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Health, healing, wellness.

Over the course of the pandemic, our health has become front and center as we all navigate fighting a novel virus.

Many have looked to new health and wellness practices that fall into the category of alternative medicine.

Learn more about these integrative approaches from one functional and lifestyle medicine practice in Bradenton to a Sarasota company on a mission to create health sovereignty through its products.

Coming up next.

(upbeat music) Alternative or integrative medicine is defined as treatment options or therapies that fall outside the allopathic approach of pharmaceutical drugs, surgery, or conventional medical treatment.

Alternative medicine can include practices such as acupuncture, chiropractic care, and herbal supplements.

These practices have developed over thousands of years across the world and have become more popular in recent times in the United States.

In dealing with the pandemic of the last year, many have sought new ways to improve their health.

In this episode, we explore some alternative medical approaches that offer different pathways to health and wellness.

Their goals are the same, to strengthen the body's immunity and improve overall wellbeing.

This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Always consult a qualified healthcare provider about your personal health.

Welcome to "Up Close".

I'm Cathy Unruh.

Good Medicine is a private practice in Bradenton that specializes in functional and lifestyle medicine.

Good Medicine uses what they call an individualized approach that includes different kinds of treatment options to reach a patient's health goals.

(upbeat music) - Here at Good Medicine, we try to build a plan based on your individual health needs.

So everything from infrared sauna, to vitamin injections, IV nutrition, if that's a need.

Everything is individualized here.

So we review labs, we understand looking forward what's the next steps for a treatment plan.

- From treatment perspectives, we start with the basics in evidence.

We want to understand kind of what's happening underneath the surface.

So in addition to, you know, that deep dive into their history, we're also getting a good comprehensive lab.

This is a deep dive into let's look at your cholesterol, let's look at your nutrient deficiencies, let's look at, you know, a comprehensive metabolic panel, let's look at your hormones, and your thyroid function, and things along those lines.

So after we unpack that, in their follow-up visit we now have evidence to really support and kind of match up with these symptoms and say, okay, this is our treatment plan, this is what we need to move forward with.

We do spend a lot of time diving into their diet.

We focus on hydration.

We focus on healing their gut.

And so sometimes if they're in a chronically inflamed state, we have to offer treatments outside of that space.

So do maybe IV therapy or IV nutrition where we're bypassing the GI space and going directly into the intravascular space to ensure that they get adequately nourished.

- What I really loved about Dr. Sarah is that her approach is looking at root causes of issues rather than traditional Western medicine which more just looks at what your symptoms are and then try to resolve those symptoms.

So she recommended that I do a comprehensive blood labs and then also I wanted to do a food sensitivity and allergy testing because I had a suspicion that I had some sensitivity or allergic reaction to a couple of different things including wheat or gluten.

So I have to report that I am feeling absolutely great.

I have been doing infrared saunas three times a week which are wonderful ways to remove toxins from your body.

I've been on an anti-inflammatory diet and also when I got the results from the blood labs and the allergy testing, I was somewhat surprised to find out that I did not have sensitivity to wheat or gluten but rather I had a moderate overgrowth of Candida yeast in my gut that I need to address.

- People ask what functional medicine is or what good medicine is.

And I tell them it's really just listening.

It's really just paying attention.

Really getting to know those who we're serving, it makes all the difference in the world.

- I have really thick Greek hair and I was going through some stressful time in my life and my hair started falling out and thinning but like in chunks was falling out.

Sarah had been my doctor already for a bit and I contacted her about it and she was calm and cool about it.

Didn't worry me.

It's easy.

Let's just do a blood panel.

The beautiful part of that is that she did a thorough blood panel not just coming to her own conclusions or sexism doctors, okay, here it is, take these bills or, you know, do this and then you're done.

And she saw the root of the problem.

And because of my stress, my hormones, and because of that, certain vitamins were off and she was able to get to the root of the problem because she saw what I was lacking.

