The Difference Between Getting Stem Cells Internationally Vs. The USA, Peptides, Testosterone & Hormones, Tissue Engineering, DNA Editing, Truths & Myths Of Regenerative Medicine & More

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, it all comes back to, I think, the model of understanding that disease starts in the cell. You have to really understand like the seven or eight hallmarks of aging. Mitochondrial dysfunction, like stem cell exhaustion, telomere attrition, loss of proteostasis. These are all terms to just say that the cell is not functioning the way it should be. And so instead of just saying, hey, let's just target this one thing and hopefully it'll work. Instead, what we say in regenerative medicine and functional medicine is we say, wait a minute, like there's like seven or eight different processes going on here, so why don't we try to stack different therapies or modalities so we can treat all the different cellular pathways. For example, with chronic pain, we know that the inflammation is part of it. So yes, we'll get some very good anti inflammatory stem cells, inject them into the spot. A lot of times there's a big component of immune dysfunction. So that's where peptides can be super helpful, like Thymosin Alpha 1, Thymosin Beta 4, because they can help with the immune system. And then you can also do IV stem cel. They help to systemically target all those other hallmarks of aging. And that's why I love IV stem cells because they're really comprehensive in terms of targeting all those cellular hallmarks of aging.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Foreign.

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Most kids gummies and multivitamins have oodles of sugar, like five plus grams of sugar, which is like two teaspoons of sugar and a whole bunch of other gummy junk that growing kids should never eat. So what Haya did was they created a pediatrician approved super powered chewable multivitamin. Zero sugar and zero gummy junk. Fifteen essential vitamins and minerals, vitamin D, B12, Z Sync, folate, whole bunch of stuff to support your kids. Energy and immunity and brain function and mood and concentration and teeth and bones. It's non gmo, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free, everything you can imagine. So it's safe for just about every kid that walks the face of this planet. A young growing human needs nutritional support. And this is how you do it. And this is how you do it guilt free. So I've worked out a special deal with high off for this multivitamin. 50% off your first order. That's huge. 50% off. So here's how. Go to hyahealth.com Ben this deal is not available at the regular website. H A Y- A H E A L T H.com Ben your discount code will automatically populate@hiathealth.com Ben Check out for an amazing multivitamin for your kiddos. And you never know, you might just pop it too because it tastes amazing. Well folks, as you no doubt know, there's a lot of myths and there's a lot of confusion out there when it comes to stem cells, regenerative medicine in general. Stem cells particularly. I mean like people are constantly asking me, you know, what's better? Your own stem cells or some other source like umbilical or placental or whatever, you know. Or is it true that stem cells don't work unless they're combined with certain things or some sort scaffolding they could grow on? Do you need to combine it with exosomes or do exosomes actually work? Doesn't matter where those come from is tissue engineering and gene editing as dangerous as it sounds? You know, should you or could you combine stem cells with things like peptides or hormones? And if so, what would be the ideal stack or protocol for that? I've obviously, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, interviewed other people in the stem cell industry, other physicians in the stem cell industry, and.

A guy who has really impressed me in terms of his body of knowledge. He is a guy who a ton of pro athletes, royal families, like, a lot of big wigs, travel to be treated by this particular guy. He's trained in sports medicine. He specializes in regenerative medicine. He conducted one of the first Health Canada approved clinical trials with what are called mesenchymal stromal cells or MSCs. He is known around the world for treating high profile celebrities and athletes. He's one of those guys that people travel to be treated by because he knows what he's doing. He studied the heck out of this stuff. He's the chief scientific officer of a company called Science and Humans. He teaches as an assistant clinical professor at University of Toronto where he works with medical students and residents. Currently, at the time that we are recording this podcast, he's in Dubai. You're going to want to visit the show notes for today's podcast which are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Doctor Khan. That's D R K H A N because the name of my podcast guest today is Adeel Khan. Adeel Khan, K H A N. We've never talked before on the show. He's a brand new podcast guest. You're going to learn a ton. Adil. Welcome to the show, ma'. Am.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Do you spend a lot of time over there in Dubai, by the way?

No, it was actually just all incidental. So what happened was in March of this year, I got flown in by the richest man in Dubai. His name is Mohammed Alabar. He's the owner of Emaar. He basically built the whole city. So the reason why Dubai is the way it is and it became an iconic place is because of Emaar. Anyone who knows anything about Dubai knows Emaar is the main principle for why people come here. Because of the Burj Khalifa, the six tallest buildings in the world, it was all built by this man. And what happened was basically it's a funny story because the personal trainer to the crown prince of Dubai heard about me and follows me on Instagram and stuff. And then this Alabar guy, the Emaar founder had a shoulder and knee issue and he wanted prp and there's like, you know, there's probably a thousand people offering PRP in Middle east, you know, and so he's like, no, I want the best. So then my name came up and then he flew me down and I treated him and I treated his wife and he was super happy. And obviously when you treat the richest man in Dubai, you get access to a lot of the high net worth individuals. And so that's why I ended up back here, just basically because I treated him. I went to literally treat like two people and then there was like everyone wanted me to treat them and I was like, I'm leaving in like five days. And then so I just came back so I could treat a lot of people who just want to have access to my care and obviously my technology and obviously it's good for networking and business and branding, all that stuff too.

Yeah, I definitely want to talk about your technology because you're doing like some super different stuff with stem cells based on the couple of conversations that we've had. So we'll dig into that in a little bit. But yeah, Dubai is beautiful. It's a very cool part of the world. I think a lot of people, they get, I don't know, kind of nervous. Like I talk to a lot of Americans who have this idea that it's just like this crazy foreign country that's dangerous, et cetera. But Dubai is clean. It's amazing. It's like a clean Las Vegas, Disney World for adults.

Literally. That's what I say. It's like Las Vegas meets Beverly Hills meets Silicon Valley in the Arab world. So basically this innovation hub and you have some of the brightest people around the world. Just to give you context, 4,000 billionaires moved into the region in the last year alone. From Russia, from China, from all over. Probably because of a tax haven, but obviously because there's so much money here, they just keep compounding. So it's a pretty remarkable place. So for people, I think. Yeah, just generally speaking, like, if people want, like there's definitely none of that Islamic law stuff or any of that, so you don't have to worry about like getting like police or anything. You can enjoy your time.

Yeah, cool. Explain to me your background, like, like, how are you different than any other stem cell doctors out there? Like, why is it that people are going to you as the go to guy right now in the stem cell industry? I want to learn a little bit more about your background and your history and your Training?

