Stem Cells For Longevity & Performance: The Untold Truth About Domestic vs. International Treatments! with Dr Harry Adelson and Dr Amy Killen

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast—

this is bad. I mean, first and foremost, it's clearly catastrophic for the patients and their families, but it's also bad for the whole field of regenerative medicine. You know, Ben, the take-home message here is this kind of stuff doesn't happen in the U.S.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. I sat down with two super cool doctors to talk about the full body stem cell makeover and oh, so much more, dispelling a lot of the myths and revealing a lot of the truths in the stem cell industry with Dr. Harry Adelson and Amy Killen, recorded live in Park City, Utah. The show notes are at bengreenfieldlife.com/stemcells2025. Enjoy. I'm here in Utah with two of my favorite doctors. This is the— probably one of the fanciest things that I've kind of come across in the whole— I mean, it gets called the biohacking industry, but like the regenerative medicine space, the anti-aging space, this whole idea of covering your entire body with stem cells. Not just covering, but like injecting the entire body with stem cells. And this is what you guys specialize in. I honestly don't know if anybody else in the world does full-body stem cells? They don't.

I don't think anyone's crazy enough to.

It's kind of weird because we're in Utah, and like, the perception that I get is most people think like you go overseas, you go like Mexico or Lithuania or something like that to do the fancy stuff that you can't do in the US. Do you get that also?

Yeah. I mean, Ben, first of all, it's great to see you again. You know, this is, I think, now your fourth full-body stem cell makeover.

I should probably mention, by the way, Dr. Harry Adelson here and Dr.

Amy Oh, there's that too.

I'll put your long extended bios in the show notes. And the show notes are going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com/stemcells2025. Stem cells 2025. Okay, so the international versus domestic thing, what's up with that?

Yeah, so, you know, Ben, I guess my question is, on what planet does an American citizen have to go south of the border to get a procedure of any sort?

I thought it was this one because there's like rules about using your Well, that's this common misconception that's getting pushed.

And I mean, it's just, see, the thing is we can do stem cell medicine here in the US, but there's all these misconceptions about it. The one thing that we can do internationally that we can't do here in the US is culture expand the stem cells, grow the stem cells out in a laboratory. There's one big advantage to that. And that is it reduces the price. Beyond that, there's a lot of—

What do you mean it reduces the price?

Because to procure the stem cells from an umbilical cord, for instance, is an expensive procedure. And you only get so many from a single umbilical cord.

So you could get less umbilical stem cells at a lower price than take them overseas and grow them?

If you take them overseas and grow them, they become much less expensive. And that's the big upside. Okay. There's a lot of downsides, however. When you grow them in a laboratory over and over, you get problems. You get genetic fragility. Agility. You certainly can get contamination. There's a lot of problems that can occur. And a lot of these clinics are, you know, they're, they're really incentivized to grow it out over and over, to do many—

this is what's called passes. Microevolution in general. Yeah, passes. Like stem— like they'll brag like these are like 4-pass or 4th generation or whatever, right? And I have heard more because I've interviewed some other folks in the stem cell industry, and I have heard like bits and pieces of this now that No, you don't want to grow them because kind of like it's almost like microevolution, right? Like if you breed yeast or fruit flies over a certain period of time, you tend to see a greater level of mutation.

Exactly. Similar process. And not passing them at all is preferred. And we can do that here in the US. We can use umbilical— first of all, like, let's just back up for a second. So, you know, for years we used bone marrow and fat. There's two types of stem cells. Basically, there's stem cells from your own body, which is called autologous. Autologous means donor and recipient are the same person. You underwent two full-body stem cell makeovers using your own bone marrow. We— you don't have enough fat, so we didn't use any fat, but with most people we use fat.

I had a, I had a little bit— quick, quick story, I know I keep derailing you, but I actually harvested my fat to get my fat stem cells. Uh, this was year— this— I was 30 years old at the, um, US Stem Cell Clinic in Florida. So I had my fat stored there, and then I went to Forever Clinics in Berkeley also when I was 30, and I had my bone marrow stored there. And then the first time I did it with you, you harvested my bone And like you said, that's autologous. But from what I understand, it also kind of makes it a little less comfortable and increases recovery time to be tapping into your own body.

Well, yeah, and we'll talk— we'll kind of go into the full deep dive about autologous versus allogeneic. But essentially, when we're talking about this allogeneic— and allogeneic means primarily it's birth tissue. That's donor and recipient are different people. We're talking about from birth tissues, essentially umbilical cord. This is not embryos. There's the baby, and then there's the birth tissues. And the birth tissues are— the umbilical cord, the placenta, and the amniotic membrane.

We'll come right out and say it, because I get this— this is not like aborted baby tissue.

Absolutely.

This is like straight up just like from the birth.

Yeah, just donated.

Yeah. So when a woman gives birth in a hospital, there's the baby and then there's the birth tissue. The birth tissue is the umbilical cord, the amniotic membrane, and the placenta. She's given 3 options what to do with the birth tissue. It can be thrown in the trash, it can be— she can keep it herself, or she can donate it. And if she donates it, she gives up a version of her health records in a redacted format, which then whoever takes over the birth tissue gets possession of. So you don't see her name, you don't see her Social Security number, you just see all her health information. Uh, and then they do all sorts of testing on that. The big advantage of using naive, meaning straight from the umbilical cord, is that this is as nature intended it. This is the preservation of the entire biological integrity of the tissue. This is all of it. All the growth factors, all the cytokines, all the extracellular matrix, all the items that are responsible for helping a baby to grow.

