Episode 14: Dr. Paul Anderson, ND on IV Therapy for Fatigue, Infections, and Cancer
Show Summary:
Dr. Paul Anderson is CEO of the Anderson Medical Group which includes Advanced Medical Therapies, a state of the art medical center providing fully compliant IV, Hyperbaric and Mild Hyperthermia therapies. Dr. Anderson is former Chief of IV (intravenous therapy) Services for Bastyr Oncology Research Center and a past Professor at Bastyr University.
Join us for a conversation about the benefits of IV Therapy and how it can help address fatigue, optimize the immune system, support cancer, and improve patient outcomes!
Listen to the full conversation:
Subscribe:
Watch on YouTube:
Full Episode Transcript:
SPEAKERS: Dr. Andrew Wong, Dr. Paul Anderson, ND
Welcome to the Capital Integrative Health podcast, a podcast dedicated to transforming the consciousness around what it means to be healthy and understanding the root causes of both disease and wellness. I am Dr. Andrew Wong, co-founder of Capital Integrative Health, an integrative practice committed to expanding access to holistic root cause medicine to the global community.
Today, we have Dr. Paul Anderson. Dr. Anderson is the CEO of the Anderson Medical Group which includes advanced medical therapies, a state of the art medical center providing fully compliant IV hyperbaric and mild hyperthermia therapies and Dr. Anderson is also former chief of IV services for Bastyr Oncology Research Center and a past professor at Bastyr University. Please join us today for a conversation about the benefits of IV therapy and how it can help address fatigue, optimize the immune system, and improve patient outcomes and much more.
Dr. Wong:
So, first of all, thank you so much Dr. Anderson for being here today.
Dr. Anderson:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah. So, you are very famous in our circles. We've taken the IIV NTP and I know, you know we've taken that with Dr. Cochran everyone and we've had some calls with you already so thank you so much for that but I think just to start with and we just ask some background questions a lot of times at first so kind of in general why did you decide to pursue medicine as a career and then maybe just more specifically about IVs what made you interested in IV therapy.
Dr. Anderson:
Well, both are kind of a long story. So the short version of the story is in the late 1970s, I was in a lab person so I was already kind of on that track and I had become a bit disillusioned just with I think the way medicine was at the time and so I did other things and then I decided at some point to go back and finish medical school and I had some really interesting and very fruitful interactions with some Naturopathic physicians who had really helped my family and so that sort of made me step back and look at maybe there's another way to practice that you know would fit my personality better. So, that's kind of the very short version of how I’d go into practice. IV therapy I think was two things. One was when I started doing it was in the 1990s and it wasn't terribly well defined or even probably legal for me to be doing what I was doing but I had had exposure before working in hospitals and other places to do IV therapy andIi was starting to get patients in who were just too sick really to just do oral therapies with now you can always do oral therapies of course but to try and kind of move their case forward, I really felt like IV nutrients would be helpful and so you know in a sense there were a few doctors before that who were doing IV therapy like Dr. Myers who the “Myer’s cocktail” is named after and then Dr. Gaby who would work with him and Dr. Wright and a few other people Dr. Clinton and then kind of in the late 80s, 90s this next group of us started doing all this and what we have now as far as training and knowledge about it is so much different than it was back then which is really good for everybody.
Dr. Wong:
Yes. Well, we are the benefit for sure.
Dr. Anderson:
That's sort of what led you to it.
Dr. Wong:
For sure. Thank you so much for creating all the training programs and I know there are different training programs out there but certainly we didn't, we weren't going to talk about this but I think it is good to just notice if you're a clinician out there and you're actually wanting to get some really good training, hands-on training and also some theoretical knowledge about the training too, I know that you're part of the IIV NTP. Yes, you kind of created it with some other doctors.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah. I do the specialty things with them like chelation and oncology.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah got it, got it. Great, okay.
Dr. Anderson:
But they do a lot like if you want a really good IV nutrient course, just check with them.
Dr. Wong:
So IIV NTP, if you google that I think it'll come up essentially. What makes IV nutrient therapy so helpful. For patients, I think you already kind of answered that but why is it
different from taking say oral supplements or oral medications? We'll start with some basics first.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, I think and of course you also have to keep in mind it's never one or the other for most people. We usually do both.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
But what led me into it is sort of I think a good explanation of that which is people would have been so chronically ill and their gut so inflamed and all of this that you had a limited amount of exposure for food or pills or whatever to get through them. So, one way to kind of get their metabolism and their cells fed around their messed up GI tract was to put the nutrients in an IV. And so there's really two big targets with IV therapy that we do. One would be, let's get things around your GI tract to help say with a chronic illness or fatigue or maybe recovering from chemotherapy or surgery or something like that. The other is, let's put more of the nutrient in you than we could ever do orally like IV vitamin C, we do that sometimes. So IVs kind of have these two benefits going around the gut and then being able to manipulate nutrient levels for therapeutic output.
Dr. Wong:
You recall that Orthomolecular Medicine the second way.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, essentially.
Dr. Wong:
Yes, yes. And we know that you know basically we have seen this in our clinic too is that IV nutrient therapy will often do those two things like you said go around the GI tract, get to the areas that you know wouldn't otherwise be the case if someone had intestinal permeability, etc. and then number two you know there are certain times when you just need a super therapeutic dose of a nutrient in order to accelerate that healing. Let's talk because I know there are a lot of listeners out there that are generally interested in health and wellness. What conditions can IV therapy be helpful for and that's a long laundry list I’m sure. What accounts of some of the big categories you think of that okay this is where I would go with IV therapy in the first few months of that treatment.
