[Transcript] – Killing Mold & Mycotoxins For Good, The Craziest IVs You Can Get For Energy, Fixing Knees & Back Without Surgery & Much More With Dr. Matt Cook.

Affiliate Disclosure

Transcripts

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/recovery-podcasts/mycotoxins/

[00:00:01] Introduction

[00:00:46] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:40] Introducing Dr. Cook

[00:08:07] A Primer On Ozone Dialysis

[00:14:13] How to Mitigate the Adverse Reactions of NAD Injections

[00:23:58] How to Treat Mold and Mycotoxins with A Nebulizer

[00:41:49] Podcast Sponsors

[00:44:19] Comprehensiveness of The Approach

[00:45:36] How to Sleep Like A Baby and Bind Everyday Toxins

[00:50:01] Procedure That Would Drastically Reduce Orthopedic Surgeries

[00:56:29] Importance on Imaging in His Practice

[00:59:30] Success with Treating Spine Issues

[01:05:52] The “Next Big Thing” In Regenerative Medicine

[01:12:23] Obtaining Matt's Services

[01:15:57] Closing the Podcast

[01:17:43] End of Podcast

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

Matt:  So, by running it through a filter and ozonating it at the same time, I get all of the benefits of the ozone, plus the filtration, plus the detox. We're going to have a radical moment for the next 20 or 30 years of putting together better and better solutions where we can start to heal fascial chains and basically turn on parts of the body and get it working. That is going to solve so much pain.

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

Hooray, hooray. Life is pretty freaking good because I got a chance to sit down for the fourth time with one of my favorite docs on the face of the planet. This guy is a wizard. He literally fixes in one-day things like knees and low back issues. He can knock out mold, and mycotoxins, and Lyme. He works with me. He works with my wife. This is his fourth time on the show, Dr. Matthew Cook. And as usual, it will be a pleasure for you.

This podcast is actually brought to you by, A, my new book, “Boundless,” about 608 pages. We had to put 500 pages to the cutting room floor, but fear not because I made them all available on a secret webpage for the book that you get access to when you get the book. It is big, bold, beautiful hardcover. It is the book–I write books that I want to read. I don't write crappy little pop culture, buy it at the airport type of 250-page paperback books. I write manuals to fix yourself and to optimize your body and your brain, and that's what my new book is about. It's called “Boundless,” “Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defy Aging.” You can get it at boundlessbook.com.

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Matt:  EBO2?

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  Extracorporeal blood oxygenation. But we'll just call it ozonolysis.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, cool. By the way, Matt, how does it feel to have the band back together?

Matt:  It feels amazing.

Ben:  We still need to name our band.

Matt:  What do you think we should name it?

Ben:  I don't know. I'm tempted to have something Green or Greenfield at the beginning because I'm obviously the bandleader. I'm the band frontman. You're kind of the backup.

Matt:  I'm the backup? Oh, man, that's cold.

Ben:  But we could just put your name first and have like Cooking with Greens, the Green Cook though.

Matt:  I like something Green because I'm the Green MB. So, then we don't know. You don't know who the leader is.

Ben:  You don't know. And for those of you listening in, Matt and I are actually going to be on a super-secret project and recording an album in Los Angeles next month. So, soon, you won't be able to turn on the radio without hearing Dr. Cook and I singing rollicking country music songs, which actually have been blasting in all the treatment rooms I've been in with Dr. Cook thus far during this two-day foray at BioReset Medical. So, if you guys aren't familiar with Dr. Cook, I've already interviewed him. I'm just going to start calling you Matt, Matt, because that's the way we talk to each other and I feel really weird calling you Dr. Cook.

Matt:  Me, too.

Ben:  Yeah. It's pretty awkward. Dr. Cook, Matt was on the episode called “Immortal Cells, Biohacking Pain, Killing Lyme, Stem Cell Confusion, How Ketamine Works & Much More.” It was so good and so popular with you guys that we then followed up when Matt came up to my house and recorded an episode called “What You Don't Know About CBD and THC, Fixing Lyme Disease, The Full Body Blood Change Reboot, Peptides 101, Hyperthermia & Much More.” Now, you need to go back and listen to those episodes at some point. You don't need to know what we're going to talk about in today's show, but I'm going to link to all my previous episodes with Matt, and you can dive into those if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3 because it's the third time he's been on the show. So, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3 is where you can access the shownotes. And if you hear us fumbling around as we're recording here, it's because Matt does all sorts of crazy never-before-seen, never heard of intravenous treatments at his office, and he might be hooking one up to me here while we are recording. And speaking of country music, I walked into one of your treatment rooms this morning after we threw down a crazy workout in which I kicked your ass at the gym. You worked out on the old man machines and I was with the kettlebell.

Matt:  I was kind of embarrassed for the band just for my poor showing.

Ben:  I have to, because I'm the front man of the band, make sure that my Python arms are all prepared. So, I was doing Jacob's ladder and Turkish kettlebell get-ups. Well, I think you were doing like seated leg adductor machine.

Matt:  It was pathetic.

Ben:  Yeah, it was.

Matt:  But I did get a good workout.

Ben:  Your inner thighs are going to be super toned, bro.

Matt:  Super toned.

Ben:  Yeah. So, I walked into that room. You're playing country music. You had this gal hooked up to this crazy machine. And I've talked about 10-pass ozone. I recently interviewed Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz and we talked about ozone treatment and how that works on the blood. But you're doing something next-level here. Can you tell me what that was, what that machine was you had her hooked up to, and why somebody would do something like that?

Matt:  Yeah. So, that's ozone dialysis. I've been doing high-dose ozone in one form or another including the 10-pass for years and years and years. And what happens with that just to reference, since you mentioned it, is that there's a machine that creates a vacuum and sucks blood up into basically egg device. And then this machine mixes ozone with that blood, and then the blood goes back in. That's called one-pass. So, then the idea is if you did that two times, that would be two passes, and each time, about 200 ccs of blood goes out, and then gets ozonated, and then goes back in.

Ben:  Yeah. And I've done that. I did the 10-pass and I actually felt like Superman afterwards with the 10-pass ozone that you just described. I did a different facility, but you're doing something beyond that now.

Matt:  Right. And so if you did that 10 times, that would be the 10-pass. What you saw today is–what we do is I take and put an IV in the arm, and then I use a pump and I pump blood out, and then I send it through a dialysis filter. So, when we send it through a dialysis filter, it filters out a lot of toxins, it filters out proteins, and it filters out antibodies. And then we apply ozone to the dialysis filter the whole time, and then we apply suction. So, what happens in this technique is that proteins start to come out. And then you saw that foam at the bottom?

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, then that seems to–

Ben:  In the little bucket underneath where all the plasma and the proteins were collected.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  So, it creates a little plasma separation and it pulls off proteins. And because I'm doing it with filtration, what I've noticed is people don't have any flare. So, you're super healthy and you got the 10-pass up [00:10:17] ______ and then you felt like a million bucks. However, you're doing everything right and you don't have almost any toxicity in your body. If you take somebody with Lyme disease and you do that straight out of the chute, a lot of times people will super flare and have a herxheimer reaction because you're not filtering out anything that you killed. So, it goes in, and then it all goes right back in, and your body has to deal with it. So, by running it through a filter and ozonating it at the same time, I get all of the benefits of the ozone, plus the filtration, plus the detox.

Ben:  So, you were telling me that this can have an effect on cholesterol, too, which I think is really interesting in an era of statins right now being, of course, the go-to treatment for cholesterol. And a lot of docs are still prescribing statins. It sounds like this might actually make that a moot point for a lot people.

