[00:00:00] Latest and Greatest in AJ lanigan’s World on Staying Healthy: Thoughts on Health, Supply Chains, and Pandemic Preparedness

[00:06:12] Beta Glucan: From Discovery to Affordable Immune Support

[00:08:00] AJ’s Journey into Immunology and the Search for a Better Way

[00:14:41] How Beta Glucan Works: Immune Cell Activation and Efficacy

[00:18:03] The History of Immunity and the Discovery of Beta Glucan

[00:26:20] Beta Glucan Research and the Importance of Purity

[00:28:26] Beta Glucan vs. Glucan: Understanding the Molecular Difference

[00:31:12] How to Identify Quality Beta Glucan: The Story Behind ‘Glucan 300’

[00:35:07] Why Beta Glucan Matters for Cancer Prevention and Immune Support

[00:40:40] How Beta Glucan Helps the Immune System Overcome Cancer’s Cloaking Mechanisms

[00:45:42] The Role of Beta Glucan in Strengthening the Immune System Against Pathogens

[00:50:27] Why AJ’s Beta Glucan Stands Out: Proven Results and Quality Control

[01:00:46] Immune Modulation vs. Boosting: How Beta Glucan Supports Balanced Immune Function

[01:06:20] Mushrooms vs. Yeast for Beta Glucan and the Whole Food vs. Isolate Debate

[01:14:53] Optimal Beta Glucan Dosage: Prevention, Active Support, and Cost Considerations

[01:23:58] How and When to Take Beta Glucan for Maximum Absorption

[01:26:35] Taking Beta Glucan with Other Supplements: Avoiding Solid Food for Best Results

[01:27:40] Beta Glucan and Candida: No Risk from Yeast Sensitivity Due to Purification

[01:29:45] Beta Glucan and T Cell Lymphoma: Supporting a Healthy Immune Response Without Aggravation

[01:32:10] Beta Glucan as a Nonspecific Immune Modulator: Supporting Natural Immune Regulation

[01:34:58] Beta Glucan in Oats: Different Molecule with Limited Immune Impact

[01:36:54] Better Way Health’s International Shipping Options

[01:38:31] Beta Glucan and Plasma Cells in Multiple Myeloma: Supporting Immune Health During Treatment

[01:42:37] Understanding the Underlying Causes of Low Blood Counts Despite Beta Glucan Use

[01:46:47] Can Beta Glucan Help Recover Blood Counts After Cancer Treatment?

[01:50:38] Where to Learn More: Vita with Immunity and Beta Glucan Resources

[00:00:00] Latest and Greatest in AJ lanigan’s World on Staying Healthy: Thoughts on Health, Supply Chains, and Pandemic Preparedness

Ryan Sternagel: AJ, the traditional first question for you—and you’re not allowed to talk about the immune system or beta-glucan in your answer: What health thing have you been thinking about lately? What rabbit hole have you been going down? What have you been looking into when it comes to staying healthy that’s not related to what we’re about to talk about?

AJ Lanigan: A lot of people worry about how they look. I’m not one of them—I typically dress like a hobo who’s been thrown off a freight train. But I’ve been working with some topicals, things like aloe vera and hyaluronic acid. A lot of folks get into shea butter. By the way, for those who don’t understand supply chain problems, there’s as much difficulty getting plastic bottles and lids for topicals as we’ve had over the last year or two getting bottles for our capsules, or even getting the right-sized capsules.

It used to take around three or four weeks to get my raw ingredients to a co-manufacturer to put into capsules, bottle them, and put the tops on. During COVID, that time stretched to 26 weeks. Now, it’s shrunk back to around 16 weeks. As my daddy, who used to run moonshine for his father at the turn of the century, used to say (my dad was born in 1910), “Boy, you can’t sell with an empty wagon.” We’ve suffered some bumps and bruises, but we’re adjusting.

Here’s a little hint: Anytime the news starts talking about a virus coming over the horizon—H1N1, H2N5, something like that, just don’t pick your nose and shake people’s hands. But if they give the virus a formal name like the Wuhan virus, Japanese encephalitis, or the Spanish flu, you better duck.

AJ Lanigan: You better duck, it’s going to be a little tougher.

Ryan Sternagel: Look out for that name. I’ve been wondering if they’re going to go with COVID-2 or something entirely different for the next one.

AJ Lanigan: They had to mix up the letters of the Greek alphabet—you had alpha, beta, delta—and then they got to Xi, but decided the American people weren’t smart enough to understand it wasn’t referring to the head of China. So, they skipped “Xi.” There are other things I’ve noticed that people don’t pay attention to, but I find it rather insulting that the government doesn’t think we’re competent or intelligent enough to be given the facts.

It’s academic, though. Humans (men and women) have been on this planet for a long time, and we will continue to be here. Did you happen to read War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells? A lot of people don’t read, but when I was in school, they required it. We had things called books, and they were kept in places called libraries.

War of the Worlds was also a radio show way back when. For those who didn’t get a chance to hear the prelude to the show, which explained, “Hey, this is not a real invasion of Earth. You’re going to hear a lot of stuff, but it’s not really happening,” they thought an alien force had come to our planet and crippled us in no time. Of course, Tom Cruise came along, and more recently, they redid the movie, which gave it a little extra punch.

But what happened after two or three days? Not the ingenuity of mankind, but tiny microbes (ones you couldn’t even see) invaded the bodies. They caught a cold, developed pneumonia, and died. I feel pretty safe. We’ve had thousands of years living on this planet, developing our immune systems, and it has served us well. I think we still need to give it support from time to time, just like you floss and brush the teeth you want to keep. Don’t worry about the rest.

Ryan Sternagel: You’ve got to maintain the things you want to keep—that’s for sure. But everybody, I’m excited for this one. We’re talking, of course, about beta glucan. Somebody wanted to know what we are talking about here.

[00:06:12] Beta Glucan: From Discovery to Affordable Immune Support

Ryan Sternagel: Speaking of the immune system and chronic conditions that result from a malfunctioning immune system, it’s been a staple in our regimen ever since our son was diagnosed. It is one of the first things we had him on, based on all the research we were doing, and it continues to be a staple in our holistic prevention approach—whatever you want to call it—almost 10 years later.

AJ, you didn’t create or discover beta-glucan, but you are the beta glucan apostle of our times.

AJ Lanigan: The actual discovery began back in the 1940s. But when I came along about 25 or 26 years ago, one little capsule, about the size of a contact lens case, cost $985—plus shipping and handling. My claim to fame is being able to manufacture it and get it to a price where all my friends could afford it. Before, they’d almost have to die just to buy a bottle.

A lot of work has gone into the manufacturing process to get it highly purified, removing all the fats and proteins so people don’t have problems with yeast allergies. That way, the uptake is successful, and it does what it’s supposed to do.

[00:08:00] AJ’s Journey into Immunology and the Search for a Better Way

Ryan Sternagel: I guess that’s the topic of the day—what is it supposed to do? Do you want to give folks a little rundown, maybe two to three minutes, on how you got to be doing what you’re doing? I know you were studying other immune-related things and doing big things on a lot of different fronts before you zeroed in on beta glucan. How did you get into studying the immune system and coming up with ways to help it work better?

AJ Lanigan: I have to say a lot of my biology and chemistry knowledge comes to me innately. As I said, my dad, who was born in 1910, used to run moonshine for his dad. The ability to make high-quality moonshine back then was important. My dad never got caught running moonshine, but he wasn’t quite good enough to make the first cut in NASCAR either!

