Regenerate Your Cells: How Stem Cells Can Turn Back the Clock, with Dr. Jeffrey Gross

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Hello, and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. Another celebrity sighting today. Ed Levitan, Wendy Trubo, and Today we have Dr. Jeffrey Gross on our podcast. We're super psyched. He is a trained neurological surgeon. He specializes in athletic injuries, spine procedures, and offers longevity and biohacking consultations. He founded Celebrate, focusing on anti aging and regenerative medicine. And the mission of that emphasizes offering modern biochemical treatments and considering surgery as the last resort. Jeffrey, welcome. We're so happy you're here today.

Thank you so much. It's my pleasure and honor.

And this is something that we haven't talked much about, but we really want to know, like, what is the state of the art right now? Like, what's. What's happening? What are. Well, let's start with what are stem cells? Right.

We back up a step. How did you go from being a neurological surgeon into a longevity and biohacking advocate? What was that? Path and bridge? Because. Because there's, like, really far apart.

Yeah, I mean, I was, you know, practicing mostly spinal surgery. I was helping people with spinal problems, trying to. Trying to find a way not to do as many surgeries for people. But the menu only had so many items. And when I was going to the, you know, annual education, medical education meetings, it was the same information over and over. I was trained to do what I did by people who were trained to do it 20 or 30 years earlier. So my training goes back 25 years. Their training goes back 25 years. And when you really look back historically in the spine, nothing had really changed drastically in 50 years or more. And I said, this is. This is not right. We have so many things going on. And patients would come in and say, yeah, you know, the shots, the medicines didn't work, and the therapy helped a little, but what do you got left? We got surgery. I don't want surgery yet. You're kind of right. I agree with you. I don't want to give you surgery. So some of them would say, how about lasers? How about this? How about, how about stem cells, Doc? And luckily, chance favors the prepared mind. And I do have undergraduate background and in that field. And I said, you know what? You're right. I'm tired of this same old thing. And I started going to different conferences. I started going to educational stem cell and molecular biology lectures. And it grew into something to get additional training in. And then I wanted to add it as a tool for my spine patients. But it's blossomed into so much more. So that's kind of why I made the Jump.

Okay, thank you. Now we can dive in. I just was like, now, how you.

Get there from here? What stem cells are?

Do you remember I used to share in med school, I was in biochem, and I remember saying, like, where are we in the body? Where is this happening?

Right?

Like, I always need context. So, okay, now we can jump into stem cells. Have at it. Ed, you're up.

What are stem cells?

All right, you know, listen. Stem cells created us, right? When we are an embryo and a fetus, those cells have unique abilities to divide and create us, create our organs, create our parts, create our tissues. And once we're born, they're still helping us grow and develop and heal. If you're injured. When we're adults, though, we do retain a bank of stem cells, and we call upon them frequently to renew our immune system, to make new skin cells or hair follicles or. Or our liver cells, or help us heal and repair. But as we are exposed to our world, which is full of microplastics and pesticides and phytochemicals and xenohormones and all kinds of crazy things we don't realize we're getting unless we pay attention to your podcast and others, we are damaging our cells. And our cells are so busy fighting the environment in a defense mode. And we call that defense mode chronic inflammation. Right? And that. And as we know, chronic inflammation is the root of aging and the root of many diseases of aging and vice versa. So our stem cells help us replace, you know, some of these and suppress some of this chronic inflammation that's kind of smoldering and causing us to degrade and degenerate, whether it be our joints or other things. The basis of this damage is even our stem cells get damaged. The entire field of regenerative stem cell medicine is tapping back into that youthful signal to help our cells get reprogrammed, even temporarily enough to do some good work to suppress that inflammation, reverse it back into a more optimal healing restorative mode. So, in short, you're either in defense mode, your cells are defending the environment, and in chronic inflammation, or they're the opposite of that degeneration, and they're in the regenerative optimal health mode, which is an anti inflammatory mode.

Well, how do we get more stem cells and how do we. Like, obviously they're. They're amazing, but how do we get more? How do we harness that power?

