[00:00:00] Luke Storey: I'm Luke Storey. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. Dr. John Lieurance, good to meet you finally in person, dude.

[00:00:28] John Lieurance: Yeah, it's a pleasure, Luke. Glad to be here.

[00:00:30] Luke Storey: Yeah, I'm stoked. Thank you for coming out to Austin. I've been so blessed that since I moved here, so many people are willing to come into town and I don't have to sit on a Zoom call staring at a computer. So, it's super cool to meet you. And we have an agenda today. We're going to get to hang out, and go do some other stuff, and spend some time, so I'm very glad you made the trip.

[00:00:49] John Lieurance: Very glad to be here.

[00:00:50] Luke Storey: So, let's start out just telling me a little bit about your practice and some of the things you do in Sarasota at Advanced Rejuvenation. Now, for those listening, we're going to be doing another interview here in a few weeks out with Dr. Matt Cook in California. We're going to go deeper into all of the wild modalities, but just so people get a sense of kind of who you are, and how you got into practicing medicine, and the way you do, that's so unique.

[00:01:16] John Lieurance: Yeah. Well, Matt is a colleague of mine, and we've done a lot of similar studies together, and our practices are quite similar, actually. Matt is an anesthesiologist. I'm a naturopath and a chiropractic neurologist, so we have very different trainings. But the structure of our clinics, we both use a lot of ozone. One of the things that I had an experience early on with actually a wrist injury, where our practice had been doing regenerative medicine maybe for 25 years. We were one of the first to start doing something called prolotherapy, and then eventually, we started-

[00:02:00] Luke Storey: Yeah, I've done that.

[00:02:01] John Lieurance: ... doing platelet rich plasma. And then, I think almost 15 years ago, we started using adipose tissue and bone marrow for orthopedic regeneration. But I had this wrist injury and it was a paragliding accident from Hawaii, right? So, crazy, do you know Makapuu Point? Have you ever been to Hawaii?

[00:02:22] Luke Storey: Yeah, I have, what island is it on?

[00:02:23] John Lieurance: It's on Oahu.

[00:02:24] Luke Storey: Oh, okay. I've not really played around on Oahu much.

[00:02:28] John Lieurance: Oh, okay. Yeah, I grew up there.

[00:02:29] Luke Storey: Oh, okay. Cool.

[00:02:30] John Lieurance: Yeah, in Kailua, a little town in Oahu there. So, anyway, there's this Makapuu Bay, there are all these lava rocks and the wind was just so that you had to take what they called crazies is the launch.

[00:02:44] Luke Storey: Oh, boy.

[00:02:45] John Lieurance: So, my Brazilian buddy, Ray, took off and he made it look like it was no big deal. And so, I came up, and set up my paraglider, and went to launch, and got twisted up, and went back into the mountain, and really injured my wrist quite severely. And when I returned back to Florida, I found it really hard to work on patients. And for a couple of years, I was wearing a wrist guard and I had gotten lots of regenerative treatments on my wrist and it just wasn't taking.

[00:03:14] And it was in the early days, we were like, well, maybe PRP just doesn't work on wrists. It was really a very limited view of what it does and doesn't do, versus now, we have a lot more understanding. And so, I went to a conference and they had flown somebody in from LA that was trained using ultrasound guidance. And the surgeon that was working with this fellow did the injections on my wrist, I volunteered to be on the table while everybody observed as a learning moment for people.

[00:03:51] And this ultrasound tech basically went in and guided this doctor to specific ligaments in my wrist. And he was able to see the damage, and there was a piece of cartilage in the wrist that was damaged. And so, they just specifically went in and injected those points. And what was even more impressive to me was this doctor was a chiropractor. And so, me being a chiropractor as well, I could really see the future of orthopedic medicine as being able to use these very advanced types of biologics if they were able to be, obviously, you need to diagnose that you've got a problem that will be helped and where the problem is. 

[00:04:35] But then, being able to actually put the injection in the exact spot really made a lot of sense, so my wrist healed up. It was a phenomenal response that I had, and then I was committed to just take as many classes and to learn as much as I could about diagnostic ultrasound and ultrasound guidance, which is, it's called musculoskeletal ultrasound or MSK. And there's just a handful of doctors, really, in the country that really have a strong command over this.

[00:05:03] Luke Storey: It's so funny that you mention that, because years ago, I was having like tennis elbow and wrist problems. This is going back probably 10 years or, no, even more, probably more than 10 years, 10, 12 years, and I went and had that done, and it fixed it. It never came back. It was the ultrasound guided, and I was watching it on the screen to see the needle going in there, and I forget the name of the doctor, unfortunately, at this point, but yeah, it was very effective. I mean, I kind of forgot about it. I was like, oh, yeah, my elbow used to hurt all the time.

[00:05:31] John Lieurance: Yeah. Well, one of the things that doesn't show up on X-ray, or MRI, or calcific tendinosis and different calcium deposits, and you can go in there with a needle and break that stuff up. You wouldn't even know it was there unless you were able to read the ultrasound. You can hide your dissect nerves. You can go into fascial planes and release them. I mean, it's really just the sky's the limit as what you can do when you get good with this.

[00:05:59] And so, Matt is also another doctor that I would consider one of the top doctors in the country able to do this work. And so, I would say that in our practice, we have a part of the practice that's orthopedic. We do a lot of regenerative medicine, but we also do some regen medicine with neurologic. And with my background in chiropractic, functional neurology, we see a lot of patients with vestibular disorders, and balance disorders, and degenerative neurologic disorders, hearing loss, tinnitus, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and we are able to basically put together what I consider protocols that would be hard for people to find at one center.

[00:06:49] And I think that's really the future of medicine. There's a doctor, his name's Dale Bredesen, he wrote a book called The End to Alzheimer's. It's a great read, and what he did is he classified Alzheimer's into four different categories based on what the etiology of the disease was, like for instance, infection, versus a patient having certain genetic disorders, or some people may have problems with sleep or detox, right? So, there are like these different categories that are fueling that inflammation and the buildup of the beta amyloid in the brain.

[00:07:26] And so, he has a certain set of plan of action for each one of these categories. And so, he's been doing research, but it hasn't been well-received, because you can't patent this stuff. Our broken health care model, Big Pharma, they want one molecule, one indication, something that's patentable, which most of the stuff that works really well, like melatonin, which we're going to dive very deep into today. But God has the patent to that. And you try to change it just a little bit and it doesn't work. The pharmaceutical industries have been working really hard to make something that works like melatonin, but if you change it just a tiny bit, it just doesn't work.

[00:08:13] Luke Storey: Wow, interesting. So, do you find, at your clinic, that you get a lot of sort of health tourism? Do people typically travel to Sarasota, and stay there for a period of time, and go into treatment, or are a lot of your people like local?

[00:08:28] John Lieurance: Yeah. At least half of our practice, people travel in, and sometimes, people will travel in for a day. Sometimes, we'll keep people for five weeks or more. I'd say typically, it's usually between one and three weeks that we see people. We treat a lot of Lyme, a lot of mold, because we may or may not get into my story with my battle with Lyme and mole, which almost killed me. So, figuring out how to deal with that has actually been quite a blessing. And it's become my purpose to pass that forward and help other people.

[00:09:02] Luke Storey: Yeah. So many people I interview, I guess, including myself, have a real, very specific pain-to-purpose story. I think when people are really passionate, and dedicated, and also innovative and creative about the ways in which they serve, it's often born out of their own suffering. There's nothing as motivating as being hurt in one way or another, right? And then, once you find the solution to it, it's just like this burning ember within you that has to be shared. I think it's just part of human nature. When you find a solution that's hard-earned, you're really driven to share that information.

[00:09:38] John Lieurance: And if you look at Buddhism, it's like you're burning off all this karma, right? So, it's like these challenging times in our life, if that didn't exist, one of the sayings I like is that strong wind leads to strong timber. So, if you don't have any breeze or any wind, then the trees, they're not going to be strong, they're not going to be able to withhold. So, these things are presented to us, I believe, not by accident. I think that these things are intentional and there's a means to the madness of our life and the evolution that we enjoy.

[00:10:19] Luke Storey: Yeah, for sure, man. Well, I can't wait until our second interview to dive in more deeply to some of those specific modalities, because like when you said tinnitus and hearing loss, I was like, I want to talk about that, of course, selfishly, because I have that in my left ear, pretty bad, but we'll talk about that later. Let's go ahead and start diving into some of the really interesting things you do. When I found you and your site, MitoZen, I became really fascinated at first with these sprays.

[00:10:52] So, I've got one here. I would do one right now, but then my eyes would water for moments, The Meditation Mist, which I think when I first found it, it was called ZEN Spray. And I got a hold of one of those, and I was like, huh, this is different. This is interesting. And then, went further into your product line, and found you make all these suppositories, and I thought that was interesting. The only one I've ever done before was the, it's for cancer, and it's made out of like apricot seeds. I forget what the vitamin B3 or 6 or something. 

[00:11:22] John Lieurance: Niacin?

[00:11:23] Luke Storey: No, it's not niacin. It's used in alternative cancer treatments. I think it's, is B3 niacin or B6 niacin? I think it's B6 or 7. Anyway, it's the only suppository I'd ever seen, and it had like some, I think, CBD, or cannabis, or something in it, too. So, I was somewhat familiar with that delivery system, but you're doing all of these other crazy ones. So, I was like, huh, this dude is onto some really cutting-edge stuff.

[00:11:49] So, let's start out with this spray, because I know people watching the live streams want to hear about that. For some reason, people are super fascinated by this, because I've posted a few times, like, oh, I'm doing this hopi oxytocin spray, and then I get all these DMs, people are like, wait, what is that? I don't even think most people know what hopi is, or these Amazonian tobacco-based plant medicines.

[00:12:12] And I carry these with me all around town when I go to parties here in Austin and stuff, which is way more than I could have ever imagined. I'm always dosing people with it, and they text me, you got an extra bottle? It's like people are super into it. So, give me the origin story of these sprays just in a quick breakdown. And then, what are in the different sprays? Not only this version, but you have like the glutathione, you have some awesome peptides, and really interesting things. And why did you choose to use the spray?

[00:12:39] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, we were talking earlier before we started recording about kind of how ZEN was born. And hopi is an Amazonian herbal, it's usually a blend of a number of different herbs, but mapacho is a very high-end tobacco. And so, these tribes in the Amazon would basically blend these various herbs, and it differs slightly from tribe to tribe. And basically, they'll blow it up the nose. It was usually someone else who's kind of administering it, although there is a self-administer apparatus, if you've seen that before.

[00:13:18] Luke Storey: Yeah, I have. Yeah. 

[00:13:20] John Lieurance: Yeah, it's funny, because I was at, you know who Dan Pompa is?

[00:13:24] Luke Storey: Yeah, for sure. He's been on the show, yeah.

[00:13:26] John Lieurance: So, I was speaking at Dan's event, and I go into the bathroom, and I'm coming out of the stall, and this guy is like kind of hunched over in the corner, right? And I hear this sniffing sound, I'm like kind of curious what's going on. And I look around and he's got that self-administered hopi, and I'm like, what are the chances? And I said, that's awesome. I'll show you how I do it. And I busted out my ZEN and this guy actually happened to be an MD, has a line of CBD products, I'm forgetting his name. 

[00:13:56] But basically, there are two actions that happen, is one is there's the actual herb itself and there is a microdose of nicotine, which has a very, very powerful and positive effect to the brain. In fact, they did studies on nicotine, and they found that it actually prevents the degenerative neurologic disorders, specifically Parkinson's. So, there seems to be some sort of a neuroprotective effect, and it does enhance memory concentration and focus.

[00:14:33] So, there are some aspects to what's actually in the herbs themselves, but then there's a burn that occurs. And to me, normal hopi was way too much. I didn't like it. It burned like crazy. And so, this is what a lot of people will do if they do ayahuasca retreats or if they go into the Amazon and they're doing some sort of a ritual, the people will do this hopi. And after the burn's over, there's what's called the afterglow, which is really what you want.

[00:15:03] The burn's not really the fun part, it's the afterglow where you feel calm, you feel grounded, you feel focused. There seems to be some feelings of well-being that come after. And so, people would do this and they would start to share from their heart, right? Because they're feeling like they're in a good place, they're grounded. And so, in these traditional settings, people would then sit in circles and they would connect with each other.

[00:15:38] So, this is one great application for ZEN, is to do it in a group with people. You can also do it. Sometimes, people are maybe in front of their computer for long periods of time, and you just kind of get crazy, you want to get up and just, ah, that could be a good time to do ZEN, to just kind of reset yourself a little bit, get up, walk around, do a ZEN, and then return to your work. There are some breathwork techniques, we can get into that a little bit, that are phenomenal.

[00:16:08] Luke Storey: That's interesting, because I've been doing it, I mean, I probably hit it two, three, maybe four times a day, and the one that is for sure is right before I do my breathwork, and then I'll go into a meditation.

[00:16:20] John Lieurance: Well, the way that I like to use it with breathwork is I'll do like a Wim Hof breath. And then, once I get to my last breath, I'll do an inhale, I'll spray the ZEN in both sides, and then I'll do a little holotropic sip, sip, sip, focused on the third eye, the crown, exhale, completely hold my breath as long as I can. And for those that have done plant medicine, let me know if that doesn't bring some color to that. Do that breathwork a little bit.

[00:16:52] Luke Storey: Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I was wondering about, I don't know how to frame this exactly, but when we are using substances like plant medicines, however potent they might be, a nicotiana rustica strain of wild tobacco would be on the lower end of the psychoactive spectrum, ayahuasca or toad medicine being on the higher end. I know an important part of it is the reverence and the ceremony to it, and sometimes, I'll find when I'm doing the ZEN spray, I'm just kind of not really being conscious about it.

[00:17:32] I mean, it's definitely not like a hopi ceremony, where you're seated, there are intentions, and all of that part of it. And I'll kind of catch myself, and go, oh, maybe I should be a little more mindful about this and build my own little ritual into it. Not that I have to be a shaman to take some nasal spray or something, but do you have kind of any sort of reverent approach to it or practice due to the fact that it does have these sacred plants in it? It's not just some sort of pharmaceutical compound, or a synthesized molecule of nicotine or something like that.

[00:18:06] John Lieurance: The way I look at it is more of a tool, and it's got a lot of utility in various ways. And so, when I'm doing my breathwork, then I would say, yes, there's a reverence to using the medicine at that point. And I think that that is a great point that you're making, that I think that that's something that's missing in our culture quite a bit. And if we can bring more of that into our life, and if ZEN is something that allows you to focus on giving some more intentionality into a moment, then I would fully support that.

