September 28, 2019

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/integrative-health/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:50] Meeting Dr. Herskowitz

[00:02:14] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:44] Further Introduction of Dr. Herskowitz

[00:11:16] Dietary Considerations for A “Constitutional Assessment”

[00:28:18] Exercise Considerations for A Constitutional Assessment

[00:36:36] What Are “Breaks” In the Chinese Astrological Cycle and Why They Are Opportunities Rather Than Problems

[00:41:18] Podcast Sponsors

[00:44:09] The Multi-Pass Ozone Machine

[00:49:25] How Ahvie Injected Laser Lights into Me Intravenously

[00:53:57] Peptides Ahvie Wishes More People Knew About

[01:04:00] Ahvie's Approach to Nootropic Stacks

[01:07:09] What Intravenous Procaine Is

[01:11:06] Why Ahvie Doesn't Co-Administer Exosomes for Recovery

[01:15:02] Final Notes from this Podcast

[01:21:35] End of Podcast

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Ahvie:  I think that this type of fusion of this particular ancient form of medicine eventually gets you deeper into the interstitial space, deeper into the extracellular matrix. In a way, that is in your authentic nature.

I'm interested in people that are serious enough to train other people because we're at a point in time where we have to raise the consciousness level dramatically. It's not we don't have a lot of time left. So, I might as well only deal with the serious people.

Ben:  Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Well, as I am sometimes prone to do, I like to get out and about every now and again and go visit really smart doctors who are doing really cool things. I met today's guest at a bar in a steakhouse in Vegas at an anti-aging convention and I didn't even know he was attending the convention. We sparked up a conversation. He started telling me about these crazy body typing protocols that he uses to customize diets and lifestyle and medical protocols. And then, I found out the dude. He uses ozone and NAD and all these really cool so-called biohacks in his protocol as well, kind of like an East Meets West type of approach to amplifying physical and mental performance. He's a whiz kid. He's a whiz kid. He's older than me but I'm going to call him kid, anyways. Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz. You're going to dig today's show recorded right at his office where I was doing all sorts of crazy stuff in his Batman cave in San Francisco. So, check this guy out.

As you listen, the shownotes are going to be at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie. You spell it A-H-V-I-E. bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie.

Now, before we dive in with the great Ahvie, I want to tell you about something else that can be like a shotgun for performance, for neurotransmitter depletion, for recovery, for enhanced sleep. And, that is protein. Protein is well studied for a ton of different effects–sleeping faster, muscle synthesis, enhanced recovery from exercise, optimal cognition, immune system support, proper digestion, especially as you age. You name it. But, the problem is if you're an athlete, you can't have a steak or poultry or fish or eggs before you go hit the gym with that stuff sitting in your stomach. And, in many cases, folks are trying to get all the beneficial effects of protein but they got to eat so many calories to get as many protein or as much protein as they actually want. This is where amino acids come in. Not branch chain amino acids which, in my opinion, spike blood sugar and cause some significant issues with insulin and blood glucose and, also, don't even have all the amino acids you need for building blocks; but instead, essential amino acids. I've been using essential amino acids for eight years now. Discovered it when I was racing Ironman Triathlon. It's almost like an illegal performance-enhancing. I mean this stuff is a huge shot in the arm. I take about 10 to 20 grams pre or post-workout. Any of the people who I'm coaching for muscle gain are doing 20 grams post-workout. Any of the people who are doing fasted workouts are taking 5 to 10 grams pre-workout. And, this is probably one of our most popular supplements at Kion because of its extreme efficacy. You get a 10% discount on Kion Aminos. How? You go to getkion.com. That's getk-i-o-n.com and use discount code BGF10 for 10% off site-wide.

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Alright. So, here's the deal with what you're about to hear. I will tell the story about how I met this dude in the beginning of the interview that you're about to hear. But, I recently had the opportunity to dive into this super interesting kind of Eastern wisdom meets modern Western medicine, cutting-edge world of medical bio-hacking at the office of this guy named, Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz in Anatara Medicine in San Francisco. This guy's really smart. So, they did a bunch of stuff on me like a 10-pass ozone and infrared treatment on my blood and photo treatment on my blood and exosomes, and all this crazy stuff, IV procaine. We just kind of filmed and podcasted the whole thing.

Now, Ahvie, who you're going to hear during this interview, along with the person who helps him out with some of the body typing stuff he does, he has a really deep history. He was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Cardiology and worked at the Department of Molecular Immunology and Microbiology over there. He was also in his residency at Einstein Anatomic Pathology and graduated from Einstein Medical School. And, with the name like Einstein, it must be a medical school for really smart people. He was a clinical professor of medicine at UCFS and the co-founder for the Institute for OneWorld Health. And now, he practices convergence medicine and regenerative medicine at Anatara Medicine, also known as the San Francisco Stem-cell Treatment Center. And, you can go to their website. It's anataramedicine.com and I'm going to link to everything we talked about at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/a-h-v-i-e. So, enjoy today's show.

So, I'm sitting here in the office of Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz. And, I met this guy at an anti-aging conference in Las Vegas called A4M. Myself and a great filmmaker named, Jeff Hayes, we met up at a steak house there to slip into the bar and stuff some ribeye into our face, and there was this fascinating guy who was sitting at the bar with Jeff when I showed up for dinner. And, he isn't and anti-aging doc and was there delving into all the different technologies and peptides, everything else that you'll find at this A4M Conference. We began to talk and one of the things that intrigued me about him was he began to describe his practice. And, it was kind of like a like an East meets West mashup of technologies that I've had the pleasure to engage in the past couple of days. And, I'm actually hooked up to–what am I hooked up to right now, Ahvie? What is this?

Ahvie:  Well, you're hooked up both to what we call a multi-pass ozone device which will give you 10 separate treatments in one. So, this will be 200 ccs of ozone-treated 10 times back and forth into your body. And, I'll explain the mechanism of action during the podcast.

Ben:  10 times pass ozone?

Ahvie:  Yeah, 10 times pass ozone, which should give you a more spectacular effect, particularly the well or off you are the more repair you're going to be enjoying from that. And then, at the same time, you're being treated with photodynamic therapy or photonic energy or laser therapy, but intravenously.

Ben:  My blood is actually passing through this. You guys should see me just visual right now. And, we have a photographer in here so we might publish some photos if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie. That's A-H-V-I-E. That's doctor's first name. We'll put some photos of some of these technologies because I've got tubes coming all on my arms and going off in separate directions and my blood's getting sucked up into a big glass spaceship looking ball for the 10-pass ozone. So, it's very cutting edge. That was not what intrigued me about in the first place. I didn't know you did all this stuff, but you were talking about this idea of getting my birth date, getting my birth date and my birthplace and my birth time. And, it was for the purposes of this thing that you do called “constitutional assessment.” I've never talked about it before on the show. I've mentioned some Eastern medicine concepts and body typing and eating according to your Ayurvedic type and some things like that, but never seen as deep a dive into it as all this paperwork sitting here in my lap. And so, sitting with you right now and we'll get a chance to meet her in a moment. It's Tracy who I know you kind of tagged him with on these constitutional assessments. And so, if you're listening in right now, what we're going to do is we're going to go through what it means to get a constitutional assessments, just based off of where and when you were born. And then, we're also, after that, going to dive into some of these technologies that, when paired with the type of diet and lifestyle that Ahvie can recommend based on this constitutional assessment, can really amp up performance and energy and sleep. He's worked with pro athletes. He's some great stories he'll tell you later on, in particular, about a pro cyclist he was telling about last night.

So, that all being said, Ahvie, where's the best place to start in terms of describing what this whole constitutional assessment thing actually is?

