Episode #151: Melatonin Miracle with Dr. John Lieurance, ND, DC

Why You Should Listen

In this episode, you will learn about the miracle molecule know as melatonin.

Watch The Show

Listen To The Show

Support The Show

About My Guest

My guest for this episode is Dr. John Lieurance.  John Lieurance, ND, DC is a naturopathic and chiropractic neurologist who has been in private practice for over 27 years.  He directs Advanced Rejuvenation, a multi-disciplinary clinic, with a focus on alternative and regenerative medicine, naturopathic medicine, functional neurology, functional cranial release, Lumomed, Lyme disease, mold illness, and many other neurological conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, degenerative neurological disease, and inner ear conditions. He travels internationally teaching other doctors about the benefits of melatonin and various protocols using melatonin as well as other modalities.  Dr. Lieurance founded UltimateCellularReset.com, a web based educational portal, which sends out weekly videos on health and wellness tools for overcoming disease and fostering longevity and vitality.  He has been featured in many podcasts and documentaries.

Key Takeaways

• What is melatonin?
• Where is it produced in the body?
• What properties does melatonin have that go beyond sleep support?
• How might melatonin help the body to mitigate stress?
• Can melatonin help with autonomic nervous system balance?
• Does melatonin support the mitochondria and production of ATP?
• Does melatonin support the brain's ability to detoxify and minimize neurodegenerative conditions?
• Can melatonin support autophagy and balance mTOR/autophagy?
• Might melatonin have a role in dealing with chronic infections?
• How might melatonin support detoxification of heavy metals?
• Does melatonin help to balance the immune system?
• Is melatonin a reasonable tool to consider in those with autoimmune conditions?
• How important is it to decalcify the pineal gland?
• How might melatonin be helpful in those with SIBO?
• What forms of melatonin work best?
• What is high-dose melatonin?

Connect With My Guest

https://MelatoninBook.com
Use code BETTERHEALTH to get your free PDF version of the book

Related Resources

MitoZen
Use code BETTERHEALTH to get 10% off

Interview Date

August 24, 2021

Transcript

Transcript Disclaimer: Transcripts are intended to provide optimized access to information contained in the podcast.  They are not a full replacement for the discussion.  Timestamps are provided to facilitate finding portions of the conversation.  Errors and omissions may be present as the transcript is not created by someone familiar with the topics being discussed.  Please Contact Me with any corrections. 

[00:00:00.26] Welcome to BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts, empowering your better health. And now, here's Scott, your Better Health Guy.

[00:00:14.05] The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health-related decisions with your own personal medical authority.

[00:00:35.06] Scott: Hello everyone, and welcome to episode number 151 of the BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts series. Today's guest is Dr. John Lieurance, and the topic of the show is the Melatonin Miracle. Dr. John Lieurance is a naturopathic and chiropractic neurologist who's been in private practice for over 27 years.

He directs Advanced Rejuvenation, a multi-disciplinary clinic with a focus on alternative and regenerative medicine, naturopathic medicine, functional neurology, functional cranial release, Lumomed, Lyme disease, mold illness, and many other neurological conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, degenerative neurological disease, and inner ear conditions.

He travels internationally teaching other doctors about the benefits of melatonin and various protocols using melatonin as well as other modalities. Dr. Lieurance founded UltimateCellularReset.com, a web-based educational portal which sends out weekly videos on health and wellness tools for overcoming disease and fostering longevity and vitality.

He has been featured in many podcasts and documentaries, and now my interview with Dr. John Lieurance.

I am super excited today to talk with Dr. John Lieurance on his new book, Melatonin: Miracle Molecule.

I often joke that melatonin has been my personal drug of choice for many years, and I'm excited today to learn more about it; thanks for being here, Dr. John.

[00:02:11.12] Dr. John: Scott, thank you so much for having me, and I have a good feeling about this conversation about melatonin.

I have a personal purpose to bring this information to the public because it's been suppressed, maybe not suppressed, but certainly, there's a lot of research that we'll go into that just seems to finger into almost every condition, every part of the body every system in the body.

[00:02:39.18] Scott: Absolutely, I mean, I learned a ton. I knew a good deal about melatonin, but your book goes into so much detail that there were so many other connections that I wasn't aware of.

So let's start by having you talk about how your own personal journey led you to doing the work you do today with your clients, with your patients. Did you have your own complex chronic illness that led you to your passion today?

[00:03:03.08] Dr. John: Yes. I think there's a lot of practitioners like myself; there's that pain to purpose story.

A good friend of mine, Dan Pompa likes to, that was a phrase I borrow from him. And for me, my pain to purpose story is one where there was an illness, and what's interesting about my situation is that I was already a very successful physician, and I had been pioneering some work with endonasal balloon manipulation, in combination with using different neurological testing and something called functional neurology.

So I was working with a lot of people with various neurological conditions, movement disorders. Like for instance, there's a rare neurological case called palatal myoclonus, and I've probably seen close to 60 of these cases where any other doctor in the world has probably only seen two or three. But when early on, you could put videos out.

So I was having these just dramatic improvements and changes with using the balloon treatments and putting them on YouTube. So I was having all these people come in from all over the world really, and so I had one of those practices, and then I got sick, and I didn't have the answers, right?

Which was just incredibly frustrating because I was supposed to be the one that could fix anybody. And so I started searching, and I went to multiple holistic practitioners that mostly ran functional testing on me, right? And they were like, well, your gut bacteria's off. Or you've got some inflammatory markers high, or your platelets are low. It was just these kind of random things, but nobody ran the right labs on me for almost a decade.

And finally, it was actually me that just said, you know I'm going to run an IgeneX test; let me just see, do I have Lyme? It came back positive. I hooked up with someone local that was doing a lot of very high-level work with viruses, he ran a number of viral panels on me, and it was like those were all high. So then I really got my clinical picture.

And what happened with me is I started to incrementally get better, as I started to address it best I could. And it got to a point where I was better, but I was always like super sensitive; I couldn't really travel. And I just felt like I was always on the verge of this inflammatory reaction, and so it made it impossible to really want to plan things.

I mean, you'd literally plan a dinner, but then it's like I don't know if I'm going to be up for it or not, and it was a way you could lose a lot of friends. That type of inflammation, when it would kick in, definitely affected my mood.

I was irritable quite a bit, and so it can be incredibly isolating. And I know a lot of people listening to your particular podcast can really resonate with this story. The things that I found to really be important after this kind of initial cleanup that I did was the mold component.

And so I wound up testing my house, and I found there was mold in the house I was living in before, the one I was in presently. And so, the process of studying pretty rigorously with some of the work that Shoemaker does.

And I'll tell you right off the bat, there are some things I agree with, and there are some things that I haven't found clinically applicable, and I've added to that whole kind of idea.

So for people that aren't familiar with Ritchie Shoemaker, he's actually really done a lot for, I think, all of us because he's really brought to the forefront sinus conditions that can really cause a lot of inflammation, particularly MARCoNS.

Which I think is important for all of us. Anybody that's got any illness at all, they really need to look at that. Toxic buildup and this is really at the core of a lot of the things that I discovered that helped myself, and then now we do with patients is, you've got two main components that these toxins build up.  One is they go through the liver and gallbladder, they travel through the gut, and they just circle over and over and over again. And so there are some very specific binders, particularly I like cholestyramine, and then there's the more difficult to handle component where the toxins settle in your cell membranes and fatty tissues in your body because we're talking about fat-soluble toxins.

Water-soluble toxins, the body doesn't have as much and is able to clear those fairly efficiently. But the fat-soluble toxins are the biotoxins, right? So we're talking about biotoxin illness as an umbrella, and then we have all these subsets with Lyme disease, viral infections, and mold.

But they're all within one umbrella of biotoxin illness, and the biotoxins are fat-soluble; they create a tremendous amount of inflammation, and it's somewhat difficult to flush these out and get healthy cell membranes because that's where the rubber kind of meets the road.

And this can dovetail into melatonin very nicely, but the cytokines okay, so every stress that we encounter is going to relate into some sort of combination of cytokines that are released. So even a sunburn, there are cytokines that are released in the skin.

