Podcast Introduction and Episode Overview

CBD has specific effects on your central nervous system and your immune system. I will say too that the Pico IV has CBD, CBG, CBGA, CBGB. These are all different types of cannabinoids.

It has no THC and that's really good for a specific reason, but these cannabinoids are going to bind to the receptor sites that we have for the ones that we make and they're going to regulate the same thing that our body is trying to regulate.

And in the case of people that are chronically ill, people that can't conceive children, or people that have headaches all the time, or you name the number of problems, it will help regulate that system.

And where I really want to focus for the patients is on the immune system. Your health is shaped by more than symptoms. Through real stories and expert insights, we explore how your genetics, environment, and daily choices affect your wellbeing.

We uncover root causes and share practical tools to help you find the healing you need. Welcome to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine Podcast. Welcome back to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast.

I am your host and coach, Amanda Grabeau. Today's episode is a special one. I had the chance to sit back, listen and learn as Dr. Shilpa Saxena takes over the host seat and leads an incredible conversation with Dr.

Andrew Peterson about the first IVCBD therapy in the US. It was a great conversation. For those of you who do not know Dr. Saxena, she is an internationally recognized speaker and expert in integrative and functional medicine.

She's also the chief medical officer here at Forum Health. She is known for bridging evidence-based medicine with patient-centered care and helping patients navigate emerging therapies responsibly.

Honestly, this episode is incredibly informative and genuinely fun to listen to. Dr. Saxana interviews Dr. Peterson about the groundbreaking therapy that's now available at participating form health locations, the first IV CBD therapy in the US known as the PICO IV.

Together they break down the science behind this therapy, why it's different from oral CBD, and how it supports immune regulation, inflammation, neurological health, pain, mood, recovery, and even longevity.

What I loved most about this conversation is how approachable yet deeply scientific it is. Dr. Peterson brings his real world experience working with complex and chronically ill patients, while Dr.

Saxana expertly connects the dots between immune dysfunction, inflammation, and whole person healing, making this episode that's just as valuable for patients as it is for practitioners and probably one of my favorite episodes yet.

If you've ever wondered how cutting edge therapies make their way into integrative medicine or whether something like IV CBD could be right for you, this episode delivers clarity, nuance and practical insight.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Saxana as she leads this fascinating discussion with Dr. Peterson on Pico IV therapy and why Form Health is excited to offer it as part of our commitment to innovation and patient-centered care.

Let's get started. Hello, hello. I am so excited to be here with my pal, Dr. Andrew Peterson. We are both reporting live after work. So these are what two doctors look like after a whole day of patient care.

I'm sorry I was late for the roundtable.

What Pico IV Is and Why It Matters

Well, I wasn't able to attend because of a patient. So we both had the same thing. I'm sorry. So all that to say, what I'm really excited about in this conversation is that we are a network that believes in providers learning from other providers and sharing great ideas.

And one of the ideas that is relatively new and exciting in the functional medicine world is this Pico infusion. Pico is called a picoinfusion because it uses very small particles of cannabinoids or CBD specifically.

And so it's just a fun name that really talks about the size of the molecule. And Dr. Peterson will help us understand why that is important. But this picoinfusion being an IV sterile form of CBD not THC, which has implications for people who don't want to have THC in their system.

It has been shown to be quite beneficial for various conditions. So let's start off, Dr. Peterson, with maybe letting us know a little bit about why did you become interested in offering PICO for your patients?

Sure. Well, because physicians work in networks, right? A really good friend of mine, she's actually the immediate past president of ILADS, Amy Offit, called me one day and said, you have got to do this for your Lyme patients.

Nothing has been more transformative in the last two years that I've done besides this. And I said, well, if it's good enough for the president of ILADS who is an excellent doctor taking care of chronically ill patients.

It's good enough for me. Let me try doing this. And so that's what alerted me that there was something out there that was available that I was not using that could help chronically ill patients, people with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalopathy, etc.

And I'd never really considered it for that patient group, right? Cause we think of medical marijuana for people that have, I don't know, pain or anorexia or anxiety, depression, right?

I've had plenty of patients that will use oral CBD and I've never found it to be all that remarkable. I've had patients that, you know, report negative side effects.

And so it just wasn't on my radar. But that's the honest answer is a friend of mine who's a physician who I respect completely said this has made a difference for my patients.

