What if one natural compound could revolutionize your health? Meet Sam Shepherd, a physicist, inventor, and dinosaur hunter (yes, really!) who discovered the astounding benefits of astaxanthin. His story, shared on The Glen Merzer Show, is one of determination, science, and life-changing breakthroughs.
In 2003, Sam was diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer that required monthly phlebotomies to manage. But rather than accept this as his lifelong fate, Sam used his scientific expertise to seek solutions. By analyzing the biochemical makeup of animals with exceptionally low cancer rates—like sharks, elephants, and pink flamingos—he pinpointed astaxanthin, a compound derived from algae, as a potential game-changer.
Sam began experimenting, growing the algae himself and monitoring his health. The results? Astounding. His required treatments dwindled, eventually stopping altogether. Today, at 72 years young, Sam boasts a clean bill of health, no aches, pains, or chronic diseases, and coronary health comparable to a 20-year-old.
This discovery led to the creation of Valasta, a patented form of astaxanthin designed for maximum absorption. Unlike other supplements, Valasta combines astaxanthin with glucose, targeting inflammation and oxidative stress at a cellular level. According to Sam, this supplement has shown potential benefits for managing blood sugar, joint pain, and even cancer.
But here’s the catch: astaxanthin isn’t widely known in the medical community. As Glen Merzer noted, “You may have to educate your physician about it.” Despite skepticism from traditional circles, Valasta’s word-of-mouth success is undeniable, with testimonials from across the globe.
Whether you’re plant-based, health-conscious, or just curious, Sam Shepherd’s story is a testament to the power of science and determination. Could astaxanthin be the supplement you didn’t know you needed?
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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Sam Shepherd and the Supplement Everyone Should Know About!
Here's the transcript:
Glen Merzer: Hello and welcome to the Glen Merzer show. could find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube and please remember to subscribe. And you could find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. I have a fascinating guest today. You're going to want to listen to this all the way through. This man has some provocative things to say. I have met him only recently. This is my first time meeting him virtually in person. And I've got to begin with a disclosure or two. This disclosure, because we're going to be talking about something that may be a treatment that some people may choose, physicians are not ordering this treatment, some people may choose to use for serious diseases and that's their decision. So the disclosure is that nothing we say shall be taken as medical advice. This conversation is for informational and educational purposes only. It's not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you have any serious health problems, please consult with your physician. I am not a physician and neither is my guest, Mr. Sam Shepherd. Sam is a prominent physicist, inventor and engineer who has garnered international recognition for his expertise and contributions in several fields in science, including biochemical, medical engineering, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. He has 42 patents. He's also a dinosaur hunter, something that I can't say I am. He has a BS in chemical engineering, a master's in environmental engineering, and a PhD in the not necessarily related subject of biblical studies. Sam, welcome to the show.
Sam Shepherd: Thanks so much, Glen, for having me.
Glen Merzer: Well, thank you so much for being here. You have a fascinating story about overcoming a very, very serious disease. So tell us that story.
Sam Shepherd: In 2003, I was having some cardiac issues prior to 2003, but I went through a series of tests thinking it was heart disease related, it wasn't. It turned out in 2003, I was diagnosed with a form of bone marrow cancer or blood cancer called polycythemia vera. At that time, my hemoglobin levels were very, very high. And the only solution that I had, there was no chemo, no radiation options. So to keep me alive, I had to be phlebotomized. And it turned out that my accumulation of red blood cells on a monthly basis required me to be phlebotomized every month. I did that for four years. And it does take a lot out of you. it wasn't, you can live a long time with polycythemia, but you will always be treated for the disease just to stay alive. and about, I did that for about 48 months and I finally came to the conclusion that I've got to figure out. felt I had all the tools in the toolbox. If anybody could figure this out, and I'm not saying this out of a hubris point of view, but if somebody could figure this out, I felt that I probably had the best tools in the toolbox to do that. So I started out, I was working for had some projects with what's called DARPA with the Department of Defense. So I had access to some databases that allowed me to go find what the world knew about animals and the cancer prevalence in those animals. And I found five animals that apparently don't get cancer or extremely low rate of cancer. And those were salmon, pink flamingos, sharks, elephants, and naked mole rats. And I had done some research and requested that those animal tissues be analyzed and every molecule under a mass spec be evaluated and we put in screening options. I didn't wanna know anything about amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids, any vitamins, anything that could be produced by the organism.I had no interest in knowing. I wanted to find that those molecules that apparently were in each one of those species, but wasn't produced by any of them. And that's a pretty tight screening program. And it was revealed that there was one found and that was called astaxanthin. And I began to do a lot of research around astaxanthin. And I began, it comes from an algae called Hematococcus bruvialis. I began growing that algae. got the species from the University of Texas. And I began growing that algae in my backyard in a pool that I had set up to grow algae. I call them the hillbilly hot tubs, but they're those N-text blow up hot tubs that you can get from Walmart. And I began eating the algae and I knew it was 3.8 % astaxanthin, so I could dose myself by how many grams of that algae I ate per day. And I started out at four milligrams, and after a couple of months, my phlebotomies got pushed out from once a month to once every two months. Statistically, it wasn't significant, but I wanted to make sure because this is a deeply red algae and I didn't know the toxicity levels versus dose. So I didn't want to kill my liver or my kidneys. So I watched my blood work pretty carefully. And I found that my phlebotomy rate decreased. So then I went from four milligrams, my blood work was perfectly fine other than my hemoglobin. So I tripled the dose and went to 12 milligrams per day. And I had a basis for doing that in that there was some work being done at 12 milligrams per day. And so I started that in my phlebotomies got pushed out to once every four months. That was statistically significant.