And so it's stress, and the stress causes inflammation. If it's too much stress, your body can't handle that amount of stress. And so you have pathology, you have disease, you have a problem, right? But then there's the familiar zone, right?

So the familiar zone is stressors that we are typically on a day-to-day basis exposed to, it's not enough stress that's really enrolling your body to get stronger, so it's kind of status quo. And just outside of the familiar zone is the hormetic zone.

And hormesis is when there's a stressor given in the right dosage gives us a net gain in health; which exercise is a perfect example of that, right?

Too much exercise, you could injure your ligaments and so forth, but just enough, you're going to have muscle growth, not enough, and it's not enough stimuli to the muscle to really do anything.

So when I look at melatonin, I look at melatonin as the premier stress buffer, absolutely premier stress buffer, and it works within those cytokines.

So this allows us as people that are kind of post Lyme, post-mold whatever, we have a ceiling, right? There's only so much we can do before things crash, right? And the inflammation kicks in.

So much mold we could get exposed to, which is much less than probably when you were younger; you could probably tolerate a certain amount of mold, but now no way.

So these cytokines, what happens is they hit the cell membrane, they go into the cell, and they interact with the mitochondria in a way that causes the mitochondria to make a major shift, and this is called the Warburg effect.

And this Warburg effect happens with cancer as well, but the gist is instead if you, let's say you have a hundred logs, right? And you want to burn those logs and get the energy out of the logs in fire and heat, right?

So when you switch from this Krebs cycle which is the normal cycle inside the mitochondria, with cytokines, the cell basically can't handle that anymore, so it throws all of the pyruvates, which is the building block for this energy, into the cytosol, and there it only makes 10% of the energy.

And this is exactly what happens with COVID; it's that the cytokine storm is so heavy that there's a shift where the immune cells can now only make 10% of the energy, and it gets run away. Once that hits, it gets run away. The fascinating thing, Scott, is that melatonin is made by every mitochondria in the body, and it's made to buffer those cytokines.

And normally, it tries to keep up, and so if we keep intact, all stressors are going to go down this pathway. When we look at a cytokine and how it interacts with the mitochondria, there's a level to that amount of stress that the melatonin production can manage.

Once it exceeds that, you're kind of in a situation where you're making less energy. However, what they found is if you give supplemental melatonin, it can turn that machinery back on to start making more melatonin, and turn that whole, not just inflammatory situation, but the ability to make energy; this is really super important, right?

We need to be able to make energy efficiently, and this is the problem with a lot of us with mold and Lyme and biotoxin illness in general, is we get the machinery just basically clogged.

[00:12:51.29] Scott: So let's go back to the basics then for the listeners, so what is melatonin? Where in the body is it produced, I think most people would say the pineal gland, but we already know that it's coming from other places.

And then why might we, in some cases, need to supplement it exogenously? Is it because the number of stressors that we have in our environment?

Is it because some people aren't able to create as much as they actually need? Why might we need to consider supplemental melatonin? 

[00:13:20.01] Dr. John: All really good questions. So if you look at the graph, with normal aging, melatonin drops off absolutely dramatically, especially at 40. And by the time you're 60, 70, 80, you just almost have no melatonin.

Now stack that on top of what I call is melatonin headwinds, okay. So what are melatonin headwinds? They are things in our environment, in our life, that are inhibiting what little melatonin we might be producing, right? So this can really cause a problem.

So light pollution is on the top of my list, normally. So melatonin is a, it's the premier antioxidant in your body. It's produced by the pineal, but it's also produced in the gut. Virtually every cell in your body makes its own melatonin.

Okay, so melatonin headwinds, so light pollution, so melatonin is normally produced at night when you go to bed when there's complete darkness. And melatonin is suppressed when we get up, so when we get up, there's a lot of blue and green light because that's what's naturally during the day.

And the problem is that blue and green light is very strong in cell phones and computers and TVs, and even just the lighting that most people have in their house. There's a chapter in Melatonin: Miracle Molecule; I literally have pictures of my house, right?

And I show you how I've figured out how to make it really convenient with lamps and remote-control outlets, right? Those little pads, right? In the remote-control outlet. So you have red lights and in various lamps, and then I've got red led rope light that I've got along my stairways. So that'll be helpful to reference that.

And EMF is another big headwind for melatonin. The actual EMFs, they penetrate, and so when they go and interact with the pineal, it actually tells the pineal that it's daytime. And so, you definitely don't want any strong Wi-Fi signals while you sleep.

And I find it really interesting to look at the fact that they've established that these microwaves, these EMFs, do indeed cause cancer. And you look at melatonin, and I have a whole chapter on cancer. But melatonin, there's just dozens and dozens of articles, maybe even hundreds showing that melatonin is effective for cancer.

And we can dive a little bit into that if you'd like, but what are some other headwinds? I think there are stressors, right? We're busy. We work, and we're like on our cell phone, and we keep ourselves so busy, we're adrenalized, cortisol is high, right?

At night, we might still be kind of working on things, and then we think we can turn lights off, turn the computer off and immediately crawl into bed and go to sleep, and that's not what happens.

People, they're not working with their body in the natural fluctuations of the sun as the earth rotates around the sun, right?

[00:16:52.01] Scott: Most people I would say that are listening probably think of melatonin as a sleep supplement.

5-HTP also commonly used for sleep, isn't the sleep effect of 5-HTP largely the result of its eventual creation of melatonin?

And then would you say that sleep support or the management of our circadian rhythm really is the primary role of melatonin in the body? Or is it just the one that people know the most?

[00:17:17.23] Dr. John: 5-HTP converts into serotonin, then serotonin converts into melatonin. This is pretty obvious.

So that's an affirmative on that. I find that most people look at melatonin as just a sleep substance, and I through my research in writing this book, I have come to the conclusion that it is probably the most important molecule in your body.

Not only does it regulate sleep-wake, it protects your cells. We talked about stressors, right? There are all these different stressors. I'll give you one really interesting example that really sold me on melatonin. Was I would, I've got some Indian background blood in me, but I don't tolerate sun very well.

I get really red for a day or two, and then it goes away. I don't really brown or hold a tan. And as you can see, I'm fairly tan if you're watching this video.

So when I started using higher doses of melatonin, which will get into the super physiological dosing and why you might want to consider higher dosing than what they typically use. I noticed that I wasn't burning anymore.

Like, I can literally Scott go out in the sun all day on a sunny summer day and not have any burn at all. So this is an outward expression that I can see of how melatonin is protecting my skin. I have a whole chapter on skin, and they talk about this.

And there's been a lot of research that has shown that the melatonin prevents skin burning, and skin cancer, and a number of other skin conditions. But I had a redhead; I read this redhead male come to me that we did a bone marrow stem cell procedure on his hip.

He came from New York, and he went out fishing, right? And he started the high-dose melatonin, the Sandman, the suppository; I think it was. And he took one before he went out on this fishing trip, and he didn't burn at all.

He couldn't believe it; he came into the clinic; he's like, I can't believe it, I would normally be charred. So we know that's happening, and we can see that outwardly, but that's happening for your brain, for your gut, for your hormones, and your glands.

For every single system and every cell in your body, that is literally what melatonin does for you. Is it protects you, and it allows you to have a larger ceiling, right? Of stressors, before your body basically can't handle that anymore.

It also allows you to stay and go a little bit further into the hormetic zone, which I think is a really interesting conversation to have, Scott, right?

So let's say that if I can only exercise 20 minutes, it's possible that melatonin might support your mitochondria where you can exercise for 30 minutes and not hit that wall.

[00:20:20.09] Scott: In those people that maybe take melatonin for sleep support, and they feel worse, or they feel groggy the next day. Why do some people may be not seem to tolerate melatonin?

[00:20:31.16] Dr. John: Well, there's a gene, CYP1A2, and this is a cytochrome gene. And it's the one that also regulates us breaking down caffeine. So if you have a hard time with caffeine, let's say you take it and you feel like it stays with you longer, and you can't take as much as most people do. It's likely you have this gene.