And interestingly, that's the reason I'm starting it in my practice because you are a provider that I know and respect. And that's what works. But what I'm trying to imagine, here's a patient coming into your practice or any one of the practices in the Forum Health Network.

So let's just first maybe ask you, can you describe what an endocannabinoid is and what does CBD mean? Right. I try not to get too nerdy, but I also try to explain it well enough so that other scientists would say, I get it.

And ordinary people would say, I get it too. We make some molecules, endocannabinoids, and they are regulating a particular pathway of communication in our body.

Now, the cannabinoid pathways that we have mostly function in the central nervous system and the immune system. And we make an endocannabinoid called AEA and another one called 2AG.

And neither one of those is technically CBD, but CBD binds to the same exact receptor site. I think this is interesting. The AEA, it stands for anandamide.

Anandamide, ananda is the word for bliss. So it is scientifically called the bliss molecule. We make this. This isn't coming from marijuana. It's not coming from hemp.

It's coming from your own body saying, hey, I need to make enough of this so that I can regulate my brain and I can regulate my immune system. So CBD, because it's an analog for this and it's found in a plant, that's no surprise.

There's lots of molecules that plants make that we make a similar one, right? That's how herbal medicine works. CBD has specific effects on your central nervous system and your immune system.

I will say too that the Pico IV has CBD, CBG, CBGA, CBGB. These are all different types of cannabinoids. It has no THC and that's really good for a specific reason, but these cannabinoids are going to bind to the receptor sites that we have for the ones that we make and they're going to regulate the same thing that our body is trying to regulate.

And in the case of people that are chronically ill or people that can't conceive children or people that have headaches all the time or you name the number of problems, it will help regulate that system.

And where I really want to focus for the patients is on the immune system. I'll say this and maybe I'm going too deep again, but CB1 agonists are found in the brain and CB2 agonists are found in the immune system.

And our endocannabinoids regulate both. But CBD has a much stronger receptor affinity for CB2 receptors, which means it has a much stronger affinity for the immune system and much less on the brain.

That's a good thing because for most of our patients' concerns, we're trying to help their immune system and not make them high. Now, that's not to say that it doesn't have some CB1 activity.

It's just far, far less than THC has. THC primarily acts on the CB1 receptor, or CBD primarily acts on the CB2 receptor. I think that's important for people to understand.

Anybody that's concerned about THC or marijuana, or is this going to make me high? Is this a recreational drug? CBD has never been considered a recreational drug nor would it really fall into that category because it's helping your immune system.

It's not making you high. What I'm hearing is, is that the reason that you like it is because it is a non recreational drug source of helping the immune system and the brain more immune.

I'm pointing, I shouldn't be pointing to my belly, but more immune over brain. And that's why you can get with immune benefits. benefits for inflammatory conditions or conditions that are stemming from an immune system that is either weak or confused.

Endocannabinoids, CBD, and Immune Regulation

So weak would be like people with chronic infections, like Lyme that you've mentioned, I would think people with mold, FDR, all the autoimmune patients.

Most every autoimmune patient, I think in functional medicine, we believe there's some sort of little bug that you've got going on in your system that could be triggering your immune system to be irritable and inflamed.

That's right. So this could help autoimmune patients, but also people who are struggling to get over an infection, like a mold, a line. I've seen chronic strep, chronic yeast.

Is there any other infections that come to mind that are missing for the people who might be listening, trying to figure out, would this help me? If it's a toxin, whether it's heavy metal or pesticide or mold, this'll help.

If it's a microbe, whether it's a bacteria or a virus or a fungus, this'll help. Because whether it's a toxin or a microbe, it's gonna cause immune activation.

And that's good for, let's survive the acute problem, right? If I get pneumonia, I want my immune system to kick into high gear. But I want it to calm down relatively quickly because otherwise, if it doesn't, now I have autoimmunity.

So you could just think any bug or any toxin, this will help. It's not panacea where it's just gonna cure everything. You still have to fix the bug, get rid of the bug, clean up the toxin.

But in the meantime, if your immune system stays up regulated, you're gonna have more symptoms. You're gonna have more headache, you're gonna have more brain fog, you're gonna have more pain, blah, blah, blah, right?

So it'll help the symptoms for sure in all of those cases. Okay, so let's expound upon that. So for people who are considering this Pico infusion, which is by the way an IV infusion.