Glen Merzer: So the red blood cells in your blood were not building up so fast anymore.
Sam Shepherd: Correct. And we measured hemoglobin and hematocrit. Those were the two indicators on my blood work that we watched, I watched pretty carefully. So Now I had two data points and two slopes of the curve. Now I could calculate how much do I have to take? I was 53 at the time. How much do I have to take so that I'm never phlebotomized for the next 50 years of my life? And it turned out to be 96 milligrams. So I began taking a hundred milligrams a day and my phlebotomies ended. My hemoglobin became normal. All my blood work became normal. I had some active joint pain that completely went away. I'm now in my 72nd year. I have nothing. I have no disease. I had mononucleosis when I was younger, and I still retained what's called the CMV, the cytomegalovirus that lives in the base of my skull. And periodically, it'll raise its ugly head. You have viruses for the rest of your life. And it has a tendency to increase what's called my angiotensin levels, which can cause some smooth muscle contraction in my arteries and can elevate my blood pressure. But we watch that pretty carefully. And I'm battling that with antiviral. And it works fine. Truly have nothing. have no aches and pains. I have no diabetes, no heart disease. My wife and I went in to San Antonio to the Heart Institute. They wanted to do an experimental evaluation of our arteries in our pulmonary, cardiovascular, and up into the brain and see what kind of inflammation, coronary inflammation, that both of us have so we went in February of 2022, I believe, and they did a catheterization and they found absolutely no inflammation. We fell off on the bottom end of the normal distribution curve. They've never seen anyone 70, 71 years old with no atherosclerosis. We were totally clear. They gave us the coronary health of a 20 year old. We know it's not genetic. I went in first. He thought maybe it could be genetic with me. And so when my wife went in, one of the questions he said, there's a good, cholesterol was running high, about 260 without medication. And he said, we'll probably find something in her. So she went in the next day and they did the heart catheterization and carotid catheterization and they found absolutely nothing.
Glen Merzer: Now, is her cholesterol still high or did it go
Sam Shepherd: still high, still high, 240, 260. And he was amazed. He said, short of you two being from, I know this is going to sound bad, yeah, you two maybe being brother and sister from West Virginia or something, genetically we were extremely different. And there's not a genetic reason why we should both have clear arteries at our age.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Now we're going to talk now about the supplement that you've both been taking, which is a supplement that you have created. And another disclosure now, you have a financial interest in this supplement. I do not. I know you will say, you said it to me on a phone call, and I believe you, but that you created this supplement not for financial gain, but to spread something, a treatment that people can choose to use if they wish that can help them. It's not something that is currently being prescribed by any doctors. So anyone uses it, uses it because it's their own choice to do so. But as far as I know, there are no side effects to this supplement. It's called Valasta, V-A-L-A-S-T-A. So, first, tell me, am I right that there are no known side effects to taking a supplement based on astaxanthin?
Sam Shepherd: Yeah. To date, we're currently in 37 countries, all 50 states. There's no known side effects to any medications. The only side effect that we've noticed, and it's sort of a backhanded side effect. The first one is you will have a red stool. It's not blood, it's called spillover. your body can absorb only so much, your ability of your body to absorb it increases over time. so you may get a little bit of spillover and it may show up as a red stool. That's perfectly fine. It's just astaxanthin that wasn't absorbed. The backhanded side effects, people who are currently on warfarin, heparin, blood centers, insulin for type 2 diabetes, this will stop the disease. So one of the side effects, for example, on blood thinners is your blood will appear to normalize. And if you're on warfarin or heparin, you've got to get off of it because what will happen is you don't give heparin and warfarin to people that have normal clotting factors. Once your blood becomes normal, you don't want to be taking warfarin. You want to Wean yourself off because your blood is now normalizing. In type 2 diabetes, this does not work on type 1 diabetes to any great extent. It stops insulin resistance, but that's another discussion. It does work on type 2 diabetes. So if you're taking insulin or any form of prescription to reduce your blood glucose levels and you start taking this, You can, as your glucose levels or your insulin levels improve, you may see a lower than normal blood sugar level. All that means is that you've got to wean yourself off of the insulin. You're becoming normal. You don't give insulin to people with normal blood sugars.