Which means if you take melatonin, that it's going to take longer to break it down. These are the subsets of patients that will take melatonin, and they'll wake up, and they'll not just be groggy when they wake up, but they could be groggy an hour or two hours later.

What we're doing, Scott, is we're having people dose much earlier, sometimes even before dinner. Two, three, four hours before they go to sleep. Twenty percent of the people that try this, they're going to be really sleepy when they take the melatonin that early.

But the vast majority are 80 percent of the population. If they've got light and they take melatonin, they generally won't get groggy.

And this also kind of means that if we have a lot of patients where we want to dose them during the day and the night, so we actually, as alternative healthcare practitioners, will have patients that we want melatonin running through their blood at a high level all day and all night.

[00:21:52.23] Scott: It seems that today, we're under more stress than ever. You've talked about how melatonin can kind of help the body to buffer this stress.

And so, how is it protecting the body from stress? Is it primarily inflammatory support? Oxidative support? What are some of the properties that are helping the body to better mitigate or respond to daily stressors?

[00:22:15.21] Dr. John: Well, it modulates things. We know that it modulates the immune system very nicely, so some things would kind of go up a little bit. Sometimes some things are a little bit suppressed, and it's definitely the premier antioxidant.

So it works in that fashion. It supports the parasympathetic nervous system, probably more than anything. Which is really a huge benefit.

So heart rate variability is something that we look at when we're starting to work with people with the melatonin, in particular, the higher doses. And what we find is that a lot of people start reaching some really impressive heart rate variabilities.

Your heart is controlled by your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. And so you're going to get some input from one, and some input from the other. But if it starts to be more dominant on one side of your autonomics, the variability is going to be less, right?

So we don't have people that are parasympathetic dominant, I mean, it can happen, but we're all stressed. We have too much sympathetics, and this is the challenge I think most of us deal with meditation and breathwork, and there's a lot of great strategies.

But point being that when we go to sleep and all that melatonin kicks in, it's the biggest support for the parasympathetic nervous system. Which means that you'll start to get parasympathetic input to the heart.

Thus your heart rate variability or HRT will actually start to elevate very nicely. And the chart for heart rate variability and melatonin is almost identical as it relates to age and time. 

[00:23:59.18] Scott: So the more sympathetic dominant we are, the less variability there is between heartbeats. In other words, it's more consistent.

And the more parasympathetic we are, the more variability we're going to see, which is the heart rate variability.

And the ideal scenario is that there should be more variability between the time between each heartbeat, correct?

[00:24:21.15] Dr. John: Correct, yes. And so what you really want is you want both sides of the autonomics to be balanced.

[00:24:28.13] Scott: So that's kind of talking about the cellular stress effects of melatonin, supporting the cell. But do these stress mitigating effects maybe go even further than the cell?

So can it help with things like anxiety and depression and mental-emotional stress? How is it potentially supporting those issues?

[00:24:50.06] Dr. John: Ah, great question. So as a functional chiropractic neurologist, something that I found really interested interesting is all of neurological conditions, especially the degenerative ones, which you're starting to get into poor mitochondria function, poor glucose.

There are all these different problems that slow the brain down. You get these mental-emotional conditions that generally are associated with that, particularly depression. So it's really a very common symptom that is part of the clinical picture with someone that has poor brain function.

So when you start looking at melatonin, as it relates to improving mitochondrial function, we start looking at the two most metabolically sensitive organs in the body, which is your brain and your heart.

So these are the areas that will actually see some of the most profound improvements when we start using melatonin.

[00:25:52.15] Scott: You mentioned the autonomic nervous system; many people listening have various dysautonomias; POTS being one of them or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.

You talked about how melatonin can potentially kind of help modulates the autonomic nervous system. So do you see melatonin helping in some of these conditions? 

[00:26:13.12] Dr. John: Yes. So POTS, we do see a lot of that; it's a common problem. It's autonomic; it's poor autonomics, so you're not the stress of standing up, right?

So you're laying down, there's less stress, and the cardiovascular system trying to maintain a certain amount of blood pressure in circulation to the brain. So we stand up, and that stressor is stressing the autonomics, and then you've got this problem with pots.

So I do feel like there is a very good chance that someone could do nothing but go on melatonin and see some results with pots. However, as a functional neurologist, if you have the ability to find someone that's close to you that does functional neurology, preferably someone that's trained through the Carrick Institute.

There are some really cool exercises that can be done. Like, I'll kind of give you a synopsis of what that looks like. Well, I've got this table; you see that table right there, and then it lowers.

[00:27:22.08] Scott: So this is kind of what some people call tilt table?

[00:27:27.05] Dr. John: Yes, that's a high low table actually, but yes, it tilts up and down. So what I'll do is I will have people go to different positions.

So I'll go up, and I'll muscle test them until they blow out, right? So, in other words, I'll find a strong muscle, and then I'll move them up incrementally until their muscle gets really weak. And then I know that it's that angle that they're having a difficulty dealing with gravity.

And so it's at that point that I start doing horizontal gaze stabilization exercises because they're very supportive to the pons, which is really the primary area in the brainstem that kind of regulates us. So basically, this exercise is strengthening the nervous system in this really key area.

And then what I'll find is the muscle gets strong, and then I'll go to a higher level and a higher level. So I'll just incrementally work through that, and that has been profoundly helpful with a lot of my cases with POTS.

[00:28:29.09] Scott: What is the impact of melatonin on cortisol production?

[00:28:34.06] Dr. John: Well, they're opposites. So cortisol is high in the morning, and melatonin needs to be high at night. So they're kind of polar opposites as far as your circadian wake cycle, sleep-wake cycle.

[00:28:49.29] Scott: When we think then about the mitochondria and the production of energy, can taking exogenous melatonin allow the mitochondria then to produce more ATP?

Does that exogenous or supplemental melatonin actually get inside the cells where it's needed to support that ATP production?

[00:29:09.14] Dr. John: Yes, Scott, actually, it does just that. So when the cell is being assaulted by these cytokines, and it's changing the energy production of the mitochondria.

And the melatonin, it's too much for the melatonin that's normally produced within the mitochondria to keep up with. Then the cell is kind of doomed, right?

What they found in studies is they found that when given exogenous melatonin, it's a life jacket; it's a life vest to this cell and these mitochondria. And it actually gets that system primed again.

[00:29:50.15] Scott: The brain detoxifies through the glymphatic system while we sleep. Inadequate sleep prevents us from really detoxifying, which can over time increase the potential for things like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, or other neurodegenerative conditions.

So can melatonin improve our brain's ability to detoxify, and potentially over the long term, minimize neurodegenerative conditions?

[00:30:17.16] Dr. John: I like that question because the answer is going to surprise a lot of people. There have actually been studies to show that melatonin actually helps detox the brain of heavy metals. That when there's toxic exposure to the brain, that it minimizes a lot of the damage associated with that.

So we've kind of talked about it already, but the support of the mitochondria is everything. That's aging, cancer, you look at most all diseases, there's a core commonality which is cytokines, and then that challenge to the mitochondria.

So there's a mitochondrial component to just about all diseases. And so melatonin works within that core aspect. You know what I find fascinating? Is that I don't think anybody's really come out and really talked about using melatonin for Lyme and mold.

I've been listening to you for a while; late in my recovery, you were a great resource, and you still are. And I really appreciate your podcast, by the way, Scott. 

[00:31:34.02] Scott: Thank you.

[00:31:34.12] Dr. John: But it's like it's time has come. So I can tell you that from my experience, and from the experience of Lyme and mold cases that I'm dealing with, and really virtually quite a few conditions, using high super physiological doses of melatonin is really showing to make some impressive changes with people, with regards to their resilience.

[00:32:02.02] Scott: I want to talk a little bit about these neurodegenerative conditions a bit more. So amyloid, we now understand in Alzheimer's disease, is actually protective.

That ideally, you want to get rid of the triggering toxins or infections before you reduce amyloid. That it's essentially the fire extinguisher of the fire.

And so I understand that melatonin can potentially remove protective amyloid, but I'm wondering, is it also doing that in a way that's more modulating?

Or could it potentially reduce amyloid when the triggering toxins infections are still present, the fire is still there, and maybe make that problem worse?

