← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Dr. Ross Carter: Is Aging Optional? The Stem Cell Fix No One Talks About
00:51:54
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- [00:00]
Amitai Eshel
Foreign Beauty, the podcast where we simplify the science of youthful skin and dive deep into cutting edge biohacking strategies to help you glow from the inside out. I'm your host, Amitai Eshel and today we've got a real game changer in regenerative medicine. Joining us, Dr. Ross Harder. With over 26 years of experience in non surgical joint regeneration and 13 years pioneering stem cell and exosome therapies, Dr. Carter has transformed how we think about healing and aging. He's a three time best selling author and the creator of Young for Life program which blends personalized protocols for biological age reduction, peak performance and most relevant here, skin rejuvenation. Today we're cutting straight to the what, what we are interested in and what we're getting A lot of questions about how advanced biologics like stem cells and exosomes can actually repair and reprogram your cells and your skin at a cellular level, slow aging and restore the youthful glow naturally. If you're ready to dive into the science and practical biohacks behind cellular health and longevity, you're in the right place. And just a quick heads up. This podcast is brought to you by Young Goose Skincare, the company I co founded with my wife Anastasia. If you want to try some of these biohacking skincare solutions for yourself, you can use code podcast tengoose.com to get 10% off. Now let's get into it. Okay. My dear friend, and really someone I admire is on the podcast today. Dr. Ross Carter. Welcome.
- [02:07]
Dr. Ross Carter
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [02:10]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. So obviously we, you know, we've known each other for a few years now and I think, you know, first time I saw you was at a Dave Astri conference. You walked around with a, with the kind of similar shirt that you're wearing today, which is kind of doctor Stem cell, I think was T shirt. Probably back then.
- [02:28]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah. But I think back then, I mean, not even a short while back. I think it's 2021 or 2022. We lived in a different world. It was, it was, I mean, at least it wasn't as popular as it is today. Even the, the, the, the words, I think stem cells.
- [02:47]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yes, they are becoming very popular actually.
- [02:51]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. So maybe we should start by defining, you know, what stem cells are and how are they used within the context of regenerative medicine as a whole.
- [03:03]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, there's different types of stem cells that, that we can talk about the two primary. And when it comes to therapy, at least that's Primarily, what we're talking about, you've got.
- [03:15]
Amitai Eshel
But let's say someone doesn't even know. You know, a lot of the times, obviously, when you talk with. Even with people at the. In the field, you. You start pretty later on in the conversation. But really, if someone doesn't know, you know, what are, what are stem cells?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Well, we'll start with that. A basic stem cell is a undifferentiated cell that can become another type of tissue. It can become more of itself, or it can delineate, meaning convert down to a specific type of cell. So, like, if it wants to be a heart cell or skin cell or a brain cell or whatever, those originate from an undifferentiated stem cell. And the. The master stem cell we call an msc mesenchymal stem cell or medicinal signaling cell, they have a couple names, and so they're really responsible for creating the new tissue in our body once it becomes damaged. So that's the essence of what a stem cell is.
- [04:12]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. So if I understand you correctly, it's kind of what we're made of to begin with.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah.
- [04:19]
Amitai Eshel
We can think of, like, almost like. Like a process of, like, pruning as it kind of migrates throughout the cycle. It starts as everything, you know, and slowly, slowly access to certain information of what it means to be different types of cells is closed off or hidden.
- [04:40]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yes.
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Amitai Eshel
And then it only has a choice to be a specific cell.
- [04:45]
Dr. Ross Carter
That's a. That's pretty much it. Yeah. It has the ability to. To really become anything, and then it basically chooses a line of cells that it needs to become based on different factors.
- [04:59]
Amitai Eshel
So now, you know, now that we kind of know that. I think now it begets the question maybe if you could break down how stem cell therapy and maybe other type of, like, regenerative therapy that stem from stem cells work at cellular level to repair our body.