And with that, we did some IV vitamins immediately but then she also went deeper as in it turns out the vitamins that I do take my body wasn't metabolizing them properly.

So she went in and started healing my gut in different ways and taking things for that so that I can absorb the nutrients so that I don't have issues.

So it was a eye-opening, mind blowing experience because literally in three weeks my hair just started flourishing again.

And it was just tiny little tweaks that she had to do and I was fine.

- I was practicing in conventional medicine for a full five years and then of course, a thousand plus hours of training.

And in my doctorate program, I'd been a nurse for several years prior to that all within the conventional space.

So prior to jumping into this path, I experienced work in, you know, in trauma, step-down trauma, BOR, orthopedics.

I had spent a lot of time in a variety of different areas.

There was a time when I feel like things like chiropractic care, acupuncture, massaging is an excellent example of this was a little bit more fringe and not really considered a reasonable approach or adjuvant therapy to conventional care.

And I see that shift kind of happening and I'm grateful for that shift.

I'm grateful that brilliant providers are really starting to think about, okay, what are the additional things that I can do for my client?

- I'm one of those people who goes to my annual physicals with faithfulness, I do my annual mammogram and everything else that's recommended.

And I'm in fairly good health.

But Western medicine is more focused on symptoms.

And so the fact that I've been kind of struggling trying to lose this 10 or 15 pounds that I just can't quite get off, my GP will just say, you know, watch what you're eating.

And Dr. Sarah had a different approach to that that has worked for me.

(upbeat music) - We are seeing a trend now of traditional, you know, healthcare providers starting to move into the functional lifestyle medicine, the concierge medicine.

You're seeing more of that kind of direct relationship model popping up here in this community.

I see it all around the country.

- Especially in the healthcare climate, people are really starting to ask questions.

And they're wanting to know what their alternatives are.

Especially, you know, in the space of COVID too even just the discussion of vitamin D here recently.

Probably 90% of those that I serve are vitamin D deficient.

So in Florida, the sunshine state, right?

So that shouldn't be the case.

So if people are wanting to kind of dive in and understand that and understand, okay, if reduced vitamin D level increases the predisposition of COVID or, you know, worsening of a COVID infection, why is my vitamin D low and what can I do about that?

And that's what functional medicine is all about.

- With COVID here, now is the time to invest in health and wellness and build up our immunity and be as healthy as we can be.

(upbeat music) - Next, we take a look at colloidal silver.

The coronavirus pandemic has raised awareness of this product.

But what is it exactly?

And how is it believed to work?

We learn today from a Sarasota manufacturer, Sovereign Silver.

Its parent company is Natural Immunogenics, a second generation family owned business founded in 1998.

Through its manufacturing process, Sovereign Silver creates minuscule silver particles resulting in a hydrosol with two ingredients, 99.999% pure silver and pharmaceutical grade purified water.

Today, we are joined by Theo Quinto.

He is co-president and son of the founder of Natural Immunogenics.

Also with us is Robert Scott Bell.

He's a doctor of arts, a homeopathic practitioner, an author, and an expert in silver therapeutics.

He's also a radio host who comes to us from his studio.

Thank you gentlemen for joining us virtually today.

- Great to be here.

- Thank you, Cathy.

- Theo, let's start with you.

This all started with your father's swimming pool.

Tell us that story.

- Yes, it really did.

So if you go back 55 years in the year of 1966, my father was renovating a small, little castle in France and it had this beautiful pool, stone-faced, waterfall coming into it.

And because my dad has always been a way outside of the box thinker, he didn't want to have to use conventional chemicals and chlorine.

And so he researched at the local university and that led to him finding out about this company that produced a silver and copper ionization system that you could install in a pool.

And then those two metals would take care of the purification of it.

- From there, this whole thing began.

Explain the concept of health sovereignty and how that guides your business.

- Well, you know, the Queen of England, the Vatican, these are sovereign individuals or sovereign entities which means that they're in full control of themselves.