But if you, like, grow and expand naive tissue, like umbilical tissue, do you still get all the growth factors and everything, but the disadvantage would be the potential for mutations, or does it also, like, dilute the good stuff?

Well, you're just growing out the cells. You're not growing out the actual tissue. So you're not getting all of, for instance, the Wharton's jelly. You're not growing that stuff. You're just growing the individual cells. Or, like, the hyaluronic acid for skin.

And that's, that's a part of this tissue usually. And so when you expand just the cells, you'll get a bunch of stem cells, which is great, but you don't get like the extracellular matrix, the hyaluronic acid, the things that go around the cells and can help make the cells work better. Okay.

And there are some situations where you want gargantuan quantities of cells, but for most longevity purposes, for most musculoskeletal pain conditions, most of the things that you and I are look, you know, we're gonna be treating with you and your treatment, these are things that you achieve perfectly well with this naive tissue.

Yeah, and the fascinating history of this, by the way, for those of you listening, um, Harry gets into how he used to work with just like beat-up cowboys and ranchers here in the Utah area. I've interviewed him twice about that whole history, so check out the show notes and I'll link to those as well because there's a really cool background behind how all this got started. But I kind of want to focus on some of the science today and also like the procedure itself and how that actually goes. But before we leave the, the domestic versus international piece, I've been hearing that it's now legal in certain states to actually expand the stem cells? Like Florida, I think, was one that I heard about.

So it's really interesting because these laws— there's the two states that have passed these laws. One is here in Utah and the other's Florida. So what you need to keep in mind is that state laws can never supersede federal laws. Okay. So imagine that you've got like Dad, who's the disciplinarian, and he lays down the law and he's— and he sort of says what you kids can and cannot do, but he's not real clear. And sometimes his language is a bit adult language. It's sort of hard to follow. And then you've got Mom, who brings the language down to the kids and tries to make it easier to follow the rules. That's kind of what's happening here, is the federal laws dictate what happens in the country, but the states are trying to provide guidelines to make it easier to understand and actually make it easier to be compliant. So these laws that have been passed in Utah and then also in Florida don't allow you to do anything that you aren't allowed to do federally. What it does is they clarify the rules in two regards. They clarify the rules about which types of manufacturers you can use, and they clarify the rules around informed consent.

What's a manufacturer?

So a manufacturer are the laboratories that, that, that collect the birth tissue products, the umbilical cord, the amniotic membrane, and the placenta, and they process those tissues, put it into vials for guys like me used on guys like you.

Okay, so the states can clarify the nature of the manufacturer and the compliancy, but they can't, based on these new regulations, like, take your own stem cells and expand them without getting into trouble?

Well, taking your own stem cells and expanding them is legal nationwide. There's no new— there's no— these state laws don't allow for anything that is not allowed otherwise in all the other states. It just clarifies what it is how it is that you can sort of follow the federal laws.

Okay, so I'm still confused though. Like, what's—

it's confusing.

That's why— legal in Utah and Florida that didn't used to be? Nothing. Nothing. Okay, so some— it's like some doctor can't move to either of these two states? There's no reason to have a stem cell operation? No. Before?

No, it does not change the regulatory landscape at all. It just clarifies the rules.

Okay, and then when you said that it is legal to expand your own stem cell tissue, but then you said one of the reasons you go international is to culture it, which I think is the same as expansion.

That's the difference between autologous and allogeneic. When it's autologous, we are able to grow out your own stem cells. Oh, I see.

So it's legal to grow your own, but it's not legal to grow, like, somebody else's.

And those laws actually come from, like, the abolition of slavery and having ownership of your own body. Right. Yeah. So it's—

the big difference there is your own cells.

4 main regulatory pathways for donated umbilical cord tissue to be brought to market in the United States. Each of these pathways has very clear rules on manufacturing, advertising, and intended use. The first is the cosmetic pathway, which covers topical applications like serums or creams designed to improve the appearance or hydration of the skin. These products can't make medical claims and are for external topical use only, and it says so on the label. There's certainly not any intended use for like IV or something like that, and it can't be injected at all. Like no IVs, no knees, no nothing, no needles. Next is the research-only pathway. These products are labeled for research use only, or not for human use. That seems pretty clear, doesn't it? They can't be injected or used on patients at all. They're meant for lab-based study, or product development, or early research, not at all clinical care. These are not okay to use on patients. If someone tells you they are, they don't know what they're talking about. Then there's the 351 biologic drug pathway, which we all know as the pathway to becoming an FDA-approved drug. These products undergo full FDA approval through the investigational new drug and biologic license application process, which can take years of clinical trials to complete before they can be marketed for use in patients. There's currently no 351 FDA-approved stem cell products that have been brought to market. But there's a fourth pathway. We have the 361 HCTP pathway. HCTP stands for human cellular tissue-based products. These products are regulated by the FDA and as such meet the strict standards for donor eligibility, sterility, and traceability. They can be used in clinical settings for homologous use, meaning the product performs the same basic function in the recipient as it did in the donor, such as protecting, cushioning, or supporting the tissue. Basically the same functions we're trying to achieve in your knee, Ben Greenfield. Of those 4 pathways to bring umbilical cord tissue to the market, the 361-HCTP pathway is the only one that allows physicians in clinical practice in the United States to legally inject them without being part of a formal drug trial. Products that are 361-HCTP registered meet the highest standard for donor screening, sterility, and traceability. 3-61 HCTP® Umbilical Cord Tissue Products are produced in FDA-registered, CGMP-certified, and hopefully American Association of Tissue Banks accredited facilities. What this means is that every vial of 3-61 HCTP® Umbilical Cord Tissue Products can be traced back to its donor. Every lot is tested for contamination and every process is validated. When you compare that level of oversight to what's being offered south of the border, order, I mean, there is no comparison.

