Interviewer: Well, Doctor, one of the things you talk about is cardiac
Injuries. Talk about how your own experience has shaped how you study
that topic.
Dr. Kugler: Well, I always used to be very much into fitness. I mean, real
fitness, body building, everything. And here I was on my weight, the health
club, I visualize this, I'm turning to my health club, and out of nothing,
Bang! A young kid had bought an oversize truck two hours before and ran
through a red light, side-impacted me, my car spun around. I was
squeezed into this thing, a older, five or six years Mercedes, and the cops
came, and 'Sir, don't move,' and we get you out of there and the paramedics, broken neck, broken spine. They brought me to the hospital, and it seemed OK, and they
let me go home, and over the next year and a half I am going downhill like
you wouldn't believe it. I lost muscle mass, I came to a point where I'd
walked 30 feet, and I'm [makes sound as if gasping for air], you know. I
mean, it was so distressing, until finally Dr. Gallia, a doctor friend
of mine in our area, diagnosed that the impact had ruptured a part in my
heart. So, I went to USC, picked the best ones, after another year and a
half of evaluations, and so on, it turned out that my left atrium
had enlarged to 6.8. Less than 3.9 is normal. I had extreme
irregularity, and my ejection fraction was 28%. Now, this is not really
very good. [laughs]
After another year and a half of drugs, which I don't like
anyway, but I had to try it out, they finally told me that nothing could
be done about it, four drugs and a pacemaker and a defibrillator. With
the help of friends from alternative medicine here, and Dr. Ron Klatz
played a key role in that, advising me about where to go; we'll think
outside the box. The first thing we had to do is evaluate what's inside
the box. I mean, that's drugs, right? And that stuff doesn't work. Finally with this, and the method that comes out of NASA, called ECP, very much discussed here at the meetings, enhanced External Counter Pulsation, a lot of supplements, towards mitochondrial functioning. I mean, there's any from coenzyme Q10 to fish alpha lipoic acid and so on and so on. An Olympic trainer friend of mine, who designed a new indoor exercise program - normally with heart, oh, don't do anything, you be careful - 'Oh, no, I want you to do heavy weight lifting and so on." Heavy weight lifting, ECP, special
supplements, embryonic cell extracts that I got from Germany, it's the very next
best thing to stem cells. Actually I run a stem cell laboratory right now.
We applied that, and while everybody's saying it could never
work, after three months, I am totally back to normal. It amazed everybody.
I mean, my left atrium had come from 6.8 down to 5.3. My left
atrium was literally, I mean...it's heading towards the right range again.
My ejection fraction from 28 to 60%, and my rhythm was totally normal,
sinus rhythm, right? I went back to all the experts. All the experts
told me, 'Well, you are heading in the right direction, and the expensive
things, the embryonic cell extracts, and the ECP, I mean, that's $250 an
hour, right? I did three per week. The embryonic cell extracts,
they cost around $550 Euros, that's $700, and I also did three per week.
You can just add it up. I mean, I wrote checks against everything.
They said, 'You have no choice but to wean yourself off of
the expensive stuff,' which I did, and after another five months, USC, the
professor gets all kind of crazy: 'Never seen anything like it! That's
impossible! How can this be!' And blah, blah, blah. We do
another evaluation there, an echo, and that's why nobody can argue with it. It
was done at the best. Left atrium: 6.8, 5.3, now 3.7. I'm in the normal range
again. My ejection fraction 28, 60, now 80%. At my age I'm classified as
high-performing athlete, and totally normal rhythm. We wrote it up for
a medical journal, and in the meantime, Dr. Ron Klatz, from A4M here, is the best people ever. A larger bunch of supplements and so on and so on and totally, totally, totally back to normal. They allowed me to present my recovery in 2009 at the A4M Meeting in Las Vegas, and there we made medical history.
About a year and a half later, out of, I believe, about 30 or 40
publications, they pick about seven or eight, and that's also published in
print. Very recently, the Townsend Letter for Doctors...you know, one
of the...there were similar people, I mean, many years ago they started
with a two-page newsletter. Now it's a very well-recognized medical
publication, 130 pages, and occasionally they take on an entire, on
one problem, just one entire issue. In this case, they evaluated heart
disease, and towards the end, they pick one publication that they quote as
'made medical history' and that shows we're on the right track, and again,
they reproduced our publication. We're very happy about that.
I'm back to the gym. I regained...that's another thing that's very
important here in this area. It used to be that maybe 50 or older, no,
you can't rebuild muscle mass. It's impossible, right? Total nonsense.
Eighteen pounds of muscle mass I rebuilt. I'm back to the gym, high-
performing exercises. There's a new type of exercise that a friend of mine,
an Olympic trainer, developed, Dr. Paul Ward, very famous man in the
fitness field. He is Olympic trainer, and every team, I mean,
football, basketball team, you name it, they use that type of training
program. In my book, we have the simplification of this program;
exercise for everybody, to make it less boring, more effective, and it was
reviewed by a very famous Texas University fitness expert, basically saying
with this program, we are getting results beyond belief, and respect to overall fitness, body shaping, calories expended, and so on and so on. Everything is heading in the right direction. We're very happy about that.