I Injected My Joints With 300 Million Stem Cells

Over the last three years, I've spent millions of dollars on a protocol to slow my speed of aging and even reverse the damage that's taken place. My team and I are constantly searching for groundbreaking new therapies, which is why I'm flying to a resort in the Bahamas owned by Tiger woods and Justin Timberlake, where I'll be injected in all six of my major joints with 300 million stem cells taken from young Swedish bone marrow provided by a revolutionary company called Selco Labs, with the aim to give me superhero joints, athletic performance and eliminate all my aches and pains. If this works, we'll be a step closer to my goal of extending human lifespan. Damn. 20 minutes late, which I said I would be. 20 minutes late. Okay, we're on time. Oh, man. Oh, we're on our way to the Bahamas. My dad is boarding a plane right now in Salt Lake City. We have people coming from all over the world. My father is getting 100 million mesenchymal stem cells injected into his vein. So it's going to be throughout the body. And then I'm getting 300 million mesenchymal stem cells put into my body at each joint. Stem cells are the body's repair system. Those healthy young Swedish cells should multiply in my body, future proofing all of my major joints and taking me one step closer. We are in the Bahamas. We landed safely. We were pretty concerned we were gonna die. We were in a Boeing. So when. When they. When they came out with the instructions, I was like, I'm gonna listen this time. When they talked about how to fasten the seat belt, I was like, check. Good instructions. Evacuation. I was checking the manual then. Now we're off to see my dad. He didn't die either. I'm not sure what kind of airplane he flew today. We're all staying in a. A villa. There's five of us, so somebody needs to take the couch. Maybe we will just look at people's sleep scores and who. Whoever has the worst sleep score gets the couch. Like they're used to it, you know, like it's. They're used. It's not going to be that. That big of a deal. We're.

We're on our way.

How does anyone know what is going on right now? Are you guys in a golf cart?

We were in your golf cart.

Thank you.

Guys walk all the way from LA or what?

Come this way. What just happened?

See you.

Hey, buddy.

Good to see you.

How are you?

Good to see you.

I heard all your snide comments in the Background impuning Brendan and mine and Tarek.

Integrity.

Hey, come on, let's get you upstairs.

Whoa.

See, it's already on there. Get out, Kate.

Now. This is our place. Oh, there's not enough room for you guys.

Full view of the courtyard this way. Yachts, the whole nine yard.

Yeah. Rich, give us the tour.

Man, is this nice. Full kitchen.

I've already prepped the meal for three days.

Gorgeous.

Look at the aesthetics of this place.

Yeah, man, I've never seen a room like this before.

Is it amazing?

Yeah.

Is that amazing? Real estate Rich is my favorite, but this is amazing.

This is insane. I didn't expect this at all. I had no idea that it was here.

Yeah, our driver coming in said, yeah, you know, I had Tiger last week, Justin, the week before. I told him, well, now you can say you had Rich.

All right, Rich, where are we?

Hey, we're in Nassau, in the Bahamas.

How are you feeling about it?

I am, you know, I'm really assured. You know, I have all the confidence in the science and in what Brian's doing, but there's always apprehension, you know, if I don't mess up the actual process itself, like, I'll be the one failure, that kind of thing. So it's. There's a lot of responsibility. Seriously, here is. Brian is taking extraordinary efforts to help me.

How was your general health prior to Brian swooping in with all these interventions?

It was terrible. Not anything that's debilitating, but, you know, we've all been there, right? Well, I had a lot of that. But the most terrible thing is my mind. That's the one thing that I just can't see me living without the ability to do what I do. I'm in the legal biz. I was writing a complex paper, wrote about a half a page, and then looked at it as I usually do, and it was gibberish. I'd actually manufactured half a page of type gibberish. And frankly, I think my panic alarm to Brian that. Look, what have you got? He swooped in. I still remember that he sent me three, four, five supplements specifically for the brain. He was on me almost every day. Are you doing this? Are you doing this? And I'll tell you very quickly, I saw a reversal. And these interventions have. Each one of them have helped me.

