300. Stem Cell Therapy & Regenerative Medicine With Dr. Adeel Khan
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I'm joined in with an extremely special guest, and I'm extremely excited about this particular interview because we actually crossed paths in Dubai at the World Biohacking Summit.

And this man is truly an expert in the field of regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy, and he's just extremely knowledgeable. So joining me on the podcast, we have Dr. Adil Khan. Adil, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Regenerative medicine is all I live and breathe. So I do know a lot. Awesome. So maybe Adil, my audience would love to learn about your story. How did you get into this particular space?

Yeah, I mean, it was honestly just a desire to want to help patients that were not being helped by our conventional system. And funny enough, it started out with a family member, my mom. And I think for a lot of people, when they see their own family member not getting help from the system that's supposed to be able to

offer solutions for medical problems, especially in Canada, which is where I'm from, where it's a public system. And obviously we're taught that we have one of the best healthcare systems in the world because we're able to not charge people. And we have this amazing, we do have this amazing kind of ideology, I guess, of like everyone deserves access to healthcare, which I truly believe, but it obviously is not working for many reasons. But, and one of the reasons is because of just chronic diseases. And that's what my mom had, you know, she had

various chronic illnesses and the system was just not able to fix her the way that I was hoping they would. And a lot of it was just symptom management, not treating the root cause. And that's where I obviously found out about functional medicine and integrated medicine and, you know, naturopathic and all that stuff. And obviously looking at the science-based interventions are the ones that are promising at least. And a lot of them show high levels of safety and

they can be equally as effective. So I was kind of went down that rabbit hole of being like, okay, why don't we try to use something that can be equally as effective as a pharmaceutical or maybe a surgery and has much less harm. And that's kind of what got me interested into this whole alternative, let's call it alternative medicine field. And then naturally,

As the science has evolved, instead of just being like, okay, take this supplement or do these lifestyle interventions, which are still great and can be helpful, we can intervene much more at a cellular level with these cell therapies and peptides and now even gene therapies. And so I think regenerative medicine is just a natural progression of functional medicine.

And that's where obviously I think the future is headed. And that's why I'm kind of specializing that now because I'm putting all my eggs in one basket, I suppose. But I think this is where medicine is really headed. - I fully agree. And I'm actually really curious, Adil, was there one particular intervention or particular compound or therapy that really caught your eye and you're like, that really got you into this was like, damn, this is super exciting, really, really profound.

I mean, I guess it's simple, but platelet-rich plasma, I mean, PRP, which is just where you take your blood, you centrifuge it, concentrate the platelets, and the platelets essentially act as little messengers that can reduce inflammation and help with healing. So PRP has been around for a long time. And I happened to work with the guy who started PRP in Canada. Well, actually worldwide, really. His name is Dr. Anthony Gallia, and he was the first one to do PRP for sports injuries. So he's

He's best, he's most well known for treating Tiger Woods and a lot of other high profile people. But, but because obviously I started out in sports medicine with him, I saw, Hey, wow, there's this amazing alternative that no one's really talking about. Even, even two, you know, six, seven years ago when I started, it wasn't that popular. And it's still, I mean, you still, obviously there's a lot of people doing it now, but it's still not standard of care, which is kind of weird to me because again, why wouldn't you, if you have a

a chronic elbow issue, for example, you have tennis elbow and it's not getting better and you try, why would you want to put cortisone in there, which just weakens the tendon and damages it versus just trying PRP, which is essentially harmless. And if you do it the right way, it can work very well for many patients.

And that's what got me interested in it. But obviously, PRP has a ceiling, you know, it only works for so many things. And it works really well for acute sports injuries, but it doesn't work that great for chronic degenerative conditions. And that's how obviously, again, it's just progression. It's like, you have patients who aren't getting better, and then you get frustrated. And then you're like, okay, what else can I do for them? And then you just keep researching. And that's how I got to where I am.

Yeah, do you find that, I mean, over the years, now that you've, you know, treated some extremely high profile clients and, you know, your level of knowledge has multiplied in so many different ways. How would you describe your toolkit now, like in terms of things at your disposal, like sort of talk us through what that would look like nowadays?

