Category: Healthy Aging & Longevity

  • EWOT Explained: Are You Aging—or Losing Oxygen? with Brad Pitzele

    Could some changes commonly blamed on aging also involve declining oxygen delivery or utilization? In this episode of The Dr. Haley Show, Dr. Michael Haley speaks with Brad Pitzele, founder of One Thousand Roads, about Exercise With Oxygen Therapy—better known as EWOT.

    Brad shares how serious health challenges, including cancer, autoimmune illness, Lyme disease, chronic fatigue, severe pain, and limited mobility, led him to investigate mitochondrial health and eventually build his own EWOT system. He explains how EWOT works, how it differs from supplemental oxygen and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and why people use it for exercise performance, recovery, biohacking, longevity, and chronic health support.

    The conversation also addresses responsible claims, system quality, mask hygiene, session length, red light therapy, and the important distinction between supporting health and claiming to cure disease.

    Resources:

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    Key Takeaways

    • Brad’s interest in EWOT began with his own prolonged health crisis and his frustration after trying many expensive or ineffective approaches.
    • He built his first system using his engineering background because existing EWOT systems were financially out of reach.
    • EWOT uses exercise as the delivery vehicle: physical activity increases breathing, circulation, and oxygen demand while the user breathes concentrated oxygen.
    • Brad distinguishes EWOT from nasal-cannula oxygen and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, noting that each has different uses and limitations.
    • According to Brad, a common EWOT routine is about 15 minutes, three to five times per week, although exercise tolerance and medical considerations differ by person.
    • Reservoir capacity, mask comfort, component quality, oxygen-concentrator fill time, hygiene, and customer support are important when comparing systems.
    • A 5-liter concentrator may suit one scheduled user, while a 10-liter unit can refill the reservoir faster and may be more practical for multiple users.
    • Brad pairs EWOT with red light therapy because he views the two approaches as complementary tools for oxygen delivery and utilization.
    • Personal stories and proposed mechanisms should not be confused with proof that EWOT diagnoses, treats, cures, or prevents disease.

    About Brad Pitzele

    Brad Pitzele is the founder of One Thousand Roads, a wellness technology company specializing in Exercise With Oxygen Therapy and red light therapy. His work grew from his own experience navigating cancer, autoimmune illness, chronic Lyme disease, and severe limitations in mobility. Combining that personal experience with a background in mechanical engineering and business, Brad now works to make these technologies easier to understand and more accessible. He also hosts conversations with experts in chronic health recovery, biohacking, and longevity.

    What Is EWOT?

    Exercise With Oxygen Therapy combines physical activity with breathing a high concentration of oxygen through a mask. An oxygen concentrator gradually fills a reservoir, allowing the user to draw a much higher flow during exercise than a concentrator can produce moment by moment. The exercise increases breathing, heart rate, circulation, and oxygen demand while the reservoir supplies concentrated oxygen.

    In this interview, Brad describes EWOT as distinct from medical supplemental oxygen, which may be prescribed for low blood oxygen, and from hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which uses increased atmospheric pressure. EWOT is not presented as a cure for cancer, Lyme disease, autoimmune illness, or any other condition.

    Episode Timestamps

    • 00:00 — Are You Aging—or Losing Oxygen?
    • 00:55 — Meet Brad Pitzele
    • 02:20 — Brad’s Health Crisis and Search for Answers
    • 06:00 — Discovering EWOT and Mitochondrial Health
    • 07:43 — Building His Own EWOT System
    • 09:47 — Recognizing Predatory Wellness Marketing
    • 11:29 — Lyme Disease and Bartonella Explained
    • 15:57 — When Illness Becomes a Catalyst for Change
    • 18:22 — Can EWOT Cure Cancer? Responsible Claims
    • 19:05 — Oxygen, Inflammation, and Aging
    • 22:05 — The Origins and Proposed Mechanism of EWOT
    • 24:00 — Exercise Alone vs. Exercise With Oxygen
    • 28:18 — EWOT vs. Supplemental Oxygen and HBOT
    • 36:44 — EWOT Explained in 60 Seconds
    • 37:38 — What an EWOT Session Feels Like
    • 39:17 — The Best Exercises and Who Uses EWOT
    • 42:20 — Session Length, Frequency, and Safety
    • 45:11 — How to Compare EWOT Systems
    • 48:18 — 5-Liter vs. 10-Liter Oxygen Concentrators
    • 50:30 — Masks, Sharing, and Cleaning
    • 51:48 — Combining EWOT With Red Light Therapy
    • 54:02 — VO2 Max, Recovery, and Potential Benefits
    • 57:15 — Where to Learn More

    Medical Disclaimer

    This episode is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The guest’s descriptions of his health history, experiences, proposed mechanisms, and outcomes represent his perspective. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before using supplemental oxygen, beginning EWOT, changing an exercise program, or using another health technology—especially if you have a cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, or other medical condition.

    Full Transcript

    The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Proper names and obvious transcription errors have been corrected. Speaker labels were reconstructed from context. Claims and opinions remain those of the speakers.

    [00:00] Brad Pitzele: What happens as we age is that we develop pockets in the body that are not getting oxygen because of inflammation. That can contribute to a buildup of waste in our cells, slower repair and healing, and some of the memory decline we often attribute to aging. That may actually involve a loss of oxygen utilization.

    [00:27] Show Announcer: You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.

    [00:55] Dr. Michael Haley: This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, your show host, and today we have a special guest, Brad Pitzele, founder of One Thousand Roads. I think the web address is OneThousandRoads.com. It will be below his picture the whole time, in case I’m wrong with that. But it’s a wellness technology company specializing in Exercise With Oxygen Therapy, better known as EWOT and also red light therapy. Brad’s work grew out of his own struggle with serious health challenges, including cancer, autoimmune illness, chronic Lyme disease. At one point, he could barely walk and felt like he was running out of options. Who can relate? He credits EWOT and red light therapy with helping change his direction of his recovery. Combining that with personal experience with his background in mechanical engineering and business, Brad now helps make these technologies easier to understand and more accessible. He also hosts conversations with experts in chronic illness recovery, biohacking, and longevity. Brad, thank you for joining me today on the Dr. Haley Show podcast. You know, I was looking at your website and looking at some of the technology and I thought, this isn’t something someone does just to start a business to make money. It seems like a very niche, maybe even difficult from a business perspective. You are introducing something that I—and probably many listeners—know very little about. I think a lot of people probably don’t know much about EWOT and red light therapy in recent years has become more and more known. Maybe that’s a little less niche, but get us caught up to speed. What is your story and what led you to start such a company?

    [02:53] Brad Pitzele: Yeah, I’m someone who runs on passion. It seems about every decade I come up with a passion project. When my oldest was born, she was born with Down syndrome, something I didn’t know about, and I got really involved in Down syndrome advocacy and helping pass laws. So we’d spent many weekends traveling out to Washington, D.C. and knocking on Congress people’s doors. But while all that was happening, my next passion project unfortunately was forming. And that was I had started to become really ill. It started with arthritis and I went to the rheumatologist and was put on medications, and they helped a little bit, and then they would wear off and I’d be in a worse place, and I’d just kind of kept stair stepping down. Each time they wore off, they got worse. And after several years of that, I developed melanoma. And that was kind of my ripcord moment when I had to pull the ripcord and just step away from standard medicine. I went back to my rheumatologist and said, what do we do if I take these drugs? I can die of cancer. If I don’t, I’m going to die crippled up in a ball in the corner. And he said, no, no, we’ll just give you a different drug in the same class and hope for the best. And I just like, heard alarm bells in my head and I didn’t know what to do. And I was sitting in my car after that appointment and I just thought to myself, I don’t like either one of these paths. I don’t feel good about them. I need to forge a third path. And I didn’t even know what that was. So I started doing a bunch of research and trying to get better. And for years I was in the alternate health space, trying diet supplements, different modalities. I would go on these chronic illness groups where folks were talking and they had similar symptoms as me and nothing, nothing was moving the needle. And I started seeing functional medicine doctor. At one point he decided he wanted to test it for Lyme disease. And I remember scoffing at it and saying, like, I didn’t have Lyme disease. I’ve never been bitten by a tick or had that bullseye rash thing. I’m like, this is, you know, this is silly, but I’m going to let him do it just so he can get it out of his head. And we can, like, focus on the real thing. And sure enough, it came back with, I had Lyme disease and a co-infection called Bartonella, and I still didn’t even believe it. I went back to the next appointment. I’m like, what’s the chances? This is like a false positive? And he kind of laughed at me. And he’s like, Brad, you have the DNA of the bacteria in your urine. What do you think? And I was like, oh, that’s what that means. So that’s not a really comforting diagnosis because when you research it, there’s a lot of folks not getting better. A lot of doctors don’t even believe it exists. And the ones who do, so many of them won’t treat it. And so it’s just one of these kind of do it yourself diseases sort of thing. You’re like, dropped in the forest, go find your way out. Luckily, he gave me some advice later on and he was like, you know, you should try looking at mitochondrial health. And one of the first things he recommended was Exercise With Oxygen Therapy. And, you know, that was over a decade ago. So, no one knows about it today, but they really didn’t know about it a decade ago. There was no information on the internet. No one was using it. The only places I found information were a couple of manufacturers who were making it, but it was, you know, somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000 for a system. And I tried so many things that I wrote a list recently. I wanted to count it and I could count at least 200 different modalities. I had tried on trying to get better. So, you know, when the doctor says, hey, here’s 201, you’re kind of like, yeah, you know, I don’t have a high degree of confidence. And so when I saw the price tag, I was like, yeah. Yikes. I can’t spend $10,000 on an experiment because how am I going to feel when I fail? That? And how many $10,000 experiments do I really have? And so I kind of walked away and said, I’m not doing it. And then I kind of thought about it more and I realized like, what else? What other options do I have? I’m getting worse and worse at this point. It wasn’t just arthritis, it was brain fog. It was no energy. It was, you know, chronic fatigue, I guess is the way that you describe it now. Nerve pain. I could barely walk the bottoms of my feet felt like someone had beaten them with a meat hammer. My muscles were stiff, And of course I had more and more arthritis. It wasn’t just my hands, it was my hands and my feet and just new symptoms were coming and going, which isn’t untypical of Lyme disease. so then I was like, what am I going to do? And then I kind of settled on the idea. I’m like, well, if it wasn’t $10,000, I’d give it a try. And I thought to myself, well, what if you just make your own, you know, do the research and figure it out? And as I joke, I’m a recovering engineer. I spent the first decade of my career doing mechanical engineering. Probably saw me smile when you said engineer at the beginning because I, you know, kind of tried to put distance between me and that, but sometimes it comes out. And so I built my own. I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in it. The first couple of months I did it, I didn’t notice anything. And I thought to myself, this is another one you can throw on the trash pile. But I didn’t have anything else to do. And kind of out of inertia. I just kept doing it in the mornings, and about the third month I started to notice symptoms going away. And then it progressively I got better, and a year later I went in for a checkup with a doctor and he just like, took one look at me when he walked in the room. Michael, he was just like, whoa! He’s like, you’re much better. He’s like, what’s going on? Are you doing the oxygen? And I said, I am. And he’s like, who’d you buy it from? So I can tell my patients. And I was like, oh, he’s going to be disappointed. I’m like, well, doc, I just kind of made my own. And then he looked at me like I was crazy for a second. And then he gathered his composure and he was like, well, would you consider making him for my patients? And at first I just kind of like, recoiled. I was like, you know, I’m still I’m a healing journey. And like, I don’t want to overextend myself. And, you know, I got I’ve got a family and I got a job and like, do I really you know. And so but I sat with it for a while. In about six months later we launched the company. So and you’re right, it wasn’t. I launched it more as a passion project than, than a business enterprise. My goal was to kind of pay it forward. I know how lonely it is when you’re really sick, and I always felt like there were a lot of folks coming at me with $10,000 tests I could do that might help me. And it kind of felt predatory at times. And I also felt like there wasn’t much information on this. No one knew about it. And there wasn’t the science. Wasn’t there anything out there was really hyperbole in marketing speak. And so that was kind of my goal to bring the price down, make it affordable for people and bring the science forward.

    [09:47] Dr. Michael Haley: You know, in all your experience in trying the different things, when did you start to realize that some may be predatory and probably most weren’t? I’m sure a lot of people really have good intentions behind the things they do, but how are you able to weed out the ones that might be predatory?

    [10:11] Brad Pitzele: I can’t tell you who was and wasn’t, but I remember a specific conversation I had with a doctor and he was importing some new technology. So it’s from Germany. It’s this new technology. I’m the only one in the United States who has it. And he says it’s about $60,000 for a treatment, but I think it’ll take care of you. and he saw the look on my face when he said $60,000. And then he said, he’s like, yeah, it’s like the cost of a Mercedes. He’s like, would you give a Mercedes to get your health back? And I was just shocked that he said that. I was like. And I thought to myself, I’m like, yeah, I suppose if I knew 100% the thing was going to do it, I probably would find the money. I’d probably remortgage the house and do it. But like, he was just so casual about it. It was like just his, his delivery on it was like he already had his sales pitch. And I’m like, I felt like I was being pitched versus listened to. And that was kind of just it was a icky feeling like, you know what I mean? So I’ve had I had several of those too. I like when people do pay attention to that.

    [11:07] Dr. Michael Haley: You know, that inner feeling, that little quiet voice that might be saying, this is not for you. You know, don’t be duped. And I think the problem is, is some people aren’t bold enough to let that come out of their mouth. I’m not perceiving this as right for me. I’m going to try something else. Yeah, and they get put in all these different directions.

    [11:29] Dr. Michael Haley: What’s Bartonella you mentioned having that diagnosis.

    [11:32] Brad Pitzele: So Bartonella is known as a co-infection of Lyme disease. When you get Lyme disease, it likes to invite its friends over, is what I say, you know. So Bartonella, Babesia, there’s several others, Anaplasma or Ehrlichia that these other co-infections. And they basically team up to beat your body up while they’re knocking your immune system down. They’re kind of having a party in there. Bartonella in particular. There’s a it’s a Bartonella henselae is the subspecies is an infectious agent that actually causes what’s commonly known as cat scratch fever or cat scratch disease. It’s called cat scratch fever and cat scratch disease actually for a couple of reasons. One, feral animals like feral cats often carry and if they do, they can infect a person through a cat scratch. But also it causes these striations in your skin that look like cat scratches. you know, it’s also one of these reasons why pregnant women are recommended to stay away from, like, feral cats and so forth, has to do with cat scratch fever. You probably thinking of the Ted Nugent song right now either had it or it was a song about something completely different, parallel to it, I don’t know. Yeah, exactly. So we more of us know that song than know that it’s about that. It’s named after that bacteria. So yeah, it’s a and it was really interesting when I started to research it. Like I had all this foot pain and the best like I try to explain it to people. It was so bad that if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I had to put a special set of shoes on just to get out of bed and walk, you know, like the ten feet to the toilet. I just couldn’t do it barefooted and I couldn’t, I, you know, I had shared that with my rheumatologist early on and he’s like, no, that’s not Arthritis I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your toes may have arthritis, but the thing on the bottom of your feet is and I was like, what are you talking about, doc? How can these both inflammatory, painful conditions not be related when they’re living in the same foot? And when I finally got diagnosed with Bartonella, it made sense. It’s very common to have this foot pain. Often it’s mistaken for plantar fasciitis as well. So and a lot of nerve pain. But it can cause a different kind of cluster of symptoms as Lyme, some of them over lap and some of them are distinct. I would say, you know, when we talk about these kinds of syndromes, conditions, sometimes we can take a measurement and say, you have this particular DNA evidence that you have this.

    [14:04] Dr. Michael Haley: Other times it’s just a group of crazy, stupid symptoms that no one can make sense of, and there’s no real treatment for them. Right. I think that’s almost the best kind of problem to have because there is no cure for it. So now you have to start doing things right. I can’t just take something. I can’t just open up a pill bottle, swallow three capsules a day for a week and it’s gone. I actually have to take care of myself and do things for me that are healthy and beneficial. I might change my diet, I might work on my rest patterns, I might do red light therapy and expose myself to the light I’ve been shielding my body from. Like right now I’m in an office with these bright white lights. I’m not getting any real light, right?

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    [15:57] Brad Pitzele: And I have this conversation often with folks. What starts as a sickness actually becomes a gift in some ways, which sounds absolutely crazy, but it forces you to focus on your health and to refocus on what are the things that you’ve done, the controllable things that may have contributed to this situation? I know for me, I always tell folks like my first symptom started when I was in kindergarten, but I didn’t get really sick until I was in my 30s. And lo and behold, when I was in kindergarten, we took in a feral cat. So. You know, like, interesting. So I, you know, you can have things going on in your body, but it’s not just the infectious agent. Sometimes it’s other things you’re doing lifestyle choices, the way you treat your body, the way you handle stress, those sorts of things you allow into your life. And sometimes to your point, like the health crisis becomes a focusing point for like, okay, what needs to change? Because I can’t go back to that old way of living.

