Dr. Jason Snibbe: Peptides for ACL Recovery, BPC-157 & TB-500, Robotic Surgery, & Prehab | TUH #278

Our goal is to walk within an hour of the surgery. There's enormous amount of data showing that if you get up and walk on your joint replacement immediately, your confidence goes through the roof of trusting the joint.

I love thought leaders like yourself that are really patient-centric and thinking about what is the best possible outcome for this patient to get back to full life.

It's like you're an artist. You want that canvas to be good quality canvas. So if the canvas or the patient is not quality, they don't have good tissue or good metabolism and good health, No matter how great of a painting you draw, no matter how great of a surgery you do, you're gonna have a bad outcome.

The focus on prehabilitation, posthabilitation, minimally invasive surgery, and the use of all of the biohacking modalities tells me that you're really focused on the whole patient journey.

My big passion is controlling the episode of care for these patients.

Where do you see the future of orthopedic surgery going?

I think the future of orthopedic surgery will be—

Ultimate Human. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today is going to be one of those really fascinating, what I would call the in-between podcasts, because we're gonna look at a classically trained surgeon who is doing some phenomenal things, not just with joint replacements, but with surgical interventions, minimally invasive, sparing as much muscle as possible, and getting patients back to activity faster than traditional methods. And what I love about this surgeon is that he is also a biohacker. He's as curious as I am about ways that we can improve outcomes using things like nutrition and biohacking modalities. To improve these surgical outcomes. So welcome to the podcast, Dr. Jason Snibbe.

Thank you for having me, Gary.

Board-certified orthopedic surgeon and slash biohacker. That's right. Yeah, I, I, I love it. In fact, I wrote something down here that I thought was a really cool way to start the podcast. Prehab is the missing biohack.

Yes.

Um, certainly heard of rehab, but I've never heard of prehab. Absolutely. And, um, you know, before the podcast started, like a lot of my guests, we sort of ran a mini podcast in our hyperbaric chamber. Yeah, it was so nice. But I find it really fascinating that you take this whole patient approach to something like a surgical intervention on a joint. And I wonder if you might just talk about that for a minute. What was your journey from classically trained surgeon to now being one of the pioneers and arguably one of the leading authorities in the world on these minimally invasive robotic surgeries and your attitude towards this rehabilitation?

I think, you know, my approach to surgery has always been, how can we make it better? What are the little things that we can do to make it better? And when I started my career, I realized that if I'm super gentle on the tissue, I'm easy on the muscles, I don't put, you know, traditionally these heavy retractors that would tear through muscle and tear through tissue, it was kind of brutal. And I realized—

Open-heart surgery, like, —rib spreader.

Yeah, just so brutal. And I realized if I just am gentle, then when I would go see the patient the next day in the hospital, I'd be like, "Wow, this guy's getting up out of bed. He's able to engage his muscles. He's able to move so easily and move so quickly without having all this trauma to the joint." So everything that we traditionally do, so for example, like in a knee replacement, traditionally people put a tourniquet on your leg. A tourniquet for, you know, the case would take an hour and a half, 2 hours. It would crush your quad muscle.

Right.

For 2 hours.

Right.

And so then they would say, "Okay, get up and move." You're like, "I can't." It's like a car was sitting on my leg for 2 hours.

Right.

And so these things, by eliminating all these little things that were involved with the classical aspects of surgery, I refined my technique to be less and less and less and less invasive. And I realized on the back end, the patients, were incredibly happy and satisfied, but they were like, "I got rid of my cane so quickly." Yeah. And my patients, sometimes it's a joke that sometimes that what they joke about, they say the physical therapist comes to their house typically the first couple weeks and they open the door and the patient walks up to the door with nothing. And they're like, let's say it's a man, they say, "Okay, is your wife, where's your wife?" He goes, "No, no, I'm the one that had the surgery." They're like, "But you're walking around." Yeah, yeah. And I go, because the, the results are just incredible.

Wow.

But I also think that like the neuro connectivity to your muscles and activating your muscles, for example, like you go to the gym and you're like, I wanna work on my glutes and my quads. If you do really focused exercises on those muscles, you start activating those muscle fibers, you start getting neurotransmission to those muscles to activate those muscles. So by the prehab we talk about is, getting you into that surgery, whether it's a shoulder surgery or a knee surgery or hip surgery, activating the muscles around that joint. Also trying to mobilize the joint, try to stretch—

Prior to surgery.

Prior, yeah. Sometimes you can't because it's arthritic and it's damaged, but as much as you can to stretch and mobilize the fibers and then increase blood flow and connectivity to your muscles. And so then when you come in, your muscles are activated and you have a much better, easier time to activate those muscles again.

I don't think that a lot of people think about getting in shape for surgery, right?

Right.

And we talked about this a little bit too. I had some experience with the NFL Alumni Association where they were, you know, these athletes after they had retired from the league were having, you know, surgical interventions. I mean, the ones that had trauma went right away, but the repetitive use injuries that, you know, built up over time and now they need rotator cuff surgery or knee, hip, or, shoulder surgery, and the difference in outcomes just by rehabbing them, I guess, you know, and getting their hemoglobin A1C under control, getting their— some of their inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein under control, getting them on, on a, on a good clean diet to lower their inflammatory cascade.

Absolutely.

So what would be— in a perfect world, um, I'm coming in for a knee procedure, uh, let's say a joint replacement.

Yes.

And what does a prehab cycle look like for you? How far out and what does that map look like?

