Al Danenberg thought he was a poster boy for a senior healthy living lifestyle and eating habits, but one sharp pain in the shoulder led to back pains, chest pains, and breathing difficulty. He found out he had incurable bone marrow cancer and had only a few months left to live.
That was 2018.
What helped him was a series of unconventional cancer protocols that he tweaked as he went along, but that doesn’t mean there were no setbacks. He fractured himself so many times. He was cleared with cancer cells, but COVID activated his plasma cells creating dysfunctional antibodies which damaged his bones even more.
But now, he has lived beyond his prognosis.
In this conversation, he shared how lifestyle and diet changes are the key to his health, and puts on his periodontist hat as he discusses ways to help our gut, what anti-nutrients are and the benefits of pulsed electromagnetic therapy. With his life story and great knowledge, as his oncologist says it, Al is genuinely one of a kind.
Quick Guide:
00:59 Introduction
01:58 Outliving his prognosis
18:53 What his oncologist say about his methods
20:52 One’s outlook can change the situation
23:13 From paleo to carnivore diet and how it helps gut health
39:50 How can we treat ourselves to avoid gut problems?
44:25 The anti-nutrients
48:55 Benefits of PEMF therapies
56:09 Closing and contacts
Get to know our guest:
Al Danenberg is a nutritional periodontist. He was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer but survived through lifestyle changes and therapies. He continues to do individual consultations to help patients enhance their immune systems.
“Why would we even want to start eating something our body never wanted to eat in the first place? And that's an interesting story to be told. Because for the most part, we are animal eaters, we can eat animals without a problem, unless there are certain medical issues that you might have, but for the most part, we can eat the animal products without a problem and absorb these nutrients. And we don't need these plants that are very damaging more so than others.” - Dr. Al Danenberg
Connect with him:
Website: https://drdanenberg.com/
Episode snippets:
05:53 - 07:05 Finding out his disease
16:05 - 17:34 Cancer and bone fractures didn’t stop him from creating the highest quality of life
20:54 - 21:26 - The attitude contributes a lot
26:20 - 27:41 - Adapting th
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
Al Danenberg thought he was a poster boy for a senior healthy living lifestyle and eating habits, but one sharp pain in the shoulder led to back pains, chest pains, and breathing difficulty. He found out he had incurable bone marrow cancer and had only a few months left to live.
That was 2018.
What helped him was a series of unconventional cancer protocols that he tweaked as he went along, but that doesn’t mean there were no setbacks. He fractured himself so many times. He was cleared with cancer cells, but COVID activated his plasma cells creating dysfunctional antibodies which damaged his bones even more.
But now, he has lived beyond his prognosis.
In this conversation, he shared how lifestyle and diet changes are the key to his health, and puts on his periodontist hat as he discusses ways to help our gut, what anti-nutrients are and the benefits of pulsed electromagnetic therapy. With his life story and great knowledge, as his oncologist says it, Al is genuinely one of a kind.
Quick Guide:
00:59 Introduction
01:58 Outliving his prognosis
18:53 What his oncologist say about his methods
20:52 One’s outlook can change the situation
23:13 From paleo to carnivore diet and how it helps gut health
39:50 How can we treat ourselves to avoid gut problems?
44:25 The anti-nutrients
48:55 Benefits of PEMF therapies
56:09 Closing and contacts
Get to know our guest:
Al Danenberg is a nutritional periodontist. He was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer but survived through lifestyle changes and therapies. He continues to do individual consultations to help patients enhance their immune systems.
“Why would we even want to start eating something our body never wanted to eat in the first place? And that's an interesting story to be told. Because for the most part, we are animal eaters, we can eat animals without a problem, unless there are certain medical issues that you might have, but for the most part, we can eat the animal products without a problem and absorb these nutrients. And we don't need these plants that are very damaging more so than others.” - Dr. Al Danenberg
Connect with him:
Website: https://drdanenberg.com/
Episode snippets:
05:53 - 07:05 Finding out his disease
16:05 - 17:34 Cancer and bone fractures didn’t stop him from creating the highest quality of life
20:54 - 21:26 - The attitude contributes a lot
26:20 - 27:41 - Adapting th
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
S3E22 Al Danenberg
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eating, paleo diet, gut, oncologist, pmf, create, foods, body, plants, animals, diet, people, cell, multiple myeloma, cancer, called, mouth, infection, carnivore, seeds
SPEAKERS
Jack Heald, Al Danenberg, Dr. Philip Ovadia
Announcer 00:10
He was a morbidly obese surgeon destined for an operating table and an early death. Now he's a rebel MD who is Fabulously Fit and fighting to make America healthy again. This is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia.
Jack Heald 00:37
Well, welcome back, everybody. We are delighted to have you with on the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with us today. We've got somebody that once again Phil's track down what looks like a fantastic story. Dr. Al Danenberg. Phil, I'm just gonna throw it to you, set it up, introduce our guest and off we'll go.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 00:59
Sure thing, really excited to talk with Dr. Dannenberg on multiple levels. I think I first became aware of his personal story, which is quite compelling, probably a couple of years ago on one of the podcasts that I listened to. And then he's another practitioner that I would say has created his own mold. I wouldn't even say broken the mold; I'd say created his own mold just perusing his website. He is to my knowledge, the only nutritional periodontist probably in the world, which I think is great. But really excited to hear both his professional and his personal story. So, Al with that, why don't you give a brief introduction to our audience of who you are and how you got here?