It's there to regulate or at least normalize the immune system and help with symptoms from a dysfunctioning immune system. But what you said, which is really important, is it's not gonna do all the cleanup of the bug or the toxin.

You may still have to couple it with taking a supplement or taking another IV. Yeah, 100%. It's actually not cleaning those things up. It's helping the immune system calm down.

In order for the immune system to stay calm, you're going to have to do the things necessary to clean up the toxin or clean up the bug. Well, we could use long COVID, for example, right?

Long COVID is an immune response. The virus is mostly not there anymore, but the immune response stays high. Well, you probably don't have to do much else.

You already got rid of the virus. Your immune system did it eight months ago, but you continue to have brain fog. Well, maybe this is all you need. Well, what about mold toxicity?

Well, you're living in a moldy house. You got to clean up the mold toxins. You can do this at the beginning. You can do it in the middle. You can do it at the end.

But if you don't remove the mold toxins, you're still going to have the problem and the Pico IV benefits are only going to be transient. Right? So the distinction there is, is the problem gone and the immune system still mad or is the problem there and the immune system's mad because it's still there?

Yeah. So it says, is it going to be the complete therapy if the trigger is gone or is it going to be a temporary therapy because you still have to address the root cause or the trigger of the immune system being off?

Okay. Got it. And to answer one question that you asked that I don't think I answered very well, you said, can you think of other things? There are things that people identify as my problem is MCAS or my problem is SERS or my problem is POTS.

Well, those are actually just all names for immune dysfunction. And so I want listeners who think, well, I have that. Will it help that? Yeah, absolutely.

But we'll still have to clean up the reason that your mind got started. Let's look at categories, because I think you absolutely work in the world of chronic illness, which people who are in other foreign health practices may not be familiar with that term.

So can you just kind of put if chronic illness is your term or chronic infections, can you just list the bugs, list the conditions that you commonly see, and then we'll go into other categories so people know.

Sure. So viral, if you have Epstein-Barr, if you have cytomegalovirus, if you have parvovirus, if you have a Coxsackie virus, if you have long COVID, well, all of those will trigger immune dysfunction.

Bacterial, you're looking at things like Lyme and Bartonella and Babesia, Rickettsia, Anaplasma. If you're looking at toxins, you're looking at pesticides and herbicides and heavy metals, molds.

And they get different names conventionally, like if a person has MCAS, that stands for mass cell activation syndrome, but something activated the mast cells.

It didn't just happen by bad luck. And so then you go backwards and you say, well, what thing activated mast cells in me? And then you find that it's a virus or it's in mold or it's something.

foods too. Think about the number of people that are sensitive to gluten, right? Well, they generally weren't born with a gluten sensitivity. There are those people, they have celiac, but the people that just developed gluten sensitivity, well, this will help them too.

But you still have to fix the gut, right? So in the in the throes of their situation, this will be really useful. And then simultaneously you and your doctor, your health coach are working on fixing your gut health.

And now the inflammation that you experience when you eat gluten has gone down because you used Pico IV, but you still have to fix the problem. of the gut permeability issue.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we talk about as providers is the connection between the gut, the brain, and the immune system.

It's a different Holy Trinity. But those three systems are very interconnected. When you help one system like the immune system, you will probably help the brain and or the gut.

So let's talk about when we help, when we use Pico, what kind of benefits are you seeing for people in the brain system department? You said central nervous system.

I'm just going to call it brain here. But, or maybe does it help nerve issues as well to nerve pain? At Forum Health, we uncover the why behind your symptoms.

With advanced lab testing, hormone optimization, and cutting-edge therapies, we help you heal and perform your best. And now, through shopforumhealth.com, you can access physician-grade supplements trusted by our providers, supporting everything from adrenal health to focus and longevity.

Learn more at ForumHealth.com and explore supplements at ShopForumHealth.com. Yes, yes. I talked to a patient this morning, and she has a history of Lyme and mold, and she had excruciating pain in her upper extremities.

And nothing has been as powerful for her as this has. And she's taken all sorts of things to try and treat this, from pain medications to turmeric to ketamine to black seed oil, right?

She's done all sorts of things. And Pico IV, she said the second one, her pain was gone on her arms, hasn't come back. Wow. Maybe it's worth understanding.

Well, that's because it reduced the cytokines that cause inflammation, right? It reduced interferon gamma, it reduced IL-17, interleukin 4, right? Those are the things it did.