They're not under the influence of anybody else.

So for us, tools like sovereign silver that my father has invented and created, really allow you to begin to understand just how much more in control of yourself you can actually be, definitely your health and wellbeing, when you find out about tools like this and you begin to put them into your daily practice.

- And Robert, this is very personal to you because you are a homeopath and homeopathy is of course, believing that the body has the ability to take care of itself.

And you had many years of chronic illnesses which brought you eventually to a true belief in the use of colloidal silver.

Tell us your story.

- Yeah, that's true, Cathy.

I was raised pharmaceutically.

I was on many antibiotics throughout my young life to meet the needs of what we perceive were counteracting infections for instance.

Unfortunately, it rained destruction on my gastrointestinal system, impacted my digestion, my immune system.

And I suffered chronically with many infections and inflammatory diseases.

And so when I found homeopathic medicine, it was a life-changing moment.

But years later, I encountered Theo's father, Stephen Quinto and the whole family and what they were producing the silver hydrosol which I had heard about silver but I was detoxifying patients including children from metals from their body that were toxic and burdensome to the body.

So I had to be sure that there was a form of a metal, in this case silver, that could be used safely, so safe in fact that I would use it for myself and my children.

- And we're going to get into a little bit later, of course, how this is believed to work and the efficacy of it all and the safety and so forth.

But Theo, I want to go back to you because your company says that it has made the most significant breakthrough in colloidal technology in 125 years.

What's that significant breakthrough?

- Okay, well, back in 1996, my father set out to really explore the research and development of how to manufacture a colloidal silver product.

And he ended up creating his own matrices, inventing his own proprietary technology.

And after three years, he had refined down the size of a particle of silver so small that it was actually smaller than one nanometer.

It'd be like comparing just briefly a glass of sand versus a glass of gravel.

So much more sand fits in the same space.

- A nanometer is one-billionth of meter, correct?

- That's correct.

- So let's do a couple of definitions here to help people as we continue this conversation.

Colloidal means?

- [Theo] So it's something suspended in water, not dissolved like salt in chemistry.

So it's unique in that surface area, 360 degrees are available for interaction within a biological system.

- And then a hydrosol simply means that it's in water.

Water is the liquid that's used.

So silver began, as far as we know, began being used way back like 2,600 BC to store beverages and so on and so forth.

And then over time, it became apparent or it seemed reasonable to Hippocrates back in about 400 BC that this might actually have some health benefits if ingested.

Is that correct?

- Throughout history, yes.

From Hippocrates forward they've known of some of the benefits of silver.

They didn't understand the scientific reference points as to how it was working.

As whether, you know, when they stored things in silver vessels, they were retained in integrity for much longer periods of time.

And that kind of led to in about 120 or so years ago more investigation into what silver could be used for medicinally in terms of a benefit to health.

And that includes the dropping of a form of silver into the eyes of newborn babies which is still used in some places around the world to prevent neonatal blindness should there be an infection through the birth canal.

- Silver is a heavy metal.

Other heavy metals are gold, uranium, mercury.

And a heavy metal means that it's high in density.

To the brain, that can seem kind of counter-intuitive, I'm gonna put a heavy metal inside my body?

- Well, it's exactly what my concern was when I first encountered it and Theo and the family what they had done to provide, as Theo described earlier, the smallest possible particle size.

So that means you could use the least amount to get the most benefit.

Now, when we discuss the properties of silver as to why we would use it, we'd also say, well, how do we use it for just benefit, no detriment?

Unlike heavy metals that are deleterious in their action against the body like mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, aluminum.

Silver is benefiting the body because it's a regenerative agent in addition to an agent that downregulates tissue inflammation which is the source of so many problems both acute and chronic that we suffer from.

So to lump it in that same concept is improper although it might be considered for some a transitional metal but again, beneficial to life as opposed to harmful to life.