Yeah, I think it comes down to working with good scientists and good doctors and like. So one of the doctors I trained with originally was Dr. Gallia out of trial and Canada. He was actually the pioneer of prp. So he was the first one in the world to do PRP injections. And so obviously I got into this whole regenerative field with him and then I obviously as the technology evolved then I kind of got into stem cells and, and I got connected with a guy named Dr. Ian White. He's a Harvard trained scientist and he's had like 20 years of experience in the field. And so basically I've been working with him and also with University of Toronto on how can we enhance stem cell function and then also how can we better select who the best candidates are for stem cells too. So those are two of the things we're working on. But the biggest key difference I think between what we do and what everyone else does is that we actually have third party testing to validate our cytokine profile. So meaning like what is the actual protein profile? Like where are the growth factors, where the anti inflammatory factors and how many live cells are there actually in the, you know, in the stem cells that you're using or even in the exosome products. So for example, like we have our own, like with Dr. Yin White, we have our own proprietary process and how we harvest the umbilical core stem cells and how we harvest the amniotic fluid and we've done third party testing compared to other products and we have the best profile. Obviously if people want to see that, whatever, we can make it public knowledge. But the point is we've had validation to show that. And that's why I think people get attracted to me specifically is because I'm working with scientists. I'm not just kind of working on my own like as a doctor. Because the reality is regenerative medicine, regenerative science is evolving so rapidly and unless you have scientists to kind of back you up, there's no way you're gonna be able to keep up with like the depth of field. Even in Dubai. Like I'm working with a scientist from Italy, so His name is Dr. Giuseppe Moochie and he has some patents on stem cell tech too and like genomics and he's a really brilliant guy too. But like I just, I'm so fortunate because I get exposed to all these high level scientists and I get to learn, you know, their 20, 30 years of experience and condense it and then I can obviously share it with the World.

Yeah, when you say that like you, you guys are able to profile the stem cells, what exactly do you mean? Like, like what are you looking at when you're profiling stem cell.

It's called flow cytometry. So there's two aspects to it. There's. So if people looking to get stem cells done, they should always ask for two things. Number one is quality control. 50% of the money we spend on just our stem cell processing is quality control to test for like, infections, like diseases, make sure it's good quality cells. And then the other thing is flow cytometry, which is basically a special type of microbiological test where you look at the actual markers, meaning there's certain markers that stem cells need to have to actually be a true like stem cell. It has to have what are called certain CD markers. And so if it doesn't have the right profile, then it's not really a stem cell or a stromal cell, which is another topic. Go into that. But there's a lot of misconception on what is a. Let's start with what's an actual true stem cell. Because the problem is you have literally hundreds of clinics in the US offering stem cell injections, but in fact, none of them are actually offering true stem cells. They're offering what are called committed progenitor cells or medicinal signaling cells. As of now, unless you are in a clinical trial, every stem cell procedure you are receiving is not a true stem cell. The reason is because unless you isolate the actual mesenchymal stem cells or stromal cells and expand them, it is not a true stem cell. Because what you're injecting when you take your bone marrow or when you take your fat is just what's called progenitor cells. So meaning they have a certain cell lineage that they're going to differentiate into. Or so the meaning they can still turn into certain cells, but the main effect is anti inflammatory and it's what's called paracrine, so sending signals to reduce inflammation.

And you still get some benefit from that.

Right. And that's why people still go back and they say, I had a stem cell injection, it worked great. But it's not really a stem cell injection. It is important for the nomenclature because people are getting. It's one of those things that's like, it's not really a stem cell injection. I mean. But are people going to just go around saying, I had a progenitor cell injection? Probably not. But I think as long as they understand what is a True stem cell versus what you're getting in the States right now.

Okay. All right. So. So these progenitor cells that you get in the States, the reason for that is because from what I understand, it's like, illegal or something, or considered to be the creation of a pharmaceutical to modify your own stem cells. So they got to leave them as progenitor cells.

Exactly. So they basically, what they did, and this was probably the lobbyists, obviously, like, people like Pfizer, and they have a lot of strong. I was actually just on a call yesterday, and I actually know someone in the FDA who said they. The reason they. Basically, because of the drug lobbies, they. They want to classify stem cells as a drug, and they want them to go through the same type of trials which cost like, 30 to $50 million. That type of work is very expensive. And, like, unless you, like, no doctor's gonna do that, right? Like, you can't do that unless you're a big pharma, a big company. As of now, basically, it's like they're saying any sort of true stem cells where you're isolating, you're expanding, or you're taking perinatal tissue, like amniotic or umbilical cord stem cells, those are classified as a drug, and therefore they're not allowed to be used in the US Quick question about that.

Didn't a judge in California, like, toss an FDA lawsuit recently? I was talking with Dr. Harry Adelson about this, and he said that something happened in California that would open the door to the proliferation of clinics that could expand stem cells. Do you hear anything about that?

As far as I know, and I work with, like, the Orthobiological Institute, and I'm working with the American College of Regenerative Medicine as well, which is, like, the largest regenerative medicine organization. We have, like, a team of, like, 100 lawyers. And, like, maybe there's. Maybe there's a very specific case. But as of now, definitely outside of clinical trials, you are not allowed to expand stem cells in the U.S. more so in. If you get. If you get an infection or something bad happens, the insurance won't even cover you. So the malpractice can be. You can lose your license, basically. I don't want to leave Canada. Like, you know, Canada's. I mean, I like Canada, but it's just the regulation is so pathetic. They're like, 10 years behind. So that's why I'm working in Mexico, Italy, Dubai. I'm working in Egypt. Like, I'm working all over the World doing the stem cell, like, expanded stem cells, because it's approved pretty much everywhere else except Canada and US.

Yeah. I'm looking at an article right now on this ruling in the state of California, and it says this Judge Bernal ruled in favor of the defendants of the Cell Surgical Network, saying that their treatments and they were expanding cells were outside of FDA jurisdiction and that the stem cells weren't considered drugs. I have no clue what that means for the industry, but it seems like something's kind of happening.

Yeah, it could set a precedence. Yeah, for sure. But the problem is there's people on the other side who are trying to push back. And for a doctor, it's basically a gray area, and you don't know if your malpractice will cover it. So you have to be very careful. That's my advice to doctors who are doing it, you know, and we are opening up a clinic in Florida with the. Actually with the Florida Panthers. So we're opening up with a professional hockey team. And I'd love to offer expanded stem cells there, but I just. Maybe. I mean, maybe I'll have to look more into that, but as of now, we can't, as far as I know.

But you could do it internationally.

Yeah, exactly. My patient, especially my athletes, all those guys will just fly down to Mexico, and it's no problem.

Okay. All right, got it. So back to these stem cells versus these progenitor cells. It's my understanding that stem cells can just replicate and replicate and replicate, and they can be expanded almost like, indefinitely. But progenitor cells are kind of, like, limited. Hence, back to what you were saying. They have a little bit of an inflammatory or a paracrine signaling effect. But does that mean that they don't actually, like, heal the tissue or grow new tissue as effectively?

