Secret Therapies Used By The Healthiest People Alive
15 Dec 2025 · 30 min
Podcast episode (March 23, 2016) in which JJ Virgin interviews Dr. Robyn Benson (doctor of Oriental medicine, founder of Santa Fe Soul/Self Care Revolution). They discuss oxidative therapies and regenerative medicine used in Dr. Benson’s practice: ultraviolet blood irradiation (UVBI), Myers cocktail IVs, high-dose vitamin C, glutathione injections, Prolozone (local injections + ozone gas), and PRP (platelet-rich plasma). JJ and Robyn describe clinical uses (immune support, infection/shingles, sports recovery, joint pain, post-surgical healing, facial rejuvenation) and procedural details; the episode also contains lifestyle tips, sponsor ads, and a listener Q&A about belly fat and diabetes.
Questions this episode answers
March 23, 2016
About 60 cc of blood (mentioned for both UVBI and PRP).
Primarily vitamin C, plus magnesium and B-complex (formulation described conversationally).
Chapters
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Hey it's JJ Virgin and welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. And I give you tips that you can put into fast action to up level your so you can go out there and live the big life you were meant to live. Now today's show is really interesting stuff that I'm betting you've never heard before. I'm going to pull back the curtain on one of my friends medical practices and I have had the opportunity to do some traveling with this gal. She's super smart and she uses some really cool oxidative therapies and I wanted to give you information on these because these are things that I personally used and both through her, because I travel I've done some traveling with her and also some things that I've done over the years to help me survive a really bad knee injury when I was young and make it 30 years without having to have surgery until I got into my 50s. And so in this podcast what you're going to hear about is how you can use IV therapies to help your sports performance, to boost immunity, to get rid of some like pathogens in your system. All the stuff that could be making you feel bad put you at risk for a lot of the different diseases. Plus you're going learn about Prolozone and prp. Again, things that I've done to help with cartilage and mobility and youthfulness in my joints and help reduce pain. You can also use them for facial rejuvenation. And this is all going to be with my friend Dr. Robin Benson and she has created something called the Self Care Revolution. Her whole thing is how do you transform lives and healthcare and really how do you do this? She's been doing it one person at a time here in her Santa Fe Clinic. She has worked with thousands of people, and really, she's one of the key people I know doing some of these innovative therapies using Oriental medicine. She's also traveled to over 70 countries. Amazing. So for the last 23 years, she's been doing acupuncture, herbs, IV therapies, and energy medicine. In fact, she brings a lot of those things. She brings her energy medicine out to our conferences and works with people there, and I've had the chance to experience some of that with her as well. Amazing. And she also wrote the Healthy Conscious eight Pathways to Smart and Effortless Travel, where it's really about the health hacks that she can show you to do so that you do not get sick and go down when you travel. Hugely important. And again, she's out in Santa Fe. She has Santa Fe Soul, which is her healthcare center. She has 15 practitioners in there. She's also a massive athlete, besides being a world traveler, a speaker, and, of course, an author. And I am super excited to have her with us today. All right, let's do it. So, Dr. Robin Benson, welcome to the show.
It's a pleasure to be here, jj. Thank you.
Oh, I am so glad you're here with me today, because the stuff you're going to share, I mean, like, I think of this now as kind of normal, but I know that it is really a secret. And what I want you to do is pull back the curtain on these things that you do in your practice that I've been so fortunate to be able to be exposed to. But before you do that, what I'd really like to do is just because you've got a really unique perspective, and I'd love you to share, like, who you are. You've been in practice for 24 years as a doctor of Oriental medicine. You know, how did you. How did you end up going down that path?
