Dr. Jack is joined by Dr. Frank Shallenberger to discuss energy, aging, and therapies that could change your life for the better. Dr. Frank is the owner of The Nevada Center Of Anti-Aging Medicine and is one of the pioneers in alternative and integrative medicine. In this episode they discuss mitochondria, the main powerhouses of the cell, and what happens when they malfunction. Want to feel younger and have more energy? Have a listen and you just might find out how to restore your cellular power supply.

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Dr. Frank Shallenberger Explains Energy, Aging, And The Therapies That Could Change Your Life

Welcome to another episode. Our focus here is on getting you the 100-year heart. To get you that information and get you on the path to the 100-year heart, I give you the best information and I bring on the best guests. I’ve got an absolute superstar in the holistic industry on in this episode. This is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. When you talk about some of these founding fathers that paved the way for the next generation, people like me to be able to do what I do to get that message of health and wellness out there, we’ve got Dr. Frank Shallenberger. Dr. Frank, how are you doing?

I’m great. Thanks for the intro.

Behind me on my wall, I’ve got a picture that includes the names of my four children and my wife. Dr. Shallenberger leads off with his 6-time grandfather, 4-time father. He’s one of the originals, practicing medicine since 1973. I’m sure you don’t feel like you’ve been practicing for that long. I know how time flies. He’s pioneer in alternative integrative medicines since 1978. He’s licensed to practice in Nevada where he’s got the conventional medicine license and also alternative and homeopathic medicine. He’s giving you the best of both worlds.

He has taught thousands and thousands of practitioners. He’s got two books that he wrote. One is called The Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough and Bursting With Energy. He’ll tell us how we can get a copy of that. He’s also the editor of the Second Opinion Alternative Medical Newsletter, and a pioneer in therapies as it pertains to mitochondrial health, the use of ozone and getting that incredible therapy. We’re going to be talking about all those as we get in with Dr. Frank. Thank you so much for being on the show.

It’s a pleasure, Jack. Thanks for having me.

Give us some of your backstories if you will. You started and graduated maybe in 1973, and then five years later, you wake up and something happens that pulls you out of the medical matrix, the pharmaceutical pills and the surgical model. Tell us about that story.

All of us come into these different ways and we thought about how we got into it. For me, it was a combination of things. Number one, after I got out of medical school, I went into emergency medicine. I was one of those trauma docs. We were putting tubes in everybody as the helicopters brought them in. After about 6 to 8 years of doing that in the late ’70s. I decided, “I want to have a nice life. I’m going to try and get a day job.” That’s what I did.

I hung out my shingle and started treating people in more of a general practice type of setting. I’ve been so disillusioned being in emergency medicine. Emergency medicine is so straightforward and it hits cause. I’ve often told people, “When you’re an emergency doctor and somebody comes in with a knife in their back, you don’t give them some Prozac and send them home.”

You take the knife out, sew up the wound and fix the problem. That’s the mentality that emergency doctors have. We’re going to fix the problem. I get into internal medicine and family medicine, and I’m not fixing any problems. All I’m doing is I’m treating symptoms and that’s great. Half the time, the drugs I’m giving to treat the symptoms are causing other problems.

I was disillusioned with that. I went to the department head of the hospital I was associated with. I said, “This is what I’m doing. What am I doing wrong?” After talking with me, they said, “You’re not doing anything wrong.” I said, “I’m not fixing people.” They said, “We don’t fix people in internal medicine. We just make them feel better. That’s the deal. What are you getting so excited about?”

I thought, “That can’t be right.” My dad was a doctor at the time. He called me up one day around this time. He came up in the ’30s. He said, “I got all these old books from medical school and pharma. Would you like them?” I said, “Yes, send me some of these books.” He sends me this big old box of books. The first book I pull out is a book by Ciba, one of the pharma companies. It’s a short little book but in there, it goes through vitamins. It turns out that back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, pharma was into vitamins. They are not anymore but they used to be.

