In this episode, Dr. Jane Levesque and Dr. Darren Schmidt discuss the importance of natural fertility, the impact of food on health, and the role of mitochondria in overall well-being. They delve into the significance of nutrition, particularly the often-overlooked vitamin B1, and how it affects bodily functions. The conversation also addresses the challenges of sugar addiction, the role of exercise, and the innovative MVX Plus testing that helps assess health and guide dietary choices. The episode emphasizes a holistic approach to health and the importance of individualized care.

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Takeaways

Pregnancy is a natural process, and support is crucial.

Food toxicity is a growing concern affecting health.

Meat is essential for optimal nutrition and health.

B1 is vital for energy production and overall health.

MVX Plus testing provides insights into metabolic health.

Sugar addiction is a significant barrier to health.

Exercise should primarily aim to increase protein intake.

Holistic health focuses on fixing root causes, not just symptoms.

Environmental factors contribute to health challenges.

Individualized care is key to effective treatment.

Sound bites

"Food is really, really toxic."

"B1 deficiency is endemic."

"B1 can help all that."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Natural Fertility and Health

03:06 The Impact of Food on Health

05:54 The Role of Mitochondria in Health

08:52 Understanding MVX Plus Testing

12:00 The Importance of Nutrition and B1

14:55 Addressing Sugar Addiction and Dietary Changes

17:47 The Role of Exercise in Health

20:52 Conclusion and Future Directions

Connect with Dr. Jane Levesque

Website - https://www.drjanelevesque.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drjanelevesque/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DrJaneLevesque/

Pregnancy is a natural process, so if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change that. I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 a.m. for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips.

on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. Today, I'm connecting with a colleague and a friend, Dr. Darren Schmidt. He's a chiropractic doctor specializes in nutritional medicine. He has been in practice for almost 30 years. I have seen him speak at EECO, the Cell Core Conference that is hosted every year.

And he always has the most fascinating topics. He's one of those guys that's always on top of research. And so I had to have him on the podcast. We are talking about some of the latest testing and supplementation and what we're seeing in the health field in the last little while. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hi, Darren. Thanks for being here.

Hi, you're welcome.

You've been in the game for almost 30 years. You said you started practicing in 98? That's crazy.

Well, started nutrition in 98, started chiropractic practice in 97, but I quickly went into nutrition. Yeah.

Yeah, so even, yeah, you're almost at it for 30 years. My first question to you when I have someone who's been in the game for so long is like, what are you seeing now that you didn't see 10 years ago or 20 years ago?

Well, mean, definitely COVID makes people really sick for a longer period of time. Like before that somebody had a cold or flu, it was really easy to fix that up. So that's way different. The other thing is our food is really, really toxic. mean, obviously people are becoming more and more overweight because our food is hyper palatable. So it's designed by ⁓ food engineers, food chemists to make us eat more and more. And I went to Ohio State University and they had a food chemistry department where

One of my friends went through it as he became a chemist and that was job to make food more and more palatable so you don't stop eating, you just keep eating. So that's a total disaster right there. So the more chemicals added to our food makes us sicker and more overweight.

Yeah. How has that changed your practice?

Well, the idea of food being hyper palatable, it's new for me in the last five years. Whereas before that, I would say MSG is toxic, but it's not. There's a lot of chemicals in food that are not necessarily toxic, but they just keep you eating. Like even the colors of Skittles, you know, all the different food colorings and stuff. It's to attract you and make you think it's fruit, like berries, you know, or there's a chemical that they put in bread. So when you put it in the microwave, the bread becomes soft and warm. I mean, that chemical, you know,

probably not toxic, but it makes you eat the bread, because now the bread is so much more inviting and like cozy. So just all kinds of psychological, you know, chemical ways make people keep eating.

And then that's you're seeing the biggest issue with that is the blood sugar dysregulation and like inflammation that's causing from it.

Yeah, everything related to metabolic syndrome and high blood pressure and all sickness and weak immune system and can't detox. Yeah, it's our food is a disaster.

Yeah, I agree in terms of it's funny, I've never actually heard it from the palpable perspective, but like that makes sense. So it's the addiction that that makes it hard to stop. And then it also just makes you want to eat more, which obviously there's the chemical exposure, but you're saying it's also the volume. Is that, am I understanding that?

Yeah, definitely. It's the volume is a is really bad. Yeah. And then the other thing is they're getting people to stop eating meat because meat is bad. Right. It's not bad. Meat is the healthiest food you can eat, but they use really bad science, the same science that they tell you like back, you know, decades ago, they said was cigarettes were good or they were weren't harmful. Right. They used to say that cigarettes were good for to help your digestion.

They're not that bad.

