← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
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This is wisdom that's been hidden for thousands of years.
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Correct. We discovered that this blue green algae was triggering the release of stem cells from the bone marrow.
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Stem cells have literally changed my life.
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So now you go back to the core of your health and it's your ability to repair. If you give back to the body its ability to repair, the impact can be phenomenal.
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Somebody's looking to age more slowly. Maybe the single greatest thing they could do is focus on replenishing their own stem cells. Foreign.
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If you've ever looked into stem cell therapy for chronic pain, joint issues, or anti aging, you've probably been hit with
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a massive price tag. Well, today I'm sitting down with stem cell scientist Christian Dropo, who says you
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have all of the stem cells you already need sitting inside your own bone marrow in your body right now. Now, I'm a little bit skeptical of
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the idea, but Christian is here to convince me otherwise. Christian, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much. My pleasure.
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Well, I'm excited to dive in and I will start off by saying that stem cells have literally changed my life in an incredibly positive way. You know, I had a spinal infection about three, a little over three years ago, and stem cells helped me heal. About 10 years ago, I hurt myself lifting weights. I blew my L5S1 disc and my L4L5 disc. Chronic pain. For years and years, I went and got stem cell injections, and three months later, all of a sudden, I was 70, 80% better. And so for me, stem cells have been such a powerful form of medicine and, and helping me heal. And I do. And listen, generally, I am in agreement with you, but I do wanna push back a little bit on a few of these points in that here's something I found, is that I eat in a way to activate stem cells. However, my experience has been that just pales in comparison in the strength and the effectiveness to going out and getting stem cell injections, even though it's very expensive. What are your thoughts on that?
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I mean, it's a discussion that is a little bit more nuanced than this. If you're talking about an application in joints vertebra, like what was your experience then? Injection in the joint is by far superior. You don't have enough blood circulation into joints to really deliver a lot of stem cells. It's not impossible. We have seen it. But anybody that comes with an injury to a joint, if they have the funds to do it, I'll tell them go for an injection. But if you're talking about systemic, like Lung function, heart function, liver function, and so on. Releasing your own stem cells will have benefits equal if it's not superior to injections for a number of reasons. And it's a spectrum. It's not like a black and white answer. It depends on the terrain when you inject stem cells. Well, let's put it this way. Injecting stem cells, injection, most of them, it depends where they're injected. It depends on a lot of different things. But generally speaking, very few of them survive past the first day. Virtually none survive past a week. So they are, at the end of the day, almost like a slow release exosome product through apoptosis of stem cells. At the end of the day, they stimulate your endogenous ability to repair. If your tissues are depleted with stem cells, then that means these stem cells and exosomes don't talk to a lot of people in your body. So you come back and you say, I wasted my money. But stem cells do their job. But if you don't have enough in you, then you don't have leverage. And that's why we see in our study the greatest results when both are combined. You mobilize your own stem cells, and then you get a stem cell injection. And it's in that case that we get the best results.
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You know, there are about nine to now, there's 12 hallmarks of aging, but always on the list is stem cell exhaustion.
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Correct.
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And so for a lot of people, I don't think they fully realize that your stem cells are what create new tissues. They're the main thing used for tissue regeneration and healing. And so when you think about the top things that are damaging our stem cells today, causing people to have chronic illness, causing people to age too quickly, what are the top things today that are destroying our body's own internal stem cells?
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Exhaustion means two things in the body. There's one that we can do something about it. There's another one that, as of today, there's not a whole lot that we can do about it. Fasting is one thing, and I know that you know very well about fasting. So the first one is the conversion of red marrow into fatty marrow. That starts very early in life, from the moment you're born, not long after red marrow starts to convert into fatty marrow. By age 15, you've lost 50% of your red marrow. As you get into your mid-30s, probably 75% of your red marrow. And that corresponds to about a 90% decline in the number of stem cells in circulation. There's nothing you can do to change that, Other than possibly fasting, more research needs to be done. But fasting looks like as a method that can definitely rejuvenate stem cells. Can it reconvert the red marrow, yellow marrow, into red marrow? Open question. But it's good for stem cells. The other part is exhaustion of stem cells in tissues. For example, a good example is the gut. So you have intestinal stem cells that constantly renew the lining of the. You get a new lining like every five days or so. It's extremely active. But the moment that you've got an injury, an ulcer, whatever, colitis, and locally the tissue is constantly fighting to repair, it runs out of stem cells. That's local exhaustion of stem cells. Then you've got the acute condition. If you release stem cells from the bone marrow, you can replenish that layer. So you help. You've not removed any of the cause of the problem, so you need to dive to the cause. But at least the balance between degeneration and repair. Now your repair exceeds a degeneration. So exhaustion in the bone marrow, there's not a whole lot that you can do. Fasting is the best exhaustion in the tissue. It has a lot to do with diet, toxicity, lifestyle. I would say the most relevant to me will be sleep and stress. Stress is going to suppress, and in animal studies it was shown to be stress hormones. So cortisol, adrenaline are going to suppress stem cells ability to migrate into tissue and proliferate. So you basically shut down the body's ability to replenish your tissues with stem cells. So if there's one thing to control, we'd say stress.