[00:18:44] Luke Storey: Yeah, it does have an interesting effect, speaking of hopi specifically, in the context of plant medicine ceremonies, and that's, for the most part, when I've used it, like you, not a fan, by the way, just for the record. I don't want to diss any of our plant teachers, but like, wow. And I think it has something to do with being administered by someone else, too, and they'll kind of ask you, how much of a dose you want.

[00:19:09] Of course, my dumb ass is like, give me the full thing, the first time. But I have to say, the first time I did ayahuasca in Costa Rica, I think that was the first time I did hopi, and they served it to me, and I said, I don't know, you pick, what are you feeling? Just give me whatever. And it was pretty strong, but not to the point where I felt like dizzy, and I wanted to throw up, and I went back to my mat, and shortly after, I had my first cup.

[00:19:33] And then, there's kind of a 45-minute to 60-minute waiting period before the second cup, when in this particular ceremony is when it kind of kicks in to the full experience. And I was actually really impressed by the level of presence that I was able to have. After that hopi, I went to my mat. I remember just sitting there, and I felt so clear and focused. And when that medicine finally hit, it was like a freight train, because I was so acutely aware of that presence. 

[00:20:04] I was really in a deep state where my mind was so quiet. So, any subtle nuance of change in my biochemistry or in my field was just so perceivable and I could see the first trickle of that medicine coming on, because I was so present. I wasn't like moving around, and like, I don't know, do I feel anything yet? I mean, I was waiting, like you'd be sitting there waiting for a train that's bringing someone you've missed for years, you're just staring at the tracks. And I was kind of just staring in the expanse of my own.

[00:20:38] John Lieurance: No mind.

[00:20:39] Luke Storey: Yeah, no mind, right?

[00:20:40] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[00:20:40] Luke Storey: In my own consciousness and just waiting. I'll never forget when the swirls of the visuals started to come in, and it was just like, holy shit. But it really added to that. So, I think that was the one time where I really saw the ceremonial purpose of why these different indigenous peoples throughout time have used tobacco. I mean, through all of them, really, that I'm aware of, that use entheogens as part of their ceremony and practice, there does seem to be a through line of the use of tobacco for that purpose. 

[00:21:12] John Lieurance: The way I really look at spiritual growth and spiritual practice is that there's such a big focus to getting to that no mind, which is a very strong parasympathetic state, which is the opposite of a sympathetic, right? So, the sympathetic fight, flight, or hide, where parasympathetic is resting and digesting. And I think about resting and digesting, and I think about digestion as assimilation. And in that state, you're also able to assimilate knowledge, and wisdom, and experience.

[00:21:49] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting. That's cool.

[00:21:52] John Lieurance: So, anything that can really strongly promote that deep parasympathetic state will really serve people with the goal in mind to basically connect through the field.

[00:22:06] Luke Storey: Yeah, that's interesting in the assimilation piece, too, as it pertains to ingesting something, too, right? Because maybe in that experience that I had, I was so present to the assimilation on all levels, biochemically, physiologically, but also spiritually. I was assimilating that medicine in such a clear and profound way that it really demarked a massive change as it started to come on, because I was so ready to take it in. I was so receptive, I guess, in that parasympathetic state, rather than having a resistance or fear like, I don't know, is it going to be scary? Am I going to throw up? All of that stuff? I was just like, Let's do this, bring it in.

[00:22:48] John Lieurance: Well, Joe Dispenza does such a great job of describing the brain waves associated with this, with the high beta, where you have this pinpoint focus attention, right? So, we're going through the day, and we're like looking at that, we're looking at that, we're addressing this, and it's this convergent attention onto a point. And this allows us to get things done and we need that, right?

[00:23:12] But what he teaches in his meditations is more divergent, right? Like think about your heart and the space your heart occupies. So, you're thinking more globally. And this is bringing in more welcoming in the parasympathetic. So, with the hopi and with the ZEN Nasal Spray, that burn is in the sinuses. So, your face, your eyes, and your inside of your mouth as well, which is why we kind of beta test the Boca Zen.

[00:23:44] Luke Storey: That shit was crazy. Oh man, I love it when guests bring me, they like have their secret formula, that they're sort of beta testing. Oh man, that was really great.

[00:23:54] John Lieurance: But the burn, so it's your trigeminal nucleus. And so, in your brainstem, the trigeminal nucleus is the largest nucleus, and so you have this huge impact on the vagus nerve. And so, it actually strengths strengthens what's called vagal tone, which is what you'll get with meditation, with breathwork. This is really the seat of the parasympathetic nervous system.

[00:24:18] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting. And why did you add oxytocin to the spray?

[00:24:25] John Lieurance: So, oxytocin is a really interesting peptide. It supports trust, it supports a sense of well-being, it's actually tremendously anti-inflammatory. There's actually a lot of really good qualities to oxytocin. But originally, it was designed as an entrance into meditation, so somebody can take a couple of sprays in their nose, and then they can go deeper into their meditation quicker. And so, that's why it's called Meditation Mist.

[00:24:59] Luke Storey: Right. So, the oxytocin kind of adds to the calming effect. Is that the idea?

[00:25:08] John Lieurance: That supports the parasympathetic actually.

[00:25:09] Luke Storey: Oh, okay. It's like when you hug someone you love, I noticed this with Alyson all the time. I make it a point to not just give an obligatory like, oh, hey, good morning, quick hug, but we do real hugs for a while, and I have intuitively, for some reason, found, this was pretty early on in the relationship that we would just synchronize our breathing. And almost every time we hug or we're just cuddling, we'll just breathe together. We never talked about it, we just started doing it.

[00:25:37] And I can be like so fucking stressed out and have a million things going on in my life, and if I really take the time to be present with that, especially with the breathing, it's like just such a hard reset. It just calms me down so fast and profoundly. And I'm sensing, I mean, aside just from the energetics of it, that there's a lot of that having to do with the oxytocin. It's just like a really soothing feeling to just share that time with someone, even just for 30 seconds or a minute.

[00:26:10] John Lieurance: Yeah, you can get that with people, but you can also get that with animals. Like they've done study with dogs. I have a great dog, Lonnie.

[00:26:18] Luke Storey: Oh, you do?

[00:26:18] John Lieurance: Yeah, a little Australian Shepherd.

[00:26:20] Luke Storey: Oh, cool.

[00:26:20] John Lieurance: And she goes to the clinic. She's just such an amazing animal. And she'll look you right in the eyes and just stare at you with these beautiful blue eyes. And yeah, you can feel the oxytocin. And so, they did studies and they found that the dog actually secretes oxytocin, as well as the human.

[00:26:43] Luke Storey: Oh, wow. Well, you get to meet my dog, Cookie, today.

[00:26:46] John Lieurance: Awesome.

[00:26:47] Luke Storey: Yeah, she's a little sweetie. She's having a little bout with some inflammation, or hot spots, or something right now. It's super sad. I had to get her one of those little cones, but I got the inflatable cone. She thinks she's in trouble. She hates it. I put it on and she just freezes, just stands there. I'm like, poor thing. But yeah, she's biting the hell out of herself. So, I've been giving her deuterium-depleted water, and C60, and all kinds of stuff to kind of quell that.

[00:27:12] And I think it's helping. But yeah, it's so sad when you love your animal and they're suffering. And especially when you do something to help them and they don't know that's what you're doing, they think that they're in trouble, I'm just like, oh, God. Well, anyway, cool. Thanks for kind of breaking down the sprays. And then, if we have time at the end, because I don't want to use up all our time and not really dive into melatonin. 

[00:27:34] Because your book on it is freaking mind-blowing, but I just have to ask, you use these nasal sprays as a delivery system to get different nutrients and molecules into the body, but something that you seem to have kind of pioneered is the suppositories. And why did you pick that particular delivery system versus taking some capsules, or tablets, or an IV, or anything like that?

[00:27:57] John Lieurance: Yeah, great question. So, orally, when you eat or take supplements, your gastric acid is going to act on that. And so, it's going to break it down there and various enzymes are going to act on it. And then, it has something called first pass through the liver. And the liver breaks most of these molecules down or these proteins and such into their components, and has to re-establish them, and put them back together on the other side. So, very little of the nutrients that we take orally actually will get into the bloodstream. 

[00:28:34] And then, eventually, to the cell is where you want it. So, other delivery systems, such as intravenous, this is something that's popular, people going to IV lounges to do IVs, because they know they feel better, because they're getting those nutrients directly into the bloodstream. And so, nasal sprays, there's liposomal delivery, which I'm a fan of. We have a lot of liposomal products as well. And then, suppositories are a way to get nutrients into the bloodstream and to kind of bypass this gastric acid and first pass.

[00:29:11] Luke Storey: When you do liposomal, like you just gave me some of your NAD and I got a big swig of that. I'm feeling very energized, by the way. I'm assuming that also bypasses the gastric system as well, right?

[00:29:22] John Lieurance: It does.

[00:29:22] Luke Storey: I mean, you're just absorbing that right into your mouth and the mucous membrane of your mouth?

[00:29:27] John Lieurance: Yeah, and your esophagus. So, yeah, there's a lipid bilayer that basically goes around the nutrient through, usually, ultrasound is what you use to kind of bring those nutrients into this little lipid. And then, that lipid can go right through membranes into the bloodstream very quickly.

[00:29:52] Luke Storey: So with the suppositories, it's funny, when I first discovered that one that I forget the name of, apricot seed extract thing, it reminded me of one of these rock and roll folklore stories around the band, Fleetwood Mac. And who knows if this is true, but the rock and roll rumor is that they had fried their noses so bad snorting coke that they would fire coke with a straw up each other's asses, absorb it that way.

[00:30:24] And so, just for some reason, I don't know, it's the kind of a story that sticks in your head. But it made sense to me, because the inside of your rectum is essentially the same material as the inside of your mouth. So, if you were to hold something in your mouth and it had the ability to sort of soak in and get in your bloodstream, it would happen the same way. And I think I've done coffee enemas, and this kind of stuff, and ozone, and all sorts of things rectally, as embarrassing as that is sometimes to talk about publicly, but it made sense to me.

[00:30:57] But then, I noticed in using the products, the timing of bowel movements is really important, because they're not cheap, right? These things, I mean, they're really high quality nutrients. So, like what's a good time for someone to insert one of these things? And how do you make sure that you don't end up just kind of evacuating it inadvertently because you weren't yet quite empty?

[00:31:24] John Lieurance: Yeah. Suppositories, they were one of the first things that I really noticed a big difference when I was really sick with mold and lime, and it was glutathione suppositories. And so, I was introduced to them and I would do it before bed, which I think is really one of the best times to take it, because there's not a problem with the issues that you're talking about. So, if you woke up in the morning and you had a bowel movement, that would be another good time to do it. 

[00:31:53] Any time post-bowel movement. Now, you can also do a coffee enema, or you can get one of those fleet enema deals that you get at like Walgreens or CVS Pharmacy, and you can evacuate yourself, and then put a suppository in. And I think a lot of people might be listening to this or watching this, thinking that this is pretty extreme, and maybe, but there's also a possibility for people that are really struggling with some significant challenges that can maybe finally actually get relief. 

[00:32:29] Because what suppositories offer you is a slow bleed into the bloodstream over three to five hours, which is even better than an IV. If you think about it, you come to me for an IV, I'm going to hook you up, unless you were doing something like NAD, where I'm going to keep you for five hours, you're going to sit there and do a slow drip for five hours.

[00:32:53] Well, can you imagine that I can give you about the same amount of milligram of NAD, and you put the suppository, and then you can just go on your merry way, and go around, do whatever you need to do that day. There's no downtime. And it's as good as a really long IV, but nobody that I know is doing like, say, Myers' cocktails, which is a common IV that people will get with high-dose vitamin C, and B vitamins, and magnesium, et cetera.

[00:33:27] If you were to drip that for three to five hours, you're going to have better cellular absorption. So, the way I see it is, it's like if I were to have beans, and I had dry beans, and I put them in a bowl, and I poured water in there. And then, I came back an hour later and I looked at it. Those beans are probably still going to be hard, right? It's going to take a few hours for that water to really soak them up. So, your cells are the same way.

[00:33:52] So, if you have, say, a thousand milligrams of CoQ10 and you give it in a bolus, where something called Peak Plasma. So, basically, you take a nutrient and it's in the bloodstream for a certain period of time, and then it's not. So, Peak Plasma might be for one hour, so your cells have an hour to collect this thousand milligrams of CoQ10, whereas if I took 1,000 milligrams of CoQ10 and put it in a suppository, Peak Plasma is going to be over five hours. Wow. So, yourselves have time like those beans to absorb the water, your cells have time to absorb that CoQ10 or whatever nutrient, the NAD.

[00:34:33] And plus, the expense is much less if you're looking NAD. NAD is a wonderful nutrient for a lot of people for maximizing health, and there's a lot of studies on it showing it's extending life, and just does so many wonderful things to help your mitochondria or your core energy-producing structure in the cell do its job better. So, this is something you could dose three or four times a week. Who has time to go to a doctor, pay $1,500 for an IV, sit there for five hours, right? Well, everybody's got time to do a suppository three or four times a week, after or before bed, or after-

[00:35:13] Luke Storey: I do them constantly. I mean, maybe every day, because I'll kind of switch it up. I don't want to do NAD every day. So, before I go to bed, I'll do a glutathione or one of the melatonin ones, which we'll talk about. For those listening, too, I would say, it's not really that big of a deal. I'll show one later in the video for those that watch on YouTube and those on the live stream, but it's basically like a little bullet that's, I don't know, the size of your last digit on your pinkie. I mean, for some people, it might be freaky if they've never administered anything that way, just mentally, but yeah.

[00:35:49] John Lieurance: They're really smooth and the shape of it, so as soon as the point kind of gets right into the anus there and it just kind of sucks up in there. It's not like you're having to force it or push your finger.

[00:36:02] Luke Storey: Yeah, not at all. It's super fast.

[00:36:04] John Lieurance: It's such a nothing, like you're in front of the sink, you open it up, you put it in, you wash your hands, and it's like, it's no big deal.

[00:36:12] Luke Storey: Yeah, that's how it is for me, but I know some people listening, because I've mentioned to people, and they go, oh, that's weird, I'm like, I don't know, to me-

[00:36:18] John Lieurance: And you don't really feel it when it's in there either. It dissolves very quickly, because it's made of organic palm oil. So, at room temperature, it turns into a liquid. So, it's hard, which palm oil was a lot better than like cocoa butter or some of the other suppository bases? And I like it, because in most settings, people could put it by their bed, and it's still hard and they can still apply it before bed. Melatonin, it's just such a perfect nutrient for a suppository, because you want a slow release of melatonin, because that's how your body pulses it. And I've really seen some very powerful effects with dosing melatonin in that fashion.