Ahvie:  Well, when I first started this practice, excuse me, I wanted to delve into personalized medicine and precision medicine. I come from a molecular background, cardiology and immunology in Hopkins. And, those terms are used very loosely, but I also was trained as a five element acupuncturist around 20 years ago. And, it's sent some of my sickest patients from Hopkins through that system and understood that it has a role to play, that ancient wisdom does have a role to play, and the fusion between ancient wisdoms as well as molecular techniques is the most important way to go forward in the future of medicine, so to speak, that most of our highest intelligence is not necessarily artificial intelligence. It has to be both fused with predictive biomarkers with genomics, with proteomics, but also then have a higher level of sort of tracking. So, ultimately, the system is not just dictated by genes and epigenes. It's also dictated by patterning and by gating. And so, this takes you in to the energy world and takes you in to my world the Five Element Theory. Tracy was my original five element acupuncturist and teacher. I asked too many questions so she made me trained in it. I was also trained by the person who brought the technique to the west. But, it gives you a sense of the importance of this type of principles and then allows you, then, to understand someone in a deeper individual level. So, it's archetyping. It's a form of archetyping.

Ben:  Yeah, I remember you using that word, archetyping.

Ahvie:  So, you can archetype through Ayurvedic medicine, you can archetype through this form of medicine which was generated in Korea. But, I think this is, by far, the most accurate form. It ultimately leads to nutritional recommendations that really are energetically best suited or metabolically best suited for you. So, it has a lot of side benefits.

Ben:  I flipped through my paperwork last night. Because when I came in last night, I mean, we did other treatments. We did ultraviolet radiation in my blood. We did a little bit of ozone. I know you do exosomes, which we'll do later today and we could talk a little bit about that. And, we even did this far out IV procaine treatment. So, a lot of different things.

And, last night as we were doing that, I was reading through, I noticed it's not just nutrition. There were things like be sure to make your energy flow upwards after workout, finish with the upper body portion, which I did this. You'd be proud of me. And, I went to the gym this morning and I finished up with pull-ups and push-ups to drive the energy upward, rather than fetch me on the bike or finishing with squats. And, there's a lot of kind of like emotional management, like what to do with anger, what to do with emotions. So, do you think Tracy's the best person to walk us through what this assessment actually looks like? Is that how you want to do things?

Ahvie:  Yes, that's exactly how I would like it to run. It's just essentially, while this sounds a little bit weird, there are only a few people in the world that know how to do this on a very high level.

Ben:  Well, I've never heard of it before.

Ahvie:  And, she's one of them. So, we've had now 20 years of experience. Perhaps, Tracy can tell a story, but it stems from my own experience with trying to treat my youngest son who was then one year old. He's now turning 21. And, I asked Tracy to train in the system and now she's become the leading expert, certainly, in this part of the world. There are a few experts in Korea because it stems from Korean Sasang medicine, so to speak. But, I think she's the best person to explain really how it's useful to you, but also how it would be useful to your followers in terms of the practical benefits of having an assessment like this.

Ben:  Alright. We'll turn things over to Tracy here. And, come back to Ahvie for some of the techie stuff here in a little bit.

So, Tracy, I have all this paperwork in front of me that I received after giving my place of birth, Lewiston, Idaho; my date of birth, December 20th, 1981; my time of birth, which I had to hunt down my mom to get, yes, she had my data stored away somewhere, 7:12 p.m. Standard Time. And so, where do you go when you get this information?

Tracy:  Okay. So, let's start with I'm fairly techy myself. I'm a biochemist by training and worked in medical research, and was a project manager at Genentech before I became office acupuncturist. And, one of the things I noticed about Ahvie is if I missed a point with the needle, he'd say, “It's a little distal and a little lateral,” and I thought, “Man, this guy knows energy.” So, I said you need to become Five Element acupuncturist, and he did.

So, one of the things to know is that the Chinese astrology and Chinese medicine come from the same philosophy. It's about the movement of Chi. It's about the rising and falling of yin and yang. It's about the cycle of the seasons, the interaction of the Five Elements, and the eight trigrams of the I Ching. They're all of the same ilk.

And, what I found through experience with my patience with people I knew, was that anybody who did the diet that was prescribed for them through their astrology got better. And, I'd never seen anything do that. So, it's become the focus of my practice. I only do acupuncture on my old clients where I know we're both attached to each other.

So, I do this almost exclusively. And, I can tell a lot from the person's chart about what the energy looks like in their body. It's almost like looking at a landscape when you see somebody who has all five elements. You have a lush landscape that contains everything. People are missing elements that shows up as either a lot of wetness, a lot of dryness, some organs being really dominant. And, because it's a Chinese philosophy, only balance is good. Excess is not any better than deficiency. Only balance is good. And so, you use food specifically, but also herbs and supplements to balance out what your constitution is.

So, for someone like you, and I do have your permission to talk about you personally?

Ben:  People freaking know that I shove coffee up my butt every Wednesday morning. They'll be fine hearing about the constitutional assessment.

Tracy:  We won't get that personally.

Ben:  Just don't let any life insurance company listen in, if I'm constitutionally effed up.

Tracy:  So, you're missing elements. So, you're missing two elements in a row, and a third element is very, very weak because the two elements before it aren't there.

Ben:  Because of when I was born and where I was born in the time I was born?

Tracy:  Yes, exactly. And, the way that the Chinese would look at this, even from an acupuncture point of view, I keep interesting about necessarily healing things, it's about helping you be the authentic person you were meant to be. And, Chinese astrology tells you what that authentic person looks like. So, for you, it's not surprising that you've become an athlete from your chart. You have tremendous stamina and you have blocked energies.

Ben:  I think you call it stubbornness in the chart. It must be fair.

Tracy:  I guess you live with that too. But, this is blocked energy. You can have that without stubbornness, and what may feel good to somebody with tremendous energy and blocked energy is to move, is to move. So, moving made you feel better.

Ben:  Always. Always. Even before I got into sports, I would dance like a maniac. Every time my mom would put music on, I go to the living room floor, just dance like a maniac.

Tracy:  Always. And, that's the other thing. I think, because I've read a couple of your books, and I think you're, from a Western standpoint, because biochemist is like being a nutritionist, you've got it down. It's tweaking the things specifically for you, because some of the things that you're eating build the water energy and build the metal energy, or the lung and the kidney. And, you already have too much of that. So, if you eat foods that are cooling in nature, say, pork, what it does is it makes the water energy stronger. It's already too strong. It's blocked. Where does that water, excess water, energy goes? It goes and damages your heart. It over-controls your heart.

Ben:  Now, is there a biochemical reason that pork would be considered a cooling food. I mean, for example, how lemons would be alkalizing, or is this something different?

Tracy:  No, it's something different.

Ben:  Like the energy of a pig?

Tracy:  Yeah, it's about the energy of the food and it's about the energy of the food when it's ingested and how it interacts in the stomach. So, pork creates coolness in the stomach. But, you don't need coolness, you have plenty of it.

Tracy:  You need lots of warm.

Ben:  What does coolness in the stomach mean?

Tracy:  That's a hard thing to translate into a biochemical framework, and I don't know whether I could specifically can.

Tracy:  The Chinese would say it strengthens water, which is cool energy that sinks downward.

Ben:  Okay. I was just curious if cool might be like less enzyme production, less hydrochloric acid, something like that; and, warming would be more metabolic activity.

Tracy:  You're a very intuitive guy too. So, one of the pieces is like if I told you watermelon was cooling, would you be surprised?

Ben:  No.

Tracy:  No. Of course, not. It's because it's extremely cooling. Were pork is sort of cooling.

Ben:  Yeah, you don't want pork on a hot summer afternoon.

Tracy:  Oh, you can do pork on a hot summer afternoon.

Ben:  Yeah?

Tracy:  Yeah. Ask everybody in the South.