Okay, let's do it, guys. We're off to the clinic to get the stem cells, dad. Into the vein, myself into the joints. Let's do it, dad. Oh, this way. Wait, this way. Go the wrong direction. Have we thought through this situation? We have a four person golf cart and there's five of us.

Little baby, one Prius.

Oh, you're right. We do have the little Prius.

Hey, Scott, size doesn't matter. Just quit it.

I love it. Oh, you.

Oh, we could fit.

We could all cram on here.

Yeah, we can do it.

If I could be here.

Scott, don't do that.

I like that. Scott.

All right, let me try it.

Okay, you try it.

Oh, yeah, there's plenty.

That's a good suggestion. Does anyone know where we're going? Yes. So I have. I have the map and left side of the road. I just have no air orientation. Turn left. Turn left. And I'm on the left side of the road. Yep, left side of the road. Yeah, we're in a good situation. Definitely a status associated with your golf cart. Is this. This is the right. Feels like I'm driving in a loop, guys. This is awesome. Okay. Is this driving past the new construction? I don't think we're on the right path. Yeah, this is a dead end. Yeah. All right. The problem is if we're late, the stem cells are gonna be so. Because once the stem cells leave the lab, they've got two hours of time and then they start to deteriorate very quickly and we lost. And so this entire endeavor may be a failure if we can't get there within a few minutes and figure out where we're at. No one has any idea where they're going. This is like last night we got dropped off. We didn't know where we were. So it's a pretty similar situation. The chances we arrive at the clinic without three or four more errors is unlikely. There's some signs here. Let's see if it says wellness center on there. This might be it.

Where is the wellness center? Wellness center.

Oh, it's Christina.

Safely arrived. Hey, good morning. How you doing? Good to see you.

How you doing?

Good. How you doing?

How's your trip out here?

How is your trip? You had a 40 pound ultrasound machine.

It's good. It's here. My name's Dr. Steve Sampson. I'm from Los Angeles, California. I'm a board certified physician in physical medicine and rehabilitation. My specialty is in non surgical orthopedics and sports medicine. But part of this trial includes all this necessary documentation. You understand this is a patient sponsored, ongoing open label single arm safety and efficacy phase one and two, a study for the purposes, procedures and risks of the research described in this office.

Thanks, doctor.

You bet. Onto the next steps.

My objectives are a little bit different. I think a lot of people, I understand a lot of people probably see when they're in some kind of dilapidated situation, they can't function in a normal fashion. And so with this project, we're endeavoring to try to rejuvenate my entire body back to age 18, which is, by current medical standards, it wouldn't be considered to be a normal objective. So it's really something we're trying to pioneer. And so I think more specifically the things we can address today that are more practical is I do have some discomfort in my right shoulder. I grew up playing a lot of sports, baseball. I used my arm a lot, and I think over time it's just slowly worn out. And so lately I've been experiencing weakness in my shoulder where if I do a bench press or a push up or even some movements, I'll feel weakness in my shoulder. Otherwise, my joints are. I don't feel any pain. However, in looking at the imaging, there is meaningful deterioration in my joints. Like there's various things that I have that are problematic. So it's not like I don't feel anything, I can't feel any pain, but there's still deterioration that has happened. And so I'm hoping to address both the discomfort in the shoulder and also rejuvenate what has been lost with wear and tear of my joints. Okay.

I think what's unique is if we were to take an MRI on anybody who's say, 40 years of age, we're gonna see some signs of active lifestyle and wear and tear. And the question is, do those correlate with day to day discomfort? And in medicine standard in the United States, it's, well, we treat as injuries come, right. So, hey, my shoulder hurts, so we're going to treat it. And perhaps a new way of approaching this in the future is more from a disease prevention point of view. And to be honest, we don't quite know how these cells are going to affect any potential imaging.