Glen Merzer: Correct.
Sam Shepherd: So there's a backhanded thing that you want to watch as you watch your blood work start to normalize. You've got to take that into account.
Glen Merzer: Right. And the tricky factor here, to go back to my disclosure that we're not giving medical advice and you're recommended to consult with your physician, is I can almost guarantee you that when you consult with your physician, they probably haven't heard of astaxanthin. And so you're going to find that some physicians may be more open to it and say, well, let's give it a chance for a week and let's monitor your blood work. And others may say, I never heard of this. Stick on your stick with your meds. This is this is hocus pocus. Is that your experience, Sam, that some physicians are open to it?
Sam Shepherd: Yeah, it was early on. We were looked at as snake oil salesmen. That's why we did no no marketing of this product whatsoever. I'm perfectly fine financially without this product. I've formed eight companies in my life. This was the very first one that ever came to fruition without a business plan. This started out with me giving it to family and friends who had terminal cancer. Their cancers went away and they then told their friends, they told their They're oncologists. And then it just went around the world with no marketing. We don't do any advertising. It's only by word of mouth and by testimonials. So we approached this at a much different level. And I thought that at one point I was going to retire and get away from a lot of this at 65 years old. And it just took off. and it's all results oriented. So whether you believe anything we're talking about here or not, it doesn't make any difference. But look at the testimonials and try it. There's no downside to this. And there's a huge potential. I taught biochemistry at two separate universities, one at the Lone Star in Houston, Texas, and the other one at the University of South Carolina. And this is basic textbook. This is established science as to how this works. It's the only product that is patented. the way it works-
Glen Merzer: Or let me stop you there. What do mean it's the only product that is patented?
Sam Shepherd: It's the only supplement, natural product that we can find that was approved and given a patent for. We have two patents on it. The first one is, which the title itself unravels a lot of people. It says, method for the process of treating, treating,inflammatory disease, particularly for the treatment of cancer. Now that's the way the patent is and that's what we have to set up and publish. So that patent is public. You can read it, but it's based on what's called the glucocytic form of astaxanthin. So what we have, you can get astaxanthin at Walmart and it's a very pure single molecule. So think of it as this pen. So what they do when they extract it from the algae, it's called CO2 supercritical extraction. They crack off, if there's anything reacted to the end of the astaxanthin, like a lipid, glucose, or some other enzyme in the algae cell itself, that's the way it exists. But when it goes through the extraction process, these side chains are broken off. So you end up with a very pure, practically insoluble form of astaxanthin. That form of astaxanthin you can buy in Walmart.
Glen Merzer: And do you believe that that form of astaxanthin has any benefit at all?
Sam Shepherd: At extremely high dose. You have to be at eight times the dose of that pure level versus the Valasta. And the reason is, and this is what our patent is based on, we reattach the glucose onto the end of the astaxanthin. So it looks somewhat like a tadpole. And when we do that, cancer cells love sugar. So when the cancer cell sees this glucose molecule, it pulls it inside the cell membrane. And you'll see it on the website. There's an animation there that shows how it works. Now once inside the cancer cell, The enzymes, lysosomes crack the glucose off and the cancer uses that glucose for energy. Cancer requires 16 times more sugar than a normal cell to operate. But now the astaxanthin is intracellular. It's inside the cell. Now, cancer, because of its high metabolic rate of sugars, produce in the mitochondria, a very large concentration of the hydroxyl free radical. Now the hydroxyl free radical, there's four that I was able to identify. Singlet oxygen, the peroxyl, the hydroxyl, and the...Superoxide, those four free radicals cause 92 % of all human disease. That was a big deal. I presented in Washington to a bunch of senators, representatives, a rotary was there. There were several doctors from all the five majors, John Hopkins, Sloan, MD Anderson, Cleveland Clinic and Mayo. They were all present during the presentation. They were shocked that we now knew what causes human disease. The Valasta, when it does that, what causes those diseases primarily is the hydroxyl free radical. The hydroxyl free radical, without getting into a real chemistry lesson here, and I promise there won't be a test when we do this, but it's an oxygen attached to a hydrogen, an That has a zero charge. It has an electron missing in its outermost orbital. So whatever it touches, it snatches an electron from it, whether it's a protein, whether it's your DNA, doesn't make any difference. It will steal that electron. When it steals that electron, the electron configuration, let's say of insulin, for example, let's say insulin protein is all folded up and it looks like this floating around in your bloodstream. If there's an electron from the hydroxyl free radical extracted from that proton or from that protein, it misfolds. And now it cannot line up with the insulin receptors on the cell and you are a type two diabetic. That's what causes diabetes. So it's a direct measurement