[00:37:04] Luke Storey: Yeah. Well, let's get into that then. Oh, no, I wanted to ask you one thing. When it comes to the IVs, I've been doing these nutrient IVs for a long time, pretty often. And the other day, someone mentioned in one of my Telegram groups that unless a clinic specifically orders the more expensive version of the IV bags that they use, very commonly, aluminum as a preservative, do you know if there's any truth to that? And is that a potential issue someone should look out for if they're getting IVs?

[00:37:40] John Lieurance: Yeah, it's a great question. And I can't answer that for sure, but I can tell you that aluminum is really nasty. It's in so many of our foods. And Klinghardt is a really well-known doctor, I'm sure a lot of people maybe have heard of him, and he presented once when I was at a conference on how aluminum can make viruses much more virulent. And that's not something that you want right now, right? Besides retroviruses, you have COVID and other viruses that you don't want to have their way in your body. So, avoiding intake of aluminum, and then there are different protocols that you can actually like clear out aluminum from the body.

[00:38:31] Luke Storey: But you've not heard of that specifically being an issue with IV bags. 

[00:38:36] John Lieurance: The bag itself?

[00:38:38] Luke Storey: No, like the nutrients, just the formula that they put in the IV bags being preserved in that way.

[00:38:42] John Lieurance: I haven't, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[00:38:45] Luke Storey: Okay. Cool. Worth looking into. I'm glad I've remembered to ask you that, because it was a bit disconcerting to me as someone who's gotten a lot of IVs. And also, because the other day, Alyson came to me and said, sweetie, I'm very concerned I'm magnetic, and I was like, you're very magnetic. And she said, no, for real. And she was able to stick magnets to herself, like people that are getting the shot right now.

[00:39:08] I don't know if you've seen these videos, but where people have the injection site, they're magnetized. And she's not had any of these injections, obviously. But yeah, it was pretty disconcerting. And then, I tried it on myself, and some days, it'll stick right here on my sternum like a little refrigerator magnet, and some days, it doesn't. And I'm like, what the hell? So, I start going in my groups asking people, and that's where the aluminum thing came up, because people are like, oh, it's the aluminum in the chem trails or in the IVs.

[00:39:37] Some people have said, and this sounds somewhat plausible, that with some kind of viral infection, not even the one that is currently all the rage, but that your red blood cells can lose their ability to carry oxygen. And so, that iron would become, I guess, the heme or the iron becomes more concentrated at different points in your body and the iron would be magnetic. 

[00:40:00] So, there's a few theories going around we haven't been able to figure it out, so I thought, well, we need to start jumping in the hyperbaric chamber and make sure oxygen is getting everywhere, which is what I've been doing. She's a little more hesitant to do that, but that's where that aluminum question came up, because it's very odd to have a magnet stick to your body.

[00:40:26] John Lieurance: I'm going to have to start sticking magnets to my body when I get home. I just haven't tracked that yet.

[00:40:26] Luke Storey: I have one in my bag. Let's see, dude. I'm assuming you haven't had this shot going around?

[00:40:28] John Lieurance: No.

[00:40:28] Luke Storey: Okay. Yeah, because there's a lot of people, I saw this one video where they go on a beach, and they're like, Have you had the shot? And people are like, yes, and then the magnet sticks to them. And it was about half the people that it sticks, and half, it doesn't. Maybe depending on the batch or the producer of said shot, but that's why we tried it. We're just like, I don't know, is that just a thing?

[00:40:48] There are also videos going around where people are buying really cheap factory-farmed meat, and chicken, and whatnot, and the magnets will stick to the meat. And I have some regenerative farm elk at home, I tried it on that, didn't stick. Alyson had some organic chicken nuggets or something, it stuck to those. Yeah, it's real weird. It's real weird. We'll experiment with it later. I don't want to lose time here. So, what is melatonin and why does it decline so much as we age?

[00:41:21] John Lieurance: Well, so melatonin is produced in the pineal gland, and as you know, the pineal gland is kind of the third eye, right? And this is where a lot of our perception of the non-physical world enters, according to most spiritual and religious groups. And so, the pineal seems to be a sensor for what we call the quantum field or the field. And it just so happens that that's where we convert serotonin into melatonin.

[00:42:06] And also, you can convert into DMT as well, which is one of the problems with autistic kids actually. They have a higher conversion of DMT, and they have very low melatonin levels, and that's why they're kind of in that state, where they're a bit confused. They're basically in an ayahuasca trip to some extent. So, actually, in my book, we talk about the benefits with autistic children and using a high-dose melatonin with them.

[00:42:38] So, melatonin, the way I see it is the ultimate stress protector. So, melatonin protects you from a lot of different types of stresses. So, it's taken me a while to really fully grasp, but it seems like if I could be kind of common as far as one aspect of, all the stressors are really going to create inflammation in your body. And inflammation shows up in something called cytokines, right? So, there's a number of different cytokines, there are inflammatory cytokines.

[00:43:18] So, like if you get an infection, you get a cytokine storm, right? A lot of people may have heard about this. And this can be very challenging to your health, because not only can you have this runaway inflammation, which, by the way, you can have with aluminum toxicity or mercury toxicity. So, toxins, infections, mental, emotional, electromagnetic, these are all types of stressors that all wind up creating this inflammatory response in the body, and that's the commonality of all diseases, is that there's inflammation there.

[00:43:55] But inflammation is not the problem, right? So, the cytokines are basically getting to the cell, and then the cell is responding to these cytokines by trying to buffer this stress, best it can. And so, at some point, we call it like a hormetic zone, right? So, we have this familiar zone. So, like today, you might be stuck in your familiar zone, so you're doing things that your body's accustomed to doing.

[00:44:23] And maybe you'll do a run later and you'll go into your hormetic zone, which is something that you're stressing yourself. And this is a good zone to get stronger. So, hormesis is a word for when we stress ourselves in a way where it's a good stress that we get a net gain in health, like heat. Could be like sauna, or an ice bath, exercise. There's a lot of toxins that are given as medicines in the right dosage.

[00:44:54] And so, hormesis is a really beautiful thing to look at. And so, you have the familiar zone, you have the hormetic zone, and then outside of that, I call it the danger zone. So, when we look at the moving into where the cell is getting too much of these cytokines, too much of this inflammation due to us starting to get into that danger zone, melatonin is there to protect.

[00:45:25] Literally, this is the way your body deals with it first. This is Plan A. So, this is within each of your mitochondria, produces melatonin, which basically quenches this stress. When it gets to the point where it can't quench that stress anymore, then it starts to make energy from a much more inefficient way, which is called aerobic glycolysis. And I know it's a fancy word, but basically, we're making about a 10% of the amount of energy that we were, otherwise making from one molecule of glucose.

[00:45:58] So, glucose plus oxygen goes into the cell and it's converted into something called ATP in the mitochondria. And that gives you, through something called Krebs Cycle, 38 ATPs. If it goes through aerobic glycolysis, you get about nine. Okay. So, I'm sorry, you get four. So, this much more inefficient way of making energy, they call the Warburg effect. Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize by discovering that oxygen and cancer can't coexist. He was the first one to discover this aerobic glycolysis. 

[00:46:35] So, there's a lot of applications to cancer, because this is, in essence, what a cancer cell does. And this is why melatonin has been deeply studied with cancer. But what they found is that when you give exogenous melatonin, it actually will reverse that, and it will allow the cell to start buffering the stress, and it'll start to kick in the production of melatonin within the mitochondria, because it keeps that energy being made in the mitochondria. It prevents it from going into this aerobic glycolysis, which is this inefficient way of making energy.

[00:47:09] Luke Storey: Oh, that's wild. I didn't know that.

[00:47:12] John Lieurance: So, it's really, at a very deep core level, in so many diseases. And that's why I'm on Chapter 20 in my book, where—I mean, it's available in e-book, so people can go to—and we'll give you a coupon code, right? So, melatoninbook.com. And there are three chapters I'm still working on, and it's been a two-year adventure.

[00:47:37] Luke Storey: It's an outstanding book. I mean, that's why I wanted to talk about melatonin today, because I just thought, oh, it makes you sleepy. You know what I mean? Literally, that's like, I just thought its role and I'm going through that book like, holy shit.

[00:47:50] John Lieurance: It's just the holy shit, yeah.

[00:47:52] Luke Storey: It's wild.

[00:47:53] John Lieurance: So, when they first looked at melatonin, I think this is just so fascinating, they did studies with rodent models, and they're like, you know what, melatonin doesn't seem to have any benefit, but what you have to understand is that the laws around how they have to treat these animals in the laboratory setting is it's basically like these rodents are living at the Ritz Carlton. It's not a stressful situation. 

[00:48:15] Okay. They're fed regularly. They're not exposed to a lot of heat and cold, blah, blah, blah. So, what they did is they stressed these rodents, and then took the stressed rodents, compare it to the ones that weren't stressed, and looked at them, both given melatonin. And what they noticed is that—I'm sorry, they had both stressed rodents, but they had one with melatonin, one not. And this is when melatonin really started to shine.

[00:48:42] And you could imagine the way that they stress these rodents was they put them in tubes for like hours upon hours in a day with little holes in it. And so, this is a common way that they stress these animals so that they can do tests like this. But what they found is that all the different diseases that the other animals were getting that didn't have the melatonin, the melatonin group weren't having. 

[00:49:05] And so, it was really profound. And that's what spurred all the research that you'll find. So, if you start to Google and look at research on gut, liver, neurological, cardiovascular, autoimmune, sleep, degenerative neurologic disorders, I mean, skin. This is what's fascinating to me. I always burned as a kid. I mean, I remember in Hawaii, I used to teach sailing, right? We'd be out in the sun all day long, and as much sunscreen as we put on, basically, my lower lip was a scab.

[00:49:42] It was a scab across my cheeks, my nose. But I burn so easily, and then I'd lose my tan, I'd get really red, and then I'd get white again within like a week. So, when I started using high-dose melatonin, I can go in the sun all day long and I'll get brown. It's insane. I had a patient come see me a few weeks ago, redhead from Boston. He's like this hedge fund guy came in for stem cells, for his hip. 

[00:50:14] And he went on a fishing trip and I got him on melatonin, because I'm like, we're going to get you on these couple of hundred milligrams of melatonin a night. It's really going to help you heal quicker and it's part of our stem cell protocol. And so, he goes out in the boat all day, and the guy could not believe. He basically browned, like not even burned, and he was pale. So, what I get to wrap my head around and what I think is fascinating is this is a visual of what you're seeing on the outside.

[00:50:46] So, you're seeing your skin be protected, right? Melatonin, you think these UV rays are coming and they're hitting your skin, that's stressful. Your body has to buffer that stress. There are cytokines. There's inflammation happening. There's a war at a cellular level with your body trying to protect itself from these harmful UV rays, and melatonin is there to the rescue, it's protecting. So, we can see that. We can see how that's working. But when you can't see what's happening with your gut, you can feel it eventually if you do it for a long enough period of time to get the benefit. But it's really awesome to actually visually see how amazing melatonin can protect you in that way.

[00:51:31] Luke Storey: That's really interesting. I always recommend to people to take astaxanthin and a lot of chaga tea, because I'm a huge sun worshipper. I mean, I sit out in the sun all day long. I love it. People, when I moved to Texas, everyone's like, oh, man, you're going to hate it, it's really hot and sunny. I'm like, why would you live anywhere that's not hot and sunny? But yeah, I never get burned, just solar callous. But that's a really good one to know, because I always recommend people, safely get a lot of sun exposure. But people that are really fair-skinned, the freckly redheaded types especially have a difficult time with it. It takes them a long time to build up that callus.

[00:52:09] John Lieurance: I love chaha tea.

[00:52:11] Luke Storey: Me, too. I use it every day. It's the base of all my coffee drinks, and elixirs, and stuff. I just keep it in a glass pot and just any time I heat water, it's chaga tea until it stops being dark brown.

[00:52:22] John Lieurance: Chaga tea has got some great antiviral properties to it, but it also helps to detoxify fluoride out of the pineal and some of the calcium in the pineal.

[00:52:30] Luke Storey: Really?

[00:52:32] John Lieurance: Oh, yeah.

[00:52:32] Luke Storey: What? Maybe that's why I'm so spiritually awake. I know, right? Well, that's one of the things, actually, I was going to ask you about. But before we get into that, why do you think, or do you know why melatonin seems to dramatically decrease in our endogenous production as we get older? I was looking at that graph in your book, and it's like, when you're a little kid, you're way up here, and by the time you're 70, I mean, you almost don't have any. It's crazy. Is it just part of the aging process and nature trying to weed out the old folks or what?

[00:53:04] John Lieurance: Well, I think there are going to be outliers to that. Certainly, there's a lot of industrial and cultural reasons that we can talk about that are going to really squash your melatonin production. It would be interesting to go back a thousand years and actually test melatonin with some of the people without all these toxins, and light pollution, and yada, yada, yada, but it seems to be that it's a glandular decline. 

[00:53:36] And so, the pineal loses function over time. Certainly, I think it's multifactorial and there's not one smoking gun that's causing that, but the aging process, we're not meant to live a thousand years, unfortunately. So, we have a lifespan, and part of that is that our body is wearing out. And so, the pineal is going to decline. And so, if you look at that graph, it does drastically drop off, especially right around age 40.

[00:54:11] So, I think everyone wants to really ask themselves, are they okay with that? Because even if there's no other confounders, like for instance, if you're staring at your computer screen or you've got your lights on at your house, you're inhibiting melatonin and your circadian rhythm. If you've got light in your bedroom, there's EMF. Those rays actually go into your skull and your pineal senses those. That's what they found.

[00:54:45] Luke Storey: So, yeah, in our first phone call, you mentioned this. So, okay, on the light spectrum, you have visible light, right? And so, if that light is in the spectrum of green or blue, it shuts down your melatonin production and starts you making cortisol, right? And so, one would think, well, all I need to do is just at night, put on my blue-blocking glasses and have red or orange bulbs in the house, but you were saying something about how, beyond the visible spectrum of light, you have EMF that are like RF radiation in the invisible spectrum of light, but still, it is part of the spectrum, we just can't see it. So, you're saying that that actually passes through your tissue and your skull, and your pineal gland perceives EMF as light and it suppresses melatonin production in the same way?

[00:55:34] John Lieurance: Yeah, it triggers the same response that daylight would have on your eyes.

[00:55:39] Luke Storey: What? Dude.

[00:55:41] John Lieurance: So, turn off your Wi-Fi router at night. It's easy to do, right? And what I did is I painted my bedroom with this carbon paint. I did it when I was remodeling it. so even before the flooring went in. So, it's hard to actually use a mobile phone in my room, my bedroom. But that's really the most important place. You want to get your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-enabled devices out of your bedroom.

