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135: Chandler Fang and Roberta Vassallo on trusting your AI agent with financial planning

from The GRIP Podcast

48m 20s

135: Chandler Fang and Roberta Vassallo on trusting your AI agent with financial planning

Dr. Frank Schellenberger, known as the "Godfather of ozone therapy," shares insights on mitochondrial function as a foundational pillar of health. He explains that every cell relies on oxygen to generate energy through electron movement, and when this process slows—due to aging, toxins, or poor lifestyle choices—cells become tired, sick, and prone to degenerative disease. Schellenberger’s patented bioenergy testing measures mitochondrial function by analyzing oxygen and carbon dioxide levels during rest and exercise, providing an early warning system for cellular decline. This method reveals that many people have mitochondrial function typical of much older ages, even if they feel healthy. Ozone therapy, which enhances electron flow, supports both mitochondrial and circulatory health, and is especially effective in preventing disease. Prolozone therapy, a pain-free alternative to traditional prolotherapy, regenerates damaged joints and soft tissues by delivering ozone gas, which stimulates healing without inflammation. Schellenberger emphasizes that conventional medicine often reacts to illness after symptoms appear, while integrative approaches like his offer preventive, root-cause solutions. He highlights how daily choices—diet, stress, environmental exposure, and drug use—directly impact mitochondrial health, especially in younger populations. His key message is empowering: every day, individuals either build disease or build vitality; with awareness, they can make conscious, health-promoting choices. By adopting proactive strategies like regular bioenergy testing, exercise, and ozone therapy, people can maintain youthful cellular function and potentially live into their 90s or beyond with vitality and independence. His work challenges the status quo, advocating for a shift from reactive to preventive care grounded in science and personal agency.