Yeah, I'm pretty lucky because now that I'm, I guess, known for regenerative medicine, I kind of get approached by all these different companies too. And so I get first access and first dibs on all these technologies that no one has access to. So it's like my patients get a... Obviously, it's very beneficial for my patients, but then now it's also beneficial for just...

I guess society at large because I've been able to put together a lot of these pieces and now we can license them out and give them to other people and make them more accessible. So

So, yeah, so basically I find that, you know, with the I guess with the evolution of this field, you know, now I have so many different tools in my toolkit and I can pick and choose what I really need to use. And so it's not just like, you know, there's let's say PRP is at the very bottom. And that's seven years ago. All I had was PRP.

you know, I didn't have any other options. If PRP didn't work, I was like, oh, well, I guess, you know, I guess you can go do surgery or, you know, like, you know, I'm sorry, there's not much else I can do. But now it's like, okay, I have exosomes. I have your,

your own stem cells. I have, you know, umbilical cord stem cells. And then now I have the new stem cells, which is, we will talk about, you know, the second generation stem cells. And then obviously, of course, we have peptides. And then we have all these different advanced kind of diagnostics now with, you know, personalized genomics. And then, you know, all these different kind of

Even technologies to remove toxins from your body and looking at cell membrane health and looking at your immune system and how that becomes dysfunctional. So I just feel like we have so much more to dig deeper and that we can really figure out what the root problem is. And we see some of the most complex patients from around the world. I'm not, you know, obviously I'm a sports interventional pain sports doctor by training.

And that's why I kind of specialize in, but, you know, just the nature of regenerative medicine is that it's not system-based, you know, the way we were taught in medical school. It's really what's called systems biology, which is how is the whole body interconnected and why does it go dysfunctional in these chronic disease states and how do you restore that system?

systems biology approach and I like to call it first principles and looking at the root cause and how to kind of make the cells work better and restore cellular function and health. Now you mentioned the second generation stem cells, the Muse stem cells. Did you want to sort of briefly explain like to my audience, like the brief evolution of how stem cells have sort of progressed and where they're at today and how they're used?

Yeah, I mean, that could be a... I could talk about that for like 10 hours, but I'll try to keep it brief. So essentially...

stem cells you know there were these mesenchymal stem cells let's you know which are kind of like it's embryological term for just meaning like the middle layer you know from the different um when your embryo evolves and uh and basically these were first discovered in this late 60s but they didn't know what they were really so they actually mislabeled them and then they were i think they called them fibroblast cells or something and then in 1990 in the early 90s

you know, Dr. Professor Arnold Kaplan, he coined the word mesenchymal stem cells because he figured out, hey, these can differentiate into different cell lineages and they have all these unique properties. And then funny enough, then he later renamed it in 2017 to medicinal signaling cells because he realized

that they're not actually true stem cells. They can't really turn into new tissue. They're more anti-inflammatory signals and they can reduce inflammation, but they're not really what's called pluripotent, which means they can turn into all different cell images. So this is important to understand because when people think about stem cells, they're always like, oh, I'm going to regrow new tissue. I'm going to have myself a new tendon or a new cartilage, but

99% of stem cell clinics, actually, in fact, almost all stem cell clinics are offering mesenchymal stem cells, which do not regrow new tissue. They just, like we said, medicinal signaling cells or signals that can reduce inflammation. They can still be helpful, but it's just a misnomer. It also confuses people because then they think they're getting something regenerative when they're really getting something anti-inflammatory, which is just for people to understand. And then

So then what a lot of clinics do is they offer, some clinics offer embryonic or fetal stem cells because obviously those are stronger. They're from the aborted fetuses, but there's ethical issues obviously with that. And then the problem with these stem cells is also they can cause tumors or cancer. And that's the same problem with what's called induced pluripotent stem cell or IPSCs.

Those are made using cellular reprogramming, the so-called Yamanaka factors, where you overexpress these transcription factors and it makes old cells young again, which sounds like science fiction. So it's like cellular reprogramming.

It's very cool and it's awesome for research, but the clinical translation is still not there yet. Because again, the iPSCs can have uncontrolled proliferation and lead to tumors and cancer. And so basically you have the main problem is, okay, we have these stem cells that can reduce inflammation, but they're not regenerative. And

And we have all these other cells that are regenerative and they can, they're pluripotent like embryonic and IPSCs, but then they can cause tumors. So is there a cell that can solve these problems, both this problem? And yes, that's the mu cell. And that's what is very exciting. So the mu cell is pluripotent.

