630: John A. Lieurance on Understanding Melatonin, Methylene Blue, and MitoZen

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie, from wellnessmama.com. And this episode gets to go deep on a couple of topics I was not at all well versed in, and was excited to learn about, including things like melatonin, including high dose melatonin, methylene blue, and then some things I was somewhat familiar with, like photo biomodulation, and some other more advanced therapies. And I learned a lot in this episode. I’m here with John Lieurance, who is an author, a physician, a lecturer, and a scientific adviser. And he has a really cool story. After he became very ill, actually from birth, and then with other things after that, he began to really explore and research ways to improve health at the cellular level. And this is how he learned about melatonin, is basically a core antioxidant that supports all systems of the body. And I will admit, I was skeptical of this going into this episode, because I’d always been wary of melatonin at all. And he explains some really important nuance around that.
He also has a book on melatonin that provides a lot more information that I got to read that I highly recommend, if you are curious about it. And also we talk about methylene blue, which is something I’ve experimented with a little bit. But he talks about ways to make it even more effective and what things you would want to specifically use it to support. We also then get to go deep on some more advanced therapies that he uses in his clinic, which is in Sarasota, Florida. And we talk about several other really fun topics as well. So, very, very fact packed episode. He is certainly a wealth of knowledge. And as I said, I learned certainly some new things in this episode. I hope that you will as well. So let’s join John. John, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Dr. John: Yeah, Katie, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Katie: I am excited to learn from you on several different topics today, actually. But I think for some background, and so people understand how you got into understanding so much about these topics, I would love to hear a little bit of your personal story. Because I know that was an impetus for a lot of your research.
Dr. John: Yeah. So, at a young age, I had some challenges, right, you know, even before I was born. A lot of people might be noticing that there’s a lot of commercials with lawyers looking for people that have been injured in Camp Lejeune. And it was basically the country’s worst water contamination catastrophe. And so I was in utero and my first two years of life on Camp Lejeune. And really everybody in my family, my direct family, has some sort of a major health issue. My father has cancer, and I’ve got one sister who has some health issues, and then my mother. And so from, you know, a fairly young age, I just remember always kind of having brain fog, and I had a lot of ADHD, dyslexia, hyperactive. And so, my father’s in the military, so we got stationed in Hawaii. And in Hawaii, I had such challenges in school that I wound up getting sent to special education classes, which, in of itself, was quite challenging, just from an emotional standpoint. And I was able to get mainstreamed out of that before high school. So my immune system, I’d say, I never really felt like I had a strong immune system. I was always really, really sensitive to things.
And so, fast forwarding into my early 30s, I got really, really sick, and then eventually found out that I had Lyme disease, then found out that I had mold in my house. And that really started, you know, the more recent journey of mine to heal myself from that. And what I discovered through really, all of these journeys was some commonalities in what breaks down in the body and what’s required to allow the body to heal itself. Because, you know, as a naturopath and as a chiropractor, our philosophies, as more holistic practitioners, is that the body can heal itself, right? So I wouldn’t call myself a healer, right? I don’t think doctors heal. The body does that.
You know, the body has a wisdom and an intelligence. And there’s a life force that drives all of that. There’s an energy in the body that drives all that. And what happens is the body loses that life force. And then the full expression of vitality and health, you know, doesn’t show up. And so this has been, you know, kind of the emphasis of me and my studies, and the books that I write, and the work that I do in the clinic, and different products that I’ve been involved in producing through MitoZen.
Katie: It seems like a common theme for many of us in the health world, is that we got into it originally trying to figure out our own issues, and then also then have this passion for helping others as well. And I love that you come back to that point about healing. And that that’s sort of the body’s natural state, is that it wants to heal, and that we’re working with the body on that. That it’s not, like, an exogenous thing. But what’s really strikes me about your story is that you have managed to do that even with things that you were born with, like, conditions that you entered this world with. You’ve been able to find healing, which I think is really exceptional. And you’ve written a lot about some of these different ones that you talk about and related to products that you have.
I would love to go through each of them, because at least a couple of them are pretty new concepts for me, especially the way that you talk about using them. And the first one of those being melatonin, and especially high dose melatonin. So I would love for you to start broad on that, and maybe walk us through the sort of what’s happening in the body when we take high dose melatonin and the benefits. Because I think perhaps many people have heard cautions against taking melatonin in any form at all. So maybe walk us through the background on melatonin?
