Editor’s note: This article has been reprinted. Originally published May 1, 2022.
Dr. David Minkoff is a natural medicine pioneer based in Clearwater, Florida. In this interview, we learn more about his top strategies for optimizing your health and solving common health problems that conventional medicine can’t solve.
Like me, he has a passion for sports and has loved it since he was young. He has completed numerous Ironman competitions during his athletic career.
“Most of the people I train with are chronically ill, but I have worked with some top athletes and I can really help them because I understand what kind of metabolism they need to be able to perform consistently at a high level.” he says “I’ve been to the lab too, and that was really helpful.”
Minkoff’s Journey
Minkoff has somewhat varied medical training, including adult and pediatric infectious diseases. In 1995, his wife, a nurse, took him to a series of lectures by nutritional biochemistry pioneer Jeffrey Bland, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“The light just turned on.” Minkoff says: “It was like, ‘This guy is smart and makes sense, and I want to learn this too.’ So I started taking courses. I went to ACAM (American College for the Advancement of Medicine) and learned how to chelate.”
Afterwards, he met Dr. Dr. Bedford, a pioneering alternative medicine physician and Lyme disease expert. Trained with Dietrich Klinghardt. Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, general practitioner, cardiologist, and president of the International College of Acupuncture and Electrotherapy; Dr. Thomas Rau, a Swiss biomedical doctor.
“When I started this job, I sought out the best people to help me learn how to do this job better.” Minkoff says: “It’s been 25 years. So I left ER in 2002 and we’ve been gangsterbusters ever since.
We have a very large practice now and it’s a lot of fun because there are so many new ways to actually solve body problems and help people feel better.
… If you have a chronic condition such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis, or Parkinson’s disease, the repertoire of standard medicine is not very good. They can help relieve symptoms. It’s okay for a while, but you’re heading towards an endpoint that isn’t what you want.
We have seven hyperbaric oxygen chambers. We’ve been doing that for years. It’s a really great treatment. We have been using methylene blue for about 5 years. Then I learned about intranasal NAD. It was really interesting. “This field is exploding with amazing people helping people and coming up with things that have virtually no downsides.”
2 key root causes
Chronic diseases are usually caused by underlying cellular dysfunction, two of the main causes being toxicity and/or poor gut health. Minkoff explains:
“Half the problem is things that aren’t in the body, and the other half are things that aren’t in the body that should be there. In some cases, it’s mechanical things.
You may need a chiropractor, acupuncturist, massage therapist or something similar because the joints are out of place or the cervical vertebrae are out of place. Sometimes surgical intervention may be necessary.
But the two biggest ones are that they are toxic and depleting. So here’s my approach to people: What are those things and what is the priority or order in which we deal with them?”
Many things can go wrong when it comes to detox, so it should be done under the supervision of an experienced physician. For example, using DMPS can be very damaging to your kidneys, and if your body is unable to excrete the toxins, releasing them from the tissues in which they are trapped will make your health much worse, not better.
Diagnose
When Minkoff sees a new patient, she has them complete an extensive and detailed medical history, including a dental history. A detailed physical examination can then be performed followed by autonomic testing to identify various triggers such as toxins and infections.
“The body is so sophisticated that it says, ‘Here’s my priority level. Do the root canal first. Take care of the cavity. Oh, yes, there’s parasites in there. There’s autoimmunity in there. I have chronic Epstein-Barr virus or herpes type 6.'” Minkoff explains.
Autonomic response testing also identifies the specific pathogen causing the problem. In the interview, Minkoff gives several examples of patients whose health problems resolved after specific pathogens were identified and treated.
Often an infected root canal is found to be the cause. Minkoff has a biological dentist nearby. If he suspects a dental problem, he will send the patient there for a three-dimensional cone beam CT scan. This scan uses two-dimensional x-rays to clearly identify problem areas that may not be visible. Another really helpful diagnostic is dark-field blood analysis (also called live-cell microscopy), which Minkoff learned under Rau.
“I think it’s very helpful because sick people don’t have good blood.” he says “Their physical exam is usually fine, their reflexes are fine, their heart sounds are fine, their liver and kidneys are fine (but they feel terrible), and when we see blood in there and see it, we think, ‘Holy smoke.’ There’s biofilm everywhere, there’s fibrin deposits, there’s organisms.