Having those genetics, I’ve always been interested in biology and chemistry. My parents gave me a chemistry set that had some test tubes, a microscope, and some other things, but my favorite part of the whole box was a simple magnifying glass. Now, I’m telling you—don’t try this at home—but I was fascinated that I could concentrate the sun’s light like a laser into an anthill. As the ants ran out, they basically exploded! But the problem was I got too close to the dry grass in our yard and set it on fire. That created a problem for my rear end when my dad came out and stomped the fire out.

So, early on, I was experimenting. As I got into high school and started fooling around in chemistry class—which had a great chemical stock but always had supervision—it was a good thing. I’d get home and think, “What’s up under the sink?” I’d start pulling out household cleaners and mixing things. Before long, I’d created chlorine gas and almost killed my family.

Moving forward, I didn’t kill all my brain cells. I went to pharmacy school at the University of South Carolina. You have to understand, in the 1970s, that was, in my mind, when some of the best technology in the world existed. My grandfather on my mother’s side died of prostate cancer back in the 1950s—he was my favorite person in the world. They didn’t have much to help him back then except radiation. I use the word “help” loosely—they burned him up with that, which caused it to spread through his body, into his throat, and his mouth. I remember it like yesterday, with the doctor showing my mom how to use glass needles to draw morphine to keep him comfortable. Cancer has been in the back of my mind since my preschool days.

Other members of my family had health issues, too. I’m an only child, but the Lanigans are prolific. I had lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles. Anytime something went wrong—like a car accident—and they went into the hospital, they didn’t come out the same. They’d go in with one problem and come out with something else—maybe a broken leg, but then they’d develop a hospital-acquired infection and lose a limb. I learned early on: stay out of hospitals.

In my mind, I’ve always felt there’s got to be a better way. As I got older, one of my pharmacy buddies out in Denver—his dad developed prostate cancer, so he ended up traveling to Japan and came back with a compound called PSK, or Crestin. It’s approved as a drug for cancer there. They extract it from mushrooms—highly purified—and it’s a protein-bound complex carbohydrate. You take anywhere from three to six grams a day, and it costs $10 a gram. It comes in little sachets that you mix in hot water. It smells a bit like dirty feet. You’re looking at $900 to $1,800 a month—again, a little pricey for most of my friends.

I started a quest, I’m sure you know what PubMed is. I hope you’ve talked about it before. I say, “You live by Google, you die by Google,” so be careful what you find out there on the internet. But I was thinking, “Okay, this stuff is found in mushrooms, molds, mildews, smuts, and baker’s yeast—all fungal forms have beta-glucan in them. You find it in certain grains like oats and barley, some seaweeds, and even in Euglena, or pond scum.”

Even though there’s a lot of it out there, every single source has a slightly different molecular structure.

[00:14:41] How Beta Glucan Works: Immune Cell Activation and Efficacy

AJ Lanigan: What car do you drive, Ryan?

Ryan Sternagel: My wife has the nice car; I rotate between the old Ford Escape and the Ram 1500.

AJ Lanigan: Great. So, you can fit the small car in the back of your Ram if you need to. I drive a Tundra, but that Ram key won’t crank my Tundra, and my Tundra key won’t crank your vehicle—they’re both keys to vehicles, but the key switch is different.

Let’s talk in terms of the key switch being like a receptor on the surface of immune cells for a second. The key switch is necessary to crank that cell up so that you can go down the road. That’s the basic principle of the beta glucan molecule.

The question is, how much of a dose does it take? It takes three to six grams daily of the second-best immune modulator in the world, which is PSK, or Creston.

Our material has been tested side by side. Who tested it? The University of Louisville. In fact, there have been six different studies comparing our ingredients to not only other glucans but also to vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and combinations of things over the years. We found that it takes anywhere from six to eight times the dose with PSK Creston, or maybe 150 to 500 times the dose, to get the same effect. That’s a lot of effort for the truck to move, and that’s why we use what we use—a proprietary genus and species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We have a proprietary material that we use so we can purify it and get the same results every time.

Ryan Sternagel: I like it. I also love that your father and grandfather were moonshine runners.

AJ Lanigan: The streets of Columbia were dirt and the sidewalks were wooden back then.

Ryan Sternagel: I remember I got caught with a fake ID in college, but it wasn’t on my record until I lost my first job after they checked my background. It’s like, why didn’t they check my background before hiring me? But then my second job thought it was a testament to my entrepreneurial spirit, so there you go.

AJ Lanigan: If you check my record, I’ve got a long list of speeding tickets. I don’t try to outrun them—I just say, “Okay, you got me, let me pay the ticket, and we’ll go on down the road.”

[00:18:03] The History of Immunity and the Discovery of Beta Glucan

Ryan Sternagel: We were talking before we went live about how we want to make this different from all the other interviews, blog articles, and so on out there about beta-glucan. We want to spice it up a little bit. We should probably back up a bit and start with the basics: What the heck is beta-glucan? You touched on it a little, but what is it, and what does the research say? I know you said you had an interesting timeline story on it too, and I’d love to hear that.

AJ Lanigan: I want people to understand the immune system and its importance. Once you grasp that, it makes sense why beta glucan needs to be a part of your life. May I start with a bit of a backdrop?

Ryan Sternagel: Let’s do it.

AJ Lanigan: About 2,500 years ago, there was a guy by the name of Thucydides. He was a noted Athenian historian who documented what was happening during the Peloponnesian Wars. What interested me was his observation about the plague that hit them. They weren’t sure if it was smallpox, typhus, or the bubonic plague—he just used the term “plague.” Maybe it was something else entirely. But his key observation was that if you caught it and didn’t die, once you recovered, you could go back and help those who were still struggling with it.

Today, we refer to that as innate, natural immunity. “Innate” means you’re born with it. The immune system has two arms: the innate and the acquired, which I sometimes refer to as the “learned” part. The innate system responds first, in seconds or minutes—it keeps you alive until the acquired immunity kicks in; This is where your B cells and antibodies have the chance to ramp up.

That’s as far back as I can find any documentation of where immunity was first recognized. I’m going to fast-forward past Leeuwenhoek with his microscope, Pasteur, and all those guys. Then you’ve got Jenner, who got credit for the idea that cowpox might somehow be used to train the immune system, though he had no idea what it was going to do.

The guy—I say “tricked,” but he asked his gardener if he could use his son to test this theory. Even before that, the Chinese had taken the scabs from people with smallpox, ground them up, and blew the dust up people’s noses through a long tube. This was called variolation. If it didn’t kill you, you’d get sick for a bit, but afterward, smallpox wouldn’t harm you.

Lady Montagu, who was over there with her husband, an ambassador from England, had her children variolated. She wrote about this when she went back to England. When the disease reached England, the royals were all upset, unsure what to do. They didn’t have Anthony Fauci to tell them to wear double masks—sorry, I can’t help myself. But the royal physicians read what Lady Montagu had written and explained it to the royals. The royals asked, “Is it safe?” They weren’t sure, so they said, “Go down to the prison, bring forth some prisoners, and try it on them first. Let’s see how it works.”

So, they were doing all of this without any idea what the immune system was or how the immune response worked. Immunology as a science is barely an infant. Biology and chemistry have been around for thousands of years, but immunology is quite new. We only discovered what a B cell was a few decades ago, and that came from the bursa of chickens. That’s where antibodies come from, yet we’ve been using vaccines and variolation for hundreds of years.