- [05:20]
Dr. Ross Carter
So there are two different lines of cells that we can talk about when it comes to stem cells, when it's. When we're using it as a therapy, regardless of how it's being used, whether it be used for your skin, whether it be used for your joint, whether it be used for brain issues. They. They. There's two different types of cells that we talk about. We either can use your own stem cells. So you have stem cells in your body right now. They're in your bone marrow, they're in your. Your adipose tissue. So they're stored there, and they're. They. They surround your blood vessels, and they're there when you Injure yourself or some repairs need to be happen, then they come out and they. They try to repair the damage. Now, when we use our own stem cells, the challenge we have is as we age, the ability and the quantity of the. Those cells is lower. It just can't repair like we used to. We. We can't heal like we did when we were two years old. Right. You, you know, you would go out and play on your bike. Well, maybe not at 2, but go out and play on the playground or something. And, and you'd skin your knee. And then, you know, the next day or the day afterwards, I mean, it was like it would never happened. You know, today, if you go out and, you know, skin your knee, it takes a while for that to heal, if it completely heals at all.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
So using our own stem cells can benefit us. However, we've found that it's. It's really dependent on a lot of factors, one being our health, one being our age, how well we're doing in, in general, you know, is how's our nutrition, things like that. So another choice that a lot people, a lot more people choose is what's called an external source of cells using what's called perinatal tissue, which is the tissue that remains after a woman's had a baby. All that tissue. There's an umbilical cord, there's placenta, there's cord blood, there's amniotic fluid. We group that into a category called perinatal tissue. And what's amazing is scientists or laboratories have the ability to take someone else's placental tissue and recycle those cells and so that other people, not even related to that family, can use them for a therapy. Now, these are super, super strong because they are only a day old. So they, they haven't been around for a long period of time. So they, they tend to have a very strong ability to repair damage, even if it's not from someone in our family. Which is a question I get all the time now, the body does. When we use external cells, the body will recognize them as foreign, but it has the. The. These cells have the ability to evade the immune system for a period and usually enough time to get its therapeutic response so it can actually stimulate a healing response and then be killed. And it still helps the body. So more people are kind of turning to the use of perinatal tissue as opposed to just using their own cells.
- [08:23]
Amitai Eshel
So you're saying, in other words, that it is not necessarily the cells themselves that cause repair it is there the information that they relay as far as, like, tissue, as far as, like, stimulation for repair.
- [08:38]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah. So a stem cell itself is more like a surveyor. What it does is it surveys what is happening in an area of inflammation. So they're attracted to inflammation, so they go to that area and then they kind of have this intelligence to figure out what needs to happen to, to fix the problem. So I think of it like a job site where, where you got the, the, the, the guy in the middle explaining to all the workers what they need to do. And then those workers are the ones that actually do all the work. And the way it does that is through signaling. So you've got these little tiny particles that come from stem cells, and they actually come from all cells. It's a way of communication. They're called exosomes, or that's the most common word that most people have heard of, exosomes. And really what an exosome is, is. Is a protected encapsule of information. It has information in it of how to do something, whether it, say, take down inflammation or to stimulate a repair. So those little capsules, those little exosomes are really what causes and stimulates the actual repair work to happen. So the exosomes are really what causes those repairs to. To occur.
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Amitai Eshel
So within what you said before, which is the quality of perinatal tissue, is there a difference in quality of exosome as far as the age of the cells?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah. So all of your cells make exosomes. They all use that system of communication. So your cells are always constantly communicating with each other. So, yeah, the younger the signal, obviously, the more powerful it typically is going to become. You can get signals from all kind of cells, but typically when we're talking about repair, regeneration, we want to use the cells that are responsible for that. In this case, stem cells, typically. So those are the exosomes that we're typically looking at using these stem cell exosomes, for example.
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Amitai Eshel
Okay. So I think, you know, a lot of people might have a. Might have heard of two types of therapies. Especially, especially as, again, as time goes on and more and more people are offering those therapies, and really you could find them in people who are maybe less experienced or more experienced. And that's kind of why I asked you to come on, because I regard you as an authority and an experienced person in the field. There are two things that I think most people are exposed to now. One is localized or even like hyper localized. Right. And one is systemic treatment.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yes.
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Amitai Eshel
Maybe we could talk about the differences. There and why would one choose one or not or the other?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Well, if you're talking about systemic, then we could be talking about autoimmune conditions or even aging for that matter. If you're talking about localized, we're talking about working on a specific area or joint. For example, let's say they have knee pain or shoulder pain or something like that. We can also use them in the skin. You know, you can use it to help stimulate repair and regeneration of skin tissue and collagen, and that's why it's used for facials as well. So yes, it can be used systemically, it can be used locally. It really depends on what the goal of the treatment is. A lot of people come to me and they have problems with their joints, their knees and shoulders. And we work specifically in those areas. We concentrate the healing products in those areas. If they have systemic issues, usually it's inflammatory. Pretty much all systemic issues, autoimmune, for example, are an inflammatory systemic procedure or process and we can use them to take down inflammation systemically, thereby helping to minimize the effects of the autoimmune condition.
- [12:40]
Amitai Eshel
And there is, is there, is there a protocol where you're going to go. So again, like when we spoke last time, we, we spoke a lot about multiple sites of injection. So, so, so multiple joints, you know, and that this is, this is becoming a more popular option because obviously, you know, I got, for example, I got my knee injected with stem cells when I had a meniscus tear or, you know, anything like that. But most people, even if they have something acute, they also have some lingering pain. I'm sure they remember, suddenly their hip hurts, et cetera. My question is, would they also benefit at the same time or let's say they are concerned mainly about a specific joint. Is there still a benefit to combining it with systemic introduction of stem cells or would you rather work only on that tissue? On that specific tissue?