Al Danenberg 01:58
Well, first of all, I'm 75 years old, so it can’t be that brief. I mean, if you really want to know what's going on, it's going to be more than brief, I guess. I am a periodontist, practiced for 44 years. Periodontics is a specialty of dentistry that treats gum disease, jaw bone infection, and variety of aspects related to that. And I stopped practicing actually seeing clinical patients in 2018 because of a medical situation. And here I am thriving and I can go over that medical problem if you want and go you go into a little bit more detail, but I have utilized nutritional concepts along with traditional periodontal treatment, but more cutting-edge periodontal treatment, not just deep cleaning and surgery where you cut open the gums, but treatment that involves specific types of wavelength lasers to regenerate bone. So, it's quite exciting for me to have done that and incorporating those modalities I've recommended. Not all my patients have loved what I had to say. I recommended a change on diet, a change of lifestyle, to improve all the other factors that integrate into a healthy mouth.
Jack Heald 03:38
Well, Dr. Dannenberg, one of the things that gives someone credibility is experience. So, I think it'd be worthwhile for you to go into the health issue that you faced in 2018.
Al Danenberg 03:54
Sure, of course, so around 2018, up to 2018, I was practicing Periodontics, learned a lot about nutrition, started to write books, did some seminars, lectures around the country. And actually, I was speaking at the Paleo FX meeting in Austin, Texas in April 2018. And while I was traveling, I noticed some soreness around my shoulder, which was kind of strange, and it just didn't go away, went to the meeting, did my little speech, and came home and the shoulder pain became back pain and became chest pain and difficulty breathing. And I'm a hardhead so it took a little while for me to determine maybe I can't figure this out on my own, I need to see my medical doctor. So, I went to my general medical doctor who I had been seeing for years and he did some blood work and the bloodwork look normal but one of the blood tests that he did was the C-reactive Protein and most people know in the medical world that a C-reactive protein can be an indicator for systemic inflammation. Inflammation inside the body in the circulatory system doesn't say where the inflammation is, it just says, hey, it's there. Let's pursue it. So, then he did an MRI. He did a little bit more research. And he calls me on the phone. And he tells me, this is now September 2018, he says, are kids around and he says that did somebody beat you up, or did you fall down some steps? And I said, of course not. I think I just pulled a muscle on my shoulder. And he said, in a more serious tone, I think you have either lymphoma, leukemia, or multiple myeloma. Wow. At this point in my life, I thought I was the seniors’ poster boy for healthy living lifestyle and eating habits. And here I am given a kind of dire prognosis.
Jack Heald
Kinda dire?
Al Danenberg
Yeah, it’s kinda dire. So here he is, telling me what's going on. I'm thinking, oh, my God, my entire life is going to change. And I'm devastated. He recommends an oncologist who he knows well, for me to see I had no idea who this was yet. I'd had a bunch of other tests and went to the oncologist. And he, eventually after all the tests, since myself and my wife, my two adult kids down, and he tells me I have IgA kappa light chain, multiple myeloma. Basically, it is a bone marrow cancer. It is a very specific bone marrow cancer, and it's incurable. And I have three to six months to live. That's September 2018,
Jack Heald 07:05
September 2018. Bone marrow cancer, untreatable. You shouldn't be
Al Danenberg 07:14
Incurable, incurable. Doctors tried to treat it.
Jack Heald
I’m sorry. Incurable.
Jack Heald 07:18
And you'll be dead by April 2019.
Al Danenberg 07:22
Yeah, that would be the best-case scenario. Sure. So, he said, let's start chemo the next day. And I said to him, and again you know what it would be like for a truck of bricks to drop on your head, right? This is the first time I'm hearing what that is. And so, we decide, I decide and my wife agrees, I'm not going to do chemotherapy. I tell him, why would I do chemotherapy, which is going to bring me down. Medically, it’s going to have a lot of side effects if I only have three to six months to live. He said, well, if you did chemotherapy, your life expectancy will be extended, you'll go into remission. And I said, well, you said it's not curable. He said, well, unfortunately, you'll go into remission, but it won't work completely. Over a period of time, you'll get this cancer back, you'll have to have more chemotherapy with more caustic drugs. And eventually, you're going to die from multiple myeloma. I'm very geeky. And I want to know, what does he mean by that? So, I asked him, how a person with multiple myeloma die. And he says that more than likely, you either have kidney failure because this cancer affects the kidneys severely, or you bleed to death in some fashion because of an anemic condition because the bone marrow is replacing all the healthy blood cells. Or you die from an infection because your bone marrow can't mount a defense because the bone marrow houses the plasma cells that make antibodies for infections, viruses, bacteria, infections from external sources. So that's what I learned at that appointment. What I did decide was like that I mentioned, I was not going to do chemo. I needed to find something else that may maintain the quality of my life. I had no interest in living a long time, deteriorating over a period of years. What I wanted to do if anything, is to have the quality of life that I had when I'm here speaking to my oncologist, and I felt fine except for some chest pain. And eventually, keep that quality of life until I couldn't do anything else. So, I created a series of unconventional cancer protocols from a lot of research. I tweaked it many, many, many times. What I did in the beginning is totally different than what I'm doing now. But I did very well. So, I did very well. My oncologist was shocked and pleasantly surprised. I saw him every month, every four weeks for evaluation. And now September 2018. Another almost year goes by, and now it's August 2019. And I'm doing well. What I needed to do and the pain by the way, let me tell you why I had pain in my chest is because multiple myeloma weakens the bone structure. And some of my ribs cracked. And one of the ribs was pressing deeper and was causing pain if I was to try to take a deep breath. So, I know that this disease makes my bone structure very fragile. I didn't understand how fragile it could be. But I knew it would be very fragile. So here I am, August 2019. Stop me as soon as you think this is boring.
