High Dose Methylene Blue & Melatonin For Detox, Energy Production And Rejuvenation

John Lieurance, DC

Hi, Laura. Thank you for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m really excited for this interview because you are literally the creator of products that have changed my family’s life. And we’re going to get into that today. But before I start asking you all the questions, let’s tell our audience who you are. You’re an author. You’re a physician. You’re a lecturer. You’re a scientific advisor for Midas. Then that’s the company that has really changed my life and my family’s life. You’re a passionate educator. You practice functional neurology, naturopathic medicine and regenerative medicine. You’ve done that for the last 25 years. And you are the founder of the Advanced Rejuvenation Center of Sarasota, Florida, founder of Functional Cranial Release, which is an Indonesian cranial treatment with the ability to unlock spinal fluid to allow healing of the nervous system. 

You really are advanced in your you know, your come from and how you support people’s bodies and how you treat this is not so. So get ready, everyone. This is not a conventional functional medicine talk. We’re talking next level here today and we’re really going to explore some of the treatments for chronic disease and mitochondrial health that our audience may not be aware of. Things like photo, bio modulation, methylene blue, you know, ozone treatment, intravenous light therapy, high dose melatonin. We’ll see how far we get with these topics. But I just want to let people know this is the level of things that Dr. Lawrence is working on with his clients and what he’s teaching. So you also have a history of helping people with chronic illnesses like Lyme and mold and your methods are also used by Biohackers. I mean, you’re a biohacker dream because you can help people who already are functioning well, functioning even better, and then you can help people with chronic illness get better as well. So let’s do this. Okay. Sounds good.

John Lieurance, DC

Yeah. What a great introduction. Thank you, Laura.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, you’re so welcome.

John Lieurance, DC

It’s been interesting to see the evolution of the biohacking, you know? You know, like it used to be that we were kind of uncool. You know, we were the granola eating tree huggers. And then you slap a different name on it, call it biohacking. All of a sudden, it’s like, super sexy, right? And everybody is into it. But we, we, we’ve things have really changed. You know, back in the eighties, there just wasn’t the toxins that there is today. You know, and there wasn’t the electromagnetic pollution. And there wasn’t all of the different types of bugs and the accumulation of toxins in our oceans and just in our water, in our air, all the aluminum being sprayed and chem trails, which is just really activating a lot of viruses. Dittrich Killing Heart has really, I think, shed a lot of light on that. And I, I can’t help but think that that might be fueling such a high rate of Epstein-Barr virus that I’m seeing here clinically. But yes, it’s more difficult for us as clinicians to help people. And we had a pretty nice conversation before we started recording and you had mentioned that, you know, a lot of the standard stuff just hasn’t really been moving the needle for my family. And you’ve had, you know, some issues that you’ve addressed and you used a bit of a higher dose of methylene blue and it seemed to really help your daughter.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. So let me let me set the stage here before we talk about this. In terms of my daughter, you know, I’m pretty transparent about my family. And, you know, my husband doesn’t always do what I want him to do. And the struggle is real. Everybody always says, oh, about my husband or my my wife is not on board with me. And you know what? I get it. Like I have that, too. He’s evolving. He’s getting better. My daughter is a teenager and she you know, teenagers are teenagers. They don’t want to swallow pills. They don’t want to, you know, change their diet. They don’t want to get it. They don’t want to stop eating gluten and dairy. They definitely don’t want to sit in a sauna or sitting in front of a red light or do all that, you know, sit on a PMF mat. And I mean, all the things she’s just like, can’t be bothered, right? And so we’ve struggled with her acne for since she was 15. She’s 18 now. 

