Summary: 

This episode of Wellness Your Way features the best interviews of 2024! Tom O’Bryan discusses inflammation and the things in our daily lives that contribute to inflammation. Dr. Shivani Gupta talks all about turmeric and how it can help control inflammation. Dr. Nayan Patel explains why glutathione is the master detoxification agent and how we can support our body’s glutathione levels. Dr. Bill Rawls talks about things we can do to restore cellular wellness. Lastly, Christian Drapeau discusses what the body uses stem cells for and how we can create more stem cells.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

E179: The Inflammation Equation with Dr. Tom O’Bryan

Tom O’Bryan: Now, Megan, I want to tell you, this is so important and I’ll tell you why. Blue Cross Blue Shield published an article in February of 2020 and they said, we got a problem here. But because that virus came out at the same time, no one paid attention to the Blue Cross Blue Shield article. But in the previous four-year period, the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s went up 407% in four years, in 30 to 44-year-olds.

Megan Lyons: Wow. Oh my goodness.

Tom O’Bryan: That’s you.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, that is.

Tom O’Bryan: And your followers.

Tom O’Bryan: It went up in a four year period. Not 10%, not 20%, which would be bad enough. Every autoimmune disease is going up 4 to 9% a year, every year. And that’s really bad. But 407% in a couple of years. In four years. Why? Because your generation was born from moms who already were getting really toxic like no one before in history with these accumulated chemicals in their body. And then as your generation grew up, you’re accumulating more of these chemicals and they get stored in your body. You have to test for this. The test is called the total tax burden. By this, by the same laboratory. And when you do these tests, you go, oh my God, I’ve got so much mold in my body. Mold metabolites, where did that come from?

And then you check and you have an extra come in and your home’s full of mold. And then you learn how it affects your brain. And that 30. No, wait, wait. 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer’s is inhalation. Alzheimer’s. It’s what you’re breathing that’s going right up your nostrils directly to the brain, causing inflammation in the memory center of your brain, which is killing off brain cells. Killing off brain cells, Killing off brain cells. So if you’re living in a moldy hollow or you have a little mold on your shower curtain, oh, this is not too bad.

You know, I’m, it’s not too bad. You know, I’m a guy, I’m a 27 year old guy. So yeah, there’s a little black stuff there and that’s not too bad. I’m, you know, doesn’t bother me. Well, just wait a few years and after you, after you’ve killed off enough brain cells, you know, it’s like, wake up guys and gals. Wake up. Wake up. This world is not, it’s not fair that this is the world that you’ve been brought into. You’re supposed to have been brought into a pristine planet Earth, not a toxic planet Earth. But it’s toxic. And those chemicals, you know, the last time the government published on how many chemicals are coming into the country every year was 2010. And when they published that, the journal Pediatrics wrote an article, said, this is a big problem. We have failed our children. And there was a lot of hullabaloo about this report from the EPA because they told us it was 27 trillion pounds of chemicals being manufactured or imported into the United States every year. So I took that number, 27 trillion, and I divided it by 365 days and by 350, whatever the population is of the US 350 million. And that’s 247 pounds per, per person, per day.

Megan Lyons: Wow.

Tom O’Bryan: So that means the flame retardant chemicals on that chair that’s just to your right behind you. Yes. The formaldehyde on the desk, if it’s not solid wood, it’s press board. And press board is soaked in formaldehyde. The flame retardant chemicals in the clothing that we all wear and the sleeping clothing we wear and in the sheets and the blankets we put over us. And they’re outgassing flame retardant chemicals in the air all night long. And you’re breathing it in, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, but you’re breathing this stuff in. And it just keeps accumulating and accumulating and accumulating. And so your generation is at the highest risk of any generation ever in history. And unfortunately, the World Health Organization now tells us that children born today have an expected lifespan two years less than their parents expected lifespan.

Kids will live two years less than you will because of all of these toxins that we’re surrounded by all the time. Just, just think about the artificial insemination study that we talked about. Yes. The more vegetables you eat, conventional vegetables, the worse the outcome. The more miscarriages, the more failures of implantation. And. But you’re eating lots of fruits and vegetables, which is supposed to be good for you. Yes, but what you’re eating is not fruits and vegetables. They’re Franken foods. They’re, they’re, they’re damaged, they’re, they’re loaded with chemicals. That’s why you have to go organic. Or if you can’t get organic, you go get the spray wash to wash your veggies with.