Dr. Anderson:
You know I think there's the first divide in groups of people who are usually helped by it. One would be you treat an acute patient who maybe otherwise is healthy but they got a bad flu or some other infection, etc., and you just wanted to do something to really help their already good immune system get through it so we in a lot of those cases we might do IV vitamin C with those people or other support nutrients for them for example. And then there's where we see more use which would be chronically ill folks. So in our world, in our clinic, chronic illness includes with and without cancer, so you could have a chronic illness like a chronic GI problem like Crohn's disease where you're maybe not absorbing well or multiple sclerosis or you know any other sort of autoimmune type disease IV nutrients would be very useful in those instances partly because of gut damage partly because the medications a person might be on may have deficiencies. And so in the non-cancer world, a lot of it is supportive you know feeding the cells, recovery and repair and all that. On the cancer side, there's kind of two big chunks. One is recovering from therapy. A lot of people come in after you know chemo or radiation or surgery or all of the above and they just don't feel very good and they want to try and heal up so that's that's a big target for IV for us.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
And then there's people supporting their cancer therapy say with vitamin C, etc.
Dr. Wong:
Great. Well, we do have two pet rabbits at home so it's probably a good time to go down a couple rabbit holes here based on the answers. I think we'll start with the acute illness for a second because this is 2021 when we're taping this and we're still in the COVID pandemic time. I hope that everyone is staying healthy out there figuring out ways to support your immune system, optimize it. So that's I know one thing we want to talk about today is IV therapy for supportive care for COVID. Let's say someone has an acute COVID illness. Maybe they've tried different therapies and this is probably you know too deep of a topic to talk about this for the whole time of course but you know what would you think about there in terms of IV therapy for someone with acute COVID? And then maybe we talk about long COVID in a minute too.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah and certainly that's a deep well there. What I found in the last almost two years doing COVID interviews is the best way for me to answer these things is, here's what I've seen okay.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
So, this is what I've experienced and you know you're you, do what you need to do.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
So again with COVID, it's a microcosm kind of what I was just saying with chronically ill people and recovery and all of that. What we've found over time and we're you know getting on a year and three quarters here I guess since you know it all started that we knew of. What I have personally found clinically is if I can get somebody very early the first day or maybe two that they get the fever and the early symptoms, we will often, usually it's a patient obviously so we already have labs on them etc., but we often will give them maybe a medium-high dose of vitamin C say 50 grams 50 000 milligrams and often, that will shorten the kind of the nasty symptom group and it could just be my patients that I've had but so far that people have been able to early IV vitamin C haven't had to go into the hospital which is great you know because keeping out of the hospital is number one there. But then on the other side of it, there's a protocol that I wrote for hospitals because hospitals can- you don't leave the hospital and you get an IV all day long. What we were trying to do is mirror a couple of the randomized control trials that did COVID and intensive care given IV vitamin C.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
And because the patient doesn't have to go home and they're hooked up all the time, you kind of have this low constant vitamin C going in. And the hospitals call it high dose, it's certainly higher dose than you would eat, but it's lower dose and we might give outpatient. The benefit it has though is it's 24/7 and in those studies, people not only were more likely to live and get out of ICU but they were there a shorter number of days .
Dr. Wong:
This is versus placebo or versus intermittent high dose vitamins?
Dr. Anderson:
No, that was versus just standard of care for ICU.
Dr. Wong:
Oh, like normal saline and everything.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Wong:
Got it, got it. Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
So, they just added one thing which is the high dose vitamin C to the control group or the treatment group. So, there's a lot of ways to use it. I calculated it's probably less than one percent of US hospitals using IV vitamin C this way.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
But with the ISOM, the ortho molecular group, I published two things. One was the protocol for the hospitals so they'd know how to do it because that was our first question.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
But the second was a review of the two RCTs that did get published which were very positive.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
So I think with COVID, you know, that's sort of like acute and sub-acute COVID. We've seen like vitamin C, maybe other oxidative things like ozone has worked really well and then sometimes other things you know depending on how bad the lungs are. And then in you know later stage or long COVID, we do a lot more sort of repair stuff, mitochondrial support with nutrients and glutathione and things.
Dr. Wong:
Got it, got it. And do you think the mechanism for the vitamin C is more of an antioxidant in general? Is it kind of reducing the- I guess the oxidation of iron there? I know there's been some articles about that.
Dr. Anderson:
You know obviously each of these RCTs, they look at different biochemical endpoints to try and uncover why is it working you know. I think when I read them and by the way there's I think like eight or ten randomized controlled trials being done on vitamin C and COVID. Just there's only two that have finally been published.
Dr. Wong:
Got it.
Dr. Anderson:
They mirrored what the Chinese saw earlier but I think that when it comes to the vitamin C and why is it working, it's probably a lot of different things but one thing that they showed in one of the trials was that it dropped IL-6 and almost you know everyone could have not been an immunologist but now we all know about IL-6, right?
Dr. Wong:
Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Anderson:
Very inflammatory, all of that. And it dropped it like not a little bit, it dropped it many orders of magnitude.