[00:32:45.05] Dr. John: You had mentioned the glymphatics, which I failed to kind of comment on, on your last question. But the deep sleep is the primary activator of the glymphatic system. And this is the gutter system in the brain.

And so, when you look at the family of degenerative neurologic disorders, there are these accumulations of proteins. So beta amyloids and Alzheimer's, you've got alpha-synuclein and Parkinson's and tau and TBI.

So when these proteins accumulate, you're exactly right. We have to look at why; I think about if you had trash, and then you see that there are rats.

The problem is it the rats? And if you continue to try to clear out the rats, it's like an ongoing; you're never going to actually get there, right? But if you clean the trash out, then the rats aren't going to have a place to go.

So that's the same thing with these proteins, is it's that chronic inflammation that leads to the deposition and the cytokines, right? So whether it's infection or toxicity.

So melatonin, if you start to think about all the things that we've talked about up until now, you can start to see how melatonin fits into that model quite nicely.

Not only is it going to help detox the brain, but you're also just in the antioxidant capacities of it by itself, but also the glymphatic system, which the research is fine finding that this is a huge part of these degenerative.

I mean, that could literally make a difference between someone who would get it or not is how they're sleeping. And if they're actually activating their lymphatic system through an adequate melatonin release and deep sleep.

[00:34:31.17] Scott: So it sounds like it's not a concern because it's also while it may be helping to minimize the amyloid or the alpha-synuclein, it's also getting at some of those triggering toxins or microbes or other things at the same time.

That it's actually doing multiple things that are potentially beneficial in these neurodegenerative conditions.

[00:34:51.21] Dr. John: Well, I would totally agree with that. And I would also postulate that it's possible that because you give exogenous melatonin and you're starting to increase your glymphatic clearance, that you'll see a reduction in the beta-amyloid just because that's what the glymphatic system does.

[00:35:09.22] Scott: And so that kind of leads into another question, which was some people have suggested that taking supplemental melatonin is not likely to get into the brain.

So do you find that taking oral melatonin can get into the brain? Or do we need to be doing other liposomal or suppositories or other things to actually raise the melatonin levels in the brain?

[00:35:31.03] Dr. John: Well, so this is a good question that kind of falls within absorbability and route of delivery. So when I did my research, I found a paper where they looked at oral melatonin. And they found that it was only two and a half percent absorbed.

And so what we've done, and just as a disclaimer, I'm a scientific advisor at Mitozen.com, and we make a liposomal version of melatonin and a suppository called Sandman. And the route of delivery, my favorite, is the suppository.

And the reason is because you have a slow release, so basically, the melatonin is going into the bloodstream over the course of hours. Three, five, seven hours which more mimics how your body would release it.

The suppository delivery is actually very nice, with a lot of different nutrients. We even have an NAD suppository that's really almost as good as going for an IV. And you're bypassing your stomach acid, your digestive enzymes, and something called first pass through the liver.

So it actually gets into the bloodstream very nicely, very safely, and so you have a much higher absorbability. You have the same situation with liposomals; it's encapsulated by something that's very close to your cell membranes.

But you're going to have a faster absorption and a shorter what's called peak plasma. So what that means is when you take an oral product, you have an absorption and a maintenance in your bloodstream of a certain nutrient.

And there's only so much time. It might be a half an hour or an hour for your cells to pull it into the cell. Where if you have that same amount of nutrient, but it's kept in your bloodstream for, say five, six hours, you have a lot more ease to put into the cells where you can use it. And that's again while I really like, so a pill would be better than nothing.  And there's been a lot of studies that have shown that just simple pills have been very helpful. Liposomal would be the next best thing, and then after that, we would suggest a suppository would be kind of like your premiere route of delivery.

[00:38:03.10] Scott: Excellent. You talked about the rats, about the trash, so I want to talk a little about autophagy.

So the cellular janitorial process happening in every cell in the body. Is melatonin supporting this broader cellular cleansing or what we call autophagy? And if we have an over-activation of mTOR, the building side of this or the counterbalance to autophagy. Can it kind of help to modulate that mTOR autophagy balance so that we have fewer senescent cells or zombie cells in the body?

[00:38:39.23] Dr. John: So what I know is that melatonin does promote autophagy. So an interesting question would be to look at does it inhibit mTOR? Possibly, I need to go back and do a little bit of research.

But I do know that it does promote autophagy which makes sense because it's at night, you're sleeping, you're fasting. So outside of that, that's the knowledge I've got on that question.

[00:39:09.17] Scott: Many of the people listening, as you know, are dealing with chronic infections, chronic Lyme disease, parasites, viruses, various fungi. Dr. Klinghardt has talked about the role of melatonin in dealing with some of these infections.

So is melatonin helping the body to deal with these infections through some direct anti-microbial properties? Or is it more the reduction of inflammation, the increase in ATP, the modulation of the immune system? Are they direct or indirect effects?

[00:39:42.21] Dr. John: Well, so melatonin has a very powerful support to the immune system. And one of the things that a lot of us are going to suffer from is something called immunosenescence, right? So this is when immune cells get too old, and they become dysfunctional. I know you've talked a lot about senescent cells, I'm sure, in a lot of other shows.

So your immune system has this possibility of going senescence, and this is what happens with age. And there's actually a study that they did in 2003, where they found that supplementing with melatonin actually regenerated the thymus.

And they found that the immune capacity and natural killer cells were much higher after I think it was like 60 days of melatonin.

And I don't know the dosage on that study, so things like CD3 and CD4, natural killer cells, macrophages, progenitor cells, and just in general, your innate and cellular immunity has been shown in studies to be greatly enhanced with melatonin.

So when you enhance that immune system, then you can go and fight a lot of these microbes. But as far as like an actual, like if you were to look at like Artemisia or Allicin extract or something that's actually anti-microbial, it doesn't work like that at all.

[00:41:20.26] Scott: If melatonin is supporting NK cell activity, if we look at this whole Th1, Th2 balance. I know Dr. Shallenberger was one of your mentors in this realm of melatonin as well.

He talks about Th2 dominance being a primary reason that we have these ongoing chronic viral infections. So is melatonin potentially then helping to balance Th1, Th2? Kind of supporting or stimulating the Th1 side of things so that we're getting better immune balance?

[00:41:54.04] Dr. John: Really, it works on both, yes. So it's really a global support, so there are benefits on both sides of that.

[00:42:02.04] Scott: And if melatonin is strengthening the immune system, would you say that it's boosting, or is it modulating?

In other words, is melatonin still a reasonable tool in people with autoimmune conditions? Or are there any autoimmune conditions where melatonin has been either helpful or contraindicated?

[00:42:22.00] Dr. John: Yes. So I have a whole chapter in the book on autoimmune, and it's been shown to be quite powerful for autoimmune conditions. So there's actually an interesting study in Germany with MS, and they did very high doses of melatonin suppositories.

And they virtually reversed the MS with these patients. I really find MS to be a very fairly treatable; out of all the autoimmune, it's probably one of the easier to treat. But still, a terrible disease. Autoimmune conditions are a really shining area where melatonin's been able to really help.

There are some great studies. If you look at my book, there's just a number of different autoimmune conditions that have been clinically shown to be very helpful. It's that whole immune-modulating, but it's also working on things almost like a construction, right?

It's going in, and it's like improving the function, right? It's allowing the body to function within this broader scope without hitting this hyperinflammatory, shut down the energy production, the immune system shuts down, and a lot of things start to really go wrong from there.  So if we can manage that, we can support stress, we can allow for the body to have a better chance to return to a healthier situation; that's really where melatonin is going to shine.

[00:44:01.02] Scott: Melatonin has been studied in acute respiratory distress syndrome, as well as you've mentioned various cytokine storms. So, could it have some application in helping to mitigate our current world situation, the pandemic?

And then, building on that, do you think that the fact that melatonin declines with age could be an explanation for why younger people seem to have less impact from coronavirus and older people obviously more impact. Could there be a connection there?

[00:44:32.16] Dr. John: Yes, I love that question. So they've actually done research on this virus with melatonin, and the results have been quite impressive. And anybody can go Google it and pull it up.