    [16:58] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, I think about how programmed we are to believe that health comes in a bottle. And if I take this for that symptom, I’m going to get better. But I’m just covering the symptoms. And you were talking about how the doctors wanted to change your medications. We’ll just, you know, we’ll give you something else. And when you think about it, you’re giving drugs, chemicals to someone who is challenged. They have a health challenge. Yeah. If you give it to someone completely healthy, they don’t get healthier. They have one choice, and that’s to get less healthy. When you give drugs to someone that’s completely healthy. So how can medicine, how can medications make someone who is sick healthier? Now, I’m not saying medications don’t have any value, but we’re treating these symptoms with them. And that could be life saving to buy time. But ultimately you have to change your lifestyle. You have to address your nutrition, your exercise, your rest, maybe vitamin D levels. Maybe, you know, there’s all kinds of things that you can address in your to make it better fight cancer, autoimmune conditions, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. There’s things you can do.

    [18:22] Dr. Michael Haley: EWOT does not cure cancer, right?

    [18:25] Brad Pitzele: No. There is a strong linkage between oxygen and cancer, but I can’t tell you that it cures it.

    [18:34] Dr. Michael Haley: The body addresses cancer, but sometimes the body needs help. There are things that can support it, just as nutrition can support the immune system so it works more like it is supposed to.

    [18:52] Brad Pitzele: That is right. The physiology of why it works and what is going on in the body was one of the eye-opening things to me about oxygen. Now, we’ve given it this term, Inflammaging like we’re all just supposed to become more and more inflamed. And of course, to your point, a lot of that has to do with the environments we operate in. We’re growing our food in depleted soil. We’re drinking water with all sorts of contaminants in it. We’re, you know, we’re eating foods with their spraying with I mean, I just learned this year that they use Roundup glyphosate as a desiccant to dry crops, not even to keep the pest away after they’ve cut them down. Rather than wait for them to dry, they’ll just spray a bunch of roundup on them. And I think that speaks. I mean, even though we know it’s a carcinogen, that just speaks to how little care is being paid to the things that we put on and in our bodies. So as this inflammation builds up, one of the most sensitive places in the body is our capillaries. These are like the very end points of our circulatory system where the rubber meets the road. It’s where oxygen’s exchanged and it’s where nutrients are exchanged. And they’re so thin. They’re thinner than a human hair, and they’re so thin that even red blood cells that carry our oxygen need to fold up like a taco to fit in, because the red blood cell is bigger than the capillary. And then they march down in single file. But this inflammation can cause inflammation in our capillaries. And there’s over 50,000 miles of capillaries in your body. So there’s a you know, there’s a ton of them. It can go around the earth two or more times. And when they become inflamed, those red blood cells can’t pass through cleanly. And so your body starts losing the ability to utilize oxygen. And every year past the age of 25, it loses 1%, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you get to age 50, you’ve lost 25% of your body’s ability to utilize oxygen. And why that’s important is your cells. They run on aerobic respiration, which requires oxygen. And so if they run out of oxygen, they can still produce energy, but only about 5% as much. And it’s a dirty energy source that causes free radicals and damage to our mitochondria and our cells. So what happens is as age is we have these pockets in our body that aren’t getting oxygen because of this inflammation, and it causes buildup of toxins in our cells because the cells are in low energy and they won’t take the trash out. It causes slow repair and healing. It causes a lot of the age related memory decline, the slow healing of the body, all these sorts of things that we often think of as, oh, that just happens as we age. Naturally. That’s actually a loss of oxygen utilization, which I found kind of shocking. I was like, why doesn’t anyone talk about this? Why isn’t this more widely known? And the way EWOT was discovered was there was this German physicist and inventor, Manfred von Ardenne, who started playing around with oxygen and exercise. He had studied another German, Otto Warburg, in the 1920s, was doing work on oxygen cancer, and he showed that he could turn a regular cell into a cancer cell by starving it of oxygen. And so Manfred von Ardenne wanted to follow up with that. So he started experimenting with oxygen, with exercise. And what he found was this swelling in our capillaries is stopping oxygen from reaching cells and causing all sorts of problems. And when he did, he had folks breathing oxygen while doing exercise. He was able to cause this anti-inflammatory effect in their endothelial cells of their capillaries that reestablish more youthful blood flow. And that was kind of the birth of Exercise With Oxygen Therapy. Was this epiphany that oxygen is incredibly anti-inflammatory and it can reestablish normal oxygenation in the tissues over time. He had there was one piece of research. He did what he had, elderly folks who had a lot of inflammation, and he had them just do two sessions and he had them come back, I won’t say several weeks later. And like he measured their endothelial swelling and he saw that it had remained open at that youthful level even after two sessions. And so that was kind of like there was a lot of shock in that for me, and probably for you and listeners, is like realizing oxygen’s anti-inflammatory and the actual the truth of the matter is anywhere in your body. You have inflammation, you have low oxygen. And then when you have low oxygen, you have inflammation. Those two have to ride together. And so that was kind of like one of these AHA moments for me where I was like, wait a second. Like, so you’re telling me that if I have, I know I’m inflamed. Every part of my body hurts.

    [23:55] Brad Pitzele: So you’re telling me all these parts are also low on oxygen? That was kind of shocking to me.

    [24:00] Dr. Michael Haley: Now, by any chance, did he compare those results to someone that just did the exercise without the oxygen? Cause I have to consider the possibility that exercise is increasing circulation and circulation is moving the inflammatory. I won’t say markers, but yeah, kind of getting the inflammation out of the system.

    [24:24] Brad Pitzele: Yeah, it’s a good question. I don’t think he directly did. But we now understand the mechanisms and why that works. So to your point, exercise is definitely beneficial. One of the physiological adaptations of exercise is The circulatory system releases nitric oxide, which causes a cascade of changes in vascular system, including vasodilation, causing the blood vessels to open up. So if you could imagine a clogged pipe, your capillaries opening it up will allow more red blood cells to go through. Because our red blood cells, they’re not all identically sizes you would imagine. They’re kind of on a spectrum. And so some of them, even if they’re clogged, maybe they’re getting a few through. And as you open it, maybe you’re allowing more of the spectrum of red blood cells to get through. But the reason why Exercise With Oxygen Therapy works, it works similar to hyperbaric oxygen in that it normally when we’re breathing oxygen, the main vehicle carrying it to our cells are those red blood cells. And when we do Exercise With Oxygen Therapy we create a second vehicle. We actually infuse the blood plasma with oxygen. Now our blood plasma is a clear, straw-colored liquid that the red and white blood cells ride on. It’s kind of like water-plus. And it normally only carries like 2% of our oxygen. But under these conditions of exercise, in breathing high concentrations, we can flood it. And the reason why that’s important is because blood plasma is about a thousand times thinner than a red blood cell. So as you can imagine, these choke points that aren’t getting oxygen through. The immediate thing that happens is that blood plasma is able to get through that choke point, not only deliver oxygen downstream, but all around that bulge in the capillary, and cause that anti-inflammatory reaction so that it’s permanent. If you were just to exercise without oxygen, you would create vasodilation and drive more oxygen through. It might be able to have a mild anti-inflammatory effect, but it’s not going to reestablish normal blood flow. and we know that because, look, a lot of us exercise and we can still see a drop in oxygen utilization with age. And you see it in everything from you think about grandma who’s got cold hands and feet. What do you think that that’s why she’s wearing a sweaters. Her circulation isn’t as good as it used to be. Blood isn’t perfused into the tissues as much you think about. Hey, as you get older, your memory, you know, you sometimes you forget where you put something or whatever. That’s. Our brain is incredibly oxygen intensive. It’s the most oxygen intensive organ in the body. Or you think about slow healing and healing slows as we get older. All of that is related to decreased energy production. And all of that goes back to decreased oxygen delivery as a primary cause.

    [28:18] Dr. Michael Haley: Let’s understand the differences in technologies first so people can have a bit of a mental picture of what this is and the things that I’m familiar with. Well, now I’ve seen the EWOT system so I know what it looks like. I don’t really have a picture of how big it is and or how much space it takes, but I understand there’s two primary pieces of equipment. How is that different than someone that with COPD that has an oxygen tank with one of those things around their neck where the little things go up their nose and they’re getting some additional supplemental oxygen. And how does it differ from the hyperbaric equipment? What is that actually doing that’s different? Are there any that I’m leaving out and just what are their purposes. Who should get supplemental oxygen. Who should get hyperbaric. Who should get EWOT

    [29:14] Brad Pitzele: Great question. So there’s a variety of different supplemental oxygen modalities out there. You know you can think of something like supplemental oxygen for someone with COPD. So they got that cannula in their nose. What. There are two ways you can get oxygen highly concentrated oxygen. One is bottled oxygen and one is a device called an oxygen concentrator. In it basically purifies the oxygen out of the air, which is at like 21% up to medical grade, which is 93%. So the person breathing the cannula, they can use either one of or maybe a combination of both. Obviously, the problem with an oxygen bottle is you’re always having to refill it. And to be quite honest, when you’re doing exercise, you can use a massive amount of oxygen. It’s not pragmatic. You’d be running out to get it refilled every day. So that doesn’t make a lot of sense. But the device is great. So the oxygen concentrator device is it’s basically you plug it in and flip a switch and you have an endless creation of oxygen for, you know, years on end, so to speak. The challenge with them is they only produce about 5 or 10-liters of oxygen in a minute. And when you exercise, you can easily use 50 or 60 liters of oxygen in a minute. So they don’t produce nearly enough. So if you were to put that cannula up to your nose and try to do Exercise With Oxygen Therapy, even if you were getting 10-liters per minute and you’re pulling in 50l of air, you’ve now gone from 93% oxygen diluted down into like 30 something percent oxygen. So it’s not quite the same. We want a high concentration of oxygen because that’s what drives it into the blood plasma. So COPD, the reason why they’re doing extra oxygen is their lungs are inefficient at pulling gas through them. And so they run hypoxic, which is the fancy medical term for low oxygen. And so they supplement so that each breath, each element of gas that’s passing through their lungs is got more oxygen in it so that their blood oxygen levels maintain closer to normal. EWOT and hyperbaric are very close cousins. So hyperbaric what happens is there’s two flavors of hyperbaric. There’s hard-shell hyperbaric which you have to do in a doctor’s office. And their soft-shell, what you might see a celebrity doing in their home. The difference between them is the pressure level. So if we talk about hard-shell hyperbaric, they go up to what’s called 2.3 ATA So when you’re standing at sea level, you’re experiencing 1.0 ATA So that means they have got 130% more pressure than you feel at sea level, the mild ones that people do in their homes, maybe they have 30% more, so they’re much less effective. So for these hard-shell ones, you get into a tube, they pressurize at 130% more than sea level, and you sit in them for maybe 60 or 90 minutes. And that pressure forces more gas through your lung membrane and into your circulatory system. And then it uses the same principles EWOT where it forces that oxygen into your blood plasma, because your red blood cells are tapped out, there’s not really much room on them for incremental oxygen. So without blood plasma, neither of these modalities would do a whole lot. And so now inside your circulatory system with hyperbaric, it kind of ends there. What I mean by that is you’re feeling 130% more pressure here on the outside, but you’re not feeling it in your circulatory system, your circulatory system, thank God. Right. It doesn’t. If you had 130% increase in blood pressure, that would be, you know, life threatening for certain. There’s a small difference in blood pressure when you’re in a hyperbaric chamber, and that’s mostly caused because you’re forcing more gas into your blood. So that incremental gas volume causes a 10% increase in blood pressure. But then the body, in all of its infinite wisdom senses, there’s a high amount of oxygen, in the blood. And it does what it can to maintain homeostasis. So it actually causes what’s known as vasoconstriction. It causes all your blood vessels to constrict. And so net net you do still get more oxygen through, but you’re kind of fighting against your physiology. Now. It’s great for a variety of things. if you’re scuba diving and you spend too much time down below and you come up too fast, you can get something called the bends. And so they’ll put you in a pressurized chamber. It’s really good for folks who are too sick to do any kind of exercise. It can be great for that. For folks who have like, non healing wounds, like diabetic foot ulcers, if you get in a particular hyperbaric chamber where they actually fill the entire chamber with oxygen versus just a mask, I think it’s really great for that and probably superior to EWOT for that.

    [34:13] Dr. Michael Haley: What’s that? No, I’m just like, I didn’t know there was a difference where they would either fill the chamber versus having a mask. And I’m not familiar with hyperbaric chamber.

    [34:24] Brad Pitzele: Yeah, yeah, a lot of them. They’ll just have you breathe a mask because obviously there’s less oxygen being utilized. And so there is less reason to fill the entire chamber with oxygen. And if they use a good mask that’s actually can be better than just filling the chamber for most things they’re doing it for. Because if you just keep pumping oxygen into the chamber and you’re stuck in this tube, well, every breath you breathe out, guess what? That’s diluting what’s in the chamber. So using a mask, if they have what’s called a breather valve, which is one valve in one valve out, then it doesn’t matter. They keep feeding you oxygen and your breath isn’t in that mask, so to speak. So like when you’re scuba diving. Yeah. Exactly. Right. So Exercise With Oxygen Therapy we’re using we’re taking advantage of all the physiological differences that happen in our body during exercise. So when you start exercising your body and all of its wisdom recognizes it can’t keep up energetically with all this movement. And so the gating factor to produce more energy is oxygen. And so immediately it has this cascade of physiological changes that we all know. You start breathing faster and deeper, your heart starts beating faster. And there’s some were less familiar with like your lung membrane actually thins out and some of the capillaries that normally don’t get blood flow in your lungs become engorged with blood to allow to have more blood gas exchange happening in your lungs. So and then inside your circulatory system you have vasodilation. Your blood vessels open up, as we talked about earlier. And you also have increased systolic blood pressure, which is a normal exercise response. It’s your systolic pressure goes up during exercise. And that’s really important because the difference in pressure between your blood and your tissues is actually forcing more oxygen out and deeper into the tissues. And so we hijack all these physiological adaptations and we have you breathing near pure oxygen. And so in a 15 minute exercise session, you can take in as much oxygen as you would in like a full day of just normal breathing or like 90 minutes in one of those hard-shell hyperbaric chambers. And we’re doing it in a situation where your body is tuned in and it’s seeking more oxygen versus fighting that physiology.

    [36:44] Dr. Michael Haley: All right. I’m going to ask for a summary of that. Give me the YouTube short version, the 60 second version. When you are doing EWOT, why is it important to be exercising as opposed to just wearing the mask?

    [36:58] Brad Pitzele: Well, when you exercise, your body has all these physiological changes that allow it to take in more oxygen so that it can produce more energy, because oxygen can be a gating factor in energy production. More oxygen equals more energy. And so you start breathing faster and deeper. your lung membrane thins out and your heart starts beating faster and deeper. And all of these changes are really about driving that oxygen through the circulatory system into the tissues that need it.

    [37:31] Dr. Michael Haley: Boom. That is great. The first time you did EWOT, that was with your own equipment that you made?

    [37:38] Brad Pitzele: That is right.

    [37:40] Dr. Michael Haley: Did you notice anything during that session?

    [37:43] Brad Pitzele: I did actually. And the very first thing most folks notice is the exercise is easier, noticeably easier. And I describe it like this I was on my elliptical machine and I was at a resistance of 12, which I had done for a long time, and I started doing it, and immediately I had to turn it to 13. And a couple minutes later I turned it to 14. And in my second session I had to turn it to 15 sort of thing like, which was kind of shocking to me, but it makes sense if your body’s getting more oxygen and producing more energy, you can just do more work, right?

    [38:27] Dr. Michael Haley: That is really neat. Which brings up more questions, though, because now I am wondering: is the benefit the fact that you have EWOT, or is it that you are able to do more exercise in less time?

    [38:37] Brad Pitzele: That’s a great question. It is definitely the oxygen delivery. Exercise is the vehicle. So exercise has a ton of its own benefits. And let’s be honest, there’s only one health practice we all could do exercises probably up there on the list. If it’s not number one, it’s definitely number 2 or 3. So it has a whole host of benefits. But exercise alone will not get you there. And a little bit more exercise is not the turning point for a lot of folks. Really. What it’s about is delivering oxygen to starved tissues and causing an anti-inflammatory effect that allows for more of what I call a virtuous cycle, which is more oxygen delivery, less inflammation, less inflammation, more oxygen delivery, and so forth.

