.

So you've got glutathione, you've got high dose vitamin C, you have this germanium Myers cocktail. Any other interesting IVs or injections that you think that kind of fly under the radar or that more people should know about?

Well, it's simple, but injection vitamin A is one of the most. It's kind of one of those miraculous ones like iron, especially for viral infections. We call it our no flu shot. So it's high dose. Vitamin A is extremely antiviral as well. And if you can get your hands on it, that in a shot is one of those that when you start to feel like you're getting sick, if you do a shot of that, it's gonna pretty much guarantee you're not gonna get it. It Works really, really well.

And you can do that via just like, a basic push iv that is.

Actually one that you have to do in a shot.

You mean like an injection?

Yes.

Okay.

It's like an intramuscular kind of like when you get a B12 shot.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. So that works wonders. And then the last area that I love to add in with IVs would be amino acids. So someone like yourself who's endurance athlete, a lot of times you're using up many of your proteins and your nutrients as just a part of the metabolism of the activity that you do. And so using amino acid IVs can be wonderful for just helping with tissue, you know, repair and restoration. So doing those are really great, especially for patients who, like you said, have leaky gut. There's someone who has maybe a history of eating disorders, and they're not able to, you know, maybe someone with bulimia or anorexia, and they're really working on helping to heal their body. The amino acid IVs are pretty miraculous. And then also for a patient going through cancer treatment, if they've gone through chemo or radiation and their bodies are depleted, the amino acid IVs are a brilliant way to help with healing of their tissues.

Now, when you're doing amino acids, do you know if these are, like, branch chain amino acids or essential amino acids or what kind of amino acids are we talking about?

That's a really great question. I know that we can get different forms of amino acids depending on what is deficient. So we can do some testing to determine what's deficient. Like, especially, for example, if we can do, you know, like. Like neurotransmitter testing. If we can do, you know, let's say a panel and see that this patient is deficient in specific ones, and we can tailor that in their treatment.

Okay, so you're saying. You're saying like, a urinary neurotransmitter. Because I've. I've talked to some people, and. And they've had, like, neurotransmitter imbalances and have done. I think one of the ones is the. The urinary organic amino acids profile. Yes.

Yup.

And so you can get that done, and then you can. You can basically dose amino acids accordingly.

Exactly. Mm.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Okay. It's almost like a targeted delivery, huh? Now. Now, these are. These are all things that people would need to go to a clinic to have done. You. You. You wouldn't. This is not something you could just, like, ship out to A listener.

Well, if someone is deficient in certain amino acids and we can do it, you know, via oral route, we could do it that way. But, yeah, if they're gonna be doing injection route, then we would need to have them, you know, at a local clinic for sure.

Okay. Okay, got it. Now, there are. There are some other treatments that you do, but first, before we move on to some of the other really interesting things that you do, I should. I should mention that this whole idea behind IV infusions or IV injections, if you're listening in and you're an athlete, you know, somebody like me, I compete in a lot of these sports that are World Anti Doping association sanctioned. And a lot of times you need just, like, for testosterone, you need what's called a therapeutic use exemption, meaning you have, like, a medical condition that you would need to be using these things for. I don't think a lot of people with, like, Epstein Barr virus are going to be competing competitively in some of these sports. But the idea is that more than I believe about 50ml is prohibited. And so I think if you. I think a push IV in most cases is just fine. But, like, These bigger drip IVs are technically not. That would be considered a prohibited substance. Do you know the volume of a push iv, by the way?

