The Longevity Loop Podcast

One Shot To Skip The Scalpel

• Brent Wallace from Longevity Clinic Marketing

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We map a clear path from sick care to true repair with Dr. Jeff Gross, moving from surgery-first thinking to signal-driven healing using exosomes, peptides, and smart imaging. Along the way we explore NK cell exosomes for cancer and aging, and the habits that make any protocol work better.

• Why stem-cell medicine in the U.S. fell behind and how it is catching up
• PRP, MSCs, and exosomes as a spectrum of healing signals
• Targeting bone-edge inflammation to regrow and maintain cartilage
• Exosomes vs surgery for joints and spine and one-and-done procedures
• Peptide stacks including BPC 157, TB500, SS-31, and GLPs
• NK cell exosomes for tumor control and senescence clearance
• When to seek regenerative care and why earlier is often better
• Practical habits: heavy lifting to failure, hot sauna, protein, vitamin D, omega-3
• Imaging standards: 3T MRI with inversion recovery to find targets
• What’s broken in insurance-driven healthcare and how to navigate

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Resources and the full transcript live at Spannr.com
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SPEAKER_00:

Wouldn't it be great if we could get at least as good a result from the surgery with a simple one-time injection? It's just a one-time, really. They're well aware that the stem cells are delivering a message, and it's the message that counts. So they were able to sort of move people biologically younger for up to two years after a single NK cell infusion. That's an easy one. Use your muscles hard, weight bearing exercise, intense. Doesn't have to be for long periods of time, it's just intense. So you got because it you'll maintain your muscle mass, you'll maintain your bone density if you do that. And those both are correlated with healthy longevity.

SPEAKER_02:

This is the Longevity Loop Podcast, and I'm your host, Brent Wallace. In every episode, I bring you the leading voices in longevity, plus my own insights, put the world's best strategies directly into your hands, making elite longevity strategies accessible to everyone, regardless of your background. So let's jump into the loop starting right now. All right. Uh that I've known about for a while. We'll probably get into the story a little bit, but I recently hung out with Dr. Jeff down in LA at the HealthSpan Summit, which was a super cool event. Um, if anyone's ever casually interested in longevity stuff or you're a professional, awesome event, awesome weather, awesome people, moodly run. So anyway, uh, and then just the quick disclaimer of things is that this is a podcast just meant for entertainment purposes. Nothing here is meant to be medical advice, even though Jeff, Dr. Jeff is a doctor, but always check with your own clinician, doctor itself. This is not supposed to be medical advice or be a replacement for any of that. So just know that it's a conversation between me and Dr. Jeff. If you don't know about Dr. Jeffrey Gross, uh he is a stem cell whisperer and a regenerative um doctor. So we'll just get right into it. Um, Dr. Jeff, you transitioned from being a top-tier spine neros surgeon to founding Recelebrate. That's a crazy pivot. Uh well, maybe it's not that crazy, but it, you know, when when you go from that to that, that's kind of radical. So, what did you see in that surgical practice that made you realize that there might be a better path for the people you're serving?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thank you. It's uh thanks for having me, by the way. It it's an evolution. Um it it it I recognized early in my career that there was a problem in the sick care system and the delivery of healthcare, and that people were getting the same thing, and I was trained to do the same thing that my professors were trained to do by their professors in the 1950s and 60s. So nothing had changed. Uh, yeah, there's a new widget or a new approach, or we do it through a smaller incision because we're cool. But um the the there was nothing new being added to the gap between surgeries and all these non-surgical treatments like injections and therapies, right? That we have all this technology, we have all this biotechnology, you know, and why why isn't that happening? Uh it also occurred to me because I have undergraduate background in molecular cell biology and biochemistry, that stem cells have potential. And, you know, we know this in the 80s, there was a big, you know, resurgence of research in this area. And it took, you know, 10, 20 years for that to trickle into, you know, the clinics. And where were those clinics, Brent? They were in Europe and in Asia, they weren't here. There was a big, there was a big schism here where people thought, you know, we were harvesting, you know, aborted fetuses, which we were not. No one was. But you know, all you take is is one bad, bad apple, and you hear that and it goes crazy. Totally. So so we were held back here. Of course, there are economic forces in this country that benefit from surgeries and from drugs, and and surely they didn't want some kind of natural, easy solution. So it my patients came to me and said, We don't, we're not ready for surgery. We don't want the surgery. I said, Great, because I only want to do it for you if you absolutely have to have it. I was a little different than my colleagues because we were always taught how to do the surgery during residency, then how not to do it once we were out in practice. But a lot of my colleagues weren't thinking the same way. So I never really fit into that system. I was always bucking against the insurance companies and not willing to take their craziness. And finally, enough patients said, How about stem cells, doc? And I said, You know what? You know, I'm prepared for that. Let me, instead of going to these annual neurosurgery meetings where we talk about spine surgery and stuff, which, which by the way, I I still see spine patients. I still do second opinions, did two today. I it still comes very easy to me to help people figure that out. But um, I said, you know what? Let me go to a stem cell conference. Let me see what's happened in all these years since you know I was taking, you know, biochemistry lab, you know, 102A or whatever in college. So right. So I started going to courses and conferences, you know, seven years ago. And I said, Wow, uh, why are we so behind? I mean, look what's happening. Look at these, and we had international speakers. Here's what we're doing in Europe, here's what we're doing in the in the islands, here's what we're doing here and there. And and a couple people in the state saying, we're doing it too. Um, and they had a whole lecture on regulatory cautions, and you take that to heart and you do it right, and now it's all I do.

