Ep.38 Anti-aging Medicine and Stem Cell Therapy

The field of regenerative medicine has made great strides, in recent years, to become established as credible and effective treatment for joint and spine degeneration.  While stem cell research has been controversial in the past, the FDA regulates its use, and the process is quite safe.  So why is Europe is so far ahead of the US in embracing the benefits of this technology?

Neurosurgeon, Jeffrey Gross, wanted to explore the area of regenerative medicine, so he went back to get the training needed to be able to treat patients in his medical practice.  His passion and enthusiasm is palpable, as he and his colleagues know the value in giving the body what it needs to heal itself.  The world of regenerative and anti-aging medicine is fascinating, and it holds much promise in the prevention and halting the progression of disease.  

In the episode Dr. Gross and I discuss:

• Perinatal sources for stem cells - placenta, the umbilical cord and the amniotic fluid from pre-screened, new mothers - labs are FDA certified and regulated
• Our own stems cells are not optimal as we age
• European knee study results - knees and hips are the "low hanging fruit"
• Spine treatment is refined to address the specific area of pain
• Importance of muscle mass and bone density - protein intake and weight-bearing exercise
• Hormone replacement therapy to activate the body's DNA
• Why the FDA has not approved stem cell therapy but still regulates it 
• PRP (platelet-rich plasma), stem cells, and exosomes for anti-aging - exosomes have been used to treat heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's

Jeffrey Gross, MD has graciously offered a complimentary 15 minute consultation for Asking for a Friend listeners.
You can reach his office at: (844)4recell
https://recellebrate.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/recellebrate/
Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/recellebrate

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Transcript

 Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Therapy 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS stem cells, called, people, bone, joint, injections, patients, spine, iv, procedure, regenerative, midlife, pain, regenerative medicine, bone density, biologics, sedation, improve, knee, perinatal 

On this podcast we have discussed numerous times the importance of weight and resistance training in order to support our bone and muscle. We all want to stay active going into midlife and beyond. But there's also the reality of the expected aches and pains that may sometimes hold us back from doing all that we'd like to do. I know people who have already had hip and knee replacements, but does this have to be inevitable? Are we missing an important step in giving our bodies what it needs to heal itself? I wanted to research the topic of stem cell and regenerative medicine. Because there are other options that can be pursued, which may mean that going under the knife may not have to be the first option. Where stem cell research has been controversial in the past, there are many centers popping up around the country posting positive results for their patients. Could this become part of a mainstream approach for orthopedic and neurologic treatment? Health, Wellness, career, relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is asking for a friend. Welcome to the show everyone. Our guest today is Dr. Jeffrey gross. He is a trained neurosurgeon and the owner of spine and a regenerative medicine practice called RE celebrate. He sees patients in Orange County, California and in Henderson, Nevada, as well as remotely by computer video conferencing. In his practice, he offers specialized precision and concierge treatment options for patients with neck and or back problems as well as brain and head injuries. He provides a comprehensive approach to evaluating the pain generators of the spine and associated areas and digs deeper to find the source of the problem when identifying the root issues of persistent pain and injuries. Dr. Gross employs regenerative medicine and other non surgical options First and foremost, he is an internationally recognized expert in these fields. Welcome, Dr. Jeffrey gross. 

Unknown Speaker  2:30  
Thank you appreciate being here.

Unknown Speaker  2:32  
I'm really glad to have you here. I've been very curious about this topic for a while. I thought well, we're midlife, aches and pains become a lot more prevalent over and beyond the every day. I know there's a lot going on in this field. First, before we get started, I'd love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about you where you're from and how you got to where you are today.

Unknown Speaker  2:57  
Great. Thank you. Well, we had a nice chat offline before we started here that we're both Ohio based at least at the beginning. I'm from Ohio. But I did my college in California, my medical school in Washington, DC, my residency training fellowship, Chief residency in California and New Mexico in spine and neurosurgery. Like you said, you're very curious about this topic. And I became curious about this topic a number of years ago, I call myself a recovering neurosurgeon. I spent a lot of my career treating people with aches and pains and finding that what we were trained to do back in the 90s, really hadn't changed much at all. Even though there might be a few new bells and whistles or approaches, what we were doing was largely the same. And having an undergraduate background in biochemistry and molecular biology, I've missed that. And perhaps the nerd part of me, which is a big part of me, went back and retrained because I was curious and figured out a lot had developed in the stem cell field. Over the last two or three decades, I'm now re employing that back into I'll call it my second chapter of my practice. And it's been both fun and rewarding and interesting, and there's so much that we can do and can be done that we should have been doing for many years.