But that science was called epidemiology. So they use the same quote unquote science to make you think that meat is bad and to make you think that the various shots are good. And then, you know, it's like these large studies, like, you know, millions of people put together, but what about you as an individual? You know, it's it. And there's a guy named he's at Stanford, Yonides, I-O-A-N-N-I-D-I-S, John Yonides. And he is a researcher of the research. And he says epidemiology is garbage.

just total garbage, worthless. As a matter of fact, it's worse than garbage. It makes you think the opposite of truth. And so it is really easy to do. It's really cheap. Just send out surveys to people. Any, you know, any like masters in epidemiology at the local school of public health can do it. Just send out a survey by email and it's, you know, there's no control group. There's no controls, you know, then you do a bunch of math and you come up with some, you know, basically it's garbage. yeah, it's, it's derailed us as a

Yeah, so.

as in our healthcare society.

I mean, I think you've done some presentations at EECO as well about how it has derailed some of us as professionals as well, because it's hard to sift through all the research and to know what's what.

Right. there's so much, know, 95 % of nutrition research is epidemiology. So you can find some research showing meat is good versus meat is bad, or, you know, spinach is good or spinach is bad because, you know, spinach has oxalates and there's just too many variables. So the bottom line is, well, we've got this new test that you can test yourself, which we're going to talk about, and you can just skip all the Harvard epidemiological studies and all that and just test yourself really cheaply.

Yeah, I'm it's in my understanding is you've never really done any group stuff. You've always do one on one because you just see medicine as like such an individualized thing. Or is there a general things that you're like, everyone should do this.

There's generalized things now that I've figured out throughout my career. so, you know, regardless of my license, I quit taking insurance in 2005. So it's been 20 years now. That's my personal claim to fame is that I survive in the free market. I actually get people well. And there's a lot of other naturopath, you know,

holistic doctors that do too. And I love them for that. But, there's a lot of like medical doctors and other types of doctors, they take insurance and they don't get anybody well, but they retire with millions and millions of dollars in the bank account and they never got a single person well because they got paid by insurance. So third party money causes trouble. So I got rid of all my third party money. People pay me directly. And if I don't get people well, why would they come and see me? You know, like there's no reason cause they already have insurance. So they're going to use that money through the medical system.

The science of supplements and diet is really, really good and getting better and better. It's really exciting. So we got that going for us. And so it all comes down to mitochondrial function. So the mitochondria are in your cells and they need to work well because that's where your body makes energy. If you don't have energy, you can't detox, you can't walk around, you can't have a strong immune system. All the horn thing, all the stuff, having a baby. that's stuff. Yeah. You talk about that at eco. It wasn't this last time, but I think year.

Yeah, huge, yeah, that's it.

I mean, I don't think you can address in urine chronic disease, just so some people have background, it's like that mitochondria, I think. And this is why I love Cellcore, where it's like, how come it took them so long to get it out of Todd that like the reason it was named Cellcore is because it's focusing on the mitochondria and the mitochondria is the core of the cell. And it's like, my God, that makes so much sense. But yeah, it's the core of the cell. that's, you know, if you don't have good mitochondria, you don't have anything.

Right. So knowing the causes of why the mitochondria don't work well is what you and I are really focused on and Socor has great products. There's other companies too. And then knowing the ins and outs of all that and practicing it, right? Applying it into people's lives so that they get better.

And practicing it in our environment now, like that's the, I, like I said, when I have people who've been in the game for 20, 30 years, I'm like, how has that changed in terms of like what I see? And I've been practicing for 10 years, but what I've seen in the last five years is like the complexity of cases is much greater. And maybe that's just me growing as a practitioner as well. But you know, before you could get away with like two or three different supplements, whereas now.

Most people have to take quite a bit, whether it's my thalation support, mitochondrial support, drainage, binders, you know, all that kind of stuff. I'm curious what you've seen in terms of that.

Yeah, I mean, the complexity of the cases is a factor. honestly, the environmental problems include moldy homes, and then chemical exposure in the environment, and then poor quality water with chemicals and radioactive elements like radium in it. So that stuff is not getting less. There's more sprays in the agricultural fields, there's more homes that that's 40 % of buildings in the United States are moldy. So these are factors that

kind of fly under the radar, at least at the national level. got RFK Jr. as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and he's going after food, chemicals, which is fantastic. And that's going to make a dent. I think that's going to help. But to really have the bigger picture, we have to address the quality of the buildings. made out of paper.

And then it rained and then they're like let it dry for a minute and then we'll seal it all in

Right. Yeah. And then before that it was plaster. Plaster walls do not grow mold, you know? And then when I, so this, I'm in this house now and when I first moved in, high winds would blow shingles off the roof. So I had a roofer guy come out. He said they were high nailed. And I said, what's, I said, what's that mean? He goes, see this line right here on the top of this shingle. That is not where you put the nail. You put the nail below that line, but everybody thinks the nails go on the line. And they said, this is 10 years, this is eight years ago.

Cushing motor

But like most people don't know that my brother-in-law is a builder. And I always ask, cause I was like, why is, do we actually like need to change building material? And he is like, well, no, it really depends on you can obviously, but you don't have to, you just have to check the humidity level before you seal everything in. And most people don't, they just visually do a check and go, yeah, it's fine. Versus like it needs to be below a certain percentage. And then you can apply even certain things on the wall. can't remember what he said to then it.

like mold will ever grow on that. And it's just because we're trying to pop these houses so quickly or you're rushing or whatever, you're essentially, you're just not looking at. And even with electrical, we had issues with electrical in our house because they do a visual check, but they didn't like, hey, this wall over here is like, whatever is going on in the wiring here, it's as high as, you're living into like in a power plant.