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Well, and I want to go all the way back and say this. If somebody is looking at reversing their biological age, if somebody's looking to age more slowly, maybe the single greatest thing they could do is focus on replenishing their own stem cells, protecting their stem cells. You know, I've spent a lot of time studying Chinese medicine and they have a term for this, and it's called. So they say if you want to age slowly, in Chinese medicine, they say preserve the three treasures. And the three treasures are shen chi and jing. Qi is cellular energy. It's tied to your mitochondrial health. Shen is your spiritual sort of side of things. And jing, they would say, is your bone marrow. So their whole thing for physical anti aging in all of Chinese medicine, it's over 3,000 years old, is preserving your bone marrow stem cells.
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I have a story for you that you were like, this is not my expertise. So you'll know way more about what I'm going to tell you. But when I published my book Cracking the Stem cell codes in 2010, so somebody at Harvard read it, she was a professor in traditional Chinese medicine. And her main focus, she's an American, she learned, and her passion was to go back into ancient Chinese medicine and read. You know, as you know very well, Chinese medicine is not like research, like what we do in the West. It's opinions from notorious healers. And if they're known enough and prestigious enough, then their opinion becomes science. So to go through all this literature and see what was lost, if anything, when it transferred to what is today traditional Chinese medicine. So she found a number of things, but one that she found was the jing. She said, in ancient Chinese medicine, there are two jings. There is the primordial jing on the day of your conception and then the postnatal jing. And she said, and the way I was describing embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells in my book, she says it's the same description as prenatal jing and postnatal jing. So I asked her, what plants are there to support the jing? And she told me, foti eshou wu. Oh, yeah, and goji, she said eshewu stimulates the jing and goji berry circulates the jing. So I went to the lab and we tested in humans what is the effect of fo t and goji berry. And we found that fo t stimulates release of stem cells from the bone marrow, and goji berry stimulates their migration out of the blood into tissues.
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Now, listen, I love talking about this because it's so. Because this is wisdom that's been hidden for thousands of years. And so, and just so everybody can keep up with some of these terms, jing is spelled J I n g. And that is really tied to this area, the bone marrow that's really your stem cells and is the way we would communicate this in Western medicine today. And then faux tea, which is called he shou wu, Faux tea is an herb that you can take today, you can buy at some health food stores a lot that most don't carry it. But it's one of the top herbs used in China. And the ancient folklore around this is really amazing to where there was a man and his hair had turned gray. He started using faux t daily and his hair turned back black. And so, you know, and by the way, I've had a couple people, so we have a. At the health institute, we've got a program where we've had a couple Women lately who their hair has went from gray back to black. And part of it is you can start to reverse the aging. Typically it's stress that will really, you know, start to wear out your stem cells that can cause that to happen. But this fo t is incredible for supporting stem cells starting to reverse some of that aging process. Of course, goji berry too. I mean that is probably not talked about enough here in western medicine. That's actually a shen builder as well for reducing stress, boosting nitric oxide. Anyways, that's another just incredible ingredient.
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But the hair color is interesting because after experiencing this with foti, we had had the same thing with the blue green algae, afa Blue green algae that I started my work with that it's through this ingredient that we discovered this whole phenomenon of stem cell mobilization. And we had cases of people who came to me and reported like my hair color is changing. And honestly my answer to them was like stop making up that stuff. You know, it's like it's not necessary. It's a good product. Enough like don't make up these stories. And they were telling me no, it's happening. So we turned that into a small study, eight people and we took photographies and measured the density of white in the hair and. And in the six or eight individuals in all of them in six months an average of 20% reduction in white. And that became then almost like something that I really pay attention like in the folks medicine, the folklore of the use of a plant. I will ask or look in the literature, has this been used anywhere and to report to change air color? Because that's telling me, I mean it's one of the box that I check if I see a plant that has a real potential to be a stem cell mobilizer.
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You know, when we look at these algaes, like let's just use spirulina as an ex example in some of my research one a lot of people don't realize this is really more of a part of a microbial family, right? Correct. Most people think, oh, spirulina they might think of as more of a vegetable, it's more of a microbial and it also is maybe the highest food that I know of in peptides. It's actually a very. So when people are using plant based peptides today, I mean fava bean's one, there's a few others, but I mean peptides, you know, the blue green algae is maybe one of the highest things in peptides. It's super high in magnesium, but it's an incredible, you know, and I love that combination.
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You know, one of the things that I started to learn as I also formulated supplements, I know this is something you're an expert in, is I started to realize that in Western medicine today, everything becomes isolated. Right. So it's like take calcium by itself, Right? Take this one thing by itself. But when you go and study these ancient forms of medicine, they were so wise in saying, no, I understand that if I pair these two herbs together, they're more effective now. It's so funny. Christian, you'll enjoy this. This was probably about, I don't know, maybe I want to say about 10 years ago the study came out that said when you consume turmeric, take it with piperine, which is a compound in black pepper because it increases circulation and gets more throughout your body. And the scientific community was like, wow, what a medical breakthrough. This is incredible. Ayurvedic medicine has a drink called Golden Milk, which is turmeric, along with black pepper, long pepper and ginger. That's been around for like again thousands of years and they already knew this
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all turmeric drink in Ayurveda as pepperine. That's right, as black pepper.