Matt:  When you pull the blood out, you literally see lipids coming through. And so you literally can see in some people that have real high cholesterol, you'll see every two to three centimeters of the tubing, you'll see big packets of lipids.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  Once it goes through the filter, all of those come out. Now, I've got a couple of different ways because there are filters that are designed just to filter lipids. And so that's called lipopheresis, and we do that. But then we also have found that we pull so many lipids out with this technique that you probably don't really need to do lipopheresis because this works better.

Ben:  What about the good lipids? Will this impact HDL cholesterol if you do something like that?

Matt:  It's interesting because we were talking yesterday about peptides raising HDL cholesterol. What I find is, is that the–as I sort of track people, the good cholesterol–you're still eating a high-fat diet and you're eating a diet with a lot of real healthy fats. And so we're constantly replacing those. And so if I basically debulk the blood of cholesterol and lipids, then when you fill it up, you preferentially start to fill up the good ones, especially if you're doing everything lifestyle-wise.

Ben:  Okay. So, if I leave here and I'm drenching my salad with extra virgin olive oil and having some fatty cuts of fish, and maybe a little bit of coconut oil in my coffee, et cetera, I'm replacing all of those.

Matt:  Exactly.

Ben:  Yeah. How do you feel? You told me you've done this yourself. I haven't done it before, but how do you personally feel as a healthy guy doing ozone dialysis?

Matt:  I feel better than I felt lucky at any point in my life. How I talk about all of these things is each of the big techniques has a profile and how it affects you. And so for example, I did plasmapheresis this weekend. What happens is that has a profile, ozone dialysis has a profile, 10-pass has a profile, stem cells have a profile, killer cells have a profile, all of the IVs have what they do, and the sweet spot is then figuring out what everything does and then knowing when to do what.

Ben:  Okay. And there's a lot of very interesting IVs that you're running that I want to get into. But before we talk about IVs, and I think you're hooking me up to–what are we doing today during the podcast over this crazy mix?

Matt:  What I'm going to do, I'll put an IV in and I'll give you high-dose vitamin C. I'm going to give you some IV quercetin, some IV CoQ10. And I always combine CoQ10 and quercetin–I mean, CoQ10 and NAD together because they both are mitochondrial enhancers.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And so, I'm trying to stack multiple mitochondrial enhancers. I'm going to bring some trimethylglycine in, which you're going to take, which we talked about, which is super interesting because it makes any DCO easier, which you had–

Ben:  Okay. This might be a good point to just get into all of that. So, you have the NAD that you administer here, and I've talked about that many times before on the show about how potent the mitochondrial enhancer that is and how important it is for longevity and anti-aging as well just because of the steep decline as you age. But of course, it feels like a punch in the gut when you're getting the IV, you get a flush reaction, et cetera. How are you mitigating that with your treatment here at the clinic?

Matt:  It was great because I got the opportunity to talk to Joe Mercola. And remember, you introduced me to him. He called you and got my phone number.

Ben:  Yes.

Matt:  And this is kind of like the acceleration of learning and thinking about things. He called me and he was telling me about niacin. We started to have all these conversations, and then it forced me to go back to the literature and start reading about niacin. And I found out that when you take niacin, it's quite interesting, it creates–to metabolize it, you get methylated niacin products showing up in the body, and it will show up in the urine.

Ben:  And for the listener, just to understand what that means, when you say methylated niacin, what does that mean exactly?

Matt:  Carbon, in its most simple form, exists as a methyl group. So, you could think of the most simple form of carbon in the body as a little methyl group. If you take one piece of carbon and put it on a protein, a lot of times that activates it. And so we say we methylate that molecule. So, for example, if I want to activate a B vitamin, I would methylate it.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And so then in the process of breaking down niacin, it seems that there's a lot of methylation that goes on in terms of breaking it down. What I begin to think about is that if you're taking NAD, it causes a flushing reaction that's very similar to the niacin. And so that made me begin to wonder. We don't have a lot of evidence on this, but I'm going to try to figure this out in more scientific detail. But the flushing that you get from taking NAD is very similar to the flushing that you get when you take niacin. And so I began to wonder. I wonder if I gave methyl donors, if that would make it easier to take NAD. So, I basically just went and looked up the methyl cycle and trimethylglycine is there, and that's definitely the methyl donor. That's the easiest to take with the least amount of side interest.

Ben:  Trimethylglycine, you can just drink that like orally, right?

Matt:  Just drink it, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. At the same time that you're getting an NAD IV.

Matt:  Yeah. And so then what happened is literally overnight, I just started giving people that. And everybody in my clinic said, “Oh, NAD is twice as easy to take now as it used to be.”

Ben:  You don't think that would interfere at the cellular uptake of the NAD, having methylated glycine at the same time?

Matt:  My census is that it goes in easier and people feel better and they have a more profound NAD effect.

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, I did this yesterday after having done many NAD IVs. And if anything, I felt a greater uptick of energy.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  And I've been go, go, go all week. I'm sleeping about six and a half hours a night compared to my normal eight hours just because of the load on my plate right now. And I did that. We went out to dinner. We were out 'til 10:30 p.m. or so and I normally just would have been exhausted at that point and my energy levels are through the roof.

Matt:  Mm-hmm, yeah.

Ben:  Okay. So, you co-administer the NAD with trimethylglycine, and then you're also implementing other mitochondrial enhancers like CoQ10 and quercetin at the same time?

Matt:  Yeah. And I think of the quercetin more as an anti-inflammatory than a mitochondrial enhancer, but it may have a little bit of a mitochondrial benefit. And then it's interesting. Some people–the name of the game is then trying to track and see what people can take and what they like. So, for example, if you can tolerate taking SAMe, which is another part of the methyl cycle, if you take–I've never taken cocaine, but if I take two to three SAMes–

Ben:  SAMe being S-Adenosyl methionine?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  And you're taking that orally?

Matt:  Orally.

Ben:  When you're doing the NAD?

Matt:  And NADs works twice as effective.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  Yeah. So, I do that. I do that quite a bit.

Ben:  Now, where my mind is going is a lot of NAD supplements along with NMN and NR supplements are now becoming widely available, not as potent as the IVs but still a source for people who might not be able to do or afford IV administration. Patches are another thing that are quite common. Could someone theoretically at home take an NAD capsule or NR or NMN and simultaneously just from Amazon or wherever else, by SAMe, by trimethylglycine, supplement with those at the same time they take their NAD to hack this same effect at home?

Matt:  Right. So, yes, you can. It was interesting because I got to listen to Mercola interviewed Sinclair, and it's completely independent from me. I kind of figured out this trimethylglycine thing. It turns out he, in this podcast, mentions, I think it's coming out in the next week or two, that when he takes–

Ben:  I've already heard it. I get the pre-release version of my email inbox.

Matt:  Yeah. So, when he takes big doses of his products, he takes the TMG as well. And so there's something going on there that I think is very synergistic, and smart people are thinking about it. So, I'm super, super interested and beginning to understand this physiology more.

Ben:  Do you, just in case people are wanting to shop around for this, have any brands that you like for SAMe or trimethylglycine, or are you just getting some physician's super-secret special?

Matt:  Pretty much, yeah, the latter.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, cool.

Matt:  And it's embarrassing. I'm just going to Whole Foods and buying it.

Ben:  Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, if you're listening in, because I love to crowdsource knowledge on this podcast and you have a really good source of SAMe or trimethylglycine that you use or that you vetted, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3 and just leave a note over there.

Matt:  Go grab a bottle of TMG because the TMG that we have is great and it's a powder form.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And then it makes this perfect with water.