Yeah.

Yeah,

like that's it. And then you're sleeping by that. then, you know, so that was really valuable to just have somebody come in. And a lot of the times I find the problems are there because people are rushing as opposed to like, there's obviously good, quality workers that know what to do, how to build an electrical and all that jazz. But yeah, it's a bit of a mess for sure.

Yeah, right.

So let's talk about, I mean, you've done some carnivore, you've done some ketosis. Tell us a little bit about, you I don't want to say like what you recommend, but just what are you seeing as the most valuable thing for people to know in the nutrition space? Because let's be honest, there's so much noise. And so if we're now surrounded by all these foods that are making us eat more and then they're full of garbage and et cetera, how do we get out of that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So to cut through all the noise, the single most important macronutrient for the human body is protein. It's not fat, carbs, ketones, or alcohol. And I'm a big fan of the ketogenic diet in some cases, and I do it myself. But if you don't have enough protein, you can't feed your body, you can't feed your muscles. Your muscles are the single largest organ in your body. It's not your heart, your skin, or your brain. It's your muscles.

your tongue. Your tongue is the strongest, but not the largest, hopefully.

Well, the tongue is mostly muscle.

Yeah. But they say that is the strongest muscle in the body, right? Because it can move like so much more than his body weight.

Yeah, I've never heard that. I never looked into that. Okay, I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. So ⁓ if you don't feed your muscles, then your little tiny thyroid doesn't have a chance your little tiny heart adrenals kidneys, sex organs, they don't have a chance if you don't if your muscles aren't happy. So and then with this test that we'll talk about, and BX plus, it'll pick up on that if you have enough amino acids in your in your body, if it's being digested and utilized. So beyond that, so

You know, people will say, well, you need some plants to have certain chemicals, phytonutrients, fiber, chlorophyll. And I sell all this as supplements and I, but I have the one rule and that is meat is food, plants are medicine. So yeah. And people say, well, I need fiber to go to the bathroom. So I eat a lot of salad. Okay, fine. That's great. The fiber in your plants are medicine. There's a lot of people that don't need fiber. Right. So, but.

As I've been running this test, MVX +, I'm finding more and more people are just simply malnourished because they're not eating enough meat and they're on like a vegetarian diet because it's supposed to be healthy for them. But yet, can, you the numbers show me that they're malnourished. So that's been, you know, super beneficial to discover that.

Yeah, I love that. It's protein, think is wildly underestimated. And then like, obviously the quality of protein and then what your body does with that protein really matters as well. So, I mean, let's talk about this MVX because you've mentioned it a couple of times. What is it? What's the test? How do we get it? All that stuff.

Yeah, NVX plus is the official name of it stands for metabolic vulnerability index. And it's available in United States. It's really inexpensive. When when I sell it to my patients, it's $89. And I have a setup on my website that anybody can buy it just go on the front page of my website, upper right corner, click on the NVX test. And so my website's the NHCAA.com

And then for doctors, they can order it in various ways. ⁓ I'm a big fan of professional co-op services. I ordered it from there because they're the ones that turned it on and made it available to the public. Whereas before that it wasn't available except for only to the government. And they did research on it for 30,000 people for many years. And so what it does is it tests six times. Yeah, blood tests. have to be fasted when you give your blood. So just skip breakfast and go in the morning, get your blood drawn.

analysis right? worked.

Okay, so then it takes about a week, you get your results in a week. And so it gives you a score one to a zero to a hundred for your overall health. like it's a score, right? Like it's a game and higher, the higher the number, the worse off you are. want your score to be really low. It also of these six factors, it'll guide you down the right path. Okay. So one of the factors measures toxicity. Another one measures infection and inflammation. Another one measures mitochondrial function and the last three measure your B1 status.

plus sugar and protein, like how your diet's doing. And I mentioned B1 because it's the single most important mac, ⁓ micronutrient. So protein is a macronutrient. B1 is the micronutrient. And we can get into that too. That's really interesting information there. So, so you, so you run your first MVX plus score and you see what the number is and you can look at the six factors and say, I need to detox it. Or, I need to eat more meat or whatever, whatever it tells you to do. And then

Yeah.

You do it for a month or six weeks or two months or whatever, then you redo it, redo MVX and see if your score gets better. So when I first ran my MVX test, January 13th of 2025, my score was 55. Now it was, and I felt terrible because I had a gas leak at my house for the previous year, probably longer, but at least a year.

What's the highest usually you see in the person that's like really unwell? What's the score usually when it's really unwell? When somebody's unwell?

What's that? Yeah, what's that?