I mean, what I do for a living is I help people detoxify and I help people heal their gut, and I help people get rid of parasites. And I have struggled with my own daughter just because she’s basically noncompliant. Right. So enter your product. Methylene blue. And actually was introduced to us by a friend who my husband had covered and he said, you know what? He literally had it in his refrigerator. And he said, Take it. You just gave it to me. He said, Give this to Sam while he has COVID. It’s really going to help him get better faster. And and, by the way, give it to you know, you take it for your brain, give it to Bella for her acne. And I was like, okay, so we did it. And her acne cleared in two weeks. It was the first time in all these years. So what’s happening there? And link this to mitochondria for us because obviously we’re on the mitochondria energy summit, your work your literally your life’s work surrounds mitochondria support. I mean your company is called mitosis then. So everything you do is with the full purpose of helping the mitochondria because you and I mean we have lots of speakers on this summit that are talking and unpacking mitochondria, you know, science, but you know, the relevance and importance of mitochondria. So tell us.

John Lieurance, DC

Let’s break it down and make it applicable for people and not get so deep into the science. Yeah. As you requested in the simple the simple aspect of it is that there’s various vectors of inflammation into our body and I call it there’s three door, the three doorways. Right? So I have this protocol that I use here in the clinic and I call it the ganache protocol and ganache is the Hindu lord of doorways. Sometimes you’ll see people wearing T-shirts. It’s the elephant figure, and they’ll wear a T-shirt that’ll say Remover of Obstacles, right? Obviously, a doorway would be an obstacle for you to go forward. And so I look at the different doorways in the body, and these doorways are routes where we have a very strong interaction with our environment, where microbial overgrowth, where it can form, lends itself to the accumulation and the release of something called endo toxins into the systemic circulation locally, but then also go systemic. And endo toxins are also called lipopolysaccharide. 

And these are basically little particles of a fat soluble toxin. And they you know, we talk about toxins being at the root of all diseases, more so than infections, because ultimately the infections are releasing toxins. And it’s these fat soluble toxins that get into our cell membranes and it disrupts our hormones, you know, because hormones have their interaction with the cell membrane to regulate the cell and stimulate the cell to do various things. There’s different peptides. There’s there’s lots of signaling that occurs at the cell membrane and, you know, eating bad fats. As a side note, a lot of the vegetable oils, you know, these fats are very, very harmful, extremely pro-inflammatory. And they don’t lend themselves to the cell membrane being flexible. So they have poor ability to bring and deliver oxygen throughout the body. So I’d say, you know, infections, toxins, heavy metals, dietary toxins in the form of a lot of bad fats. These things are the primary culprit that activate inflammation in the body. 

And what happens when inflammation gets to a certain level in the body, especially at the cellular level, is that there is a switch that happens where we only produce about 10% of the energy that we might otherwise produce. And this is called the Warburg effect. I imagine that you guys covered that like extensively. And what this basically means is that we need to look at different ways that inflammation is getting into our system mental, emotional, spiritual, chemical, energetic, electromagnetic, nutrient, nutrient stress. You know, if we’re not getting the vitamins and the nutrients and all of these different stressors have an impact at a cellular level as to triggering inflammation if they’re not within a certain dosage factor. So when you start talking about this word for misuse, right, so it’s where there’s a certain amount of stress that we can take. And when we go above and beyond this threshold, the inflammation starts to kick in and shut down the energies. Right, which is the life force. And with your daughter, your daughter’s life force and its ability to keep her skin healthy, when that starts to diminish, the skin tends to be a very clear representation of the gut because the gut and the skin have a very strong embryonic origin. And so oftentimes when we see things on the skin, we can just imagine that if we were to open someone up and look at their gut, we could see that the gut would probably look similar with different ulcers, etc.. I’m really glad you just said that, because when I’m looking at a gut test and I see Staphylococcus growth, I always use the example of we know what staff does to the skin. You can imagine a staph infection on your skin when it’s out of control. Now think about your gut the same way that same like ulceration and that irritation and wounding is happening on the inside. 

Yeah, that’s that’s what’s that’s what’s happening. And so what methylene blue is really, really interesting because when you talk about different types of substances, there’s very few that have such a wide net that they cast. Methylene blue is so much of one of those nutrients that have all of these far reaching abilities to heal the body that in the late 1800s, the word magic bullet was coined based on a nutrient that has far reaching ability to heal the body, but leaves the body completely unharmed, very, very safe to take.