Ben:  Okay. That's fascinating. That's going to be very cool for a lot of people. Now, another thing that I found very interesting was how you're tackling mold and mycotoxins with a nebulizer. And you had me try this out yesterday. How are you using a nebulizer for this? Actually, Matt, I totally forgot. Before we get into the mold and mycotoxins and how you're using the nebulizer before we leave the NAD bandwagon behind, subcutaneous NAD, like a subcutaneous injection. We also did that yesterday. I just remembered. Can you fill folks in on that and why you do that?

Matt:  So, the subcutaneous NAD I think might have more of a cognitive effect than any of the other IVs. When you put the IV in, then the faster that it goes, the more flushing there is. And the slower that it goes, the less flushing there is. So, we're able to tolerate, titrate that in over somewhere between one and six or seven hours. If I give you Subq, I'm able to give you a dose, and it gets immediately absorbed and there's a curve of absorption basically. And so yesterday, what I did is I injected 200 milligrams for you, Subq, and then that absorbs over 45 to 50 minutes.

Ben:  So, those of you who might not know what that means, it's actually under the skin. So, rather than IV administration, or intramuscular, or anything like that, or oral administration, it's almost like an insulin syringe subcutaneously.

Matt:  Yeah. And I injected it–and subcutaneous basically means in the fat, which you don't have very much of these days so it's [00:22:29] ______.

Ben:  Well, I'm working on that for the band.

Matt:  Oh, good.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  Good.

Ben:  I mean, working on keeping it off for the band, for the front man shots.

Matt:  Oh, good, good. For the front man shots?

Ben:  For the CD cover.

Matt:  Do you want to tell them about the onesie that I'm going to wear?

Ben:  No. I don't want to disturb our listeners. So, subcutaneous NAD would be something you could use if you were really going after the cognitive effects, that head clearing effect that NAD can give you?

Matt:  Yeah. And then a dose of anywhere between 105 or 6 or 700 milligrams is the therapeutic dose. The more you begin to hack everything else, the less of the NAD that you need. And so you can get almost all of the benefit that you would get from a five or six-hour IV from a subcutaneous injection.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  So, I have people all over the world that I may all Subq injections, too.

Ben:  And so, if someone has like the powdered vials of NAD, you could just basically reconstitute that or draw it in like sterile water and inject subcutaneously?

Matt:  NAD is incredibly hard to buffer. And so I have a compounding pharmacy buffer for me and it works a million times better. So, I wouldn't try to reconstitute it at home and do that because it doesn't work very well.

Ben:  That's okay. There's probably like 0.001% of our listeners who would think about doing that anyways or who have a much NAD powdered vials in their freezer.

Matt:  Yeah. There are people though.

Ben:  There are. There's a lot of docs who are listening too though who are going to like this kind of stuff. Okay. Let's move on to mold and mycotoxins because that's something that you're well-known for treating along with Lyme and treating very successfully. And you're using like a nebulizing process for this. Can you describe?

Matt:  So, the conversation about mold is mold usually lives in a biofilm, either in the nose or the intestine.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  So, when I'm working somebody up and I'm talking to them, I try to get a sense of like, “Do you have any sinus problems or any nasal issues or is everything perfect?” So, I had a new patient yesterday and they're like, “I've been having sinus problems full-time for the last 20 years.” Some people are like, “Oh, my nose is perfect.” Now, the common bacteria that is called–there's the bacteria called MARCoNS that can colonize the nose. And when that bacteria colonizes the nose, it will secrete–and other ones can colonize the nose as well. And they start to secrete a biofilm. Do you know what a biofilm is?

Ben:  I do, but can you describe in your words to the listeners?

Matt:  Have you ever seen at the edge of a pond you see that almost gelatinous mucus layer that's right there at the edge of the pond?

Ben:  Right. In my bathtub sometimes, too.

Matt:  Exactly. So, that's bacteria, and fungi, and mold. And when they live together, they secrete this mutinous mixture that's a place for them to live. And then they live in there. They get some protection from the environment. And then that's where everything happens from a microbial perspective like out on nature. If they start to colonize you either in your intestine or in your nose, then what can happen is that they secrete that and now you have a biofilm in your nose that is using this gelatinous mixture where they're living, and it provides them some cover where they can just live and live for a long time.

Ben:  Now, if someone suspected that they had been exposed to mold or mycotoxin or might have a biofilm like that, is there some kind of a nasal swab test or something like that that they could–is there something someone could order to their home, or does a physician need to do this test?

Matt:  We do that test, but you could ask any physician to sign up with a company, and then they just order it and [00:26:30] ______.

Ben:  What's the name of that test, do you know?

Matt:  We have like [00:26:36] ______ in the back. I just asked him to order the test so we get through the name of it.

Ben:  Okay. Cool. We'll put that in the shownotes. Okay. So, you have this biofilm in the nose, and its mold, and it's releasing these mycotoxins.

Matt:  Okay. So, then this is trippy. In all likelihood, there was a biofilm and it just happened to be there. And often in the intestines, there's also a biofilm. Maybe somebody had a little bit of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Maybe they had some parasites. And so there's a biofilm there and it just happens to be this environment where these microbes are living. Then a person goes in and then they get into a house or they get exposed somehow to mold, and they breathe in that mold, and that mold comes in and then enters that biofilm.

Now, once the mold gets in there, that's like a fantastic place for that mold to live. And so then they just set up house. And the way that mold works–have you ever seen like a piece of bread? I was telling you about this yesterday where there's the green of the mold, and then all around that there's nothing there.

Ben:  Yeah. I usually just picked a little green speck off and eat the bread.

Matt:  I love that. So, then that–and penicillin is maybe one of the most famous molds. And so then what that green is doing is it secretes little, tiny, nano particles called mycotoxins. So, a mycotoxin is not the mold. The mycotoxin is a toxin that the mold secretes because it's kind of a gangster and it's trying to kill everybody else in that biofilm.

Ben:  Mm-hmm.

Matt:  So, it comes in. It lives in there and it starts to secrete that mycotoxin. The problem is, is that the mycotoxin is getting secreted into the biofilm and the biofilm is literally right next to all the blood vessels either in your nose or your intestine. So, now that mycotoxin gets into your bloodstream, and mycotoxins are neurotoxins, and then they cause fatigue. And then I do a blood test and I look to see if people have antibodies to mold toxins because the body sees that toxin that's basically a neurotoxin and the body is trying to react to it. And so it doesn't have a lot of good ways to deal with it. So, it starts to make antibodies, but now your immune system is fading thousands and thousands and thousands and millions of mold toxins that are floating around your body, and it causes an incredible amount of immune dysregulation.

Now, how we find out if how somebody has mold is that if they have chronic illness, then by definition, I have to work it up. So, I have a pee in a cup and then I send it off to see if there's mycotoxins in that cup. And so that's part one. And then I check to see if they have antibodies to the mycotoxins. And then if that's the case, then I have them do a little digging around in their house and make sure that the house doesn't have a whole bunch of mold that they're breathing and on a regular basis.

Ben:  Which they could have a professional, like they could get–is it an ERMI, ERMI analysis?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like if you go to survivingmold.com, you can read up on those type of home analyses.

Matt:  Yeah. And then there's professionals beyond that that come in and help you work that up.

Ben:  Right. Same website could help you find those people, too.

