Jamie Costello (JC): Hello, I am Jamie Costello, the founder and CEO of KlothoGenics. I’m glad you decided to listen today. In the next four episodes, Dr. Michael Galitzer – a leading, integrative physician and author of the new book Outstanding Health – will give you a simple, step-by-step roadmap to achieving outstanding health.

JC: This is the program I wish I knew when I began my journey towards optimal health. When I turned 45, I had low energy. I was tired at mid morning and again at mid afternoon. I was not consistently productive at work or in my life, and I lacked the day-to-day focus on my priorities. In addition, my memory was becoming foggy at times. I knew I needed to get help to correct this before these conditions got worse and turned into my long term reality.

JC: I shared my concerns with my physician. He ran a number of blood tests that showed I was apparently OK for my age. He told me that how I was feeling was just normal aging. I did not want to accept this. I wanted my youthful energy and vigor back.

JC: The treatment plan my physician proposed would fix any abnormal results. However, what about my low energy and cognitive issues I was experiencing? He did not give me a plan to improve these areas or to optimize my health because there was nothing “abnormal” about me. If I wanted to regain my youthful energy and vigor, I needed to figure out my own plan.

JC: This began my journey to optimize these results and my health. When I began the journey I did not have the road map Dr. Galitzer and I are going to give you today. I tried many different ideas and tested them to see whether they achieved the results I wanted. Some did. And some did not. It was a process of trial and error.

JC: In these episodes, we will give you the road map I did not have. You will learn the simple ideas and cutting edge discoveries you need to be proactive in your health and regain your youthful energy and to look and feel years younger. So let’s get into it. I’ll be back at the end of the show to share some more details.

JC: For me, Dr. G has become instrumental in my personal health journey, and because of that, I wanted to introduce him and his practice to all of you today. Michael, welcome, and thank you for agreeing to share your plan for outstanding health with us today.

Dr. Galitzer (DG): Jamie, it’s great to be with you today.

JC: Yeah, I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

JC: Well, first of all, tell me your story. How did you get to where you’re at today? Was there an event or situation? Why did you move from emergency medicine to what you’re doing now?

DG: Well, I was a board certified emergency room doctor, Jamie, for about 15 years in Los Angeles. Those were the days when there were no trauma centers, so the traumas went to the nearest hospital, and it was quite an experience, working there in those conditions.

DG: After a while, it’s a difficult job… 24 hour shifts. Lots of life and death.

DG: And the patients really weren’t the highest priority. It was the hospital and the doctors serving the hospital more than the patients. The politics of the ER were very different in those days, and the average life of the New York doctor was really about 8 years. So I did manage for 15, and a couple of times I was looking for a change. I came across a clinic that was looking for a doctor who did general practice and nutrition. I knew all about the general practice, but being an ER doc, I really had no clue about nutrition, so I figured I’d learn it. I read books, took courses, listened to tapes, got nutritionists and started doing all of these blood tests. Nobody got any better.

DG: One of the people who didn’t get better at the time was my best friend, who in the course of running these new blood tests found out that he had mercury toxicity from the silver fillings in his teeth that were leaking over time.

DG: So I heard the expert talk from out of town. He was Hal Huggins from Colorado and asked him who I could refer him to locally to get the fillings changed. And the next thing you do is a blood test; it’s as you do a food allergy test to find what metals are compatible with the patient’s blood to put back into the teeth once the mercury was removed. And I said to my friend, to this dentist for the referral, and he came back and said, well you won’t believe this dentist, but he has this machine, and he was tapping my finger, measuring the skin resistance. He had all these files of different metals, and he was able to tell me which metals were compatible with my body and which metals were not.

DG: Well, the results exactly matched the blood tests. So, therefore, I said, well, if you can figure this out without a blood test, just by tuning into the skin resistance, I wonder if you need this test. This dentist basically told me about these people from Europe who were giving a course. Roy Martina was the name of the doctor, and the course was in four weeks, so I went and took the course – this was in late 1986 – and Roy and I became good friends, and I learned basically this whole technique of electrodermal testing, which led to what is called energy medicine.