So meaning it can turn to all two over 200 cell types in the body, but it's non-tumorigenic and non-cancerous inherently by its single cell RNA sequencing and the genetic kind of profile of the cell. So the safety level is very high and the efficacy level is much higher than mesenchymal stem cells or standard mesenchymal stem cells because mu cell is technically a subpopulation of mesenchymal stem cells.

And so basically they can differentiate into all the different cell types and not cause cancer. And they can survive a lot better than regular mucosal stem cells because that's the other problem with those cells is when you put them in your body, 90, 95% of them die. But the mucosal, the majority of them will survive. So that's the big difference. And that's the name.

is a mouthful. It's multi-lineage differentiating stress enduring cells. So multi-lineage differentiating, that just means pluripotent. It can turn into all different cell types, right? All the multi-lineages. And then SE, stress enduring, just means it can survive in harsh environments. And that's the key difference between mu cells and other MSCs, so to speak, and the safety profile versus embryonic and the other type of stem cells. So that's

a very general overview of all the different subtypes. And I think at a very high level, just think about stem cells as the fix-it guys in your body. And if you think of your cells as these buildings, as I like to say, that break down. And every day, every minute right now, you probably had a million in the last 60 seconds. You had a few million cells break down and turn over, right? And so there's a constant renewal cycle in your body. And whenever cells are breaking down and rebuilding,

So to speak, stem cells are involved in that process to a certain extent. And so but eventually the fix it guys get tired and they can't do their job as well. And then there's, you know, there's mistakes that are made in the DNA and so on and so forth. So if we can have more of these fix it guys to repair damaged tissue, then that's that's really all we're trying to do.

Yeah, remarkable. You did a fantastic job at summarizing that. So that was really helpful. I was just thinking about like my brain was sort of ticking about common pathways and how we can actually amplify the effects of these new stem cells. Is there literature on ways to like precursor compounds that stimulate the body's own production and or are there ways to...

you know the theory of like whenever you introduce something exogenous, like for example testosterone, the body shuts down its natural production. Is there any sort of research going on looking at that sort of pathway there?

So the mu cells are unique because they actually thrive off inflammation, which is, you know, most cells don't like inflammation because, but the mu cells actually, they have a homing mechanism. And so this is called sigmosine monophosphate, S1P. And when these cells have tissue damage, so let's say you had a heart attack and

and you want to do the muscles afterwards, and this has been done in Japan with good results for that specific condition, your heart tissue, your heart cells will have this S1P signal and say, hey, there's a problem here. There's inflammation, there's damage, and the muscles will sense that and they'll go there. And so they actually have this amazing homing mechanism. So that's what makes them really unique. And so you don't necessarily

Need to do the let's say preparatory work as much as you do with other stem cells because they're actually going to thrive even in those harsh environments and hence the stress enduring nature of them. But what you can do is

you know, to help, let's say, just optimize the cellular environment is to reduce oxidative stress because the way these stem cells work, one of the main mechanisms is through mitochondrial DNA transfer and mitophagy. And mitochondria, I could talk about all day as well, but they're, you know, they're much more than just energy production, right? Mitochondria is

It's basically they're responsible for taking when you eat food, they're responsible for taking that food and turning into energy and cellular metabolism is. That's where it happens and unfortunately, we were all traumatized in med school from the Krebs cycle. So doctors don't want to think about that stuff, but it is actually probably it is the most important thing to understand when it comes to longevity and aging because.

when that electron transport chain and the mitochondria start breaking down, that's actually one of the root causes as to why we age, because you get oxidative stress, which is just basically free radicals damaging the different cell components. And so these mu cells can help with that. And, but you want to reduce oxidative stress. So you're just giving them, let's say a more favorable environment for them to do their job. So sometimes we'll use, you know, peptides or methylene blue or hyperbaric oxygen, things like that, just to get,

the body in a ready state in terms of the oxidative burden. Interesting. With the Muse, for example, do they need to be, you said they have this homing mechanism. Does that mean that they don't need to be localized in terms of their application? Yeah, I mean, that's the scary part about this. It's almost hard to believe that they can go

where they need to go and i didn't you know i didn't believe it until i saw it in my patients but also obviously in the clinical trial that they did for example with stroke patients in japan it's not like they injected the mu cells into the brain they just did an iv and even and it was a pretty low dose too it was only 20 million which is like one-tenth the dose of regular stem cells