    [39:17] Dr. Michael Haley: Now, when you’re using an EWOT machine or system, I guess it’s a system because there’s a machine and the bag that holds the concentrated air. How long of a leash do you have for your face mask?

    [39:31] Brad Pitzele: So our systems come with a ten foot hose. But we also sell hose extension kits. So we have folks who want to do it further away, or they want to place their equipment a little bit further away from their equipment. They can.

    [39:43] Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. And the reason for it, I’m wondering also what is the best exercise to do. Could I do deadlifts and squats? Or should I be sticking to a rebounder or elliptical or stair steps? What’s the best exercise?

    [40:00] Brad Pitzele: Well, that’s actually one of the best parts about EWOT is that it’ll meet you where you’re at as far as your physical abilities. We have folks who are very chronically ill, and all they can do is bounce on a rebounder or use like one of these $50 under the desk pedal bikes. We have some that are so sick they can’t do any exercise, and they’ll start by just going in an infrared sauna blanket and put the mask on, because an infrared sauna can increase your heart rate. But really, the benefits from it come from doing it consistently over time. So the best exercise for you is the one that you’re most comfortable with and you’re willing to keep doing, whether that’s an elliptical, whether that’s calisthenics, whether that’s even weightlifting. Anything that gets your heart rate up is great for doing EWOT. Okay.

    [40:50] Dr. Michael Haley: Your typical customer—are they someone who is sick and trying to get well like you, or is it someone trying to optimize overall health?

    [41:00] Brad Pitzele: We actually get folks who come at it from different angles. We have all sorts of folks dealing with a variety of chronic illnesses, everything from cancer to autoimmunity to Long COVID and chronic fatigue, even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and CTE. And we also have folks who are doing it because they’re biohackers or they’re interested in longevity. then we even have folks who are doing it because of the sports benefits and the athletic benefits.

    [41:15] Dr. Michael Haley: So is this maybe something that’s used in some of these biohacking clinics where you can do a one stop shop and get your ice plunge, your red light therapy, your EWOT

    [41:29] Brad Pitzele: Absolutely. Yeah, there are definitely biohacker gyms out there. And there’s also like I said, there’s also folks using them in like fitness gyms. We’ve got them in chiropractor offices, doctor offices, etc..

    [41:47] Dr. Michael Haley: As a thank-you for tuning in to The Dr. Haley Show, I have a special listener offer available now and throughout July 2026: $20 off a purchase of $200 or more at HaleyNutrition.com. [ACTIVE COUPON CODE REDACTED—LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FOR THE CODE.] As usual, the listener coupon may also be used with sale-priced and already discounted bundled items. Enjoy the rest of the podcast.

    [42:20] Dr. Michael Haley: Tell me about the typical session. And why does it tend to be 15 minutes at a time? And how many times per week can you do it twice a day. What’s the right amount of EWOT

    [42:34] Brad Pitzele: So I’ll start by saying the risks of EWOT, the only real major risks of EWOT are the risks of exercise injury. So it’s all the same sorts of things. There’s not really any sort of risk to doing too much EWOT, there can be with other oxygen therapies. There’s not really with EWOT. So as far as frequency you kind of have, you can do as much as you want. I generally recommend that folks do it about 3 to 5 times a week. We find that most of our customers see a peak benefit right around there. I know of anti-cancer clinics that have folks doing it three times a day, and I think that’s kind of ridiculous. I think it’s a little overkill. I don’t know that you necessarily need to do that much, because particularly for sick folks, there’s a balance between the benefits and also trying not to overdo it and wear out the body. So you’ve got to kind of have, you know, you’ve got to listen to your body. As you were saying earlier, I think that’s really important. So usually it’s 15 minutes, about 3 to 5 times a week. I recommend I recommend you at least take a day or two off just to recover from the exercise itself.

    [43:49] Dr. Michael Haley: Why is it 15 minutes?

    [43:51] Brad Pitzele: It goes back to Manfred von Ardenne and his work in figuring out at those concentrations what amount of exercise was required for that capillary switching that caused that anti-inflammatory effect, which is really what we’re going after with this. So you can do more, but you really don’t need to do more. And it’s a law of diminishing returns.

    [44:12] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, I think that’s the thing I like to tell my customers to when they ask, how much aloe should I drink? I have the Aloe vera business. And, you know, well, there’s probably a point of diminishing returns. People got results with very small amounts, but I would probably do more than that. Yet at some point I’m going to say, all right, how much of this is, you know, how much more benefit am I having at some point? Probably none.

    [44:40] Brad Pitzele: That is right.

    [44:42] Dr. Michael Haley: At some point, if I am consuming so much of one thing, I may not be getting other things I should be getting.

    [44:49] Brad Pitzele: That is right.

    [44:51] Dr. Michael Haley: Everything in life is about balance. Now, tell me about your system and what sets it apart from competitors besides price. What should people compare, and what should they avoid?

    [45:11] Brad Pitzele: Yeah. I always tell folks: we do not sell Coca-Cola; we sell the Coke can, right? the magic is the oxygen. It’s sitting in the room around you right now. All we do is purify it and give you a mechanism to deliver it to you during exercise. With that said, I think there are a few things out there that I would call. Watch out! There are some folks who’ve like, cut costs and created really cheap masks. They’re really paint inhalation masks. You know, where you get those paint with the two little, you know, for fumes, and they’ve turned those into masks. I wouldn’t do that. I’ve talked to folks all the time who’ve used that mask, and it’s just not a comfortable mask, I just tell folks I could save a lot of money if I were to switch to that. But I won’t do it. I just refuse to give people something that I think is a poor experience. Not a lot of competitors out there, but there are some doing it and they have two ports, so they put two hoses on. They try to tell you it’s twice as good, but the having multiple hoses actually doesn’t do anything for you. The other thing to watch out for is there’s actually several competitors out there that are misquoting their reservoir size. They’ll tell you it’s 900 liters. And I you know, you do the math on the geometry and it’s like 700. Why that’s important is I went back at the beginning and I told you, we can do 50 or 60 liters of oxygen a minute or more, depending on how in shape you are like. So our reservoir is 1,000 liters. And when I use it every week, I mean, I can drain the whole thing. So and I’m a five foot seven man, I’m in shape. But like you can imagine, a football linebacker probably can drain it faster than I can, right? So when you get down to 700 liters below 900 liters, as many of these are, you may not be able to do the full 15 minute protocol. And I’ve actually heard some affiliate selling some of these products saying, oh, you just need 7 or 8 minutes. I don’t know that we have science that says 7 or 8 minutes. You get the benefits. I’m sure you get some benefits from it. So I would be careful on that. Other than that, just make sure you know, they have good quality components, medical and food grade components. You’re going to be breathing from it. You want it to be high quality. And the biggest thing is customer service. Like, can you pick up the phone and talk to somebody? If you send an email to you get a response. Because for a lot of folks, you know, it’s a piece of health technology and you’re going to have questions as you come up to speed and figure out what works for you or have questions as you’re, like, coming up the learning curve. So it’s I think it’s important to have good customer service just to help folks get going and get the benefits from it.

    [48:18] Dr. Michael Haley: I looked at the two systems you offer. My understanding is that the reservoir is the same with either system, but one oxygen concentrator fills it about twice as fast. With the less expensive system, you wait longer when starting with an empty reservoir, and that could also matter when more than one person in a household uses it. Is that the primary difference?

    [48:54] Brad Pitzele: when I got into this space, we sell a 5-liter per minute and a 10-liter per minute model. So when I got into the space, everyone was selling the more expensive 10-liter models. But because I wanted to make this affordable for people with chronic health conditions, I wanted to make an economical unit. So we were one of the first to launch with the 5-liter model, something we still do today. The market is kind of bent towards us, so now others are doing that as well, which I think is great. It’s an economical thing. Neither one is EWOT like It’s both full benefits. The difference is filling. So if you’re a single user and you’re the only person using it, 5-liter could be enough because both of them are digital timer capable, meaning you can program it. Like for me, I program mine so it’s completely full. I walk out in my garage where I do my exercise every morning first thing and it’s ready. So the three hours versus an hour and a half won’t make a difference. But if you’re somebody who wants more flexibility, like you decide not to do it in the morning and then, you know, an hour and a half before lunch, like maybe I’ll do it on my lunch hour. But 10-liter gives you more flexibility. Also, if you have multiple people in the house, to your point, what folks will do is leave the machine producing oxygen while they use it. And if the first person does that with the 10-liter system, you might be able to get the next person on in 25 or 45 minutes. If it’s the 5-liter machine off and you’re waiting for an hour and a half or more, and that just for most folks, it becomes really difficult to like, actually do it in your day like you did it. Now I got to wait an hour and a half like, but then life’s happening an hour and a half later sort of thing. So for most folks who have multiple users in the household, they go and get the 10-liter. Just makes a lot of sense.

    [50:30] Dr. Michael Haley: Should each person have their own mask?

    [50:33] Brad Pitzele: Usually they do. You can share if you want, but obviously you’re sweating in it and it’s pretty intimate in that respect. So even husbands and wives who kiss a lot often want their own mask and sometimes their size. There’s multiple sizes, and so if you’re different size than your spouse or whoever else you’re going to use it with, you want your own mask?

    [50:55] Dr. Michael Haley: Now, if I am going to a clinic and relying on the mask they give me, how do they clean it?

    [51:05] Brad Pitzele: It’s a great question. I can’t speak for everyone, but how we instruct folks who use our systems and clinics we normally have them do is the first thing we need to do is wash them with warm soapy water. The second step usually is they’ll use like a UV sterilizer oven. So it’s kind of like something you might see at a barber shop. Well, it’ll, you know, bombard it with UV energy that can kill any bacteria, viruses, etc..

    [51:32] Dr. Michael Haley: All right, great. Briefly tell us about red light therapy, the systems you have, and what makes them unique.

    [51:48] Brad Pitzele: Yeah. So red light therapy I think the interesting thing is what you pointed out is we’re all underneath LED lights at nowadays indoors. And they filter out reds and near-infrared because they cause heat. And so in the name of energy efficiency, we’ve taken these reds in near-infrared out of the spectrum that we live in. Unlike the sun, which is full spectrum. And light isn’t just about increasing our visibility. It’s a signal into our body. And what red light do in near infrared lights do is they actually interact with our mitochondria, which are these little energy factories that use oxygen. And what they do is they force your mitochondria to use more oxygen. So that’s why we pair them with exercise. With oxygen therapy is we first have folks to EWOT exercise oxygen therapy to flood their body with oxygen. And then immediately afterwards, while there’s still a lot of excess oxygen floating around, we get them underneath the red light, which causes their body to utilize that oxygen. And so all of the benefits you hear about red light are all about oxygen utilization. So if you hear about the skin benefits, the skin cells use more oxygen. They produce more energy. And when they have more energy, they can produce more collagen, they can repair more quickly, etc.. So what we do with our lights that is a little bit different is ours have eight different wavelengths and four red wavelengths and four near-infrared wavelengths. And why that’s important is each wavelength has a different penetration depth into our body. So reds generally stay at the skin level. Infrared can get deeper. And because we’re focused on helping people with their wellness and get over chronic health conditions, we want to treat as many of the tissues as possible and cause as many of those mitochondria throughout the body to utilize that excess oxygen. And so we offer a broader spectrum than most on those wavelengths. So you’re getting kind of a full benefit if you’re going to go under it for your skin. Why not also treat your organs and your bones and everything else at the same time and get the full benefit sort of thing? And that helps us because, as I mentioned, a lot of the people we are helping. They have a variety of different health needs and health concerns, and so we’re able to help address all of those kind of simultaneously.

    [54:02] Dr. Michael Haley: Is there anything I should have asked you that I left out?

    [54:07] Brad Pitzele: I think you did a good job. Actually, I think we covered a lot of the basics. Maybe benefits. I guess we could talk about that.

    [54:14] Dr. Michael Haley: Benefits of, generally speaking, measurable benefits.

    [54:18] Brad Pitzele: Yeah. The benefits are actually really impressive. A large portion of the research is in athletic performance. Everything from improved VO2 max to improved power output. It was used by, you know, a lot of research done and by Olympic teams. And VO2 max is an incredibly important metric. it stands for the maximum volume of oxygen your body can use. And it’s directly tied to longevity and health. So and improving it by 8 to 12% is actually very large. So a lot of research there. But we also know there’s a lot of benefits around energy production. As we’ve mentioned detoxification which is not talked about often enough. So when your cells are in a low energy state, they stop taking the trash out. So your cells build up with all these lactic acid and metabolic waste products inside the cell walls. And when you give them oxygen, you allow them the energy to detox the cells. But also in order for your body to detox things, it needs to go through an oxidation reaction, which means it uses oxygen to break complex molecules into simpler molecules that your elimination organs can handle and eliminate from your body. So it works through a variety of modalities on detox, that lymphatic drainage. And of course, sweating is a great detox. So it’s great for that. It’s great for anti-inflammatory effects. And that’s why we have so many folks using it for chronic health conditions and for longevity. And then of course it also there’s a growing body of research that shows the links between low oxygen and cancer and cancer fatality rate. And so a lot of folks are using it in part of their cancer healing journey as well.

    [56:02] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Interesting. You know, I think about and something you said triggered this in my mind. I think about the you see the athletes on the side of the field. I don’t know if they still do this, but you see them sometimes putting a mask on their face, and now that’s just getting caught up with their immediate oxygen deprivation so they can get back in quicker. I wonder if they have any long term benefits.

    [56:26] Brad Pitzele: It is. It’s also about recovery. So the when I mentioned all the athletic benefits, one of the big ones is when you start working out and you get sore, that means you ran out of oxygen. You went to anaerobic respiration, you started producing this lactic acid, which as it stays in the muscle, it continues to damage tissue. And the way we break it down is through an oxidation reaction. We combine it with oxygen and it breaks it down further. So it can be used as fuel. And so part of the reason why they’re doing that is certainly to catch back up, catch their breath literally, but also to help break down the lactic acid that’s already built up inside of their muscles so that it’s not causing further damage and it keeps them going.

    [57:12] Dr. Michael Haley: That’s pretty interesting. Yeah. Wow.

    [57:15] Dr. Michael Haley: You have a YouTube channel. What is your number-one channel—YouTube, Instagram? Where should people go to learn more?

    [57:22] Brad Pitzele: Our YouTube channel is the best place to find out more. It is One Thousand Roads, all spelled out, HQ.

    [57:30] Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. And the reason I think that’s going to be important is and I told you this before when we got started, I’ve got this list of questions here more than I can possibly ask. And I’m hoping that you continue to answer them on your own channels. So I’ll be sending this to you. I appreciate that, and I know you’ve created a lot of content, but now people know where they can go and subscribe and find out more. Brad Pitzele, I want to thank you for joining me and taking this time out of your schedule to teach us about EWOT. Thank you so much, Brad.

    [58:00] Brad Pitzele: Thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate it.

    [58:06] Show Announcer: I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.

  • Prostate Cancer Education: Knowledge Reduces Fear with Michael Bovarnick

    In this episode of The Dr. Haley Show, Dr. Michael Haley speaks with Michael Bovarnick, founder of The Prostate Education Project, about his personal journey through prostate cancer, recurrence, treatment decisions, and the emotional challenges that often come with diagnosis.

    Michael shares what it was like to hear the words “you have prostate cancer,” why education became such an important part of his own healing journey, and how his experience led him to create a resource for men, spouses, caregivers, and families facing similar questions. The conversation covers PSA testing, Gleason scores, prostate cancer recurrence, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), ADT side effects, intimacy and relationship challenges, and the importance of having a loved one present during medical appointments.

    Dr. Haley and Michael also discuss Michael’s long history with Haley Nutrition’s Aloe Vera Gel Health Drink as part of his personal wellness routine, while making clear that aloe vera is not being presented as a cancer cure. Rather, the episode focuses on education, preparation, supportive wellness, and helping men ask better questions before and during treatment.

    If you or someone you love is navigating prostate cancer, this episode offers a thoughtful, personal, and practical conversation about why knowledge reduces fear, understanding builds confidence, and education empowers patients.

    Key Takeaways

    • Prostate cancer diagnosis often brings fear, uncertainty, and unanswered questions.
    • Michael Bovarnick created The Prostate Education Project to help patients, spouses, caregivers, and families better understand the journey.
    • The episode discusses PSA testing, Gleason scores, recurrence, ADT therapy, ADT side effects, intimacy, and emotional resilience.
    • Michael encourages men to take PSA testing seriously and to ask better questions before making treatment decisions.
    • The central message: knowledge reduces fear, understanding builds confidence, and education empowers patients.