Well, unwell, I mean, it's a rate, it's a gradient range. So somebody who's really sick with cancer and metastasis to the spine is like 78. And then somebody who is, has been working on their health for five years, detoxing and doing all the healthy things. And they, their score could be 30. And it doesn't matter if you're, you know, a hundred years old or five years old age is not a factor. What matters is your mitochondrial function.

And if your body is loaded up with the toxins or infections or inflammation or malnutrition. So it's all about mitochondrial function.

So 55 was bad for you because I was thinking like if it's out of 100, like is 98 like you're basically dead?

Yeah, 98 you're dead.

Okay, sounds good. Okay.

So, found the gas leak December 7th and ⁓ between, okay, so I didn't change my supplements from December 7th to January 13th. I didn't do much other than I wasn't breathing in gas and I felt better. But January 13th, I got my blood drawn for MVX. Again, I didn't change anything and then one month later in February, I got my blood drawn again and my score dropped to 31.

So a huge drop, 24 points in four weeks just by not breathing in gas. then the third natural gas out of my... Yeah, is in my home, outside of my home at the gas meter, right outside my living window. Okay, so then in March, my third test, I had a sinus infection, which I didn't know I had until the next morning when I woke up. when my blood was drawn, I didn't know I had a sinus infection, but my score went from 31 up to 39. So that's bad.

was the guest again.

That's right.

So again, it picks up toxins and infections. Okay. Then my fourth test had dropped to 29 and then my last one was 26. So being, so I run this on 350 people now and my score at 26 puts me in the top, you know, top, top 15 out of 350 people. But when I was at 55, you know, I was like, I'd be in the middle somewhere. But, but the point is in a few months, you know, if you, if you

do it right, you can drop your score and then you feel better, right? You become more active and it directs you down the right path, which is fantastic. And we got the supplements to help you, right?

Yep. Well, you're dropping the score because you're improving the infection or the inflammation or you're improving mitochondrial function. That's why you feel better. And then the score obviously reflects that. Yep.

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

So it tracks you, it tracks your progress. It guides you down the right path and it'll give you, it'll actually give you the percentage of your chance of dying in the next five years. So when my score was 55, my chance of dying in five years was at 20%. And then my score at 26, my chance of dying is at 1%. So yeah, you can significantly increase your lifespan. And now here's the other thing. There's a lot of tests online.

You can buy into that measure how long you're going to live. So they're looking at risk factors and looking at VO2 max, like your fitness. And that's not nearly as important as the six. Yeah, because that's all about mitochondrial function. So now these six factors of mitochondrial function or dysfunction, you and I've been studying this our whole careers and all the way back to a hundred years ago.

That's it.

So even in the 1930s, they talked about vitamin B1, 1920. I got a book from 1929 talking about how important it is to have enough B1 in your body. then that, you know, and so B1 affects four of the six factors of MVX. So this data is a hundred years old. So in 2018, I came up with what I call the seven step blueprint to optimal health. So that's kind of like my plan to get people healthier. And MVX lines up with that exactly.

So my seven steps lines up with the six factors of MVX. So it's like a, you know, if you have truth, it's like a universal truth, right? You get the mitochondria working well. And so I figured that out over my career. And then these other researchers at LabCorp, they figured out MVX over their career. It's still like 30 years that they put all this together. Yeah. So it's just fantastic. It's like so true, right?

That must have been a big eureka moment for you.

That was amazing. Yeah, it was a good day.

Yeah, that was a good day when it all came together. it, you know, so I'm, my brain right away goes to, if it's marking ⁓ a toxin, do we know which toxin that's causing the issue? Or do you like, you do further testing to figure that out? Or what infection? Like is it yeast versus parasite versus, you know, viral bacterial? Does it go down? Cause obviously you don't just do the test and you're like, okay, it is an infection, but then you have to know what infection it is and then, you know, how long to treat it for and all that jazz.

Right, you have to do further testing to get more data on that. Yeah. So do you want me to go over some labs?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what do you do? How do you because I I love the test that shows us the general direction but like it's in my cases that I see it's never an end all in be all. Do know what mean? Like that's it and we don't have to do anything and you're just gonna go this way. So I'd love to give a bit more insight.

Sure. So in NVX, one of the factors is called small H2O particle number. And if it's too low, that's bad and it indicates toxicity. So then I like to run the Cyrex Array 12, which has 28 different organisms, including mold, yeast, candida, virus, bacteria, parasites, Lyme. So there's that. And then another factor is called glycA. That's infection and inflammation. So to drill down inflammation, I run a panel on LabCorp called hypercoagulation panel.

And there's two of them on LabCorp, but one of them that's the one that I run is called hypercoagulation panel dash esoterics. So this is a panel that they purchased from a lab called esoterics, whereas the other one's more for warfarin, the drug. So regarding infection, I'm sorry.

Yeah

No infection. You said infection. Yeah.

So Cyrix, wait, no, okay, I messed this up. Cyrix-R812, that's for the infections, right?

Yes, okay. That's that makes more sense.

That's glycA.