Unknown Speaker  4:25  
What exactly is the technology behind stem cell activation and the benefits?

Unknown Speaker  4:32  
I hate to say it's really technology because it's something our body has had all along. If we listen to our grandmothers, we have been doing it if we eat right and we exercise and we sleep, right we do everything we thought was healthy, we're probably activating our own stem cells. For example, if you do yoga classes, Yoga has been shown to have stem cell activation properties. We have stem cells within us they were very active when we were a fetus or an infant and they slowed down their activity, they stopped dividing, and they stopped giving off messaging to our normal cells to heal, to regenerate to lay down proteins and collagen and discs in the spine and cartilage in the knee and this kind of thing. But when they can be encouraged and reactivated and awakened, they can have youthful activity. And we can do this through diet and sleep and exercise and anti inflammatory lifestyles, not taking pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories, then we can have an impact on that. Well, regenerative medicine can have an even more powerful impact on that. And that can be through basically borrowing. Youthful signaling from perinatal sources, we can explain that if you need and giving it to us middle aged people, and getting a burst of activity of the regenerative system of our own stem cells. If there's a technology, it's really leveraging our own biology,

Unknown Speaker  6:01  
when you said perinatal, what exactly does that mean? There's some mythology

Unknown Speaker  6:05  
that people get all worried about stem cells. And somehow we've got these farms of harvesting babies and things like that. It's not like that the United States sources for stem cells and for other activation, biologics, such as exosomes, which come from amniotic fluid are basically previously considered medical waste, a mother would deliver a baby by C section usually planned or otherwise. In this case, in this industry, these mothers are pre screened and consenting, meaning they're planning to donate their waste. I don't know if they're paid or not. But nonetheless, it's medical waste. They give their placenta, the umbilical cord and the amniotic fluid to these companies that under sterile conditions, process and prepare products and the products aren't modified. They're just organized into doses. And they're counted and tested and screened and make sure they have no diseases. So by perinatal, we mean around the time of a birth.

Unknown Speaker  7:07  
That makes sense. Is there a process by which I would be using my own stem cells for, say, a procedure? If I was going to have something done?

Unknown Speaker  7:18  
You can do that many clinics still do that. I just don't find the best utility in that because my stem cells are 57 years old, they're kind of sleepy. Yeah. If I take them out of me in one part and put them back into another part, yeah, I may get the benefit of having them concentrated in one area, which is the basis of a PRP treatment, if you've heard of that. But certainly, I could do better. And it's a lot easier not to harvest them from my bone marrow, because that's no fun. Sounds awful, and you can harvest them from fat, but fat tissue is inflamed, obese tissues inflamed. So we don't want that signal or that message from those stem cells being delivered to others. Now, there are good results from both your own harvested stem cells and from fat source stem cells. We can do even better with the most useful source of stem cells. And that comes from these perinatal sources.

Unknown Speaker  8:13  
This has been researched for years and years and years. When did we start using this in the clinical setting?

Unknown Speaker  8:21  
Well, if we were Europeans, it would be over 15 years ago, if we were from other countries besides Europe, it would be at least that it's been available here in the United States. It's not super advertised, because we are precluded from making certain claims. By our government, you don't see a lot of advertisements, you do see advertisements to go to Panama or Mexico. And they have the same perinatal sources that we do. I don't know if they come from different labs or what the regulations are. But a lot of people go out of the country. And that's one of the myths like we have to enter the country. No, you don't you can stay here and have some of these things. The labs we use come from reputable companies that have, oddly enough FDA approved labs, their processes and what they do is all regulated by the FDA and approved and certified by the FDA, even though the actually delivery of the stem cells and other biologic products are not yet approved. I said that very strategically, not yet approved, and just so we're clear, because they're not approved, doesn't mean they're unapproved. They're just not fully adjudicated, they're not fully decided. A lot of things in medicine and what doctors do isn't approved by the FDA or is off label, but they do declare that they have jurisdiction over biologics.