    Timestamps:

    00:00 PSA Testing and False Positives
    00:11 Welcome to The Dr. Haley Show
    00:39 Meet Michael Bovarnick of The Prostate Education Project
    02:50 How Dr. Haley and Michael First Connected
    03:14 Michael’s Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Aloe Vera Story
    05:37 Important Disclaimer About Aloe Vera and Cancer
    06:51 Aloe Vera, ADT, and Supportive Wellness
    08:05 Why Prostate Cancer Can Return After Prostate Removal
    09:53 Haley Nutrition Aloe Vera Message
    10:54 Life Today After Prostate Cancer Recurrence
    12:18 Prostate Cancer Awareness and Rising Diagnosis Rates
    13:36 PSA Testing, Screening, and Dr. Haley’s Personal Story
    16:59 Hearing the Words “You Have Prostate Cancer”
    18:46 Intimacy, Relationships, and Emotional Challenges
    23:10 What Doctors Explain — and What Patients May Miss
    26:22 Advice for Newly Diagnosed Men in the Panic Phase
    28:33 PSA, Gleason Score, and Treatment Decisions
    31:06 What Is ADT? Androgen Deprivation Therapy Explained
    32:45 ADT Side Effects Doctors May Not Fully Prepare You For
    34:01 “Cancer Changed My Diagnosis, Education Changed My Journey”
    34:51 Why You Should Bring a Partner to Appointments
    36:06 July 2026 Haley Nutrition Coupon Code
    36:39 What Is an ADT Holiday?
    39:27 PSA Testing Advice for Men Over 40
    40:36 Urinary Symptoms, Enlarged Prostate, and Getting Checked
    42:49 Prostate Cancer Symptoms Beyond Urinary Problems
    43:52 Exercise, Diet, Bone Health, and Muscle Health During ADT
    44:25 Genetics, Family History, and Prevention Questions
    45:00 Exploring TheProstateEducationProject.org
    45:41 The Newsletter and “Living Library” Vision
    46:47 Spanish-Language Resources and Community Outreach
    48:32 Final Thoughts: Knowledge Reduces Fear
    49:46 Closing Remarks

    RESOURCES

    Medical Disclaimer

    This podcast episode and accompanying blog post are for educational and informational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. The information shared should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, including prostate cancer.

    The views and personal experiences shared by Michael Bovarnick reflect his own prostate cancer journey and should not be interpreted as a recommendation for any specific test, treatment, medication, supplement, or health protocol.

    Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about PSA testing, prostate cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment options, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), medications, supplements, diet, exercise, or any other health-related matter.

    Aloe vera is discussed in this episode as part of Michael Bovarnick’s personal wellness routine and experience. Haley Nutrition Aloe Vera Gel Health Drink is not presented as a treatment or cure for prostate cancer.

    If you are experiencing symptoms or have concerns about prostate health, speak with a licensed healthcare professional.

    TRANSCRIPT

    Michael Bovarnick: Fight with your doctor to get a PSA test because I would rather have a false positive and go through the testing than end up with prostate cancer.

    Intro: You are listening to The Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode will feature an interview or message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.

    Intro: Your host is none other than the founder of Haley Nutrition, Dr. Michael Haley.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Today I’m joined by Michael Bovarnick, founder of The Prostate Education Project. Michael is also a longtime customer of Haley Nutrition Aloe Vera Gel Health Drink, and over the years he has generously shared with others how aloe has supported him in his own life. We first got to know each other through phone conversations when he would call in his orders. Then, probably more than ten years ago, we met in person when he came to our location to pick up his aloe.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Michael’s work with The Prostate Education Project grew out of his own experience with prostate cancer. Like many men, he entered that world with little preparation for just how medically, physically, and emotionally complex the journey would become. Along the way, he began building a structured collection of educational and wellness resources to help himself stay grounded and informed.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That personal effort eventually developed into a larger mission: helping patients and caregivers better understand what to expect, what questions to ask, and what practical tools may help them navigate diagnosis, treatment decisions, side effects, recovery, and emotional well-being. Rather than overwhelming people with more medical jargon, Michael focuses on providing clear explanations, realistic guidance, and useful resources for men and families facing prostate cancer.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Michael, welcome to the show. I want to start by saying, this episode is for people with prostates, people who used to have prostates, and people who know people who have prostates or used to have prostates. As I studied your website, I realized this just isn’t about someone who has a diagnosis with their prostate because so many other people are involved. It really is a journey.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Let’s go back before we talk about The Prostate Education Project. How did we come to know each other? I think you were using the aloe before I had taken over that product line. Is that correct?

    Michael Bovarnick: That is correct. It’s a long story, but if you want it, I can give it to you.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Well, yeah. Why did you start drinking aloe vera to begin with?

    Michael Bovarnick: The story began 23 years ago, Mike, when I was diagnosed with a pretty advanced case of prostate cancer. Going back a little bit beyond that, we had a friend whose sister had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She was 36 years old at the time, and I’m going back 24 years now. She was basically told to go home and that she had six months to live.

    Michael Bovarnick: A friend of hers told her about this crazy product called Stockton Aloe. She said, “Well, I have nothing to lose. Let me try it.” The protocol then was three 8-ounce glasses, three times a day, for four months.

    Michael Bovarnick: She started drinking the aloe, and we talked to my friend. The cancer started to shrink. Anyway, long and short, when I was diagnosed, we said, “Hey, what the heck. Let’s give it a try.”

    Michael Bovarnick: I had made a decision to have my prostate surgically removed, but I also told my surgeon that I wanted four months and that I would sign any agreement to hold him harmless if something happened to me. My choice, my problem.

    Michael Bovarnick: At the time, my PSA was elevating and my free PSA protein levels were dropping dramatically. After drinking the aloe during the four months, it was like a religion. I never missed a day. My PSA dropped and my protein levels increased. Now, I can’t say one way or the other that it worked, but when the surgeon was ready to go in, he had booked me for four hours. He was in and out in an hour and a half and performed, at that time, a revolutionary procedure in the United States: a laparoscopic radical prostatectomy, which was unheard of back then.

    Michael Bovarnick: Anyway, long story short, when the pathology came back, the cancer had one centimeter to go before it broke out of the prostate. So again, I always tell the story. I can’t tell you that the aloe helped because there’s no way of testing it, but I can also say I think the aloe certainly did help.

    Michael Bovarnick: I’ve been drinking aloe ever since, every single day. Now, 20 years later, I have a recurrence, and I absolutely am a firm believer—not putting everything on the aloe—that the aloe has kept me healthy at 83 years old. That’s also having gone through major open heart surgery ten years ago.

    Dr. Michael Haley: So here we go, and we’re going to do a little disclaimer because aloe vera is not a cancer cure. In fact, there’s really no cancer cure outside of what’s in you. You have the ability to cure cancer, and sometimes you can use things to help strengthen that process so that your body does it better. There are certain things that will get in the way of healing cancer, and there are certain things that will help you heal from cancer.

    Michael Bovarnick: Well, I don’t disagree at all. Again, not to make it a commercial, but I’m absolutely a firm believer that for both my wife and myself—my wife also drinks this—it has helped us maintain a quality of life that probably wouldn’t exist.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, I see it as one of those things that’s beneficial to me. It helps me. It helps my immune system work more like it’s supposed to, but it’s not a cure for cancer. That’s okay, because I have a cure for cancer, and that’s my own immune system working optimally.

    Michael Bovarnick: I’m a firm believer, and again, I can’t prove it. Being on androgen deprivation therapy medications now, I absolutely believe that the aloe is helping enhance that drug. But again, I can’t prove it. It’s just my own feelings.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Well, you know, it’s not so out of the ordinary to think that, considering there is science that would actually support that. There was a chemotherapy company, I believe, behind this particular project because 240 people with stage four cancer all got chemotherapy, and 119 of them were given one ounce of aloe a day. The 119 that got the one ounce of aloe had more than three times the number of people in what they considered the complete response group.

    Dr. Michael Haley: So that is statistically significant, and they were only getting one ounce a day. Can you imagine if we said, “Drink three 8-ounce glasses a day” during that study? What would the results be? We don’t know. It should be done, but science certainly suggests there’s a benefit. Their conclusion was that their chemotherapy worked better with the aloe. They believed the aloe somehow starved the cancer cells, making them weaker and easier for the chemotherapy to kill. So we need to study this more.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Mike, years later, why do you think the prostate cancer came back, especially if you did not have a prostate because it was removed?

    Michael Bovarnick: In my research, the potential or probability, from a statistic quoted by Johns Hopkins, is that the potential for a long-term survivor is about 1 to 2% in that population, especially as we age, that the cancer will come back. There may have been dormant cells somewhere in the body and they just popped up.

    Michael Bovarnick: Not to get political, there is some discussion today about the COVID vaccine also having lit up some cells that were lying in the body. For me, and again, not to make a political discussion out of it, my fourth COVID booster was very coincidental. March of 2022, I believe it was—sorry, March of 2023—was when my PSA started to elevate. I can’t prove it, but it was just a coincidence. But again, Johns Hopkins quotes statistically that there is a 1 to 2% chance that long-term prostate cancer survivors will have a recurrence. I’m one of them.

    Dr. Michael Haley: No, I think that’s fair.

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    Dr. Michael Haley: How is it affecting your life today? Are you still playing golf?

    Michael Bovarnick: I still play golf. Honestly, Michael, I consider myself one of the very fortunate few because I do a lot of reading and studying, having developed The Prostate Education Project, about so many young men—and I mean much younger men in their late 40s and 50s—who are now being diagnosed with severe metastatic prostate cancer and some dying at a very young age.

    Michael Bovarnick: For me personally, I keep asking why me? Maybe I have been so lucky from what I’m dealing with compared to what other men are dealing with. Mine, I consider a minor situation. So to answer your question directly, fortunately, I’m still able to maintain an active lifestyle.

    Michael Bovarnick: Yes, the medication has some negative impacts, which we can talk about—the sleep deprivation and the sweats. I understand what a woman goes through with hormonal adjustments. But all things considered, at my age, I’m not doing too bad.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Did you come across anything that gives you an idea how many men have either benign prostatic hypertrophy or prostate cancer at some point in their life? I’m guessing it’s a high number.

    Michael Bovarnick: I can quote you from the American Cancer Society. Last year, 2025 estimated—and this is one of the reasons I really got involved with education—the American Cancer Society estimated in the United States that roughly 360,000 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer. They also estimated nationally that 350,000 men would be diagnosed with prostate cancer.

    Michael Bovarnick: The numbers, again per ACS, of deaths annually specifically to breast and/or prostate are equal. That was the motivation because people just aren’t aware of it. Again, with all due respect to women and breast cancer, men are just lost in the clouds, so to say. They’re just not aware of it, and/or for whatever reason, doctors stopped doing PSA testing. But that’s another whole discussion.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. It’s not like it’s easy to palpate and diagnose. I’ll be so transparent to say I haven’t had my prostate examined. Dare I say this, this is a bad story. I was in college, and someone put something in my drink, and I didn’t realize it. I didn’t know that whatever drug was put into my drink, what I experienced was like something I had never experienced before.

    Dr. Michael Haley: So I went to the hospital. I took myself there because I just did not feel right. Unfortunately, it was a teaching hospital. I don’t know why they decided to check my prostate when I was drugged, but it was a perfect opportunity because I had no idea what was going on. There was just this line of doctors: “I don’t know. What do you think?” “I don’t know. Let me see.” “Well, why don’t you have a check too?”

    Dr. Michael Haley: It was probably some kind of date rape drug I was given, and I was raped by a bunch of medical professionals instead. That was the last time I ever had my prostate checked. At this point, I’m almost 60 years old. I probably should have been examined again since then. Maybe I have a little.

    Michael Bovarnick: Hopefully you’re getting your PSA testing. But again, the question has become, because of the “false positives,” PSA is not necessarily the benchmark.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, and this is where we do the medical disclaimer. This is not medical advice. Don’t do what Dr. Haley does. We’re providing information here that could be of benefit, and if anything we say raises questions, discuss it with your doctor. This is just good information.

    Dr. Michael Haley: But you had given a number like 300-and-some thousand, and that had to do with cancer. I would imagine prostatic hypertrophy or precancerous-type conditions are probably way higher. The reason I think that is because I remember years ago watching Robin Williams do a comedic bit where he was talking about difficulty urinating. That would be from an enlarged prostate, where you just don’t have the powerful stream anymore. The audience thought it was hysterical, and the only reason they could be laughing so much is because so many of them could relate to it.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I would imagine that this is a much bigger problem in people over 40 years old than what anyone is really talking about. What do you think?

    Michael Bovarnick: I don’t disagree with it. Again, not practicing medicine, but certainly an enlarged prostate may be an indicator. I just come back to the fact that either men aren’t going to the doctor and they’re not being checked for it, or whatever it is in their world today—the foods we eat—the numbers of cases are just growing rapidly, sadly. The numbers of younger men with severe cases are just incredible.

    Dr. Michael Haley: A lot of people probably don’t want to know and don’t necessarily want to have this experience. What was it like? What did you feel? What did you experience when the doctor said, “Michael, you have prostate cancer”?

    Michael Bovarnick: You hear those four words, and honestly, initially your mind goes blank. I write this on my website. You hear the words and you hear them talking, but you don’t really hear it anymore.

    Michael Bovarnick: It creates so many questions. Again, going back to The Prostate Education Project, one of the reasons I did this is because people hear those words and it creates so many questions, either for the patient or the spouse or family, that they don’t know how to react in that moment.

    Michael Bovarnick: I can talk about my own personal situation, but you change and you think your life is over because of the sexual aspect of it. The ego takes over. You’re not the man you think you are. That is totally unrealistic. There are ways to get around all of these things. The biggest thing, if I would put a number on it, is that the mind takes over. If you can get through the mind aspect of it and not let the mind control you, then you’re on your way back, if that helps.

    Dr. Michael Haley: It does. When you mention intimacy and the effects it can have there, the emotional strain it can take on a relationship for those who are in a relationship, is there something they can do to help decrease those emotional challenges? If so, what?

    Michael Bovarnick: The way I say it now—and you may have to edit this out—my comment today is, unfortunately, I consider men to have two brains: one in the head and one between their legs. I say that somewhat jokingly, but too often most men think with the one between their legs. If their manlyhood is gone, they can’t function. There are ways to get around that. The emotion is still there. The intimacy can still be there. The fact that you may not be able to function sexually is another whole discussion.

    Michael Bovarnick: The sad part to that, quite honestly, Michael, is that in many cases it is the woman who becomes the problem because she feels left out. The intimacy is gone, and depending on how the man responds to that—because again, from what I’ve read, so many men become withdrawn because they think their sex life is gone, their intimacy is gone, they can’t function, and they’re not the man they thought they were.

    Michael Bovarnick: That’s one side of it, and that relates to the woman and the relationship changing. That’s another problem with cancer, whether it be prostate cancer or other cancers, but specifically prostate cancer from the male side of it. From the posts I read from women talking about their own relationships and how it affects them, and how the man reacts to it, intimacy changes. There are still ways to get around that and make the partner feel comfortable, but it’s a major factor. There’s no question about it.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Personally, I think one of the keys to intimacy is honesty and vulnerability. I think that’s what makes it so special. Opening up communication in that area makes yourself vulnerable to your partner. I don’t know if that’s helpful or not.

    Michael Bovarnick: In talking with people, what I find is that women who have cancer seem to be, in my opinion, more open in talking about it. Men don’t want to talk about it. That does change the whole dynamic of how you have a conversation. Again, I’m not practicing psychiatry, but so many men, I feel, just feel that they now have a problem. They can’t relate anymore, and the spouse relationship becomes a problem. I don’t know if that answers the question.

    Dr. Michael Haley: It does. There are people who specialize in this area, and it probably would be good to get some professional help. Don’t ignore it. That would make sense.

    Michael Bovarnick: Yeah, but most men won’t admit it though. That’s my experience.

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    Dr. Michael Haley: You mentioned that when you were given that diagnosis, you were present, but you weren’t hearing anything. You were overwhelmed, and you probably don’t know what the doctors explained well and what they left out, or what you had to learn on your own, because maybe they did explain things, but you weren’t able to receive it at the time.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Do you remember what doctors presented to you or what was left out? With everything you’ve learned since then, what would you say was really left out?

    Michael Bovarnick: I can go back, again remembering that I’m 23 years into dealing with this, and the protocols certainly have changed over the years. Initially, I’ll go back to the fact that my father died from prostate cancer, so I had some life history with this and the effects of it that he went through, which were horrible.

    Michael Bovarnick: When I was first diagnosed, realizing the age that I was at the time, I had to make some choices. Knowing what my father went through, I immediately made the choice that I was going to have it out.