They even did a study in Canada last year, and they found that with 40 milligrams of melatonin, they decreased the spread, so you were 56% less likely to contract the virus just by taking melatonin. And so, it works on modulating that hyperinflammatory state.

So a lot of the studies that we've seen in viral infections, equally as severe as the one we're looking at now, it shuts down that cytokine storm because it's allowing your immune system to continue to work. And that oxidation doesn't take over and just basically put out all of your energy reserves.

[00:45:42.10] Scott: Similar to the question that I was having about whether or not melatonin is more directly antimicrobial or supporting the immune system, I want to come back to your comment about heavy metals.

And so, if melatonin is helping from a heavy metal perspective or heavy metal detox perspective, is it directly chelating or detoxifying metals?

Or is it through other properties that are helping to support the ability to remove heavy metals from the system? And then should we, if we're taking melatonin, should we be on a binder at the same time, or is that not necessary?

[00:46:19.21] Dr. John: Well, so at my clinic, we put everybody on binders in the beginning because we do a lot of detox. So I think that is a terrific idea. I do find a subset of people that start melatonin do have some side effects that don't seem to last.

I recently had a very well-known doctor reach out to me and said, hey, have you figured out the situation with the nightmares with melatonin and also the grogginess. We've already talked about the grogginess. But my response to him was, I think there are multi-factorial aspects to that.

One is I think that there's a detox situation for people with heavy metals, which with your question, I think the glymphatics play a role in that. I think up-regulating mitochondria function. If you are tired, and you had a dirty house, you go home, are you going to clean your house?

But when you start to have this mitochondria energy, you've got more energy; the body starts to look around and say, oh, what kind of cleaning can I do, right? So this is kind of in line with the mechanisms.

So my answer to him was that one fold, if you stick with it, so for people sometimes if they just stick with it for a few days, they kind of get over that hump, and they don't have those side effects anymore.

And so, what could possibly be happening there is that they're going through this detox phase, where they're up-regulating mitochondria function. They've done their house cleaning, and then now they're kind of ready for that next layer. 

[00:48:02.06] Scott: Yes, that's interesting because I personally right now take 20 milligrams of melatonin before bedtime each night.

And I have had that experience that you're talking about that if I try like a 50-milligram melatonin suppository when I get out of bed first thing the next morning, I actually feel a little bit dizzy, kind of some balance issues and whatnot and I've repeated that a couple of times.

So it's interesting that it sounds like that tends to resolve if you continue to use it over time.

[00:48:31.28] Dr. John: That's what I found. I think the majority of people will find that, and I do think that there's a subset of people that are not going to tolerate it as well as others. And so kind of back to the nightmare, and you know just side effects in general, really interesting point, Scott. Is if you look up melatonin and side effects, like you look up in WebMD, right? So it's going to say these are the side effects of melatonin.

And it makes you think that oh I could get headaches, and I could have depression, I could have this and that. They did a study Scott, and those side effects were exactly the same in the melatonin group as they were in the placebo group.

So it's really misleading the public, I think because it's not really accurate. But nightmares, I think a lot of people have unresolved subconscious thought patterns. You have these experiences that you've had throughout your life, and you develop these subconscious ways of filtering your world.

And so I think it's possible that some people with that increased mitochondrial function might actually be remembering these dreams, and those nightmares may be going on anyway, right? It's all of a sudden they're like it's coming to their awareness, it's coming up to be healed, potentially.

[00:50:00.22] Scott: Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Yes, I really love the book; I urge people to really get a copy of it.

What I like is each chapter goes into details; we won't even begin to cover here today. So things like heart health and cholesterol and heart attacks and stroke support and hormone balance, I mean so many things in this book that I just never really seen before around melatonin, that I think people will really enjoy it.

And we have a gift for people at the end of our conversation that will allow them to access the book.

Dr. Klinghardt had suggested that melatonin is even more important than glutathione from a detoxification perspective.

In the book, you talk about how melatonin can help to increase glutathione levels in the brain, that it may be protective against things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

So do you think there is a synergistic effect of using both melatonin and glutathione? Or is glutathione no longer necessary when we're using melatonin?

[00:51:01.28] Dr. John: It's a really good question. And it would be nice to see some research done in this area. I personally feel like they're synergistic, and I use them together in my practice.

[00:51:18.16] Scott: One of the markers that we talk about in the biotoxin illness arena is MMP9. You talk about MMP9 elevation seen in SIRS or chronic inflammatory response syndrome, also being in people that have had strokes.

And so I'm wondering, is there some melatonin impact on MMP9? Can it be that it's helping to minimize the damage that MMP9 is creating in the extracellular matrix in our connective tissue? What are your thoughts on melatonin and MMP9?

[00:51:51.29] Dr. John: Well, that's another good question that, and that's a marker I test fairly regularly at my clinic. So infections are generally what drive that biotoxins and infections. And so something called NF-kb, which is considered your rapid response acting to infections part of your immune system.

So it's typical for things like induced nitric oxide, all of the MMPs. Melatonin actually has been shown in research to modulate that NF-kb and down-regulate the inflammation.

And it's kind of within that pathway; there's an anti-cancer aspect with this NF-kb. So that was kind of a long way of answering your question, that yes, it can support that marker.

[00:52:49.16] Scott: SIBO is a very common issue these days, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. You've suggested that melatonin helps the gut in many ways, including with SIBO and leaky gut.

And so is that support through its parasympathetic nervous system support, in that SIBO many times is kind of this more headwaters neurological issue that we need to be working on, that the parasympathetic nervous system needs to be supported. How is melatonin may be helping in SIBO?

[00:53:21.15] Dr. John: Well, one of the chapters that was one of the most surprising to me was the gut and diving into melatonin in the gut. What I found shocked me that gut melatonin was 400 times more than brain.

So your gut actually makes melatonin, and that your microbiome is actually on the circadian clock just like you are. And so, during sleep, you produce melatonin, which stimulates something called microbiome swarming. So this is an effect where your microbiome is actually repopulating itself and growing, right? What they found is that when you supplemented with melatonin, the studies showed that it suppressed the bad bacteria, and it promoted the swarming of the good bacteria.

So I do think that there's a real application for a variety of gut issues which you know I had a lot of gut issues when I was sick. I mean, I don't see patients come in that have Lyme and mold, and even a lot of these neurological cases, it's just almost kind of part of the deal with people that are unwell.

And the parasympathetic nervous system is totally shut off because of inflammation in general, and cytokines stimulate cortisol. They stimulate your sympathetic nervous system.

So it's even above and beyond just the fact that I'm stressed, and I'm thinking about how I'm sick, and how am I going to get better, and I can't work. I lost my girlfriend, whatever; it's all those different things.

The light pollution, the EMF, all these stressors are converging in; they're activating the sympathetic nervous system.

And that's shutting down your fuel delivery to the gut. So you're going to actually shunt and bring blood flow to your gut, which is going to bring oxygen and nutrients that are going to keep you and have a healthy gut.

So when that starts to diminish from chronic sympathetic dominance, you start to get leakiness, right? So that you have a thinner wall, and things start to leak into your bloodstream, which can then trigger autoimmune chronic infections. It can cause disruptions to your immune system.

[00:55:49.17] Scott: So I see now why we call it the “miracle molecule”. It's just amazing; every one of these questions we get into to see all of the different facets of melatonin. As we get older, calcium in the wrong places in the body can lead to many problems, including, unfortunately, death.

Melatonin is secreted in part from the pineal gland that we talked about; many people talk about the pineal gland also being our connection to our higher source, higher power. How important is it to decalcify the pineal gland, and how might we approach doing so?

[00:56:24.08] Dr. John: So 80% of the population in North America has a calcified pineal. And I think probably that the chapter on pineal was one of the most, it was an amazing chapter, it almost could be a book in of itself, right? Because I'm very much into consciousness meditation, spiritual growth. And when you look at melatonin and its relationship to DMT, that relationship is very interesting because DMT may actually be the molecule that allows us to see what's real, right?