Exactly. They don't have a. What's called engraftment effect, meaning they don't actually engraft and regrow new tissue. They help to reduce inflammation, which can still be helpful, like we were saying, and it could still help. Especially for osteoarthritis, for example, it could still help for, like, two, three years, but it's not going to regrow you a new knee. If you want to regrow a new knee, there is. There is a way to do that, but you need what's called the regenerative medicine triad. You know, you need progenitor cells or stem cells, you need growth factors, and you need a scaffold.

What are. What are the three again? You said, do you need the cells and what else?

The cells, growth factors and a scaffold.

The cells, growth factor and a scaffold. So. So the cells would be your, your own stem cells that have been expanded, right?

Yes. And that expanded stem cells obviously have growth factors in them. So that covers two of them.

Okay. So you don't, you don't have to do additional growth factors if the stem cells has been expanded.

No. Unless you're doing like some people might mix prp, you know.

Okay.

Especially if you're expanding the stem cells.

Okay. Now what about the scaffolding? What's that?

Yeah, so the scaffolding is very interesting. So there's a guy out of University of Washington named Prashad Gulia. He's the first guy in the world to develop FDA approved. Is it under clinical trial right now? So it's not approved yet, but it's an FDA approved clinical trial for 3D bioprinting scaffold. And it's using what's called an hydrogel polymer. So basically it's made up of like hyaluronic acid, which is like collagen. And this is a chain of that. And basically they use your body. So they'll look at a knee or hip and then they'll actually print a custom biodegradable scaffold. They'll seed it with the stem cells and then it'll actually resurface the entire joint. So that can grow you a new knee.

Holy cow. So what's the scaffolding made out of?

It's a biodegradable hydrogel, which is made up of hyaluronic acid. Essentially.

Let's say it's a knee. Would you first, after you've taken out someone's stem cells and prepared those for an injection, take the hyaluronic acid and inject that with like a needle into the knee?

You would actually use a scope and yes, you would inject that into the knee and it would create an actual scaffold that holds. And then you see the scaffold with the stem cells and then that actually resurface the entire joint. So I'm actually working like with, for shot because we want to be the first ones in the world to offer that in Mexico because Obviously, I mean, U.S. is not going to approve that probably for like five, 10 years because again, like going to take away from knee and hip replacements. Right. And that's like the biggest money generator for hospitals. So you're basically disrupting the whole medical care system. So they're going to fight back as much as they can. It's going to be interesting.

So the scaffolding goes in first. It sounds like a very unique approach. I haven't heard of this before. The scaffolding goes in first and then the stem cells. I'm assuming you're using someone's own stem cells like their marrow or their fat cells. Or are you using a different source of stem cells to go in on top of the. Without scaffolding?

Yeah, we can talk about that. So what's better, like, you know, autologous or allogeneic. So that means like using your body's own versus using someone else's. So the literature is still not 100% clear, but based off the general scientific community and the way the trends in the literature, allogeneic, meaning donated, is better. The main reason being because you can use umbilical cord and umbilical cord has no chance to to undergo any mutations as fresh stem cells in terms of like the growth factors and all that too. They have more than like the fast stem cells. And obviously if you're older, too late. Right. Like if you're 55, you have knee pain, your stem cells aren't going to be that great to begin with. So it's better to use a young healthy person's or babies Right. From perinatal tissue.

Okay, now back to the expansion thing. Are those stem cells expanded?

Yes. Okay. For resurfacing the joint you use. Because the problem is if you don't like. So there's a lot of. There's actually been quite a few research trials now using expanded STE stem cells for osteoarthritis. And if you don't expand the stem cells, the results are quite mixed. Like it's probably like 70, 80%, not bad. But when you expand the stem cells, like for example, with fat stem cells or bone marrow, and you have like between 10 to 50 million somewhere in that range seems to be the right dose, then the results are almost like, you know, like close to like 100%, especially if you inject them intraosseous, which means into the subchondral bone. So just to give you an idea, but the problem with osteoarthritis is that the cartilage thins out, but then the bone underneath also gets damaged. Right. It's called the subchondral unit. And so if you don't treat the bone and the cartilage together, then you're not going to get a great result. So there's actually been research out of Europe, in France and they actually did a 12 year follow up where they did intraosseous stem cell injections. So intraosseous means they put it into the bone and they put it into the joint. And they did 12 year follow up with one group had knee replacements, and one group had the intraosseous stem cells. And the group that had the intraosseous stem cells, only one person ended up needing revision into a knee replacement, whereas five people in the knee replacement group ended up knee revision. And so it's long term, incredible results, right? Like, it's actually potentially better than a.

Knee replacement, this whole interosseous idea. It's my understanding that it's almost like aerating a lawn where you kind of like put little holes, like you inject little holes on the two articulating surfaces of a joint, and then you almost like plug those up with the stem cells and then it kind of regrows some of the articular cartilage, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, now, the reason this is cool and the reason I know this is because I don't know if I told you this story in any of our phone calls, but my knee was at like 20, 25% capacity a year and a half ago, and I had that interosseous needling done in my knee. It was in the US So I don't know how expanded these stem cells were or whatever, but like, my knees at like 90% now, it's pretty crazy. And that's the exact protocol that I had done after an orthopedic surgeon told me, hey, look, you're gonna have to get scoped. You got arthritis, you've probably lost this knee. And I mean, I'm running around the pickleball court, the tennis court. I went on a run the other day. I'm thinking about signing up for a triathlon now that I can run again. It's pretty crazy.

We can get you the other 10% there if you're still having some issues. Because we can use the expanded stem.

Cells is one of the advantages also of going with something like umbilical from a young, healthy source, the fact that you don't have to wait because if you take out your own bone marrow and your own fat, doesn't that take a little while to expand those cells?

It does. It takes like three to four weeks. So that's why for out of town people, we have a bank of allergenic stem cells ready to go for fat and for umbilical cord as well.

Okay. And there's no babies harmed in the harvesting of these cells, right?

No, no. In fact, it's the opposite. So it's not embryonic stem cells. So embryonic stem cells are where, you know, those were the controversial ones, right? Where it's like you create an embryo and you're taking their stem cells and like obviously you're potentially killing the fetus. So that's like very controversial. And so no one really does that. But embryonic stem cells are true what's called totipotent stem cells, meaning they can turn into any type of tissue. Whereas the MSCs, the mesenchymal stem cells or mesenchymal stromal cells that we're using, they're what's called pluripotent. So they still have an ability to turn into multiple different types of cells, but mainly they turn into either muscle, fat, cartilage, those are like this typical cell lineages that they go into. So that's why the MSCs are great for musculoskeletal conditions, because that's usually what we're trying to treat. To your question, I do prefer the umbilical cord over the fat when it comes to like IV stem cells, but when it comes to injections, I usually use the fat because the fat is more. It has a greater propensity to turn into cartilage, whereas umbilical cord can turn into a lot of different cell lineages.