Well, a push can be. At least in our office. We'll do 30 to 60 milliliters.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I thought. One of the larger ones. Yeah. So basically, it's kind of ironic because I've been to some. Some events, like Spartan races, for example, where they have these trucks outside where people are administering these giant IV bags to athletes. And I'm like, I don't know if they know this, but technically, if somebody wins this event, goes in there and does the iv, either before or after, they could get their little. Little check and metal stripped away if they're putting anything more than 50 milliliters into these folks. Unless, of course, there's a. There's a medical reason. You know, same thing with, like, Ironman Triathlon. I remember I would finish up the Ironman in Kona, for example, and I would actually pretend to be pretty sick that we called this flopping so that I could get the iv, so I'd get the doctor's approval to get the IV after the race to replenish my electrolyte levels and my hydration levels so that I could then that evening go and. And party my ass off after having done naturally. Ironman, of course, always work in the System. Yeah, you got to work this. But I mean, you feel like I'm way, way better when you do, like when you do an IV infusion versus the oral. But yeah, so if you're listening in and you're a competitive athlete, know that once you go beyond the realm of like a push iv, you need to make sure that you're staying within the realms of what would be considered legal in your sport. So now that we've got all that mumbo jumbo out of the way, how about this thing called. I think it's called naso simpatico.

Yes.

I read this on your website. What is the naso simpatico treatment that you do?

Yeah, so nasal sympatico is a non surgical in office procedure that takes about 20 minutes or less. And it is a wonderful treatment for chronic sinus infections. It's also great if you have an acute infection of the sinuses. So the flu this year has been gnarly, and it's something we've been using a lot in our practice.

They always say that the flu this year has been gnarly. It's like El Nino.

I know, right?

Seriously, big, big this year.

Yeah. A broken record. Yeah. So nasosympatico, what I love about it is if you're having a chronic sinus issue and you don't know if it's bacterial or viral or fungal, this works for all three. So that's the beauty of using specific essential oils. So there's basically these long swabs. You insert three on each side. So you insert them into the sinuses and they're doused with thyme, eucalyptus, peppermint and lavender oil, which sound very gentle and natural. It sure doesn't feel gentle when you're getting it. It's very, very intense. And if you have an infection happening, your eyes will just tear up. But it's pretty miraculous for the results we've been seeing with it. It's, you know, what kind of treatments.

Would, or what kind of conditions would you use this naso simpatico technique for chronic sinus infection.

So if you have, you know, stuffiness, also for allergies, it works great too. If you are, let's say you go to your doctor frequently for sinus infections where you have to be on antibiotics. You might be having some ongoing, you know, yeast overgrowth in the sinuses and it might not be bacterial, so be a great option for that. And so, yeah, so just allergies, sinus infections. If you have chronic post nasal drip, you know, sinus headaches, Things like that.

I've never, never heard of this before. I have had before. You know, of course I'll do things like diffuse thieves, essential oil in my office and kind of like put my nose up to that and breathe it in sometimes just to. I'm a carrier for staff for mrsa. I've done one of these Nary's panels where you do like a swab and can find out if you're still carrying because I got an infection with that with immersa a few years ago. And so I find that thieves to be pretty effective for that. But I'd never heard of this naso sympathetic.

I would give that a try. I would experiment on yourself and maybe read, retest and see if that's still the case.

Now the other interesting, the other interesting nasal thing that I've had done is this cranial adjustment where they put a balloon up through your nose, then inflate that and it adjusts all of your, like the little bones in your sinus cavity bone and your head is just super clear afterwards. You literally can feel like all these crack, crack cracks going on inside your head when you get this done. Have you ever done this?

Yes. It's a service that I also do in the office too. Yeah. Nasal specific treatment. Yeah. I don't do it a ton because a lot of my patients are over the phone, but I've had it done myself. And it's so wild because you hear every little bone. It sounds like your nose is being broken, but it's not.

Yeah, it's kind of freaky. Yeah. And you actually do this in your clinic?

I do.

What do you call this?