So it's not like you can overdose on these things, right? You can do them as much as you need to get better. So that's why that's the beauty of this stuff. And I obviously with if I have a knee patient, you know, if I have a patient with knee pain or arthritis, you know, I would still do a local injection just because I think it's still going to be more effective, obviously, than just doing an IV. But in theory, if you just did an IV, it'd probably still be beneficial. But, you know, I think I think when it comes to it's always about risk benefit, right?

injecting into the brain with stem cells is obviously risky versus just doing an IV. So why not just do an IV, especially because we can see that it works, but injecting into your knee is, you know, pretty safe. So doing a local injection isn't a big deal. So that's where we'll, you know, that's kind of how we look at it. Now, are you guys like the pioneers of the, in terms of like, particularly in like in the West U S for example, Dubai, is anyone else actually even offering the muse as a, as an IV right now? Are you guys like the first to,

to sort of bring that forward well i'm definitely the first i mean we're definitely the first yeah but there will be other groups offering it because the technology will be licensed to other clinics because but i was the first doctor to raise awareness about it and kind of you know as you said high profile people chris hemsworth uh did a post on instagram and he talked about the muscles in that post uh so that obviously brought a lot of attention to the muscles so you can imagine there's millions of people and a lot of doctors wondering about them and they want to know

and they won't have access to them. So obviously, there's gonna be access. This is a technology that the world needs to have. - Remarkable. In terms of the frequency, for example, I'm just curious regarding sort of like a typical protocol, like are we talking a daily thing, a weekly, or obviously it depends upon the condition we're looking at? - Yeah, no, for the most part, let's say if it's a chronic pain patient,

Typically, we just treat them one and done and that's it. Sometimes they need a second treatment, but the majority of people, it's incredible. Yeah. And that's where it really shines. And for longevity, let's say that's the other common thing. That's something you obviously do on a regular basis. So some people do it once every six months. It's an infusion once every year. And that's something you could just do to, let's say, slow down the aging process or even reverse biomarkers of aging.

Now, in terms of complementary therapies, I know you mentioned before around the mitochondrial function, reducing oxidative stress. In terms of complementary protocols, like looking outside the box in terms of supplementation, maybe even other nutrients, glutathione, vitamin C, selenium, things like that. Yeah, what's your stance on integrating these sort of protocols as well?

Yeah, no, I'm always, I mean, I started out in that whole world of, let's say, lifestyle medicine. And I understand that stuff very well. And I think that's still the foundation and nothing's changed. It's just if you want to build upon that foundation. So, and I always recommend to people to optimize their micronutrients, to optimize, you know, their sleep, stress, exercise, nutrition, all the basic stuff so that they can give the stem cells, you know, the best opportunity to work.

This is always about our slogan is kind of, you know, empowering the body's natural healing abilities. So we're trying to make your body heal and we're giving it the signals and the cells and the tools to help it heal. But the more you can do on your end to create an environment that allows those cells to work.

and thrive is going to be something that only you can do. So I don't think that changes anything. And I think, like you said, you want to have those pathways, so to speak, working as efficiently and effectively as possible. And I think that's where all these kind of nutraceutical and lifestyle interventions can be quite effective. On the note of like glutathione, there's a

There's a supplement called deliverance. It's a liver supplement that I really like because what it does is it actually helps to make your liver

work better. And it helps, it's been shown to help reverse non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and even help with liver cirrhosis, like early stages. So it's pretty incredible. If it can do that for clinical diseases, obviously it can help with just like longevity and general health. And so that can help to increase your own body's production of glutathione and which is a master antioxidant, right? And so I'm a big fan of trying to get your own body to work better as opposed to taking something exogenously.