Dr. John: Yeah, that’s a great question. Melatonin is the body’s master antioxidant. And, you know, I think that word gets thrown around. You know, people will hear resveratrol, or various different antioxidants as being, like, the master. But really, melatonin is the master. Glutathione is, you know, up there as well. But literally, melatonin sits within every mitochondria. So, where oxidation is really created is in the mitochondria, which is this, what they call the powerhouse of the cell. And it’s there within the cell that oxygen and glucose is converted into this very valuable commodity called ATP, which is, that is life force. That’s the energy that’s driving everything in the body. And when we have stress in the body, then we need to adapt to it. Right? And so, this adaptation requires energy. So my belief is that all diseases is really where there’s a stressor that the body is not able to adapt, because it doesn’t have the life force to do so. So, when we talk about melatonin, we look at how melatonin is actually produced in each mitochondria. And that there’s not a lot of benefit from melatonin besides the circadian rhythm, right?
We have melatonin that’s produced in the pineal, but there’s not a lot of benefit, unless there’s stresses that require melatonin to come in and buffer, right? And in fact, in the early days, when they first started doing studies on melatonin, they discovered that the results were kind of, like, lackluster. They were kind of looking at these mice, and, you know, mice, there’s laws that require scientists to treat and provide certain environments for laboratory animals, which I think is very appropriate. But basically, these laboratory animals were, like, living at the Ritz Carlton. You know, they had regular food, clean environment. And so, when they looked at these animals with and without melatonin, they didn’t really see any difference. You know, the lifespan was about the same, yada, yada, yada. So, what they did is they then redid the tests where they would stress the rodents by putting them into these sleeves, like, these tubes, for a certain amount of time per day, which is like this confined, dark environment.
And so, what they found was really shocking, is that, when they did this to the animals, then they really saw a lot of the different diseases that these rodents were suffering from, that would be seen in modern culture were much less prevalent in the group taking the melatonin and the lifespan. I mean, it was just amazing. And so then they’re like, “Oh, wow. Okay. So melatonin seems to be really, really beneficial when there’s a stress involved and there’s a need for adaptation.” So, this is outside of the pineal. So this is why the book I wrote is, “Melatonin: Miracle Molecule.” And it’s beyond sleep. Right? So, this idea of melatonin just for sleep is really limiting compared to what all of the benefits melatonin provides.
Katie: You’re right, I think most people have probably only ever heard of melatonin recommendations in relation to sleep specifically. And like I said, it seems like that even in sleep recommendation, can be a little controversial as far as, if taking it… I’ve heard for instance that taking melatonin can down regulate your body’s natural production of melatonin. What’s your take on that? Or just are we talking about sort of, like, a different process in the body at this point with these doses?
Dr. John: Well, so there’s misinformation out there on melatonin. I mean, I would say it’s just the vast majority of healthcare practitioners really don’t understand melatonin, and they’re just parroting things that they might have seen without really digging into the research themselves. And so, there’s no toxicity of melatonin. They’ve done studies where it would be, like, an adult taking 150,000 milligrams. And they just stopped the study because they just assumed. And that was also the thing that was overwhelming to me when I went through all of the different studies. And, you know, we broke melatonin down into multiple different chapters, as far as, like, organs and different disease processes that melatonin worked on. And all the researchers concluded at the end of all these studies pretty much the same thing, whereas there just doesn’t seem to be any toxicity, and that further research into this would be appropriate. And so the other thing is, when you deal with hormones, there’s always this concern about a negative feedback. Whereas if you take the hormone, the hormone is going to down regulate your own production.
That happens with estrogen, and that happens with progesterone, and cortisol, and testosterone. Virtually all the different hormones in your body have this negative feedback loop. And that really keeps things in check. But not melatonin, there is no negative feedback loop. In other words, there is no direct correlation with your production of melatonin and any exogenous use. You will produce melatonin based on the amount of sunlight or photons that enter the eyes. And they create a storage of melatonin in the pineal. So then when total darkness hits, then there’s the release from the pineal, which is then going to activate you to go into a very deep parasympathetic state, which is opposite from cortisol. So cortisol would be to, like, the sympathetic nervous system, getting you up in the morning, getting you able to, like, do and focus on things. To the opposite would be the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that’s extremely important for us to be able to rest, and relax, and have proper blood flow to our brain, and to have proper blood flow to our gut and to our digestive system, to all of our organs, really. Because you think about the parasympathetic being resting and digesting. And the sympathetic being fight or flight.