SPEAKER_02:

That's so cool. Yeah, I feel like there's almost a secret club of stem cells in the United States. It's like, oh, otherwise you got to go to like, you know, Mexico or India or Germany or something, you know, and like it's like almost, I mean, obviously it's not a secret club. I mean, there's people like you definitely pushing it forward where it's it's a way bigger, um, a way bigger thing now and way more accepted. But uh, yeah, just when I first started hearing about stem cells, you know, I don't know, three, four years ago, it was definitely like, oh yeah, there there's there's some doctors, you know, like, and it's just uh become a lot more commonplace now. Um, so starting with the fundamentals, if someone's never heard of stem cells before, which I think with our audience it's probably pretty rare, but still, how would you explain what they actually are and and why they matter for healing? And uh, and we might get into this later, but you know, the difference between that and PRP, or you know, just kind of the different modalities that we we we hear out there just kind of getting casually thrown around, but maybe not totally understanding what they do and how they work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I got you. I got you. Um so you know, just to tap back in for one second to the last element. I I'm here, I'm here not just to hang out with you, but um because I think one service is we need to let people know what's out there. And I'm here to share that and educate. So let's educate on stem cells and regenerative medicine in in general. So the field is regenerative medicine, medicine that creates and regenerates and restores. And that comes in different flavors. The most basic flavor is called platelet-rich plasma or PRP. There are some other forms of that, but it's basically taking some of your own blood, spinning it in a centrifuge, pulling out some of the concentrated healing growth factors and platelets, and putting them back in an area of your body that needs a ramped-up attack on healing. And that's that is uh kind of the lowest level. You can get that in most places. Um, by the way, all of these elements, all of them, are not yet approved for marketing claims by the FDA. They're not yet approved for marketing claims. That sentence is very important because most people don't finish that sentence. Um, so PRP is not approved by marketing claims, but interestingly, some health insurance companies are starting to pay for it because they've figured out it's cheaper than a surgery for a joint.

SPEAKER_02:

Interesting like that. Interesting. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00:

So hopefully that'll continue uh into some of these other more powerful regenerative biologics. So from PRP, the next one up would be stem cells. So what are stem cells? Which is really what you're asking me. And stem cells are the cells from which we are created and from which all other cells stem from. So um hence their name, right? And when we're when we're a fertilized egg in our mother's womb, we're very powerful stem cells, because there are many different kinds. And then as we develop into sort of a fetus-shaped thing, they're powerful, but not as powerful as the embryo, the initial embryo. And then later, as we're almost ready to be born, we're a fully formed fetus, human-looking. Those are called multipotent stem cells. And that's basically when we use stem cells in the clinical sense, we're generally talking about these multipotent stem cells that come from the middle layer of the embryo called the mesoderm. And these are called MSCs, short for mesenchymal stromocells, which are the particular cells that we maintain. They help us grow and develop as a child. They help us repair, restore, and heal if we're injured. And when we're done growing, we use them all the time to renew and restore. But as we age and accumulate chronic inflammatory cellular stresses and oxidation and all this, you know, pro-cellular aging chemistry, our stem cells are exposed to that too. And they don't work as well. They become exhausted in number and in quality function. So that's where this whole field of regenerative medicine or stem cell medicine comes in to strategize, to use those youthful ones as a hack, whether you take your own, concentrate them, and put them back in, or even better, you get the younger donors, younger sources, usually from ethically donated materials from a mother who just delivered her baby by C-section, donating the, you know, what we used to throw away, right? The placenta, the umbilical cord, the amniotic fluid, and using those materials. And then the third level is kind of parallel with that stem cell level. We've we've learned, Brent, that stem cells aren't really doing the work. But wait, we keep using this phrase stem cells. Like that's it is, this is stem cell medicine. Stem cells are these useful creative cells. Um, they they're very powerful, but they are delivering a message of healing, repair, anti-inflammatory behavior, optimal cell behavior, re-im, re-engaging and reactivating our cells. Our cells do the repair work, not the stem cells. The stem cells turn that switch back on and remind us how to do it. How do they do that? They deliver signaling factors, growth factors, proteins, peptides, and vesicles that we call exosomes.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So all cells make exosomes, and we use the word exosomes in the treatment sense, it's typically a stem cell-derived exosomes or an MSC-derived exosome. And that really is cutting out the middleman. And we like exosomes, they travel through tissue better. Uh, they uh they're uh they're less expensive than stem cells, and they really are the modern way of doing regenerative medicine.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, okay. Thanks for that clarification because I had a few questions for the exosomes, and because that is something I I don't know about. So you just clarified that for me in my mind, and hopefully for you know those listening, that was just a a thing that kind of like, okay, that that totally makes sense. So with the exosomes, you know, we'll just jump right into it. And and you know and I don't know if this would be synonymous, but like stem cell treatments and exosome treatments, do they differ fundament fundamentally? I mean, I know you said the stem cell was what does the exosome. So do you just bypass that whole stem cell treatment now and just go straight with the exosomes?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's we're mostly what we're doing. Uh yes, they're on the same effective level in my mind. Um we don't really have head-to-head studies, but if you read from the you know major uh you know thought leaders in this area, they're they're well aware that the stem cells are s delivering a message and uh it's the message that counts.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Okay. So since they do differ from traditional surgery here, we're just gonna talk about you know traditional surgery. In terms of like addressing the root cause versus like symptoms, how does uh that messaging, you know, you you talked briefly about you know with the PRP, you know, you injecting it in the part of the body that needs it. So if I needed shoulder reconstruction surgery or something, how does that uh those treatments differ from a traditional surgery uh spec? I mean you touched on it a little bit, but I'm I I know there's a lot more to the story.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it differ different from a surgery. Well, I mean, uh a surgery is you know an open thing. You have risks of infection, you have risks of uh pain, uh, you have complications, you have downtime, rehab, missed work. I mean, uh it depends on how big the surgery is, of course. But um I mean, wouldn't it be great if we could get at least as good a result from the surgery with a simple one-time injection? It's just a one-time, really. Um for the for the methodology we follow, which I did not invent, but I think we might have improved it a little bit. But uh the methodology has over 15-year follow-up published in the medical journals uh from Europe. So this is not shooting from the hip. This is medical evidence. It's uh well-founded and great studies and how we approach joint and spine applications, at least. And I do a lot of that, if it's not clear. I come from the land of spine, and that land is musculoskeletal and structures, and it's probably more than 50, 60% of what I do now is I I meet with people all day with joint and spine problems, cartilage degeneration, joint degeneration, things that have been called arthritis, which is kind of a dummy-down version of osteoarthritis, which is a dummy-down version of a metabolic derangement of the cells that produce and maintain cartilage. And those cells live in your bone. They do not live in the cartilage. So, Brad, just like your full head of hair there, that hair is a protein. That protein comes, is made by a cell inside your scalp called a follicle. Well, cartilage is a protein, and those cartilage type proteins, it's many different proteins, but they're made by cells in the bone. So think about that. Your joint, your cartilage, is made and maintained and lubricated by cells in the bone edge. So we treat the bone edge, we treat the source. Just like if you wanted your hair growth to improve, you treat the scalp, you don't treat the hair. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So that's where you deliver these exosomes, right? And in the and and it sounds like you're still working with stem somes and exosomes, and just like just using them uh almost interchangeably. So that's where the injection site would go, just right on the edge of the bone, and then that would signal in that area um to um you know, to uh signal the repair mechanisms and stuff. Okay. So there's a peptide now, you've heard of it, I'm sure, BPC157. How does that work? Is it complementary in an exosome or stem cell treatment, or is that doing the same thing? How how does how does BPC157 work in conjunction with that?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. Um, and it's only the beginning. Uh peptides are are blossoming, but we do like to stack peptide therapies with the regenerative treatments. Uh, they're not doing the same thing, but BPC157 matched with TB500 and some others that support collagen uh production uh can work synergistically together. So we we will pair that type of peptide protocol with an exosome procedure to get more out of it. And um, because the cartilage regenerative process takes six to 12 months in the bigger joints, uh, we have seen that the BPC 157 and the TB500 and others will are helpful in suppressing the inflammation and improving pain while they're healing. So I've got one guy, we treated his knees, I don't know, three months ago, and he did a cycle of BPC 157, TB500. Let's just call that Wolverine protocol for short for now. Yeah. The two main elements of the Wolverine, even though often a wolverine has three elements. Um the he did a six-week cycle, and then I said, finish the cycle, let's see how you're doing. He went off it for a week or two and his pain started to flare up again. So we went right back on it. And his pain calmed down again. So I know it's helping. You know, I know it's helping. And uh, so we're doing that. If you have reduced muscle mass and we need to help support your mitochondria and muscle, we might add a mitochondrial peptide, a MOT C or an SS31, um, things like that. We have we have a lot of different avenues and they're just blossoming.