It's called nasal specific treatment. And essentially it's like a sort of like a chiropractic treatment for your sinus bones. So you have a deflated small little balloon, looks like a water balloon. So that's inserted into your sinus on each side. There's three on each side. And then it's briefly inflated. And as that is happening, it's moving the bones of the sinuses. And so you know when the bones are out of place, you can have blockages of drainage that can happen. So if you've had like chronic post nasal drip happening or if you're always that person who is clearing your throat, you just can't seem to get that clear. It could be that you're just not draining your sinuses properly. I had a lady with a 10 year history of a cough that just would not go away and she had multiple chest X rays and it was always clear. We did the nasal specific treatment. After two treatments, her cough was gone. So she was able to finally clear her sinuses properly. And it can range from the sensation of the treatment can be from just some light pressure to the worst pain ever. Just really depends on the patient. And I really believe you can store emotions in various parts of your area too, various parts of your body as well. So for some people, if they've had maybe like trauma to the face, like a car accident, or if there's been a history of abuse, sometimes there can be an unemotional release that comes with it too. It's pretty cool actually.

Okay, got it. Now what about this glutathione nebulizer that you do?

What's that? Yes, well, how familiar are your listeners with glutathione?

Well, I, I've talked about it before and you know, it's a topic near and dear to my heart because I've done this genetic analysis and I actually carry that gene that causes you to produce less of the superoxide dismutase which allows you to produce a lot of glutathione. So what I do, you know, I'mI'm pretty into Glutathione. I have like an, an intranasal glutathione. I have this clinic send me actually an injectable glutathione. So I do an intramuscular glutathione into. Deja vu, my butt cheek. Once a week on Wednesdays I wake up and I go and checked a bunch of glutathione. And then I have this other fella who's been sending me glutathione push IVs. I did one yesterday. So I'm. I'm kind of putting glutathione into just about every orifice I can right now.

What about suppositories, anal suppositories?

I haven't put glutathione. Actually, no, I have, I have. There's something called glytamin, a glytamin suppository. And you can actually. You can, yeah, it's like a glutathione and coffee, little cacao, some anti inflammatories and actually once a week it's kinda like a coffee enema enema, but in a tiny little bullet sized thing so you don't have to do the whole stainless steel bucket on the floor, that type of thing. It's like a travel size coffee enema. So yeah, I do that a little bit too, now that you ask.

I love It. Well, the only place you're not getting it would be lungs. Right. So, I mean, every glutathione is not absorbed orally very well for the most part in most oral preparations of that. And I think there's also ways. Even if that were the case, let's say glutathione were absorbed orally really well, there still might be other ways to administer it that makes sense depending on the delivery. That's, you know, that you're. That you're wanting. So if there's, you know, lung issues, like, let's say, chronic coughs, or especially if someone's trying to get over smoking and you're wanting to really jumpstart the healing of your tissues, I mean, nebulized glutathione is a beautiful way to get that in. It's a vapor form of this incredible antioxidant and it's just delivered directly to the lung tissues.

So what's it look like? Is it like a little thing that you. That you breathe in like a tube or.

Exactly. So you just have like a mask and there's a little kind of chamber in the front where you squirt the liquid right in there. And it just helps to just vapor and it smells like a rotten egg. So it's not sulfurous. Enjoyable, right? Exactly. So what we do at the office is we just do one drop of Breathe oil from Doterra and it really helps to mask the smell pretty nicely. And then you're getting the essential oil delivery as well. So we'll have patients do maybe once or twice a week for one to two months, depending on the condition. If someone's repairing from smoking, I'd have them do it twice a week for probably two to three months. And then it also does change blood level. So if we are testing someone who's deficient in glutathione, we already know that they have so many processes in the body that doesn't work but don't work properly. Like thyroid physiology really needs proper glutathione. The liver, you know, hormone detoxification. So we're gonna really wanna get those levels higher. And let's say that person is completely needle phobic. Then. Then glutathione nebulizer would be aa. Great option.

Cool. Okay, so we've got a whole list of glutathione nebulizer, nasal sympatico. And I know you'reyou're big into like, hormones, fertility, both male and female. I wanna talk about that. But first, let's say somebody's listening in. Maybe they don't live in San Diego, they're in whatever New York City or Miami or wherever else. What would be a way for someone to actually be able to find someone who could do these type of protocols but someone who is, who is certified, someone they can trust totally.

