Turning Back Time on Joint Degeneration with Dr. Elizabeth Yurth
In this interview, JJ Virgin talks with Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, an orthopedic surgeon and chief medical officer of the Boulder Longevity Institute, about rethinking joint degeneration as a chronic inflammatory disease rather than inevitable wear‑and‑tear. Dr. Yurth argues that the current orthopedic paradigm—patching joints with steroids, meniscus trimming, and eventual joint replacement—fails to address the underlying systemic inflammation that also raises heart disease risk. She advocates a proactive, multi‑modal strategy that begins at the first injury and includes: (1) allowing the natural three‑day inflammatory cascade before intervening; (2) using low‑dose aspirin to trigger aspirin‑mediated specialized pro‑resolving mediators; (3) maintaining movement (the MEAT protocol) while resting the injured joint; (4) optimizing hormones (progesterone, estrogen, testosterone) and metabolic control with GLP‑1 agonists; (5) supplementing with peptides such as BPC‑157 and thymosin β4 (injectable preferred) to stimulate tissue repair; (6) employing the repurposed drug pentosan polysulfate (Xylitol injectable, oral Elmeron) as a disease‑modifying osteoarthritis agent that rebuilds cartilage; (7) using adjuncts like collagen hydrolysate, Fortetropin (myostatin inhibitor), creatine, and choline‑rich egg‑yolk supplements; (8) applying red‑light therapy and sauna to improve mitochondrial function and reduce cytokines; (9) limiting steroid use and avoiding meniscus removal, which perpetuates inflammation; (10) integrating these systemic optimizations before or alongside regenerative procedures (platelet‑rich plasma, stem cells, exosomes) to improve outcomes. The conversation also dives deep into exogenous ketone supplementation—highlighting the superiority of ketone esters over salts, their role in inhibiting the NLRP3 inflammasome, dosing protocols (10‑20 g 2‑4× daily), and their neuro‑protective benefits for brain injury and joint inflammation. Dr. Yurth shares a case study of a severe traumatic brain injury survivor who, with high‑dose fish oil, progesterone cream, essential amino acids, creatine, and ketone esters, achieved remarkable recovery despite a grim prognosis. Progesterone’s utility for men’s joint pain is emphasized. Practical supplement stacks (creatine, essential amino acids, MyosMD, high‑dose fish oil) are discussed. Dr. Yurth explains her virtual care model—licensed in every U.S. state, seeing patients worldwide, reviewing images remotely, and using systemic optimization as the first line before any invasive procedure. She also mentions the post‑COVID cytokine surge, genetic variability in inflammatory response, and the need for personalized anti‑inflammatory strategies. The interview underscores a shift from reactive joint replacement to preventive, cellular‑level healing, positioning orthopedics as a first‑line, medicine‑focused specialty.
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80% of people who tear their ACLs will go on to have severe joint arthritis. So something's wrong, right? We think we're fixing the problem, but what we should be doing is using all these things we have to turn off the inflammatory cascade.
Today I'm talking with Elizabeth Yurth. She is a medical doctor, co-founder, and chief medical officer of Boulder Longevity Institute. She's got over 30 years in sports and spine orthopedics. She was fellowship trained also in anti-aging and regenerative medicine. And you're going to hear how she is using all sorts of cool stuff to create healing at the cellular level.
If you have joint disease, irregardless of your activity level, you have an 80% higher chance of having heart disease because the same inflammatory cytokines that are going after your joint are going after your heart as well.
So hold on, that is like such a mind-blowing statement, right? Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, welcome to Well Beyond 40.
Thank you, JJ Virgin. I'm actually really grateful to be here with you.
Well, I have been listening to podcast after podcast interview of you. I don't know where you've been all my life. Holy smokes. And I mean, some of the stuff you said, I'm like, wait a minute, what? I had to take it back, you know, replay. Part of it of like the way that you manage pain so that someone will not have to have a joint replacement, the OA connection with heart disease. I mean, it just was going on and on. So I'm going to start at the beginning. You as an orthopedic surgeon are saying that we don't actually have to get a lot of these joint replacements, that our body can regenerate and that we can manage joint pain. So I would love to start there? Because I think that's a revolutionary concept, especially for a gal who's had a knee and a hip replacement.
Well, I'm going to start with, you know, at some point, and you probably found this in your own life, a knee and hip replacement can be life-changing, right? There certainly is a place for, for that, at least in this day and age. The key, honestly, is for us to start thinking a little more proactively, because to me, we're letting this disease go too far and then treating it. And the problem is because we're not thinking about it like we do everything else. This would be sort of like, oh, we're just going to ignore your atherosclerotic plaque in your heart until you need to have a stent placed, right? We're not going to do anything. We're not going to treat it. We're not going to do anything. We will just wait because when you need a stent, then we'll just put a stent in there. All will be good. And that's what we're doing with people with joints, right? Where basically you come in and you've got a sore knee and we put some steroid in it and then maybe we scope it and clean it up and we put some more steroid in it. And then we just, you know, at some point we'll just replace it and everything will be good. So the key is why are we looking at every other disease proactively to prevent that outcome and not in orthopedics? We're basically just patching things together with the outcome being exactly what you faced.
Yeah. And it's what I was always told, just what you said.
Right. It's a, this is a wear and tear. There's nothing you can do about it. One of my old partners used to say, this is just a sign of a life well lived. And it's not, this is an inflammatory disease process. So it is a disease somewhat based on your genetics, You know, I have horrible knee arthritis too, so somewhat it's based on your genetics. So some of us just have different cytokines that are going to be more prone to that. So then when we have an injury, instead of that injury going on to heal, we basically create this huge inflammatory response that starts these destructive properties. So that's really the key is that we have this inflammatory response that's inappropriate and long-term ongoing. So that's really where we need to be starting. We need to be looking back to the first time you hurt your knee, right? And the first time you hurt your hip and what should have been done differently from square one, because at some point there's no turning back, right? At some point the joint's gone, you're going to have to replace it. Now we can do regenerative therapies, but my goal would be to start educating people on how to prevent the need to have to have these procedures done even in the first place.
Well, let's hope, because I was one of those ones— I heard you talking on another podcast about how in the United States we do meniscectomies and they're not allowed in other countries.
Right.
I tore my ACL when I was, you know, a teenager and then fully tore it in my 20s and then, you know, had a meniscus, like the whole thing. But for someone listening who maybe now just has joint pain and nothing severe, like they just have a little wear and tear, where should they start?
So let's look at that wear and tear, right? It's not wear and tear. Just like you don't use your brain too much and it wears out or your heart beats too much and it wears out.
So that whole, you were an athlete.
That whole concept needs to go away, right? Let's go away from that. Wear and tear. We don't just wear our joints out.
That is just, but like, that's all we've ever heard.