Unknown Speaker  9:41  
They want to regulate it. Of course, I get that the age group of my audiences, midlife women, many of us have already maybe had a knee replacement or a hip replacement or we're being told that that's all On the horizon, is this technology available for knees and hips.

Unknown Speaker  10:05  
That's probably the low hanging fruit. Yes, because the stem cells and the exosomes, which are signaling molecules and packets of information from a stem cell to activate other stem cells. These products are from what's called the mesenchymal stem cells, the MSCs. And these are the tissues of the body that form the structural elements, anything structural joints, bones, things like that are probably the easiest to deal with. And we get the most functional response. I have some people that want anti aging, you know, where we do organ damage, stroke, heart attack, those are harder to measure. But when you have knee pain, and you have knee cartilage degeneration, then we do an MRI a year later, and you've got improvement, and you feel better. That's very easy to measure. That's why I call it the low hanging fruit,

Unknown Speaker  10:55  
can you actually be bone on bone at that point and get relief?

Unknown Speaker  11:00  
Well, I haven't treated a complete bone on bone. But most doctors who look at a knee and say you need surgery or replacement, they use the phrase bone on bone, but there may be some cartilage left. The fun part about this is most people think you have to inject something into the joint itself. Well, the cartilages of the body are biological rubber cushions, discs, for example, in the spine. These tissues don't have a lot of cells, there's not a lot of cellular activity, there's some but these are basically a collection of squishy proteins that are made and get their blood supply and get their nutrients from the surrounding bone. So we have found in borrowing from the French literature with results of over 15 years, that the source of the stem cells that help improve and regenerate and rejuvenate the cartilage of a knee or a bone on bone situation comes from the surrounding bone. And that's been our best results.

Unknown Speaker  11:59  
You brought up France and there actually is a study that was done in France. Can you talk about that a little bit.

Unknown Speaker  12:06  
I'm specifically referring to the work of Dr. Hoonah Glau. I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, despite three years of high school French and I apologize, be that as it may. This is a wonderful study, what they did is they took patients who were recommended to have a knee replacement by an orthopedic surgeons, so they're already bone on bone. Orthopedic Surgeons have a certain recipe, you start with injections, you can do the lubricant injections, the hyaluronic acid, the different types of things. You do physical therapy, you try anti inflammatories, when you're beyond that, then they say the only thing left is replacement. Because that's their menu. This group took these patients already at the end of the menu, looking at knee replacement and said, Hey, before you do that, would you like to join our study, we're going to do two different types of injections, stem cells into the joint and stem cells into the knee bone above and below. And they published it three times now at the five year at the 10 year and at the 15 year follow up. This is a long longitudinal study over time, they have what's called a survival plot survival plot is they start with 100% benefit. And then whoever the injections don't work, or they ended up needing a knee replacement, they fall off that the survival curve or plot and may have found a 15 years that the patients who had the bone injections, about 80 to 85% of them still did not need a knee replacement. Wow, these are patients who needed a knee replacement 15 years earlier, they have survived those knees for 15 years plus and still ongoing. If they had the joint injection was still great results. It was like in the 60 65% range. You might think well wow, what if they fall off that survival curve? Why didn't you do the injection again? And the answer is you probably could they didn't study that. Okay. But the take home message here is you can have long term benefit from someone who's needing a knee replacement or bone on bone perhaps from a regenerative procedure to that joint that involves basically some injections with the bone injection being better than the joint injection and that's what we're doing. We base a lot of our activities on studies like that.

Unknown Speaker  14:19  
When you have a spine patient, what are they typically presenting with and what do you do for that patient with this process?