of the hydroxyl free radical. Now let me get back to the, the last being inside the, the cancer cell, the astaxanthin inside the cancer cell can donate an electron to the zero charge, which carries a pH and acidic pH. why cancer cells live in an acidic environment. And Warburg was the one who figured that he could kill cancer by raising the alkalinity of the cancer cell. But cancer lives in a pH of between 5.2 and 6.8. Seven is neutral, seven is water. Anything above seven is alkaline. So now the cancer cell can survive in this high hydroxyl free radical environment. And that acid that goes with that, that pH of about 5.5 kills adjacent normal cells and leaves space for the cancer cell to grow into the void. That's how tumor cells grow. So I have an with a zero charge. When the astaxanthin donates an electron, it becomes an with a minus one charge. So now it's a hydroxyl ion. A hydroxyl ion has a pH of 11, saponifies the cell membrane of the cancer cell, the cell ruptures and the cancer cell dies in four seconds. That's how we know-
Glen Merzer: So you're essentially using alkalinity to defeat the cancer.
Sam Shepherd: Correct, but we're not requiring it to be carried through the blood system. The blood pH can never get above 7.35. So you cannot eat alkaline foods and change your cellular pH because you cannot get above 7.35 in your blood. If your blood goes to 7.4, you're gonna be very, very sick. If it goes to 7.3, you're gonna be very, very sick. So all of the alkalinity ideas of foods are all based on a molecule, an antioxidant molecule that can donate an electron to a free radical and itself not become a free radical. That's why the big molecules of vitamin C, vitamin D, there's some polyols that are large enough molecules that they can donate an electron and it just changes the resonance structure of the molecule without itself trying to steal an electron from another molecule. That's the advantage of Valasta. It does not itself become a free radical. If a hydroxyl free radical steals an electron from the DNA inside a cell. That DNA on one side can rupture, it can misfold, and it can cause mutations. That's how cancer is caused from inflammation. Now we have a way in the blood work of now measuring your level, your predisposition to get a disease through a blood test called an HSCRP, a high sensitivity C-reactive protein. Everyone must... should insist that their doctor check that box on their blood work.
Glen Merzer: I agree completely with that.
Sam Shepherd: If you're less than three milligrams per liter, your chances of getting an inflammatory disease are less than five percent over your entire life. If it's greater than that, you'll have a 90 percent chance of getting an inflammatory disease. within the next five years. And that can be as simple as arthritis, irritable bowel. It presents differently in different people, but it's the same cause. Right.
Glen Merzer: Inflammation trumps almost everything else. And it's why it's so important to have an anti-inflammatory diet. And what you have is a sort of a targeted anti-inflammatory supplement. Now, again, the supplement is called Valasta. That's V as in Victor, A-L-A-S-T-A. You can just Google that. The website is Valasta.net. Is that right? That's correct. And on the website, you will find testimonials from any number of people who have used the product and believe that it helped them either cure a disease or facilitate their recovery. I'll note, Sam, that I watched a number of those testimonial videos and they were powerful. There was one drawback, though, which was that a number of the people who had cancer had done chemo and or radiation and then did Valasta. They believe that it was the Valasta that saved their lives. A cynic would say, no, it was the radiation and the chemo, and then they're given the credit to the Valasta.. So the ideal situation from your point of view would be people who take your supplement first, but most people are going to do what their doctors order first. Any comments on that?
Sam Shepherd: Yeah, I'm not interested in doing any more research with people. The primary focus is to heal the people. Now, most people have gone through years with cancer of chemo and radiation. And the one thing that we do know with those treatments, they're extremely inflammatory. They're only buying them time. And there's no real cure associated with chemo radiation. Chemotherapy has tremendous side effects and most people give up. And a lot of the people were several months after their treatment actually had another outbreak of cancer and decided to go a different route. And that's when they went to Valasta. So as you're aware, Glen, it's really tough to get into cause and effect when you have multivariant treatments for a disease. And I'm really I really don't care other than if you measure your HSCRP after a chemo treatment should be under three, it's probably gonna be over 200. So they're giving you a disease and they're derating your autoimmune or your immune system to such an extent that you can't fight off disease. there's the upside, Valasta doesn't do that. And with Valasta, this is not something you wait on several months. You should see an effect from Velasta anywhere from two to six weeks after you're on it to know whether it's going to work or not. Unlike the people who took chemo or radiation and then four months later, they got a re-occurrence of the cancer and they don't want to go back and do it. Then they take Velasta and the cancer goes away. So we can get into cause and effect analysis. I'm absolutely convinced. And now there's over a thousand peer-reviewed articles through the National Institute of Health on this astaxanthin-linked-to-disease that really proves that we are on the right track.