With that backdrop, let’s talk about where beta glucan fits in. Once we understand that innate immunity is your front line—keeping you alive until acquired immunity can kick in—the question becomes, what can we use to amplify or activate that front line so it can do a better job?

In the 1940s, there was a gang of scientists led by a man named Pillemer. Nobody shouted “Eureka!” in the lab, but they put a little bit of yeast cell wall in a dish with some white blood cells, and the white blood cells got busy. They called out, “Hey, come over here, look at this!” That was the discovery that something in the yeast cell wall would cause white blood cells to activate.

Fast-forward from the 1940s to 1968, when a guy named Nicholas DiLuzio at Tulane University and his team isolated the 1,3/1,6 molecule. It’s a very complex molecule that wraps around itself due to its shape. If it comes from mushrooms, it’s a 1,4/1,6 which is more linear and water-soluble, the same as with grains and other sources.

So, that’s the backdrop. Aren’t you glad you asked, “What is beta glucan?” It took a minute to explain, but now we know!

[00:26:20] Beta Glucan Research and the Importance of Purity

Ryan Sternagel: No matter where it comes from or what it is, the research is voluminous. You mentioned PubMed, and it’s the voluminous research out there that’s impressive.

AJ Lanigan: Anyone jumping in on this—let me tell you, you’re big time in my book, because you know, and you’ve told me, that the folks here know what PubMed is. If you go to PubMed and type in “glucan,” you’ll get over 200,000 medical journal articles. Type in “glucan cancer” and you’ll get over 12,000 peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic. Some of them are about the process; some of them are about how to analyze it. But your eyes will be sore from reading all the studies out there proving the benefits of this ingredient.

What’s even more important is its safety—as long as you’ve got a highly purified material that gets rid of the proteins. There was a precursor called Zymosan, and it’s still available. Sigma Chemical supplies it to universities and labs for calibration standards. Zymosan is a yeast glucan that was manufactured under the Bacon patents. It’s still very rudimentary and contains a lot of proteins and lipids.

[00:28:26] Beta Glucan vs. Glucan: Understanding the Molecular Difference

Ryan Sternagel: I remember seeing 200,000 studies, but when I was looking the other day and brushing up on everything, I could only find 20,000. Then I realized it was because I was typing in “beta glucan.” When you type “beta glucan” in PubMed, you get about 20,000 studies; Typing just “glucan” brings up 200,000. That might be a good question—what’s the difference between beta-glucan and glucan?

AJ Lanigan: The difference is in the construction of the molecule. Alpha glucan is much simpler and more linear, while beta-glucan is a little more complex in the way it’s structured. Beta 1,3-D glucan, where “D” stands for dextro-rotatory, indicates which direction the molecule spins. Chemistry guys love drawing pictures—if you go to Google Images and type in “glucan,” “beta glucan,” or “1,3-D glucan,” you’ll see all sorts of pictures.

Broken down to its simplest form, it’s a hexose molecule—six sides, six corners. If you count around the corners, it hooks up 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Every third terminal has a little side chain; That’s how our molecule is structured. This is important because after testing different structures from various sources, we found that the lowest dose using our ingredient gives the highest immunological response.

If you’re trying to lower cholesterol, for instance, you might look to the Cheerios commercials. They give me a lot of business every time they talk about beta glucan and cholesterol or diabetes. Even though it’s a different molecular structure, it’s still called “glucan.”

[00:31:12] How to Identify Quality Beta Glucan: The Story Behind ‘Glucan 300’

Ryan Sternagel: So we’re talking about beta glucan versus glucan, and specifically beta 1,3-D glucan. How do we zero in on that as the most efficacious?

AJ Lanigan: If you’re out there shopping—whether online or in a store—you want to make sure the product is made from a yeast source. Ideally, it should be from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a type of yeast. Our material uses a proprietary strain, which you probably won’t find elsewhere. Some companies even put my name on the bottle, so that’s one way to find it.

Look for companies that have peer-reviewed medical journal articles published on their exact material—not something similar or borrowing other people’s research. You’ll see names like “Glucan 300” on the bottle; Anything referring to 300 is a good hint.

One of the premier researchers, Dr. Václav Vetvicka, came to America over 30 years ago to work at the University of Louisville on other projects. They tricked him into working on beta glucan alongside Dr. Gordon Ross. Together, they pioneered some of the earliest human data, publishing studies showing that certain natural killer cells could recognize cancer that they otherwise wouldn’t without beta glucan. This research was dynamic even back in the 1980s.

I met Dr. Gordon Ross first (he’s passed away now). Dr. Vetvicka is still kicking, though. He retired last year and went back to the Czech Republic with his lovely wife, Jana. Years ago, he came to visit me in South Carolina, and I was able to convince him to keep working on beta-glucan.

I had a choice—I could’ve hired private labs and said, “Here, do this work,” and if I didn’t like the results, throw them out and redo it. Instead, I chose to put my product in the hands of disinterested third parties, like major universities and teaching hospitals. That’s what I did, and you’ll see a series of studies on our ingredients over the last 20-plus years.

Where did the name “300” come from? The first jar I gave Dr. Vetvicka had 300 grams in it. When he published his work, he didn’t have a name, so he just referred to it as “Sample 300.” I thought, “Maybe we’ll call it that.” And that’s the secret behind the name “300.”

[00:35:07] Why Beta Glucan Matters for Cancer Prevention and Immune Support

Ryan Sternagel: Most folks with us here are concerned with cancer or other chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases. We also have concerns about cold and flu season. I wanted to ask you about those three things: cancer, autoimmune diseases, and general prevention of illnesses. Let’s start with cancer. You mentioned it earlier—why should someone with a cancer concern be interested in beta 1,3-D glucan?

AJ Lanigan: All right, the answer is relatively simple. People talk about heavy metals, chemicals, poor diet, stress, not getting enough rest, and even genetics—being unlucky. All of these things revolve around a central issue. Why? Because they all impact, suppress, and depress your immune response.

How do we know this? Because we’ve tested it in universities. We’ve taken chemicals, heavy metals, and other things to prove that a healthy immune system, when faced with a significant challenge, will be suppressed or depressed. If your immune system is operating at a high level and your challenges are lower, you stay healthy. But the first time a challenge rises above that, it becomes a problem. Why does a person develop cancer? Because their immune system failed them.

Let that sink in for a second. The immune system’s job is to surveil, identify, attack, and eliminate things that don’t belong in the body; Cancer doesn’t belong there. Take natural killer cells, for example. One of the things they do is look at cells and think, “Smiley face on this cell, smiley face on that cell”—meaning the cells are healthy. But when they come across a cell without a smiley face, bada bing, bada boom—it blows it up. That cell might not be cancerous; it could be hiding herpes or Lyme disease, but if it doesn’t have a smiley face, it’s taken care of.

That’s what a competent, fully functioning immune system does. It catches cancer early—nips it in the bud before it has a chance to grow. The numbers are clear: One out of two men and one out of three women will face cancer at some point if they live long enough. Everyone faces heavy metals, chemicals, and stress, so why does one group get cancer and another doesn’t? The difference is that one group’s immune system didn’t fail them.

We can make it complicated, and I’m not saying these other factors don’t have weight, but they don’t hit the core issue. If they did, everyone would have cancer. That’s why people should be interested in immune support. As my dentist once told me, “AJ, brush and floss the teeth you want to keep—don’t worry about the rest.”