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Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let's Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today's content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let's Talk Wellness Now, and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised. "Every cell in your body runs on the same fuel, oxygen. So what happens when your cells stop using it well? Well they get tired, they get sick, you age faster, and here's the part that should make you really angry. We've had a way to measure this since the 1970s, and almost no one in mainstream medicine has ever offered it to you. Today, I'm sitting down with a man who holds the actual patent on measuring mitochondrial function in a clinic. He's known as the Godfather of ozone for a reason. He's been using 130-year-old therapy to help patients regenerate joints, recover from chronic infections, and reclaim their energy decades before anyone else was willing to say it out loud. This is Dr. Frank Schellenberger. Stick around. This one gets into the biochemistry of why you're tired, and what to do about it. What if you could have a functional medicine practitioner in your back pocket, 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Without the $300 to $500 an hour price tag per visit, well, here's the reality. Functional medicine works, the protocols work, the root cause approach works, but access is the problem. Most people can't afford to see a practitioner regularly, and even when they do, the appointment ends before all their questions get answered. So you go home with a list of supplements, a lab report you don't fully understand, and more questions than you came in with. That's exactly why I built Finari. Welcome back to Let's Talk While Listen Now. The show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, and today we're diving into mitochondrial function, oxygen utilization, and the decades-long story of ozone therapy in America with one of the pioneers who built this field from the ground up. If you've ever been told your labs are normal, but you still don't feel like yourself. If you're dealing with fatigue, chronic pain, degenerative joints, or you've just always sensed there's a piece of conventional medicine it isn't measuring, this episode is for you. So grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started on the journey for deeper healing. I know that story because it was my story too. I spent three years being told I had MS. Three years of fear, three years of doubt, three years of sitting across from doctors who had given up looking. Turns out wasn't MS. It was something completely different, something treatable, something we could actually address. But nobody was asking the right questions. That experience is what gave birth to scene at last. My book written for every woman who has ever walked out of the doctor's office feeling more invisible than when she walked. My guest today is Dr. He's been practicing alternative and integrative medicine since 1978. Yep, I said that right, 1978. And he's a founder and past president of the American Academy of ozone therapy. Dr. Schellenberger holds the only patent on using respiratory gas analysis to measure mitochondrial function, a method he calls bioenergy testing. He's written two books on the subject, the type two diabetes breakthrough and bursting with energy. And he's authored numerous peer-reviewed papers on ozone therapy and oxygen utilization. He's also the developer of pro-low zone, an injection technique used to help regenerate damaged joints, herniated discs, and degenerative soft tissue. And he is the editor of the second opinion, alternative medicine newsletter. Dr. Schellenberger, welcome to the show. Yeah, I was a surgical resident, an absolute neophyte to medicine. And I just happened to kind of get lucky in the sense that I found out that lying is falling was, I was happening to be in the San Francisco area at the time. And Linus Pauline was having a study group with about like 10 other people, all of whom were like very famous people in San Francisco. And I just found my way into it. And I started listening to all these guys talking about things like vitamins and imbalances. And he called it orthomolecular medicine, but you know, talking about all the imbalances that in his theory was those imbalances would cause all the problems. And so therefore, the way to fix the problems is not with drugs to help with the symptoms, but to actually go in and look for the imbalances and repair the imbalances, and typically the imbalances are all natural things. He was focusing mostly on vitamin C and other vitamins, but it could be anything, it could be amino acids, it could be sleep, it could be lifestyle habits, whatever. And you know, it just got lucky. And it started awakening up here saying, you know what, all they taught me in medical school was really good stuff, like biochemistry and physiology and so on and so on. But they never, ever, ever told me anything like this before. Isn't that something? I think all of us who've kind of stumbled upon integrative or alternative medicine, whatever we want to call it these days, we all kind of feel the same way, right? Like we learned all this biochem and we were like, oh, thank God it's over. We don't have to think about it anymore. And then you get into the integrative space and you're like, oh my gosh, that biochem meant so much. And now we know like the underlying cause of what's causing the cells to not be healthy, to that make us sick, but we didn't learn any of that card in medicine at all. We just learned the basics of it. And here's how to fix people. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how that's how I got into it. I remember, I just so much remember 1978, I read a book called Sugar Blues. And this book basically had the radical concept of maybe people ought not to be eating all that much sugar. And oh, by the way, taking B vitamins might be a good idea. So I said, okay, you know, I don't think anybody died from sugar deficit or died from taking too many B vitamins. So I'm going to go ahead and give them those. And thank you for about like 20, 25 percent of my patients didn't start getting better. And then I started clicking. And did you just kind of gradually start doing more and more things as you learned then? And did you stop doing surgery? Because if you were a surgical resident back, that's a big thing. I did that for a couple of years. And so back in the late late 70s, you know, I made the transition. I said, you know what? This is a whole lot more interesting than doing the double stuff. Not talking to people and just cutting on that. One thing about surgeons is surgeons, their mentality is pretty straightforward. It's pretty obvious. You got a swollen appendix, I'm going to take the appendix out. We know I have to get into a big intellectual discussion about this. Whereas with the internist, not so much, it's always this and that. We don't always know what we're doing in internal medicine, but I got that surgeon mentality. I'm just looking for what's obvious. Right. That's what they call it all practicing medicine, right? Because that's what we're all doing. That's true. Yeah. So you've said that the body is a self-healing mechanism. It is really our lifestyle and our toxic load that breaks down, which then causes all these problems. Do you think you started learning that when you studied with Linus Pauling or when would you say that you started really noticing that as a big part of people's illnesses? Yeah. Way back then, those guys were on it. I mean, they were focusing to a large extent on, you know, certain vitamins, niacin. I remember it was one of them. But they were also, you know, Linus was an interesting guy. He came in one time in one of the groups and he said, "I want to discuss your end therapy." Yeah. Okay. If anybody else said that, probably we'd blow him out of the group, but, you know, not Linus. So he was open-minded. He thought about lots of things. And yeah, for sure they were focused on diet back then and lifestyle choices and all that kind of thing. Awesome. So you are the grandfather of ozone therapy, right? That is what you are known for and ozone therapy has been around a lot longer than people think, over 130 years. But still today, you know, most Americans have never heard of it. They've never done it. What do you think that the reason is that it hasn't taken off to me mainstream, like it has in different parts of Europe? In the early 80s, a very famous German physician by name, Horst Keith made this statement. If ozone therapy were patentable, it'd be in every hospital in the world. There's your answer in a nutshell. It doesn't make money and it's cheap and it's easy to do, and there's no side effects, so obviously you don't want it. In a profit-making system. That is so true. Can you explain to us a little bit so the listeners understand exactly what is ozone therapy and what does it do? Yeah, so ozone, a listener's ozone is pure oxygen. It's got nothing to do with pollution. It's true up in the pollution. There is some ozone up there, okay? But the ozone is not the problem. Ozone is just pure oxygen. The oxygen that we're breathing right now consists of two oxygen atoms coming