You know, when you’re in a fight or flight state, all the resources are going towards getting away and fighting, or fleeing. And so this is the state that I see so many of my patients in, and so many people in general, in today’s world. There’s just so many different stressors that activate the sympathetic nervous system. And so, there’s a need for something that’s going to strengthen and improve the parasympathetic nervous system to bring things back into balance. And that’s where I think melatonin really comes into place. And when you look at the production of melatonin at a young age, and as you get older, I mean, it’s just so drastically low, by even the 40s. And then when you get into the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, I mean, there’s just very little production. So that leaves us really with the option of supplementing. And then when we start thinking about supplementing, we start thinking about, well, are we really just interested in the circadian rhythm, then lighter doses, you know, might be fine. Or if we’re really looking for that total body rejuvenation, or that total body effect of stress resilience.
And there might be times where we want to take high doses for periods of time, like when we’re traveling, right, versus other times. So there’s different thoughts with taking it. You know, there’s different ways to go about it. I personally take at least 200 milligrams of melatonin each night. And some of the smartest people I know, and the biggest researchers like Russell Ryder also takes large amounts like that, and has for many, many years.
Katie: Well, I’d love to go deeper on two particular points. So, you said you take it 200 milligrams per night. I’m guessing it is still important to take it at night. Like, you wouldn’t necessarily want to take that in the morning, just because of its ability to, like, lower cortisol and put you in parasympathetic mode, if I’m understanding that right?
Dr. John: Yeah. So, there are instances where I would recommend, like, a patient here at the clinic to take it during the day as well, if it was a cancer patient, or a degenerative neurologic patient, or just a patient that I really wanted to support to the maximum. Twenty percent of the population won’t be able to tolerate melatonin during the day, just because they’ll be just so drowsy. But what’s really interesting, as long as there’s light hitting our eyes, we’re not going to have that activation through the pineal. So, many people can tolerate taking melatonin during the day, but there is that consideration about the circadian rhythm. And so, I don’t think that the average person would be a candidate to take it day and night, but it’s not something that we don’t recommend with some cases.
Katie: Okay, that was gonna be my next question, is, if you find that if you’re tired in the morning from taking that big of a dose. Because a thing I’ve thought of a few times when I’ve taken it when traveling, for instance, and I was drowsy, but I also was inside and unable to get light exposure. So that would actually make sense with what you’re saying. So, as a general practice, even with big doses, you would want to take it most of the time at night, and then get sunlight in the morning to start that process of the body’s natural circadian rhythm.
Dr. John: Right. Yeah. So, melatonin orally is only about two and a half percent absorbed because it’s a very delicate molecule. There’s so many different nutrients that a lot of people take in supplements that just really don’t absorb very well. NAD is a big anti-aging and health supplement that doesn’t absorb well orally. Glutathione is another one. A lot of your polyphenols, a lot of the plant, you know, the curcumin, and resveratrol. Those also don’t really make it through the gut very well. And so, our digestive enzymes break them down. And then our liver also breaks them down through something called the first pass. And so then what’s required is, literally at the other end of that process, is the body has to put things back together. And so it’s very challenging for these different nutrients. And so, I’ve personally found suppositories to be just such an excellent delivery, and it was something that I discovered early on in my healthcare journey. Specifically with glutathione suppositories. You know, this is something I could take before I went to bed, and I would wake up and actually feel halfway human. And so that kind of led to looking into formulating a number of different other nutrients and suppositories.
And that’s what we’ve got at the MitoZen. You know, we formulate a number of different repositories. And so, rectal delivery avoids the digestive enzymes, and it also avoids first pass through the liver. So it’s very comparable to if you were to go to a clinic and get an IV, except it might even be better in some ways, because that level of nutrient is going to be exposed in your blood for up to five to seven hours. Whereas if you get an IV, usually those IVs drip for an hour, maybe two hours. And so if you’re really wanting these nutrients to get into your cells to make the biggest impact on your health, then slow delivery, over a long period of time, is really going to be your best friend. And that’s where we find the suppositories to be. And it’s really no big deal. You know, for somebody listening to this thinking, “Oh, my gosh.” You know, like, I remember the first time that I did a suppository for the first time, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, here we go.” But I found it was just such not a big deal. And you don’t even know it’s there. It takes, like, two seconds to put it in. It melts. It’s basically like an oil, because it’s in, like, a suspension of oil when it’s placed.
Katie: And are there differences in dosing that people would use, for instance, for just sleep issues and wanting to improve sleep versus some of these more severe issues? I know you said some people it sounds like in very severe cases, could even take it during the day. So at probably very, very large doses. But are there sort of ranges of just for sleep issues versus for other things?
