Dr. Josh Axe: Why Your "Normal" Bloodwork Is Lying to You and What to Test For Instead

August 4, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

When Dr. Josh Axe’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, her oncologist gave her three days to begin radiation and chemotherapy. Instead, she chose a natural protocol of vegetables, wild salmon, medicinal mushrooms, and prayer. Four months later, her tumors had shrunk by half. Nine months after that, she was in complete remission. Twenty years later, she is still cancer-free and water-skiing in her mid-seventies. That experience launched Axe into a career combining functional medicine, herbalism, and traditional Chinese medicine — and it frames everything he teaches about healing at the cellular level.

The first step is not a test

When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, Axe says the most important move has nothing to do with labs or supplements. “You get down on your knees and you pray,” he says. “Your chance of beating cancer is always going to be higher with divine intervention.” He has observed that the patients who are most prayerful and most positive — who genuinely believe their body can heal — get the best outcomes. The cancer industry, he argues, often leads with fear, telling patients their disease is “highly aggressive” and needs immediate treatment. That fear itself can be damaging. After prayer, Axe recommends consulting someone who understands integrative care, even if the patient also chooses conventional treatments. “Somebody’s chance of survival is muc

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Opening: The Missing Piece in Modern Medicine** - Dr. Axe argues that spiritual, relational, and emotional health are foundational to physical healing—areas conventional medicine ignores.
2 (01:33) **Introducing Dr. Josh Axe** - Gary Brecka welcomes back his friend and repeat guest, a leading voice in natural medicine.
3 (02:48) **Bridging Eastern and Western Medicine** - Brecka shares his personal renaissance from skepticism to openness about traditional Chinese medicine and plant medicine.
4 (04:40) **Dr. Axe’s Origin Story: Healing His Mother from Cancer** - Axe’s journey into herbal medicine began when his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and given three days to start chemo and radiation.
5 (08:39) **Blanket Advice for a New Cancer Diagnosis** - Axe gives a three-step process for anyone facing a cancer diagnosis, prioritizing spiritual and integrative approaches.
6 (13:14) **The Cancer Diet: Starve Sugar, Flood with Oxygen** - Axe details the dietary approach for his friend with colon cancer and explains the metabolic logic behind it.
7 (16:01) **Personalized Herbal Medicine: Tongue Diagnosis and Biomarkers** - Axe explains how he tailors herbal protocols to each patient, using both ancient and modern tools.

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Guests on this episode

Dr. Josh Axe

Show Notes

Dr. Josh Axe spent two years exhausted before an advanced blood panel revealed the real problem: his vitamin B2 was almost undetectable, and his mitochondria were badly depleted. Once he corrected it, his energy went from a 6 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. The fix wasn't a stimulant or a gadget, it was testing inside the cell (RBC markers, not just serum) instead of trusting "normal" bloodwork. If rest isn't fixing your fatigue, this is the episode that tells you where actually to look. As always, this is general wellness education and not medical advice, so run your own testing and dosing with your clinician.

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