Ben:  I guess so, okay.

Tracy:  And, that garlic and onions and hot peppers are warming. Ginger is warming. Cinnamon is warming, you can tell. So, these are sort of like fine-tune to these more subtle things. Like chicken is slightly warming.

Ben:  But, we don't have to go on intuition. I have like a 10-page sheet, you've given me of all the foods that are cooling, all the foods that are neutral, and all the foods that are warming.

Tracy:  Yeah, and that system also points out what organs those foods direct. The charts have checkmarks in certain categories. So, all the checkmarks in the warming category feed the spleen. So, unless it says it goes to the heart or something, it goes to the spleen. It has a checkmark.

Ben:  And, if people want to follow along or go and look at this after the episode and they go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie, can you email me these as well, and I could put a PDF download of them on the website?

Tracy:  Yes, that if I have a PDF I can send.

Ben:  Okay. Perfect. And, I'll make this available to all of you listening, so you can review this list of cooling and neutral and warming foods. So, once you get the list of foods.

Tracy:  And you need to know which ones are right for you, right? So, for you, cooling foods are not helpful and they can be actually detrimental. And, that also lung building foods aren't right for you because your lung energy actually dominates your chart. And, it's also building the kidney energy. So, you have this kind of cold damp environment. And, you don't have enough warmth from either the stomach or the spleen or the heart. Those are all deficient. And, you're also missing wood in your chart. So, with all that metal, you're attacking the wood element. This is damaging your liver long term.

So, I think you've already figured out that you have great stamina but you don't have good resilience, and that you've put an emphasis for yourself on recovery.

Ben:  Oh, I have good resilience but only because I've hacked it artificially. I use peptides and I have my NormaTec boots and infrared, all these things because I figured out, well, my resilience, my bounce back is not great, but I can hack it.

Tracy:  Exactly. Yes. That's what I mean. You know that about yourself.

So, eating the right foods will help you not have to hack it so much. So, if you start eating foods that build the organs or the elements that you're deficient in, this will increase your resilience.

Ben:  Interesting. Okay. So, I'm looking at this list and, of course, you're saying that I would benefit from spices, garlic, onions, pepper, warming foods; but then, there are certain others like you mentioned pork that would be considered a cooling food. How about when you get into things like beverages, for example? Coffee versus tea, forms of alcohol. What do you do with beverages?

Tracy:  They're in the same kind. Anything you put in your mouth and that goes to your stomach is considered food. So, for instance, tea-like Camellia sinensis, the black tea, Oolong, green tea, that is a cooling herb and it's not good for someone of your constitution; but for somebody else, that would be the best thing to have. You're actually better off with coffee even though it has rough energy. It's actually better for you because its warming and its nature.

Ben:  And, this is the best for the balance, especially for the heart. It says your heart is your weakest organ, so you're missing fire and missing wood that supports the fire. And so, you say if you drink alcohol, I'm supposed to avoid grapes and barley because those are cooling foods. So, no beer, wine, scotch, or Vermouth, and cocktails like gin and tonic, which I love, bourbon and water, or margaritas with no salt, would help your heart stay strong. And, I was telling Ahvie last night, I give everything that I kind of do this little immersive journalism kick with a fair try. And, I'm going to actually do this. I'm committed to trying it out for a month first and then reporting back to my audience on what I find.

So, I can totally substitute some gin and tonics for the wine. But, also, at the end of that list, it says margaritas, no salt. Now, I'm a salt fiend. What's up with salt?

Tracy:  Salt is very, very cooling and it builds the kidney, which you don't need.

Ben:  No kidding? No kidding?

Tracy:  So, every time you eat cooling food, you're overtaxing your heart.

Ben:  Okay. But where do you find the balance? I was thinking about this during the workout today, because I sweat copiously. I've had sweat sodium analyses done and my sweat sodium loss is through the roof. My shirt was drenched after an hour. And, in the gym across the street here this morning, I thought, “Oh, gosh. There's got to be a balance.” It says no salt, but if you're an athlete and you're sweating heavily, there must be some kind of balance.

Tracy:  Strictly, you need some salt.

Ben:  Yeah.

Tracy:  So, one of the issues with the symptoms that you're having, we call that floating fire, which actually comes, or deficient fire, it actually comes from a deficiency. So, what fire, and we all have some, if you didn't have some heart energy, you wouldn't be sitting here talking. If you have some heat but you have a really cold stomach, that heat does not settle down and it goes upward and it goes out to the surface. So, that's why you perspire and that's why you feel flushed, but it's actually comforting from the cold stomach. And, because your diet is basically really good, Ben, this very little that you would have to change. Like, if you substituted chicken for pork, if you substituted lamb for beef, because beef builds the lung energy, you would be well on your way to having better heat.

Ben:  That's interesting. And, I noticed some of the foods on here I just kind of intuitively like. I love lamb. I prefer coffee to tea. I love squash and sweet potatoes.

Tracy:  Good. You're going to have fun.

Ben:  And, these are on the list: nutmeg, cinnamon, lamb, chicken, ginseng, peanuts, honey. I love raw honey. So, the things to avoid the cooling foods would be like the pork, like you mentioned, watermelon, buckwheat, beer. A lot of shoots and sprouts are also cooling. That's interesting because those are often recommended as nutrient-dense foods.

Tracy:  You have to avoid burdock, you know.

Ben:  Yeah. Very interesting. Okay.

Tracy:  Some people get cravings for foods that aren't right for them. You've got a little bit of a thing going with salt, but I promise you when you start doing the diet, your salt craving will go down.

Ben:  Okay. This is interesting. Now, what about the exercise component? I thought, I alluded to the fact that it says here I should be focusing on moving the energy upward, kind of focusing more on upper body, or finishing with upper body. How exactly does that work?

Tracy:  It has to do with the way the energy splits. When you have a lot of cold energy, it tends to sink downward and because it's not circulating fully you get warm energy flowing upwards, so you get the split in your energy. And, when you start moving your upper body, it brings the circulation because most of your energy isn't going into this kidney and sinking downward into your legs. So, for instance, swimming is preferential for you than bicycling, because bicycling is almost entirely lower body.

Ben:  Interesting.

Tracy:  Running, of course, is more full-bodied. But, you can, I think, obvious talked about a patient.

Ben:  Yeah. Tell us about that cyclist that you worked with, you told me last night. This is intriguing, Ahvie.

Ahvie:  Well, this cyclist was a master cyclist, number three or four in the nation for a number of years, has his daily diary for decades now for training and then for competition. And, he became familiar with the diet and ultimately decide to do it. So, ultimately did the diet. She had your constitution, in fact, but he was a master cyclist. So, he wanted to become champion, finally. And so, he did the one-year cycle with the diet and the changing of his exercise regime to doing upper body first and lower body, then upper body again. So, doing two-thirds and one-third upper body focus. So, he did less training on the cycle, more training on upper body than he had accustomed to. And then, he became national champion.

Ben:  Now, is he doing the diet recommendations as well?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay. So, the primary thing you would notice is feeling less of drained, faster recovery, more resilience. If you're this type, what is it called, you say a lesser Yin type.

Ahvie:  Yes. But, you can also have CNS effect. When Tracy uses the concept of floating fire that it floats up to your head and you become ruminating and you become difficulty with getting into deeper sleep. So, as you settle your energy down in a more balanced fashion, you'll get less of that floating fire.

Ben:  So, would this mean like when you go to bed? Because one thing I've actually found to settle me down a little bit is this whole body scan where you kind of contract your toes and then relax and contract your feet and contract your legs and allow yourself to become more heavy. But, would that be something that would kind of draw some of that energy down from the top of the body towards the legs as you see?