Well, you can activate your own stem cell activity from a number of angles. You could eat more phytonutrients, great fruits and Vegetables and supplements that we don't get from our regular diet because we have nutritional gaps. You can do meditation and breath work, get restorative sleep. You can eat with your circadian rhythm. You can do even fasting and other hormesis like hot sauna, cold plunge intensity exercise. All of those things stimulate stem cell activity in the body. Even yoga has been shown to do that. Those are the basics. But we know that stuff is healthy anyway. And one of the things it does is to stimulate. Why is it healthy? Because it stimulates stem cells. We can also get exogenous, meaning external signals to our stem cells, like besides fruits and vegetables that have plant derived signaling called extracellular vesicles or exosomes, which a cell makes, all cells make them. But we can get stem cells signaling exosomes from certain plants and vegetables. We can get them from bone broth because that comes from the bone stock or the bone marrow. And the bone marrow has all the stem cells from an animal. And we can get that, and we can get it from actually eating bone marrow. We can get it from when you're, when you're sick. In most cultures, your grandma makes you chicken soup and that chicken soup comes from chicken stock. And that chicken stock has bone marrow cells. Lot of stem cells making the stem cell derived signals, these exosomes and these are all ways that we can stimulate our own stem cells. And then the last way you can get them is, is to get some stem cells or stem cell signaling, these exosomes from stem cells, from an alternative, hopefully useful source. So there are many donors in this country and labs that collect umbilical cord tissue and amniotic fluid here in the US and we focus on the labs that can obtain the donated material is all ethical, of course. Donating material from donors who have not been vaccinated for Covid. And that's not necessarily a political statement, although it could be. It's really saying we don't know what that material is doing long term, so we want to avoid it for now.

Okay, so when you're looking at. Okay, so there's a lot. I have a bunch of questions from this. So when you're, when you're looking at stem cells and it's so interesting you talk about bone broth because for months I drank three cups of bone broth every day. And I was like, oh, I should probably go back to drinking at least one of them every day. Right? So when you look at, when you sort of take a step back, is your, your thought like stem cells are the root of all possibility for health. Maybe that's a little bit broad. But is that, is that the approach that we need to boost our stem cells in order to have regeneration occur?

Yeah, for many things. Yeah. I don't want to say it's the, it's the panacea. But anyone with, you know, inflammatory burden, you know, and problems, they're trying to, you know, to slow down, to stop and possibly even reverse. I think regenerative medicine is a useful technique to have in the list of things to do to help that problem, help that reverse the inflammation going on.

And then how does it, I mean, we've kind of talked about like you're a surgeon, so you had, you had that toolbox. And when you contrast the stem cell, do you find people can push off surgery?

Oh, that's the entire, that was my entire goal for most of my career. But I'm more successful now at that than ever because of this additional tool. So the answer is absolutely yes. That's my favorite client right now is someone who has gotten a surgical opinion elsewhere, maybe more than one, and they're seeking anything they can to avoid the surgery. And that's where I like to step in. That hopefully is my niche for the rest of my career.

So there's stem cells that are. You do as a general stem cells, and then there's stem cells that you inject. What's kind of the difference? And why would you use one versus another? And then are you actually using stem cells or using exosomes? Like, there's all sorts of like variations.

There's a lot out there. You're 100% right. So let me answer those in reverse. I think that stem cells are great, but when you look at actual stem cell delivery to someone, if you inject them IV, for example, they only last about 10 to 14 days. But the benefits go on for much longer. And the reason for that is those stem cells have delivered a signal to our cells to activate them and to suppress the inflammation, reprogram them temporarily at least to do some good work. And that signaling is done through the cell to cell signaling called exosomes, stem cell derived exosomes. So I cut out the middleman, a bigger fan of the exosomes, for a number of reasons. One is the stem cells are really the exosome delivery vehicle. We can skip that and get a more concentrated dose of exosomes at a lesser cost. They're more affordable because they're more abundant and they're probably doing most of the work anyway. They also penetrate tissue better they're small enough to cross the blood brain barrier when cells really aren't. They are easier to handle and store and what have you. So all in all, I think exosomes are really the modern way to deliver regenerative medicine. There's nothing wrong with stem cells. Stem cells have been around for over 20 years in Europe and Asia. Here in the US we're just late to the party for various reasons.

Wait, so where do the exosomes come from? I think I missed a step.

Amniotic fluid, perinatal donation. So mother has a planned C section. Congratulations. Here's your baby. Hey, can we have all this fluid you're not using anymore? That's how it goes.

So do you have to have the IRB boards involved in hospitals because you're using? I mean, it's technically medical waste, right?

It's, it's. Well, it. Previously, yes. Now it's medical treasure. So it.

Thank you.

These, these go through tissue bank donation services. It's done, fully regulated and you know, certified. They go to labs that collect these. They, they do not pay the donors, they're not allowed to pay them. So the, the collection services, you know, have an administrative fee. And then these labs have a very stringent testing, screening, quality assurance. These are FDA certified labs following, you know, what are called CGMP protocols and what have you. And they only release, you know, the tissues that don't have anything in them. They screen them, they test them, they culture them and everything. So I buy them from those labs. So I'm not involved in that process, that I'm a clinical user of these things. So we're not doing these in any hospital setting. We're not doing anything experimental per se. Everything we do has come from some scientific background. Like for example, when we take care of joints, we follow a French protocol that has 20 year follow up that they're about to publish. And I'm following the 15 year follow up publication from a number of years ago. So this isn't anything unproven and there's a lot of mythology and misuse of words out there about legal and illegal and all this business. And we, we are super compliant to make sure we make no marketing claims which the FDA regulates. So we're very cautious about that.