Matt:  Right. But so now imagine the immune systems floating around the bloodstream trying to fight these millions of parodic nano toxins that are floating around. And so the key to getting rid of them is eliminating that biofilm, eliminating where the mold is living. And so that's improving nasal health and improving gut health.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  So, then on the nasal front, what I found out is that you can nebulize sea minerals, and you can also nebulize glutathione. And I combined sea minerals and Quinton and glutathione.

Ben:  Sea minerals, Quinton, and glutathione. And nebulize means people place this mask over their face, I did this yesterday, and breathe all of that in through their nose.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  And those three things put together will kill the mold?

Matt:  That will start to kill the biofilm because it starts to dry up the biofilm. And once I start to dry that up and I improve the health of the nasal mucosa, then the biofilm goes away, and the biofilm is where the mold is living.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  So, then the name of the game is I'm trying to figure out what's going on in the gut, what's going on in the nose, and then heal and make it so there's no place for that mold to live because if I said, “Where are 90% of the mycotoxins that's in somebody's body coming from?” it's probably in a biofilm in one of those two locations.

Ben:  Okay. So, you'd nebulize. And I assume there's something in the minerals that would be breaking down the biofilm. Is that how this is working?

Matt:  I think so. And you were telling me about how you're doing the salt breathing in the sauna?

Ben:  Yeah. It's called halotherapy. And Clearlight Sauna is now selling on their website these micro crystalline salt units that you mount on the wall of the sauna, and I just added one of these to my sauna, and you put a little packet of salt into a tube that sits on this halotherapy device, and then a small metal bead. And when you flip it on, the metal bead circulates very rapidly within the tube, breaks up all these salt crystals and releases micro crystalline salt particles into the air. So, you're breathing salt the whole time you're in the sauna. It's called halotherapy.

Matt:  Yeah. So, I think that it's something similar to that, and that as you start to break up and dry up those biofilms and then they go away. It's not my total protocol, but it's the first step and what I can tell you is the next step. A lot of times, people will give different types of silver, colloidal silver, and antibiotic sprays, which are the traditional naturopathic mainstays of treating this. What I found is if I get you to do the glutathione and sea minerals, and then also a lot of times, what I'll do is I'll do the amniotic fluid like you nebulize afterwards. And I start to heal and detox and get rid of that biofilm. If I still have to do the antibiotics and the silver, people have way less side effects and it's way easier for them.

Ben:  Are they nebulizing the antibiotics and the silver, too, or they're just taking orderly?

Matt:  Those are just nasal sprays.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, got it. And then the amniotic fluid that you're nebulizing, it's literally like–is it human amniotic fluid?

Matt:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  And what's that doing? That's what's repairing the biofilm?

Matt:  So, then that's just improving the health. There's all kinds of growth factors and it's extremely anti-inflammatory.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And so, I'm not looking at that as being a powerful investor, but I'm looking at that as just improving the overall health of an area. If I improve the health and the functioning of the nasal mucosa, then that makes you more likely to be able to get rid of all the problems, and they quell this basically infection that's somewhat opportunistic that really shouldn't be there unless something else is going wrong.

Ben:  What do you do about the biofilm on the gut?

Matt:  So, then the biofilm on the gut is like the holy grail of functional medicine, because if you can heal the gut, all of your immune systems there, and once you start to fix that, everything else kind of goes away. So, part one is I do a test where I actually have a parasitologist look. He actually does a study under microscope to see if there are parasites. He looks to see if there's cysts or any form of the parasite. I also do a SIBO breath test to look for bacterial overgrowth. I do a lot of talking to get a sense of what symptoms people have. And so before I develop a plan, it relates to, “Is this fungal? Is this bacterial? Is this mold? Or is it all of them parasitic?”

And so then in general, the first thing that I do is also put people on spore-based probiotics. And I'll start with the spore-based probiotic, and then two to four weeks in, I'll add in a spore-based bacillus. I'll intersperse that with some regular probiotics. And so then I'm building up their microbial health. Then eventually, once they're stable with that, I'll start to very carefully put some prebiotics that were studied to work with the spore-based probiotic that we do. On that sense, we're building that up. In terms of breaking down the biofilm, there's fibrin and there's all kinds of cross-linking. And so I use digestive enzymes to start to break and clip apart that biofilm, but people take those on an empty stomach.

Ben:  Right. Otherwise, they'd be working on the food and not on the stomach.

Matt:  Right. And so I'll use Boluoke, which is lumbrokinase and Serratiopeptidase. And then I'll start to mix in other digestive enzymes based on what people can tolerate. But the digestive enzymes start to clip away and break down that bowel foam. Sometimes I'll use some EDTA. There's a product called InterFase Plus that will chelate out any minerals that are part of the matrix of that biofilm. And then I'm left with at a macro level, what's going on is this parasite. If it's parasite, then what I do is I put people on a dropper of an anti-parasitic that they're going to take for like six or eight months because those parasites are coming out and then they're going back into a hiding phase and coming out.

If I have you on a long-term regular program, then when they come out, every day you're taking it. So, it's kind of like dollar cost averaging for parasites. And so then every day, you're treating them. If they have SIBO, then I get them to change their diet and I get them to eliminate sugar. And then there's a couple of diets that are incredibly helpful if people have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Ben:  Like an elemental diet?

Matt:  Yeah. There's the specific carbohydrate diet, and then there's the GAPS diet. I onboard them to that and I say–a lot of times, what I'll say is, “This is going to be easy, but we're not going to do this forever. We're going to do this for six months.” And for some people, they can handle it very well. Then what I'll do is I'll have them follow the diet 80% or 90%. And because we're doing all of these other things, they can get away with not being completely OCD on that diet.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  Now, then in parallel to that, if they have parasites, I've got these herbal parasitic drinks.

Ben:  Yeah. You sent some of those to me when I had giardia. What exactly are those?

Matt:  What they are is–there are different herbal concoctions. And so, there's candida, there's bacteria, and then there's two different types of–protozoan and metazoan parasites. And so there are herbs that are designed to take care of each one. So, you got a protozoan. So, I gave you that. Notice, you're basically totally in charge of everything, in your diet, in your lifestyle, and all of that is going perfect?

Ben:  Obviously, after kicking your ass in the gym this morning that's apparent.

Matt:  I know.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  But you know what, I'm so happy being the second-best athlete in our band. And then even if your brother joins and I'm the third-best athlete, I'm the third-best–

Ben:  It's still a bronze.

Matt:  I'm on the podium.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  So, for you, I just gave you the juice. If somebody has a lot of issues, what I'll do is I'll onboard them and start on the diet. I'll start them taking digestive enzymes, I'm going to give them probiotics, I'm going to give them biofilm busters, and then I'll give them that anti-parasitic dropper that they're going to take for a relatively long time. And then once they're stable and they're tolerating that, and they're not hurting, and everything is okay, then as the surge, I give them these herbal plant juices that I think probably have a biofilm busting, and then they have an herbal effect of actually going after. And then a lot of times, what I'll do is on top of that, I'll add in berberine or some other herbal antimicrobials. And then if somebody takes the Doctor's Data test, if there's bacteria, they actually test and they'll test the sensitivity. And so, it'll show you whether the bacteria is sensitive to [00:40:02] _____ sensitive to berberine. And so then I use all of that data.

Ben:  That's a stool panel, that Doctor's Data.

Matt:  That's a stool panel.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And we do a lot of stool testing with Doctor's Data and other companies to identify what we're facing so that we can go in and treat. And what I'll tell you is that if you look at all people that have complex problems, complex mold, complex Lyme, complex–all sort of major issues where people are really struggling, 90% of the time, they had–if you walk through their history, they had a fairly big gastrointestinal situation, and they had leaky gut. And I'll find out that they had leaky gut for two or three years, a lot of inflammation and problems, potentially visceral adiposity and probably multiple different infections, maybe a little bit of mold, maybe a little bacterial overgrowth, maybe candida, maybe all of them, maybe parasites. That causes a ton of immune dysregulation. And then it's when they get bit by a tick and they get Lyme disease on top of immune dysregulation where nobody's doing their job, that's when people get really sick.

