LS 33 - Regenerative Medicine, Age Management with Dr. Steven Victor

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Welcome to the Longevity Show. Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a life, a longer, happier life. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Steven Victor to the show. He is chairman and CEO at the New York Institute for Regenerative Medicine and CEO of Regen Medical, founder of IntelliSell Bio Services, and a dermatologist to celebrities and professional athletes. Steven, welcome. How are you?

I'm great, thank you.

Good, good. Well, hopefully you are growing old slowly.

I've actually grown backwards because I'm 63 and I actually had the therapy, the cellular therapy about four years ago.

Tell us about that. That'll be our first stab into this cellular therapy, right?

Yeah, cellular therapy. So typically, being a cosmetic dermatologist who does a lot, a lot of liposuction, I develop severe bilateral right hand and left hand carpal tunnel, which is a severe neurological pain. I hope people listen to this. Don't ever get this because it really just keeps you up at night. It intense, terrible pain. And nothing worked. So I went in to have typical hand surgery. So the idea was to do my left hand first because I'm right handed, wait three months and do my right hand. Well, I went in, had my left hand done by my famous surgical friend who does hand surgery. Surgery went really smooth. But with rehab, about three, four weeks later, I started developing scar tissue and my hand had contractions. And unfortunately, the only thing you can do is inject cortisone into the scar tissue and contractions. The problem with cortisone, it gives you weak muscles. And if you really use your hands a lot like I do, that was not a good idea. So we're trying to figure out a solution. And I was, I was teaching another doctor how to do stem cells and I decided, you know what, I might as well be the patient because I've done other people with carpal tunnel. So they harvest 2 ounces of my own fat from my belly with a hand suction with tissue harvesting. The lab in one hour made my stem cells under FDA guidelines of sterility and traceability. I got the stem cells injected into my. Was still hurting me. My left hand which was all now had all that scar tissue. And I got the cells intravenously. Within two or three days, my left hand that was already contracted and had that scar tissue was about 90% perfect. Within six months, it was absolutely 100% perfect. My right hand that had not had surgery yet, but had severe pain, within two weeks, the pain was gone. It's four years later. I'm about. My left hand is perfect. My right hand, occasionally, if I sleep on it funny, starts hurting. But also what was interesting, by getting the cellular therapy intravenously, all my generalized inflammation went away. My lower back felt better when I was. You know, when you're younger, you pop out of bed, and as people probably listening will tell you, as you get older, right foot goes on the floor, then the left foot goes on the floor and you kind of pick yourself out of bed. Now I just pop out of bed. I just, I felt, I felt like I was 25 years old. I had more energy, I had more alertness. I was just felt like younger because one of the prim action of these cells is anti inflammatory. As a matter of fact, they're 1000 times more anti inflammatory than cortisone, but without the side effects. We believe, and I think a lot of scientists agree with us, that a big component of aging is inflammation. And if you can neutralize or relieve that inflammation, you feel younger. Because I'm sure people will realize as you get older, you're sitting in a chair for a while and you're stiffer when you're young, you just don't get that stiffness. And all that stiffness is bas pain. And pain will SAP your energy. So the cellular therapy four years ago made me feel so much more younger. As a matter of fact, it's starting to wear off a little bit. So I'm ready. I'm ready to get another session. I just got to figure out who does me. So in the next couple weeks, hopefully I'll get another session done.

So, Stephen, that sounds like great treatment. What does that kind of thing cost and will insurance companies cover that?

So in the United States, it runs from 15,000 to 25,000. If you go overseas, it starts at 25,000. We've seen prices rehears, Herb. Price is as high as 100,000.

Oh, it's more expensive overseas. That's interesting.

Yeah, we thought it would be cheaper. It's actually, we're starting to look at, we're calling reverse medical tourism. Come here and you can have the same cellular therapy, but it's less expensive, which is interesting. Insurance here does not cover it. However, recently we had a patient who injured his knee on the job, and the workman comp board actually approved therapy at $20,000. Because in the workman comp world, if someone gets hurt in the job, they basically figure out how much the patient is going to the surgery. And they had this gentleman market a little bit north of $200,000. So we treated him, we made his knee better, he's back to work. So we saved the Workman comp system $180,000, which is really, you know, great for the system. And what's interesting about workman compensation, which I didn't know until recently, if you're a professional athlete, a baseball player, a basketball player, anybody like that, and your injury is caused by playing the game, your treatment is covered by workman comp. So I thought that's pretty fascinating. So there's a whole new world that could be opened up now that can have for workman compensation, covering these kinds of treatments for these patients, which I think would be great. And also, if you don't follow the field, Senator Boxer and Senator Kirk about six months ago, put a bill into Congress asking them to allocate funds to support people like my companies to help research and help treatments, because they did a study, and the study showed by regenerative medicine, or using your own cells, your own tissue to fix disease or wellness, whatever is going on with you can save the insurance industry $250 billion a year. And that's a tremendous amount of savings for the insurance companies and the whole system. So we're kind of excited about that, and we think that's going to be a thing in the very, very near future.