And like Truly Free the company, Truly Free is great. Their products, you know, you buy conventional broccoli, it looks green, it’s okay. But you spray half of it with this veggie wash and you dip it water and shake it one time and rinse it out. All of a sudden, the sprayed part is just bright green. And you. And you see, oh, this other part’s got wax on it. I didn’t notice the wax before because the whole thing was like that. And you see this stuff, and then you start to understand what we’re up against. So we don’t want to overwhelm people. So every day we’ve got eight or 10 experts. So six minutes of this expert, four minutes of this one, nine minutes of this one. And then we’re asking the question, so what do you do about this? What do you do? And then we talk about how do you detox, what foods do you select, what kind of a environment, why houseplants are so important in your house? And so we want to give you the guidance.

First, we have to wake you up. We have to wake you up. So you say, oh, my gosh, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. Oh, I didn’t know this. And then it’s like, what do I do? Well, here’s what you do. Here’s the handout on glass storage containers. Because plastic storage containers in your kitchen for leftover food. The phthalates are in the food. The next morning, you put chicken in a leftover storage container in the refrigerator. The next day, take chicken out. It’s got phthalates on. It didn’t have phthalates yesterday, but it’s from the plastic. And so we give you the URLs for glass storage containers so you can go get glass storage containers. Right. Just all these. All these little things that we all have to learn. Here’s three organic nail polish companies and cosmetic companies so you can find safer products. You know, the average woman, you know better than I do. It’s somewhere around 160 to 180 chemicals a woman every day. Men, it’s about 120. Between the shampoo, the deodorant, the shaving cream, the soap, and the conditioner, we’re putting all these chemicals on us that get absorbed into your body. And because they don’t make you sick when you’re using them, we think they’re okay.

E173: All About Turmeric and its Anti-Inflammatory Properties with Dr. Shivani Gupta, PhD

Megan Lyons: But I have to say, you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to with a PhD in turmeric. That is so specific and so incredible, it makes me happy. How did you get specifically so interested in turmeric?

Dr. Shivani Gupta: Well, I studied Ayurveda, I went to India, I studied it under the great gurus. I kept exploring, like, how do I pull the nuggets out of this wisdom? Because it’s a pretty involved lifestyle and commitment and the detoxes are huge. I remember going to India and doing the detoxes and thinking, gosh, if we all just detox for three weeks every year, we would have an entirely different planet in terms of our health, pathologies and diseases. And so eventually I thought, you know, I need to study this in a structure so that when I go out to write books and teach about this, people will listen. So I did my master’s in Ayurvedic sciences first. And in the Ayurveda course, it was just so much knowledge. And herbology really caught my interest because we have such a affinity for and usage of herbs and spices in a way that here in the west, we have no idea. Like, in the west, we’re like, I’ve got my oregano, I’ve got my rosemary, I use some sage, maybe if I want to be fancy with my Italian versus in India. Like, it’s unending the level of spices we play with, but they have potent medical benefits, potent superfood level things that they do to the body. And so when I was sitting in her biology class, I’m hearing, cilantro does this and cumin does that and fenugreek does this and mustard seed does that. And then I was like, they talked about turmeric, the spice. And I thought, gosh, you know, I’m, I, we all use turmeric. What is the big deal? But when they spoke about the benefits, I was like, oh, it’s anti inflammatory, antioxidant, it’s antiviral. That one really caught my attention. Antibacterial antifungal. I thought, wow, this was the key to the kingdom. If I had had this as a kid, maybe I wouldn’t have been dying on every vacation and I wouldn’t have been the weak one who couldn’t really go to a party or a trip without being scared that I just crashed the next day. And I also felt like I come from a family of diabetics. And so growing up, going to India every year, I’d watch people really suffer with the advanced stages of diabetes. And Pass away from it from stroke, heart attack, amputation, all those things. So I just sat there and thought, this spice could be that one thing, that if I study it and I understand it, maybe we can convince all of Western medicine to use this as a tool. And so that’s why I chose it as my PhD topic, because my advisor was like, you need to pick something. And I underestimated how hard it would be to study that much science, but it made me a true evangelist of the power of turmeric.