Jack Heald 11:18
You've already made it six months when you're not supposed to.
Al Danenberg 11:21
Right? So now it's August 2019. I know that I've lived longer than my prognosis. I'm standing in my bathroom. And I am brushing and flossing my teeth. So, I think I know how to do that, sound cleaning my mouth and I take the dental floss. And I want to throw the dental floss into the trashcan and the trashcan is just immediately to my left. So, I twist my body like anybody would to the left to throw the dental floss away. Once I do that, my right femur snaps in half. I crashed into the floor, break a few ribs and break my right humerus in half.
Jack Heald
Humerus is? That’s the upper arm?
Al Danenberg
Yeah, where the biceps are. So, I don't know that I broke these yet. But when I look at my body lying on this floor, it's bent in ways that I can't bend these bones. So, I know it's not a good thing. And it's painful. So, I'm screaming for my wife who is in the other room. She comes. And obviously, there's a lot of motion here and emotion here. And she calls EMS, they take me to the hospital. Now, what I am thinking is, in my irrational state maybe, I've lived like you said longer than my prognosis. My bones are very fragile. I have an incurable bone marrow cancer. And now I’ve broken two of the major bones on the right side of my body. And all the patients that I have seen in the past, if they fall and break their pelvis, they don't do very well, the morbidity and mortality is high. So, I'm thinking it's over. And I tell the emergency room doctor, I'm ready to die, and I want to die. So, what they do is they fix my right femur because the femoral artery is right there. And it would be punctured and I believe the death hospitals don’t want you to die in their care. So, they fix my right femur, surgically. They don't fix my right arm. And they put me into a hospice hospital to die. So, I am in a hospice hospital in where I live, and of all things, and I’m there for a week or two, there is a hurricane coming to Charleston, South Carolina, called Dorian. So this hurricane is moving at one or two miles an hour but 187 mile an hour winds and its eye is going to hit near where the hospital is. So, the hospitals ordered to evacuate of all their hospice patients. And my wife being a nurse helped them and they didn't know where to put me. So, my wife gets a hospital bed. I am now in my home with hospice. The hurricane comes and goes and it is what it is. And then my wife, who is a phenomenal, strong individual, gives me some tough love. And she basically says look, you have done so well until these fractures. Let's get you back on your unconventional cancer protocols like you're doing. Let me get a physical therapist in and let's just see what we can do and not continue with this nonsense of dying. So, the physical therapist comes in, I've had a catheter in my body, and you know where it is, for 30 days, like, it's terrible as a matter of fact. I get the catheter out, I get now out of bed, the physical therapist helps me literally sit up in bed, and then I start to walk on a walker, and I'm becoming more mobile, even this leg that was broken, they put a bar in it, and I can actually stand on it. My right arm, they never fixed. So, it has a little crook in it. But it's healed somewhat. So, I am starting to become more mobile. And I revoke hospice. And I go to see my oncologist, the original oncologist in October 2019, and he's shocked that I'm still alive. And I said, well, the only reason is my wife has given me some tough love. And I am just doing the things that I think I need to do to support my body. And that basically, my basic, unconventional cancer protocols, and nothing fancy here, by the way, it's just methods to support your immune system. My immune system is shot, I'll never get it as good as you guys are. But I can enhance that immune system to fight the fight that it was designed to fight. And that's what I've done. So, from that point on, I've gone in and out of problems. I've had setbacks. But by May of 2020, I had a PET scan that showed no cancer cells. Unfortunately, it hasn't stayed that way. So, I got COVID in 2021. That activated my plasma cells. And since my plasma cells are malignant for the most part, it created a lot of dysfunctional antibodies, stimulated more internal damage to the bones. So, I've had many, many, many bone fractures, especially my ribs and the vertebral column, the vertebrae, but I have been able to create the highest quality of life that I can. I am physically not able to do the things that I used to do. But on the other hand, I am mentally alert, I do consults all over the world. And my oncologist continues to say, you're one of a kind.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 17:36
So, there's so much to dig into, but what I want to go back to when you were having that initial discussion with the oncologist. What's interesting to me is you asked a very insightful question: how do people with multiple myeloma die?