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Exactly. So it's just so funny today that like the scientific community sometimes is behind what a lot of these ancients were doing. And so anyways, but that's one of the things I even see that you're doing, it seems like in your product is you're really looking at saying, how can I combine certain ingredients together?
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Correct.
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To get an even more Important effect. And so one thing I'd like to do is kind of, I'd love for you to share within your brain and some of your thoughts on if you are looking at activating stem cells and supporting stem cells in somebody's body, what are some of those? And maybe you hit on a few. If there's any others, feel free to share those. But what are some of those key ingredients? And are there any that you found may work synergistically together?
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Okay. It's a big question. First, when we say activating, these cells can be in a somewhat dormant state that could be activated. Other than that, the stem cells don't have an inactivated state, an activated state. I mean, they do. Deep in the bone marrow, you have such a thing as quiescent stem cells, but they're not the stem cells that we're talking about here when we talk stem cell mobilization. So when we say activating, really it's mobilizing, releasing them from the bone marrow. So I started with afa, blue green algae from Klamath Lake. So I was hired in 1995 to study that plant right after the passage of DSHEA, the dietary supplement Health and Education Act. So I had to simply document mech active compound so that there was science behind the claims that were being made. The main claims were immunity, supportive immunity, anti inflammation and mood elevation, mental clarity. Very quickly I identified it contains phycocyanin, which is a COX2 blocker. COX2 inhibitor, selective COX2 inhibitor. But the polysaccharides stimulate NK cell activation, migration and macrophage activation. And it's a source of phenylethylamine, Molecule of love, which was shown in the literature alone with a blocker of monoamine oxidase inhibitor to actually reverse depression. So it's a very strong component for like a sense of like, well being. So it explained all the benefits that people had observed. But as I'm doing this research, I came across people reversing multiple sclerosis, copd, emphysema, Parkinson, Alzheimer's, heart disease, atherosclerosis. I mean, the list was so long. And the degree of the benefits were very. It was great, like, amazing benefits. So for a number of like, for a year or two, I don't know really if these are real. They're just stories. But as I start to dig in some of these cases, there's a point where it culminated into a real belief that it was real, this product was doing something and I could not explain. So we did a number of projects until early 2001, I came across an article. The title was Turning blood into brain. So go back in 2001, an article that shows a stem cell can go from the bone marrow to the brain and becoming a brain cell. In 2001, stem cells are only known to be precursors to blood cells and the brain does not repair.
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At least that's right.
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That's what we're told. So I thought it was fascinating. So I went to the local medical library, which was not that extensive in Climate Falls. But I found one other paper, doc, pre Internet. So I had to go and flip, go through all these journals. So I found one other article documenting the same phenomenon in the liver and in the heart. So I simply thought, can you think of a physiological mechanism that will allow stem cells to become liver, heart and brain, but not skin, pancreas, lung and the rest? I can't. So if they become those three, they have to become the rest. So let's assume that they will become the rest. That means they must be the repair system of the body. How can you see a stem cell going to the brain, becoming a brain cell? And the conclusion would be, oh, it was a crazy stem cell. No, it has to be with a purpose. So we published an article in 2001. Stem cells are the repair system of the body. And in the back of my mind, just like there are plants that stimulate the immune system, what if this blue green algae was stimulating the repair system? So we bought a flow cytometer that counts stem cells. We started on our cells and very quickly we discovered that this blue green algae was triggering the release of stem cells from the bone marrow. Then after documenting the mechanism of action, active compound, proof of concept and all of that, then my attention went to been seen in the world to be associated with a broad range of benefits. We talked about foti, it's one of them, but will come to mind immediately. Like medicinal mushroom.
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Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I take reishi constantly. I tend to do a multi mushroom blend. But yeah, I mean, Reishi was another one of those in ancient Chinese medicine that was often talked about being great for longevity, especially to your point there, you know, and they have beta glucans. I mean, part of that benefit there is this improving cellular communication, which I'm sure. And maybe you could talk about this, but I mean, that is a really key part of the body knowing where to repair or what to kill, like a cancer cell. And that's something we know mushrooms are great at.
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Yeah. So I will talk about other plants as we move Forward, but let's stop on mushroom, because when I came to study those, so goji berry, medicinal mushroom, a lot of adaptogens that are. A lot of them are polysaccharide base. And when we started to do these, to test these, we saw an immediate drop in the number of stem cells. Now we're looking for something that is going to give an increase. So as somebody, I'm not a clinician, I'm in the lab. So as somebody in the lab, you see a reverse of what you're expecting and you think the machine is screwed up. So let's clean up the machine, let's readjust everything and later on we get the same response. So let's change the antibodies. You know, they're probably faulty. And after maybe three, four months of trying to find what was wrong with that response, we had to realize it was a real response. And digging a little bit more into it, we realize these polysaccharides increase the density of a specific receptor, Cxcr4 that responds to the SOS molecule coming from an injured tissue or just a tissue needing repair. So as you enhance stem cells ability to detect these areas and migrate in these tissues, well, they disappear from the bloodstream. So the moment that I identified those, then it became clear to me, when you release stem cells, if you want them to do their work, they have to migrate into tissues, otherwise in your blood they do nothing.