SPEAKER_02:

That's cool. That's really cool to hear that you're using those synergistically with that other protocol there. Because I know I've used um, you know, I get running injuries where I it feels like my tendons and my calf are like kind of torn or inflamed, and I know BPC 157 with the TB500 um really does help me. So someone would be seeking exosomes or stem cells. At what point, you know, it's like for someone like me, like say I eat it real hard on my bike and my shoulders all screwed up, and you know, I'm using the BPC 157 to kind of get there. At what point would I seek out someone like yourself to say, hey, doc, I think I need some exosomes here? Would it be that it's not healing, or would it be me going to a traditional doctor and them saying, Hey, you need some surgery? And I'm like, I don't think so. Or what's the line there?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, had you asked me this three or four years ago, I I would have said, Yeah, when you when you no longer can take it and the other things aren't working. But now I I have a uh a little additional opinion on that, where I think the earlier you get to this, the the easier it is to have your body repair it and move you backwards along the degenerative line in into, and guess what the opposite opposite of degenerative is? It's regenerative. We want to move you to the regenerative side of things. So that's the goal here. So I would say it there's no harm in looking at it, right? And the way we do that is we get, you know, most of my patients, I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada, for those of you who didn't know that. And most of my patients are not in Las Vegas, Nevada, right? Um, so we start on a video just like this, Brent. We we get to know people, we get their records, we get any imaging they have. If they need, we'll order the MRI for them. And it has to be an MRI, an X-ray is inadequate, and it has to be a good quality MRI, a three Tesla MRI, which speaks to the magnetic strength, which is a big factor in determining the um the quality of the resolution of the images. We also order some additional imaging um from the MRI that's from the secret menu that you don't normally get, and you have to know. So let us order the MRI for you. I'm very particular because we're targeting these inflammatory damage at the bone edge, and we can see it. We can see these bright white spots on what's called an inversion recovery MRI, and those are my targets. So I told you I thought we might have had an enhancement on how the Europeans were doing this. They were targeting off x-ray, which means all they were targeting is loss of cartilage height. I'm targeting off the actual inflammatory changes in those cells, which is the reason they're not working.

SPEAKER_02:

Got it. Wow, that that's pretty cool. Yeah, I I've never known that would be the process of that. So that consultation would result in an MRI, and then you'd have the exact data that you need to know if that would require exosomes or stem cells, and then you could make your recommendations from that point.