So we have this reality which is the physical reality, and then there's another reality that a lot of religious people might refer to as heaven, or they might talk about it as the morphogenic field, right? Or just the field, the quantum field.

And so, there does seem to be a consensus that there's something beyond this physical world that may be involved in creating this reality. And that it may actually be able to have certain intentions to augment and change our current reality, right?

So this ties into melatonin and DMT very beautifully, and I don't think it's an accident. Because it's like again Scott, this is like the most important molecule I think that our body produces. DMT can be released naturally with like breath work; like there are different breathing exercises that you can do that you can get DMT to release.

People will sometimes do a vine called Ayahuasca, right? And they go, and they do what's called a journey. So there are different psychedelics. Even some people will, there's also this 5-MeO, which is a very strong DMT, that's from a frog, the bufo frog.

The bufo, it's a short-acting, I guess you would call it a medicinal product, but it's usually vaporized. And the people will go into this very spiritual realm, and when they come back, it's hard to describe it, right?

When you start getting into this area, it's beautiful; it's undescribable. And that's why I had so much enjoyment writing this chapter because I feel like I was going into all this science, and then I got to actually talk about what some other aspects of my life that I was really passionate about.

[00:59:15.18] Scott: Give us a couple of your top interventions for helping to decalcify the pineal gland.

[00:59:21.11] Dr. John: So that's a good question, so the biggest thing is to avoid fluoride, they've done a lot of research, and they've seen that areas that are higher in fluoride, there's more calcification of the pineal. So it's very clear in the research that that definitely happens.

So there's a number of natural substances that can be really good to help decalcify the pineal. One method, and you can look this up.

Also, it's in my chapter; we don't need to kind of go line by line with it. But I find it, Joe Dispenza, right? Scott, have you ever gone to see Joe Dispenza?

[01:00:02.22] Scott: No.

[01:00:03.21] Dr. John: No, I'd recommend it. In two weeks, I'm doing another intensive in Marco Island. But he does this breath that he calls the pineal breath, right?

And so there's an intentionality where you're going through the different energy zones, and the breath is basically pushed up, and so there's a what's called a piezoelectric effect with these little crystals in the pineal.

Where when you start to move them through hydrostatic pressure from doing breathwork, they start to kind of create an energetic, turning it almost into like a radio receiver is the way Joe speaks about it.

So we look at our pineal, and we look at it as a radio receiver, which it might be able to pick up a lot of subtle types of frequencies and energies that again are from this other realm that we might call the quantum field.

[01:01:07.26] Scott: Beautiful. Yes, I love a lot of the things that you mention in this chapter. Things like iodine, shilajit, chaga, vitamin K2, I mean so many things that people can do to help support this decalcification process.

I want to talk a little bit about children dealing with things like autism or learning and behavioral disorders, ADD, ADHD, asthma, allergy, the whole gamut or spectrum. Do you think there's a place for melatonin supplementation in children?

[01:01:39.15] Dr. John: Absolutely. Children are already making a lot of melatonin, so one thing that we didn't cover is taking melatonin safe, is taking lots of melatonin safe. Do you produce less melatonin if you take it exogenously?

The answer is that they have not found a toxic level, and they've gone up to like 150,000 milligrams in the studies. And also, there's no negative feedback loop with melatonin like there is with other hormones like estrogen and testosterone.

So there's no worry about shutting down your own production. With children, one of the things that they found with autistic children is, and this is something you can look up, again it's in my book. Is that the autistic children were converting, they had less melatonin, but they were converting into DMT.

Which really makes a lot of sense because if you think about a lot of these kids, they're really a bit on a psychedelic trip when you look at it from this perspective. And giving exogenous melatonin seems to be a benefit in this population of children.

Asthma, again that's a hypersensitivity. There are gut relationships to that, immune relationships; we've talked about how melatonin works on all of those. So it's kind of when you start to understand kind of the core of it; it makes sense on all these other spokes to the wheel.

[01:03:12.12] Scott: So we're definitely going to talk a bit about the high-dose melatonin; I love that you brought in that conversation about the feedback loop.

Because even with the melatonin I've taken for years, many practitioners have suggested that I stop taking it, that I'm going to impact my own ability to produce it, so it's nice to know that that is not something to be concerned about.

I want to get some thoughts from you on blood sugar regulation, hemoglobin A1c, people dealing with diabetes. Is there a potential role of melatonin in helping to better balance our blood sugar and glucose metabolism?

[01:03:48.26] Dr. John: Yes, so that's a great question. There are receptor sites on your pancreas, and it's MT1 and 2. And so, when we go to sleep, melatonin actually will cause a decrease in insulin. And so one of the things that can kind of get us in trouble is that late eating, right?

Because that glucose is going to float around a little bit more. So this is a really interesting fact with, so that the chapter with diabetes, they were able to find a pretty dramatic change in a1c and blood sugar regulation, because of this relationship that melatonin has to insulin in the pancreas. It's very hard-wired to the circadian rhythm.

[01:04:44.03] Scott: The name melatonin comes from its impact on melanin. In the book, you talk about how it can help with conditions like vitiligo.

I'm curious in the biotoxin illness arena; we talk about MSH or alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Do you see any impact on MSH levels in people that are taking melatonin?

[01:05:05.07] Dr. John: That would be a good study to run. We see improvements with that with our patients overall. We're not doing mono therapy though, that's the challenge.

So the research would be good to do, but if you're a clinician like myself, you're doing ozone, and you're doing antimicrobials, so it's very difficult to really make that conclusion.

[01:05:31.12] Scott: With the higher dose melatonin approaches, some people are using melatonin during the day.

I'm wondering, is that something you commonly do with your patients, where they're using melatonin throughout the day for more serious conditions? And how much melatonin can one safely use throughout the course of the day?

[01:05:50.10] Dr. John: Yes, so I think you'd mention this early in our interview, Frank Shallenberger, who's a mutual friend of ours. Was actually just talking with him just yesterday. When he introduced me, I was doing an internship at his clinic in Reno.

And I sat there, and I watched him, and he was dosing; the majority of the patients were like degenerative neurologic cases and cancer patients that he was asking them to take melatonin day and night. And he was dosing them 200 milligrams day and night.

And so I think there's probably a lot more conditions that would really benefit from that. I know when I've been sick, like if I know, you were going to ask me later in the interview, but I got COVID about six weeks ago, the Delta variant.

And so I dosed very heavy melatonin during the night. I was up around 800 milligrams, and I took the same amount during the day. So that was a situation where I wanted it 24/7. And a lot of your better hospitals, because between you and me, between you and me, right?

Nobody's listening to this. But a lot of your hospitals are just bringing people in that are infected and just letting them lay there, and hopefully, they make it; there's not really a lot of treatment.

And we recently, actually my grandmother got sick with COVID, and we went to her place, and we ran ozone and high-dose vitamin c, and we literally saw her, it almost seemed like she came back from the dead.

Like she couldn't even talk, she was hunched over to sitting up and like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. Like this is like two hours later, like that's the capacity that our hospitals could have.

But there are a number of hospitals that use very high doses of melatonin day and night, and they're even having their health care workers dose the melatonin as well. 

[01:08:01.22] Scott: Are there any contraindications for melatonin or potential downsides? Particularly as we move into this higher dose realm?

[01:08:10.02] Dr. John: You know the only thing I would consider to be a potential would be depression. And you could almost have an argument to say that it's more of a reason to take melatonin, but it's definitely a contraindication if you look on the internet.

So you'll have to talk to your healthcare provider about that situation. But the argument is that you're groggy and so you're more apt, so it's not like the melatonin causes you to be depressed. If you're already running depression in your brain, and you're a little bit more groggy, you're not able to stay busy and forget about those things, right?

So I don't think that it's a kind of the chicken or the egg type of situation. But if you are depressed, you might want to tread lightly and make sure that you do work with the healthcare provider.

[01:09:05.28] Scott: So you mentioned you recently had your own experience with COVID, wondering what tools did you find most helpful in recovering your own health.

[01:09:14.22] Dr. John: Yes. So during the actual infection, I was on ivermectin. I was on zinc and quercetin, and olive leaf extract, all of those really helped to kind of minimize the inflammatory reaction. And then, of course, melatonin.