Al Danenberg
Yes.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
And the answers he gave you are probably the same exact answers that most oncologists would give if you ask them, how do people receiving chemotherapy die. Because they die from infections, they die from kidney failure, and they die from blood dysfunction, bleeding, and the like. So, that just a very interesting thing. But yeah, so here we are five years later. You, I'm going to imagine, have outlived if that oncologist or a group of oncologists saw a hundred patients with same cancer as you in that timeframe, and put the other 99 on chemo, I'm gonna guess that those 99 are probably dead at this point.
Al Danenberg 18:50
Yeah, maybe, of course.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 18:53
98 of them probably are. And one person may be survived chemo and yet here you are doing untraditional things. And you've outlived the people who do the traditional things. And I'm just wondering what the response is to that, what is their take on that?
Al Danenberg 19:16
I do respect my oncologist, who's a conventional oncologist. And he will tell me, of all the cancers and multiple myeloma is kind of one of those cancers that is incurable and that it comes and goes, no matter what you do, and he would put me into the category well, it's now kind of subsiding on its own, and it will reactivate on its own. In addition, though, he does give me credit for the things that I've changed in my lifestyle and diet that obviously has some success with a lot of other people with other types of chronic disease, so he understands that, if nothing else, I have enhanced my immune system, and thereby enhancing and maintaining a quality of life as best as I can. But he will not go to the edge and say, you have the answer, I need to get all my patients on the diet and lifestyle choices that you're making. Unfortunately, he's not going to do that. But I think that he would say, continuously do what you're doing, because you're doing it right.
Jack Heald 20:43
There's people listening right now, who are going, ask him what he does?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 20:52
Well, yeah, we're gonna get to that, certainly. But I was also going to just comment I think your attitude has a lot to do with, I think, unfortunately, a lot of people in your situation just give up hope. And unfortunately, our medical system doesn't do a great job of giving them hope. And so, I think that plays a big part in this and you weren't willing to accept that, and you are willing to fight and have been fighting. So, I think that goes a long way. But like, Jack said, everyone wants to...
Al Danenberg 21:28
I think you're right, that's a very important element, though. And I think that's an important element for all chronic disease. I think that emotional stress, we can clump this all together. And a term of emotional stress has a tremendous negative effect on the body, especially the gut, and the bacteria, and the garden of bacteria in the gut that has an effect on inflammation throughout the body that now can affect every organ system in the body. And there are a number of people that become victims and not survivors. And then there are a number of people and maybe much fewer that take on a survivor instinct and don't consider them victims. I personally can get very depressed at times. I mean, I'm human, right? So, it's not like I've done everything right. And look at me, I'm on a pedestal. I have had a lot of setbacks. I have had some really depressed moments. I think another element for success is not just attitude, it's a partner of one sort or another to help you individually get out of a bad situation mentally. My wife does that. I help her when she's down, which is very, very infrequently, but she can certainly help me when I'm down. Now, when I'm up, it's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I am great. But there are moments when things are rough.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 23:13
Yeah, understandably so. So, I guess let's talk, let's dig in a little bit about what you've been doing. And I think let's start with the big one, which is the diet. And let's preface this. You didn't come across, you didn't just sort of pick some things out of a hat. I know you researched this and came up with this protocol. And as you said, you've kind of adjusted it over time. But talk about, let's talk about the diet part of it first, and then let's get into some of the other things that you found helped you.
Al Danenberg 23:57
So, before I had my diagnosis, I was involved with newer thoughts of nutrition, least newer thoughts for me on nutrition, and I had become an individual who followed the Paleo Diet concept. So, I was eating a paleo-type diet, which would be basically removing certain foods like grains, seed oils, and legumes and eating basically meat, and some vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds occasionally, but those were the foods that I ate, and I did very well with that. And so, once I was diagnosed, I pursued that but I also went into what's called the autoimmune Paleo Diet, which cuts out a few other things including dairy and nightshades, which are somewhat irritating to the body. And we can get into why they are irritating later on if you want. And that was what I started to do the day 1 when I was diagnosed. As I started to progress with that, I found a clinic in Budapest, Hungary. They used to call themselves The Paleo Medicina Clinic, they now call them the International Center for Nutritional Medical Intervention. And the doctors in this clinic are treating just patients with serious chronic diseases and all forms of cancer. And today, they've had maybe over 6000 or so patients under their wings. And they basically put these individuals on a very strict animal-based diet. And it is amazingly curative. And they do write case reports of their successes in various journals. Obviously, they also translated into English. When I found out about that, it really hit home because the Paleo diet was kind of a stepping stone to move toward that. And then I got involved and learn more about the carnivore diet that's spoken and researched with many people today, and all of this started to make sense. And I began a very strict animal-based diet in January 2020. And it was, I think, transformative for me. It helped me. I think it affected the fact that my cancer cells were not visible in the PET scan in May of 2020. I think all of this was very, very positive. But once I was reading the case reports from this clinic in Budapest, Hungary, I knew that this made the most sense to me. So, I continue that and that's the kind of diet I eat now. I don't do 100% just animals, I eat basically, I would say 80 or so percent animal meat, organs, and that includes cartilage and, and of course, when you eat meat, you're eating the blood, you're eating all the animal product from nose to tail. And I'm also eating some fruit and some raw honey. I don't eat any vegetables to speak of and I don't eat any nuts or seeds.