Ahvie:  Well, for you, it's going to be, once you get on the warming side, you'll be able to balance that energy without doing that. Actually, just you won't need to do it. You'll just go to sleep and be in more homeostatic balance.

Now, for example, you see people in the hot tub all the time, okay?

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  So, if you're my archetype, which is the opposite of yours, it's much easier for me to go into the hot tub because all I have to do is put my legs in the hot tub and then I feel amazingly calm because I have to work my lower body more than my upper body. And, for those of you like you, you'll end up going into the hot tub fully immersed up until your neck because that'll make you feel better because you need your upper body [00:32:14] ______.

Ben:  Oh, even in the sauna, I love, love it. I do the sauna and I do the cold and I've talked a lot in the show about cold thermogenesis, and I've probably never said this on the show before, but I do struggle with the cold. It's an uphill battle for me. I think that's why I'm attracted to sometimes doing the cold showers and the cold soaps because I get attracted to anything that I have a hard time with to conquer. And so, I figured out how via breath work and focus and little bits of meditation and some Wim Hof breathing and things like this. I can really tackle the cold tubs or a cold shower or a cold soak, but the sauna, you can put that thing at 200 degrees and I won't even ask twice I step in. I absolutely love it.

Ahvie:  So, if when I go into the cold plunge, you'll see everyone will notice me because I'm the weird guy that has my legs out and my butt and my upper body in, because I can be in the cold plunge for an extra 10 minutes that way without bothering to freeze my lower part of my body, because it's just more natural for me. I can't explain it. I think Tracy is right, there is no biochemical explanation that we can figure out. I think that this type of fusion of this particular ancient form of medicine eventually gets you deeper into the interstitial space, deeper into the extracellular matrix, deeper into the communications network that nutrients have to flow into cells, in a more efficient way and in a way that is in your authentic nature. And, it's over and above, needling someone and direct redirecting their pathways. It's more fundamental. And, the interesting thing about adults is we have some placebo effects with children and, in fact, babies don't. So, when you take a younger child and you modify their diet according to this, so many of the symptoms go away, and very quickly, and more quickly than for us.

Now, when we're taught, if you were allowed to eat everything that you were suited to eat, that you liked to eat, in real nature 100 years ago, you would have gravitated to the foods that do you the best. But right now, everyone that goes to school and goes to a birthday party, they're going to be barraged by terrible food and Dunkin Donuts, and so on.

Ben:  Or, even if you go to, say, there's a Whole Foods across the street, I could go in there and buy a bunch of healthy cooling food, right? But, I could also, at the same time, buy a bunch of warming foods.

Ahvie:  I just want you to know that I never met you before when I first met you. And so, I just noticed you had two things on your plate, you had beef and pork. And I said, “Well, I hope this guy has a cool [00:35:17] ______ to be made cool because he's world-class athlete and I'm sure that's the case.” And yet, I sort of estimated you were around 35 at the time. And I said, “Well, in the 30's, you can overcome with other compensatory mechanisms things, but as you get into your 40's and 50's, this becomes more fundamental.” And, we've treated now at least, 10/15,000 people with this technology. I call it technology, but archetypal form of medicine for 20 years now. And so, we have long-term follow-up, and most of the folks that use it have used it for the last 20 years. And, most folks had their kids typed and so on.

So, in most families, you have two different types. I know, my family two of us were cooling and two of us were warming. And, the entity that I ran with 200 employees with a Gates Foundation Enterprise that we ran downtown here, we had about 120 people in the warming category. That's a bit more of in the population in your category and about 80 in the cooling. And then, we had neutral food in the center and we all had a blast. But, all of them that still in contact with me are still using it.

Ben:  Amazing. I do have another question about this chart. And, it kind of relates to lifestyle, I suppose. You get to a point in the printout here where you talk about breaks. You say, I don't know where the page is, do you know where I'm talking about, Tracy? Yeah, what's a break?

Tracy:  Break is an incompatibility between two of the astrological animals. Sometimes, when you go to the Chinese restaurants and you look at the placemats, it says, “Don't marry this person.” Well, you have an incompatibility within you. So, what this means is that people who have breaks in their charts when they get upset tend to be more emotionally upset than the average person. They tend to hang on to it a little bit longer. Anything that's in the chart is not considered default because you were born with it, but it is considered an opportunity. So, breaks provide you the opportunity to be sensitive to emotional things and to learn how to manage your emotions without being critical of yourself. To say “I'm angry” and yet not to act out on it, and not to also get angry. It's yourself for being angry.

Ben:  And it says you can be stubborn which makes you successful in your business and athletic ventures, but doesn't always serve you. I love this tip. Practice responding to suggestions with “maybe,” which I need to do more of “maybe.” I actually did that this morning. Someone did one of those cold email introductions to somebody I'm supposed to meet and have to connect with, and I just wrote back and I said, “I'll go check them out.” And, rather than that knee jerk reaction of, “Yeah, where do you live? Let's get together. Let's hop on the phone this Saturday.”

Tracy:  And, it's important to note that stubbornness is a desire for freedom, you can't control me kind of thing. But, of course, you are free. You don't have to follow someone's advice, right? You don't need to do that. And, what a knee-jerk response to somebody is it's a mechanical reaction. It's the opposite of freedom. So, “maybe” gives you the breath to step back and go, “Oh, okay. I don't have to do this. I'll decide if it's right for me.”

Ben:  Interesting. Well, I know that we want to delve into some of these technologies also, that you pair with this. But, is there anything else you guys want to tell people about this constitutional assessment?

Tracy:  What's right for Ben Greenfield isn't right for everyone. So, because you have listeners who would need the opposite diet.

Ben:  Yeah. I have listeners who like pork and maybe they actually should eat it.

Tracy:  And, maybe they should eat it. So, the only thing they need to do is find out what's right for them, because what's right for you is for you.

Ahvie:  So, as a cardiologist, when I do recommend people with this cooling archetype to eat pork, their cholesterol numbers will improve.

Ben:  Interesting.

Ahvie:  Now, when salt is cooling for me and not to cooling for you, and it's good for me, it's not good for you, if a patient like me gets hypertension, they're not sensitive to reducing their salt intake. Patients that develop hypertension with your archetype are sensitive to salt reduction.

Ben:  Interesting.

Ahvie:  It has physiological meaning and I think that when I have a drawing that I have about us as we're in the center, as our system biology is in the center and what we bring to the table, people say, “Well, I'm only bringing Chi my genes and I'm bringing my generational genetics as well,” but, this is not genomics. But, you are bringing the time and place of birth and how it impacts on all the epigenetics that you put yourself in front of. So, it has a lifelong impact, which is fascinating.

Ben:  Well, like I said, I'm going to give this thing a try and I'll report back to people. I experimented with a carnivore diet and I did the liver cleanse diet in Switzerland and messed around with all this stuff. So, I'll be reporting back to folks on how all this goes.

So, Tracy, thanks for joining us for this part of the show. It was really great. And, I guess I do have one other question regarding this. You guys can do this from afar, right? People need to come to San Francisco to do this or?

Ahvie:  No.

Ben:  They can just give their birthdate, etc., and they go to your website to learn more about that?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay. Alright. So, I'll put a link to the website in the shownotes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie, A-H-V-I-E.

And, what we're going to do now is transition a little bit from the East to the West.

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So, as promised, what we're going to do now is move on and talk about all the beep-boop-beeping whirring sounds that you hear in the background right now. And, that is what's called the, what do you call the 10-pass ozone, Ahvie?

Ahvie:  It has different names and one is called multi-pass. We typically use it. The healthier you are, you can start with 10-pass as we started with you today. That's the typical regime for optimization and repair. It's also called hyperbaric oxygen, even though it's not a hyperbaric chamber. It acts through a different mechanism of action.