I was nebulizing something called GlutaStat, which I should say we manufacture this. I actually, so I want to say like 16-17 years ago, I was doing medical crew for Tony Robbins, and I got the flu. And I knew it was starting here because you just feel it's like all here, and it's kind of starting to get into your lungs. And I just had to show up at this event in Fort Lauderdale.

So basically, the mad scientist that I am, I whip together this liquid, and I started nebulizing it, and it was emulsified oregano sage, clove, bay leaf, there was NAC, glutathione, those are the major ingredients in there.

And now we put these terpenes, antimicrobial terpenes, in there as well. But I just started to breathe it, and it cleared up like in 24 hours.

Whereas I know a lot of other people that were catching this flu were staying sick for a week or two weeks. So I know that this intervention really helped, so we launched that product that long ago.

And so I've been using this clinically, I have a number of different doctors that utilize it in their practice, and then we also have a lot of just individuals that that purchase this liquid.

And so it's available in a nasal spray and also nebulized; it's called GlutaStat. So I was using this both in a nasal spray, and I was also nebulizing it. I know our friend Dr. Shallenberger is a big fan of the hydrogen peroxide nebulized; I think that's terrific too.

Do I think one's better than the other? It's hard to say. I know I've had some really good experiences with the other, but I do know that the results with the hydrogen peroxide are also impressive.

[01:11:28.14] Scott: So before we jump into some of the other things around what helped your own recovery. GlutaStat, which I have a bottle in my fridge.

Can we tie that back into the biotoxin illness conversation? Would it potentially be helpful with people that are dealing with MARCoNS or with fungal-related overgrowth in their sinuses from water damage building exposures?

[01:11:51.24] Dr. John: Yes, and this is a great question about Marcon's and sinus hygiene in general. I mean, people aren't talking about this enough.

So what happens is we get colonies of bacteria in our sinuses, and they produce something called biofilm, which is like this sticky protein.

So when that's there lining your sinuses, anything in our environment has something to stick onto, which could actually make it easier for us to get a flare like we walk into a water-damaged building, and there's mold in the air, and we've got a lot of biofilm.

There's a place for it to stick and then be exposed to your immune system. So just cutting down on a lot of that biofilm is one aspect. But also if you have this infection called MARCoNS, which you need a deep nasal swab to discover that, which most doctors can do.

I think you might even be able to order this yourself. You got to go deep in there though, a lot of people are a little bit timid. So initially, when I started really working with Marcon's with our products, I was at a conference with Klinghardt, right?

And they were talking about a probiotic nasal spray, alternated by colloidal silver with EDTA. And they were doing these one day, the probiotic spray and the other day of the EDTA. So I created a combo of two nasal sprays called MARCoNS A and B. And honestly, I've seen the eradication of the MARCoNS with the GlutaStat, or the MARCoNS A and B.

Sometimes, I'll actually have them take all of them, you know if I really find that it's a really difficult case. So if you have it, you want to do something for 30 days, and then you want to retest it.

If you're having trouble clearing it, you might want to look at your pets, your family members because you could be catching it from them, but it's really important. I think probably people; just their general status improves between 20 and 30 percent across the board by just doing this one step.

[01:14:11.20] Scott: The sinus hygiene focus?

[01:14:14.12] Dr. John: Yes, a 30-day sinus protocol.

[01:14:17.13] Scott: Yes, I mean it makes sense to me. I mean, we spend so much time talking about oral health and flossing our teeth and doing all these other things, and we, for the most part, people don't really do anything to support their sinus health. So yes, that's a that's an exciting a couple of tools that you have there.

[01:14:33.19] Dr. John: If you ask a cocaine user what's the quickest way to the brain, they're going to tell you through the nose.

So when you have a sinus that's not healthy, a nasal passage that's not healthy, they've actually looked at this, and there is a higher incident of degenerative neurologic disease with these different colonies that can occupy the nasal passage.

And then it can go into your lungs, right? And cause chronic inflammation there, and then it could go into your gut. So there are some people that have chronic gut conditions like SIBO, and it might be because their sinuses is basically dripping into that gut chronically.

[01:15:17.07] Scott: Nice, that's another fantastic connection. Okay, so in your own recovery, the sinus hygiene was really important. What are a couple of other things you did to get back to a good state of health?

[01:15:28.00] Dr. John: Well, I think I mentioned most of them. I did do some ozone IV and some high-dose vitamin C IV, and that was really helpful. Literally, like after you did it, you just felt like you're really on the road to recovery.

Drank plenty of fluids, rested; I didn't try to come into the office; of course, I wouldn't anyway, right? I had COVID. But yeah, yes, that's pretty much the core.

So I learned a lot through that process. After COVID, I started to have the typical loss; I had the loss of smell, and my taste was off, and the fatigue was fairly strong. And motivation, and I noticed that there was some depression, the moods really.

And I talked to a lot of people that run into this after they've had COVID, and what I found Scott was that the adrenals and the thyroid really get smashed through this process. So we support the adrenals and the thyroid with things like iodine, with the thyroid.

We'll even put people on a short dose of T3 Cytomel, which even just if we're talking about like Lyme and mold and you know biotoxin illness, this is something that I think a lot of practitioners fall short, is they're just looking at lab work to determine whether there's a thyroid problem or not.

And so very often, thyroid panel on blood can look totally normal, but people aren't functionally; their thyroid's not working functionally. So the best way to know that for sure is to take straight T3 and then see do your symptoms improve, right? Broda Barnes did a bunch of work with this, and like basal thermometer is something that you can test as well.

So we'll put people on a week or two of Cytomel, which is that straight T3. And we do a variety of different things to support the adrenals. Methylation is huge; this was the one that just was like, ah, okay, I'm on to something here.

Any type of stressor really depletes all your methylators, your B vitamins, and other methylating substances. So I actually worked with Dr. Dan Pompa on this formula. We didn't really want to produce an oral methylator because there's a lot on the market, and there's a lot of good ones.

What we wanted to do was we wanted to make one that had more of the ingredients than any other supplement we saw out there, pulling from a variety of different substances. But also, put it in a suppository. And so we came up with something called MethylMax.

And I noticed right away, when I dosed a suppository with MethylMax, it just really move things for me as far as my energy, my cognitive abilities, brain function. So that's a huge one. And there's a lot of different ways; I mean, you could go and just get some B12 injection with your doctor.

Certainly, you could try the MethylMax. But there's a lot of options for methylators, and that's something that people should take a look at.

[01:18:57.00] Scott: Any thoughts on the role of fasting in terms of viral recovery?

[01:19:01.28] Dr. John: Yes. So fasting is a really great way to kind of improve a variety of different situations in the body. From the microbiome to the immune cells. That whole conversation we had about immunosenescence.

When you fast, your body goes into a cleaning and recycling phase. So you're going to take these dysfunctional cells, which we're talking about immune cells, which happens so that chronic stress from getting that infection is absolutely going to create lots and lots of immune senescence in your body.

And so, if we go in and we start fasting, we can clear those up. But just as important is I lost 15 pounds with COVID, so I know a lot of people are going to be in the same boat unless they're happy. I have the opposite problem that people have like I have a hard time keeping weight on like I want to put more muscle on, right? So that weight was not happily lost.

But we want to pay attention to that mTOR. To your point, you had mentioned that earlier. If we're going to do fasting, there are things that we can do to accentuate that cleanup of senescent cells like fisetin, resveratrol.

There's a number of other polyphenols that are really good, sterile still being. And so taking something to increase that signaling of clearing out these senescent cells, and then rolling into increasing your protein.

Take something like a Perfect Amino; we're a big fan of these essential amino acids. Increase your protein intake to your tolerance so that it doesn't disrupt your gut, but you're able to kind of increase that intake for a day or two after the fast.

So that is really important to kind of follow that sequence. Another trick that we figured out is preloading with NAD prior to fasting seems to give better results. And NAD can actually support your senescence cells, and so you don't want to take NAD or a precursor to NAD every day.