Dr. John: Yeah, they’ve done a lot of research on melatonin where they’ve done, you know, 10, 20, 40, 60 milligrams, and sometimes even higher, with some really interesting results. Like, for instance, there was a study that they did in Canada on COVID. And they were using 40 milligrams of melatonin, and they found that it decreased the transmission by 54%. And, you know, when I read that, I was thinking, “Oh, this has got to make the news. This is going to be something that everybody’s got to know about.” Because, you know, there was no… And I try to be careful when I speak about these things, you know, because we’re being watched and it can be a little bit dangerous, I think, for some of us to be very outspoken. But it really is very sad. So, people don’t think about melatonin as something that would be protective during an infection. There’s quite a bit of information in my book about melatonin. But if you think about a stressor, right, we said it’s like one of the ultimate stress resilience molecules. Well, you talk about a stressor, when you get, like, a bad infection, whether it’s Epstein Barr, or Lyme disease, or the common cold, or the current pandemic.
These things create a tremendous amount of inflammation, and the body has to overcome all of that inflammation, and maintain the strength and viability of the immune system. And what happens is, there’s something called a cellular danger response. And the real scientific word for that is the Warburg effect. And so Otto Warburg was a German scientist, and he discovered, basically how cancer cells really operate. And so, like, when a normal cell turns into a cancer cell, it makes this very specific shift in the way it makes energy. And so some people call this the cell danger response. And basically, in essence, what happens is that there’s a certain… Because all stresses have one thing in common. They all result in inflammation, right? So the stressor initiates inflammation. It is the inflammation that affects the mitochondria, where it shuts the mitochondria down, and it shifts the energy production out of the mitochondria into a system that is only 10% as effective as it would otherwise be. And so this is the cell danger response, or what they call the Warburg effect. And this is exactly what happens with cancer cells.
So this is something that’s happening all the time in our body. And there’s, you know, extremes where you get into cancer, but then there’s also situations where we might get on an airplane and travel to Europe, and then exposed to all the EMFs, and the plane, and the bad air, and the mental emotional stress of packing and getting there, right? So all these things accumulate, and you start to have inflammation. And then we’re worn out, and we’re on a trip, and we’re not really feeling as robust and vital as we would like. Well, that’s a situation where we could take a little bit more melatonin, and find that all of that would be quite different, you know, because we would be able to tolerate and adapt to those stressors.
Katie: That’s fascinating. And it makes sense. I recently had Thomas Seyfried on as well. And he was mentioning the Warburg effect in relation to his research on cancer. And the way you just explained it, it actually makes complete sense that those things would be very synergistic. I also love that this seems to really highlight also, we know from the research, I’m sure people have heard by now, things relating to the importance of regulating our circadian biology and making sure we’re supporting that. It sounds like this is also a key when it comes to, if you’re going to do high dose melatonin, you need to have those light signaling cues. But I’m curious, are there lifestyle, diet, or supplemental things people can do that work synergistically with high dose melatonin, or that just naturally helped the body’s production of melatonin?
Dr. John: Yeah. So, if we’re talking about the sleep wake cycle, there’s a lot… I mean, we could really get into it if that’s something that you feel you’d like to really dive into, as far as, you know, sleep, right? So our deep sleep and our sleep cycle is really… It’s important to have a level of protection to that. And so, besides taking melatonin exogenously, we can have… Think about it like signaling. So, if you were to think that there was, like, somebody sitting in a cave, right, and they were, like, deep in your brain, all the way in the middle of your head, right? And there’s this little cave, and there’s, like, this little guy or gal sitting in there, and there’s a little walkie talkie, and they’re, like, getting signals as far as what’s going on out there. Like, I have no idea, is it day? Is it night? Is it getting close to being night?
And so, the signaling is very important. It is multiple things that signal us to have this sleep wake cycle, where we’re awake, and we’re productive, and then we’re sleeping, and we’re really restoring ourselves. So, like, getting up in the morning and getting direct sunlight into our eyes. You know, we’re on the walkie talkie. Hey, it’s morning. Let’s get up. Let’s have a strong wake up signal. Right? And so, sunrise and sunset have been really important cues as we’ve developed as human beings. And so, watching the sun rise and watching the sun set…you know, sun gazing basically. There’s been some really, really interesting effects that I’ve seen with that. Agnihotra is a Vedic practice where they burn this this small fire, it’s a very bright burning fire that burns for about 12 minutes, and you basically stare at it. And we have some systems that we’re using with our patients, with some very specific lights that we have people put at their house, that they can look at. And it’s the near infrared light that’s really the magic, right? So, infrared and near infrared. The big difference is the near infrared penetrates much deeper. And a lot of the healing principles are in the near infrared, right? So, the sun is about 54% near infrared. And there’s different light sources that can be up to 40%, 42% or so. And so we have people using these at home.