You can take all the vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and amino acids to build healthy bones and tissue, but healthy tissue can’t protect itself; That’s why you need an immune system—to protect you against everything in and around you trying to get in. Years ago, someone did a study—don’t know who paid for it—but if we flipped off your immune system like flipping off a light switch, your flesh would start to leave your bones in about 72 hours. Whether you have cancer or not, you need to support that immune system.

Ryan Sternagel: That’s a big deal. Speaking of PubMed, there are about 1,900 to 2,000 studies on beta glucan and cancer in particular.

AJ Lanigan: Every day, when I wake up, I know there are PhDs and MDs in labs using my ingredient to address cancer, infectious diseases, allergies, rapid healing, the aging process—because the umbrella of the immune system impacts all of these things. When they get results, they publish. Other researchers read these studies and think, “Oh, that gives me an idea.” Their reputation is built by publishing.

Academics are wired differently than people selling snake oil. People can have a good story, but without disinterested third parties backing up their claims, it’s just a show, but at the end of the day, it may not hold water.

[00:40:40] How Beta Glucan Helps the Immune System Overcome Cancer’s Cloaking Mechanisms

Ryan Sternagel: When it comes to cancer, we talked about the smiley face versus no smiley face. It’s well known that a lot of cancer cells have cloaking mechanisms that make the immune system think they’re regular cells. Do you have anything to say about that in relation to beta 1,3-D glucan?

AJ Lanigan: Yes. In fact, pharma companies are making big money with treatments like Keytruda and Opdivo that deal with PD-1 and PD-L1. Here’s the super cool part: think of checkpoints as traffic signals. You don’t want an immune system that’s running wild like a freight train over a cliff. The number one rule is “do no harm to self.” The immune system needs to be ready, primed, and activated (which is what I like to say about our material) but if there’s nothing around to fight, it doesn’t need to be blowing stuff up; That’s where the checkpoint comes in.

If the immune system gets the green light, it unleashes what it needs to eliminate what doesn’t belong. Some cancers hijack that signal; They keep the light red, causing the immune system to stand down and allowing the cancer to grow and spread. There are other things cancers do, like releasing chemicals and fragments to disguise themselves. An immune system that isn’t fully functioning or competent can miss this, which is why not everyone is diagnosed with cancer.

Think of a classroom of 20 kids. Six of them always seem to get sick—missing days or weeks of school with stuff running out of their noses, while the others stay healthy. They’re all breathing the same air and touching the same things. The difference is their immune systems. This same principle applies to our population, whether it’s with COVID, West Nile virus, or anything else. Not everyone who comes into contact with the same thing gets sick; The difference is their immune system.

[00:45:42] The Role of Beta Glucan in Strengthening the Immune System Against Pathogens

Ryan Sternagel: When it comes to the immune system’s role in fighting pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and so on, what’s the connection with beta glucan?

AJ Lanigan: Things that are not part of us have antigens on their surface. These antigens are recognized by our frontline soldiers, our neutrophils. When you get standard blood work done, you’ll see “NEU”—that’s your neutrophils. On any given day, they make up 50 to 70% of your white blood cells. You also have macrophages (or “macrophages,” depending on where you were educated). They’re the big brother of the neutrophils. Both of them are what we call phagocytes, which means they engulf and digest foreign invaders.

Once they’ve gobbled something up, they display the antigen (the “splatter mark”) and take it over to a T-cell. Think of the T-cell as a four-star general. The neutrophils and T-cells communicate, sending out cytokines and lymphokines—chemical messages to alert the rest of the immune army. This process allows the rest of the immune system to know what the splatter mark looks like.

There’s so much wisdom in our immune cells, even the simplest ones. One of my good friends from South Florida, who has more degrees than a thermometer, gave a talk over a decade ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. He said, “There’s more wisdom in one immune cell than in all the libraries that have ever existed, or ever will exist.” That’s true of these frontline soldiers. As the immune system encounters more, it learns more, and it’s incredible how much we still don’t fully understand.

If you don’t believe in a higher being, just look at the technology we have today. There’s a video I show during training—a capillary tube, like a hair-thin tube, with a piece of beta-glucan on the tip. We release an immune cell nearby. Now, keep in mind that the immune cell has no eyes, ears, or brain, but when we move the tube, the immune cell starts crawling toward it. Move the tube again, and the immune cell adjusts course. How does it know to do that? It’s the wisdom I’m talking about.

As science advances, we learn why this happens, but in the meantime, don’t worry too much about the “why.” Think about it this way: Why do you blink your eyes? Why does your heart beat? You don’t have to consciously think about those things. Thank goodness, because most of your brainpower is focused on just sitting upright and overcoming gravity. We don’t have to control our white blood cells consciously—there are trillions of them, and they don’t fight fair. They gang up to do the job.

To overcome or prevent cancer—or to overcome illness and bring yourself back to health, you’ve got to consider the immune system as part of the solution. Along with everything else we’ve mentioned—managing stress, getting proper rest, and so on—supporting your immune system is critical. Ignore it at your peril.

[00:50:27] Why AJ’s Beta Glucan Stands Out: Proven Results and Quality Control

Ryan Sternagel: The beta 1,3-D glucan was recommended by all the holistic cancer researchers we followed when Ryder was diagnosed.

There were a lot of different products we tried early on, and some aren’t in our rotation today, but beta 1,3-D glucan provided by Better Way Health, formulated by immunologist AJ Lanigan, continues to be a primary player in our immune support strategy. We try to categorize eerything, and when it comes to immune support, it’s been a staple for us all these years. You mentioned studies comparing your own product to other popular immune support products; Can you brag a little more about why your product is the best, AJ?

AJ Lanigan: Sure. This is unique in the industry. The food supplement industry, on the whole, creates a lot of confusion. It’s not by accident that people look at the shelves and don’t know what to buy. If you go to some of the bigger supplement shows, like the one in Anaheim, you’ll see 7,000 booths, and it seems like every single one of them says, “Take my product—it cures everything.” Not true.

When I get into debates, they don’t last long because people make claims, and I just use two words: “Prove it.” I point them to the work that’s been done on the most popular brands—not just in America, but in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan. We’ve tested hundreds of products. Some of them are so bad that when we use salt water as a control, which isn’t supposed to do anything, we’ve seen the immune response go below the level of salt water with certain products.

But let me tell you, that doesn’t stop those companies from making millions of dollars because they’ve made a great pitch. They use what I call “label candy”—a long list of ingredients that sound impressive, but I doubt anyone has tested all of those ingredients together. I’m not talking about multivitamins, which are supposed to match what you’re not getting in your food—I’m talking about special, targeted products like immune system boosters or something for pain. These things can be tested, but the industry doesn’t like doing that. They don’t like naming names or pointing fingers. I’ve done quite well by doing the opposite for over 20 years.

I encourage people to look at our studies—look at how the immune system works with our product compared to other glucans. Not vitamins like B, C, or E, not probiotics, and not those other cocktail combinations. Let me tell you, I’ve had people try to convince me that certain waters have “energy” and are as good as my product. I say, “Okay, bottle it up and send it to the university.” These universities don’t have a dog in the fight—they do the work, report the results, and publish it. Some people ask, “What if my stuff doesn’t come out so good?” I tell them, “They’ll still publish it.” Then they say, “Forget it. I don’t want to play.”