Jack Heald 27:44
So, the Paleo diet is very similar but not identical to carnivore.
Al Danenberg 27:51
Well, no, carnivore is really strict in that it is just animal-based. So, it's just animal products. Paleo uses animal products, but also vegetables, spinach, legumes, but it also includes nuts and seeds.
Jack Heald
All right.
Al Danenberg
The Paleo diet has some plant matter. And a carnivore diet, a strict carnivore diet has no plant matter at all.
Jack Heald 28:21
Okay.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 28:23
What used to be Paleomedicina diet, from what I understand is pretty high fat.
Al Danenberg
Yes.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
It's a ketogenic. It's a true kind of therapeutic ketogenic diet.
Al Danenberg 28:39
Yes, it is two grams of fat to one gram of protein. And just a little bit of carbs, if there are some carbs involved. It is considered a high fat, high fat, moderate protein diet. Now, carnivore would be a high fat, I mean, a high protein diet. A strict carnivore diet, maybe very high protein, because you're eating quite a bit of meat, and not as much fat.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 29:12
Yeah. And talk about some of the other things besides the diet that you implemented yourself.
Al Danenberg 29:19
Well, yeah, so the diet is going to give you the nutrients. And the diet that I'm talking about is a diet of our ancestors, our species, or at least 600,000 years when Home sapiens, the oldest Homo sapiens specimen is about 600,000 years old from the skull that was discovered in Morocco. So, for the most part, this is not like a cult diet or cult way of eating. It is a diet of the human species. We are omnivores, but we lean towards a carnivore-ish way of eating.
Jack Heald 29:58
We are omnivores but we lean toward a carnivore-ish way of eating.
Al Danenberg 30:01
Right? So, we can eat plants. But our digestive system is designed to digest animal matter more than plants. We don't, we have a very small colon, that's where a lot of plants will be digested. Other animals that are omnivores, and certainly, herbivores have a large colon and other parts of their intestinal structure to digest all of this plant material. We don't as humans. In addition, as humans, we have a very acid stomach. So, our stomach has extreme high acidity, so when we were evolving, we would be eating meat that was rotting on the ground, and what's rotting the meat would be all kinds of microbes. If we couldn't kill the microbes as it went into our body, then microbes will kill us. And the first defense to kill microbes would be a very acid stomach that kills the microbes but allows the nutrients that are resistant to the acid to get into the body. And that's the kind of stomach acid we have as humans. And we still do.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 31:19
Still do, exactly like you said.
Al Danenberg 31:22
You can't be a vegan and say, this is the way we've always been because it's not. That’s the facts.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 31:30
Yep. And how do you answer the question that I'm sure you hear a lot in that everyone knows, and air quotes, for those who aren't watching on YouTube, everyone knows that meat causes cancer.
Al Danenberg 31:47
Yeah, so the only people that know me causes cancer are the ones that read the research that is not well structured. So, when research is done on humans, it's very, very difficult to do those kinds of tests on humans. But when they evaluate humans and see well, did you get cancer? Did you not get cancer? It's basically because humans have answered questionnaires. And they say, well, yeah, I eat this kind of meat. Yeah, sure. And they didn't correlate the fact that what kind of meat was it. It was highly processed; it had all kinds of chemicals in it. Oh, by the way, I also had a drink of Chardonnay and had three packs of cigarettes that week. I mean, all of these other factors integrate into what is going on with your immune system. When you're looking at studies that are well designed, red meat shows to be quite healthy, as a matter of fact, and that's the only way to get certain nutrients in your body in a bioavailable way.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 33:03
So, I'd like to actually circle back to pre-cancer. You are like you said, a practicing periodontist, and you adopt a paleo diet or along those lines, what led you to that to start with?
Al Danenberg 33:23
Paleo diet? That's a great question. So, when I was in practice, I went to a seminar that was for dentists to learn nutrition. And I never knew anything about nutrition. And it was at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health of all places. And it was a week's course. And I wanted to figure out modalities that I could integrate into my therapy that was going to assist the body to be healthier. I didn't know anything about Paleo at that time. I just knew that this course was going to tell you about nutrition. Well, Kripalu is not known for an animal-based diet, by the way, it's more plant-based than anything, but this course was more paleo oriented. And there were several speakers that explain what a paleo diet was and what it could do to the body and how it avoided certain elements in foods that were very damaging to the body. And it made total sense to me. And I had no idea that there was anything out there called a paleo diet. So, I finished the course, got home, my wife, I said to my wife, let's make some changes. We literally cleaned out our kitchen and pantry of foods that were not paleo-type foods, like a lot of grains and a lot of legumes and beans and things like that. And we had seven bags of food that we're going to throw away, we actually took them to the food bank, and for the most part, our cupboard was bare. So, we went out to farmers' markets, which I never experienced before. And we started buying healthier foods. And I started this paleo diet. Well, the beautiful thing was, I was about 185 pounds at the time, I'm sure 5’7”, I had some other medical issues. I had reflux. I just felt not as healthy as I should be. But I thought I was healthy, but I was chunky. All of a sudden, and when I say all of a sudden, within several years of eating this kind of diet, I'm providing my body with such nutrients and avoiding all the wasted calorie foods, I lost quite a bit of weight. I went down to 150 some pounds. I lost over 35 pounds of weight. And I didn't even try to do that. It's just the way I started eating. So, by incorporating these ideas into my therapy with my patients, knowing that a healthier diet helps the gut and we'll talk about that, but when you help the gut, you'll help the health of the mouth. And that is how everything circled around getting into a paleo diet and then incorporating it into my office.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 36:51
Yeah, and it's interesting how we somehow sort of disconnect the mouth from the gut in a lot of ways. Most dentists, certainly, and physicians don't relate the two. But obviously, the mouth is the gut, it's the beginning of the gut. And so, it makes sense to link those two.