So that's a really good point because not all providers are created equal. Really important to see someone who knows what they're doing. So I would say it depends if you. We work with patients over the phone all the time. The only limitation we can't do would be the injectable stuff. But everything else we can do. So you can, you know, get our information@cheyenne natural medicine.com so we can do that over the phone if it's, if it's desired. But if you want to see someone in person who can do all the hands on stuff I would go to first I would go to naturopathic.org because you can find naturopathic doctors who are trained and licensed on that website. And that would depend on the state where you live if they're able to do the kind of services that we're talking about. So it's really state by state, depending beyond that, let's say you're in a state where they don't allow naturopathic doctors to do the treatments we're talking about. Then I would look@acam.org, a C A M and also I would do functionalmedicine.org to see if there's a functional medicine doctor near you. Also a 4M. So American association of Anti Aging Medicine. Those are all websites that have conventional doctors who are trained in natural medicine. So those are oftentimes considered functional medicine or like anti aging doctors or integrative. And there's so many options. Chances are you probably have some natural medicine providers in your area and maybe just don't even know about them.

So in different states naturopathic physicians can't necessarily offer these injections.

Yeah, exactly. Just depends where you get, where you live.

Okay, got it. So naturopathic.org acam.org or functionalmedicine.org what was the other one? A4M Yep.

A4M dot org. Yep.

Let me guess. Yeah, that's what I thought. All these dot orgs. Okay, so the thing with your clinic is that you've also got a lot going on when it comes to fertility. Like I saw a video you did about how to quote, supercharge the vagina. Close quote. Fill me in on this.

Well, there's a lot of buzz about just the ecosystem of the gut, right? There's all these probiotics that people are taking and just a big focus on good bacteria that translates very much into healthy vaginal health as well. So, I mean, for a lot of the ladies listening, I'm sure you guys, many of you have had the experience where you have maybe a bladder infection, you take an antibiotic, and then, boom, you have a yeast infection of the vagina and you took that antibiotic orally. So obviously there's a big connection between your gut and your vagina, otherwise that wouldn't have happened. So I did a podcast episode, how to have a Healthy Vagina. So it would be a really good follow up. Listen, if any of you are really wanting to dive deep into vaginal health, no pun intended, but the body in general, we want it nice and alkaline for the most part, except for the stomach and except for the vagina. The vagina should be very acidic, so about 3.5 to 4.5 for pH. And that's for good reason, because it allows the vagina to be healthy from different microbes and it helps to protect the reproductive system. And so a lot of things can throw that off. Poor diet is a big reason. If you're eating a lot of sugar, that's going to affect your physical. It could really affect the ph of the vagina and then translate into yeast infections and bacterial vaginosis. So really the first step is just healing up your gut translates into healthier vaginal area. And usually the main thing that makes the biggest difference is just improving the bacteria of that area.

Now, are you improving the bacteria of the vagina via a, a probiotic that would be like a suppository type of probiotic, or can you just do that orally?

I like to do both. I mean, like even, like we were saying with the IV treatments I do. Even if I'm having people do IVs, I'm still doing the inner work as well. So if I'm having someone do like, let's say vaginal probiotics, which I recommend all the time, I'm still gonna have them. Do have them do it orally as well, kind of both sides.

Okay. What else can you do aside from paying attention to the floor of the vagina to supercharge the vagina?

Well, the strength of the muscles is very important. As women get older, there's more of a chance of becoming incontinent where maybe you sneeze and you get some dribbling of urine. I mean, that does change as Hormones change and just a lot of us are just sitting all day long, so we're not working those tissues. So I recommend every time you're at a stoplight, do some Kegels. That's where you're just squeezing the muscles down there, kind of like you're holding your urine if you're trying to stop midstream and just get in the habit of doing that. And that really for guys too?