I’m pulling out this book and on the first page is vitamin deficiency. I’m looking at vitamin deficiency and it says, “Fatigue, aches, moodiness.” I’m thinking, “Those are my people. What most people have is this kind of stuff. I wonder if they might be vitamin deficient?” That’s what got me into this. I subsequently got lucky in as much as I was in the San Francisco area. Linus Pauling had a study group going on once a month there in San Francisco. I got to meet with all these great guys, these early luminaries. My mind was open. By the time the ‘80s rolled around, I was into it. That’s what brought me to looking for answers, something that may treat at the causal level instead of the symptomatic level.

The world needs plenty of emergency room physicians and trauma surgeons but when it comes to actual prevention, the medical doctors have nothing. The toolbox is empty. Their idea of prevention is statin drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs and aspirin. That’s not the answer. As you started looking at all of this and as your travails go on through the ’80s, and talking about hospital administration, you’re talking about the late ‘70s as that goes into the ’80s. That’s the golden era of insurance companies and Medicare when the physicians and hospitals were a printing press of money going on. Go into some of the headwinds you came up against as you’re starting your career and going into this natural alternative, and all the blowback from your colleagues.

It’s a much better atmosphere these days. Back then, there were a lot of antagonisms. If you even told your patient they shouldn’t eat sugar, there’s something a little bit questionable about how intelligent you are. We did have to deal with things like that but I’ll tell you a funny story. Linus Pauling had set up this group called the Orthomolecular Medical Society and I ended up being involved in that. In the early ‘80s, I had my first meeting. I’m in the audience, listening to all the speakers and such. I turned around and who was there? The chief of staff at the hospital. All these guys are talking about alternative things like IV, vitamin C and so forth.

I go up to him and said, “John, what the heck are you doing here?” He says, “I’m interested in this stuff but don’t tell anybody I’m here.” That’s the way it was back then. As long as you didn’t tell anybody and you flew under the radar, maybe you were okay. It got into a few problems eventually in the State of California. Those days are over. It was a little problematic, especially with insurance companies. If you didn’t do anything by the book, they called that fraud.

It’s amazing because you think insurance companies would want to lower their outlay for those who are insured. Therefore, if you have a healthy population paying insurance dollars and you’re not spending any of that, you would think that would be fantastic for insurance companies. You can only say that they are all embedded together with insurance, hospitals, pharma and the government.

It’s almost a catch-22 in the sense that, what happens to the premiums if the expenses go up? They don’t care about the expenses. They just raise the premiums. Now you get the government involved and then it’s printing money all over the place. They’re not motivated to keep the costs down.

When I wrote my book back in 2015, I showed that to a lot of my cardiology buddies. They’ve looked at it and some of them even read it and commented, “We love your book. Everything you say is fantastic in there. Don’t ever mention my name that I ever approved your book.” I got a friend who is the head of the cancer department at a huge East Coast university. He’s one of my best friends from osteopathic school.

He hears everything I have to say. He loves everything I have to say but his job depends on him toting the company line. He could never break free from that, which he could. People like you and myself had taken the risk and the hits to continue to bring truth to the world and the best way to stay healthy. I appreciate you.

I do want to talk about ozone because I know you’re one of the foremost authorities worldwide on ozone. I do know that you love to talk about mitochondrial health. Do you want to set up the concept of ozone? First, let’s talk about what are the mitochondria and why are you so passionate about having a healthy mitochondrial function?

Aging is a phenomenon wherein your cells could work but not have enough energy to work well.

Many years ago, I’m out riding my bike. One thing about riding my bike is that my brain is free-floating. Whatever pops in, pops in. I’m riding my bike and I’m thinking about the fact that as people get older, the mitochondrial functions worse. It’s a known fact. Everybody accepts this and that this is a major cause of the disease. The fundamental ultimate cause of the disease is that the mitochondria don’t work so well. For readers, the mitochondria or organelles in all of our cells. Our cells have thousands of these little guys. That’s where the oxygen is headed. The most critical thing we can do for life is breathe in oxygen. All that oxygen only does one thing. It’s very interesting.