together. The reason they come together is because each oxygen atom individually does not have enough electrons to keep that molecule balanced. So they come together and they share electrons. That's a very stable molecule. I think of it as a man-woman marriage. They're coming together and they're sharing the household or whatever it is and things are better that way. So these two oxygen atoms, and that's what we're breathing. O2. O2 is a fairly stable molecule. It's not 100 percent stable, of course. But it's a fairly stable molecule because it's so well balanced. O3 is three oxygen atoms sharing the amount of electrons that makes two oxygen atoms stable. This three-some is not stable. It's an unstable oxygen molecule. What that means is that when you put that into a system, a biological system, it instantaneously grabs an electron. It's going to move an electron. And all life is about electron movement. As soon as your electrons stop moving around, you stop moving around. It's all about the movement of electrons. Everything that goes in on your cells, goes in on a mitochondria, goes in the nucleus. All that stuff, everything 100 percent is initiated by the movement of electrons and ozone initiates that. So we can take that and we can put that gas. It's a gas, by the way. We can take that and we can inject that gas into a joint and it'll start moving electrons in the joint. We can inject it into a bladder. We can inject it into an intestines. We can inject it into the bloodstream and it's going to move electrons wherever we put it. It's going to start moving these electrons and that electron movement is the issue because the reason ultimately that we get sick. The very bottom line reason that we get sick is because our electron movements start slowing down. So when a person is feeling really good when you're a 35-year-old triathlete, those electrons are moving fast. They're moving fast and they're moving purposely. But you start hitting 55, 60, 70, start smoking, start not getting enough sleep. The electron movements are slowing down and then everything else slows down. And then we counter that with ozone. So in a nutshell, that's basically what it's about. It's about oxygen therapy. So ozone can be used as a treatment for an illness but it also could be used as a preventative as we're aging so that that electron transport doesn't slow down and then we don't have as much disease that should occur. Absolutely. Mostly, you know, it depends on people and what they want to do. Of course, I get an ozone treatment periodically just because I'm in the office and I can do that. But the reality is that exercise is the same thing. Exercise does the same thing. So if you're a healthy person and there's nothing really wrong with you and you want to do what you're talking about like preventive exercise. You technically need ozone therapy. Just go out and exercise. Now if you're sick though, it's hard for me to tell a sick person I want you to go do all this exercise to ramp yourself up. So I'm going to get you a jump start with things like ozone therapy. I love ozone therapy. We do it in our office too and like you, I have the opportunity to be able to do that. So if I start to feel run down or I'm traveling too much or I'm starting to feel like I'm coming down with something. I hop on that ozone machine and it is amazing how good you feel so quickly. And even my staff will say to me, you haven't had an ozone in a while. Your blood looks thick. It's not looking good. You're not doing something you're supposed to and I'm like, you're not supposed to know that. You're not supposed to tell me that. But it's amazing that they've noticed the difference in the blood and how it comes out and how it looks for us as we don't do the things that we're supposed to do and we become more toxic. Yeah, you know, if it weren't for logistics and expenses such like that, really, you could make a case in this toxic soup that we live in, you could definitely make a case for every single human being getting ozone treatment on a pretty regular basis, whether they feel good or not. Yeah, just as a preventative just do something preventatively. Is there anybody that you can think of that shouldn't be doing ozone or would be contradicted in doing ozone therapy? Well, you know, there's this one enzyme called G6 PD and we teach that in the courses and such. But everybody's supposed to make this enzyme. But if you don't make enough of that enzyme ozone can be toxic. You can't tolerate that electron movement so well. You have to have you have to have that enzyme to direct and temper the enzyme, the electron movement. And if you don't have that enzyme or if you don't have much of that enzyme, the practitioner's got to be very careful in the dose they give and sometimes it would be fairly rare. But sometimes you just flat out don't give it at all because of that. There's no, there's no contraindication. It's you could do it once a week. You can do it twice a day. It doesn't sort of matter. A lot of practitioners use it in gigantic doses. I'm not a big gigantic dose type guy, but, but, but I and they get away with it with. And you know, it can be real purposeful and I don't know any contraindication to doing it at all as long as you have that G6 PD enzyme. That's awesome. Now you've been the developer of something called prolozone. What's the difference between a standard prolo therapy and prolozone? Now, besides sounding the same, they're totally different. The mechanism of action is completely different, excuse me, proliferative therapy or what they call prolo therapy involves inflammation. So you're going to take a substance that's very inflammatory and you're going to inject it normally around the joint, but you can also went to a joint is going to create the inflammation in there. And then the body responds to that inflammation by coming in with anti inflammatory sorts of reactivities and those those that response is what creates a healing effect in the area. Now, so that's the mechanism of the action and inflammation, creating a body's response to that inflammation and that response to inflammation is what creates the healing. Also, it's different. It doesn't cause an inflammation. It is simply moving electrons. And as it's moving in electrons, as it's moving in electrons, that stimulates the body's healing mechanism in a different way. There's no inflammation involved. And so that's kind of good because with prolotherapy, and I used to do this with prolotherapy, I mean, you go ahead and check some of these need with prolotherapy. It could hurt for a good 7-10 days. It could be really dumb because that inflammation hurts. So with prolozone, no pain. You can end up with the same sort of effect, but no pain. And it's much better if we don't have pain, right? Today, people have wanted to do that. That's so painful like that. Yeah, you know what the other thing is though. And I don't know if you thought of this. I was, I've been using those over 20 years before I thought of this. And that is that, wait a second, proliferative therapy uses liquids. Ozone is not a liquid. It's a gas. So what, how is that different? It's different because when you put a gas in an area, the heat of the body expands the gas, and it starts spreading all over the place. So with prolotherapy, you've got to be pretty pinpoint where you're putting that stuff. But with, with prolozone, it's sort of like, you know, target practicing with a shotgun. You got to be really bad to miss. So you get a lot more benefit, even if you're not a master injector, right? Yes, that, too. And that's it. No, no, no, no. The spots. It dices along the facial planes. As you probably know, you can put it in over here. And the patients say, I feel it over here. It went over there. People don't do that. So I think that's a huge part of white prolozone is, is like the best regenerative therapy I've done, or I've ever worked with. Because of that one simple fact, I think there's a big difference. Well, and that makes a big difference for the person, too, because where they're feeling the pain doesn't necessarily always mean where the damage. And so if we're injecting in the painful area, but that, that injury is actually lateral to it or up or down or wherever it is, You're not. going to get the benefit out of it, you're creating more inflammation. So that makes perfect sense why pro-lossone would work so much better than pro-lotherapy for people. - Yeah, I don't, I don't do pro-lotherapy anymore. I don't know anybody that has does pro-lotherapy that has tried pro-lossone. It's going back to pro-lotherapy. It's just, it's not a point I don't think. - I had pro-lotherapy in my neck, and oh my gosh, I tell you, that was the worst thing I've ever performed. - Pretty bad. I had, I had it in my lower back too, and I was the same way. And I made the mistake of doing it the day before I went on vacation, and I was all screwed up for the whole time. - Yeah, yeah, I only did it once, and I would never do it again. I was like, no, and I even used nitrous with it. It still was bad. And I was just like, I will never do this again. It was worse than the pain I was having. It wasn't worth it for me at all. - So if any of you listeners out there have had pro-lifitive therapy, and you don't want