    Michael Bovarnick: Again, I’m going to come back and say I did the protocol for four months. I was very fortunate that the surgery happened. No nerves were taken, so my nerves were spared. I was pretty lucky. During the 20 years, I always had the key. Being a paranoid hypochondriac, I maintained doing PSA testing throughout the entire time.

    Michael Bovarnick: Too many doctors, unfortunately, and I’ve had this in my own experiences, have said to me, “Oh, a few of my patients at the 15-year mark, I would not have done any more PSAs.” Well, guess what? I probably would have been dead.

    Michael Bovarnick: That all said, coming back now 20 years later, the protocols have changed. The cancer was different, meaning that my PSA started to elevate, and I knew what needed to be done. I immediately went to my primary and said, “You’ve got to get me into a PET scan.” The PET scan came back with two nodes on my left pelvic wall. I immediately knew I needed radiation or some form of treatment.

    Michael Bovarnick: Fortunately, I have a son-in-law, so to say, in the medical business, and he got me in to see the right people immediately. Five days of pinpoint radiation. Three months later, the cancer elevated again, which necessitated going back for ADT treatment, androgen deprivation therapy, which is another whole discussion.

    Michael Bovarnick: Again, as I said earlier, the effects of ADT can be worse than some of the actual problems. That also necessitated another round of radiation. So I was aware of this. It affects you, and how do you deal with this, especially now going on medications that definitely are going to change your life? I don’t know if that answers the question.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. So for someone who is newly diagnosed and needs to make good decisions, but they’re in that panic phase, what would your recommendation be for them?

    Michael Bovarnick: Just try to read as much as you can. Hopefully what I’m trying to do with my own project is an asset to somebody, because yes, it raises so many questions. Unfortunately today, and I don’t know if there’s any straight answer to that, Michael, because as you know and I know, and most people know, doctors or clinicians just don’t have the time to sit and talk and explain things as they used to.

    Michael Bovarnick: That opens up the question, “What do I do?” I don’t know if there’s any straight answer to that except people now go on Facebook and social media sites and try to find some information—not necessarily the best. I would say try to do your own research. Make up your list of questions.

    Michael Bovarnick: Again, that’s exactly one of the reasons why I had this higher calling, so to say, to develop The Prostate Education Project. I hope that through that project, I’m answering a lot of those questions from a lived experience.

    Dr. Michael Haley: One of my favorite questions to ask the doctor is, “If this was you or someone you love, if this was your child, what would you recommend for them? What treatment would you recommend for them? Would you do this to yourself?” Also, “What are the outcomes? People who get this procedure, how many does it work for? Are we just buying time, or is this working toward a real cure?” These are some of the things I want to know before jumping into a treatment.

    Michael Bovarnick: Again, I can only speak to protocol. The choices when you’re first diagnosed are: what is your PSA level? What’s your Gleason score? Do we watch and wait? Do you do immediate treatment? Whether that be surgical removal, does it mean radiation? What are the numbers? The numbers will dictate the treatment.

    Michael Bovarnick: I’ll go back 23 years ago when I was diagnosed. My primary care was very aggressive in making sure I had care. Our local pharmacist in the town where we were living—he and I were diagnosed at the same time. His doctor told him, “Let’s watch and wait.” He was dead in two years.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. What can you tell us about the Gleason score?

    Michael Bovarnick: It’s a biopsy pathology. How do they determine the aggressiveness? It’s a test, unfortunately, going through the rectum, where they insert what are referred to as plugs or cores into the prostate at different locations within the prostate. Then, based on the results of where the cancer is within the prostate, it’s a two-tier number. That two-tier number will dictate. Generally, the highest score is nine. It could be 3+6, 5+4, or various options. Those numbers will generally dictate, from a clinician standpoint, the course of action.

    Michael Bovarnick: Along with that, depending on having a PET scan today, that’s the PSMA prostate-specific PET scan, which will show up any—not microscopic cells—but it will show up any larger cells. That’s how we found mine.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I got you. Do you wish you had done anything different?

    Michael Bovarnick: No. It is what it is. I tried to maintain, during the 20 years, a quality of life. We watched our diet. Fate being what it is, it is what it is. I can’t say, for me personally, that I would have changed anything.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Okay, well, that’s nice to hear. You mentioned the ADT therapy. I don’t know what that is.

    Michael Bovarnick: Androgen deprivation therapy. Prostate cancer loves testosterone. Prostate cancer feeds off of testosterone. The goal of androgen deprivation therapy is to reduce the amount of testosterone in the body.

    Dr. Michael Haley: How is it administered?

    Michael Bovarnick: In the past, the only options were injections. One of the common ones was Lupron that is being used. That’s, I believe, a three-month injection, with varying side effects that go along with it.

    Michael Bovarnick: Six years ago, Pfizer came out with an oral medication called Orgovyx, and that changes the approach. Bottom line, ADT will reduce the testosterone in the body from wherever it is to almost nothing. That creates hormonal changes.

    Michael Bovarnick: You end up with hot flashes. Sleep deprivation becomes a problem. It is not atypical to have weight gain because your metabolism changes and the processing of insulin changes.

    Michael Bovarnick: In my own situation, I will drink fluids, and the fluid goes to the bottom of my legs, which can cause swelling. But that fluid, when I go to sleep at night, comes back up. So it’s not uncommon to be up three or four times a night to urinate, all part of androgen deprivation.

    Michael Bovarnick: Everybody is different. I consider myself very fortunate with the side effects that I’ve had compared to others. I deal with it. It’s not fun.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Were you prepared for that? Did they tell you those changes would happen?

    Michael Bovarnick: No. Again, the clinicians don’t have the time to really go in-depth. They can gloss over it, but unless you’ve done it, you don’t know it. So they can talk about it, but my personal feeling is that unless you’ve dealt with it and know what it’s like to go through it, it’s a totally different discussion.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. So it’s making your sleep difficult, and if it’s making your sleep difficult, it’s probably crossing over into other areas of your life.

    Michael Bovarnick: Well, you need that afternoon nap.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I kind of like that anyway already. Is that bad? I think there are some cultures where that’s just something you do. You have lunch, and then a little while later you take a power nap. I think that’s a good practice in life. I’m not going to give up my naps.

    Michael Bovarnick: I’m just reading some of my notes here. You asked a question before, and maybe this will answer it. I was quoting, “Cancer changed my diagnosis. Education changed my journey.” My hope is that The Prostate Education Project can help change theirs—or yours.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That’s a good word because I do understand that the doctors don’t have the time. As you had already mentioned, when you are there and you’re hearing some shocking news, you’re not necessarily going to hear it anyway. So it is good to have another source.

    Dr. Michael Haley: One of your recommendations was to have a loved one with you at your visits. Tell us a little bit about that and the why.

    Michael Bovarnick: Absolutely. In my own case, my lovely wife has been my partner for years, and she hears things that I may not hear. It’s a partnership. Having a spouse or partner with you in dealing with any cancer, not just prostate cancer, I think is critical. If you have any kind of relationship, it’s an understanding that both of you are going to go through this. It’s not just an individual.

    Michael Bovarnick: One of my other notes says patients don’t just need treatment. They also need understanding. Having a partner with you who also understands what you’re going through and dealing with—you can’t put a price on that.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I agree. Absolutely. Not that you want to burden anyone, and that’s not what it’s about. It’s about just being honest. Here are the facts of life: I’m not who I used to be. I can’t pick up that automobile anymore. We want to be, you know, we love competition. We want to win everything and be the greatest. That doesn’t last.

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    Dr. Michael Haley: I want to go back to the ADT because I saw something about an ADT holiday. What is that? What does that mean?

    Michael Bovarnick: The ADT holiday, again, I’m now speaking of my own situation. I was on Orgovyx, the oral medication, and I chose that primarily because the injectables are typically either one month or three months. If you have any kind of side effect, you’re stuck. Whereas with the oral medication, the life within the body is 25 hours. So if you have a bad reaction, that’s it.

    Michael Bovarnick: Anyway, I was on the oral medication for seven and a half months. During that time, I had repeated PSA and testosterone tests, and each one of those—four of them—the numbers were all the same. My PSA went to undetectable, and my testosterone essentially was less than three.

    Michael Bovarnick: The decision was made, because I tolerated the medication well and appeared to be doing well, having gone through the second round of radiation, that we would take a break off of the medication. This would be the ADT holiday. It’s initially a 90-day trial, if you will.

    Michael Bovarnick: My first PSA, six weeks into that, my numbers remained where they were originally. My medical oncologist was pleased with that, and also said it could take up to three months for the testosterone to start to regenerate, especially at my age. Hopefully the PSA remains where it is, undetectable.

    Michael Bovarnick: I started May 1st, and I’ll do another PSA test at the end of July, and we’ll see where we are. Hopefully, if the numbers maintain where they have been, we will continue the holiday and just continue with the PSA testing. That’s the benchmark.

    Michael Bovarnick: If the PSA starts to elevate, if the PSA doubles within a three-month period of time, we know the cancer is back. Then you’re starting all over again: PET scan, where is it, going back on the medication, and hopefully it hasn’t hit any of the organs or lymph nodes or any of that kind of stuff.

    Dr. Michael Haley: All right. Give advice to men who are 40 and don’t have any symptoms. What should they do?

    Michael Bovarnick: Fight with your doctor to get a PSA test because so many don’t want to do it. Again, part of it is that it has come down from the almighty government above saying you don’t need it because you get false positives. But my argument is I would rather have a false positive and go through the testing than end up with prostate cancer.

    Michael Bovarnick: It may be uncomfortable doing tests or whatever. If you have to go in for a Gleason test, there are so many other options today. I ask that same question, Michael: why are so many young men being diagnosed? Part of it is they’re not getting tested. Again, not practicing medicine, it just appears that the cancer is hitting younger men, for whatever reason. So I can’t emphasize enough: PSA, PSA, PSA.

    Michael Bovarnick: When the doctor says every year, my argument is, no, every six months. It’s a cheap test, even if you have to pay for it on your own.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, and I know your answer is going to sound very similar to that first question, but for the man who is over 40 and is having symptoms—difficulty peeing, getting up frequently in the nighttime, not emptying completely—they are having symptoms of prostatic hypertrophy and they haven’t been to a doctor in years. I’m asking you for me because I haven’t been to a doctor forever. What do you say to someone like myself who just doesn’t go to the doctor?

    Michael Bovarnick: If you want a PSA test, go to a lab and get a PSA test. I think anywhere you are, it’s a hundred bucks. If you can afford it, get a PSA test. It’s critical.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Go to the doctor. Get it done if you can. Go to a lab. Not everyone can go to the lab because they probably require a prescription. I might be able to write my own prescription, but I don’t think anything.

    Michael Bovarnick: I’m not sure. That’s a good question. I’ve talked to guys who said they’ve just gone to the lab and said, “I want a PSA.” But the key is, yeah, get it. Get a test.

    Dr. Michael Haley: You can probably get a prescription from Amazon. I think they have doctor visits.

    Michael Bovarnick: Well, it’s a doctor. Your doc-in-the-box. Nothing wrong with that. Dr. McCullough was on TV, and you can call up his 800 number and get his all-inclusive medical care kit with all the prescriptions and so forth.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That’s right. I did see that on the news channel.

    Dr. Michael Haley: It is true, too, that you can schedule a doctor’s visit. This is probably the one good thing that came out of the whole COVID shutdown: doctor availability online became a lot more popular. You don’t even have to take time out of your day to schedule an appointment. I could do it from sitting in the same chair I’m in right now. As soon as we’re done with this call, I could be on a Zoom meeting with a physician who is asking the right questions and writing the right scripts, and I go to the lab and get my blood test.

    Michael Bovarnick: Let me go back to something you said because you’re talking about somebody with an enlarged prostate or having difficulty urinating and so forth. Yes, that is a common sign. But again, not practicing medicine here, one of the common problems that men will all of a sudden discover is they have pain in their shoulders or they have pains elsewhere in the body that have shown to be a sign of prostate cancer.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Oh, interesting. So it’s not just urine or urinary problems.

    Michael Bovarnick: Especially if it’s metastasized. Again, this is from what I’ve read, not speaking from experience, but there is so much out there that there are signs of prostate cancer that has metastasized because it will affect, obviously, organs and the bones. It will attack the bone and muscle.

    Michael Bovarnick: By the way, that’s one of the side effects of ADT also. It will affect, and does affect, bone and muscle. So staying active, having a proper diet, and exercise are critical when you’re on these medications. Absolutely critical.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, and I’ll say critical for maximizing general health anyway, so why not all the more so when you really need it?

    Dr. Michael Haley: Do you think you could have prevented prostate cancer to begin with, or do you think it was kind of programmed in you because your father had it and it was in your genes? Could you have turned that gene off?

    Michael Bovarnick: I have an older brother. He doesn’t have it. He’s had other cancers, but prostate-specific, again, from my own reading, yes, genetically it’s a high probability. So whatever it was, could I have started something to prevent it? It is what it is.

    Michael Bovarnick: Doctors will tell you the chances of most men having some prostate issue and ending up with prostate cancer sometime in their life is not too unlikely, unfortunately.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I visited your website, TheProstateEducationProject.org, and for anyone still listening, if you’re listening this far, then there’s definitely an interest. I would encourage you to go check out that website. The resources on it are extensive. My goodness, what a complete resource there.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Well, it’s never complete, right? Because if it was, you wouldn’t be adding to it. It’s going to be a growing database of content. But it is rich, and there’s a place to subscribe. If I subscribe to the newsletters or to the website, what am I getting?

    Michael Bovarnick: That’s coming down the road. We’re working with some doctors now. One particular urology group here where I live gave me a tremendous validation.

    Michael Bovarnick: The newsletter ultimately will be from doctors and clinicians talking about it in more general terms. We want to talk about more patient, lived experiences, and any trends. We want to do things from a lived experience. As you mentioned earlier, we want to hear from the spouse or partner and talk about their experiences and how they’re dealing with it.

    Michael Bovarnick: So keeping current, trying to get more clinicians involved, can get us all down the road. For us right now, we’ve kind of changed the whole model of this thing, and we’re no longer really considering this a website. The goal is to make this a living library that will go beyond when I’m not here.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That’s great. I noticed that you’re also already getting recognition. There was a post shared by Urology Nevada, which is a large organization of physicians and people you can get appointments with to get your urology issues evaluated and treated.

    Michael Bovarnick: One of the key things that we haven’t talked about, and what I’ve done with this project, is that we have converted this project to 100% Spanish, and it’s universal Spanish.

    Michael Bovarnick: In our work, the people I work with doing this in the Hispanic community have found that, statistically, the Hispanic community has more problems with prostate cancer than the Caucasian community, interestingly enough. They’re not getting the proper treatment.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Interesting. I’m verifying that. I went to the website as you said that, and there is a dropdown box in the top right.

    Michael Bovarnick: That’s correct. It instantly converts the website from English to Spanish. The whole website is in Spanish. It’s a universally medically accepted Spanish.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Awesome. I know that would be important here where I am in South Florida.

    Michael Bovarnick: Absolutely. Spanish here where I am in northern Nevada, 37% of the population of this county is Hispanic. Going back to Urology Nevada, 30% of their patients are Hispanic.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Great. One of these days I’m going to learn Spanish, at least well enough to order food. I know what I like. I can get a hamburger. I know how to do that one.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Mike, I want to thank you for taking time to educate people. There were so many things we could have covered. For anyone listening in, check out the website, TheProstateEducationProject.org, and subscribe to the newsletters. Eventually you’ll be getting great content.

    Dr. Michael Haley: More importantly, if you look at the big menus on the top—I’m doing that right now—there’s a section for patients and families, and then the educational library is just jam-packed, well-organized, with all kinds of great content. If you need to learn more about this, check out the website.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Mike, thank you for all you’re doing. Any final parting words?

    Michael Bovarnick: Yeah. Again, just looking at my notes, we’ve come up with some taglines. We’re talking about all of this stuff of education: knowledge reduces fear, understanding builds confidence, and lastly, education empowers patients.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Beautiful. Thank you.

    Outro: I hope you enjoyed that episode today on The Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on DrHaley.com.

    Outro: If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics, be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at DrHaley.com, and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.

  • How Functional Medicine Helps You Get Off Medication (Dr. Mark Sherwood)

    Why True Health Means Less Dependence on Medication

    Most people are taught that managing symptoms is the same as being healthy—but what if that’s not true?

    In this episode, Dr. Mark Sherwood breaks down how functional medicine shifts the focus from symptom control to root cause healing—empowering people to reduce or eliminate unnecessary medications and take back control of their health.

    If you’re trying to understand why so many people stay stuck on medications long-term, this episode explains what’s missing—and how to fix it.