That's a great question. I have to say. How I got into medicine, jj, was it started at a very young age. I was literally five years old. I was one of five children, the second of five. And we lost my little brother when he was just six months old. He was born with a hole in his heart, had a bunch of different health issues, but I was one of these young girls who wasn't into playing with Barbie dolls. I was a very serious person even then. And when that happened, and I saw the shift that happened in the dynamic of my family, holding this baby, knowing he was not well, I just have to say, the day that he passed on, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. In fact, I wanted to be the doctor that saved his life, certainly. But it just set this path. I knew, I knew then that's what I was going to do with my entire life. And then I had the great opportunity when I was just a fifth grader to do a career day with a doctor. The whole day I spent with this man. And he took me to two nursing homes. Let me tell you, that was such an eye opening experience for a 12 year old girl. I couldn't believe what I saw in those nursing homes. And more than anything, I was just so surprised. I even asked him, his name was Dr. Rainsville. I said, why are many young people here? And he said, well, certainly, you know, diseases of aging. He said, but Robin, a lot of people have made poor choices and that has led to accelerated aging and that's why they're here. And I have to tell you, just I can see that place to this day. I can smell it. And I thought, you know what? I am, I am so determined to help people live life well and to not get sick in the first place and to help my family members and loved ones to know that this is not how you, you know, end of life, why not live it well, all of her life? And so that was a deciding factor. JJ and then finally, I was really close to a friend. We were earth science partners. And this was when I was, gosh, 14 years old and he had leukemia. And it was an incredible process to see him go through this. And when he died, one of the things he really wanted to do was he's like, robin, I just hope I can live to run a marathon. So we were on the cross country team together. He'd be out there, practice, no matter what condition he was under. And so I ended up at that age. I, you know, at 15, I ran my first marathon. And I have to tell you, it just set me on this course to not only living well myself in every which way, but studying sports medicine in college and every step of the way. I'm now 50. I have, this has been my mission, this has been my vision, this has been my way to share my gifts with the world.
And I know you and I are right around the same age and you look, you know, you look amazing and you're totally active and we've had the chance to travel together. We both have super high energy, so it's very fun to be with you. But also it's great to travel with you because you bring, you bring your medical bag with you and we get to do glutathione injections and B12. And let's talk about some of these things, because I know I've just gotten a little taste of what you have at your practice, which I'm going to go see in Santa Fe. I'm super excited. But, you know, you've got all of these different oxidative therapies in your practice. Talk about them and why you brought them in.
Okay. So around, like, halfway through my career, I was. I was treating, gosh, honestly, 100 patients a week. It was wild. And I was thinking, you know, I was just looking at who I was treating, and I thought, wow, these people are coming in with some serious conditions, whether they had cancer or, you know, they had hepatitis. A lot of my patients have autoimmune diseases. And so acupuncture is phenomenal. I mean, it's the oldest continuous form of medicine on the planet. And I can do amazing things as an acupuncturist and as an herbalist. But there comes a point where people are really suffering, and I'm thinking, how can I help them quickly? How can I. Not only that, I'm not just about, you know, getting someone better faster, but get to the root of the. Of the issue. So Chinese medicine is big about not just treating symptoms or about treating the root. So what we're seeing, jj, in this world that we're living in is accelerated aging and lots of levels. People are exhausted, people are in pain, people are stressed out. And, you know, we often think of our healthy cells. We're as healthy as our 70 trillion cells, or where we produce energy in the cell. The ADP production is compromised. There are lots of reasons that the toxicity in the world. Our hormones are not working. We're not breathing in very fresh air. The beat goes on. So when I got into this medicine of practicing these oxidative medicines. Oxidative medicines are the use of ozone in medicine. It's hyperbaric oxygen. It's hydrogen peroxide, yeast. And these are ways in which you're helping the body on a very deep level, return more to nature. Like there's certain viruses, bacterias, and parasites. So let me give you an example of one that I do, one of my oxidative therapies. It's called ultraviolet blood irradiation. So what's that? I actually extract about 60cc of blood, and we put that through a UV light. So there's certain spectrums of a UV light area that are specific to get rid of these pathogens. So the blood actually goes to this, this tube and it's exposed to certain spectrums of the UV light and that helps to create this really healthy blood free of pathogens. And we put that healthy blood back into the body. So I mean, all the acupuncture in the world can be very helpful. But when people have these very challenging health issues, and again, I mean, I see this in, so in young people too, I find that I can have, I help them get back into much better, a much better shape. Sometimes we can re. Actually, you can actually reverse some of these conditions. So to be more specific, again, I've talked about people with hepatitis, people who come like right now. Shingles, Shingles, I can't tell you. I have four patients just in the last two days with shingles. Using one of these therapies is really helpful because it's virus and it really helps to get the body oxygenated, it helps to get the circulation improved. It helps to move the infection out of the body. So I'm just really thrilled, JJ that this last, you know, 14 years. How many? 10 years now? No, no, about 14 years. 14 years that I have been doing these extra therapies. So ultraviolet blood irradiation, high dose vitamin C. I do those on a regular basis too, as you know, you hear about it for cancer treatment. In fact, there are cancer treatments all around the world and these therapies that I'm talking today are used in all of them.