Right. That's all we ever hear, right? It's just like wearing through a tire. And that's not the process. Our joints are actually not designed to just wear out like that. So what happens is you do get a little injury. Like, you know, I like you, I tore my first, I tore my ACLs 4 times. I finally stopped repairing them. The key is you have this little injury, you strain your knee and maybe, or get a little damage to the meniscus. That starts an inflammatory cascade. Right? That inflammatory cascade is designed to be there for about 3 days and then your body brings in all of these other, what we call cytokines, these proteins that turn it off and begin the healing. Now, you and I— so I have end-stage arthritis in my knees— we hurt our knee, had this inflammatory cascade start and it didn't turn off. So instead of these, these little cytokines were there to try and start repairing things, they stay turned on. So what happens? You have these high levels of these cytokines, which are called things like interleukin-1 beta, tumor necrosis factor alpha, these high levels of these inflammatory cytokines that's telling your, your own cells to go into attack mode. So now they start trying to clean up this debris. And I always tell people it's a little bit like if you have a spot on your wall and you keep scrubbing the wall. If I keep scrubbing that spot, eventually spot's gone, but so is my wall. So that's what happens. You have this little injury, the body comes and tries to clean up, it doesn't turn off that process, it keeps cleaning. Finally, you have no meniscus, that's gone. Somebody scopes it, they just start more inflammatory process. So what should we have done instead? Well, number one, we need to look at injuries that— like when you and I tore our ACLs the first time, 80% of people who tear their ACLs will go on to have severe joint arthritis. And if you are young like you and I, by the time we're 50, by the time we're 50, we're going to have severe joint arthritis, 80%. So something's wrong, right? We think we're fixing the problem, and yes, you are giving some stability to the knee, yes, it did feel better for a while, but what we should be doing after the fact is using all these things we have to turn off the inflammatory cascade. If you came to me and you hurt your knee, you're gonna— first thing I'm gonna make sure is do they have what they need to heal? Number one is things like hormones, right? Because if I have no hormones on board, I can't heal. And that's true even if you look at young people. Like when you and I first tore our ACL, were you on birth control pills, right? If you're on birth control pills, like a lot of us were, then you're going to have these very high levels of estrogen no progesterone, which is the anti-inflammatory hormone, and very low levels of free testosterone because sex hormone binding globulin, this protein binds testosterone when you're on birth control pills. So these women are on birth control pills, they hurt themselves, they don't even have the hormones they need to be able to start this recovery process. Number 2, you've got to let that inflammatory process go for about 3 days. So the first thing you want to do is not sort of turn it off. You don't want to start giving these people tons of anti-inflammatory medications or putting steroid in. Just like a fever, the body starts that inflammatory response to try and heal. So get rid of that old rice concept.
Yeah, I was just thinking of rice. I'm like, oh boy.
Because none of that's right. You want motion. So we do what's called MEAT. You want motion. You want to, to quiet everything down by sort of resting that joint while you're moving everything else. So if I hurt my shoulder, I'm going to get on the bike. If I hurt my knee, I can get on the cycle ergometer. I can do something, but I can move. So you keep moving, and then we start Anti-inflammatories at about 3 days after. Those first couple days, let the inflammation go. One of the best things you can do, believe it or not, is a low dose of aspirin, because at 3 days, a low dose of aspirin turns off the high levels of these inflammatory cytokines. Just a low 81 milligram of aspirin. And then you can actually start things that are really like peptides that are really going to help that healing process. A couple of peptides that are really easy to get that anybody can get is BPC, body protective compound. And that's available just as a supplement anymore, an oral supplement. If you want injectable, you need to see a physician that works with peptides, but as an oral supplement, you can buy BPC. There's a bunch of companies that make it. So if you just look for BPC from a good reputable supplement company.
Is oral gonna work in this situation or would injectable be better?
Injectable is going to be better. So body protective compound, you guys, if we back up to what are peptides, 'cause I don't know if your listeners all know what peptides are.
Are they? You never know when someone's coming into the show.
Yeah.
So we've done some talks on it, but I always think it's great to go back over. These things again.
Let's start back to what is a peptide. So peptides are short chains of amino acids. A protein is greater than 50 amino acids, a peptide is less than 50. Okay, so it's— and it could be 2 or 3 amino acids, it could be an arginine and glycine put together. So basically 3, 2, or 40, up to 49 amino acids makes the peptide. The reason peptides are so important is because they have very specific actions. A lot of the peptides are made endogenously by your body. So they're not some wild compound that people have invented. They're made by us. So the most familiar one is insulin. So insulin— you eat glucose, insulin appears, glucose goes into the cells. Well, body protective compound is made by our gut. When we're little, young, we have nice high levels of it. So if we're injured, this body protective compound is exactly what it sounds like. It starts turning on this process to repair. So this is not some weird compound, it's how your body is going to do it. Some of us make more than others, right? If you're older, you're going to make less than if you're younger. If you have more things going on, you're going to need more. So that's why it's sometimes adjunctively adding it on. And you're right, most peptides are denatured if you take them orally. Body Protective Compound is not, but it's not as strong as it is injectable. So in a perfect world, you'd want to inject it. And anecdotally, people feel like they they feel better. Like if it's a knee injury, I'm going to take a little skin by my knee, inject it in my knee. If it's a shoulder, I'm going to take a little skin by shoulder, inject it by my shoulder. So people feel a little bit better injecting it actually close to the site. So if you have— find a doc who works with peptides, you're going to get going with some— something like BPC and then what we call the Wolverine Healing Complex with thymosin beta-4. So thymosin beta-4 is one of the thymic peptides. When we're young, we have this giant gland in our chest that makes, makes all these things that stimulate our immune system, that help us to heal. When we're when we're at puberty, it starts shrinking. So by the time you're in your 60s like me, it's a little fatty nub. It doesn't do anything. So basically, I can give back thymic peptides like thymosin beta-4. So BPC, thymosin beta-4.
Can you take that one orally as well, or is that one—
So there is a fragment of thymosin beta-4 that is available orally. So there's compounds, people who are now making BPC with thymosin beta-4. And it's a fragment of— it's not actually thymosin beta-4, but it's a fragment that appears to still have some really good properties for healing. And it's hard to find doctors who are really well-versed in peptides, but if you can find a good doctor well-versed in peptides, then I would say work with somebody who can get you subcutaneous injections. I'm not a fan of getting them through research chemical sites. I think we use only compounding pharmacies because people are buying them, you know.
On the BPC-157, my husband had it and I was going to use it for one of my things, one of my injuries, and he's like, you have to inject it 3 times a day. And I'm like, okay, I'm out. What's the big deal?