SPEAKER_00:

And we and we can put the you know, I get the MRI, we look at it here on my computer, I share it on my screen so anyone can see it. So we only invite people here to Las Vegas who who are you know ready for a procedure. Um, and you know, the procedures are straightforward. It's usually a one and done, and um they're they're straightforward. We do want to make sure everyone is teed up and ready to go. Like, you know, you're no other pro-inflammatory problems in your lifestyle. We want you uh optimized, you know, we we work towards that. So it's not just the joint. We want to really suppress inflammation in your body from all aspects that we can sleep, diet, nutrition, exercise, everything for sure.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think that's one of the things that really sets you apart from just kind of a I mean, if you could call stem cells ordinary, but you're you're very much holistic in your approach to it where you do address those other things, like kind of like a true longevity specialist or longevity clinician would. So one thing I do want to touch on too, just in the research getting ready for this, there's a lot of talk about natural killer cell exosomes specifically. They're getting a lot of attention right now. So, how are those different than a normal exosome? And and I think you're working with those too, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I'm glad you're asked. So I, you know, we've been using the stem cell-derived exosomes for quite a while now. They're abundantly available. Um, and but I didn't have anything for patients with cancer. And, you know, I have to help those that are suffering. It's built into the Hippocratic Oath where we have to do that. So we don't give regular exosomes or stem cells to people with cancer because we're not sure if it'll increase the cancer or not increase the cancer. We just we just don't know enough. Right. Um, so it in my, you know, when when I'm not seeing patients or hanging out with people like you on podcasts, I I am I'm always reading and you know, going down rabbit holes as a nerd, and I'm I'm studying, and I I was looking up immune, different immune therapies, and so I became a fan of what's called the natural killer cells. And these are cells in our body that whose job, and they're just a small percentage of our white blood cells, so they're very small number of our cells. Their job is to be like a sensory system, a security system. They go around the body and they selectively remove abnormal cells. So cancer cells, infected cells, zombie senescent cells. Now, the cancer cells, you're like, well, why do we need those if we don't have cancer? We do make accidental cancer cells during our lifetime. They get screened out, they get edited out by this mechanism. And normal cells are not affected by natural killer cells. So it turns out that people with cancer tend to be found with a reduced number and function of their natural killer cells. So it made, it made sense to me that wow, if we could restore that natural killer cell function, maybe we could help them fight the cancer naturally. Because that that's paralleling with my, we can help people with cartilage who aren't making cartilage anymore if we restored their cartilage function, right? It's it's that same sort of logic. So um, so I studied natural killer cells and the research extensively. Turns out natural killer cells do their work, kill the abnormal cells by, you guessed it, their own special exosomes, NK exosomes, natural killer cell exosome. So great, where do I get my hands on some of these? It took me two and a half years to get some. Why? Natural killer cells are so few, and getting them to produce enough exosomes to make a therapeutic dose was laborious. And a couple different labs had them in China and in Europe, and I've been communicating, communicating, communicating, you know, spending most of my time on an app called WhatsApp, because uh that's how they communicate from other countries. And the Chinese were great, they wanted to share them, but their government would not allow that. So I finally got my hands on some limited doses out of Europe uh from a lab. They they only had so many doses, uh, and I bought 25% of their supply and big investment, put it in my freezer, and we've been using them very um, you know, judiciously, you know, very uh sparingly, sort of rashing them. Um they have an anti-aging uh quality, but I'm not using them for that because I don't have enough. I'm only using them for people with cancer. And the research shows that you can do them IV for bloodborne tumors, uh, and you can do them directly injected into cancers, and the tumors will shrink, and we've seen some of that clinically already. Um and um, you know, we're we're getting to know these. We're doing it with some people who want something natural in addition to a chemotherapy or radiation plan, depending on their cancer. And it's been useful in many different cancer types in the literature. And we're also using them for people who maybe have a risk factor for cancer, maybe a family history or a genetic mutation, and they want to maybe take some preventative action, at least hypothetically. And similarly, people who have maybe been in remission and they want to extend that remission or take action that's hypothetically uh charged to help reduce remission. Um, and then some people just flat out aren't gonna have chemotherapy and radiation, just natural only. And this is ideal for them because we have we've seen no side effects so far. So we're we're making these available on that sort of compassionate basis.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that is so cool. I that is one thing that that really excites me. I mean, just like when you said that about the cancer, I don't I was like, wow, that's so cool because that is an area that just I feel like it's just it's just a big mystery still out there, and everyone's just doing these things, and there's so many promising alternate therapies than the chemotherapy, kind of traditional, the cut-burn chemical, whatever they you know they call it. Um, not to say that that doesn't work because it obviously does, but I think there's way better, way more advanced things out there that we could be investigating and doing that can really save save people. And it's really cool to hear you that it could be a preventative as well or a therapeutic, it sounds like, because but it's so rare, you know, you kind of want to save it for the the big guns for the really, really important yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right now, until we can get more of these, and you know, I've I've I've sort of in the pipeline to get more, but um, you know, we're we um we we want to make them available to people who absolutely can benefit from them or at least hopefully benefit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. One thing that I always heard that natural killer sells, there's a mushroom active hexane compound. It's AHCC, which is like some sort of fermented compound out of Japan that also is supposed to do that. I have a couple bottles of those, they're super expensive, but anytime I feel like I get them sick, I'm getting sick, I'll pound and it really seems to work. Um, so uh I mean, obviously, supporting the body just to make it immune, you know, resilient is always the first thing to do, but it's just so cool that there's the exosomes that can really uh do that, and then you've got a source on them too.