It was referring to methylene blue and originally methylene blue was was utilized as the first treatment for malaria and they were using it as a stain. So that they could see what was going on during these experiments to see what would kill malaria. But then they found that the stain itself was the cure and then it went on to grandfather, a lot of the hydroxychloroquine family of drugs and and so it’s become it’s become an aspect of medicine that would probably be much more known if the patent didn’t run out because it’s literally such an old drug. It was grandfathered in. It was around even before the FDA was was a thing. 

So what happens with when you take methylene blue is that it’s antimicrobial. One of the benefits of methylene blue is that it’s antimicrobial. Another benefit is that it’s an enhancer of mitochondrial function. So it literally upregulates mitochondria by 30%. I don’t know any other substance that does anything like that. And so the fact that it has both those two together makes it a really ideal situation for someone that’s not that that’s sick because often times if you can calm down some talk, some sort of an infection and then also give this lift in energy where the immune system can start to kick in a little bit better. 

So with someone that has an infection, whether it’s in their gut or in their brain or anywhere in their body, if you can have a suppression to that microbial overgrowth and at the same time you can charge up your immune cells while you really got something special here. And so that’s one of the reasons that we use methylene blue so much in my practice with a lot of with a lot of our coaching clients, we work, we have a lot of people that fly in and we see a lot of patients with various viral infections and different types of autoimmune conditions and you name it. And besides having people take methylene blue orally because it absorbs very well orally, not so good sublingual. So and we use higher doses than I think a lot of people have been talking. There’s been some fear surrounding methylene blue I think initially as it’s kind of taking off as being this new supplement on the market that a lot of people are starting to take. Just because there was some some issues with methylene blue where there was some surgical procedures that were done in very high doses of methylene blue were given an SSRI were given at the same time. And so these people didn’t do so well. They had something called serotonin storm. So the Mayo Clinic retracted the warning for taking methylene blue in conjunction with SSRI and only the warning exists. Having this specific thymic dmae surgery and taking and being on SSRI is because they have to give you very, very I mean, a couple thousand milligrams of methylene blue in an IV. So anyway, what.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Can you write.

John Lieurance, DC

Like the methylene blue is safe to take with accessorize, with psychedelics, with things like that. I talk about a lot of this stuff extensively and have seen firsthand that it hasn’t been a problem. But you should always talk to your health care practitioner before you embark on this. We typically have people dosing anywhere from 40 to 180 200 milligrams of methylene blue per day. I think kind of the standard that a lot of the professionals are talking about is a half a milligram to four milligrams of of for per bodyweight, which is, you know, the upper limit is around 180, 150 milligrams per day. Your urine will turn very blue. Mercury. Yeah, nothing to worry about. But guess what, if you have a chronic urinary tract infection, the standard of care right now is absolutely barbaric, is to beat on antibiotics ongoing. I mean, obliterating your microbiome. I mean, the consequence to your mitochondria being on antibiotics is, you know, I don’t even need to get into that, but so as an alternative to antibiotics for urinary tract infection, because it accumulates in your urine, people can be taking methylene blue every day. So a lot of our older patients that are in nursing homes, I would love to see this getting more out as a standard of care for a lot of these people.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s not going to, John, because then the nursing homes aren’t making money on selling drugs for chronic urinary tract infections. And I mean, I lived in that world for 20 years before I moved camps, you know, shifted teams and went to functional medicine sites. And truly, when, when, when products are come to market that actually are truly preventive, they don’t last long. They don’t unfortunately. I’ve seen it with other products. That’s a whole nother rabbit to you go down. But I would love to see it in nursing homes and care homes. And I don’t I mean, I want to put out there in the universe, it’s not going to happen. But I know we’re dealing with it.

