[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let’s Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised. [01:23] DEB: Every cell in your body runs on the same fuel: oxygen. So what happens when your cells stop using it? Well. Well, they get tired, they get sick, you age faster. And here’s the part that should make you really angry. We’ve had a way to measure this since the 1970s. And almost no one in mainstream medicine has ever offered it to you. Today I’m sitting down with a man who holds the actual patent on measuring mitochondrial function in a clinic. He is known as the godfather of ozone for a reason. He’s been using 130-year-old therapy to help patients regenerate joints, recover from chronic infections, and reclaim their energy, decades before anyone else was willing to say it out loud. This is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. Stick around, this one gets into the biochemistry of why you’re tired and what to do about it. [02:28] DEB (Venaari ad): What if you could have a functional medicine practitioner in your back pocket 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Without the $300 to $500 an hour price tag per visit. Well, here’s the reality. Functional medicine works. The protocols work. The root cause approach works. But access is the problem. Most people can’t afford to see a practitioner regularly. And even when they do, the appointment ends before all their questions get answered. So you go home with a list of supplements, a lab report you don’t fully understand, and more questions than you came in with. That’s exactly why I built Venaari. [03:09] DEB: Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine and empower you with the tools to heal. I’m Dr. Deb, and today we’re diving into mitochondrial function, oxygen utilization,, and the decades-long story of ozone therapy in America with one of the pioneers who built this field from the ground up. If you’ve ever been told your labs are normal but you still don’t feel like yourself. If you’re dealing with fatigue, chronic pain, degenerative joints, or you’ve just always sensed there’s a piece of conventional medicine it isn’t measuring. This episode is for you. So grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind. Settle in and let’s get started on the journey for deeper healing. [04:07] DEB (Book promo): I know that story because it was my story too. I spent three years being told I had MS. Three years of fear. Three years of doubt. Three years of sitting across from doctors who had given up looking. Turns out, wasn’t MS. It was something completely different, something treatable, something we could actually address but nobody was asking the right questions. That experience is what gave birth to Seen at Last, my book written for every woman who has ever walked out of the doctor’s office feeling more invisible than when she walked in. [04:45] DEB: My guest today is Dr. Frank Shallenberger. He’s been practicing alternative and integrative medicine since 1978. Yep. I said that right. 1978. And he’s a founder and past president of the American Academy of Ozone Therapy. Dr. Shallenberger holds the only patent on using respiratory gas analysis to measure mitochondrial function, a method he calls bioenergy testing. He’s written two books on the subject. The Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough and Bursting with Energy, and he’s authored numerous peer reviewed papers on ozone therapy and oxygen utilization. He’s also the developer of ProloZone, an injection technique used to help regenerate damaged joints, herniated discs, and degenerative soft tissue and he is the editor of the Second Opinion alternative medicine newsletter. Dr. Shallenberger, welcome to the show. [05:51] FRANK: Yeah, I was a surgical resident, an absolute neophyte to medicine. And I just happened to kind of get lucky in the sense that I found out that I happened to be in the San Francisco area at the time. And Linus Pauling was having a study group with about like 10 other people, all of whom were like, very famous people in San Francisco and I just found my way into it and I started listening to all these guys talking about things like vitamins and imbalances, and he called it orthomolecular medicine, but you know, talking about all the imbalances. And his theory was those imbalances would cause all the problems. And so therefore the way to fix the problems is not with drugs to help with the symptoms, but to actually go in and look for the imbalances and repair the imbalances. And typically the imbalances are all natural things. He was focusing mostly on vitamin C and other vitamins, but it could be anything. It could be amino acids, could be sleep, it could be lifestyle habits, whatever. And I just got lucky and it started awakening up here saying, “You know what? All they taught me in medical school was really good stuff like biochemistry and physiology and so on and so on.” But they never ever ever told me anything like this before. [07:11] DEB: Isn’t that something I think all of us who kind of stumbled into integrative or alternative medicine, whatever we want to call it these days, we all kind of feel the same way, right? Like we’ve learned all this biochem and we were like, Oh, thank God it’s over. We don’t have to think about it anymore. And then you get into the integrative space and you’re like, Oh my gosh, that biochem meant so much. And now we know like the underlying cause of what’s causing the cells to not be healthy, to that make us sick. But we didn’t learn any of that part in medicine at all. We just learned the basics of it. And here’s how to fix people. [07:45] FRANK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so that’s how, that’s how I got into it. I remember I just so much remember 1978, I read a book called Sugar Blues. And this book basically had the radical concept of maybe people ought not to be eating all that much sugar. And oh, by the way, taking B vitamins might be a good idea. So I said, okay, you know, I don’t think anybody died from sugar deficiency or died from taking too many B vitamins. So I’m going to go ahead and give them those. And then about like 20, 25% of my patients started getting better. And then it started clicking. [08:18] DEB: And did you just kind of gradually start doing more and more things as you learned then? When did you stop doing surgery? Because if you were a surgical resident, that’s a big thing. [08:28] FRANK: I did that for a couple of years. And so back in the late, late seventies, you know, I made the transition. I said, you know what, this is a whole lot more interesting than doing this other stuff. Not talking to people and just cutting on them. One thing about surgeons is surgeons, their mentality is straightforward. It’s pretty obvious. You got a swollen appendix? I’m going to take the appendix out. We don’t have to get into a big intellectual discussion about this. Whereas with the internist, not so much, it’s always this or that. We don’t always know what we’re doing in internal medicine, but I got that surgeon mentality. I’m just looking for what’s obvious. [09:09] DEB: Right. That’s why they call it all practicing medicine, right? Because that’s what we’re all doing. So you’ve said that the body is a self healing mechanism and it’s really our lifestyle and our toxic load that breaks down, which then causes all these problems. Do you think you started learning that when you studied with Linus Pauling or when would you say that you started really noticing that as a big part of people’s illnesses. [09:34] FRANK: Yeah, way back then those guys were on it. I mean, they were focusing to a large extent on you know, certain vitamins, niacin, I remember, was one of them. There were also, you know, Linus was an interesting guy. He came in one time in one of the groups and he said, “I want to discuss urine therapy.” Yeah, okay. If anybody else said that, probably we’d throw him out of the group. You know, Linus was — so he was open-minded. He thought about lots of things and yeah, for sure they were focused on diet back then and lifestyle choices and all that kind of thing. [10:09] DEB: Awesome. So you are the godfather of ozone therapy, right? That is what you are known for. And ozone therapy has been around a lot longer than people think, over 130 years. But still today, you know, most Americans have never heard of it. They’ve never done it. What do you think — the reason is that it hasn’t taken off to the mainstream like it has in different parts of Europe. [10:33] FRANK: In the early 80s, a very famous German physician by the name of Horst Kief made this statement