JC: Amazing! That was 30 years ago. I guess, yeah, 30 years ago exactly.

DG: Yeah, 30 years ago, and we were really out there in those days. I think we’re still thought of being a little out there in these days because the concept of energy medicine really isn’t… there’s not an awareness about this in our present society.

JC: Yeah, well, I know just in my own journey all of these new ideas in medicine, your normal physician really isn’t equipped to handle, and you really can’t talk to them about it. If you tell them the 15 different blood tests you took to determine if you have optimal health they just kind of look at you and wonder why? Sort of the old thing about, Why do you take supplements? … I don’t know because I heard they were good. But your physician generally doesn’t believe in them. So, crazy. Well, tell me, why did you write the book? Obviously it’s a big task to write a book, and what were you hoping, who were you reaching out to with the book?

DG: Well, the book was intended for anybody who wants to create outstanding health in their life, but outstanding life because basically people don’t want to live to 100, but people want to feel great, so people really want outstanding health… people want to be outstanding in whatever they do. They want to be outstanding as a parent. They want to be outstanding in their job. Our society rewards outstanding. We give Oscars; we give Emmy Awards. We give gold medals at the Olympics. We all really want to be outstanding in our lives, and more importantly, I think people really want to have outstanding health.

DG: The problem with… the challenge with dealing with traditional medicine is medicine defines health as the absence of disease; whereas, in our kind of medicine, we see health on one end and disease on the other, and a lot of people are in between. They have symptoms: they are tired, they can’t sleep well, they have digestive issues. Those aren’t really signs of diseases because they have normal blood tests and normal x-rays, but they are not signs of health. So the book is geared to anyone and everyone who wants to feel their best all the time.

JC: Yeah, one of the things I really liked in the book is it was a complete plan. It wasn’t take this pill or do this exercise or do this one thing. It was really a road map that starts at the beginning and leads you to a complete plan to outstanding health. In fact, I’ve enjoyed the book so much that if you looked at my Amazon account and saw all of the different shipping addresses I’ve sent it to, you’d be amazed. I really think it’s a fantastic job and a great book.

JC: Now, one of the things in the book you start out with that I thought was interesting is a health questionnaire. I’ve posted this on our website, and I encourage our listeners to do this short, self-examination of your current health. I thought it was interesting you put this questionnaire in the book and in the very beginning. What were your thoughts?

DG: The thought really is the concept of energy medicine is really… we started off by asking people to evaluate their energy because 1) Health is energy. And 2) That there is an energetic level to the body that we’re aware of, but most of us don’t realize it can be measured.

DG: So, again, a little recap here: Traditional medicine looks at the body from a physical point of view and also from a chemical point of view, so we do x-rays, CAT scans, biopsies, and otherwise to look at structure. We do blood tests to look at the chemical level. But the electrical level correlates to how people feel. If you looked at your body as an orchestra, your organs and glands are instruments in that orchestra, some of them are sluggish, and some of them are strong. Again, the key is to get everything as strong as possible. So this concept of energy seemed to be the most important thing. How do we feel? That’s an energetic component. You can’t really measure that in a blood test. So the question is really supposed to make people aware of the their bodies, their energy, their feelings, their emotions and also the lifestyle issues that really, really support outstanding health and also can interfere with outstanding health.

JC: That makes sense. Now in addition to that, I know there are some baseline tests. More – maybe not all of them completely standard – but some important tests that you like to see in people to analyze their current health. Now whether they are blood tests, saliva, stool tests… where do you like to start in that area?

DG: Most people are really, very comfortable with getting blood tests. Most doctors these days do use blood tests. You know, I find that the more comprehensive we can get these blood tests, if we add a few different things to it, we can get a lot more information besides the normal white blood cell count, the CBC count, and some blood chemistries. We want to go a little further. We want to look at things like CRP – C-Reactive Protein – is measured inflammation in the body. We want to look at ANA as measurable autoimmunity in the body. Vitamin D levels. Blood types. You know, a lot of people are into eating right for their blood type. I think there is some validity to that. So there’s a bunch of… and the hormonal blood tests are very, very important. We want to know their baseline DFGA, their baseline cortisol levels, their vitamin D levels, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and insulin, so the hormonal tests are extremely important, and the regular blood chemistries we’ve tweaked a little bit homocysteine level, pharatyn level are very… give us a lot of information.