It's not like it's magical at the level of the nerve. It just reduces the things that cause inflammation and the inflammation was what was causing the neuropathy.

Okay. Perfect. pain conditions may benefit if this is the root cause of it. Inflammation, immune, we should be looking at a Pico IV. What about? Pain, headaches, fatigue, those are symptoms more so than diseases, but they will improve for the vast majority of patients.

The sicker the patient, this is the caveat, Dr. Saxena, the sicker the patient, the more complicated it is, and so you can't expect as dramatic results.

That's yeah, that's true with every therapy that you choose, right? But the more times you do it, the more benefit we'll have because it continues to balance the immune system.

And the more you can push down the inflammatory signals and push up the anti-inflammatory signals, there's a part of your immune system called the T helper cells, and they do that.

The more you do that, the better you feel. So patients at my office, I'll have them do the first one. And if they say it helped a bunch, I'm super excited.

If they say I didn't notice much, they shouldn't be discouraged. they're probably gonna do three or four before I'll say, we have more work to do before we can get the immune system balanced.

All right, if you can't get the immune system balanced, well, that's probably because there's still a big problem. So stop trying to treat the symptom and go back to the drawing board and look for the cause.

So, you know, if you're seeing benefit in the first infusion, that's a great sign. But if it's it might take up to three or four before you notice a significant benefit.

And if after the fourth one, how much benefit would you expect after the fourth one? Would you say that? Again, it depends on how sick they are. And I'll say this too, just to be fair to what's happening physiologically.

If you kept doing this weekly, eight times, 10 times in a row, you will get benefit. There's almost no way that you couldn't because you can't lower these cytokines that cause inflammation without having a net benefit to the body with respect to symptoms.

I'll use an example, and hopefully this doesn't derail us too much. If you give a patient steroids, they're gonna feel better almost 100% of the time.

And that's because steroids actually turn off the production of these cytokines.

Clinical Uses for Chronic Illness and Inflammation

That's why steroids are immunosuppressive. This is so much better and safer because it doesn't turn off the production of the cytokines, but it does lower them.

But you'll still make them, right? And so if somebody just stayed on this, it will help them. They will feel better, but you're not masking the problem.

If the pain doesn't resolve and stay gone, you know that something is still there. So I think that's an important thing for patients to understand. With steroids, you can cause the patient problems because now you've turned off the immune system.

Whatever the underlying cause is, like the Epstein-Barr or the Lyme, it could get worse. or the gut inflammation, right? The gut dysbiosis, it could get worse.

You can't make it worse with this because it's not blocking the production of these cytokines. It's just turning down their effect. And that's a great point.

That is a great point. Safety. you know if I remember reading it correctly this is pretty safe for everyone there is not really a major contraindication except if you have like severe kidney disease if I remember correctly and I don't even know if that's I mean, yes, I think that's exactly right.

And anytime when they have severe kidney disease, we're just cautious because we're giving you an IV and your body is going to have to get rid of it. So, you know, it's going to be more potent and harder to get rid of.

And we asked work of your kidney that, you know, maybe was too much for it. Yeah, it's not related to the medicine itself. No, not at all. It's just related to your kidneys.

But it's not going to hurt your kidneys, it's just going to make your kidneys do some work and you'll have the CBD in your system longer. Well, most of our patients aren't on dialysis, so all that to say it's safe for everyone.

In fact, there's research that shows it's used in children as well, too, is how safe it is because it's naturally occurring. Well, I should say it's mimicking something that's naturally occurring in the body.

Well, it is actually naturally occurring. It's just not the one that naturally occurs in us, right? This is naturally occurring in plants, but there are dangerous things from plants, too.

Yes, that's right. Okay, so we've just established that it's safe for everyone. It's relatively, it's just an IV and it takes probably what 20 to 30 minutes to administer.

If you have a higher dose, it would take up to an hour maybe. Yeah, and I have had two patients who complained that it burned and we had to turn down the rate at which they received it.

So it took a little longer, but that's unusual. So yeah, it's usually 30 minutes. Yeah. So not overly time consuming as some infusions could be. So we were talking about how it can help brain pain like headaches and brain issues that are like pain down into the body.

And then the other thing that I think is super related to brain inflammation is depression, anxiety, mood issues. And I feel like there is a whole kind of demographic of people who don't have like depression anxiety to the point that they feel like they need a medication or that they need to go see a psychiatrist.