You won’t see that with us. I’m exceptionally proud that we not only do our own testing throughout the entire manufacturing process, but we also ensure that lot to lot, bottle to bottle, pill to pill, you get a consistent result. We don’t guess from one pill to the next about what batch or “octane level” it is. I have a minimum cutoff—it’s got to meet that or be better; Other companies don’t do this. It’s something to brag about, but again, I let the peer-reviewed literature speak for itself. I tell people, “What you see in the literature—that’s what’s in this bottle.” And if you buy it, thank you.

Ryan Sternagel: There it is. AJ supplies various companies, and my favorite company that he supplies is Better Way Health.

AJ Lanigan: Better Way Health not only has a great way to ship you the product, but they also have a team of customer service people we refer to as “the aces”—two gals and a guy. When you pick up the phone, you’re going to get accurate, clear information. These are some of the best-trained folks in the world. They do a fantastic job, so you’re getting more than just a bottle of pills.

Ryan Sternagel: Their Black Friday sale is when I always stock up on their stuff, and it’s when most people do as well. We’re not talking about a thousand-dollar bottle of supplements, but it’s not cheap either. Then again, AJ, you said it used to be a thousand dollars for a pill?

AJ Lanigan: Yep, a single capsule used to be $985 plus shipping and handling, and it wasn’t even as pure as what we have today. That was Sigma Chemical’s part number G5011. It’s still available, but it costs more now—thanks to inflation.

Ryan Sternagel: God bless you for doing everything you’ve done to make it more accessible to everyone. It’s still a premium product, but the Better Way Health Black Friday sale is when everyone stocks up for the coming months.

AJ Lanigan: Don’t worry about stocking up. We’ve tested the shelf life or stability, and it’s five years. We’ve put a five-year shelf life on every bottle, and we keep testing. After six years, we’re still testing the same sample against the baseline. People ask if we’re going to change the shelf life, and I joke, “I feel silly for putting five years on the bottle.” But who buys a bottle of supplements, locks it in a safe, and passes it on to the next generation? You buy it to use it—it’s not going to work through osmosis! You have to put it in the body for it to work.

Ryan Sternagel: I somehow still have an overflowing closet full of supplements.

AJ Lanigan: Don’t be stingy! We’ll make you some more. Once you’re a customer, they’ll reinvite you to take advantage of these offers. But Ryan’s getting a big jump on it now. Don’t keep it a secret—if you’ve got family and friends, get together and stock up. Tell them, “Hey, I listened to this short, fat guy from the suburbs of Red Bank, South Carolina. I checked PubMed, and the studies are there—we need to be using this stuff.”

Ryan Sternagel: I can’t stress it enough—like AJ said, it all comes down to the immune system. Of course, there are other factors at play, but you want a robust, thriving immune system; No one can argue with that. You guys know all the research I’ve done, and I only talk about things that I love, use, and give to my children to keep them healthy. This is number one in the immune support category for us, and there’s a reason for that. Hopefully, you’ve got a sense of why today.

[01:00:46] Immune Modulation vs. Boosting: How Beta Glucan Supports Balanced Immune Function

Ryan Sternagel: One question that’s been asked a few times in different ways is about the difference between immune modulation and immune boosting. Obviously, with certain types of cancer or autoimmune conditions, you don’t want to indiscriminately boost the immune system. Can you speak to that?

AJ Lanigan: I try not to use terms like “boost,” “amplify,” or “pump up.” There are a lot of terms like that floating around—Astragalus comes to mind. You don’t want to take Astragalus every day because it could create a pro-inflammatory situation that you don’t need.

The immune system is smart enough, if properly supported, to know when to unleash all those powerful chemicals to fight off threats. Let’s use the word modulate. Sometimes, people’s immune systems get out of balance, maybe due to lifestyle or diet. It’s okay for it to be out of balance in the short term. For example, if you get a bacterial infection, you need your white blood cells, particularly neutrophils to increase dramatically. If you get your blood drawn during an infection, you’ll see that your white blood cell count, especially neutrophils, goes way up—sometimes beyond the normal range depending on the severity of the infection. But the immune system is supposed to knock out the infection quickly and then calm itself down.

We have immune cells called suppressors that cool the immune system, and we have helper cells that fire it up; TH1 and TH2 cells are key players in this regulation. How do they know what to do? As I mentioned earlier, it’s all about the release of cytokines, interleukins, interferons, and tumor necrosis factors—there’s a long list of chemical activities happening.

As the cells receive this information, it’s like they’re getting orders from headquarters on what to do. Beta-glucan has been tested and shown to significantly improve this intercellular communication. We’ve been able to induce pro-inflammatory activities and then repeat the experiment using beta-glucan, which helps keep the immune system in a balanced state. We can do this with chemicals, stress, or other factors—it’s measurable and repeatable. That’s why it’s worthy of being published in medical journals. If it only worked in one location, it wouldn’t be as valuable.

Ryan Sternagel: Someone named Gene commented that the word “boost” is somewhere on the Better Way Health website. I tried to find it, but I couldn’t.

AJ Lanigan: Nobody’s perfect. I’ve taught them better!

Ryan Sternagel: Marketers will be marketers.

AJ Lanigan: Activate and modulate are better terms. For people familiar with American football, think about when the offense comes to the line—the big, strong linemen are standing around, healthy and ready. When the ball is snapped, what happens? The guys on the other side of the line clean their clocks.

What our material does is it activates or readies those immune cells so that when the ball is snapped, they’re able to do their job; They’re not going to jump offside and cause damage or penalties. That’s what happens when the immune system is dysregulated. We want the immune system to be self-regulated, and it knows how to do that. Beta-glucan has been demonstrated in numerous studies to be beneficial.

Ryan Sternagel: The football analogy was perfect for that scenario.

AJ Lanigan: Except for the folks across the sea who have a different idea of football!

Ryan Sternagel: There you go, there you go. There’s maybe offsides in European football—soccer—something like that.

[01:06:20] Mushrooms vs. Yeast for Beta Glucan and the Whole Food vs. Isolate Debate

Ryan Sternagel: There are questions that come up when you hear about medicinal mushrooms, glucans, beta-glucans, and so on. Obviously, they come up in that conversation. Here, we’re talking about yeast, a special strain of yeast. This has been bugging me for a while, for a couple of reasons, but I haven’t worried too much about it because of all the research you have backing it up.

Still, common sense or logic might say that you’d want to get beta glucans from mushrooms, not from yeast—because what the heck is yeast? What’s the difference there?

And as a follow-up question that’s also been bugging me: We’re talking about isolating one particular molecule versus the whole compound. It’s like the debate around whether ascorbic acid or ascorbate is “true” vitamin C, or if you need all the cofactors from the whole berry to make vitamin C work properly. Same with curcumin versus whole-food turmeric. It’s a two-part question for you, AJ.

AJ Lanigan: Do you want to start with vitamin C and ascorbic acid, or with the mushroom versus yeast?

Ryan Sternagel: Let’s start with the mushroom versus yeast, and then we’ll go to vitamin C.

AJ Lanigan: Mushrooms are popular, especially in Eastern Asia and Southeast Asia, where they’ve been part of their medicine cabinet for 3,000 years. Beautiful. We love it, and there’s good research on mushrooms—even little button mushrooms. But the last time you went to the grocery store and bought mushrooms, how much did they cost? You couldn’t eat enough mushrooms to get the same immunological response as one of my capsules. You simply couldn’t consume that much.