DG: Now, in terms of the lipids – you know everybody is fascinated with cholesterol – and I find that not to be that fascinating. When I was an intern, the normal cholesterol was under 300 and now the normal cholesterol is under 200, but what one really needs is an advanced lipid panel. That means that everybody is concerned with their LDL – their bad cholesterol level – being too high, but in reality, it is the size of the LDL molecule that is more important than the total number level for the LDL. So if you’ve got a small LDL, those molecules can get inside the blood vessel and cause a problem, but if your LDL particles are large, there is no problem. You can have a high LDL level with large LDL particles and not be at risk. You really can’t see that on a traditional lipid panel – you need an advanced lipid panel. We like to include an advanced lipid panel so people can get the real truth about their cholesterol.

JC: Yeah, I find a lot of those tests interesting in two areas: 1) When you have them done with your normal, traditional physician, he is just concerned that you’re in the standard reference range for this broad age of people. If you ask him, “Which side of the range should I be on to be more optimal?” They don’t know. 2) They really don’t have time to discuss it with you because they have no intention of treating you to become optimal. So it’s very difficult for someone like me who is interested in achieving optimal health to figure out what those optimal health results are. What are your thoughts on that?

DG: Well, I completely agree with you in terms of being optimal. We see this mostly, or frequently, with men and their testosterone levels. There is a huge range in “normal” blood testosterone level from about 300 – 1,000. And a lot of people come into me and say, “Well, my testosterone level is 350, and my doctor says it’s okay.” But that really isn’t okay. We know that testosterone prevents heart disease, and you’re less likely to have premature death with a high testosterone level, so we’d like to get that 350 more like 600 or 700. That is a great example of in large range when sub-optimal is not in the patient’s best interest.

DG: By the way, in addition to the blood tests, I find that saliva tests are very important to look at the adrenal hormones DHA and cortisol. We usually have these people do saliva tests every four hours – 8:00 a.m., noon, 4:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., midnight, and 4:00 a.m.. You can really get a lot of information about one’s adrenal status from the saliva tests, probably much more accurate than blood tests because when somebody is coming at you with a needle at 8:00 in the morning fast, your heart rate is going to go up. We find that the saliva tests are much more indicative of adrenal health than a blood test is, and so we do saliva a lot for adrenal health.

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JC: I put together this special series of conversations with some of the leaders in integrative health care to give you the tools I used to achieve optimal health. If you want to regain your youthful energy and look and feel years younger, my company, KlothoGenics, can apply the discoveries in gene science to your genetic profile to determine the best diet, supplements, and exercise program for your body and its metabolic factors. We analyze 260 different gene variants to prepare a truly individual program for you for diet, exercise, supplements, to achieve optimal health. You also get a 90 minute consultation to discuss your program, and we can arrange follow up consultations to answer questions, provide updates, and to discuss your progress. Call me today at 1-866-761-7773 or go to my website http://www.klothogenics.com/ to find out how easy it is to get your genetic profile and get started. There is no better way to achieve your health goals than this.

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JC: And I know a lot of these tests are geared also to test for inflammation. And I guess one of the things that along my journey I never really knew is that I always thought inflammation would manifest itself in someway that I could visually see it, but, in fact, you can have chronic, sub-level inflammation that is really shortening your life. And a lot of these tests can measure that inflammation, so it’s important to determine if you have any right now.

DG: Yes, you know the Erythrocyte ESR is the test for inflammation. The Cardiac CRP is another test for inflammation. You can actually look at the blood tests, a CBC, and look at the different types of white blood cells. There is a monocyte, eosinophils, and a basophils, and if you add the percentages up (monocyte + eosinophils + basophils) and it’s greater than 10, that’s also a sign of inflammation, even if the CRP and Sed rate are normal. It’s a lot of information that can be gotten if you look a little closely at some of these blood tests. Again, inflammation is important.