John Lieurance, DC

We saw this very clearly with the latest pandemic. You know, I mean, there was a myopic effort to for herd immunity through the vaccines and anything else that destroyed that narrative or deviated off that narrative was, I mean, very powerfully quieted, you know, and edited and so forth. And a lot of people were injured and lost their businesses and so forth because they had voices that opposed that. And that’s one of the reasons that Meadows Unclogged is becoming on is coming into the scene where it’s a private membership club. And this is where all of our products are going to be sold through to $10 lifetime membership. And it’s going to preserve freedom of speech for people, for freedom of their choice, of different medical treatments that they would like, you know, and medical care, you know, supplements and so forth.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, it’s important that you’re figuring out a way to keep these products available for people and to keep your business alive. In a climate where when people have solutions, really good solutions, oftentimes it’s it’s quieted because it you know, you don’t need to sell pharmaceuticals if we can solve problems with less expensive natural substances. Now, can you talk a little bit about photo bio modulation? Because when you’re taking methylene blue, if you’re combining that with light therapy, it’s very powerful. Can you talk about that? Because these are some of the things that I think people don’t realize are so influential on their detoxification journey, on their energy producing journey, on their reducing inflammation journey.

John Lieurance, DC

Well, you know, as I’m sure you’ve covered, the mitochondria can accept electrons and photons. And so we have this inherent part of the four steps for proteins in the mitochondria were the last one is the cytochrome C which cytosol and chrome is light. So light can enter the cell. The challenges that light our skin is designed to protect us from sun. So not a lot of rays and photons get through the skin. So it’s the near-infrared spectrum that tend to penetrate fairly deeply. And 54% of the sun is near infrared. So being out in the sun is really one of the best things that we can do without sunscreen and without sunglasses. I would say to you, one of the tricks I found is that it is fairly fairly known, is that when we’re in sunglasses, it’s the sun. And when it hits the iris of our eyes, it triggers a melanin to be produced from our skin. And so oftentimes, if we’re always wearing sunglasses, our skin doesn’t know to start producing that protective melanin. And so we burn right instead of tan.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m so glad you said this. I ditched my sunglasses a few years ago, and I’ve got these, you know, gorgeous, expensive sunglasses that I never wear anymore because I don’t want to be stopping that process in my body. And some of my friends are like, you’re not wearing glasses. I need it’s rare. Like, if I’m out on a sailboat or something on the bright ocean, like maybe you need to, but try driving and just going outside and I don’t carry them with me anymore.

John Lieurance, DC

Well, you build your melatonin based on sun hitting your retina as well. And so we’re going to you know, it just doesn’t make sense to wear sunglasses before 11. And then I think, you know, after two or three in the afternoon. But so many people, I think it’s just it’s just automatic. They open their front door and the glasses go on and they never see the light of day, you know.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And then they say, I have to because my eyes are so sensitive. Well, you yourself, too, that you don’t have to be like that, right?

John Lieurance, DC

Yeah. Yeah. So these are things that can really help your mitochondria. In fact, sun gazing has been something that a lot of people talk about as you know, the ability for these very densely mitochondrial, the cells are dense with mitochondria within the eyes. Right. Because they’re high metabolic. And so when we allow sun to go into the eyes, there’s a high rate of photon absorption into those. And besides the signaling that happens throughout the body, that’s very positive because this whole circadian rhythm also plays into having a strong mitochondria, because if you don’t have the signaling to be awake and get things done right, which is primarily driven by cortisol and the sympathetic nervous system, vice versa. At night we have melatonin that counters cortisol and it puts our body into a deep state of relaxation. And so our body needs this to recharge its batteries. So this is where the mitochondria really are allowed to kind of regenerate themselves right in the cells can regenerate themselves without that. It’s just a constant battle on to our cells and tissues and we never can really recover from that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So can you share a little bit since you did just bring up melatonin? I mean, we have a lecture on this summit with Jason Carroll. He went super deep into melatonin. We even talked about your products on there. But can you just touch on this and how important it is to use high dose melatonin in a detox protocol and why?