Unknown Speaker  14:29  
What's usually like a low back pain, a low back pain that we can tie to either one of the two main sources of low back pain would be either a problem with the discs, which is not too dissimilar from a knee at least as we approach it in this type of thing, or a problem with the joints called the set joints of the spine. And there are regenerative treatments applications of one or both. We do like to pin it down to the level or levels meaning the individual discs or joints because we don't want to treat the whole spine we want to treat just where the problem is. It makes the procedure easier and more refined. Sometimes at the beginning of seeing someone, we do some high end MRI studies, we might do some diagnostic blocks, numbing blocks to confirm the sources of pain. And then we talk about the regenerative options.

Unknown Speaker  15:19  
Now is spinal stenosis is that different?

Unknown Speaker  15:23  
Not necessarily. stenosis refers to a narrowing usually of the spinal canal, and or the pathways where the nerves leave the spine and go down the leg, or if it's the neck go down the arm. But it depends on the pain we're dealing with. If the pain is back pain, even though they have stenosis, we're really treating the pain, we may not improve the stenosis, if the stenosis is causing nerve symptoms that might require something more traditional to open the space up.

Unknown Speaker  15:50  
If you have a compression fracture, would this help with that? Or do you have to do other things with a compression fracture?

Unknown Speaker  15:57  
It depends if the fracture is not yet healed, it may depends on how bad the collapse is, there are some balloon procedures that can help improve the collapse. These collapses usually occur in middle aged or older women with osteoporotic changes. And we might want to get into a little discussion about bone density and regenerative medicine for improving bone density. Because it just depends on the fracture and what's going on if it is healed, and it's not causing pain and deformity or the collapse isn't too bad. It may just be okay. The way it is. It's individualized.

Unknown Speaker  16:34  
I asked that question because my mom, unfortunately had several compression fractures. And I think the last one, we finally talked her into doing kyphoplasty.

Unknown Speaker  16:43  
That's the balloon procedure. And it's been around it's a wonderful procedure. Interestingly, I was involved in the very early going of it and part of the original study, actually. And it involves a balloon that can sometimes restore the height and the angulation of the collapse. And then traditionally, you fill out with cement to keep it hardened. But there's some controversy about the bones above and below because with osteoporosis, they become soft, so you want to protect them. Some of the regenerative medicine approaches might be very useful to do so.

Unknown Speaker  17:13  
You had mentioned just a little bit ago that when there is bone density issue, that that can actually help bolster the bone density in that affected area.

Unknown Speaker  17:25  
I just read a paper in the last week or so on use of exosomes, which are extracellular vesicles, these can actually stimulate and improve bone density because as bone density declines, people become more frail, they're more risk for fracture. improve bone density is also associated with longevity, muscle mass and bone density, if you can support those two things, and you support them through activity through good protein intake through the right supplementation and various things, but also activation of the stem cells if you're so interested.

Unknown Speaker  18:00  
Well we talk a lot about that on this show about making sure we're getting enough protein, make sure we're doing weight bearing exercise, weights perfect. I look at my mother's generation, they were busy. They were doing a lot of housework, but they didn't necessarily hit the weights in the gym. They may do yoga and maybe hop on an exercise bike, but I think we're doing better as midlife women good, but probably have some waking up to do when it goes to this so that we can be active into our 70s and 80s. Part of

Unknown Speaker  18:37  
that might require some hormone replacement strategies, because stem cell activities in our own bodies deal with what DNA is being actively used to make those genes to make proteins, the steroid based hormones, and I'm not talking about use of steroids, but most of the hormones, the estrogens testosterones, those are based on a steroid molecule. Those go into the nucleus of the cell and they help tell the DNA what genes to activate. If you want a more youthful approach, a more youthful set of genes, a more restorative regenerative set of proteins being made and to support the body to build muscle to build bone, then you need the right hormone balance. Also,

Unknown Speaker  19:19  
when someone comes to see you as a patient, are you counseling them on these types of things.

Unknown Speaker  19:25  
I started out wanting to move my spine practice into adding the regenerative medicine is a tool but I've expanded accidentally into the whole anti aging realm. That doesn't mean people come here just because they want to live longer. And it means we talk about precisely a person's specific needs in terms of all the different buckets that they may require help from to have an anti aging or health goal because really age is the accumulation of chronic inflammation and degeneration and disease changes in the body fighting against that or the absence Disease is really a youth or anti aging process.