Geez. Okay, so, so back to finishing what you were saying about, um, the, the idea of using the— how do you pronounce that— allogeneic?

Allogeneic.

Like using the allogeneic tissue versus the autologous. Any other advantages or reasons that you would do that versus what you used to do, which was taking the bone marrow and the fat?

Well, so So, you know, you know, remember the story. So I, for years, did autologous. I did bone marrow and fat. And you referred me one of your patients, one of your movie star patients who came to me. We did an autologous treatment. We used his bone marrow and fat. He did great. He had a great outcome. He's very happy with it. He called me back and he said, I tweaked my back doing stunts for my movie. I need to get back in, but I can't afford the downtime associated with the tissue harvest. Will you consider doing it with birth tissue cells. Yeah. And I said, well, I won't promise that I'll do it, but I'll promise that I'll look into it. So I sort of did a deep dive. This was about 4 years ago. I did a deep dive in the literature. Hadn't done— hadn't really looked at the allogeneic literature in a while, and there had been a great deal more published on the safety and efficacy. So I felt good about using it. So we did a full-body stem cell makeover on him using, uh, using birth tissue products, and the outcomes were— I was very happy with the outcomes. I was very happy with how much easier it is to go.

It was way easier. I did, I did the original, the energy. And then I did the new one. Yeah. What, like, I think it was 1 or 2 years ago. Yeah. And now I'm doing the new one again tomorrow just because I love you guys so much. We love you. And I beat myself up so much, and I do feel kind of beat up for like a week after. And then my body starts to ramp up and feel incredible afterwards. And maybe we can talk later on about the recovery and performance and even the sexual and the aesthetic implications. Back to the domestic versus international piece, what would be, if any, like the reasons that someone wouldn't go international besides the potential for mutated cells? Like, are there any other concerns or anything like that?

Well, you know, anytime you leave the US, you're leaving the US. So, you know, I mean, there's—

I've done blood filtration in Tijuana. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if anything goes wrong, you're basically on your own. And, you know, unfortunately, Additionally, you know, I don't want to go into great detail about this, but I will just mention that there is a well-known stem cell doctor who has been treating people overseas, or south of the border, I should say. It's about to hit the news. I'm aware of 2 serious, serious bad outcomes, but allegedly there have been close to 20. And I, you know, I don't want to throw stones. I don't want to cast stones. I don't want to get heavy into it, but it's going to hit the news.

That could happen in the US, right?

Well, not in the way that it's happened down there, because what was being— in all of these patients, allegedly, and the truth will come out and we're going to find out all about this, but the bacteria that was being cultured out of these people who are having these massive infections was coming from tap water. And that's not something that you normally find in people in an infection. So, you know, like, again, he looks intrigued.

You mean like there would be like tap, like like tap water in the procedure?

Well, we don't know. I mean, that's—

that's contamination.

We know of some patients— like, I personally know some patients who have, who have shown me their pathology reports that showed this bacteria that's endemic in Latin America.

They couldn't just get that from like drinking the water and not in your blood, not in your blood.

Yeah, not in your blood.

So contamination is a big concern.

Yeah, it was some type of contamination. And we're talking about serious complications here, you know, not minor hiccups. Complications that permanently alter the trajectory of people's lives. You know, I feel the need to say that I'm not just repeating back gossip that I've heard. This isn't just hearsay. These are patients and doctors I've had direct conversations with. One of the patients I know personally, he's a major health influencer. He's been a patient of mine. I'm also friends with the two spine surgeons who took care of him while he was in the hospital dealing with this infection infection that pretty much almost killed him. His infection was in his spine and it completely destroyed his spine. He ended up getting spinal fusion because of the damage done by the bacteria. The other patient that I do have direct knowledge of was referred to the same south of the border clinic by a doctor who's a longtime friend of mine. My doctor friend told me that the infection destroyed his patient's kidneys and this guy's gonna be on kidney dialysis the rest of his life. I do not have direct contact with the alleged other 20 or so infections from that same clinic. That part is hearsay, but only once removed. So, you know, the truth will come to light. But this is bad. I mean, first and foremost, it's clearly catastrophic for the patients and their families, but it's also bad for the whole field of regenerative medicine. You know, Ben Greenfield, the take-home message here is this kind of stuff doesn't happen in the US. I mean, seriously, if you want to get treated, just stay home, for crying out loud. We can do it here in the good old US of A, and it's not worth the risk of going south of the border. You know, I'm the— I strongly believe in medical freedom. I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater when we're talking about, like, some degree of oversight by the government. Yes. You know, the FDA, for all its foibles and for all we like to complain about it, like, they do a lot of great good as well, as far as protecting the public health of people.

So the other thing I think some people might still think is that there's some kind of like illegality associated with even like the allogeneic. I keep wanting to say allogeneic. How's it spelled?

You actually can say either.

Okay, I'm gonna say allogeneic. Follow your lead. Is there anything people have to worry about as far as legality with these?

If it's done correctly, there's really no gray area. And I'm gonna talk more about that. But the sort of the reason people think you have to go abroad. First of all, there's these influencers who are conflicted who are telling you that you have to go abroad. There's, you know, guys who— we all know them— and they are either getting sort of endorsement payments or they are owners of international clinics, and they're the ones out there saying you have to go abroad to get the good stuff, is what you hear a lot. You have to go abroad, and that's just simply not true. Another big reason is the You know, all of these therapies using birth tissue products is not FDA approved. Now, just because something is not FDA approved doesn't mean we can't do it. It just means we can't talk about it as if it's FDA approved.