Unlike vitamins and minerals, which have a lot of things that they do, oxygen in the human body only accomplishes one thing. It finds its way into the mitochondria of our cells and the mitochondria are able to extract energy from that oxygen in the process, collecting it from the transport. It extracts the energy from the oxygen and that energy can be harnessed. The cells use that energy to keep us alive. I knew at the time that animal studies had shown that as animals get older, the ability for their cells to function or the functional aspect of their cells remains intact even to very old age.

The problem is not that the cells can’t do what they are charged with doing, the problem is the mitochondria aren’t working so well, aren’t processing the energy efficiently, and the cells are getting less and less energy. They could do what they’re going to do but they can’t because they’re not getting enough energy. We have this phenomenon called aging, which is a bunch of cells that could work well but aren’t getting enough energy to work well. I tell my patients that it’s analogous to a flashlight with a bad battery. The flashlight could work well but you need to change the batteries.

We know about these phenomenons. We know that cells can work even into old age but they don’t because they don’t have enough energy. The reason they don’t get enough energy is because as we get older, for a whole bunch of reasons, the mitochondria won’t process the energy and that’s the whole thing. I’m riding my bike and I’m thinking about this, “The older you get, the less energy you’re able to make.” It came into my head, “What if the decrease in energy came before the aging? What would happen if the mitochondria became dysfunctional or lost their ability to react even before aging?”

At that point, I thought, “That’s interesting. Maybe that’s the case.” Maybe if the mitochondria aren’t working well early, and I’m talking into your 30s, that might predispose you down the line to aging prematurely and developing extra vulnerability to diseases as you get older. I thought, “I need to find a way to measure mitochondria.” I started making some calls and doing some research into this to find out. Outside of strange research settings, there’s no way to measure mitochondrial function. I’m thinking to myself, “This is the single most important thing I want to know about myself and I don’t know how to measure it. Let’s try and find some ways.”

We tried a bunch of different ways. It turns out that a good way to measure oxygen is so grossly obvious that most people got it right over their heads. We put a mask on people like a scuba mask, and they are breathing through this device. It’s connected to a pulmonary gas analyzer, which analyzes how much O2 or oxygen they are consuming, and how much carbon dioxide they are putting out. It turns out that if you do those measurements under a proper protocol and use some very established formulas, you can detail how well the mitochondria are working.

We developed this test and I’m doing mitochondrial testing on all of these patients of mine. They could be in their 30s, 40s, they could be asymptomatic or sick. The numbers are horrible. I’m calling back the company that makes the analyzer, I’m saying, “There’s something wrong with this equipment. These numbers cannot be that bad.” What I learned was at that time, the numbers were really bad. There was nothing wrong with the equipment. All of these numbers that we’re supposed to see have been developed in two weird ways.

One is all the published data is either on the level of Olympic athletes or on people who were ready to get heart transplants or lung transplants. The Joe Lunchbox in the middle or normal human beings, nobody knows about them. That’s how it’s been studied. I’m here getting all this data and I’m finding out Joe Lunchbox is flunking. He looks bad. Sometimes even in the 30s, we had one study where 12% of “healthy” asymptomatic individuals in their 30s already had a significantly poor mitochondrial function. That’s when it occurred to me.

The mitochondria become dysfunctional first. As they become dysfunctional, then they start to go into decay later on because they are at first dysfunctional. In other words, it’s preventable. If you get it early, measure it and discover there’s a problem, there are things that you can do to prevent that decay that ultimately comes down the line. The cool thing is I’ve got people in their mid and late-80s that now have the mitochondrial function of a 35-year-old person. It’s crazy what you can do with this. That individual is never going to get sick. He’s going to be as functional right up to his last day.