SPEAKER_00:

So anyone listening, um, yeah, we we chase that stuff down, we don't wait for it to find us. But you're right. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Brent. You're right. You can stimulate your own natural killer cell function. And I do want to comment on the anti-aging quality of natural killer cells because you can take that adaptogen that you mentioned, you can take um uh transfer factor, you can take glutathione, which is hard to absorb, but you have to find the right source. Um, those things will stimulate natural killer cell function. Fasting will stimulate natural killer cell function. Hot sauna, all the hormesis things you can do will stimulate natural killer cell function. So the biohackers tend to have better natural killer cell function in general. But anti-aging that makes sense. I'm sorry. The anti-aging side of things is I remember I said these cells also kill off. These natural killer cells and that's their exosomes kill off senescent cells. So if you were to remove your aged cell population, your zombie cells get rid of them, your body is made up of more younger cells by average. And that makes you biologically younger. So there was a study done a few years ago using NK cells, which of course, you know, implies the exosomes were being produced. They didn't have the exosomes at the time. And they showed reduced age marker. So the enzyme you look for that leaks out of these senescent cells is called beta-galactositase. So everyone at home, there'll be a quiz later. Please write that down. Beta galactosidase. I'm just kidding. So they noticed that beta-galactositase went down after a single infusion of natural killer cell donor cells. And it stayed down for up to two years. So they were able to sort of move people biologically younger for up to two years after a single NK cell infusion.

SPEAKER_02:

That's really cool. So that sounds like one heck of a rejuvenation outcome that you get there. Um that that's that's so cool. Like I'm so excited for the future, and I'm really excited to get those NK exosomes more available. I mean, I I imagine people are working on it like crazy, like trying to figure out how to get those things going there. Um but uh, you know, and then with the peptides and just all those cross-complementary things. So it really sounds like you're doing not only just injuries and kind of like things like that, but you're also doing the whole body preventative, ramping up your immune system and the longevity part of it. Because I mean, obviously, we've met at the HealthSpan Summit, which is longevity-based, so that's part of that. Um of the peptides, you know, we touch on them a little bit. What are you most excited about though clinically with the peptides? Is it is it the BPPC 157 TB stuff, or are there other things on the horizon that that other people might know about or excited about what to hear about?

SPEAKER_00:

To me, BPC 157 and TB500 are, you know, they're tried and true. They're around, they're good, they're good to go. Put them over here. We need them, we'll use them. But I'm really excited these days about the mitochondrial peptides. SS31 is is been my recent go-to favorite, um, especially people with long COVID and they're just you know inflammatory damage and the cells aren't functioning. Sometimes it's it's the mitochondria. And we can look at that and we can help restore that and uh through through good use of peptides. Um I'm also a huge fan of GLPs, um, and you know, not just for weight loss, but for suppressing inflammation and all the other health benefits that could come with that that we've been demonstrating now in long longer longitudinal studies. Probably the most studied peptides besides insulin are the GLP3s. Yes, insulin is a peptide peptide therapy, right? So and they're the and what's really another thing that excites me is that some of the primitive small fragment peptides, three and four amino acids long, are we call them sometimes bioregulators. They're probably preserved all the way down into bacteria and fungi. I mean, these are these these are used uh they get through the nucleus of the cell and they change what genes are being coded. That's epigenetics, right? And that's when you're eating right and you're exercising, you're releasing those internally. So we're just stress we're just learning from that and sort of amping it, helping it, supporting it, biohacking it, you know, to get the health benefits related there too for health span, for long for healthy longevity.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's one of my favorite things. I mean, our friends over at Soma Peptides, who are also at HealthSpan event, you know, they're such a great source of peptides out there. And I've got to know Peter, who is also at the Health Span event, and we've yeah, it it's it's so much fun to play with it. Like the SS31 is great, like you said about the mitochondria. Since I'm an athlete, you know, I love to run and bike, and you know, some of those are just so amazing for for the healing factors and just for the performance factor, you know. As I age, I definitely notice like the recovery and you know, just the the ability to go, go, go, no matter how good my sleep and diet is, it, you know, it's just obviously gonna naturally decline. And so part of that health span increasing is really capitalizing on these peptides. And I think it's such a new frontier. And it's so cool to hear doctors like yourself integrating those with like really, you know, holistic overall, you know, not only just healing the body, but then just, you know, healing it to back to you know, homeostasis or whatever you would call it, but then going beyond and opening it up so you really unlock the highest performance without overclocking your body, which I think like some things like SARMs or you know, some of the things that the maybe weightlifting community get into that kind of like, you know, make your body perform, but it might be paying a price later on in life. But you know, I feel like the peptide part of it is is something that is really um a sustainable solution, at least it seems to be that way to, you know, uh on on my end of things, and it seems like it's on yours too. Yeah, totally. So kind of talking about the overall system of healthcare now. In your opinion, what is really broken about the conventional health care system that maybe some doctors won't say publicly?