- [13:37]
Dr. Ross Carter
No, I think it's always great to do both. You want there's more to a joint condition especially than usually just wear and tear. I mean, what is causing the problem in the first place? What's going on? Why is the tissue not working? I mean, how has it been damaged? So you can do system wide in conjunction with direct injections and they will those improve the results? Always. So I'm a big fan of doing both at the same time. You get, you get much better results than if you just do one alone.
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Amitai Eshel
Interesting. Very cool. Okay, so what I'm very interested in is the kind of state of, the state of the Union, if you will, as far as, like, biologics in general.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Sure.
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Amitai Eshel
So you mentioned exosomes, you mentioned stem cells within the skin. Within the skin Health.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah.
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Amitai Eshel
You know, category. There are also, you know, growth factors and inflammatory cytokines. What are we seeing? What are you seeing? You know.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Well, if you're talking about skin, I mean, it has to do with the. And. And joints. It's really the extracellular matrix. You know, it's important for both skin, joint health. It's the. It's really a scaffolding.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [14:53]
Dr. Ross Carter
Which supports, you know, in the skin, it gives firmness and elasticity. In the joints, it supports the cartilage, helps with mobility. When it breaks down. When we have aging, we have inflammation both, you know, in the skin, we'll see wrinkles, and in the joints we'll see joint pain. So. And a lot has to do with this extracellular matrix and with the collagen, you know, breaks down in the joint. You know, we're going to have. I'm sorry, in the skin, it's like the. The destruction of the tissue in the joint, they. They break down and then it causes issues.
- [15:31]
Amitai Eshel
And what is the. If someone is mainly interested in, you know, in health optimization.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yes.
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Amitai Eshel
Or like. Yeah. So health optimization or optimal performance or healthy aging, whatever. You would want to kind of categorize it.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Right.
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Amitai Eshel
How does one approach or how does one interact with stem cells or biologics in general to improve what is already functioning? Well, I would say, like, how much of that do you see and what are the approaches for that?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah. So one of the ways that we look at it is biological aging.
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Amitai Eshel
Right.
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Dr. Ross Carter
We have our chronological age, which is how old our ID says we are. And then we have what's called our biological age, which is how old our body is functioning. Right. And that can be. You can do it by organ systems. There are different companies that will break down the age of various organs, whether it be lungs and kidneys and brain, or you can have an overall biological age. And there are different ways to look at that. You can do blood tests that'll determine it. You could do saliva tests. But what the idea is is to see how old your body is functioning in essence. And once you know what's happening and how old some your body is functioning, then you look at protocols that can help slow the process down. You know, obviously right now we don't have the ability necessarily to, you know, stop the aging process altogether. Not yet.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
But, you know, I believe in our lifetime that we might come pretty close. I think we might be get there. There's a lot of money right now in longevity. You know, billions of dollars of very wealthy people are trying to, you know, want to live eternally, you know, live forever.
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Amitai Eshel
My joke is that the more. The more money you have, the less you want to die.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Exactly right. And the more money you put into something, the. The more likely you're going to find a solution, right?
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
And there's a lot of people, you know, just look at Jeff Bezos, for example. He's. He's invested a ton of money in this as well. Everybody's really jumping on that bandwagon of let's live forever. Right. Or live as long as possible, as healthy as possible.
- [17:43]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Increasing our health span, not just our lifespan. Right. So, you know, that's really what our goal is. And you can use these biologics, whether it be a peptide, whether it be growth factors, exosomes, stem cells, you can use all these signals to slow the process of aging down. In some cases, reverse it to some degree, like you could. You could decrease dramatically your speed of aging, which is what we want to do is slow that process down so that we can live to 100 and feel great. And not just, you know, people when they. I say, hey, how many of you. When I do seminars, how many want to live past 80? And they're like, you know, if you, you know, half the hands maybe go up a little reluctantly. And I say, well, if you could live. Let's say you could live past 80 and still feel like you do now, then everybody wants to. Right. So we don't want to be a burden to society or live in a nursing home. There's not a lot of joy in life in that. It's. It's enjoying the rest of your life and being as pain free and as active as you usually can so that you have cognition, so you can think of, you can reason, you can remember things, and you can take care of yourself, and you can exercise and you can move and play and have fun. You know, I played pickleball. I'm a big fan of pickleball. And I played with this guy who's 85 years old, and he was really, really excellent. I couldn't run after the ball, but he could sure hit the ball really well.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
So, you know, I. For me, I want to just. I want to be able to enjoy the rest of my life and be healthy enough to. To have fun. I'm not. My goal is not to live as long as possible. It's to live as long As I can. Health, healthy.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the goal.