Yeah, phenomenal. In terms of the oxidative stress pathway, you tied in very nicely mentioning the mitochondrial function as a really significant hallmark of aging is how well an individual is actually synthesizing ATP. It's a great proxy, so to speak, of understanding that.

Explain to my audience from your perspective, let's start with, I know lifestyle, diet, sleep, things like that are all absolutely crucial for maintaining peak mitochondrial function. But from a peptides perspective, what are some particular peptides you've leaned upon for specific mitochondrial function?

Yeah, I mean, look, your mitochondria are working. You have trillions and trillions of mitochondria. Something like 3.5, 10 to the 16. It's more than trillions. And so it's just like an obscene amount. And they're always working and they're keeping your body going. But they get tired and they start making mistakes because they have their own DNA and their DNA can get damaged over time.

So what can you do to help either reverse some of that damage or at least help the mitochondria work better? So that's why obviously there's a lot of buzz around these supplements like NMN and NAD. You know, like I think TruNiagen is pretty effective for helping your own NAD, which is like an intermediary for helping with energy production. But then, you know, that's supplements are supplements. There's always issues with

bioavailability and absorption. And I think you just don't know because everyone has different guts and sometimes supplements help, sometimes they don't. And I think, you know, peptides bypass some of that because obviously there's subcutaneous injections. And also I think they have potentially more potent effects in a lot of supplements. And so

I kind of, you know, because I was big on supplements, obviously, and I'm still, I take a lot of supplements still, but it's just, it's more just, I think peptides are the new supplements in the sense that they're kind of where supplements were 10 years ago. And I think, you know, people are still learning about them, but they have a lot of potential. And so there's these peptides and, you know, there's so many different peptides, right? Ozempic is the most common one people have probably heard of for weight loss. But then there's obviously these mitochondrial peptides. There's one called SS31, which,

is I'm a huge fan of it. Basically it helps me with what's called cardiolipin, which is in the inner mitochondrial membrane. And so, you know, in that electron transport chain, it basically helps to stabilize the signaling and help with the

electron transport, which is very interesting because that stuff, as it becomes dysregulated, that's, you know, again, these electrons leak out and then they start damaging other properties of the cell. So if we can maintain that functioning of that electron transport as much as possible, I think that's going to be good for longevity and for pretty much every chronic disease. And then there's also a peptide called MOTC.

and then, you know, dash C. And that one's, I'd say more to, it can actually improve VO2 max and cardiovascular function. And again, it's doing that through the mitochondria. I don't remember exactly the mechanism on that one, but I think it's, I think it does help with mitochondrial biogenesis. And so it's basically going to be, again, another tool that you can cycle and use as needed. Like these aren't things that you would necessarily take all the time, but you can take them periodically and give yourself a boost basically. Right. And I've had so many people, they love how they feel on SS31.

And then Moxie can also help with just general cardiovascular performance. And if you're an athlete, especially, or if you're, you know, really into fitness, it can be pretty cool to see what it can do for your body. Yeah, this SS31, you said peptide for the cardiolipin. I'm curious to know, I mean, that sounds phenomenal. And I haven't actually covered that on my YouTube channel yet, but I will be after our conversation, after I do a deep dive. In terms of applications, so...

are we looking at athletes you know endurance athletes or even some people just looking for a general energy boost like what are some of the potential no i i think ss31 uh and even mod c to a certain extent can be used for longevity like so whenever something can be used for longevity it basically means it can be used for any chronic disease because what is longevity interventions is trying to fight the aging process and then what is the aging process it's basically these different

Hallmarks of aging, mitochondria dysfunction being one of the biggest and, you know, stem cell exhaustion and chronic inflammation and all these are different hallmarks. But these hallmarks underlie all chronic diseases or have at least some commonalities. So, for example, whether it's type two diabetes or cardiovascular disease or neurodegenerative conditions, a lot of them have the same underlying dysfunction of the mitochondria, of stem cell exhaustion, of inflammation and all these different other drivers.

In terms of, I mean, a lot of people talk about this reactive oxygen species as like a marker of oxidative damage. If an individual or a consumer actually wants to check, like think about it from a consumer's perspective, how do they actually know whether or not they're actually generating a significant amount of, you know, ROS? There's no like blood test for that specifically, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's this omics field, you know, like proteomics, metabolomics and all these other things. And so there are companies offering mitochondrial testing now. And they look at thousands of different kind of, I guess, you know, the profile of, you know, of the mitochondria, I guess, you know, but the...