SPEAKER_00:

What isn't broken? Um, the the entire system is flawed from medical education uh right through this is everything is driven by health insurance, whether you think it is or not. And I've seen I've seen it, right? They they ration health care, they make you jump through hoops, they're hoping for attrition. People get fed up, go pay cash, get better, die, whatever, so they don't have to pay for it. They push the can down the road, kick the can down the road. Uh and why? Because they are uh there's a conflict of interest, they are driven by profit. So um until that's repaired, uh, this problem doesn't get fixed. Uh until we can get the lobbies out of Congress uh that come that are hired by big pharma and big implant companies, doesn't get fixed, or big big insurance doesn't get fixed. Um you have insurers making billions of dollars a year when I can't get an MRI for somebody. And that's why I gave up on insurance much earlier in my career. I just couldn't practice medicine. And for a clinician to continue to survive and pay the bills, they have to hire additional people in the office just to get on the phone with the insurance company and try to get approval. Did you jump through this hoop? Did you drop, did you try this for six weeks? Right. Yeah. And then someone on the other end of the phone, they're they don't have a practice, they didn't practice. And then uh not only do you have to hire people, but you know, they pay you so little, you have to see 12 patients an hour just to get the same money you made 10 years ago. So so no one's happy. The patients aren't happy, you're gonna miss stuff. They do miss stuff all the time, incomplete, they're not examining. It's it's medicine is completely watered down because of health insurance. It needs to go back to the pre-uh mid-80s change. Back then, health insurers can only make a little margin, like uh utility, a public utility can only make like a five or ten percent margin. Uh, right now they're making, you know, 4,000% margins on your premium.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I and I've heard a lot of times that's why a lot of times it works like in India or Mexico, it is more run like that, where it's just like a lot more efficient and um, you know, where it's not the crazy markups and stuff like that. Um one of the other things that you touched on briefly in our beginning, you know, like that surgery should be a last resort, not the first option. Yeah. So how do you think that that would change if every surgeon started to adopt that philosophy? I mean, obviously there's the profit thing, like, well, where would I get our money type of thing? But what do you see a healthcare system working kind of in that model? Um, what do you think would would change? I mean, uh that there's an obvious answer there, obviously, but in your opinion, because you've been in the trenches, you're still in the trenches practically, um, you know, like what is the what would the outcome be?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm entrenched, all right. But the uh the well, I mean, if they did it right, the insurers would actually make more money because surgery is probably the most expensive thing they pay for outside of certain drugs. So um, you know, if they could really foster that uh, you know, surgical reduction by paying for regenerative biologics, and and we're seeing a little bit of this. I mentioned I think they're paying for PRP, most of them now. They're paying for PRP. And just to be clear, everybody, PRP is not yet approved for marketing claims. But when they say we say, Oh, will you pay for the stem cell treatment? Oh no, that's not approved. They never finished the sentence for marketing claims. Just so everyone knows, the FDA was set up by Congress to protect consumers with false marketing claims. They approve marketing claims for drugs, medical devices, certain foods and supplements. They do not regulate the practice of medicine, they do not say what can and cannot be done. But when we speak to stem cells, exosomes, peptides, PRP, and many other drugs and surgeries that we do are parts of those things, they are not yet approved for marketing claims. That doesn't mean they're unapproved or disapproved. And what do you see at the bottom of the jar of supplements? It says these claims have not yet been evaluated by the FDA. That's actually the neutral statement we should all be making. For stem cells, I this has not been evaluated. Interestingly, many of these things are approved in Europe. So humans must be made differently over there.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_02:

Totally different species of human, I guess. Yeah. That that's yeah, I mean, it's it, yeah, I mean, it always floors me how different um thing even dentistry, you know. Like I found a great biological dentist here uh where I live in Tucson. And ironically, I had to go search her out through the list that a German dentist has.

SPEAKER_00:

And I know him, by the way. He's he Dr. Dome or Dome. Yep, Dr. Dome, yeah, yeah. Dinner with him. Very good guy. If anyone's looking looking for advice, he's he's a wonderful. But I realize he uh has set up like a a threshold of quality where he he he vets certain people and has that list. So I'm glad you tapped into that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's awesome. I saw him, Pete, speak in Austin at a health optimization summit, and I'm just like this is the dentistry that like all dentists need to do. But but you know, again, I I'm sure there's and you're probably tapped into this too, but even just like dentistry and like being able to restore teeth and enamel. I mean, I'm imagining that there's a good use case for exosomes in dentistry, even, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so uh teeth are a different embryonic origin, like the nervous system. They're what's called ectoderm, not mesoderm. And remember, most structures, joints are mesoderm, most organs are mesoderm. So they're special. So they found that they can actually use some of the dental stem cells to help brain health. Uh neural stem cells can regrow teeth, like they're the same kind of tissue. So this we have to pay attention to the embryonic origin. The embryo, after it's a ball of cells, flattens out and has three layers like a sandwich. And most of our body is that middle layer, that mesoderm, meso being middle. Um, and then the outside is the ectoderm. It's the nervous system, it's the teeth, few cells in some of the glands. And then the inner is the endoderm. And the endoderm is what makes the nucleus cartilage of the disc, uh, which is why discs are really tough to regenerate. We're working on a sandwich therapy for discs, and where we have something special for the inside called a MUSE stem cell, a MUSE cell.

SPEAKER_02:

Got it. Yeah. That that's an interesting thing, and I'm sure that's gonna unfold, you know, in in the future here as you know, kind of more people get on board with this. Um, one of the things I wanted to ask you personally, what's the most dramatic patient outcome that you've seen personally? Um, that even just made you like almost blow your mind. You're like, wow, I know these things are cool, but this is amazing, I you know, type of reaction.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, I listen, I have people we've done uh joint bone injections, and I've seen we did an MRI a year later, and they have like twice the cartilage thickness. Um but what blows my mind is I have this this wonderful woman. She first came to me, she was around 79, and she painted uh river rocks, big ones, like three to five inch, three to five inch, and she brought me one, it's like a paperweight in my one of my clinic rooms over here. And um, artistic, you know, very pretty. Here's here's my gift, you know, and she had aches and pains everywhere. She could she was getting to the point where she couldn't use her fingers to do the painting and get around and cook, and and she's independent, woman, tough lady. We did a very low dose Ivy uh stem cell-derived exosome in uh infusion, but um within days, she's walking further, cooking, cleaning the house, painting again, and most of her areas of pain improved. And she she said to me, she said, I can start to see light out of my eyes. So what do you mean? She says, Well, I didn't bother you with this, but for most of my life I've been blind in this eye. So I don't even mention it to anyone because it doesn't matter, right? She said, I can see light. And I said, I have no idea why. But cool. And she said, Well, when do I come back for another one? Like, that was great. I'm feeling good. I said, You let me know when it wears off. Didn't hear from her for over a year. So that's probably one of my most memorable wow moments. Wow. But most of the work we do is you know, day-to-day musculoskeletal back pain, neck pain, knees, shoulders, fingers, thumbs. We've done toes and ankles, and we're working on a smaller needle so we can do TMJs because I I my needles are too big for that right now. Well, what's the TMJ? The you mean that it's a joint, and a lot of people have problems here. We get an MRI, we can see the the changes that lead to the dysfunction in the joint. So uh we have bony targets there too. I just uh because it's small and I want to do it from the inside of the mouth because I don't want to leave a scar on the face, we're designing a special needle for that.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, that's a jink, we're tinkering over here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, well, it's I mean, we got to talk a little bit, you know, in LA, but it just super cool that you know it's it's that's what was so cool about a podcast is that you get to kind of spend time and like, oh whoa, that's what you're doing? Oh, whoa, that sounds really cool. Yeah, totally. Thank you. So with with with reselebrate, who's your ideal candidate? And you know, conversely, if someone comes to you and says, you know, and you might say, no, you're not ready for this yet, or this isn't for you. I mean, you briefly talked about the MRI, but who's the ideal patient uh that were the candidate that was gonna come and see you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, if so the the low-hanging fruit are joints and spine. If you've got pain and inflammation, maybe you've had an old injury, old sports injury, maybe you had an old arthroscopy surgery, and down the line you were told, well, at some point you're gonna need a joint replacement. That's kind of my bread and butter. That's what we're seeing. That's where we're trying to move the needle. Um, you know, we it's growing. Um, we're putting in our own state-of-the-art injection facility. Um, with uh it's gonna be unlike any other uh freestanding uh place around. Because we do a little twilight sedation for the injections because of the bone, you know, we have to go in the bone for 15 minutes or whatever. So though those are my ideal patients. Um most of my people have an appetite for this, they're already health optimized, they're probably on hormone optimization. They have their diet is dialed in, their exercise is dialed in. Uh they they do cold plunges or hot saunas and you know, intermittent fasting, and they have a grounding mattress pad, and they're do, they're doing they're doing it all. The good stuff on peace that's holding them back, you know. Or maybe someone who's 75 years old or 80 years old and they they've been independent, and all of a sudden now they're on a cane and they've got a bad knee and they don't want that surgery, they don't want the replacement. Um, we've been able to help people with that. So those are our ideal, most common, we call it the avatar, the most common type of character that we would see.

SPEAKER_02:

So it sounds like most of these patients coming to see you, since you do really work with the whole lifestyle, you're holistically dealing with these, say, injuries or you know, aging ailments. So it seems like most of them are probably sticking with, you know, a good diet and exercise because they're already coming to you with that. So when you advocate for that or tune that up, it seems like they probably really stick to that so it really sticks better. Is there a cutoff, say if you're a hundred-year-old and you're like, oh man, I'm you know, like this is all new to me. Is there a a point of kind of no return with spit stem cells or just kind of like where you want to tread a little bit more lightly? Because I know with traditional surgery, obviously, there's there's kind of like, yeah, we might just let this cruise on by because you're too old to recover from this.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, is that the case with stem cells and exosomes? Or no, it's just an injection. Unless your body parts fusing together. So, you know, in the spine, for example, if the disc is worn down, the bone will eventually fuse to its neighbor. And then after it's fused, then stem cells and exosomes aren't going to do anything except enhance the fusion. And and honestly, you know, decades ago, that's what would happen with knees. Um, but we don't see that anymore because they get replaced before then. So unless you're fusing together, which we don't I don't really see in practice, um, you know, a simple injection is a lot e a lot better tolerated, especially if you're 100 years old than a surgery. And we do see older, older people here, and they can be candidates. That's super cool.

SPEAKER_02:

That's really good to know. Because that's yeah, obviously you'd want to get ahead of anything as young as possible, but you know, just for you know, people just learn. I mean, even my folks, I mean, they're still super healthy in their 70s, but I'm starting to advocate for them to, you know, start seeking out, you know, treatments such as you're doing and stuff. My dad's historically had a bad back and you know, those type of things, and they're still active, but I do notice them slowing down. And so, you know, I I think it's like, hey, you got to take care of this now, mom and dad. You know, these are the things, you know, you don't want to wait too long, but it's also good to know that you know it it's something that you know you can't address at sounds like most stages uh of life. Um so for someone listening who can't access your clinical services right now, what would be the highest leverage thing that they could do today? You know, that they can be like, okay, cool, this is something that I can do. Um what what would you recommend for someone listening?