I want to learn more about the technique that you’re talking about doing. That’s a fantastic thing to spread the news and information on. Are there any other tests that you use? Are there any blood tests? You can look at different markers of inflammation, oxidative stress, the common things that most people certainly in the functional medicine space and natural space are checking into. Do you find any of those helpful or are you talking about, “We got to be measuring O2, CO2 and exhalation methodologies?”

All these other tests are wonderful, whether it’s an EKG or blood test, or you’re looking at Omega-3s, vitamin levels, iron levels or hormones. They are all critical to look at. I look at the mitochondrial function as being a global asset. Mitochondria are extremely sensitive. They are not only a global way to assess an individual, they are also very sensitive.

Anything from severe emotional trauma to head trauma, to lack of sleep, all of these things can almost immediately affect mitochondrial function. If I get a patient and test them out and his mitochondrial functions are good, I can pretty much tell that guy, “We’re going to look at other aspects to see if we can even get you better, but the reality is your lifestyle is matching up pretty well with your genetics.”

Now, we diagnosed somebody with mitochondrial dysfunction. You and I could talk for hours about all the different modalities to be able to improve that mitochondrial function from nutrition to lifestyle, to avoid environmental toxins, to supplements and techniques for detoxification. Enlighten us to some of the popular or what you find have been the most effective things that you’ve utilized to increase that mitochondrial function.

I got this test and I find that people don’t have a good mitochondrial function, now I’m looking for that magic bullet that’s going to push them over the finish line. The reality is there are not very many magic bullets out there. We did do a study where it showed that parenteral B vitamins, of all the things that I tested and I tested CoQ, carnitine, all the usual cast of characters that one would think of for mitochondrial function. In terms of supplements and things that you can do by far and away, it was something simple like B vitamins.

There are several of them, particularly niacin. There’s niacin and riboflavin, which are cofactors for this whole mitochondrial process. B vitamins are turned up during stress. There’s a little stress going around in our society. I’m pretty sure that most people are not getting the adequate amount of niacin and riboflavin they need. I’ve always been big on that. Interestingly enough, in terms of supplements, we could talk about peptides a little bit. Peptides are different, but the only thing that I’ve found that’s effective is the B vitamin. Outside of that, the number one thing is aerobic exercise. There are no two ways about it.

That’s not the only factor but that’s the number one critical factor. If I see mitochondria functions down, the first thing I want to ask that patient is, “How are you engaging in aerobic exercise? Do you have a regular aerobic exercise program going around?” We want to talk about that. The second one that surprised me has to do with this. As the oxygen comes into the cell, for it to provide the proton that sets the whole electron transport chain going, it has to get that proton from either glucose or a fatty acid. That’s where it gets it. All of us can get it either way.

In my body, my mitochondria can harvest that proton from glucose. It can also harvest that proton from fatty acids. The reality is when you look into it, we’re all different. You have some people on one side of this equation that can harvest the proton from glucose very efficiently, but not so much from fatty acids. The person should have a diet fairly high in complex carbohydrates. They should not be on the high-fat ketogenic type of diet. They should be on a complex carbohydrate diet.

On the other hand, you have people that cannot efficiently harvest protons from glucose. They are the keto people. They want to be on a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. You’ve got these extremes and the rest of us fit in between these extremes. What’s cool about doing this testing is since the production of carbon dioxide varies between, whether you’re getting the proton from glucose versus whether you’re getting the proton from fatty acids, I can look at that ratio of CO2 to O2 and tell you where you stand on that spectrum. The number one thing that I’ve found to improve mitochondrial function is exercise. The number two thing is finding the right diet. If you’re a person that doesn’t burn glucose well and you get on that high carbohydrate thing, I could tell you some great stories. It’s going to flat-out suppress your mitochondria.

Is that what you do? Do you try people on a couple of weeks of the high complex carbs and then test them, versus the higher fats and then test them, and see which one wins out?