    ABOUT THIS EPISODE

    In this powerful conversation, Dr. Mark Sherwood shares his journey from professional athlete and SWAT team member to functional medicine practitioner helping people reclaim their health.

    The discussion dives deep into the difference between conventional medicine and functional medicine, highlighting how modern healthcare often treats symptoms rather than addressing underlying causes. Dr. Sherwood explains why many chronic conditions are driven by lifestyle inputs—and how correcting those inputs can restore the body’s natural ability to heal.

    You’ll also learn why lab numbers don’t always tell the full story, how medications can sometimes create new problems, and the key foundational habits that have the greatest impact on long-term health.

    This episode is both practical and empowering—offering a clear path for those who want to move from dependency to independence when it comes to their health.


    RESOURCES


    TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 – Foundational health habits that actually work
    00:43 – Introduction to Dr. Mark Sherwood
    01:14 – Background: athlete, SWAT, and transformation
    04:00 – Why perspective changes everything in life
    06:26 – Early life experiences that shaped success
    08:53 – The defining moment: a childhood belief carried forward
    11:57 – Transition from baseball to law enforcement
    14:13 – SWAT team realities vs Hollywood
    15:07 – The Power Team and influencing lives
    20:07 – The mission: helping people get off medication
    21:23 – What’s wrong with modern medicine
    22:35 – What real health actually means
    23:48 – Functional medicine explained
    27:11 – When medication is useful (and when it’s not)
    29:43 – How medications affect natural body functions
    31:52 – Hidden risks of common medications
    33:19 – Why symptoms don’t equal health
    34:11 – The problem with lab numbers
    35:00 – Why “normal” may actually mean unhealthy
    39:19 – The real drivers of health (you control these)
    41:53 – The biggest obstacle: misinformation
    45:34 – Stress is a verb, not a noun
    48:36 – Why failure should never be the focus
    50:35 – How to work with Dr. Sherwood
    52:15 – The Kingdom supplement line origin
    55:02 – Final advice: start today


    TopicKey Insight
    Functional MedicineFocuses on root causes, not symptoms
    Medication UseShould be temporary, not lifelong
    True HealthAbility to live fully without pain or dependence
    Root CausesLifestyle inputs drive most chronic disease
    Lab TestingInformational, not absolute
    Biggest ProblemMisinformation about nutrition
    Core HabitsDiet, sleep, movement, stress
    EmpowermentIndividuals have more control than they think

    TRANSCRIPT

    Below is the full transcript of this episode of The Dr. Haley Show with Dr. Mark Sherwood. The conversation explores functional medicine, medication dependence, nutrition, laboratory testing, stress, mindset, and the foundational lifestyle choices that influence health.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: We have control over what we’re putting in our mouth, whether that be food or liquid. And we have control over supplements. We can control what we do with our body exercise-wise. We can move more, sit less, and we can make sleep a priority.

    Those things are foundational truths. No, they’re not sexy. They don’t sell TV shows, but they do create health.

    Dr. Michael Haley: You are listening to The Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode, there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.

    Your host is none other than the founder of Haley Nutrition, Dr. Michael Haley.

    This is The Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, your show host. And today, well, we’ve got a fun interview with one of my—I’m going to say friends that I don’t quite know yet.

    But the way I found out about Dr. Mark Sherwood—I hope you don’t mind me saying, Dr. Mark—I own a company, Haley Nutrition. Everybody knows that, an aloe vera company. And when I see new customers, I like to look and find out who they are.

    Sometimes I see that they’re a doctor or something because their email address might say something about a clinic. I do a little research, and I find this amazing person who has done all kinds of crazy things in his life. A real go-getter, from the SWAT team, Power Team, author of all these books, and made some movies.

    I find him on YouTube, where he’s a guest on the Christian television network and more. So you’ve been in a lot of places.

    I’m one of those guys—I don’t know a lot of people. I don’t have a chance to keep up. A lot of people say, “Do you know Dr. So-and-so?” And it’s always no.

    So it’s no surprise here that I wouldn’t know someone as big and famous as Dr. Mark Sherwood. But I’m excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me today.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: It’s my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. And I get it. I don’t hang out a lot either. I just kind of try to do my job and do it well and value the opportunities that God gives us.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Of course. There’s something magnetic about that that makes you attractive to people. I’m going to call it excellence. For some people, we might call it the excellence of Christ or something like that.

    It’s a standard, and it’s very obvious in your content that that’s who you are. That just kind of permeates. There’s a certain trust factor, belief factor. I believe it’s authentic, and it comes from somewhere deep.

    It’s good, and it makes you create excellent content that’s beneficial and helpful to others.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. I think probably a lot of that comes from—and it is who I am, with God’s help, of course—but a lot of times in life, your pain, your past, the traumas you go through, the situations you go through in life, careers that you’ve had, things you’ve seen, and things you experience kind of shape who you are.

    I legitimately, realistically care about people. I’ve seen people at their best in the worst types of situations, and I’ve seen people die in front of me in my previous career.

    So you begin to have a different perspective.

    Even right now, I want the listeners to know that I am completely engaged with Dr. Michael Haley right now. I’m not thinking about anything else other than to represent well and do a great job to inspire people who are listening.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. And I’m going to encourage people to check out your content. I loved your YouTube channel.

    In fact, one video that I came across was published just a couple of months ago, and it was with someone that I had the pleasure of meeting probably 20 years back. In that video, you introduced Lou Ferrigno as your friend.

    So obviously, you know him better than I do. I had a chance to meet him and shake hands with him.

    The neat thing about it—and I bet you can relate to this—I’m kind of a large person, and at the time I met him, I was into powerlifting and all kinds of stuff like that.

    Not many people make me feel small. This guy is a tower. He is a mountain of a man. He is 6’4”, probably 270, and still in really good shape.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: It’s funny. Probably like you, we’ve done events together and movies together, Lou and I. A lot of people look at me and say, “You should be his son. You look the same, except you’re smaller.”

    And I’m like, that’s unusual because I’ll go out on the stage and usually my physical stature is a little bit larger than most people’s.

    But Lou is still an amazing man with an amazing physique. And he’s a good guy. He’s got a really good heart for people.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Well, that’s what I noticed too. I remember at the time I had met him at the Arnold Schwarzenegger fitness competition and expo in Columbus, Ohio.

    I remember shaking hands with him, this mountain of a man, and he was the most gentle, kind person. He looked you in the eyes with a big, warm, loving smile, which is kind of how people who are big and strong and confident are. They tend to be the most gentle, loving people.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: They are.

    Dr. Michael Haley: And he was definitely not an exception to that. Just someone that you’re drawn to and love.

    But what I really enjoyed about the conversation you had—and I like knowing this about you and about people—I’m going to ask you this too: What makes you who you are?

    In that interview, you got to find out what really inspired him and led him to be who he is now.

    I’m not going to give it away. People can go to the—I’ll put a YouTube link in the resources. You can check out that interview with Lou Ferrigno, interviewed by Dr. Mark Sherwood. Check it out and find out for yourself.

    But what makes you who you are? If you go way back, were there words that were spoken to you that breathed life into some kind of philosophy or belief? How did you become who you are?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I think it all starts with the childhood and early adulthood experiences you have. And in those experiences, you have a choice.

    In life, you’re going to have ups and downs and all-arounds. You’re going to get knocked down. You’re going to get back up. That’s life.

    And the longer you live, the more you’re going to experience those ups and downs and all-arounds.

    Early on in my life, being an adopted kid, I was a little unique. I would say I had great parents, but it wasn’t the most awesome upbringing. We didn’t have the conventional types of brothers and sisters and families and sibling-oriented community.

    So I had to kind of figure it out.

    There was a moment, believe it or not, that happened when I was probably in the fourth grade, maybe third grade.

    I was always a shy guy. I was a decent athlete but wasn’t one of the popular kids—kind of in the middle of the road. It was a small school. I had 47 people in my graduating class, so everybody knows your business and knows everything you do and don’t do. And if they didn’t know it, they’d make it up. That kind of thing, right?

    So the teacher in class one day asked the class, “Does anybody have a goal that you want to do in life?”

    Of course, all of our hands went up. I didn’t think she’d call on me, but she did. I was shy, and she put me right on the spot that day.

    She said, “What do you want to do, Mark, when you grow up?”

    And I said, “I want to be a professional baseball player,” like every little kid wants to be something.

    The whole classroom busted out. They started busting out and busting on me. I was broken, man. I was like, this is not cool.

    But anyway, the exercise was to write down on a piece of paper what you want to become and put it in your pocket. Never let it go until the dream comes true.

    So that day I was forced to do that. I put it on a piece of paper, put it in my pocket, and started to walk out of class.

    The teacher caught me, and she called me aside for a really private conversation. She said, “Don’t let anybody else determine your future. It’s up to you. I watched what happened to you. I watched what hurt you. But your job is not to prove everyone else wrong. Your job is to prove yourself right.”

    I never forgot that. Honest to goodness, I never forgot that.

    I held onto that paper until one day—and this is a crazy story—I was in the dugout of one of my first professional baseball games in the country of Australia, and that light bulb went off.

    It was between innings. I was waiting for my time to hit, and I got my bag out and thought, “Do I still have that note?”

    I dug around and dug around. I found my driver’s license, and it wasn’t there. I was like, “Oh no, I lost it.”

    I don’t know what made me think of that, but then I flipped my driver’s license around, and that little note was stuck to my license.

    I was really careful because the white paper was now yellow. I peeled it back, and there were the words: “I will become a professional baseball player.”

    That moment kind of shaped everything I am.

    If you have a dream, hang on to it. I’ve always been kind of a high dreamer, high achiever, high doer after that.

    You can’t let people stand in the way of a goal that’s really driven from deep inside you. That really shaped who I am today.

    Dr. Michael Haley: It’s interesting because there’s kind of power in wanting to prove to people that you can do something they say you can’t. And then there’s also power in the people who say, “You can do that.”

    You had it coming from both sides in one day.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I did.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Which is very, very cool.

    Whatever led you to be part of the SWAT team? And was that before or after baseball?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: My baseball career ended. I did not make the major leagues in the United States, but I was able to play professionally over in Australia.

    Then I came back and got cut a few times off of teams. That wasn’t the funnest thing in the world, but you have to change careers at some point.

    I wanted something that was helpful, goal-oriented, and problem-solving. I think that’s probably the way I’m wired—to serve and protect, I suppose.

    I had a friend who was a police officer, and he said, “Well, you should apply. You’d be great.”

    And I did.

    Before I knew it, there I was on the streets of the city of Tulsa all by myself.

    I learned to operate with a lot of stress going on and issues that happened that I had to deal with. About three years on, I was offered the opportunity to try out for the SWAT team.

    I made that, and I stayed with that for ten years of my 24-year career.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. Interesting.

    Now, by any chance, have you seen the show Tulsa King?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh yeah, with Sylvester Stallone, of course.

    Dr. Michael Haley: All right. Does it have truth or facts? Does it remind you of Tulsa? Is there accuracy in it?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: There’s not.

    In that show, he’s the guy who leads the way and kind of dictates the pace of even interactions with law enforcement. That’s not what happens.

    If that guy, that character, would have been in front of me, he would have been in handcuffs very quickly. And if it would have taken two of me—and I am bigger than him, by the way, just so people know—for sure.

    But honestly, in that situation, TV is sometimes not reality, and that makes for a good show. But that’s not reality.

    Law enforcement doesn’t back down to drug lords or con men or anything like that. You just don’t. You have to deal with the problem.

    Cases like that made me laugh when I saw that. But I was like, well, people like getting entertained. That’s all good.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I suspected that might be the case.

    Now, the other thing that was really cool—I don’t know if you know this—there are videos of you circulating on YouTube when you’re on the Power Team.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: No idea.

    Dr. Michael Haley: There you go. Tearing phone books in half and rolling up frying pans and bending rebar and all kinds of neat stuff.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, breaking baseball bats. We did a lot of crazy things, for sure.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Tell us a little bit about that. How did you get involved in the Power Team, and what was the mission behind it?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: When I was on the SWAT team, the SWAT team in those days was a volunteer unit. We carried around pagers back in those days at work—my patrol job or whatever I was doing.

    When the pager goes off, you’ve got to drive to the scene. You change right there on the street. I mean, legitimately change your clothes in the street, and you just do what you’re going to do.

    But part of being a police officer, you get opportunities to work security jobs to make ends meet because, back in those days, I didn’t make a lot of money.

    I got an opportunity to work security for the Power Team, John Jacobs and the Power Team, at Oral Roberts University.

    I’d never heard of these guys and didn’t know what they did. There I was, standing guard, if you will, backstage for these big men to come out on the stage and do whatever they were going to do.

    I saw big scaffolding stacked up there with big stacks of brick and ice. I thought, “What in the world am I witnessing?”

    My job was to walk out with John Jacobs. John looked me up and down and said, “Nice arms.” That’s what he said, straight up.

    Then he went out there.

    What I saw was an event for five days in a row of men getting out there and doing some extraordinary things that blew my mind. They didn’t seem possible, but they used it to get people’s attention.

    They had a powerful message of hope, restoration, and forgiveness.

    I realized that when they got their attention, you also had an opportunity to get people’s hearts. I thought that was so cool.

    I said to myself that day, “Man, I sure would like to be a part of something like that.”

    Whatever year that was, maybe 1994 or ’95, give or take, you kind of forget. They go their way, I go mine, I collect my paycheck for the security job, and move on.

    About three years later, I was at the same location working security for a church service. A guy comes up to me and says, “Hey, have you ever done any martial arts?”

    I’m like, “No.”

    He said, “Well, we’re going to start a little local team like the Power Team. We’ll go around to different places in Tulsa and use that as a tool to speak the gospel.”

    I thought, well, that sounds neat.

    He invited me to a meeting, and before I knew it, I was out there in the housing projects in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the very thick places I worked.

    I was out on a flatbed semi-truck speaking and breaking bricks and hurting myself a lot because I didn’t know what I was doing.

    I did that for about two years, and we weren’t getting paid for anything at all.

    Then one day, out of the blue, I get a call. It was from the Power Team. They said, “Hey, we want to offer you a tryout.”

    Just like that.

    Those words came back to me. I’m like, “Oh my word. That’s crazy.”

    I was on a plane. I flew up to Des Moines, Iowa. They gave me a uniform and didn’t tell me how to do anything at all.

    I was on the stage, and I failed at every one of those things.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Oh no!

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. I mean, it was five or nine events, and there were thousands of people out there.

    I’m thinking they’re going to tell me to go home. But I tried hard. I gave it my best.

    At the end of that, I was called into what at that time was a hotel conference room.

    I thought, here we go: go home.

    But instead it was, “Welcome to the team.”

    Just like that.

    I think they saw that I wasn’t going to quit. I think that’s probably what they were looking for.

    Ten years later, I was still there. Crazy story.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That’s really neat.

    When you say things didn’t work, does that mean you tried to tear a phone book but you couldn’t?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh, I tried to tear a phone book. I failed.

    I tried to blow up a hot water bottle, and it probably didn’t make it halfway through.

    I had a stack of bricks there, and I had no idea what I was doing. It may have been maybe a foot and a half or two feet deep of concrete, which I watched these other guys go through like butter. There was just so much power.

    I hit that thing with all my might and thought I broke every bone in my elbow. I was hitting down on it, and I probably broke maybe half or a third of the way through.

    Silly me, I hit it again. They always tell me, “Don’t do that,” because you can only hurt yourself on a jagged brick.

    But I tried. I think they wanted to see my persistence.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. They must have seen not only something in success, but something in failure and how you handled that.

    Isn’t that life anyway?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: It is. You’re going to meet obstacles.

    I think they may have even given me a chance to share that story maybe three or four nights later. I shared how I felt through that process of failure and what that meant to me, how that made me want to come back, and what I learned from that.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Wow.

    Well, now, years later, you’re helping people get well. You’re on a mission to empower people to overcome self-imposed health challenges.

    I like those words because we know there’s truth in that. A lot of the challenges that we have are self-imposed, and I think that’s actually empowering. I think that’s a good thing—to be able to recognize that and say, “I may have something to do with why I’m not well.”

    Because if that’s true, then I have some power to turn things around.

    If I’m just a victim and this got me, then I’m pretty much powerless to do anything about it.

    So I kind of feel that recognizing this may be self-imposed means, well, now I can do it.

    And in your mission, you’re trying to get people off of unnecessary medicines.

    All right, so let’s talk a little bit about health and wellness.

    I want to start with a definition. This is one of my favorite definitions. I’ve got it in front of me somewhere if I can find it.

    All right. This is from Cancer.gov. Cancer.gov, by the way, is a government organization. It’s part of the National Institutes of Health. This is a big division. This is our government.