John Lieurance, DC

Sure. Well, so melatonin has been shown to detox heavy metals out of the brain. So one of the one of the things that I always recommend when people start going higher on the dosage is to take binders because you will release a lot of toxins and sometimes people have some side effects taking melatonin when they start. And sometimes what happens is they take it and they feel maybe too groggy in the morning or they get a little headache or something happens and like, Oh, I can’t take melatonin because I’m having this effect. Whereas if they take it for a few days, those effects kind of level off and then they feel pretty amazing. You can take melatonin for sleep or you can take melatonin for this mitochondrial support. So I would say that mitochondria is at the core of adoption. Right. So we’re talking about the ability of the body to adapt to all types of stressors as we walk through this, this environment, this world, this planet, we’re subjected to all kinds of different things that we need to adapt to. And it’s these reactionary adaptation response that is either we have the energy to do it or we don’t. And if we don’t have the energy to do it, then it causes harm and damage and degradation to our cells and tissues in our body, which leads to disease, which is dis hyphen is lack of ease in the body. This is a reduction in the battery power. Right. And so the body has a self-healing, self-regulating ability. There’s this innate ability for us to heal, but we don’t have the energy because we haven’t had we don’t have the ability to adapt. And so it rescues me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So so methyl. So what we’ve talked about so far, methylene blue, high dose, melatonin being things that maybe people aren’t realizing will be really important for the protocols. You also have some pretty amazing with iron products that you can nebulizer that you can use. And I think you have a suppository as well, some some different products, right?

John Lieurance, DC

Yeah. So glutathione is a really interesting compound along with methylene blue and melatonin. It wraps around toxins like like flypaper and chaperons and out of the body. It’s one of the primary detox pathways that we have. The liver produces large amounts of glutathione when you’re really healthy. But as we get worn out and we get less healthy, we start to run into challenges with detox. So glutathione is one of those nutrients, unlike methylene blue absorbs very well orally. Melatonin does not absorb very well orally. So we like to have those dosed in a suppository. Rectal absorption absorbs very, very well. At first, when I first heard about rectal delivery, I was like, No way. But I was sick at the time. And man, it was the only thing that really moved the needle for me. And so I got really open to using this delivery and it’s just become such a it’s just a nothing thing. I mean, it takes 2 seconds. You don’t even know it’s there. And the benefit far outweighs the opposite. So I would say the juice is worth the squeeze.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. Everybody get comfortable with suppositories. They’re little and easy to put in. And, you know, they don’t have to bypass the harsh the harsh environment of the gut all the way. I mean, it just gets absorbed right through the intestinal wall, right into your bloodstream. It’s pretty incredible delivery method.

John Lieurance, DC

Well, you know, back to glutathione, it was one of the first things I really tried that I felt, you know, like it really improved. I slept better. One of the things glutathione does is it helps improve sleep. It helps to improve viral immunity, and it also helps to detoxify. And it’s also anti-inflammatory. It’s really good for different allergies and different, you know, autoimmune conditions and things like that because it calms down a lot of that inflammation.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

In the few minutes we have left, there’s one more product. You have lots of different things that you have, but there’s something called Sandman. It is a sleep product and Biohackers love it. People with chronic illness love it. It comes with and without CBD. CBD, I believe. So tell me a little bit more about Sandman and why this can be so beneficial to people who’ve tried every sleep aid out there and cannot sleep well.

John Lieurance, DC

Sandman is a combination of melatonin and glutathione, and the dosage of melatonin is quite high. It’s 200 milligrams. And believe it or not, we go even much higher with that with some of our other patients, and there’s no problem with it. It’s very healthy. And as you said, Jason’s done a great podcast talking about all of those reasons. So I’d recommend going and listening to that for a deeper dove into melatonin. So we really didn’t have enough time to really give it its credit as far as its benefit to the mitochondria. But yeah, so Sandman, we have a Super Sandman, which is more on the pure melatonin basis, which is 425 milligrams. And we have those both in a a liposomal and a suppository.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s amazing. So any final words? So as people are really seeking, I mean, we have health seekers here. People are watching this interview because they have tried a lot of things to get their health better. And they are really, really working towards improving their quality of life. And and some people are already healthy and they’re looking towards maintaining that amazing health. So, you know, what would be additional words of wisdom you have for people in this journey of healing, in your experience and everything that you’ve seen in your years? What would you tell our audience?