to do that again, this is different. - Yes, do pro-lisone, do that instead. That would be much better. And you can do pro-lisone in pretty much any area, right? Degenerative joints, herniated discs, those kinds of things. Is there any. - I have put it every place. I put it bladders, joints, fingers, ears. I'm stuck in an eyeball. I haven't put it in the brain, but I've injected the epidurals with it, you know, I'll put it right in the CSF. - So you pretty much put it every place. - Pretty safe, pretty safe, that's awesome. - It's just oxygen, it's pure oxygen. It's nothing in there besides the oxygen. - Yeah, so that makes it very easy and very safe to use. - Yeah, yeah. - So you've also been. You've created something called bio-energy testing, so it might probably function, right? And you hold the only patent on using this respiratory gas analysis. Tell us a little bit about that. How does it measure mitochondria? - What does it do? - A long time ago, like three decades ago, I'm trying to get it through my skull. You know, I figured out at that point, all diseases caused by poor mitochondrial function of the listeners, the mitochondria, the part of the cell, where the oxygen goes in to start moving the electrons. That's where the action is, so to speak. And we know decades ago that all disease, including the very process of aging itself, has to do with the decrease in the function of mitochondria to process oxygen. So I'm going through my head, and I know that scientifically, not much gets done in medicine, if anything, where there's no measurement. And the example would be like blood pressure. If we didn't have a blood pressure cuff or a way to monitor blood pressure, one, we wouldn't know if there's a problem or not, two, if we assumed there was a problem and treated for high blood pressure, we wouldn't have a way to know if our treatment was working. So the point is if you don't measure something in medicine, whether it's blood sugar, blood pressure, or mitochondrial function, you have no idea what's going on. So, and so we're talking about the single, most important thing in health, and nobody's measuring it. So I started to think, okay, how can we measure mitochondria? Now the germs had done some work where they had, you know, but it involved in the arterial stick and a venous stick simultaneously, looking for the difference in the O2s. And it was very complicated, and who wants to get the artery stuck, anyway, as a routine test? And so I thought, well, I don't know about that. Well, one day it just came to me. Now wait a second, what goes on here in the mitochondria when oxygen is involved? What goes on is the oxygen only goes one place. You know, all that oxygen I'm breathing in, it's not like it goes to 20 different places. It only goes to my mitochondria. So if I'm breathing in that much oxygen, I must have that much mitochondria. If I'm breathing in that much oxygen, I have that much mitochondria. So the amount of oxygen that my body is consuming, and that amounts to how much oxygen is going in, subtracted by the oxygen coming out, that's the amount that actually disappeared into my body. That directly correlates with how many mitochondria I have. Now, when the oxygen goes into the mitochondria and gets processed into that electron movement, we talked about, the waste product is carbon dioxide. So the more effectively the oxygen is moving electrons, the less carbon dioxide produced, the more ineffectively oxygen is working. In other words, the mitochondria aren't working so well. You get more CO2 produced, so I love two things. The amount of oxygen I'm consuming, that tells me how many mitochondria I have. The amount of carbon dioxide produced to the amount of oxygen that I'm consuming tells me how well they're working. So it's simple. I just put a mask on a person, kind of like a scuba mask, and they're in their breathing. We don't, with them sitting quietly in the chair, so I want to see what the mitochondria function at rest is. And then I put a monopicycle, and they're on there for maybe 15, 20 minutes. And you know, we progressively work them harder and harder. And we can see their oxygen consumption go up, up, up, up, up, up. Well, at some point, obviously, it always levels off. That point, the exercise, but we take that number. What's your maximum oxygen consumption? And then we say, is it good or not so good? So we go to a database and the database have been out there for about 70 years, by the way. They did this software back in the '30s. These days, the instrument, back then, the instrument was like a whole room. These days, instruments look like a shoebox. It's like a little computer. It's crazy how crazy it is. But the database goes all the way back. Anyhow, we go back to that database. And we can say, you know what, you're a 50-year-old person. Your mitochondria are consuming the amount of oxygen that's typical for an 80-year-old person. This is not good. You've got a problem. And then the patient can say, but I feel fine. I say, yeah, you're on the road to destruction, but you haven't got to destruction yet, but you're on the road to it. So you want to go on a different road. So it gives us a way to measure mitochondrial function. And so if somebody, one of my patients, come in and we measure this on every single person I see, basically. And if it's poor, I tell the patient, okay, you're lucky. You're mitochondria are lousy and you've got to find out about it early enough to make a difference. Because normally people only find out about this when they come down with cancer or heart disease or some kind of problem. So you're lucky. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to do something. And we could talk about what that amounts to. But we could most know would be one, obviously. But we're going to do something to make you mitochondria better. And then we kind of kind of re-measure and make sure that what we're having you do is actually working. So it's a really remarkable system that I can tell there's two things that really form the basis of why we get sick. And such that if a patient does not have problem with these two things, they don't get sick. I know what they die of. But they don't die of some illness. They don't waste a way. One of them is this. The mitochondrial function that we're talking about. The other is endothelial function or circulation. Now they're related, obviously, because the way the mitochondria gets the oxygen is through the circulation. So they're a unit right in there. But I can tell my patients, look, by the way, we also measure nitric oxide and flow mediated endothelial function as well. So between those two measurements, if those measurements are good, your mitochondria will work well. And you have good endothelial function. Guess what, folks? You don't get sick. Go about your business. Don't worry about it thing. You're going to be 92 years old on no medications. And doctors are going to be scratching their head and saying, "Well, you're not in any medicine. "And you're in your 90s. "What kind of crazy thing is this?" But that's very possible if you do those two things. And by the way, folks, ozone therapy is good for both of them. It is. It's great for both of them. So is this similar to, I know people that are listening might recognize this type of testing. They offer it in some of the gyms where they do the VO2 max. They put somebody on a bike and they wear this big thing and they work out. Is this a similar test to what they offer like that or slightly different? It's slightly different. But it's the mechanism is the same. Those guys are measuring oxygen consumption. And most of them, but not all, are measuring carbon dioxide production. So we're getting the same measurements. The difference is what are we doing with the measurements? So what we do is, and my patent is basically built around this, we take the measurements and run them through algorithms. And it gives me a whole print out of very interesting things. One of them, of course, is mitochondrial function, but I get a lot of interesting things through those algorithms. And then we don't take people to VO2 max. And now that's a misnomer. VO2 max is the amount of energy produced with and without oxygen. It's a summation of with and without oxygen. We don't care about without oxygen. So you don't want to go to VO2 max. You just go up to the point where you start to enter into the production of energy without oxygen. We call that anaerobic threshold. So that's one of the differences, too. We don't use VO2 max. We use anaerobic threshold. All the data that's published is on anaerobic threshold. The only data on VO2 max has to do with athletes. Because the guys that win the race, or the guys that have the best without oxygen energy production. But for just healthy people, we don't need to know that. So we don't do that. So that's one difference. And the other difference is the algorithms. And then the final difference. is that I don't really want you, if you're a seven-year-old woman, I don't want you to have the mitochondria of a seven-year-old woman. Right. I want you to have the mitochondria of a 40-year-old woman. So everything we do is defaulted back to comparison to a 40-year-old database. Oh, that's awesome. I don't care if you're 41 years old or you're 81 years old, you are going to get compared to a 40-year-old database. And the really cool thing is, I've got patients in their mid-80s that are equal to a 40-year-old database. Wow. It can happen. It can happen. Yeah. There's investment in it, right? You have to be willing to invest your time and energy and money into having that type of mitochondria. It's not going to come by eating at McDonald's and eating sugar and all of that. There's an investment in our house to be able to do that. So people listening, you know, realize that you're going to have to make a commitment if you truly want to have the body of a 40-year-old when you're 80. It is possible. It just means you need to do some work to get there. I'll tell you a story. And I want to tell you the story because it's so recent for me now and it's personal. I'm 80. I just hit 80 years old. So I'm an 80-year-old dude now. Now, in the old days, I used to race bikes. So back in my 30s and early 40s, I'd race bikes on pretty darn good conditions, so forth. And I mean, we used to go out and ride 60, 80 miles group of us and think nothing of it. Nobody would go home, have the beer, and call it a day. So I thought, you know, I'm 80 years old. Huntsman Cancer Institute, up in Utah, has international senior games every year in St. George and they do all kinds of stuff, but it's all for seniors. And it's not competitive. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to go out and I'm going to compete in the bicycle competition. So it turns out there's a number of thick factors, but one of them is a 25 mile road race, 25 miles. That's like nothing compared to the old days. So I'm not 80 years old, though. I'm not like the old days, okay? But I wanted you to test it looks pretty good. Really good. I mean, it looks as good as the average 40-year-old, but these guys that race aren't average. But anyway. So I said, I'm going to go out and I'm going to, you know, ride four, I'm going to prepare for this. What? I go like seven miles and I'm out of gas. What? I just, I struggled home. You got to go out seven miles, which means, oh yeah, unless you call your wife, you got to come back seven miles. So that's what you're doing else. And I got home after 14 miles and just laid on the lawn and just like I was about half dead, this completely ran out of gas. And what got me off on this tangent is, is number one, you know, I'm nowhere near what I used to be, okay? And I'm cool with that, but the point is, so I started on a training program. So I got my bi-wenging number, was about like 110, which means 10% better than a 40-year -old. Okay. And, and now it's up to 160. Okay, guess what? I feel, I feel like a young man. Yeah. I did not expect that. It's funny. It's a personal experience for me, but I didn't realize, you know, I know I had to get in shape for this bike race, but I didn't know that I have all these extra benefits, like I'm sleeping better. My back doesn't hurt this and that. All this stuff is like really good. And my parents work in better the whole thing. It's just extra bonuses, but it kind of goes to your points about, yeah, folks, you got to work at this, but I don't know for me, it's it's kind of fun because of the results. If I didn't get the results, no, I would not want to go out and, you know, ride a bike intensely for two hours. Right. I can do that. And yeah, I don't, I can turn down the Twinkie. It's not that big a deal. I can live without that Twinkie. I'm good because of the results, because of the results. Right. And then I can look forward to, you know, unless something terrible happens to me, I can look forward to, I don't know, 10, 20 more years, you know, good functional living. Right. And I think a lot of us are, we're fine with living into our 80s and 90s. And there are some people that are striving for a hundred and I have a patient that's striving for 150, go for it, but you want to have that quality of life. That's what everybody's afraid of. Like, we don't want to be 80 sucking through a straw, living in a nursing home where we don't know anybody. And, you know, we're just miserable living in this existence because that's not a quality of life. So if we want to live to be that age, we have to put forth a little bit of effort to do that. Yeah, there's a famous Stanford doctor who, interestingly enough died at the age of 92, but he puts the aging thing really, really out there in the late 60s, early 70s when nobody was thinking this way. And he wrote, he wrote a whole bunch of books. One of them was called, why do we die too long and live too short? It was just to your point. Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, why do you want to get to be 75? And then for the rest of your life, be all sluggard and on eight different medications. When you don't have to be that way, you don't actually have to be that way. The medical system tells you, oh, yeah, that's normal. No, it's not normal. Yeah. I think that's the hardest part is, you know, from 40 on, the medical system starts saying, well, you're getting older. Well, you have to accept this. Well, this is normal. And you really don't have to accept it. You just have to be open to looking at health and life in a different fashion. Yeah. I'm glad to see that we're talking more about it than we ever have before. But mitochondria can fix a lot of different things. Why do you think we're seeing more mitochondrial disease in such a younger age population? I mean, I have so many young people in their 30s and 40s. And now even early 50s, they're, you know, type two diabetes. They have cancer. If I were myelgia, I mean, they just, the list of what they have going on, it goes on and on and on and on. I don't remember this 25 years ago when I started. I don't remember seeing this kind of list of problems in this population of people. What's your opinion on that? Yes. So, okay. So you asked the question, well, what screws up mitochondria? Okay. Now, we know aging has an effect. With that, everybody knows that. Right. But leaving aging just the very aging thing aside, what could screw up your mitochondria? Well, clearly heavy metals, heavy metals are known to screw up everything. The endothelium, the mitochondria, the whole package. And it's a lot of heavy metals out there. You go get a flu vaccine, you're getting some mercury injected in you. The dentist puts silver and melcoms in you get mercury injected in you. You get glyphosate, you get all kinds of environmental toxins. So that's certainly part of the problem. I think you could probably, listeners could probably name a lot of, you know, things that people do these days that aren't so good, they don't get enough sleep. Yeah. Exercise is in front of a computer all day long and, you know, they're stressed out. They take medicines and drugs, they take drugs all the time. It's crazy all the drugs people take. It could be over to the counter drugs, it could be prescription drugs, they don't think anything about it. Hey, what I just, I just read an article about the kids in kids and this would be lower than eighth grade in Baltimore, like half of our on drugs, they're getting vaccinated. They're on drugs. Living in an environmental soup of heavy metals, good grief. It's amazing. It doesn't get worse than it really is. Yeah. I can't tell you. I don't think I've seen a 20 year old in a long time who hasn't been on some kind of stimulant, Adderall Ritalin by Vance, antidepressants, like everybody is coming in on an antidepressant, that seems to be the answer that traditional medicine has for people. Let's give you an antidepressant and we'll give you Adderall or Ritalin, whatever it is these days. It's really hard and they can't function without it, but nobody's looking at their mitochondrial function at all. Yeah. Yeah. As you know, there's all kinds of alternatives to these antidepressant medications, all kinds of alternatives to Adderall, but it brings me to another point and we should hear about this. Our medical, our medicine system has some good sides to it, some really good sides. One of the good sides is that it helps with symptoms. Because there's going to be a point in time, folks. You're starting to get sick now, okay? You're like 40 years old. You might have started to go bad, but you feel good. But the whole time, the gone bad over the next 10, 15 years, you feel pretty good, but you're not going in, you're going like I say on the highway to destruction. So what you want to do is, and you want to stop that early on because there will be a point where you can't go back. That's the thing that you can't go back, folks, you will reach a point where you can't go back. And then you'll say to yourself, hmm, darn it, I wish I had been not been smoking so long or whatever your problem was, there's a point you can't go back. And we don't want to get to that point, obviously. Yeah. That recently happened. And that's where the drugs come in handy, it was the point I wanted to make, Deborah. That's where the drugs come in handy. So I got the patient now and they're back so bad. I can't really fix it the way I want to fix it, surgery's not going to fix it, nobody's going to fix it. Okay. Because medicine to help you with the symptoms. Now, I'm not going to dilute myself and thinking I'm fixing you with these