The cells have traveled 5,000 miles from Sweden to the Bahamas, kept in cryo tanks filled with liquid nitrogen. Now they're being thawed and are just 30 minutes away from the clinic. Once they arrive, we'll have a limited window of opportunity to inject them into my body before they expire. Okay, the cells just got here. We have two hours before they expire. Let's. The cells have just arrived. The sooner we can get them into my body, the better.

All right, Brian. So right now we're just prepping the area to keep it clean and sterile. I'll walk you through every step. The goal is for this to be as comfortable as possible. So first what I'll do is feel around your knee a little bit and then I'm going to give you a little local anesthetic. I'm going to try to aspirate his left knee. There could be a little trace amount of fluid. So do you see on the machine there, Brian, that black track? So ultrasound is great at showing soft tissue and fluid. And that's the little tunnel pathway that's beneath the kneecap and the patellofemoral joint. And that's going to be. It's like landing a plane. I'm going to guide my needle through that little path and you'll be able to see if you want. Dr. Patel, if you want. Can you grab that? You'll feel my hand. A little tapping here. Three, two, one. Okay, so next I'm going to try to remove the fluid. The theory is out with the bad, in with the good and watch that little area and see if it drains. See it kind of shrink, See the fluid kind of coming up on the screen.

Whoa.

It's pretty trippy, huh? So the body creates its own lubricant called synovial fluid. And if you look at it in a microscope in a patient with discomfort or arthritis, it has a pro inflammatory imbalance like that yin yang symbol where there's too much breakdown and not enough repair. Just give me feedback. It's the first time I've ever done an injection. So I just looked it up.

Wow, that's entirely.

And then watch this. This is really cool. Like it's very viscous in nature. Do you see that?

Oh man, that's awful.

So if you were to look at it in a microscope, there'd be an imbalance of inflammatory proteins in there. And so what we're really trying to do is reprogram. So we do things in the US like PRP bone. Now we're trying to shift the body to an anti inflammatory state.

Okay. Yeah.

And we're studying these mesenchymal stem cells that have been called medicinal signaling cells. They're almost like mobile paramedics. And so if you think of our body as made of 37 trillion cells that we approximately just coursing through our body. And when we have an injury, like if I were to get off this chair and bang my knee, that would trigger an injury response where these mobile cells, they're called pericytes and they release and they travel to the area of injury. And so we're trying to mimic that Response. And what we found is that in the published literature, these MSCs have the ability to significantly tamper or lower infant inflammation.

This is an intricate procedure. The doctor has only got 4 ML of the solution, which is tiny, and he has to balance getting that liquid exactly where it needs to go with working quickly so the stem cells don't expire before entering my body.

So watch. See the flow of the cells, Brian? It confirms an accurate placement. And also, I have no resistance. I'm not hitting anything, which makes it less painful for you.

Oh, wow.

Okay, little pinch. Three, two, one. So that's it for the left knee. You did great.

That was so much easier than I thought. I was expecting a lot more pain.

It's like a bad day. You keep the expectations managed.

That was, I think, simpler than any procedure I've done. Easier than a blood draw.

Well, we still got another knee to do.

Yeah. As the doctor injects my second knee. I'm very aware. Next up is my hip, which will be more painful.

So both knees are done. And now we just do the right hip.

Okay.

You need a break for a couple minutes.

I want to go try dunking.

Not advised. Yeah, Correct. So we can check. Your knee has what's called a bursa, called the suprapatellar bursa, which means above kneecap bursa. And usually we'll see the cells in there already. Yeah, you can see the mscs. You see the speckly fluid? Yeah, that's the fluid. So you can actually see the cells. Just a way to confirm the injection is accurately placed. If you get freaked out by needles, this would be the point to turn away from the television set. I warned you. Usually in my practice, I will conceal this so the patient. I'll be talking, and they won't see it, but you will feel a little pressure because again, I don't put numbing down into the joint. Just sharpen me up. Just trying to relax. Yeah. Just do your best. I know there's a needle in you to try to keep still. Hips more sensitive. You're doing great. Okay, Ready for Of the cells. That's done. We got one more spot.