- So there are essential metals also and we're familiar with them.

We, lots of us take, you know, magnesium, and iron, and calcium, and those sort of things that we know are essential to our body functioning well.

Do you all consider silver to also be essential or just of extra benefit?

- When we look at where silver is found in the earth in the soil, we find a very interesting conclusion that there are no bacteria that are detrimental to mammals that live in the presence of silver.

So that fact alone really begins to crystallize what the opportunity of silver really is in terms of protecting mammalian life on this planet from microbes.

- There are a number of recommendations against using colloidal silver.

And not just your product but colloidal silver period.

The FDA warned way back in 99 that it's not safe or effective.

And they haven't changed guidance since then.

The National Institutes of Health warns that it can cause a skin condition that makes your skin kind of bluish-gray discoloration.

Various medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic warned that it has no known health effects in the body, it could be detrimental.

There are concerns about possible toxicity harming good bacteria in the gut.

And then of course, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has taken action against several companies for unproven health claims.

So that's some pretty powerful adverse advertising out there and yet you're doing very well.

How do you respond to these negativities?

- Back in 1999, colloidal silver was considered an OTC drug product.

And then it was relegated to dietary supplement status due to a ruling by FDA at that point.

So no longer was it treated as a drug, it was now a dietary supplement and supportive structure or function, just general health.

And I had to investigate this very seriously, Cathy, for me to utilize it in practice, much less as a father with my children, and recognize that there was a known quantity that you should not exceed every day.

And this is according to the World Health Organization and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

They said a normal ingestion level on a daily basis, 350 micrograms, is just an average consumption because it's a naturally occurring ubiquitous trace element not to exceed 980 micrograms which is their considered critical dose.

When we're dealing with a 10 part per million silver hydrosol, even at seven doses a day for the next 70 years without taking a break, you are not exceeding what is considered the normal ingestion level of 350 micrograms.

So the recognition of long-term, let's say ingestion of the wrong forms or excess quantity can result in the discoloration of the skin known as argyria.

But I wouldn't risk it, again, anybody that I see or sees me much less my children, with levels approaching that.

That's why we've adopted a safe form as a supplemental use.

And so that distinguishes the concern that we have.

- [Cathy] Does the body excrete the silver?

- Yeah, the normal pathway from ingestion to excretion is via the phase II conjugation pathways in the liver.

And then it's excreted via the colon as solid waste.

It's a normally dealt with trace element.

As I said, even from breast milk on forward from the moment we're born, it's found in whole grains, medicinal mushrooms, and even numerous sources of water, well water, spring water, even tap water you can measure micrograms of silver.

So it's a normally occurring element and it is easily processed and excreted in these right forms at the right levels.

- So the big question, of course, what are the benefits?

- Well, from an immune modulation perspective, and that's a fancy way of saying how does it support your immune system?

One of the ways that it's known in the scientific literature is to modulate the immune response, to strengthen your own immune system.

Not to hyperstimulate it but to normalize it or optimize it so that when you encounter things that are a challenge you're better able to do so via white blood cell response and B lymphocyte activity and engagement.

So that's one of the many ways it can do that.

There are another direct ways that can reduce the burden, the microbial burden in the body via ion interaction.

When you remove an electron from the silver, you now have a positive charge.

That means a positive effect in the body and it can interact with bacteria and fungal species by basically weakening the outer membrane of those species and penetrating, if you will, those cells.

And it can even bind to the DNA within the mitochondria of those cells.

Whereas your healthy mammalian cells have an onboard antioxidant defense mechanism and they are completely unharmed by the presence of the silver ions.

It stops replication of viruses on contact and stops reproduction of fungal and bacterial species that are harmful to you on contact as well.

- And what kind of proof can we find about this peer-reviewed studies, trials?

Where do we look?

- They're numbered in the thousands.

You can look through PubMed, NIH studies as such.