Megan Lyons: Wow, that is incredible. And I think the audience has heard me talk about turmeric so many times, and every single time I’m just saying it’s anti inflammatory. It’s anti inflammatory. Inflammation is at the root of all of our chronic diseases, all of this kind of stuff. And so they’ve heard my take on it, which is not the PhD in turmeric take on it. I love for you to really break it down for the audience to hear it in a new way. What is inflammation and why does this even happen in the first place?

Dr. Shivani Gupta: Sure. So inflammation is like this forest fire. Oftentimes we have acute inflammation. The body handles it fine. Usually our inflammation is handled properly and it’s a good thing. But the problem is most of us have a system that’s got toxins, toxic burdens, our immune system is not as strong, our lymphatic system’s congested, the body is not at a plus level. And so thus, once this inflammation is happening in the body, it oftentimes becomes chronic, low grade persistent inflammation, which I consider a forest fire. And most people say, well, I’m not inflamed because they’re not feeling a very active symptom of inflammation. I’m in my early 40s, I would not say that I’m inflamed. But when I think about it, the stack up of symptoms that I do complain about and all my friends complain about, or what we call inflammaging. So that is, oh, you know what, I wake up and I’m just still tired. Oh, when I wake up, I’m more creaky, my feet hurt or my, this hurts. Oh, you know, I’ve got headaches every day, but I don’t know why. I have all this belly fat and I’ve done everything, but I can’t get rid of it. There’s certain things that when they start adding up, you look at that and say, guys, I always say, we’re not aging. This is inflammaging. And if we actually ate an anti inflammatory diet and addressed inflammation, these would not be complaints. So don’t blame aging for what is actually inflammation in the body. And so when it comes to turmeric, turmeric is not just a very powerful natural anti inflammatory that can address, you know, chronic joint pain and major inflammation issues. It can also do so much more. It’s antioxidant. And the science shows that it’s not just going to reduce oxidation. It’ll stop the forces that are creating the oxidation in the first place. But really goes to that root cause, oxidation is what’s aging us. It’s what makes us the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz or the Tin Man. Sorry. It makes us all, you know, stiff in the joints and having all those things over time that we complain about. So the antioxidant benefit I find wonderful. So we can stay youthful and vibrant and focused and energized for longer as we age. Then it is such an immune modulator. So the antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal aspects are very powerful supports. Especially in this modern day world where we are traveling, where we’re working, where we’re constantly touching things and exposed. I think we saw in the last few years we all are susceptible to things. So if we can show up in the world every day with our defense system activated with something on board that’s protecting us at all times, to me that’s a very powerful tool because I need that defense system in place. I can’t assume that in any given day my lymphatic system’s clear, that I’ve eaten perfectly and done all the good things. I wish I was that way, but I do my best. And so I take this as my insurance policy. And then now I’m doing a lot more presentations on curcumin at medical conferences. So I’m speaking more into the pre surgical and the post surgical applications of using curcumin across all the surgeon and medical subspecialties. I’m speaking into curcumin for longevity. I think there’s a lot of science that’s going to come out in the next few years because it’s exponentially growing the amount of published science on curcumin. But it’s also a powerful tool for longevity. There’s an indication that it extends telomeres. So to me it’s truly a wonder herb, like a top, top wonder herb that’s beautiful and supportive to nearly all of us that we can use as a strategic tool. And when people talk about superfoods, I’m like, have you thought about super spices because we take superfoods for the antioxidant benefit. So I stopped taking the 50 superfoods out there and I just take my turmeric and I’m like, great. I have done the work to be anti inflammatory.

Megan Lyons: Amazing. You covered so much great information there. I wrote down several things I want to dive into. But the first question that I have for you is inflammation is actually a good thing to some extent. Our body is doing that for a reason. So how do we now weigh the fact that we all need this anti inflammatory agent with the fact that inflammation is a quote, good or helpful process in our body?