[01:21:24.01] Scott: And when you say support senescent cells, meaning that taking NAD, you then have less ability to clear them?

[01:21:32.21] Dr. John: Well, so you're providing energy to the mitochondria. So you're wanting to clear them out, right? So it supports them just like it supports all of your cells in the same way.

And what we've done is we have an NAD suppository, as I've mentioned before, is we've actually included some of the senolytics in with that, so that you're kind of getting a little bit of an inhibition to supporting the senescent cells.

But I think that it makes a lot of sense to pulse this, and so we designed something called the fast track fast, which is three-phase.

So the first phase is NAD loading, the second phase is fasting while you're taking these polyphenols. And then the third phase is feasting while you're taking things that are going to upregulate mTOR.

[01:22:28.12] Scott: Can we just stay in phase three?

[01:22:31.14] Dr. John: Well, that's the problem.

[01:22:34.01] Scott: That's what most people do, right? I mean, that's the problem with our society, sadly. So would you suggest that this fasting approach could be helpful when people are recovering from COVID? Or is that not the time to be fasting?

[01:22:49.06] Dr. John: Listen, I think this could be supportive to people across the board. If you are on this planet, you're watching this, you're human, even if you're an animal, I fast my dog.

I mean, I fasted, I did a five-day fast a couple of months ago, and I had my dog do the fast right there with me. And when you talk to people about this, like that's so inhumane.

But it was beautiful because I was fasting, I got home, and of course, I wasn't preparing food, so my dog was really, it was beautiful. She was like, oh yes, she wasn't begging for food. But to your point with regards to post COVID, if you get the calories in but it's in a smaller window.

I don't know if I would recommend rushing into an extended fast right after COVID, I might give it a month, maybe two.

But certainly, you can start doing some intermittent fasting where your window is much less, right? Six, eight hours, ten hours, or even a 24-hour fast, I think wouldn't be too stressful on the system.

[01:23:59.25] Scott: I love that you mentioned fisetin or fisetin that is one of the supplements that I take on a fairly regular basis, very few people talk about it. So it's good to hear that you see some potential options for incorporating that into a program as well.

As we start wrapping up, I want to make sure people know where to find the book. So the book is at MelatoninBook.com. Dr. John's been very generous in offering a free pdf version of the book.

So you can just go to the website MelatoninBook.com, put it into your cart, use the code BETTERHEALTH and get a PDF version of the melatonin book, so that's fantastic, and thank you for doing that.

And then we've talked about some of the Mitozen products throughout the conversation, the Sandman, the GlutaStat a few others, MethylMax and so on. So just want to give you an opportunity to maybe mention some of the key products that maybe tie in.

Like if we're talking about melatonin, what are some of the key products in this realm that might be worth people knowing more about?

[01:25:03.27] Dr. John: Well, the fast track fast program kind of incorporates a lot of different things. Like when you look at replenishing your NAD levels, it's in there. When you look at fasting and increasing, so you have more autophagy, clearing more senescent cells, it's in there with that phase two.

And we already talked about kind of the mTOR. The sinus protocols, I think, are really something to look at, and the GlutaStat is, that comes in a form that you can put in a nebulizer. And it also comes in a form that you can spray as a nasal spray.

[01:25:45.12] Scott: And how about the melatonin products?

[01:25:47.29] Dr. John: So we have two forms of melatonin, we have Sandman and Super Sandman. Sandman comes in, both of them come in liposomal, and they also both come in a suppository.

So with the liposomals, you have a syringe, so you can really put however much you want in there. But the Super Sandman liposomal is basically no glutathione, so it's twice as much melatonin.

So I think as kind of a pearl for people, if they're going to go with a liposomal, the Super Sandman is going to be the more affordable way to go. Because if melatonin is your main interest, there's going to be a lot more dosages on that particular product. Incidentally, I really like that liposomal Sandman.

One thing that we didn't really talk about is there's a faster onset. So if you're wanting to go to sleep, you take the liquid, it hits quicker. The suppository can take 30 to 45 minutes before it really starts to get into your bloodstream where you start to feel that kind of tiredness from the melatonin.

So sometimes what I'll do is I'll do a little bit of the liposomal, and the suppository. So the normal Sandman suppository has 200 milligrams of melatonin, and the Super Sandman has 450.

[01:27:12.12] Scott: Wow.

[01:27:13.27] Dr. John: So listen, it's a lot. Now when people first start taking these higher doses, they might feel like they're freight trained in the morning.

Like I don't have this gene, but I can tell you that I was kind of going along doing 200, and even working up to 200, there was mornings where I felt really groggy.

But I remember one particular time where I said I'm just going to go for it, and I did 800, and it was at least a year ago, and I was feeling like, I actually thought I had caught COVID.

So I'm like getting symptomatic, somebody I knew had it, and it turned out to just be a 24-hour thing, but I took 800 milligrams. I'd remember how it was quite powerful, right? If I take 800 now, it's really easy to tolerate. So you can work your way up with it if you're having some side effects. And again, it could be that your body's working through these different layers.

[01:28:14.11] Scott: And if I remember correctly, from some of Dr. Klinghardt's conversation, that the melatonin researcher Russel Reiter if I remember correctly uses something like 200 milligrams a day for his own health.

[01:28:27.19] Dr. John: Yes. Russel is really a gift, I think to all of us. He was the first researcher to discover that the pineal was actually functional, and it wasn't just some useless gland. This was like in the 60s. And then he's probably one of the most researched researchers with melatonin.

And a very good friend of mine, we message back and forth, but yes he takes 100 to 200, yes absolutely. And you're talking about the most researched, knowledgeable physician.

He's an MD, he's a PhD and he takes that much. So to me, that was one of the things that really got me to be a lot less fearful of diving into this. 

[01:29:13.26] Scott: My last question is the same for every guest, and that is what are some of the key things that you do on a daily basis in support of your own health?

[01:29:21.08] Dr. John: Well, my morning ritual. So I have a morning ritual, and I wake up very early. I'll usually even go to sleep sometimes at 8:00, 8:30, 9:00 the latest. And so sometimes I'll even wake up at like 4:00, 4:30 in the morning.

And I will do meditation and breathwork at that point. And then I have a Japanese hot plunge and cold plunge, and so I'll go between the two. And of course, I know you've probably done shows on cold thermogenesis and all the benefits with mitochondria.

And then I've got red light panels, right? So I get out of the cold plunge and then I go stand in front of the red lights. And I have a bio charger, this is all at home. And so do a little bit of yoga, and that's how I start most days.

And I think that along with a good diet, intermittent fasting, working with some of these signaling that we talked about with NAD and fasting with senolytics, making sure that I'm getting myself enough protein. I think that's a missing thing for a lot of people too.

I think people should pay attention a little bit to these essential amino acids, and maybe supplementing with that a little bit more. They're so important to so many facets of health, but yeah.

[01:30:52.04] Scott: Wow, sounds like Toys R Us at your house, that's pretty amazing all those tools that you're using there.

This was such a fun conversation, I love the book, melatonin miracle molecule. I urge people to get it, again you can get a free copy of the PDF from MelatoninBook.com using the code BETTERHEALTH. Just a great conversation today, so many other things that I learned from the conversation.

I appreciate that you spent the time to put the book together and really enlighten people about melatonin, that you're putting some great products together for us as well. So thank you so much Dr. John for being here today.

[01:31:26.12] Dr. John: Scott, you're very welcome, very welcome.

[01:31:30.00] To learn more about today's guest visit MelatoninBook.com, that's MelatoninBook.com. And to learn more about the MitoZen products, check out the link in the show notes. 

[01:31:43.29] Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a positive rating or review, as doing so will help the show reach a broader audience. To follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or MeWe, you can find me there as better health guy.

To support the show, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com/donate. To be added to my newsletter, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com/newsletters. This and other shows can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

[01:32:18.06] Thanks for listening to this BetterHealthGuy Blogcast with Scott, your better health guy. To check out additional shows and learn more about Scott's personal journey to better health, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com.

Disclosure

BetterHealthGuy.com is an affiliate of MitoZen.

Disclaimer

The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health-related decisions with your own personal medical authority.