Interesting. So what's the recovery time like for. For a procedure like that? You know, are you out for a while? Do you get like a lot of pain and a reinitiation of the inflammatory, inflammatory process or are you like on your feet the next day?

It really varies. Like I had some people, like literally they were like pain free in like a week and they felt great and had no pain after. And then other people have pretty bad pain for two, three days. Like if it's really bad, maybe one or two weeks. But most of the time you're only like resting or like non weight bearing for 48 hours and then you can go back on your feet and then you do cycling and activity and then within two weeks most people are back to where they were and then they start noticing results pretty quickly, like within six weeks. Like I don't know how long it took you but, but usually that's what I find.

That was pretty fast and like Wolverine bro. Took me about five days. But I do a lot of stuff. I do like the red light therapy and I do PMF and hyperbaric. I think if you have access to a lot of these modalities post treatment, it's pretty impressive.

Exactly. And that's what we do in Mexico, we can stack what I call stacking different cellular pathways. So you can stack multiple pathways, and then that way you can optimize the recovery. Especially, like, you know, I'm dealing with some of the, like, literally the highest paid athletes in the world. And so, like, for them, every week makes a difference. So if we can get them back faster, it's going to be a. It's going to potentially mean like a million dollars or something like that.

Tell me a little bit more about stacking pathways. What kind of things are you doing?

Yeah, so, like, I treat a lot of chronic pain. Like, that's one of my specialties. And, you know, the problem with traditional chronic pain is like, I mean, the whole system's broken. Right. Like, I mean, I don't know if you've heard that documentary about, like, the whole Purdue Pharmacy and like, how they got people hooked on oxycodone content and like, all this stuff.

What documentary is that?

It's really good one. It's called the Pharmacist. It's on Netflix, highly recommended. But it's basically about this company called Purdue Pharmacy. And they essentially tricked, more or less. But, you know, doctors aren't children, so I don't know if you can say they were tricked, but let's just say they. They tricked doctors to believe that pain was a vital sign, like a six vital sign, and that they had to treat pain using pain meds. And so they essentially, whenever anyone had a pain more than like 5, 6 out of 10, they would be like, here, take some oxycontin. No problem. It's not addicting. It's. It's great for you. It's going to help get rid of your pain. And then obviously we found out it's super addicting, people overdosing, people dying. And then eventually they had like, multiple lawsuits. But, you know, they made $20 billion. They got lawsuits for like 5 billion. And then they just obviously closed shop, but they're up like 15 billion. So this is what pharmaceutical companies do. They. It's just a classic playbook. Wow. So the whole paradigm with chronic pain has been, like, very usurped by these pharmaceutical companies. And now it's kind of like, I would say mainly pain doctors who are usually like anesthesiologists, and they're very traditionally trained. So what that means is they only know how to tackle, like, one pathway. So they'll be like, okay, you have chronic back pain. Is your joint causing it? So let's inject some cortisone in there. Or let's do a nerve block and then we can get rid of the pain that way. But the reality is chronic pain has so many different pain generators. Yes, inflammation can be one part of it. There can obviously biomechanics, it can be the immune system related to it. There can even be like what's called oxidative stress, like reactive oxygen species. There's a lot of different cellular pathways that get affected in osteoarthritis. So it all comes back to, I think, the model of understanding that disease starts in the cell. So you have to really understand the seven or eight hallmarks of aging. And I think you probably know them, right, like mitochondrial dysfunction, like stem cell exhaustion, telomere attrition, loss of proteostasis. So basically these are all terms to just say the cell is not functioning the way it should be. And so instead of just saying, hey, let's just target this one thing and hopefully it'll work. Instead, what we say in regenerative medicine and functional medicine is we say, wait a minute, like there's like seven or eight different processes going on here. So why don't we try to stack different therapies or modalities so we can treat all the different cellular pathways. For example, with chronic pain, we know that the inflammation is part of it. So yes, we'll get some very good anti inflammatory stem cells, inject them into the spot. But then there's also a lot of times there's a big component of immune dysfunction. So that's where peptides can be super helpful, like Thymosin Alpha 1, Thymosin Beta 4 because they can help with the immun system. And then you can also do IV stem cells because they help to systemically target all those other hallmarks of aging they have. Like, and that's why I love IV stem cells because they're, they're really comprehensive in terms of targeting all those cellular hallmarks of aging.

What kind of stem cells do you use for the IV stem cells? Just for either the combination with the regenerative medicine procedure, like a stem cell injection or the stem cell scaffolding or just like a general longevity. Do you focus on a specific type of stem cells?

We do both. So generally speaking, I use umbilical cord tissue, not umbilical cord blood. It is, it is important to notice the difference because tissue is more potent than blood and a lot of people are still using blood products, but the tissue is actually better. It has more MSCs in there. It's called Borden's jelly. That's like the, the word that most people have probably heard of. But it's expanded. It's expanded obviously. So you expand it, you know, like to 100 or 200 million or whatever. Sometimes based off your body weight, it might be more. And then, yeah, you put it intravenously. And that can work, work for, you know, for neurodegenerative conditions, for chronic pain, inflammation and like you said, for anti aging and longevity because it's going to make you younger at a cellular level. But to give people an idea, stem cell exhaustion is one of the hallmarks of aging. And what that means is as you age, your stores of stem cells deplete. So to give you an idea, so when you're born, you have about 200 million stem cells per cell and then by the time you're 80, you have only like 1 million stem cells per cell. So that's a huge decrease. Right? So your reserves are decreasing as you get older. If you can replenish those reserves using IV stem cells, then obviously it's going to have an anti aging and longevity effect just from the stem cell exhaustion alone. But the other cool thing is anti inflammatory, helps with mitochondrial function, helps with oxidative stress. There's some studies suggesting it may increase telomere length. So there's a lot of biomarkers that get improved when you do the IV stem cells. And so it's really cool to see. And that's why I do it. I mean, I've done it myself, I'm doing it for my family. Like it's basically one of those things if you have the money for, like everyone would do it basically, you know.

Now what about tissue engineering? Is that what you've just described?

Tissue engineering is more that 3D bioprinting we were talking about earlier. So that's where you're actually creating scaffolds, whether synthetic or it's actual, like using biomaterials, like the hydrogels we were talking about earlier. So tissue engineering is 3D bioprinting essentially and using biomaterials and bioink to print tissue. I know it sounds like science fiction, but, but we're not far away from printing organs. I think by the end of the decade that'll be very achievable. And then so instead of for like for all these kidney transplant patients, instead of having to obviously get a kidney donor, you could just print them a new kidney and implant it.

Could you print like a knee or an elbow, like a joint?