So, if you can build a program where you start to heal the gut, even though we do all of these crazy sexy IVs and advanced injections and stem cells and things like that, I spend half my time healing the gut and doing these sorts of foundational simple things. Because if you don't fix those things, you can't get people better.

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It's a very comprehensive approach. I mean, I know you're working with my wife now, who recently tested for–pretty clean across the board, except she tested for candida, I believe was the main thing. Actually, she also had a mold that came up positive that we thought was from the goat barn. I'm blown away by the comprehensiveness of the approach. I think that's the main thing people need to realize is you can't just take berberine. You can't just take some biofilm disruptor. You can't just drink the anti-parasitic juice. This stuff needs to actually be all systematically programmed.

Matt:  Right. And so then like in her case, then she's going to start to nebulize. And so if there was a biofilm there, that was a minor biofilm that somebody wouldn't have been bothered by if they didn't get exposed to some mold. But we're going to eliminate that and there's no place for them all to live. We eliminated in the gut. And then she's going to do the juices, and she'll do the droppers, and do that whole thing. The other thing to think about is that if people have antibodies to mold, and then if people have a lot of mega toxins in their urine, after I start to do all of this stuff in breaking the biofilms–and another thing I didn't mention is taking binders. I'm a huge fan of Chris Shade and everything–

Ben:  Quicksilver Scientific?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. We took some of that last night. So, that's like babies.

Matt:  That's amazing.

Ben:  We did six sprays of LipoCalm, which is like his GABA inhibitory neurotransmitter; six sprays of their melatonin, which is like the most powerful melatonin I've ever used; and then six sprays of their hemp, their Colorado hemp, and you're just like, “Hell, I got light.”

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  But all their liposomal formulas are good.

Matt:  It was amazing. So, I'll put people on his binders. And then he uses this technique where he takes some bitters, which squeezes the gall bladder and pushes any toxins out of the gall bladder liver into the intestine. And about half hour later, you can take one of his binders. And there are different binders for different problems. And so there are some binders that are better for binding onto mold. And then there's some binders that are–his IMD, the intestinal metal detox, that are better for binding onto metals. And so then now you're starting to detox the body that way. And then once I've got somebody on a real stable program, if I don't 100% fix things with ozone dialysis and plasmapheresis–and what I found by the way is plasmapheresis and ozone dialysis can really lower mold levels.

Ben:  Well, I would imagine because as you mentioned, some of those mycotoxins can get into the blood. So, if you're using ozone dialysis and you're going after the nasal cavity and the gut already, then you're also addressing the issue with the blood.

Matt:  Right. But then sometimes even with that, I will put somebody on Sporanox, which is an antifungal, to try to systemically kill all the mold. And just as a highlight to remember this, there is clinically almost a look that people have that looks like they have mold. A friend of mine is a naturopath and walked into my clinic and she looked at this person and goes, “Oh, they look like they have mold.” And it was this patient of mine that has Parkinson's. A lot of people with neurodegenerative problems that we see, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, also have mold. And so then–

Ben:  Why do you think that is?

Matt:  Because if they have a biofilm in the nose that's right next to the brain, or if they have their systemically–I have a guy who–[00:48:05] ______ VIP person who I've just been consulting over the phone because he's a friend of mine.

Ben:  It's Trump, isn't it?

Matt:  Not yet, I wish. But he had candida in every bodily fluid that was checked.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  And so, then imagine you have some immune dysregulation. And this is the story I think for like–200 things we could go through it and it's just going to be the same story, which is leaky gut, visceral adiposity, inflammation, all of the sudden, undigested foods getting into the bloodstream. And the immune system is paying attention to that. It's paying attention to mold that's being released by biofilms. And so it's not effectively doing its job. And then because of that, people can start to actually have some of these infections happen into their brain. So, people can have Borrelia, which is the bacteria that causes Lyme, or mold, or both living up into the brain. For example, I have some people that show up here that have had abscesses in their brain.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  So, then what we're trying to do is fully detox and eliminate all of those stealth infections because stealth infections are underlying a gigantic amount of problems, both cardiovascular, neurologic, immunologic, and they can be very big factors in terms of all our immune disease as well. So, then now, you start to have a rational and thoughtful approach to thinking about all these problems where I'd just going to look and figure out–well, let's just do a workup and see if you have any of these things. If you have them, then we can talk about a lot of different strategies to treat them. But it's critical to treat it.

Ben:  Okay. Got it. Now, I know we just went through a ton, you guys. And so far, everything we talked about, I'll put links to at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3. But I want to change direction a little bit and talk about regenerative medicine and joints. For example, yesterday, you treated my knee with a very cool protocol that incorporated ozone, exosomes, and something called nerve hydrodissection, which I think if more people knew about this, there would be far fewer unnecessary surgeries being performed for orthopedic issues. Can you describe exactly what you did, for example in my case, to my knee?

Matt:  So, I think of joints in terms of five compartments. There's the nerves, and you could maybe even say nerves, arteries, veins, and lymphatics. Then there's the fascia. Then there's the ligaments and tendons that are going across. Then there's the joint and the joint capsule in the synovium. And then there's the subchondral space, which is basically where the bone marrow is on either side of the joint. So, if you look at a joint, there's what's the joint in between two bones, there's the marrow of each bone, and then everything surrounding it. And then on top of that is the systemically how inflamed you are.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  If you call fascia its own thing, then it would be six. If you don't call fascia its own thing, then call that the same with the nerves and arteries. That's fine. So, then what I do is I do an assessment. So, I look with an ultrasound at the nerve, and I touch it, and I palpate it, and I track it, and I look to see if there's dilated fascicles, because the nerve is like a water hose that's carrying neurotransmitters out.

Ben:  And what would be a dilated fascicle? For people who don't understand what that would exactly mean.

Matt:  A nerve is basically like an electrical wire. And so your femoral nerve, you think of that as one nerve, but that's actually hundreds and hundreds of fascicles that are going out and each fascicle is like a little baby tiny nerve and the nerve is made up of a whole bunch of those wrapped together inside, basically, a sheath. And so what I do is I look to see if people have nerve pain. And if they have nerve pain, then what I do is I–and that nerve pain may because they're just super inflamed. So, for example, if somebody had chemotherapy and they all have peripheral neuropathy. People can have peripheral neuropathy for all kinds of problems, or people could just have impingement. So, for example, carpal tunnel is impingement of a nerve. If somebody has nerve pain for any reason, then what I do is I use an ultrasound and I take a needle and I put the needle in the fascia in between the muscles where the nerve is. And then I inject and I surround that nerve with fluid. And my whole life was doing nerve blocks for 15 years–

Ben:  As an anesthesiologist.

Matt:  –where I would just put local anesthetic around a nerve and put it to sleep and then sit somebody up and do a shoulder surgery wide awake.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  So, that was kind of like my life. And then I found out that if you put exosomes around a nerve or placental matrix, then it will start to calm down and heal peripheral neuropathy, all kinds of peripheral nerve pain, nerve impingement. And so then that's what basically started my career. So, then we look at the nerve, we look at the ligaments and tendons, and we look at the joint. And so in your case, I did some nerve hydrodissection because you had a branch of the saphenous and obturator nerve that were in some pain. And so I put placental matrix around each of those nerves.