DG: You know, I like an inflammation to a car that overheats, and the treatment for a car that’s overheating is water. It’s a water issue, and usually there’s a leak somewhere in the water system in the car. And eventually, if the car continues to overheat, the engine becomes dead, so to speak, the car doesn’t work as efficiently as possible. So chronic inflammation over time will reduce the cell’s ability to create energy, and at that point, antioxidants are really not the treatment. So to liken antioxidants to water on an overheated car: antioxidants are great for inflammation in the beginning, but as inflammation continues, the engine gets cold – the body produces less energy, the cells produce less energy – and that really requires a different type of therapy called oxidative therapy or intravenous vitamin C, intravenous hydrogen peroxide; some people are using intravenous ozone to kind of energize and heat up the body. And again, that’s one of the real problems the challenges of treating people over the age of 65 and 70. They just don’t have enough energy, and sometimes you’ve got to use these intravenous therapies to actually increase their energy.

JC: Well, so, we’ve gotten people to do the questionnaire and assess how they feel today; now your book describes six steps to the journey of outstanding health. First, preparing your mind. Then, cleansing the body of toxins, adding proper nutrition and gut health, adding proper exercise and sleep, regenerating your body with energy medicine, and hormonal happiness. So there are only six steps, but it seems like you believe each one needs to be done in this specific order, and I was struck that your first step – and I found it very interesting – is for the listeners to go out there and cleanse and fortify their mind. I know attitude makes a big difference in outcomes in sports and in health, so obviously this is the first step.

DG: Yeah, I think you’ve got to really pay a lot of attention, Jamie, to one’s attitudes, one’s feelings, their emotional state, and I think most people just tend to just say… well… a patient goes to see a doctor, and the doctor says, Well, your blood tests are normal, and your x-rays are normal. And the patient says, Well I feel lousy. And the doctor will then say, Well, you’re all stressed out. I can give you an antidepressant, or take a vacation. So the bottom line is that stress – as much as I hate to use that word – stress is a major issue, and it’s really a perceptional issue. It’s how we perceive our environment and how we perceive the events that happen to us as opposed to the actual events. So getting one’s head in order, mind in order, emotions in order, beliefs in order, I find extremely important, and I find that you really want to start with one’s purpose.

DG: You know, what is your purpose in life? Why are you here? What is your dream? A lot of people say to me, Well, you know, I don’t really know my purpose. And I say to them, What was the first thing you wanted to do when you were a kid? That’s an example. Maybe start thinking about that. Or If someone gave you a billion dollars and said to improve the world, how would you do it? Or What out there do you have such a burning desire for that you would pay to do? And I think if you looked at those three things, you might get a sense of maybe your purpose. Another thing you can do is make a list of one column your “Gifts” and the other column of “What You Really Enjoy.” And try to match your highest gifts with what you really enjoy to find your purpose. But I find if people know or are tuned into their purpose, I find that’s a huge advantage.

DG: I think, also, that passion is key. You’ve got to be excited about life. You’ve got to at least be excited about certain things in your life if you’re not excited about your whole life. So focus on purpose and passion and also being grateful is also a stepping stone. I ask people what they’re grateful for, and they’re very quick to respond. The bottom line is they’re responding to me but don’t really think about what they’re grateful for when they wake up in the morning. Or they think about being grateful in their gratitude during the course of the day I’m not sure. But I think that if one has a purpose, passion, and gratitude, then that goes a long way in helping one achieve outstanding health from an emotional point of view.