Glen Merzer: Are there any peer-reviewed articles on your product?
Sam Shepherd: I've not funded anything specifically on my product. My product is only a way of getting the astaxanthin into the cell very effectively by attaching that glucose to it.
Glen Merzer: Right. But you mentioned that there are a number of studies on astaxanthin. But I think you would say whatever those studies say about astaxanthin, if it's simply taken with a Walmart style supplement, it's not going to be as effective as yours.
Sam Shepherd: But it's eight times the dose. If you look at those studies, those studies are eight to 20 times our dose level per kilogram of body weight. Ours is having the same effect at one eighth that dose level. So that becomes an economic advantage of our product over.
Glen Merzer: OK, so the studies you feel do have some merit because of the dosage.
Sam Shepherd: absolutely. Yeah.
Glen Merzer: And how would you summarize what the studies have found?
Sam Shepherd: A lot of people can research them themselves, but there is no question now, according to the NIH, that Valasta is going to stop the inflammatory disease.
Glen Merzer: I think you meant to say that Astaxanthin.
Sam Shepherd: Astaxanthin, correct. Will stop inflammatory disease. Correct.
Glen Merzer: Okay. And now I am a vegan and many of my listeners are vegan. So it behooves me to point out that you have two delivery systems for your product. You have a spray, which is vegan, which has olive oil in it. In fact, it's more olive oil than astaxanthin by weight. Is that correct?
Sam Shepherd: That's correct. Each pump on the bottle is 13 and a half milligrams or each capsule has 35 milligrams in a, I think it's a double odd capsule.
Glen Merzer: And the olive oil is necessary. The fat helps deliver the astaxanthin. Is that why you use it?
Sam Shepherd: Correct. If you, this is why pure astaxanthin is not very effective. When it hits the acid in your stomach, The hydrogen ion has a tendency to inactivate the astaxanthin. So the astaxanthin, which is oil soluble, will remain in the oil. Hydrogen ions cannot penetrate through oil. So the oil will carry into the small bowel where once the pH gets above seven, it's absorbed readily through the small bowel then.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Now you also have an option on your website to get astaxanthin to get Valasta in chocolate. And I have to point out to my listeners that that chocolate is not vegan. Even your dark chocolate apparently has some milk fat. So on behalf of my people, the vegans, Sam, I ask you to look into getting a vegan dark chocolate to deliver your Valasta. Will you look into that for us?
Sam Shepherd: Sure will. And right now our chocolate supplier we started out was Ghirardelli simply because my 90 year old mother who was having kidney failure problems wouldn't take the Velasta until she was told she was going to be put on dialysis. And I tried to get her to take the Valasta and she didn't like the olive oil. And I said, OK, what do you like? She said, well, I like chocolate. I like Ghirardelli chocolate. So I knew from the milk fat content of the chocolate that the Velasco or the astaxanthin would dissolve in that. So I made her chocolate bar. She was the very first person and we gave it to her. Her kidney function was about 30, 31 % effective. She was going to have to go on dialysis at 90 years old. She had refused dialysis. So we put her on, I made the chocolate bar, we gave it to her. And in about three weeks, her kidney function got up over 58%. And she passed away two years ago from an injury from a fall. But she was also a type two diabetic since she was 48 years old. And those diseases had gone away. But she began, she liked the chocolate and was Ghirardelli was her favorite chocolate. we'll look at some kosher chocolate producers. And vegan
Glen Merzer: kosher or non kosher. What I care about is vegan, vegan.
Sam Shepherd: Yeah, we'll look at that. That's some vegan. I think our chocolate is kosher. I'm not mistaken, but some vegan type of chocolate. I don't know how it'll taste or anything like that,
Glen Merzer: but it'll taste fine. Chocolate always tastes fine.
Sam Shepherd: Yeah, does. The only advice I have that's one.
Glen Merzer: Look, you've done biblical studies. I'm sure somewhere in the Bible it points out chocolate's delicious. Any beans.
Sam Shepherd: Beans are good. Beans are excellent.
Glen Merzer: Now, you're not on my team, the vegans. Why is that? Why do you believe in consuming meat?