Dr. Wong:
So, that's really a big key there.
Dr. Anderson:
So it went from like the deadly inflame you make you clot level down to just normal within days. So I think among the many other things, the other thing I think that it probably does do is whenever you give even higher doses of vitamin C, it takes your body a while to distribute it and get get rid of it so you could have even had an oxidative high dose but the next day you're still getting the benefit of the vitamin C.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
And I think when it comes to like clotting, the abnormal clotting, abnormal pulmonary activity probably brain and heart, I think that the presence of the vitamin C keeps the oxidation reduction level so you don't get these weird clotting things.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
If you look at all the research anytime you're critically ill, your vitamin C goes to zero anyway so makes sense.
Dr. Wong:
It makes sense even from a general viral perspective, right? We need more vitamin C and those that make sense. Geat, so this is a very general question I know you have thousands of patient success stories but could you just share with us a general kind of patient success story for IVs in general. Maybe just kind of walk people through that process. Maybe they come in, they try some other things working on their gut. What is kind of a typical example of someone that would use you know IV therapy? Maybe we could just say for- you can pick whatever condition you like I suppose. There's many many possibilities here.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah. I think because there's the sky is the limit literally on what's happened but I think maybe i'll do two bookends because there's such a range. On one end would be more of a typical like we talked about earlier otherwise healthy person but they get run down or maybe you know between their children at preschool and work and everything they've gotten you know four colds in a row and they're just not doing well. A person like that in addition to all the other things we might do like look at their diet and look at you know their immunity generally and all that. What we might recommend with someone like that is why don't we do some things just to get your previously good immune system just back online you know give it some support etc., and depending on their symptoms there's kind of two trajectories that group we would take with. One would be they were pretty strong to start with but they've just been getting sick more often and they just need you know kind of a little more. If their constitution was already pretty strong we might just do a moderate like high-dose vitamins like 50 gram vitamin C twice a week for say three weeks and then once a week for three weeks and then kind of reassess. And often even during colon flu season that's you know plenty and they're sort of back up there they've changed whatever else you need to change. In people like that who were really already fatigued going into it, what we've had better success with is alternating. So those two IVs a week, one would be nutrients followed by glutathione to support the cells and the mitochondria, the other IV would be a vitamin C and we'd rotate back and forth. So that's kind of on the more I guess healthier end of our folks.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
A really common chronically ill type of a patient would be they don't remember when they last felt normal or healthy.
Dr. Wong:
Right, right.
Dr. Anderson:
In those cases, a lot of times they have such profound deficiencies you know could be iron vitamin D anything really but we usually check them out and their gut has become so subfunctional that you could give them in fact a lot of them have been taking nutrients orally for years and the gut's just letting enough in to kind of keep them alive. So, we've seen some very remarkable cases with people like that who have just gotten very you know I'm talking 15, 20, 30 years of chronic illness. A lot of people out there like that.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
And so we would do you know usually again an alternating start with two IVs a week. One would be very heavy with nutrients and glutathione just to recharge. The other would be some nutrients, iron, if they needed it separately and maybe some other things and we'd rotate that. They of course don't bounce back as well as the healthy folks you know to start with do but what I’ve seen is once you get in sort of you're coming in behind the dysfunctional digestive tract etc., and just their dysfunctional body, the cells start to get fed and actually kind of perk up and there's actually a kind of a feed forward mechanism where the GI cells start to heal as well so then what they take orally or eat does make a difference. So those are in everything in between but that's kind of the normal kind of starting place.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, kind of we call the vicious cycle becomes the virtuous circle in a way, the body's starting to heal itself. Kind of a technical question for you more of a clinical question but are you using more of an empiric, let's start with some basic IVs with Mag C, glutathione zinc, different things, or is it more? Are you kind of going more towards let's look at the labs also or kind of know clinically what they might be deficient in and if it's labs do you go with like intracellular testing or do you go more with like a general lab like a lab core quest kind of thing?
Dr. Anderson:
Probably all of the above.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
You know for people who are not chronically ill, we'll still do basic labs and make sure there's nothing wrong.
Dr. Wong:
Right, right.
Dr. Anderson:
But their therapies are probably a little more empirically based on-
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
Like what I described earlier. The people on the far other end of the spectrum, the sicker folks or people who have just finished a round of chemo or radiation, they're just really worn out post-surgery. With those folks, we do a broader look so we definitely look a lot at their iron stores because if those get run down to a certain point, your mitochondria just can't even run anymore. We look very definitely at a lot of minerals because chronic illness you know we kind of know we're going to burn up vitamins but minerals work with vitamins so I usually do like a red blood cell panel for minerals.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
Because you can get a lot of data all in one place.
Dr. Wong:
Right, right.
Dr. Anderson:
And what we do with that often is if they're going to get more than three or four IVs and let's say they're really low in zinc but they got plenty of selenium, we'll leave the selenium out and we'll just give them zinc and the other ones same with magnesium etc. So yeah, it's the sicker you are the more you probably should customize a bit.
Dr. Wong:
That makes a lot of sense. We've talked a bit about fatigue I think using kind of a mitochondrial kind of support. What are your favorite nutrients for I mean I know you talk about this all day here but what are your favorite nutrients for IV wise for let's say mitochondria support with someone with chronic fatigue you know?