Okay.

Doing great, that one. A little more pressure than the knee.

Or it was.

Yeah, it's normal. I mean, you saw the. The depth that we felt.

I felt the depth, but you need.

It to get into that structure.

One more injection, and we have 28 minutes left before the cells expire.

Not too bad.

Not too bad.

Doing okay?

Yeah. Okay, thanks.

I'm feeling any significant discomfort right now. You feeling any major pain?

No. Okay. Good job, doctor. Thank you. Well, well done, team. I know that there was a lot of effort that went into this. Yeah, a ton. So it's very smooth. Thank you, everyone.

So, Brian, next we're going to do an ultrasound of both experience your shoulders gives us a little more real time. Look at your tendons so that tomorrow we can be dialed in and have a game plan ready to go. Because it will be a little tighter on the clock because each shoulder will be injecting probably three spots, and so that's three. Another three, and then your hip. So we just want to be mindful of the clock and the time. So we'll scan you now to be prepared for tomorrow.

Yeah. All right. With just 17 minutes to spare, we got all the cells in. 150 million today, 150 million tomorrow. So success on day one when you.

Know you're here to help yourself, but your body can react and potentially have some inflammation, which may not be uncommon post procedure. So you want to take it easy for two to three days. You can bear weight as tolerated, but I don't want you exercising for a few days.

Now it was time to check on my dad, who was getting just one stem cell injection straight into his bloodstream.

You look absolutely magnificent. I mean, I'm telling you, those hamstrings.

Oh, thanks. Oh, you notice I work on them so hard.

I know this is really, really important.

Yeah, I'm happy to do this, dad. So my dad's getting 100 million bone derived mesenchymal stem cells injected in the vein. So this is called a systematic treatment where when you put it in the vein, it can go throughout the entire body. And what we were doing with mine is we were injecting the cells directly into the joint so it's more concentrated. Not to say that they can't migrate elsewhere, but the majority of the cells do stick in the locale. Yeah.

What's the best outcome, AKA what's the hope?

Optimum outcome are the things that are near and dear to me that I'm monitoring every day. And that's one cognition. Well, here it is, the end of a huge journey. I almost think I don't have to sleep anymore, do I? No. No need to eat. Thank you.

Good job, dad. Trying off their joints. Buckle up. Welcome to my crib. Come on in. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. What she saying? Say loud. Yeah. The first thing you notice when you walk in, right in the mirror. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? You gotta pose that question. Safety is the number one priority. This could be any problem, like you're out of water or there's not enough fruit in the house. You just pull this thing down, the whole crew just shows up right on time. Then I have a few pictures in the house that remind me of some of my favorite events in life. This here is one. I won a global competition. Most teams had 10 or 12 people. I was doing that by myself. Down here, I keep all my boats. I keep one for every day of the week. That here closes through Monday, right there on the horizon. Sunday, different day, different boats, different activities. But it's nice to have them all close by. There's a few other of my favorite pictures. This shark actually rode on its back for about 100 meters. This wave stopped because it found me intimidating. You know, the octopi, they regenerate. And so I keep it here for inspiration that I'm just going to regenerate my entire body and I'm going to grow young just like this guy. I think that's a spoiled. Nah, it's an octopi. I'm not quite sure why this is here. We've never used it. People get down and like, I think you want to get the white ball in the pocket, which I did. So I got a point. So these are urns. I have them from my friends and my family. They're not going to be for me. I'm never going to die. We'll just put them all in here and stir it up. All right. Now, this room, this is primarily where I watch videos on myself. I watch my own YouTube videos and put up images on my screen, on the screen here. And just. I invite friends over so everybody can view it at the same time. I just thought it was a really nice vibe. I usually take this seat here. I put everyone else, and then we just watch my videos over and over again. Everyone loves it. This is what we call the kingdom. Come on in. I hear this is where all the magic happens. I've made videos of this. People have seen my videos. I have talked about my techniques. I have told them exactly what to do, how to do it, how to do it with others. But Here is my 100% sleep score 8 months in a row. Right there. You see it. In the evening, I made my first mistake. I went out to give a talk and socialize. And by the end of the day, I was feeling pretty rough.