Yes, you could. I mean eventually you could use bio, if you had the right type of bio ink for cartilage. And yeah, you could just print it and then essentially just use a scope and put it in and then you resurface the entire joint. Those things are all in the works right now. There's like. And there's a lot more research in China and Japan and Korea on this than there is in the US because they're actually, I would say China is probably the leader in biomaterials and 3D bioprinting. They're doing some really cool research and they're the ones who actually there's a huge like, you know, 2,000 page textbook that was published this year about biomaterials and 3D printing. And it was, it was all, it was from China. Don't ask me how I got my hands on that.

But now what about gene editing? Because they're doing a lot of the gene editing in China as well, right?

Exactly. Yeah, in China. I don't know if you heard about that doctor who got arrested in China.

Yeah, it did tell people about that.

He modified the embryo and the fetus to have certain traits. You know, at first people were like, oh, wow, look at this discovery. It's so cool. This doctor's awesome. But then people were like, wait a minute, he's playing God. Like, he shouldn't have done that. He's giving them better characteristics. And then everyone just, I guess, like got mad at him and then he ended and then all of a sudden he's in jail and then the, the child, as far as I know, went missing or something. Like, I don't, like, I don't know where they are or if they're just like in protective custody or something like that. But super controversial topic, obviously it's like, because eventually maybe you could gene edit and choose for certain characteristics, right? You could choose for color, you could make potentially higher iq. And then only certain people can afford that. And then it gets into this whole topic about elitist society and all that stuff. Right?

Yeah. Now with the gene editing, is that something that could be used for regenerative medicine in some way?

Yeah. So the intersection, it's like what we call the post genomic era. So, so now that we've actually got gene editing technology improved, so the intersection of gene editing, cell therapy and tissue engineering together is really what's going to allow us to make the next generation of therapeutics. So what does that mean? So basically it means that we can customize a cell to program it to do what we want to target specific pathways. So let me give you an example. So have you heard Of CAR T?

No, no. What's that?

CAR T is this really cool technology. It's actually like a patented or trademarked technology that's owned by a company. But basically it's specifically they use gene editing and cell therapy. So they edit what's called the T cells, which are part of your immune system, to target very specific pathways. So there's been two main uses for it. One for like different types of blood cancers and the T cell and that's actually approved by fda. So there's actually a gene edited. Is cell therapy approved in the U.S. it's pretty cool. So they can actually edit the cells and use a gene technology to say, okay, this T cell go in there and target these cancer cell pathways and then it can actually kill the cancer cells. It's also been used for lupus. And there was a trial in Germany done earlier or in late 2022 and it was essentially they had 14 patients using Car T technology. And all 14 patients were in remission or like cured basically. Right. And like in medicine, we rarely use the word cure or remission because it's chronic disease. Like the pharmaceutical model is like they just keep people on medicine. So when you have these amazing technologies using gene editing and cell therapy where you're actually putting people in remission, it's almost unbelievable. But it's one of those things that's, I think again, like, I feel like everywhere in the world will have like in Mexico, Europe, everywhere, I think it'll become really commonplace. But in us it may take some time because of the lobbies and everything.

Now is CAR T cell therapy is that similar when you hear people going to Mexico to do high dose T cell killer therapy, is that what that, what they're doing down there?

No, that's different. That's just like they have like natural killer cells and stuff like that that they can infuse for anti like targeting. They don't have a CAR T in Mexico yet, but I am actually, I'm working with a group in Mexico and they're actually building the first regenerative medicine hospital in the world. So it's like a four story hospital. I'm going to be the assistant medical director. So I'm helping to design everything around it. So I'm going to make sure if we have gene editing cell therapy and then like CAR T we'll have all the works. There's some really cool gene therapy too, which I think you will love and I think you, you would. Maybe I'll get it for you when you come here. But it's called follistatin. Have you heard about it?

Yeah, I've heard of follow statin, but tell me about the therapy.

Yeah, so it's called follow statin gene therapy. So it's originally designed to treat muscular dystrophy, but they're using it in healthy people, too, to help put on muscle because basically it increases follow statin levels, which inhibits myostatin. And myostatin, for people who don't know, is basically like the enzyme that kind of blocks your ability to put on muscle. Most people have similar amounts of myostatin, but someone like Ronnie Coleman, who's like the best bodybuilder of all time, everyone thinks he had a myostatin deficiency. Or if you. If you Google myostatin deficiencies, you'll probably see these big bull cows that have like, ridiculous amounts of muscle.

Yeah, like. Like the myostatin knockout bulls, myostatin knockout mice, myostatin knockout dogs. You Google image, search for that. It's crazy.

Crazy. Yeah. It's wild, right? And so now we finally have a therapy. And it's the best part about the gene therapy is it doesn't. It's not like it's actually affecting your DNA. It's only. It basically increases transcription factors that increases that follow statin. And it's a temporary thing. It lasts from like six months to a year. But it's. It's such a better and safer alternative than I think than like something like anabolic steroids, where it's not going to put any stress on your kidneys or livers or anything like that, but it may potentially increase your ability to put on muscle mass during that period. Period. So I think it's going to be really cool. So I'm excited to try it on myself. And I'm sure you'd love to try it, too. I'll probably be the first doctor outside of Honduras, where they have it right now, to have access to it.

Yeah, I think I heard the liver king talking about myostatin knockout therapy at one point. I'm pretty sure it was a joke, although, who knows? Now, this Follistatin, obviously, if we're inhibiting the pathways that would shut down myostatin, then would there be any risk? Some people, for example, get concerned about excess myostatin stimulus and the early onset of things like cancer due to excess growth in tissue. Do you know of any side effects of this follistatin therapy right now?

There have been trials for over a decade as far. If you look at the PubMed literature and the Safety has been pretty high on it. There hasn't been any risk of those cancer. And I think the other thing, people I know obviously like David Sinclair and stuff, the Atahi talks a lot about MTOR and protein synthesis and possibly increasing your risk of cancer with these type of things. But personally I think it's, you know, you have to look at the whole picture and when you put on more muscle, you actually release what are called myokines. And myokines are a type of cytokine which is a protein which actually decrease inflammation systemically and actually decrease your risk of cancer. And that's been shown in like several trials and also in vitro, like in, in basic science research too. So I think you have to look at the big picture. Yes, maybe mechanistically, maybe there's some increased risk of some cellular pathways getting increased risk of development of cancer pathways. But that's just a mechanism. You have to look at the actual clinical research and the outcomes. And if you look at the clinical outcomes, muscle and strength tend to be the best predictors of longevity and health and quality of life.

Now back to the peptides. You had mentioned a couple that you use in these stacking pathways. What were those PEPT you mentioned? I'm just curious if you use any others?