Sam Shepherd: First of all, it's the single largest source of acquisition of amino acids in one type of food source. So all of the amino acids can be obtained through eating meat. A vegan lifestyle is a little more demanding than I'm willing to do. I was raised on a beef farm my entire life, so some of it's environmental. But the only thing you really have to measure for health is that HSCRP. Don't allow yourself to get into a chronic inflammatory disease state. Periodically, we'll have an acute inflammatory response from a cold, from COVID. I can tell you my COVID story. I had severe cases of COVID and it actually took out my left lung. through a blood
Glen Merzer: my goodness.
Sam Shepherd: Yeah. Into my left lung.
Glen Merzer: Why would, do you think it was, if it was that severe, if you weren't in an inflammatory state when you contracted the COVID?
Sam Shepherd: When you get COVID, you are in an inflammatory disease state.
Glen Merzer: Yes, but there's a study in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, that said that people on a quote, plant-based diet, which doesn't necessarily mean a vegan diet, people on a plant-based diet had 72 % or 73 % less severe COVID than the rest of the population. And that I would argue is because we're on a less inflammatory diet. Now you're not on less inflammatory diet that I'm on, you seem to be able to control your inflammation with Valasta. So I would have thought that you would have had the same advantage that I had. And when I got COVID, it went away in a day or two.
Sam Shepherd: I had COVID for two weeks. I stayed home, got dehydrated, lost 17 pounds in two weeks. And I had no interest in eating. I got severely dehydrated. So I put myself in a situation of thinking that I could overcome COVID until I couldn't breathe. Something hit me in the middle of the night and I knew it and went into the hospital and they did an x-ray and they found a blood clot in my left lung.
Glen Merzer: Do you think the blood clot was related to your disease?
Sam Shepherd: Could have been. Could have been. and it got aggravated. So, you know, anytime they put you in a room with windows and the doctor comes in in a space suit, you know, you're pretty much in trouble. But I was in there for the one night and then the one day and the doctor came in in a full space suit, scuba tank, pressurized suit. And I'm setting up on the edge of the bed. And he looked at me and he said, he said, are you, you you look like you're feeling pretty good. I said, I am. And my O2 level got down to about 88 % saturation. And I now had it back up to 94, 96%. And I was feeling okay. So I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and I turned to the doctor and he's at the computer there. And he said, let's see what your blood work looks like. And I said, what's my HSCRP? And he turned around to me and he says, are you a doctor? And I said, no, no, I just. I want to see what it is." He said, okay. So he pulled it up and he said, your HSCRP today is 27. And I went, my golly. I said, 27? He said, what do you think it should be? I said, it should be under three. I take Valasta. He'd never heard of Valasta.
Glen Merzer: Of course.
Sam Shepherd: And he said, do you know what the CRP is for somebody with COVID? I said, I don't have a clue. He said, a mild case is over 200. He said, a non-survivable case is over a thousand. He said, we have four doctors trying to figure out why yours is only 27. And I said, well, I'll tell you why. And so he looked it up and he sat there for 45 minutes with me. He said, we've never heard of this. I said, well, you need to. So he became a believer in it also. simply from that case. It's probably what saved my life in the end by keeping my interleukin-6, my inflammatory response to a bare minimum. And unfortunately, something mechanical went wrong with that blood clot. And it scarred my left lung pretty severely, cut the blood supply off to my left lung. And So that's just something I've got to live with now.
Glen Merzer: But so were you taking the the last in the Valasta throughout your your period of having covid?
Sam Shepherd: When I got covid, I didn't want anything.
Glen Merzer: So not even your own supplement.
Sam Shepherd: man, I was pretty sick. Yeah, I just I didn't have it in.
Glen Merzer: It didn't just spray your mouth with.
Sam Shepherd: Now, I thought I was okay. I was taking 100 milligrams a day since 2008. Probably the longest human being, the longest person to have taken the S-thoxanthin type product. And that's why the doctor in San Antonio wanted to look into it. But I felt pretty bad. It went on for two weeks, terribly dehydrated, which probably aggravated my clotting factor quite a bit. Went in, they put me on an IV, got me rehydrated, got the clot dissolved pretty quickly. But now I'm gonna live my life. No one is guaranteed the quantity of your life. All we have is the quality of our life. And I have, I'm going to enjoy my life and keep my HSCRP less than three.