Al Danenberg 37:13
Well, here's what I think and here's part of my big controversial way of thinking, many dentists, even biological dentists, understand the relationships. But they think the mouth is the source of infection that gets into the rest of the body. And it is the source of infection that gets into the gut. I say that's not the direction. It's the gut microbiome which has 38 trillion cells. And by the way, we only have 30 trillion human cells so we’re more microbial than a human. Those 38 trillion cells in the gut do quite a bit. And it communicates with the immune system. And when they are out of balance, it affects the immune system, and it affects the lining of the gut. And the lining of the gut becomes more permeable, and some junk that's in the gut that you go out the other end can literally perforate, and travel into the bloodstream, and it's called a leaky gut. That leaky gut creates what's called metabolic endotoxemia, which is very, very toxic to the body. And all the different systems of the body are affected, including the mouth. And when this happens in the bloodstream, and the immune system becomes somewhat dysfunctional, then the mouth bacteria, this garden of bacteria in the mouth, which are not as diverse as it is in the gut, the intestines, that changes and when that starts to change, and you're eating unhealthy foods, the foods that may feed the potentially pathogenic bacteria, then you get these infections in the mouth, periodontal disease, tooth decay, and then it can spread through the body in from the mouth itself. So, you have two notices of infection, one in the gut, one in the mouth, most likely the gut stimulated the mouth problem. But both of them have taken hold and created more systemic inflammation, both need to be treated. The problem is most dentist wants to treat the mouth. They don't understand the gut. Most other naturopathic as well as functional medicine people want to treat the gut, they don't know anything about the mouth, but they need to treat both at the same time.
Jack Heald 39:48
Okay, so...
Al Danenberg 39:49
That's a mouthful, right?
Jack Heald 39:50
That's a mouthful. So, let's take the average listener who knows they're not as healthy as they need to be. They have the typical combination occasional or painful gas, acid reflux, quite possibly starting to show the kinds of signs of intestinal leaky gut that you were talking about. How do we start treating ourselves? What's the first two or three steps we can take?
Al Danenberg 40:32
The first thing in my mind would be to avoid the foods that have toxic elements doing exactly what you're saying they're doing. In other words, remove grains, remove nuts, and seeds. Nuts and seeds, although they have a lot of nutrients, they also have a lot of lectins and oxalates inside of them. These are chemicals that the plants make that can be very irritating to an animal like us, we are an animal, that can destroy the gut and create bloating and all of this, these other factors that I just mentioned. So basically, nuts and seeds. Legumes in and of itself are very irritating to the gut. There are some benefits and nutrients in legumes, but on the other hand, they have these anti-nutrients. So, I would avoid the products, the foods that we think are healthy, that irritate the gut. And that would be all the grains, all the legumes, all the nuts, all the seeds. And they’re seed and nut oils. So peanut oil and safflower oil, and soybean oil, all of these oils have very high concentrations of linoleic acid. It is a type of fatty acid, who our body needs a little bit but not a lot, and we're getting extremely high levels of that, which cause destruction of the cell membrane throughout the body. It causes damage to the mitochondria. And the mitochondria are like little batteries of every cell. If you had a flashlight, and you want the flashlights glow, you have to put batteries in it. And if you turn it on, that light will glow for a period of time and then it dims, and then it goes out because the batteries die. So those batteries are basically the mitochondria of every cell. Some cells have one or 200 mitochondria per cell. Some of them have several thousand mitochondria per cell. The cells that are working hard, like hard tissue cells have many, many more mitochondria. This is the electricity that makes the cell work. Well, seed oils, with their high levels of linoleic acid compromises mitochondria, and create a stressful environment, and causes the cell to either misfunction, malfunction or kills them. So, we need to remove the foods that are irritating, and just eat the foods that are not. All the animal products basically are more bioavailable elements, we can digest them better than these other plant elements that have anti-nutrients that we never develop enzymes to digest. Now there are animals that have been created and evolved with a digestive system to digest them, like what's called ruminant animals. These animals like cattle and sheep, for example, they have four stomachs, they can take grass and other grains and other food products and they can choose them. And then they can make nutrients and store them in their body that are healthier and not tainted for us to eat. Whereas if we ate the original foods that these animals are eating, the grasses and legumes and whatever, we cannot destroy the anti-nutrients, it's damaging for us. They can. So, we need to clean out our body's consumption of irritating foods. That's the first step.