No, it has a longer half-life than that. So usually once a day is plenty. If you're taking it orally, you probably want to try and get up to 2 or 3 times a day because it's much shorter-lived, but subcutaneously injected, it has a much longer half-life than that. So if somebody's really acute, sometimes I'll have it do it twice a day, but usually once a day is plenty. So with both those, those peptides, you can do them once a day. BPC, you can take for an extended period of time. You can take it for forever if you wanted. Thymosin beta-4, you need to cycle. It's a little bit more growth stimulating. So when we think about growth stimulating things, we don't want to do them ongoing because we don't want too much growth, right? So basically, thymosin beta-4, you, you would do a 12-week cycle, maybe, so 3-month cycle, and then stop it. Really, once a day is plenty for both of those. And as people are healing, you can even go down to less frequently than that. They'll still do fine. It's because, remember, it's not just all the compounds in there working, it's initiating a process in your body to instigate this healing. So it's getting more blood vessels to form in the areas, all those things that you and I didn't do, and that's why our knees went on to develop horrible arthritis, right? It's because we didn't have the ability to heal that. Now one of our favorite go-tos when people are injured, or let's say you're older and you have pretty severe knee arthritis, is actually not a peptide, but it's what's called a repurposed drug. And it's a very cool repurposed drug that's actually now available in Australia as a drug called Xylosol. It's in phase 4 trials here in the US now. It'll probably be available for knee osteoarthritis Probably end of 2027, maybe. It basically is something that— Sopensin polysulfate is a drug that's used orally for bladder inflammation, but it doesn't work well for joints orally. But if you do a little subcutaneous injection of it, it has all of the properties we need to turn the joint into its— your body into its own healing machine. So the things that happen when you're injured is you get elevation of these bad cytokines, and you get elevation of a couple of enzymes that are very destructive, and you get elevation of something called neurogrowth factor. And that causes these little nerve endings to grow into the joint, which causes a lot of pain. So basically, penicillin polysulfate blocks the bad cytokines, blocks interleukin-1 beta, blocks TNF-alpha. It turns off these degradative enzymes that are continuing to destroy your joint, and— it regulates neural growth factor so that the pain starts to go away.
It sounds like a miracle.
It's a miracle, and it really is, honestly.
Seriously.
It's considered a disease-modifying agent of osteoarthritis. It's called a DMAO because it may be truly a cure for osteoarthritis.
Wow.
So in Australia, it's eliminated the need for joint replacements by almost 90%.
Oh my gosh.
And even if people have pretty severe osteoarthritis, what they found is after after a year on this drug, that there was 30% improvement in joint space. In the group that was not on the drug, they had 6% loss of joint space. So it actually didn't just help with pain or stop the ongoing process, it actually rebuilt cartilage. And we're seeing the same thing like in the rabbit models with discs and people who have degenerative discs, at least in a rabbit model, you could actually repair the disc as well. I, like you, I tore my ACL 4 times. I had it repaired 4 times after that, tore it again, was like, screw this, this is not working. So I have really bad knee osteoarthritis. I started this medication, penson polysulfate, about 3 years ago now. And really even— and I was bad. I mean, it was hard for me to walk. It was hard for me to hike, you know, hiking, bracing. I did everything, but it was a lot of pain. Totally have no pain in my knees. I mean, zero. Amazing. I haven't re-imaged them to see if they look any better, because I kind of don't want to, because they feel fine. But it's been remarkable, and for a lot of our patients too. It really is, you know, maybe I think one of the most remarkable agents. So let's say you tear your ACL. What if I let you go for a couple of days, you have your surgery, right? And then after your surgery, I'm going to pull in all stops to stop you from heading down that road, that you and I went down where now we end up at 50 with horrible arthritis in my knee. So we want to get those people right after injury in our office where we're basically starting them on some peptides, starting them on penicillin polysulfate, making sure their hormones are all optimized so they have the best chance of actually not following this road.
And I would assume they'd never cut out meniscus in this case either.
You should never cut out meniscus. It's the stupidest surgery in the world. I always talk about it's a little bit like, you know, somebody comes in with dementia and you're like, oh, we'll just take out those bad parts of your brain. You'll be fine. When you trim out meniscus, you know, so the people have this torn meniscus and you trim it and you said, what we do is we trim off the edge to make it more stable. Then what we're starting is even more of an inflammatory process going on. Right now we just set our body up to go, oh my God, there's another injury here. I need to go. And it starts destroying it more. And it's why when you have one joint bad, you'll start to see other joints go bad. This is not just one joint. It's systemic, right? It's why you mentioned that one of my podcasts, we talked about heart disease. If you have joint disease, irregardless of your activity level, so even if you're still exercising, still doing everything right, you have an 80% higher chance of having heart disease because the same inflammatory cytokines that are going after your joint are going after your heart as well. So we have to address this as a systemic problem.
So hold on, that is like such a mind-blowing statement. So is it— the inflammatory cytokines that are— they're active because of the joint issue. Because of that, they become systemic and cause this heart disease.
Exactly. Nothing is isolated to one place, right? When our body sets off an inflammatory cascade, it sets it off somewhat systemically. And remember, you have these genetics too, right? Like, not everybody's going to have an injury and have horrible levels of interleukin-1 beta, but some of us do. And so those are the people who then now I've even further upregulated this, right? So I've started this whole process, the cytokine is even further upregulated, so you'll see systemically in the blood higher levels of interleukin-1 beta in these people after an injury. So then that's going to go on and do the same problem to other places like your brain, like your heart.
Wow. Wow. And are you running labs to see these levels?
Sometimes we will, yes, we'll run an inflammatory cytokine test panel on people. It's a little tough right now cuz everybody post-COVID has pretty bad inflammatory cytokines. COVID was sort of a disaster and COVID and, and some of our treatments of COVID were sort of a disaster, uh, for our immune system. So now we're seeing a lot of high levels of inflammatory cytokines in everybody. But yeah, you know, so a lot of times we will treat presumptively and say, listen, we know this is going on. You've got a horrible inflamed joint. Let's just go after this instead of running a, you know, an $800 test on people.
That makes sense. So back over to this, um, this treatment, the bladder treatment. Pentosan. What is it called?
It's called pentosan polysulfate. The joint injection form is called Xylitol. Um, the oral form is called Elmeron.
How would one get this before it's approved? Like, can you get it now in compounding pharmacies and get it done now?
Yes. And that's because it is a drug, right? It's a, FDA-approved drug orally. So I can have a compounding pharmacist take the oral form of it and make it into an injectable form. So because it already is an FDA-approved drug, I have the capability of making it into whatever form I want. So I can have a compounding pharmacist make it into Xylitol, make it into the injectable penicillin polysulfate. Wow. So we have access to it. It's an FDA-approved drug. So, you know, it's, you know, unlike peptides, which you run into this kind of regulations, are they FDA-approved? This is an FDA-approved drug. Interestingly, the one caveat is the oral form of Elmeron. About 3 years ago, people— a big ophthalmology group in at Kaiser came up with that they were seeing this connection between people who were on Elmeron for at least 15 years at a high dose and a retinopathy in the eye. So penicillin Elmeron, so the oral form of this drug, got a black box warning on it. That said, listen, there's a retinopathy associated with this medication. Bunch of lawsuits ensued. That black box warning doesn't exist in other countries, just here in the US where we're a little more litigious. But the injectable form, number one, it's at a significantly smaller dose. It would take— even if we say this is a dose-dependent response, it would take about 90 years to ever hit the dose that would cause that retinopathy. The retinopathy only occurred in 1 out of 1,000 people, so it's a rare occurrence anyway. And it appeared to be that you had to hit this max threshold of dosing. We also know this drug because it's been used in racehorses for a while. So racehorses always get the cool stuff before we do.