I know it's just not here. It's like, it's like these are, that's what people don't understand is so many of these things are standard course outside of the US and they're just, you know, I, they're now my standard course. If I feel like I'm getting sick, I go get a Myers cocktail. You know, if I've put myself under stress. We use glutathione injections, but people just don't. Aren't aware of them. That's why I was so glad that you were here to share these because if we just got used to doing this, it's like you start with good nutrition, you start with great lifestyle, you're happy, you're handling stress. However that is for you, you're getting good sleep, you're exercising. But then as things start to go sideways, what if you do things that help your body come back into balance instead of hitting it with. I mean there's times when, hey, western medicine saved my son's life. But then it was all of these things and we're going to talk. I know about Stem cells and prp and some of that was those things that really brought him back to life. And you know, I'd love to share like I always love stories on different therapies and what happened because I think that really helps people see the results. So let's talk about some of these that you've seen when you've helped people with, you know, injections, treatments and what are the outcomes?
Been okay, well let's talk about Myers cocktails, because that's the one that I do. Gosh, I've done thousands and thousands of those and that is the most common one that people come into on a daily basis. So when people are feeling, and I've kind of trained my clientele and it's word of mouth, let me tell you people, they'll spread the good news about Myers cocktails. The Myers cocktail is actually named after Dr. Myers and it's an IV infusion of primarily vitamin C. We put magnesium, B complex hydrochloric acid, a bunch of different things and it's like a 50, 50 cc's and what people can expect from that is if they come in with, let's say a low grade infection or the first signs of infection, immediately people feel so much better. I mean the vitamin C goes right into the body. What's cool about an IV as opposed to a supplement is we have to think about, worry about the digestive system breaking it down. Well, this completely just goes into your bloodstream. So we don't, we're not questioning if you're going to absorb it or not. So. So for any type of infection, pain, even a lot of my athletes, I have come in to get a Myers cocktail pre event and post event. And that's phenomenal, especially post event in terms of lactic acid and being sore. It helps to resolve the soreness quickly. Okay. And migraines, a lot of people have migraines very, very common, or any headache for that matter. The Meyer's cocktail, the magnesium content in it and the whole formulation is really, really helpful. So people come in with a migraine, they leave without, certainly with just a regular headache. So that's just another example. I have many people that just know that they're immune compromised and they want to travel. And part of being a healthy conscious traveler, the name of my book, people come in just about every mover and shaker that I treat. They come in simply to get that immune boost so they can ensure that they're going to be healthy when they're on the road, when they're speaking. And so These are just some of the examples of why I use Myers cocktails.
Yeah, Myers cocktails are like one of the most amazing things that, you know, it was kind of a big secret. What about. And this is one that has been near and dear to my heart because I had a really bad injury when I was 17, tore my ACL, tore it completely in my 20s, blew through all my cartilage in my knee and really kept myself going through being really strong, being ideal weight supplements. But starting with doing, I started doing prp and I think that helped me really prolong having to do surgery. So I'd love to talk about joints because I think joint health is one of the most amazing things that you can do here and support.