Dr. Anderson:
Sure. You know I think the big picture to remember is that the mitochondria operate using a number of B vitamins and then which is why those are generally in all the formulas. They're supported by some amino acids and then minerals are very important for running oxfos running the electron transport chain. So, iron's a special case but if iron is low, it's sort of its own little IV thing that you do but if it's low, the mitochondria just can't work. But let's say iron's okay, a lot of trace elements come into play when it comes to the mitochondria things such as selenium and zinc that we mentioned earlier even chromium and then magnesium is a really big deal as far as like protecting mitochondria so all of those minerals become very important. The B complex of vitamins which we will usually add extra B5 pantothenic acid because the B complex we use doesn't have a lot of B5 and to get fat into the mitochondria. To burn it you use a lot of b5 so b5 is a big one. Generally carnitine, the amino, because it also helps put energy in for the mitochondria to burn fat and then taurine which helps with mineral movement. So a lot of times at the very base a recharge you know IV would be B vitamins, some vitamin C of course, the minerals aforementioned minerals ,and then you know carnitine taurine. Now, something a lot of clinics are doing now which we experimented with about 15, 18 years ago in in fibromyalgia patients was NAD and we used to like get NAD a long time. Before, it was cool. And what we would do a lot of times with the like a fibro chronic fatigue patient is we would do a lower dose of NAD so like let's say you know an addiction dose is 500,000 you know milligrams, we'd be doing 150 milligrams along with the other nutrients and what we found was, it was very synergistic and you could do it so it didn't over stimulate them. A lot of times you take someone with fibro or chronic fatigue and their their cells are so tired. If you give them something that's a little too stimulating, they need it but they feel horrible from it.
Dr. Wong:
So you give them the NAD plus the vitamins and minerals and you're doing a pretty low dose. Yeah, we're starting to get into that here. We kind of see that those NAD infusions are a bit longer, right? They'd have to stay in the clinic for a bit longer, correct?
Dr. Anderson:
Definitely, yeah. And the higher the doses, the longer they're going to be there because you know the upside of NAD is it is already active you know, it's the active form of B3 so you don't have to put two B3s together and all that. The downside of it's already active and so if you get someone who's sensitive, it goes in too fast you know their heart will respond to it so they get tachycardia and stuff. Generally it's more just they're uncomfortable but we don't want them to be uncomfortable so we start with lower doses and yeah you just can't go as fast.
Dr. Wong:
Got it and then I think we talked about this a little bit with COVID and long COVID and things like that but what types of IV therapy do you recommend for improving the immune system? And I think this is another pretty broad question here and I think we have another question about chronic infection so I don't know if you wanted to tackle both of those together or not. But someone did ask me once about IV vitamin D. We have not used that. Is that even a thing, IV Vitamin D? And would you even recommend that?
Dr. Anderson:
So, yeah there's a couple of options with vitamin D specifically. There's a D2 form for IM use that a lot of people use and that's been researched a lot like in elderly folks and stuff. But then there is also a calcitriol which is the active form of vitamin D and it's I forget but it's many numbers of magnitude more active than say D2. We've used that with people, it's an IV product.. It's used in cancer research, it's used in people that truly need vitamin D, and a few other things. It's available. It's a lot like giving say glutathione or lipoic acid where it's in its own bag, it's a lipid soluble acid. But in the non-cancer setting, the people I’ve done that with a lot of Crohn's patients who've been ileactimized so no good absorption anyway. We've used calcitriol so you give them a nutrient IV and then calcitriol after, boost up their vitamin D levels. Those have been generally people where their Gastros have them on these high doses of oral D and their levels just aren't coming up.
Dr. Wong:
Got it.
Dr. Anderson:
So we've used that a lot so it is available. A lot of outpatient clinics will have people come by once a week for an IM which can work too.
Dr. Wong:
And if you could please participate in our vitamin D poll, where do you like the vitamin D serum levels like 25 OH vitamin D in a in a person that's generally healthy that wants to prevent viruses and you know those type of things.
Dr. Anderson:
You know, I think what I have seen as far as people who stay the healthiest and of course vitamin D is just one thing.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
But generally, I tell clinicians the upper quartile you know so not above normal but you know definitely above the 50th percentile so in that like upper tertile or quartile so 25 to 33 percent.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
The other thing and I think it's important to mention like in otherwise healthy people, that's usually pretty linear. In our chronically ill people, now we've started to check their 25 OHN. They're 125 just to make sure they're not hyperconverting because they're inflammation. So sometimes you'd have to be a little careful with the chronically ill folks that they're 25 isn't like low but they're one-
Dr. Wong:
But then that's yeah. And that might be a good segue into a question about chronic infections because my understanding is in theory if the 125 is higher and that 25D is lower, could there be an intracellular infection there? Is there? What do you think about that?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, I mean it's definitely one of those protective mechanisms the body uses you know sort of like reverse T3 blocks, your thyroid function and stuff. It's almost always accepted that, 25 going down, 125 going up, is a pro-inflammatory activity in the body ups the hydroxylase pathway. And so, what I do from there though is because that could be any reason for inflammation.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, not just infection.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, you could get an acute COVID patient and that will do that you know too. Cancer, it does that. But if they have a history and symptoms and either no one's looked in the area of you know chronic infections or they never really had that worked up you know and they don't have cancer and they don't have acute COVID or something, I think it's really wise to take that as a signpost that we we need to start turning rocks over and uncover what's underneath here.
