Still Fasting in 2025? Here’s How to Make It Work Better : 1315

The entire body is constantly going through a process of tissue turnover. You get a new skin every month, a new liver every two, three years. Cells have a specific lifetime. They are replaced, and they're replaced by stem cells. Stem cells have been doing their job and repairing in your body since the day you're born. Christian Drepo is a pioneering stem cell scientist whose groundbreaking research is redefining how we heal and regenerate the body.

He's not just advancing science, he's unlocking.

The body's ability to repair itself from within. The ability of stem cells to migrate and mult fasting. So you take stem cells before fast and after fasting and you see that they're more effective, which means they act as younger stem cells. The more we dive into stem cell research, the more we need to realize it's like your immune system. Any body fluid is likely to have stem cells. They are really everywhere and they are the body's repair system.

The idea is we're making stem cells in our marrow. How do we influence the quality of our bone marrow so that we can make more stem cells? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with. Hey, guys, quick reminder. If you're listening to this on your favorite audio podcast app and you haven't been over to my YouTube channel, check it out. Just search for the Human Upgrade or find me under Dave Asprey, bpr. I post full video versions of every episode and a bunch of other cool content outside the pod. It's a great way to go deeper into the content and connect with other biohackers like you. So leave a comment for me. Yeah, I'm actually going to read them and poke around while you're there. There is a lot of stuff specifically for you. It really helps and it means a lot to me. Why do some people regenerate and other people just break down?

I would say it comes down to how many stem cells you have in your bloodstream. And because this is something that is interesting, if you look at your last blood panel and look at the range that you have, let's say for platelets, for lymphocytes, red blood cells, actually any markers, any parameters in your blood and the range between what is too low and what is too high is roughly maybe sometimes a factor or two or threefold. But if you look at stem cells in at least the work that we've done in the lab between the person that has very few stem cells, we've seen as low as 0.01% of your. Sorry, 0.01 stem cell per microliter. And we have seen up to 5 stem cell per microliter. That's a 500 fold. So. And this is your normal physiology.

Okay. How would I know if I have a lot of stem cells or no stem cells circulating, quite frankly, until.

And we're working to develop an assay here to do. I mean, we can do this. It's just that normally it's using. You use flow cytometry to do this, and you need to find a center that has a flow cytometer. I mean, it will be difficult, and you just cannot get that done easily. But to answer the question is very simple. If you get an injury, how long does it take for you to recover? If you go to the gym and you, like crush yourself, how long does it take to recover? Right there is going to tell you how many stem cells you have inserted.

It's just a function of how much steak I eat.

I would say it's how many stem cells you have.

I know that if I eat a lot of steak, I recover faster.

You do?

Well, I mean, everybody does. So there's protein, there's mitochondrial function, there's thyroid, there's testosterone. So let's assume that since there isn't really good tests for circulating stem cells unless you're in a university lab, and since you make a product that causes stem cells to be released, we know you can do that. What is it, my fingernail growth rate? Is it the way my skin looks? What are the signs I have a lot of stem cells. Or that I need more stem cells?

First, we need to understand that we discover stem cells. It's a discovery. We're looking at it as something that is new. We need to understand it's your natural repair system. It's been there since the day you were born. Stem cells have been part, intimately part of your life since the day you're born.

Well, no, before that you couldn't actually. Since the moment of conception. Right.

Moment of concept. This. Absolutely. Pluripotent. Totipotent stem cell.

Is totipotent a word?

Yep. Totipotent.

What does totipotent mean?

Tot comes from in Latin, means all. So it can do everything.

That's crazy. I know. Pluripotent stem cells. I wrote a book about that kind of stuff. But totipotent's in your word for that.

Totipotent.

Yeah. That seems like it should be a blend of coffee.

In a nutshell, we've been living with stem cells every day. So now to decide that, now that I have knowledge about it. I'm going to start to feel them like you won't. You're not going to feel your stem cells no more than you feel your mitochondria working in your cell. So, so how can you see it? It's going to be in the function that stem cells are having. So, and, and again, stem cells have been doing their job and repairing in your body since the day you're born. So even that is hard to tell. So what we tell people, you want to see how many stem cells you have and, and how they work, Go to the gym, trash yourself. Like, do something that you know the day after you would be really sore. And we use release that puts more stem cells in circulation. And we just say, take two capsules right after two capsules before you go to bed and see how you feel. The day after you will, you will have the experience of what stem cells can do.

Oh, that's cool. So you can a b test your stem cells. So go to the gym, get trashed, and see how long it hurts. And then I guess wait a week or two so the muscles aren't stronger. Do it again, this time with stem regen. Because you've shown that when you take two capsules, you get 10 million stem cells released and you get about 100 million when you do a stem cell.

IV meaningful amount with about 15, 20% survival. So actually it's not a whole lot different.

Interesting. Okay. So very similar from stem regen and an iv and when you're doing this, though, if you recover much faster when you're doing that, then that's. Well, then you know stem regen is working. But you can also tell how, how good your stem cells are. It's your stem cells. If you are sore the same amount each time, what does that mean?

I doubt that people will experience that because I've seen it too many times. But it, but it could mean that you, you release stem cells no matter what. You release stem cells. You need to understand. Stem cell research has shown something that we knew before, but now we know it with certainty and with numbers, meaning the entire body is constantly going through a process of tissue turnover. You get a new skin every month, a new liver every two, three years. Even the heart that was believed to mature until about 10 years of age. And after that, whatever you have in terms of number of cells in your heart, that, that's, that's what you have for your life, we now know it's not true. You get about 1% turnover rate every year in your heart, so your heart renews. So if you understand that you're you, you get a new liver every two, three years. How old are you now? You've got, you've got a few livers.

And you're gone through a lot of livers.