Okay. The number one injection that I do for joints is called Prolozone. In fact, in my 24 years of practice, it is probably the most rewarding thing that I do and the most amazing quick response that I get with my patients. So there are a lot of people walking around with aches and pains in their knees. And so what I do is I make a formulation that has some procaine in it and other ingredients. I inject that first followed by the ozone gas. It's phenomenal. JJ, I'd have to say about 80% of the people I do get instant results, especially with knees. And what's really cool is I can't tell you how many operations, surgeries that have been canceled because of this one therapy. So for all of you are listening, prolozone. I just want you all to know about this because not only is it good for knees, herniated discs and backs, also necks. I've had people with really bad pain in their arms caused by a cervical herniated disc. And it's pretty miraculous what could happen. And it's not always only with one injection. Very often you need a series of. Anywhere between, let's say one to five in most cases, and also the SI joint. I get a lot of people with chronic hip pain when I fix those SI joints. That makes a big difference. And so for people like you, people that have had ACL tears and major trauma to a joint, I'm just a pretty conservative jj. I like doing acupuncture in my prolozone first. And then if I find that I'm not getting the result that I'd like to see, or the patient is not seeing the shift, then I'll add what's called PRP, platelet rich plasma. That's where I take out about 60cc's of blood. We Spin it and we get your platelet rich plasma, we get the part of your blood that has all these growth factors, and then we inject that into your joint. It can be pretty intense. I'm not saying that this is absolutely painless.
Yes, I can speak for that. Yes, I can.
But you know what, being an acupuncturist, I think there's something to it because people have had PRP many other times, other places, and they're like, I've never had such painless prp just being a, you know, how many needles can you imagine? I'm a Scorpio rising. I love needles. There's something about me and needles. So, you know, find someone who's skilled because it doesn't have to be so horrible. But when you're putting your own substance, your own body substance into your body, you can imagine there's a little bit of discomfort. But the PRP is pretty phenomenal. So knees, actually, after my husband had an ACL surgery, he had a head of a surgical repair. I actually did some prolozone afterwards that really helped with the healing process. But about six months later, he's a big time skier. I did a PRP injection into his knee. And this is a, this is a pretty serious surgery that he had. It's just phenomenal. He's a major mountain biker and skier and he's just back doing everything that he loves to do full out. So what is that PRP really doing? I mean, not only is it used like post surgery in terms of wound healing, but it's actually, it's your own growth factors that are going in there and helping to reestablish healthy connective tissue. And it's also excellent for your bones. So it's not just, you know, you have loose ligaments. We're going to help it heal that way. We're actually, you know, when you think about the ligaments that are attaching to bones, that whole area has like this whole new blood supply. So you're increasing circulation, you're helping to reduce scar tissue. Now that's a huge issue with most surgeries is scar tissue. And so I really am able to help people a lot to eliminate scar tissue post surgically. And it's really, really cool, jj, that in the world of surgery now, so whether you're having an open heart surgery or a woman's having breast reconstruction, that they're using PRP to help once they close up the incision, to put your own platelet rich plasma there to have your own growth factors to help with the healing. So you don't have this massive, ugly scar. So it's just cool. And so the question, back to the question, why did I get into this? This is of what I'm talking about is regenerative medicine. I mean, to actually help your body, your body tissues get back to its own nature as much as possible. I can't think of any better way to do it. Right. So it's just, you can see I'm enthusiastic about it because it's, I constantly, every single day, whether I'm doing IVs, I'm doing injections, I'm really seeing people get well and feel better much faster.