Yeah, Those were Thymosin Alpha 1 and Thymosin Beta 4. The reason we use those specifically is because they work with your immune system and because the thymus gland is kind of one of the master regulators of your immune system. It's where T cells are created like from the bone marrow. They go there and then the T cells get created and that's like the adaptive immune system. And so basically what it does is it helps to immunomodulate or helps to, to regulate the immune system. And so that's why it can work really well with the IV stem cells. Because the IV stem cells are attacking the immune system more from like the gut perspective and anti inflammation perspective then you're getting that combination effect. You know, I'm a bit of a mad scientist, so one of the things I'm going to offer in Mexico is like IV stem cells, peptides and FMT together, which is like the fecal microbial transplant.

Oh really?

Yeah, because if you do all three together then you're really stacking powerful pathways. Right. Because I'm sure you know a lot about FMT because you're into like, you know, but just for your audience, like you're basically literally just taking healthy poop and putting it into your colon. And it makes such and it can make such a big difference on health. And can, it can cure like ibd, it can help with like C. Difficile, which is like a chronic bacterial infection. And it's like a lot of doctors didn't believe it when it first came out, but it's, it's the same principle as the stem cell. It's almost, it's like you're creating a new ecosystem system and then you're. So you're functionally changing the ecosystem to have all these good bacteria. And obviously the good bacteria are a big regulator in your immune system too. So my theory is that if we combine the IV stem cells and the peptides and the fmt, we can probably treat most autoimmune conditions. I've already had pretty good results treating many autoimmune conditions just using the IV stem cells and peptides. But I think all three together would be like really something unique.

Yeah, that's interesting. I've never heard of someone combining those procedures before. Now the fmt, obviously, like you mentioned, that's something that's been shown to be successful for things like IBD or C. Difficile particularly. But it sounds to me like what you're proposing is that a person who's already healthy could do something like FMT with stem cells and peptides and experience some type of anti aging or longevity effect that would boost their health even more.

Exactly. Immune boosting. Right. Think about it. You're making your immune system stronger. You're bulletproofing your immune system.

The stool that's used for an fmt, that's pretty well screened.

Screened, exactly. It's the same type of screening methods that they use for stem cells. Like it's very healthy young donors, usually athletic, and they do genetic testing, all that stuff.

Okay, now what about exosomes? Are you a fan of combining stem cells with exosomes?

There's a lot of debate again in the scientific community about this. For example, the scientist I'm working in, in Dubai, in Italy, he, he basically says exosomes are like a poor man's stem cells. You know, basically says you can't afford stem cells, then do exosomes. But then I have other, other doctors I work with who say like the exosomes from amniotic fluid can be really powerful for like anti inflammation and oxidative stress. I think based off everything I've seen, I think the exosomes can be good on their own, but they're usually more temperate. There's something you have to do like every six months or a year and you have to repeat it. Whereas the stem cells, because you're creating a new ecosystem like we're talking about, they tend to be more long lasting. And for anti aging and longevity you don't have to do them that often. You can do them every like two to three years, whereas the exosomes you probably have to do every six months I think for like possibly maybe a year to really get the longevity benefits. Can you combine them? For sure. I don't know if there's going to be any real additional benefit because the stem cells are so powerful on their own like and they're kind of the exosomes kind of doing similar type of things. But what we're working on is designer exosomes. What that means is any, any cell that can be cultured you can create exosomes on. So we're actually working on creating a muscle derived stem cell exosome, exosome, a liver derived exosome and cardiac and kidney. And so because then we can treat those conditions specifically, especially sarcopenia, which is a big problem, which is the loss of muscle as you age. So we're going to create a muscle and we're going to, obviously these are our patents, but we'll be the first company in the world to have our own designer exosomes.

Okay, got it. And do you do much with hormones like TRT or anything like that?

The reason is because in sports medicine if you don't optimize your hormones like you can't recover sometimes. Right. And if so, it's one of the things you have to understand if you're going to be like a high level sports doctor. Obviously from an anti aging and longevity perspective. I'm sure most of your audience is pretty well educated on like the importance of testosterone and all that. But it, but it also does make a difference for injury recovery because let's say if your growth hormone levels are suboptimal or your testosterone suboptimal, you're not going to recover as fast as someone who has good like levels for their age. So I do think it's, it is important to check it and optimize it too.

Okay, so with testosterone, what, what form of therapy do you like for that? Because some people will prefer injections, others pellets, others a cream. Do you, do you have a preferred protocol for testosterone replacement therapy?

I mean generally I find the injections just absorb better. Like there's just so much variability with the other stuff. I mean the pellets are convenient obviously like once it's in there. You don't have to worry about it. And I, you know, it is a relatively new thing in Canada. I know in the US They've had it for a while. My preference is injections because then you can also have. And especially if you do injections frequently. That's. I think that's the big difference. So, like, a lot of doctors prescribe it, like, oh, do it once every 10 days or once every two weeks or once day every a week. But then your levels will, like, you'll, you'll have a big trough and then you'll have like a drop.

That's my understanding. Like, like a real big surge and then a drop that no way mimics the, the natural diurnal variation in testosterone.

Exactly. Yeah. So what's better is to do it like, every day or every. Even, like. Yeah, every day. Sounds crazy, but some people said that you can. I mean, some of the doctors I've worked with and some of the research out there, you can do it subcutaneously, even every day. And the results are pretty similar to doing it intramuscular once a week. You just spread the dose out and it's more. And obviously subcutaneous injection is much, much easier.

Yeah, that's interesting. And so the thing with the testosterone replacement therapy, regarding the gel, what about the application of like, a gel in the morning and in the evening, which a lot of doctors will do now.

That does mimic the pathway, like, I mean, like the variation, the iron or variation better, but the problem is the absorption is just so variable. Like, the bioavailability is, like, in studies, it seems to be high. But then I find clinically, like, some people are like, I didn't even notice the difference. I've seen that a lot. And their testosterone levels just don't budge on it. So sometimes if people are really hesitant to take injections, we will start them on that. But then I find, like, probably like 30% of the time, like, people are just like, don't notice the difference.

Yeah. On your Instagram profile. And if you look you personally up on social media, you're obviously pretty fit. You've got a lot of muscle yourself. Would imagine you do a lot of the protocols that you're talking about. But I'm curious, and this might be kind of an involved question about your own daily routines. What are you actually doing on a typical day? Based on everything that, you know, for exercise, for diet, for supplementation, what would a typical day look like for you?

My life is like a dumpster fire right now. So it's like, I try my best to incorporate. I think the big thing is for people to like, especially for high performers, like, people who are doing a lot, like, you do have to have a routine. And so I'm very, like, OCD with my routine. Like, I try to always meditate, like 10, 10 minutes in the morning. I have a very specific meditation that I listen to every time it's the same one. And that way I just, like, kind of repeat it. And for me, it's, like, easy and gets me going, and then I can kind of focus on my goals and, like, what I want to accomplish for the day and that type of stuff.

You mean on an app, like one of these meditation apps, you have your own customized routine?