Dr. Shivani Gupta: Great question. So our body is built to defend ourselves and our body is built for survival. It’s why we have the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. At any given moment, if there’s a threat, our body knows how to send resources where they need to go so we can run, so we can hide, so we can actually send all the blood flow to the things needed to save our life. So I have full faith that the body is capable of always creating a great inflammatory response to any threat because it’s built for that. Our skin is a defense system. We have so many defense systems. The problem is our poor body in modern day times is under assault 24 7. So between the food quality, the water quality, the air quality, the EMF pollution, the toxins, like the body’s literally confused at all times about what is good and what is bad. And so if our body’s going to be creating inflammation and response 24 7, then that’s where the inflammatory response is, not good. So when you take a plant like a turmeric or any of the ayurvedic herbs, they’re so intelligent with the body, their plants from earth, we are from earth. And so they go in there and the body knows, adaptogenic wise and you know, with our own like inner thermostat, how to use what it is we’re taking. So I have found over the years when you have like knee pain, if you take turmeric, it’ll help get that knee pain down. But then people will say, you know, my gingivitis went away. So once you address the big inflammation issues, it’ll go after the small inflammation issues. And there’s so many inflammatory issues people are suffering with every itis in the body is inflammation. We know that the chronic diseases that are the biggest killers and epidemics in the world are inflammation based. So I’m a big believer in let’s address the systemic inflammation we know that we’re all suffering from and trust that the body is fully capable of generating the inflammation response it has to generate when it’s actually needed.

E207: The Master Antioxidant: Glutathione, with Dr. Nayan Patel

Dr. Nayan Patel: We haven’t got into that part yet, but I’ll start dive into that part because the second portion of glutathione that we, that nobody talks about is the detoxification activation of all the detoxification pathways inside your body.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Nayan Patel: And that is by far much more effective and needed to a body than the antioxidant benefits that you see. Right.

Megan Lyons: Wow.

Dr. Nayan Patel: And so how do we keep our body clean from inside? So that part, the detoxification pathways have multiple effects on your, on your liver by conjugating those things. So if we can reduce the chemical load inside your body, the stress also reduces. When we measure stress, we only measuring stress on your adrenal glands, which is. Right. It sits right above your kidneys. That produces cortisols and adrenaline and all those, all those good hormones that you, that you are always excited about to do some things. But that in moderation is great. But in a modern day society, we overproduce these hormones today. I mean, young kids are what we call them is adrenaline junkies. Right. They get bored extremely easy.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Nayan Patel: If they’re not engaged every single second of your life within two minutes. Dad, I’m bored. Mom, I’m bored. What am I supposed to do now? I said sit down, relax, calm yourself down. You know, do meditations if you have to, do yoga, do something, exercise. Just calm yourself down. Give the brain some time to breathe. And we don’t do that part. So when you say stress, it’s a big old thing. So I want to make sure I address that stress issue from, as a point of detoxification. Because if your body cannot detoxify, the stress never leaves you. Yeah, the stress starts building up over time. And so when we talk about stress, there are oxidative stress that we discussed earlier. There’s chemical stress that we talk about. Alcohol and exposure to other chemicals that we either put in the form of a makeup of the foods we eat or exposure yourself to some chemicals. And the third thing is the psychological stress. So keep in mind, I’m going on and on. I’m sorry.

Megan Lyons: No, it’s fantastic. Keep going.

Dr. Nayan Patel: That your brain consumes 20% of all the oxygen you breathe in. Your brain is only 2%, 2% of a total body weight, but yet it consumes 20% of all oxygen. You breathe in the highest amount of stress you have in your body. The oxygen stress in your body is in your brain.