I mean, we like to get to people as early as possible, obviously, for, for many different reasons. And I think that way I look at it is like we try to be the best we can be. We try to create the best surgery, minimally invasive. I use robotic technology. We're doing so much to make that operation great. But if the base, the foundation is poor, No matter how good you are, you can't get a great result sometimes. And so we love to get to people many months before, let's say 3 months, even maybe 6 months if possible, to get them organized, especially with their inflammation in their body, to lower the inflammation, to work on their diet, and then also whatever supplements they need, whether it's like, I'm a huge fan of your amino acids. I go all over the world. The Perfect Aminos. The Perfect Aminos, which I think is a, an incredible supplement. It's so easy. And we're right now with the patients, we're getting them on Perfect— if they— let's say they're not taking it, and let's say they want surgery quickly, we will put them on Perfect Amino every day all the way up to the surgery, and then, and then, and then at least for 6 weeks after. Most of the patients love it so much they stay on it for the rest of— for the rest of the time. They just—

I take it every single day. I take that, yeah, H2 tabs, and a mineral salt.

Yeah, everything. And I do the same. You do?

Absolutely. Are you taking the H2 tab too? Yeah. And I take Mineral salt.

Yeah, yeah, I take it all. I'm a believer. I'm a believer. If your pantry looks exactly like my pantry—

Oh, it doesn't really.

So I do it. I'm a firm believer. And I just think that putting people on those programs, you're creating an environment for them to gain, prevent as much muscle loss as possible so they can gain the muscle back quicker. You're getting rid of the antioxidants in their body to just rid themselves of all this stuff. But also remember, we're giving them a lot of poison.

Yeah.

We're giving them anesthesia, we're giving them narcotics, we're giving all these horrible medications that patients don't like taking them, but they have to in the beginning 'cause it hurts. But to rid themselves of all this stuff, these supplements are very key to do that.

I love that you're talking about, you know, diet, lifestyle factors, even prior to surgery. And I know that you and I have very similar viewpoints on sedentary lifestyle. And, you know, when I was really drilling into your background, you've spoken openly a lot about how very often the problem is not in the joint, it's from the lack of mobility causing the joint to now be dysfunctional. And I think that conventionally you would think the opposite, right? The more I use it, the more I wear it out. But your discussions around SnowEagle Fluid, synovial fluid and things like that, and that mobility is critical for the— for life extension of our joints.

Absolutely. And, and I think it's, it's, it's not only weight training, resistance training, it's also stretching, working on your flexibility, like keeping the tendons and the, and the ligaments around the joint flexible so there's natural movement. Because we know if I put your leg in a cast for 6 weeks and your knee doesn't move, your cartilage breaks down.

Your cartilage breaks down from, from lack of movement. Lack of movement and load. Correct. Right.

Okay. And because, because naturally when you move, the cartilage is on the surface of your bones. They have water. The synovial fluid goes in and out of those cartilage cells by movement. So the more movement you have in a joint, the more natural environment of the cartilage will exist, and it will be better for your joints to move. But also it's the muscles around it. And you know, like we see, there's spine patients who they get spinal cord injuries and they lose 30, 40% of their quad, they get knee pain.

Yeah.

They have a normal knee on an MRI, but their knee hurts 'cause they don't have the strength.

Right.

So it's build, it's making sure that they build up that power and that strength in their legs. But the, I tell every patient, you need to walk every day. You need to get out and walk and move because it's so important, especially as we age, for balance, for mobility. For your whole system. And I talk all about this all the time with patients is the kinetic chain.

Yeah.

So the minute your foot touches the ground, there's forces going through your leg, through your back, through your whole body. And so by walking, you're activating that whole kinetic chain in your body as opposed to just doing like a bicep workout or just doing like a quad workout. You're working on all the little muscles all throughout your body.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, walking is so uniquely designed to do everything that we need to live a long, healthy life. I mean, it circulates lymphatic fluid. It's actually a part of our detoxification pathway. That's why sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. When I was in the mortality space, I was fascinated that sitting had become the new smoking.

Oh, yeah.

And as an orthopedic surgeon, you're saying it's just as detrimental to the joints. Absolutely.

Yeah. It makes your joints break down. It makes you— it creates a lot more trouble and degradation of your cartilage and all your joints, but specifically the weight-bearing joints.

So somebody that's in a position where they are considering a joint replacement, probably out of necessity. I mean, most people don't get them done because they don't absolutely have to get them done. Exactly. I want to talk about what's unique about this minimally invasive muscle-sparing robotic surgery, because there are not a lot of orthopedic surgeons that are highly skilled in that area. And, and you are the— not just the thought leader, um, but you're also— you train other physicians on these procedures. Um, you're also affiliated with a number of professional sports teams, heavily weighted towards basketball for some reason.

Yeah, yeah, I just— I've been— I work a lot in NBA and NHL too.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, listen, Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to The Ultimate Human Podcast. I, I think trauma is one thing, right? We understand trauma and sports and, you know, uh, you know, anytime you apply severe trauma to the joint, you're gonna actually need to have surgery. But repetitive use injuries, repetitive use injuries is something I think is, you know, a broad category where people have just worn the joints out or they've had poor biomechanics to the point now where they're considering a replacement.

Yeah.

What makes what you do with minimally invasive robotic surgery, first of all, I don't think a lot of people really understand what robotic surgery is.

Yeah.

Like you don't leave the room and a robot does it, right? No, no, no, no.

Okay, good.

I'm not, 'Cause I feel like Tesla's gonna try to do that soon with their—

I'm going to a sauna or cold plunge while the surgery's happening.

They can already wash your dishes, dude. I mean, they could drive your car.