[00:56:11] Luke Storey: Last night, I fell asleep with my Oura Ring and I forgot to disable the Bluetooth. I hate it when I do that, because I sleep with my hand right under my head, usually, like under the pillow. I woke up. I was like, ah, goddammit, because if you get an EMF—I mean, I love the Oura Ring. It's great. I have them in my online store. But if you get an RF meter, that thing puts off a lot, as do all these great wearables. So many of these great biohacking technologies, you have the connectivity wirelessly, but you got to really remember to turn the Bluetooth feature off. 

[00:56:42] John Lieurance: Yeah. When I put my phone on Airplane, it disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Does it not do that on your phone?

[00:56:48] Luke Storey: It does, yeah, but I'm talking about, I have the phone on Airplane all the time when I'm sleeping, but I'm just talking about like the Oura Ring or that thing, the Hapbee that I had around my neck earlier, which is super cool, so many of these different devices, the Apollo, it's a really great little mood-regulating vibrational therapy you wear in your wrist. And now, they're getting smart and they make it so that you turn on the Bluetooth on your phone, you connect to it, you set the program that you want to run, or you turn your ring on, so it's going to sense you're asleep. But then, you can turn the Bluetooth off on the device, because when you turn the Bluetooth off on your phone, the device is still emitting it.

[00:57:23] John Lieurance: So, you have to go in the app?

[00:57:25] Luke Storey: Yeah, like in the Oura Ring, before I go to sleep, I just open the Oura Ring app, and I disable the Bluetooth, so it's still tracking my sleep and the HRV.

[00:57:33] John Lieurance: Actually, I didn't know this. 

[00:57:34] Luke Storey: Yeah, man. Those things emit a crazy amount of Bluetooth.

[00:57:37] John Lieurance: Wow.

[00:57:38] Luke Storey: Yeah. So, there you go.

[00:57:39] John Lieurance: Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Good thing I'm taking all the melatonin, right? 

[00:57:44] Luke Storey: Yeah, I know.

[00:57:44] John Lieurance: My gosh, how would I be surviving?

[00:57:47] Luke Storey: Yeah. So, I think what you alluded to earlier is really interesting about the EMF, and I'm totally on board with that. When we go to my house today, I'll show you, I'm so proud of all, I finally bought a place, so it was worth it to do all of the shielding. It was expensive. I mean, it was a pretty big undertaking. But yeah, the bedroom's just a total Faraday cage.

[00:58:05] John Lieurance: I've got this silver canopy over my bed as well, which it's cool, but it's a little stuffy under there. Like sometimes, I can sleep under it, but there's not the airflow that I really like.

[00:58:19] Luke Storey: I was concerned about that. I was looking into that some time ago, and I thought, I don't know, yeah, is it going to get sweaty in there?

[00:58:27] John Lieurance: It's romantic, though. My girlfriend absolutely loves this. It's sexy.

[00:58:32] Luke Storey: I mean, that's the thing, the shielding fabric, that sheer kind of fabric, it doesn't look ugly. That's the funny thing. I mean, it looks kind of like a lace or like a mosquito net, almost, so it's not terribly offensive-looking, like some of the silver shielding fabrics and stuff. The stuff I put on my floor, it basically looks like tin foil fabric.

[00:58:57] There's not a lot of applications you can aesthetically use that with and not have it interrupt your vibe. Okay. So, back to the melatonin. I'm really curious, because you and I are both fans of Joe Dispenza. I know you just went to one of his workshops recently. I've been to a couple of them. I'm going to go back, I think, in January to Marco Island with my dad and the fiancee again, by the way. I don't know if you're going to go there.

[00:59:19] John Lieurance: I'm going into September.

[00:59:20] Luke Storey: Oh, you are?

[00:59:21] John Lieurance: There's an advanced.

[00:59:21] Luke Storey: In Marco Island?

[00:59:22] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[00:59:23] Luke Storey: Oh, shit. I didn't know about that. 

[00:59:24] John Lieurance: Yeah, I was going to mention it to you. I thought you'd already done the advanced one.

[00:59:28] Luke Storey: I have, but dude, I could go to one of those every month, like I love them.

[00:59:33] John Lieurance: Maybe I can get you in. I got some contacts.

[00:59:36] Luke Storey: Hey, let me know.

[00:59:37] John Lieurance: Alright.

[00:59:37] Luke Storey: Let me know. I interviewed Joe and I can't even get myself in.

[00:59:40] John Lieurance: I know. I listened to it. It was a great interview, by the way.

[00:59:43] Luke Storey: Oh, thanks, man. He's a well-insulated guy. He's got his, wish I honor. But anyway, one thing I thought that was really interesting in the model that he created was when he breaks down the pineal gland and the other neurotransmitters, as you alluded to earlier with, I think it was, first, tryptophan, then serotonin, or I guess, melatonin, then tryptophan. Would you break that down? 

[01:00:09] John Lieurance: Tryptohan, serotonin, then melatonin.

[01:00:10] Luke Storey: Oh, okay. And then, at what point does endogenous dimethyl tryptamine or DMT come into the equation?

[01:00:17] John Lieurance: That can be made from serotonin.

[01:00:21] Luke Storey: Okay. 

[01:00:22] John Lieurance: Yeah, instead of going into melatonin, it can go into DMT.

[01:00:25] Luke Storey: And did his hypothesis or model around using these breath exercises to put pressure on the pineal gland, to cause it to excrete more of that stuff, did that make sense to you? Because I've had some super psychedelic experiences specifically in his retreats, I think because of the entrainment of the unified field of consciousness within there. I don't go that deep on my own, but man, some heavy breath work and really doing those yogic holds, I mean, you can really go pretty far out.

[01:00:59] John Lieurance: I agree. And I have, since I did the seminar with Joe, I've been practicing every morning. And I think that he's come up with some just genius applications. I've added some of my own twist to it. There's a beautiful human being that I follow. His name is Michael Rice, and he's a naturopath, and he's been teaching something called still point breathing and deep Aramaic forgiveness work. I want to introduce you to him. I think your listeners would probably love to hear his story. 

[01:01:35] But he basically was an ordained deacon for the Catholic Church, and then he began to study the original Aramaic Bible, which he started to realize really wasn't anything like the Bible that we see at the church now, and it was more like Buddhism, is what Yeshua, which is Jesus's real name, had been teaching. And so, he began to teach some of these principles that he learned from that original book. And one of them was that Yeshua had spoken much about using the breath and that it's the veil.

[01:02:13] Luke Storey: Oh, word?

[01:02:14] John Lieurance: Yeah. And so, he feels that Yeshua would be sitting around with his disciples and they weren't eating bread or drinking wine. He says, they were doing breathwork. And so, he came up with something called still point breathing. And so, what I did is I've combined his still point breathing with the Dispenza breath, which I'd like to show you. Maybe we'll do it later tonight.

[01:02:42] Luke Storey: Absolutely.

[01:02:42] John Lieurance: And I've been able to get to some gamma experiences that have been just mind-blowing. 

[01:02:47] Luke Storey: Really?

[01:02:47] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[01:02:48] Luke Storey: Well, that was the other thing that really blew me away at the couple Dispenza retreats is how they have, they didn't have it at the last one, because of COVID stuff, but at the first one in Palm Springs, he had this team of scientists in the back of the room. I mean, there was a huge section of the room, is all devoted to quantification. And they were doing the qEEGs on people. And during some of those longer meditations, I mean, he'd have three or four people that were popping into to high gamma. I think a couple of hundred standard deviations outside of normal. I mean, super deep consciousness spaces that I don't know that anything-

[01:03:24] John Lieurance: So, Dr. Patel was the NASA scientist that was doing all the research for the twin. So, one twin went into space, the other one stayed here, and they're trying to figure out like what the impact of space travel would have on a human body. And so, they were identical twins. So, this same scientist is running the research for Joe Dispenza. And so, Hillary, my friend, she's really in charge of that as well.

[01:03:52] And so, Dr. Patel actually came for his first time to a Dispenza seminar, and he'd been doing all this amazing research, and proving these amazing—which we can get into if you want. And he actually went up there for a couple of hours, and talked about his research, and was showing a number of slides. And what I'm hearing from the inner circle in the Dispenza group is that this has taken Patel to the next level, because he finally actually got it. And he is now like seeing it from, there's a saying that I like I recently read, it says, the proof is not in the pudding,t he proof is in tasting the pudding.

[01:04:36] Luke Storey: Oh, I like that. I like that. Well, I think that's what's so cool about what Joe is up to is hehe's bringing in scientists, right? He's bringing in viable people that are working within the confines of rigorous study and not just a bunch of hippies going like, oh, I saw some colors. So, it's like he's using these ancient yogic techniques and kind of rebranding them, and I mean, doing so respectfully, I don't think he's like appropriating those, but he found things that felt good and started building his own model. 

[01:05:08] But it's the research to me that's really interesting, especially when you see a doctor or scientist come up on stage, and go, yeah, we have no way to explain this. Like what we just saw in the back of the room, this one guy did this, this lady did that, and it's just, the spontaneous healings and the coherence healings, where someone's got MS or cancer. I mean, things that there's no possible way that they could be healed, and they are. And it's relatively common. I mean, it's not guaranteed for every person, right? But I think that stuff's just so fascinating.

[01:05:39] John Lieurance: That might really sound crazy to people listening to this, because when I first started to wrap my head around it, it was very difficult to really take it on, but there's a field that is, in essence, gravitational field, and this is called the quantum field, or the morphogenic field, or even the field. Everything that's physical is emanating from that field. And so, the way I understand it is that the world we're living in is physical.

[01:06:11] And so, everything's linear, right? So, there's unlimited time and space, where in this other field, in the field, if you take everything linear and you turn it so it's in one moment, so it's unlimited time that's all happening in one now moment. And that's really what I feel we're touching into when we're doing plant medicine or we're having these amazing experiences in our meditation is we're actually experiencing that oneness, that complete, like it's just this expansiveness, right? And so, it's that now moment that's just infinite time.

[01:06:55] Luke Storey: Amen. Even when we talk about it, I go there. It's so beautiful. I was curious about going back to melatonin with Joe's work and that cascade of, are those neurotransmitters? Am I calling them the right thing, the tryptophan and serotonin? What are those compounds called?

[01:07:17] John Lieurance: Serotonin is a neurotransmitter.

[01:07:19] Luke Storey: Okay. So, in the cascade of those neurotransmitters, where the metabolites of each one can create something else, and you said one of them can split off and become melatonin, or it can split off and become DMT, do you see any benefit to high-dose melatonin assisting in that process or is it too far down the metabolite change to give you more DMT? You get where I'm going with this?

[01:07:46] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[01:07:46] Luke Storey: Like if you're saturated with melatonin, is that going to help you to more readily produce your own endogenous dimethyl tryptamine or are they already on two different paths and they don't impact at that point on that chain?

[01:08:00] John Lieurance: It's tough. It's not a black or white answer to that. I know that when you look at the essence of achieving these states that I think a lot of people want to achieve, where you're feeling one and you have this experience that we might call a magical moment, hat it's a very powerful parasympathetic state that you have to be in. And melatonin is going to be the primary activator of the parasympathetic nervous system.

[01:08:39] Melatonin is the primary supporter to the vagus nerve. So, your entire parasympathetic nervous system hinges on melatonin. And this is why as we get older and we have less melatonin, it's harder for us to focus on things. Things become more excitable. You see a lot of degenerative neurologic disorders, peopl, there's too much movement, right? They've got tremor. People are kind of agitated, right? They're not calm, and centered, and relaxed. Depression, anxiety, a lot of these things can follow with poor neurological function, which ultimately is a result of not just low melatonin levels, but the need for this parasympathetic nervous system to be there.

[01:09:25] So, by supporting the parasympathetic nervous system with higher doses of melatonin or even normal doses of melatonin have been shown to be effective. We haven't really gotten into the super physiological doses of melatonin yet. So, just to give the listeners kind of an idea, two or three milligrams is kind of a typical dose that doctors will prescribe. What they found is that there is no toxic level to melatonin. They've literally given melatonin the doses of like 100,000 milligrams, and there's no toxic level.

[01:10:00] Luke Storey: Wow, that's crazy. Do you ever wake up again? I can see these mice laid out for six months sleeping in hibernation.

[01:10:09] John Lieurance: Yeah, I know. Well, yeah. So, there's no toxic level. They can't see that there's any damage to these animals, whatsoever, as high as they could possibly go. And then, it's one of the few hormones that doesn't shut down if you take it exogenously.

[01:10:23] Luke Storey: I was going to ask you about that.

[01:10:23] John Lieurance: You don't shut down your endo, so you have an exogenous, taking from outside, and then you have endogenous, which is what you make from your inside. So, the exogenous typically shuts down endogenous. So, like testosterone is a good example. You got to be careful, because if you take too much, you're not supporting the production. Growth hormone is another good one. That's why the peptides are such a better option than taking regular growth hormone. You take like if ipamorelin, or CJC, or something like that, you're stimulating your own production of growth hormone, right?

[01:11:02] Luke Storey: Are those peptides, just to divert for a second, are those peptides then precursors to those hormones, like to HGH, for example? Is that kind of how those-

[01:11:12] John Lieurance: No, they stimulate the gland to produce it?

[01:11:15] Luke Storey: Ah, okay. Oh, cool. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because when I started taking your, what are your suppositories, like 400 mg or 200? I forget.

[01:11:25] John Lieurance: So, we have a SandMan that's 200 mg, and then we have it in the liposomal so you can dose whatever you want with the syringe, right? And then, we have Super SandMan in both a suppository and the-

[01:11:42] Luke Storey: That's an ass kicker, that one, no pun intended. And is that one 400? That's 425. Okay. Yeah, that's the ones that I have. And I was kind of concerned about that. I'm like, I don't know if I'm hitting my body with this much melatonin, then is it going to send the signal to my body to go, oh, we don't need to make that anymore, so that's really good to know. Yeah. One thing I've noticed with the Super SandMan is I've experimented with it a few times. It's not something I do all the time, because I'll tend to be a little groggy the next morning and the next day, and I've noticed that it works best if I take it.

[01:12:18] Like if I was going to take melatonin to sleep, say I want to fall asleep at 11:00, I'll do it at like 10:30, right? And so, I was kind of doing it that way. And then, 9:00 AM the next day, I'm still kind of like—I mean, great for meditating, because I'm still in that relaxed place, but I can't just get up, and go, feel a little foggy. So, I've had to learn to sort of titrate that way earlier, like take it at 6:00, and then all of a sudden, I'm like sleepy at 9:00 and I can reset my circadian rhythm.

[01:12:46] John Lieurance: So, it's beautiful you figured that on your own, because that would be some of the coaching we might do for people that would reach out with challenges. Melatonin with 80% of the population, unless there's darkness, won't cause sleepiness, so you can dose much earlier with melatonin. So, you're a slow metabolism of melatonin.