Dr. Wong:
So we've talked a little about rabbit holes with COVID, I think it'd be nice to talk about bug holes here if you don't mind. If we wouldn't, maybe go into what is your general thought about IV therapy for Lyme and Epstein-barr which we took and we've you know done your courses of course and you know we do see a lot of people with Lyme and chronic active Epstein-barr in our clinic too. So, I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts about that. How long do people have to be on IV therapy in your experience. I know it probably varies from individual to individual of course for these kind of conditions.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, I think with like chronic epstein-barr, other chronic viruses, complex Lyme you know stuff where Lyme is never just Lyme, it's every other thing.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
So, the first thing that we usually try and sort out with with the patient because it's you know it's the patient's body and their money and everything so they really need to have some you know idea why they're doing it roughly how long usually, you can't give like exact but the first thing I usually dial back to is what's our goal with the IVs, with you. Okay, so like with a lot of people, say they don't have Lyme and a bunch of other infections but they do have a bad flare of Epstein-barr you know or the CMV Epstein-barr combo or something. I'll usually say you know we kind of have to focus here. Either this hits you like a truck out of the blue but you were doing okay. Those would be people where I may do like we said earlier four weeks of two IVs a week of either two high-dose vitamin C or like a high-dose C and the ozone, back and forth. That in the acute infectious person who otherwise was not too unhealthy, that gives their body the most benefit to kind of get over the hump. Now, the thing that usually happens there because you know, you tell students out and they do it and they say well we did four weeks and they didn't feel a whole lot better. Well, that's when you have to have the other discussion which is how deep is the well you're treating, you know.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
Because if you get in there and they have pretty good vitality and then you start to do oxidative therapies, you now have this war going on.
Dr. Wong:
You're revving up that engine, yeah?
Dr. Anderson:
The virus-
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
And so they don't feel good because you know they're fighting.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
So the other folks though is the more of a fatigue picture they have, the more I tell them you know this is a marathon not a sprint here so what we're going to do is that alternating thing where we do have mitochondrial and glutathione support and then we'll do oxidative and then we'll go back to support because we want to build you up while you’re fighting, you know.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, makes sense.
Dr. Anderson:
But that's kind of where we start and then I always just say, your body will know we get to checkpoint number one which is usually about eight treatments. With a chronic person, eight to twelve. The reason we do it there is your body usually has shifted somehow and then we maybe do further apart or more oral stuff or whatever.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, great. Let's shift gears a bit. We've talked about chronic infection, we would love to talk about here but we do also you know a lot of people come in for generally to IV nutrition for autoimmune conditions, neurologic conditions, you mentioned MS you know, I know people have things like Parkinson's or even Alzheimer's. I'm kind of curious on your thoughts about specifically glutathione and then PC in these conditions or the other things are you know really helpful for neurologic type of conditions.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah. I think you know a couple things but with chronic neurologic problems, it's the same as the problem anywhere else in your body, it's just you have a hypercritical tissue being your brain or your nerves which you know aside from the heart you know, the central nervous system is extremely sensitive to inflammation and you know any manner of imbalance. We tend to use more I would say more sort of intensity with treatment with chronic neurological issues or even like acute you know trauma and stuff like that.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
Because the brain's requirements are so high. Now, you mentioned kind of some core things. We use glutathione probably with almost everybody. Brain stuff, it's very necessary so we do IV and we do oral in between, the whole thing. PC phospholipids are part of the matrix of the outside of the cell and the brain being mostly lipid, it's going to use a lot of it. Now, phospholipids on the outside of the cell generically technically are just you know phospholipids but they have different families underneath that and most of the time at least as far as we can see right now with research is when the brain becomes inflamed or dysfunctional, the membrane lipids become more inflamed and they become dysfunctional themselves so they may not do their signaling job like they're supposed to. So giving phosphatidylcholine for example, IV and orally, slowly shifts more phosphocholine back in. It’ll kind of substitute for the bad lipids, move them out and you tend to need to do it kind of slowly and methodically because you can substitute too many bad weapons at once. But what I found is in people with traumas, in people with neuropsychiatric problems, people with inflamed brains like an MS or ALS etc., the phospholipid therapy, if it's timed appropriately, can greatly settle the brain down as far as you know pain, inflammatory things like you can't sleep or you know other things going on. And we've even had people who, especially when the psych meds really weren't helping the person but they were on them because this psychiatrist didn't know what else to do, we've had people be able to get off over you know a course of therapy with phospholipids and glutathione and all that stuff so it's pretty remarkable especially when you get to the brain and you know some of these basic added added things like phospholipid therapy and extra glutathione etc.
Dr. Wong:
Thank you so much and we have found certainly oral phosphatidylcholine can be really good for gut healing and different things. However, for brain and chronic fatigue, mold, micro toxins etc., we've we have found that IVs are more helpful than the oral and is that because the oral phosphatidylcholine is getting kind of broken down into choline using for phase two liver detox and it's sort of getting utilized in other pathways or what do you think that's from?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, I mean it's probably yeah all of the above but any time you take something orally, like phosphatidylcholine where your body has a lot of fates for it other than your brain, it'll use those first. Also, there's you know probably if you're dealing with mold patient or someone who's inflamed otherwise, it would just take a long time to be able to get that much orally into them you know because your gut biome when you take phospholipids orally, it converts a lot of them right away so yeah there's probably a lot to that. It’s kind of like with glutathione you know. I tell people like look the long game is to get your body to make it appropriately the medium gain we can probably do with oral stuff or whatever, the short game is let's just boost your levels.