Even PSK (Crestin), the drug that comes from mushrooms like shiitake and maitake, has been approved as a drug for 25 or 30 years. It’s one of the ones we’ve compared to, and it takes six to eight times the dose. It’s not that mushrooms don’t work—they do. The question is, what dose is required to get the same immunological response?

It’s like comparing a Clydesdale horse pulling a log to my Tundra truck. Both can pull the log, but my Tundra has 300-something horsepower; I chose the Tundra. There’s nothing wrong with mushrooms—they’re delicious, and I eat them all the time. But pound for pound, dollar for dollar, it makes sense. Mushrooms are about 3-5% complex carbohydrates by weight, while baker’s yeast is around 35-40% complex carbohydrates. Glucan is just a fraction of that carbohydrate. So, when we start, we’ve already got 10 times the amount of the good stuff before we even purify it.

I hope that clears up the mushroom versus yeast question. Now, let’s switch gears to ascorbic acid. If you look up vitamin C, the definition you’ll see is ascorbic acid. If you look up ascorbic acid, you’ll find it defined as vitamin C. So, here’s a question for you: How many oranges do you need to eat to get 500 milligrams of vitamin C?

Ryan Sternagel: I don’t know.

AJ Lanigan: A lot. How many bananas would you have to eat to get enough potassium to offset the effects of Lasix? For those of you taking Lasix, a diuretic—you’re peeing out all the things you need to replace. You couldn’t eat that many bananas, so they give you a pill that contains the exact material you lose.

It’s not an argument of vitamin C ascorbic acid versus eating rose hips, acerola cherries, or oranges. If you need 500 milligrams of vitamin C, how are you going to eat that much? The answer is—you can’t. You eat enough to prevent scurvy—the “limeys” proved that long ago.

You can walk out in the sun and develop enough vitamin D naturally so you don’t need to take a supplement. But when COVID hit a couple of years ago, some early work out of Italy showed that a huge number of people dying from COVID were vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D plays an important role in immunological support. We’re afraid of the sun these days—we don’t let our kids play in it, and we avoid it ourselves because we’re afraid of skin cancer. We also don’t eat certain things. As a result, many people end up vitamin D deficient.

Doctors can test to see if you have enough of these different vitamins and enzymes, but you have to get blood drawn or provide a stool sample. These things can be known and understood, but to know, you’ve got to test for it.

Ryan Sternagel: The vitamin D and COVID connection—I’ve had many heated exchanges with our county council and health department trying to get them to acknowledge that and let people know.

AJ Lanigan: Everyone, take a time out and Google “South Carolina Senate hearings.” These hearings happened two or three weeks ago. There was a PharmD I know—smart guy—but believe me, we do not send our brightest and best to the government. You’ll be astounded at some of the testimony and the lawmakers themselves. Sorry to go off-topic, but that’s a good example of why relying on the government to protect you is never a good idea.

[01:14:53] Optimal Beta Glucan Dosage: Prevention, Active Support, and Cost Considerations

Ryan Sternagel: Can we get into dosage now? Specifically, we’re talking about the Better Way Health product, Glucan 500. The normal serving on the bottle is two capsules, but can we talk about dosage for prevention versus an active situation, and so on?

AJ Lanigan: When we test side by side, we start with salt water as a baseline. Then we give an extraordinarily low dose—like one-sixth of a milligram of our material—and it shows an immunological response above salt water. Then we double it and then double it again. Let’s say we’re at two milligrams per kilo of body weight. For those outside the U.S., a kilo is 2.2 pounds.

If I weigh 110 pounds, I can take as little as 100 milligrams, and that will increase my immune response by about 50% above baseline. But to get maximum immune response, I need to take 20 milligrams per kilo of body weight—so, one of those 500 mg capsules for every 55 pounds of body weight. The immune response increases based on how much you use, and then it levels out. After that, it doesn’t matter if you take a 55-gallon drum of it—it won’t go any higher.

When we look at studies, all these other companies’ products are barely above salt water, even when you take 16, 32, or 128 times the dose, that doesn’t mean they don’t work, but if you look at the graphs in the studies, our product performs much better. And we want you to get the best immunological response possible.

Over the years, this ingredient—not something like it—has been tested against a wide variety of viruses and cancers. It was even tested when they were mailing anthrax. There are studies on this ingredient versus anthrax and radiation.

People ask, “Can I still take this product if I choose standard care like chemo or radiation?” Absolutely, and your outcome will be better. If you choose something else or a combination of approaches, your outcome will still be better. That’s not just me saying it, that’s what’s in the peer-reviewed medical literature.

Ryan Sternagel: That’s a good point—it wasn’t the original question, but it’s definitely worth discussing. I was going to say it’s potentially even more important when going through conventional cancer therapy, but really, it’s important either way. Those therapies—chemo and radiation—are highly immunosuppressive.

AJ Lanigan: Exactly. You’ve got cancer because your immune system failed you, and now they’re slapping your immune system around even more. If you’re not supporting it properly, to begin with, you’re trying to pump life back into it while they’re giving you donuts, sugar cookies, and Pepsi after treatment. Holy macro!

Ryan Sternagel: Just to clarify, what was that milligrams-per-kilogram dose you mentioned?

AJ Lanigan: If someone wants maximum immune support, we know that the dose is 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That’s a 500-milligram capsule per 55 pounds of body weight. If you weigh 220 pounds or more, that’s four capsules.

Now, understand, we have an organization here called the FDA, and they don’t allow diagnosis, prognosis, or prescriptions unless you’re a medical doctor prescribing an FDA-approved drug. There’s ongoing work to use our material as a water-soluble injectable, but in the meantime, we know what it takes to get the immune response. That’s another point of pride for our company—every lot, every bottle, every capsule is measured to ensure it delivers the right immune response based on body weight.

Ryan Sternagel: Very good. Parents of children listening, take note—you might need to break out the calculator.

AJ Lanigan: It’s not like insulin, where you have to be super precise. If your 10-year-old weighs 100 pounds and you give them a 500-milligram capsule, they’re not going to get hurt. And while they might not come back from school looking smarter, it’s certainly not going to harm them.

Now, I know for a lot of people, especially those dealing with cancer, cost may not be the primary concern. But for others, especially those doing standard care, money can be a big issue. Some therapies can cost $120,000 to $150,000 a year, and if insurance only covers 80%, they’re taking out second mortgages or losing their cars.

If money is tight, here’s what you can do: I’ve given you the recommended dose. If you can’t afford to take it every day, take it every other day. Let me explain why. In our dose studies, a single dose takes about 72 hours to peak in the immune response, and then, after about two weeks, it comes back down to baseline. So don’t cut your dose in half—take the full dose for two or three days, then switch to every other day. You’ve effectively cut your cost by 50%, and you’re still getting a strong immune response. Don’t say you can’t afford it—yes, you can. The alternative is not great.

Ryan Sternagel: That’s new information for me. I’m really glad we did this for that insight. Very good.

AJ Lanigan: I don’t need the money so badly that I have to keep secrets like that. Honestly, more people would realize it if they looked at the peer-reviewed literature and said, “Wait a minute, a dose takes 72 hours. I could take this every other day and keep my immune response close to the max.” It would be much better than leaving it down at the baseline.

[01:23:58] How and When to Take Beta Glucan for Maximum Absorption

Ryan Sternagel: Now for some more practical considerations: “Should it be taken on an empty stomach, with food, with other supplements, or away from them?”