And then if we think about the sun, and we think about the blue and the green lights that are going to be really prominent during the day. You know, these are really prominent in a lot of our TV, and our computer screens, and our cell phones, and even in the lights in the ceiling. And so, what a lot of people might think about doing is switching all of their lights to a red light at night, once the sun goes down. The easiest way I found to do that is to get these remote plug outlets. You can just go on to Amazon and type in remote plug outlets, and you get the one that has, like, six plug outlets or whatnot. And then you get little lamps and get red lights and put them in there. And you put the lamps around your house. And then it makes it really easy to turn all the lights on and off. And I’ve also used, like, red rope light. I put that, like, up in the stairs in my house and on the balconies outside. And that way, you’re not getting exposed, you’re protecting that sleep wake cycle, which is so important. Making sure that you have good coverage on your windows so that it’s totally dark in your bedroom is important. EMF can trick the brain into thinking that it’s sun because the rays go through and they actually activate your pineal. So turning off your Wi-Fi router at night. You know, those are, I think, some of the easier things to make shifts with.
Katie: Yeah, I love all those recommendations. I do that in my home. I don’t have timers on them, but I have the daylight broad spectrum bulbs in the ceiling overhead. And then at sunset, we turn those off and we turn on lamps that have the red-light bulbs. And it’s amazing, especially in kids. I feel like kids respond so much quicker to everything. But they naturally start to get calmer, more tired. Bedtime is easier when we make those light changes and don’t have screens at night. And also to echo your point, when they get morning sunlight, they are more focused and energetic during the day, so am I. So I love those recommendations. I did a whole solo episode just on morning sunlight. And I’m a big proponent that if we all just did that, that’s a free thing we can all do that makes a huge difference in how we feel during the day.
And I know we could talk about melatonin for the whole episode if we wanted to. And I’ll make sure I link to your book in the show notes, because there’s so much more than what we’ve covered. But another topic I really want to learn from you about is the topic of methylene blue. Because I’ve experimented with it a little bit, but I don’t have a deep understanding of it. And I know that you’ve done a lot of research here as well. So for anyone not familiar, can you start off by just explaining what methylene blue is?
Dr. John: Wow, yeah. So we’re going into my next favorite subject, you know, these two molecules, melatonin and methylene blue. It’s just so fascinating how they have some synergies together, I believe. We find that when we… We have a train track right behind us. I don’t know if you can hear that. They like to honk right behind the clinic.
Katie: That’s kinda fun.
Dr. John: So the methylene blue works a little bit different. So melatonin is produced in the mitochondria to quench stress. Whereas the methylene blue, it gets into the mitochondria and it has this affinity for mitochondria. So, like, literally, it was originally a staining product, they would stain tissues. Where they would do, you know, biological studies under microscopes, and they would be able to look at especially, like, nerves. And they found that the nerves just lit up really, really blue. And so it was mitochondria that the methylene blue were particularly attracted to. And so the more mitochondria the cell has, the more stained it would become. Right? And Paul Ehrlich in the late 1800s, wanted to develop a cure for malaria. And so he was using the methylene blue as a dye. So he puts the dye in there. And he’s about to start introducing a number of different medicines to see what would work as a anti-microbial for malaria. And as soon as he introduced the dye, he was shocked. And he saw that it worked as an anti-microbial. So he found his cure with the dye. And so then methylene blue was introduced, as its first indication was an anti-malarial drug.
And this is way before the FDA was, you know, even a thing. So methylene blue predates the FDA. And its safety track is just incredible. In fact, the term magic bullet was coined about a substance that had far reaching healing abilities to the body, but left the body unharmed. And they were referring to methylene blue, because not only is it antimicrobial, it’s also an energizer. Because it gets into the mitochondria, what it does is it acts as a pro-oxidant and an antioxidant. So in other words, it donates electrons and allows your cells to make energy independent of oxygen. And it up regulates it by about 30%. And so, most people that take methylene blue might find that they have more mental clarity, they’re more focused, they might have more physical abilities. They’ve also done large clinical trials on mood, particularly on depression. And the results were fantastic.
So methylene blue acts a bit as an SSRI. So it does enhance mood quite well. And it’s photodynamic. In other words, there’s different substances that work with light. And when certain light frequencies interact with these substances, they call that photo biomodulation. So it’s the ability of light to interact with our cells in our body, in conjunction with different substances, which is… Really, it’s kind of the source of my next book I’m working on called “Light Hacker’s Guide.” And we get into all these different substances. But of course, methylene blue is the most powerful that I found. So when you take methylene blue, and then you also introduce light, particularly red lights, you see a very powerful mitochondrial benefit.