The reality is most people like over 90% probably, you know, have, it's just so common now have some sort of, you know, let's say dysregulation in their mitochondria. And I think anyone who's, and so I'm not against doing testing for it, but at the same time, if you, you know, I think if you're, if you have a chronic disease, you have mitochondrial dysfunction to a certain extent. If you're, if you're age, like after age 70, 95% of people have mitochondrial dysfunction. It's just,

It's just what happens as you age. So if you can do something to slow it down or prevent it at an earlier age, then why wouldn't you? I think we still need better testing though too, which I think there's going to be probably some breakthroughs with quantum sensors and whatnot where you can really measure and see what's going on in the mitochondria. I think right now it's still just proxy measurements and I don't find them to be that useful because it's

It's kind of like, okay, you have a chronic illness or you're tired. Let's try the peptide. Why do you need to do some fancy tests? It's not going to change management so much. You know what I mean? Fully, fully resonate with that. It definitely makes a lot of sense. Just going back to, I mean, like, let's say on the topic of

maximizing insulin sensitivity because that's obviously a desired quality or I guess a desired outcome for many patients regardless of their condition. Let's say

we're looking at like you've got the common drugs metformin ozempic some of the other you know pharmaceutical drugs that are being prescribed to have the other secondary benefit of you know improving insulin sensitivity beyond just lowering blood sugar but from a peptides perspective or from what you've seen clinically with patients looking at blood work and looking at that fasting insulin score the hba1c have there been any surprises that you've come across in terms of any

like sort of yielding a favorable effect in that regard. Yeah, I mean, I found the one that I find to be more effective for that is ratatouille, or I don't know if I'm saying that right, but ratatouille. It's a ratatouille. So that's like the third generation ozempic, which they call a triple acting one because it's not just a GLP-1. It also helps with insulin sensitivity and mobilizing basically sugar out of your body.

but basically helping with the metabolism of sugar. Um, and so I think that one is going to be, that one tends to have more profound effects in what I've seen clinically. And,

Interestingly, there was a paper that just came out a couple of weeks ago about how stem cells can also help with metabolic reprogramming, which means basically they can help with the conversion of white fat to beige fat, which means that, you know, and that's the healthier fat, right? Because the problem with fat is now we know, you know, the fat is like an organ system too, and it releases all these signals and pro-inflammatory signals. And so if you can

change the cellular signature of these cells, which is what these stem cells can do. That's pretty, that's pretty cool. And that's where I think it's kind of comes back to this whole concept of as your body gets older, your metabolism slows down, right? Everyone kind of has that common understanding. And why is that happening, right? That has to do with the mitochondria and has to do with insulin sensitivity. You know, the white adipose fat cells and the

chronic inflammatory environment that's kind of being produced. And if you can change that, then that's pretty exciting too. So I, and, and, you know, I can just say anecdotally, I've seen it in myself too, just after doing a few infusions in the past year with the mu cells, I'm kind of, it's like, I can definitely notice that my metabolism is faster and which is very interesting. And obviously doing some of those peptides too, like we talked about SS31 and whatnot.

um i'm jealous of your your toolkit having access to some of these amazing compounds like if i was in your position i'd just be like every week's a new experiment yeah it's fine it's definitely fun and it just feels like i can just i just want to see now the experiment is how young can we make my face is the one we're doing right now that's awesome that's awesome um going back to the to the muse i mean i'm actually really interested in exploring that i'd imagine a lot of my my

listeners would actually want to actually utilize this therapy. So just run us through what that looks like in terms of it. Is it financially accessible for most people? What does that typically look like?