Yeah, it works for guys. I've got an app on my phone called Kegel camp, and at 10am and at noon it reminds me to do my Kegels and I do them and it's actually pretty helpful because I'm a runner. I'm 36. I've been doing these sports for a while. And you know that pelvic floor can tend to get weak with a lot of that, the, the jarring and, you know, the fact that, you know it. It's so easy to train the glutes and to train the core and the deep abdominal muscles and, and neglect some of those, some of those areas like around the perineum and, and the rectum and. And so, yeah, I absolutely agree. It's crucial for guys too. But yeah, that's what I use is, is this Kegel Camp app. And I, I did interview also two people I should note on this. One was Kim Enami, who does like vaginal weightlifting with freaking like coconuts and kettlebells. And she had some interesting tips. I'll put a link to her show in the show notes. And then I also interviewed the, the biomechanist Katie Bowman, who mentions about the fact that if women are going to do Kegel exercises that they're actually shorting themselves or they train themselves how to activate their pelvic floor without activating their glutes. You know, long story short, that's what she says. So basically she's a big fan of combining your Kegels with glute activation type of exercises like, you know, kick outs and bridges and, and you know, even, even things like lunges and squats where you're specifically squeezing the glutes as you do them so that you don't build up imbalances from all the Kegels that you do. So give me one more. In addition to strengthening the pelvic floor and using something like a probiotic insert or probiotic orally, what would be another.

Thing, and a follow up on the pelvic floor is a brilliant form of exercise that I will forever do is Pilates. And it really does a lot of that is activating the. The gluteal muscles and also working on pelvic. So I love that form of exercise. I think it kind of hits both. Okay, yeah. Let's see. A simple little trick. If you listening are getting chronic bv, this is a really common complaint ladies deal with, and they don't really know how to remedy it naturally because if you're getting this, oftentimes your hormones are off. So obviously you have to work at the hormone level. But most of the time when you're going to a doctor, they're giving you just metronidazole. It's just more and more antibiotics, which worsens the problem. A really easy fix is actually hydrogen peroxide. So hydrogen peroxide can be used as a vaginal rinse. And it works, like, instantaneously for chronic bv. So you use that as a rinse and then you can insert a probiotic. And it just helps to restore the flora. And it is. It's like game changing. For women who've dealt with. With chronic bv.

And how are you using the hydrogen peroxide? Is this orally or.

No, this is actually. It's like a douche. Do you get kind of like. Let's say you grab some Summer's Eve, which is a douche. You can pour out what comes in it, which is vinegar. Actually pour in hydrogen peroxide, use that as a douche at night for about one to two weeks, and then just insert vaginal probiotics. And it's like the heavens part, you know, Angels are Singing operates. It's an amazing treatment for women who've been dealing with that.

Okay, got it. What are some of the top things that you like to do for guys, specifically for. I know that you do some stuff with fertility, but what about, like, libido? What about. What about for guys who want to increase their libido or testosterone? I mean, like, you know, kind of. Kind of both.

Yeah. Well, libido, it's crazy how I'll have a guy who has libido in the tank that he'll have. I'm sorry, testosterone in the tank. And he'll have a fabulous libido, you know, and then we'll see guys with great testosterone, but their libido is low. So it's not always going hand in hand. But what I will say, for men with low libido, almost always stress is a big contributor. So you got to bring the stress down. Some guys get more aroused when they're stressed, but a lot of guys, it's the opposite it really kills their sex drive. So taking. Taking inventory of the stress is big. Also, smoking is big. That's going to decrease blood flow. So I've had men coming into my office in their twenties with erectile dysfunction problems, and in almost all cases they're smokers. So just.

Yeah, I've heard that's even like the canary in the coal mine. Once you lose your ability to get an erection, that's often a sign that there's some arterial dysfunction. That would proceed like a cardiovascular incident.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The penis can be a gauge for cardiovascular health, for sure.

Yeah.

And then alcohol. Alcohol can be a player in how your hormones are going to be metabolized. So for men who drink a lot, oftentimes they're going to have higher estrogen, and that can affect libido pretty big time. So just the lifestyle stuff. And then a big factor is deficiencies. I mean, oftentimes when I see a guy who has erectile issues or libido problems, zinc is a common deficiency for them. So we'll get their zinc higher, and a lot of times that'll really improve things. Just because zinc is so important for helping to optimize testosterone.