I know, I was just saying, we should just look at what the racehorses are getting.
Yeah, that's exactly it. Like a lot of peptides, they made their way into the racehorse population way before they made it to the US. Wow, that's interesting.
Not shocking, but, you know, and I would assume it's not like you're taking this every day anyway.
It's a once-a-week injection. So usually once or twice a week injection, you give yourself subcutaneous injection. We teach you how to do subcutaneous injection.
Oh, you don't even have to put it into the joint?
No, it doesn't have to be in the joint. It's just a subcutaneous injection. So it's working systemically. So it's all these other benefits. If you look up penicillin polysulfate, it also has anti-cancer benefits. Makes sense. Cancer is an inflammatory immune-mediated disease. If I can modulate—
I can imagine heart too then, right?
Heart, and yes, very protective against heart, very protective for kidney disease. So really has all these other really great properties. I give this lecture on penicillin where, you know, you look at the studies that have been done on penicillin and all of its benefits, and there's so many places, even as an antiviral agent. So it's actually a really potent antiviral, and eventually it will be available to everybody. Right now, to find a doctor who knows about it, it's a little bit hard, right? You know, people have to listen to me. So, but, but there are doctors who are learning about it. You know, it's, again, it's not It's not a difficult thing to have a compounding pharmacist make, and it's life-changing to so many of our patients. Really life-changing. I mean, it's amazing. And you're treating the disease, right? When you replace a joint, JJ Virgin, you didn't actually treat the underlying disease process, right? That disease is still going on. So now your other joint goes and this goes and this goes, right? Because you continue to work out hard and do all the things you're doing. Now you live a perfect life. You eat perfectly and you do everything perfectly. So your inflammatory scores are definitely much lower, right? But there's somewhat— you're fighting obviously a little of a genetic predisposition to this, right? You had a hip and you had a knee and all this stuff.
So, well, I look at it— I mean, the very biggest thing that you've said that, that I kept hearing these podcasts is, wait a minute, you flipped the entire paradigm. Because again, when I had this initial injury and then like, you know, broke my foot, blew out my knee, hurt my— like, so you just you keep hearing the common school of thought is, oh, you, you're an athlete, right? Wear out your joints.
Wear out your joints. Right.
And so to hear this completely 180-degree opinion and go, huh, what if that wasn't the case? And it makes sense, as you said it. And even if it was, oh, you had an injury, but it created all this inflammation. Of course inflammation would create other problems. Like, it's like, right. Well, of course, you know, and I was going to one doctor who was managing the inflammatory response in my broken foot, right, because that was an old injury, but what he was doing started to degrade the joint. So I was like, all right.
So steroids, steroids are anti-inflammatory. They do blunt the immune response, right? They turn off that immune response. The problem is they turn off all the good immune response too, which is why you end up with, you know, yes, acute relief, but long-term destruction. You know, steroids are— and, and I won't say steroids should never be used. Sometimes there's an acute injury where you've got to get somebody just pain under control using steroid, but that's like one time. You don't keep doing it, you know, every 6 months having a steroid injection. I have so many people that's their mainstay treatment for a joint is they keep doing steroid injections until they replace the joint. So I think unless we start, you know, and we're never going to get the, you know, my old partners at my orthopedic practice were like, you know, when I ordered labs on patients, they said, you know what, we don't do medicine here, we do orthopedics. I mean, you know, unless we start shifting this paradigm, we're going to see an epidemic of worsening and worsening arthritis because there's more inflammation. We're all in a post-COVID era now where everybody has higher cytokines. So now these injuries are going to be compounded even more and more. So unless we start understanding this and treating it like a disease— JJ, even, you know, you work with a lot of functional medicine people, and if you look in the functional medicine world, they still— if somebody hurts their knee, they send it to the orthopedist. They don't treat themselves. And I'm out there preaching, you guys are the first line treatment. You guys are the ones should be treating these people, not sending them to the surgeons. You need to get their inflammation regulated, in control. You need to help them to start repairing. That's gonna be, you know, and with some simple things, like I said, you know, a once or twice a week injection of using BPC orally even, and once or twice a week injection. Let's go back to like my aspirin thing. The reason aspirin is so hugely beneficial is because 3 days after an injury, what we want to start have happening is we want to turn on what are called pro-resolving mediators. Some of you guys probably take these, they're called SPMs, Specialized Pro-Resolving Mediators. Pro-resolving mediators are what your body brings in about 3 days after an injury to say, okay, turn off the inflammation, let's start healing. But that pathway doesn't always work so well. So there's something called the aspirin-mediated pro-resolving mediator pathway. It takes your omegas, so your omega-3s, your, you know, your DHAs, your EPAs, and it basically, with a little aspirin, you turn those into pro-resolving mediators. So this whole pro-resolving— specialized pro-resolving mediator pathway is aspirin-mediated. So I can start 3 days after an injury, a low dose of aspirin, and if I'm taking some good omegas, I will turn— accelerate this healing process, turn off and blunt the inflammation. How easy is that? Right? So if you guys get an injury, keep moving, relative rest of the injured site, but not— you want to keep moving it and you want to keep moving the rest of your body. Start— try and stay away from the anti-inflammatory drugs right away. Try and stay away from the ice. We want that inflammation for 3 days. After 3 days, so you use your red lights, use other things like that during that 3 days for pain control. After the 3 days, a little low-dose aspirin, start moving, start some BPC. If you can't get it injectable, get it orally. It's still going to help, right? So low-dose aspirin, BPC, and if you can get in and somebody knowledgeable can get you a little penicillin for even a 12-week course, it will modulate this response. So we do not see this cascade of this event going on to developing end-stage disease.
Amazing. But when you look at it now and you mentioned it with, you know, post-COVID, it would seem like a high percentage of people here, I mean, and especially you look at Okay, we've got post-COVID, we've got like 80% overweight, 40% obese. So if you're obese, you're going to be inflammatory. Like, then you look at women going through menopause, right?
Horribly inflammatory, right?
Okay, so, so you're just, you know, stacking the deck. Could it be that doing these things to control inflammation could be just one of the most significant things you could do for health here?