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That's right.
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So the moment I discovered those kinds of product, now I starting to combine them. So that's one of the synergy. So we have ingredients like foti, which we do not have in our formula because although it was an amazing discovery to tie back to Chinese medicine, it was probably the least effect, one of the least effective. And you cannot take it every day like it has consequence on the liver over time. So we passed on that one. But. But we have a lot of effective stem cell mobilizers coupled with beta glucan to drive stem cells into tissues.
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Yeah, that's so powerful. Yeah. I mean I love this idea and this phrase that of course I didn't come up with it Hippocrates and maybe he did, but you know, food is medicine. And so, you know, I. One of the things that I wrote a book years ago on this and I had a lot of fun doing it. And this is this ancient principle of like supports, like, you know, and so there. And part of that is, you know, and this could be used in a lot of different examples. So for instance, if you need to support your eyes, eat Carrots, because if you cut it open, it looks like an eye. Or you want to support your blood. Eat beets because it looks like blood and it supports the area. Or a walnut looks like a hemisphere of your brain. Right? So we know these principles. One of the unique things about reishi mushroom was if you hold it up, it looks like your kidneys or your kidneys and adrenal glands. I mean, it is one of those like support like things. And so that's why, I mean, I have always loved mushrooms. I love the research behind mushrooms. And I want to share just a personal example of how we use this with healing. My mom from cancer. So my mom was diagnosed with cancer back in, I want to say 19, around 1995, 96, the first time, went through the conventional treatments and my mom almost died. And then she just was very sick afterwards. Then this was again in 2006, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. This was 20 years ago. This was the second time. And at the time I was learning all about natural medicine. And we decided to take care of her all naturally. But a few of the things that she was taking is she took blue green algae every day. She did a lot of turmeric and ginger. We did a lot of medicinal mushrooms, especially reishi, and followed a really, really clean diet. I mean, for the most part it was salmon, steamed vegetables, berries, pomegranate, olive oil. I mean, that was pretty much the diet. But I look back and again, some of the things you're sharing are the things my mom was taking, especially the blue green algae, the mushrooms there, some of those herbals to help her heal.
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It's actually very interesting to see, and I'm not claiming here that these plants have anti cancer properties. However, it's very interesting to see that as I've used these plants over the years for stem cell mobilization. I would say in the top 10 stories that come back to me is people with cancer who come back and say, you know, I took your product for whatever, like my knee pain. And they come back and they say, well, my prostate cancer is gone. Like I've heard so many of these stories that I start to dig a little bit into it. And I'm not an oncologist, I'm not a clinician, so I'm just sharing data here. What I think is happening is that when a stem cell migrates into a tumor and they are attracted to tumors, so a stem cell is coordinated, is programmed to multiply and then differentiate into cells of that tissue. So when they penetrate and they talk to each Other. So when stem cell proliferate, take the liquid from a population of stem cells that is growing, put that liquid in a population of quiescent stem cells and they start to multiply, they release exosomes and they coordinate their response. Let's see. Like ants. So that stem cell gets into a tissue, it starts to proliferate, and when it starts to differentiate and it entrains the ile proliferative cells into differentiation. So your cancer stops because you cannot differentiate and proliferate at the same time. It's one or the other. So I think it stops the tumor because we have seen it many, many times. A colleague of mine years ago isolated the protein that triggers the differentiation of stem cells into skin cells, keratinocytes. And he applied them on some people with melanomas and they disappeared a matter of weeks. I took all the plants now that we have documented having an effect on stem cell mobilization on PubMed, and you put their name in cancer. All of them have a vast literature on their anti cancer properties. So, I mean, I would like to dig a little bit deeper, but I believe that one of the mechanism of action of all these plants that have anti cancer properties is in part by stem cell mobilization. It's tapping on the anti cancer properties of stem cells.
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Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right? Eating clean, working out, taking all the right supplements, but your body just won't cooperate? Maybe you're tired, you're foggy, you're gaining weight, you can't sleep, and your doctor says your labs are normal. Here's the truth. Normal blood work does not mean your body is operating normally. It just means the levels in your blood work look okay. Not that your cells are actually using them the way they should. It's like using the wrong map and wondering why you're lost or putting gas in the tank, but the engine still won't turn over. Because if your cells are inflamed, stressed, or in survival mode, nothing you do will work the way it should. Your body's been whispering for years now. Maybe it's screaming. And you deserve someone who's actually listening. Go to mybloodwork.com and see what your blood work missed. What's really going on beneath the surface. Because you're not crazy, you're not lazy. You're just stuck in a system that was never built to find the problem. It was built to diagnose disease, not restore your health. @mybloodwork.com we'll show you how to finally
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get your body and your life back.
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C
Now We've talked a lot about herbs
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and I want to come back to this topic. But I also am curious about if there are any nutrients specifically that are crucial. It could be vitamins, minerals, other compounds that are crucial to, you know, stem cell proliferation. Stem increasing stem cells in our own body. Is there one or two that you that you know of that might also be very important?
