Stem Cell Scientist: The Secret to HEALING is Hiding in Your Body

25:56Maybe 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.

26:34Go 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. At mybloodwork.com, we'll show you how to finally get your body and your life back. Now, we've talked a lot about herbs, 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 stem cell proliferation, increasing stem cells in our body.

27:15Is there one or two that you know of that might also be very important? 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 AFLIC limits, they can go for 50 generations. It's basically the telomere attrition. So if it's an injury and that process of proliferation is stimulated and is significant in order to achieve full repair, that process of amplification, it means mitochondrial biogenesis. It means a lot of cellular duplication, which means a lot of DNA duplication.

27:55So 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 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. But 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.

28:39It literally is between every cell. Everywhere. Actually, your fascia more than your organs. That's right, yeah. So 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.

29:24So nitric oxide producer, natokinase 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 the 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.

30:07That's so good. So a few things that I picked up there is one, we want to really support mitochondria. Things like allergic 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, and 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.

30:41And then the collagen, yeah, if you, you know, 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 can have women oftentimes, especially they get to a level of being just too feeble and they can fracture a hip, right? 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. 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.

31:22But this is a lot of lobbying from dairy industry and all that. 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. That's right. But if it's too tight and it's not flexible at all, then it breaks. And this is how kids are. When you have a one-year-old, their bones are, they're flexible and mobile to your point. Look at a horse, 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.

32:01I remember doing research on this years ago. There is more collagen in our bones than all other minerals combined. Totally 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.

32:39Are there any other foods that are kind of high on your list in terms of supporting stem cells? 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 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.

33:22something that has been very well documented in science. Like everybody knows about inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction. But let's say, take inflammation, for example. If inflammation was really the fundamental driver of disease formation, then take an 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.

34:03Where 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 triggered 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. 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.

34:41What 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. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I have seen when I, 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.

35:23Oh, okay. You know, 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, you know, 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?

35:55It'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, you know, tissue regeneration, stem cell activation, that's going to be high on the list. In Chinese medicine too, they would say there's kind of two things you want to do. You want to 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, I - Super important for stem cells.

36:30Yeah. 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. Yeah. The repair, the higher ability to repair after a fast, I think, is largely driven by the rejuvenation of your stem cell bank. You know, and fasting has been recommended for, again, you know, especially across religious circles. You know, obviously Judaism, Christianity, Islam, I mean, 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.

37:14When you look in the longevity space, probably the best evidence for longevity or one of the best things is related to fasting. 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 who 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.

37:56I 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 trained. 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, even 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.

38:41But 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 proliferate more easily. Oh, wow. So, but if you do, I would believe that if you do intermittent fasting, you probably get a little bit of that.

39:25So over time, it may stimulates the same benefits. Yeah, yeah. So interesting. So 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? I mean, the one that I studied, I studied a lot of like ashwagandha, these adaptogen. the adaptogen either trigger a migration of stem cells out of the blood into tissues, or the response like FOTI is there, but it's not like my hero plants.

40:05So the hero plants that we've had so far, I would say, C. buckthornberry 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 like what in their eyes is like the top plant. And if it's good for everything, it's very likely as a stem cell effect. And they told me sea buckthorn berry. I was surprised. I don't know, I was expecting something more exotic.

40:41So I dove in the 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. 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's, Alzheimer's.

41:22So I asked her, is there a plan that the healer told you, that's the plan 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.

42:08And polysaccharides. And it's a polysaccharide. But we tested it and we got this massive of release in stem cells. So that's another ingredient that we have. We have Panax Neurogenesis. And think about its ability to support healing and regeneration of tissue with a burn. I mean, of course, yeah, that makes total sense. 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, which was the thing not to do. So it exploded and he had severe burn on his arm, his thigh, a little bit on his hip, but his, and his hand.

42:48His hand were like completely burnt, like skin hanging on. 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 asked 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.

43:24So 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 a number of stem cells, your body will utilize them. That is clear in the scientific literature. Yeah, it's so powerful. Is there anything else outside of plants? Is there any therapies? It 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.

44:01Yeah. I think what is fascinating in that question is that 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.

44:35You 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 if you look 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.

45:13And 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 PMF is actually through stem cells.

45:52You know, there's some great studies on PMF and how much faster you heal a fractured bone. It's your repair system. It's incredible. So in answer to your question, it's 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 leveraged stem cells and your repair system. Red lights, HBOT, hyperbaric chamber. Yeah. 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, for recovery. Well, we know that it boosts proliferation of stem cells in the bone marrow.

46:28So 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. It's so powerful. And as we keep digging like this, a lot of modalities leverage stem cell function. 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, focusing on that mitochondrial biogenesis 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.

47:02Pick 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? There was a woman, they went and did this study on a woman and she was like 110 years old, very old.

47:38And they found she has almost no stem cells. Like, you know, it's 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 those are the, I think, more of the infantile. 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. 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.

48:15Something 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.

48:54Wow. And so that means you have more frequently micro lesions that don't repair. And over time, the injury happens on top of micro lesions that have not repaired. 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. The problem that you experience at 50 and 60 started at 30. It just did not become clinical until later on, but it started earlier. And it's driven by a deficiency of stem cells, like a gradual decline of your ability to repair.

49:32So 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 C. buckthorn berry as a risk because before C. buckthorn, 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.

50:16So 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. It's the only place where it matters.

50:51So capillary health, so all your polyphenols, natokinase 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, the 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.

51:27Repair has started. So, but if you have systemic inflammation, that means stem cells cannot identify where the signal is coming from. So they've 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. 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.

52:02And 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? On our website, stemregen.co, stemregen.co, and on social media, Stem Cell Christian. 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.

52:31It'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 you about stem cells? And then are you gonna 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.