Glen Merzer: All right. now I would argue that, the, the low fat whole food vegan diet is the diet that leads to the lowest levels of inflammation in the body. I have a, a kind of a simple view of inflammation. When you eat foods that are natural to your body, you don't develop inflammation. When you eat foods that are unnatural to your body, you develop inflammation. So if you eat a lot of processed foods, a lot of salty crackers and, you know, sugary treats and cakes and, and oily restaurant food, not natural to the human body, you're going to develop inflammation. If you eat whole fruits and vegetables, it's natural to the human body, you won't develop inflammation. The question is what about meat? I would argue that meat is not natural to the human body. And all the studies seem to show that meat is inflammatory. So I'm going to recommend to you that you stay on the Valasta, but consider moving over towards a plant-based diet.
Sam Shepherd: I would even go a little bit further, Glen, in that measure your HSCRP.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. Mine was 0.26 last I checked.
Sam Shepherd: Yep. Yep. You, there's a gentleman friend of mine, Fred Bishi up in New York and Paul Nison.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. I interviewed Paul for this show. Yeah. And Fred Bishi is 90. four years old, guess now, raw vegan. his CRP is very low. So you can get these antioxidants through the vegetables that you eat and the beans that you eat and the seeds that you eat. They're very high in these antioxidant compounds, these polyols, these other forms of antioxidants. And If your CRP is less than three milligrams per liter, you're definitely doing something right. people are going to choose what they're going to do. I just don't have any sort of... For me as a biochemist, I'm focused at the mitochondria level. Anything that causes excess activity in the mitochondria, its ability or it's the energy required to process some of these molecules that are in processed foods, for example, always produces the hydroxyl free radical. So the more of those processed foods that you eat, the more of those hydroxyl free radicals you're going to produce, it's going to up in your HSCRP test. So the whole idea is garbage in equals garbage out. Limit the amount of garbage you're putting in. Keep working towards that low inflammatory disease state. That's the key. Whether you use Valasta or you use it with high levels of vegetable and the antioxidants you get from skins of apples or seeds of apples or peaches or whatever, it's the antioxidant levels in our diet.
Glen Merzer: Right. And you won't find many antioxidants in a sirloin steak, will you?
Sam Shepherd: Nope. There aren't many at all. it's do what you feel you need to do, but keep your HSCRP and know that if your HSCRP goes high, maybe cut some meat out of your diet. For example, I very seldom eat red meat.
Glen Merzer: Good.
Sam Shepherd: Because of the iron content and my predisposition not to process iron real well.
Glen Merzer: And that heme iron in meat, that gets absorbed willy-nilly, whereas the iron in plant foods, the body will use what it needs and it won't absorb more than it needs.
Sam Shepherd: Yeah. There's a normal distribution to all things. So when you eat meat, for example, you are slugging your system with very high concentrations of heme or iron-based Fe plus two type of, or Fe plus three even, but once it hits the stomach, you can have Fe plus three iron that has to go through the ferritin cycle to get it to the Fe plus two, which then can be incorporated into the blood corpuscle. So the slugs of of inflammatory type molecules. Fe plus three is extremely inflammatory. And that's why ferritin levels have to be, are taxed to convert the Fe plus three into Fe plus two, which is not a free radical. But Fe plus three, if I take Fe plus three plus the the peroxyl radical that generates a hydroxyl, two hydroxyl free radicals. So the Fe plus three in red meat is also extremely inflammatory. It taxes your body to process it, which I think is what you were referring to.
Glen Merzer: Yes. And let me just make a translation for my audience. You have just heard a non-vegan scientist. make a very good case for the vegans. So thank you for that, Sam.
Sam Shepherd: That's right. The other thing that I want everybody, and you and I fall into this category too, I think, I'm going to, you're probably over 50, Glen.
Glen Merzer: Thank you. I'm over 68.
Sam Shepherd: my golly. Well, you look good for as old as you It's all those plans. But up until, one of the things that we have, we actually have data on this in measuring glutathione levels. There's two antioxidants that we naturally produce, glutathione and another one called SOD or superoxide dismutase. When we're young, we produce a large amount of that. So we can do a lot of stupid things that are stressful and oxidative stress type levels because we have glutathione, which is a cellular antioxidant, along with superoxide dismutase being produced. After the age of 40 in women, and age 50 in men, we stop producing those cellular antioxidants. That's why we get age onset diseases. We don't change our habits, but we lose the defense mechanism against them. And that's why we get arthritis. That's why we get type two diabetes. We get arthritis, we get cancer, we get Parkinson's, irritable bowel. That's the reason. Well, it turns out that the astaxanthin itself is about four times more potent than glutathione, our own cellular antioxidant. It truly is the most powerful natural antioxidant known to exist on planet Earth.
Glen Merzer: And is that because it was it it evolved within algae, which are exposed to the sunlight and they needed a mechanism? to survive and thrive in nature?