So, right now, you're on, I think, past number nine.

Ben:  Meaning my blood has passed through there nine times so far?

Ahvie:  Right. So, you've had 200 cc's or 220 cc's of blood ozonated at a high concentration eight times now passing through your system. So, you've had around 1.9 liters of blood treated.

Ben:  Wow.

Ahvie:  Now, in our history, the Italians that have done most of the basic research in Ozone have suggested in animal models that this dose is too high, but in humans, we see it's the opposite. It's a paradoxical effect and it's more anti-inflammatory and more reparative. So, basically, when ozone is infused into that conical device, it instantaneously changes from O3 to O2 and O-. So, it retains a negative charge. And, it releases ozonides, that O- immediately is lipophilic. So, it loves cell membranes. So, it immediately inserts itself into your white cells and your red blood cells in that conical thing. And then, it's going to be infused into you.

Today, we infuse it without going first through UV light. Yesterday, when we gave you a standard ozone treatment with one pass, we passed it through UV light to get an accentuation of both repairs as well as antimicrobial effects. But in this case, it's going to enter your body.

And then, it has a more global impact. So, it has, even though it's only affecting a very small number of cells in the conical device, it has a global impact on microcirculation, on oxygen transport, on the RBC's ability to transfer oxygen through the lungs. And, it has a massive effect on all the nerve to pathways and anti-inflammatory pathways and suppressing the NF kappa pro-inflammatory pathways.

Ben:  So, how would someone feel if they were to go and do something like this? What would be the expected feeling? Would they be tired afterwards? Would they be energized? Would they sleep better? Why would someone actually go do 10-pass ozone, if they didn't have lime or mold or mycotoxins or something else going on, that I don't know ozone therapy is often used for?

Ahvie:  I think that the main use for this is for optimization and longevity. The limitation of ozone is that it has a relatively short half-life. And so, it only lasts in your system 48 to 72 hours. And, unless you build a reserve, so, in this case, with 10-passes, we typically treat people 10 times. So, we give 10 10-passes and that builds your reserve for the full-year.

Ben:  Wow. That's similar to NAD, where if you really want to jumpstart your NAD levels you get, usually about four or five consecutive days, around 1,000 milligrams of NAD, and then you would move on and use patches or supplements like NMN or NR supplements afterwards to keep those levels up. So, 10-pass ozone, you do 10 treatments in a row of 10, so 100 passes total.

Ahvie:  Yes. That's correct.

Ben:  Wow.

Ahvie:  When you're dealing with fundamentals, pillars as I called it yesterday with you, pillars of optimization, pillars of repair, pillars of aging, of which NAD is part one pillar and ozone is another pillar; in my opinion, each has its strengths and weaknesses. You have to build the reserve.

A single treatment is going to make you feel, in this case, the less toxic you are, the more up you'll feel, you'll feel clarity, you'll feel energy, you'll feel you'll develop your stamina, and you will repair faster. But, if you have a high toxic load, you will feel sleepy and you will detox. If you have lime or mold, those patients are the ones that have so-called Herx reactions, although, we specialize in the center on how to mitigate those negative responses, I don't believe that detoxification responses that are severe are informative on any level.

Ben:  So, at the same time that you're doing this 10-pass ozone, to my right here is a different machine. All sorts of cables coming out of it. And, what is this one?

Ahvie:  We call it “the octopus.” The other name for it is the Weber laser. And, in this case, it's providing you with multiple colors of laser light. The first one that you received intravenously, this is the unique part of this machine is that it has the ability to have its fiber optic cable tip out of the IV cannula, and then, you will see the color under your skin. So, you first had infrared. Then, you had red. Now, you're having green.

So, if we turn the lights out, you'll see that you're at a green dot right underneath.

Ben:  Right underneath my skin here where the needle is plugin.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Interesting.

Ahvie:  So, each one gets 20 minutes. And then, after that, you get the blue and then there's also a UV light device as while, UV light frequency. So, each one of the lights has different characteristics.

So, for example, the intuitive one is blue. It is cooling. That's an anti-inflammatory thing. So, that would be best for you after the workout. And, in this case, you'd come in after your Spartan championship, run on two weeks' time. And, you said you want to [00:50:53] ______.

Ben:  Absolutely. Well, I'm more like after a brutal competition, because after workout, you want a quality inflammatory response.

Ahvie:  No, no. After that 7, 10-hour thing that you're going to do. You'd benefit from all the lights, but some of them are more focused towards cellular repair and some of them are more focused towards anti-inflammatory effects. Now, it was also developed for cancer care patients because you can use a photo activating agent and then localize that agent to a given mass. And then, photo activate that mass in that location.

But, for the optimization folks, again, you have to develop a reserve. And, this will accentuate the effects of your ozone 10-pass. And, I was telling you last night that my only problem of treating you last night with this, even though we had difficulty with the machine, was that you probably wouldn't sleep for a day or two afterwards.

Ben:  It gives you that much energy.

Ahvie:  It gives you that much energy. Now, I think if you had intravenous CoQ10 , intravenous resveratrol, intravenous other forms of therapy, you can mimic this effect because the body the system doesn't matter as long as you're talking to mitochondrial function and you're dealing with, you're going deep, deep, deep down. So, all of these technologies, including the procaine that we gave you yesterday, which I'll dive into in a minute, are deeply vasodilatory and they go down to the microcirculation level and then to [00:52:32] ______ spaces and locations.

So, without the communications happening on that level, you're never going to get cellular repair. You'll get energy flows and you'll get effect, but you won't get the complete benefit.

Ben:  Now, last night, when I was here, as you mentioned, there was also the UV radiation.

Ahvie:  That's right.

Ben:  That's different than this infrared radiation that I'm getting right now, the infrared that I'm getting right now. What's different in the UV radiation that you do with the blood and this infrared light treatment?

Ahvie:  The UV radiation has two-fold. One is activation. It activates your white cells and red cells de novo. So, now your white cells and red cells that now contain ozone, O-, and then that's already penetrated deeply into their systems. So, the UVA has that characteristic, and then, the other UV light that's present in that particular device is a pure anti-infective. So, we are all carrying a lot of viral genomes in our system. I think, you told me that you may be carrying a GRD on your system.

Ben:  A few weeks ago, yeah, I got GRD.

Ahvie:  So, in that setting, high dose vitamin C in 75-gram level, plus the UV light will be able to support you, eradicating it more quickly.

Ben:  Interesting. So, in addition to all these treatments, and this was a hot topic at a forum as well, you do some peptides. And, last night, we were talking about a range of different peptides for mitochondrial enhancements, for longevity, etc. Are there particular peptides that you're pretty fond of using in your clinic or ones that you think fly under the radar, that you wish more people knew about?

Ahvie:  So, thinking about scaling peptides into the general population for prevention, I think the two peptides that come immediately to mind are BPC 157 and Thymosin Alpha 1. As an immunologist, I'd say that we are, as a society, in a state of immune chronic activation. So, we've lost the ability to modulate.

Now, that's, for many different reasons, we've lost circadian rhythms. We have a tremendous toxic load from the food supply. Our biomes are been modified to such an extent that they're no longer, I think, protective. But, we're in the state of chronic immune activation.

So, modulation. And so, what's the number one drug in the world today? It's Humira. Humira is an immunosuppressive drug.

Ben:  That's the number one drug, really?

Ahvie:  That's the number one drug in the world, yes.

Ben:  Because it's used for autoimmune conditions, which are so prevalent?

Ahvie:  But autoimmune conditions are pro-inflammatory states. And, I can assure you that most of the patients that are treated in that particular way could be handled in a more natural way, and sort of not require a drug like that, that is suppressive. It's not modulatory. It's ultimately suppressive. So, that you'll develop over years lymphoma and tuberculosis.