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B
Not that I know of. In the role of stem cell release mobilization like stem cells from the bone marrow to the blood. However, stem cells then migrate into tissues and as you know, with the Aflik limits they can go for 50 generations. It's basically the telomere attrition. So that pro if it's an injury and that process of proliferation is stimulated and significant in order to achieve full repair. That process of amplification means mitochondrial biogenesis. It means a lot of cellular duplication, which means a lot of DNA duplication. So when you duplicate the DNA, you need a strong DNA repair mechanism if you don't want to develop like a weak tissue or faulty tissue, however you want to call it. So I would say coenzyme Q10 NAD everything that supports mitochondrial mitochondrial biogenesis and DNA repair. That's so good the new tissue. And we forget that oftentimes like your connective tissue, your fascia is so important in the body. It's like it's the soft skeleton of your body probably holding you standing, probably more than your bones.
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By the way, A new study came out recently and my wife, she's a doctor, she shared this with me that they now know that fascia, it's not just like in your IT band, it's not just in certain. It literally is between every cell, everywhere.
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Actually your fascia more than you are organs.
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That's right, yeah.
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B
So the fascia, the organs can grow in the fascia. So that means when you repair an organ you have to rebuild the connective tissue. So collagen peptides are extremely important. When you talk about anything that is repair microcirculation when a stem cell is released, these stem cells can be fairly large for a 12 micron capillary. So you need to have like really optimized microcirculation. So if people want to boost their stem cell function, I would say not their function for the stem cells, but the overall impact of stem cell role in the body is reopen the microvasculature. So nitric oxide producer nattokinase to make the blood more fluid bioflavonoids that help that are essential for collagen formation. So if you want because A capillary, oftentimes this is not talked about. I think with the full understanding of what it is like. Capillaries are not by themselves like small blood vessels. They're like tunnel into your connective tissue covered with epithelial cells. So if they don't have a healthy surrounding, they're not healthy themselves. You cannot have a great flexibility of capillaries if you don't have flexible collagen and connective tissue. So provide everything to be able to rebuild those tissues and it really boosts stem cell function.
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That's so good. So a few things that I picked up. There is one we want to really support mitochondria, things like allegic acid NAD coenzyme Q10. These things are critical for that. I've done a fair amount of research on key nutrients for supporting stem cells. I mean, you hit on so many things. I would say just for the common nutrients though for people that are important, by the way, these are also really tied to things like testosterone production and immunity. But vitamin D and zinc, I think those are kind of the two that people may want to consider supporting their body. But those are amazing recommendations. And then the collagen. Yeah, if you. I hardly know anybody that as they age that has bone issues. Not to say it doesn't happen. I mean, I know like you could have. Women oftentimes especially they get to a level of being just too feeble and they can fracture a hip. Right. So that. But a lot of times more often it's joint pain, it's joint dysfunction and that's, you know, your joints and connective tissue in those areas in fascia that's like 90% collagen. And that's almost all it is.
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B
Totally. I was going to say one of the main issue with bones is that everybody has put in our brain as a society that calcium is what matters. But this is a lot of lobbying from dairy industry and all of it because at the end of the day, you need way more collagen in your bones because bone solidity is not really the issue. It's bone frailty and inflexibility. That's right. If your bone can bend, you won't break it.
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That's right.
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But if too tight and it's not flexible at all, then it breaks.
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And this is when you have a one year old, their bones are, they're flexible and mobile. To your point, look at a horse,
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a horse galloping on a slow video and you see their bone actually bend to absorb the pressure. So your bone actually is meant to bend. But you need to maintain proper collagen formation for that.
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I remember doing research on this years ago. There is more collagen in our bones than all other minerals combined.
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Totally.
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Right, Yeah. I mean, it is crucial. It's crucial. You know, one third of all the protein in our bodies is collagen. And so, you know, and I think about our ancient ancestors, or the way that they would eat an animal and they didn't just eat the muscle meat. Right. They'd eat the organs. They would eat all of the connective tissue there as well. They would make bone broth. Of course, that's a great. That's probably the top source of collagen. But I think that's important when you think about some other foods that you like. When it comes to. We talked about some plants. Are there any other foods that are kind of high on your list in terms of supporting stem cells?
- [32:45]
B
If I rely on the scientific literature, and it's not a lot in that domain, but the ketogenic diet is so far what has been documented as being the best to support stem cell function. And it probably goes back to fasting. Fasting triggers ketones, like the same kind of cellular phenomenon. I'm working on my next book right now, which is really the. The main thesis that I'm proposing. As we talked about before, you're born with red marrow. It converts into fatty marrow. So your repair power, let's say your endogenous repair capacity, goes down as we age. Something that has very well been very well documented in science. Like everybody knows about inflammaging, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction. But let's say take inflammaging, for example. If inflammation was really the fundamental driver of disease formation, than taking ibuprofen, does it change the course? So I'm not saying it's not relevant at all. When I'm saying, like fundamental. Take oxidative stress. Well, take glutathione, vitamin E and vitamin C. You should change the course. And it's good, but it's not changing the course. But we are doing studies right now where all we do, patient with stable chronic congestive heart failure. They've had the problem for years where they are. They've been there for two years with the best of what medicine could give them. All we do is that we add a blend of plant extracts that trigger the release of their own stem cells. That's all we do. And so far we published the first 10 patients. Now I'm going through a second analysis of now the 40 total patients that we have in the study, the first 10, after six months, all 10 had recovered normal heart function. We're doing one now on Parkinson S, we're doing one on COPD. And my point is just to show your repair capacity goes down as you age. You have well documented what drives degeneration in tissues. What we never considered is that the body offers another side to that equation. Regeneration. It's your stem cells, but you lose it as we age. So disease development and aging actually results from a failure of endogenous repair. And if you give back to the body its ability to repair, the impact can be phenomenal.