Exactly, exactly. No, I think that, so what we used to do before robotics became the mainstream, or sorry, not mainstream, but before we had the opportunity to use robotics, we were doing the same operation essentially for everybody. We were kind of aligning joints. They said, this is the best way for this joint to be stable and for it to be aligned properly. What we do with robotics is we get a CT scan of the joint. Let's say we talk about the knee. We get a CT scan of your knee. Now we know literally your alignment from your hip down to your ankle, rotationally in all 3 planes of the body. We know exactly where your knee lies.

Right.

And then from that, we understand the size of the bone, the approximate sizing of the implant. And then during the surgery, I stress your ligaments, your ligaments, not somebody else's, not based on some like research number. It's basically how your ligaments respond. And then based on those responses of the ligaments, we get a set of numbers and I adjust on a computer screen the implant to accept your ligaments.

Ah.

So it aligns your body to exactly the way your body's aligned. So you get the proper center of rotation. So that allows your leg to be in the perfect alignment, not somebody else's Gary Brecka's alignment.

Yeah, yeah.

The way your knee is aligned and your knee is balanced, but also the sizing is perfect and the alignment is perfect. So we're literally putting it in because if you look at the data on total knees, let's say 80% say I like it, 20% say it feels weird. It doesn't feel like it's right 'cause we're putting it in this weird way. Yeah.

Like a perfect hinge in to somebody who has genu valgus or genu varus, or wide hips and narrow angle—

Exactly.

Versus narrow hips and more of a straight angle.

Absolutely.

So you're accounting for that in anatomical physiology on a per person, per patient basis.

Absolutely, but also imagine someone has a weird shape to their femur, a weird shape to their ankle, they had a broken ankle years ago. You're going to account for all of that. Yeah. And then what also makes it incredible is this idea called haptic technology. So when you're cutting the bone, the robot knows exactly where the bone is in space. So the saw will never leave the bone. So really? Absolutely. So I'm a big guy. I'm 6'4".

I thought you held the thing in your hand like—

Yeah, no, no, it's on the robotic arm. So I tell people, like, I'm 6'4". I weigh about 200 15 pounds. If I lean all my body against that robotic arm, it will not move. Because when, when we used to do knee replacements, and people still do them without the robot, the saw would exit the bone and that would cut all your tissue and create more scar tissue, more trauma, more damage. So the haptic technology keeps the saw or the cutting device within the parameters of the bone and it will never exit.

Wow.

And that makes it so, so perfect. And that's really where robotics is a game changer. And now we have it for the hip, we have it for the knee, and we have it for the shoulder now. And so the accuracy of putting those implants in and getting the actual center of rotation where your muscles work the most efficiently, where you have the best result with range of motion and stability, you get all that without having to like use like, you know, kind of primitive x-ray or something that you don't understand. Now you know 3-dimensionally exactly the way it's gonna be. So when you have a select group selection of—

I'm just curious, I mean, when you have a selection of like different, um, uh, prosthetics, you know, knees for example, um, I always thought everybody got the same knee. No, right? No. So, you know, like, uh, Stryker just made— Yeah, well, 200,000. And, and, and you just bought it and stuck it in there?

Well, no, it's, it's— well, I use Stryker. That's who the robot— robotic company.

Yeah, I know, I'm not just trying to shout them out.

Yeah, but, but I— but, but yes, so they come in different sizes and different kind of alignments and stuff like that, and that's what you pick. So like, for For example, like a woman may be a size 2, or like I may be a size 5, but we have different sizes, but it's the positioning of that implant to get the best range of motion and the best movement. But also we're not damaging any tissue while we're doing it.

That's the big thing, right?

Huge, huge.

And patients are, so my mom, Judy Barko, is in the audience with us today. Hi, Mom. She had bilateral knee replacement. I wish we had known him. When you had your knee replacement. 'Cause she actually had to have one redone.

Oh yeah.

She had an infection in one. So they put a temporary in.

Oh yeah, that's a two-stager.

Yeah, that I think had like antibiotics in it to kind of clean up the infection.

I know.

It wasn't—

That's tough. That's a tough recovery, yeah.

Yeah, and truthfully what happened was, and I've talked about this a number of times say it while my mom is here, is she went to this rehab facility, post-surgical rehab facility, and they didn't get her out of bed for almost 45 days except for, like, restroom and things like that.

Oh, my God.

And this was an issue because there was this little loophole where one of the rehabilitation specialists could come in, and if my mom denied therapy, they would get paid for the therapy and they would just leave.

Oh.

So yeah, I found out that this, you know, young therapist was coming in on the days she was supposed to see my mom. And if she said, okay, you know, you ready to go, Mrs. Brecka? And she goes, oh, I think I need to, you know, go to the bathroom. She'd go, oh, patient denied therapy. And by noting the denial of therapy, they didn't have to do the rehab. So it set her back tremendously. And then, she had the knee replacement and she was starting so far beyond the 8-ball.

The muscle loss just from that.

The muscle loss was incredible. And she's working her way out of it now. I have a rehabilitative specialist comes to the house, what, 3, 4 days a week. Dr. Evan, big shout out to you. And does the post-surgical rehab and gait analysis and things like that. And it's helping a lot.

Great.

It's helping my father with his gait. But I wish we had, known about the prehab.

Yes.

So for someone like my mother, what would, you know, where we've decided, yeah, it needs to be bilateral knees and you do them both at the same time, right?

Sometimes, yeah. In the right patient.

Yeah. And with this robotic surgery, what would that prehab timeline look like? And what kind of biomarkers, if any, are you looking at before?