John Lieurance, DC

Well, I would I would maybe point to some some rituals that people could adopt. You know, we we briefly kind of touched on photo by modulation. You know, I would say Breathwork is another really important, I think, thing that people could adopt into their routine on a daily basis, grounding like actually standing on the ground. So if I could put all those together excuse me. I’ve got a little tickle in my throat. I’m sorry. I keep on coughing. Go out into your backyard in the morning. You know, when the sun’s coming up, look at the sun. You know, let that circadian rhythm really kick in where you’re you’re sleep. Wake cycle is really clear and your brain knows when you’re waking up when you’re going to sleep that morning sun is is the best signal that you can get. You’re getting some sun and some photons into the eyes, under the skin, try to wear as least amount of clothes as you can. 

Do some breathwork if you’re not familiar with breath work. One of the suggestions I would have is check out an app called by Wim Hof, William FAA H0 F. There’s also one called Breath Works, but there’s a few different breathing applications. Apps on your phone play one of those apps, there’s different breath work that you do, different styles and the breathing calms down the and improves your autonomic nervous system. And so if you want to have a strong mitochondria, you have to be able to make sure you put the brake system on your body. So one of the challenges that a lot of us run into is that we’re constantly on the go, right? We’re adrenaline. And so this adrenaline, this adrenalized state, leads to a lot of challenges in the body which limit our ability to adapt. So it limits that that that inherent mitochondrial force. And so your autonomic nervous system isn’t controlled by your mind, but your breath is controlled by your mind and by your autonomic nervous system. So it’s one of those things that’s kind of like splits between those two. So by working your breath, you’ll find that you’ll be a lot less reactionary in your daily life. You’ll find your block more calm. You’ll feel more almost euphoric after Breathwork, and you start to build a really strong autonomic nervous system which will improve your gut by improving your gut. We talked about this with your daughter, right? So these endotoxins, when you have too much bad bacteria, not enough good bacteria, you have this release of these endotoxins. You have this upregulated a lot of inflammation. One of the other points that we didn’t talk about melatonin is that it improves the good bacteria in your gut and it suppresses the bad bacteria. So a lot of the strategies that we talked to about the different substances could really improve.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

If.

John Lieurance, DC

You have no idea what’s going on. So currently cough like this is like money anyway. A lot of the different nutrients that we talked about along with some of these basic things where you’re standing barefoot in the grass on, on, on your pavers or some sort of concrete, not on asphalt. Looking at the sun, doing the breath work. I mean, you’re able to get so many aspects, I think, of a really beautiful start to a day, do some prayer, do some intention. And that is I will leave you with that. And I would love to hear from everybody about how that works for them. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. John Lawrence at Instagram. We’re also at Advanced Rejuvenation DOT, U.S. And like I said, you can become a member at Meadows and Dot Club and I think you’re going to be having a coupon code for some of those people as well when they come over and and check out the membership.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thanks so much. You just totally inspired me. You know, I’ve been meaning to bring more breathwork into my daily. And I have this routine every day where I wake up, I sit in front of my red light, I read Scripture. I do it for minimum 10 minutes longer. If I have the time. But there’s no reason that I can’t do 10 minutes of breathing while I sit there, too. It’s like I want to I want a habit, stock, everything. I’m like one of the people, like, get it done. Like do all the things that what’s what is not good because then that just, you know, puts me into a fight or flight response. So, but anyhow, you just inspired me on This Week. I am committed to doing breathing while I sit in front of my wife.

John Lieurance, DC

Beautiful.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Thank you so much, Dr. Lawrence. You enjoy the rest of your day. Take good care. Now.