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Dr. Ross Carter
I have, you know, some, some uncles in their 80s and you know, they aren't doing so well. They, they're not, you know, they're, they're alive. But are they, you know, they're, they're barely alive. It's not. Yes, I, I want to be that when I get that old. I want to be able to, you know, have fun, enjoy myself. And you can use these, these biologics, you know, to, to, to really enhance that our ability to heal ourselves and, and repair the damage, even trick our body into believing it's younger through methylation. And then it makes our, our epigenetics, you know, changes them to be more youthful. And that's really what we want to.
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Amitai Eshel
Express is youth 1 million percent. So how would one, you know, and we can definitely talk about organ specific like the skin or joints, but how does one go about, you know, achieving that, you know, 80 year old dream of being an 80 year old and feeling and looking as, as young as, as, as they are today?
- [20:24]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, I've been in the alternative health care field for a long, long time. Yeah, regenerative medicine for a long time as well. You know, there, there's. Science is coming up with ways a lot. I mean, we'd be, you'd be surprised at all the discoveries that are being made all the time. They're learning so many things about how to do something and preserve our life so that we can be healthy. I mean, the first thing is some simple things that people can do. One is sleep. If you don't recover, it doesn't matter how many stem cells or peptides you use. And if you're not sleeping, they're not going to work. So I would say the first thing is you gotta get your great quality sleep every single night. And that is the first step, you know, and that's something that most people that I talk to have not mastered. They get sometimes good sleep and sometimes they, most of the times it's just not that great. So, you know, that's the first step. And if you're not sleeping, figure out what it is that's causing you not to and learn how to maximize your sleep. So that's the primary thing, recovery. You have to give your body a chance to recover. Then you can use all these other options to accelerate our repair process. These, these signaling factors, they really just accelerate our own body's ability to heal. Yeah, I can't give stem cells to a dead person and expect them to heal. Right. They won't. It's. It's working in combination with your own body and accelerating the process of repair. We have the ability to heal ourself. It just slows down as we get older.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
And these, these biologics or whatever you're using is speeding up that process. And that's really what we want to do, is repair as quickly as possible, recover as quickly as possible so we can enjoy ourselves.
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Amitai Eshel
Yes, for sure. So walk us through a typical regenerative medicine protocol you use for, for skin or joint rejuvenation. What does a patient experience from. From start to finish?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Well, okay, let's. Let's take an example so that it's easy to explain. Let's say, let's take somebody that comes in, they have a problem with a shoulder. You know, they, they play tennis or something, and their shoulder is bothering them. How do we deal with it? Well, first thing is, we want to find out, do they have a degenerative process that's occurring in that joint? Is the tissue wearing down and why? Now, a lot of people don't know this, which surprises me. When we see degeneration, we think we say wear and tear. But what does that mean? I mean, are you saying that the, the tissues are rubbing and then they're getting thinner? That's not how it really works. What's happening there is, there are these enzymes, they're called proteases, and they work on the skin just as well as on the, the joints. And, and what they do is they think of it like a little pac man going in there, and they eat up some of the tissue. Now, they're naturally supposed to be there to clean up when you have damage. But typically as you get older and you have more damage, they kind of stay around in the areas and they'll start to really eat up the healthy cartilage and tissue. So if that's the case, which a lot of people have, they've. They've got some. We use a new type of therapy that neutralizes these enzymes and these. And once you neutralize the enzymes, then that repair, then you can repair it. But you've got to stop this process. It's like having a house and having termites eating it up. Now, you could go and put more wood on top of it, but if you don't, you don't talk about. You don't fix the infestation of these termites. You know, it's. It's really not going to last that long.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
So when, when somebody says, hey, I did stem Cells. And it didn't, it didn't quite work for me. I said, well, did you stop the degeneration that's occurring? They're like, no. Say, well, that would be step one. So when we address somebody, we look at the, what's causing the degeneration. Is it a degenerative process with enzymes? A lot of times it is. So we neutralize that first. That's our first step. The second step is then, now we have a joint that's ready for regeneration as much as possible. We use peptides, we use stem cells, we use exosomes, all those in a, like a nice symphony of repair. It stimulates as much and as fast as we can the tissue to start to rebuild. And it can rebuild for most people. And after that we want to strengthen it. You know, I mean it's great to get, you know, new tissue regeneration in the area, but if you go and just, and you just, you know, rip it back up, it's not going to do much good. So you want to strengthen it. And we, we recommend people do a specific types of protocols to start to strengthen the new tissue so that it can support itself and then stay on a more permanent basis.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
So typically for a joint, that's our, our kind of, our three step process that we take people through.
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Amitai Eshel
Yeah. You know, it's in a lot of the times when, when I give a lecture or whatever, I equate it to the difference between going to the dentist and brushing your teeth every day. Right, Right. Like you have to do both things. If you went to the dentist, you got work done, but then you don't do anything at home, which would be that supportive process. Right. The, the work, the strengthening of the area or good lifestyle or following instructions. Because one of the things you told me that frustrated you as people going, you know, they get, you know, they get their shoulder injected and work on and then they go and back to, you know, whatever injured them to begin with. Very, very fast.