- [35:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the things that I have seen when I do a lot of blood work on patients, so we do these advanced cellular panels. And in working with so many patients on this and looking at blood work, the first domino that I see that kind of typically tips with most people that then throws everything else off is the hormone cortisol.
- [35:23]
B
Oh, okay.
- [35:24]
A
You know, so. And the reason I bring this up though is you brought up something. Growth and regeneration, your body and your nervous system acts on a spectrum. It's either in parasympathetic state, which is rest and digest, it's creating stem cells, it's doing exactly what you talked about, or it's in this fight or flight state with high cortisol and melatonin tends to be over here in regeneration as well. And that is chronically elevated stress hormones like cortisol. And with that, the things, the herbs that tend to help that the most are a lot of the adaptogen mushrooms. It's reishi, it's ashwagandha. Right. It's rhodiola rosea. It's a lot of these herbals. And so I do think there's also a connection there. But to your point, anything you can do plant wise to support this tissue regeneration, stem cell activation, that's gonna be high on the list in Chinese medicine too. They would say there's kind of two things you wanna do. You wanna focus on building your body's ability to be anabolic. That's repair, generate and heal. And also your body's ability to activate autophagy, which is cleanse, get rid of, which is activated by fasting. And so anyways, super important for stem cells. Yeah.
- [36:31]
B
Because stem cells multiply rapidly, so they generate a lot of garbage if you want in that process. And so that's why I think fasting with autophagy is so far has been shown to be the most impactful on stem cell function. The higher ability to repair after a fast, I think is largely driven by the rejuvenation of your stem cell bank.
- [36:58]
A
And fasting's been recommended for again, especially across religious circles, obviously Judaism, Christianity, Islam, some of the major ones there, a lot of monks and deep thinkers also as well. But again, this is me thinking out loud. There is so much research. When you look in the longevity space, probably the best evidence for longevity or one of the best things is related to fasting.
- [37:23]
B
I mean, I'm not an expert in fasting. I fasted a lot, let's say I'm an expert on my fasting, let's put it that way. And from what I have encountered with friends and people are telling me I cannot fast, like after three hours without food, like I start to have, I'm lightheaded and there are people who just cannot handle it. And so I think you probably need to train your body. I fast easily. I fasted up to like all my study, all my exam periods in college. I would fast because I was so much sharper, so much present, I could concentrate for hours. I fasted all the time during these periods. A week, two weeks was not a problem to fast that long. But when somebody cannot, I think you just first need to recognize the terrain is not train. I never had to train like I always done it easily, but I have friends that absolutely can. So I think you need to train the body to be able to generate energy from your own fat to start to create ketones, work on ketones so that you don't suffer hypoglycemia. You need to train. So I would say start with some avocado, your breakfast, go on a heavy fat diet for a little while so that the body kind of really is forced to develop this ability to tap into fats. But from a pure rejuvenation standpoint, the science and I believe it's a spectrum. But there's a point where if you don't fast for long enough, statistically you cannot pick up the difference. So I think it's there on intermittent fasting, but you cannot pick up the increase in stem cells, for example, with intermittent fasting. The studies have shown three days. So if you do three days fasting, you can pick up both an increase in stem cells in the refeeding period, and if you take stem cells before and after, you can measure that they migrate and prolife easily.
- [39:18]
A
Oh, wow.
- [39:19]
B
So, so. But if you do, I. I would believe that you feed. If you do intermittent fasting, you probably get a little bit of that so over time it may accumulate the same benefits.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. So I. I know your expertise is in plant based stem cell medicine. And so we've talked about a lot today. We talked about foti, we talked about Reishi, we've talked about goji, we've talked about the blue green algaes. Are there any other herbs or plants that you want to talk about that you feel like, okay, these really also deserve mention.
- [39:47]
B
I mean, the one that I studied, I studied a lot of like ashwagandhas, these adaptogen. The adaptogen either trigger a migration of stem cells out in the blood, out of the blood, into tissues, or the response like fo t is there. But it's not like my hero plants. So the hero plants that we've had so far, I would say seabuck thornberry from the Tibetan Plateau. So I was traveling in China at some point. I was with three biochemists that did their PhD with plants of the Chinese pharmacopoeia. And I asked them, okay, you're lost on an island and what is the one plant that you bring with you? And it was a joke, but it was not a joke. I wanted to know what in their eyes is the top plant and if it's good for everything. It very likely has a stem cell effect. And they told me seabuckthornberry. I was surprised. I don't know, I was expecting something more exotic. So I dove into scientific literature and Tibetan medicine, Mongolian medicine, Chinese medicine for lung cancer, disease of the lung, of the heart, cardiovascular system, diabetes, and to speed up recovery from bone fracture and burn to the skin. So look at this whole spectrum. So it's telling me it looks like we have a stem cell effect.