Hey, what's going on?

Finished up the day. So we did both my knees and the right hip and no one's ever done six joints in 24 hours. We split it up three and three, and turns out it's a lot. My entire body just feels like it's stiffened up and it can't move. And then when I get up and walk, it feels like I've been in a car crash. My body just aches, so I think I'm a little warm. I'm shivering, so I think I'm gonna go to bed. Was it the right decision to do six joints in 24 hours? We'll find out. And this hip. This hip especially, they went in right here, and they went in right here. So this whole thing is just pretty frozen up. But, you know, I was in a car crash once, and I remember what it feels like. Your whole body just aches. Like everything just hurts. All right, bedtime.

All right, night, night.

Night, night. We're going to get the second mesenchymal stem cells injected. Yesterday was both knees and the right hip. Today is the left hip and both shoulders. I'll say, yesterday was quite the adventure. I didn't think the therapy was that big of a deal. Then last night, I was tossing and turning, turning all night long. It was, I think, one of the worst night sleep I've had in a long time. My resting heart rate, which is normally around 49, was 64. It was my first time in the red zone of my recovery, so I feel great. My body is hobbling a little bit. I'm ready for three more, but I think stacking three more on the previous three, I don't know, maybe tonight's gonna be a tough one. So this is Project Keep Dad Alive. How we doing, dad? Hey, it's.

It's feeling good on all kinds of levels. One is I get time with him. Two is he's keeping the old man alive, and we get to share that he's taking care of me. Crap. It's really personal. It's deep.

Yeah. So kids at home take care of your parents? Yes, please. They took care of you when you were a baby. So when they're returning to a similar state. Dad, you weren't a diaper yet.

I'm not saying. Are we going so slow?

I'm really worried, actually. Yeah. The cart might die any minute. This is. Look, this is full speed. I don't know. We're going like four miles an hour. We're heading to the clinic. The golf cart is gonna die any second. Look at this. That's legit. Yeah, this is full speed. We're barely crawling. The stem cells Are going to. To expire in two hours time. The walk to the clinic is probably 20 minutes from here. Everyone's waiting for us. I don't even know. Look, the battery is. Oh. Oh, no, no. Yeah, we're. Yeah, we're in this thing. It's gonna die any second. Yeah. My knees don't bend. I lost bending capacity in my knees. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Maybe you can jump really high now.

Oh, that's. Yeah. Hi, guys. Good morning.

How was your sleep?

Then you were off. Yeah. Not great. I got one of my worst scores in like six months. Wow. Yeah.

And how do you feel today? Huh?

I feel fine. I can't bend my knees. Okay. But you probably expected. Yeah, but I feel great.

We can check your knees too, today just to see if there's any fluid post procedure. Just curious, just to check. Yeah. How about your hip?

That's feeling a lot better. Yeah, I was trying to just bend my knees further than that.

Yeah. What I tell my patients is, you know, you're here to help yourself, but your body responds as if it's been injured. And that's part of the healing process. And typically with these cell treatments, they're natural based and they take time.

Yeah.

I tell my patients it took years to develop these issues. It takes weeks to months to improve them. So it's early on I figured when.

I was feeling all this, I thought, this is good. We're on. We're on the right track.

Something's happening.

That's right.

Because I believe that this could be like a really good, like, maintenance type thing that you do.

Yeah.

Once a year or something. Long term, to prevent progression over time. Do we just accept that arthritis is inevitable, or can we intervene early and eventually cut it off?

Yeah.

So it's a new way of thinking.