    This is how they define mainstream medicine. They say it’s a system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals, such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists, treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery. Also called allopathic medicine, biomedicine, conventional medicine, orthodox medicine, and Western medicine.

    Now you, on the other hand, are practicing functional medicine.

    What do you see wrong with that mainstream medicine definition? And how is functional medicine different?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I hadn’t heard that definition before from that website, but I will probably use that again.

    I think that’s one of the most deceptive, disempowering, discouraging, and expensive things that I’ve ever heard.

    That is not health.

    Health is not just the absence of symptoms. Health is the presence of health, meaning you can do what you want, when you want, how you want, with whom you want, and not hurt.

    You can live younger longer. You increase healthspan, you decrease sickspan, and you increase independence. You decrease dependence upon drugs, et cetera.

    In the allopathic Western system, I think the Western system is very flawed.

    I’m not anti-medicine. I am a traditional naturopath, but I’ve been trained in medicine as well via my wife being an osteopath. We work together, so we’ve got a great marriage, a great team, and we see both sides of the coin.

    Medicine is necessary from time to time. When it becomes unnecessary, that means your system is returning to normalcy, and then you become negatively affected by medicine once you get to a normal position. Therefore, you don’t need the medicine.

    Functional medicine, or upstream healing as I like to call it, doesn’t disregard symptoms. I acknowledge the symptoms, but the symptoms indeed are telling us something because the body is saying something.

    If somebody is saying something, you have a conversation. You say, “Well, why are you saying that? Tell me what that means.”

    That’s what you’re doing with the body. You’re asking what it means. What’s the body saying to me?

    Then you go back and look for what may contribute to the dysfunction of a system, systems, or system biology that may contribute to the presentation of the symptoms.

    Once you fix it upstream, the symptoms become irrelevant because they’re gone, and the need for medication becomes further irrelevant because it’s not and was never needed.

    You’re not born with medication deficiencies. That’s a very key statement.

    So we work up here, and we are aware of downstream.

    We also like to combine genetics, emotional health, spiritual health, and conversations around that because we really look at the holistic care of a human being.

    We’re not a one-dimensional person.

    That’s another angle where conventional medicine has completely failed. It’s silo medicine.

    “I’ve got a headache. I’m going to get something for my head. I’ve got a stomachache, something for my stomach. My stomach can’t have anything to do with my head. There’s no way because that doesn’t make sense. It’s not the right department.”

    That stuff doesn’t work.

    We are a synergistically derived being who lives synergistically with the world—with bugs, with viruses, with bacteria. We are living in this world, and we’re meant to thrive, not just survive.

    I think that we need to look at it completely differently.

    We’ve had amazing, amazing stories of conditions that went away. Most of the time, I kind of know why, and sometimes I don’t. I’m okay with that.

    All I care about is that people get free from the system, get independent from the system, and have a life that’s conducive to abundance, joy, and fulfillment.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I want to tap into that mindset just a little bit more, but not quite yet.

    As you were talking about medicine, I too agree it has its place. If you’re using medicine, maybe it’s to buy time while we get to the underlying cause.

    But the goal should always be, “How can I get off this medicine and not need it anymore? How do we correct the problem?”

    I’m not even opposed to pain medicine. I typically won’t go for it.

    I remember I had a surgery. I had an injury followed by a surgery, and I did take one Vicodin following that surgery.

    I decided I didn’t need any more, mostly because I really liked that Vicodin.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah.

    Dr. Michael Haley: And I realized that is a bad thing.

    I could see how people could get hooked on it. So for me, I said no to any more at that point.

    But if that helped me get a night of sleep that I needed, well, now there’s maybe a trade-off. There are benefits, and sometimes the medication can get us over the hump while the body is healing or while we’re correcting the problem of high blood pressure, overweight, glucose levels.

    Maybe we need to make changes so we don’t need the medicine anymore.

    B.J. Palmer was one of the greatest chiropractors ever. He said something like, if you took all the medicine known to mankind and threw it into the ocean, it would be good for mankind.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Bad for the fish, but good for mankind.

    It’s not to say that all medicine is bad, but in a lot of cases it’s doing more harm than good, and maybe even in the majority of cases.

    Would you agree?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I would.

    A lot of people don’t understand the mechanisms of action with medications and really what they do.

    Again, like you mentioned, those applications that you cited are probably necessary from time to time.

    If you have a person who’s hypertensive when they’re about to have a stroke or heart attack, you need to do something to get that pressure down immediately until you figure out how to bring back proper relaxation or dilation of the vessels.

    That’s the point.

    Then blood pressure medication in that application would push your blood pressure too low, and it would make the blood pressure medication dangerous because your body is functioning normally.

    But a lot of people don’t understand that medications, as a principle and very general rule, either start or stop a natural function.

    Think about that for a second.

    We’re starting or stopping a natural function. We’re bringing an unnatural start or stop to the function.

    Additionally, when that happens, you get this scenario where you might get depleted vitamins or minerals.

    If vitamins and minerals are required for cellular operation of other systems of the body, then this medication—starting or stopping a natural function, creating an unnatural situation with nutrient depletion—could cause further downstream effects.

    I’ll give you one example that we all know. It’s going to be the cholesterol-lowering effects of statin drugs.

    That has been a mistake because we must have cholesterol for our brain, for cell membrane repair, and hormone formation.

    Does cholesterol itself cause disease? No. It is the particle damage on the molecule that becomes problematic.

    So when we take statin drugs, it’s to lower LDL cholesterol. There’s no bad or good; it’s all good.

    But if we lower it, making it lower, we now have a couple of things that have happened.

    We have our hormonal backbone or processes cut off. You have no more construction. Your vitamin D, which is actually a hormone, begins to go down because you’re not producing it anymore.

    That’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg.

    Other hormones begin to go down, and all of a sudden you begin to have muscle pain because you lost your coenzyme Q10 structures. The whole system has the muscles messed up, and people hurt.

    Those aren’t good things.

    You compound that further. If the brain needs cholesterol and you take statin drugs repeatedly, are we seeing an increase in Alzheimer’s dementia today? We absolutely are.

    So we need to begin to look at medications in the proper context.

    Just one more simple example: the PPIs, the proton pump inhibitors that people are taking today.

    You might have Barrett’s esophagus or something like that where you need to stop that acid for a second because it’s creating more damage until you find other things that can bring soothing to it, maybe like an aloe or something like that. I’ve used it in the application many times.

    Those proton pump inhibitors were never meant to be used long-term.

    But I see people all the time who use those things long-term, and it knocks off the transportation of vitamin B12, which is necessary for the brain and other situations. It knocks off the synthesis of nitric oxide, which is necessary for proper vasodilation.

    So high blood pressure is tied to chronic PPI use.

    Those are some simple examples.

    But you’re right on point. Medications can be very, very dangerous if not properly prescribed and properly deprescribed.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. The other problem I have with them is just the whole thought process of, “I have this symptom, so I’m going to take the medication. Now I don’t have the symptom anymore, so everything’s okay.”

    In the case of GERD, acid reflux, you might actually have to learn how to chew your food better, consume food that has digestive enzymes in it and helps things digest, or you might have to eat proper portion meals at the right timing, maybe not right before you go to bed.

    But if I’m taking these medications and I don’t have the symptoms, why do I have to change anything?

    So I see that problem.

    Then the other problem I see with medications—and I’m going to have you talk about this one a little bit—is they can be prescribed based on a number.

    That number might be a blood pressure or a sugar level. Or we did a blood result, and we’re looking at these averages. This is the average, so we expect you to fall between these two areas.

    Tell me about the numbers. How meaningful are they, and should we use that as a decision for whether or not to take a medicine?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, we shouldn’t.

    Numbers in labs are nothing more than informational pieces. But as we both know, if you don’t interpret information with wisdom and proper context, that information can be interpreted in a foolish manner.

    We could begin to treat people’s labs as opposed to treating the person.

    This is exactly what you’re describing.

    When you treat the lab and not the person, the person then becomes a number. That’s all you are.

    The ranges that we have today are set by a system, the same system you described in your definition of health as per the Cancer.gov website.

    So if the same system that looks at health based upon a conglomeration of things, including prescriptions, sets the ranges, and the ranges are set so you prescribe medications, those ranges are derived so that medications will be used.

    If you fall outside the norm, that means you need medication.

    So what is the norm?

    I look at the norm as something that’s normally sick, like everybody else.

    I really mean that in a sense that you look at our population today, and in these United States of America, it is the most unhealthy it’s ever been in the history of the world.

    The influence of the Western diet and the Western lifestyle, going now worldwide, is affecting the world in the same manner.

    We have more sickness per capita in this country than anywhere in the world. We spend more per person for this quote-unquote health insurance, but we’re near the bottom in outcome.

    So what we’re doing simply doesn’t work.

    When we look at numbers, I look at them and understand them in a different manner, like I just described.

    For me, they’re just reference pieces. It’s what’s passing through that blood right now. It may be what’s on the roadway right now.

    You can check labs two or three hours apart over and over again, and you’re going to get some different results.

    We tend to look at labs as static instead of in motion.

    It’s like going out to your favorite highway every day at 7:00 a.m. You could take pictures between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. at your favorite highway every single day, Monday through Friday.

    You’re going to find some of the same cars. Your general traffic flow might be the same, but you might find some different things on there from day to day.

    You need to look at the whole picture as compared and opposed to just one lab.

    We like to also say, “One lab is no lab.”

    People say, “Well, that’s out of range.”

    And I’m thinking, well, when somebody calls me normal, you need to run because that’s not a compliment. That means you’re normally sick like everybody else.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Normal, not optimal.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Correct.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Right, right.

    I think of something like blood pressure. We might say, okay, it’s supposed to be between here and here. Then we give you the medications to fall in that range, and all of a sudden you’re unable to think clearly because you’re not getting enough blood flow to the brain.

    You have signs of dementia, but you’re within the right blood pressure that we decided is right.

    The other thing that’s kind of funny is these normal ranges change over time.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah.

    Dr. Michael Haley: The normal blood sugar level today is different than it was 30 years ago when I went to school. They changed the numbers. They changed the range.

    Well, how can that happen? Are humans different now?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. It’s funny you say that.

    That’s an interesting one. I was talking to someone about that just yesterday.

    We run a marker in our office called the Insulin Resistance Score. It’s kind of like the HOMA-IR score. Anyway, it’s a blood sugar analysis inclusive of insulin and C-peptide.

    The normal ranges say 33 or less.

    But I can tell you at ten or more, you’re already subclinically insulin resistant. I try to get people to five.

    It’s like we’ve gotten off with this stuff.

    The more you tell a lie and the more you repeat the lie, the more truthful it becomes. That’s not really the truth, but it’s just what people believe the truth to be, although it was never the truth.

    You’re right. They’ve changed the ranges of blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol numbers—especially LDL cholesterol—over the years.

    It’s shocking.

    The fascinating thing is, even as you age, there are certain ranges and different markers, sections of labs, where your age will change the range.

    Why does my range have to go down? Why do I have to be in a bad place compared to someone 20 years my junior when that’s a good place?

    It’s a little bit of a shell game and trickery and deception, in my opinion.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah.

    Well, let’s talk about the places that people have power or say in their health. What are the areas that they can affect and make their health better?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: To set up probably the best answer I can give with that one, understand one of the greatest con jobs in the history of mankind is to say, “Well, it’s in your genes. It’s got to be genetic. It’s in your family line, so you’re going to get that. You’re susceptible. You’re predisposed.”

    But our genes have changed 2% in 10,000 years.

    So it’s all in the inputs.

    Your genetics respond to the inputs of the environment. That’s how they work, by creating proteins in response to that. It’s called the epigenetic conversation.

    But what happens over time is we need to know that it’s not the gene’s problem. It’s an input problem.

    Understanding the genes—and we check the genes on people—is empowering and informational.

    I want to know my hardwiring. I want to know my system and how it’s operating so I can have the right software inputs.

    So we can put in the following, which we have control over.

    We have control over our thoughts, our words, our perceptions, our stress management.

    We have control over what we’re putting in our mouth, whether that be food or liquid.

    And we have control over supplements, which are supplementing what a diet is obviously not doing anymore because of the farming problems we’ve had.

    We can control what we do with our body exercise-wise. We can move more, sit less, and we can sleep more.

    We can make sleep a priority.

    Those things are foundational truths.

    No, they’re not sexy. They don’t sell TV shows. They do create health.

    Everything goes from those foundations.

    When you get those foundations right, those inputs right, the outputs have a better chance of being favorable as opposed to non-favorable.

    So we work on that a lot—what we do, what we say, what we do with our bodies, and how we rest our bodies.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Now, if you were to say one thing that tends to get in the way of people getting well, what would you say it is?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I would say it’s the misinformation that is circled around nutrition.

    We don’t live on calories. We live on nutrients that are obtained from things we put in our mouth, typically, or our skin or whatever.

    We are told by a system to consume things that are not food, and they are poisonous substances that create a negative inflammatory response in our body.

    I like to say it like this, and it’s a funny way to look at it, but it’s probably truthful to the point where it makes a point:

    If anything the U.S. government subsidizes, makes cheap, and puts on the end cap—don’t eat it.

    Stay on the outside of a grocery store.

    I think a lot of people really think it’s too expensive, but it’s actually more expensive to eat unhealthy because we’re eating nutrient-poor foods that provide no satiation or fullness sensation, as opposed to nutrient-dense foods that make us want to eat less and actually bring satiation or fulfillment.

    I think if people would just fix that one thing right there, it would help the systems of the body.

    It seems elementary and very complex, but really not.

    If you could just imagine things being—I mean, like in your background there, you’ve got a field. I’m thinking to myself, that’s a natural picture of food and where food comes from.

    If you can imagine it, it’s a natural setting, natural production setting, natural packaging.

    That’s a good thing.

    There were no donuts in the Garden of Eden. I just want people to know that.

    So it’s real food. That’s what it is.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. And since you just said that, I have to make sure that people know one of your book titles is The Garden of Eatin’, right? Which I think is hysterical.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yes, yes, yes.

    Dr. Michael Haley: There are a couple of things that you said that I like.

    One is when I said, where do we have a say in the things to do to get well, you kind of led with mindset and stress management because, really, I kind of think that leads everything else, including our food choices.

    And what gets in the way? Misinformation.

    I completely agree with that because so often we are arguing, and we have these dogmatic beliefs in what we should be eating.

    Maybe because of your own personal experience, “I overcame cancer by eating raw vegetables and only raw vegetables.”

    Well, maybe that was perfect for you at that point in time for your situation. But we can’t dogmatically put that on everyone in every circumstance.

    So I would call that misinformation, tunnel vision.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I heard a little bit of maybe Western enterprise influence in some of the word choices you used. Is that accurate?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: It is.

    And even when you think about stress, I’ll carry this one further.

    The mindset part of this—I learned this on the police department. It’s been so helpful for me.

    I was a sniper for a time on the SWAT team, so I had to learn how to handle things better and how to know, like you mentioned, if you’re activating that sympathetic nervous system side where cortisol is being produced all the time, you are thinking reactively versus logically.

    You can’t think clearly because you’re reacting perpetually.

    Stress, which goes into mindset—and this will help people. If you take nothing out of what we’ve talked about today, please get this. This is important.

    Stress has been misidentified in literature as a noun.

    It’s not. It’s a verb.

    You can’t put stress in a person, place, or thing, though there might be some triggers or stimuli that come from those persons, places, or things.

    Stress is a verb.

    Proving the point: how many listening have ever been in a traffic jam and late for an appointment?

    Well, no matter how mad you get, that traffic is not going to move, right?

    So that tells me that you have a choice in your response to the stimuli, which sets the tone for the proper mindset.

    Meaning, I have control over more things than I think I do.

    Stress, therefore, is not a noun.

    Here’s a definition: It is an action you take or decision you make to life’s expected or unexpected occurrences.

    So you really have a choice as to how you respond to life.

    So does your body and your mind. Bringing those two things together is great.

    I don’t say, and I try to teach people not to say, “Well, I stress eat.”

    No, you don’t.

    You work them backwards to where their mind can shift.

    That mind-shifting process, definition, paradigm-shifting process that I just described can reset the mindset.

    And that mindset can go down 13 inches and become a heartset.

    That’s a change we all really need to have in our world today, I believe.

    Dr. Michael Haley: As you’re saying that, for the people who are struggling with those situations, if you were in traffic and you really can’t do anything about it, but you get all fired up, that is a problem.

    I’m reminded of the Serenity Prayer, which I pulled up here on the side.

    It says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

    I think that’s a fantastic prayer or meditation for those who struggle with that.

    Did you watch the movie Apollo 13?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I did, yes.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Great.

    My favorite words in that were, “Gentlemen, failure is not an option.”