Ben:  Rapamycin is also suppressive, isn't that?

Ahvie:  That's correct. And, in high doses, it's not an appropriate solution for us on the anti-aging side. The question is whether low-dose Rapamycin is an appropriate medication for us. And, from my perspective, the word is still out on that. I know that many patients, that many people are taking it.

Ben:  Yeah. There are some folks using like dosage and cycling regimens that are smaller doses, cycling on and off.

Ahvie:  Except to say that one of the benefits in Anatara Medicine, in our clinic, over the last eight years of treating the very ill populations is that one of the ill populations that we have are the advanced cancer patients. So, we monitor all of our optimization patients and performance patients with what we call liquid biopsies.

So, this concept is that when you develop at tumor, even before it gets to one millimeter in size, it's already spilling over into the bloodstream. So, you can measure the circulating tumor cells in your blood. These tests are available with several vendors in Europe, but they're not available yet here. The FDA is now screening two different companies.

Ben:  Is that the liquid biopsy that you pulled on me for colon cancer?

Ahvie:  Yes, yes.

Ben:  And, the reason we did that was I just have a very high genetic susceptibility to it and had several family members develop colon cancer.

Ahvie:  Yes. And, I was telling you that if you find you have circular, if someone finds that they have circulating cells and their total body scans are clean, typically they are, we can turn the negative and the positive into a negative by using natural means; but, more importantly, if you're going to take Rapamycin, you should know what your status is, because one of the downsides is that it can, through the mTOR mechanism, it can proliferate.

Ben:  So, you would want to get a liquid biopsy for these cancer markers prior to embarking upon like a Rapamycin protocol for longevity?

Ahvie:  Yeah and, of course, since the overwhelming majority of us, men, over the age of 65 will develop some form of prostate cancer in our lives, I would want to know whether I had prostate cancer circulating in my body that will eventually emerge into a tumor or a nodule that's identified by an MRI a few years from now, because I don't want to accelerate that process.

Ben:  Now, what you are saying is that rather than suppressing immune system activity peptides such as BPC 157 and Thymosin Alpha would modulate.

Ahvie:  Yes, it would modulate. So, when you take an autoimmune patient, the auto-immune patients are suppressed by the typical drugs, the modulatory approach seems to be as effective or more effective for lasting remission. So, the concept that I've been teaching for a number of years is, conceptually, we have quadrillion chemical reactions and trillions of cells. And, in terms of chemokines and cytokines, there's at least 500 of them that we now know. So, the complexity is beyond belief. So, this is beyond recognition. So, just providing a suppressive versus a peptide that used to modulate your entire thymus gland, it seems to be a safe and effective way to reset it. And, it takes time.

One of the benefits of starting an immunosuppressive drug is that you may feel better in a week but, of course, you'll have all the complications. But, this takes more time.

Ben:  So, people are using BPC and Thymosin Alpha, not to be confused with TB, Thymosin Beta, which is more of like something you would use to repair actin-myosin fibers for an injury. You're using Thymosin Alpha as an immunomodulatory. And, actually, people are, for example, injecting that subcutaneously long term.

Ahvie:  That's correct. And, my thing is that if you're going to use it, use it for a six-month period. Now, we have a lot of experience with Lyme patients, with autoimmune patients, with patients' post-chemotherapy, and so on. They all seem to do well. Although, when I say well, nothing works 100% of the time. But having something that works 80% of the time is a very effective treatment.

So, when you're looking at fundamentals, we all understand that if you're depleted in something, you should fix it. That's sort of obvious. That's now called personalized medicine. Well, that's pretty basic stuff. You've read on that many times over. You may need to modulate how much amino acids you take, given what you need to accomplish in the next few weeks. But, ultimately, you know your communications network is intact. Well, communications network is not just hormones. It's not just testosterone, thyroid, and adrenal function. It is your immune system.

So, that's the thing that I've been focusing on for a long time. So, the experiment that's caught my attention throughout my career was when I was at Hopkins running [01:01:13] _______ lab in a cellular immunology facility, where I was responsible for doing the immunology of transplant rejection and viruses, and so on. But, we treated 100 strains of different mice with the same virus and got 12 different patterns, anywhere from death to no illness whatsoever, to something in the middle where the mice looked fine and then developed autoimmunity afterwards, post-viral autoimmunity afterwards. And then, that shows you that we are all fundamentally different on the immunogenetic side.

When we repeated that study, I'm running a Cardiac Institute 15 years later and realized that the patients that developed complications after cardiac surgery and after prolonged surgery, and these were cardiac patients, the patients that poorly were high TNF producers, on the genetic side. So, they had an immunogenesis issue to the plastic, to the blood seeing the plastic.

And then, when you look at the mice and you say, “Well, I give them one virus and some of them survive and some of them die,” give them another virus, the pattern is completely different. So, the level of complexity for me to be able to say, if I'm a pharmascientist, “I understand what's going on here,” is, I think, very naive. And, relatively, it's just way too early to say. So, if I can give them a modulatory event, I can give ozone, I can give UV light, I can give NAD, I can make your mitochondria a bit more efficient, let the system take care of itself is the fundamental, I think, lesson that I've learned over the last 40 years.

Ben:  Yeah. And last night, we were talking about certain peptides that could be used for cognition. I mentioned that stack that I recently podcasted with Dr. William Seeds about what Dihexa and Cortagen and [01:03:18] ______, C-max. And then, you began to talk about some of these unique neural stacks. I've spoken with the folks at Qualia before and talked about their supplement, Mind, which I use sometimes as a natural nootropic. I'll sometimes put a little psilocybin and lion's mane and myosin into a tea or a coffee, or, I guess, only a coffee now that we know that I can only drink my warming foods. But, you brought in this little capsule that they have me dissolve in my mouth. And, I forgot to tell you. So, I did that this morning. I put of two of those in my mouth and chewed on them and let them kind of dissolve in my mucus membrane of my lip. But, you have a unique approach to nootropic stack. So, tell me about what you're doing for supplementation for brain.

Ahvie:  So, just explain to me what happened, did you feel the effect?

Ben:  I felt a little bit of a pick-me-up, but I always like to test stuff like that in my home domain, where I'm not running around the city going to meetings, kind of outside of my element.

Ahvie:  So, one of the principles behind my search for something that would be, not only fortifying and amplifying neural function, but also repairing and detoxifying, was that there was no great solution out there. I was really shocked and surprised, from my academic world, we have very little on the Alzheimer's side, of course, and we have little on the traumatic brain injury site and the concussive site. So, using the non-profit that I chair, which is called the Institute for Rare and Neglected Diseases Drug Development Discovery, we put together a set of neurological scientists and said, “What's in the literature that's protective?” and ultimately came up with our own stack. And so, the concept was fortify, amplify, and detoxify. So, there's different supplements that are in each of these categories.

Now, obviously, you've mentioned some already, niacin, lion's mane, and so on. And, that's on the fortification side. But, uridine monophosphate, CDP choline, DHA, resveratrol, are all fortification supplements.

Ben:  DHA, particularly for the blood-brain barrier and, also, the hypothalamus. It's very useful. It's very useful.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  I was actually reading an article, it was yesterday morning, about plants medicine and how a lot of people who seem to be resistant to the effects of it are unable to dissolve ego, etc. They tend to actually be able to repair their blood-brain barrier using something like DHA and get far more effects out of something like that.

Ahvie:  Well, now, farmers, by the way, calling plant medicine multi-receptor pharmacology.

Ben:  And blah, blah, blah.

Ahvie:  And blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It's like homeopathy is now nano-pharmacology.

Ben:  Right, and a tomato is a lycopene delivery molecule.