JC: Well, I know you have to believe whenever you start anything, if you’re in a serious exercise program, you have to believe for athletes they can win, otherwise they wouldn’t go through the trouble. Or if you’re trying to lose weight, you have to believe you can lose weight. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to lose weight. Along the way, you have to have that indication that you’re succeeding. And there have been a lot of books written about our belief system. One I know that’s popular today that was written in 1937 and Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich.” There was another one written recently “The Secret” in 2006. Both of those books ask you to accept and believe it’ll come true, and it helps us to eliminate those preconceived beliefs that are limiting factors in our success. And I know a lot of physicians sometimes tell their patients, as you get a little bit older… well, that’s what you can expect Joe, you’re X number of years old now, and this is what happens at your age. Mary, you’re not a kid anymore. You should slow down a little bit. So we do have a lot of limiting language in health care, don’t you think?

DG: We do. We have a lot of limiting language. A lot of limiting beliefs. And you really… unfortunately, when doctors tell these things to patients, Jamie, patients never seem to forget them. So, again, I think there’s a responsibility of doctors to help patients be hopeful. You know, I think ultimately I like to tell my patients they really need to make friends with their past and focus on the present and be optimistic about the future. So I think one of the real key things that a doctor can do is actually promote optimism. I think when the doctor believes in the patient, the patient believes in the doctors. The doctor’s belief in the patient’s health is much more important than the patient’s belief in the doctor’s. I would encourage everybody to go out there, and spread the word.

DG: A great example is: A guy walks into a doctor’s office. The doctor says, Well, you have lung cancer. And there’s a 10 percent chance that you’ll be alive in five years and 90 percent that you won’t. Most patients would walk out of that office going, Well, I better get my affairs in order like my doctor told me. But the bottom line is, why can’t the patients start thinking, What if I’m in the 10 percent? And, unfortunately, it’s the doctor’s attitude at that time that prevents the patient from thinking it. So the gloom and doom from a lot of practitioners out there – and I don’t know why they do it. It’s certainly not from a malpractice point of view – I think needs to end. And I think really as doctors we are responsible for giving hope to patients all along the way.

JC: Yeah, but it seems like to me a lot of people, obviously with disease and health conditions that are debilitating, have fear, and being an optimist is always tough. You know, I know my dad had dementia and I have a fear maybe it’s a possibility for me. And sometimes that can create worry, but I guess also it can create detachment where some people want to stop trying. And I know your wife and you sort of deem this the “Pleasure Freeze” response where people do just stop trying.

DG: Yeah, that was a term my wife coined, and I think very aptly said, Basically in our society, we will either move towards pleasure or away from pain given the choice, and giving the choice to move towards pleasure and away from pain, you will really move away from pain immediately. That’s kind of like the default. You know the drug companies only know that too well because there are a lot of medications out there to relieve one’s pain, whether it be a headache or abdominal pain or any emotional pain. But when presented with repeated pain, people tend to detach as a way of not feeling the pain anymore. They freeze in their emotional state, which ultimately can be very harmful, too. So the Pleasure Freeze, which was a term coined by my wife Dr. Janet Hranicky, to identify that issue.

DG: But fear. You touch on fear, and we have major fears. We fear disease, poverty, illness, criticism, ill health. But we also fear change. You know, we have an instrument in the office called the NuCalm® and when I describe it to people – basically it’s to help one reduce stress – you know, I say, well listen, this is going to change your state, you’re going to feel less stressful, you’ll feel great. I’ve met a few people that decided not to do it because…

JC: Isn’t that funny?

DG: Because they were afraid of the change. So on a certain level, you know, sometimes we’re afraid to change; we’re hesitant about the change; we’re unsure about the things we don’t trust, and so I’ve had a few people who said, no, no, no, I don’t want to do it. I think maybe I won’t be able to try it. I just don’t know about this; I gotta be somewhere. So, it’s kind of funny that sometimes we fear change, which is unfortunate, but you know, we try to guide people, try to reassure people that change really isn’t a bad thing.

JC: So, Michael, for those out there who want to purchase the book or who want to contact you about being a patient, can you give our listeners a website and your contact information?

DG: Sure, Jamie, you can contact me… you can buy the book and contact me by going to http://www.drgalitzer.com/ and that’s a great way to see what I do, see what’s on the website, and get more information about the kind of work that I do.

JC: Perfect, thank you for that.