symptoms, but that's one of the handy things with medicines is that it can help you when you're at that point that you can't go back. But unless you're at that point, let's not use the drugs for the symptoms, let's actually fix the problem. Yeah. That happened to my husband recently. He had, when he was in his late 40s, he had a crowded artery that. I got blocked and he was 100% blocked and he knew it and and he's not in medicine But he said to me when they were driving and he's like hey, can you order an ultrasound for me of this next thing He's like I don't feel well and I looked at him and I'm like what are you talking about and he's like I think my crotted arteries blocked and he's not an internet guy So he didn't search this out is intuition told him something was wrong and I ordered the ultrasound thinking It's gonna be nothing and the hospital calls and says he's 100% blocked like he needs to do something right this minute And and he's he's kind of ignorant this way. He's like no, I got a hunt and trip coming up with my voice I'm going hunting and He's like I'll be back on Monday for the surgery and he took the rest and he did it and that was back in 2013 And he started getting blocked again They put a calorie and he's been great since he started getting blocked again and one surgeon said I think you should have this procedure called a t-card done the cardiologist said why would you do that? That's such a risky procedure you could throw a clot on the table and and it was the cardiologist that the vascular surgeon sent us to So we took a step back and went okay So we got another opinion saw another cardiologist. He's like yeah, you could do it It's only 60% blocked. I think you'll be okay Another vascular surgeon says I think you're okay. Let's just watch this so we watched it for three months things were okay No change we go back three months after that now. It's been six months since they found it He's 100% blocked so he went from having what looked like an hourglass Crotted artery were just one spotless block to now the internal and external crotted artery are completely blocked and They make no they made no big deal out of it. They were like well, it's blocked What are you gonna do can't do anything? And I said what do you mean you can't do anything? He's like we can't do anything and he's like yeah, you could do a CT if you want, but nothing you can do So of course I ordered the CT luckily his left side is compensating for the right side and he has had no Yeah, and that's why he's had no symptoms But I love the nature going okay, let's try to be super aggressive here and see it just happen Let's see if we can open this up some ozone some plabEx some natal kinase lumbar kinase things like that to see I said, I don't know if it's gonna work or not, but we could at least try and and but that you know We we were waiting and part of the reason we waited as they said to us if we put this t-car in it's only good for 10 years And so he said I'm 62. What am I gonna do at 72 then? But nobody said if you don't do it now the chances of you blocking like this is higher and Nobody once said that that potential could happen both externally and internally Nobody looked at why that happened. They didn't care in the cardiovascular world at all and and now it's left him going Well, what the heck why did I go see the cardiologist? They weren't gonna do anything anyway, and so when we talk about conventional medicine That is really the difference between you know what they do and and what what you and I do is we're looking for the root cause and trying to fix the Problems of those things don't ever happen. Exactly. Yeah, that's it's reactive medicine, right? Reactive waiting to tell everything goes to heck and then they decide to do something. Yeah, exactly. That's crazy This has been such a great conversation I would love to hear one more thing from you is that what's the belief? You've held early in your career about healing that you've you've seen come to fruition or something that you believed when you were younger That's really changed how you practice or how you see medicine today. Okay. I'm not sure how to answer that question Exactly, but let's see what I can do so so Gosh so many things it's sometimes people saying well, what have you learned that's so great and okay, you got it two hours So much right? You know, maybe maybe this is the answer. I don't know if it is, but maybe this is the answer We screw ourselves up if I get sick tomorrow. I did it Realize that folks realize that if you get sick tomorrow, you did it It wasn't the next door neighbor wasn't that somehow illness is floating above you and it decided to drop on you all of a sudden No, you did it and as Adele Davis. This is a great quote. I use this quote all the time Adele Davis was a nutritional pioneer in the 50s I don't know if you ever heard of her, but she died in the early 60s But she said every day of your life you're doing one of two things. You're either producing disease or you're producing hell Wow, that's a statement. That means what I'm going to do today When I'm doing the day folks, what you're going to do today? What are you going to be doing? Is it going to be doing something that produces disease and be sitting around drinking beer and eating twinkies and watching TV or are you going to be out on your bike with Shalom burger riding 25 miles and you know taking a bite or something, but what are you going to do today? Yeah, that that if you get that through your head If you'll accept that and get through your head, maybe you put posters around the house or something that what am I doing today? Am I building disease? Okay. Did that today? I think I'll do a building disease day So you could probably have a building disease day, you know periodically that'd be fine But to do it every day don't do that, you know You know again, like you don't want to get to the point we just talked about you don't get to the point where Yeah, you know the only thing is left is drugs and now you got side effects and then they got to take another drug for the side effects And you're often running and everybody's met people like that and it's a sad thing because you know They didn't know that I'm medical I'm medical commercial medical guys They're not going to tell you about stuff like that like they didn't with your hubby then I can ask you about stuff like that They're going to just say okay, just let's wait and it gets really bad. We'll do something really bad Yeah, exactly so we can't do anything and then we're just gonna say well, that's okay Yeah, I love that though because that does give you empowerment, right? It's like like the same quote Every day you're either living or you're dying. What do you choose and to do and I love though the quote that you have it empowers you Like it gives you the power to make the choice every single day and just because you make a mistake at noon Doesn't mean you can't make it better at 1230, right? So you have that little piece of chocolate or you have that one little thing? Okay, then you just don't do it the whole rest of the day make the choice to make a difference Every moment of every day to live better than you did the time before and that empowers you And if you have the power to fix things you have the power to live the life the way you want and that's huge As soon as you start the better Yes, starting your 30s starting your 40s. Don't wait until your 80s to decide okay Look, I made it this far. Yeah, I'll start leaning up my act You know, that's good if you're gonna do that. Okay. I'm not putting that down, but Start early when you feel great start doing it while you're feeling great. That's a whole idea Don't waste yourself crappy and then decide to do it. So good Dr. Salonberger this was amazing. I have had such the pleasure of talking to you. You're wonderful How can people find you and work with your team work with your clinic if they are resonating with what you're talking about? Yes, so Thank you for that Deb Number one go to Amazon and you can look I've got a zillion YouTubes on there So you could plug in Salonberger YouTube Salonberger whatever prostate cancer whatever then go to Amazon and buy my book bursting with energy Which really cuts into pretty much most of the stuff we're talking about and if people were like 40 years old and healthy people and they read that book and live by that book I could damn your guarantee. I'm never going to get sick Darnier so read the book bursting with energy and then the website it tells you about all the stuff We do if you're already sick. We've got lots of good answers for you We can do the mitochondrial testing. We can do the endothelial testing We can do all these sorts of things that that you know probably most clinics in your area aren't capable of doing and so you can learn about that at the website Which is anti aging medicine dot com. So it's really easy to remember anti aging medicine dot com I love that. Thank you so much We will have those in the show notes and we'll have links to all of your sites so that people can find it Easy especially for those of you who are listening while you're driving. Thank you so much for being with me It's been a pleasure. Okay, Deb. Thanks. Thanks for all the good work you do. Thank you. You too