There’s a bit of that but initially, right from the test itself, I can pretty much tell you where are you on that spectrum just by looking at the numbers on the test. It turns out it’s a linear equation. It doesn’t go up and down and vary like that. It’s straight linear. If I look at those ratios, I can predict where you’re going to be down the line. I can tell the audience a cool story that first got me going on this and nailed it down for me. I had a guy come up from LA. He was a 42-year-old movie actor. He wasn’t working all that much these days. He’s spending all his time in the gym. He’s from the Los Angeles area so he’s eating at Sprouts all day long.

The number one strategy to improve mitochondrial function is exercise.

He’s got this perfect type of lifestyle. The guy looks like Adonis. He comes in and we test him out, and his mitochondria functions stunk. I’m going back with my history saying, “What’s the deal with you?” It turns out that he does eat a Dairy Queen Blizzard twice a day. I asked him, “Why the heck, given your lifestyle, do you eat a Dairy Queen Blizzard twice a day?” He said probably the best answer anybody could ever give, “Because I like them.” I said, “That may be problematic for you. Let us just have you stop eating that Dairy Queen Blizzard. Let’s change nothing else.”

I bring him back in two weeks and his mitochondrial function doubled. I have seen this before. Part of what we can do is you can get the test, put them on the keto diet, come back and redo the test. I’ve done that so much now that I don’t need to do that. I can just look at the numbers and tell you where you stand on that.

How does Omega-3 play into the picture? Obviously, the answer is a lot. There has been a lot of controversy about taking Omega-3 and fish oil supplementation, especially increasing the risk of atrial fibrillation. The problem is when you take a population of people who eat McDonald’s, cookies, cupcakes and Dairy Queen as you said, and then you give them fish oil that’s lousy and rancid, and they take no other vitamins and nothing else is healthy, you’re bound to get lousy results.

To that end, I usually say to people that sometimes we need to supplement magnesium and B vitamins. A lot of times, we can get the Omega-3s from seafood. Talk me through that as far as the Omega-3 fatty acids and their role in the cell membrane and the mitochondrial membranes. How does that all play out?

You’ve got your Omega-3 fats, which are a conglomeration of fats. They are in most foods, but the thing most of us want to focus on is EPA and DHA. These are the fatty acids. The DHA is critical for neurological function. EPA is critical for inflammation purposes. We’re supposed to synthesize those. Unless you’re eating grass-fed animals and/or fish, you’re not going to get any EPA and DHA in your diet. You’re going to get the parent oils from grains and such, and then you’re supposed to convert those parent oils into EPA and DHA. You’re right. I measure EPA and DHA on every single patient I see and 80% of the time, it’s in the tank.

They can’t synthesize it. In a population, you’re going to get some people that make plenty of EPA and DHA and they don’t need fish oil. You’re going to meet a whole lot of other people that hardly make it at all. That could be a lousy diet. That’s true. A lot of them are diabetics. Diabetics, as a rule, cannot synthesize EPA and DHA. You’re almost never going to see a diabetic. I’ll bet if you start looking at studies of fish oil and diabetics, you’re going to see some different numbers.

As pertains to the mitochondria, how much credence do you put light into the equation when you’re talking to people? Infrared light, as it increases mitochondrial function, helps to drive that electron transport chain from cytochrome to cytochrome. Do you get into a lot of the red light therapies or even tell people to get out in the sun and sunbathe?

I got a chapter in my book, Bursting With Energy, that deals with light, specifically sunlight. That was my thing. It’s looking at sunlight. I learned about a guy named Vinson in the early 1900s who had sun clinics in the Alps. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this guy. He had it high in the Alps because it was above the cloud layer. Over there, there are a lot of clouds all the time and you can’t get much sunlight. He established these clinics up there.