GlycA is infection and inflammation. then the small actual particle number, that's toxicity. Okay, so let me correct what I had said two minutes ago. So toxicity, further testing is the total tax burden from... ...private America. And then there's four other factors. One of them is called citrate, and that has to do with mitochondrial function because citrate is the big molecule in the citric acid cycle, which is the first part of mitochondrial function. So in order to measure mitochondria, you can use the...

Thank you.

do the O test, organic acid test. And then the last three come together as the branched chain amino acids. And I don't really do further lab testing for that. I just give people the right nutrients, whether it's a branched chain amino acid powder or just eat more meat or fix their stomach, fix their gallbladder at B1 to fix their digestion. that, you know, those can get improved in a matter of a few weeks or a few months.

Huge. I love it. Yeah. And so then you basically using the MVX Plus to assess the progress. So then you don't have to retest things on a regular basis like the bigger panels.

Right,

you can retest those in a year or something.

You're not going to do that every month.

Right. Yeah, NVX Plus, it seems like I'm doing it about once every six weeks.

Nice. And so is it fair to say that like every time you're retesting it, you should be seeing an improvement unless like it's a sinus infection that you weren't aware of.

Right, it's fair to say that you should see improvement every time you retest. Now, you could say, let's say somebody has a severe amount of toxicity and you start them on a detox program, but you're missing drainage, so their kidneys and liver are kind of stressed out. It's possible that they can get worse on their overall score because as a clinician, you're not...

Well, you're missing a piece of a protocol.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I just had a patient he had to do two stents and he got put on seven medications for his heart. He's like a hardcore type two diabetic, you know, just he's a mess, right? Eating tons of sugar and his MVX score got worse significantly because of the surgery, right? That makes sense. So now my job is to, you know, help him get better. So they put the stents in, maybe they saved his life, but now it's time to actually get him healthier and the MVX will guide me down that path.

Yeah. How do you go about, I mean, it's all really good in practice, right? But when someone is really addicted to sugar, like it's a big issue. there anything like, what's your approach? And I'll give you an example of sometimes when I have my male clients, so like I'll work with couples with my male clients. Sometimes I almost need to trick them into eating healthier. Like I'll start switching their supplements and find a hook in something that's easy for them to do, because I know as they start doing it, they'll feel better. And then we can have the motivation to quote unquote, change the diet.

because sometimes the diet is like the hardest part to change. I don't know if you find that as well.

Yes and no. I mean, I tell men to eat the carnivore diet and they're always super happy about that. these are my patients, right? They pay me a lot of money to take my advice. And so they do what I tell them to do basically. So men carnivore diet. And then for women, it's a bit different and the addiction to sugar can have more of a hold on them. So I have them increase their meat, their protein. And of course, we're always looking for getting rid of candida or parasites because they can make you crave sugar.

Huge.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then with the hormonal stuff on a monthly cycle, that can make people crave sugar too. So, you know, I got herbs and stuff to help out with that. So it's a bit more finessing for the female patients.

I think you just said the most important part about like why patients listen to you. It's like, well, when you pay somebody a bunch of money, like you're going to listen to their advice. And so the people who are, you know, we, always say like, want to cut through the noise because there's a lot on the internet. But at the end of the day, if you're in the phase of your health journey, where you're just like trying things out and seeing if it works, it's very different when you commit and you say, Hey, I'm going to like pay this individual and I'm going to take their advice. Cause now you have skin in the game, you know,

Yeah, for sure. And the more you charge them, the more compliant they are.

It's weird.

I mean, you it's an investment, so you want to get the return on investment. And, know, I used to charge less and we would have people dropping off faster because it wasn't so valuable to them. That's just the way it is.

Psychology, yeah.

Right, yeah, look at the, no, go ahead, go ahead.

No, you finish because I'm going to change gears.

Well, okay, I was just going to say, been a lot of discussion about tariffs in the last few months. And then the Chinese people on TikTok are like, Hey, we make these bags and we ship them to Italy. And they put like a Gucci name on it or something, or you go, we're making the bags and then you buy them for thousands of dollars, but we make them for $5. Like, like that's the psychology of it. The more, higher the price, the more valuable it is.

But again, our services are the most valuable services because we're actually fixing the root of problems. We're fixing the causes, we're fixing the mechanisms, we're fixing the mitochondria. So yeah, we're doing the best work in healthcare for long-term health.