Katie: So I’m curious about the dosing and delivery method for methylene blue. I’ve definitely seen and tried the, like, troches oral versions, where someone ends up with their whole mouth turning blue for a while. I’m curious what, in your opinion, is the best way to deliver this, and what kind of dosing someone should do, and maybe any cautions about sourcing. Because I know this is something you could also just buy on Amazon, from, like, an industrial supply type place. Are there questions, cautions about where you’re getting the methylene blue and the sourcing?
Dr. John: Yes, yes. Methylene blue can be quite toxic if it’s bought… You know, you want the pharmaceutical grade. So, you know, they sell it for aquariums and so forth because it can keep aquariums clean and microbial free. It’s healthy for the fish. So, yeah, you want to have a reputable source. Francisco Gonzalez Lima is probably one of the foremost researchers on methylene blue. And when he was asked about sublingual delivery, he was very much, you know, kind of poopooed it. He did not feel that the amount of methylene blue would be significant getting through, you know, the sublingual. And I don’t think a lot of people really want their mouth turning blue. You know, so, it’s not very attractive. We created a product called Lumetol Blue. And basically, it’s held in a palm oil, and so you can throw it in the back of your throat and then drink something down, and your mouth doesn’t turn blue. Methylene blue does absorb very nice orally. And so dosage wise, we find that the dose is between, like, 40 and 80 milligrams for most people tends to really work very well. But the dosage for each individual is going to vary depending on their unique, you know, makeup. And so it’s something that you want to experience experiment with. And then again, just like the melatonin, there might be times where you’d want to take more, for more support.
Like, if you were getting sick, or if you were sick, you know, I would recommend taking a much higher dose. And most sources that I’ve read feel that between a half a milligram and four milligrams per kilogram of body weight is well within the safety zone of taking methylene blue. There is a concern of taking very, very high doses of methylene blue can inhibit your ability to utilize oxygen and actually clog up the mitochondria, and could lead to death. But you would have to get into some very, very high doses of methylene blue in order to have that. So, for the most part, I would say, you know, dosing at that level, a half a milligram to four milligrams, you’re well within the safety. And then taking a couple of days off every few weeks makes sense because it can start to accumulate in the mitochondria. And it just gives your body ability to purge it out. Your pee will turn blue. And, you know, that can be quite fun in the snow, by the way, I found. And then as your urine starts to not be blue, you know that your body’s kind of clearing it. So you will know, you know, your body’s clearance of the methylene blue just based on that.
Katie: That’s good to know. And I know you have products related to this. I’ll link to those as well in the show notes. But it’s good to know that you can use oral delivery on methylene blue, even though with melatonin, we mentioned the rectal delivery is more effective. And you have products for both of those, I believe, on your website, right?
Dr. John: Yes.
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Katie: Okay. And you mentioned that methylene blue is synergistic with photo biomodulation. And I would love to talk a little bit about photo biomodulation independently, and maybe some of the ways that it’s supportive. Because I talked a little bit about this before, and I’ve written about red light therapy, for instance. But the more I read, the more I become a believer that light is probably one of the most, if not the most important signaling mechanisms for the body. And while we all love to talk about the latest supplement, or diet, or all those other things, I feel like light is one that is often easier to dial in and potentially more important. But I would love your take on this and any tips related to photo biomodulation use and light exposure in general.
Dr. John: Yeah. So, there’s a number of different ways to utilize light for your health. And the easiest is just to get out in the sun. You know, and obviously the concern with going out and getting too much sun is that we burn. And then when our skin burns, it creates a lot of oxidation, which then repeat exposure can put you at higher risk for, like, skin cancer, right? What I found personally is when I’m taking the higher doses of melatonin, I don’t burn. I mean, I would burn to a crisp in, like, just an hour, you know, especially in my youth, growing up in Hawaii, surfing all day, out sailing. You know, I was in sailing classes every summer, and my face would just turn into one big scab. And so, what’s really fascinating is, I can go out literally all day long and I won’t burn at all. I’ll just, you know, get a nice tan because melatonin is protecting my skin. And so, getting out in the sun, I think, is something that is really valuable. And getting as much skin exposure as you can, and not wearing sunglasses as well. When we wear sunglasses, we also create more of an opportunity to burn, because the melanin secretion from our skin, which is what protects us, that’s the tanning mechanism, is triggered from light in our eyes.