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Dr. Frank Schellenberger holds the only patent on measuring mitochondrial function via respiratory gas analysis, a method that reveals early signs of cellular decline before illness develops.
  2. Ozone therapy, a 130-year-old alternative treatment, boosts electron movement in cells, improving energy production and supporting healing without harmful side effects.
  3. Prolozone therapy—using ozone gas instead of inflammatory liquids—regenerates degenerative joints and soft tissues with no pain, offering a safer and more effective alternative to traditional prolotherapy.
  4. Mitochondrial dysfunction and poor endothelial function are the root causes of aging and disease, and measuring both allows early intervention to prevent chronic illness.
  5. Functional medicine and root-cause treatments like ozone therapy and bioenergy testing offer a proactive approach to health, contrasting with conventional medicine’s reactive model.
  6. Environmental toxins, poor sleep, stress, and overuse of medications—especially stimulants and antidepressants—accelerate mitochondrial damage, particularly in younger populations.
  7. Early detection through bioenergy testing enables personalized, preventive health strategies, allowing individuals to maintain youthful mitochondrial function into older age.
  8. The core belief in healing is that daily choices—diet, activity, and lifestyle—either produce disease or promote vitality, empowering individuals to take control of their health long before symptoms appear.

Summary:

Dr. Frank Schellenberger, known as the "Godfather of ozone therapy," shares insights on mitochondrial function as a foundational pillar of health. He explains that every cell relies on oxygen to generate energy through electron movement, and when this process slows—due to aging, toxins, or poor lifestyle choices—cells become tired, sick, and prone to degenerative disease.