Yes, for sure. And I do think that there's a lot of growth for us as practitioners. Like it took me a while and genuinely it's the type of people that we are is like, I just am obsessed with how the body works and it's figuring out like what it's trying to tell me. And like, those are just things that I like doing and I don't stop thinking about it. You know, when they're like, you should take a vacation and stuff. I'm like, I can't stop thinking about my life. Like that's just how I think about the world. I look at someone and I'm like,

this is how they eat and this is what they're doing. And this is how, and you know, which one was it? The chicken or the egg where I, that's just what I paid attention to. And then I found naturopathic medicine, which allowed me to then make it into a career versus as a naturopath, you're trained to look for, you know, the imbalances and all of that. think it's the other one first. Like I was obsessed with how things look and how they do. And then I found naturopathic medicine to help me express that. And yeah, the money thing is just, I think there's a lot of growth for us as practitioners, but

Also just hate letting people know the value that we actually provide for people because it's Talk about B1 because you had, I don't think anybody really knows about B1 to be honest. And I've kind of like heard about it until obviously hearing you speak at Eco and then going deeper into it, but not as deep as you go with some of your charts.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, so with B1, okay, I talked about that gas leak I had in my house. And like I said, it was in the gas meter outside of my living room window. So I never smelled gas in the house. Anybody who came to my house didn't smell it. And it depended on the wind. So the wind would blow into the living room, kitchen, down the hallway, into the bedrooms. So there were many mornings, and it's west east, like that's our prevailing winds. So there are many mornings I woke up and my heart was tight.

diagrams.

But anyways, last year, May of 2024, I went to the ER, May 18th with crushing chest pain, eight out of 10, high blood pressure, left arm numb, left leg numb. I thought I was having strokes. I couldn't breathe. And I was doing very poorly March, April, and May of last year. And I would go to the gym, drive my car to the gym, sit in my car for 30 minutes, couldn't breathe. And I would just drive home. Like I couldn't even go walk into the gym. It was terrible. So when I

Went to the ER, they found nothing. I spent five hours there and they charged me $10,000. We did a CT of my brain, couldn't find any stroke. They kicked me out. I was disappointed that they wouldn't give me blood pressure drugs. I wanted something. I wanted drugs. And they said, don't qualify for any drugs. So luckily I'm in this profession. 10 days later, I'm with a patient and she says to me, she goes, oh, by the way, I'm very happy because I've been taking high doses of B1 and all my neuropathy is gone.

And I was like, wait a minute, I have neuropathy in my left arm and leg. Maybe I need high doses of B1 and I carry it. They're carrying it for 15 years. So I muscle tested for it. That's the procedure that we do. Anyways, I found the need for, need, I needed three. So I took three and within one hour I was breathing easier. It was amazing. So I kept taking three all summer, all fall. And then December 7th, I found the gas leak. was within two weeks, I was 95 % better.

just on the B1, even with the gas leak occurring and probably getting worse through the summer and fall.

Was this patient a patient of your like, did you put her on the high dose of B1? And you just didn't connect the dots before someone else put her on it.

She put herself on it for four months, right? Yeah, so thank God for that. know, like I'm sure I swear if I wasn't in this profession, I'd be dead twice because I had mold in 2016 and that I then went to the cardiologist for that. You know, I got four EKGs in 2016. Why is my heart?

causing so much pain, like what's causing the heart pain. So when I learned about B1 and I wrote an ebook about it and I was like, this is the most important nutrient by far. And I read a book and actually Medfx is right here. I mean, I could show you. So this book right here, Thiamine Dys- Deficiency Disease, Dysartanoma and High Calorie Malnutrition. That's the premier book on B1. And in the book, it says that B1 deficiency is endemic, meaning everybody has it, which, you know, pretty much is true. But there's no

Particular specializing supplement company that has B1 in their products. I've been paid by a variety of supplement companies to talk about their products and their products are great, but nobody pays me to talk about B1 because everybody has it, right? It's like it's 100 years old. And there's no attention on it, but here it is, the most important nutrient, I think.

I was just going say, you think the deficiency is worse now because of that high calorie malnutrition versus like 100 years ago was the deficiency the same?

Absolutely. So in my books here, when they talk about B1, I got six books here talking about B1 between 1929 and 1953. And the high doses, even in the fifties, high dose B1 was 20 milligrams. And now I took 750 milligrams a day for six months. And that was a version of B1 called Benful timing, which wasn't even invented until the 1960s in Japan. So what are the causes of B1 deficiency?

You know, all the toxins, parasites, coffee, tea, alcohol, and then the high calorie malnutrition that's processed food with very little or no B1 in it, but yet high calorie carbohydrate count. So the carbohydrates require B1 to digest. And then just stress, stress gets rid of B1. So like our lifestyles get rid of B1. So I've put a lot of people on B1. I put about 300, 400 people on B1 in the last year with fantastic results.

But yet, you know, again, a lot of my patients, they've been through the parasite cleansing, they've been detoxing, you know, they have like a kind of a baseline of a clean body and their body is ready for really good nourishment. So that's where the B1 and the increased protein comes in. So it's been absolutely fantastic as a clinician, as a holistic doctor has been great.

Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned the dosage because I think the dosage is like, there's a big difference between taking 20 milligrams or a hundred milligrams and like 750 milligrams. And it's not that you'll still get better, obviously, because you're getting some versus none, but it just takes so much longer to actually get rid of the deficiency now. Like it can take years, right, to rebuild versus if you're doing it at a higher dose.

Well, it takes years to rebuild if you are severely diseased, like you have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. And there are studies showing how B1 can reverse that in some people. So really deep neurological B1 deficiency, but also B1 stimulates mitochondria should just work. But most people who are, you know, they go, they see us, they get detoxified, right? Their parasites are gone, their candida is gone, their mold is gone. They only need B1 for about six months. Maybe a little bit longer, but not typically not longer than that.