Yes. And you know that for everything, right? And, you know, and you mentioned hormones. Remember, hormones start dropping, guys, in your 30s. It's not, you know, in your 50s that your hormones start dropping. They start dropping in your 30s. Progesterone is one of the most anti-inflammatory hormones that we have. Estrogen is what people— testosterone gets all the benefit from muscle. Estrogen is a huge player in muscle, right? And muscle, muscle makes— what do muscles make? Muscles make— you preach muscle all the time. Yeah, it makes anti-inflammatories. It makes myokines that are actually anti-inflammatory to us, right? So we've got to be able to have muscle, which we need hormones for, and we need exercise for, and we need weightlifting exercise. So we have to be doing those ongoing. I— please do not, guys, anybody who's listening to this, if you're in your 30s, start looking at your hormones, start looking at this, start being knowledgeable about it. I want to keep my hormones always at a nice level. And that starts in your 30s, potentially even taking a little progesterone in your 30s. So usually you don't need estrogen until much later. But testosterone too can start dropping at a very young age, especially with some of the stressors that people are under or birth control pills that people are under. So yeah, you're exactly right. If we can get people to start, you know, be metabolically sound, which will bring us to, hey, what, you know what, why, if I would pick one peptide that's my very favorite, it's gonna be the GLP-1 agonist. It's gonna be, I, me too.
I mean, you know, so just for the inflammatory, when you look at the anti, it's, and they're hugely anti-inflammatory.
So, you know, take all that criticism off the board because these drugs used appropriately are probably one of the best longevity tools that we have. And we know there's studies on osteoarthritis. There are studies on, you know, on neurodegeneration, on— Bone. On heart. So we know that all these things are being benefited by just a low dose. You don't have to keep losing weight. Like if you're thin like you, you don't want to lose weight. So you take a low dose. And you basically keep on that low dose forever and we're going to keep inflammation stable so we don't— so now if I'm injured, if I'm injured, there was a great study on mice, if they were on a GLP-1 and they were injured, they did not go on to develop progressive osteoarthritis.
Really?
So let's say if we have everybody on adequate hormones and everybody on a little bit of a low dose GLP, are we going to be going a long way to preventing this horrific disease that gets ignored because it doesn't— You know, it doesn't in reality kill people, but it does. You know, it, it, I look at my dad who had horrible knee arthritis. My dad died at 93, but, but he was so active. And when he couldn't be active anymore, he got really, didn't really wanna live. I mean, you know, that was all his desire for life.
Yeah. Well, you think about it, it's like, so it hurts more, you move less, so it hurts more.
Right. And I eat less muscle.
Right. Move less, so it hurts more. Now you're losing muscle, so you're not, reducing— like, it just becomes this bad snowball. So let's go back, because you threw out a couple things. Number one, I'm a big fan of HRT. It's the women that were like 65+ really got screwed by the Women's Health Initiative. But HRT as a big part of this. Then you mentioned GLP-1s. I'd love to just unpack that a little bit, because there's a couple different types now. Which ones you're liking when you're talking about low dose? Where are you seeing that low dose land? Because I agree with you. When I started learning about them a couple of years ago, I was at an IHS event and Dr. Seves was talking and I'm listening. I'm like, oh, I need this for my son for his neurodegeneration. He had severe TBI. And then I'm like, oh, I need this for my husband because of his elevated ApoB craziness. Oh, wait a minute. And I heard you. I want to unpack the ApoB too, because I heard what you're saying about that. But and then I'm listening about the osteoarthritis. I'm like, hold on. And as I started to look at the research on this, I go, what is going on with this? Why is the media going crazy?
Why is the media going crazy and all these people are criticizing this drug?
It makes me crazy. And I looked at it and went, this is like the best longevity thing I've ever seen.
I think it's the best longevity tool. And part of that is because the number one thing that's going to really enhance longevity is metabolic control, right? By far above anything else is really balanced metabolic control, making sure that, you know, your insulin and glucose levels are always sort of perfectly regulated. That's number one, GLPs, but what they're doing for the immune system, which is at the root of almost all these diseases we've talked about, is huge. So, you know, the media has picked up on the, you know, people who use them at high doses lose weight too fast, get a lot of side effects, get constipated, get all these problems.
Blame that on the pharmaceutical companies and their rotten dosing.
Right, or on doctors who are giving these massive doses of these drugs. You can sensibly use them at weight loss doses too, because I'm not going to— I mean, I love them for weight loss drugs too. But, you know, the whole, you know, Ozempic face and you lose muscle. The only reason you lose muscle on these drugs is because you don't eat, right? You have to prioritize protein because you don't want to eat when you're on them. But when the drugs first came out, they showed that they actually pushed insulin into the muscle, which is actually a really good thing. We want insulin in our muscles. It helps us grow. Remember, the bodybuilders used to inject insulin in their muscles. They still do. So basically, they were actually designed to help diabetics gain muscle. And so you don't lose muscle. Unless you don't eat protein, which a lot of people don't. If you're on a lot of this drug, you know, maybe too high of a dose, your appetite goes down so far that you're not going to eat. So we have to make sure that, you know, that people are doing these sensibly. But like you or me, we're thin. We don't need weight loss. So how do we use these drugs for every other benefit? I had a mom who died of dementia. I'm not going there, right? You talk about your son with a TBI. They're so neuroprotective. They're in phase 3 trials for dementia. So, you know, so neuroprotective, so cardioprotective. So how do we dose it so we don't lose weight? Basically, we don't know what that dose is exactly. So what I do is I dose it up to where people are like, okay, I feel a little side effect here, maybe I'm a little bit queasy, I feel a little side effect, and I back it a notch down from there. So that's going to be different from every person, right? So it's not like it's always going to be this, but it's usually pretty small that you need. It's probably going to be half or less, even a quarter of the dose that we would be using for weight loss for people. And that makes it, you know, much more cost-effective too, right? So people talk about the cost of these drugs. Well, not if you're using it at a very small dose because a 1-month supply for weight loss is not going to last you 4 or 5 months.
Right, because you have to get the compounded because you can't do that with—
Right, you can't do it with the Ozempic and things like that. So you have to get a compounded dosing on, right?
Yeah, no, I noticed when we started doing them, because all— it was still so much out there about that you would lose muscle. And I thought, this is the weirdest thing, because you can absolutely dose it so you don't lose your appetite, right? And I'm like, I just put on muscle, so I know this not to be true. Then I dug around to find out that, oh no, this is— this is like lowering myostatin.
So they're doing everything you want. They're helping you put on muscle, help you keep lean, you know, keep—
yeah, you look at and go, okay, some, you know, optimizing your HRT getting a little GLP-1, adding some BPC-157.
How far do those simple 3 things go, right? That's the whole—
sleep and protein and exercise, right?
That, that's— if we would just do those couple of things and start people a little bit earlier at their first injuries, at their first beginning to lose hormones, you know, like you and I got into this in our 50s, right? We— so, you know, we're that's where the knowledge was. Had I known when I was, you know, in my 20s these kinds of things, would I be where I am now with my arthritis? No, I wouldn't be. And, you know, and what I have to preach to the doctors is we have to be out there telling even the younger people because people come to us, you know, much later in age when they finally have pain or they have severe arthritis or their hormones are so low and we can obviously still help. But what if we got people nice and early? What if we got people first injury? What if we got people the first sign their hormones were dropping? Like your son with a traumatic brain injury, what if we started that stuff then so we could prevent him from getting dementias, right? That's where we really need to be looking. And it's what functional medicine doctors preach, and yet they don't do it in so many places like joint health.