I’ve had actual photos of this and he’s published data on this. He’s curing tuberculosis cases, syphilis cases, and all kinds of infectious cases. He’s curing them by getting these people up there and having them sunbathe all day long. The hospital rooms were such that they opened up the windows and rolled them out onto the patio. He started them out with five minutes a day.

Each day they would increase it as they acclimated to the sun until they got to the point where they could take sun all day long. The clinical results simply from doing that were astounding. I’m no expert on lights. We do use some lights. I’ve got some red lights in the clinic. I got some blue lights in the clinic. I do encourage people to get sunlight, which to me seems to be the best light but I’m sure it’s a mitochondrial inducer.

I wonder why Dr. Fauci hasn’t publicized the use of light therapy to support immune function.

He needs a patent on that before. He’s going to push it.

I’ve seen the photos, I’ve shared them on social media and emails, of the time of the Spanish Flu and how you’re talking about Boston. It’s the wintertime in Boston and how they have the patients outside of the tents that they had set up to make sure that they were getting sunlight in the middle of winter in Boston. Everybody else is walking around wearing heavy jackets. The patients are all bundled up but at the very least, their face and their eyeballs are in the light.

You’re such an incredible wealth of information. I respect you so much and everything that you’re saying. I want to honor your time and I do want to take the opportunity to jump into the ozone. If you would, give me a quick on what ozone is and why? The ozone that we talk about in the atmosphere is different from medical grade ozone. Clue me in as to how it helps people with cardiovascular issues.

The quickest way for laypeople to understand this is ozone is pure oxygen. It’s not contamination as you were pointing out. The oxygen that we’re breathing in now are two oxygen atoms stuck together. Ozone is when you take oxygen like that that they breathe in the hospitals, we pump it through a machine and then out the other end.

About 2% or 3% as this oxygen goes through the machine, changes from O2 to O3. Now, we have three oxygen atoms combined together rather than just two. It turns out that’s an electron-deficient molecule. It needs an electron. Instantaneously, it’s going to want to have an electron. Keeping that in mind, what happens in mitochondria is they don’t work so well and they become electron deficient.

If you look at NAD and NADH ratios, we could get more technical on this. Overall, that’s the problem with the mitochondria. They are proton excess, which means that they need to remove electrons. Doesn’t it make sense to put in an electronic deficient molecule? That’s basically what it does. When you put that molecule in there, that oxidizes the NADH back to NAD which stimulates the whole mitochondria thing.

In terms of therapies that we can use besides B vitamins to upregulate mitochondrial function, ozone is extremely effective at that. You can give the ozone into the blood, rectum, you can put it in body parts, and you can do all kinds of interesting things with it. It’s a very utilizable substance and it’s cheap, easy to use, and if you use it properly, it’s free of side effects.

By administering ozone, it seems to me what you’re saying is that we stimulate this additional low level of oxidative stress, and that causes the body to increase its antioxidant capabilities, antioxidant genes and proteins. Therefore, paradoxically, it lowers inflammation and oxidative stress, which are linked to every cardiovascular, brain and cancer condition, every condition in total. Is that what we’re trying to achieve?

That’s right. What people want to think of it is that oxygen molecule is going to go into your cells. It’s going to get there, either it’s going to be processed through the mitochondria to produce energy or it’s going to be processed into free radicals. If it can’t go the energy way, guess which way it’s going to go? We have study after study. Another thing I love about ozone is it’s got this huge history. All these studies very clearly demonstrate that the single most powerful way to decrease free radical production is ozone therapy. By far, there’s nothing that can come close to it.

It doesn’t sound in any way that this is suppressing the oxidative pathways in the body. There is some concern in some of the literature and that’s all debatable as well. The body is doing all this oxidation and oxidative stress for a purpose. If we give a lot of antioxidants, it may inhibit what the body is trying to do if we do it exogenously.

The single most powerful way to decrease free radical production is ozone therapy.