[01:13:08] Luke Storey: Dude, you know what, I think I'm a slow metabolism of everything. I was thinking about this yesterday, because any time I do a ceremony, everyone's leaving, and I'm like, what? I'm peaking. I mean, almost every time I do any kind of medicine, everyone's like gathering around the sharing circle, and I'm laying there like, what the hell? Like I'm nowhere near done, so I must just be kind of like that in general. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that. 

[01:13:37] John Lieurance: So, what that means is that you can dose melatonin during the day. And so, you might ask, why would one want a dose during the day? I did an internship with Frank Shallenberger, who is kind of considered one of the first alternative medical doctors. And he brought Ozone to the US. He's an amazing man. He's out in Reno, Nevada if you ever get a chance to go out there and see him.

[01:14:03] Luke Storey: No, actually, I hit him up on his website, because I want to interview him and I haven't heard back.

[01:14:07] John Lieurance: Oh, okay. Let me try to put a word in. He's so busy right now. 

[01:14:11] Luke Storey: I'm sure. Yeah. He's been on my list for a long time. I ended up doing a show recently about ozone with Ian Mitchell, so I feel like I covered the topic. But I mean, he's like the godfather of ozone. Like you're going to talk about it at depth, he's the guy.

[01:14:26] John Lieurance: He finally got around to reading the book and he gave me a beautiful quote, but it took a while. He's like, I'm so busy, I'll get back to you, but then it was like a week or two ago, I got this beautiful email with like all these accolades for the books. And so, he was one of the people that really prompted my interest in melatonin, because I went out there, and in the process of following him and watching him work with patients, I was seeing him dosing people with 200 milligrams of melatonin, sometimes, during the day and the night, most of which were during the night.

[01:15:03] But with cancer patients, he seemed to have a bias if it was cancer, or if it was degenerative neurologic disease, like Alzheimer's, or Parkinson's, or these other degenerative diseases of the brain that it's good to do during the day, because you want that support 24/7. And so, we have a melatonin called SandMan Soul. And so, we do have people that use it during the day as well. And you get used to it. At first, I think even with the nighttime, even with me personally, I noticed that I was a little groggy in the morning. But after taking it a few times, I noticed that I wasn't. And a really interesting thing, and this is in my book as well. We talk about how melatonin actually triggers, detox heavy metals out of your brain.

[01:15:54] Luke Storey: Oh, word?

[01:15:55] It's a strong key later. So, I think some people are going through a detox initially. So, they might feel a little groggy or a little off.

[01:16:05] They get a little Herxheimer reaction. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that would make sense. So, if you were to take the high-dose melatonin during the day and you're exposed to natural full spectrum daylight with blue in it, then I'm assuming you'd still get some of those anti-inflammatory and other positive effects of it, but just the sleepiness part is much less likely to kick in, because your optic nerve still thinks it's daytime.

[01:16:32] John Lieurance: Yeah. I mean, you might feel a little like you had just a little bit of cover or something like that, so there might be like kind of a mellowing aspect to it. Honestly, I've never tried it. I've not tried the dose, which is surprising. I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm thinking, I look at Ben Greenfield, I'm like, man, we're so much alikem because I'm a crazy biohacker and practicing all these things on myself.

[01:16:58] Luke Storey: Well, I kind of take things often, obviously, I'm not a doctor, but I do play one sometimes on the podcast, but I like to kind of push things to the extreme just because it's in my nature and I just want to feel everything. I'm just such a sensitive person. I just want to have the full rich experience of something. But also, I'll kind of stack a bunch of things, and try a bunch of things, and go pretty hard, because I want to inform people that listen to the podcast or follow me on social media, like sometimes, a cautionary tale of like, well, I tried it this way and go easy.

[01:17:27] Like with that drink I gave you, feel free, a great little kava and kratom drink. I could probably pound two of those and just go about my day, but some people take half of one, and they're like, whoa, I feel very relaxed. So, now, I know to tell people like, I can take a couple, and it's safe, however start slow and titrate, because everyone's biology is so different the way we respond to these things. With the melatonin, if one wanted, because I think you put that in your jetlag pack, if I'm not mistaken, the SandMan. 

[01:18:00] John Lieurance: The Travel Hacker kit.

[01:18:01] Luke Storey: The Travel Hacker kit, yeah. Yeah. So, if one wanted to, like I feel like I'm always wanting to do to reset my circadian rhythm, so I can get up and sun gaze. I fell out of it here because it was really cloudy for a while. Now, I've got a perfect view of the East, sorry, and I could watch the sunrise right on the horizon, but I can't get up that early. I'm sleeping into like 8:00, 8:30 most days.

[01:18:24] So, if one wanted to do a hard reset, like when they're traveling, and you really wanted the melatonin to give you that sleep effect, you could then like put on blue-blocking glasses like at the time you want to fall asleep, take that melatonin at 5:00 PM or something if you were switching time zones, and just knock yourself out, and get up the next day, and have a fresh start. Have you found that to be useful in that way?

[01:18:48] John Lieurance: Oh, absolutely. I introduced it to Ben Greenfield, because I know he traveled a lot, but it's interesting. It was kind of right before COVID hit. So, he finally got around to utilizing it. He calls it the melatonin sledgehammer. Andso, yeah, it is fantastic for resetting yourself. I mean, I travel to Hawaii regularly. My dad and sister still live out there, all the way from Florida.

[01:19:13] Luke Storey: That's a lot of change.

[01:19:14] John Lieurance: It's a lot of change. So, going there is the problem. Coming back—well, actually, coming back's worse. But you don't have a lot of time there. When you go on a trip, you want to maximize your time. So, if you can get there, and then you take a super physiological dose of melatonin, that night, you wake up, you sleep like a baby, you're not waking up like for instance, in Hawaii, I would wake up at like 1:00 in the morning, I couldn't go back to sleep, then you're screwed.

[01:19:46] So then, by like 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, their time, it's like you can barely keep your eyes open, right? But if you can just hammer it that first day, you stay up until sleeping time. Maybe you have to use a little caffeine or something to do it, and then you hit it with the melatonin. The other trick that I discovered, which is in the Travel Hacker kit, is really high-dose CBD suppositories.

[01:20:12] Luke Storey: Yeah, I use those on my last trip.

[01:20:14] John Lieurance: It's called NeuroDial, and it's a 300 mg suppository. And I found that the neuroprotection that the CBD administered in that, you don't get groggy. It's interesting, because of the route of delivery. You don't get that groggy feeling like you would with like a full spectrum hemp extract orally. But it seems to provide some support for electromagnetic stress that you get a lot of when you're traveling.

[01:20:41] I don't know, just the stress of traveling, I guess, and it used to be that there was such bad air quality as well in the plane that I tested that to why I felt terrible when I would travel places. But since COVID, I think they've cleaned that up a little bit. And so, that's where we had the GlutaStat nasal spray. And you would do this antimicrobial mist into the nose. So, those three products kind of make up the Travel Hacker kit.

[01:21:07] Luke Storey: Well, the last week, Alyson and I flew to Indiana, which isn't terribly far from here, but there is no direct flight, because we're going to a small ass town, so we had to go through Atlanta on the way there, and then we went through Detroit on the way back, flight was delayed. It still ends up being a freaking 12-hour day from door to door. It's like almost any time you fly, and flying is my arch nemesis. I mean, nothing wrecks me like flying. 

[01:21:34] Even if I don't really change time zones, there's just something about the pressure change, the canary in the coal mine. And I fly with Alyson, and she's fine. She's like, cool, let's go out to dinner. I'm like, are you crazy? I need to go take a nap. I mean, I am devastated after I fly. But on this last trip, I did the NAD suppository. I was filled up. Not to be too graphic, folks, but I made sure there was room, did the NAD, the CBD one.

[01:22:06] John Lieurance: The NeuroDial.

[01:22:06] Luke Storey: Yeah, the NeuroDial. And the Methyl Max, I think it's called. 

[01:22:10] John Lieurance: Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's a good one.

[01:22:12] Luke Storey: All those methylated B vitamins and stuff before I flew, and dude, I landed and I actually felt normal. I mean, it was crazy.

[01:22:21] John Lieurance: I remember you texted me, I was like.

[01:22:24] Luke Storey: It was badass. I'm like, finally, after all these years, and I've been interviewing brilliant people for six years, I mean, I've been into all of this stuff that's now called biohacking for almost 25 years, I've done hyperbaric before and after I fly. I mean, a few things help, the hyperbaric, the BioCharger, a lot of the big, heavy-hitting tools, ozone.

[01:22:42] I mean, I do all the things, but I think the secret there is that while you're actually traveling, you're getting that slow drip with those nutrients. Yeah. And there's just something about that combination. It was just incredible. Like honestly, I would never travel without having those. It made a massive difference. Yeah, really, so I thank you for coming up with those.

[01:23:06] John Lieurance: Yeah, the helpful thing.

[01:23:07] Luke Storey: Yeah, badass. I'm glad I got to tell you that. I forgot that I'd sent you that text. Let me see what else I wanted to ask you here. There's a couple of things. Okay. We covered the melatonin stuff pretty good. I want to ask you about going back to the pineal gland, and I asked Dispenza this, and he was like, 100%, it's true. I also asked Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon who's dissected and worked on a lot of brains, and I asked both of them, I said, is this calcification of the pineal gland a real thing or is it just kind of some new age?

[01:23:43] John Lieurance: Yeah. No, it's real.

[01:23:45] Luke Storey: And Jack told me, he said, Oh, I've been in a lot of brains, and for sure, it's there. And then, Dispenza said he said, yeah, it's true, but it's not like, you would think about calcification like limescale on your faucet, really hard calcification. He said, it's more like a milky chalky kind of stuff that covers it up, but it does inhibit the electromagnetic effect that he's, of course, going after with those meditations.

[01:24:10] So, you agree that it exists and you mentioned chaga as something that is known to help eliminate that, do you know of any other things that really decalcify that pineal gland? I've heard like shilajit, which I take every day, I've heard some things like that. Is there any data to support any of those things? And do you have any other suggestions on ways we can keep that gland sparkly clean? 

[01:24:36] John Lieurance: So, yeah, I mean, it's a normal variant in 80% of the population. In fact, in radiographic evaluations, they look for that as a landmark, because it's so common. So, it's real and there needs to be more research into it. There's not a lot of data for me to really pull from as far as whether some of these different nutrient applications really to what effects they're having. But I do know shilajit's a good nutrient for that. Iodine can be really helpful to support the pineal. Turmeric and curcumin can be a really good nutrient for the pineal.

[01:25:23] Luke Storey: You put those in some of the suppositories, don't you? 

[01:25:26] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[01:25:27] Luke Storey: And CoQ10 and some of those other really powerful antioxidants?

[01:25:29] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, I mean, those are chagas, a good one. Yeah. I mean, those are the main ones that those are listed in the book as well. We have a whole chapter on pineal, where we get into a lot of the kind of ethereal explanations that we were talking about with some of Dispenza's work. And we talk about some of the research and some of the results that they had in the research in this chapter.

[01:25:56] I mean, when I did the pineal chapter in the Melatonin: Miracle Molecule, I really dove deep into some of our world. And I know the book outside of that is very scientific, where besides breaking down melatonin for people so that they can understand it, like what we talked about with the energy production in the mitochondria, I also introduced a lot of naturopathic ideas where if it's the gut section, it's like how to use other methods besides melatonin. 

[01:26:33] So, different applications of natural medicine with ozone and with other types of fasting. We talk a lot about fasting quite a bit. So, I think it's a great book, and the pineal, and the connection to melatonin, and the connection with spirit, it just feels like it's been such a blessing for me to be given this project. And it was such almost an accident, but not so much of an accident, right?

[01:27:03] So, I found myself in Frank Shellenberger's clinic, where he's prescribing these large amounts of melatonin. And I was a few years post-Lyme recovery, and I was still having a lot of brain fog and word finding. My brain just didn't work well. And I really wanted to get that back. And I feel today that my brain works way better than it did at any other point in my life. Like not only did I get back, but I've overshot, which I'm happy to say.

[01:27:35] Luke Storey: Yeah. That's been my experience, too. With the pineal gland and thinking about things that would decalcify it, and I agree, I haven't seen any empirical evidence that would support that. I mean, you'd have to like do an MRI on someone with a heavily calcified pineal gland, get them on shilajit for a number of weeks, and then do another one and see if they made no other interventions if that worked. But with shilajit, something that's always made sense to me is the humic and fulvic acid content in it.

[01:28:03] And I bet if you took like some shilajit tea and put it in a glass pot that had a lot of limescale on it, it would probably remove it. Like you could do apple cider vinegar, it does that same thing. I bet there's something to that, but I wonder if doing the exercises like Dispenza teaches, these yogic, the squeezes and stuff, I'm wondering if that's going to kind of move the fluid around in there and perhaps even get rid of some of it, too. And maybe that's the basis of some of those practices to begin with.

[01:28:37] John Lieurance: You're bringing back, so K2 is another vitamin that's really good with preventing calcification deposits. And that's also, in my book, as far as something that you would want to look at to decalcify the pineal. But I'm thinking about the way that we approach, say, for instance, Alzheimer's, like if I have an Alzheimer's patient that comes in, I'm thinking of something called autophagy, which is self-eating. Have you had a lot of people talk about fasting and autophagy on your shows?

[01:29:03] Luke Storey: I've got a show next week coming out, which will already be out by this time on this substance called spermidine, which is really present in natto, which, as you know, I'm sure, is really high in K2. But spermidine, one of the main things it does is it speeds up autophagy. It makes autophagy much more abundant in your body. So, yeah, we will have talked about that to some degree.

[01:29:28] John Lieurance: So, when you look at proteins that build up in the brain, you have alpha synuclein, which in Parkinson's, you got beta amyloid, and in Alzheimer's, you've got tau and traumatic brain injury. So, these are proteins that accumulate in the brain. And so, if you want to get those out of the brain, you have to look at things like autophagy and you have to look at something called the glymphatic system. And the glymphatic system is the gutter system of the brain that kind of basically is like your lymphatic system, it gets rid of waste.

[01:29:59] And the glymphatic system in the brain is primarily activated by deep sleep, which is primarily through melatonin. And this is another reason why a lot of neurological conditions are improved with better sleep. So, I think about your question on the pineal, and I think about Dispenza's breath, and I'm thinking in the same lines that you're loosening things up, you're kind of mobilizing things, but then you're flushing them out with the breath. So, I do think that it's probably a better approach to look at a multifactorial kind of application with that.

[01:30:37] Luke Storey: Yeah, love it. When one's going to do the suppositories and specifically the ones that are really heavy in antioxidants with the ones that have the quercetin, and CoQ10, and turmeric, and things like that, I've always been curious about the timing of oxidative therapies, like doing rectal ozone or doing hyperbaric and how one would—and not just rectal antioxidants, but if you're doing anything that's strongly antioxidant, how would you time that with prooxidative, if that's the right word, therapies? You know what I'm getting at? So, like if you're going to do something like ozone and HBOT, you probably don't want to take antioxidants before you do that, because you're kind of butting heads with your internal system. Does anything come to mind in terms of how you would stagger those?