    Failure is not an option.

    Did that stand out to you?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: It does.

    You can’t go into something with the idea that you’re going to fail because you’ll focus on it.

    It’s like even with diet. We don’t ever prescribe diet. I don’t even like to use that word because diet focuses on what you can’t do instead of what you should be doing.

    You lose sight of abundance. You lose sight of opportunity when you start focusing on the negative side of things.

    It’s like you’re going to run a race. You don’t focus on failure. You focus on finishing, and it keeps you focused on the goal ahead.

    It’s like when you go to play a game. You wouldn’t coach a team and say, “Hey guys, gals, today we’re going to go out here and give 80%. It’s okay if you lose.”

    You play the game to win.

    Life is a big old game. You play to win.

    The competition is you. It’s me. It’s not anybody else.

    I don’t wake up in the day—sometimes I hear people say, “Well, you know, I’m human. I’m going to fail.”

    Like, stop.

    I realize that’s probably true, but I wake up in the day and I don’t want to make mistakes. I don’t desire to make mistakes. I don’t desire to fail.

    That’s not my goal. I’m not focusing on that.

    I’m focusing on saying the right things, doing the right things, being the right way—on The Dr. Michael Haley Show, using that as an example.

    But that’s true.

    That’s taking life one piece at a time where failure doesn’t become the focus, and therefore it’s not an option.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah.

    Now let’s talk a little bit about your clinic, Functional Medical Institute.

    People might be hearing this and say, “How can I talk to Dr. Mark Sherwood or Dr. Michele Sherwood? What options are available?”

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, obviously, with the beauty of technology and multi-state licensure, people can work with us really from all around the country.

    It’s pretty much a center right now. We focus on all the inputs we talked about: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, genetics, hormones, peptides, supplements, and wrap all that around the human being.

    It’s a very personalized approach.

    We have unique testing combinations to actually quantify and measure the biological aging processes and speeds of things like our immune systems and our organs.

    Some of that stuff out there is so awesome now because it motivates one to really work on something.

    I like to coin the biological age versus the chronological age.

    We just need to think about aging differently.

    As time has gone on, I would be remiss if I didn’t say, well, I think about my calendar age, but I don’t need to.

    I need to be focusing on quality of life all the time.

    So that’s kind of what we do.

    We’re super easy to reach. Our websites are simple. It’s drmarksherwood.com and drmichelesherwood.com.

    And a little shout-out to my wife: she’s my best friend. She’s not my spare rib. She’s my prime rib. Just a shout-out to her.

    But it’s Michele with one L.

    I like to say further, there’s no hell in my Michele.

    So there’s no period in those. It’s drmarksherwood.com and drmichelesherwood.com.

    Dr. Michael Haley: That’s great. Easy to find.

    On your website, you also have your own supplement line. The brand would be the Functional Medical Institute, but within that, you have a certain line called Kingdom.

    Tell us about that. What was the inspiration behind it? What’s your favorite? What made you want to make that?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, it started off kind of as a labor of love back in about 2020.

    We had that wonderful thing that shook the nation and shook the world called COVID.

    People were complaining about not having food and maybe not getting food and all that stuff. Remember all that talk?

    So we thought, well, let’s just make something.

    The very first thing we made was Kingdom Fuel.

    We sourced organic pea protein. We got some organic greens and reds, some fibers, both soluble and insoluble, and some vitamins and minerals.

    We sourced those materials ourselves and ponied the money up, and we made Kingdom Fuel.

    We made it because the word “kingdom,” for us, was, “I’m not living by the rules of this world.”

    By the rules of this world, this world is terrible, and I want to do something different.

    So it was giving people a choice.

    We made that, and we got it to where it would be between two and five dollars per meal so people could have something to go to.

    Then that bled into—we started mixing in some colostrum and some collagen and some multivitamins and minerals that were in packs, so people could have something really convenient, easy, and cheap.

    We started using molecular hydrogen a lot. So there are some hydrogen-initiating products in there, bottles and air or gas.

    Man, it’s been a journey, but it gives people an option, I suppose, to have some choices.

    We did it as our labor of love.

    Was it because we made a lot of money on it? No, because it cost us kind of part of my right arm.

    But it was worth it because it gave people options that were easy and convenient to put good nutrition in our systems.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Now, one of the things—you have a Kingdom coffee, don’t you?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yes.

    Dr. Michael Haley: For a lot of people, coffee is like a bad word. But I enjoy my organic cup every day.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. Coffee is a big one. It’s got a lot of benefits. Studies have shown that, as long as it doesn’t become the drink of choice, I think that’s one angle.

    And then most coffee today is moldy. You know that. I know that. It’s just really sad, especially the coffee you buy in powder form.

    I like coffee, so I usually have two cups a day, and I use the collagen as a creamer.

    All this stuff kind of bled out from what my wife and I like ourselves, I suppose.

    But we bought the rights to a field out of Colombia so we could actually have organic, mold-free tested coffee beans.

    They come in bean form where people can actually grind it.

    It’s really good. I have it every day.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Fantastic. Fantastic.

    Well, I kept you for an hour, and I want to thank you for your time.

    Are there any final parting words of wisdom that you want to share with the audience?

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: I’m so grateful. Thanks for having me on. Super grateful.

    I trust that people are motivated today to make some changes.

    The last thing I’ll leave with people, I think it’s important, is: Don’t wait until tomorrow.

    Do what you’ve got to do today.

    Remember that what you do today will affect you tomorrow.

    So you decide today what you want your future to look like in one respect.

    And then don’t live in the shame of yesterday.

    That’s like driving a car looking in the rearview mirror. You’re going to crash going forward.

    So start today.

    Do your best and make today, being the present, the gift it is.

    Just do a good job, one day at a time.

    Dr. Michael Haley: Dr. Mark Sherwood, thank you so much.

    Dr. Mark Sherwood: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

    Dr. Michael Haley: I hope you enjoyed that episode today on The Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this.

    If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot, and share this exact episode with them.

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    All the details are at DrHaley.com, and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.


    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is functional medicine?

    Functional medicine focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of disease rather than simply treating symptoms.

    Can functional medicine help reduce medication use?

    Yes. By correcting underlying issues such as diet, lifestyle, and stress, many people can reduce or eliminate unnecessary medications under proper guidance.

    Is conventional medicine bad?

    No. It is valuable for acute situations and emergencies, but it may fall short in addressing chronic conditions at their root.

    What are the most important health habits?

    Nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and mindset are the core pillars that influence long-term health outcomes.

    Are lab numbers always accurate indicators of health?

    Not always. Lab values provide snapshots, but they must be interpreted in context of the whole person.


  • How to Stay Strong, Flexible, and Active in Your 70s with Jerzy Gregorek | Dr. Haley Show #137

    What would it take to feel stronger, move better, and have less pain as you age? In this episode of the Dr. Haley Show, Dr. Michael Haley talks with four-time world champion Jerzy Gregorek about strength, speed, flexibility, discipline, and the mindset required to build a “happy body” for the long term.

    ABOUT THIS EPISODE

    In this episode, Dr. Michael Haley interviews Jerzy Gregorek, a four-time world champion weightlifter, coach, author, and co-creator of the Happy Body Program. Jerzy shares the remarkable story of his early life in Poland, his role in the Solidarity movement, and how hardship, discipline, and personal transformation shaped the philosophy he teaches today.

    The conversation then turns to fitness, aging, and performance. Jerzy explains why strength alone is not enough, why speed matters as we get older, how flexibility supports performance, and how “micro-progression” can help people improve without crashing. He also unpacks his famous phrase, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life,” and explains how long-term goals, daily practice, and compound growth can change both body and mind.

    This is a motivating episode for anyone who wants to age with more strength, less pain, better movement, and a bigger vision for what later life can look like.

    RESOURCES

    1. Buy the book “Happy Body Program” on Amazon
    2. Visit Jerzey Gregorek’s website thehappybody.com
    3. Follow Jerzey Gregorek on X.com
    4. Follow Jerzey Gregorek on Facebook
    5. Follow Jerzey Gregorek on Instagram
    6. Follow Jerzey Gregorek on LinkedIn
    7. Subscribe to Jerzey Gregorek on YouTube
    8. Watch this episode on YouTube
    9. Listen to this episode on iTunes
    10. Listen to this episode on Spotify

    TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Powerful opening: lose everything to gain everything
    00:49 Can you be stronger in your 70s than in your 30s?
    01:57 Jerzy’s role in Poland’s freedom movement
    03:52 Freedom honors vs. world championship medals
    05:25 Persistence, discipline, and early life struggles
    07:05 The first fire that changed Jerzy’s life
    08:15 Unconditional love and total personal transformation
    09:31 “Lose everything to gain everything” explained
    10:34 Injury, comeback, and world championship success
    12:13 The foundation of strength, speed, and flexibility
    13:25 What Jerzy means by “power”
    16:54 Full range vs. partial reps in training
    18:43 Snatching on a balance board
    22:14 Micro-progression and training fast reflexes
    23:08 Speed, aging, and the idea of “optional” decline
    25:50 Hard choices, easy life
    29:36 What micro-progression really means
    30:08 The cerebral palsy case that shaped Jerzy’s thinking
    33:24 What the Happy Body Program is
    36:21 Is the book enough to get started?
    37:26 Daily practice, coaching, and building a lifestyle
    40:00 Where to start with the Happy Body
    41:14 Why movement leads to more movement
    42:26 Dancing, skiing, and training the brain
    43:22 Snowboarding, soreness, and flexibility
    46:22 Jerzy reveals his age
    48:22 Advice for people who feel weak, stuck, or unmotivated
    52:38 Jerzy’s final message: choose a huge goal

    Full Episode Transcript

    Below is the full transcript of this episode for those who want to go deeper into Jerzy Gregorek’s philosophy on strength, aging, and long-term fitness.

    Can you really improve strength, flexibility, speed, and overall physical performance later in life? In this episode, Jerzy Gregorek explains his philosophy of “hard choices, easy life,” why power matters as we age, and how micro-progression can help people build a stronger, more capable body over time.


    Opening

    Jerzy Gregorek:
    We need to lose everything to gain everything—to gain a different way of life sometimes. When you come out of darkness, when you come out of a fall, you come out with advantages. You become a healer. You become knowledgeable. You become more than before.


    Introduction

    Dr. Michael Haley:
    This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, your host.

    What if you could have better physical performance and less pain ten years from now? What if you could have more strength and flexibility in your 70s than you did in your 30s?

    Jerzy Gregorek is a four-time world weightlifting champion and co-creator of the Happy Body Program—a system that combines mindful exercise, nutrition, and emotional intelligence.

    Jerzy, welcome to the show.


    Jerzy’s Early Life & Poland

    Dr. Haley:
    You’ve achieved incredible things in fitness, but I understand you were also honored by the Polish government. Can you tell me about that?

    Jerzy Gregorek:
    Yes. I was a student at the Fire Protection Academy in Warsaw in 1981 during the Solidarity movement. The government wanted to use the fire department against demonstrators. We refused. We went on strike.

    Ten days later, they came in with helicopters and tanks. I refused to sign allegiance. I stayed underground for four years. My mentor was captured, tortured, and murdered. Shortly after, I left the country.

    Years later, in 2018, I was invited back to Poland and awarded a medal for fighting for freedom.


    Freedom vs. Championships

    Dr. Haley:
    What felt better—winning a world championship or receiving that honor?

    Jerzy:
    It’s hard to compare. Winning the championship was emotional. But receiving that medal meant Poland became a free country. That was bigger.


    Early Influences

    Dr. Haley:
    Did anyone ever speak words into your life that shaped you?

    Jerzy:
    My father told me I wasn’t meant for school—that I should become a locksmith. I went anyway, but I fell into alcoholism until I was 18.

    Then people came into my life who showed me something I had never seen—unconditional love. That changed everything.


    Losing Everything to Gain Everything

    Jerzy:
    Sometimes we need to lose everything to gain everything. When you come out of darkness, you come out stronger.

    That’s why I can help addicts today—I was one. I understand them.


    Injury & Comeback

    Dr. Haley:
    Tell us about your weightlifting success.

    Jerzy:
    I injured my spine at 23—almost paralyzed. It took years to recover. After 35, I returned to competition and won world championships.


    What Creates Strength

    Dr. Haley:
    What made you successful?

    Jerzy:
    I was always the underdog. I searched for something better. Eventually, I found that everything comes from pursuing power.

    When people train for power, they become stronger, leaner, more flexible, and more attractive.


    What “Power” Means

    Jerzy:
    Power is strength and speed combined.

    You can be strong but not fast. True athletes are both strong and fast.

    Speed is controlled by the nervous system. That’s what makes performance.


    Strength vs Flexibility

    Jerzy:
    Flexibility supports power. Without it, you get injured.

    But strength and speed determine performance quality.


    Full Range vs Partial Reps

    Jerzy:
    Partial reps and full reps both have their place. They train different aspects. Sometimes we use partial reps to handle heavier loads.


    Balance Training & Nervous System

    Jerzy:
    When you train on balance boards, your body reacts faster than your mind. The body learns automatically.

    This improves your nervous system and reflexes.


    Speed & Aging

    Jerzy:
    As we age, the brain and body slow down. But speed training can help prevent that.

    When you trip, strength won’t save you—speed will.


    “Optional” Aging

    Jerzy:
    People talk about aging as decline. I think it’s optional.

    If you train properly, you can maintain function.


    Hard Choices, Easy Life

    Jerzy:
    Hard choices lead to growth. Easy choices lead to decline.

    Growth requires going into the unknown.


    Micro-Progression

    Jerzy:
    Micro-progression means improving in small steps.

    If you go too fast, you crash.


    Powerful Example

    Jerzy:
    I worked with a man with cerebral palsy who couldn’t lift a bar.

    We started with a 3-pound bar. Over time, he became independent, went to school, and transformed his life.

    That’s micro-progression.


    The Happy Body Program

    Jerzy:
    I call it athletic lifestyle medicine.

    It helps people heal through strength, flexibility, posture, and daily habits.

    The problem is usually lifestyle—so the solution must also be lifestyle.


    How It Works

    Jerzy:
    The book contains the full system. Some people can follow it alone.

    Others need coaching, videos, and guidance.

    Consistency is everything—you must do it every day.


    Results Over Time

    Jerzy:
    In a few months, you’ll feel better.

    But real transformation takes years.

    Eventually, your body becomes strong, flexible, and pain-free.


    Movement Leads to Movement

    Jerzy:
    When your body improves, you naturally want to move more—surfing, skiing, dancing, lifting.


    Brain & Movement

    Jerzy:
    Activities like dancing improve brain function because they require coordination, memory, and timing.


    Learning & Speed

    Jerzy:
    The faster your brain communicates with your body, the faster you learn skills like snowboarding.


    Age Reveal

    Jerzy:
    I’m 71 years old.


    Commitment Test

    Jerzy:
    I tell people: practice for three months, then come back.

    Most don’t. But those who do are ready to change.


    Advice for People Who Feel Stuck

    Jerzy:
    People set goals that are too small.

    Pick a big goal—five to ten years.

    Remove expectations. Focus on the journey.

    The goal will guide your habits, your mentors, and your daily actions.


    Final Message

    Jerzy:
    The goal doesn’t have to happen.

    But the process of pursuing it will transform you.


    Closing

    Dr. Haley:
    Jerzy, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

    Jerzy:
    Thank you. It’s important to help people embrace hard choices and get better.


    Outro

    Dr. Haley Show Outro:
    I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you’re listening on.

    If this episode made you think of someone, take a screenshot and share it with them.

    You can find the show notes at drhaley.com, and for more content, check out Dr. Michael Haley on YouTube.

    We’ll see you on the next episode.


    FAQ’s

    What is the main topic of this episode?

    This episode focuses on fitness, strength, flexibility, speed, and healthy aging, with Jerzy Gregorek sharing his long-term philosophy for building a stronger body later in life.

    Who is Jerzy Gregorek?

    Jerzy Gregorek is a four-time world champion weightlifter, coach, author, and co-creator of the Happy Body Program.

    What does “Hard Choices, Easy Life” mean?

    Jerzy uses this phrase to describe the long-term rewards of discipline, delayed gratification, and choosing growth over comfort.

    What is micro-progression?

    Micro-progression is Jerzy’s idea of improving in small, manageable steps so the body and mind can adapt without burnout or injury.

    What is the Happy Body Program?

    The Happy Body Program is Jerzy Gregorek’s training philosophy and system focused on strength, speed, flexibility, posture, and long-term physical improvement.

    Who should listen to this episode?

    This episode is ideal for people interested in fitness over 50, fitness over 60, fitness over 70, mobility, strength training, healthy aging, and long-term physical resilience.