- [26:04]
Dr. Ross Carter
I, we have that happen and people are, it's, it is a very common theme that happens even after I tell them you need to take some time off, you need to let this repair and they, they feel better. So that's the problem with just feeling better. You start to feel, when we do a procedure, typically people feel pretty good within a few days.
- [26:23]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
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Dr. Ross Carter
Sometimes a week, they're like, oh, I feel the pain's gone, it must be all better. And I'm like, no, it's, it's just starting. We're just starting this process. And now and then they go and hurt themselves. And I'm like, you got to give it some time. You just can't. You know, you break your leg and you put a cast on it and you think, oh, we, it doesn't, I don't feel it so much anymore. And then you, you can't just take off the cast and start work, you know, doing your thing. It's just not going to work. It's not going to work. So people, they've got to understand you do need to take the time off.
- [26:54]
Amitai Eshel
And I think probably the same thing applies to facials that involve stem cells, exosomes, whatever biologics we're talking about. It's also the not exposing it to environmental stress, to the sun and things like that that will make it effective.
- [27:10]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah, yeah, don't do a procedure and then sit out in the sun for all day long the next day, right?
- [27:15]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. Hey there.
- [27:20]
C
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- [29:24]
Amitai Eshel
Did you have any pre or post treatment biohacking strategies you recommend? Whether it is, you know, nutrition and supplementation or things maybe like red light therapy or anything like that?
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Dr. Ross Carter
Well, when we do a procedure, the things we want to do is allow the process to occur. Now what stops the process? Let's say somebody has a joint or doing IVs or any of those. We want to not trick the body by using anti inflammatories. Yeah, anything that takes away inflammation. See, inflammation is your body's way that to signal and say, hey, there's a problem here. And when we take those, it tricks the body and say, well, I guess, I guess there's no problem here, so I don't need to do anything. So we tell people to avoid any of those anti inflammatory inflammatory things, whether it be a cortisone shot or NSAIDs or any kind of supplementation that takes away inflammation. We want to avoid that for at least for a while until the body starts repairing.
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Amitai Eshel
Sorry to cut you. I said even things like curcumin or.
- [30:25]
Dr. Ross Carter
Obviously like curcumin as well. Same thing. Yeah. Curcumin is definitely one we want to minimize or just stop taking for a while. Just let your body feel its full inflammation so it knows how to fix it. Otherwise you're tricking it the whole time and you don't. Yeah. Yep.
- [30:48]
Amitai Eshel
Okay. What about obviously very, I think a very growing field at least like in our little sphere is stem cell mobilizing supplements. Is that something, you know, what is your, you know, unbiased, obviously. But you know, what is your real opinion around that or are you using them? What's going on there?
- [31:14]
Dr. Ross Carter
As far as I think it's a fine adjunctive support. It is not like doing a stem cell procedure. You know, people that make supplements that, that are supposed to stimulate your own stem cells, you know, they make it as the solution for everything. And you know that's, that's very unlikely. Some of them use the concept of they, they mobilize your, your stem cells from your bone marrow. Right. And you know, there's a cascade of events that occur. It's not just one thing like that. And I don't know if constantly stimulating the, the, the release of your bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells is always a great idea. Yeah, it might cause other issues. I don't, I'm not aware. So I mean in theory it sounds interesting. I just don't know enough if it, if the research supports it being a good thing for, for everyone. I, I just, I Have my reservations about it.
- [32:10]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. As they like to say, more research needs to be done.
- [32:14]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, yeah, I would say yes, because there. A lot of times people jump on the bandwagon of a keyword, you know, catchphrase, and they say stem cells are like, oh, well, I. When I first started this, God, more than 10 years ago, I made my own supplement. I called it Stem, stem S T E S T I M S T E M. Like stimulate stem cell production. And I use all those, all those supplements that everybody's doing now. I made my own stem cell supplement, so I was a big fan. But what I found is it helps to support a procedure, but it's not a replacement.
- [32:51]
Amitai Eshel
Got it. That's very interesting. And actually, you know, it begs the question, how do you measure the effectiveness of regenerative protocols as a whole? Obviously, skin, it's a little bit easy because we could at least have a before and after. Yeah, but are there specific biomarkers or clinical signs you can track?
- [33:12]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah, of course. You can look at inflammatory markers in the blood, C reactive protein, for example. You can, you can do a blood study and look at inflammatory markers and see if they're. If they've been decreased or, or if they're elevated or whatever's going on. So, yeah, we do blood work a lot to, to see what's going on. I like the biological age tests as well.
- [33:33]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [33:34]
Dr. Ross Carter
That can give us a, a good sense of, of, of what the methylation patterns are of, of your, you know, your cells and, and whether or not they are slowing down the process. So you, you can do all those things. You can also take things that stem telomeres, for example, or simulate stem cells, like you said? There, there's different avenues to, to, to track.