Right, like peptides aren't FDA approved.

Like supplements also.

If something not being FDA approved meant you couldn't do it, the entire nutritional supplement industry practically wouldn't exist.

Right, but you can't claim that, like, this joint recovery product cures arthritis, but you can say, "Supports healthy joints." Exactly, that's exactly right.

It's not FDA approved, to do, but we can— it doesn't mean it's illegal, it just means we can't give people the impression that it's FDA approved. Insurance doesn't pay for it. Now, that doesn't mean anything one way or the other. It just means insurance doesn't pay for it. Why doesn't insurance pay for it? I have on my website, uh, a book, a little book that I wrote, and I've got an entire chapter. The title of the chapter is "If Stem Cell Medicine Is So Great, Why Doesn't Insurance Pay for It?" It's a complicated issue. Have a look at my book if you want to see it. Well, send The Stem Cell Solution.

Okay. Oh, I've heard of that.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a complicated story, but it's all about money moving hands. Okay. And then, you know, and then the last reason is there are bad actors in this industry. There are people who do get in trouble either for using, you know, product they're not supposed to be using or for making claims. And they get into trouble. And that does draw a lot of attention.

Okay. Okay. I think that's pretty clear. Now, you brought up manufacturers. Obviously, I'm assuming that must be important, like where they're actually coming from. How does that work? Like, like, how do you decide where you're going to get your cells? And then what do you use?

Amy and I are using Vidi Labs. Vidi Labs are true manufacturers and function very much outside of the gray area here in the United States. Something that people don't realize is that a lot of doctors are buying their product from distributors or private label companies that don't actually make the product themselves. These distributors pay someone else to manufacture their product for them. And what that means is they don't have any sort of oversight of donor procurement, processing, or quality control. We want to work directly with the manufacturer because we want complete transparency and control over what it is that we put in people. Every Vidi product is FDA registered as a 361 human cellular and tissue-based product. Their facility is American Association of Tissue Banking accredited, and they operate under current good manufacturing practices certification. A lot of companies say they follow the guidelines of those organizations, but Vidi actually goes through the annual inspection of the third-party audits, the whole shebang. Let me go back and explain some of those terms I threw around. Vidi Labs is FDA registered. Now, a lot of labs are FDA registered, but what people don't realize, it's not enough for the facility itself to be registered. Every single product that comes out of Vidi Labs is individually listed and registered.

Registered.

Everything we use in our treatments, the umbilical cord tissue and the extracellular vesicles, are FDA registered and listed. That's an important point because it's actually quite easy for a facility to register itself. It really just means they fill out a form and paid a fee. But Vidi goes through the whole full registration and listing process for their specific products, which is hugely arduous, and it means the FDA has a record of all the donor screenings disease testing, sterility, and is able to trace every single batch. They're CGMP certified. CGMP is Current Good Manufacturing Practices. CGMP certification means the facility operates at the same level of control as a pharmaceutical manufacturer. Every step of production is validated, monitored, and repeatable. That means every vial is consistent, sterile, and safe. You know exactly what you're getting.

So I think go time is 9:00 AM tomorrow. I'm sure people are wondering what the actual logistics of this are. And before we even jump into what we're gonna start into, like what happens at 9:00 AM tomorrow, I think it's important to clarify like why somebody would actually even think about doing this in the first place. I'll come right out and say that I think like the joy joint recovery, joint treatment stuff is pretty obvious, um, and I've talked about that a lot before on the podcast, like beat up knee, beat up back, beat up joints. Stem cells certainly help with that. Are there other reasons besides just like general joint pain that somebody does something like this?

Well, you know, this all started— you remember when we talked about this in other podcasts— this all started when I first started doing bone marrow stem cells back in 2010. Nobody had heard of it because it wasn't cool yet. The only people who had really heard of it were Wyoming cowboys and ranchers because they were having it done to their horses. The first doctors in the United States to do any kind of stem cell medicine were veterinarians. So these Evanston, Wyoming cowboys had these expensive workhorses that were getting too old to work. They'd take them to this veterinarian, the veterinarian would do bone marrow stem cells on their joints and their hooves, and they'd get 2 or 3 more years of work out of them. Well, they would see this with their eyes and they would like ask this vet, they'd say, well, you know, can you do that to my spine and my shoulders and my hips and my knees? And the guy would say, well, no, I can't because I'm a veterinarian, but there's a guy in Park City now, go to him. So in those early—

I ordered ivermectin and fenbendazole on Amazon.

So he would refer them to me. And back in those days, you know, I was happy to get these referrals. And I'd get these guys and they just literally had arthritis through their whole bodies 'cause they're busted up old cowboys. And so I'd do their whole spine and I'd do their shoulders and I'd do their hips and I'd do their knees. And that's about the time that I met you. And I started getting, you know, the longevity crew, the biohackers and that sort of thing. And people would come to me and say, "Hey, well, could you just do my whole body in a single sitting?" And I thought about it and I thought, yeah, I mean, why not? I personally am from the Mick Jagger school of anything worth doing is worth overdoing. If you're gonna make the trip, if you're gonna spend the money, if you're gonna do the stuff, we may as well just do a massive treatment. So we do everything under IV sedation, put the person asleep, do their entire spine.

Which is important, 'cause this is how many hours?

It's an hour, it's one hour now.

Oh, it's one hour.

It's condensed, yeah.

Oh, I thought it was—

It used to be longer.