Your joint had fluid in it. And so what happens is the joint lining is kind of thinking, “Ben needs a little more WD-40 because his knee was a little bit of inflammatory.” And so then what I'll do is I'll stick the needle in and I'll put something regenerative in there. If there's a lot of fluid, I'll pull that fluid out and lavage it with saline. I probably would have done that normally, but we were trying to do 45 things in two hours. So, then after I lavage it out, then I will put in something that will stay there. And because I'm really trying to calm down the knee and stop it from making so much fluid, I put in placental matrix because it tends to stay there for a couple of months.

Ben:  What is placental matrix?

Matt:  Basically, what happens is you take a placenta and all of the growth factors that go to [00:54:56] _____ and they basically put it in a blender and grind it up and make it into a flowable state. And then they gamma-irradiate it. So, there's no stem cells in there. There's nothing living, there's no living DNA, but there's an enormous amount of collagen and a lot of growth factors, and that collagen is the scaffold.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And then the placenta by itself is super anti-inflammatory. It seems to have some anti-infectious components. So, if your knee was dry and didn't seem like there was not much going on in the joint, I probably would have just put exosomes in it. However, they had put some exosomes in you recently and it was still hurting so I said, “I'm going to put placental matrix in” and I put like a ton in there. And then I also had [00:55:43] ______ the nerve. Some people will come. They'll have a super inflamed knee. The ligaments and tendons are lit up. Sometimes the ligaments and tendons have laxity. So, they're loose. So, the joint is unstable. They have nerve pain.

So, I'll treat the ligaments and tendons. I'll start to stabilize that. I'll treat the joint. And then some people have an incredible amount of marrow edema. And so then we'll take either stem cells or exosomes or placental matrix and actually stick it into the bone marrow and start to treat that and calm that down. And so that's not in the joint, that's in the bone. But a lot of times, you'll heal that, and then that'll make the pain go away.

Ben:  Now, you are a big fan of using imaging for these procedures. I've been to a lot of doctors just because I do this immersive journalism thing, and I go into a lot of clinics. And in many of them, I'll do protocols, and some of them we'll do injections of stem cells or exosomes or other prolozone-type of treatments in the absence of imaging. But every room I've walked into where you've been working with patients here, you always have this ultrasound imaging hooked up and the screen that shows–and by the way, for those of you who want to see this, I did a whole like two-hour-long Instagram story yesterday at Matt's office, and I'm going to put a link to that in the shownotes for you. You can see, if you watched that Instagram story, what this digital imaging looks like. You can literally see the outline of the needle as it's going into my knee. But why do you do the imaging when so many docs don't feel a need for that?

Matt:  My mentor in hydrodissection is Tom Clark. He's amazing. He walked in here this morning.

Ben:  Oh, that guy was Tom Clark?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay. Gotcha.

Matt:  He told me, he said, “You've evolved into your clinic as a dilemma clinic.” And so the average person that comes here has been to five or ten doctors already. I see a lot of people who went to get a nerve treatment from somebody who did a blind injection on a nerve that was mildly bad. And then because they weren't using imaging, they stuck the needle right into the nerve. And so I've got a whole bunch of people that I fixed, but who had chronic nerve pain from a treatment like that. I don't know if you remember. You got to watch that treatment that I did for that guy yesterday?

Ben:  Yeah. It was his elbow.

Matt:  Yeah, his hand.

Ben:  His hand.

Matt:  So, then I was like millimeters away from his ulnar nerve but I never touched it. So, I'm able to see where that needle is, and so then I actually go in, and I learned this as an anesthesiologist. I'm in the fascial plane but I'm never touching the nerve. And so I'm able to create a halo of regenerative fluid around that nerve. I can do that around a tendon. And then I can literally take my needle and then guide it into a joint, and then I'm 100% sure that–like in your case, if I put $8,000 worth of product into a joint, I want to be super sure that I got that in and I wasn't just like in your quadriceps muscle.

Ben:  Right.

Matt:  And what I tell people is this is kind of an evolving space, and so those people are doing stem cells and stuff like that. Within the next couple of years, the absolute standard of care is that there's essentially no injection that should be done without imaging.

Ben:  So, when you're doing this type of treatment, the knee, the elbow, the wrist, the hand, all those seem pretty straightforward, but do you ever go near the spine? Because a lot of people will–these days, they're getting back surgery. And I question sometimes whether that back surgery is completely necessary. Have you had much success with spinal rehabilitation or treating spine issues?

Matt:  It may be like the biggest thing that I do. Like a friend of mine, they did like some marketing for regenerative medicine to this clinic that doesn't do spine, and 80% of the people they called had back problems. And so how I think about that, and it's [01:00:09] _____ imagine in your mind at the spine. So, there's the disc and the vertebral bodies in the front, and then there's little facet joints and spinous process, and there's a whole bunch of basically a ligamentous complex in the back. And then in between is the spinal cord.

So, then what happens is if the facet joints in the back are not doing their job, then when force comes through, the force can't evenly go through those joints. And if it can't go through those joints, that creates torque, and that torque goes through the spine and starts to impinge the nerves that are going out the side. And so my approach is I look and I figure out everything that's going on. So, I look at every–back pain, for example. I look at every lumbar facet. I look at the iliolumbar ligaments. I look at the SI joints. I look at the transverse processes. I look at the quadratus lumborum erector spinae. I look at every muscle group.

And then because I'm looking with an ultrasound, a lot of times what will happen is people will have facet arthritis or arthropathy. And then the nerves that go out by the facet joints, which are called the median branches, will be impinged. And because of that, all of the deep spinal muscles are not getting enough nerve electricity input. And so then what they do is they go, “Okay. Fine. I'll put some fat down in there.” And that's called fat atrophy, and that sort of stabilizes those muscles because the idea is if your ligaments and tendons and joints can't do the job, then the body just puts it into spasm to try to hold and create structural integrity and stability.

So, then I build a map, and a lot of times people will come in and they've been in [01:01:58] ______ and they're on the schedule for a big spinal fusion. And then I'll make a list of my priorities from 1 to 10. And then we'll start to go in and I'll start to–and so then we'll use placental matrix exosomes, PRP, PRP lysate, stem cells. And then we'll start to stabilize all of those things. Sometimes I'll do a fascial plane block where I'll put fluid in between quadratus lumborum in the psoas, sometimes between quadratus lumborum and erector spinae.

And then I'm treating all of those things. A lot of times, I'll actually put exosomes in the epidural space, and then I'll also put exosomes or stem cells or PRP into the disc. But what I found is if you do this in a staged approach, 85% of the time, I fix everything without having to go under the desk. There's more complications with that. And so what I try to do is I try to do the lowest risk thing that I know I can do in a reproducible way again and again and again, and expose people to the least amount of risk as I guide them through the healing process.

Ben:  It seems like a no-brainer compared to going straight in for a spinal surgery.

Matt:  Yeah. The probability with that type of approach, because you're looking with an ultrasound, and so I'm looking and I see the needle come down and touch the facet, and then I see the fluid go through the facet capsule. The probability of a problem with that type of treatment is super, super low. Now, then even all of those people, I'm talking and trying to gather what's going on, and a lot of those people will. So, for example, let's say I had somebody with back pain. Let's say they had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. They're more susceptible to ligamentous laxity and all kinds of problems.