The secret is in the dose. You need antioxidants but if you get too many of them, it’s going to start suppressing things. I could tell you an interesting experiment I did once with a scientific colleague of mine that demonstrated this. It’s very clear in my mind that antioxidants are critical, but high doses should only be used temporarily and in certain clinical situations,

There’s been some debate about NAC that I’ve seen. The literature is so effusive on the benefits of NAC and its ability to increase levels of glutathione. There are a few studies that have gotten a lot of publicity in some people that this may increase cancer risk in some of these smaller studies. You can criticize all those, I get it. Is NAC so beneficial that those who are controlling the situation want to diminish the message of the benefits of NAC? That’s a question as well.

In the pandemic, there is a pretty good amount of information about ozone and its ability to keep people healthy in the face of COVID and whatever COVID is. There’s debate about what COVID is but people are getting sick from something, and ozone appears to have a role in preventing hospitalization, ICU admission and even mortality.

Back in the mid-‘80s, there was an epidemic of whooping cough in Modesto, California. I learned about this by looking and reading about it in the newspaper. They were talking about in this one elementary school, 60% of the kids came down with whooping cough. It was huge. They shut down the whole school. I’m reading this article and I’m thinking, “60% of the kids came down with whooping cough. That’s huge. That’s an epidemic for sure. Why not the other 40%?”

If this whole viral infection thing is about the virus itself, you know the other 40% got exposed to the virus. Why didn’t they get sick? I started thinking about this in the sense that there’s got to be something more than the microbe itself. If the microbe is the problem, everybody ought to get sick. I did run into this guy named Peter Duesberg. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Peter. He’s passed on now but he was a pure genius. He worked at UC Berkeley. He did some fabulous work with viruses and such. He said, “It’s not about the virus. It’s about how we respond to the virus.” He was right on.

What I’ve learned about ozone to tie this all together is ozone makes you respond to the virus better. With viruses, I knock them all out with this protocol. Every single one, it doesn’t matter. I don’t even care what the name of the virus is. It could be Ebola, Hantavirus or influenza. I don’t care because the process is always the same. It’s not about the microbes. It’s not like bacteria. A bacteria is about the bacterium. A virus is different and we cannot treat it. There’s no use diagnosing what virus it is, just treat the condition that allowed the viral infection to happen, which has to do with the immune system.

In those studies, you referenced Franzini as lower inflammation and lower D-dimer. Those are all good things. We think about COVID as this hypercoagulable state, microemboli and thrombosis. Anything that can lower inflammation and coagulation in that scenario is going to be beneficial. I know you talk a lot in your books and your teachings about the use of ozone, as far as arthritic conditions. There are a lot of holistic dentists that are using ozone for holistic dentistry and brain-based benefits of ozone. It’s fantastic stuff.

I learned about ozone in the early ’80s. I ended up going to Germany and I heard about it. At the time, I thought, “That’s crazy. Ozone is an extremely powerful oxidant. Are you telling me that if you give somebody an extremely positive oxidant, you’re going to save them from oxidant stress? Where’s the sense in that?” The data is there so I went over to Germany to check it out. I learned about it and how to do this. I learned a lot being there from these great professors that have been doing this for twenty years. I came home and started using it.

Not long afterwards, I’ve got an internal medicine type practice. I see people with all kinds of problems from diabetes to cancer, whatever. They all get better with ozone. What’s that all about? How can you get better with twenty different diseases with the same exact substance? How does that happen if it’s not working on some extremely fundamental level like mitochondria, immune system and circulation? As it turns out, there are a plethora of studies showing how ozone stimulates all these things so we could get into endlessly talk about this. Anything good for you, you’re probably going to read about how ozone stimulates that.

The majority of people who come to see you in your clinic from all over the world, are they all getting on some intravenous ozone protocol? Is there anyone for who ozone would not be appropriate?