Megan Lyons: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Dr. Nayan Patel: So if you are at the age of saying that, hey, you know what? I’m, I’m forgetting little things here and there. There’s a sign is the stress is getting higher. Right now, if you go fast forward, you don’t fix this problem. You go fast forward, you start getting into dementia or early on, say Parkinson’s or ALS or Huntington’s disease. And I mean, you can name the disease out there. Guess what? There’s zero cure or solution for all those diseases today.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Nayan Patel: So science in the last God knows how many thousands of years have not caught up to any solution for brain disease.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Nayan Patel: And yet we. We are not doing everything possible to reduce oxygen stress down.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Nayan Patel: Right. And in this day and age right now, the advent of all this modern technology, that we will not get rid of it anymore. Our mental stress has. Is at all time high right now. So if you do not sit, I mean, the simple thing is that would you sit down and eat your lunch or would you just eat your lunch while walking?

Megan Lyons: I would sit down and eat my lunch. I will admit that I have eaten my lunch while walking before, but I certainly would not recommend it.

Dr. Nayan Patel: No, of course not. And so the thing is, we got to start slowing things down. And so that, that’s the thing. The simple joy of eating food is gone now.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Nayan Patel: Food is a meat of just a fuel and just stuff it in there and let’s keep on going. I said no.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Nayan Patel: Embrace your body. Do the right things. De. Stress your life down. Enjoy the life. Smell the roses if you have to. Right. Every day. So these are the kind of things. So when you talk about stress, I want to address that part first.

E195: Secrets to Cellular Wellness with Dr. Bill Rawls, MD

Dr. Bill Rawls: Well, you know, so much of what we do in conventional medicine is we ask, how is this patient sick? What symptoms do they have, what abnormal labs do they have, what abnormal processes like inflammation are going on in their body. And we treat those processes, but we never get around to asking, why is this patient sick? And with chronic illness, you know, we do pretty good job. With acute illness, you break your leg, we know why you’re sick, we’re going to fix that, we’re good at that, that. But chronic illness, they discount the possibility that a lot of things are coming together and we need to pay attention to that. So we end up treating these manifestations of illness, the symptoms, the processes like inflammation, but we don’t ever get around to asking that question, why? And so that was part of my journey to figure out to really get down to the heart of, get to the root causes of why that I’m sick, to see if I can move forward and realizing that, you know, illness wasn’t a diagnosis, it was a state of being. And, you know, when you look at that spectrum, at one end of the spectrum might be a 20 year old in peak health who happens to follow good diet and good dietary habits and they’re an athlete. Oh, that’s the peak of health, you know. Yeah, it doesn’t last all that long. So none of us are completely 100%. Well for most of our lives, we all have symptoms that come and go. At the other end of the spectrum is somebody that’s kind of at the end of life, you know, that their body is basically not functioning anymore. So what I see is no matter where someone is along that spectrum, they have the ability to increase their level of wellness. They can do things by looking at, by asking that question, why do I have this symptom? Or why am I having this spectrum of symptoms or that I just defined as an illness. You know, what’s driving those things and when you get at those root causes, then you have the ability to kind of move back toward that wellness end of the curve. And I think anyone has that potential at any point in their life.

Megan Lyons: I love that. One of my personal core values is continuous improvement in all things and health and personal development and business and you name it. And to feel inspired that we can always improve in our wellness on that continuum is just so motivating to me. So thank you for that. But let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum to start out, which is what creates illness. And I want to start with diet, because that’s my favorite. You have A quote. You say our diet has been stripped of protective phytochemicals through modern farming techniques. I think that has so much in that quote. Can you explain this and any other problems you see with our diet?