If I can begin to stabilize those ligaments and get them better, even if they have surgery, they're going to do way better. So, even if people end up having surgery–and I think we prevent almost more back surgeries than knee surgeries. You talked about the knee. So, many people have medial knee pain, and a lot of that is either pain of the sartorius and gracilis muscles. They rub on each other. And branches of the saphenous and obturator nerve are [01:04:24] _______ getting chronically impinged. Even a lot of people who had total knee replacement–we see tons of people with total knee replacement who are 10 years out on a total knee and they've had pain from day one because of that nerve pain.

So, then what we do is hydrodissect those nerves and calm them down. A lot of times, we can get people with total joints out of pain just from doing nerve hydrodissection because the orthopedic surgery world hasn't really embraced this, but it was awesome yesterday because I had a conversation with an orthopedic surgeon in Seattle. I explained all this to him and he goes, “That totally makes sense.” He's a cool guy because he did orthopedic surgery at UCSF right before I did anesthesia at UCSF. And I told him, I said, “The whole thing's accelerating and working because five years ago, I was trying to tell orthopedic surgeons about this and there was basically one guy in the whole world that was listening to me, who's a friend of mine.” But now, everybody is opening up to this, and so there's going to–I believe that we're entering a much more collegial and sharing moment when people are just going to look at it as new medicine, and it's not really alternative for a naturopathic. It's just like we're all on the same team doing the same thing.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, speaking of new medicine, this might be a little bit of a curveball and we even talked about this at all, but you get around a lot to a lot of these medical conferences. You're obviously on the cutting edge and digging into a lot of new things. Is there anything that's on the frontier of regenerative medicine or functional medicine that you think is going to be either the next big thing, take medicine by storm, or that you were personally pretty excited about that you haven't had a chance to talk about before?

Matt:  We do a ton of PTSD and the people–you mentioned that they're doing the research with maps?

Ben:  Yes.

Matt:  I think that what people are going to do with psilocybin and MDMA in terms of treating people with PTSD is going to be the next big thing because it's going to–people, when I was a resident, people in medical school, they're like, “Don't do PTSD because nobody gets better.” But now, we do and it's like everybody gets better. And so I think that those things paired with things like the stellate ganglion block and ketamine are going to be a major adjunct in that.

Ben:  By the way, the stellate ganglion block and ketamine, for those of you listening in, we have a whole podcast about that that I recorded with Matt where we talked about how he can literally reset the vagus nerve, deactivate the sympathetic nervous system, and use something like ketamine to affect amazing change, not only for trauma and PTSD but just for folks who are stressed, who are anxious, who need to get into a more relaxed state, who need to increase vagal nerve tone. But now, what you're talking about is the prospect of combining those kind of treatments with something like MDMA or something like psilocybin in a facilitated format where a doctor like you is actually overseeing that protocol.

Matt:  Right. Now, then to answer you, I was just stalling to think of something.

Ben:  Of course, you were.

Matt:  But now that my brain is back, on the regenerative medicine front, I'm thinking about what can I do hydrodissection with. So, what can I put around a nerve or into the fascia that's healing? And so then my latest evolution of this is peptides. So, it turns out you can do a hydrodissection with BPC 157, and it's lights out amazing. However, someone has to be able to tolerate the dose that you give them. So, for example, BPC 157. Like, I gave you 10 milligrams IV because–

Ben:  A standard subcutaneous dose that's often recommended to folks is like 250 micrograms.

Matt:  Right. Now, if I gave an average Lyme patient one milligram, they would flare. So, then the way that I do it is I titrate up extremely slowly and carefully, and I'm thinking about people like I'm preparing them for surgery or something like that. So, I'm judging and building them up once they can tolerate an amount. So, once they can tolerate a milligram, then you can put one milligram around a nerve. I have the study where they took and transected a rat sciatic nerve, and then they just gave Subq doses that were really high, and the nerve grew back together.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  And so that opened my mind to start to think about like, “Okay. If people are injecting this Subq and they're doing blind injections and nobody has a problem with it, then maybe that might be something super interesting to start to put around nerves.” We're going to have a radical and exciting moment for the next 20 or 30 years of putting together better and better solutions, either with growth factors, peptides, combinations, autologous products, where we can start to heal fascial chains and kinetic chains, and basically turn on from an electrical perspective parts of the body and get it working. That is going to solve so much pain. We're in the opioid epidemic. And so, we need things–so many people with back pain were just put on opioids. Now, then if you begin to see how I'm thinking about it, if you–all of those people, by the way, that are on opioids have dramatically low NAD levels because being on a chronic opioid lowers our NAD levels.

Ben:  Really?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Interesting.

Matt:  And that's why if you have–most people who do NAD over the last 20 years have been doing it for opioid and alcohol addiction. And so we do these protocols where we'll do a 10-day protocol where we give NAD every day. That's where I started with NAD. Then I found out if I stacked that with vitamin C and other protocols, I could get it to work better. Then I started to find out that I stacked it with all of these other micronutrients and I got it to work better. So, that imagines this is kind of the complexity where you get somebody who's been on long-term opioids, they got no NAD and they've got debilitating pain. So, then those people, you have to go in and start to rehab and heal. It's like a remodeling project. Heal all those facets, heal those kinetic chains, get the kinetic chains working. The people, the trainers that you're dealing with who were doing high-end training like tonight–

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. You're referring to a talk I'm giving tonight to the access personal training group?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  So, the philosophical approach of what they do for high-end athletes that are going to come and see them is literally exactly the same philosophical approach I have to people who can barely walk down the hall. I'm just trying to turn kinetic chains off, on. Heal that “glute amnesia” that all those people have. And then once you do that, then just looking systemically what else is going on and how do I optimize and just stabilize all of this.

Ben:  It's fascinating. If someone is listening in and they have mold or mycotoxin or Lyme, they've got a spine injury, they've got a knee injury, perhaps even they've got an addiction or PTSD issue, there are many, many other things that you treat. Should they simply go to the website, like go to BioReset Medical and use a contact form or something like that?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And then when people do that, 10% of the time they'll come, they'll just kind of fly here and do stuff. But usually, what I do is I'll spend an hour on the phone or half hour on the phone talking to people, and I'll get a sense of what's going on. I would say probably 30% to 50% percent of my practice is just people that heard me like on your podcast. And what happens is people will hear me talking about something and they go, “Oh, I have this problem and I heard you, and I think you know how to fix it.” And so they'll just show up. But a lot of times, I can orchestrate. For example, if somebody has knee pain and it's really bad, I might order an MRI for them before they come. Same with the back.

Ben:  Yeah. Or labs. Like, people could run their mold and mycotoxin labs at home, for example, and have–you would have a lot of that data by the time they show up.

Matt:  I do, yeah. I do that every day.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  Yup.

Ben:  Okay. Cool. It's very similar working with a well-educated patient. I know to a certain extent how that feels because I work with well-educated clients. When a client comes to me for my coaching program, one of the things that they're required to do, we were talking about this at the gym today, is they are required to listen to all my podcasts. I'd rather work with a client who already knows everything that I'm delving into, everything I'm educating them about, so then when they ask me questions, all we're doing is taking a deeper dive into some rabbit hole that we didn't yet get into on a podcast that they've already heard, or they're pinging me and saying, “Oh, Ben, whatever, should I go see Matt Cook? Is he right for me in this situation? Or should I take this supplement you talked about or buy this biohack?

So, yeah, that's what I like about this podcast is–and we've had this discussion a couple of times, you and I have. It just helps to educate people. So, you've got a more informed consumer coming in who just knows a little bit more about their condition and what they need. And I think it makes the job for someone like you or someone like me that much simpler.