- [33:57]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah. And would these biologics actually reprogram cells or let's say, or the cell environment to maintain usefulness long term?
- [34:13]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yes, I believe we can do that using, let's say, stem cell exosomes, for example, there's this process called heterochronic parabiosis. And for your listeners that may not know what that means, it's where they take two animals. Let's, let's say with the, with the current research they use as rats, they take an old rat, they take a young rat, and they connect their circulatory systems together and the old rat starts to rejuvenate in all cell lines. The young rat starts to kind of accelerate aging. So they're kind of having this change of their cellular function, which is pretty dramatic and amazing. So we see that you can change cells into a more youthful state in every area. And we can use that concept when we do it for ourselves. So what we do is use the signaling factors. Now what causes that is, is all these youthful signaling factors in the young rat that's going into the old rat. So now the old rat cells sees all these youthful signals and it thinks, well, I guess we're younger than we thought. And then they start functioning that way to say it in an easy way. And so we can use that same process ourselves. I mean, you've probably heard about people using young blood transfusions where they would, they would buy young plasma or young blood from another person and they would do an infusion and it would rejuvenate them. And it works even like guys like Brian Johnson used his son to do it. And so it's pretty, pretty interesting how those works. But, but you're, you're really just using the youthful signals and you're putting them in your body and it's influencing your cell's behavior. It has to do with different things like methylation, which is the expression of your genetic, your health, your genetics. And you have patterns that form as you get older. They, they, they're, they're basically different patterns that happen with methylation. And when you use youthful signals, it changes that methylation to be more young. So, so that's the way I see it, as a way to, you know, use these like biologics to slow the process of aging and trick your cells into believing they're young. And then they start to act that way. Pretty cool.
- [36:32]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, it is. And is that the, is that the viewpoint behind your kind of life? Yeah, Young for Life program.
- [36:40]
Dr. Ross Carter
Exactly. But that's, that's the whole purpose. I've worked with a lot of celebrities. Most of them I cannot name. However, I can name one Tony Robbins, who put me in this book. So he, he put that in there so I can say it.
- [36:54]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [36:55]
Dr. Ross Carter
And so, but the, the idea is everybody wants to be young for life, right? Yeah, they want to, they want to feel healthy and strong. And we're using these to basically influence our body to function at that, at the younger, younger level. We always want to, we want to be as young as, for, for as long as we possibly can. So that's what I, I came up with a program basically, where we look at your body's blood work, we look at your genetics, we look at your biological aging, we put all that together and, and look at your hormones as well, and we, we put together Kind of a package of, of things of how do we slow this person's body, person's aging? So we look at your genetics and see where do you have problems? Do you, what, what. We all have areas of genetic weakness, right? So what are yours? And if we find what's going on, then we can support it. Then we look at your, your aging. How old is your cells functioning? And we see if, if they're functioning older, then we can look at things to slow that process down, right? Look at your hormone levels. You know, most people just don't pay attention to that. But that's a huge thing that, that, you know, really has to do with your energy levels and how you function. So we, we do all those things, this test, and then we have a baseline of where you are, and let's see where you want to go. And then we come up with a program of how to get you there. We, we use anything and everything that will slow it down as much as possible. Most of the time, it's these biological, so peptides and exosomes, stem cells, all these things will help with that process.
- [38:35]
Amitai Eshel
Are there many people who come and say, hey, you know, at the end of the day, I want to look younger from this program?
- [38:40]
Dr. Ross Carter
Of course. What's great is when we do it, you know, especially systemically, it affects every system of the body, whether it be your skin, whether it be your blood vessels, your muscles, your bones, everything. Cognition. It works on everything. That's why I'm a huge fan of systemic procedure. It'll, it'll also, if you use the little tiny exosome particles, they'll go up into your brain. It can help stimulate neurogenesis and creation of new brain cells, and it can take down inflammation that could lead to dementia or other issues.
- [39:14]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's really interesting. What new protocols or, or biologics are, are you most excited about that are coming up? Are there, are there any innovations in the field that you like?
- [39:29]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, I mean, when it comes to stem cells, I mean, stem cells are stem cells. We're, we're not, we're not usually. We found that when we mess with it, it causes issues, and we don't want that. We don't want cancerous issues and things like that. I, I'm. Right now, something I'm really excited about is this, these, these enzyme neutralizing therapies. Because when I, when I first started, I didn't know anything about that. All, all we did was stimulate, stimulate tissue regeneration, but I didn't know anything about this, these enzymes that are causing, causing the destruction in the first place and neutralizing those. So that's an area that's, that's pretty new that most people have never heard of. And it's so important to get great results is stop the destruction first. Once you do that, then you can stimulate the tissue regeneration.
- [40:21]
Amitai Eshel
You know, it's funny, I gotta interject and tell you that I feel you and I, and I, you know, I wish it was coming across as sexier. That's my, that's a truth.