AJ Lanigan: My advice is that it’s best to take it on an empty stomach. Why? Because the uptake is more efficient that way. The capsule goes through the gut without anything in the stomach to interfere. Stomach acid isn’t going to affect it—it’s quite resistant. Many other things you take get beaten up by the stomach’s pH of two, but once it moves into the bowel, the pH changes.

In the small intestine, there’s a strip where you have what are called Peyer’s patches. Within these patches are M cells, or microfold cells, which grab particulates and physically pull them through the lining into the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). This is where the immune cells are sitting, sampling what you’re consuming. If you take the capsule with a big meal—say, a double beef whopper with cheese—it’s now competing for space. It’s like if five or six people all tried to get through a bathroom door at the same time, only one’s going to make it. We want to maximize your dose’s effectiveness.

That doesn’t mean you’re in trouble if you forget. Wait a couple of hours, or take it 30 minutes before your next meal. I like to tell people: Put the capsule on your nightstand with a glass of water. When your feet hit the floor in the morning, take it. By the time you’ve stumbled around, taken a shower, and cooked breakfast, 30 minutes will have passed, and you’ve maximized the uptake of the ingredient.

[01:26:35] Taking Beta Glucan with Other Supplements: Avoiding Solid Food for Best Results

Ryan Sternagel: “What if you have a few other supplements that also need to be taken on an empty stomach? Is it a big deal to take them together?”

AJ Lanigan: Solid food is the main concern—don’t put it in the middle of a double beef whopper or a tomahawk steak. If you’ve got a shake full of your morning supplements, that’s fine. If you’re taking something like thyroid medicine that also needs to be taken on an empty stomach, it’s not going to interfere.

What we get concerned about is people eating a pile of solid food and then throwing the capsule in there—that’s where the physical competition happens. But if you’re consuming something like a liquid shake or even an ice cream cone, it won’t block the uptake.

[01:27:40] Beta Glucan and Candida: No Risk from Yeast Sensitivity Due to Purification

Ryan Sternagel: Now, an interesting question: “If someone has a Candida infection, is the yeast base of the supplement a concern?”

AJ Lanigan: Good question, and a very common one. The issue with yeast products is the protein that people are sensitive to—it’s the protein that triggers reactions. Our process removes those proteins. We take the yeast, which is a single-celled organism, and we break it down using the same kinds of chemicals found in your body: acids, and alkaline substances like calcium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide. These hydroxides have a very high pH and digest away the proteins and fats.

Then we wash it and test it to ensure we have the right purity, potency, and biological activity. If it’s not up to standard, we reprocess it to make sure it’s highly purified. So, for someone with a Candida infection, it’s not a problem—Candida involves the whole, living organism and the proteins within it, but we’ve removed the proteins from our product.

[01:29:45] Beta Glucan and T Cell Lymphoma: Supporting a Healthy Immune Response Without Aggravation

Ryan Sternagel: Here’s another one: “If beta glucan promotes T cell activity, do you have anything to say about T cell lymphoma, which involves uncontrolled proliferation of T cells?”

AJ Lanigan: Let me go back to this: The immune system knows what to do if it’s working properly. We know this ingredient won’t cause the immune system to do something it’s not supposed to do. A common question I get is, “Will this product make more white blood cells?” The answer is no unless you need them.

If you’re undergoing chemo or radiation, it’s not unusual to see your white blood cell counts plummet. In fact, if they get too low, your therapy might be discontinued. It’s bad enough to have cancer and go through chemo and radiation, but if the immune system fails on top of that, the cancer can come back aggressively. This product helps keep your immune response and white blood cell counts where they need to be.

As for the direct question: No, it won’t aggravate T-cell lymphoma. The immune system will recognize those errant lymphoma cells because they don’t look like normal cells, and they will be attacked by a healthy immune response.

[01:32:10] Beta Glucan as a Nonspecific Immune Modulator: Supporting Natural Immune Regulation

Ryan Sternagel: That brings up another question. You said it’s not going to create more white blood cells if too many are already being produced. The immune system will recognize aberrant cells better, but when we talk about modulating immune activity and bringing it down where needed, is there anything to help reduce the production of excess cells in the first place?

AJ Lanigan: Don’t look at this compound as a targeted therapy. Earlier, we talked about checkpoint inhibitors like Keytruda and Opdivo—those target specific sides of the checkpoint. Beta glucan is not like that. It’s a nonspecific immune modulator—write that down. It activates immune cells by turning on the CR3 receptor (complement receptor number three). As Dr. Joyce Zopf at Harvard University said, once that happens, it sets off an immunological cascade that helps the immune system operate at its best levels, but it doesn’t make the immune system do anything it’s not supposed to do.

Again, it’s nonspecific. We could pump you with a steroid and shut the immune system down to quiet inflammation, but a properly functioning immune system knows when the damage has been done and when to help with repair. Once that’s done, we don’t need inflammation anymore, and the TH cells will turn down the burners. TH1 takes care of one side of the immune system, and TH2 takes care of the other—B cell antibody response versus cell-mediated immunity.

[01:34:58] Beta Glucan in Oats: Different Molecule with Limited Immune Impact

Ryan Sternagel: Completely different question—I should’ve transitioned better: “Is beta glucan found in oats?”

AJ Lanigan: It is, but it’s a different molecule. You mentioned the Cheerios girl—go to YouTube and type in “Cheerios girl,” and you’ll see this little girl running out bragging about glucans. But the glucans in oats and barley are entirely different molecules. They’re beta 1,4 glucans, which are more linear and water-soluble. You’d have to eat a lot of rolled oats to get enough to impact cholesterol or immunity.

You probably couldn’t eat enough bowls of Cheerios or any other grain. However, we’ve taken glucans from grains, purified them, and stripped out the starches and glycogen, leaving about 70% glucan. Yes, you can get some immunological response from that, but it’s still little league compared to the pros.

Ryan Sternagel: At least you can tell yourself there’s some beta glucan in your oatmeal.

[01:36:54] Better Way Health’s International Shipping Options

Ryan Sternagel: “Do you know offhand where Better Way Health ships? Is it worldwide or just North America?”

AJ Lanigan: My understanding is that they now have a company that specializes in fulfillment and can ship overseas, much cheaper than I could. I had a guy contact me from Germany, and I told him it would cost more to ship the bottle than to buy it. But Better Way Health uses a company that handles most of their fulfillment, and it’s very economical.

If you contact them, you can say, “Hey, I live in Tasmania” (we had someone from New Zealand check in earlier), or “I live in Melbourne.” They’ll give you the delivered price. And, though I’m not certain, I think after a certain amount, the shipping and handling cost is greatly reduced. They’re quick to respond, so you won’t be left guessing.

[01:38:31] Beta Glucan and Plasma Cells in Multiple Myeloma: Supporting Immune Health During Treatment

Ryan Sternagel: Going from oats back to a more technical question: “What effect does beta-glucan have on plasma cells in multiple myeloma?”

AJ Lanigan: For those who don’t know, here’s how it works: You’ve got B cells. B cells get activated and multiply to fight the fight. Then, B cells convert into plasma cells, which secrete antibodies. The antibodies stick to their specific targets—for example, herpes 1 has a different antibody than herpes 2 or cytomegalovirus.

In multiple myeloma, those plasma cells have gone sideways. The immune system wasn’t kept up to speed, and now cancer has infiltrated those cells. There are many different ways they’re treated with standard care.