For some reason it feels like it was longer anyway.

Okay, I do the entire spine if they're intervertebral discs, if they need it. I don't do discs if they don't need it, but otherwise we do epidurals in the spine, stem cell epidurals, uh, facets the entire length of the spine, flip them over, both shoulders, both elbows, both wrists and thumbs, both hips, both knees, both ankles and toes. I also do a sphenopalatine ganglion injection.

This is a new one.

Yeah, this is a new one that I've added since— that you'll get for the first time tomorrow, which is the, the sphenopalatine ganglion is the fifth cranial nerve, so it's a way to get the extracellular vesicles and the cells directly directly, effectively into the brain. If you look up nose to brain stem cells, another way to do it is aerosolize through the nose. I do it as an injection. It's a little further upstream on the 5th cranial nerve and it's more accurate and more direct.

Yeah, I did stem cells in the nose once.

Well, you're gonna get it.

Lights went on in the brain. I mean, now my lights are off, but it felt like stuff got a little bright. That's super interesting. I didn't know you added that. Yeah.

Okay, so— Well, and then Amy does the brain.

Piece, the, the joint issues piece. Um, Amy, you've got—

then it's my turn. Okay, so I do the— I do— I know I have been quiet. Um, I do what I call sex and skin. So I'm doing your skin, obviously face, usually neck, upper chest. I do scalp as well to try to improve hair growth and quality of hair. And then I do the sexual injections at the end, as you know.

And then still under anesthesia.

Oh, you're, you're still— yeah, that's the one that everyone's always— that's like the most important one for being asleep. Although it's actually—

I've done it without anesthesia. It's not that painful even.

And And that's it. And I always do some IV stem cells as well. And then we wake you up and all that happens in about an hour.

Okay, I wanna dig into a few of the nitty-gritty here.

You said— And when you're talking about South America, just as the last thing, you know, when you're going to South America to get those culture-expanded cells, you're getting this gargantuan number, but you're mostly just getting it IV. You might get your knees, you might get your back, a couple of things. Nobody's doing this.

What's the IV part for?

Just general health. And the idea being that, you know, stem cells can kind of home to areas of inflammation and areas of need in theory, and they can, but a lot of them, when you put them in an IV, get trapped. The cells themselves, part of them will get trapped in the lungs. So it's, it's good to do both IV and the actual, you know, joints and things.

Would the IV also affect organs?

Well, that's mostly going to go to the organs because they're just going to follow the laws of hemodynamics and fluid dynamics. So they're mostly going to go to the organs, but they're not going to go to your knees and your shoulders and certainly your intervertebral disc. So, you know, if you're getting it IV, you're hoping some of it gets to your musculoskeletal structures. When we do it in the musculoskeletal structures, they exert their primary action on those structures. Then they get picked up in general circulation.

So that's why it would be interesting for someone who was pursuing anti-aging or longevity would be, of course, there's the joint piece, but then the infusion and then the brain injection would help out with neural and full systemic organ function. Function, or at least almost like a regeneration or regenerative medicine for full body.

Yeah, that's the idea. We're hitting all the moving parts.

Okay. So when I go in there at 9:00 AM, I remember the past couple of times I like count down and then I just wake up in a chair. So when I fall asleep, are you guys just like starting at a specific spot and the needle goes in, or like, is there any other pieces of machinery or special things involved here?

Well, we're, you know, so we do the same, we do it exactly the same way every time. And that's, I hope, because it's so like Amy and I—

Terry is like a Swiss watch. Like, he's very, very— it's very regimented. It's very like the syringes are lined up like perfectly.

That's what I want if someone has a bunch of needles in my body.

It's a work of art.

I want to be dialed. Yeah, yeah. Not, not what, what the spirit inspires you to start with that morning.

That's right.

Okay, good.

That's right. Yeah, no, it's, it's exactly the same way every single time. Time. Uh, the one thing that we are starting to do different— so I mentioned to you about the, uh, the, the sphenopalatine injection. I am bringing in the Regenylase laser, which is a very sweet new laser, and you're going to get that tomorrow. It functions on sort of two pathways.

Yeah, explain this because most people's experience with lasers is like people getting blown up in movies.

Yeah, this is totally different. This is a non-ablative laser, so this is more like what you would when you go to the spa and you get a laser facial treatment. So there's two settings on this laser. There's the photo photobiomodulation. Photobiomodulation, what that does is it actually— you're able to activate a cell so that the mitochondria produce more ATP, which is how a cell will sort of get energized. So there's sort of two ways that we use the photobiomodulation. We put the cells that we're going to use in a clear plastic bag, and we pass this laser over those cells to activate the cells. Then, as we're injecting you, you'll see in the video that we're going to show, I'm going like, for instance, go down your spine, and as right after I inject them, she's going to follow right where I injected with the laser to— in order to activate these cells. That's the photobiomodulation aspect of this laser. The other mode of this laser is a fractional laser. So just like you use like a fractional non-ablative laser on somebody's face, you're passing the laser over the face, and what that does is it doesn't impact the skin, but it creates creates this— it's called a coagulation. It's these micro channels that go down into your skin, and what that does is it, it causes the growth of new collagen to increase the elasticity of your skin. Face, that's for the face. But what I'm— what we can do with this laser is we can actually use a fiber optic cable and use this laser. So with you, we're going to put it in your— you have a little bit of arthritis behind your left kneecap.