Schellenberger’s patented bioenergy testing measures mitochondrial function by analyzing oxygen and carbon dioxide levels during rest and exercise, providing an early warning system for cellular decline. This method reveals that many people have mitochondrial function typical of much older ages, even if they feel healthy. Ozone therapy, which enhances electron flow, supports both mitochondrial and circulatory health, and is especially effective in preventing disease.

Prolozone therapy, a pain-free alternative to traditional prolotherapy, regenerates damaged joints and soft tissues by delivering ozone gas, which stimulates healing without inflammation. Schellenberger emphasizes that conventional medicine often reacts to illness after symptoms appear, while integrative approaches like his offer preventive, root-cause solutions. He highlights how daily choices—diet, stress, environmental exposure, and drug use—directly impact mitochondrial health, especially in younger populations.

His key message is empowering: every day, individuals either build disease or build vitality; with awareness, they can make conscious, health-promoting choices. By adopting proactive strategies like regular bioenergy testing, exercise, and ozone therapy, people can maintain youthful cellular function and potentially live into their 90s or beyond with vitality and independence. His work challenges the status quo, advocating for a shift from reactive to preventive care grounded in science and personal agency.

FAQs

Ozone therapy uses a gas form of oxygen (O3) that is unstable and quickly grabs an electron in biological systems. This electron movement is essential for cellular energy production. By stimulating electron flow, ozone therapy helps restore mitochondrial function, which is crucial for energy, health, and preventing disease.

Bio-energy testing measures oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production while a person rests and exercises. The difference between these values reflects mitochondrial activity. A person's results are compared to a 40-year-old database, helping identify early signs of mitochondrial decline even when symptoms are absent.

Ozone therapy is generally safe but individuals with low levels of the enzyme G6PD may experience adverse effects. Practitioners must be cautious with such patients. Otherwise, it is considered safe for most people, including those with degenerative joint conditions or chronic fatigue.

Prolozone is a gas-based injection therapy that uses ozone to stimulate healing. Unlike prolotherapy, which uses inflammatory injections and causes pain and tissue damage, prolozone moves electrons without inflammation, leading to healing without pain and with broader, more effective distribution.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of cells and are responsible for energy production. When they function poorly, cells become tired, leading to fatigue, chronic illness, and accelerated aging. Measuring mitochondrial function allows early detection and intervention before serious disease develops.

Yes, mitochondrial function can improve with lifestyle changes, consistent exercise, and targeted therapies like ozone. Dr. Schellenberger shares personal examples where individuals in their 80s show mitochondrial function comparable to 40-year-olds, leading to improved energy, sleep, and overall well-being.

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