I’m trying to answer in a way that makes sense, but since I’m not a medical doctor, the FDA doesn’t allow me to give prescriptions or prognosis. What you want is to beat the cancer—that much I understand. You have a choice in how you go about it: standard care, alternative, complementary, or a combination of both. Regardless of what you choose, as I’ve said before, your outcome will be better, and you’ll likely have a better quality of life, especially if you’re going through standard care.

AJ Lanigan: I see so many people suffer terribly when they go through treatments like that. You’re talking about removing bone marrow, nuking the body, and then trying to get the bone marrow back. I had a guy from southern Alabama whose bone marrow got contaminated with bacteria during treatment. When they put the bone marrow back, it was loaded with bacteria. They had to repeat the process, and again, it came back contaminated. He was absolutely ravaged. But three years later, he drove up here and wanted to go fishing with me. He had a hard time walking because of some bone issues, but he said, “I got tired of playing golf. I figured I’d come up and go fishing with you.” That’s what can happen when you get the immune system back to where it needs to be.

We’re not talking about a silver bullet here, ladies and gentlemen. You still need to do all the other things—diet, reasonable exercise, managing stress, and proper rest. These things are well-known and understood, and so are they. If you just walk in and say, “Here I am, Doc, fix me,” it doesn’t usually work out that way. I hope it does if you choose that path. Sometimes it does, and if it does, I’m happy for you.

[01:42:37] Understanding the Underlying Causes of Low Blood Counts Despite Beta Glucan Use

Ryan Sternagel: “Is there any reason why it might not work? Tatiana said she’s been on it for a couple of years, but still has very low white blood cell and red blood cell counts.”

AJ Lanigan: To answer that, we’d need to understand why she has the low counts to begin with. Last week, I had a guy send me 49 pages of blood work—he’s a veteran, and he sent me all his lab work from last year. They know he has prostate cancer; his PSA is up around 16 (it’s supposed to be below four). They did a biopsy, it came back positive, Gleason score confirmed—there’s no doubt he has prostate cancer. But as I’m reading his paperwork, I see he’s got low HDL, toxic levels of vitamin D, and too much protein in his urine.

I told him, “Bob, you don’t just need your primary doctor and oncologist—you need a nephrologist, a urologist, a cardiologist. You’ve got to have a team.” It’s like trying to run a football play without a center to snap the ball. Why is Tatiana’s white blood cell count low in the first place? If we had an appropriate diagnosis, we could figure that out. There are all kinds of reasons why that could be. You can’t fix it if you don’t know what’s broken.

I don’t mean to dodge the question. It’s like asking, “Why do I have short arms? I’ve been taking beta-glucan for a long time. Why do I have gray hair?” We need to know the underlying cause. Is it an immunological issue, or are there other factors that could be easily corrected if identified?

A lot of people I work with have already run the gauntlet of treatment, and by the time they come to me, it’s because everything else they’ve tried has failed—standard care and complementary approaches. Many times, it’s because there wasn’t an appropriate diagnosis to identify what’s causing the underlying condition. That’s important. If someone has a fever, you need to know why—is it bacterial, or viral, or are they just overheated? Getting good information is key.

I’d be happy to answer more if you can get back to me with more details.

Ryan Sternagel: In Tatiana’s case, she’s saying everything’s out of control. A hematologist and oncologist are both confused—she didn’t have chemo or radiation, and there’s no cancer in the first place. That leads me to ask, Tatiana, are you working with a functional medicine doctor?

AJ Lanigan: Since she’s listening, what led her to discover she had low blood counts? Was she having increases in infections? Something had to trigger the blood work to make that discovery. If she didn’t have chemo or radiation, that doesn’t explain why her blood counts are low.

[01:46:47] Can Beta Glucan Help Recover Blood Counts After Cancer Treatment?

Ryan Sternagel: Susan’s follow-up question is related: She’s dealing with low counts after cancer treatment, and we talked about the functionality of beta glucan. “Would beta glucan help with low counts due to cancer treatment? Would it help bring those counts back up?”

AJ Lanigan: Similar to what I said earlier, beta-glucan is a non-specific immune modulator. One of the things we know it does is increase interleukin-2. Pharma companies have learned how to synthetically manufacture interleukin-2, and it’s sold as a drug called Proleukin. But if the immune system is functioning properly, it will send growth factors to the bone marrow. Depending on the type of growth factor, it’ll say, “Send me more natural killer cells,” or “Send me more neutrophils,” or “Send me more B cells.”

The immune system, when it recognizes a low blood count, will trigger the appropriate growth factors to bring those counts back to where they need to be. The question is, does she have a deficiency in these growth factors, or is something else going on? I’d also ask if she had normal white blood counts before. Does she have records showing that? Some people are born with certain immune deficiencies—maybe they can’t produce enough B cells to make antibodies against Candida or certain viruses.

Beta glucan isn’t going to correct someone’s genetics—it’s not going to change who your mom and dad were, if you know what I mean. Some things aren’t part of the immunological puzzle, and DNA is one of them.

Ryan Sternagel: Susan mentioned she had normal counts until the treatments, and Tatiana, who didn’t have treatments, said her decline showed up in her regular CBC test.

AJ Lanigan: We’re getting bits and pieces of information here. It sounds like there’s more to figure out.

Ryan Sternagel: Again, everyone, AJ is not directly with Better Way Health—he supplies them. The guys at Better Way Health are some of my favorite people in the world.

[01:50:38] Where to Learn More: Vita with Immunity and Beta Glucan Resources

Ryan Sternagel: Aside from Better Way Health, AJ, is there anywhere else you’d like to point people to follow up on your work?

AJ Lanigan: Yes, for those who want to dive deeper into the science, there’s a site I’d direct you to: Vita with Immunity. “Vita” is Latin for life, so it’s vitawithimmunity.com. You’ll find a wealth of interviews there. I’m in some of them, but you’ll also see university professors, MDs, and other experts.

If you have cancer, I recommend starting with a five-minute interview with several MDs, oncologists, and others. The video is titled The Immune System vs. Cancer. Then, go to the second short video, about four or five minutes long, on the Mechanism of Action. It explains where the immune system first encounters beta glucan, what happens downstream, and how the immune system improves at surveilling, identifying, attacking, and killing cancer cells. Both videos total less than 10 minutes.

So, start with The Immune System vs. Cancer and Mechanism of Action at vitawithimmunity.com.

Ryan Sternagel: I didn’t know about this website, but it looks like a treasure trove of information for those who want to geek out beyond the videos.

AJ Lanigan: Yes, and there are some cartoon-style videos, like The Immune System vs. Virus, where you can learn a lot about the different players in the immune system. They’re fun—gather the whole family, get the kids involved, and they might grow up to be immunologists!

Ryan Sternagel: I remember that cartoon virus video from a couple of years ago. That was a good one. VitawithImmunity.com—I’m looking forward to checking it out. Thank you for your time, AJ. This has been great.

AJ Lanigan: It’s been my pleasure and honor. And to everyone out there, go to the Vita site, be a good student, and then go be a good teacher. Help others.

Ryan Sternagel: Absolutely. And yes, everyone, there will be a replay. You’ll get an email—if you received an email announcing this webinar, you’ll get one about the replay. Also, the link you used to log into the webinar will become the replay link after I end the session and the processing happens. So, it’ll be easy for you to access.

AJ Lanigan, thank you, sir. This has been fun. I’ve been researching this stuff for a long time, but I learned many new things in the past two hours. All right, everyone, we’ll see you soon.