I sent you my full body MRI, which is great. I've never had one of the— I've never had that in hand. To like send you beforehand, and I got it a couple months ago in LA. And there's a bunch of issues on there. And I think this is what a lot of people don't realize with like diagnostic imaging is you can see a ton of crap in there that freaks you out, but a lot of times you're asymptomatic. Like, my back looks lit up like a Christmas tree. I've got a strong— unless I'm sitting on a plane for like 5 hours and I forget to stand up and stretch, um, or I'm just basically like sitting for long periods time. Um, as long as I keep my core strong, I do a lot of walking, my back feels fine. Yeah, my right knee shows arthritis, my right knee is fine. Um, my neck shows arthritis, my neck feels fine. But that left knee is probably like 85%, and that one also shows—

well, I'll take a little credit having done the 3 full biceps makeover. So yeah, prior— because that's the thing that's confusing is your diagnostic imaging can look terrible, but the person can have very little pain. And that's the thing that's That's quite amazing is how bad it looks on imaging doesn't actually even predict whether the person has pain to begin with. But your left knee is symptomatic. Your left knee is bothering you. And we do see on MR, we do see both from your old MR from 2021 and this more recent full-body MR, you do have arthritis behind your kneecap. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna put an 18-gauge needle right behind your kneecap. Then I'm gonna thread this fiber optic cable through that needle. So we're able to bring that laser directly into contact, into contact with the, uh, with, with the back of your kneecap, and that's going to do the same fractionalization that, that you would do, you know, even with skin.

Yeah, that's incredible. That's pretty cool.

That's new.

And by the way, you're going to have a video camera in there because— oh yeah, people want to see this. Oh, for sure. Uh, again, the show notes are bengreenfieldlife.com/stemcells2025. I'll embed the videos in there. Uh, probably— I don't know if they're safe for work or not, but, um, but check, check out the videos. I'll put them in there.

We'll blur out your butt.

By the way, like, I gotta just come around and say this because, because I get this a lot of times. People are like, oh, you're the biohacker, why the heck do you have like arthritis and all this crap going on? Your full body MRI. I don't talk about this a lot on the podcast anymore, but from starting my college tennis career at 15 years old all the way up through 17 years of Ironman triathlon, adventure racing, Spartan, Tough Mudder, obstacle course career, like basically every day it was like a masochistic sufferfest. I don't know if you guys have treated other people who have done a bunch of like crazy endurance.

Yeah, how many rest days did— would you have?

Yeah, now I'm but yeah, I mean, like, I literally— oh, rest days were not even in my vernacular, right? Yeah, until I was basically like 37 years old, right? So yeah, I mean, I, I haven't lived this like nice longevity-infused Blue Zone style lifestyle for, for my entire life. Um, what about another thing that people bring up a lot when they're talking about stem cells? That's exosomes. Um, and they say that they help the stem cells signal or go through the body in a way. Do you use those?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, we do. We've been using exosomes for a long time. We were kind of early adopters back before they were cool.

We tend not to call them exosomes just because the word exosome is in the vernacular of pharmacological drugs, so we tend to call them extracellular vesicles, but it's the same thing.

Yeah, okay. EVs, and they're essentially these little— just, I call them like little bubbles of information. Like, they're one of the ways that stem cells communicate with other cells is they release these little bubbles of information that contain things like microRNA and cytokines and growth factors and essentially messages that the host cell then can grab and pick up, and then those exosomes can essentially change how that host cell is behaving. It can change how the proteins are being made, and, you know, you can act— it can act more youthful just because of these exosomes. I'm sorry, EVs, just because of the EVs. And so, you know, you can use these EVs by themselves, like, or you can use them in combination with the other stem cell products like we do and kind of get the benefits of both.

Are they coming from the same umbilical tissue, or do you— or the same manufacturer, or what happens? Absolutely, yeah.

So it's They're derived from the mesenchymal stem cells from the umbilical cord tissue. So they take— the way they manufacture them is they have these umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells, and then they sort of stress them out so they produce all these exosomes, and then they centrifuge them out, separate them out. So we tend to use both and mix them together, and we just feel the extracellular vesicles are the actual messenger. It's the actual proteins that signal the whole paracrine effect, which is really basically how regenerative medicine works.

Yeah, you talked about how they'll screen, um, the mom who's— who this birth product is coming from.

All non-COVID vaccinated mothers.

You read my mind. Yeah, um, I didn't talk to you about this beforehand, by the way. Um, the— I get that a lot, like people like, all these procedures that you're doing, you know, do you know if these people have been vaccinated? Because the mRNA can hang around the tissue. So even that gets—

yeah, there's— yeah, there's— they only accept from non-COVID vaccinated. It's, it's only from mothers who give cesarean section births 'cause it has to come, once you go through the vagina, it gets contaminated 'cause there's bugs in there. So it's cesarean section birth.

Which is great for baby's hygiene and microbiome, but not good if you're using those.

Exactly, exactly. But it's only non-COVID vaccinated mothers, and that's documented through and through.

Okay. When I've done this in the past, and I kind of hinted at this earlier, I noticed that after some of the post-procedure soreness wears off, I start to recover better, I have more energy, my sleep improves, and my sexual performance improves. Like, those are the main things that I notice. What else do you guys get people talking about after something like this?

I'll be really curious with this one after we do this phenopalatine injection to hear, because that, that especially for the mental piece.

Yeah, you bet. Yeah, you bet. Uh, but quit, quit drinking coffee, you know.