Dr. Bill Rawls: Yeah, well, that kind of ties it into one reason why I think everybody should be taking herbs every day. And when you look at the modern diet, there’s a lot that’s going wrong there. You know, it’s loaded with carbohydrates, abnormal fats that we really shouldn’t be eating, and the wrong ratios of food nutrients. It’s got better nutrient supply than most people realize that people aren’t dying of vitamin C or different kinds of vitamin deficiencies. So it’s covering the basics, but it’s an overload of carbohydrates and fats that aren’t good for us. So when I look at the diet, it’s not necessarily nutrients. I see missing as much as I do these things that we call phytochemicals. So phytochemicals are chemicals that plants produce to protect themselves, specifically to protect their cells. So all living organisms have stress. The world, you know, it’s just living in this world. It’s a mixed bag of things that promote life and things that challenge life. And so all living things have to deal with free radicals and toxic substances and radiat, but especially microbes, microbes of every variety. So every living organism has to have a defense system. We have in our immune system. Plants have this sophisticated chemical defense system, but it’s not just for microbes. It neutralizes free radicals and toxic substances of every variety and radiation. Just about every stress factor that we could be exposed to. Plants are being exposed to and they’re making this chemical solution. But also plants have. They’re regulating their cellular function. So they’re multicellular organisms like we are. So chemical messengers, hormones, other signaling agents, these are things that we use to coordinate cellular functions in our body. We’re all made of cells. And so plants are doing that same thing, and they’re using a lot of the same chemical messengers and hormones and things that we are. So when we take a Certain plants are actually going to augment what we’re doing in balancing our stress hormones. So when we’re taking an herb, we’re getting that defense and regulatory system of the plant. And when we take that in, it’s having that effect on our cells. It’s protecting our cells from free radicals and toxic substances and microbes of every variety. So you’re boosting all of your own cellular Defenses with those of the plant. And that can be very powerful, but we’re not getting it in our modern food supply. So if you go back 50,000 years, for hundreds of thousands of years, humans ate a forage food diet. They ate about 2/3 plants matter. But an average human on the face of the earth that far back, pre agriculture was eating up to 500 different plants in a year. So we’re eating maybe a couple of dozen, 500. But they were eating the raw wild plants. So they were getting all of these protective phytochemicals that were rich and robust within the plant. So they were getting all this stuff. We don’t get that anymore because our food plants are cultivated to produce calories. And by doing that, by cultivating our plants, we de stress our plants. We drove, you know, we use pesticides and herbicides and we protect, protect them from stress. And in doing so, we’ve downregulated all those protective chemicals in our food plants. Now, not to say that eating celery and broccoli and all of our vegetables is really good for you. You do get a lot of that phytochemistry, but not as much as their wild predecessors. But the other thing is we eat a lot of grains and a lot of beans, and that has the lowest concentration of these phytochemicals of anything else you can eat. So we’re just that. That I see, is one of our biggest dietary deficiencies is not getting these things. And it’s a really big argument for why each of us ought to be taking a regimen of herbs every day.

Megan Lyons: Yes, really great point. So I’ll summarize what I heard as the two major factors here is, number one, we’re getting too many grains, beans, and I would add, certainly processed food, processed sugar, chemically stuff, we’re getting too much of that. But then even when we are getting the vegetables, which are, they do still retain some nutrients. I want everyone to hear that, don’t stop eating your vegetables. But let’s say that zucchini that I get, that’s perfectly shaped and huge and no, nothing on its skin, none of that. Well, it makes you think that plant didn’t have to go through very much stress. It was probably given who knows what chemicals to protect it from all this stuff. So it did not generate its own defense mechanisms, which would have helped me if I had eaten that 50,000 years ago or whatever. And that is why we need some kind of supplemental phytochemistry through herbal medicine. Is that true?

Dr. Bill Rawls: And that big, juicy zucchini is going to have some of those chemicals still in it. So you go to the grocery store and you look and go, those organic zucchinis are kind of scrawny looking. They don’t look quite as good. There’s a reason for that. But they’re actually better for.

E191: Enhancing Your Body’s Own Stem Cells with Neurophysiology Scientist Christian Drapeau

Megan Lyons: So in a healthy young person, if there’s some kind of damage, how do these stem cells actually work to heal and regenerate tissue in anybody at any.

Christian Drapeau: Age, during your entire life? Stem cells are your repair system. So you really need to think. And it’s not a comparison, an analogy, a metaphor. This is exactly what your stem cells are. They are your repair systems. Imagine that you cut yourself, you get a bacteria that gets into the cut. Your immune system will detect that bacteria, send a message to your lymph nodes that will trigger the release of a bunch of immune cells. They will go everywhere in your body, but they’ll be attracted to where there is the infection. They will go beside the bacteria. They will kill the bacteria. This is your immune system. At the same time, that injury will release very specific compounds that are very well known today, well documented. They will go to your bone marrow. They will trigger the release of stem cells from your bone. Mar. Stem cells will circulate everywhere in the body, but when they go into the fine capillaries of the affected area right there locally, one specific compound is released that will connect your receptor at the surface of stem cells. It will make the stem cells express adhesion molecule. And the stem cell will stop in the capillary, migrate across the capillary wall, get into the tissue, crawl to the site of the injury, and upon contact with cellular debris of that tissue, the stem cells will multiply and transform into CE tissue. Anytime you’ve had an injury at any time in your life, it’s your repair system that kicked in and make it so that six weeks later that damage is completely gone. And as a child, it’s actually completely gone. You have no. You may have a memory, but you have no trace left of any broken bone, anything that you’ve had as a kid because you had plenty of stem cells to repair.