It's just a YouTube video of this. It's one of these Indian guys who's like, I forgot his name, but he has such a calming voice. But he also has. He's a guided meditation for, like, 10 minutes. And it says, I can share it if you want. But, like, it's basically like the best morning meditation.

Share it with me and I'll add it to the show notes. Why do you like it so much?

It's because of the way he. He. He talks about how your energy and everything starts in your spine. And so he always talks about, like, inhaling and imagine the energies going into your spine, like one bite. Like, first doing. Imagine the energy from your arm is going into your spine, and then breathe out slowly and exhale. And then imagine you're bringing it back into your spot. And he always talks about, like, how it's centered around your spine. And I find. And obviously the diaphragmatic breathing. But I find there's this interesting. You know, I think if you look across a lot of the cultures where they talk a lot about meditation and mindfulness or something about, like, you know, chakra, energy, qi, all that stuff kind of starting in that in the spine, in the lower back there. And I feel like that just helps to center everything when you meditate. Meditate.

Interesting. Yeah. I'll try it out or just email it to me and I'll add it to the show notes. And by the way, for everybody listening in, the show notes can be@BenGreenfieldLife.com drkhan D R K H A N so you got the meditation in the morning. What else are you doing?

I do take a supplement called dhea. You've probably heard about it. Yeah, I mean, this is a supplement in U.S. but in Canada, it's actually a drug. But basically it's kind of like a pro hormone, I guess, but it can help to synthesize more testosterone and it is very important. After I just turned like 35, so. So based off the literature and what I've read, like, after 35, it's probably recommended for all males to take between 25 to 50 milligrams. And it also can be a good compliment to TRT if you're on that too. That's one of the supplements I take on a daily basis, which I find really helps with my energy and like mood and all that stuff.

You don't get concerned at all about that getting converted into DHT or causing hair loss or anything like that?

Well, that's why I take. I personally take pumpkin seed oil, 500 milligrams a day. It's an alternative to finasteride or propecia. And it's also a 5 alpha reductase inhibitor. So it prevents the conversion to DHT.

Okay, got it. That's good to know because I think a lot of people are on DHE and experiencing some of those issues and aren't aware of that. So pumpkin seed oil is what you take to combat that?

Yeah. There's actually a clinical trial head to head comparing pumpkin seed oil to finasteride and had similar efficacy without any side effects.

Okay, got it. So you got dhea, you got your meditation session. What are some other big things that you're doing?

I usually do do intermittent fasting. And it's partly because I'm just so busy and I don't have time to eat in the morning. I'm always in a rush. So my fasting is usually like, I would say 16 to 18 hours. And I find that if I am doing intermittent fasting, though, what I one thing I do consume throughout the day is something called hmb. It's basically a loose leucine metabolite. So leucine for people don't know, is basically one of the amino acids that helps with protein synthesis. And one of the risks with intermittent fasting is that you can lose muscle, especially if you don't knock enough protein. And so for me, muscle is always probably one of the priorities, especially because I obviously do powerlifting and bodybuilding. But I think for health and longevity in general, muscle is king. But we're not talking about anabolic stories. We're talking about natural. And so without taking steroids, how can you preserve muscle mass, especially if you're in a calorie deficit or if you're doing intermittent fasting? And so I use HMB in My, I just drink it throughout the day in my water. Three grams a day, by the way.

I interviewed Sean Wells at one point. He's a big fan of this ingredient he developed called dilucid. He actually sent me a little bottle of this dilucine powder and recommended I use it because I lift weights a lot in the morning and I'm in a fasted state. And apparently it does help to stave off some of that catabolism. Now previous to that, pretty much what I've used are essential amino acids, which is a blend of different ingredients. We actually amped up the leucine content of the kion essential amino acids for this reason amongst a few others. But this idea of leucine, whether you're getting it from like dilucine or whether you're, you're stacking with something like HMB or using essential amino acids, I think a lot of people aren't aware at how effective that is. It's staving off the potential for muscle catabolism. If you're working out in a fasted state. Like, it can be a real game changer.

It can be. And like people don't realize, like, yeah, if is a great tool but a lot of people I think over use it or like and they don't realize that they're. Yes, they're losing body weight, but they're probably losing muscle and fat. Fat. And you really want to be careful because I've seen it and I've seen it clinically too. Like people use if when I used to do obesity medicine, like literally you would see someone lose like 20 pounds but their body fat wouldn't change. They'd be like, what the. They just lost muscle. It's like. And because they're just doing if all the time and they're in a calorie deficit and they're not getting enough protein and they can't maintain their strength and they're just doing low intensity cardio like walking or yoga. And I find that's very common with females especially. And so I don't think we can overstate the importance of dilucine or hmb. Generally speaking. Like, you know, my days usually like obviously I'm working, I'm doing procedures. I have lots of meetings because I run a, I run a company, it's called Regeneratus. We're like a startup stem cell technology company. We have our, that own a proprietary stem cell tech. We've developed and you know, now we're, we're, we're so, we're Expanding that. So really busy with that stuff. And then even if on my off days I always try to get some sort of movement session in. So obviously I do like high intensity strength training four to five days a week. Right now I'm just kind of doing like a bodybuilding split, but I switch. You know, there's so much misinformation about this stuff. But like, the problem is the community, the fitness community is run by mainly anabolic steroid users. There's nothing wrong with that, there's no judgment on them. And obviously I take care of literally the top bodybuilders in the world, so they're my friends. But like, it's just not applicable if you're not on steroids. And so you need to know how to train when you're not on steroids. And generally speaking, just doing a bodybuilding split four or five days a week is not optimal for most people. But you know, if you're someone like me, I've been trained for over a decade, so I can. And I alternate, so I usually do. Right now I'm doing bodybuilding, but my plan is to go back to powerlifting in a few months and then that way, you know, I continue to build strength and then when I go back to bodybuilding, I can do higher volume with higher weight and so I get more metabolic workload and capacity and all that. The gist of it is the strength training is really key. For me, a lot of people, the problem is if you're not getting good sleep and you're stressed, like strength training is just going to put an additional stress on your body. So you really have to be in good health in general before you start lifting heavy weights. I find a lot of people need to get their cortisol regulated, get good sleep, manage your stress, all that stuff, and then add in high intensity strength training. But a lot of people try to add that in and they just burn themselves out. It is one of those things I love and I can do because my body can handle it, but it's also because I have all the other factors dialed in.