Dr. Wong:
A lot of people want to come in and and they have been you know suffering for 10, 15, 20 years and sometimes giving or you know they kind of can see that light at the end of the tunnel or at least some hope you know and I think that the IVs can really help with that.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Dr. Wong:
Great and then just going back to that first part of that question that I didn't really get to but autoimmune conditions, so you have some of the psoriasis or you know I guess any you know RA. I mean it would it be a similar kind of protocol that you would typically use for anyone with a chronic issue basically.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah. I think you know every of course there's similarities with all autoimmunity but when you get away from the neuroinflammatory autoimmunities, MS, ALS, all those guys. When you get away from the brain as the focus and you get to other autoimmune things especially you know you bring up like RA.
Dr. Wong:
Lupus or something.
Dr. Anderson:
You know any of the other more global things. One thing that we've noticed is if it's the beginning of that case, we tend to do very sort of balanced calm things because in an autoimmune patient who you don't have any control around their body. If you stimulate them too much, let's say did too much ozone or high-dose vitamin C or another you know kind of focus stimulating thing, two things can happen that don't go well. One is they have infections they didn't know about which a lot of autoimmune people do.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
They get the fight going on, they feel worse. The other is simply that you give them immune cytokine stimulating treatment and you know an oxidative treatment or something like that, their immune system is already out of balance, it becomes more out of balance.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
So generally on the front end, we say we know what has been worked on in your world. If they're starting from scratch, it's going to be basic mitochondrial support nutrients. Everything's balanced really well, nothing pushing too hard and then we move forward.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
You get somebody who's already you know, their guts cleaned up and you've fixed some chronic infections and their hormones are pretty balanced, they can tolerate you know a lot of stuff. So with autoimmunity though, you do have to be careful about pushing an already deranged system further acutely.
Dr. Wong:
In general, what do you think about in terms of how would you approach a patient with say breast cancer you know. Unfortunately, right breast cancer is on the rise you know. There's other types of cancer obviously too. We know that and you wrote a book with Dr. Stengler. I believe it's called outside the box cancer therapy is correct? So I think that's really good for both clinicians and lay people I would say. It seems like it's written for a general audience, is that right?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, our goal with it was to write it so anybody could use the book.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
But to put references in like a textbook would have. So if somebody gets to their doctor and they say well I've never heard of any research on whatever, they can look.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, I highly recommend that. For sure.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, so it's good for both ends. A lot of doctors use it too.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah. No, we definitely use it here. What is your general approach to someone with cancer? Let's just say breast cancer as an example for this.
Dr. Anderson:
I think that you know the the first primary question we usually work on is what are their goals and are those goals something we can work on or is it beyond us or you know we don't do that or whatever. So really the first thing because a lot of people you know and rightly so like they've maybe never interacted with the integrative medicine community at all you know.
Dr. Wong:
Sure.
Dr. Anderson:
Forget about it and then suddenly they have cancer or their loved one does and they have no idea actually you know what can you do what can't you do and all that stuff. So the first thing was just you know what would you like out of this and sometimes they don't even know you know off the top. I mean the most common answer I get is, “Can you make my cancer go away?”. And that's obviously, that'd be great. Everyone would want that.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
I just tell people that's above my pay grade. I don't do that you know but here's what I can do.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
So, let's say that's not our goal, what's your other goal? Next thing then is I'm going to do a lot different sort of trajectory of treatment with a stage one or two breast cancer patient or stage one or two prostate cancer patient, people that have a high survivability you know ratio versus say a late stage four patient where they have body-wide metastases and you know, your goals are usually a bit different. So, for example because this comes up a lot and this is just an arbitrary thing but I've seen it many times. People will say well you know you get a breast cancer patient, don't you need to look at how wrecked are their hormones, how toxic are they, how you know how are all these other parts of their system working or not working and the answer is yes, that's important to everybody who has cancer. if you are an early stage one or two and you have kind of limited treatment in the oncology world, you have not only the the body energy etc., but also the time to deal with all those areas you know, gut health, toxicity, chronic infections, endocrine, the whole thing. But, if you're a stage four patient like a lot of our research subjects were, you can get to all those things but your immediate concern is you know staying alive and doing things to stay alive. So in a lot of stage you know later stage patients where just trying to reel them back in and strengthen them up, high-dose vitamin C is very restorative. Some of the nutrient therapies we talked about and other things just to get their system back to base.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
And then we work on it. A stage one or two patient you know, they a lot of times now, which is great you know, they'll come in saying well my oncologist is done with me. They did you know whatever the treatment is, it's got a 94 success rate but oncologist says we're done, stay healthy you know. That's where people like you and I can come in and say all right stay healthy we've got time, let's look at all these things, let's make sure you have as low a toxic intake as possible. If we need to do some detox, let's do it. If your hormones are messed up within the realm of, what we can do let's get them working again. If your gut's been trashed and most people get cancer treatment, their gut's not doing very well, let's get that back online. So the approach is very dependent on where you're at as the patient but also a lot of it has to do with how much you know how much time do we have to work with you before critical things happen.