I don’t put everybody on ozone. It’s a rescue remedy. It’s cheap but it still costs. Insurance doesn’t cover it. You got to be in my office to get it. I got to stick a needle in your arm. It would be cool if I gave you a little pill of ozone. I would put everybody on that. Normally what I do is test their mitochondria. I look at their clinical condition and if it looks like it warrants it, I’m going to pull out the bigger guns. I’m going to put them on ozone therapy. If people were to come to my clinic, they would see a big old infusion room and lots of people all day long going in and out, getting ozone therapy all day long.

If they walk down the hallway, they are going to see people getting ozone via a sauna. If they walk down the hallway a little bit further, they are going to see people getting ozone via colonic. There’s ozone all over the place in there. I’m shooting ozone into people’s knees. I’m shooting it into their sinuses. I’m shooting it into their vaginas. I’m shooting it all over the place.

As a doctor, if I can find a simpler way to do something, I’m going to do that. For a lot of people, it’s a matter of lifestyle about the things that doctors are already telling them, “Don’t eat the Twinkies. Eat something appropriate and take some B vitamins. How about we detox off a little heavy metal? By the way, you need to exercise. You do need to exercise. If you do these things, we’ll bring you back. We’ll recheck your test and your mitochondria, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Dr. Shallenberger, tell me how can my readers find out more about you and what you’re doing, the books you’ve published, how to reach you, and how to see you in person in Nevada?

I like to recommend that they go to YouTube. I’ve got a lot of stuff on YouTube. One of the things that I’ve put up there is called Disease is optional. It’s a five-part series. Each part is twenty minutes long. It goes into this whole mitochondria thing that we were discussing, only in a lot greater detail. If you go to YouTube and search, “Shallenberger disease is optional,” that series will come up and that will teach you a whole lot about the mitochondria and the testing process.

The other thing is my book, Bursting With Energy, which is still in the old edition. The new edition is coming out. That book is a pretty good book to read and help people to explain why we want them to do these things. One of the things that all clinicians learn eventually is that most people will do what you tell them to do if they understand why you’re telling them to do that. When you going to see a doctor and the doctor says, “I want you to stop eating your Twinkies. I want you to start getting on your bicycle. I want you to do this and this,” but he doesn’t explain why, you’re not going to do it.

What’s nice about the book is it explains to people why these things that everybody is telling them are good for them are good, and they are much more likely to stay with that. If they go online and plug in Second Opinion Newsletter, that’s a pretty good newsletter. You said, “Shallenberger, you’ve been out there for 50 some odd years doing this stuff.” What’s funny is I think I’m still in first grade. There is so much that I don’t know and it’s so exciting. One of the most fun things I have is making this newsletter because there’s always new stuff coming up that even I don’t know about this stuff. The newsletter is another good way to keep up to date with what’s going on.

I think about my former life as a conventional cardiologist and how easy it was. Somebody comes in and the blood pressure is high, here are pharmaceuticals. Cholesterol is an issue, here are some pharmaceuticals. You need an angioplasty stent, let’s do that. The toolbox that we have in those situations is very small. Now you get over into the causative space. You get into holistic medicine, integrative medicine and functional medicine. We’re all in first grade.

There’s this whole world and every day, there’s something new, which is exciting but it can make it a little bit difficult for all of us to keep up with this information and modality. Your book is a fantastic reference, YouTube channel, Second Opinion Newsletter. Dr. Shallenberger, I sincerely appreciate your time being on the show.

Jack, it’s been great talking with you. Maybe we’ll get together next time and we’ll talk a little bit more specifically about cardiovascular disease. One of the slam dunks of ozone therapy is cardiovascular disease. There are a lot of very interesting things we could talk about.

We’ll do that. We’ll nail it down for next time. I would love to talk to you a second time to get the stuff to my database of heart-healthy interested people. We will see you next time. Thank you.

Important Links:

• Dr. Frank Shallenberger
• The Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough
• Bursting With Energy
• Second Opinion Alternative Medical Newsletter
• Disease is optional – YouTube
• https://www.AntiagingMedicine.com/

About Dr. Frank Shallenberger