But if you still have peristate candida mold toxins, then yeah, you might be on B1 for years and years.

Yeah, but you should probably address that.

For

sure, definitely address that. Yeah, clean the body out first and then nourish. that's kind of like a bigger picture is detox, then nourish. Now, now, I mean, always, there's always exceptions to these rules. But yeah, certainly put B1. give ⁓

You're always nourishing to some extent, you know what I mean? Like you need protein to detox. And so it's like you are nourishing, but the way that I see it, what you're saying is like, when I give people nourishing things while we're detoxing, the body is not using it to build itself up. It's using it to detox. Exactly. So then like once the stuff is gone, then you're still eating or consuming in whatever form the

nutrients, now the body can rebuild itself instead of focusing on detoxing because the pathogen is out of the way or the toxin is out of the way.

Yeah.

Cool. Anything else that we missed that you feel the need to share with the world.

Regarding like MVX plus or the or view. Yeah Yeah, like I said this before but be one is vital for four out of the six factors of MVX so

Or anything about Darren.

When mitochondrium inflammation.

Yeah, well, nutrition. yeah, definitely mitochondria, that's that's citrate and MVX. But the last three factors of MVX are the amino acids, valine, leucine and isoleucine. So those are called branched-chain amino acids. And when they go up in the blood, that means that they're not going into the ⁓ mitochondria, and they're not being utilized. So they end up in the blood. Why is it in the blood? Well, because they're not entering and they're not being assimilated and digested.

So when that happens, those three amino acids high in the blood tells the liver it can't de-fat itself. So now you get fatty liver. And then when you have fatty liver, have insulin resistance, high glucose, high blood pressure. Yeah, metabolic syndrome. So people blame the diet, which is true, because high calorie malnutrition causes a B1 deficiency. So then you go on a keto diet, which I'm a huge fan of keto carnivore. But the keto diet...

I mean, everything goes.

specifically has been shown to reduce fatty liver by 31 % in six days. So you do the keto diet and add B1 because the keto diet doesn't work on its own. You got to add in the nutritional, you know, the high dose B1. So you're using high dose B1, you know, nutraceutical, right? Like it's, I'm not going to say pharmaceutical because it's not a drug, but nutraceutical. Yeah. So now B1 is needed in five biochemical reactions in the mitochondria. So when you get that, including step one,

which is getting what's called the acetyl-CoA into the mitochondria. So it's a rate limiting factor. If you don't have enough B1, you can't do step one in the mitochondria. And this is true for all the cells from head to toe, including the nervous system. Now the nervous system is the brain, the nerves in your arms and legs, but from your brain stem, you get the vagus nerve, which comes down to your organs in your torso. So your nervous system controls your gallbladder function, stomach, you know, stomach grinding.

Everything.

Everything, pooping and sex, sexual function and intestinal. Yeah, all this stuff. Sweating. That's all nervous system stuff. So B1 can help all that. And but like, I'm headed towards more towards digestive function. So you can add in B1 and your whole digestive function works better. And then you can digest your protein better. So B1 lowers branch chain amino acids. And that helps defat your liver that helps get rid of fatty liver and, and all that. it's like, these are big picture

items that all come together. And you got to, you got to kind of know, I know all these things, right? Like at a deep level, and they all just work together. So I was watching a TikTok video, and this poor girl, she was in her 20s. She's got pots, you know, where you stand up and you feel dizzy. So there's a study, she got involved in this study at the hospital, and she's talking to the medical doctor.

And you know, I'm sure the study might be a million dollars, right? The house was going to make a lot of money on this study. the medical doctor told her, drink more water and exercise. It's like, that's not going to do it. It's mold, candida, toxins, right? Like that, like, how about, how about eat more bread? Like what else are you gonna, what other stupid advice can you give to a person with a chronic illness? And I, you know, like, it's just,

So what I'm seeing now is that that oversimplification of anything like, it's just my ovulation that's off or it's just my this or I just get dizzy where for someone like us who is obsessed with understanding how the body works, then we have a thousand questions for that person, right? Because we want to know how they're sleeping, what their stress like, their exposure, their past, all of this stuff, where to somebody who's not trained and they're trained to just prescribe pharmaceuticals, they're going to say,

There's a pharmaceutical for that. And I think like now is a really good age. Like you said, RFK is going to make a dent, but also for us as practitioners to step up and be like, Hey, we, this is how the body works. Like we know this and you can live in it. You live in it every day and here's the proof. And if you do this, this is, you you test this and you do this, you're going to feel it. It like, just, I don't want to say it's embarrassing, but like there's certain things that the doctors will say now. And I'm like, it's embarrassing that you're still saying that.

with the amount of information that we have. No use, because this just happened like yesterday, but I had this poor woman freaking out because her husband's sperm analysis said he had zero sperm that was moving, but everything else was gray. And I'm like, look at the time that he collected and the time that analyzed. And it was a day later, a day later. So they analyzed dead sperm and this poor woman is like, I'm never going to have children. Like my husband's sperm is dead. And it's like, no.