So what is the actual process that occurs in cell regeneration? I mean, like you said, you talked about the procedure and the way the mechanics of that all work. You know, they take the stem CE out of your belly area, they inject them into your hand. But why does that. What is actually happening there that makes that work? Like, why. Why do you. Why does your hand feel better? What happens?

So I put it on the very scientific level of a sixth grader. And I actually got this lesson from. In New York City, we have something called Stuyvesant High School. It's where all the smart science kids go. And I actually did the science teacher there for beauty and for arthritis. And she basically explained to me in very simple terms of what's happening. So in your body, in your bloodstream, there are stem cells floating around. There's stem cells as you Know in your bone marrow there's stem cells in your teeth and there's stem cells locked up in the blood vessel walls. So let's say you lead the longevity show. You go outside in New York City we have this terrible snow and this terrible ice and it's really terrible outside and you slip and you break your leg. So the bone breaks. When the bone breaks also the muscle gets ripped, some nerves get ripped, some blood vessels, and sometimes the bone even goes out through the skin. So what does the body do to put.

Thing it does is relieve platelets, stop the bleeding, then it releases all this stromovascular fraction cells, stem cells start the repair process. So the first set of cells that go kind of like into action are the anti inflammatory immunomodulation cells. They stop inflammation, they reduce inflammation. Because you have inflammation, you don't have healing. The next set of cells then kick in and they start increasing blood flow in order to have really good wound healing or have any kind of healing you or vascularity. So there's, they're like phase two, phase three, you have cells that stop cell death. And then the last phase is you have cells that actually differentiate into different kinds of tissue. So the broken leg, you're going to make new bone, you're going to make new blood vessels, new nerves, new muscles and even new skin. So what happens in 90 days all these cells have gone in this cascade of events and actually put your leg back together again. So what happens in disease states or aging states is that these cells are out there trying to fight inflammation. When I tell the patients they should think of inflammation as little PAC men, they're going around the body eating up areas and the body's sending out the stromovascular fraction stem cells trying to basically stop these PAC men. However, there's too many PAC men and the PAC men are winning. So we do is harvest 2 ounces of adipose or fat tissue and then through using ultrasonic cavit, separate out the cells from the blood vessel walls and we concentrate them and that's all we do, we don't grow them, there's no additive agents. And then we put them back in the body where you have these sites of injuries, where you have all these little PAC men and now there's enough cells that they actually win the fight. And they turn off these packed cells, they turn off the inflammation and they grow new tissue as I explained. So that's how it works on a very simple scientific level level, there's all different enzymes involved and all different mechanisms involved, but that's essentially how the body is so intelligent, to actually to heal itself and heal wounds and heal diseases. And that's why we name the cells Intellisol because they're really super smart cells.

Very interesting. That's just fascinating. And I assume that the future will bring just more and more breakthroughs like this. This is incredible. It's an amazing time to be alive, as I always like to say to my listeners. What are some of the other areas in which anti aging and age management are some of the other very effective areas in this field?

Well, age management is important because we believe that there's somebody alive today who's actually going to live to 150, but you don't want to live to 180 if you can't have quality of life. What age management is really about is using various kinds of biomarkers, identical markers, doing tests of the body. You don't have to do invasive tests that we can start looking at your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, and we can start identifying problems that are going to happen before they happen. Because right now, before this age management started, basically patients and doctors wait till something breaks, you have a heart attack, then you go to the hospital, your kidney fails, then you treat it. But with the technology we have today, without being invasive, in all the blood testings and all the gene testings and DNA testings, I can take you and do a full day examination and really see what's going to happen to you in the future. And I could design programs or design treatments that I can stop that process from happening. So it's, I tell people it's like you have a car, do you really wait to the car breaks down, you do maintenance, you do tune up, you change the oils, you do things that keep that car in really good shape because when it breaks down, it's much more expensive, much harder to fix. What I really get said about some things in medicine today, we don't really do that well enough. Because if you go to the managed care doctor and you get this 5 minute, 10 minute physical, they really don't talk to you about your nutrition, your exercise. They don't look at all your biomarkers, they don't look at your real genetics. They don't really do an extensive workup that's necessary to identify possible things that could happen to you that you can stop today and fix today. So you don't have all that data. Because once you get damaged, as you know, if you have a stroke, a heart attack, you have renal failure, it's very hard to go back and fix it as well as preventative. So age management has really come to a forefront with the testing that's available, from the blood testing to the DNA testing, genomic testing, from all these various technologies that we have that we can look inside the body without being invasive. So people are going to live to 100 with real, true quality of life. And I think that's essential.