Unknown Speaker  20:03  
Ah, great message. I do have a question about the procedure itself. You do this under anesthesia, right?

Unknown Speaker  20:12  
We do under sedation. Okay, let's talk about anesthesia because that word is probably a little bit too broad. I don't want to put anyone out under general anesthesia, if we don't have to, especially the older we get, there are risks of that. And it's makes us sluggish. We do it under sedation, no breathing tube, just a little supplemental oxygen, and a little Twilight. So nobody really feels it. Because the procedure itself in one joint might take me 10 minutes, 15 minutes. If we do two spots, we want someone to wake up and be ready to roll right after that. The bone injections don't feel good. We've done them awake for a few tough guys who thought that they can handle it. And they could but we don't even like doing them. So it's Twilight, Twilight sedation, it's an IV and some supplemental oxygen and it works great.

Unknown Speaker  20:58  
It works great for when we get our colonoscopy.

Unknown Speaker  21:03  
It's the exact same approach. It's the same medicines the anesthesiologist used for us we do these in a little Procedure Center. Just make sure everything's clean and a place to do the sedation. But we do some things in the office too. I can do a local joints in the office. We can do IVs in the office, things like that.

Unknown Speaker  21:22  
I got a question from one of our listeners, because that's part of the asking for a friend piece. Yeah, she had surgery on her thumb for osteoarthritis. And did the tendon thing where they wrap it around the joint or I don't know, but they did take, I think attendant out of her forearm or something. Is this something that would be available for a thumb joint?

Unknown Speaker  21:46  
I'm going to take that in two parts of it's okay. The first part is let's say we met this person before this surgery and it would be ideal osteoarthritis, just the last four letters itis speak to inflammation. Inflammation is basically the problem here. Anything regenerative is highly anti inflammatory. We your cells have two main types of metabolisms inflammation, which is the slow chronic aging process or anti inflammation, which is regenerative or youthful process. So we try to flip the cell metabolism locally for the healing response. That's the underlying biology, cellular biology, yes, we would want to see that person, we would probably look at an x ray or MRI, or both. If there is painful joint, then we would probably do a very small bone injection on either side of the joint. I've done some toes, a couple hands and wrist. When people come in, sometimes they have osteoarthritis across the area. And we might catch them a little late for a person like that I'm not going to inject every joint, we might start with an IV because that goes everywhere. And then if they come back and say, well, things are better, but I still have this one thumb, then we can address the thumb. Now the second answer is you've got someone here who's had a surgery. I don't know if we're dealing with a person who the surgery maybe wasn't fully restorative or didn't meet all the goals, I don't really know. But there might be something we can look at. But I would have to back up when we look at an x ray or MRI and see if there is something indicating ongoing inflammation. That's our target.

Unknown Speaker  23:21  
It may be a sense of she just doesn't want to have the surgery done. And the other hand, what are options? Because I hear that's not fun recovery? Sure, because you're basically one handed for quite some time,

Unknown Speaker  23:34  
right, particularly at your dominant hand while you write and do other things with it. That can be very difficult.

Unknown Speaker  23:39  
It really could be Are we any closer to getting the FDA to approve this process?

Unknown Speaker  23:47  
There were some changes in the last year where the FDA is creating a new process for biologics. It's very difficult. There are economic, industry and governmental pressures. I'm going be very careful here. If you were, let's say, a company who made pills to treat diseases, you probably would not like this.

Unknown Speaker  24:11  
Yeah. That's unfortunate. It must be effective enough because people are willing to pay out of pocket for this.

Unknown Speaker  24:19  
Well, because it's not approved. It is not covered by any insurance, unless you have an HSA plan and you have some control of what you need medically. But listen, there are a lot of manufacturers that make the products now there are more clinics doing it. It's not the Wild West, the costs are not that bad. In the long run, if you needed an $8,500 Knee injection, and it worked. That's a lot better than the economic and non economic costs of a knee replacement long term. You need to buy a wheelchair you'd need to have a walker you'd need to maybe put ramps in your house. You need to stop doing a lot of the things you want to do. I think it's a some All investment in health and longevity.