But it's enough inflammation in the brain that if it were to be turned down, they would probably be happier, more productive, you know, just better socially in relationships.

Have you seen people comment about that aspect Yeah, absolutely. It definitely helps mood. It actually directly helps mood because it increases GABA tone and it decreases glutamate.

So there's two neurotransmitter like reasons why you could say, oh, that's how it works. When people take an antidepressant and they say, oh, I'm taking an SSRI and they, even if they're not doctors, they might put the names together and say oh it's helping support my serotonin well this is directly helping support your GABA so it helps with mood in that respect helps with anxiety and this sort of everything feels wired and glutamate is excitotoxic and everything works worse in your brain when you have glutamate so if you reduce glutamate you're gonna feel better.

In fact, that's one of the things that ketamine does. So anybody that's familiar with ketamine and says, oh yeah, that's used to save, that rescues people from suicidal ideation.

That's how, reduces glutamate. Well, CBD reduces glutamate. There's also a thing called microglial activation that causes inflammation in the brain and so it's helping with mood because when that goes down your mood improves because now you can make the serotonin and the dopamine and that sort of thing.

But it also helps with headaches and it also helps with brain fog. Because if the microglial activation goes down, now the inflammation in your head's gone.

It's like if you had inflammation in your knee and it went away, your knee would hurt less. So essentially making your brain hurt less and work better.

Which I think probably is why Pico is used for people who are having like active symptoms, but it's also something that can be used for people who are what are now called biohackers or longevity seekers.

You know, you don't have to be fully diseased to benefit from this. You can actually be very functional and you want to be even more functional. Yep. And what do you think about that?

Well, I have another patient and, uh, we talked about that on the last week. She, uh, she said, you know, since I've been using Pico IV, I know once every two or three weeks, I have never slept better in my entire life.

And I have more energy than I've ever had. And she's not sick. She's about as healthy a patient as I have. But now if she feels like her day is gone from 24 hours to 26, because she sleeps better, sleeps more restfully and has more energy.

Great. Good for her. Yeah. So it's amazing because a lot of people think you have to be, well, I'm not sick enough to need a Pico. And I don't think that's the lens that we should be looking at it.

It really should be like, what are the things that interfere with you having a 10 out of 10 day? Right. And could this potentially help you? And for me, like, you know, I physically feel generally well, you know, every now and then I sit cross legged too long.

And I definitely look a little bit like an older woman with me. No, you don't look like an older woman ever. But all that to say, you know, I can imagine that would be an interesting variable to look at.

If I did Pico, you know, I've, I've started to do these Pico infusions myself. I think it's super exciting. I think that as functional as I am, I would love to be.

less prone to musculoskeletal injuries when I work out, you know, if I use poor form, when I was trying to do the heavy strength training that's now required of me.

I can imagine like, you know, I'm in a sandwich generation, Dr. Peterson, where I'm taking care of my parents and my kids, and that's just a little bit of stress.

And that can throw me. I'm looking forward to seeing how Pico is going to help me just be, for lack of a better word, the superwoman that I want to continue to be.

I think that's a fantastic application for it. And while I don't see as many patients that are optimal health as I do chronic illness, there's no doubt that it works for those situations.

And when you work out and you want to recover faster, we know that there are things that help, right? Like taking creatine is good for recovery. Well, if we reduce your inflammation, if TH1, TH2 and TH17 go down and Treg cells go up, I guarantee you you're going to recover faster.

So if you want to be the world's greatest triathlete, this will help you, right? There's just, here's the thing, it sounds too good to be true because it sounds like it helps everything.

But the reason why that is accurate and actually reasonable is because it is mimicking almost perfectly a system in our body that exists for the express reason of decreasing inflammation.

and it decreases inflammation in a perfectly safe way without causing your immune system to now be overly suppressed, right? So your body's doing this and think about when we're young.

When we're really young, things work really well and so Probably your CBD, your endocannabinoid system when you're 12 works better than it does when you're 34 because by that time you've accumulated some toxins and microbes and stress and all this stuff that's making the world not work as good.

But there's really just no one where this wouldn't be of value. So whether it's optimal health or chronic illness, it really is the lever that you can pull that says, hey, immune system is going to work better for the next while.

Well, this is really great information. So we talked about people with just obvious immune issues, whether it's bugs or auto-immunity that would benefit.