[01:31:27] John Lieurance: And this is an interesting conversation I have with some of my MD doctor buddies, some people are just so overly focused on antioxidants, like you've got to get more antioxidants. Well, oxidation is just as important, right? So, oxidation triggers a lot of amazing gene expressions that lead to us producing more mitochondria and better energy production.

[01:31:52] And when we get large doses of oxidation, like what you would get with, say, like the RejuvenOX protocol that we do in my clinic, where it's a high-dose vitamin IV with ozone, it's more than what you would get naturally. And this is something that is normally higher during the day, because you think that we're working, we're exercising, we're moving around, we're creating oxidation.

[01:32:20] So, I would say that you want to let that rip during the day. You don't want to take antioxidants during the day every day. In the evening time is when you would preferably take an antioxidant. So, if a patient was coming into our clinic, maybe they had chronic Epstein-Barr or something like that, and we're running this RejuvenOX high-dose ozone, we would not want them to take antioxidants before they come in. And by the way, oxidation also promotes autophagy.

[01:32:51] So, if people are doing fasting, they're doing intermittent fasting, you don't want to take antioxidants while you're fasting. You want to let that oxidation kick in, because it's accentuating—the main goal when you're fasting is you're trying to stimulate the body to clean, and repair, and recycle. And so, this system is not activated with many people in our society, because we're constantly snacking or eating all the time. So, it's the same thing with oxidation. We want that oxidation to hit. We want it to be a strong signaling, because that's where the body starts to go in and repair its own endogenous antioxidant buffering system.

[01:33:35] Luke Storey: Got it. And hyperbaric oxygen therapy would be oxidative, too, like Ozone would be?

[01:33:42] John Lieurance: It is.

[01:33:42] Luke Storey: Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'm always trying to tie, it's like you do the whole morning routine, I think I asked Ian Mitchell about this, I'm like, alright, so if I do the hyperbaric, and then I'm going to do some, because I do a lot of hydrogen, I do these hydroshot drinks, and then I also have a hydrogen gas inhaler, which I use, which is very antioxidant.

[01:34:03] So, I was trying to put together with him like, if I do hyperbaric and I do the BioCharger, take a sauna, take an ice bath, and all these things that are pretty powerful interventions in and of themselves, and we were kind of going back and forth on how you would want to stack those, and I think we ended up that you'd get some oxidative stress from the hyperbaric, so you do the ice bath after that, right? And then, I think it was like sauna goes either way after as well, because of that hormetic stress response.

[01:34:32] I don't know that we ever worked in where the hydrogen would come in, but it's antioxidant, so I'm assuming you do that later after the hyperbaric. So, it's just like with some of this stuff, I'm a bit of a cowboy and I just do everything, but I think in the service of the audience and people who experiment with this stuff, the timing of them and the sequencing is important not only to get the maximum benefit, but you could be actually stressing the body more than you want to by giving it this boomerang effect of antioxidant prooxidant [making sounds] back and forth.

[01:35:04] John Lieurance: Have you considered when to dose NAD?

[01:35:08] Luke Storey: No, I just do it all the time. Good question. When would be a good time within that framework to dose NAD? 

[01:35:15] John Lieurance: I do it in the morning, typically.

[01:35:17] Luke Storey: Yeah, I did one today, and then some more of the oral version, the liposomal.

[01:35:22] John Lieurance: So, very few people know this, but NAD supports your cells, right? I mean, that's what it does. And so, there are certain types of cells that we actually want to get rid of when we're fasting, and we want autophagy to go and clear these types of cells. They're called senescent cells. And so, one of the products that we make, Locitol, is part of the Fast Track Fast, right?

[01:35:47] So, we have people taking this senelytic while they're fasting to really even further and deeply go into autophagy and clean these senescent cells. Senescent cells are basically like cells that should normally be cleaned, and recycled, and gotten rid of. They produce a lot of inflammation, a lot of disease, and they cause a lot of problem, and hog of a lot of energy. So, the challenge is that NAD supports all your cells, but it also supports senescent cells.

[01:36:15] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.

[01:36:16] John Lieurance: So, we don't want to dose NAD when we're fasting.

[01:36:19] Luke Storey: Oh, shit.

[01:36:21] John Lieurance: So, now, we're starting to look at NAD kind of the same way with an antioxidant. So, NAD is probably better, pulsing certain times during the week. Not every day. A lot of people are taking the precursors of NAD like every day, and that's not going to be the best way to do it.

[01:36:38] Luke Storey: Oh, that's interesting, because I am usually fasted for the first half of the day. I'll have like a fatty elixir or something in the morning, but I'm not eating any protein, or carbs, or any other calories, really, other than fat. So, I'm kind of intermittent fasting for most of the day, almost every single day. And then, I'll do the NAD in the morning, because I'm like, I want energy, right? So, I'm kind of doing it in the middle of a fasted state, would you say?

[01:37:06] John Lieurance: Yeah. And so, if-

[01:37:07] Luke Storey: And I'm still not clear when people talk about fasting, if fat is fasting, I still don't get that, because I feel like I'm fasting if all I've had is some MCT and some butter or something in the morning. 

[01:37:18] John Lieurance: Well, you're going to decrease the signaling for autophagy, vut you're going to be you're going to be in ketosis, right? And there's going to be a level of signaling that your body is going to have with this autophagy and cleaning up senescent cells that's going to be regulated by the calorie intake. And primarily, it's protein that really regulates what's called mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, which is the whole signaling.

[01:37:47] When mTOR is inhibited, then we basically are cleaning and recycling, and this is what we want when we fast. We want to inhibit mTOR. When we activate mTORs, when we're eating primarily proteins and primarily leucine, which is the protein that primarily activates mTOR. So, if one was going to fast, what they really want to do is they really want to hit this after the fast and really have a good refeeding phase. 

[01:38:18] Luke Storey: You mean with NAD?

[01:38:19] John Lieurance: Well, we have a product called StemTOR.

[01:38:21] Luke Storey: Yeah, I've got some of that. You sent me your fasting kit, and I was like, I can't fast right now, so I just started taking them anyway. But I really want to do the real deal, though, because the whole program laid out in there, I was like, oh, I bet this is badass because of what you're describing.

[01:38:38] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, you're loading NAD for a couple of days, so you can even just do like a 24-hour fast, right? So, you do two days where you load NAD, and this can be done every single week for like a few months. And I've seen some real awesome changes with people with regular—I mean, some people think they're going to do a fast and they're going to change their life, it doesn't work that way.

[01:39:01] You really need to make some solid changes for a period of time to really—because your body is constantly making new cells and tissues. So, if you want to make quality cells and tissues, a quality organ, a quality body, you have to give it enough time for the body to repair it and replace it. So, the 24-hour is really easy to do, because you just do a lunch to lunch. So, you do two days where you're taking the NAD Max, you do two days when you do a 24-hour fast and you're taking the Lucitol.

[01:39:32] Luke Storey: When you say 24-hour fast, you mean, only water and maybe electrolytes, right? So, you're not eating any fat either.

[01:39:38] John Lieurance: Yeah, you can do coffee or tea, but no cream, or sugar, or anything with that.

[01:39:41] Luke Storey: No butter?

[01:39:43] John Lieurance: Yeah. Well, I mean, but you're still going to get an effect. It depends on how deep you want to—you want to swim in the deep end of the pool or you want to stay in the kid's side of the pool.

[01:39:55] Luke Storey: God, the deep end, dammit.

[01:39:57] John Lieurance: So, that's going to be kind of—it's a graduation. It's not like it's all in or all out. I mean, you're still in the pool. And then, the third phase of the Fast Track Fast is where you're increasing your protein intake. I'm a big fan of essential amino acids. The one that we're using right now is the perfect aminos, and Ben Greenfield has a great one called Kion aminos as well.

[01:40:21] Luke Storey: Yeah, love those. And then, the StemTOR, it's got deer antler, it's got rhodiola, which is a great plant extract for mTOR, and it's got high dose of lutein, and it's kind of a chocolate vanilla flavored. So, you do that for two days. And so, it's just as important to prep for the fast as it is to do the fast, as it is to refeed, because the refeeding is when the body's repairing new cells and tissues. So, you're doing this breakdown.

[01:40:54] Your microbiome, by the way, is breaking down, too, when you're fasting, because you're decreasing the nutrients. So, those bacteria are also going through their own fasting phase. So, you're going to get a lot of clearing of the bad bacteria, and that's one of the upgrades that we have to the phase three is the Sandman, which is the high-dose melatonin. I don't think we've actually mentioned the name of it yet.

[01:41:20] Oh, no, I did.

[01:41:21] John Lieurance: Did we?

[01:41:21] Luke Storey: Yeah, because we had the Sandman, what was it, Pro or Max? The two different ones.

[01:41:25] John Lieurance: That's right. We did.

[01:41:26] Luke Storey: Yeah. Carry on, because before I forget, I want to bust a couple of these out before I forget, because I wanted to cover a couple of them, but carry on.

[01:41:36] John Lieurance: So, there's something called microbiome swarming. And so, your microbiome are on the same circadian clock as we are. Like they're sun worshippers, just like we are.

[01:41:48] Luke Storey: This is why one's digestion goes to hell during travel, huh? Is that why?

[01:41:55] John Lieurance: Yeah, it's part of it.

[01:41:57] Luke Storey: I mean, even if you eat the good food, I always notice, my gut just gets wrecked when I fly, and I'm like, God, I didn't eat anything weird, I don't eat airplane food, I bring my own food and the whole thing when my gut's just like, what is happening?

[01:42:08] John Lieurance: I think you and I are really sensitive to the EMFs. I think that's primarily what it is and I also think even though they're filtering the air, the air quality is still poor. And you got a lot of other people that who knows they're out gassing, whatever they're doing.

[01:42:22] Luke Storey: Especially nowadays out gassing spiked proteins, making me magnetic.

[01:42:27] John Lieurance: Exactly. So, this microbiome swarming actually fast, it just fascinated me, because what I realize is that the primary activator for your good bacteria to proliferate and grow is melatonin.

[01:42:42] Luke Storey: Oh, wow.

[01:42:43] John Lieurance: And that melatonin is made in the gut, and it's 400 times more in the gut than it is in the brain. And so, when you're taking products like the liposomal SandMan, some of it is going to get into the gut in these high doses, you're not just dealing with the nervous system, and the brain, and sleep, you're providing all of this melatonin, because the gut has this effect and they've done studies where they've shown that when exogenous melatonin is provided to people with all these different GI problems, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, they do phenomenal, like incredible.

[01:43:20] And a lot of it has to do with it inhibits the bad bacteria and it promotes this microbiome swarming. So, let's go back to our fast, we do a 24-hour fast, well, to me, it makes a lot of sense to hit high-dose melatonin after that, because then you're going to promote this microbiome swarming, because you're breaking it down. But then, hey, let's build it back up just like you're doing with the rest of your body.

[01:43:40] Luke Storey: Wow. Well, that brings me to one of them. I mean, your stuff is so freaking cool. So, I'm so glad I actually have some of it here, and thank you for bringing some. I brought some of mine just to show, but there was one in here, ah, this one, the Pro ByoMax. This stuff really got my attention, because the last time I did a round of functional medicine labs, I was really low in butyrate. And so, I started taking a few different forms of it. One of our sponsors actually makes a great one, BodyBio.

[01:44:13] They make like calcium butyrate and a couple other ones. And I just started eating those with every meal, got a lot better. And so, I saw that this one has butyrate in it, but you also put spore-based probiotics in here, which another one of our sponsors, Just Thrive, makes an oral probiotic that I love. My body loves that. And I was like, oh, this one's really interesting, because it's a suppository. And so, you're just evading the entire GI tract and just putting it where it's going to end up hopefully swarming and proliferating, like that's the end result you want anyways.

[01:44:46] John Lieurance: Yeah, in the colon.

[01:44:46] Luke Storey: Yeah, you want your colon to have all this bacteria.

[01:44:49] John Lieurance: Yeah, there should be no bacteria in the small intestines. So, it's all-

[01:44:53] Luke Storey: That's when you get like a cebo kind of situation, right?

[01:44:56] John Lieurance: Right. Exactly.

[01:44:58] Luke Storey: So, yeah, kudos on creating this one. And before I forget, actually, people listening, if you go to mitozen.com/luke, you can find this ZEN Spray, the Meditation Mist, and all of this stuff, and there's a discount for you over there as well. I want to make sure I mention that. That's mitozen.com/luke. So, the Pro ByoMax, is there anything else on that that I missed?

[01:45:22] John Lieurance: Well, butyrate is a really interesting substance and your beneficial flora produce a lot of butyrate when they're healthy and thriving. And butyrate seems to have a really positive effect on us physically. And one of the things that butyrate does is it really helps to improve the communication between the brain and the gut. And I start to think about Dispenza's stuff, I've never even thought about this until now, but you're talking about this product, and I'm thinking, I wonder if like it's somehow balancing the energy centers and the butyrate is somehow doing some connections through just from science, we know that there's a better gut-brain connection, but it could be more than that.

[01:46:07] Luke Storey: Interesting. Yeah. I'm going to crack one of these suppositories open and not put it in, folks, don't worry, but I just want to show people on the YouTube video. But the funny thing about butyrate is it smells, like butter smell has butyrate in it, right? And it smells like socks.

[01:46:23] John Lieurance: Yeah, it doesn't smell good.

[01:46:25] Luke Storey: Sometimes, I'll open one of the Pro ByoMax, and I'm like, what? Who took their shoes off? And I'm like, oh, no, it's on my hands. I mean, it's not particularly bad. It smells like butter. I mean, it smells like really good butter. Okay. The NAD Max, the Sandman. And then, one of the things I thought was really cool, I'm going to oh, the GlutaMax are kind of smaller, right? Okay. I'm not going to open with those.

[01:46:51] I want to open one of these and I'm just going to show people on the camera, so they understand what we're talking about, probably don't want to open a StemTOR. I guess I could open the Sandman. So, while I do this for people watching on our live streams, et cetera, I'm just going to show people what we're talking about here. And also, hopefully to assuage some of their concerns, so if my editors end up editing me into that, so this is this little bullet that is one of the suppositories that's made out of palm oil.

[01:47:27] So, you can see, just like about as big as the last digit of your pinky. Not a particularly uncomfortable thing, as you said earlier, it's just kind of like whatever, you just get used to it. But I thought, for some people's benefit that are like, what are they talking about, I like show and tell. I always try to like, if people have cool products, I like to bring them, like we did one the other day with the BioCharger.