Two months later, ‘Hey, look at this blood. This blood looks better.’ And two months later, ‘This blood looks really normal.’ That’s the complete picture of us restoring this person’s healthy physiology, and that’s health.”
Available Treatment Modalities
When it comes to treatment, Minkoff has a number of interesting modalities at his disposal, including proliferative therapy, ozone therapy, prolozone (a combination of prolotherapy and ozone), hyperbaric oxygen therapy, chelation, UVBI (ultraviolet blood irradiation), EBOO (extracorporeal blood oxygenation), photobiomodulation, and more.
Minkoff also offers VSEL (very small embryo-like) stem cell therapy, which also has powerful effects. Minkoff uses it himself and believes you can gain 7 pounds of lean mass without changing your training for VSEL. He received training in the use of VSEL from Dr. Todd Ovokaitys in San Diego.
Dr. Frank Shallenberger is the physician who trained him in ozone management. Minkoff and I both spoke at Dr. Shallenberger’s ozone certification course. If you know a clinician who is interested in this modality, encourage them to look into his training program designed for healthcare professionals.
Benefits of Extracorporeal Oxygen and Ozone (EBOO) Therapy
EBOO is a powerful way to manage ozone. This is much more effective than 10-pass ozone, but most people should start slow and work their way up from there. After becoming fascinated with this treatment, I approached Tom Lowe about making this device available commercially in the United States. Minkoff explains:
“EBOO is a method of delivering oxygen and ozone to the body in a dialysis-like setup. An IV goes into one arm and passes through a machine with a pump that takes the blood out of the body. It goes through a system where the blood is exposed to very high concentrations of oxygen and low concentrations of ozone and then recycled back into the body.
Some of the new machines expose the blood to ultraviolet light. For about an hour, your blood circulates through this machine and is highly oxygenated. It’s not actually filtered like dialysis, but you’re exposed to these higher oxygen concentrations.
And – I don’t understand exactly how that happens – but if you’re really sick and toxic, there are effluent containers that can collect a lot of the effluent in these containers. Sometimes it is foamy and yellow. Our record is that a really sick person has up to 2,000 CCs of this foamy fluid…”
Sauna therapy is another great treatment with powerful therapeutic benefits. We didn’t get a chance to dive into sauna therapy, but I’ve published an in-depth deep dive into saunas, along with specific recommendations on how to identify and/or build one of the best saunas in the world. This is a treatment that we believe most people can benefit from.
How to Increase NAD Naturally
If you cannot or cannot afford IV NAD treatment, here are three ways to increase your NAD levels naturally. That is, calorie restriction (or time-restricted eating, which can achieve the same results but is safer), aggressive exercise, and sauna therapy.
Doing these three things activates NAMPT, the precursor to NAD. You can then use low-dose niacinamide (not niacin). The ideal dosage is approximately 50 mg three times per day. This provides the raw materials your body needs to create NAMPT. I have a great interview with molecular biologist Nicola Conlon on this topic, which you can find on my Substack.
“I’ve given niacinamide to a lot of people with mitochondrial problems and found that it helped,” Minkoff said. Niacinamide is also very cost-effective. It costs about 25 cents per month, while other NAD precursors, such as NMN, cost more than $100 per month.
Plasmalogen and iron testing
Minkoff also uses a lipid test developed by lipid biochemist Dayan Goodenowe, author of “Breaking Alzheimer’s.” “I learned a lot from him,” Minkoff says. “We test him on everyone.”
“He now has a laboratory where he can measure the levels of plasmalogen, which is a very essential part of the cell membrane, and he has gotten some very good data on people with APOE4 in the amnesia pathway.”
Patients with low plasmalogen levels may be given supplements such as fossil lipids to prevent further deterioration of neurological function. Minkoff also measures ferritin and iron binding in all patients, and if hemoglobin levels are high, he prescribes blood donation to lower the amount of stored iron. Stored iron is so destructive because it causes oxidative stress and is often overlooked as a factor in poor health.
basic health guidelines
If you have chronic health problems, getting a full workup is your best bet, but here are three basic recommendations that can improve your health:
• Organize your diet — Focus on whole, organic foods and avoid all processed foods, including restaurant food.
• Optimize your sleep — A sleep tracker can be very useful in helping you get a good night’s sleep.
• Get regular exercise — While aerobic exercise is important, strength training should be a top priority, especially as you age. This is because having muscle mass optimizes your lifespan and reduces your risk of insulin resistance and diabetes.