Ahvie:  So, when you take each of the supplements in these three different columns, we came up with what we felt was a better gig. So, we have about 100 testers in the clinic that love to test, and a variety of people anywhere from the optimizers all the way to the folks who have early cognitive decline. And, this is something that they all were actually quite pissed off when we ran out. So, we made a batch to test and then we ran out. So, we're going to make another batch soon and we're going to give you some to test.

Ben:  Yeah. When, it's available and we're not, just so people know, I'll be not financially affiliated on this at all, but I'm sure some people want to try it, so I'll put a link in the shownotes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie.

And, there was another thing that was really interesting that we talked about last night and that I actually did. So, you have, in addition to all of your other services here, massage therapy services. And, I was kind of beat up from a few days of teaching at this health retreat that I was at, and so, I decided to get a massage. And, we began to talk about the use of intravenous procaine as a way to relax the body. But, apparently, it has a lot of other effects. Can you fill me on how you use IV propane, because I wasn't that familiar with that one?

Ahvie:  Yes. The reason my voice is so froggy is I just came back from Hong Kong and Korea where I examine other centers and see how we're doing stacking up against them, and so on. But, I met two compounding pharmacy PhD chemists in Hong Kong, and they were the ones that produce IV therapies for various clinics in Germany. And, I asked them what their absolute favorite IV was. And, it was surprising and shocking, actually. They said it was IV procaine and sodium bicarbonate. And, I said, “Well, it doesn't, I mean, it's not intuitively obvious.” And I know that one of our senior managers here at Anatara Medicine has extensive experience using IV pushes of procaine.

So, the procaine is, of course, a neural anesthetic.

Ben:  Yes. So, sort of like a ketamine?

Ahvie:  It's sort of like a ketamine. It isn't the same type of a high and is less of a half-life, a shorter half-life. It does disturb neural pathways sufficiently to reduce pain through the sodium channel. It also has interesting other qualities that, through its metabolites, PABA.

Ben:  SNAP and PABA. It's not GABA. It's Para-Aminobutyric Acid.

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Not a gamma-aminobutyric acid.

Ahvie:  That's correct. PABA. It's anti-inflammatory and a vasodilator. For example, a lot of us have experience with prolotherapy which is procaine and ozone together. When you're injecting it locally into tissue, it tends to sit there for a much longer time. And, it has this breeze position to allow capillaries to dilate and it infuses into the interstition. With the addition of a sodium bicarbonate, it can sit in the interstitial space when given intravenously that makes you alkaline. It's one of the most potent forms of getting rapidly alkaline.

So, when you took it yesterday, you took it as an IV push. And, you said to me that, “Hey, listen. I'm not the type of guy who does one thing at a time. And so, I'm going to get a massage and I might as well do procaine too.” And, your pupil is dilated, you felt sort of a first [01:10:11] ______.

Ben:  A little like a full-body heaviness.

Ahvie:  Heaviness?

Ben:  Yeah.

Ahvie:  Yes. It didn't seem like it was that unpleasant, but it is used for depression, it is used for post-traumatic stress disorder. But, it can be used in those settings a bit differently than it is used with you. So, when you have clinical disease, and you're not using it for optimization purposes to say I want to vasodilate my system sort of like a different way to get to magnesium and magnesium effect that, well, if you run it through an IV drip, the same amount that you actually got. It's sort of like you taking NAD as a push and pushing through it, versus getting it in a multi-hour drip. But, you could take a one-hour drip and have an effect on brain function, on brain aneural chemistry.

Ben:  Interesting.

Now, the last thing I wanted to ask you about regarding some of the sports medicine pieces. I know after we finish up here, we're going to do an injection of exosomes. Many people associate that as something that would be co-administered with, for example, stem cells. But, you like to use exosomes just on their own. If so, how do you use them? Are you using like ultrasound imaging to guide into a joint or injecting in their pain? How do you use exosomes?

Ahvie:  So, I teach stem-cell peptide course twice a year under the ACAM group, American College for Advancement in Medicine, for which I'm president of the last few years. The next session is in mid-October in Nashville. And, we talked about actually combining the two, because if you want to know what the state of the art is for regenerative medicine is combining stem cell therapies with peptide therapies. And, of course, optimizing so many other things. And, I would add, you could also add NAD to that, you can also add deuterium-depleted water to that. You can add a lot of different things to that. But, the basic reality, in my opinion, from my academic background, from my science background, is that no one's ever shown significant replication of stem cells of whole cells in the body, in the human body. When I run the animal models that I used to run in my lab at Hopkins, I had a very large animal lab that fed all of cardiology and cardiac surgery. And, when you co-fluoresce a stem cell with a cardiac cell and the rat improves after an infusion of their own stem cells, they're very few cells that are the original cells that you actually get. The improvement is massive, but they're only very few cells that actually are the ones that you infused.

So, that gives rise to the concept that it's a paracrine effect, largely a paracrine effect. It doesn't mean they're not replicating, but it doesn't mean that they have the largest effect. So, the concept is that if you're dealing with a communications network that your whole cell has to, then, go to the environment and talk to the environment and use the niche local stem cell populations, of which we are just beginning to elucidate, for example, I know probably the best about the heart but the heart has its own innate cells, we even have stem cells circulating in our bloodstream that are remained dormant; but, you can use the informational packet. So, you don't need the whole cell.

Ben:  The informational packet being the exosomes?

Ahvie:  The exosomes, yeah.

Ben:  So, you have your own stem cells in your body, and the exosomes are simply acting as cell signaling molecules to allow those stem cells to travel to where they're most needed, and act most efficiently.

Ahvie:  And, that's how we actually do our own repair on a day-to-day basis, we are talking. For example, how do you stimulate your own stem cell production? You do that from, the most widely known is intermittent fasting.

Ben:  Yeah, fasting, exercise.

Ahvie:  You can do it through hypoxia. You can do it through ischemia-reperfusion.

Ben:  Yeah. Heat, cold, hyperbaric.

Ahvie:  Yes. Right. And, the breathing techniques that you've elucidated. Well, it's talking to your own cells. In pathology, one of the benefits that I had to sit in under the microscope for 10 hours a day for three years is to look at these cells and say, “What are these cells doing here?” These are called the parasites. These are the cells that outline all the microcirculation from the arteriolar site to the capillary site. And, these are CD34+ stem cells. And, they remain dormant, unless you talk to them. So, if you talk to them, you can activate them that way.

So, either solo ourselves. So, my main message is, listen, we have to wake up. We are living in an experimental times and we have to help ourselves get over this sort of state of immune activation, the state of disrepair. You're at the cutting edge and your followers are on how to maintain. But, for the average person, it's very hard for me to imagine getting hurt by using exosomes and peptides to maintain yourself.

Because, the future, I think, is a direct mitochondrial body communication. I think, if that's coming, it's coming in large waves and it will be here in the next three to five years. If you can keep yourself together, there'll be, in the future, for my future, there'll be NAD specialist, there'll be mitochondrial specialists, there'll be immunomodulatory specialists. We won't be having to go to the cardiologist. We won't have to go into the nephrologist, and so on.

Ben:  And, in the meantime, I've recently commented when I was at a health retreat and we were sitting around the living room with this huge mansion in Napa Valley that we rented for kind of like a luxurious retreat for folks and people who were doing PMF and getting vitamin cocktails and NAD. And, we had the photobiomodulation lights there. And, I was doing an Instagram story on it and I mentioned, “Geez, people think we're just a bunch of rich efforts sitting around too much time on our hands.” But, the fact is that when it comes to the mitochondrial optimization, don't think that, I don't want to give people the impression that you have to go do just full-body enhancement, a 10-pass ozone or infrared, or exosomes, or anything like that. A lot of this stuff, as we began this podcast talking about for optimization, is free. Knowing their body and eating foods that support your unique body, grounding and earthing by being outside in your bare feet, getting in the ocean or getting near the beach, or going for a walk after a lightning storm, getting out in the sunlight, getting exposed to cold, to heat, going on a walk each day and staying physically active. There are certain things and, of course, very clean water and mineral intake.

