The Incredible Impacts of Methylene Blue on Cellular Health

But in the big picture, it has a couple of targets that it does inside the body. One of them is that it triggers an oxidation reduction reaction in the body. And what that means is it— Hey, it's Dr. A. On this channel, we talk about all things integrative medicine, chronic illness, oncology, and we answer lots of questions. The biggest thing to consider with methylene blue is it is used in the body as an exogenous source, meaning unlike a vitamin or a mineral or something. We don't make methylene blue in our body. It is an exogenous thing. So often when people are sort of slamming methylene blue, they'll say, well, it's a fish tank cleaner, it's a dye or whatever. Well, both of those are true statements, but the medical version of methylene blue is a highly purified version of methylene blue that's checked for heavy metals and other toxicants. And so you're using not a reagent grade, not a lab grade, not a dye grade methylene blue. You're using a medical grade methylene blue. That's number one. Number 2, it is from the outside. And so it's something that we're adding into the body the same way you would add a drug, really, because it is a drug. In the US, methylene blue is a drug, even though you can buy it as a supplement, which is a whole other discussion. So buyer beware if you're buying it as a supplement, because a lot of methylene blue is contaminated with heavy metals. And so you want to make sure that the company that you're buying it from is checking for that, because you can get cleaner and less clean versions of methylene blue. But in the big picture, it has a couple of targets that it does inside the body. One of them is is that it triggers an oxidation reduction reaction in the body. And what that means is it can be a net effect of having an antioxidant effect in the body. So when it's going into the body, it might help to level out your redox, your antioxidant status. The use it's most known for is to trigger the mitochondria to make more energy. And unlike things like NAD or other substrates for energy that the body uses, methylene blue comes into the mitochondria kind of in the middle of the process. And sort of just kickstarts the process to making ATP through the middle of the respiratory chain. And so it's not working like the way your body normally does. It's literally coming in and saying, work harder. Methylene blue, if you take too much, can make you jittery and you feel kind of overcaffeinated and stuff. That's because your body's being forced to make more energy from it. So that's where a lot of the good stuff comes from. Now, if the main metabolic outcome of methylene blue is to create more energy, then places in the the body that need lots of energy production might benefit more from it than other parts of the body. And there might be more uses for it, at least that we know about. But in the modern research about methylene blue as a drug or addition to a treatment program, number one would be as a neurological agent. So neuroprotection in people who have had neurological injuries, traumatic brain injury, et cetera, the help and maintenance of people with things like memory problems, Parkinson's, disease, other neurological problems. There's a lot of research on those sorts of disorders and diseases. Another area that's more global would be enhanced cognition. So again, we mentioned, you know, maybe people with memory issues and things. Sometimes you get just where maybe you've had a protracted illness or maybe you've had to take protracted period of maybe chemotherapy or radiation or other drugs that have affected your cognition. Maybe you got long COVID and you have brain fog or you've got other reasons for brain fog. Sometimes methylene blue can be helpful with with cognition, brain fog, those sort of things. Because again, the brain has a lot of mitochondria and methylene blue is going to go and be specific for those mitochondria. The other thing that methylene blue can do, probably because of both of its redox antioxidant help and its mitochondrial help together, is as a mood support. There are people who have used methylene blue to help to level out the other treatments they're doing for mood problems, et cetera. Now, something you should be very cautious about and work with a doctor that understands methylene blue and drugs both, or any healthcare provider that understands methylene blue and drugs, is if you're going to use it for mood support, there are certain drug categories that might not go with methylene blue. They could be things like monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAOIs, the serotonin category of drugs to one degree or another. So if you're on any neuro or neuropsychiatric drugs, mood drugs, please don't take methylene blue unless You're working with somebody who knows how to check for the balance of those and overdoses and things like that. There's also benefits in that methylene blue can be an antimicrobial agent, and there's more and more research going on in that for bacterial infections, maybe viral infections, other stuff like that. There is research going on as a metabolic treatment. Methylene blue as a metabolic treatment that might be incorporated into certain cancer treatments, and that is again new emerging research. There is emerging. research on undoing the DNA damage that chemotherapy does, specific research around kidney damage, but you could look at that for other areas as well. And then, as I mentioned, it's used in emergency medicine and it's also used a lot in surgery as a dye and a diagnostic aid, either to stain a tissue or to look and see if there's any particular leaking in an area during a surgery. They'll use dyes for that. Methylene blue is one of those. And then the final one, which is really cool, but is a little bit beyond our discussion here. About other things is it is used as a photodynamic therapy agent. And that means that they're using— so methylene blue is photoactivated or biomodulated by red light of a particular wavelength. So sometimes if methylene blue is applied in a tissue or person and then they apply red light to it, it will photoactivate it and it'll work more because it's photobiomodulated. So methylene blue, again, kind of our top-down discussion, really cool substance, has a lot of potential medical benefits. Number one, it the drug in North America. Number 2, if you're getting it as a supplement, please, please, please buyer beware. A lot of the supplements are very dirty and contain heavy metals. So please do your due diligence and make sure that the company selling it is giving you certificate of analysis to show it passed heavy metal screening. If they can't do that, don't buy it because you don't know whether you're— it's dirty and toxic or not. And then number 3, if you're going to take methylene blue and you're on any other drugs, but especially brain drugs, please work with a practitioner who knows about the brain drugs and the methylene blue so that you don't overdose or do something untoward. All right. Well, I hope that answers the top-down question about methylene blue. We'll put some other content up here for you to look at. Appreciate all of you. If you have not subscribed yet, please do subscribe to the channel. The community is growing and we put out this content all the time. I will see you all in the next video.