Can you do zinc via an iv?

Absolutely.

That's not as tasty as shellfish, but it could be a good solution to mainline it in the bloodstream, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. So we'll have them do like, orally. We'll have them increase oysters and pumpkin seeds, and then they can take oral zinc. Really important to take zinc with food because you can get really nauseous otherwise. And then in the iv. Yeah.

Okay, got it.

What else? A lot of times, too, just doing a good detox.

Why would that be?

Well, because if you have a high level of toxins in your system, it's going to slow down your own body's physiology system. Your antioxidants are going to be overburdened. And, you know, you're probably not going to be detoxing your hormones properly because your various enzymes are going to be, you know, tied up from doing various detox processes. So you just want to keep stuff out of your system that's going to muck up the machinery. I really believe that the body is designed to be healthy, but when we get. When we throw crap in the way, it's going to muck up the system. So the physiology doesn't work at its optimal. So removing the toxins that can interfere with the proper function, that's going to allow the rest of everything else to work better. You know, optimizing your hormones and your adrenal hormones and you know, proper detox. So it all plays together. So I recommend to do a detox at least once a year, but ideally twice if you can.

When you say do a detox, what do you mean?

Yeah, so in my office we'll do like a two week kind of designated detox program. And that's where the patient will remove the main foods that cause inflammation. So it'll be like gluten free, dairy free corn, soy, sugar. And then during that period, we'll also have them do very specific co factors that support detox. So like glutathione to bring that one back again, we'll do. We actually have a shine reset. It's a two week detox program. So it's all kind of included. All the supplements are in one kit. So we'll have them do that kit. And then oftentimes we'll kind of add in like a fish oil and then a probiotic, usually on top of that.

Okay, all right, got. And that, that would be all you do, like a glutathione, a fish oil and probiotic. You wouldn't do a lot of other detoxification supplements like say like chlorella or binders or things like that?

Yeah. So in the, in the detox kit, in the liver cleanse protein, it's all of those cofactors are included in it. So yeah, so it has in the two weeks, they do two shakes a day with the shake. They also do supplements that also support phase one and phase two liver detox. And then we'll have them do a green drink as well as the fish oil and then the probiotic.

And you're a fan of doing something like that like once a year?

I think that's minimum once a year, but ideally twice. And then I have some patients, every single change of season, they just do a two week detox. It's a great little reset.

What are some other. Are there or are there any other protocols that you guys do that you, that you haven't mentioned yet but that you think folks should know about as far as things that are out there that a lot of people don't know are available to them, Like a lot of people aren't aware of, like high dose vitamin C or something like low dose vitamin C blended with hydrogen peroxide or glutathione nebulizer? Like, are there other things that you think people don't know about that you guys have at your clinic or that exist in natural medicine?

Hmm, let me see I mean, the thing I'm geeking out the most on right now is my fertility course that I'm finishing right now. It's called Golden Eggs Fertility. So I'm diving into golden eggs. Yeah, golden eggs. So women, for the first time ever, women had more babies in their 30s than in their 20s. So birth age is definitely becoming later and later. But the problem is, is that women don't know how to stay healthy or they don't know how to keep their eggs as healthy as possible and how to stay as fertile as possible as long as you can. So that's an area I'm really interested in because I'm 37 and I do want to be. So it's an area that's really kind of close to home for me. So, yeah, that's something I've been really working on, is how to optimize your fertility, how to increase your fertility and stay as fertile as you can for as long as you can. And there's so much that can be done from using targeted supplements to, like we said, supporting detoxification and just really like doing a deep dive in how does the body actually work, how do hormones work and how do we optimize that rather than just waiting until something is off to intervene. So that's what I've been geeking out on a lot right now. So. And then the guys protocol is called Golden Swimmers because there's a lot that can be used to optimize sperm production, sperm motility, the potency and a lot of. I think when we think of fertility, we kind of think of it being mostly women, but it's about a third of the time when there's a problem, it's women, about a third it's men, and about a third time we don't know why. So it's actually a lot more men and kind of unknown than is as much like a woman problem. So, you know, what I'm really passionate about is having women empowered about their fertility, excited about it, and take the fear and the shame out of it. Because when a woman hits 30, in medical kind of jargon, they're considered a geriatric pregnancy once they do get pregnant, and there's a lot of shame. And 30.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow.