Unknown Speaker  25:03  
There's also the cost of rehab to and the time.

Unknown Speaker  25:06  
Now insurance usually covers a lot of those things. But we could have a whole different session on the institutionalization of medicine in this country. In the limitations. Wired Magazine, probably 20 years ago now called this rationing by hassle. They make you do what they tell you to do, not what the best medical option is always. They make you jump through hoops and check boxes. Have you tried this? Have you tried that? And it's limited, he only offers so much physical therapy, you get eight visits? Well, what if someone needs 22 visits?

Unknown Speaker  25:38  
Do you have a patient success story you want to share with us?

Unknown Speaker  25:41  
We have a fun one on our website, a man named Lee who have given us permission to use his name and video. He's very stoic, he is hard to read leave. He was retired. I believe he's in his 60s and he liked the bowl, he injured a joint in his low back called the sacral iliac joint, we have one on either side of our back of our pelvis, he had so much pain, he couldn't boil anymore, he was basically became sedentary. And as we talk, you got to keep moving. You got to keep your weight bearing exercises your bones and your muscles going. And as one of my favorite doctor friends used to say, motion is lotion. Lee was losing his motion and therefore losing his lotion. We met Lee Lee invested in an injection we did here in the office to a sacroiliac joint in the surrounding tissues. And I followed him every month or so for a few months and then a little bit better. And by about three to six months. He was 50% better. And he was okay with that. And we thought maybe we try some bowling and then I kind of lost touch with Lee. And then at the 12 month mark, my calendar flagged it and I brought him in. He was still and he said you don't have any pain anymore. I've been bowling. Well. I said doctors sometimes get involved in medicine because we like the success stories. We'd like to enjoy that with you. How can you never call he goes yeah, I was doing fine. We made a little video of we and I basically had a tease out if I'm on your bone again. Right? Yeah, yeah. Well, and again, how's your pain? I don't have any pain. That's great. People are funny sometimes. I like his success story. Because he wasn't overselling it. I had to tease that out of

Unknown Speaker  27:12  
them. But that shows you that the results can build over time. It does

Unknown Speaker  27:16  
take time people want to know how quickly am I going to be better, it probably has to do with how bad you are to begin with how much degeneration there is, how healthy your tissues are, and your cells are, how much inflammation there is, which is hard to measure. We have some blood tests, but we really don't fully know. And just see how it goes. As long as it's trending better, and it's still improving, still improving, then we just enjoy that. Someone like me it took 60 some years to degenerate that joint. It took them a year to rebuild it. We do have great results with younger people, athletes, we treat I have somehow a bunch of elite athletes we deal with and they tend to heal faster, but they also abused their joints a lot more than most of us.

Unknown Speaker  27:56  
They can't afford to be out of commission very long. True, true. How else is stem cell activation being used? I have read some things about Alzheimer's and erectile dysfunction. And

Unknown Speaker  28:09  
yeah, the quick menu of things is and I'm a recovering neurosurgeon who knew I was going to be doing all these different things, but there's a biohacking crowd and I've been speaking at some of these organizations convention is very fun. We have one coming up here in Austin, February 4, and fifth, if anyone's interested. It's called the biohacking Congress. These people seek anti aging longevity and health span, things to do, whether it's infrared or sauna treatments or various things. Regenerative medicine offers some of those as well. Those patients tend to come in for IV therapies for sexual function, especially in middle aged besides the IV there are specific injections called the O shot and the P shot. You may have heard of those for the ladies and PS for the gentleman.

Unknown Speaker  28:57  
We had a doctor here on the show who does the O shot in her practice with some great results.

Unknown Speaker  29:04  
Oh perfect. And the results are wonderful. And you can do that with PRP, you can do it with stem cells you can do with exosomes. Then we get into the diseases of aging, the inflammatory diseases about heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, which is an inflammatory disease, things like this. We tend to use the exosomes IV and we use them IV because the exosomes are small enough to cross from the bloodstream into the nervous system through what's called the blood brain barrier. Stem cells are too large. We can and have delivered stem cells to the nervous system by doing a spinal tap. But we try not to do those those are not fun, although they're useful. The exosomes work IV and we do have some patients who come for rehabilitative therapies after stroke, Alzheimer's and other cognitive issues COVID long haulers also for lung fun Russian people have been trouble breathing and need some regenerative help there we have a breathing machine we put the exosomes, right, a breathing machine, the menu keeps expanding, and what we can do.