[01:47:50] We had it on in the background and my mics were fine, but I found out later all the live streams just were totally useless, because the pulsing of the field from it was so powerful it was going like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick on the live streams. So, these won't do that, but I did want to cover the GlutaMax 600. So, you got 600 milligrams of glutathione in here, and then you have the quercetin and a couple other things. But you mentioned that when you had Lyme, that the suppositories of glutathione were really helpful to you. 

[01:48:25] And these ones, I just do kind of randomly at night to help with detox and whatever glutathione does, but would this be a good one for someone, who, say, like can't get to your clinic or to go work with a practitioner? And a lot of people are too sick, like my mom. I mean, I would send her out to see you, but she's not really up to getting on an airplane, and she's kind of hurting. Do you think that the glutathione are just a good general like wellness tool for someone who's not feeling well that maybe isn't in a position or doesn't have the money to work with a specialized practitioner?

[01:48:57] John Lieurance: Glutathione is equally as interesting as melatonin. Glutathione is one of the primary viral protection. It deals with viral immunity. Glutathione is one of the primary substances that actually, it's like flypaper. It wraps around toxins, heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, and so forth, and chaperones them out of the body. Glutathione is an antioxidant. It's anti-inflammatory. It's very supportive to the brain. And it's also one of, that and uridine are the two primary sleep-promoting substances. That's what they call them, sleep-promoting substances.

[01:49:37] Luke Storey: So, this would be good to do at night then.

[01:49:39] John Lieurance: And that's why we have glutathione. It's 250 milligrams of glutathione in the Sandman.

[01:49:44] Luke Storey: Oh, it's already in there. Oh, okay, you know what, now that I think about it, on one of those flights I did, I did a glutathione, too, because I was just thinking about the antioxidant properties or the oxidative stress that you're getting while you're traveling. 

[01:49:57] John Lieurance: Yeah.

[01:49:59] Luke Storey: Cool, man. Okay. I'm almost done. I'm kind of like a kid in a candy store here. So, these are the NAD Max, the glutathione. There were a couple other that you mentioned that we didn't really get into, and I've been curious about these, because I've just been taking them randomly, because I just take everything to see what it does. Let me see here. Okay. And you mentioned it earlier, Lucitol and StemTOR. And the Lucitol looks to be another really potent antioxidant blend.

[01:50:30] John Lieurance: Yeah, I originally designed Lucitol, I had this idea I was going to change football, right? So, there's the movie, Concussion came out with Will Smith, and I just knew so much from my training through the Carrick Institute with neurology on what happens with these head traumas is that there's a—and this actually will tie into plant medicine a bit. We'll circle back. This is really interesting.

[01:50:56] So, when the brain gets a trauma, you get a leaking of the blood brain barrier, and there are things that leak into the brain, and there's an activation of the primary immune system in the brain called the microglial. So, the microglial cells are in the brain, and they're like a chihuahua with a bazooka, right? So, they get pissed off and they just start blowing away, because that's what they do. That's the immune system in the brain. But the challenge is they don't really quiet down. Sometimes, they'll keep blasting away for months and months.

[01:51:27] And that's why there can be even a subtle trauma with somebody, but they could have these consequences that can last for a long, long time. So, things that quench microglial activation, in other words, something that quiets these chihuahuas up in the brain can be hugely beneficial for anybody doing any type of impact sports or if you hit your head. And so, Lucitol is basically a collection of these very powerful, what's called polyphenols, like lutein, fisetin, sterile still being curcumin, quercetin, all of these green tea extract, they're all very powerful polyphenols, resveratrol. They have abilities to clean out senescent cells. There's senelytics as well.

[01:52:18] Luke Storey: That's why that one is part of the fasting protocol then?

[01:52:21] John Lieurance: So, yeah, the utility with this is it's a very powerful anti-inflammatory. It's powerful to take while you're fasting. And if you're a hockey player, or you're doing football, or something like that, you'd really, I would even say, take it before you go out in the field.

[01:52:36] Luke Storey: Oh, wow.

[01:52:37] John Lieurance: But it will stain your shorts and you will never get it out.

[01:52:42] Luke Storey: Is that why that one would be useful to recover from a plant medicine or psychedelic journey?

[01:52:50] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, I'm not ashamed to talk about it. At one point, I wanted to kind of stay on the low end of it, but I'm actually an expert in a film coming out called Psychedelics Revealed.

[01:53:03] Luke Storey: So much for that low profile.

[01:53:03] John Lieurance: I'm out of the closet with that. So, we actually do ketamine in our office as well, and we're doing it at a very high level to give people experiences as what we were talking about in the interview here. And so, when I went and had a medicine journey, my first medicine journey, I was literally worthless for like two weeks. It was so excitatory to my brain. I mean, it was an amazing experience.

[01:53:35] I had this opening in this mystical experience and it was life-changing, but it was hard for me to start integrating the experience. And so, for those not familiar with plant medicine and these experiences, you have these incredible insights, and then it's a matter of working through understanding it, and processing and integrating that experience into your life so that you can make positive changes, right?

[01:54:02] And so, the sooner you can start to integrate, the better. So, I was pretty upset, because I was pretty trashed for two weeks, and it's hard to work, it was hard to think. So, the next time I went out to this particular person that was providing the medicine, who, by the way, was very well-trained. I mean, you want to go to someone that has a good reputation, this is not something that you just go alone and biohacking it in your bedroom.

[01:54:29] Luke Storey: Definitely not. As cavalier as I am in my ways, I would not take that route with any psychedelics or plant medicines. I vouch for that 100%. Got to have a guide. You never know what could happen.

[01:54:43] John Lieurance: So, actually, when I told the guide what I wanted to do, he told me not to, and I did it anyway, which was I wanted to take my products, because he was concerned that it would dampen the experience. But my goal of protecting my brain and feeling fresh was more than worrying about how deep I went into the experience. And so, what I did was I took Lucitol before I dropped in, and then I took a 300 mg NeuroDial after my experience, and a Lucitol after the experience, and then Sandman that night.

[01:55:18] So, what happened was the Lucitol prevented that microglial, right? So, when you're going into the medicine, there was an excitation that could happen, but the microglial didn't stay in that state of, the Chihuahuas basically weren't yeping the entire time. They may be barked a couple of times, but they didn't go crazy. And I woke up the next day, I felt amazing.

[01:55:42] In fact, that night I went to dinner and the people at the table, because there were some other people that flew in that were going to do some work, and I hadn't seen them in a while, and they couldn't believe I could carry on a conversation. And I told them what I did. And so, this is now part of their protocol out there, and we're having a lot of people around the world, really, that do plant medicine that are using this protocol.

[01:56:06] Luke Storey: Wow, that's amazing. That's good to know. I'm going to be using that very soon. Would that excitation of the brain and the inflammation that so ensues, would that be true of universally, say, with psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT, ayahuasca, LSD, I mean, MDMA, MDA, like all the things that—is it just kind of universal that you're going to get that? 

[01:56:31] John Lieurance: I would say, more with the empathogens, the MDMA, the MDA. The 5-MeO, maybe. I mean, I didn't really find that to be a stressful substance.

[01:56:47] Luke Storey: It's funny now that I threw that in the mix, after 5-MeO, I feel freaking amazing, and I feel just better than ever felt in my life, like immediately afterward for the following days, a couple of weeks, beautiful meditations.

[01:57:04] John Lieurance: But the same thing with ayahuasca, like it's so anti-inflammatory. I mean, admittedly, I had the worst night of my entire life the first and only time I've ever done ayahuasca. It was terrible, right? I got sick. It was not like I was facing my demons. I felt like crap, like I just wanted off this ride. But the next day, I felt amazing, like my joints, it just felt great. So, I know that's an experience a lot of other people have with that particular medicine.

[01:57:32] Luke Storey: Yeah, actually, that's true. I'm thinking, what kind of wrecks me? A day after some mushrooms, there could be a little bit of that, I think, with the exception of the last time I did mushrooms. I was on a sacred hunting trip here. I did a podcast recently about it and the way that it was served in that ceremony, by the way, we weren't hunting on mushrooms just for clarity. You can find that episode in the show notes, folks.

[01:57:56] John Lieurance: Shotguns and mushrooms, not a good combination.

[01:57:58] Luke Storey: However, one of the guides who was just like an outfitter that wasn't part of our crew, per se, I was talking to him about it, and he's a good old boy from Texas, he's like, oh, man, we go hunting on shrooms all the time, especially at night with night vision. He goes full on shroom and they just go out and-

[01:58:14] John Lieurance: Well, you heard about the studies with the hunting dogs in psilocybin?

[01:58:18] Luke Storey: Uh-uh.

[01:58:20] John Lieurance: I guess, I don't remember the specifics, but it's pretty impressive how much better the hunting dogs were-

[01:58:26] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.

[01:58:27] John Lieurance: ... able to perform.

[01:58:28] Luke Storey: Interesting. Well, to the point of kind of the plant medicine hangover, Mansal, the gentleman that runs this outfit and that served the medicine in the ceremony we did, after one of the hunts, he does something called tacking, where he blends it up with lemon juice. And I forget exactly the chemistry of it, but it-

[01:58:50] John Lieurance: It's changing the psilocybin to cybin. So, this is-

[01:58:54] Luke Storey: You're familiar with this?

[01:58:54] John Lieurance: This is how you prep it. You take the-

[01:58:56] Luke Storey: Oh, you know about this. Alright, lay it down, because I just did it, and I was like, holy shit, this is strong.

[01:59:01] John Lieurance: I'll give you the recipe. This is the deal. And so, what this does to the mushrooms is it makes it a faster onset, and it doesn't last as long, and you need less.

[01:59:11] Luke Storey: Yes, this was like two-and-a-half grams, and I was trying to talk to a buddy of mine. He was kind of having a hard time, and his face was going, I mean, I usually don't even get visuals like this with my eyes open, he's kind of a freckly guy, and his face was becoming transparent, and he was going totally fractal, and I'm trying to have a serious conversation with him. And I was like, two-and-a-half grams, like that's kind of not that much for me, and I was tripping balls, dude.

[01:59:42] It was so strong. Interestingly, and it did hit quite fast, it lasted a little longer than I thought, because I heard that, too. It's short acting. It seemed like quite a long time. But then, when it wore off, I mean, it just like [making sounds] it degraded very quickly, and then I felt totally normal. And I didn't have any of—the big noticeable difference was I often get a headache if I take mushrooms. 

[02:00:07] Like I just don't feel that great physically. I always get a lot of work done. I have some beautiful experiences, but it does—maybe it's like some neuroinflammation or something like that, but I kind of get a headache, and I just don't feel that awesome, and none of that was present. And also, I didn't have any nausea, no cramps or anything that can sometimes be present with psilocybin so that tacking with the lemon juice, there's definitely something to that.

[02:00:32] But what I have had pretty universally negative experiences with are the heart openers, MDMA, MDA. I feel like I took crystal meth, like I get really sort of depressed and awake, but I don't feel light and happy, it's a bummer.1 I really have not had great experiences with those particular medicines, like I've done them mostly with psilocybin in ceremony, and then it's fine as long as the mushroom part lasts longer.

[02:01:05] So, I have to take plenty of mushrooms to make sure I'm going to be in that experience throughout the duration of the subsiding of the MDMA. If the MDMA lasts longer than sort of like the mushrooms wear off, and I'm like, oh, I just feel creepy. So, I wonder if that has something to do with that piece there that could be abated by the Lucitol and getting all those great neuroprotective compounds in there.

[02:01:32] John Lieurance: Yeah. Well, the CBD can dampen the heart openers a bit, so that can be taken pre-, but it's probably better to look at those types of things after and it just kind of takes it out of the system. I know with ayahuasca, it's the same thing. They will give you CBD. Some shamans will give you CBD to bring you out of it a bit. It's kind of the way that CBD is in the cannabis plant because THC can be pretty excitatory. So, if you're a little too high on THC, you can take more CBD, and it actually will calm you down and kind of bring you back.

[02:02:21] Luke Storey: Oh, that's interesting.

[02:02:23] John Lieurance: Yeah. I actually have a whole chapter on melatonin, and CBD, and THC, and we get into Delta-8-THC and just all the different chemistry behind sleep and stuff like that.

[02:02:33] Luke Storey: Yeah, I saw some of that in your melatonin book, and I didn't have time to dive into that part, but it's going to take a bit more reading. There was a lot of information in there. Yeah, very interesting.

[02:02:43] John Lieurance: It's more like a textbook.

[02:02:44] Luke Storey: It is, yeah, but it's actually very readable. I'm not that great at reading highly technical papers like scientific papers, it's like I get lost pretty easy, but I found it to be actually very readable. But there's just a lot of information. There's so many kind of nuanced side conversations that take place, and then it's like, okay, now, we're on to this next thing.

[02:03:04] John Lieurance: I think the best way for people to look at that book is the first couple chapters. Get the book, read the first couple of chapters, and then look at different organ systems that you might be interested. If you've got skin issues or you're looking to have great skin, go to the skin chapter. If you've got liver problems, go to the liver chapter. If you've got neurological issues, go to that chapter. So, it's not like you have to read the whole book, right? But the first couple chapters are really juicy. I mean, we really dive into melatonin, we talk about the stress and how it buffers stress, and we really set the stage, so people, when they go on to the next chapters, they really understand it.

[02:03:45] Luke Storey: Yeah, very much so. Well, I'm glad we got to cover the kind of antidote to the plant medicine. I think that'll be really valuable for a lot of people, and I'm glad you added the caveat. I speak about these things kind of loosely like, oh, it's no big deal, I did this and that, but I want people to understand, like for me personally, any time I ever venture into those realms, I mean, I'm very picky about when I do it, with whom I do it. The whole thing is very, very intentional.

[02:04:14] John Lieurance: It's very sacred.

[02:04:15] Luke Storey: Yeah, I wouldn't do those things in a flippant kind of way. And I get offers here in Austin all the time to sit in ceremony. I mean, almost weekly. 

[02:04:24] John Lieurance: I mean, there are bad things that can happen. I mean, there are good energies and there are bad energies, and they talk about a bad trip, right?

[02:04:33] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[02:04:35] John Lieurance: You don't want your first experience to be something that you're going to be pushed away when this could be something that could be life-changing to you.

[02:04:42] Luke Storey: Yeah. 

[02:04:42] John Lieurance: This is something that could transform you into a better human being.

[02:04:47] Luke Storey: 100%. I mean, that's why, like you for a while, it was like, ah, I don't know if I really want to talk about this. I don't want to influence people in a way that they could go out and have a negative experience, or be harmed, or anything like that, but I also have to be honest that I've just transformed my whole life through these experiences.

[02:05:07] John Lieurance: Have you been to any ketamine centers?