I mean, we like, I mean, we obviously work with professionals that do the labs and we like to look at, you know, A1C, We like, you know, we like to look at all the inflammatory markers.

C-reactive protein.

C-reactive protein. All these inflammatory markers, sedimentation rate, different things to look what people's inflammation is and also to look at all other aspects of their health, you know, and eat whatever they need, as many biomarkers as they can check, you know, to just make sure that like even heavy metals and all those kind of things to just get them detoxed from all these things. Because I just think the more optimized you are. But like I said, I like to get to people as early as possible.

Yeah.

Most of the time we have about 3 months.

Yeah.

You know, to get them going. And so getting them in prehab and getting them through that process where they're getting stronger. But we also empower the patients. We say, "You're getting up day 1 and you're getting up immediately and that's your job." Walking the day of surgery.

The day of surgery.

And our goal is to walk within an hour of the surgery. Oh, so you're—

The nurses always say, if you have Snippy do your surgery, you're up and walking day one.

Yeah, yeah. So there's enormous amount of data showing that if you get up and walk on your joint replacement immediately, your confidence goes through the roof of trusting the joint.

Wow.

And I tell this to patients all the time. I'm like, your joint replacement is not like a delicate egg. It's not gonna break. It's so strong. This is metal and plastic.

It's really strong. Right, right, right.

So we get them immediately up and then when they have that confidence, they realize, oh wait, I'm okay.

Yeah.

I can put my weight on my leg.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna collapse. I'm not gonna fall and break something. I can actually put pressure on it immediately.

Yeah.

And that's one of the reasons, it's a good segue, is one of the reasons for us, for me, we wanna, I'm a big passion, my big passion is controlling the episode of care for these patients is how do we, get the right people to touch our patients and have access to our patients through that process. Because in the medical system now, it's hard.

Yeah.

Because in a hospital, some therapists buy into the system, they don't. Some internists buy into the system, some don't. And so I have spent my whole life, my whole career trying to control that episode of care to get the best physical therapist, the best person to check all those markers, the best person to give them the right medication, the right treatment to get them through that process. And we're starting to evolve into that where it's all about all the things that you do that I love.

I was very flattered that you invited me in to be a part of your rehabilitation facility.

Absolutely.

Bring some of my biohacking tools there and we would love to take advice on how we could do better recovery through different biohacking modalities.

And that's what we want. We want a whole system because I think Like, it's almost like, yeah, you have to have a surgery and it's a process, but you can save that person's life. You know, if you do this whole analysis on them and you realize, hey, you need to lose some weight, you need to get your inflammation markers better, you can make their entire life better.

Yeah.

You know, their level of activity, their level of resilience and strength, you can change their life completely.

Yeah, I love that. I also like that you're outside the box and you have a very broad view progressive attitude towards things like PRP, exosomes, stem cells, and fascinatingly and very exciting, uh, neuropeptides.

Yes.

Um, you said that, uh, you, you're not only on peptides yourself, but, um, which is a good sign. Um, but, you know, talking about peptides specifically for a moment, what peptides have you found in your surgical practice and your rehabilitation of patients post-surgery have been the most effective? Like, what are your go-to?

So my go-tos are BPC-157, TB-500, and ipamorelin, which is a stimulation of your own growth hormone.

Yes.

Those are the main ones that we use, and, and those are the ones that we tend to see great results with.

Yeah.

And the peptides have been a game changer because we're putting people on these peptides, and a lot of them are getting better without anything. Mm-hmm. Like, I had a guy in the office the other day who had little rotator cuff tendinitis. We put him on BPC-157, TB-500. He, he texted me a month later, goes, I'm 80% better. Really? So it's incredible. And then I, I have my own story about peptides. So I had all these patients on peptides. I had this horrendous Achilles tendonitis. It was so bad. My patients are like, hey doc, why are you limping around?

Yeah, it's not good to be limping as an orthopedic surgeon, dude. It's not a good look. Not a good look. It's like skinny chef. It's not— it's not a good look.

Exactly. Yeah. So I had this, and so I had a few patients, actually a couple patients from Vegas, and they were all on peptides. And I'm like, you know what, I just got to put myself— I put myself on it. 6 weeks cured, right? I had it for 2 years. Yeah, it was gone. Like, if someone hit my Achilles, I'd like go through the roof. It was so painful. And so it literally just healed it. And so I'm a huge believer in it. I also think for me, I'm a surgeon, but my single— the principle that I've lived my life by is how do we avoid surgery? When people come to me, and a lot of people come to me in LA and from all over the country because they say, go to Snibby, because if you don't need the surgery, he will tell you.

Really?

Because I always say I'm more popular from the people I didn't operate on than the ones I did.

Really?

Because I like to look at things and look at their, and I ask the questions. I always tell patients, I don't operate on your MRI, I operate on how you feel.

I love that. Yeah, I saw that in your record.

You could have a meniscus tear, a little arthritis, and you say, well, I can play golf 5 days a week and I'm exercising, working out. So I'm like, well, what's the problem? Just go keep doing it. And then the other thing is all these injections. These injections help continue the process of healing and promote healing into the joints, increase blood flow, lower inflammation. And all of these injections that we do, whether it's PRP, whether it's exosomes, are gonna keep evolving.

Yes.

And you're on top of this data so much.

No question.

We're just at the tip of the iceberg of this thing where we're gonna be able to modulate these things based on what you have. So they say, "Okay, you have arthritis, this is what we use." Yeah. "You have meniscus, this is what we use." rotator cuff tendonitis, this is what we use. And I think that that's the key for me, is that I'm always asking the question, how does this affect your life? How is it— how is it— what's the impact? I'm like, and I always tell them, you can always have surgery, right? You can have surgery tomorrow, you can have surgery 3 years from now. You could— I can always operate on you, and if I do it, I'll do a good job, right? But right now you don't need it. Go get your biomarkers better. Go get your, your, your nutrition better, lose a little bit of weight, get your diet organized, and let's see what happens.