Yeah, well, it does feel like orthopedics has been siloed.
Yeah, it's right.
Right? I mean, it's like you go, I've always avoided the orthopedic surgeons because I figure they'll want to cut. I will go to them last when I need that option. Go to the, just the straight orthopedist, right? Who doesn't cut, who injects, or the functional medicine doc doing regenerative therapies.
But, but let's look at the regenerative therapies. I love regenerative therapies and I do a lot of, a lot of regenerative procedures. But if you're isolated, because you've seen these clinics all, you know, that's what they do. They throw in some platelets or, you know, platelet fibrin or stem cells or exosomes, whatever it might be, into a joint and I haven't fixed the underlying process, do we really think that long-term is going to work? It's not. And so that's my criticism of a lot of the regenerative places is that they're still not optimizing health. We always— so if we do a regenerative procedure on somebody, you can damn well be sure they're on hormones, we've got them on some BPC, some thymosin beta-4, we've started them on some penicillin, so we actually, have them in an optimized state where now if they're doing an expensive regenerative procedure, it's actually going to hold, right?
I mean, honestly, this Pentosan that you're talking about sounds like with that, you probably won't need a lot of these things.
Well, that's— so that's what— so we all come in for a little while beforehand. So we've lost a lot of our regenerative procedures because if people are on that for like 12 weeks, they're like, I don't really need anything else done now. So, you know, so like, well, darn. So the key is that oftentimes once you do these things, people don't need the regenerative procedures. Now, if you're very far down the road, then yes, you probably still need to add on, right? So that's where now I can pull in my stem cells or exosomes or whatever your favorite tool is, and it's going to really work. 'Cause now I have the body in a state where it's going to actually utilize these things appropriately and heal.
It sounds like then the smartest thing is you do all of these things 'cause those are expensive. I mean, we did early on after my son had his traumatic brain injury, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, we had, you know, back then we had his own stem cells expanded, done intrathecal, like all these things. I mean, $50,000, right? And people are spending, you know, stem cell procedures can be so expensive. And now I've heard there's potential issues with— and maybe I heard this from you, but when you hear it, you're like, oh, this makes sense that there could be, you know, senescent cells in the stem cells.
Yeah. So that's, that's another problem is if you're using your own stem cells, if you're, you know, and you're older, we used to think, oh, stem cells don't get senescent. Well, Chinese study really proved that wrong. When they took mice, so elderly mice that had arthritis, and they put in culture those cells next to nice healthy chondrocytes, nice healthy cartilage cells, initially not much happened. But if you kept, if you watched them over time, they started to create this senescent, they actually spew out these senescent proteins that start damaging the cells, sort of anti-inflammatory response. But then you actually down the road, you now have these zombie senescent cells, chondrocytes that are killing off the other cells. So using your own stem cells, I don't think is a really good idea as you get to be an older person. If you're young and healthy and perfect, then, you know, then probably that's okay. But by the time you're my age, they're probably not going to work and you really want to be looking for, you know, and then if you go to like umbilical stem cell, Well, then you've got the downsides of some of those. You have to be very careful where you're getting them and who you're getting them from. And there was just, you know, a bunch of people who had infections recently out of one clinic. Yeah. You know, and so you have to be super careful with that. So, you know, I think that we have to be really careful with what we're doing with a lot of these regenerative therapies too. And, you know, and make sure that we're knowledgeable about who we're doing them with and, you know, and making sure that we do have the right the right tools on board for that person to actually get better.
So again, that would be a last case. Like, okay, everything I'm hearing, I'm like going, all right, this definitely seems that we do this if none of these other things would work before we go do a joint replacement, right?
No, right. So that would be— that would be your next tool before you go to the joint replacement. And then, you know, I have patients that come to me, they're bone on bone, they have horrific pain. I'm going to say, you know what, Let's get your joint replaced. After that, I'm going to make sure that you go down the right road, right? But I'm going to help you recover from that, so I'm going to help you so you heal much better. You know, and even— we'll even pull in like post-joint replacement, even using anabolic steroids a little bit for a little while. Because what anabolics do, they help you put on muscle very rapidly. So if you have an injury like that where you had a joint replacement, we can actually use things like a short course of anabolic steroids on people. You know, I work with a lot of bodybuilders, so we kind of— you learn that tool of If I want somebody to put on muscle fast, I can use a short course of anabolics. So you can even do things like that to help people heal. There are people who I advise them, you know, the best thing for you right now is a joint replacement. I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not going to say let's try a $25,000 procedure and make you spend, you know, all this money. I'm going to say, you know, you're kind of at that stage where the joint replacement is going to work for you, but then the day, 2 days after that surgery, 3 days after that surgery, I want to be working with you and I want to get you on this road so this heals really well and that you don't have a cascade of events where now your next joint goes.
You mentioned red light. So I keep coming back to my favorite tools, which is a sauna and red lights. Yeah. And I'd love you to talk a little bit about red lights because that's the one that you're still kind of going, is it doing anything? I can't tell. Like, what's— what's your take on red lights?
I think it's really compelling and I think it's very helpful for healing. And, you know, a lot of this goes beyond some of the basics of cellular mechanisms because if you look at mitochondria, which are your little energy cells, but they're much more than that. You know, they're not just the energy of our cell. They are actually in control. They're the control tower. They're in control of everything that happens in your cell, whether it lives or dies, in fact. And so how do we get mitochondria healthier. Well, we know that when mitochondria are exposed to certain wavelength frequencies, they actually— it tells— it signals these little mitochondria to become tougher, stronger, and actually make more of themselves. And that's actually— it's actually— you kind of have to get into this whole quantum biology that there's actually, because of the way the electrons flow, you know, this is all an electron transport, right? It's all electricity. So if I can put the right wavelength of light then I can actually rev up these mitochondria to work harder. When the mitochondria are working harder, I have more energy, I can get more blood vessels to the area, I can make more muscle, I can heal faster and better. So red light's a great tool, and, you know, and it has a lot of basis in science. It's not expensive. You can buy a little red light for your home that's not, you know, if you, you don't have to have a big huge panel. If you have, you know, I have one that's big that I can put on my shoulder, or I put on my knee or something like that, right? So you don't even have to have, you know, a $50,000 unit. You can buy a little $500.
You've got a great wrapping. So we have, we have a huge panel, then we have a small travel one, then a face one, but I have a great wrapping one. Yeah. Around joints. That's amazing.