That lab is shit and you need to redo it. And like, I can't believe you trusted that doctor. And you know, like in our day and age now, we just have so much information. There's no way. I just think like people are not going to be able to get away with this and they shouldn't because it's like, that's why we're in the fucking mess that we are in. Pardon my French, but it's like, we're in a mess because we've just been given such poor advice. don't worry about it. doesn't.

And this is a hundred years old this information. Yes, right, but

just wanted to know about you. It's like a hundred years old. That's crazy. Like this stuff has been around for a hundred years.

Yeah, and it's physiology. Yes. Exactly. It's how the body works. And so if you have a broken car, you, you got to know how the car works in the first place in order to fix it. You don't just drug it or amass the symptoms of a broken car. So, but as opposed to medical school where they have very little physiology, they do have pharmacology, right? Or maybe pharmo physiology or some BS like that, like how do the drugs affect your body? Right? And the body doesn't like the body doesn't like that the drugs. then they keep blaming the body. it's your body. It's your genetics.

It's how the body works.

It's just the way that you responded with bad luck or whatever. Yeah.

It's

your genetics. It's your personality. It's your age. Yeah, I have a guy I have a guy now african-american super Dynamic and interested in his health and It's like, you know, there's that there's this like idea in my head. He's got high blood pressure Right, and I know there's genetics there. It's like, oh my god We got to make this work. And so last fall when I saw him we talked about teeth. He's got four fillings He got those fixed in the wintertime

Huge ya!

And then I saw him again like last week. It had been many months since I had seen him. yeah, blood pressure went from 150 over 90. Now it's like 130 over 80 because he got his fillings taken out of his face, right? Like that's physiology.

Yeah, he's not swallowing

of

selling mercury, one of the most toxic substances on planet Earth for humans. It's like, you know, thankfully we got that nailed down and he's got it fixed.

Yeah, people like us, Darren, we're gonna make it happen. We are making it happen.

Yeah, so with MVX, it gives you that overall score plus gives you the other numbers and stuff that you can look at. But you can set this up as a challenge, whether within your family or within your group, it could be talking about like a congregation of a church or whatever, you run the MVX and you see who gets better faster. And then I need to train up a lot of doctors. I've done three trainings now, I got another one coming up in a few days. And so

The doctors are super excited about our kind of doctors, our holistic doctors are so excited about it. So that's a lot of fun. It's a, can create some competition with that, you know, now there was a study done. Yeah. Free market. Yeah. Free market competition. Like that's what the entrepreneurship and free markets all about is really good competition. So there's a study done at Duke university where they ran MVX and they gave a bunch of people statin drugs and it lowered their LDL cholesterol.

Huh? Good competition.

They re-rent MVX and it did not lower MVX. did not help it. So yeah, statin drugs don't make you live longer. They don't improve your health.

They don't improve your quality of life. They don't improve your quality of life.

Huh?

Yeah, they may give you comfort. I think a lot of therapies give comfort. Yes. Right. Merely comfort. So they did not publish that study. They never will publish that study because it's a failure on the statin drugs. But here's another super interesting research study they did with people exercising. had four groups of people, one control, one did mild and then moderate and then heavy exercise over eight months. And guess what? It did not lower their MVX either. So exercise is not such a factor.

Now they had lower glucose and they had lower insulin resistance, but exercise is too superficial. It doesn't actually detox the metals and chemicals and parasites and candida and mold and it like that. That's the thing. So again, when I had the gas leak or when I had the mold, I could exercise every day for an hour and I would never

help

it. Yeah, that wouldn't help it. And I was just gonna say like, are you telling people not to exercise? Or are you telling? I know.

Parity is to detox and get your clean.

Yes, because then you'll want to exercise. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now here's another thing about exercise. This is a realization I just had. Exercise, the most important aspect of exercise is to increase your appetite and then to eat more protein. And it's two of exercise. It makes you feel good. It makes you look good naked, that kind of stuff. But you want to exercise to increase your protein intake.

mean, ⁓

It makes you crave protein. I love it. I love it. Tell Darren, tell people where people can find you.

Yeah, exactly.

My main website is the nhcaa.com. My social media postings are primarily on YouTube, so just go on YouTube and you can search my name.

Yeah, you have some fascinating code.

Thanks. I'm creating a membership site for doctors and we're going to talk about NVX. We're going to talk about our successes using it. And my plan is have like big symposiums where people talk about NVX and they go up on stage and they say, Hey, I got this patient who hears the score and then we did this and the score got better. like that kind of stuff.

stuff.

Amazing. Well, thank you. Thank you for being here and sharing your knowledge. And it's I had some good light bulb moments. So I hope listeners do too.

Yeah, thanks Shane. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode, visit www.DrJaneLevesque.com forward slash podcast. And if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took two minutes to share it with a friend, rate and leave me a review at www.RateThisPodcast.com forward slash

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