And by the way, a lot of times I'll go through periods of time where I'm working on a book or I have a pretty high workload and I'm only able to sleep around six hours a night, night. And so one of the things I'll do for that is I'll use a little bit more NAD or do nad patches or IVs because those helped with a lot of the cellular repair that would be happening during the Longer sleep periods and then I'll do yoga, NIDRA or non sleep deep rest protocol or some type of deep meditative session in the afternoon, which is only like 20 to maybe 40 minutes max. Max. But if I can do a nap and a little extra nad, even if I'm on a short sleep cycle, I'll usually have pretty good workouts and pretty good repair and recovery. I know that sleep deprivation is something you don't want to extend for long periods of time, but for short workload stints, like if I have a couple weeks here and there where I'm just working more than I. More than usual and also shorting sleep a little bit, I find that NAD and then that daily rest protocol helps out quite a bit.

Yeah, it's funny actually, I just had NAD the last two weeks in a row because I'm in that situation right now. It's like I'm in a new country working and I'm just like inundated with opportunities and I like raising money for my company. It's just like, yeah, just like crazy workload. And so my sleep has been like six hours and it's just. Yeah, I did two iv. I do, I'm doing four in a row. I don't know what you do, but I usually like to do like four in a row and then like once a month type of thing. Yeah, and then you use just something called quercetin too, which is important to take with it because it helps to. With the cellular senescence and all that.

Yeah, that, that can actually help out like fisetin, carcetin, some of these flavanols and polyphenols. You're right, they can really help help out with the NAD absorption. Now. I've actually increasingly been using patches because it's a little bit more convenient than the IVs. And the transdermal absorption is actually pretty good. These ionthophoresis patches that you just put on your inner thigh, you saturate one side of it with a saline solution, the other side of it with a little bit of nad and you slap that on. And I feel like I get similar effects as getting an NAD iv. The other one that works really well. Well. And a lot of times I'll do this for like a long haul airplane flight is a high dose NAD suppository. So it's just like a slow bleed via rectal delivery into the system. And I think that the patches and the suppositories, they're definitely superior to oral intake of nad, but they also seem to approximate what I get from an iv.

That's awesome. I didn't even know you could get the suppository. That must be compounded.

Pharmacy doctor John Laurence in Florida, he's got some really good stuff like high dose melatonin suppositories. Nad a lot of stuff I'll try travel with just to get the equivalent of an IV without having to mess around with needles and finding clinics and stuff when I travel now for sleep, do you have anything in particular that you're doing? As a busy guy who's obviously trying to prioritize some of your strength training and workouts and also your medical practice, are you doing anything interesting when it comes to prioritizing or hacking your sleep?

You're starting to set your body up for a good sleep by doing all the right things throughout the day like we talked about. Because all those things help to with your circadian cycle, especially the exercise and the, and the meditation and all that stuff. And then also the cortisol regulation. Like I do take adaptogens on a pretty regular basis usually Ashwagandha KSM66 like post workout. Reason post workout is because that's when your cortisol kind of spikes and you want to do something to help bring it down. So I use vitamin C and KSM 66 to kind of bring that down especially because I'm usually working out in the evening. That I find really makes a difference for me from the cortisol regulation because a lot of people are what's called adrenal dysregulation. They're not. Not so basically, you know, when their cortisol should be low it's high and when it's high it should be. It's. It's low. And that. That's tired but wired. Right. That's like the classic thing that happens to people at nighttime. They want to sleep but they can't. And that's usually just have has to do with their adrenal dysregulation. So if you can get some sort of adaptogens in you and like or whether. And obviously there's IV protocols for that too. But I find for me at least personally I find just the supplements do the trick. I'd. Red light therapy I find really helps me. I think you do that too. Correct.

Right. Obviously you can use the red light therapy in the morning to simulate sunrise or in the evening as an alternative to office lights in your office to simulate sunset and kind of establish better circadian rhythmicity. But you can even take it a Step beyond that. There's one device called a V light, and it'll do like a 10 Hz alpha wave signal intranasally. And you can also wear it on your head so you get the intracranial and intranasal delivery. And that one is actually pretty impressive. I don't know if I will have released the podcast by the time this podcast comes out, but I just did a podcast with Dr. Lou Lim about the use of red light therapy intranasally and cranially for enhancing sleep and also this meditative bliss state. So I think a lot of people are familiar with the panels or replacing the bulbs in their room with incandescent or red lighting. But I don't think a lot of people are aware that you can use intranasal red light and cranial red light to also enhance sleep. You can just put it on, pick up a book, and it kind of lulls you to sleep as you're falling asleep. So that's kind of something new I've been doing. I haven't talked about it on the podcast much. Is using red light therapy, like the V light in alpha mode, just laying in bed at night while I'm reading.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's very interesting. So basically, we're talking about all the factors that we can do to optimize your ability to fall asleep. Say, for whatever reason you're struggling with sleep, which a lot of people do. One of the things I've seen successful clinically, and there's actually a peptide called dsip.

Yeah, Deep. Deep Sleep Inducing peptide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that one, I find. I find can be quite helpful for people because it's not. Like I said, the problem with the drugs, again, is like, they're. They're usually just, you know, they don't actually affect your quality of sleep. They just kind of. They can increase your quantity, but not like deep cycle. And that's the same problem with CBD and THC and all that stuff, too. You're not necessarily making more restorative sleep. So whereas the DSIP can, I'm a shoe scientific officer of HD Muscle, so I actually made a sleep supplement with them. And the main ingredient is really just valerian, but root. There's no melatonin in there, but the valerian root obviously can help. It's kind of like a GABA agonist, so it can help relaxation and everything.

Yeah, I got to get your hands. Maybe I'll bring some to Dubai. The Kion sleep product, that's the one that I helped formulate over for Kion and that thing, it works like gangbusters because I used to do a lot of the valerian, the ashwagandha stuff like that prior to sleep and now I just do the kion sleep. And then if it's a super anxious or stressful day, I'll add a little bit of cbd if I'm traveling, add a little bit of melatonin. But that stack of kion sleep plus cbd, or when you're traveling, kion sleep plus CBD plus melatonin. I mean, as long as you got your other sleep hygiene dialed in like the cold, the light, the absence of external noise and not working a lot in bed, it's a pretty good product.

Again, it's the same principle, right? We're trying to stack multiple things at once to try to optimize whatever solution we're going to get to. Very few doctors think like that for whatever reason when it comes to medicine. But you've done it with biohacking and longevity. But I'm trying to do the same thing when it comes to treating pain, pain, treating injuries. It's like, why don't we try to actually think about how can we stack multiple things at once to get the most optimal result instead of just saying like, let's just try this one thing, you know?

Yeah. Adil, anything else you want to throw in before I let you go?

I think people are really going to see regenerative medicine take off. It's a disruptive technology. We're in the middle of a stem cell revolution and so people just need to remember that. If you're going to get stem cells done, just make sure you check for flow cytometry and quality control because I think those are the typ two biggest things. If we remember one thing about what we talked about, it's those two things when it comes to stem cells.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're listening, you have questions or comments or feedback about what we've discussed so far, just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com drkahn BenGreenfieldLife.com D R K H A N well, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Adeel Khan signing up from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.

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