Yeah, that's great. You put around your back. Yeah. That's a really nice one too. That, yeah. So I love red light and agree with you. Sauna, I think, has some of the most documented evidence behind it. Uh, you know, when you look, sauna's been around for a really, really long time. So when you look at things that have sort of established in history as it was a healing tool way back, you know, if you go to like the Egyptian pyramids, I mean, basically this goes way back, right, that people used sauna heat because it helps you to detox. It helps— it basically, when you, when you heat up to a higher temperature, you're sweating, you're getting rid of all these bad cells, you're getting rid of all these bad cytokines, all these inflammatory cytokines. I think if you want to— and I have like one of those little SaunaSpace saunas, it's like a $5,000 unit, you know, it's not expensive, it doesn't take up a lot of room, and I could sit it in the corner of my— I don't have a big house, so I could sit it in the corner, and you know, and so that's— these are such easy tools to implement. You don't have to have all this big fancy $150,000 things or be running off to all these places. I think you can do— I think that's what we really need to emphasize to people because we have all these people out there who are preaching the million-dollar protocols, and you don't really have to have the million-dollar protocols.
It's what's so funny about, about Brian Johnson with this $2 million a year is when you read through his stuff, it still comes down to, okay, sleep, exercise.
I'm like, all right, anti-inflammatory diet.
Whether he's on the right anti-inflammatory diet, I don't think so, but sure doesn't seem so. But either which way, it sure doesn't look very delicious.
So there's that. I don't know, I'm a plant, I'm a plants and animals. We have to remember that too in all of this is that when we eliminate like fun and social and all that stuff, that's also hugely beneficial to our health. So when I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, I fast 3 days out of the week, I can't go out to dinner with any of my friends, you know, that's not really a great way to live either.
Yeah, when you have to get up at 4:30 AM every day.
Right, so we have to sort of look sensibly. I think, you know, we've gone way over the deep end here. And, you know, and I love people like you who are like, I kind of go and bring it back to, well, exercise, which is the number one thing we can do, right? And I always talk about, because I do get a little, you know, I see people who truly can't exercise. They are so sick. So there is tools we can use to help them get back so they can get to exercise. But, you know, you have to at least simulate exercise for a while until you can get people back on the road, because it's the number one thing that's going to save your joints and save your brain and save your heart.
In most cases, I mean, even when I worked in physical therapy, I remember we had a guy in a wheelchair. It was like, we still figured things out.
Right.
I remember when I had one of my ACL surgeries, I went over, got over there, crutched over to the Schwinn Aerodyne bike. I remember the surgeon walked over, he goes, "What are you doing?" I said, "I got a leg, I got arms." Right.
You could pedal one leg. I remember I did too. I had my foot over the handlebar and was— Yeah. I had rotator cuff surgery about a year ago, completely tore my rotator cuff lifting. And the next day I was in the gym doing stuff with my other arm because, you know, 20% of that goes to that bad side. So, so yeah, you really don't ever have to stop moving.
Which is so important with the— gosh, you look at that, the studies that show just one week of bedrest and you lose 2 pounds of muscle. And I'm like, do you know how hard it is to put on a pound of muscle? And that is where one of the other places I heard you talking, you were talking about Fortetropin, about myos.
Yeah, myos.
Oh my gosh, that's been a recent find. I'm like, where has this been?
Isn't it? It's so cool. I mean, and I know you talk a lot about myosMD, but Fortetropin is, you know, people are going and getting these big false down gene therapies, which is amazing, but you have to have $50,000, $60,000 to do it. So we can actually give Fortetropin, which is in these fertilized egg yolks, that will turn off myostatin, you know. And yeah, I'm like, so we can now—
why don't you just do that?
So I— that's another tool I use on my patients too when they— so they have an injury or they do a procedure on them, I'm going to have them doing their protein shakes, going to have some myosin in it. The other thing that when you look at fertilized egg yolks, beyond the fordetropin, they have tons of choline in them, which is hugely helpful for cell membrane function. Throw a few scoops of that into your protein shake. Oh yeah, no, that's such an everyday Yeah, yeah, that after my workout, that's my first thing.
Creatine, yep, all of it. Collagen. And I heard you're a collagen fan too, yeah?
I am. I was kind of poo-pooing collagen for a lot of years. Now, it's just a big meta-analysis that came out that looked at collagen and skin, and it said there was zero benefit in skin. And it was a pretty, you know, big meta-analysis. So I don't know about skin, but I could tell you that we know it's beneficial for joints, and there's some really good clinical data on that that just 5 grams of collagen actually improved walking speed in people with knee osteoarthritis and pain perceptions in people with knee osteoarthritis. So, you know, I think you have to use like a collagen hydrolysate. So it has to be the right type of collagens, you know, and you usually have to have adequate vitamin C or take it with some vitamin C. If you're vitamin C deficient, it's not going to work. I poo-pooed collagen for a lot of years in my orthopedics. I'm like, that's stupid. You can't take collagen and make collagen. The data supports otherwise. So again, another simple tool that you can do that's going to help joint health.
Yeah, I heard about this. I've not seen the study. It makes sense. I think it's probably premature, but about taking it pre-workout because of the blood flow to, you know, these areas that are tough to get blood flow to. So I just like, well, that's easy enough to do.
I think I have a hard time with creatine before or after workout, collagen before or after workout. Creatine should not matter.
It's tissue stores, right? I mean, it shouldn't matter.
I drink a little creatine while I'm working out. I do too.
I throw my creatine in, my aminos because I was like, "Well, you know, might as well have more on board." Right.
And then I come home and have my MyosMD. The other thing that, you know, when we're talking about just kind of simple things like ketones, you know, so ketones— so, you know, when we have somebody who's really bad autoimmune, what a lot of people do, if you listen to like Dr. Terry Wahls and her MS talk, things like that, is is put them in a ketogenic diet, right? The problem with a ketogenic diet long term is you start to lose metabolic flexibility. So short term it's okay, it can really bring the immune system stable. It's really the production of ketones. Exogenous ketones work equally as well to making your own ketones. So one of the other things we use a lot of, and for your son with, with the brain stuff, ketones are so, so, so good for the brain and protective. All you guys who go out and do high-risk sports, take your ketones beforehand because basically it stops that neuroinflammation. But if you look at ketones and joints, by using like 10, 15 grams of ketones like 3 times a day, you can actually really help inflammation. Turns off something called NLRP3, which is one of our big inflammatory modulators. And so basically it just turns that off. So I, you know, I drink ketones a lot through my day too to keep my brain functioning better, to keep my inflammation down. But some really good data, if you've— I think if you did one thing before you're going to do any kind of strenuous sport or anything like that is to take some ketones ahead of time because they really prevent this big inflammatory cascade if you were to get an injury or a brain injury or something like that.
I just read that that's one I haven't been doing. It's like I've played around with them on and off and I've never really focused on them.
Yeah, and there's some, you know, I mean, in general, you have to be careful with the ketones you get. Ketone salts really aren't great. You want a ketone ester. There's really only a couple of companies that make ketone esters, KetoneAid, Kinetic. Kinetic separated the ester out, which is really cool. So they put— they separated the beta-hydroxybutyrate away, and by doing that, they were able to get a much longer state of ketosis. They were able to bring people into a ketotic state much longer. And plus they taste really good versus most ketones taste like gasoline. So Kinetic did a really nice job. But there's— you just want to make sure you have a ketone ester on board. But guys, I honestly think if you did one thing for your health, I think ketones are huge, JJ. They're—
start—
you go back and just like your GLP-1s, start looking at ketones and every disease in the book and you'll see that they can really help almost everything.
Ah, interesting. I know we played around with them, as you can imagine. We put Grant on that. Ketogenic diet for a while there. Of course, getting him to stay on one is—
it's impossible. Yeah, it's impossible, right?
Like, yeah, you know, and we played around with different ketones, but probably we just didn't have a, you know, yeah, a good source.
And you have to do enough of them. Like, if you have a brain injury person, you want like 20 grams 3 or 4 times a day, which is why, like, like, these Kinetic cans are like 12 grams. And but you can, you can buy this Kinetic Pro, and it's, it, and it, it is like 20 grams and like 2 tablespoons and add it to some sparkling water and Tastes yummy.
Perfect.
That's something you can get, like, you know, even an 18-year-old to do.
That's perfect. Yeah, he was— he's now 26, which is great because he wasn't supposed to live through it. Is he 20? No, he's 29.
Wow. How did he get a brain injury?
He was run down by a car. Hit and run. Yeah. 13 fractures, crushed heel, torn aorta.
Oh, my God. Jesus.
Yeah. And the doctors who told us to let him go.
Wow. Wow. I didn't know that story.
Yeah, it's, it's pretty brutal, but we did progesterone. We did high dose. So we did high dose fish oil, but that was a whole story in the hospital to get that.
Yeah. Right. Trying to get anything in the hospital, right? Once you're in ICU, trying to get anything is pretty hard.
Oh, we couldn't, we like, once he spit his feeding tube out, I'm like, game on, man. So I had like essential aminos and high dose fish oil and we were doing progesterone cream.
Yeah, yeah, progesterone is great, guys. But you, you forget about progesterone for men, right? But it's not only good for the brain, but low progesterone in men will present with achy joints, so just like it does women. So you can actually use low-dose progesterone in men and help a lot of back pain and joint pain.
Interesting. Well, I had a girlfriend, I don't know if you know Anna Cabeca, but she pinged me. She's like, this is a study out of Emory. I'm like, cool. I actually found the researcher, asked him, because they were only using it for 5 days post-injury? He goes, yeah, we didn't have the funding. I'm like, oh, okay, cool, you know. So I actually got to all these different researchers for different things. So that's where I got the 20 grams of fish oil and do the progesterone. So we, we threw everything at him, um, behind the doctor's back.
Yeah. So, and you didn't even have peptides back then, right? You couldn't—
no, I mean, that's— so, I mean, now we are— now we're throwing more stuff at him, but You know, it's like amazing what you can do because otherwise he would— no way would he be here.
So yeah.
Wow. Anyhow, thank God you are such the cutting edge. And I know what I love is this, that you are teaching laypeople that you have access to all of this so that, that laypeople can actually read it and study up on it themselves.
Because again, I think that's critically important, guys, because you're not going to hear from your orthopedic doctor, right? I mean, you know, not in the 50 minutes, I guess. Steroid injection and get out of there. So you guys have got to learn this and then seek out, you know, the people who can help you to get up. All the things JJ and I just talked about, so many of those you can just do on your own.
Are you able to— and we're gonna put all of this information, your Hormone Optimization Academy, your Boulder— what's the Boulder?
Longevity Institute.
Longevity Institute. We'll put that all at JJVirgin.com/YourThrive. Y-U-R-T-H. Are you able to see people virtually? Does your clinic do that?
Yeah, very much so. I'm licensed in every state. We actually see people all around the world. So we see people virtually lots of times. Obviously, if they have a procedure, they have to fly in, but we can get them going on all this stuff virtually. You know, we have people usually send their images to us so we can look at them. But you know, for a lot of this stuff, honestly, when people come to us with joints, joint pain, we just get them into this really nice optimized state. They'll come to us saying, "Oh, I want stem cells," or, "I want exosomes," or whatever they might want. And I say, "Okay, let's back up. Let's start here." And 3 months later, they're like, "Oh no, I'm doing pretty good." Yeah, it makes sense.
Well, either which way, whether they get them or not, they should do this first from everything you just said. Exactly. It's perfect. And a lot of things we talk about on the show, they're already doing, but you just added another layer of things. I love that, 'cause I gotta tell you what I was thinking was like, I was like, all of us who've been active our whole lives are now screwed because of our joints. And I was like, I've been thinking about it all wrong.
Right, right. Let's think about, right. And that's why you're, you know, like, because you live such a good life, right? But even these little things, like for you, Pentosan may be a godsend. I mean, for me it really was.
Oh, I'm getting my paws on that. I really like, that was the first thing I'm like, what is this and how do we find it?
Yeah, no, it is a really amazing drug. And like I said, You know, this drug's been around since 2019. It's been being utilized in other countries since 2019. It's not like new to the show.
Well, I appreciate you. I love what you're doing. Thank you so much for being out there, being courageous, being brave, and changing lives everywhere. And again, I'll put everything at jjvirgin.com/yurth, Y-U-R-T-H, so that everyone can grab these resources and get out pain.
I so appreciate you letting me share this so we can hopefully stop this epidemic. Thank you.
I am super excited about everything that Dr. Elizabeth Yur talked about. I'm going to give you a couple key things to think about. Number 1, when you do have some kind of an injury, move. Move. Wait a couple days to reduce the inflammation. So wait a couple days for the ice and low-dose baby aspirin, the low-dose aspirin, and then start to work through these things. BPC-157, I'm going to give you the code I have for Healthgevity. That is where I get my BPC-157 oral and is also where I get that fragment of thymosin beta. And then I'm also— the other things there, so thymosin BPC-157, moving, doing exercise. But the other cool things that she talked about were, uh, Yolked and creatine. So I'll also put the information on Yolked, on that fertilized egg yolk that's amazing that I take every single day. I put 2.5 pounds of muscle on with that. And then my creatine, shiitake product. I am going to be looking for ketones to see which one is the best one. So I will be looking for that. She talked about, I think, a kinetics formula. So I'm going to start to dig into that. Stay tuned there. And then red light. I do have a couple different red light panels. I have a Juve red light panel and a small Juve panel. And then I am not sure what my wraparound one is. We will find it for the show notes. But those are my different red light panels that I've been using. So there you go. So again, think about what can you do? What if joint pain was a sign of just, you know, we need to work on inflammation and what are the things that you can do for inflammation? I'm also going to go get that treatment she was talking about, so I will let you know how that goes in a future episode.