Jack Heald 44:25
Okay, you have used this phrase multiple times. I've seen it and heard it elsewhere. But I've never gotten a definition, frankly, because I never went, wait a minute, I don't think I know what that means. And now I know that thought comes to me. What is an anti-nutrient?
Al Danenberg 44:42
Okay, so it's a great question. You, if you were going to be attacked by a lion, you could run away from the lion, right? Theoretically, or you can run away from something...
Jack Heald
I will attempt it anyway
Al Danenberg
You can run away from something that may be affecting your body's physical health. A plant cannot pick up its roots and run away. So, a plant is a living structure. It has evolved, just like humans have evolved. And plants want to propagate. We want to propagate. plants want to propagate. They propagate by creating seeds, that eventually gets spread through the area, and they can create new baby plants. Well, if animals were to eat these plants too soon, because the fruit is not ripe enough, or it's not ready to spread and propagate, the plants will die. They can't run away from the predator. So, they make elements, they make chemicals in their system that are called anti-nutrients because it stops the nutrients in the plant from benefiting us as animals. And these chemicals damage the animals that are eating them, and enough damage over time, the animals are going to learn not to eat this plant. And that is what these anti-nutrients are very, very variety of chemicals that are extremely damaging to different animals that eat them. Now, when the plant becomes ready to propagate, and it creates its own fruits, and the seeds are there in the fruit, it stimulates animals to eat the fruit, which is sweet, or whatever delectable smells good. And animals chew it, they generally don't wash the seeds. They swallow the seeds whole, and the seeds, they defecate in other areas of the property. And the plants start to grow new baby plants.
Jack Heald 46:57
Yeah, that's how they propagate.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 46:59
Unfortunately, humans appear to be the only animals that are dumb enough not to be able to figure out the anti-nutrient thing. And we just ignore basically the toxic effects of these. We just say, oh, we're bloated over. We have digestive problems and just go on with our lives and, and don't connect maybe it's coming from the food that we're eating.
Al Danenberg 47:26
Well, what's funny here is the food industry and pharmaceutical industries go to great lengths and spend lots of money to create products, enzymes, supplements that will break down these bad things that are in plants so that we can eat them. Why would we even want to start eating something our body never wanted to eat in the first place? And that's an interesting story to be told. Because for the most part, we are animal eaters. We can eat animals without a problem, unless there's certain medical issues that you might have, but for the most part, we can eat the animal products without a problem and absorb all these nutrients. And we don't need these plants that are very damaging more so than others. But we can eat these foods that our body has a DNA to want to eat, and can digest these foods without having supplements and other synthetic chemicals made to help us digest foods that we should never be eating. It's like I want to drink some arsenic, give me something so that the arsenic doesn't kill me, but I really want this glass of arsenic. I mean, I don't understand that. But that's the way it is.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 48:55
I wanted to shift gears for a minute and just ask you about something else I noticed in your protocol. This is something that I don't think we've really talked about on the show much before but PEMF therapies, Pulse Electro-Magnetic Field therapy. Tell us a little bit about that and what benefits you have found it to have.
Al Danenberg 49:21
So, I can't tell you a specific benefit that I can feel by using the PMF alone because integrated with everything else I do. And I'll tell you what I know and it's pretty interesting. Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field therapy affects the frequencies in our body. Now we are electrical beings. The only reason you and I are here is because of the electricity that is generated in our cellular structure. Actually, cells talk among one another through chemicals, but also from through frequency. And so, the Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Fields are very low-frequency type of waves that can actually penetrate the body and reenergize the cells that have been weakened from other factors. And so Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field therapy can help regenerate mitochondria, help cellular membranes to move in and out, or allow minerals to move in and out of cellular membranes. And Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field therapy has also been shown to help patients that have osteoporosis, and help bone deposition. So, in certain types of fractures, it helps healing of a fractured bone. So, in and of itself, Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field therapy kind of improved the electrical balance in the body. And I use that as a mat that I sleep on. Now, recently, I haven't been using the mat only because of some of the fractures I've had. I've had issues sleeping. So that's a different story. But in general, the mat will be underneath my sheets, and it goes on for 20 minutes when I go to bed and it goes on again for 20 minutes when I wake up. There are different patterns that you can adjust for. And it helps to stabilize the electrical balance of the individual cells.
Jack Heald 51:41
This is the mat itself does the PEMF?
Al Danenberg 51:47
Well, there is a control box like in computer creating these frequencies, it's a wavelength. And it is in the electromagnetic spectrum. It is on the left end of the spectrum. So, it's low frequencies. And it actually can even negate dirty electromagnetic fields from various sources like the computer screen you and I are looking at or electrical wires. It can actually help balance those dirty electromagnetic fields that you may be absorbing. So, this console, this computer generates these frequencies. And the mat has coils on it. It uses copper coils that generate these frequencies throughout the body. You don't hear or smell it. There's no feel to it, other than the fact that it is on and this field of electrical current is helping your body stabilize.