You've gone through a lot of livers. So my point is that if you don't have liver problem, that's because your stem cells are working. So stem cells are working. You don't necessarily feel them. So the question is, if I want them to work for one specific thing, like after a workout. Well, the question is, are they reaching that area? So now if you don't feel that there's a benefit, then the question is, do I have good microcirculation? So a big 30 micron stem cells can squeeze itself into a 12 micron capillary to reach the tissue. Do I have too much systemic inflammation that basically numbs stem cells and their ability to find where they need to travel. So it's not that your stem cells are not there. It's not that they're not working. It's just there may be other layers to deal with to make sure that stem cells go where they're needed.

Okay, so the idea is we're making stem cells in our marrow. Is that the only place they're made?

That's where they originate? They're pretty much. I mean, once they leave, well, that's where they're made.

Okay.

But then they reach, they leave the bone marrow. And they will go in every single organs and tissue in the body. Each tissue, organs will have their own stem cell layer that has some form of proliferation as well. So you can say a stem cell can come from your liver. It's called an oval cell in your liver. So it's an hepatocyte stem cell. It started in the it originate. Think of that. Totipotent stem cells on the day you're born, on the day you're conceived. And then think of your bone marrow stem cells on the day you're born from those stem cells. Everything that you are in the future came from those stem cells in the bone marrow. Okay, so they come from there originally.

Because I am a professional biohacker, I've had my bone marrow taken out twice. Not that comfortable, but not as painful as everyone says. It just feels weird. Kind of like, you know, that fingernails on a chalkboard thing. Just imagine that inside your skeleton. That was the feeling of it. And they pulled them out and said, wow, your bone marrow is so rich and creamy. And I Thought about putting some in my coffee, but I didn't. But how do we influence the quality of our bone marrow so that we can make more stem cells and then stem region can release them better?

This is a, to me, a fascinating field in medical research because in the whole field of stem cell research, the one thing that has barely been touched is the bone marrow. So the research on the bone marrow itself is. I mean, there's really not a lot of what is known today. Fasting is the only thing that I'm aware of that can help regenerate the bone marrow. What I mean here is that if you extract stem cells from the bone marrow and you look at their ability to migrate into a tissue and proliferate, which is an essential part of what they do, one stem cells is meaningless. It's one stem cell with become a million tissue cells that is really relevant. So amplification is essential. So the ability of stem cells to migrate and multiply increases after fasting. So you take stem cells before fast and after fasting and you see that they're more effective, which means they act as younger stem cells. So rejuvenation of your bone marrow is something that has been seen with fasting. With fasting, I am, I am convinced. I mean, that's an area of research that I would like to really dive now. Ways to be able to either reconvert the bone marrow or slow down that conversion process. I think it would be the single most potent thing that we can do for longevity.

I know that when I had my marrow taken out, I had the most profound cravings to eat bone marrow. And I'd flown to San Francisco afterwards. There's a restaurant called the Epic Steakhouse that's there on the water. And I was just jonesing in a way I'd never have for bone marrow. I like bone marrow on my ribeye, but so I go to this restaurant and I was so tired after this brutal stem cell procedure, which doesn't happen when you just take stem regen pills. But I was so cooked that I went in and I turned a right into a fish restaurant. And I sat down and I'm like, there's no steak on the menu. What happened in my restaurant? And so I'm traumatized over lack of bone marrow.

You recovered?

I did recover, but it feels like the way you would increase bone marrow would be eat bone marrow. Kind of a Chinese medicine perspective. But I think that works because your body at least has materials. Egg yolks, particularly raw egg yolks, fatty cuts of meat, choline sources like that, making sure there's enough iron and a lot of the micro minerals, trace minerals, things like that. Those would be really important for bone marrow because mineral deficiencies are going to block that at the start. And this is why I focus on things like minerals. 11 the things I'm doing for longevity, like the most boring, like have enough minerals, have enough vitamin D. Right. So we get that going, and then there's all these different biohacks that it feels like support stem cells, and one of them would be something like pemf. So you could possibly eat a bunch of nutrients that support your bone marrow, and you could use PEMF on the parts of the body that do that. Now, what is PEMF going to do if you're taking stem regen, do they.

Work together on the bone marrow? You pretty much, like, mentioned everything that is. That is relevant. So there is. I mean, I love traditional Chinese medicine. And all this science is coming from observing nature. From a purely western medical standpoint. When you cook the bone marrow, you have no cells that are alive, no growth factors are intact. So all of this is gone. So technically, you would say there's no link between eating bone marrow and what it. What. What it would have as an effect on the bone marrow. But I'm not quite sure that it's that simple.

It's mostly a nutrient thing. Right. And there's a bunch of haters out there, like, well, there's no evidence that eating collagen affects your skin. I'm like, guys, I don't know if you've looked at those studies. I have, but there's three different studies that show, oh, many. It's a signaling factor. But what I do know straight up is if the body needs nutrients to make bone marrow, if you eat bone marrow, the nutrients will be in it, right. And then you can convert them. And if you're lacking something, it can't. So I'm not saying eating bone marrow causes you to grow in bone marrow. I'm saying eating bone marrow means you'll have the materials as long as you can get the signal to make bone marrow. And then you take stem regen afterwards, which is going to cause the bone marrow to release more stem cells.

Correct.

Okay, that's kind of cool. So healthier bone marrow plus stem regen would mean even more stem cells.

Correct. I'm taking a leap here. I cannot tell you that the science is there. However, one thing that we completely know in the world of medicine and oncology is that you have people that are called poor mobilizers and people that are called good mobilizers, people who release stem cells easily. The more you release stem cells, the more your bone marrow gets better at releasing stem cells.

Oh, so it's like.

So that's a reality.

You're training your bone marrow to be better at making stem cells in a way.

So the leap that I can probably not take scientifically, but it's just an interest concept. If you start to release more stem cells, are you going to build a stronger bone marrow over time? We know from the work that we have done that if we test somebody who is naive, meaning that person has never taken any of these herbal extract that we have shown, trigger the release of stem cells from the bone marrow. And we test them on day one, when it's the first time that they're taking it, then they take it every day and we test them, let's say a month later. Their response a month later is stronger than. Than it was on day one. Okay, so we have seen that.