You know, I'm all about optimizing performance, and lately I've been using the ION Weighted Vest during my workouts, and it's been a game changer. It isn't your average weighted vest. It's designed to fit like a second skin, activating your core, improving blood flow, and even helping you with recovery while you train. What I love most is that the weight is perfectly distributed. It doesn't pull on your shoulders or throw off your alignment. Whether I'm doing strength training or cardio or just taking a walk, I'm burning more calories, building muscle, and pushing my endurance even further. If you're serious about leveling up your training and unlocking your full potential, check out the AION Weighted Vest at aiongear.com. That's A-I-O-N gear.com, and you can use code ULTIMATE for 10% off and start training smarter today. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. You know, you and I have a, a friend in common, Ram Dandalya.

Yes.

Is it Ram or Ram?

Ram.

Ram, okay, Ram Dandalya.

Yeah.

Every other Indian doctor I know is named Patel. So he's like—

Exactly.

I think you almost have to be a Patel if you're Indian and you're a doctor. It's like—

I think so, yeah.

There's a lot of doctors in India, yeah. So, but he and I connected over Dana White's journey. He was his cardiologist. Cardiac doctor, and he's out at Seniors where, where you are.

Yes.

What I really find fascinating is what you guys are doing with this more than $100 million center that you're building for not just surgery but pre- and post-surgical rehab.

Yes.

Bringing biohacking modalities like red light and hyperbaric, you know, chambers and, and things like that to the table to really help help patients accelerate their healing process, but at the same time just improve their, their cellular biology.

Absolutely.

How, how is it that you're, you know, such a classically trained allopathic physician and surgeon, um, but you're willing to consider, you're open to, um, some of these biohacking modalities and, and, and therapies that I would call non-mainstream, like red light and, and, yeah, hyperbarics I think that when, like we said earlier, I think that, you know, it's like you're an artist, right?

And you have a canvas. You want that canvas to be good quality canvas and that you can paint on, you make that beautiful picture. So if the canvas or the patient is not quality, they don't have good tissue or good metabolism and good health, no matter how great of a painting you draw, no matter how great of a surgery you do, you're gonna have a bad outcome. You're gonna increase your infection rate, you're gonna have wound healing problems, you're gonna have, have muscle wasting and muscle loss, and sometimes they can never gain it back.

Yeah.

And so, like I said earlier, how do we control the episode of care? Because it's not a transactional thing. We're like, okay, you come in here, you have a knee replacement, goodbye, I'll see you later. It's now a process where we can take them through and try to control some of these things and also mitigate risk and try to make sure that they don't have— they have a lower chance Give them the best chance for the wound to heal. Put them in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Put them in red light to increase blood flow so their wound healing is better, so they get better blood flow to their muscles and their microvasculature.

Yeah, yeah, we talked all about that.

All of that stuff is just such a huge part of it. And I think that for me, I've always thought, that's why I embrace robotic technology, 'cause I said, this is where we're going. This is where the technology needs to be. I don't want to be in the backseat. I want to be driving this. But then by building this beautiful hospital that will be done at the end of this year, you'll come see it. Yeah, we'll have—

You're literally building a hospital.

Building a hospital. 70,000-square-foot hospital.

When you say building, ground up?

Ground up. From ground up. Just a beautiful, gorgeous hospital that we can control all these aspects so we can put hyperbaric red light inside of it. Because when you work in a hospital system, there's so much regulatory issues that restrict you from doing the things that you really want to do. And so I said to myself, I said, how do I, how can I make the experience on all levels amazing? But it's also, like we said earlier, the non-surgical patient. You know, you have a meniscus tear and you're going to get an exosome in your knee. I love that. I want you, I want you doing all this stuff too. You know, I want you doing the red light and the hyperbaric and the peptides and the aminos. I want you on all this stuff to optimize your recovery, surgical or non-surgical.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, and I think the future of medicine in general is this whole patient approach.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, for so many decades, we've only treated the one little narrow symptom that's presented, like, you know, the joint has degraded, let's replace the joint. And we just focus on that event, not this prehabilitation and posthabilitation. You know, I had an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Alex DiSimone, and I'm grateful to that man to this day because in 2009, I had an ACL, an MCL, and I actually cracked the lateral half of my tibial plateau.

Oh, wow.

In a bad knee injury. I wish I had a great story. Story. The story is terrible. I'm gonna make something up so it sounds like heroic. But the truth is I'd had a few cocktails and decided that the one jiu-jitsu class that I took at the YMCA qualified me to wrestle a D1 wrestler that was my business development director.

Oh my God.

And it was like this short little spark plug. And we got to chatting at a, at the bar at an insurance conference. And I was like, hey, let's just go up to the room and figure it out.

Oh yeah.

I'll hip toss you all over this place. And I was like, you know, it's like one of those like—

Hilarious.

You know, like the guy that's taken 2 boxing classes and I'm like, no, don't grab me like this. Grab me like this. Don't stand there, stand over here. Put this leg here. And then I'm gonna like throw you across the room. He's like, we're gonna wrestle, we're gonna wrestle. Handedly whipped my ass and in the process broke my leg, dislocated my knee. But I remember what he said to me after surgery was, and he said, I need you to hear these words because it's the most important thing you're going to hear for the rest of your life. And this will determine the use, your pain level, your functionality for the rest of your life. He said, surgery. Yeah. 30% of your journey, and your surgery went exceptionally well. I did a great job. You got great tissue in there, joints very healthy. He said 70% is going to be how dedicated you are to your post-operative rehab. And, and at some point you're going to feel like you're tearing pages out of a phone book, meaning like your progress is going to be so minimal, you know. For the first few weeks, it's like big progress.