That's right. So I am currently in the penalty box. I'm on doctor's orders to rest. But I've got tea. I just made myself some peppermint and. That's wonderful. Gonna hang out with my dad. Let's call Talmadge, see what he's doing. Hey, Talmadge. This is an odd time to call. Yeah. I'm about to go into the therapy. I'm gonna introduce someone to you, Then I'm gonna show you where I'm at. You can say hi to grandpa. There's grandpa. Hey, good morning, Scott. Hiding there in the bushes. And look at this. This is the garden. What's it like being 18? What does the world look like from your vantage point? So Unpredictable. Yeah. I. I can't speculate anything about where.

I'm going to be at in the next couple years, where Ao is going to be at in the next couple years, which is both scary and exciting.

A town which has kickboxing lessons. Right now. He just did his first kicks yesterday, and it makes sense. He's been playing soccer his whole life, so his legs are unusually strong. And he found that he has a superpower and his ability to kick. And so he. Yesterday, last night, he said, dad, I kind of want to figure out a way to fight you. I'm going off talmage. We have the left hip and two shoulders to do. The cells we have are only good for two hours. We need to get the entire thing done in two hours or the cells are expired. So we're under a very tight time frame. We have to jump. So I know you do too. So great seeing you. Thanks for saying hi to everybody. Have a good day. Talmadge. I'm ready for this. I love this. It's my favorite thing in the whole world. Everything about it. My best life, my best time. I love the team. I love the project. It's the best.

Three, two, one. Okay.

Yes.

Okay. Now we're going to proceed with the shoulder.

Perfect. Not too bad, not too bad. Do you want to see the big needle, though? Show them the big needle.

We use local numbing first, so the patients typically won't feel this.

But that's not true. You feel it. You feel it.

Most of my patients prefer not to look at their procedure. Brian again is atypical and wants to see everything.

We have one final injection left. This is the most complicated one. It's where I have tenderness in my right shoulder 30 minutes before the cells expire.

Save the best for last. Oh, put that needle. You're not helping me.

Oh.

So I'm using the ultrasound image guidance. As you can see, it's critical to be to able precise. And the procedure is complete. Okay. You did amazing. You see how we saved that last? When I started doing this, we didn't realize, like, the most uncomfortable or unpleasant, we start early. Patient would say, like, how many more of these do we need to do?

Yeah.

So of all the areas, your right shoulder will be more sore than the other because A, it had more symptoms and B, that area is technically a little more, you know, uncomfortable. So it's usually for a few days, up to a week. Just listen to your body.

Yeah, it feels like. It feels like I broke my shoulder.

Oh, my God.

Sore. What we're trying to show here is can you actually rejuvenate the joints to a more youthful state in these kind of proactive measures? And it's expensive because it's new technology, but as it scales, it will become lower cost. And so if this can work and we can demonstrate that it is efficacious, then more people do it, the costs go down. Whether it's the joints or whether we're doing on speed of aging or blood biomarkers, anything we can show that slows our aging damage and reverses it, I think would be positive. So, okay, we're here.

The mission was don't die, and we succeeded.

Yeah, that's excellent, you guys. We just finished up this groundbreaking treatment. Six joints, 300 million stem cells in my joints. Nothing had ever been done like this before. I'm feeling great. I'm on doctor's orders to chill out. Apparently, I wasn't doing enough. My goal in doing this is to make it is to do the experiment for you. If it works, to then scale it and make it low cost and accessible for you. I'm happy to be here with my dad. This is also project Don't Die dad, and we're doing well. So this is his third therapy. First we did plasma. Second we did the gene therapy. And this is the third domestic combo stem cells. He got 100 million yesterday. So dad is getting access to the best therapies in the world. So, kids, again, reminder to take care of your parents. They took care of you when you were, you know, not able to take care of yourself. So it's a nice thing to do to be mindful of others and their needs. So hopefully you can continue to follow along and let's do this together.