Matt:  Yeah. And then if I can say something to the people out there is that there's hope. So, many of these problems that feels like–especially if you hadn't been introduced to sort of like our worldview, people feel a sense of hopelessness like they're never going to get better. And what I try to communicate to people is that you're going to be great, you were going to heal everything, and you're going to be able to heal–even if I don't do it, there's hope and we're going to find you somebody that–and a lot of people will tell me, “I had no sense of hope. And then all of a sudden, I started to get this idea that I'm going to get better.” As soon as that starts to happen for these big problems, then it allows people to come out of fight-or-flight, then the immune system starts to work better, they start to feel better, make better choices. So, it's a journey but it's an amazing journey to watch people go down.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, Matt, this is the third show that we've done. Like I told, those of you listening in, you got to go listen to the first two as well. You probably know why Matt is one of my favorite physicians. He's super well-informed, super cutting-edge. He's also a very nice guy who has had the honor of also being my backup in the Green Cook band. And so he's got that going for him, too. And should medicine never work out for you, Matt, don't worry, you'll always have a place on my band bus.

Matt:  Oh, nice, nice, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  So, even I could be a roadie.

Ben:  You could be a roadie.

Matt:  I could be a roadie and like the backup singer. That'd be a two-for-one.

Ben:  You can feel free to bring your assistant, Barb, here who's sitting with us taking notes, and you guys can just come on the road with me. We'll make music and–I don't know what else.

Matt:  That would be amazing.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. But in the meantime, folks, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mattcook3, or you could go to the BioReset Medical website, bioresetmedical.com. Matt's clinic is in San Jose, and potentially also up in Seattle soon as well, correct?

Matt:  Yeah, exactly. And then go to bioresetnetwork.com because we train physicians to do everything that I told you about today.

Ben:  Oh, well, so if we have the docs listening in and they're just drooling at the mouth a lot of this stuff, you could teach them.

Matt:  Yeah. I'd teach them everything.

Ben:  So, it's bioresetnetwork.com?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay. We'll put that in the shownotes as well. Matt, thank you once again for putting up with me for the third time in a row.

Matt:  That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Ben:  Alright, folks. Thanks for listening in.

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.

 

Dr. Matthew Cook is one of the most brilliant physicians I know, bar none.

Whether you need to fix Lyme, mold, or mycotoxin issues, completely repair a knee or back issue without surgery, or get the most advanced anti-aging and longevity treatments that currently exist, he's your man.

Dr. Cook founded BioReset Medical Corporation and, as acting President, operates a regenerative and pain medicine practice that offers leading-edge non-surgical solutions in orthopedic medicine, sports medicine, regenerative pain medicine, and stem cell medicine.

He is a board-certified anesthesiologist with over 20 years of experience in medical practice. Currently, Dr. Cook is president of California Anesthesia and medical director of the National Surgery Center, Los Gatos, CA.

In addition, he sits on the scientific advisory board of several high profile medical companies including BM Doc, FREmedica & Vasper Systems. Dr. Cook’s early career as an anesthesiologist and medical director of an outpatient surgery center that specializes in sports medicine and orthopedic procedures provided invaluable training in the skills that are needed to become a leader in the emerging fields of musculoskeletal ultrasound imaging, nerve hydrodissection, and stem cell medicine.

I previously interviewed Dr. Cook in the following episodes:

In today's episode, we take a deep dive into plasmapheresis, 10 pass Ozone with filtration, nebulizing for mold and mycotoxins, crazy IV treatments including alpha-lipoic acid, quinton and quercetin, how to boost methylation during NAD IV treatments, nerve hydrodissection and joint treatments, and much more.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-A primer on ozone dialysis [8:15]

  • It's different from ten-pass ozone treatment for the blood
  • Put an IV in the arm, pump blood out, extend through dialysis filter
  • Filters out toxins, proteins, antibodies
  • Apply ozone to dialysis filter, apply suction
  • Proteins come out, separates from plasma
  • No flare with the filtration, even with a disease such as Lyme
  • You get the benefits of ozone, filtration, and detox
  • Effect on cholesterol
    • Lipids come through (more effective than lipopheresis)
    • Good cholesterols stay; bad cholesterols leave

-How to mitigatee the adverse reactions of NAD injections [14:15]

  • Methylation occurs when a protein meets carbon (ex. activating a vitamin)
  • A lot of methylation occurs in niacin
  • Co-administer NAD with trimethylglycine
  • It made NAD much easier to take
  • Does not interfere with cellular uptake of NAD with methylated glycine
  • Implement other mitochondrial enhancers such as CoQ10 and Quercetin simultaneously
  • Subcutaneous NAD injections have more of a cognitive effect than other IVs

-How to treat mold and mycotoxins with a nebulizer [24:00]

  • MARCoNS bacteria (Multiple Antibiotic Resistant Coagulase Negative Staphylococci)
  • Biofilm: similar to mucus on the edge of a pond
  • Ask your doctor for the appropriate test
  • Mold enters the body and thrives in the biofilm
  • The mold secretes mycotoxins, which tries to kill everything else in the biofilm
  • Mycotoxins are neurotoxins causes fatigue
  • Chronic illness is an indicator of mycotoxin presence
  • Check environment for mold presence (survivingmold.com)
  • Nebulize sea minerals, quinton, and glutathione begins to dry up the biofilm, thus killing the mold
  • Halo therapy (administered via a sauna)
  • Nebulizing amniotic fluid improves the overall health of an area of the body
  • Biofilm in the gut is the “holy grail”: if you can fix that, it solves numerous issues

-How to sleep like a baby and bind everyday toxins [45:35]

  • Quicksilver Scientific (use code GREENFIELD15 to save 15%)
    • Lipo Calm
    • Melatonin
    • Colorado Hemp
    • Intestinal Metal Detox
  • Bitters squeeze the gallbladder of toxins
  • People have a “look” of mold in their system
  • Neurodegenerative disease patients often have mold
    • Biofilm in the nose is right next to the brain

-A procedure that would drastically reduce orthopedic surgeries if more people knew about it [50:15]

  • Nerve hydrodissection
  • 5 compartments of joints:
    • Nerves, arteries, veins, etc.
    • Fascia
    • Ligaments and tendons
    • Joint and joint capsule
    • Subchondral space
  • Look at nerve via ultrasound; look for dilated fascicles
  • Nerve pain may be because of inflammation, impingement
  • Putting exosomes around a nerve will heal peripheral neuropathy, impingement, etc.
  • Placental matrix: Growth factors of placenta blended into a flowable state

-Why Matt places such a high importance on imaging in his practice [56:30]

  • Matt's clinic is a “dilemma clinic” i.e. people have seen several docs already with unsatisfactory results
  • Able to see where the needle is; never touch the nerve
  • Create halo of regenerative fluid around the nerve
  • Ideal standard is no injection done without imaging

-Matt's success with treating spine issues [59:30]

  • It's the biggest thing he does; 80% of respondents to a recent survey had back problems
  • The body creates spasm to create structural integrity and stability when joints don't do their job
  • More back surgeries are prevented than knee surgeries

-The “next big thing” in regenerative medicine [1:06:00]

-How to go about obtaining Matt's services [1:12:30]

-And much more…

Resources from this episode:

SAMe and Trimethylglycine

BioReset Medical Corporation

Quicksilver Scientific products we discussed (use code GREENFIELD15 to save 15%)

Dr. Mercola's podcast

survivingmold.com

Clear Light Saunas (use code: BENGREENFIELD for $500 off)

Bio Reset Network: a network of like-minded doctors

Video of Ben's procedure at Bio Reset Medical

Episode sponsors:

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