SPEAKER_00:

That's an easy one. Uh use your muscles hard, weight-bearing exercise, intense. Doesn't have to be for long periods of time, it's just intense. So um you got because it you'll maintain your muscle mass, you'll maintain your bone density if you do that. And those both are correlated with healthy longevity. So you you gotta do that. So I recommend you know, lift heavy, lift to failure. You can use machines, you can use you know, uh thick elastic bands, but do it. Do it often, do it daily, get your steps in. Um, you know, the the second one will be maybe some hot sauna. If you want to choose one hormesis, hot sauna would be great. You get in there 20-25 minutes at 180 degrees Fahrenheit five days a week, and you'll have better heart health, reduce mortality. There are some key supplements. Almost everyone I know is protein and vitamin D and fish oil deficient. By fish oil, I mean omega-3. So you you gotta take, you know, three, four grams of omega-3s. You gotta take 10,000 international units or more of vitamin D. Sure, take it with K2. That's great. Um, protein, protein, and protein to maintain your muscle mass. Um, Brent, what do you probably weigh what about a buck 70? Buck seventy five?

SPEAKER_02:

Pure muscle, baby.

SPEAKER_00:

There you go. So to maintain your muscle mass, I'm gonna call you almost completely lean. So you probably need 175 grams a day uh to maintain. So that's a lot of protein. That's protein shapes and protein powders and you know, protein in your meal. And if you're a vegetarian, it's tough. Yeah. It's insanely hard. It's tough. So for those of you that aren't, eggs, eggs, and more eggs, good, lean, organic, grass-fed meats, wild grass-fed, because they have more organic, you know, omega-3s, real butter for your C15, um, and things, and good, good olive oil, stuff like that. Stay away from your seed oils. I could go on and on.

SPEAKER_02:

Our newsletter going out tomorrow. It talks about seed oils, you know, and then just um, you know, like I love good olive oil. Actually, you know who has such a great olive oil is Brian Johnson. His blueprint olive oil is so delicious and so reasonably priced. I'm just like, this guy, he's he's such a crazy guy, but oh my god, like his olive oil is I'm a fan.

SPEAKER_00:

Brian, I'm a fan. I love me too. Thanks for pushing the envelope. And by the way, you you don't have to spend Brian Johnson money to get Brian Johnson results out there.

SPEAKER_02:

No, not even not even close. I mean, he even just talks about that all the time. He's like, dude, just sleep, you know, exercise, like you you said, and you know, just that nutrition, you know, that that that uh protein and you know, really getting your macros up there. Um, Jeff, I got a couple really fast, rapid-fire questions. You already answered the first one, one supplement under 50 bucks that really moves the needle. Uh it sounds like it's the omega-3 and D's there. Um second question: if someone has one hour a week to invest in their health, how should they spend it?

SPEAKER_00:

I would break that up into three 20-minute intense, high-intensity lifting sessions. One exercise to failure, move to the next one, one exercise to failure. You don't need to do three sets of 10. That was that was a made-up construct that doesn't mean anything.

SPEAKER_02:

So just get that heart rate up.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, it gets your muscles to failure, so they release those myokine, extra kine peptides that stimulate your brain health and and your bone growth and your muscle growth.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's what you need. Right? Yeah, I like it. I like it. Yeah, I've got some heavy kettlebells that that's what I try to do. Um uh, you know, just here in the backyard most mornings. Um, and then the last rapid fire question what's the most common health mistake that you see in people over 40?

SPEAKER_00:

I see that um people don't pay attention to their changing metabolism and they keep eating like they did when they were 20, both by volume, uh, both by content, uh, content and volume. So you can't keep going to the drive-thru, you can't drink as many adult beverages anymore, your liver metabolism is not the same, your your insulin sensitivity is not the same. You have to adjust to your age-related metabol metabolic changes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. Awesome, awesome. So, in closing, where should people go to learn more about your work, uh, what you're doing in Las Vegas and re-celebrate? Obviously, there's the website re-celebrate. I'll have that in the show notes. R-E-C-E-L-L-E-B-R-A-T-E.com. Is that the best way for them to get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00:

Please follow us on Instagram. I hope you have a sense of humor. We like to drop funny things on Instagram. Yes. We have some funny stuff at reselebrate. Uh, reselebrate.com is the website. If you're interested in um, you know, exosomes from nature. We're big on plant-derived exosomes too. Great way to get your phytonutrients. Check that out at resellneutra.com, R-E-C-E-L-L-N-U-T-R-A. Um, we've got um working on a skin uh uh exosome-based skin product that you keep in the refrigerator because most of the stuff you get at the esthetician is powdered, dried, and not bioavailably working. So we've got something live uh that should be launched by the first of the year. Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Super impressive.

SPEAKER_00:

And we can we're not bored over here. If by the way, if you have free time you want to pitch in, come on over.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm in.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm I'm only four hours away, five hours away. So um uh we're just uh we're actually just in Vegas just for a few hours, um, just on our way through traveling up north. But uh, but yeah, uh Nick next time I'm in Vegas, I'm gonna definitely look you up and uh we'll we'll hang out and uh enjoy some company.

SPEAKER_00:

Make a subscribe visit. We'll we'll take some photos, um, do some funny videos together and put them on social media and make people laugh because that's the best medicine. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02:

It's my favorite thing to do in the world. All right, Dr. Jeff. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Longevity Loop podcast. And uh with that said, uh we'll sign off. Thanks for joining, everyone. So you've just taken another step towards a longer, healthier life. Thanks for tuning in to the Longevity Loop. All resources and a full transcript from this episode are available at our longevity hub, Spanner.com. Spanner is our hub for all things longevity, from finding the best longevity doctor to work with in your area to breakthrough products and educational resources. And for the innovators, doctors, and clinicians that are tuned in right now, I do help professionals like you get more patience with cutting-edge, AI enhanced marketing, and lead capture systems at longevityclinicmarketing.com. Be sure to follow the Longevity Loop on your favorite podcast app to continue building your blueprint for 100 plus year life. So, let's keep the loop going. I'll see you next time.

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Brent Wallace

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