Well, what I love with what you just described is, you know, when I first injured myself, I didn't know any of this stuff and I was given all these pain meds that then created gut problems that didn't fix anything. So it just created, you know, just created a new problem and didn't do anything to fix the old problem. So that's the other fun thing here is you're actually going through and doing things that, that create more benefits. You know, they have side benefits benefits. It's so awesome. And that's again, this is why I wanted you to come on and share that there's other options out there. And I know people can learn more about that if they go to robinbenson.com now it's Robyn with a Y. So R O B Y N B E N s o n robinbenson.com so I'm going to invite you all to check out Robin's information because she's got, she's, she's a great hacker for how to travel healthy, which is why I love traveling with her. She's just amazing and a great resource. So, Robin, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. So awesome. Now after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so be sure to stick with me.
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Welcome back. So this is the time where I answer a listener's question, and today's question comes from Hans. And I think all of you are going to relate to the core issue he's bringing up here. I'll let him tell you about him himself.
Hi, jj, this is Hans. And I'm a diabetic, a type one diabetic. So I need to take insulin on a daily basis, and all the diets that I have gone through have not quite worked. It's basically, I need to lose my gut. I'm fit overall, but the gut is really pumping up. I'm 60 years old, and I have never had this. It's very frustrating. So I was trying to find a way of really doing that with the diabetes that I have going on. Of course, I take insulin shots before every meal, and I try not to take too much insulin, but then again, it all depends on the meal that I am taking, how much that I need to take with every meal. So I hope you have some suggestions there for me. I would appreciate it, and thanks for all you do.
Okay. So, Hans, and again, whether you're a type 1 diabetic, a type 2 diabetic, or not, the issue that you're really struggling with is the issue of belly fat. And belly fat is a different type of fat than anything else. It is the most dangerous type of fat because it's the most metabolically active. It's the most predictive, really, of heart disease. And so we really want to focus on it. This is not just about vanity here, and there's a couple things that I can tell you and when you talked about diabetes, that I think could be contributing to the problem. Number one, a lot of the times when you look at diabetic formulas, they do things that are below glycemic index so that you don't have a big blood sugar response. But one of those products that has a low glycemic index is fructose. And fructose can be incredibly problematic for belly fat because the only organ that can metabolize fructose is the liver. So fructose goes straight to the liver, where, in general, most of it will probably be converted to body fat and specifically belly fat. So you've got the issue with you want to make sure that you're really, obviously maintaining good blood sugar stability. That means eating good, healthy fat, eating fiber, and eating clean, lean protein. But one of the key things that I would tell you to do is really watch, be on the lookout for fructose, and get this down to as close to zero as possible. How you can do that is to do the sugar impact diet and to look at staying in the green on the sugar impact scales. That's number one. The other big hack here to help drop your body fat is to start doing coconut oil and coconut oil. A tablespoon of coconut oil a day is very thermic, helps your body burn fat and really is going to help with burning fat off the belly. Now, another key thing here is to manage stress because two things can really contribute to you laying down more fat around your belly. One of them is insulin and the other is cortisol. So watch your stress as well. And I always hate that term stress management, because I'm like, how do you do that? What you really have to look at is what things are creating stress in your life that you can eliminate and what things can make you happier. Because so often if you ask someone what are they doing every day to make themselves happier, to help with some bliss, they're like, oh, I don't know. So whatever that is for you, is it walking your dog? I just had a dog walk by and bark, so I'm thinking walking dog. Is it taking a hot bath? Is it watching something funny? Is it reading a great book? Is it hanging out with friends or family? Whatever it is, build some great downtime into every day that helps restore you and rejuvenate you. So again, let's keep your blood sugar balanced with good, clean protein, healthy fats and fiber. Get that fructose down to as close to zero as possible. Follow the sugar impact diet and get into the green on those charts and start looking at some healthy fats. But specifically, coconut oil is very thermic in helping you burn more fat. And monitor that belly on a weekly basis by using a tape measure, because that is again, one of your biggest indicators, if not your number one indicator of metabolic health. So thanks so much, Hans, for that question. Such a good one. Now, if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask that's jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me and I can cannot wait to hear from you. And by the way, one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. And be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy. Dare to live a life that matters.
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