Dr. Wong:
Got it. So then I know that you've answered this question many times as well but this comes up so much of course. Right, someone's coming in, they're getting active chemo, they're seeing the oncologist, where's the timing of that chemo versus the IV as a supportive therapy?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah. This is an area that's there's a lot of misunderstanding around just because in the basic reason, it just sounded like a bad idea, correct?
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
It wasn't anything really with the chemistry or any of that.
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
So and really because of the research project a number of years ago, we were asked that question every day so what I did I put together a research summary of all the research on vitamin C and different types of chemotherapy so some there's no research but there's a lot and we would share that with the oncologist when we're treating the patients and in almost every case, there's no negative putting them together. And the oncologist would be shocked by this because they'd never heard of this research number one and they just thought well it must be bad, right?
Dr. Wong:
Right, right. Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
So generally speaking, now there are practical things such as you know, if you just got done with IV chemotherapy, you're probably not feeling like going to another doctor's office and having another IV anyway, right?
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
So a lot of times, the timing is for two reasons, patient schedule and then the other is you know kidney function because and this something we did you know watch and do very carefully in the hospital was, if the person just got chemo you have to be careful how much more IV you put into the person for their kidneys that day and it's not that the IV vitamin C is bad form, it's just you don't want to hit the kidneys with too many.
Dr. Wong:
Are you preferring to do IVs say pre or post or both chemo basically?
Dr. Anderson:
You know, that's sort of the eternal question which everyone has an opinion about why it's better. What I will normally do is, if there's a therapy going on say this week and we can get you vitamin C IV monday morning before you do any of your therapy, that works really well because the body kind of has a chance to perk up. In some people where they have these super intense like radiation or chemo structures to their schedule, we might say look you know this this week is shot you're going to be in the middle of chemo or radiation or whatever. Let's come on your rest week and take care of you then you know so a lot of depends on the intensity of the therapy too. All things being equal though, I tend to like before if you can but that's just not always possible.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, yeah. And I had a question about specific superstar nutrients but after hearing you talk and of course remember your lectures, you make a really good point. I want to just emphasize that it's about the whole person, it's about their goals, it's about the gut, it's about their mindset you know, it's about different aspects of health balancing hormones obviously reducing inflammation overall. IVs is one way to do that, it's not the only way but certainly you know, taking a whole person approach and a comprehensive approach usually results in the best outcomes and also is the safest way to go, yes?
Dr. Anderson:
Definitely, definitely. Yeah and you know the nice thing with IV therapy with patients is, you can always do something a little extra in one direction you know if it's clinically indicated and really move a case forward and then you know. Your long-term goal of course is let's feed the whole system and get it all working together you know but if you start out really imbalanced IV is kind of nice because you can kind of fill in the imbalance and move forward more quickly.
Dr. Wong:
You know another thing, I'm starting to dabble in these electrolyte powders here and try these out. I'm just realizing how dehydrated we all are in some ways you know.
Dr. Anderson:
Yes, yeah. I think everybody's dehydrated. You know, like in our cancer patients which of course it's harder to stay hydrated when you're you know that ill but yeah we started to give our cancer patients a half liter of half normal to hydrate them before their vitamin C IV and they tolerated the vitamin C way better.
Dr. Wong:
You said a half normal saline, a bag?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah.
Dr. Wong:
Okay.
Dr. Anderson:
Half normal, half liter, kind of- plasma osmolality in and the IV went so much better after we did that.
Dr. Wong:
Nice.
Dr. Anderson:
With our non-cancer patients, we usually get them to drink enough but it's hard you know
Dr. Wong:
Yeah.
Dr. Anderson:
Or if they've had a fever, they'll just be super dehydrated.
Dr. Wong:
So remember the basics too and you know also get the circulation going, get those white cells to the areas that people need if they have an infection or something like that. Well, thank you so much Dr. Anderson for being on here. We have a few fun closing questions for all of our guests and so if you don't mind going through that but we kind of asked people if if you have a morning routine that you wish to share with the listeners because you are a well-esteemed doctor and we want to know what your kind of health routine is in the morning here.
Dr. Anderson:
You know, it's changed over time just as I sort my way through life plus you know you go through different stages and now our children are all adults and we have grandchildren so I have different worries in the morning than when they were little.
Dr. Wong:
Right, if you’re listening to this and you have kids, please. Right.
Dr. Anderson:
So when you have little kids, your morning is whatever but-
Dr. Wong:
Right.
Dr. Anderson:
But yeah, what I try and do to actually is to be very conscious about what I'm thinking when I first wake up and where my mind goes because you have your whole day to kind of you know divert yourself or get worried about things or whatever. And so, if the first thing that I do is say what or why am I thinking, what I'm thinking, a lot of times maybe I'm worried about something's going to happen today or did I do this or whatever and it's just really nice to take and say I've got all day for that, I'm going to take one minute and just kind of focus on today's going to be a good day, today's got these good things going on, all this stuff. Next thing that I started doing is a short format journal. I've got all kinds of journals I write in but this is just sort of a morning and evening thing that just takes a couple of minutes and you focus you know on something that you're grateful for and something you're you know excited to do today and maybe a challenge you know.
Dr. Wong:
Nice.
Dr. Anderson:
So those things, I find if I don't do those, it's really easy not to get up and you're running and you're going.
