Stem Cells, Peptides, GLP1s and the New Blueprint for Preventative Medicine with Dr. Vass

If you are wondering where the future of medicine is headed, then you are absolutely, positively going to want to listen to today's recording because I have Dr. Vase. I don't know if you know of him. He's all over social media, but he is just a brilliant physician, a caring physician, a talented physician who started off in the emergency room and recognized that that is not where he is going to be able to do what he wanted to do in medicine, carry out what he wanted to carry out, and accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. So he left the ER for what I consider much greener pastures, but he's really setting a standard for what healthcare should look like. So sit down and stay tuned. For Dr. Voss. Hi, Dr. Voss.

Hi, how are you?

I am so— I am so happy to have you, excited to have you. Uh, I want— I want you to tell everyone your origin story, but before we even go there, I'm reading your bio and it says you're a rock and ice climber. And like, as a fellow physician, you know, we're kind of like, uh, cooked to be cautious Right? What is up with that?

You know, I guess I've always been a bit of a risk taker. And, you know, yeah. So, and, you know, let's say I'm not cavalier, you know, I'm judicious, but I definitely, you know, like I tell people, my mother calls me a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Although really the draw for me to these kinds of sports, because I still, you know, avidly whitewater kayak. I don't rock climb as much, which is more a time constraint, but I'm here in Boulder, Colorado, which is a mecca of rock climbing. It's why I moved here.

Sure is.

And those sports, at least my personal attraction to them, is that it puts you in a flow state. And so for me, the way I describe it, it's like moving meditation. You cannot be thinking about anything else. You have to while you're engaged, hyperfocus. Yeah. And, you know, yeah. So, so for me, it was moving meditation when I was young. I found, you know, really my first love was wrestling. So I wrestled through high school and college and I still do jiu-jitsu. But that's again, you can't do that and not be, you know, mind blank. So that's— I'm drawn to things where— and now I meditate a lot. So, you know, that's a sort of a different way to the same, a similar thing.

And you're a super fit guy.

I guess so.

I mean, I think you're blushing. Are you blushing?

Maybe I am. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I'm, you know, I guess again, like I've, I've lived my life. I've been incredibly fortunate and I do things that, that I love, that I love doing.

And so your fitness is probably not with the intention of being fit. But with the intention of doing things that you love that just happen to result in fitness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're really setting a beautiful example.

Well, I think, you know, we, you know, we're, we're, we're about health and we're about living a full, enjoyable life. I think, you know, we're, we're in alignment there, I believe. And, you know, when you break it down, the people who live the longest are engaged in things that they love doing. And, and you can, it doesn't have to be Listen, physical activity is important for longevity, but you can get, you can access, you know, that space, you know, the connection space is sort of the, you know, what I call it through anything, through music, through painting, through art, through sculpture, through performance. My wife's an opera singer. My parents were artists. So, you know, I, it's like you don't, it doesn't have to be a physical pursuit. That's your real passion and love. And that, can feed a full, healthy, long life. And so I think that's part of the cheat code is finding, you know, finding your passion, finding your love, and being able to allow yourself to enjoy that.

I think I'm in big trouble because I lift weights twice a week with my friend Jenn, who is also my trainer. And God should forgive me, but that woman is pure evil. And it is like 80 minutes of horrible torture for me. But I do it because it's like a means to an end and I've never been healthier, but I don't love it. Well, you know, and I'm not in a flow state.

Yeah. Well, and so listen, if, if you can find the cheat code, great. But if you know anything about me, that lifting is so important, particularly for women, because it's not often what women are drawn to. Men are more likely to be drawn to the resistance training.

My boys love it.

Yeah. And I'm kind of with you. I do it. I do resistance training. I don't love it. So I don't want to just say, oh, it should just be you know, it has to be love and rainbows all the time, right? Like, it's great. It's, it's great if it aligns that way. But yeah, strength, strength and resistance training is, is incredibly important. And the data is, is really bearing that out.

Um, that's why I grin and bear it twice a week, like whether I need it or not, right? Yeah.

Well, good for you.

Yeah. I'm not sure we should celebrate it. I bitched the whole time. I'm like, you guys should really fire me. So I'm just curious where this very healthy mindset and wisdom of yours came from, because I know you spent a lot of time in the emergency room as an emergency medicine doctor. I spent a lot of time in the emergency room as a surgeon, right? Because half of our time in the hospital is heading down to the ER because there's a trauma or there's an acute appendicitis or a hot gallbladder or, you know, a ruptured colon. So I look at— I know what my emergency medicine colleagues look like, and they don't look like you.

Uh, I actually, I appreciate you bringing this up because I think a lot of emergency medicine physicians, at least I did, and a lot of my, like, my close friends went into it for the right reasons. You know, we wanted to help people. You know, I wanted the freedom to be able to rock climb on weekdays when, you know, the cliffs were empty. And that worked great in my 20s. And I loved a component of that kind of medicine. But the emergency department is, is a very dark place. You're dealing with people at their worst, at their worst. And often you're dealing with people at their worst when you actually don't have a solution for them, but society doesn't have anywhere else to put them. So they end up there and really, you know, negatively impacted and the environment. So that, that energy, if we want to get into the woo a little bit, like the energy that's manifesting there, is toxic and it was taking a severe toll on me. And that was, that's part of how I ended up where I am is I knew I needed to change, you know, and, and at the end of my emergency medicine career, you know, I really felt like a sponge that had been sort of like wrung out to, it was brittle and dry and like there was no water left. And, you know, the problem, one of the problems that I had was like people who are naturally great at emergency medicine, like the rock stars in residency, there are people who know how to disconnect themselves from the pain and suffering that they're dealing with. And I'm not very good at that. You know, I'm very much an empath and I could feel people's need. And it was rewarding for me to be there for them, but I had a very hard time sort of drawing the line.

So you aren't referring to your people as gomers? No, I mean, you know what I'm talking about though.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's a horrible acronym.

Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of dark, terrible humor and, and really coping mechanisms everywhere, everywhere, everywhere in medicine.

We were no, we were no better in the surgery realm. Maybe we could have even been worse. Right.

Yeah. I mean, it's a very.

We often lost our filters and, and working in a hospital, especially when you're health-minded, working in a hospital is really challenging, really challenging because there's nothing about health that's happening in a hospital. Nothing. Literally nothing. I, I'm going to take like a little bit of a tangent to share a story with you that when I was kind of making my transition out of surgery and into functional medicine, there was an attempt to recruit me by the hospital saying, listen, we'll give you, we'll make you the first chair in the country of integrative oncology. And like, what an honor, right? And so I said, well, let's, let's talk about what that looks like. So I said, what? I'm talking to the chief medical officer of the hospital system, which is the biggest hospital system in Philadelphia. And I'm talking to the chief medical officer and I said, tell me, what are we going to do about the cafeteria? And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, listen, I can't have people wake up from their colon resection and give them pancakes and waffles and sausage for breakfast.

Insurance.

Like, I— we have these people that— or, or a bypass or whatever, like, pick an operation, okay? Because the educated people will be like, well, they wake up from colon surgery and they're not eating. But whatever, be that as it may, what we're feeding people in the hospital is totally, totally inappropriate. And the chief medical officer said, well, the cafeteria is off the table. No pun intended. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you know, part of our scores which lead to our reimbursement, part of this score is how good is the food. And if the food is too healthy, they perceive it as not tasting good, and so we get lower scores and lower reimbursements. So the cafeteria is off the table. And he said, let's just, let's just put that concept aside for a minute. We have this amazing teaching moment. People are at their crossroads. They are listening. We have a captive audience. We can take this opportunity to make sure that they don't need the next surgery, the next procedure, the next whatever. We can help them to be on a path to health. And he looked at me like I had 10 heads. He was like, what are you talking about? Why would we want to prevent the next procedure? We get paid for every procedure that we do. And I was like, yeah, we do not have the same agenda. My agenda is to keep people out of here and your agenda is to keep people in here. And that, that was the turning point for me. That was my moment that I said, like, I not only need to walk away from surgery, I need to walk away. I need to run all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you have like a moment? Did you have— or was it just— yeah, tell me, tell me about that transition because it's, it's not small. It's a big deal to walk away from a big career and start over.

Yeah, I mean, my colleagues, you know, I was part of a growing super successful private practice in emergency medicine. It had started as like a single hospital ER group and had grown to, you know, multi-hospital, multi-freestanding ED, over 100 providers. You know, I was a partner. It was part of the leadership. It was, you know what I mean? Like many people would say, like the worst financial decision I ever made.

Yeah.

Was leaving that practice, you know, selling, you know, I got a little, you know, you got a little nest egg that helped sort of seed where I am today from that. But yeah, the, the moment for me was I was working a night shift and I was overweight. I didn't, you know, I didn't look the way I like. I didn't like what I looked when I looked in the mirror. And even then I was climbing and still like a lot of people would still say like, oh, you're well, you're fit, but it's not. Like it was, I wasn't happy with it, but that was the least of it. It was, I was in that emotional state where I was wrung dry and the, the ER was under construction. So literally there's like plastic tape, plastic curtains halfway down the hallways and we had people in hallways all over the place, which in Colorado is not. Now I know on the East Coast and I'm practicing the East Coast like that in New York, it's normal in New York City, like stacked 3 stretchers deep in the, in the hallway is normal. Like in Colorado, it's not like that. So it was like, you know, I was like, I feel like I'm back in New York, which I left for a reason. But, um, and I saw somebody come in and traumas and you know what it's like on a bad night. It was level 1 trauma center, stroke center. Like everybody's busy. There's, you know, I'm like my job as the ER physician in that, in that moment is I have to see everybody as quickly as possible and identify who, like who really needs help.

Triage. You're on triage.

Get them the help that I can get them as quickly as possible and draw in the reinforcements to get them the help they need. And so every person who comes into the waiting room could be that person. And it's very easy to get lulled into, oh, the cough, like, they're fine. And then if you let them sit for 2 hours and you come in, they're coughing up blood. Anyway, You know the stories, right?

Oh, I know.

You never know.

My husband sat in on a gurney in the hallway of our local hospital for 12 hours with a spinal abscess.

Yeah.

I mean, with— by the time they like figured out what was going on with him and drew blood cultures, he was septic.

I mean, I have stories like that. You know, we all have stories like that. Like I actually had, yeah, I depends on how far down this rabbit hole you want to go.

Go into an ER and complain of back pain, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Like, if you don't have a dissecting aneurysm, you're sitting on a gurney in the hallway.

Yeah. Yeah. And the standard of care— and so I know this literature well because it was my specialty. The standard of care is to miss those 2 or 3 times before they're caught. So your husband is actually lucky. You probably had knowledge and advocated for— I mean, I'm making a bunch of assumptions, right? So the standard is to miss that. Diagnosis. That's the standard of care. 2 or 3 times, you know, we're talking by the 3rd visit, that's sort of the standard to catch that diagnosis, which anyway, so, but the moment for me was a night, you know, night like that. I'm, I'm already wrung dry and I see what I think is an easy, like, oh man, a cough, you know, cough came in. I was like, all right, I can get her in and out quick. And I go, she's in the hallway. And this poor woman, she was young in her 30s, looked healthy. And I was like, this is sweet. She wants a Z-Pak. I'm going to give it to her. She's going to be home and happy. I have one less person I have to worry about. And it was a chronic cough that had been going on for, you know, I forget, 12 months, had seen everybody from like the pulmonologist to the whatever. And it was, keeping her up and she, she had everything. She already had everything. She had like a codeine cough syrup. And like, I literally went through all the things I could think of. And, and, and I, and I was, I said to her, I was like, you know, I'm so sorry, but I don't, I'm, I, I'm not going to be able to give you the answer you're looking for. And she got mad. And like, I, like in this moment, I don't blame her, but then I, like, I felt myself getting mad and, and I started getting mad.

You matched her energy.

Yeah. And we started having an exchange, a verbal exchange. And I was like, I could feel, I was like, and I'm not like, I'm not a violent guy, right? But I was like, I could feel, I was like, I'm going to—

So says the wrestler.

So says the wrestler. Well, you know, like that's a healthy avenue or has been my life to like channel that energy. And I felt it bubbling up and I was like, I have to disengage because like there's also like, this isn't the only thing going on right now. Like there's, I've got 30 other people in this ER who I'm the, you know, like I'm their doctor. And I left that interaction and I was like, I need to find a way to practice medicine where this isn't like, I don't like this. I don't want to keep doing this anymore.

Well, that's super frustrating, but I would think that that is not an infrequent thing that happens. Happens in the ER because you get a lot of people who are just at the end of their rope and frustrated.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, for me, you know, I actually, most of the time I can handle that really well because I, you know, people can feel when you approach an interaction with compassion, people feel that. And, you know, I just reached a point where I was like, like in this moment, I don't have any more to give. And I'm going to a place where I like, I don't, I don't like, I I don't like this. This is not, it's not good for me. This is not good for her. This is not good for my wife or my children. Because then I come home and it's like, you know what I mean? That cloud is over me.

Yeah.

And so it spreads to them. Yeah, it was just, it was toxic. And so that, that was really, it wasn't, I left immediately after that, but that was where I was really, I was faced with, I like, I can't keep doing this. So yeah, that, that was, that was sort of the moment.

Talk to me about where the knowledge came from, because you and I have the same education. And I'll tell you that the stuff that I do every day now in practice, I didn't learn it in medical school. Yeah. Or if I did, it was not deemed important.

No.

Right?

It's not taught.

They teach us biology, they teach us physiology, they teach us biochemistry, and then they say, okay, forget all that. Because now you're going to learn to recognize symptoms, make a diagnosis, and prescribe and move on.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So how did you figure out how to do what you do today?

It was a journey, right? I mean, I didn't learn— I shouldn't say I didn't learn any. I mean, the medicine that I practice now is not taught in our traditional medical educational system. It's not taught in medical school. It's not taught in our internship and residency programs. The whole, the whole system is so profoundly broken, even going all the way back to your, you know, your story about the, the cafeteria, right? Like the thought that the system, the system is so broken You can't even take care of yourself as a provider in that system. How can you really care for people? What we do really well is we do disaster management well. That's what our system is good at, disaster management.

100%. I agree with you. If you break your leg or rupture your appendix or have a heart attack or have a stroke, like you want to be in a hospital, right?

Yep. And that's where, that's where what we do well ends because everything else after that is toxic. I mean, you know, I have, you know, you, you mentioned, you know, your functional cancer. I'm not sure what the right term— I don't want to miss, you know, give you a name.

I don't even know what to call what I do.

You know, you're a cancer specialist.

What do you call what you do?

But yeah, I, I mean, I think it's the practice of medicine, you know, and now it's called longevity and it's gone by regenerative medicine and functional and integrative medicine. You know, it's, it's just, it's hard to, it's hard to name it. It's taking care of people and doing it and, and doing it right.

In my opinion, giving them what they need.

Yeah. And, and, um, and Here's, here's the thing, which isn't really the direct answer to your question, but our system is set up, our medical education system is set up for patentable therapies. And even in the scenario, so what I call in the pipeline, patentable therapies and treatments and procedures, you know, devices have a pipeline into our system because to educate a nation of doctors. Who are out, you've been out of residency, many for, for many of them for many, many years, to educate them on the new tools and techniques and treatments. You need an army of reps, of drug reps or device reps to educate. Really what they are, they're educators for our doctors, but that isn't really what they are. They're a marketing force for patentable therapies. So our system has a fundamental flaw, in my opinion.

But you know, it starts before then because they're, they're creating all of the medical school curriculums. They're also, for all intents and purposes, running the residencies. They are.

So it's, it's crazy, but this is how it works. So, so everything, almost all of the treatments, and I shouldn't say because I still like here, in my opinion, functional regenerative longevity medicine works better with traditional— when you use them together, right? Because I still prescribe medications and I still recommend traditional procedures and I still refer people into rheumatologists and oncologists when, when they need it. But you're going to get a much better outcome in that system if you've done the background work that we're working with people every day to do. And you're going to need it less. So all I'm doing, in my opinion, is practicing medicine. But most of the tools in the toolkit that we're practicing, these are non-patentable therapies. And so what does that mean? None of our doctors are educated in any of them unless they have the curiosity and the integrity to go out and pursue them. And here's newsflash. This is what happens to doctors, right? We work so hard. And so let me not speak for anybody else. Let me, let me speak for myself. I worked so hard to get, you know, one, get into college. This is the other thing. I'm dyslexic. And so like, you know, and my parents, when I was young, they were like, sure, you want to be a doctor, right? Like, like, you're so talented at so many other things. Like, there are other avenues you could pursue. But for me, I was like, no, that's— this is what I'm going to do. And so it's like beating my head against a wall, but like, getting through pre-med, getting into medical school, getting through medical school, getting through residency, getting through the testing, all the studying, all the note-taking, all the writing. It's like drilling a hole in my head every time, but I got to be very good at it by the end. And, um, yeah, sort of lost my train of thought, but, but where, you know, we work— so here we go. We work so hard. We work so hard to get there. And then you get through residency and this is— I was like, I've made it. And I think this is a trap a lot of physicians fall into. They're like, I've worked so hard for so long. And in college, you know, like how hard I worked versus a lot of my friends who studied, you know, finance and business and, you know, English and philosophy, all very like important, you know, subjects and topics that we need people educated in. Like, it was, it was a different— we had two very different college experiences. Like, we work so hard to get in that once and through that, once we're through, which means you finish residency, a lot of people stop. Their intellectual curiosity stops, their motivation to seek and go out and do stops. And guess what? The system facilitates it because the only way you can stay let's, let's, let's be frank. A lot of people go into medicine because it's, we know, you know, you're never going to be poor. You're probably not really going to get rich in most cases.

If you're a pediatrician or a GP, you might be poor.

I know, but great point, right? It's true. People don't know this, but it, but it's my point is there is like sort of a monetary sort of carrot with the physician. Like path, right? That, you know, there's, there's sort of a, you know, a sense that I'm going to be okay if I, if I make it there.

Yeah.

But if I just get there, and then once you make it and you finish the residency, you're so wrung out and so tired. The thought that I'm really going to read journals from multiple different specialties and stay on top of all of this stuff and find these things that will be helpful for my patients and myself, like that stops because they're so exhausted. And then they're on the hamster wheel because you got to now see X many patients per hour and this many diagnoses and get that many RVUs. And so now all the energy goes into how do I, how do I keep the flywheel moving to maintain my credentials, my status, my, et cetera. And so none of it goes into curiosity. None of it goes into seeking out novel therapies. All of the education has, you know, is brought to them in a marketing force. And if you don't have a patentable therapy, our physicians are not learning about them, period. So you have to have the energy and the curiosity to go out and find these modalities. And that's what I did, really, just out of— and, and this is interesting, looping it back to where we started. It was guys at the jiu-jitsu gym who for years had been asking me. They were like, listen, we want to do stem cells. They all listen to Rogan, right? So they were clued in and they would come to me and say, we want to do stem cell therapy, but we don't trust anybody. We trust you because we know you. We want you to do stem cell therapy. And I remember the first time somebody asked me that. I thought they were insane because I had no idea what he was talking about. I said, are you talking about a bone marrow transplant, like, for leukemia? And he kind of looked at me funny. He's like, no, like stem cells for my shoulder. And I was like, there's no— I was like, there isn't. That's not a thing.

It's not a thing.

And then he looked at me funny. And for 2 or 3 years, people were asking me this. So when I had that moment, I was like, well, there are all these guys who want stem cell therapy that I know from the gym. Let me just— so I found a conference and I was, I thought I was going to walk into a bunch of horse hockey. You know, like, let's be frank. I didn't know what I was walking into. And I walked in that conference and there were people from Case Western, UCLA, USC, these bowtie academic professors presenting their research. And I remember my jaw dropping because I thought these results are so good. They're almost unbelievable. And I remember looking around at the conference. This is a big national conference that I've now lectured at for many years, and it's actually an international stem cell conference. And there were maybe 25 people in the audience. And, you know, you go to a general surgery or an emergency medicine, there's thousands of people at a national, let alone an international. There might be, you know, thousands and thousands of doctors. There were— I remember counting, the number of people, and there were as many people just attending because about half the people in the audience were presenting. They were going to present and they were going and they were actually sitting down and listening to their colleagues to hear what they had to say. And so over the course of this 2-day conference, you know, I was like, half of these people presented and there's maybe— I mean, I don't even know how, like, financially it worked at that time for the people putting on the conference. But I remember thinking, I can't believe I heard about this at the jiu-jitsu gym.

Unbelievable.

I can't believe I heard about this at the gym.

Yeah.

I was like, this is so real. It's— I can't believe this should be standard of care. Your post-op, you should be getting infusion of your, you know, 10 million of your own IV stem cells to reduce requirement for pain medication and lower recovery time and speed recovery and lower infection rate. Like 10 years ago, I was saying in 10 years, in 10 years, this will be the standard of care. And here we are. It's still, most of my colleagues don't even know what we're talking about.

I'm so surprised that the ortho guys haven't picked up on this. And I'm sorry to say ortho guys, but there are just so still so few women in ortho.

And, you know, my experience, there are early adopters. And at that same conference that, you know, I now present research at and lecture at, there are orthopedic surgeons. Most of them are sort of older and they're like, I don't really want to operate anymore, but I was looking to stay active. And so they found biologics and they, those physicians who now are very well, now they're very well versed in cell therapies. They'll tell you, man, like you don't need orthopedic surgery anymore. You know, and what I tell people is like stem cells are going to do to orthopedics what stenting did to CT surgery. Like, nobody gets a bypass anymore. I mean, there's still people in rare cases who need bypass, and it's great that we have that option, you know, if for those people. But what I see, my personal experience, is that most people are scared. They're scared it's gonna take away their bread and butter. Like, most meniscus surgery, like, you don't need meniscus surgery anymore.

But no one needs meniscus surgery.

Unless in very specific circumstances. But, you know, rotator cuff surgery. I'm sorry to tell you, these are obsolete procedures. Cell therapy can fix even complete rotator cuff tears. And I know that because I've seen it. I've done it in patients, which when I, when I learned early on many years ago, we were learned, oh, you can't fix complete tears with cell therapy. It doesn't. And here's the thing, it doesn't always work, but it can work. And if you know how to do it right, you can maximize you know, the patient's chances of success. But my point is we're not teaching this to anybody because guess what? Your cells aren't patentable. So none of these doctors are being educated in how to use these therapies.

Yeah.

Period.

I mean, listen, we, we're, we're dealing with that in the area of bioidentical hormones. And what is worse is that there are people on the other side who are spreading this narrative that bioidentical hormones are unproven and unsafe, and the only thing that's safe is what comes from the pharmaceutical companies. Like, give me a break, right? Or compounding pharmacies are the wild, wild west.

Yeah.

And like narratives that are mind-blowing that you're, you're honestly looking at me straight in the face when you and I have the same degree and the same initials behind our name and the same training and the same background, and we're supposed to have the same intellectual curiosity and honesty and integrity and integrity, and you are telling me that it is better for me to put pregnant horse urine in my body than a bioidentical hormone? Right. And it's crazy to me.

I've been berated. I'm sure you've been on the other end of these phone calls berated by like, sorry, I'm gonna like Kaiser OB-GYNs because I, because of women who I have on hormone therapy.

Who, and women who will tell you, I mean, not that many people take me on if I'm, if I'm being honest, like, yeah, I'm going to give a big flex right now.

I love it.

But not that many people take me on, but the radiologists do take me on with the imaging part of it, which I'm more than happy to have the conversation. Like, let's go.

Yeah.

Let's go. Let's have it. Right. But the, it is astounding to me, the people that are still willing to toe that line and to stand behind. The pharmaceutical companies' narrative rather than bioidentical hormones.

Well, and what's tragic is, is they're so wrong. They're so wrong. And they have been for years. And the data has been out there for years. And they refuse. And they've scared so many people that they're, they're hurting those women.

I know. That whole, the science is settled. Right. The science is settled. So they won't even look at the science.

Well, that's, you know, yeah.

And we see that in a number of areas all over the place.

You know what I tell, what I tell 100% and, you know, so what I tell people is anytime your doctor says, well, the data, the data doesn't show that the data says this. I would argue that most of the time that's code for, I don't really know. This is what I believe and what I've been taught. And so I'm just going to say that that's what the data says. And it's sad because really what's happening is, you know, I see traditional medicine as, you know, it's, it's the giant that rules the roost that's already half dead and it's sort of falling apart. And, um, you know, I would argue I never in my, you know, cause I've been asked like what in an ideal world, what, what would our health system look like? And I would say, Listen, like, I wouldn't replace what we have, but what we have needs to take up a much smaller portion of how we deliver care. And that where we should be spending most of our time, energy, and money is, is in a totally different way of caring for people in a proactive, preventative fashion. And with a whole set of tools that are actually safer and more effective And when those ultimately don't work, then we still have the system, the pie and the financial pie, because your original anecdote, like it's the tail of the tape right there. Well, we need, we need volume through this place and we need the Medicare funding and we need, and we need our, our, our approval ratings at such and such. So our, our reimbursements don't drop that they're stepping over wellness. For nickels and dimes.

Yeah.

And it's—

and, and I would actually argue not only are they stepping over wellness, but they're kind of creating a barrier to it.

They're stomping on it on the way.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree completely. And I— so one, one thing, you know, I think, you know, physicians need to, one, start taking So, cause I've been asked, you know, like what, you know, what do we need to do? And I personally think that like the physicians, I feel like we need to own this. Doctors are too readily like, it's the insurers and it's the government and it's the, you know, and listen, like there's plenty of like, I mean, if you watch me, like I harp on big pharma all the time. Right. And, and yes, and they do serve a purpose in the right space. But if doctors stepped up and really did what was right for themselves and for their patients, we could fix all this tomorrow.

So I agree with you, but here's the conundrum. First of all, they're not educated. Yes. Second of all, they are doing exactly what they were trained to do, and they're busy doing it, and their heads are down working, and it's very hard to change when all of your time and energy is consumed doing the thing that you were trained to do. Yeah. The third thing just dropped out of my head, but I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Yeah, it's okay.

And there is no reward for helping your patient be well because the only way the doctors are paid now is if their patients are sick. The only way hospitals get paid is if people are sick. So there's no reward for wellness. So what do we do? I mean, even the well-intentioned doctors are stuck. They're stuck.

Well, I think, I mean, my personal, you know, so my personal take on this is I'm generally, I consider myself an optimist. I'm like, we, thank you. I am a risk taker, right? So like leaving my practice, that's a risk. Most doctors, most doctors are risk averse, you know, so I'll add to the list of things. I agree 100% with everything you've said. And, and doctors do not like to stick their necks out. They want to stay within the standard of care, you know, so they don't want to take any risk. And I think the solution— I mean, it's happening, this movement that we're— you're a part of, that I'm a part of, that all— everybody who's listening here is a part of. The groundswell ultimately is, it's coming from the patients. The patients are demanding this kind of care and the patients are demanding this kind of, these types of treatments that we're broadly speaking about here. So, you know, I believe we're going to come around and, you know, at least my current medical practice, I mean, our long-term vision is we're going to change how care is delivered. Not just, you know, in this country, in, in the nation. And, and I don't— I think it's going to take an army to do that. And, you know, I would, you know, having just met you for the first time, you know, shortly before we started recording, like, like, we're a part of the same movement.

Yeah.

And this, like, having a podcast like this, like, thank God for you, right? Like, we need more people who are willing to, to put their You know, do what's right, do what they believe is right with honesty and integrity and, and, and help people help themselves.

We really, we don't have the system behind us, right? Like it's not like the American Society of Gynecologists and Obstetrics is out there saying, hey, we should all be educating our providers on how to deliver bioidentical hormones. Right? Like, we don't have that. And I'm not an OB-GYN.

Right.

You know, that's kind of who owns the hormone space, even though they are surgeons and not endocrinologists. So that whole thing needs to change. But the societies aren't behind us. And even, even if you are like someone like you or someone like me, and you are a little bit more of a risk taker. I mean, I know in my personal situation, everyone thought I was out of my mind. Here I am, like, running the cancer program, and suddenly I'm leaving to become a functional medicine doctor, right? So walking away from the money, the prestige, all of it, and with a God-love-him husband who told me I couldn't do it, a best friend who— and I love her and I know what she was saying, but she told me I couldn't do it. And so, you know, I had a lot of naysayers around me. Thank God I'm either insane or too stubborn or not risk-averse. But people like you and I are few and far between. And most people who go into medicine go into medicine because they didn't want to take the chance of going into finance. Right? It's not that we're not smart enough to get it. We get it.

Yeah. There's a sense of security.

Generally kind. We're altruistic. We're not looking to make waves. We're looking to smooth and unruffle the feathers. Right? We're looking to make things better and to heal. So, I don't know, like, do we need to attract a whole new generation of disruptors and renegades? I don't know. I don't know. I do think that the grassroots movement is going to be the groundswell, right? I think that this generation coming up, and I'll use mammogram as an example, this generation, because since I opened Perfection Imaging in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and since we are the only independent center offering how to screen for breast cancer safely, effectively, painlessly, without radiation, without compression. So the 30-somethings that are starting to get into the breast cancer screening realm are like, wait, you people did what? You went and had your breast compressed between 50— between 20 and 50 pounds and radiated, and you guys called that screening? What is wrong with you? And they're right. They're 100% right. But my generation and everyone before me was like, okay, I'll do it. I'll put my breast in the vise. Right? Like, we just didn't question. We didn't question. The system said that it was good for us and their word was good enough. And we believed them and we trusted them.

Yeah.

And meanwhile, you know, there's someone at the top going like this. It's true. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, you're not wrong.

And so I do think that it is going to come from this, from this up-and-coming generation that they question everything, right? Like my kids, my kids are late teenagers, right? And because I said so doesn't work with them. They want to know why. Why am I doing that? Why are you asking me to do that? Why, why, why, why, why? Right? And that didn't exist in my generation. Like if my parents told me to do something, why was not one of the choices. Why was how you got a patch in the tuchus, right?

Well, you're, I mean, you're, you're making a fantastic observation. I love it. Where my mind goes is the bots, right? So AI, so medical education and medical school has so highly coveted this type of memory and mind that the computers can do so much better than even our best humans. And in my perspective, medicine has swung from even in the night. So my best mentors in medical school were people who practiced pre-antibiotics, and the lessons that I learned from them I'm still using today. And they were a different kind of physician than we train now. I don't know if you have any perspective on this, but, or thoughts, but the pendulum swung from really it's bedside manner, interpersonal communication and interaction and support, because really there wasn't that much that could be done therapeutically, you know, pre-antibiotics, pre-general, you know, reliable general anesthesia. Right. And so we make those—

We were trained by some old dogs, though.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there weren't many of them, but, but there was one in particular, a couple. But one in particular who was, you know, Mort Bogdanoff, who, you know, anyway, so he's long gone. God bless him. And thank you, Mort, for everything you taught me. We swung from, in medicine, as, you know, a human connection, you know, field to all the way. Now we're training technicians. We train technicians. They're very good at what they do. And guess what? The computers and robots are going to be better at it than us for sure. And the computers are already probably better at like, they could probably take the MCAT and ACE-IT right now. Right. And so we're, we're rewarding our medical education system is rewarding a kind of intelligence that is probably already obsolete. And the pendulum is going to have to swing back to this more of a traditional medical relationship where we're going to look to our doctors, not for their technical expertise, because the machines are going to be able to do that more reliably than humans, but we're going to, we're going to crave, we're going to need this, I don't even know, undefinable human connection.

Implementers.

What's that?

Implementers. And so I just, I just think of the, the EOS system. Do you, do you know what that is? Have you ever heard of that? Yeah. Okay. So the EOS, the Entrepreneur's Operating System, which was made famous by a guy, Gino Wickman. Yeah. Gino Wickman. He wrote Traction.

Traction.

Right. So they talk about that, you know, there's the visionary at the top and that's the one with all the brilliant ideas. Right. But the visionary is useless without the implementer. It's the implementer that puts that to work. So, you know, anyone can go on ChatGPT and figure out how to read their pathologies or how to figure out like what their diagnosis is, right? They can even get a plan. But what they lack is how to put that into action. What they lack is how that connects with their world, their environment. Their everything, right? How to, how to make it human, how to put it in place, how to make it work for them. And so I think that what you're saying is that we are going to be the go-between between this like master world of intelligence and how to make, how to bring it into our patients' lives.

Yeah, to a degree. And I would take it even a step further. In that in my, you know, people used to ask me like, what are your— give me some stories, like what happened in the ER and, you know, what are your biggest saves or, you know, and, and when I look back on those, like the ones that I remember after, you know, a lifetime of practicing that medicine, it was decisions that I made not because the data actually said, oh, the meta-analysis say this and therefore in this scenario you do that. It was when I just felt like, you know, I know even in many cases the data says I should turn left and we need to turn right. You know, and I don't, you know, and sometimes it's the patient or the patient's family and they're like, listen, I know you're telling me.

That's a gut feeling that you have, right?

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

It's like intuition.

It's, yeah, I would argue that. It's a connection to an energy that is unmeasurable, difficult to describe, goes beyond— it's, you know, what is it to be human? What is it to be conscious? What is it to be connected? What is it to be a part of something bigger than ourselves? There's a component of, dare I say, spiritual. And when the going gets tough, you rely on that. Over whatever data there is, whatever, you know, it says this, you know, on the lab report or on the EKG or on the scan, and therefore you're supposed to do that. And the biggest saves I've had were when I said either I or— and sometimes it wasn't even me, it was the patient or the family— where the family said, I know you're telling us this, but we're not doing that. That's, that's, that's just— he or she never would have wanted this. This doesn't feel right. Is it possible? And then in those moments, if you're connected and you're open and you can hear the universe talking to you either through yourself or through another mouthpiece, that's where the miracles happen. That's the kind of intelligence that I think that really— that's where the future of medicine lies for humans, because otherwise the robots are better at all the other things. Than we are.

For sure. I had a woman who I met with yesterday with triple negative breast cancer, and she's, she was diagnosed in 2020. So she's been dealing and she's had, I don't know, 4 or 5 recurrences. And so the main thing that she wanted to meet with me about yesterday was, do I think that metformin and vitamin C infusions will work for her. And I'm like, honey, if we had a one-size-fits-all solution, we would be using it, right? I don't know if that'll work for you, but what we need to do is figure out why you got breast cancer, figuring out why it keeps coming back, because whatever is driving it is is still there. It's still there.

Yeah.

So, you know, you, you can take all the metformin in the world, all the ivermectin in the world, all the fenbendazole in the world. If why you got cancer is still there, it's coming back. It's coming back. And, but everyone, patients and providers alike, have been so trained in the if X, then Y. Right. And I agree with you that it is going to, it's going to have to revert to what it was centuries ago. It's an, it's the art of medicine. And that art cannot be practiced by ChatGPT or Claude AI or any of the platforms. Right. It's got to come from us. It's got to come from us and our relationship with the patient and our deep understanding of dysfunction, because we are brilliant machines created perfectly by God, and we're meant to heal. We're meant to be healthy. And it's only when we put these roadblocks in our, in our way that we suffer. And intentionally or unintentionally, right? Like, this isn't about blame or shame. I'm not here to make people feel badly that they got breast cancer. Of course not. Of course not. But I'm also here to say you have way more power than you think. And I think the last thing that everyone should do is, is abdicate that power to their surgeon and the medical oncologist and the radiation oncologist, because no one ever got healthier in any of those scenarios. You know, I could tell you as a surgeon, I didn't make anyone healthier. By removing their cancer. Did I prolong their, the time until progression? Yes. Right? Did I temporarily alleviate some suffering? Maybe. Maybe. But I didn't change the trajectory that they're on. I didn't. And you certainly don't get healthier with chemotherapy. In fact, I will argue that with very rare exception. People mostly suffer with that and don't benefit. And then radiation, I mean, I'm not even sure why we're doing it anymore, quite frankly, but that's a, that's a conversation for another time. And again, if you have someone with a pathologic fracture or something and they're in horrible pain, yes, radiation is a great bandaid to put on that wound in that moment. But then you have to deal with how the wound got there. You have to. I don't know where I was going with that.

Well, thank you for saying it because it's, I think it's incredibly powerful for people to hear from somebody with your expertise and training and experience what these modalities do to people in real time. And I guess, you know, I, I would say you know, in the right scenario, any one of those things might be valuable. And without doing what you're, you just verbalized, which is unless until you get to the root and, um, you know, I don't know if you believe this, but I had a patient who was an energy healer. And when I first opened my original practice in this space, you know, I had a conversation with her. I didn't really think much. I was like, energy healer. Oh, that's interesting. She said, you know, we believe that every disease, every illness, you know, has at least a 30% energetic component. And I didn't really— I didn't— I'm not sure I still understand that completely, but the longer I practice medicine, the more I believe that to be true. That— and this is just speaking to like the roadblocks that you mentioned that we, you know, that, that that we either put in our own way or that are put in our way, however we want to phrase that, right?

Yeah.

That if you don't deal with that energetic component, and I would argue now, I would say, I think all disease is probably more than 30% energetic. You know, I don't know what the percentage is.

No, but I mean, I can tell you just looking at my patient population over these last 20-some years. There is always something. There is always something. So when I get a new diagnosis of breast cancer, my first question is like, what's going on? Right? And it's always a divorce or a move or a job loss or had to move my parents into assisted living, or I became the caregiver. My mother had a stroke. My father has cancer. Someone has Alzheimer's. There's always something. God forbid, lost a child. Like, there's always something. Yeah, there's always something. And that negative energy is so immunosuppressive. It is so immunosuppressive because your body feels like it's dying anyway. Right. That's what that negative energy is. Your body feels like it's dying. So why does it need the immune system? System. If you're dying, you don't need to fight off the common cold or the cancer that wouldn't kill you for 10 years anyway. So just let it happen. I'll deal with it later because right now I'm dying.

Wow. I've never heard it articulated that way. That's incredibly powerful. Thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I agree. And so anyway, we've, we've gone, we've gone deep.

I have you for an hour and I didn't even talk about like what you do and what lights you up and what excites you. I want to talk about peptides. I want to talk about stem cells. Like, tell me, tell me.

I, I mean, what should we be all thinking about in terms of peptides?

There's all this talk around peptides and if they're going to be illegal, if we're going to be able to get them, how do we get them, where do we get them, what are they for?

Yeah, I mean, peptides are simple, really. Peptides are protein medications. That's it. And, and if you think medication is sort of this broad term. And then we have drugs, which are sort of inorganic or non-native molecules that we find that block something or accelerate something in our system. So, medications, drugs, peptides are a category under medications, and they're proteins. They're proteins that do something in our body. Most of the time, they're proteins that are already there that we're just amplifying the number of. So like, and I think the GLP-1s, the Ozempics, the Wegovies, the semaglutides, the tirzepatides have sort of cracked open the public consciousness that, man, there are proteins that are effective medications, but there's nothing new about proteins in medicine. Like insulin's the original peptide. It's protein. You know, there are antibiotics that are proteins. There's all sorts of traditional medications that are peptides. Where the interest is in the non-patentable space, these things like BPC-157, thymosin beta-4. Now, thymosin alpha-1 is actually an FDA-approved, considered traditional medication, but you can't get it at the pharmacy. They don't make it anymore. You have to go to a compounder to get it.

But, Will you just talk about those a little bit? Because I don't know. I know what those things mean, but I don't know that everyone knows what those things mean. So BPC-157, thymosin alpha 1, beta 4. Talk about those.

Yeah. So these are just proteins. What's that? Oh, the Glowstack. Yeah. So that's Glowstack's just BPC-157, thymosin beta 4, and GHK-Cu. And these are all naturally occurring proteins. That exist in our body that serve a function. BPC was originally identified in intestinal tissue and actually gastric juices, but in every tissue that it's been tested in, it just helps heal. It helps promote healing. And you can think about, like, our GI tract. It's an acidic environment. We're digesting proteins and fats. Like, why does it not digest itself and deconstruct itself? Well, it's because it heals really effectively. And guess there's a lot of BPC there to help that GI tract stay healthy and functioning. So we have a barrier between our digestive processes and our internal organs. And so BPC basically just helps tissues heal.

And I, I use it a lot in gut recovery protocols. I use the oral versions in gut recovery protocols. But I'll tell you that the injectable got my football-playing son through his season this year because he dealt with a lot of injuries and he never missed, he never missed a game. He never even came out of a game. And so it's, it was really amazing.

It's, it's an effective pain, you know, in the right dose at the right time. It's, it's an effective anti-inflammatory pain. Medication that works totally differently than a steroid or an NSAID. And so I really think it helped him speed up healing. Yeah.

Like from, from one week to the next where he would, you know, get beat up on Saturday and by Friday he was back in playing shape again.

Yeah. So it's WADA-sanctioned. It has been for a while, not because it's an anabolic, but because it helps recovery time. And so if you're, if you're a competitive athlete and your workout to workout, like, you improve, like, even if it's just by 3 to 5%, if you can improve, if you can improve your recovery, it means you can work out a little bit harder that next day. And over, you know, over months, over weeks to months, that small, you know, gain that you get, you know, on a regular basis adds up to a huge difference at the end of a training.

So you're saying he's not gonna be able, allowed to use it in college?

Well, here's the thing. It's what a sanction, but there's no— like, they can't test for it because it's already natural.

I was going to say, how do you, how do you test for it?

I mean, so you'd have to know how you would test for bioidentical testosterone.

So, um, any of the peptides that are really—

they're relying— I mean, it depends on the organization and how they test, but but most of the time they're just relying on urine and they're relying on sort of these standard.

Incidentally, he's not on testosterone. I am. I was just, just asking, but I don't want anyone to think that I'm like, my son is doping.

No. Yeah, no, I, I, you know, anyway, like, I mean to get into this sort of like performance enhancement space, but WADA and USADA, which I think is, I think they're well-intentioned. But what they're doing is they're— people who are following the rules are now out a very good option for injury healing and prevention. And so, yeah, anyway, it's, it's a little bit backwards in my opinion in, in some of these compounds that have been sort of sanctioned. But to get back to this space, BPC-157 is simply something that your body naturally makes to help it that has anti-inflammatory effects and helps promote healing. And so it can be used for many, many different things. And this is what interestingly often drives a lot of skepticism from traditional doctors because they'll say, well, there's not one thing that can help the brain and can help the lung and can help the GI tract. That doesn't make any sense. Well, but it does if you take it from the perspective of, well, anti-inflammatories, right? They affect multiple multiple organ systems and can be beneficial. So it's just reframing how, how they think about it. But here's what's interesting. BPC is a, is a 15 amino acid peptide. To make that a patentable product, you have to alter it in some way. You can't just patent BPC because it's naturally occurring.

Yeah.

And with a, with a short amino acid sequence like a GLP, I forget how many amino acids, it's many, many more, 20 or 30 amino acids. So you can swap one amino acid out or create a cross-link between different amino acids to, like, extend.

Yeah, I was going to say, what is semaglutide?

Well, it's just a peptide that's naturally secreted from our GI tract that they swapped two amino acids out of to create a novel compound, which it still performs the same function that the natural analog does. But it lasts a little bit longer. And, and, you know, the difference between like semaglutide and tirzepatide and now like retatrutide, which is still in phase 3 trials, but everybody's sort of chomping at the bit. They found ways to make it better. But the, but the protein sequence is long enough to allow this manipulation. You take, you know, 15 amino acid peptide and swap an amino acid out. You've now created something totally different. So the shorter the amino acid sequence, the more difficult it is to patent, to alter, to patent. So, so BPC, nobody's found a way to manipulate it, to change it, and then make it a patentable product that then it's worth running through, you know, the hundreds of millions of dollars for. So, so it's just sitting there. Now you can, you can get vitamin C as a pill over the counter. You can, you can go to an IV infusion center and have somebody plug in an IV in your arm and give you high-dose vitamin C. Like, vitamin C is not FDA approved. It's, you know, a naturally occurring, generally regarded as safe. And so this is where these— this— there's this gray area with these peptides. People don't understand why, like, if it really works, why hasn't pharma grabbed it and run with it? Well, if they can't make it novel, they can't patent it. And that doesn't mean it's not effective. GHK-3 is a 3-amino acid peptide bound to copper. And, if you go look at the ingredients of high-quality cosmetic creams, it's in almost every single one of them because it's fantastic. It helps stimulating new elastin and collagen formation in the skin. And, it's an effective cosmetic topically, works even better as an injectable. But, you have to get that properly made. You need someone who makes sterile injectables. So, you need a compounder who specializes in sterile injectables who's willing to make it.

I'm lying to myself and telling myself that I do a microblade roller and then putting my topical on and telling myself that that works because I'm not injecting stuff into my face.

No. Yeah. Well, but that works because basically, you're driving minute amounts in through those you know, through the microneedling process that happens with the roller. And you could get a microneedling pen too. And that's highly effective.

So very painful.

Yeah, it hurts. So, so GHK-CU, same thing, you know, it's naturally occurring. It helps promote soft tissue healing. So it also has anti-inflammatory properties. Thymosin alpha-1 is a, just to get back to the original question is that's actually an, that was run through FDA approval process and is actually approved as an adjunctive therapy for cancer and hepatitis because it helps enhance immune system function. Thymosin beta-4. Now, the thymosin peptides, these are proteins that are naturally made in the thymus gland. The thymus lives in sort of the throat area near where the thyroid is. And what we learned in medical school is that the thymus is very active when you're young. and it atrophies as you get older. So, by the time you hit your 30s, your thymus is largely inactive. And, by the time you're 100, it's probably not working at all. And, what that means is a lot of these proteins that it produced to help regulate and modulate and make your immune system effective, we now either lack or are deficient in. And so, thymosin alpha-1 is a fantastic immune modulatory protein that works really well in these post-viral syndromes, particularly post-COVID, post-EBV, in people who are suffering from, from mold toxicity. It's, it, I use it when I fly, you know, because in my clinical and personal experience, I get sick less when I'm using it. Now, I don't have large meta-analyses to, to prove that. So, um, I want to be upfront about that, but that's thymosin alpha-1 is an FDA approved medication. So, you know, we can prescribe that to a compounder, get it, no problem. Thymosin beta-4 is another thymus protein. It also has immune modulatory effects, but it seems to work better. It'll take BPC's effects and amplify them. And thymosin beta-4 again works through multiple different mechanisms, but it has anti-inflammatory effects. It can help promote new blood vessel formation and a host of other things. But these peptides, there's a world of them. Every time, you know, somebody looks at human or mammalian tissue and they do like an HPLC or mass spec analysis, we find new proteins that we weren't sort of aware of or hadn't been documented before. And really all peptides are just naturally occurring proteins that have an effect on our body that if we want to amplify, we give ourselves more of. That's, that's all they are. They're, they're very simple. They're not complicated. And because they're— most of them are naturally occurring, they tend to be very well tolerated, have low side effect profiles, and be very safe, which also drives skepticism from the traditional medical community. So anyway, I'll stop talking about peptides. That's, that's really all peptides are. They're protein medications.

So I'm just curious, have you— do you have a feeling about whether or not any of these are going to have a role in cancer care? I have my own opinion, but I, I would love to hear yours.

I do. And, and I think, I mean, something like thymosin alpha 1, it's actually FDA approved as a cancer adjunctive treatment. So I, I think that there has been a paucity of research in this area because people want to go after patentable products, but like the GLP-1s sort of cracked open this. This code of like, well, wait, maybe we actually can, maybe we can patent these. And so maybe they're, maybe it's worth spending a whole lot more time on. And I think we're like, every, every peptide I have rattled off on this podcast are naturally occurring. So in their native form, they're effective. And as like the example that I used with like, you know, semaglutide to tirzepatide to retatrutide, Big Pharma is fantastic at when they really clue in on it and they're like, man, we can make this work. Like, can we make it better? Each generation has gotten better, better at helping you lose weight more quickly. And at each generation gets better at making sure you're losing less muscle in that process. And, um, and then there's a whole host of metabolic disease, metabolic disease, and then cardiovascular disease and dementia benefits.

Yeah.

And so it microdoses. Yeah, they're, they're, listen, I, I'm somebody who subscribes to the fact that there's nothing that's a cure-all and when used in the right time and place, you know, the right thing is the right thing. And so, um, people ask me like, do you think GLP-1s, are they good or they're bad? I think, you know, if they're used properly, they're fantastic and you can, you can misuse them and have all sorts of problems. So I don't want everybody to think like, oh, peptide naturally occurring, it's all safe. Like, you can take too much BPC, you can get blood pressure fluctuations, you know, you can have allergic reactions. There are scenarios where you, you, you wouldn't want to use some of, some of those peptides. And so you need— there needs to be judicious thought around the application, just like any therapeutic. So I guess I just, I just put that there. Not that I think they're dangerous, it's just, you know, you need to have some thought around around what's happening and having guidance that's educated is beneficial.

Yeah. I think what we're seeing in terms of not necessarily the weight loss portion of it, although I do think that that is meaningful because a lot of the cancers that we see are obesity related. So breast cancer is obesity related. Colon cancer is obesity related. Uterine cancer is obesity related. And so I think that we are going to see a benefit in all of these areas, but also the anti-inflammatory effects of these medications, even done in microdoses, I think are going to play a role in prevention. And I also think they're going to play a role in diminishing recurrence. So I think that they are going to play a role. You know, I am, I'm prescribing them for my patients in microdoses. And again, do I have mountains of data to support it?

No.

But I have colleagues who have been doing it for 20 years on the, on the down low, right? They figured out a long time ago, way before I even knew about functional medicine, that you can use these these compounds or these, um, these peptides in tiny aliquots and get a lot of benefit for people. And I believe it. I see it. I did it personally and it makes a huge difference, a huge difference, even for someone who was living as clean as I lived and seemingly doing all the right things. And I still like struggled, struggled, struggled to get that last 5 pounds off. And at a microdose, it like went away and my brain fog went away and all the stuff that I was struggling with went away.

Yeah. Incredible, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Really incredible. Talk to me about stem cells.

Yeah. Stem cells.

How are you using them? What benefits are you seeing?

You can use them for, for any damaged tissue. And here's here's the thing is most, most people don't understand how they work. Like, we think stem cells— actually the wrong term. So like, medically, stem cell means a cell that can turn into something else. And MSCs, or mesenchymal stem cells, which pretty much every adult, you know, stem cell therapy is using some form of a mesenchymal stem cell. The guy who actually— Arnold Kaplan, who's a PhD researcher at Case Western, who came up with that name when he, when he found these cells in a lab And he got them to differentiate into bone and nerve and muscle and different tissue. So he called them a stem cell, but when he studied them deeper, he, he recognized that that's not actually what they're doing in our bodies. They're not turning into new tissue. What they're doing is they're, they're masters at honing into— so damaged tissue emits markers of inflammation, interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha and a bunch of other inflammatory markers. And MSCs are masters of honing to where the source of those markers of damage are coming from. And then what they do is they make an assessment of the cells in that area to see, you know, are these cells healthy? Are they not healthy? What's going on? Why, why are they emitting these markers of inflammation? And if, if, if they find a cell in that area of cell damage that's healthy, they will secrete exosomes, which are basically packets of protein and microRNA, which give that damaged cell access to parts of the genome that the cell itself might not natively have access to, meaning parts of the genome that have been locked off in the genome that it contains in its nucleus because of what that cell is differentiated to do. The stem cell in the secretion of those exosomes, those proteins and microRNA, enable that cell to have more robust cell division. And so the way stem cells are healing injury is by finding healthy local cells and elongating their life. That's, that's how they do it. But what's unique about these MSCs is that if they come in contact with a cell that they deem to be unhealthy or will be a bad actor if it's given more cell divisions, if its Hayflick limit is extended, it will either trigger the immune system to come in and take that cell out, or it will trigger apoptosis in that cell. So stem cells are finding healthy tissue and allowing that healthy tissue to heal by replacing itself. The reason why this is important is stem cells can therefore help heal any tissue. And that doesn't mean you could take somebody with advanced Alzheimer's and give them some infusions of stem cell and they're going to heal their brain because the tissue has to have the capacity to recover from the damage that it sustained. So stem cells, if used early enough and often enough, in my belief, could, could at least delay and maybe even prevent many of the chronic degenerative diseases that, that we deal with. The problem is we're bringing them to the party too late. In many cases, which is where you'll see a study that says, well, we looked at stem cells and this kind of Achilles tendon injury and it didn't work. Well, the reason why it didn't work— and now here's the other thing— is that the healthier you are at baseline, the more likely you are to have success with a cell therapy, regardless of whether it's a stem cell therapy or another type of cell therapy like PRP, for example, which many people are familiar with. You take people who are in a metabolically deranged state and you apply PRP, you're not going to get good results because their tissue is not healthy. It can't heal effectively. Now, you take that same person and you health optimize them, a lot of times you don't need the PRP or the stem cells because the tissue will just heal itself. But you health optimize them, they still need the procedure. You can then do a cell therapy and get fantastic results. And so the key here is what's the capacity for the tissue that you're trying to treat to heal? That's the key ingredient that a lot of people don't understand with stem cells, because if that tissue is beyond repair or is severely damaged and the body is in a metabolic state that it's not primed to allow healing because of all the hurdles that the tissue has to get over because of the metabolic derangement, treatment, you're not gonna get good results from a cell therapy.

Yeah.

So, you know, I hope that—

this is no different than in the breast cancer world when, you know, there's a huge difference between the person that comes to me with a tiny cancer and, you know, they're, they're not that far down the metabolic line.

Yeah.

Or the person that's come to me after 3 or 4 bouts with chemotherapy. Therapy and they've tried everything and they're, they're totally metabolically deranged and they have, you know, just no resilience left. And I'm like, I, I wish I could help them. I wish I could turn it around.

Yeah.

And in rare cases we do, but more likely than not, like, once you get to that point, it's It's so hard to turn that around. I think for all of us, this is a lesson that we need to learn, that we need to start looking for these very early signs. I always say, I wish we screened for metabolic dysfunction with the same vigor that we do for cancer. Because if we did and we reversed that metabolic dysfunction, we would not be suffering.

We would barely see any cancer. Yeah.

Yes, that's right. And so I have a new program where we are basically screening people for the biologic markers that are associated with early breast cancer, but also the metabolic markers, the inflammatory markers, because what we're trying to do is find people before they have a diagnosis, before they've developed a mass, and identify the people that are at risk and say, okay, let's do the work now so that we don't have to talk about how do we reverse this cancer. We can just talk about how to optimize your health.

Right. Yep. Well, and this is where looping this back to stem cells, this is where, you know, I would argue that the whole functional integrative regenerative longevity space really shines is that the earlier you start, the better. I would say it's never too late. To start down the path because you'll be better off if you go down, if you go down this path than, than relatively speaking than if you don't. And the earlier you start, the better. And when, so if you think about stem cells, stem cells extend cell division, you know, they extend Hayflick limit. Like what, what is that? That's, that's reversing aging. You're altering the aging trajectory. And so, and for the cancer note, there's only a few studies that have done this analysis that I'm aware of. I'm part of two of them. There's one, you know, Harnague, who's a French orthopedic surgeon who pioneered cultured bone marrow, who's really sort of the founder of modern cell therapy, started in the '80s. He did a 30-year prospective study in the French population, basically looking at cancer rates because one of the big criticisms for culture-expanded mesenchymal stem cells is, could you be triggering cancer? And what he documented in his long-term study was that the people who he treated with cell therapy actually had a lower cancer incidence rates relative to what should be expected based on the French population data. And then, we published a study looking at non-culture-expanded stem cell adipose-derived stem cells in the knee. And then, I published a paper looking at non-culture-expanded stem cells used for lumbar disc degenerative lumbar spine. And, we did the same analysis, which we looked at 2-year cancer incidence, age, and age-matched that to historical controls in the U.S. And, our study population had lower incidence of cancer than would be expected based on the population data. And so I'm not, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that because there are confounders here, like, right? Like, were our people just healthier? Like maybe we were seeing lower rates because, you know, our people were health optimized. But the big point is stem cell therapy, whether it's cultured or not, the data that exists on it is not causing cancer. And there's a question that exists, which is. If MSCs can trigger apoptosis in unhealthy cells and if MSCs actually help enhance immune system function, is there a, like, could there be a preventative mechanism there in the cancer setting? I don't know. My personal belief is that if done right, you wouldn't need stem cells to do the prevention, the diet, the exercise, the fasting, like that would do it for you. And, you know, there's, there's an open question there that we really need our academic institutions to get in on. But again, we're talking about a non-patentable therapy. So people haven't been really interested in funding. They've applied for funding, been denied many times just because they look, you know, the people who control that funding look at a small clinic and they say, how can you pull off a study? You don't have the support you need. And I'd say you make a good point, but we're definitely not going to be able to do it without the funding. And I've been asking my academic colleagues for years to start looking at this, and it's crickets. So anyway, stem cells, super, super interesting topic, highly effective.

And someone like Bernie Marcus of like Home Depot fame would have, I think, been totally— and he unfortunately recently died, but he had been given— he gave millions and millions of dollars to Jefferson to build an integrative medicine program. And hopefully there are other, there are other benefactors like that around the country or around the world that are going to help to drive this. But things are changing. They may not be changing fast enough for our liking, but they're changing. And I'm just so grateful to people like you who are making a huge difference, a huge impact, and really blazing a trail for what medicine should look like, how medicine should be practiced, and setting an example for the future.

Thank you. I'm deeply grateful. And right back at you. Have incredible respect.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Oh, thank you. It was wonderful to be with you today. How do people find you?

I think the easiest way is longevityhealth.clinic. Is our website and Dr. Vasili on Instagram or TikTok. And yeah, those are the two best ways. Longevityhealth.clinic.

Yeah. You, you do a great job on social media. That's actually how I found you. So yeah.

Thank you.

Keep doing it. Keep doing it. It was such a pleasure to be with you today. And it was such a pleasure to be with all of you today. If you liked what you heard, make sure that you share it with someone who could use to hear it too. And make sure that you're following Dr. Bass and me on Instagram and know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.