Jack Heald 53:00
I have had quite a bit of exposure to different technologies that all make use of PEMF in one form or another. But I've never run into anybody who was able to explain like you've just explained what's happening, kind of a mechanism of how we think it works. So, wow.
Al Danenberg 53:33
There are some interesting videos on YouTube that show how PEMF changes the potential between the inside and the outside of the cell. It's almost like you have a rechargeable battery. Now it's weakening, and you put it in the charger, and all of a sudden, the battery's working again. So, the PEMF basically recharges the energy structure of the cell. And the energy structure of the cell is the mitochondria. So, it helps that mitochondria, those wonderful little batteries in the cell to cause the cell to do what it's supposed to do. So, a brain cell is going to be functioning as a brain cell, stomach cell is going to function as a stomach cell. Obviously, every cell has its purpose, but any cell for it to do what it needs to do has to create an energy or a battery source. The batteries are the mitochondria, if it has weakened, the PEMF can recharge that membrane so that the battery is now more potent to do what it's supposed to do.
Jack Heald 54:51
That is a fascinating description. It's literally, it's just right recharging the cellular battery.
Al Danenberg 55:03
Yeah. Or the potential to have the battery charge itself because the mitochondria actually function with other chemicals. Molecules that go in and out of the different sections of the mitochondria to create what's called ATP, which is our energy source. So, it's not creating the energy, but it's helping the cell to recharge itself to create the energy and create correctly.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 55:36
Yeah, very, very interesting technology that I would say, incompletely understand at this point.
Al Danenberg 55:45
No, I agree. I mean, this is, and there is not any control by the FDA. So, what happens is many companies produce all these PEMF gadgets that are relatively worthless, unfortunately. So, you have to be doing a little research.
Jack Heald 56:06
Wow.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 56:09
Well, fascinating discussion led us to a bunch of different places. And really your personal story is amazing and the effect that it's had on your professional journey as well. So, we usually try and keep these things around an hour. But before we go, certainly, how do you work with people today? How can people connect with you?
Al Danenberg 56:37
Well, interestingly, I sell nothing. I don't have a website and tell you to buy my supplements and all that other stuff. I think there's a little conflict of interest there. But that's another story. The only thing I sell is my time. So, I do individual consults, not group consults, I just do individual consults. So, I do consults for just an hour and a half for a specific subject, or a coaching program that lasts 12 weeks, and incorporates for one and a half hour zoom consults, and a variety of other means of communication between them. And all of this is based on the individual. So, I'm not going to cure any disease. I'm not creating a diagnosis for any disease, but I am helping an individual enhance her immune system to be as robust as possible. So, I do that. I get information like medical dental history form that a person fills out online for me and sends to me. I get a three-day food journal to know exactly what they're eating, drinking, supplements they’re taking, how they poop, how they exercise, how they feel that day. And this is for three consecutive days. And also, I want to look at their dental X-rays, high-resolution dental X-rays, very specific ones I asked for so that if I can see damage in the jawbone, again, I'm not diagnosing, but if I can see questionable areas of potential damage in the jawbone that may be leading to infection that they don't even know they have because infection in the bone doesn't always cause pain or swelling. That way I can help them find a good biological dentist, wherever they live, to take care of those problems. And then I work with their gut and their diet and the other factors that are related like sleep and emotional stress and exercise patterns.
Jack Heald 58:38
Thank you, Phil. Thank you for setting this up. This has been, I normally am and just bursting with questions. This has been such an information-rich hour; I have had to shut my mouth and really open my ears and really pay attention. I've heard so much of such value. Contact information, that’s your website, is that right?
Al Danenberg 59:06
Yes, it's drdanenberg.com. So, it'd be D R D A N E N B E R G.com. And the website is available that lots of articles you can download. It's pretty user-friendly, I believe. Anything that you want, you can download. There's nothing that you cannot download. Everything is available. When I even have some original recipes.
Jack Heald 59:32
I love it. We'll make sure that information shows up on the show notes so folks will be able to just click on it and show up on Dr. Danenberg's website. Well, great hour.
Al Danenberg 59:45
Well, thank you, I appreciate it.
Jack Heald 59:46
I'd love to pepper you with questions.
Al Danenberg 59:52
Sometime we can talk about dentistry. How about that?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 59:56
Exactly. We never got to that.
Jack Heald 59:58
Actually, I have a family member that I am going to direct to this. And I'm not going to say anymore but hearing this, it's like, oh my gosh, this may be what was needed. All right, well, let's call it.
Al Danenberg
Thank you.
Jack Heald
For Dr. Philip Ovadia and Dr. Al Danenberg, I'm Jack Heald. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. We're glad you joined us. Go ahead and subscribe to Phil's podcast. We dropped a new episode every Tuesday, and we'll talk to you next time.
Jack Heald 1:00:42
America is fat and sick and tired. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and at risk of a sudden heart attack. Are you one of them? Go to ifixhearts.co and take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz. Learn specific steps you can take to reclaim your health reduce your risk of heart attack and stay off Dr. Ovadia's operating table.
Jack Heald 1:01:10
This has been a production of 38 atoms