Megan Lyons: Yes. So you’re making it very clear, which I appreciate. This happens all throughout our life, whether we’re 2 years old or 90 years old. But it is true that our stem cell capacity or number or what would you say what decreases as we age?

Christian Drapeau: The number of stem cells. So essentially your stem cells are made by. I may. Are made by red marrow. The red marrow shrinks by conversion. It converts into yellow marrow or fatty marrow. That does not make stem cells. That conversion starts, starts on the day we’re born. By age 15, you’ve lost about half of your red Mar. 30, you’ve lost about 90% of your red marrow. And that corresponds to a 90% decline in the number of stem Cells in circulation, which is really what dictates your ability to repair and to stay healthy as you age. And it continues to go down as we age. So it’s that decline that really makes us discover in our 30s that we’re no longer Superman, Wonder Woman. Like, I realize that you go run a race and, you know, at 15, it didn’t matter. You run a race one day, you run another one the day after. And if you have two, you play football in the third day, it really doesn’t matter, right? 30, 35, you start to discover that your body is just not the same. It’s that decline in how many stem.

Megan Lyons: Cells you have got it. So reduced capacity to recover from physical exertion. What other changes? Maybe skin or joints. What. What other things might we notice?

Christian Drapeau: The thing we need to understand is that we experience aging. I mean, by this, like our individual experience of the process of aging is that we grow, we mature, we reach, let’s say, 25 years of age, peak health. And from there, slowly it starts to be. And we experience. Experience it as a slow decline over time. But it is not how aging is taking place at the cellular level. At the cellular level, you lose cells every day, everywhere in your body. Every single organ and tissue loses cells, and they’re replaced by stem cells. The turnover rate of tissues and organs varies. You get a new skin every month. You get a new liver every two, three years. You get half of a new heart every 25 years, new muscle every nine years. Everything is in rotation. But that means that your liver, right now, let’s say you’re 40 years old. Your liver is not 40 years old. Your liver is three years old, constantly in process of turnover. Turnover means you lose cells, so you need stem cells to replace the cells that are being lost. But if by age 30, you’ve lost 90% of your STEM cells and it keeps going down, there’s a point where you don’t have enough stem cells to offset cellular loss. So when you’re asking, so what’s the link between. There’s recovery, but what else can we see in terms you. We simply have to think of it as replacing the cells that are being lost. When you start to have a decline in the number of circulating stem cells, think of what is and everybody. If I ask this question, most people will have an idea of the answer. What is the weak spot in your physiology, given your genetics? Look at your parents, look at your siblings, your lifestyle, your exposure to environmental. Environmental toxin, your past injuries. There’s a slew of things, yeah, you will know, gee, I smoke when I was younger. I know it’s going to be my lung, my pancreas with diabetes, my family has diabetes. Whatever it is, that organ is subjected to more stress. It loses cells more rapidly. If you don’t have enough stem cells to offset that cellular loss, that’s where you will experience the deficit faster. So flip this whole phenomenon around. If you put more stem cells in circulation, you will see improvements wherever to have a more rapid turnover, which I’m going back to your question. The skin which is oftentimes where it is seen. People start to take stem regen release which puts more stem cells in circulation and they say, well I don’t know if I’ve seen a benefit yet on my heart, my knee, wherever the whatever the reason they’re taking it from taking it for. But they say, but people are asking me what am I doing because I look more radiant. Your skin is a, is a large consumer of stem cells. So when you do put more stem cells in circulation, your skin tends to really change.

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