Around the world, there's been an acceleration in the interest in silver and its medicinal benefits, if we will, in a general sense not brand specifically.

But talking about the nanoparticles and the ion activity within the body so that it can interact safely and reduce the burden, for instance, of pathogens or microbes.

- There are external uses also?

- Oh, absolutely.

Right now, you could go into any hospital around the world, a burn care center in the world and they will use topical silver for the recovery of the tissue that has been eradicated via burn.

For instance, whether it be heat burns, chemical burns, it doesn't matter.

Or mild sunburns.

Utilizing silver topically is the standard of care in medicine.

Although it's a very inactive form of silver relative to the kind of things we're discussing today.

- Theo, let's talk about the company for a moment.

You're in Sarasota.

It's a very highly rated company.

Tell us about it.

- Well, we love the Sarasota area.

So we moved the company here about six and a half years ago from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

So it's just been an incredible path for the company.

We're about 21 years old at this point of having the product on the marketplace.

Our campus is six and a half acres.

We have close to 60,000 square feet.

And it's just been really just all about the passion and the love for this material that we're able to refine and put out at a level that has never been seen in 125 years of history.

- [Cathy] How many employees do you have?

- [Theo] We're over 90.

We have all kinds of scientists, and doctors, PhDs.

Different types of chemistry backgrounds, physics backgrounds.

It's really everything to do with what this material means, what it can do, and what happens to it at such very small particle size ranges.

- [Cathy] And how are your products tested as you're developing new things?

- [Theo] So we do all kinds of in-house testing as well as third party testing.

Sometimes it's anti-microbial testing via third parties.

We have transmission electron microscopy in-house.

- Tell us what colloidal silver looks like and taste like.

- It looks basically like water and taste like water.

There might be the faintest metallic taste but that's because at the end of the day there's silver in there.

But just the right amount.

- Where do you get your silver?

- We source it through metal refiners.

Those metal refiners get it from the mines, many places around the world.

But essentially we instruct the metal refiners that we buy our silver from is that it must meet our level of purity.

- Any environmental concerns about the use of silver, the finite availability of silver, the discharge of silver when we excrete it and it goes into wastewater?

Any environmental issues attached to this?

- We've seen none whatsoever.

You're talking about something that easily binds up in nature, becomes inactive at some point.

And that's a beautiful thing if you think about it, right?

Because you don't want it overwhelming the waterways, or nature, or anything else.

- And it's used for pets also?

- Yeah, absolutely.

We just relaunched Pets.

There's part of the line that we just updated the packaging.

The other part we added the Silver Topical First Aid Gels to the line.

So now we can take our, you know, our furry loved ones and deal with them just as we would the rest of our family members.

- Robert, any final thought from you on the people side?

- Well, I just think that, you know, when we talk about health sovereignty which is a theme that runs through from the beginning with Theo's father to today, it really is so important to me in raising families, and children, and grandkids and all of that.

That we bring the power to heal back to the people.

And this really brings it back in a safe and easy to use kind of way.

And it is definitely risen to the challenge every time I put it to the challenge.

And again, for me, now it's been almost 20 years of use in my practice.

So I'm all about it.

And I definitely talk with doctors about it regularly and facilitate even more understanding in ways to use it.

- Very quickly, Theo.

Average cost for me to drink colloidal silver every day.

- From $10 up to $86.

And that's before any discounts that you might find online.

And it just depends on the bottle size whether you want different applications going from one ounces all the way to 32 ounces.

So it's extremely affordable for the results that it offers.

And I would just tell your listeners or viewers to actually just go and read the testimonials.

They're just incredible.

- Okay, thank you Theo and Robert for being with us today.

And if you do want to get more information visit sovereignsilver.com.

For more about Good Medicine, you can visit goodmedicine.global.

This episode of "Up Close" may be viewed in its entirety on wedu.org.

I'm Cathy Unruh.

Thanks for watching.

And we'll see you next time on "Up Close".

(upbeat music)