Got it.

But, but can I draw the conclusion to say, therefore, the more you take it over time, the stronger your bone marrow is? I don't know if I can go that far. It's an interesting concept.

Okay.

But to go back to your. To your question about pmf, there is an amazing synergy with pmf. Actually, there's an amazing synergy with a lot of modalities. And if I take one step back first to put that into the greater context, for most people, stem cell is this. It's this new thing like we just discovered stem cells, it's an injection. It's new. And the more we dive into stem cell research, the more we need to realize it's like your immune system. It's like oxygen in your body. Like, it's everywhere. Now we find them in urine and saliva. It's like any body fluid is likely to have stem cells. They are really everywhere, and they are the body's repair system. So if I answer the question in a very. Would say anything that has been documented or experienced in the past or our history to boost the body's ability to repair, Most likely it's leveraging in one way or another, stem cell function in the body. And PMF is a pure example of this. We know PMF accelerates recovery from injuries, joint, bone, ligament, muscle. And what we know today is that if you apply pmf, it's going to pool more stem cells in that area. It's going to boost the ability of these stem cells to migrate into T tissue. It's going to stimulate the ability of stem cells to proliferate, multiply in that tissue. And if you apply PMF to a test tube with stem cells, you enhance their ability to become like chondrocytes to make bones, tendon, stem cells, ligament, muscle. So the whole machinery is there for pmf, basically leveraging stem cells to repair a joint. So now you use PMF and you simply put more stem cells in circulation so your PMF can leverage more stem cells. So in that absolutely, like strong, strong synergy to take stem regen release when somebody is doing pmf, like two hours, two hours before. Yeah, you go for your PMF session, take two cat, two or four capsules of stem region to really boost the number of stem cells available to be leveraged.

So two to four hours is the window.

Yeah, two to four, I would say two hours is, is an ideal window. It will. The biggest increase will be between two to four hours.

The model that I use for reconstituting the body with biohacking is that you must have raw materials present, you must have energy present. So raw materials is what are you eating, right? What are the nutrients you're getting in? And then how do you get energy in? That's mitochondrial function, and that's not really what nutrients you have. They must be sufficient. You have to have enough calories for that. And then you have to have a signal, and the signal tells the body you need to change. And when the signal's there, the body changes because of stem cells. What we're doing here with all these things is saying, all right, make sure you ate the right stuff, make sure that you had enough energy because you ate enough. So fasting is good, but if you're totally fasted all the time, you're not eating our calories. We've both seen people do this all the time over fasting is bad for you or calories you just can't use. Insulin resistance, all that. We get into this, all right, do I do do squats, do I do PMF or any of the other many different biohacks, if you do those and the body has enough stem cells, you can change the body, you can change the mind, you can fix almost anything. And the neat hack that stem regen has because of all the work you've done over the last 20 years is now we can increase that layer of what's happening inside the body. So, like, great, let's wake up, let's do what I was going to do. Add the stem regen a couple hours before, and then when the body says, okay, I'm all set up to trans form. I have more stem cells to do it. But if you don't have the signal or you don't have nutrient sufficiency, it's not going to be able to build new tissue. If you don't know zinc, how are you going to build it? You can't, right? How do people know? Do I have a problem with mitochondrial function or a problem with stem cells?

I mean, it's a hard question. But first, what you described there is exactly, it's, it's all correct. But I just want to emphasize one thing. The unit in the body, like if you break down the body down to like it's, it's its simplest component, it's the cell. Everything is a cell.

I thought you're gonna say butter. That would be.

It's a cell. So what you describe is right. That cell needs the right signals to talk to it, the right stimulation. It needs the right nutrients to be able to do what that cell needs to do. Take away the cell, your nutrients are worthless. It doesn't mean anything. Take the cell without the nutrient, that cell cannot do anything. So all of these are essential to reconst building the body. But that cell, where does it come from? It comes from stem cells. So it's something that absolutely has to be inserted in the middle of basically any kind of health journey, biohacking journey. Like everything is a cell. Cells have a specific lifetime. They are replaced, and they're replaced by stem cells.

Interesting.

So in this whole concept, mitochondrial function or cells or stem cells, they're really hand in hand. And what I mean is that I mentioned that before, ACE stem cell is irrelevant. ACE stem cell that is released and migrates, let's say in a muscle, in your pancreas, your liver, whatever, and it becomes now a new liver cell is entirely irrelevant. You've got billions of cells in your liver. You had one. It's irrelevant. What is relevant is that that stem cell will multiply and will become maybe a million tissue cells. So if a million stem cells migra and all of them can become hundreds of thousands of tissue cells, now you've got really a capacity to repair. So this process of amplification of stem cells in your tissue is 1000% dependent on mitochondrial biogenesis, meaning each cell needs to be able to do its own energy. So it absolutely goes together. If you boost mitochondrial function in an old cell cell, it's great, but it's still not going to lead you very far. You need to have new cells that are going to come back and rejuvenate the tissue now give strong mitochondrial function to those new cells, and you're essentially bringing like two powerful things together to make like the greatest outcome.

It's one of the reasons that in a lot of my books I write about mechanisms to induce autophagy, which is let's get rid of the old cells or mitophagy, get rid of the old mitochondria. And when the cells are replaced, you have to have stem cells for them to be replaced. When you're doing intermittent fasting or longer fasting for autophagy, when do you take stem regen? Before, during or after the fast?

Put aside the sort of intellectual answer because we can take it in so many different, different direction by experience. If you take stem regen release during your fast, your fast is just stronger, like, like it's easier. It all parts of your fast just feel more potent. So I would say just take it the whole time during a fast.

There's nothing in it that's going to break a fast that I'm aware there's.

Nothing in it that will break a fast. I mean, the level of calories and nutrients is meaningless. What we know from a fast is that you will increase the number of stem cells during your fast. But if you take stem cells from the blood during a fast, you will see that they're sluggish, like they're not really proliferating very well, migrating very well. But right after the fast, in the refeeding period. Now if you take stem cells from the blood or from the bone marrow, you realize that they're migrating better, they're proliferating better, so they have rejuvenated. So the impact of a fast on your stem cells is really after the fast.

One of the things that bodybuilders will do is they will increase their insulin levels. So you lift heavy, then you have some protein that increases mtor and insulin, and then you have some sugar or some carbs that then drives muscles to grow faster. Is having more carbs or more insulin beneficial when you release stem cells?

I don't know if I can answer that question directly. However, what we know is that there's a direct link between how many stem cells in circulation and a whole slew of age related diseases. If you have fewer stem cells, like you count the number of stem cells and people with heart disease, atherosclerosis, vascular disease, erectile dysphoria, a whole slew of problems, they all have fewer stem cells. But diabetes, you see the same thing in Diabetes. But diabetes has a different relationship. Meaning that you have fewer stem cells in somebody who's diabetic. But also the higher glycemia, creating glycation also suppresses stem cell release. So glycation suppresses the natural role of stem cells in the body.

So you don't want elevated sugar for long periods.

Correct, correct. So the moment that you have elevated sugar over long periods of time and you increase the production of, of, of what, what, what is called glycation. Yeah, yeah.

Advanced glycation.

There you go. And you produce that in the body, it will suppress stem cell mobilization.

Yet another reason not to chronically eat sugar.

Correct.

So you could be moderate to low carb. Correct. Low glycemic. And then you work out and you've taken your stem regen right before the workout or two hours before, after the workout, you can have correct carbs and your blood sugar will go up. It should go right back down. You're not going to get a lot of aging from that. But you might get more muscle recruitment.

Correct. You need to rebuild glycogen. You need to support normal physiology of muscle. Just beware of long periods of time. I do believe, and I know it's something that is almost impossible to test, but I do believe that longevity can, can, can be predicted. If we could measure how much time in your life you spend with higher glycemia, if we could measure that, it would probably like the best marker to say, how's going to be your health? You know, when you're past 60, it.

Definitely makes a sense.

So I would say keep your glycemia as low as possible. You can have this spike, but with a good insulin response, so they come back down and you can time them, you know, with, with muscle activity or physical activity, because yeah, you need to rebuild glycogen, no question.

There's a 1970s doctor who says you exercise two, three hours a day and the only thing that matters is muscle mass. It's like exercise, exercise, exercise as a path to longevity. What does over training do for stem cells?

I don't know if over training has a negative impact on stem cells, but there's one thing that is clear. When you do exercise physically with intensity, you release stem cells. So somewhere you could say, well, physical activity is a way to. For longevity because you release stem cel, you have more stem cells in circulation. But if you really look at life like people who have trained over long periods of time, they don't necessarily out of the physical activity that they did when they were between let's say 15 and 40 years of age when they're 60, they don't necessarily are protected against all these age related problems. If not, it's probably more.

Yeah, look at the triathletes. Correct. They're not doing correct.

So I think that you release stem cells, but you also create such an environment in your body with so much repair that is needed by the constant assault to the body that at the end of the day I think that you're sucking up a lot of your healing potential toward a multitude of micro injuries that at the end of the day it may not be like a positive sum.

Yeah. There's also high cortisol from overtraining. What does high cortisol do to stem cells?

There you go. It suppresses stem cells ability to migrate into a, to proliferate.

It's one of the reasons that I ended up after about 10 years of running upgrade labs. Look, let's make sure that the environment inside the body is primed. Let's put an intense signal, whether it's for cardio, metabolic or for muscle, but a brief intense signal and then let's make sure that we have strong recovery so cortisol doesn't get too elevated and then the stem cells can really do their job. And I'm seeing better results from less stimulation. As long as the signal is clean, that's signaling it. And I think that's a good path to longevity. And I'm definitely seeing the numbers improve in people where they're losing weight, bone density is increasing and all the things that you'd expect. What is your exercise?

I don't do a whole lot. I need to increase that into and do much more right now. Shame, shame.

More exercise. I'm 20 minutes a week, dude. I do it at upgrade loud. So I think this idea that more exercise is better isn't borne out in research, but fitness is good and moving like walking is good. But the idea that you have to do zone two cardio for eight hours a week to live forever, it's not in the numbers.

My physical activity is essentially I walk a lot.

There you go.

I walk a lot. I, I live on the, on the, on a, on a farm, on a piece of land where I, I need to chop wood, I need to shovel snow, I need to carry, chop trees, carry them like, like, it's just a lot of work on the land. For me, that's the physical activity that like it recruits every single muscle of your body. It's not targeted to one thing. So that's the physical Activity that, that I like to do. I, I canoe. So it's really good for the core. So that's, that's what I like.

Have you heard of the Japanese high intensity walking or interval walking?

I've heard of it.

It's kind of funny, but you're getting better results than 10,000 steps a day or even better results than some zone two cardio. And it takes a half hour a day. And it's like walk fast for three minutes, walk slow for three minutes, and that's going to create a lot of mobilization, gets all the tissue flowing. It changes the water in the cells so that you get microcirculation. And if you stack that with, say, stem regen, that actually is a really important signal. And I don't think you have to go, you know, sweat it out and, and suffer the way some people do. I don't, I don't fetishize suffering that way, especially if to live a long time. If I have to spend eight hours a day on my longevity practice, you need to extend your life by 50% just to make up for all the time you spent, you know, miserable doing that stuff. So I like, I like your practice move is important and make sure you have adequate strength, adequate muscle.

I think you're pointing to something that I think is, I think the science is there right now. We used to think that the more time you spend exercising, the better it is for muscle mass and just longevity. And I think it's clear now with a lot of science and longevity, it's not the intensity that matters, it's really the consistency of just how you move your body. And stem cell bring a very interesting new thing in that picture is that, you know, when you look at it like muscle cells are very well known to be multinucleated. Most cells have one nucleus. Muscle cells have many, many nuclei. And the reason why they have many nuclei is that they grow through the fusion of satellite cells with muscle fibers. So, and satellite cells are muscle stem cells. Right? So, so the, the process of hypertrophy, like your muscle growing after physical activity, is entirely driven by stem cells. So the moment that you had stem cells to that component, again, you can leverage the little bit of activity that you do to basically amplify what you gain in terms of muscle mass mass.

There's other things that you can stack from the world of biohacking with stem regen. And I've got a really interesting story. It involves you and another guy who presented on stage at the biohacking conference. So you talked about STEM regen and Dr. Jerry Tennant talked about electrical stimulation of tissues for healing. Now Dr. Tennant is a legend in the field. He figured out the voltage of healing thing. And 25 years ago, and when my dad was in his early 50s, he started getting macular degeneration. And this is when I know that you know what that is, but a lot of our listeners may not. This is when inside your eyes. It's a leading cause of blindness where you have problems with the macula that involve mitochondrial function. So I knew about Dr. Tennant's work and I said, hey dad, you should check this out. So we just did. And he did it reliably for six months. It was eight minutes of stimulating acupuncture points around the eyes and it cured his macular degeneration. But it took months. Well, I was with him two days ago and he said, you know what? My macular degeneration finally came back. He's been on stem regen for a year. Actually maybe two years. You guys have been sending it to him. And, and they, they are. My parents never say that things work. We can't really tell. And they said, we think that one's working. So they're like stem regeneration regen, but with stem regen. And he took out his old Jerry tenant thing and he did his eyes again in two weeks. The spots he had where he couldn't see, he said the spots are gone. I just have a few little sparkles on the edges. But I can see in the middle of my vision again. I think that's because stem regen plus electrical stimulation did that. And so the idea is you can amplify your biohacks with this. And I'm guessing he'll probably hear this, but Dr. Tennant, that's 25 years of progress in my family. So thanks. It was an honor to have him on stage. Stage at the conference.

You know, stem cells can become everything, including cells of the eye, cells of the cornea. The only problem with the eye is that access to the eye is very limited because of poor blood circulation. So the moment you do something around the eye to enhance that. Yes, stem cells can repair.

I've been doing some work lately with tennis professionals like super high ranking ones. Stem regen doesn't have any ingredients that are banned for sport. Right.

We have now a version of stem Regen released that is called sport. And that one is NSF certified.

Beautiful.

And it's only because the original stem Regen release formula as colostrum. Colostrum is a natural source for insulin growth. Factor and insulin growth factor is on the water list. I don't think you would ever test positive, but NSF will not certify a product that contains colostrum. So sport would be what to take.

Well, if you're not a professional athlete, you can go to the WADA list for a list of all the things that work really well for humans. Performance and longevity and wada. You guys need to get your heads out of your asses. The enhanced games are coming for your jobs and I'm with them.

Some of it is ridiculous.

Yeah. And when you tell an athlete that they're not allowed to heal using the things everyone else has, it's because you hate the athlete. The reason I was thinking about all of this is what do we know about either cardiorespiratory function or muscle synthesis with stem cells or with stem regen? Have you seen seen improvements in the rate of change from taking it?

Yeah, like I was mentioning before, stem cells will go from the blood, reconstitute the stem cell layer of muscles called satellite cells, which are a crucial component of muscle hypertrophy. So muscle growth. So. So the more stem cells you have, the more you grow, but you grow your muscle. But to me the story around this is, is a little bit deeper in the sense that as you, let's say you passed 40, any injury that you have is happening at a place where he had previous micro injuries, micro lesions that did not repair properly. Every single time that you go to the gym and you feel that you cannot go full out, it's because you have these micro lesions in your body. Micro lesions will inhibit full muscle contraction as a protective mechanism. It's a nervous system protection. So if you can accelerate the repair of these microlesions every single time that you go to the gym, you will get more out of the time that you're spending in the gym. And also by repairing all these microlesions, you protect yourself against future, future injuries. So to me, the role of stem cells in recovery after physical activity is really all into hypertrophy, but also like protection and gaining more out of the time that you spend in the gym.

Another area that's really important to me is traumatic brain injury. And Nick Foles has been on the podcast anyone just it was played football, played soccer, hockey, combat sports. The list goes on and on. I'm on Dr. Daniel Amen's board of directors who actually showed that long term concussive damage is an issue. And then we have all of our combat vets. So I've been for years Working on what do I do before I'm likely to hit my head and what do I do right after. And I've certainly had my own tbis I've talked about on the show show. So what do stem cells have to do with preventing or recovering from brain injuries in 1996?

So in the very early days when I was working with this blue rhinology, not understanding how it was working, we later discovered that it act as a stem cell mobilizer. But all of this started like the whole quest started when I got a phone call one day from a clinic in Albuquerque. They were doing neurofeedback back treatment for soldiers coming back from Iraq war.

That's pretty unusual. In 1996.

Yeah, 1996. So they were still having like PTSD, mild traumatic brain injury, which affected like so many things in their lives. And they were using neurofeedback to help in the treatment of, of of this condition. And then they showed up. Two of their patients recovered from mild traumatic brain injury in record time, like five to six weeks. And they wondered why. And as they went back to their medical record, they saw that these two guys randomly were consuming this blue green algae at the time. So it started the whole research project where at the end we had about 150 of these patients in the trial and across the board, the moment that we start releasing stem cells in these individuals, they recover much faster. So there's no question in my mind that one of the mechanism of action of stem region release release in people who have a whole slew of sort of like vague symptoms because mild traumatic brain injury shows in all kinds of ways.

Sucks. Yeah.

Poor memories, poor concentration, allergies, high blood pressure, emotional regulation, personality sleep. Like there's so many different things that can be dysregulated after mild traumatic brain injury that when people say, I mean stem regen release just change a lot of things in my life that are vague like, like this I'm always thinking, have we resolved an MTBI that was there in the background? Because mtbi, I think my background is neuroscience. It's one of the most undiagnosed condition in the world. You slip on the ice, you hit your head, that's it, you get punched. Anything, you get a hit on the head, even, even a not very big one. And then you can have mild traumatic brain injury and there are signs to diagnose it yourself. So, so anyway, so, so yes, putting more stem cells in circulation has been shown to be extremely beneficial for MTBI.

We find that about 90% of people who come to 40 years of Zen. When we're running our initial brain scans on them to do neurofeedback, they have signs of brain injury. And it's small and sometimes it's big. And you can look someone straight in the eyes and say, have you ever hit your head? And they'll say no. But if you ask them five times, it's like, oh, come to think of it, when I was seven, I was unconscious for three days. Like, yeah, your brain shows that still. And I've seen a lot of marriages and relationships that just get broken up when someone hits their head. It's crazy. So if stem cells can help with that, and there's all sorts of cognitive stuff you can do, Whether it's behavioral, some of the vision and vestibular stuff. But I think nutritional sleep, darkness, circadian biology, stem cells and mitochondrial function, they all matter better. And if you know that you've hit your head, it seems like taking stem regen would be a really good idea.

Yeah.

What would you sack with it?

Neurofeedback. Okay, Neurofeedback. Transcranial microstimulation could be, like, good ways. I would say, honestly, do something with your brain. Neurofeedback is probably the most direct. But I don't know, go learn a new language. Do something with your brain that is going to activate your brain and force your brain to reconnect While you put more stem cells in circulation. That's probably the best thing to do.

I would add red and infrared light on the part.

Correct.

That makes a big difference. The 528 eye laser is another big one. And it's funny, any of these things, you stack it with more stem cells or more mitochondrial function, you get more results.

You get more results.

Yep. Which is kind of cool. Another thing that has fascinated me is vibration. I started talking about whole body vibration about 15 years ago when I started the biohacking movement. And people thought I was just crazy. Like, look at this weird guy saying, you should stand on a plate. I'm like, guys, NASA uses it to recover astronauts. I'm pretty sure it's real. You just haven't heard of it, so you're making fun of it. So when we culture cells, including stem cells, if you've ever seen videos of them, like, they're on these things that are gently swaying the cells back and forth, forth. What is the function of vibration or other things like even, like a shock wave in stem cells?

Well, there's a study that came out not long ago that is actually showing that if you count stem cells before and after sitting on one of these vibration plate, you get more stem cells in circulation.

Oh, wow. There you go.

So there's a. And I would assume it's purely a mechanical phenomenon. Stem cells adhere to the bone marrow, to the bone marrow microenvironment through adhesion molecules. So these adhesion molecules have a certain strength if you want. But if you start to apply a lot of vibration, well, they detach from the bone marrow environment and they end up in the blood. So you do vibration with stem regen release and then you basically enhance the release that you get from either one of them. So it's another great stack. Just sit on a vibration plate an hour or two after taking stem regen release.

And it's funny, you could take stem regen release and then go into one of our upgrade labs locations and get all of the vibrations. Biohacking tech we just talked about including the whole body vibration. And it's interesting because we know that a shearing force has an effect on the fascia and on muscle. And you get shearing force from jumping up and down or from whole body vibration. But there's something else happening that's interesting. It's a piezoelectric effect on cell membranes. And what piezoelectric means is that when you move something or vibrate something, it makes a small amount of electricity. Cells like electricity and cell membranes are piezoelectric electric. So when you vibrate everything, you're kind of charging the system, you're changing the structure of water. Can you talk about what that change, whether it's from vibration or sunlight or whatever the change in water has to do with stem cells.

I'm not aware of any research with water and specifically stem cells. But, but it's clear that, I mean, you talked about piezoelectric energy. I think, I think it's interesting here to go back to the, to the really the basics. A cell as a difference of electrical potential between the inside and the outside. This is normally studied in neurons because electrical current is essential to brain function. But it's in every single cells of the body. So when a cell uses ATP, most of the use of that ATP, the energy that is produced by a mitochondria is to pump certain iron ions out of the cell and others inside the cell to maintain, I would say artificially or actively to maintain a differ. Because it's like a hydroelectric dam. You put the water on top and whenever you need energy, you open the dam. So you let these ion cross the membrane and these Ions carry nutrients with them through the membrane. So the cell needs this difference of potential in order to function optimally. So anything that brings back. And this is the work of Dr. Tenen that you talked about, this is the work that what the plates. Vibrating plate is doing with piezoelectric energy, you recharge cells. So this is crucial, this passage, the vibration that will allow this passage of ions is also enhanced by proper water. And I remember in Climate Lake, where this blue green algae is growing, there's something that is very unique in that lake. If you walk up to the ed of the rivers that are feeding that lake, you can walk and at one point there's a little lagoon and it's where it starts. Like you see the water bubbling from the ground, and that water bubbling from the ground. If you test tube, but you put your hand in that in this hole and you take a water sample. The water is 4 degrees C. So roughly about, let's say 39, 38, 39 degrees Fahrenheit. It's cold pH8 and it has no minerals.

Slightly alkaline.

Okay, slightly alkaline.

No minerals.

So it's alkaline because it's restructured.

Got it.

So it's believed that it's coming from crater Lake with 2,000ft of a column of water pressurizing this water through the underground. And that pressure restructures the water. And the reason why I'm saying this is that you take a glass of that water at 4 degrees C and you drink it and you don't feel the cold in your stomach.

Interesting.

It's amazing. This water has no surface tension, so you put a drop on the table, it just flattens. And my point is that you don't feel the cold in your stomach is I think the water gets absorbed as it's getting in through your mouth, your esophagus. So water, that kind of water is amazing for how it can feed and, and hydrate cells, allow the proper passage of nutrients, proper exchange to a membrane that is essential to every single cell in the body, including stem cells. I'm not aware that it's uniquely important for stem cells, but it's really important for every single, like water. We talked about this before. Water is just like. I'm not saying nobody talks about water. There's a lot of discussions about water. I think most people do not realize how paramount it is for health to have good water in your body. You're 80% water, it's everywhere. Good water is essential. And I'm not talking about Alkaline water. I'm talking about restructured water.

It's funny, some of the keyword sensors on social media, if you talk about structured water, they actually blip it as not being scientific, which is insane. I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg or any social media company to tell me what is science science. Unless it's the science of manipulating people, they're probably good at that. But Dr. Gerald Pollock out at the University of Washington has written several big books, and he talks about something called exclusion zone water. And this is water that you can see on a microscope is different. And it forms, interestingly, from vibration or from ultraviolet light. Light. Or from body heat. And it forms when water is held up against a lipid membrane or just any kind of fat. So if you look at a cell wall from the algae, look at what's going on with that water. The reason that that water is special is its exclusion zone water. And the reason exclusion of water is so important in our bodies is that if you have stem cells or even red blood cells, micro capillaries are not big enough enough for them to go through. So something is pulling them through. And what that is is exclusion zone water. And you can increase that with infrared light on the body. So that means if you have more exclusions on water because your whole body vibrated, because you walked, because you were in the sun, because you used an infrared sauna, because you had enough hydration in the first place, or the other way to make exclusions on water would be to put the fat in water in a blender with heat. Heat. And yes, I funded the research that Dr. Pollock did showing that if you put butter and MCT and hot water and you blend it up, that you get very large amounts of this kind of water, similar to what you're finding in that lake. So whatever your method is, if you have enough of that and you have stem cells circulating now, the stem cells can get there because you had the right water. And the Tibetans somehow knew this. Right? They did yak butter tea years ago ago. So if you're looking to say, all right, I'm going to take my stem regen and I want the stem cells that my body is going to release to get everywhere in the body. So what biohacks will I do today? And it may be the infrared sauna, it may be going for a walk, it may be sunbathing, it may be drinking some coffee, I would suggest danger coffee with butter and MCT in it. Or it could be all of the different biohacks, the pulsed Electromagnetic stuff or a regular workout, Any of those are going to improve, improve the condition of water in your body. Which means that the stem cells can get there. And then you guys make, in addition to the release, which is the primary one that I've used, you make mobilize, which also helps stem cells move around in the body. How does mobilize make stem cells move around if it's not hacking the water?

What you described there is paramount microcirculation. And oftentimes like people will go to a laboratory lab, get their the blood test, you can tell all the great things that is in their blood. But that absolutely it means nothing if that blood does not reach your capillaries. Because the unit of your health is the cell. The cell must receive all those nutrients. And every single cell is the delivery system to that cells are fine, fine vessels called capillaries that are very, very small. And if you don't have proper microcirculation in an area of your body, body, that area is deprived from proper nutrition. So you can have all the great things in your blood. It has to reach your capillaries. That is true also for stem cells. Stem cells can be up to 30 microns. A capillary is 12 microns. So it doesn't take a whole lot to hinder the ability of stem cells to have access to an area that is injured because an injury oftentimes has compromised its microcirculation. So everything that you mentioned works. Red lights, P, emf, exercise, all of these work. What we did is that we approach it from a nutritional standpoint. So we have mobilized, which is nattokinase to digest fibrin in the blood. So it will increase blood fluidity. Because entrainment is a crucial component for cells to circulate into fine vessels. If your blood flow is fast and entrain stem cells into a capillaries, that helps stem cells circulating into into these fine vessels, vessels. So nattokinase. Then we need to dilate arterioles with nitric oxide, producer beetroot kind of products, citrulline kind of ingredients. So you dilate capillaries, sorry, arterioles so you bring more blood to capillaries. Capillaries are passive, so they will be extended if their ability, if their elasticity is good enough. So you need to increase the elasticity of these capillaries. So we have a bunch of bioflavonoids, herbal extract that have been documented to increase, increase this elasticity of capillaries. And for cells to really slide into fine capillaries, you need to Have a good layer of that is called the glycocalyx. So we have polysaccharides that have been shown to help rebuild the glycocalyx. So these four technologies are put into mobilize so that as you take it at the same time as you take release, you put stem cells in circulation and when the number of stem cells peak in the blood, you have increased, you have reduced the, increased the fluidity of your blood. With nattokinase you've dilated your arterioles and over time you've rebuilt capillaries glycocalyx. So you basically boost stem cells ability to go where they need to go to repair in the body.

I just saw a study about nattokinase. It was a relatively high dose, but the study showed that it was reversing plaque in arteries. It's actually healing arteries. And I think a lot of listeners might have heard of it because during the pandemic we had this weird problem with clotting. And strangely the people who got injected had more problems with that than oh, how weird. Anyway, if clotting's your problem, nattokinase is your friend.

Absolutely.

Nattokinase breaks up thrombin which is behind the clotting and fibrinogen. So this is something I've taken either serrapeptase or nattokinase every night for 20 plus years because blood flow is so important. So I love it that you included the most powerful one, which is nattokinase in sergen mobilize. So I have a hard time remembering the how to stack all three. So release is the thing that sergeant makes, that causes stem cells to, to move out into the bloods like getting an IV and then mobilize is what makes it so they can get into all the parts of the body. And the other one was a do signal. And I don't understand that one very well.

Okay, so, so in 2001, 2002 we had access to about 150 Alzheimer's patient in a hospital. And at the time this idea had started to, to, to, to, to, to develop in my mind that we are probably going. There's probably a link between how advanced a disease is and the number of stem cells in circulation. The more advanced, fewer stem cells are there to repair, so you don't get the repair. So the problem basically is advancing. So we know today that it is true across the board for pretty much like every single disease except Alzheimer's. It's the same thing, but there's a little bit Of a complexity with Alzheimer's, which we saw, and now other people have published about that as well, is that not in everyone, but we did see very advanced Alzheimer's patients that had quite a bit of stem cells in circulation.

So they weren't getting there.

That's the point is that what we saw in these patients that were advanced Alzheimer's, a lot of stem cells in circulation is when we look at the stem cell more closely, they have lost their ability to respond to the signal coming from the tissue.

The stem cells have lost.

The stem cells have lost their ability. The thing to understand is that that signal is transient, Meaning once the signal is told to migrate, a whole cascade of reaction develop. Where you adhere to the capillary wall, you create a hole in the capillary, you migrate to the capillary. There's a whole series of successive events that are happening. If you trigger this process outside of the capillary, then when the stem cell arrives in the capillary, she has lost. The stem cell has lost that ability to migrate. So it's there, but it cannot migrate in the area if it is stimulated outside of the area where the signal should be coming from. And that's to understand inflammation is a localized signal. That is mainly its main function is to tell stem cells where the problem is. So stem cells can, as they circulate, migrate in that area and go and repair. If you get a problem that is chronic and it's constantly signaling and it's not repairing, that signal leaks and it's becoming. Your local signal has become systemic. It's everywhere. So systemic inflammation, inflammation essentially is noise in your bloodstream that is decreasing stem cells ability to clearly see where they need to go. Oftentimes I just say it's like a fire. You've got a fire in your place. You look where the smoke is coming from in your house, you know where the fire is. Don't handle the fire. Let it go like this for a week. There's a point where there's smoke everywhere. You cannot tell where the fire is. Inflammation is the same thing in your body. So signal is a blend of herbal, herbal extract that have been shown to inhibit COX2.5 LOX, the secretion of various types of inflammatory cytokines, bromelain, to digest the existing ones. So it's sort of a broad formula that is there just to reduce all this background noise so that stem cells can really see the signal from where it's coming from so they can migrate where they need to go.

I get it. So we're Dealing with, number one, release stem cell cells. Number two, make sure that the stem cells can go anywhere in the body. And then number three, make sure that you've turned off inflammation. So only the parts where there's a true need for stem cells will get the attention.

They can see it and they can go there. That's the whole system.

You would do all three if you're working on healing from something, you're losing a ton of weight or you're on a new exercise program, recovering from surgery or whatever, because you need all three of them.

Correct.

Okay, that makes sense.

And that's why it was developed. It was developed because we know that your stem. Stem cells are your repair system. We know that everybody has stem cells in their body. Otherwise, after three years of having a problem, you would not have a liver. So you take that as your benchmark so you know that your stem cells are working. Why then this chronic condition is not repairing? Why is it? And the two main reason is that the chronic nature of the problem has damaged the microvasculature. So your stem cells are there, but they cannot reach that area. And oftentimes, if it has been chronic for too long, the inflammation has now become systemic. So now stem cells have a problem defining where they need to go. Okay, so you, you handle those two, those two aspects. Microcirculation and systemic inflammation or noise in your bloodstream. And now the stem cells that you've released can go and repair. So it's seeing that people releasing their stem cells with stem regen release still are not getting the benefits that, that we, we thought they could get. It's not that they're not releasing stem cells. It's just that those stem cells cannot go where they need to go. That's why these two products were developed.

Okay, I totally get it now. What about stem cells and burnout or fight or flight activation all the time? Do they do something for the central nervous system?

All I can say is that that reality in your terrain of having cortisol and having distress hormones circulating in your body. Rat studies have shown that if you have cortisol or stress hormones in the body, and you take stem cells before and after that episode, that creates stress, you can see that stem cells have lost a lot of their ability to migrate into tissue and proliferate. So you take somebody who lives constantly under a certain level of stress, that means during all that time, their natural ability to repair and to renutri issues is declined, is suppressed. And I find it fascinating because I started my old journey into brain research When I was a teen and I came across a book, it was neuropsychoimmunology and it was talking about all the link between stress and quite frankly just about any age related disease. Stress is a component of almost anything and the link from a physiological standpoint is not always clear. And now years later we discussed discover stress will suppress stem cells ability to do their job in the body and they are your repair and renewal system. So I think the culprit is right there. When you live for decades with stress, you have suppressed your natural ability to repair and renew your organs and tissues. So of course you'll develop problems as you age.

So then if I increase my circulating stem cells, if I'm still stressed, am I going to get benefit?

You're getting benefit from it because you're still increasing an aspect of your body that is essential repair. But you would get so much better results if you just chill. Learn to manage stress, learn to meditate which release stem cells on its own. So managing your stress is definitely, I mean it needs to be done. But in all the studies that we're doing, like we have a study for example on stable chronic congestive heart failure where we have shown so far on 10 patients, it's an ongoing study, 10 out of 10 have reversed their condition and now have normal heart function. But my point is, is that we didn't change anything in these people's lives. Like they're as stressed as they used to or did we get lucky and those 10 did not have stress in their lives? I would guess not.

Statistics would say no.

But if they were to at the same time learn to manage their stress, would they get other benefits outside of just their heart? I mean there's no doubt in my mind.

Well, as you'd expect, Stemregen co Dave and Christian's giving you 20% of the off as a gift and I want you to go out and try stem regen. And the reason for that is that if you do any of the biohacking, you go to upgrade labs, you do all the stuff I've written about in my books, stuff you've learned over the last 10 years of the show. Having more stem cells present can work. So try it for a month and see what changes. I think you're going to find that there really are meaningful changes. Even if you're young and you still have a lot of stem cells, if you've had an injury, you're recovering from something or you're doing heavy training or something, give it a try. And that's a meaningful savings and this works. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've had every joint in my body injected with stem cells. It hurt. It was like getting hit by a truck. And I don't recommend that kind of procedure anymore. And I still do some external stem cell procedures that have a great effect, but I take stem regen almost all the time. I probably take a few days off here and there when I get lazy, but I do that because I'm going to live to at least 180. So Christian, I appreciate all the work you did to make this real and to have the science behind it. And thanks for the discount. And guys, that's stemregen co Dave, 20% off. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

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