Yeah, I mean, is, is immortality a possibility or do we think that there's like a limit of 150 years? Is that maybe a hard ceiling on lifespan?

I think, again, if we can live to 150 quality of life, that's great. It's like anything else. And I hate to use a car example, eventually the car is going to wear out. I mean, you can maintain the car, maintain the car, tune the car up, change this plug, change this piece of the car, but eventually the car is going to wear out. And the same thing with the body, eventually the body is going to wear out. But if we can keep the body in really good shape. And when I say the body, I include the mind, I include your hearing, your seeing, because that's essential for quality of life. I don't mind being 100 if I can think well, speak well, hear well, see well. I mean, there may be some aids, but I believe that we can really take these patients and keep them at the tip top of their performance like we can on the car. The same thing with your house. You buy this house, you wait till it falls apart as you do your maintenance. Maintenance is so important, but for some reason, the way medicine has gone today and changed today, it seems that it's gotten passed over. And I'm really excited now with age management, we're going back and doing things for the patients, their bodies, and really looking for more, as you said earlier, preventive. Prevent that problem.

Yeah. Fantastic. Okay, so any other breakthrough areas you want to mention, you know, any other areas of, you know, big hopefulness that you want to mention for the coming year?

Well, I think all the cellular therapy that we're seeing today is getting better and better. We've been doing it seven years. I think in the world, people have been doing it maybe 12 years. And as we do it each and every year, we get better with it, we understand it better, we're able to use it better. I believe in the future these things will even get better as we learn more about it, as we learn to process it better, if we learn dosing is better, as we get more experience, like anything in medicine, the results improve, the quality improves, and everything we do improves. And then there's more and more research. As I said earlier, the government is about ready to help fund people like us and other people so we can do research because research is important and then teaching is important. Any new field, you have to teach people. When I went to medical school and people my age categories, stem cells, what was that about? We didn't hear anything. So education is expensive. It takes a long time. So I think the more education we see and what's interest, the world is now flat. We have people come here from all over the world and we actually go all over the world to treat people and teach people.

Fascinating. Give out your website if you would and tell people where they can find out more about you and your practice.

Okay. The best one to go to is www.regenreg.e n medical PC.com and I think you'll learn all about what we can do and what's going on in the future.

What should people do if they're all, you know, we have listeners all over the world. If they're in different parts of the world, different parts of the. Do they need to come to New York for this type of thing to your office or do you offer some kind of referral service or referral network?

Well, right now we're only doing New York. We're hoping to open up in the Middle east in the next several months. We're looking to open up in New Jersey and Texas and Florida, but we have people coming from all over the world. It's such an easy procedure. We have people fly in the morning, have it done and fly out in the afternoon, or they come in the night before, have it done in the morning and fly out. It's a very easy procedure. The only thing I'll tell you. And we don't cure people, we make them better. And I could tell you in the neurological diseases like Ms. Or ALS or things like that, they need multiple treatments to get really good clinical results because those disease have more of those PAC men running around. So we tell people it's multiple disease. Multiple treatment depends on disease. It doesn't last forever. I mean, the least amount of time is two years. We've had patients now six, seven years still doing well, and we'll have to get treated again. We're not curing you. We're not changing disease. We're just basically improving quality of life. I think that's important to understand in.

This type of thing. When you gave the example at the beginning of Our interview today about your hand and what this did for you, it really. I mean, it works in a targeted area, it sounds like, but then it also has sort of the side benefit of working throughout the body. Or is it completely working throughout the body or just the target?

Well, the protocol we use today, everybody gets the cells intravenous because everybody's aging and everybody has inflammation. That's something we now know. And then if we have a targeted area, we'll treat it, too. So in my case, I had intravenous, and then I had injections into my carpal tunnel into my scar tissue. If you have a bad knee and bone on bone, we've done 80 knees. We'll give you intravenous, but we'll also do your knees or we can do your feet if you have plantar fasciitis. So we'll target local areas, but we always do the genital treatment also.

Right. Okay. So there's. Wow. There's just a double benefit. That's fantastic. Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and I really look forward to hearing more about this as the field grows and there are more practitioners and just more science. And this is really fascinating stuff. It sounds like you're on the cutting edge. Thanks again for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

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