- [40:59]
A
That's right.
- [41:00]
B
So I went there. I developed a relationship with a farmer on the Tibetan plateau. We derived an extract, we tested it, and we had a good response on stem cell release. So that's another key ingredient that I'm working with. I came across a pharmacist years ago talking about. She was looking. She went to Madagascar, Papua New guinea, looking for plants for neurodegenerative diseases, Parkinson, Alzheimer's. So I asked her, is there a plant that the healer told you that's the plant that is good for everything? So she remembered on a trip to Madagascar, her guide and translator, on the way to the airport, stop in a small market, scoop a full bag of these black beads and said, study that. What do you do as a scientist when somebody tells you study that, you study it for what? So it was in her freezer for five years. So she sent me a bag of these little beads. We tested them, and we saw a very significant response. And it was of 65 species of aloe. It's one specific species in Madagascar used for centuries to make a local remedy called vahona that is used for longevity, for keeping grandpa to work in the field and to reverse hair color.
- [42:09]
A
Polysaccharides.
- [42:10]
B
And it's a polysaccharide. But we tested it and we got this massive release in stem cells. So that's another ingredient. We panax neurogenesis and think about its
- [42:18]
A
ability to support healing and regeneration of tissue with a burn. I mean, of course, yeah, that makes total sense.
- [42:23]
B
I mean, we do have cases. It's not a study, but we have cases. One that I remember very well in South Africa. So the man was cooking polymer on a stove and it caught on fire and his reaction was to throw water on it. So which was the thing not to do. So it exploded. And he had severe burn on his, on his arm, his thigh, a little bit on his hip. And his hand, his hand were like completely burned, like skin hanging off. And so he went to the hospital and he started to pile on our product. A blend of these plant extracts. Two capsules, more than that, like every two hours, all day long he would take these products. And already on the first, like on the second or third day, he started to see something. So he has to wait for skin transplant. He was scheduled for a skin transplant on his thigh. And after 30 days, I have pictures of him and all of his skin is pretty much normal. It's not normal. It has a different color. It's like deep red, but no scars. So my point is that they are your repair system. And if you don't have enough, the fibroblast, the local fibroblast will kick in. You will get scars or it will not heal. But if you boost the number of stem cells, your body will utilize them. That is clear in the scientific literature.
- [43:41]
A
Yeah. It's so powerful. Is there anything else outside of plants? Is there any therapies? Could be red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, anything. Any other food, anything specific that you think you know what this is? Another thing that you've discovered definitely should be part of somebody's stem cell boosting protocol if they're in great need.
- [44:01]
B
Yeah. I think what is fascinating in that question is that. But we discovered stem cells as being like this exceptional thing. Like, where can we find them? And we need to find like, oh, the fat has them. And later on you know, you can have them in your tooth. And now, you know, fast forward 20 some years later, they're everywhere. You spit on the sidewalk, there's stem cells in there. They're everywhere. They are the core of like you're talking about health. What is more fundamental than your ability to repair because you lose cells every day. That's another outcome of stem cell research. Take the heart for example. You learn in traditional medicine that your heart will develop until about 10 years of age. And if you have a problem later on, if you lose cells in your heart, too bad you cannot repair your heart. Well, now we know today that your heart renews roughly about 1% a year. That's a huge difference. Nothing to 1% a year. It's huge. Well, it's like this everywhere in your body. So everything is a constant process of tissue turnover. So at the constant process of tissue turnover, that means your entire body is like this. It depends on how many stem cells you have in your bloodstream. So now you go back to the core of your health and it's your ability to repair. And I'm saying this because as now you dive into various modalities. Let's say pmf. PMF has been used for joint issues repair for decades. And now we're discovering that if you put PMF in one area, even if you do like one leg versus the other, you will see that where you applied pmf, you get a pooling of stem cells, you boost their ability to migrate in the tissue, you boost their ability to proliferate in the tissue. And if you apply PMF to stem cells in a test tube, they turn into tendon muscle, ligaments and bones. So now it's just like, okay, all the benefits that we know, we obtain from PEMF is actually through stem cells.
- [45:52]
A
You know, there's some great studies on PMF and how, how much faster you heal a fractured bone.
- [45:58]
B
It's your repair system.
- [45:59]
A
It's incredible.
- [46:01]
B
So in answer to your question is like, the more we dig into the mechanism of action of about anything that we know, speed up recovery and you discover that somewhere it leverage stem cells and your repair system. Red lights, hbot, hyperbaric chamber, it boosts recovery and repair. Now, there's probably not a professional athletic team sports of any kind that don't have hbot, you know, that's right for recovery. Well, we know that it boosts proliferation of stem cells in the bone marrow. So couple that with herbs that trigger the release of your own stem cells and you've got a bomb here. In terms of recovery and repair, that's so powerful. And as we keep digging like this, a lot of modalities leverage stem cell function.