Yeah.

You know, Absolutely. And I never forgot that. And I hardcore dedicated 6 months of my life to just rehabbing that joint. And a few years later, I was age group champion for the state of Florida in medium distance triathlons. And to this day, God bless him, I have zero pain, no loss of range of motion.

That's great.

Knock on wood. But he was, I think a lot of patients think, think, okay, surgery's over, I'm going back to normal life. And they don't think about how much care do I need to give to this so that it doesn't— I'm just not buying myself a problem.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I tell patients all the time, like, I, I take care of professional athletes.

And yeah, I mean, your, your roster— not to interrupt you though— the LA Clippers, the Lakers, the Sparks, the Kings, and the Angels. And assistant team physician ties to the Dodgers, uh, Galaxy, and others. I mean, you're a monolithic mega giant. He's being very humble, guys.

Thank you.

You know, with his career.

And I was gonna say, like, when you take care of a professional athlete, they're back playing sometimes at 6 months, but then you have a conversation with them and you say, when did you feel— if you ask the question, when do you feel like you were back? Like, when did you feel like you were explosive as you were before you got injured? And a lot of them say a year.

Yeah.

Many of them say a year because it takes that long for those fast-twitch fibers in your muscles and the explosiveness of your body to be able to do that. It's also really important for us as orthopedic surgeons to look at the whole body. Like someone comes in with knee pain, you gotta do a good back exam, you gotta do good hip exam. You really have to check other parts of the body. For example, I had a patient the other day who I did a knee replacement on. He goes, my knee replacement's hurting. I'm having trouble. And I examined him and his medial collateral ligament was on fire. Like I just touched it, he went through the roof. And I examined him and I examined his hip. His hip was arthritic. He'd worn out his hip.

Ah.

And I'm like, because your hip's arthritic, you're cranking on your knee too much. So guess what? We replaced his hip and now he's great.

Really?

No problem. So it's by looking, not being so hyper-focused on that one joint is really, looking at the whole person, you know, like what other surgeries have you had recently? Have you had an abdominal surgery? Have you had a back surgery? You know, how is your life right now? Are you under a lot of stress? What's your work-life balance like? You know, thinking about the whole person is very important to understand what makes them tick, but also how to organize and customize their recovery or planning for their surgery.

Yeah. So you're building a hospital. You also launched your own shoe brand.

I did.

Which I think is so cool.

Awesome. It's great, actually. It's really— it's a fun project.

Yeah. I mean, uh, specifically designed around— sounds like you did it out of need because, you know, designed around people that are on their feet for longer, long periods of time, which anyone that's in the hospital, um, and those are concrete or hard tile floors. Absolutely. Um, you know, and standing on all that— I mean, I just noticed it walking around my own, my own place because we've got tile in here. Yeah. If I walk around barefoot for too many hours just being in here, I, I—

it's a lot of stress.

Yeah, it's a lot, a lot of stress.

Yeah. So I, I spent about 4 years. My partner is a chef and I'm a surgeon. And so the two of us looked at each other—

Chef and a surgeon got together and made a shoe.

Made a shoe.

Okay, good.

And so we said, our shoes are so bad. You know, we have these clogs that you can barely walk in, or people just wear like a pair of Nikes or Asics to the hospital and the fluid gets through it and the padding in it wears out after like, let's say 2, 3 months. And so we said, We spent 4 years designing a shoe, working with materials and testing them and going in the— I would go in the OR with them and spend days working with them. He would work with them as a chef. And we put them on our friends and family and said, okay, how does this feel to you? And finally, we developed a company called Snibbs. It's a parody on my name. It's called Snibbs? Oh, that's cool. Snibbs, S-N-I-B-B-S. And we created this amazing shoe. And then we also now have We have multiple levels of shoes. We have shoes that are waterproof and slip-proof. Most of them are slip-proof. We have a work boot, we have a clog, we have all different kinds of shoes for different environments. And it's really not just a Dr. Chef thing. It's for anybody. Anyone that works on their feet, anyone that's out working and walking. People wear them to work out. People wear them for long walks. And people, like, we have people wear them on movie sets when they're working those 12-hour days. All kinds of environments, but it's to basically take the stress of your body away. And we always say, I always say about the shoes is like, I want you not to think about your feet at the end of your day.

Yeah.

I want you to come home and think about, okay, how am I gonna enjoy my night? I'm gonna have dinner with my wife. I'm gonna go do something relaxing. I don't want you to say, oh my gosh, my feet are killing me.

Yeah.

And so, and we realized by making great shoe wear, you take stress off your knees, off your hips, off your back. And that makes you perform better as a person.

Yeah.

It makes you feel better as a person. And it also, we're also realizing that we're minimizing injury. And so we've done it, we've done a couple projects actually. One of them was at Caesars Palace in Vegas. We gave 200, 300 people shoes and none of them had a slip and fall. Fall over the course of about a 6-month period. And so we're realizing that we can actually have the potential to minimize injury.

Is this because of the, the floor grip, the anti-slip?