But because it used to be that what's the shoot? I can't forget. So there was one, one that you add the sugar substance to, then you're about PRP and well then there's PRP that now there's. I was thinking of Prolon. I'M like, that's not it.

Yeah.

So can you kind of. Because that seems like it's an evolution.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think prolotherapy is sort of this initial calling for enhanced healing response using sugar or salt substances and then prp, where you take your own blood and you spin it down and you get the growth factors and the platelets to cause that inflammatory healing reaction. And that's really kind of a lower level regenerative approach. And then you move up from there to stem cells and then stem cell derived exosomes. And what's coming would be more designer exosomes, tissue specific or function specific, those loaded with mitochondrial to support muscle mass to help prevent frailty. Because, as you know, muscle mass and bone density are associated with longevity. We want to support those things. Sometimes exercise is not enough, or some people can't move around. There are all kinds of things coming. We have immune cell exosomes that will become available for helping to address cancer burden and things like that. This is a blossoming field we're behind here, but the literature is mostly from Asia and Europe right now.

What are the, what are the things that exosomes at this point can do and what are the things it can't do in terms of what you've seen?

Like what can for educational purposes? I'm sorry, let me. Let you finish your question.

No, please, it's, it's. And it's not about a claim. It's like what have you seen in clinical practice?

Fair. Okay, thank you. So I can, I can talk.

This is not medical advice. There we go. You're free to say what you want.

This is educational based on literature and what we're seeing. But so you know, the low hanging fruit here is osteoarthritis, also known as, you know, degenerative joint problems. You know, some people use that phrase, degenerative joint disease. I think the word disease is improper. It's a metabolic problem of the cells that made the cartilage in the joint in the first place. And we're in those stem cells and cells to maintain that cartilage, whether it's making the lubrication, making more proteins for the cartilage, these proteoglycans and squishy proteins that keep the cushioning when we are affected with inflammation. Some of the most sensitive cells that are affected first are the edges of the bone right up against the cartilage called the subchondral bone, where cells that make cartilage live, called chondrocytes. Don't worry about these fancy terms. But basically when those cells become ineffective because they're inflamed and the bone marrow is cranky, and you can see this on mri, that means the cartilage starts to wear down and eventually you get bone on bone and pain and dysfunction. The low hanging fruit is something we have some good success with, generally speaking, is we inject under twilight sedation stem cell derived exosomes into the subchondral bone just adjacent to the cartilage. And we have a few people who have done some MRIs after the fact. Most people, they feel better, why do I need an mri? But some of them, out of curiosity, we do some MRIs and we have seen increased thickness and restoration of the cartilage. For example, in the knee, which is, which is the most common one.

That's really cool.

It's very cool.

Like, that's really cool.

So it's really, actually, so it's because I'm, I'm going where I'm not my, I'm not strong. But bone on bone is not necessarily pain. Radiologic bone and bone doesn't necessarily mean pain.

Correct.

But you're saying with pain you can actually potentially even reverse the bone on bone and add cartilage to it, which is pretty freaking amazing.

Well, I'm not making that claim because I don't want to violate the fda, but I can show you examples where that's happened.

And you have clinical experience. Not as studies show, but, well, studies have shown this.

So I, I, I, but not my study. The French, I follow a French protocol. They figured this out 20 years ago. This is not new. And, and I'm not doing it. The patient is doing. Right. The patient's own cells. We're helping them set up their cells to return to the function those cells were designed for in the first place. We're turning back to the factory that made that joint when the patient was a fetus or a baby. And we're saying, hey, please help putting in a factory order to restore the joint. So that's what we're doing.

So that's specifically for the joint in terms of, for the, if you do, can you do them iv? And if you do, if they're, what are kind of, what are the, some of the effects you've seen when you do it with IVs?

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about myself because I do it IV four times a year, just as a routine. But so, you know, and most people would agree that have these, we, we see a Boost in energy for a number of months. We see improved cognition. I have some attorneys who come in before a big trial to get an IV just so they can have that edge mentally, so they can be quick response on the response. We see improvement in workout recoveries, ability to get through the workout, maybe do more from the workout. We see improvement in hrv, heart rate variability. For those of you of your listeners who do any tracking, using a whoop or a band or ORA ring or even now apple watch will do it. We've seen some significant temporary boosts in hrv, which is a health metric. Of course. We see enhanced sleep, restorative sleep. We've seen people with improved skin, hair growth. Think about a pregnant woman who in her later trimester has her skin is all a glow, her hair is growing like crazy. She probably doesn't have too much pain, maybe back pain from carrying the weight. But usually aches and pains aren't there and their mood is typically good. This is because that woman is getting a daily dose of stem cell derived exosomes from her womb. So it's like that.