- [40:32]
Dr. Ross Carter
Because, you know, for us, we need a supermodel chicken.
- [40:36]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. I'll tell you why. Because for us, we are also obsessed with, with some enzymes that are more close to what we care about, which is nad or you know, we can give NAD as an example, but we are, we are obsessed with a few enzymes and, and pathways, enzymatic pathways. CD38 is like a big one because it eliminate its whole being in our body, you know, affects NAD negatively. But there are other ones as well. And you know, we, we come up with those, with those new innovations within the field and it's just not as sexy as saying, you know, you know, peptide or collagen or even the, the nad. You know, you start talking about enzymes, I think people kind of taper off a little bit from the conversation, but. Yeah, but they are.
- [41:25]
Dr. Ross Carter
I don't talk too much about them. I just say, hey, the bad ones that are going on, we want to neutralize them.
- [41:31]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [41:31]
Dr. Ross Carter
I don't, you know, say mmps, for example. I'll start naming them, you know.
- [41:36]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah. And it's funny that you're saying it because I think there is, there is obviously a. What we talked about, which is a negative effect of kind of going back to what has brought you to the, you know, to the office to begin with. Too soon. But there is also, and you mentioned MMPs, there is also a mental and cortisol aspect of that is, that is often not addressed. You know, MMPS and cortisol are intrinsically linked. So are you ever talking about, you know, the mental aspect and anything from like mindfulness to just like shilling the F down as a adjunct?
- [42:16]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah. One of the things that I'm a big fan of is having routines, morning routines, evening routines and. Absolutely. So, you know, one of the things I do myself, I mean every more. Every night I have alarms on my phone at specific times of. To do certain things in the mornings. I do some of. I'm a big fan of Tony Robbins obviously. And so I'll do His priming, you know, the priming. I don't know if you've seen the videos, but you can look them up and it's basically, you know, having gratitude, thinking of what you want out of your life, calming your body down, it know, projecting positive light out into the world. So I, if you do that on a daily basis, that's a really good way to start your morning. And then in the evening, you know, I cut out, cut out all the blue lights with my blockers. You know, I, I basically prepare my body to go to sleep so that when I lay down, I fall asleep really quickly and get great quality sleep. So I'm a big fan of routines and routines have to do with mindfulness. I even have a program on Braintap, I'm familiar with that, that, yeah, I've had a sleep program of, I think it's a 14 day program on brain Tap for years and it's super popular. I, I still get residuals from that, which is exciting. But it, it's all about learning to focus and, and improve your own mental health so that you can sleep great.
- [43:40]
Amitai Eshel
Do you ever listen to yourself? You're like, look, I gotta, you know, I gotta listen to myself calming myself.
- [43:45]
Dr. Ross Carter
Down a little weird because I have a very, I had to record that with a very monotone voice. Yeah, I'm talking like this. So it's not like a normal conversation. Because if you're somebody's being hypnotic, you know, because it has the hypnotic thing, you don't want to see her and talk like, you know, so here, Okay. I want you to relax. Really relax. It doesn't work. So, you know, it's, it's very.
- [44:11]
Amitai Eshel
Relax harder.
- [44:12]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah, you're not relaxing enough. Do it now. Yeah, you seem stressed. So I, I do it. But yeah, I, I, I put together that because I actually put together a program on learning how to restore your sleep. I, I wrote a book about it too. Yeah, it's basically biohacking your sleep so that you can restore it. Because I, I, I was a chronic insomniac for years and I had major issues. I was addicted to sleeping pills.
- [44:39]
Amitai Eshel
Wow.
- [44:40]
Dr. Ross Carter
Lunesta, for example, years on it. And I had to figure out how to restore my sleep because it was just not good. And it was so hard to find a way and so I had to figure it out. And so then I started teaching other people how to get their sleep, restore it because it was so important because I'd see people just, they just wouldn't sleep and then they just fall apart and It's a torture.
- [45:02]
Amitai Eshel
It's.
- [45:02]
Dr. Ross Carter
It was torture for me, man. I was under a lot of stress and I got through it, but it wasn't. Wasn't easy. So I wrote about it.
- [45:10]
Amitai Eshel
Listen, I. I love it. Obviously, we have a one. One toddler, one a year and four months.
- [45:16]
Dr. Ross Carter
Oh, yes.
- [45:17]
Amitai Eshel
So let me tell you, that's. That's something I miss. Definitely good sleep. Okay, so maybe to finish. I know you said that there is not a lot of, you know, really, you don't want to play. Play with stem cells too much.