So, wearing sunglasses can actually put you at a higher risk for damaging your skin as well. And you’re missing out on some of that benefit of the light going into your eyes, which we talked about earlier, which is building up that melatonin. But then there’s some really cool, like, kind of biohacking and different things that we use here at the clinic. Like, we’re using intravenous light therapy. So we actually have devices that have various colors of light that we introduce into the vein, and then we directly expose the blood. So, you know, our skin was designed to protect us from light, right? So, you know, the first millimeter of skin absorbs, like, 90% of that light. And the light that penetrates the deepest is that near infrared, and that red spectrum. The rest of the spectrums just completely are…they just don’t get through the skin, you know, no less into the tissues. So when you start getting into things like blue light, and green light, and yellow light, and, and some of the other colors, and the ability to utilize those colors with activating certain nutrients, you know. And in particular, our clinic we do a lot with chronic infections and chronic cases, autoimmune and such, which is usually driven by infection as well.
And so, we’re using things like riboflavin, you know. And St. John’s wort and wormwood, Chinese wormwood, or artemisia. So these different nutrients are very photo dynamic. And so, when you combine those with the different lights, very, very powerful, very powerful. Intranasal light therapy, I think, is probably one of my favorite. You can do intraoral light therapy. We have systems where we have a regenerative treatment for the inner ear. And we do laser into the ear here, called Luma Med. And there’s actually a home device that we will get people using, where it’s like a little ear bud. It puts that red light. And so we like to have people on methylene blue, while we’re doing these, so it enhances that photo dynamic aspect, rectally or vaginally. We have something called the MitoWand that we just recently started to carry on our website. And so, it’s both blue… See, blue is very anti-microbial. And blue also works very well with, like, say curcumin and a lot of plant polyphenols to enhance their anti-inflammatory mechanism. And then of course, the red and near infrared is very regenerative. And it also can be anti-inflammatory, it can be anti-bacterial as well. But it really works on that cellular energy.
So, this MitoWand can be used rectally. We’re utilizing it with people with prostate issues. And then vaginally, vaginal wall atrophy or chronic vaginal infections. But also just all of the blood supply there that doesn’t have the skin that would be protecting from the sun as much, so you can have the ability to really expose your bloodstream, you know, through these route. Which is really…you know, that’s really what one of our main goals is, when we do intranasal, intraoral, intravascular. We’re utilizing light therapy through different methods where we go into the joint or along the spine. So we do a lot of stem cell therapy here. And so, we may have a case that has, like, say, a spinal radiculopathy. In other words, their, their disc or there’s some sort of an impingement irritating a nerve. And so we may go down there and inject some stem cells right around it under imaging. And then we would feed a catheter and basically shower that nerve root with some light, different light spectrums. So the rabbit hole goes quite deep. There’s a lot of amazing utilizations with photo biomodulation.
Katie: That’s really, really interesting. And I am glad you brought up your point about sunglasses. I had a holistic eye doctor on recently who said a similar thing of, we’re actually short circuiting a lot of the important things happening in the body when we wear sunglasses in the sun. And so, even though I live in a very sunny climate, I don’t think I even own sunglasses anymore. I found if it’s too bright, I’ll just wear a hat. And that it really does seem to make you less likely to burn when you are getting sun exposure along with light exposure to the eyes. And then I also like that you brought up the systemic deliveries through, like, vaginal or rectal methods. I’ve had other guests talk about that as well for other substances. And it makes sense that you’re able to get it in a more systemic way and bypass some of those natural things that would protect against it. And doing that in a very targeted way seems like it could have a very profound effect. You also mentioned your clinic. And I would love for you to just talk about what kinds of things you guys deal with in your clinic and how people can reach out to you if you are even accepting new patients.
Dr. John: Yeah, we do accept new patients. So we’re in Sarasota, Florida, and we have a regenerative practice here. We also deal with cases with Lyme, and mold, and autoimmune, and a lot of degenerative neurologic disorders. I’m a naturopath, but also a chiropractic neurologist. So I work with a lot of different traumatic brain injuries. And we utilize kind of a wide spectrum of modalities here. And so, you know, we may have cases where I’m using different cranial manipulations and certain neurologic exercises in conjunction with different IVs. Like, we talked about, one of the IVs that we’re really excited about is called Luma Blue. And what this is, is we do this high dose magnesium followed by colloidal silver. And then after that, we run methylene blue, and then we run the intravenous laser. And the reason that we’re doing the silver is that silver connects with the methylene blue, it enhances that whole photo biomodulation. Gold does as well, but it’s very hard to find gold that you can run as an IV. But the silver also in of itself is very anti-microbial, but we’re just seeing some great results with that. We use a lot of ozone, intravenous ozone as well. We’re using something called V cells. Are you familiar with V cells?