Unknown Speaker  30:10  
This is so incredibly interesting. What do you see on the horizon then for Regenerative Medicine,

Unknown Speaker  30:17  
I see that, sadly, American medicine is going to really institutionally suppress it, it's going to be an off the books thing, it's going to be out of pocket, it's going to be for the discerning people and families who want to have wealth through health. And I'm not talking about economically, but you can take your money with you, you might as well live long and healthy and enjoy what you have the people that love you what life's all about.

Unknown Speaker  30:44  
Well, I think it's really prioritizing health. Speaking of that, what do you do differently? Now, after being in this field,

Unknown Speaker  30:53  
I've been reading quite a bit on the anti aging front. And I have been working on a book now called young again, it is a probably over complete understanding of anti aging and a how to section. And because of it, I'm not just the owner of re celebrate, I'm also a customer. I've started by improving my diet and nutrition, my supplement game is bigger and better. I take things I never learned about a medical school, I take probiotics twice a day, fish oil three times a day, I'm supplementing vitamin D significantly, in part because I personally am low genetically in that. And because if you read the amount that you think you should have on the side of a cereal box, you're gonna be in trouble because those numbers are numbers that prevent malnutrition. We want numbers that are optimal. And besides vitamins and supplements, and I could go on and on about all the different things I'm taking now. I'm looking into some of the quasi pharmaceuticals. Metformin, for example, has longevity and anti aging properties. I don't have diabetes, I'm not pre diabetic, but I take it sometimes I say sometimes because it can make you feel really fool and stuff. Anything to suppress your blood glucose over time is helpful. I've just ordered a non invasive blood glucose monitor. If you follow any of the social media, blood glucose, people glucose goddess, for example, the wonderful graphs of eating a pineapple on the spike in glucose and insulin and then eating hummus with carrots and then pineapple on it's a very different response your body has, we're going to learn from this, we're going to behave differently, we're still going to enjoy things we like to enjoy, but have less exposure to the toxin of sugar, and what many people call insulin. But I think I'd like to rebrand insulin as the pro aging hormone or the pro inflammatory hormone. And then also I have done, I think five or six times now IV exosomes for anti aging purposes. And I have a couple old sports injuries and things that does help what

Unknown Speaker  32:55  
do you feel differently after you have these infusions?

Unknown Speaker  32:59  
I do for the first few days or weeks, there's sort of an effervescence and energy. But the aches and pains are much better for me for weeks to months at a time. So I'm been doing these every three to four months. I base around when other people are doing them and my IV staff is here and it just makes it easy, but I'll keep doing them. I like it.

Unknown Speaker  33:17  
This is fascinating. I do want you to do me a favor when your book is out when it's finished. I'd love for you to let me know so that I can let our listeners know I was called young again. Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker  33:30  
Well make sure you get a copy for sure. Oh, thank

Unknown Speaker  33:32  
you and tell the listeners how they can find you.

Unknown Speaker  33:36  
We are on the what's called the worldwide web. You just type in Rhys, celebrate r e c, e ll E, B, r a t e, we're on all the social channels, tick tock and Instagram, Facebook, all of those LinkedIn, you can just type it and you'll find we celebrate. You can also call 18444 recell, r e c e LL, any listener of your show asking for a friend. I'd be happy to have a 15 minute conversation with at no cost as a thank you for the time today and for getting to share this exciting stuff with your audience.

Unknown Speaker  34:16  
Well, thank you. That's a very generous offer. And I will definitely put all this in the show notes so that people will have that at hand. Great. Dr. Jeffrey gross. Thank you so much for being here today. This was amazing.

Unknown Speaker  34:30  
Thank you. It was my pleasure. Nice meeting you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker  34:42  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai