Lightning Speed Healing Hack or Overpriced Fad? What You Need To Know About Stem Cells.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, one of the big things, and this is a huge takeaway, I want everybody to get every single tissue in your body has stem cells. Okay? You have infinite capacity to regenerate, but we have to have the right kind of epigenetic triggers to tell your body to do the job. Stem cells act upon inflammation, and belly fat is really inflammation. So even if my body wanted to regenerate those tissues in my spine, again, it's just getting siphoned, taking care of other problems. And they're using your own cells that are getting extracted from your blood, your bone marrow, and then put through a centri and then they're replicating processes your body would use in the laboratory setting.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And I gotta tell you, from these regenocene treatments to edible phytoplankton drops, to NFL players traveling to Europe for stem cell injections, it seems that stem cells themselves are kind of like this hot new topic in the recovery and the sports and the anti aging scene. And you know, I had a little bit of an experience with something kind of like stem cells. A young, bright eyed hip and knee surgical salesman. And I remember I worked for this company, Biomet, and we would do this thing after the surgeries called platelet rich plasma or PRP injections, which were just like brand new back then. And this involved collecting the patient's blood and then spinning it in this little centrifuge to separate the, what was called the platelet poor plasma and the red blood cells. And you'd wind up with this fluid that was really, really rich in what are called platelets. And you'd re inject that back into the area where the surgery had occurred to speed up healing. And then later on, this PRP process started to become more popular for things like tennis elbow and knee pain. And I remember I got to the point where in one of my personal training clinics, I was so infatuated with this stuff and its ability to speed up healing that I partnered with a physician and bought like this giant centrifuge to take patients and clients blood out and then re inject it to speed up healing. And a lot of people are doing these kind of procedures these days. But compared to even something like prp, this idea behind stem cells and stem cell injection, stem cell therapies and stem cell supplements and stem cell supporting foods, this is a whole new topic. And so I wanted to get an expert on the show for you today who really knows a lot about stem cells and really a host of other health issues. And his name is Sean Stephenson. Now, Sean, if you're a podcast junkie, is someone you may recognize. He's actually the creator and the host of a show in itunes, one of the top health podcasts in itunes called the model Health show. And Sean has studied biology and kinesiology. He founded the Advanced integrative Health alliance, provides wellness services for a bunch of different folks and organizations around the world. He's been in Men's health magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, espn, Fox News. We have hung out together down at Paleo FX in Austin, Texas. And he's a really good wealth of knowledge. And as you will see in the photo if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Model Health, that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com modelhealth where you can get the show notes for today's episode. Sean owns a relatively impressive set of abs, so you can check those out, ladies. So anyways, Sean, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Oh, man, so good to be here, Ben. Thank you so much for having me on, man. I'm slightly embarrassed, but, man, I would love to just travel around with you to have you introduce me. Man, you make everything sound so cool.

Yeah, that's right. I can make anybody sound amazing by just listing off all the magazines that someone has been in.

Right.

Or their six.

Men's Health magazine.

That's right.

Runners magazine, Hunter's Magazine.

We all know that. That anybody has made it once they've been in those mags.

That's right.

So stem cells, dude, how'd you. How did you get interested in stem cells?

Yeah, this is really. You know, I feel that for somebody to really be passionate about something, it's. It's something that they have to go through personally, you know, and see it firsthand. And to hear that story that you shared, man, I had no idea about that. That's fascinating that you were into that stuff and actually doing those procedures. But for me, I don't know if you know about this, but when I was. So this was right around the age of 15, almost 16 years old. I was a two sport athlete and at this point when I was 15, I was running like a 4, 4, 4540 already and really looking good. College is looking at me. And I was in track practice running a 200 meter time trial. All right, this is just me and the coach and the stopwatch. And while running this time trial, coming off the curve into the straightaway, I broke my hip.

So just broke your hip, just running?

Yes, no trauma, nothing hit me. And so when we, when I went to the physical therapist, what they told me was that, oh, you pulled a muscle and the iliac crest just kind of broke off with it. Right, that's interesting. But nobody stopped to ask how it happened.

Like, like an avulsion fracture.

Exactly. And so looking at the picture was just like, you know, there's my bone kind of off in space. And what was so interesting about the situation? So first of all, you go through the standard of care, which is typically ultrasound, get some NSAIDs, stay off the leg. And especially when you're that young, you've got the hormones of a mythical beast, you know, so you're going to get better fast, you know?

Right.

So I, I got better. But again, nobody stopped to ask the question, how did this 15 year old kid's hip break? This is usually reserved for people who are much, much older, you know, 80s, and also typically happens more often to women. So that could have been an indication of maybe there's something off with hormones or some kind of deficiency or whatever. But again, nobody asked that question. So fast forward four years later, I'm finally diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease, slash degenerative disc disease, where my spine was just literally deteriorating. And again, like, I didn't know, I don't know if you knew this about, about what happened earlier on in my, in my life, man. But so this is when I'm 20 years old and I get diagnosed with this condition. And what brought me in to see the physician was this radiating pain going down my leg, which a lot of people know is sciatic pain. And it can be different degrees. You know, it's on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm hitting probably just on average moving around a 5. But when I would ever, when I would stand up from sitting or laying down, it would be a 12. You know, I get this like electric shock that was shooting down my leg and it literally put me in a state to where I was afraid to get up. And so fast forward that story Two and a half years go by and first of all, Ben, you probably love to hear this. So when I saw this physician, I asked him, and I don't know if this was like my future self jumped into my old body and asked, I said, does this have anything to do with what I'm eating? And he looked at me like I was straight up on crack, right? He's like, this has nothing to do with what you're eating, as a matter of fact. And he went on to tell me, you know, he's trying to be compassionate, but he said that this is just something that happens. You got dealt a bad hand and this is something you're going to have to deal with. And he proceeded to write me a prescription to eat some pills, but what I was eating outside of the pills didn't matter, you know, and so that never really did sit with me.

So these are just like anti inflammatories?

Yeah, so just typical NSAIDs. And one of them was Celebrex, which by the way, I don't know if people know this, like Celebrex, 87% increased chance of having gastrointestinal major meltdowns. So we're talking like ulcers, internal bleeding. It's really bad news, but it made me feel relatively good, you know, and just the kind of getting around phase, you know. And so also like a 37% increase incidence of cardiovascular events from taking Celebrex, you know. So a lot of these drugs, they don't come without big potential problems. So. So anyways, fast forward the story and here's where the good part happens. Two and a half years go by, I see four or five other physicians. I try some. Everything from, you know, the medication to physical therapy to. I even did a decompression therapy where they would put you on a table and like separate your body, you know, like separate your hips from your back. So sort of like a magic saw trick, but without cutting my body in half.

How do those work?

It felt amazing while I was there, but just within hours the pain would be right back. Because it's not changing what's going on biomechanically.

Well, no, I mean, like how do they even physically work? Is it like something that's attached to each your limbs, pulling your limbs apart or.

So what it was is there were. There was you lay on the table and you lay face down and it's kind of like a corset they'll put on you and they'll, they'll strap your hands and then they'll pull the table down. So you hold on, and then the corset kind of pulls your lower body away from your upper body.

So it's kind of like an inversion table, except it's horizontal.

Exactly. And the theory behind is, like, your disc will supposedly fall back into place.

Right.

I had two herniated disc at the time, too, so. Yeah. But the good part of the story, I made a decision to get well. And most people never actually do that. You know, it's just like, I hope I get better. I'll try. I kept banking on the next physician helping me, and I never did really take personal responsibility for my own health. And that's really what happened. And so I put a plan in place, and there was three major components of the plan. Part one was changing the way I was eating because I was. I'm in college, so I'm eating, like, Papa John's every day. You know, McDonald's, if I can get up in time. But now I just heard. I don't know if you heard this. McDonald's has 24. 7 breakfast now.

Really? That's convenient. But aren't they doing kale smoothies now, too? So that's. That's all.

Yeah, whatever, man. It's smoking.

I don't know where. Where the kale comes from.

So, you know, and I'm like, jamming, you know, soda and all this stuff. And what really happened with the. With the degeneration in the first place is I was just in a state of chronic. And when people talk about, like, acidosis, it's not really what you think. You know, your body's constantly working to keep that balance, you know, so it can leech minerals from your tissues, you know, in particular your bone tissues, in particular your hips and spine. Because your body really works on a hierarchy of needs. You know, your. Your body kind of gets, like a biological tunnel vision. If it has to clot your blood and it needs calcium to do that, it's going to do that first rather than maintain the. The density of your bones. You know, it's trying to keep your, you know, foolish self alive for a little while longer to try to get the problem together. And so I changed the way I was eating, and I just simply stopped eating fast food because that's what I knew how to do at the time and started shopping at, like, Whole Foods. And this is, like, going on 20 years ago, so it's, like, super new here. I'm in the Midwest, so I was the only person shopping in the store. And they made, like, maybe a Couple of major league athletes and like a random old guy with a tie dye shirt on.

Yeah, yeah. You're in Missouri, right?

Yeah, man. So it was like hardly anybody there. Now it's packed every day, which is really incredible. And so I just upgraded the food I was eating. Instead of eating a fast food burger, I was using like grass fed beef and swapping out the bun and eating more vegetables. Eating a lot, I mean, drinking a lot of water. Just really basic stuff. And then the second part was movement. And this is really important in the conversation about stem cells as well. So we'll come back around to that. So I started moving again. And your body requires movement in order to heal itself, which, you know. And then the third component was sleep, you know, and that's really where the magic happens from all of these things is the most regeneration and positive hormone secretion enzymatic repair happens while you're asleep. So fast Forward the story six weeks later, lost like 28 pounds. Because of course I got fat just sitting there playing video games for two and a half years and eating Papa John's. And so I lost a lot of weight. And I was still in college at the time. So people saw this transformation and started asking me for help. And that was really the birthing of my career. I shifted over my course of study in college. I started working with my professors, fellow students. And since then, man, worked with a couple hundred thousand people in, in one context or another with this work and what really changed the game for me. And so this was probably about nine months after the initial getting better. I went in and got a scan done. And this was my final physician that I saw that the last guy that I fired and he put the scan up for me to see. And he's just shaking his head like scratching his beard for like. Well, he didn't have a beard, just scratching his chin. It seemed like an eternity. And he said, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I haven't seen regeneration like this before. And so I had them telling me this was not possible. How did I do it? How did I regenerate the tissue that they said was impossible? In particular the spinal disc. And so here's where the stem cell.

So it was the disc that seemed to regenerate or the. Or the bone?

Both. So my bone density increased, but also it was really, for me, the majority of pain point was my spine. You know, like that was what was really tearing me down.

Yeah.

And so the disc, and it's called degenerative disc disease. So degeneration In. In clinical terms today, what is changing a lot. That basically means you can't get it back, which is just totally not true. And so this is where the conversation goes to with stem cells. And so I dug in and found up how did I actually do this. And the reality is, every single tissue has a capacity to regenerate, but it requires growth factors to be present. And you have stem cells inside every single tissue in your body. So if you want to. Do you want me to talk a little bit about the different type of stem cells?

Yeah, I think it'd be interesting to hear a little bit more about the science behind this.

Okay, so basically, there's four major types of stem cells. The first one is totipotent stem cells. And so this is as soon as the egg gets fertilized, when stealth and the cells start to divide. And if these cells are extracted, they could potentially grow a whole person with them. And this is where we're getting into some of the ethical boundaries, you know, and people concerned and, you know, and picketing and saying they're creating people. You know, the growing people, like the Matrix, you know, that scene where there's all these people getting harvested. And it's that kind of idea. But we can come back and talk a little bit about that, because it's not really like that.

And those are called totipotent stem cells.

Totipotent stem cells. Okay. Then we have pluripotent stem cells, and these are located inside the blastocyst. And these have the elasticity and the intelligence to basically become any part of the human body. And then from there, we move to multipotent stem cells. And these are a little bit more specified generally. The moldy multipotent muscle cells, for example, create muscle only. And these are the stem cells that science is most excited about right now. And then, of course, we have the adult stem cells, which these are. These are essentially like multipotent stem cells, but they are located in a specific area, local areas of the body only. So stem cells for your bone marrow in your hip are only going to be located there. Mammary stem cells are only going to be there in mammary tissues. Neural stem cells will only be in neural. Neural tissues. So I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. And everybody's got all four in their body at some point.

Yes. If you've ever been born, then, yes, you've had all these things happen. But as you grow older, the totipotent multi. The pluripotent and totipotent stem cells are no longer Really a part of your makeup. This is just while you're in development.

Okay. So like in your embryonic phases, that's when you'd have this totipotent. And you said it's the multipotent. Is the other one pluripotent? Okay. So totipotent and pluripotent would be two types of stem cells that you'd find in, like an embryo.

You got it. You got it. And so this is actually pre embryo for the totipotent. So pre embryo. What that means is. Let me give a really great example of how this actually works, because so we got into a really ethical debate about this, you know, as. As a society and not hearing the bigger story, which is this is generally the result. Of course, there's probably some weird freaky crap going on where people are like, making sheep people or whatever, you know, and doing all kinds of weird genetic experiments. But people who are doing stuff, right. This is a result of people infertility, you know, people who are working at a fertility clinic, and they, they're taking more than just one shot by fertilizing one egg, they're doing multiple. And so if they get something to basically flower and get the baby going, that can be implanted, then they've got these leftovers. And so what happens is they can be stored up to 10 years, frozen for 10 years, and then they, they have to be displaced, or they can be donated to a couple who can't conceive, or they can be donated to science to be able to figure out better ways of conception or regeneration for stem cell activities. You know, so there's. This is what it is kind of a result of a different practice. It's not people just going after and getting people's eggs.

Okay, gotcha.

Which I'm sure it happens, but that's generally not how it happens.

So, like when, when a couple is getting fertilized, there's. There's one egg that takes. That becomes the embryo and the baby eventually that that couple has. And then they've got all these leftover eggs that. Now are those eggs fertilized?

Yes. So these. They're fertilizing. They're trying to get as many as possible to give them the greatest amount of. Of chance to survive. So, yeah, okay, these are fertilized eggs too. And then you.

You would harvest these pluripotent and totipotent stem cel. When you hear about, like a football player injecting stem cells into their knee to rebuild the cartilage in the knee, that's where those stem cell cells would come from.

Not necessarily.

Okay.

Not necessarily. So if we take this a step further, so we move out of the pre embryo phase, then we get into the blastocyst and then we get into. You can also extract stem cells from the amniotic fluid, the placenta, and this has to be through consent. And also the umbilical cord. So this is post birth. And then the mother can donate the placenta or the umbilical cord and get access to those stem cells which have incredibly powerful regenerative ability, which we could of course, talk about in a moment. But a lot of times, man, it's. It's sort of like what you're talking about. And one of the things that I've been fascinated with is stem cell prolotherapy, and it's also known as bone marrow prolotherapy. And so this is basically where you're extracting that person's blood on their blood and then putting it through a centrifuge. In particular, there's another practice that you mentioned at the beginning of the show where you actually heat the blood to a certain degree and then put it through a centrifuge and then inject it back into the.

That's the, that's, that's the regenerachine. Right, or the, the orthokine.

Exactly, exactly. But the most effective one is going to be administered with a well trained physician where they're actually going and extracting from your bone marrow itself. Because the bone marrow is like the factory where your stem cells are getting produced. Like the big factory. Like this is the big, you know, Ford tough factory where they're producing all the big major cars and then there's like little shops throughout the body where they're making smaller automobiles and whatever. I hope that example makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, it does. So basically, if somebody has, let's say, a moral issue and believes that any egg that's been fertilized is conception.

Right.

And maybe you're killing something. If you were to harvest stem cells from that, you can also achieve similar effects from either taking blood out and heating it using a process like this regenechine process, or better yet, actually going into your own bone marrow and getting stem cells from your own bone marrow.

Yes, correct.

And it has to be your own blood and your own bone marrow. Or can it be somebody else's?

If you think about this, man, this would be ideal, wouldn't it? You know, because when we talk about. So let me just share a couple of really fascinating Things that I came across when I got better, and I was trying to figure out why I got better. There was one story that I saw, and this was a guy's. It was a. What was his name? His name was Paul Halpern, and he was a jockey, right? So he's like a horse jockey, right? And he was feeding his horse, and his horse, quote, accidentally bit his finger off. All right? And so you can see these pictures on the line, and you, of course, you could put them in the show notes. It's crazy. And so his finger got bit off to the degree that I can see that happening.

I've fed horses before, and they can get a little messy.

Yeah, it could chop it right off. And so his insurance company was really pushing for it to get completely amputated because of the potential with infection and things like that. But he obviously didn't want to lose his finger. And he had the finger, but they couldn't get it to reattach. And so what they did was he went to a physician who was really on the cutting edge of this stem cell, different types of stem cell therapy, and they fitted his finger with a mold, and they filled that mold with pig bladder cells. Okay. And these pig bladder cells, obviously stem cells, but they're abundant in collagen and the growth factors required for your body's own stem cells to do the job. And this guy straight up regrew his finger, including soft tissue, nerve cells, skin, and even the fingernail. He regrew all of it. And a lot of people don't know about this stuff.

Are there pictures of this somewhere?

This. There are pictures of this. And back in the day, I remember seeing. There was a segment on Oprah, you know, Dr. Oz, and he. There was another guy that had his finger. I think he was, like, trying to, you know, play. Playing wood shop at home or something. There's an old guy, and he sliced his finger off, and. Same thing. You know, he did the same treatment. This has been done.

And they regrew them like. Like a lizard's tail.

Exactly. Yes.

I'm gonna find this story and put a link to it in the show notes or some photos. Okay, I see it. Yeah. On Huffington Post. Man's finger grows back thanks to pig bladder powder.

I'll.

I'll link a link to this in the show notes.

This is just a small part of the story. So let's take this even bigger right now. And what we talked about earlier, like, would it be ideal that it's your own blood? So when you're. Let's Talk about organ transplant. You know, if somebody needs to have a heart transplant, you basically, you have to wait for somebody to die, which is kind of messed up in and of itself. You know, it's like, I wish they hurry up and. And kick it, you know? And so then you can also get into weird situation like these movies where you get somebody else's organs and you're having their dreams and you're, like, wanting to date their wife, whatever. Like, just gets crazy, right? And so, on a real deep, scientific level, organ transplantation, your body is automatically going to resist it, you know, and so you're going to have a probable immune system response. And this is why oftentimes people have to go through chemotherapy, you know, basically destroy their immune system so they can take this organ, which that is. That doesn't sound like a good idea. And so what's been done now, man, I don't know if you know about this yet, but they're literally growing organs from people's own tissues. They've already done successful bladder transplants by growing somebody's bladder in the lab in just eight weeks.

Yeah, they've done this with. Isn't it like an ear as well? Regrown an ear.

There's pretty much nothing that hasn't been touched by this yet. They're growing valves for the heart, and they're just getting more and more effective at this. And they're using your own cells that, again, extracted from your blood, your bone marrow, and then put through a centrifuge, and then they're replicating processes your body would use in the laboratory setting. Okay, so.

So with these procedures, Sean, are these just basically like, flying under the radar? Like, you gotta sign up for some kind of like a. Like a university research program and be a guinea pig test subject in order to undergo a procedure like this, if, say, your knee is completely shot and you've done everything that you want to do and you don't want to get a knee replacement, or are these procedures that somebody could. Could go to a clinic and have. And pay to have done?

Yes, they. Absolutely, they are. Yeah. And it's growing. Now in the United States, some stuff is. Is not exactly legal, but there are ways that people are going around that legally, in the United States, you could find clinics that do it, but they'll just call it something else.

Which ones aren't legal? Just the human embryo ones. Like, are the. Are the bone marrow and the heating the blood cells, are those legal?

I only brought that up just to talk about the stem cells. And you Know, one of the different places they come from.

Right.

The real science and the most viable thing for us is working with, you know, this centrifuge process and injecting your own cells back into your body.

Okay. And that's. That's legal or illegal?

It is legal.

Okay. All right.

But again, not everywhere in the United States is it accessible yet, so people can, of course, hop online. We got every resource at our fingertips, and you could find therapists who do these different procedures. And a lot of people are going out of the country, as you mentioned, because it's full on legal in different places in Europe, you know, a lot of professional athletes, for example. But there are workarounds that physicians here are using right now, and especially in organ transplantation, that is wide open for people to use stem cells to grow organs.

Okay, got it. What would be an example of, let's say, let's start with this regenechine or this orthokine process of taking your blood out and heating it up and getting it re injected. I've got a few questions for you about this. Where could someone go? Is it just certain states to have something like that done?

You know, man, I do not know. I don't know exactly which states this is going to be accessible at, but I do know that there are physicians that are doing it here in the United States for sure.

Do you know how much it costs or anything like that?

That is the question right there. It's kind of expensive right now, and this isn't necessarily going to be covered with a standard insurance plan. That's one of the big reasons why it's not as accessible. Of course, you have to go through the FDA testing and all these different things. But as you know and I know you talk about on your show, this is big business, man. And like, finding a therapy that actually, quote, cures people's issues in a really, really strong way after one treatment that isn't a good cash cow, you know?

Yeah. So while I'm looking at the Wikipedia page, for example now, it Sundays as of July 2012, and this is for the regenekene treatment, it says it costs about $7,400, and that's not covered by health insurance. To have that one done.

Yeah, that's a pretty penny for the average person.

It's a chunk of change. What about the bone marrow one? Do you know if that's like, more or less or easier to find or harder to find?

It's a little bit more accessible, but, man, bone marrow is painful. Like, that is Some. That's some painful stuff.

Oh yeah. I mean I've gotten that platelet rich plasma when I used to have that centrifuge. I did it to myself and we had a few other people who had it done. And like you think you just get something injected and the pain just goes away. But like it can keep you up for the entire night afterwards with like teeth gritting pain because it causes an inflammatory process. That's how PRP works is all these platelets get injected into the joint and it reinitiates an inflammatory process very similar to like a cortisone injection. And you know, it's like you re injured the joint all over again, but times 10 for quite some time. And in many cases you got to go back in for six to eight additional injections. And so every time you go back in, it's another like lost night of sleep pain. I mean, in some cases you only need a little bit of an injection like around say like tennis elbow or something like that. But if you've got a full on knee that you're injecting into 10 different sites in the knee, it's a process. I mean it's, it's painful.

You see, this is why you are Ben Greenfield right there, man. Because you do that stuff to yourself. I, I can't even imagine and I hope everybody's hearing this, man. This is why you're so good at what you do because you know, you put this stuff in play and see what happens and we all get the benefit. So, you know, so this is kind of an external treatment and something that's really interesting. And there's a lot of different areas that it can be utilized and we can come back and talk about that, you know, as far as anti aging, as far as skin health, things like that.

But what you mean the stem cell stuff?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Really interesting.

But for me, for me personally, you know, in my own experience, it wasn't through surgery or it wasn't through some type of an external intervention. I did this through food. I utilized the power of my body's own stem cells through certain types of foods. And one of the big things, and this is a huge takeaway, I want everybody to get, I mentioned this earlier. Every single tissue in your body has stem cells. Okay? You have infinite capacity to regenerate, but we have to have the right kind of epigenetic triggers to tell your body to do the job. And so one of the big issues with healing and why I got better, one of the reasons I got better so quickly was I got rid of a lot of the belly fat I was carrying around because stem cells act upon inflammation and belly fat is really inflammation. So even if my body wanted to regenerate those tissues in my spine again, it's just getting siphoned, taking care of other problems. And so I asked the question, what is my spine actually made of? You know, when I really looked at, okay, if I'm going to get better, I've got to figure this out right now. And it was like stuff that I'd never thought about or even heard of, you know, so like sulfur bearing amino acids, polysaccharides. One of the big things that you often hear is calcium, but what form silica, magnesium. These things biologically transmutate and become new tissues. And I wasn't getting any of that stuff. You know, I was eating Froot Loops every day.

The stuff that you just mentioned, like those, those would be supplements that you take or you're just getting those from straight up food.

So those, those things I was looking at, okay, I, I was actually dating a girl who's a chiropractor when I first kind of had this healing experience, turnaround with my health. And she took me to Wild Oats, which led to the Whole Foods. And I was taking like a bunch of supplements at first, but I, I had this thing about taking all these pills that was kind of, it didn't feel right because of my experience previously where I was, I was pretty close to being addicted to, to pain medication, you know, during that process. So I was like, where can I find these things in food? And that's really where kind of everything changed. And I really dug in there. So one of the first foods that I started to add in was aloe.

You mean like, like aloe vera?

Yeah, like, but I would get the full on big dinosaur tail and I would fillet out the inner gel from that. And that gel, in the research I was doing, it was found to increase the production of human fibroblast cells like six to eight times faster than normal cell production. Right. And so I just started to fillet that up, throw it in a smoothie and get that into my body. And fibroblasts, by the way, make collagen, make glycoproteins, make elastic fibers, the things that my disc were made of. And by the way, if you look at it, and I know you've probably talked about this a little bit too, and how interesting it is, but there's not really a solid science behind it, but the doctrine of signatures and that Gel, basically, what that is, is everything in nature will tell you what it's good for in the human body based on the way it looks, smells, or tastes or how it functions. So blueberries are good for your eyes. Walnuts are good for your brain. It looks like a brain. On and on.

Yeah. Avocados are good for your testicles, celery for erections, all of that.

Yes. Cucumbers, Same thing.

Yeah.

And so now if you look at the gel from the aloe vera, it kind of looks like the gelatinous stuff you would think your meniscus might look like, you know, or the cell, the. The disc in your back in between your vertebrae. And so it's also loaded with polysaccharides, the sulfur compounds that I was looking for, all of this stuff. So I start to throw this in there. Another thing that I came across, this was a little bit later on, and I don't. It didn't really play a big part in my kind of healing story, but it's been something that I've recommended a lot clinically, is colostrum.

Yeah, yeah. I use colostrum, but primarily for the gut that. That has application for joints as well.

Absolutely. And this is. So here's the thing again. Stem cells are located in every tissue, but they need growth factors for them to do anything, basically. First of all, we didn't really even talk about what stem cells are. Stem cells basically are root cells. They're cells that can become anything your body needs. And of course, they get more specific as we go down from the totipotent to the adult stem cells on what they can actually do. But they can't do anything without growth factors. Colostrum has 87 growth factors, all right? And this is including IGF1, growth hormone, on and on and on. And what's so interesting also is the fibroblast growth factor that it actually has in colostrum. And this supports new blood vessel development, wound healing, neurodevelopment even. And also clinically, it's been shown to have a 22% increase in the circulation of stem cells from the consumption of colostrum.

Wow.

Crazy.

And this aloe vera gel, I mean, a lot of people are going to, like, scoff when you say, or we say, you know, walnuts are good for your brain because they look like a little brain, or avocados look like ovaries or testicles, so they're good for that. But I mean, like, if you look on PubMed Aloe Vera, there's actually some interesting things on There in terms of increases in something called scf, stem cell factor, when you expose tissues. And it looks like what I'm looking at right now is an in vitro test. Right, Like a petri dish test. But basically the ability of aloe vera gel to actually cause an increase in these stem cell factors and stem cell formation in a laboratory setting. So we're not just talking about the fact that gel looks like what you might find in a vertebral cushion. There's actually some science behind this as well, which is super interesting. And I know, and I don't have the studies pulled up in front of me, but I've seen similar studies regarding colostrum and stem cell formation and these. These growth factors, right, like not just insulin, like growth factor, but a ton of other growth factors that colostrum can help out with. Because it's supposed to help a baby cow or a baby goat or a baby human grow into a big one, right?

Exactly.

So aloe vera and colostrum are two things that can help out with stem cell formation even if you don't have, like 8,000 bucks to shell over for an injection. What else? What are some other things?

Awesome. So I think you mentioned earlier the marine phytoplankton. There's a little bit of data on that as well. Chlorella as well. Chlorella growth factor. But one of the things that I implemented and that I found in the studies early on and these. The marine phytoplankton is relatively new to me at that. I mean, I've been using it for maybe seven years, but this was like 16 years ago. And so spirulina was one of the hot things at the health food store. And I was like, okay, so how does this stuff work? Of course, it's the, you know, the highest ratio of protein of any food that people know about, about 71% protein by weight. But there was a study that was funded by the National Institute of Health, and it actually looked at how spirulina promotes stem cell genesis. Okay. So it literally promotes the creation of stem cells. So not only do you just have stem cells in all your tissues, but your body can make more of them. And it's just so fascinating. And so I'm jamming spirulina. I was putting that in my water. I was putting it in my guacamole. I was putting it in smoothies, just getting that stuff into my body. And I know again, that that helped to kind of add to that fire. And by the way, I got to mention this too, the Adult Stem Cell foundation actually endorsed Colostrum because it was shown to stimulate the release of adult stem cells from the bone marrow. Because it doesn't matter if you have the stem cells, they have to get mobilized, they have to circulate to the right place and you need the growth factors, you know, so that's kind of the secret formula right there.

Have you ever, have you ever looked into the difference in terms of, of efficacy with something like phytoplankton versus like spirulina or chlorella?

I have not. I mean, I know a bunch about the, the nutrition, the nutritional content of both, but not comparatively, you know, especially as far as stem cell production goes, you know, with, with the marine phytoplankton. I mean, if you just. That stuff is so oily, that's a huge indication of like these really rare fatty acids that it contains. And it's pretty much got everything ever that is in there. And of course it's going to be at like fraction of a fraction of a percent. But every nutrient that we know about is in phytoplankton. That's where all life comes from.

Yeah, well, it's, well, like, like Chlorella and spirulina are primarily freshwater environment species. And I know phytoplankton. You know, I had a guy a while ago, like a couple years ago, and I interviewed him about phytoplankton and how they harvest it from seawater. But I think the primary difference is it's, it's much, much smaller. Like it's a single cell organism. It's, you know, spirulina, chlorella, algae. Phytoplankton is like micro algae. And so apparently the absorbed ability is higher with something like phytoplankton. And I mean, from my experience, phytoplankton is also typically more expensive. Yes, but I would hazard a guess and again, I haven't seen much of the research. I would hazard a guess. Phytoplankton probably does an even better job than chlorella or spirulina just based off some of its properties as a tiny, tiny living organism. But I would say best case scenario, you probably are, are rotating both through your diet if you're injured or if you need to do something like fight degenerative disc disease or some of the things that you were working against.

Exactly, Yeah, I totally agree with that. But it's one of those things where it might not be cost effective for people. And I really like the approach of stacking the conditions in your favor, doing as much of this small stuff as you can to get the result that you want. And a big part of this story, even as I'm talking about some of the foods that have clinically proven viability for really helping with healing and stem cell production. And so for me, it was regenerating the. The disc in my back. And I actually went from degenerative disc disease. You know, I was diagnosed with the disease and told that this was incurable to regenerating that tissue, you know, because I gave my body the raw materials it needed to rebuild me.

Yeah, I know that we're gonna get some comments from people just because this, this inevitably happens, who might call you out, dude, and we'd be curious to see like, I don't know, photos or, or evidence that you regenerated this stuff or that, or that anybody has done something like, you know, regenerated spine or increased bone density or something like that by using food or supplements. Do you have that kind of information anywhere?

I do, man. I have to have it. But you're calling me out, bro. It's all right, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And the funny thing is, I actually lost a half of an inch in height and I regained half of an inch, you know, and of course, that can go through the course of a day. You can lose a half event, a half of an inch, you know, but this was actually looking at the juiciness. We'll say the juiciness of the disc in between the vertebrae and my spine, you know, I regained that. And also the two herniated disc retracted on their own. Whereas for a lot of people, they're just. We want to get out of pain so badly that we'll just opt for surgery. And we got to understand, surgery is not like a small thing, you know, like, this is the actual. This is a trauma, you know, and you're increasing your mortality rate like 50% just by undergoing surgery. And especially with back surgery, you can be guaranteed you're going to have another two or three surgeries at least.

Yeah. Let's say, let's say, for example, that you strained your hammy today. I would imagine you'd probably be using some of the things that we've already talked about, like colostrum and, you know, some other stem cell regrowth supplements. But what would you, you know, what. What would be some other protocols that you would incorporate, whether like, you know, juicing or smoothing recipes that you use or specific injury rehabilitation protocols that you found to be particularly effective?

Awesome. Well, the first thing I would do is probably not pull my hamstring in the first place, you know, but I actually, maybe I think it was about two years ago I did snap my hammy. That was one of my. It's so funny you would bring that one up because after that, that initial injury with breaking my hip when I was, when I was a kid, I snapped my hamstrings, like either one back and forth about a dozen times before I made it to college. And I've even got game film where I'm like breaking away and running to the end zone and I'll snap a hamstring and nobody touches me and I just fall, you know, or limp and drag my leg into the end zone. Like I was just breaking down so many different muscle imbalances and I was just made out of hot garbage, you know, like, that's one of the most powerful things about your show. And what I do is giving people the power to really understand, like, I get to make my body out of what I want. You know, like you can make your body out of the most powerful, sustainable, real foods that have existed throughout humanity, or you can make yourself out of like gummy bears and Cheetos, you know, and you get to pick that.

Yeah. And not only that, not only are you what you eat, but you are what you eat. Eight, right. So if you're eating whatever, a steak from a cow that was fed commercial grain versus, you know, an organic grass fed cow, that. That certainly has implications as well.

Absolutely it does, man. And, you know, a big part of this, and I can't. When I thought about the. The jockey story, there was a study that was done, and I saw this really early on as well, that was done on horses, because if a horse breaks a bone, a racehorse like this is potentially worth, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars to their owners. So they don't want that to happen. So to increase the bone density of the horses, they were giving them supplements, you know, namely calcium supplements. And in this particular study, they found that when they gave the horses supplements alone, there was a negligible increase in their bone density. However, when they walked the horses and gave them the supplements, they had a significant increase in their bone density. You know, so that movement is important in your body, assimilating and utilizing all the stuff we're talking about. So me pulling a hamstring or even if we take it a step further, you know, if it was a more of a significant injury, I would say definitely something that's, again, instead of just Being like an airy fairy thing, but clinically proven to actually mobilize. And what that means basically is driving stem cells to where they need to go. It might be something like acupuncture, you know, so doing some needling in that area or acupressure, but in particular acupuncture. And there's some stuff out of Harvard that's actually showing the efficacy with acupuncture and stem cells being closely related. So in their kind of like what they call is the organizing center network and how they all work together with your nervous system. So I would probably do some acupuncture. If it was more of a significant injury. I would definitely add in the stuff we talked about, the aloe vera, the colostrum, things like that. But then I would do some topical stuff. I do topical magnesium for sure and I probably do that multiple times a day. What else would I do? Some anti inflammatories. So really great one is curcumin, you know, which is coming from turmeric. That one's fantastic. Fantastic anti inflammatory properties there. What else would I do? I would probably do some cryotherapy, probably add that into the mix. After a little bit of time. I would do some self massage first and then I would probably go get some massage therapy done after a little bit of time just to kind of break up any weird cross linking or scar tissue that might be trying to build up. Because a big problem with the hamstrings is when they heal, they always kind of heal a little differently, you know, with. And build up scar tissue.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's what I do.

Now you have, and I think I've seen this on your website before you have like a special juice that you drink. Like a healing juice, am I correct or a tea?

Yes, it's a tea. Yeah.

Okay, gotcha.

You know I get my juice on man, but I'm more of a tea connoisseur.

And when do you drink this tea?

So I'm always experimenting like you, but not injecting myself with, you know, I'm not doing that man. But you know, I'm always experimenting and trying different things with my, with my diet, nutrition. But the latest phase, it's probably been about two months since I was doing this. But for probably about six months, first thing in the morning I was doing it. I'm not really a big fan of, of coffee. Not the benefits. I think the benefits are phenomenal, but just don't like the way it tastes that much. So I would use like a, a denser tea. So something that was a really strong caffeinated tea like Pu erh for example or just a black tea and I would brew that. And like with Pu erh it's actually a fermented tea and it comes in these little bricks. So and then you put it into your little tea maker, your little stainless steel tea tea ball it is. I don't wanna, I don't know if that sounds appropriate but. And then you, you know, put the hot water on there and so I would make, brew the tea and then in the blender would go. I'm a really big fan of ghee. Butter bothers me a little bit. You know the dairy just doesn't jive with me. So I love the ghee and I put a little MCT oil in there but then I stack it. So I'm adding medicinal mushrooms most times to these drinks. So I'm opening up capsules of cordyceps, reishi, lion's mane, chaga. So getting all those benefits in there as well. And usually it'll just be one or two of those. I don't put all of them in there. Maybe a couple drops of some English toffee stevia to sweeten it up. Add the tea in there, blend it up and then that's my daily drink.

It's amazing. I love it. I'm a huge fan. Not necessarily for the stem cell regrowth properties but more for the immune boosting properties and some of the stress reducing benefits of this whole medicinal mushroom approach. I've got this big, big chunk of chaga that I just brought back from Finland and what I did was I ground it up and broke it up with a hammer and a knife and then boiled it. And after boiling it you can save the liquid. But then I've got all the little boiled crumbles and they're, they're upstairs in my, in my alcohol cabinet right now because I basically just stuffed them all into this vodka bottle. So I'm making this, this dense alcohol infusion of chaga extract and if you look up chaga, I mean it's got some, some amazing like terpene and sterols and all sorts of stuff that are super duper useful for, for boosting your immune system.

So yeah, yeah, just google chaga and cancer and just have a field day on looking at that stuff. It's crazy. But what I'm finding with like chaga and Rishi in particular, dual extraction, you know, because certain things are going to be pulled out through the, through the alcohol, but other things Aren't like the beta glucans, for example, so hot water extracting. And so whenever I play with this stuff, I try to do both, but mainly I do the alcohol extraction myself if I play with this stuff. And there's some great, really great companies out there if people aren't like, you know, hunting mushrooms, like, again, that's why you're Ben Greenfield, you know. And so this is a really great practice because, number one, the big thing with in particular Rishi and Chaga, clinically, so there's about a 330% increase in your NK cell activity when you consume Reishi mushroom. So and what that means is like your natural killer cells. So it's basically the way I like to look at it is like your immune system is getting trained, you know, to basically build a weapon against whatever weird nefarious thing you're up against. And in the Chinese medicinal system. So Rishi is a mushroom that, it's a, works on your Shen. So it's like your quote, spiritual energy. And then you've got the stuff that works on the Qi and the Jing. But this, this mushroom in particular, what that says is it's a tonic, it's something you can take over time. It's going to just keep building up and building up the benefits. You know, there is no like overdose, like something like maca, for example. You probably don't want to take that all the time. You know, that's why I love the medicinal mushrooms.

Yeah, yeah, they're, they're super duper interesting. And you'll love this, this little, little anecdote if you're doing like hot water extraction of mushrooms, because you get all this like mushroom meat left over, like all these chunks of mushroom. And one thing that you can do is you can take a good organic, a heavy cream or a yogurt or anything that's creamy, even like a full fat coconut milk. You can stir some of that into the meat and then add a nice stevia, like whatever you like, a blueberry stevia or a chocolate stevia, and then you add some glutamine or some peptides or some collagen, like anything that has a little bit of a thickening type of effect. And when you stir all this together and you eat it, it's like eating a blueberry or a chocolate pancake. The texture is just absolutely amazing. I just figured out this little recipe a few weeks ago. If you use mushrooms, if you get into this hot water extraction of mushrooms and you got these little chunks left over and you don't want to stuff them into a vodka bottle to make an alcohol infusion. You can just eat them with this little recipe. Super duper.

So smart, man. Yeah, I never thought about that.

It's, like, addictingly good. So anyways, we've got all these different things that we can use to enhance our ability to create new stem cells. Are these things that you do, like, every day? Do you reserve them for when you get injured or sick? Are they something that you would recommend someone use if they've got, like, degenerative disc disease, then stop using once they've healed themselves? I mean, what's your protocol with this stuff?

Awesome question, man. I'm a big fan of cycling everything, you know, I mean, there's a couple exceptions, you know, like medicinal mushrooms even, but still, I'll even cycle those. But I'm a big fan of cycling everything, our food, our nutrients, because how we evolved, we wouldn't have access to this stuff all the time. And this is where it's kind of like we are world citizens now. You know, the world has changed, but just honoring as much as we can without stressing ourselves out, our body's natural cycles. And no, I'm in the Midwest, so we're moving to the fall now. So my food choices are probably going to be closer into alignment to what nature would be providing now. You know, so the squashes and the pumpkins and all that good stuff. And with that said, I do tend to. I'm a big fan also of preparation. So if I know I'm going to be traveling, for example, I'm going to do some stuff to kind of fortify my immune system beforehand, maybe the week before. And so I'm going to start taking the chaga with the curcumin, the turmeric combination. So I'm going to go ahead and start popping some of those. I'm going to go ahead and start upping my vitamin C content. In particular, I'm a big fan of the camu camu berry. And so that was another one of the big things that I use. And a lot of people don't know this. Yes, vitamin C is great for your immune system, but it's also important for regenerating tissues. You know, and there's studies done showing that vitamin C speeds the healing of tendons and also collagen production.

Yeah, there is a World War II surgeons used to give this to their patients after surgery. Vitamin C to help regrow tissue. I've seen, and I recently talked about this on a podcast where very, very high doses can potentially cause some issues. Not just, not just gut issues, but potentially, even in very, very high doses, vitamin C can act as a pro oxidant. And that's one of the issues. I mean, I know that Linus Pauling, for example, brought a lot of really good research to the forefront when it comes to vitamin C, but megadosing, I'll be honest with you, I'm not on the megadosing bandwagon. I generally, if I'm injured, I'll use about 5 to 6 grams of vitamin C per day, split into smaller doses, because you can only absorb so much at any given time unless you're doing like a, like an iv. But I'm, I'm personally kind of careful with the vitamin C megadosing.

Yeah, no, you're right. In the same range as me. You know, I'm not pushing it too much. But number of. One of the big things that really jumps out for people if they know about pushing with the vitamin C is the vitamin C flush, right? So your, your bowels will just empty out if you take too much, you know, and so that's kind of an indication to me that your body doesn't want you to take too much. And then Linus Pauling, like you mentioned, is just like some of the research saying you can't take too much, just keep taking it. And I like to err on the side of, like, what is my body actually saying to me? So right there with you on that one, man.

Yeah.

So let's see. So really stacking these conditions together, you know, so putting these one right on top of the other on top of the other is really the way to go, in my opinion, and cycling things. What I would do for most people is really just keep an open mind to what's going to be appropriate for you. And learning about stem cells today. So everybody's not going to go and rush. And I know people listening right now. There are people who are dealing with chronic pain. There are people who are dealing with degenerative disc disease. And they're hearing this and they're like, I knew that there was going to be a way. There are people who are, they have fractures. There are people who have issues with their skin, which we maybe can still talk about. But just understand this is one option that you can dive into is getting stem cell therapy done at, you know, actually at a facility, you know, by, by a physician. Or you can stack the conditions in your favor like I did personally, internally, with your, with your nutrition, with your movement, and also, you know, understanding I think that a big part of healing is just remembering that you can get better, you know, because it can be so tough and things can seem so bleak and dark when, when you're in pain, you know. And I remember right when I made the decision to get well, you know, that last week before that, it was the darkest time. Like I was rock bottom. And I kept having this thought in my head, like, it's been two and a half years, I can't possibly get better now. Why am I even thinking about it? You know, I just need to let it go. And people who do that have that attitude after 10 days of being hurt, you know, Please understand, if you're alive right now, if your heart is beating, your body has the capacity to do so much, you know, and it's just really about stacking the conditions in your favor. But it really starts with a change in your inner game, you know, because you can eat the best food in the world, the greatest nutrition. But if you're, if your mindset is crap and you're, you know, just totally in disbelief that anything positive can happen, you're just going to make everything hard on yourself, you know, So I just want to kind of throw that out there. I don't know why I felt compelled to say that. But just understand there's so much that you can do. And this is why I really appreciate the work you do, man, is. Is providing all this information for people to put in action. But you got to put in action.

Yeah. It's the same thing as if you, you, you've been around like a bunch of sick kids. Right. Like when my kids get home from school and my wife tells me that someone's been going around the school, I can think myself into getting a scratchy throat or the sniffles just by thinking, great, I'm gonna get sick. But at the same time, it works in reverse. Absolutely. And if you believe that, and again, this is gonna sound woo, but if you believe that you're taking care of yourself and you're using, let's say, aloe vera gel and phytoplankton and colostrum. And the whole time you're also thinking, hey, my body has the capability to heal itself. The body has this unique knowledge and it actually is an intelligent machine that can regenerate. That's going to help you a whole lot more than if you're, whatever, taking aloe vera gel, colostrum and phytoplankton and thinking, marking the day six months from then that you're going to get Surgery. Two different ways to approach it. Sean, you've got a podcast, the Model Health show, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes if folks want to listen in. But last kind of fun question that I have for you, man. What's been one of the more interesting or intriguing or enchanting episodes that you've had over there?

Just like you, man, my shows are like a masterclass, whatever the subject matter is. So there's so many great ones and great moments. But the one I tend to get the most, like if I bump into somebody out on the street or somebody sees me at the gym, that if I just bumped into people out there, the one that I hear the most about is the episode I did on water, and it was called Water and Hydration Masterclass. And in that episode, I really broke down this whole phenomenon called water. We tend to think that water is just H2O. You know, water is H2O. It's just kind of inert substance, and it's just some. Just some random chemical, you know, that's in a liquid form. And we drink it. We need to drink a lot of it. But clinically, if you were to consume just pure H2O or have that injected into your body, that can kill you. You know, it's a. It's a drug. You know, H2O in its pure form is a pharmacological product. Right? Water doesn't function like that in nature. It's H2O. Water's known as a universal solvent, so it's H2O with other things dissolved into it. You know, so that's just kind of the. The tip of the iceberg with the conversation. And what things need to be dissolved into your water? What kind of structure should it have? Where should your water be coming from? The problems with our municipal water supply, where, you know, we've got dozens, dozens of studies showing that right now, if you're not like, tapped into a well, into well water, most likely the water that you're consuming that's coming through your faucet is coming through your shower, that you're bathing in, that you're drinking, that you're cooking your food with, most likely that water has traces of chemotherapy drugs, statins, antidepressants. All of that is now making its way through the hydrological cycle. Or let me take that back. That's. That's kind of the outer parameter, but more of a direct thing from runoff and getting into your water supply. And our current forms of treating water aren't able to take that stuff out, but the experts say, you know, it's trace amount, so it's not a problem. We don't know that yet. Yeah, you know, so what can you do to actually ensure that your water is safe and it's really bringing more life to your body because you are water, you know, so that's the foundational thing. And like to wrap this whole story up, even with me when I found out, like the disc in your back. So shout out to the people out there that are dealing with this, they're non vascular. So what does that mean? Basically, hydration doesn't get there directly. It's through a process of remote diffusion that your disc actually get hydrated. It's one of the last places to get. This is why you do get shorter through the day. Like your body's just like that. That moisture is just kind of getting sucked out of your spinal disc. So please understand, you have to be so hydrated that your body has enough to do everything else. And then it's going to get to your discs. So if you want to heal and kind of jazz up those discs in your back, you've got to really make sure that you're hydrating yourself adequately on a regular basis with the right kind of water. So there's a long answer to one of my favorite episodes and one that a lot of people talk about. So that would be the one man.

Was that somebody that you interviewed or is that just you you talking about?

Yeah, that was. That was just me. So I think we maybe do the same thing where I do, you know, some solo shows. I do about a 50, 50 ratio.

Yeah. Okay, cool. I didn't know you were such a water nerd. But I, I grew up. My dad was a gourmet coffee roaster. He got very into water when I was at a young age because he realized the, the effect that different types of water have on the flavor of the espresso or on the brewed coffee. And now he actually travels around the world setting up farms with like structured water systems. Right. Like this whole idea behind Dr. Gerald Pollock's research at University of Washington into the exclusion zone, the easy zone water and how cells can actually become hydrated in a different way. And you know, for example, the growth of a farm animal, in his case, it's just farmers and dogs. Dollar signs can be affected by the status of their hydration and also the type and specifically the vibrating frequency of the water that they drink. And so I personally, Sean, I drink well water, but even my well water, I structure that as it comes into my home through this central home structured water unit. Because even that after it passes through like the bacterial iron filter and sits in the pipes of the home, it's still kind of sort of dead water. So, yeah, I'm on the same page with you. I'm a woo woo water nerd myself, so. And I get laughed at sometimes about water. People are, that's just H2O. I'm like, no, it isn't. Yeah, man, definitely is.

We definitely need to talk more about it, man. I just moved to a new house and everything was perfect and I didn't even really, I didn't make a big deal out of the water because, you know, my wife would be like, it's just the water, you know, even though she knows how I am about it. But the, the guy who, you know, the, the, the seller of the house, he was like, and it's on a well and it's just like time stopped, you know, and it was really a huge, really, really like a. Just a great fortune to be able to have access to that kind of water. But at the same time, like you said, I still do some cool stuff to the water to make sure it's really super hydrating. Because, man, your dad just sounds like awesome too. I want to talk with him. But water is so different. Even how it can hydrate your cells. You know, there's these protein structures in our body called aquaporins that kind of determine what size molecules or you know, like the, even the, the total dissolved salads in your, in your water. You know how that's going to actually get hydrated and integrated into your cells? Just because you drink water doesn't mean it's going to go where it needs to go, you know. So this is why all this stuff matters. And again, yeah, we can geek out on this stuff all day, man.

So, yeah, and it's one of those things that comes back to bite me whenever I travel because I end up spending about 30 bucks on water for a typical like, weekend bout of travel because I go buy like the good mineralized glass bottle stuff or find out where the local, where the local spring is sending its water. And yeah, it turns into a little bit of a spendy affair, but, but man, it's worth it knowing that you're not drinking birth control pills. Sean, I'm gonna link to your show and your vast body of knowledge, your blog posts, your podcast, everything like that over in the show, notes for this episode, and also everything we talked about, orthocaine and regenerachine and PRP injections and aloe vera gel and all that jazz. So if you're listening in, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Model Health to check out the shownotes. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com modelhealth if you leave a comment over there, either myself or if I can twist his arm to do it, Sean will reply if you have some things that you were unclear on. And we'll set you straight and help you out. So, Sean, thanks so much for coming on the show, man.

Hey, man, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I really do appreciate it, Ben. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and my guest, Shawn Stevenson signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam. Sa.