- [46:41]
A
Yeah. You know, one of the greatest things people can do, and as you're listening here is putting together your own stem cell protocol, really thinking through what should my diet look like? You know, focusing on that mitochondrial biogenesis of, of eating pomegranates and raspberries and walnuts and then getting wild caught salmon with omegas and a lot of the polyphenols that Christian here talked about today. Pick some supplements, right? Get some supplements with some of these core ingredients that Christian talked about, add that to your regime and then consider things like PEMF and generally just following some of the things we talked about for healing. Because stem cells and activating your stem cells is one of the greatest things you could do for anti aging. It's one of the hallmarks of aging. If we say, hey, how can I tell how old somebody is or how young someone is? How many stem cells do they have that are in their body that are working? You know, there was a woman, they went and did this study on a woman and she was like 110 years old, very old. And they found she has almost no stem cells. Like, you know, it was very few. And to your point, what's interesting, in Chinese medicine, they believe you have two types of stem cells. One type which you have a limited amount of, and when you use them up, they're gone. And then there's. Those are the, I think more the infantile and then you have more of the adult. But overall it's, you know, do everything you can. Chinese medicine talks about this, protect the treasure. It's a form of treasure.
- [48:02]
B
Yeah. So the thesis of this book that is coming is I think we can do now meta analysis of the scientific literature and determine that if you are below 1,000 stem cells per milliliter, you have now crossed a threshold in your resilience. Something happens to you, you won't have the repair capacity to overcome the challenge. If you're below 500, you're developing something like it's happening, you just don't have enough ability to repair. So as we develop also a means of quantifying stem cells in main labs. So now you can go and see how many stem cells do I have? And it's going to be like an amazing marker like in sports medicine. We're working on a study right now. I am convinced that the data will show that the difference between athletes who have frequent injuries and they don't repair very well. They just happen to be athletes that have fewer stem cells in circulation naturally. And so that means you injure, you have more frequently micro lesions that don't repair. And over time the injury happens on top of microlesions that have not repaired.
- [49:06]
A
I mean and so focusing on boosting stem cells, this is important not for somebody who's just 80 and 90 years old. It's important for 40 and 50 year olds. It's important for teenagers. It's important for everyone across the board.
- [49:16]
B
The problem that you experience at 50 and 60 started at 30.
- [49:21]
A
Yeah.
- [49:21]
B
It just did not become clinical until later on. But it started earlier. And it's driven by a deficiency of stem cells like your gradual decline of your ability to repair. So that's the overall thesis. And coming back to a question that you had like what can we eat for stem cells? I can split it into two realms. Number one, what affects stem cells specifically? On this one I can only talk about the work that has been done like in the literature, like a study we have. I was very. To me I saw testing seabuckthornberry as a risk because before seabuckthorn nothing that I studied was tied to polyphenols. So I took, I mean it was a risk because it's expensive lab work and we found that it worked. So now I started to look at other types of polyphenols. We just finished a study actually it's in the course but part of a study now pointing to another polyphenol source that has a great effect on stem cell release. So overall polyphenols are great. But in terms of what has been documented, it's the plants that we've talked about. But there's a lot of other things. Stem cell release is one part of the story. Circulation. This is where everything that is colored in your diet, red cabbage, fruits, berries, all of these, they all have like strong documentation on their effect on vascular health. And vascular health is essential. Like you do a blood test and you see all like dhe everything that you want to have in your blood. It means nothing if it doesn't reach your capillaries.
- [50:49]
A
Yep.
- [50:50]
B
It's the only place where it matters. So capillary health, so all your polyphenols, nattokinase is great. Inflammation, curcumin, everything that suppress inflammation. Inflammation should be a localized signal telling stem cells where to go. That is the main reason why inflammation is there. When stem cells migrate, they repair, shut down the inflammation. Stem cells are probably the most potent anti inflammatory component of the body, they get into a tissue, they suppress inflammation. You cannot heal with inflammation. When you cut yourself and it's painful. After the third, let's say third to fifth day, it's no longer painful. Inflammation is going away, repair has started. But if you have systemic inflammation, that means stem cells cannot identify where the signal is coming from. So they have lost their gps. So anything that is anti inflammatory, all the pigments that you have in your diet, curcumin, so anti inflammatory salmon, omega 3, all of that, everything you mentioned may not necessarily have an effect on stem cells, but it has an effect on everything else that matters for overall stem cell function.
- [51:54]
A
Yeah. And there's this element of both boosting your own stem cells but also protecting them from being damaged. And you want to do both simultaneously. Christian, I want to say thanks so much for coming on today. I've loved our conversation. I want to encourage everybody to check out all the great work Christian's doing. Christian, where can people find out more about you and your incredible work?
- [52:13]
B
On our website Stemregen Co Stemregen Co. And on social media stemcellchristian.
- [52:19]
A
Awesome. Well, Christian, thanks so much for coming on and everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you go to the show notes here on YouTube, you can check out a stem cell guide PDF we're gonna give for you there for free. Also, don't forget to subscribe. It's the number one thing you could do to help support the show and help me bring on more incredible guests here like Christian today. And if you're watching on YouTube, hey, we'd love to hear from you. What is the thing that Christian said or I shared that maybe really stuck out to about stem cells? And then are you going to go take action and start focusing on doing one thing today to support your body's own stem cell production? Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for sharing. We'll see you on the next episode.