I mean, we get two types of people. We get people who have lots of musculoskeletal pain, and we get people who don't have much at all who are doing it more just sort of for the longevity longevity play. It's a lot easier to—

to—

it's a lot less subtle when somebody has a lot of pain because they have low back pain, now they don't have low back pain. They have neck pain, now they don't have neck pain. I mean, that's clear. When you get the people who are more doing it for longevity purposes, it's more subtle stuff like that. We get people telling us— and again, we don't help everybody, you know. And again, I'd like to just like re-emphasize, none of these procedures are FDA approved. This is all completely elective. This is all like, we think it makes sense. And I've done a lot of these. Proceed at your own risk.

Harry's Doctor, he just wears the t-shirt.

Well, ask Chris Centeno. According to Chris Centeno, I'm not a doctor.

According to who?

Chris Centeno. He's an old friend of mine.

Oh, is he?

Yeah.

All right. So anyway, so it's any number of things, sleeping better, wearing their reading glasses. You get the loudest reviews with—

I mean, for me, sexual health, I think especially men, especially, this is a big fan favorite. And then, you know, I think improvements in skin quality is also something, and skin and hair both. We're not going to— it's not a face slip. You're not going to look different, but it's just the improvement in like the glow, like how well-rested you look, the pigment, the fine lines, things like that, and just kind of helping to age a little slower in the skin and hair area.

Yeah. And, and it's my understanding that there are certain things that help with, um, I don't know if the right word is stem cell mobilization or stem cell health, but like I, I was having a conversation. This was about a month ago, and these two guys did a stem cell procedure, not here, I think it was one of the overseas ones. And one of the guys, he felt great afterwards, and his buddy noticed like nothing. And then we started talking, and his friend was just like drinking alcohol, going back to his old lifestyle, hopped on a plane right after, didn't pay attention to nutrition, you know, all of these things that I think are, are big obvious points when it to putting a bunch of, like, fresh, fragile baby cells into your body that might not be great for things like the inflammatory—

It doesn't work if you're drunk. It doesn't work if you're a mess.

So I think those things are obvious. But what about, you know, now that we're in this new era of biohacking things, like, let's say somebody's listening, they're like, okay, I'm gonna do this, but I wanna get the most out of it. What are some things that people could do after getting a stem cell procedure or anything with stem cells that would help them to work better?

Well, we like a lot of different things. Red light therapy, so photobiomodulation, the big, the big—

like a red light bed, red light panel, mask, any of that. And I'm traveling, I might interrupt as you go through some of this. I brought like a portable little red light mat, and I also found a guy locally who's got like a, it's like a stand, a big stand-up red light chamber. So I'm going to do that.

Yeah, red lights, I mean, red light we know increases stem cell, stem cell mobilization, proliferation, signaling, you know, it does all— and the ATP and the mitochondria. So it's got a lot of, lot of benefits there. Um, hyperbaric oxygen is another one that is, is great for stem cells.

I'm getting one of those too.

I'm getting, yeah. I'm sure you have some wet baths. There are some supplements and peptides that we often will use. Like we give everyone some peptide combination that was actually one I created years ago. Yeah, yeah, it's called Rapid Rebound. It's a BPC-157, AOD-9604, and palmitoyl ethanolamide, PEA, which is anti-inflammatory. So it's those 3 things as an oral combination. I created it years ago just kind of for fun.

You're one of the first people I've interviewed who can pronounce what PEA is.

Oh yeah, good. I always just say PEA.

So we give people that to take home with them because that really, we think, hastens healing and improves blood flow and things like that. Certainly avoiding alcohol, don't smoke, like just being healthy is really important. And we screen for that before.

Common sense rules the day. I think so much of it is just common sense. Yeah. Alcohol is the most inflammatory thing you can engage in. I mean, it really just spikes your systemic inflammation.

That's a biggie. I don't know, like I'm on the fence about like a small glass of organic biodynamic wine or something like that.. Um, but the way that most people drink.

Yeah, that's a small glass is very different from an alcoholic beverage.

My people come to my house, I make them a cocktail and they're like, they can put any alcohol in that. And, and it like, I literally use like half an ounce of alcohol. So we really do microdose at the Greenfield.

That's kind of how I do too.

Yeah, this is like for a little bit of extra flavor. Um, what about PEMF? I hear a lot about PEMF and its effect on stem cells or its ability to, to help with stem cell mobilization.

I mean, it can be certainly very anti-inflammatory and, you know, we've, we've used it in other places, other clinics, um, just to help with healing in general. I haven't seen it studied myself for stem cell acne procedures. I don't know if you have.

It came up on a podcast like 3 years ago, and somebody did show me some research that showed that it can help with mobilization. It wasn't like a post-stem cell procedure thing, but yeah, it apparently has some kind of effect. That makes sense. Like, red light, oxygen, and PEMF are all going to affect cellular function, mitochondrial health. You throw in some of the peptides and you guys have like a— isn't it like a botanical or something like that? Is that that you use? Like a blend, capsules?

It's the nitric oxide.

Oh yeah, nitric oxide, which is also great for stem cells. That's another one that's really good for improving stem cell mobilization and signaling. You know, nitric oxide is obviously important for blood flow. It's a vasodilator, so it's getting blood flow to different areas. And levels of it goes down as you get older, so you can't make as much as you get older. So we do do a—

Nathan Brandt, Nathan Brandt, comma, you're in Park City. So for people who suffer from the altitude issues. I had beets for dinner last night. So now before the procedure, I've talked to some doctors who will do some kind of like Myers cocktail, others will do NAD. Another one does like blood ozonation. You were telling me in the car drive down, Harry, that you're gonna start doing the oil change for the body thing, like beforehand.