Brain, Mood, Pain, and Recovery Benefits

Then we talked about brain. We talked about energy, pain, and also mood in that area. The other thing that's super important to many people is inflammation as it relates to their metabolism and body composition.

things like that. And I think there's some benefits with metabolism, if I remember correctly. Have you seen… So I've never used it for that. It would make sense that there are.

We're seeing the same thing with GLP-1s, right? Whereas we decrease inflammation, that's part of why they're valuable. So I can't really speak to that from experience, but I have…

It makes sense. And I think you've motivated me to give that a try and say, hey, let's see if this helps you too. Inflammation, if you've been reading any blog posts or staying into this functional medicine, integrative medicine, longevity medicine news, you know that inflammation equals aging.

And inflammation is not bad when you need it for survival, true survival, but for most modern people, We turn on inflammation for silly reasons and then it stays on.

Silly reasons are toxins and microbes and stress and inactivity in a poor diet. And so inflammation equals aging. And so if you are looking for a mechanism that can help you bring back your youthfulness.

I think that's what I'm really learning from Dr. Peterson is like, listen, you know, I'm in my 50s. I don't expect things to work like when I was 21 with my reserves and resilience, but I am looking to maximize it as much as I can.

Because if we're interested in living a bigger life, if that just means I want to be able to hike with my kids when they pick the you know, the more complex hike, then maybe this is something I should be looking at because inflammation equals aging.

And if I can turn that off consistently, then that means my quality of life, my quantity of life is theoretically going to improve because that's what all the research shows is inflammation.

Reducing it is what life longevity goals are. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see as this is used more and more to say, wow, this is actually like many things.

It's actually improving longevity, not just improving symptoms. I think that they will find that that's true. Perfect. Okay. So let's wrap it up with just, you know, why wouldn't I just go to my, you know, corner CBD shop, which sells all kinds of CBDs and I could do it as a gummy and make it fun.

Why would I do it like an IV and get a needle in me? Right. Yeah. One explanation that you'll hear, and it's valid, but it's not much of the explanation, is that this has all of the cannabinoids that we need that are beneficial for the CB2 receptors, the CBG, the CBD, the CBGA, the CBGB, right?

So it's got all of these kinds, and that's good. There's truth that that is valuable. But I would say, and there's also a truth, and I think this is worth understanding, that because it is, and this is why they called it PICO, it is available.

in a hydrophilic form, it likes water rather than fat. THC and CBD are lipophilic molecules and so they're going to gravitate towards the brain rather than the immune system because the immune system is floating around in your circulation, right?

That's also true, but it's not the biggest reason. The biggest reason is what's called first pass metabolism. When you take it as a gummy or orally, you're going to have first pass metabolism and 80, 90% of it's going to be broken down.

And you only absorbed five to 8% of it because it was lipophilic. And so you couldn't absorb that much of it to begin with because it wasn't the right kind of molecule.

What you did absorb, you broke down 80 to 90%. When you get this intravenously, there's no liver filtering of it, there's no breakdown of it, there's no gut barrier modulation, like will we let this in?

So it doesn't matter how sick your gut is, this is getting in if you take an IV. So that's the most important thing. The second most important is that the place where most of the cytokine activation happens, and that's what causes the inflammation, which causes the aging, it causes the symptoms, is in your vasculature.

It's your endothelium, right? It's your microglial cells in your brain. And so it's going to immediately bathe the places that have the inflammation without any difficulty being absorbed without any breakdown, it's going to go immediately to those places.

It will have direct, immediate immune cell membrane interaction. That's a mouthful for a lay person. Even for a doctor, it's a mouthful. Right away, it's going to react to the places in the cell that cause inflammation.

And so the benefits can be You'll notice the benefits before the IV is even 10% into your body, particularly if you're having what's called a cytokine flare.

And so for people that have migraine headaches, they have MCAS episodes, they ate a food and they know that when they eat gluten, they're going to be exhausted for the next four days.

This can abort those type of experiences where oral CBD just won't touch that. So I'm not saying oral CBD is worthless, but compared to this, it's probably a thousand times less effective.

Okay, great. I was looking for that number.

Why IV Delivery Beats Oral CBD

I was thinking it would be good to do an exercise where we say 1,000 milligrams of oral against 1,000 milligrams, let's say, of the PICO that you already said.

Well, the reason that I came up with that number, and I'm not great at arithmetic, but you have about 5% to 7% absorption of oral CBD because it's lipophilic.