- [45:31]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, the stem cells themselves. True. However, exosomes, I think there's a lot of customization that we can do. You can do. Since I said exosomes can become from different parts of. Of the cells, different types of cells, we can get custom exosomes from, say, cartilage or, or neurological or things like that that are specifically instructed on how to work with more of itself. So customization of exosomes, I think is kind of one of the things that I'm excited about as we go forward to say, hey, I need more cartilage. I don't need just a broad stem cell. I need cartilage rebuilt in this joint. And then we get an exosome that is just for cartilage. And I like the customization aspects, but as do we.
- [46:22]
Amitai Eshel
I mean, that has been our journey for the last two years. Our facility in Korea building specific exosomes which we derive from platelets that are specifically programmed for the skin matrix.
- [46:37]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yes.
- [46:38]
Amitai Eshel
And that is. That has been. Let me tell you, that has been one hell of a journey. But we're. I think we're. We're almost. I think we're almost there.
- [46:46]
Dr. Ross Carter
Well, Florida just passed a law or. Yeah. I don't know if you heard about it. Right? You heard about it? Yeah, yeah, last week. Where, where Now, Florida is a right to try kind of state where if. If you are interested in actual stem cell therapy, you can do it here in Florida legally.
- [47:04]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [47:05]
Dr. Ross Carter
You know, even if it's not FDA approved, it's still legal to do it here now in Florida. Now that's not across the country, so you got to come here. Which is, of course, where I'm at West Palm Beach.
- [47:15]
Amitai Eshel
Exactly. So as you said, you know, stem cell exosome customization is, Is definitely coming. I believe that Florida is definitely going to be a good proof of concept of what we can do.
- [47:32]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah, we're going to have medical tourism here for that.
- [47:35]
Amitai Eshel
That would be very exciting and very excited, obviously for you for that. Is there any way you see AI affecting the way that the evolution of the field?
- [47:46]
Dr. Ross Carter
I mean, of course AI is, can make decisions and mixtures. I mean, it's good for peptides. It has to do with, you know, it can do protein folding and all kind of cool stuff. I think AI is going to take over everything, every aspect of regenerative medicine, longevity, all those things AI is going to run. It means you can look at your blood work and then see stuff that we can't normally see. So. Absolutely. I love AI. I use it constantly. I'm not just daily, every day, constantly. Me and my AI are having conversations all the time. Right. I can talk to my phone and it's my counselor, it's my friend. It knows everything I needed to know.
- [48:27]
Amitai Eshel
Amazing. Yeah. Okay, listen, that has been a great conversation. I selfishly enjoyed it. Now let's get to. At the end of the day, this podcast. The evil plan of this podcast is the evil mission of podcast is to get people mission. Now that's a joke. But that, but the mission, our mission basically is to have people obviously have a more, more health span and improve their life.
- [48:56]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yes.
- [48:56]
Amitai Eshel
And have our products work better because they function as younger people. And that's why we bring people such as yourself, because there is a corner of the market that you've really mastered. So the question is, how do people work with you? What is the best way to, to start the journey of, of kind of working with you and, and, and.
- [49:17]
Dr. Ross Carter
Yeah, absolutely. So my website. Just go to my website young young for life.org org not.com so.org I couldn't get the other one. And that's. They can, they can literally just go there and they can, you know, connect with me, do a consult. And we do, we do everything virtually. Some procedures we can do in other, other locations, not necessarily locally, but a lot of people do like to come to West Palm Beach. I mean, it's beautiful place.
- [49:46]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [49:47]
Dr. Ross Carter
So, you know, so yeah, that, that's the first step, I'd say. It's just, just go to my website. They can call our office at 561-962-1231 and they can do that as well.
- [50:00]
Amitai Eshel
Very nice. Is there anywhere that they can hear you speak anytime soon? Because you do actually, you give very interesting lectures.
- [50:08]
Dr. Ross Carter
Thank you. Thank you. I try to find conferences and things that I would, I really connect with. You know, I, I usually do a 4M, for example, you know, and Asbury and, and I've done a bunch of different biohacking conferences. I had a big biohacking conference a couple years ago. So it really. It really has to be something that I'm really interested in that I like to connect with.
- [50:31]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [50:32]
Dr. Ross Carter
And educate people about. So, you know, I don't have anything specific I'm doing. I don't have anything scheduled right now.
- [50:40]
Amitai Eshel
Got it. Okay. Fantastic. But people should definitely look for your name. You have fantastic, insightful lectures.
- [50:48]
Dr. Ross Carter
Thank you.
- [50:48]
Amitai Eshel
Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Ross Carter. I highly recommend people reach out because I think there, as the field grows, the margin for error grows as well. And when I say that, I mean margin. Margin of error physically, but also margin of error of choosing a provider and a guide and someone that understand both the intangibles and adjuncts. So again, knowing you for a long time, very respect. I really respect what you are doing and thank you. Yeah. And I wish you continued success.
- [51:26]
Dr. Ross Carter
Thank you. It was a pleasure being here.
- [51:29]
Amitai Eshel
Thank you guys.
- [51:30]
Dr. Ross Carter
Bye, Sam.