Sam Shepherd: That's exactly right. It's had hundreds of millions or billions of years for algae to live in a freshwater pond, and that pond would dry out. Typically, the hematococcus algal species is green in color, and it's prolific in its green phase. But when its pond begins to dry out and the salt content, actually records and can measure the salinity of its pool that it's living in. So when the salt content gets high enough, it knows that its pond is drying out, it's gonna die because of ultraviolet exposure. So when it begins to go into the red phase and it produces this carotenoid, called astaxanthin, it pushes it out to the cell membrane to block the toxic effects of ultraviolet reaction with water that causes the formation of the hydroxyl free radical, which would kill the organism if it didn't protect itself. So it produces this red astaxanthin, pushes it out to the cell membrane, its pond dries out, and it lays in the soil. And it can lay there for hundreds of years until the next rainfall. The rain comes in, the salt level decreases, the algae comes out of its red cyst form, repropagates as a green algae, and goes on with its life. It's the most remarkable thing. The more and more that we begin to see how science works, the more and more you have to realize that there's a creator. There's no doubt that this can't be by evolution. There's not enough time on the planet.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, without getting into theology now, but I want to ask you this. You discovered that there were five animals, pink flamingos, mole rats, elephants that all had access to the astaxanthin in nature. They all had access to this algae.
Sam Shepherd: Correct. The algae, there's also a yeast that lives on plant roots that will also produce this astaxanthin.
Glen Merzer: But wouldn't there be thousands of other animals that have access to this algae?
Sam Shepherd: You would think, but it depends on the level and because it bioaccumulates. So a lot of it is these animals, omnivores for example, don't have as high an astaxanthin content. I think it's because they have a variety of foods that they dilute down the astaxanthin content. Elephants for example, drink huge amounts of water for their sheer size. The algae is in their water that they're sucking up their trunks, gallons of it. So they get this huge ingestion of these algal species in the water.
Glen Merzer: And the mole rats, where do they get it?
Sam Shepherd: They eat the roots of grasses and plants where this yeast resides. And the astaxanthin is there to allow the root to sustain its non-inflammatory growth. So these yeast work in a symbiotic relationship with the plant itself. So the plant helps feed the yeast by producing sugars. The yeast then produces the astaxanthin that stops the inflammatory response of the root, that would kill the root. And there's a symbiotic relationship there. The mole rat eats those roots and that yeast.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, we're getting to the end of the hour, Sam, and I know you're at risk of getting kicked out of your hotel room, but I want to end with my state of thinking about your product at this point. And I have not tried your product. Again, if I do try it, it'll be the spray at this point, not the chocolate. But I want to, again, give a disclaimer that I am not a doctor or a scientist. The opinions I offer are amateur opinions, and please take them for what they're worth, which may be absolutely nothing. But if I had a serious disease and one for which a case could be made that they're inflammatory in nature or there's an inflammatory aspect to the disease, and that includes cancer, and many other diseases. I would take a shot at a supplement that seems to have no real side effects other than some red in the stool. And I don't see a good reason for somebody with a serious diagnosis that may be a condition that's inflammatory to give this a try. I would give it a try. And I hear a lot of health claims for a lot of supplements. I tend to be skeptical of most of them. I don't take a lot of supplements. I take vitamin D3 and B12. But this is a compelling story you have. It seems to me to make scientific sense. You seem to me to be an honest broker and a serious scientist. And I just find this a compelling story. And I think that I'd like to have you on again if you do me that favor of coming back another time. And I'd love to meet some of the people who have given you testimonials and perhaps I'll have them on my show.
Sam Shepherd: We can get in contact with them. They can tell their stories. You can see who they are. None of them are paid. As a matter of fact, they asked to do the testimonials because they have family members who are suffering from stage four cancers. when you look at their results and this was all accomplished from the fundamental level of biochemistry. This wasn't done from clinical studies in trial and error experiments. This is from established science, well-established, taught in medical school type chemistry and biology. All doctors are taught this. This is not something that Sam Shepherd came up with. I just found a different mechanism at which we can apply it. Chemistry is taught to every single doctor. I taught it to pre-med students. They all know it. They go to medical school. They're not interested in a cure. There's no money in a cure but there's a lot of money in treating people for years and years and years. So that's one of the problems this healthcare program has got to resolve, but you're on the right track. Prevent yourself and improve the quality of your life. Only God knows how much time we have. So don't worry about the quantity of your life. It's all about quality.
Glen Merzer: Well, thank you so much, Sam, for joining us today. I hope you'll come back and join us again. And we will put the website in the show notes. is valasta.net, V-A-L-A-S-T-A. And we'll see you next time.
Sam Shepherd: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Glen, for having me on.
Glen Merzer: Thank you.
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