Dr. Wong:
Oh, I totally understand. Yeah, I get that.
Dr. Anderson:
You know, if I don't do those then you have to reel yourself back in later in the day.
Dr. Wong:
Well, it's kind of like the train conductor, right? You could either like switch on the train or you could say where am I going, why am I doing this you know.
Dr. Anderson:
Right.
Dr. Wong:
So it makes a huge difference I agree. There are some mornings I miss that too. I try to do morning routine too but it's kind of like if you miss it, it's like oh I got to get back on the track actually and yeah it's time to take some breaths.
Dr. Anderson:
It is. it's an easy thing to forget to do but yeah.
Dr. Wong:
Yes and I think you know for all of us you know, us here talking and then everyone listening to, I mean we're all busy right now, right? Not just with COVID, even before COVID and after COVID and whenever this is over. You know there's always more stuff we can do, right? There's always so many things and so how much time do we have to actually be focused and likevlook at that purpose and like why we're doing that. I think a morning is a great time to do that because you're essentially- it's quieter whether you have kids or not at home you know, it's just a quieter time.
Dr. Anderson:
It is.
Dr. Wong:
What book or podcast are you enjoying the most right now and why do you like that? Why do you like it?
Dr. Anderson:
Oh boy. You know I’m kind of the same on both. I have very broad interests so there's probably like 10 different podcasts I rotate through depending on what I'm thinking about. In my apologies to the doctor because I don't remember his name, but there's a doctor from the UK that does these updates on COVID and he does them on Youtube. I don't know if he has a podcast or not but he's hilarious and he's just very honest and he's very you know forthright with stuff and he has no actually- doesn't care what anyone thinks about it so I've really enjoyed people like that actually.
Dr. Wong:
I'm gonna google, ‘funny UK doctor COVID’ and see.
Dr. Anderson:
Untethered.
Dr. Wong:
Untethered. Yes, yes. Unscripted, yeah. Yes, that's always the best. Got it, okay. That’s funny.
Dr. Anderson:
So that's sort of my-
Dr. Wong:
You gotta find the the silver lining, the humor and then things you know, that's really-
Dr. Anderson:
That's right.
Dr. Wong:
What do you do every day or I guess most days to cultivate joy you know. We all know that life's about happiness joy you know kind of gratitude like you talked about in your journaling. What do you do every day to cultivate that sense of joy in your life?
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, you know I think and that really is a lot of what led to the morning focusing I was doing was I would realize that you know, we all have a million things that we got to get done and we're concerned with and we got to pay the bills and all that stuff. That stuff will always be there. If I let the day because it will, if I let today suck me into it to do all that stuff, it's fine but I really lose a lot of the joy because you're just doing you know.
Dr. Wong:
Right
Dr. Anderson:
Plotting forward and what I realized was I spent a lot of years being very productive in plotting but you're not really thinking about how did today go whereas now if I have that time in the beginning and I start there and then I sort of manage my time using just an old-fashioned paper, diary, and journal. As I'm allocating my energy for the day, I can go back to you know what was it I was looking forward to today or what you know what's the goal of these things I'm doing and that, I came very late to that in life but just a lot of it had to do with realizing you know if you don't do that, no one's gonna do it for you.
Dr. Wong:
Yes, I agree. No, absolutely.
Dr. Anderson:
Life can be a little more fun.
Dr. Wong:
Yeah, yeah. Put some color into that and that's so great and for all those out there, the best thing I've found too is post-it notes. Just write it down you know get it down or journaling like you said but in a way that's not automatic you know, that's more just like, “I'm doing this but I'm doing this for a reason”, and I think even sometimes I'll even write on there like have fun you know on the post-it note you know, that kind of thing.
Dr. Anderson:
Right.
Dr. Wong:
Just her mind because it is easier to forget I believe sometimes. But yeah that's great and that, when it becomes a habit too, it's really you know, it starts to get kind of ingrained which is really nice too.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah,yeah.
Dr. Wong:
Great. Well, thank you so much again Dr. Anderson for coming on. We really appreciate it and honored to have you on here and how can listeners learn more about you and work with you.
Dr. Anderson:
Yeah, the best way because different groups of people are listening. I have a hub website it's d-r-a-n-o-w, dranow.com, and on there are links to all the media that I do and my newsletter and all kinds of stuff so that's the best entry point and then if you're a clinician, there's a portal to get to the clinician stuff and other things there so d-r-a-n-o-w, dranow.com.
Dr. Wong:
And you are teaching mostly now, are you seeing patients yourself or?
Dr. Anderson:
I'm mostly teaching and mentoring doctors.
Dr. Wong:
Yes.
Dr. Anderson:
And then doing some government advocacy for our type of medicine.
Dr. Wong:
Yes.
Dr. Anderson:
In my spare time and then most of the patients I'm working with, I'm working with through other doctors because of time and location.
Dr. Wong:
Thank you so much for being a mentor to our clinic and so many other clinics and a role model to many other doctors and I think people too in terms of just how you know you live your life and finding that joy as well. So, thank you so much everyone here today, thank you Dr. Anderson and for those listening, thank you so much for taking the time to listen today and if you enjoy this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review because it helps as a podcast to reach more listeners and be of service to you and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our next conversations and thank you so much for being with us today. So, thank you Dr. Anderson.
Dr. Anderson:
Thank you.