Yeah, in the past we've done EBO2, which is the, you know, it's kind of like the ozonation with light and filtration. The blood. And now we're starting TPE, which is therapeutic plasmapheresis, or plasma exchange. And super excited about that because there's some really cool emerging research that's come out in the last 5 or 6 years around TPE that is like super exciting. So we can't wait to do that one.

Why would you do it? Is it just like to put the stem cells into a cleaner environment?

Precisely. Precisely. So what TPE does is you're actually removing— you're taking blood out of the body, you're separating the cellular component, which is the white the red blood cells, the platelets, putting those back in and cleaning off the serum. And the serum is where we collect microplastics, is where we collect cholesterol, it's where we collect inflammatory gunk that we just don't want in there. And there's not really a good way for your body to get rid of it. You know, and then the idea is people come in one week, do two therapeutic plasma exchanges, 48 hours apart. Then, you know, the therapeutic plasma exchange does its magic thing. We remove all the microplastics and stuff from your body. Your serum. Then the following week, they— we do the full body stem cell makeover and supplement with this gargantuan dose of birth tissue extracellular vessels.

And we're doing a procedure on a Friday. I'm— I didn't schedule my plane flight home until Sunday, so I think it's a good idea not to hop on a plane right after either.

Not the next day, certainly.

Yeah, encourage that.

Yeah, just resting is really nice afterwards.

And leading up, like, I did— I'll admit, like, I didn't want to waste this procedure because it's a pretty big deal. So the past couple of weeks I've been super careful with alcohol. I've done multiple hyperbaric chambers. I don't have ozone, like blood ozone, at my house, but I've actually done a few ozone enemas leading up to this. I've been super good with the diet. Um, I actually had a client at my house for the past weeks, and he, he was doing a detox, so I was just kind of like doing it along with him. So I'm coming in hopefully pretty clean, and my hotel room is like a little biohacking facility right now. I like—

I'm not—

BMF mat, red light mat, I got NormaTec boots, I've got um, all my little like stem cell mobilizer capsules for that, uh, Stem Regen. Yeah, so I have some Stem Regen. Um, I brought BPC-157, but apparently you got it. Um, and so yeah, and then I had to down a local hyperbaric. So the reason I'm telling this to people is like, don't think that stem cells, just like, like testosterone replacement therapy for guys, right? Don't just like do it and use as a Band-Aid for a bunch of issues, like really take care of your body before and after. I think you'll notice. Yeah.

And the after is important because I think that you tend to do like Spartan races.

I did that once.

That's back.

So now we're back to the old masochistic. I did.

You did. After the first one.

Yeah, the first one. Perry is like, don't lift weights. You should be super careful for like 2 weeks. It was 5 days later. I was taped like head to toe in kinesio tape. Actually, I raced really well. I shouldn't have done it, but I was signed up and that was the time when I thought I was just like unbreakable. Breakable.

So yeah, he puts peppermint oil on his taint. Like, what could possibly go wrong? I hope you go red. It's like, yeah, he's like surrounded by white light.

I learned that from Dr. John Murat. He's like, do this right before breathwork. Okay.

Oh gosh, it's just a mental picture that I can't get out of my head now.

So let's say people are listening, um, and this, this comes up, um, how do they do it and what can they expect as far as price tag?

Well, I don't want to quote the price tag because prices change over the years. Yeah, that's true.

And so, oh man, this podcast might be out 5 years from now. Um, but it's, it's like north of $50K, right?

Yeah, I mean, this is, this is not an insignificant, inexpensive procedure. It's not for everybody. I mean, this is, uh, this is something, something for people who are really into it and really want to do it. And it is the most comprehensive stem cell upgrade ever conceived. Uh, so it's real, and you know, the— to purchase this kind of quantity of product cost me a fortune, plus all the training between Amy and me. I mean, it's— yeah, it's spendy. It's really not—

you still do the option to do like two different versions, like the one without the skin and sex, and then the—

yeah, I mean, so we call it the two hands is my two hands. So that's all the orthopedic stuff, that's the full spine, all your peripheral joints, and the sphenopalatine ganglion. Four hands is my two hands, Amy's two hands, and then sort of this newer version is gonna be to come do two TPEs, the therapeutic plasma exchange, and then do a full body. We can either do that as two hands or four hands. So yeah, it's spendy, but you know, if you consider how much it costs, A, to go to Mexico to do a procedure, and then if you factor in all the risk associated with that, if things go really, really wrong, I mean, there's a price tag associated with that.

Well, my listeners fall into two categories. They either have some beat-up bodies 'cause they're like me and had a pretty intense first half of their lives, or they're kind of at the pinnacle of biohacking and wanna try the coolest stuff to be able to be as healthy as possible, as close as possible to the day that they die. I'm actually not like a live to 200 years old guy. I think it's scientifically somewhat implausible that might happen, but I do want my joints to be around.

Yeah, we wanna see playing tennis at 100.

That'd be good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Tennis and pickleball. Maybe some backyard football with the grandkids. Yeah. So bengreenfieldlife.com/stemcells2025 is where I'll put all of the previous podcasts that I've done with Harry and Amy, and also some of the information on the protocol and the gory videos.

Yeah, we're not about that bad.

We'll have someone filming it. Yeah. And then just in case people want to go direct, docere— D-O-C-E-R-E— clinics.com. That's the URL.

Docereclinics.com. Docereclinics.com. Park City, Utah.

Utah, just call them up or contact them through the website and could look into doing this for yourself. It's a pretty cool thing. And I don't think, kind of like we started off, a lot of people realize, like, you can do this in the US, which is awesome. So thanks, you guys.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit bengreenfieldlife.com.

Ben Greenfield: In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you. And sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.