It's pretty, pretty messed up. So I would be like super elderly for pregnancy.

Right.

But there's more chance of a pregnancy going right than going wrong. So I'm really trying to, you know, change the. Just the view and perception about fertility for women who are choosing to have children a little bit later. So just be on the lookout for that. There's. There's so much that can be done that's, I think, very empowering.

Yeah. I'll put a link to those treatments and some of this other stuff we've talked about in the show notes over@bengreengelfitness.com.

DrLo yeah, one area that's exciting, too is around just brain health. Dr. Tom O' Brien is a good friend of mine. I know. I'm sure he's probably been on your show too, right? I would guess he's the bomb.

Tom o' Brien has not been on my show. No.

Oh, my God. He's wonderful. And he's doing a lot of work in just Brain Health, and he's been a part of the Paracelsus Clinic out in Switzerland and just administering protocols to patients there. And just brain restoration. As this world becomes more toxic, brains are going to be affected.

What would be an example of something you would do for brain restoration?

Going back to the glutathione. We know that glutathione deficiency is associated with dementia. So just making sure the antioxidant systems are, you know, optimized for a patient. You know, just how we talk about leaky gut, there's also leaky brain. So assessing for that. Does this patient actually have a blood brain barrier that's been compromised? If it's. If that is the case, why is that? You know, so just looking under the hood, why. Why, for one, has this person been, you know, why has their brain been declining? We know that even just B12 deficiency is significant in the elderly population. And when you have deficiency in B12, you're more prone to being diagnosed with dementia. So I really think that a lot of elderly people who have dementia are actually just deficient in their B vitamins, just things like that. Do you have deficiencies? How are your antioxidant systems? How are your essential fatty acids? Are you not getting enough of the Omega 3s and you're getting too many inflammatory oils and as a result, your brain's on fire?

All right, so there's a lot here, but it sounds to me like, for example, if someone wanted to begin to take a dive into some of these type of treatments, they could go to something like one of these websites you've recommended, like naturopathic.org or asam.org, functionalmedicine.org or a4m.org, they could go to your website, shinenaturalmedicine.com where you do some phone consults as well. And they could look into some of these things that might be helping them. Where supplements might not like delivery patches or vitamins, subcutaneous injections, intramuscular injections, push IV drip, iv. There's a lot of things out there that go above and beyond just like pill bottles. And I know that you guys listening in, guys and girls, you may have some questions about these type of things. And so if you hop onto BenGreenfieldFitness.com DRLO and type in your questions there in the comments section, myself or Dr. Lowe will try to help you out or point you in the right direction because I know some of this stuff can be confusing and or scary when you're getting needles shoved into and shoved into butts and veins and stuff going into various holes. You want to make sure you go about things the right way. And then also put a link over at bengreefieldfitness.com doctorlo to Dr. Lowe's Golden Eggs and Golden swimmers courses. She was talking about my podcast with Katie Bowman, with Kim Enami and some of these other things we mentioned during the show. So, Dr. Lowe, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.

It was such a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And, you know, I just really want all of you guys listening to know that you have so many options at your fingertips that are just really empowering. You know, like, it can be sometimes overwhelming, just all the options. But I really think it's very encouraging to know that let's say you get a diagnosis, you're not really sure what to do. There's so many amazing, you know, supportive, integrative therapies that can be done to get you well and if you already feel really good, you know, ways to optimize. So, yeah, reach out if you have any questions. And it's been, it's been a joy. Thank you so much, Ben, for having me.

Awesome. Thanks. All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Lauren Noel from Shine Natural Medicine down in San Diego, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

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