And then on top of only absorbing 5% to 7%, you have 80% to 90% first pass metabolism. So now, of the 5% you absorbed, you only have 10% of it left. So maybe I should redo my numbers.

It's 200 times more effective than oral CBD. Okay, it's definitely a lot more effective. You'd have to take a lot of oral in order to equal and you still wouldn't get the kind of distribution effect.

Right. The vascular distribution is just so important because that's where the inflammation is happening. And, you know, it just occurred to me like heart disease patients, you know, it's your blood vessels that are inflamed.

And this could potentially be supportive of reducing inflammation at the level of the blood vessel because it'll look for that area as well. Yeah. Last thing I want to say, is there any last words you have?

And then I'm going to recap, not recap, but I'm going to just give a quick little story at the end. I mean, I always like to just reassure patients that while everything we just said about how exciting this is is true, it's not the whole story.

You gotta do all the steps. You still gotta fix your gut. You still gotta treat the causes. You still gotta say I love you more and thank you more, right?

All of those things are going to help you get and stay better. So don't take this four times and say, I'm not cured of whatever it was. That's not how true health works.

So do all the steps, but realize that this could work for you almost regardless of who you are and what you're trying to achieve. Perfect. We can't simplify things.

Things are rarely linear and healing, but this is something that would really support an accelerated process, whether it's the healing or it's the feeling better so that you can heal yourself.

Or the longevity. Yeah. So my husband and I have started doing these because again, we were so excited to hear of the science and then also we're one of those little geeks that likes to be the guinea pigs.

And interestingly, my husband wears an aura ring and while he was doing his first infusion, the aura ring detected that he was so relaxed that it asked him, are you napping?

Which I think It's an amazing testament. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that I've done two at this point. And you know, there's a graded, you know, you start with the lower dose and then a medium dose and a higher dose is the general thing a provider might recommend.

So I've done the small dose and the medium dose now at this point. And I do this thing at home. I'm prone to musculoskeletal issues. and fascia tightening and I do cupping.

And the way that I know that I might be inflamed or, you know, I've overdone my pushup kind of thing is, is that when I cup, I look at the color of what's leftover and there's a lighter color or if it's red or if it's gone to full out purple at times.

then I know, okay, ooh, and what I've understood is that that's related to inflammation and toxicity. So I have historically always had a color, because I try to work out and I probably do it as well as I can, but I'm doing my best, and I get like a red usually.

I'm happy that I don't get a purple. Well, I had a massage where she put tons of cups around my body, which I normally would look like a polka dotted person.

And I had zero color on me. Wow. From all of the cups around both of my shoulders, which I remember going, what good thing have I done? I thought, oh, I'm working out better.

I'm using better form.

Final Takeaways and Patient Experience

And it just occurred to me, the variable that's changed is I've had two picots and the massage therapist and I were both looking like, why don't you look like a big old polka dot fabric?

I don't know this because I'm a clinician and not a scientist, but I'll bet it's because you had so many fewer cytokines and because you had fewer cytokines, like you directly lowered the thing that was causing the discoloration.

That's amazing. Yeah. So there you go. Napping and polka dots. That's what I want you to like remember. That's great. All right. Thanks so much everybody for listening and I hope you guys take advantage of the opportunity to do Pico for yourself, for your own health and for the people who love you.

Amen. That is a wrap for today's episode of the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast. I hope this conversation gave you a clear understanding of how therapies like PicoIV work, why immune irregulation and inflammation matter so deeply across the body, and how integrative medicine approaches healing differently by supporting the systems underneath the symptoms.

A huge thank you to Dr. Shilpa Saxena for stepping in as host and leading such a thoughtful, engaging discussion and to Dr. Andrew Peterson for sharing his clinical experience and breaking down the science in a way that's both accessible and incredibly informative.

If today's episode sparked questions for you or if you're curious whether Pico IV therapy might be appropriate for you and your health journey, reach out to your local form health clinic to learn more.

This therapy is now available at participating locations and our providers can help determine if it's a good fit for your individual needs. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who may benefit from hearing it.

It truly helps us continue bringing these conversations to more people. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on the Forum Health Integrative Medicine Podcast.

Thank you for joining us on the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast. Each episode, we help you understand your health from every angle and inspire your lifelong wellness journey.

Follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope, leave a review, and take the next step toward feeling your best at forumhealth.com.

Shilpa Saxena, MD

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