Cool. So it sounds like if you're doing it four days, four times a year, that means it probably lasts two or three months.

Is that's my own experience. I have people that do it less frequently. I have one patient, a wonderful woman who just turned 80 about six months ago. She came to me a couple years ago, had aches and pains diffusely, some osteoarthritis, and it didn't make sense to inject all her joints. I said, let's try the iv. She had significant benefit, improved her ability to go for her morning walks and do her crafts using her hands. And she called me two years after the first time and said, hey, it's starting to wear off. Can I come back in? I said, sure, come back in so it can go longer.

How expensive is this treatment?

So an iv, a single dose iv, and we give a fairly low dose because we were starting out very conservatively. A single dose IV is just under $4,000 in the clinic.

So it's not a cheap date, but it makes a huge difference.

No, it isn't a cheap date, but I think if you were going to Central America or Mexico, you'd be paying a lot more than that for a stem cell infusion.

So other than people with joint issues, who else are good? Sounds like people with fatigue, people with brain fog. Who else are good candidates for this?

So generally speaking, for educational purposes, autoimmune people, people who carry a significant inflammatory burden. So we've got all kinds of thyroid issues, Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel, rheumatoid arthritis and related syndromes. We call those the arthritides. In medical school, those people carry a lot of inflammation, generally speaking. Also, certain infections have a high inflammatory burden more than others, like Lyme's disease and Covid especially long haul Covid. We've seen benefits from the IV to suppress the inflammation. We have some people who have chronic bronchitis or pulmonary issues, fibrosis. We've had some benefits with inhalational exosomes. So we do a breathing treatment. And then I would say there is also a group, this is more on the fun side of things. For thinning hair and for some facial rejuvenation. We have some micro injections of the face and the scalp with the stem cell derived exosomes. And we don't just give these wildly. We want to help a patient become, be as ready for these as we can. So we want to make sure their diet and their sleep and everything is tight. Maybe hormone optimization things because if we're going to do this, if we're going to have this not cheap date, we want it to have the best results. We want the person to be optimized first. We don't just do that. Then we have the biohacking crowd who likes to do IVs and different things like that.

Where do you see this technology going? What's the future trajectory of it that you see?

It's the designer exosomes. So it's those chock full of mitochondria, those from the immune cells to help combat cancers. So instead of chemo and radiation, we might be using injections of these immune cell derived exosomes that can selectively kill cancer cells. And there are studies, I'm not just throwing this out. There are studies that have tried this in humans, in, in China. It's being done. We're just, we're going to be the last to have it, of course.

So if someone's exploring this for themselves, excuse me, what would you, what guidance would you offer them? What would you say is like, okay, you should do this as you're exploring.

It, do your homework.

Should they look for.

Because not everybody can travel, talk to, you know, your, your, your regular physicians, ask them about it. And I, I had a patient recently, you know, I offered a joint procedure and she went back to her orthopedic doctor and orthopedic doctor said no, no, those, that's not proven. It's not Ready? And she came back to me, she said, I don't know what to do. And I said, it's okay. Six years ago, before I got into this side of, of medicine, I would have said the same thing. So you got to find doctors who are a little bit more open minded and willing to learn new things and not just do what they were trained to do 25 years ago in medical school. So I would say ask, ask more than one clinician what to do. Do your homework on the Internet and have good questions. And then talk, talk to multiple people who do this. Have consultations. You know, we do zoom consultations just like we're meeting now and we meet people this way and we talk to them remotely. And we only invite people here in Las Vegas where we are if there's a reason to invite them here. And I do have some colleagues throughout the nation who also do this. So if you live somewhere else and it's near one of those people, I can refer you there as well.

Is there a website, Is like a national website at this point or is it all kind of piecemeal?

Just join it because of the regulatory burden. So the, the other thing to ask for is about what that doctor is using. Are you using stem cells? Are you using exosomes? Where do you get them? Show me that lab's certifications. Can I research the lab? Do your homework. Because there's a lot of questionable biologics out there, which is the one reason the FDA is probably trying to be on top of this.

Where can people find you? And we'll put this in the show notes so you.

Yeah, thank you.

You'll be able to see it.

Well, you should find me right here on your podcast. But you look me up on my. Our company is re celebrate because you're celebrating the renewal of your cells. So all of our website and Instagram and everything is. Is re celebrate. It's R E C E L L E B R A T E. Just type that in. You'll find us. Awesome.

It's been really fascinating because this is something that I think is not talked about enough. And it's definitely up and coming and really appreciate your insight.

Yeah, anytime. I'm. I'm happy to share in any way I can. And please, please call upon me. Phone a friend if you need in the future.

Appreciate it. All right, Jeff, thank you for being here for the listeners. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Feel Freaking amazing podcast. And Dr. Gross, thank you for being here. This is great. Thank you.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.