Katie: A little bit. I’ve actually gotten to experiment with one treatment of that, but I would guess a lot of people are not familiar. So can you explain what that is?
Dr. John: Well, it stands for very small embryonic-like stem cells. And so these are normally in your blood. And there’s ways to allow them to be liberated so that, they’re able to be utilized. And so, basically, it’s a blood draw, there’s an activation to that blood, and then they can be injected into joints. And they can be run IV, where it goes systemic. And then we have a device that actually lets us hone them into very specific parts of the body. We have a protocol called brain point. And brain point protocol allows us to specifically assess an individual and find out what areas of their brain would most benefit from the support with the V cells. And then we go in home them in directly into those parts of the brain.
Katie: That’s fascinating. It sounds like you guys are doing a whole lot of cutting-edge stuff. And I would guess that we get a whole lot of follow up questions with specifics from people who are saying, what about this? Or I have this. Or is my case different because of this? So I’ll definitely link to your website for your clinic in the show notes, people can find that, and perhaps we can do round two if we get some specific questions. But I would also love to hear on a personal level, with all of these things that you have access to, what your personal sort of 80-20 or non-negotiables are, that you make a regular part of your own routine?
Dr. John: Yeah. So, I like to sauna with a very high powered near infrared sauna. I like to use sauna space, sauna space lights, the way that we do some of the morning and evening kind of sun gazing mimicking as well, with some of their smaller units, which you can see one of them here on the wall here. Right here, that’s called the photon. And that’s something you could just put in your living room or your kitchen, and put it on for 30 minutes at sunrise and sunset. And then they have larger units that almost every morning, I’ll go in there and really sweat and do sauna. Wake up in the morning, I drink a lot of fluid, some electrolytes, I get in front of the sauna. And then I’m also taking methylene blue pretty regularly. So between the methylene blue and the sauna, I’m really getting a very powerful photo biomodulation effect. And of course on top of that, try to get out in the sun as much as I can. But I’m finding combining that with hyperbaric oxygen, I have one of those soft chambers. That just tends to really move the needle, I think, on myself and a lot of other people that I’ve turned on to this.
You know the hyperbarics are not cheap. I mean, you could get one, I think they’re about $15,000. But they last for a long time. And an individual that really is interested in doing some, like, serious biohacking at home, I would consider getting a sauna, getting familiar with the methylene blue, and perhaps even introducing some of the high dose melatonin, and then doing some hyperbaric. And if you can’t get one at your house, you can find somebody you can go to. But those I find to be extremely powerful.
Katie: Awesome. And I know you have more resources available on the website as well. So, again, that link will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm A couple wrap up questions I love to ask. The first being, if there’s a book or a number of books that have profoundly influenced your life. And if so, what they are and why.
Dr. John: Well, I think the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl was really impactful. And I find myself quoting that quite a bit just because, you know, this idea that, you know, our happiness and our ability to be comfortable is really just a personal choice, right? So, Viktor was in the Holocaust, and in the Nazi concentration camps. But he was able to overcome that, where a lot of other people weren’t, just because of, where he was focusing his attention and his perspective. And so, you know, I like to read a lot on everything from, like, spiritual, but also a lot of science. And so, you know, that kind of keeps me fairly balanced, doing both.
Katie: I’m a big fan of that book as well. So very much second your recommendation on that one. And lastly, any parting advice for the listeners that could be related to one of the topics we covered or entirely unrelated life advice?
Dr. John: Well, I think that having balance in your life between what I call the three pillars is really important. And those three pillars are the vitality of the body, which we covered in some depth here. And the more vital the body is, the happier you are, the better you are to your friends and family, the better community. And then identity, you know, having a positive identity with regards to yourself and the relationship between yourself and other people. And then having some sort of a direct experience with the divine. You know, and having that kind of knowledge that there’s something bigger than ourselves that is creating everything, right? And for me, I had the pleasure of the opportunity to be in a ceremony where there was a plant medicine experience. And, you know, this was a very controlled…there was a very experienced shaman. And that was very life changing for me to, you know, really have that experience of the divine. And I think when you can put all of those together, then it’s possible for us to achieve our most vital self in this life.
Katie: I love that. I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up for now. But as also a Floridian, I hope I eventually get to make it to your clinic and check it out. It sounds like you have an incredible setup there. And for any of you who want to learn more, all those links will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm, so you can check them out. But John, thank you so much for your time today. I got to learn a lot on some topics that were new to me. And I’m excited to do more research.
Dr. John: Yes, it’s been so nice, Katie. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama Podcast.
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