[02:05:11] Luke Storey: No, that's on my list. Actually, I was going to do a ketamine-assisted therapy on Zoom. It was during the peak of COVID with Dr. David Rabin, who's been on the show, and he does a lot of work with MAPS. He's a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and he's very well-versed in this kind of things. And then, I took Bufo for the first time, and then realized, I'm just going to take a break, like that was a lot to integrate.

[02:05:37] And so, I told him, hey, Dave, let's hold off on the ketamine therapy. However, this is really the only medicine I ever take by myself in a really small dose, is ketamine, periodically. If I want to do a deep meditation, I'll do, I mean, maybe 150 milligrams or something, really kind of a lower dose. But the other day, it's funny you should mention that, my friend, Stephen Jaggers, from Phoenix and Sedona was out here, and he's an incredible body worker.

[02:06:09] And we wanted to hang out, and I said, well, we might as well do some body work, because he's like my favorite guy in the world. I've never worked with someone that skilled and I've worked with a lot of great body workers. So, he comes over, and I'm like, I got an idea just popped in my head, I said, how would you feel if I took a little bit of ketamine before you work on me, because I interviewed this woman, Dr. Joy Kang in LA, she has a clinic that does stem cells and stuff, and she does ketamine therapy. 

[02:06:36] And she does two interesting things. One, she puts people on an inversion table on ketamine for the, I guess, neurogenesis and circulation kind of effects. And then, she also has a body worker come in and work on people on a high dose of ketamine with the vibration tools and all the things. And she said, it's incredible, because of the anesthesia effect and the dissociative effect, the nervous system doesn't fight the work.

[02:07:01] So, I was thinking about that. When he came over and I took like half a lozenge, maybe a 150 milligrams, and it dissolved very quickly, and I just swallowed it, so it hit me real quick. And man, the work we got done in an hour massage was freaking incredible, because I was really able to stay in my—I don't know how to say it, it's like not in my body to the point where they're really deep work was intolerable. It's not like I was numb in an anesthesia kind of way.

[02:07:32] I mean, I felt it, but I was so kind of in the quantum with my consciousness that I knew what we were doing. And he also used his breathwork while you're doing the body work. So, we're breathing, we're doing vocal toning. There's the Devi Prayer kind of music is on, and I'm just like, holy shit, we've found a key here. And it was a short session with a lighter dose. But I thought, man, if you could do like three or four-hour session and take like a ketamine suppository, for example, do you do that?

[02:08:02] John Lieurance: Yeah, we have those

[02:08:04] Luke Storey: Amazing.

[02:08:04] John Lieurance: It's three-and-a-half-hour journey.

[02:08:06] Luke Storey: Oh, that's amazing. I met someone here who serves it. Unfortunately, I forget her name. She has a clinic here, but she said that she gets them or makes them in a suppository. And I thought, that's interesting.

[02:08:16] John Lieurance: Oh, I hadn't heard of anybody else.

[02:08:17] Luke Storey: Yeah, and they do it in float tanks. I was like, now, we're talking. So, that's the thing with ketamine, like the other day when I did it, I purposefully made it fast, and I chewed up the thing, and I wanted to hit fast, because we only had so much time, but I find the dosing is difficult when you administer it yourself, where I think if you were on an IV or getting an IM shot from a practitioner, or maybe it's suppositories, where it was more of a slow release dose, where it's not too deep of a dose, but it lasts longer. If it hits too fast, it's kind of like, whoa.

[02:08:50] John Lieurance: Well, that's what's so beautiful about the suppository. It's such a gentle incline and it comes down so gently. The therapeutic potential of that is just enormous. And I love the work that it sounds like this lady is doing in California. We're doing some similar types of work. But one of the things that I built at my clinic is—and this was because I was looking for something to make like because when we're aspirating bone marrow or we're doing injections for rotator cuff or whatnot, I wanted to make people more comfortable and get them to get their mind off what was happening. So, I basically put these transducers under the table and we're basically playing this really amazing kind of like meditation music right through the table. And you really feel it, right? 

[02:09:40] Luke Storey: Dude, I interviewed a guy, Dr. Stephen, and he makes this thing called the Vibe Bed, and it plays music through transducers under the bed. And so, you put on headphones, and then you have these giant speakers essentially under you. And it vibrates and oscillates all of those tones throughout your body. That's a really cool idea.

[02:10:00] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, we're using that technology with the ketamine journeys as well and body work. And Krishna is our nurse anesthetist. So, I'm not sure if you know what a nurse anesthetist is, but basically, a lot of the hospitals are hiring them instead of anesthesiologist. So, we have a full-time nurse anesthetists on staff that does the work with the ketamine, and whether it's an IM shot or it's an IV. He's incredible. 

[02:10:28] Luke Storey: Wow. So, you kind of are cracking the code on that, too, the utilitarian use of ketamine as it pertains to body work and things like that?

[02:10:37] John Lieurance: Well, I have a three-legged stool idea for optimal vitality, and health, and well-being. So, one of the legs of the stool is something that we've talked about quite a bit, which is this direct experience in the field, right? This direct experience and this understanding of the reality of the energy that's creating everything that we're witnessing in the physical world. Then, the other leg of the stool is the vitality of the body. So, the more vital the body is, the higher levels of consciousness that we can enjoy, we can just be happier people in general.

[02:11:18] And lastly is being able to understand and deal with the mind. And so, having all of these things in place, I think, can really provide people either relief from certain diseases or people that are already healthy, like you and I at some point could be using these types of technologies to accelerate to where we're at now in a faster way if we had some sort of a guide. So, what I see with not just ketamine, but there's going to be things like MDMA and psilocybin coming up very quickly, that we're going to be doing protocols. I mean, we're already doing protocols, but they're going to improve to help people through making a more complete healing for them. 

[02:12:04] Luke Storey: Right. With the emotional blocks and things like that, right?

[02:12:07] John Lieurance: Yeah, mental, emotional, spiritual.

[02:12:09] Luke Storey: Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, I think, that a lot of people that are chronically ill get stuck in, right? They go to an amazing clinic like yours or they see someone that's doing alternative therapies that's getting great results, and it doesn't work for some people, and I've always suspected it's the unhealed emotional trauma, because then you see someone who doesn't do anything on the physical level and they go do a plant medicine journey or some deep inner work, and they're healed of the physical stuff, like at the Dispenza retreats.

[02:12:36] I mean, all they're doing is going into the quantum in a deep meditation, and connecting with source and that divine infinite potential of power that's available there, and they come out, and they're fixed. So, there's like people kind of healing themselves on both sides of that, but I think you're right, the integration of both of those at the same time, like that's home run time. I think the only thing that could prevent one from not healing with both of those combined properly would just be some karmic implication, where this lifetime, they're just supposed to be the way they are.

[02:13:08] John Lieurance: That's true. 

[02:13:09] Luke Storey: Which I think is probably the case sometimes, just your lot in life. And I hope this isn't true, but I've thought about with my back problems. I'm kind of like, I've tried everything, maybe this is just the way it is. And I don't want to manifest that, but I would be willing to accept if that's just part of the journey, if I'm unable to ever figure it out. 

[02:13:31] John Lieurance: I think about that quite a bit as well, the karma component, because sometimes, I'll have patients come to me and I just intuitively know, I'm going to fix them, like palatal myoclonus is this rare neurological disease, I can like fix it, and I just figured the code. And I get these people come in, their life is like, it's just throat contraction, it never stops, and these people are suicidal. And it's very rare. But I do these endonasal balloons with these neurological, you had Dean Howell on your show, right?

[02:14:04] Luke Storey: I got some four treatments with him, too.

[02:14:06] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, I studied with him 20-something years ago, and I've got my own technique called functional cranial release. And so, I teach doctors, I've had doctors all over the world, almost every continent that I've trained, and I've got people that I integrate this cranial, the cranium is so important. I mean, we could do a whole show on the cranium.

[02:14:29] Luke Storey: Let's do it. How much time we got? Alright. We've been going for two hours and 14 minutes. Maybe when we do the interview with you and Matt, because that one, I think, is going to be more focused on some of the physical.

[02:14:40] John Lieurance: This is a good idea, because I bet you, Matt has no clue. Cool. Well, he might, because that's the area of the country where a lot of people are trained because that kind of comes from that northwest, but maybe he doesn't. And we'll get him on the table and we'll show him. I inflated Frank Shellenberger.

[02:14:58] Luke Storey: Oh, really?

[02:14:59] John Lieurance: Yeah. So, when I was at his clinic training, I worked on his back, too. But yeah, I did some inflations on him and he couldn't believe it. Like his lower back improved by just working on his cranium, and he had never been inflated before either.

[02:15:14] Luke Storey: It's a strange sensation. What I noticed is probably brain blood flow, like it really improved my cognition. I mean, I was kind of hoping like, oh, maybe it'll fix my back and it might have improved that, it comes and goes, but I definitely was like, oh, someone just turned the lights on. That's kind of the feeling I got from it.

[02:15:34] John Lieurance: Well, cranial rhythm and the movement of cerebral spinal fluid through cranial rhythm is a real thing. You want to talk about Dispenza's work, well, I think endonasal work with a qualified practitioner could be incredibly impactful for a meditator. In fact, one of the things that turned me off, because I was following Dean Howell for a short period of time, but I remember one of his certifications I went, and that's all they were talking about, is spirituality.

[02:16:03] And I'm like, but there's neurology here, and I was in the middle of doing some really, really deep work, post-graduate work with the Carrick Institute in Neurology. And we're learning about how the eyes move, and I'm starting to see how I can do the balloons, and that it's assisting the neurology to be able to heal all these pathways much quicker. And that's kind of the premise behind functional cranium release.

[02:16:28] It's very solidly grounded in like these different functional neurological exercises based on looking at how the eyes are moving, and how the head and the eyes are related or different types of cerebellar balance. And it's a bit complicated to try and distill down into like one thing, but we're using neuroplasticity. So, most people understand that the brain grows new connections.

[02:16:55] So, what happens is, sometimes, things break down, like a lot of people lose their coordination, and they lose their balance, and they're not able to hold their head out right, and they have postural distortions, and it's based on the eyes, because the eyes are communicating with the neck and they're also communing with the inner ear. They're all yoked, and it's a conversation that needs to be really clean. 

[02:17:17] You move your head around, the eyes have an equal and opposite reaction. And so, this is something that we look at really closely. And so, we do these endonasal balloon treatments, but then we specifically get these exercises to get all of this to work together. And usually, patients that constantly need adjustments, one adjustment, they'll stay in place, because it's more of the cause, right?

[02:17:41] So, I'm always looking at the cause, like I was in the pool last night at the hotel, which you suggested I go to, which was awesome, by the way, and this guy is in the pool, and I was talking about you, and he says, I got this knee problem, right? I got all this inflammation in the knee, like what can I do for it? And I said, well, the problem is not the inflammation in the knee, the problem is you probably have some tissue in the knee that's damaged, which is causing instability, which is causing excessive wear and tear, and then you have the inflammation, so you wouldn't want to treat it with an anti-inflammatory.

[02:18:14] So, the same thing with like misalignment of the head is tilted or that you got spinal misalignments, you wouldn't necessarily want to go and push all those things back into place, because that's not what's driving it. What's driving it is the desire of the head and the eyes to want to stay and move in a certain direction as it's compensating for—because you think about vestibular function, it allows us to know our heads turning, or moving, or bending in a certain direction. And you can stimulate these to basically come back into balance with the right type of exercises.

[02:18:49] Luke Storey: Damn, that's badass. I feel like we could go on forever. I know after this podcast, we'll go hang out, and then it will be a seven-hour podcast. We should just keep mics on us when we go hang today and just run tape, let it go. Man, thank you so much for coming out and having this conversation. I knew that we were going to hit it off based on our prior talks and pretty much consistent signal messages back and forth and stuff. So, thanks, man, for making the time, and thanks for bringing me a great goodie bag.

[02:19:21] John Lieurance: I knew we were going to have a good conversation.

[02:19:23] Luke Storey: Yeah. And for those listening, I want to remind you, you can go to mitozen.com/luke, where you will find a nice discount if you want to try some of these things out. I'm a firm believer, fully drinking the Kool-Aid on all the stuff you're putting out there, and thanks for- 

[02:19:36] John Lieurance: Tasting the pudding?

[02:19:37] Luke Storey: Yeah, exactly. And also, dude, thanks for making things that work. People send me like bottles of capsules of these herbs and this stuff all the time, and it's nice and it's well-intentioned, I'm very grateful for it, but most of the time, it's like, you take it, you're like, I don't know, did it do anything, you feel anything? I don't know. And maybe it has something to do with the delivery system or whatever. I'm sure many of them are integris in the core ingredients, but I don't know, your sprays, and the suppositories, and the whole thing, and the liposomal things are just badass. So, thank you for your generosity in bringing me a bag of them and just for making something that actually works that you feel. 

[02:20:14] John Lieurance: You're very welcome. 

[02:20:15] Luke Storey: And having the wherewithal to actually explain it, too, because I think people would really—well, have benefited from listening to this and really understanding the science behind it, that it's not just like a novel idea, well, let's stick things up your butt and spray it in your nose.

[02:20:31] John Lieurance: Well, it all starts with the selfish, like I need to like figure out how to make my life more comfortable, right? Because I got this crazy Lyme and mold, and I'm a canary like yourself. And then, you just kind of start working with the products through your lifestyle, and you start figuring out all these different utilizations, and that's really what's needed. There's a lot of products out there and there's a lot of companies out there, and I just don't think that they have that. That's a missing component and I'm trying to not let that be the case with MitoZen.

[02:21:02] Luke Storey: Yeah. Right on, dude. Alright. I got one more question for you. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life and your work that you might share with us?

[02:21:10] John Lieurance: Well, God, Joe Dispenza, right? Michael Rice. You can find Michael Rice at whyagain.org. If there was an enlightened being, he's just an amazing person. Totally not money-motivated. He could be famous right now if he wanted to be. But yeah, you can find him. He does workshops. He's got a great book called, Why Is This Happening To Me Again? This is whyagain.org, Michael Rice. Third, I'm blanking a little bit.

[02:21:51] Luke Storey: It happens almost every time.

[02:21:52] John Lieurance: Yeah. On the third one?

[02:21:53] Luke Storey: Yeah. Well, a lot of people blank on the first one and many on the third.

[02:22:00] John Lieurance: Yeah. Gosh. My mom, I mean, my mom's put up with a lot of shit over the years, and she's always been there for me, and she's just that unconditional love, and she's been my teacher. So, I would say, Pam.

[02:22:18] Luke Storey: Awesome. Thanks, Pam, did a good job, if you ever hear this, Pam. You got a good kid over here. Alright. Thanks, brother.

[02:22:24] John Lieurance: You're welcome.

[02:22:25] Luke Storey: Yeah, let's go jump in the ice bath and go have some fun.

[02:22:27] John Lieurance: Let's do it.

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