Exactly, the anti-slip, and also the fact that the, the shoe really captures your foot. And, and we also designed the shoe to allow for swelling. Yeah, as your foot swells over the course of the day, it accepts that. Yeah. And so those— we're realizing that we can actually even benefit the patients and, and— sorry, excuse me— the patients and also the employees by not having injuries. Yeah. Which can take them out of their life and cause horrible problems for themselves.

And what's unique about the, the padding? Is there, is there something?

The padding is a special kind of padding. It's a special rubber material that we proprietary designed that basically has resilience and cushioning, but it doesn't wear out in 3 months. It's not the same stuff that, like, if you have a running shoe, like a Hoka running shoe, shoe. Yeah, the Hoka One One shoe is very cushy and bouncy, bouncy. It's great for about 3 months, right?

But after some miles, I think is what my son says he replaces them after.

Exactly. So after that it goes. But our shoe, we're not obviously running in them, but they have much more resilience, so they last a year, year and a half of that cushioning. It's much more resilient.

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I think that, I think, I don't think, I don't think that, I think we're always changing and moving and learning and things are just being, and they're going faster than they ever have been. I think the future of orthopedic surgery will be even less invasive than what we do now. I think that we have the ability with the robot at some point to have what they call automation, where you basically, you know, you open up, you make even smaller incisions than we make now, the robot can go in and prepare the joint or prepare things for us with cutting even less tissue and even less materials. You have to still make an incision to get the implant in there.

Of course.

But even less trauma to the soft tissues than we do right now.

Wow.

And so I think that's really important. I think that we already are using AI in— when we get the CT scan, AI kind of prepares a 3D model of the joint for us. So we use AI already, but there's going to be even more AI on data. So what there's going to be happen is that in the future is going to be like, okay, I think this, this person should have a hip that looks like this.

Mm.

And they're going to say, well, of the last 5,000 hips that were done in the United States that have hip just like this, this is the decisions that they made. They use this implant, they use this sizing, this positioning, and those patients had 98% satisfaction.

Wow.

So we'll be able to use outcome data to correlate live during surgery to make sure that, like, we want to make sure that this person has the best result.

Wow.

So that, that's a big part of it. There's also some— you may, you know more probably about this than me, I do— but there's, there are also some data about muscle mass. These special MRIs now looking at muscle mass.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And all, and all these, and looking the quality of your muscle. So part of that prehab is that how do we quantify muscle mass? Like, how do we know? We don't know. Like, if someone comes to me and they have a bad hip, they've lost a lot of muscle mass in their glute. Did they lose 50%? Did they lose 20%? We don't know. So understanding the, the value, a quantitative value of like how much muscle mass you've lost, and this is how much you need to gain, and we can check them post-surgically to They say you've gained back 80, 90% of your muscle mass now.

Wow.

And so those are some things. But I also think the biggest part of this in my life will be all of these biological things that we can do to patients without having surgery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how do we treat joints? Like for example, when you tore your ACL, right? Like, is it important? Should you have gotten like 10 injections of exosomes over the course of a year into your knee to protect you from post-traumatic arthritis? Like what are the things that we can do to prevent these things from happening? And also we're seeing people get arthritis and damage in their joints just from wear and tear, but also from metabolically, right?

Yeah.

They're like women, they're postmenopausal, they lose their estrogen, they all of a sudden they wear out their joints.

Wow.

From lack of estrogen. And so how do we understand that better? How do we understand why you have so much inflammation in your body 'cause your diet is horrible, that your knee wears out. And so it's just— it's understanding these things on a higher level, I think, is going to be the most incredible thing where people will— all the things that you do that are so incredible, that everyone will have access to that.

I love that. I mean, what's an example of somebody that had, let's say, arthritic knees and you use some other intervention besides surgery?

Absolutely.

What ways have you intervened?

So one of the— one of the simple things is meniscus tear. So classically, if you tore— you tear your meniscus in your knee, an orthopedic surgeon like me would say, oh, we're going to go in there and nibble away that meniscus. Well, guess what? 30% of those patients, which is a big number, end up within 3 to 6 months with a knee replacement.

Really?

Because by just mucking around in the knee—

Cleaning it up.

Going in, cleaning out, just that little clean out, it's trauma. You know, surgery is trauma. So you're creating trauma inside the joint, which makes the knee deteriorate. So those patients, the simple injection would be platelet-rich plasma. You draw some platelet-rich plasma, you spin it down, you inject it into the knee. Sometimes if they have a little bit of arthritis, I'll put hyaluronic acid with it. But that simple injection, many patients get 70 to 80% better from one injection.

Really?

Absolutely.

PRP or, uh, hyaluronic acid or—

A combo of that. That, or sometimes we'll do exosomes. But the thing is, we get, we get patients better with that simple meniscus injury. And I tell patients all the time, I'm 53 years old, if I tore my meniscus, I wouldn't let anybody touch it because I see so many problems with this meniscus surgery.

Yeah.

And so I, I treat them with, with exosomes, with PRP, a good physical therapy, supplements, and then they get through it and they're, they're back, they're back on the tennis court, they're back playing golf, they're back exercising, and they're fine. Fine. Sometimes it takes a couple injections to get them across the finish line.

But I mean, a couple of injections versus a full, you know, joint replacement is— or surgery and then a joint replacement.

Absolutely.

You know, is, is, is a much easier road.

Much easier. And that's something that is, is in my— in my— it's unfortunately it's not the mainstay in all practices, but in my practice, that's what we do every time.

Yeah.

And that's why a lot of people come to me. People think like, oh, they come to Dr. Sim because he's going to operate on you. They come to me all the time, they're gonna say, I heard you do this PRP in the hip and to get me better. Yeah. And, and they're like, that's why I'm here. Like, I, I saw 3 surgeons, they all want to operate on me, right? And we do PRP and they're like, I got better and I can't believe I was going to have a surgery and you just fixed me with a simple little shot.