You get those things dialed in and those alone are going to amplify your mitochondria. The fasting component will assist with stem cells and stem cell mobilization. So, I want to make sure that if you're listening in, understand that you don't have to start as complex or take as deep a dive as some of the things we talked about in today's show you can also start with the simple.

Ahvie:  Right. And, you should always start that way, because you get only a fraction of the benefit of going the distance if you are to do that. But, at the same time, I have to say that from everything I've learned in the last eight years of being in the trenches here, is that you have to do everything in your power to maintain yourself. And so, optimization is different than performance. And, the large core of group that you talk to are performance guys.

And, at the same time, performance is working through pain, working through reserves, and so on. So, ultimately, it's not necessarily an anti-aging strategy, unless you do it the right way. So, the constitutional diet can help.

But, when you're going to do things that will help you on the cellular level, that, over and above, the clean water and clean food, and exercise. It's going to take more than one dose. The most naive thing is people come and say, “I'm going to do one stem cell injection and I want it to change my life.”

Ben:  Yeah. And, that's what I said over and over again in my podcast. If you're living on a natural lifestyle, if you're living in middle LA or San Francisco, or New York, if you're racing Ironman triathlons and destroying your body on these 10-hour, 12-hour, 14-hour races where you're running from a lion for a much longer time, and weren't meant to run from a lion, yeah, there are some hacks, some stuffs, some extra things that you should do and can do to optimize your simultaneous health and longevity and performance.

And then, for other people, they just want to live as long as possible to make as big an impact on this world during the time they're living as they can. And, I respect that too.

Ahvie:  So, one last thing, I wanted to say that when we first started with Statins, we noticed that as soon as we gave them the Statin, their cholesterol dropped and then it came right back up again. So, we gave them a double dose. They dropped and then it came back up again. They would do it three, four times from 20 milligrams to 80 milligrams of a thorough statin. And, the reason for that was that they noticed that they could eat more. And, they just pushed it.

So, what happens when you look at the people who want to use regenerative forms of medicine and reparative forms and they want to use it in an unintelligent way, well, they end up they get their injection, they end up abusing it, and they go back to their lifestyle, and they can do more, but then, that effect six months later is that they still feel bad but they're actually worse off than they were in the first place, because they've stretched themselves with no strategy.

So, the most important thing is to have a strategy. I think, that's what this clinic is all about and that's what we try to teach people, is to iterate with yourself like you have and, at the same time, understand that this is the long haul. If you want to make a big difference in the world, then, I'm interested in people that are serious enough to train other people because we're at a point in time where we have to raise the consciousness level dramatically. It's not we don't have a lot of time left. So, I might as well only deal with the serious people.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, folks, you were just listening to Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz from Anatara. Is that how to pronounce it?

Ahvie:  Yes.

Ben:  Anatara Medicine in San Francisco. I will link to everything that we talked about, include some PDF's of this constitutional assessment and everything else that we discussed in his website, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie, A-H-V-I-E. Just because your first name was easier to write than your last name. bengreenfieldfitness.com/ahvie. And, until next time. I'm Ben Greenfield and Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at bengreenfieldfitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

I recently had the opportunity to dive into the cutting-edge world of medical biohacking at the integrative health office of Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz: Anatara Medicine in San Francisco.

Dr. Herskowitz is an international leader and educator in the field of personalized, precision, and holistic medicine. He founded Anatara Medicine and the San Francisco Stem Cell Treatment Center with the intention of developing one of the best regenerative and integrative health care centers in the world.

Here is a fascinating timeline of his medical education and experience:

The term “Convergence Medicine” was coined by Dr. Herskowitz in 2011 to represent a novel strategy that combines many forms of medical and energy practices into one cohesive strategy to optimize repair and rejuvenation in each individual. Taking the best from molecular and functional medicine, nutrition, and metabolism, physical, and energy medicine, he layers in the best of ancient forms of medicine that speak to a person’s innate constitution (he calls it Archetypal Medicine). This helps predict how a patient will respond to different types of treatments, including:

• Stem cells
• Peptides
• Anti-aging
• Ozone
• IV therapy
• Advanced cancer care
• And much more!

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-Dietary considerations for a “constitutional assessment” [11:15]

• Ahvie has a molecular, cardiology background – as well as acupuncturist
• Ancient wisdom has a role to play; fusion between Eastern and Western medicine
• A constitutional assessment is a form of archetyping
• Most accurate form, leads to accurate nutritional recommendations for the individual
• Chinese astrology and medicine come from the same philosophy
• Ben is missing two elements, and a third is weak because of where and when he was born (Lewiston, ID in 1981)
• You learn how to tweak things specifically for the individual
• Energy of the food when it's ingested: warming and cooling
• Eating the right foods decreases the need to “biohack” one's deficiencies
• Floating (deficient) fire: “hot” foods don't achieve their full efficacy
• Do the diet, and the craving for suboptimal foods will go down

-Exercise considerations for a constitutional assessment [28:15]

• Cold energy moves downward, warm energy moves upward – split in the energy
• Cyclist Ahvie treated:
  • Did a diet and training regimen based on his constitutional assessment
  • Less actual cycling, more upper-body work
  • Eventually became national champion
• Ben struggles with cold thermogenesis, yet has trained himself to do it through breathing, meditation, etc. However, heat therapy such as a sauna is no problem.
• We're barraged with foods that do not fit our CA
• Ahvie has treated tens of thousands of patients with their technology and knowledge

-What are “breaks” in the Chinese astrological cycle and why they are opportunities rather than problems [36:35]

• Stubbornness is a desire for freedom
• Knee-jerk response is the opposite of freedom
• Embrace “maybe”

-More about the multi-pass ozone machine I was hooked up to during the interview [44:10]

• Also called hyperbaric oxygen
• Typical treatment is 10 passes of ozone
• Global impact on microcirculation, oxygen transport, Nrf2 pathways
• The main use is for optimization and longevity
• 10 passes build up the reserve for a full year
• How one feels during and after the treatment will depend on their overall health

-How Ahvie injected laser lights into me intravenously [49:30]

• Weberneedle Endo Laser
• Each color has a different characteristic with a different use for a patient's unique condition
• How is it different from UV radiation therapy:
  • UV activates white and red cells de novo

-Peptides Ahvie wishes more people knew about [54:00]

• BPC 157
• Thymosin Alpha 1
• “As a society, we're in a state of immune chronic activation”
• Lost circadian rhythm, toxic load from the food supply
• Humira is the #1 drug today; people can be treated in a more natural way
• Rapamycin is a suppressant, not appropriate in high dosages
• Peptides modulate rather than suppress
• Immune system is the means of communication within the body
• BGF podcast: “Peptides Unveiled” w/ Dr. William Seeds

-Ahvie's approach to nootropic stacks [1:04:00]

• Look for repairing and detoxifying, in addition to fortifying
• Very little for Alzheimer's nor for TBI/concussions
• Institute for Rare and Neglected Diseases (which Ahvie chairs)
• DHA for blood brain barrier and hypothalamus

-What intravenous procaine is [1:07:10]

• Procaine is a neural anesthetic
• Disturbs neural pathways enough to reduce pain

-Why Ahvie doesn't co-administer exosomes for recovery [1:11:05]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

– The Anatara Medicine website

– Weberneedle Endo Laser

– BGF podcast: “Peptides Unveiled” w/ Dr. William Seeds

– Institute for Rare and Neglected Diseases

– DHA

– My “Constitutional Assessment” results we discussed

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