Yeah. And, and even in arthritic patients, these exosomes, uh, uh, the platelet-rich plasma, highly ironic acid, you see improvements in those arthritic knees that may not have dramatic anatomical issues, but pain.

Absolutely. And then obviously every patient is different. I mean, we analyze the MRIs carefully. We look at the deformity of the knee, how much disease they have, how much they don't have. And you know, it's, I always say, when you come to me, it's like a picture. I'm taking a picture of your knee in this one moment in 2026. And things can change and move, and sometimes it doesn't change. Change, but we try to optimize that joint and, and get that joint happy as it can be. Yeah, right now, you know, I, I've—

it seems like I have a lot of friends for some reason right now, um, that are having total shoulders.

Yes.

Um, and not a single one of them has not told me that it was the most brutal thing they've ever been through. Like, even though they prepared for it before surgery, like, coming out of it, the length of time getting back to full mobility for them. TJ Dillashaw is one of my buddies, UFC fighters, getting ready to have one. But I have a number of friends that have had them for some reason, and I wonder if there's— in your case, do you do shoulders?

Yes, I do.

Okay. And are there minimally invasive robotic procedures that lessen that kind of recovery time?

Absolutely. So in a shoulder, a shoulder is a unique joint because because it's like, I call it like a golf ball and a golf tee. The socket is a tiny little bone. It's called the glenoid. It's tiny. It's like, it's like, it's like some of them are like a quarter, maybe a little bit bigger. It's like, it's a tiny little bone. The ball is big. But to put an implant on that little bone, that little golf tee, the socket is very difficult because you have to fire a pin down the bone that's in the perfect alignment.

Mm.

And so the robot, which is incredible, I was on the development team for the robotic shoulder.

Really?

The ability to get that pin in the perfect position every single time with the robot is like as accurate as it can be. It's incredible.

Really?

And so that makes a big difference because now you're putting the implant in the right spot, but also you're minimizing bone loss. So remember we talked about haptic technology. The robot prevents you from taking too much bone, are causing too much trauma around the joint. And so the robotic technology will make a big difference. It is making a big difference in the way people recover from those surgeries and the way they respond from those surgeries. Because sometimes the preparation of the bone and all the tissue causes a lot of trauma around the joint.

Yeah, just getting in there. You gotta do a lot of damage getting in.

But also the issue with the shoulder too is like we talked about muscle mass. A lot of these people, have these very arthritic shoulders that don't move, and so they have a lot of muscle wasting. So it takes them a very long time, sometimes a year, to gain all that muscle back. But again, by doing things like Perfect Amino, by taking certain things in your body to help maintain your muscle mass and build your muscle mass, because sometimes just you on your own eating fish and vegetables is not enough. Right, right.

You know what I mean? Yeah, it takes your shoulder out.

Exactly. So you need supplements that will help build those things.

Yeah. Dr. Snivy, this has been amazing. I know my audience is going to be so excited to listen to this podcast and tear through this information. I love thought leaders like yourself that are really patient-centric and thinking about what is the best possible outcome for this patient to get back to full life and forget that this surgery ever even happened. And the focus on prehabilitation, post-habilitation, minimally invasive surgery, and the use of things like peptides and stem cells and exosomes and platelet-rich plasma and all of the biohacking modalities tells me that you're really focused on the whole patient journey. And I really applaud you for that. I wish—

Thank you.

—more of allopathic medicine would take this whole patient approach. It's, it's really exciting. Um, but, uh, so for my audience that wants to find out more about you, where can they find you?

I'm on social media at, uh, Dr. Snibbe, uh, Dr. Jason Snibbe on my, uh, Instagram, on Facebook. Um, I have a website, Dr. Jason Snibbe. Okay, so they can find me all over.

Okay, I'll put links to, to both of those, uh, in, in the show notes so people can find it. And I'll put links to your new— when is your new—

this new hospital? That will be done being built in December. Yeah, we're cranking underway, and then We'll probably do our first cases like January, February.

Okay, and is this all outpatient?

No, inpatient. You can stay overnight.

Wow.

So we'll have physical therapy in the place. They'll stay a few nights, you know, and then they'll go home, but we'll have all of that there. And then we're gonna, and then we're building out this whole thing. So we wanna do this whole longevity kind of thing.

Well, I'm gonna do it with you.

Yeah, I love it. I would love that. It'd be a dream.

Yeah, yeah. So I'll come out and see you next month and we'll talk about how we build The most impactful rehabilitation center for these post-surgical patients that the world's ever seen.

I love it.

So I wind down all of my podcasts by asking all my guests the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to this question.

Sure.

But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

To be an ultimate human is to be a person that, for me, to be, to help people, to really, really help people. In what they— their struggles in their life. And obviously for me, orthopedically. And to be an ultimate human, I want to do whatever I can on every level of their life to make them move and perform and go through life comfortable and happy and strong.

Mm-hmm.

And to me, that is the ultimate— for me being the— that is what I would say is the ultimate human for me. That's awesome, man.

Well, I think you're an ultimate human, so—

Thank you. Thank you so much. For me, that means a lot.

Yeah. Thank you for coming on The Ultimate Human Podcast. We're gonna head over to my, uh, VIP room now. I've got some VIPs waiting for you, uh, to ask questions. Um, they, they knew you were coming on the show and they, they, they, they asked us a question, so we'll go in and, and speak to those guys. And until next time, guys, that's just science.