It isn't at the moment just because it is a newer technology. And I think there's obviously there's a lot of R&D costs and whatnot. But I think as time goes on, the costs are going to come down. And even our costs, what it was a year ago is cheaper than what it is now. So it is coming down and the price range is big. It just depends on what you do, but it can range anywhere from like, you know, like five

five thousand dollars to like fifty thousand dollars it just depends on what you're what you're doing and how much you're doing and dosing and all that stuff so i don't think it's unaffordable because i think most people can you know if they have a something that they really want to get done most people can afford you know five thousand dollars but but some people can't so you know it just depends on their situation but i think over time the goal is really to get these

technologies to be approved by, you know, more regulators and then eventually insurance companies. I mean, that's a long-term goal. That's going to take obviously a long time, but there's just so much potential with different chronic illnesses. And the beauty of this stuff is so easy. If someone wants to get this done, it's literally like a one day treatment, you know, it's an infusion or it's an injection. And there's a little bit of preparatory work and a little bit of, you know, stuff before and after care, but it's pretty minimal if you think about it. And it versus like,

you know, getting a knee replacement surgery or doing, you know, these injections, like it's just such a big difference in terms of even cost to the system. Right. Because there's a lot less cost to the, if this was covered by insurance, it'd be less costly for them because obviously there's, you don't have to go through the whole surgical recovery process. Hmm. There's a, there's like a quote that looks at like, um,

Something like if you think investing in your health is expensive, then wait till you see the price of neglecting it, like wait until you're sick. So if you frame it in that light, surely consumers will realize like, hey, if I want to be proactive about my health, which is what you're doing, you're educating consumers and helping people understand these technologies and interventions are now becoming available.

like be proactive about it before you actually get a severe disease or sickness. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's always easy to prevent, of course, prevent disease and aging than it is to try to reverse it. And we, we can't let's, let's, you know, it's not like we can stop aging completely, but we can definitely help with healthy aging and,

Because we know where the underlying drivers that kind of cause it and these interventions target those different hallmarks of aging. And we see it all the time clinically, you know, patients literally say, I feel 10, 15 years younger, I have more energy, better recovery, excuse me.

And then objectively, we can measure their speed of aging using the different kind of diagnostic kits out there. Methylation isn't the most accurate, but it still gives you at least some sort of baseline that you can use over time. And we're working with this company called Generation Lab that uses biological noise, which is kind of basically how many mistakes do your genes make over time? And those errors increase over time. And that's kind of the noise or the variance that it

that can be measured now and so that that's a more accurate way to measure let's say your aging process and so we can do a before and after you know you do the treatment then you come back after and then you do you repeat the test after six months or a year and you can really see it like hey i've actually done something internally so at least you have some objective data too

So I think that's kind of the direction of the field where it's going, where it's like, okay, why wouldn't you want to start this if you have the means to do it at a younger age? Because you're going to slow down the aging process and you have the kind of objective data to show that to. Was that, so it's called Generation Labs? That's something you guys are working on? Yeah.

Yeah, we're working with that company out. Awesome. Awesome. I'll try and leave that link to the, is that publicly available? Yeah. Yeah. It's a kit. You can just order it online. It's, you know, it's a couple hundred bucks and they can, if you want to do it just for your own curiosity, um,

Yeah, I'll leave that linked in the podcast show notes for those listening. That sounds like a pretty cool, like advanced test that I've never even heard of. Everyone's focused on the DNA methylation. As you said, it's somewhat good for the average population. I'd say it's still, you know, quite useful, but this sounds like it's just sort of like a level up from that.

It is. Yeah, exactly. And then there's, there's even another level up from that, but it's not available to the public yet. It's called proteomics. So, but that's not available yet. So, okay. We'll leave that for the next, next one. Um, from a, I mean, you mentioned this Rita true tide, Rita tried, um, it's a triple, you said it's a triple hormone receptor agonist, um, superior to like semi-glutide. Um,

Are you combining that with anything else specifically for fat loss and or weight loss for clients or patients? Yeah. So often, you know, with fat loss and obesity, I mean, it really...

I can't remember the exact statistic, but let's say if they have actual obesity and morbid obesity, then a lot of them actually have a history of trauma. It's very common, adverse childhood events. I used to do something called cognitive behavioral therapy for weight loss. I used to help. And so I learned all about that stuff in terms of healthy relationship with food and body and how to get that. And so I think there often is

You know, if we're working with a patient who's very, you know, struggling with, you know, weight loss or fat loss and they have a history, that's where, you know, using the peptides can help with obviously some of the kind of, let's say, physiological stuff. But then there's also this trauma history. And that's where we can do interventions for that, too, where we have we do this vagus nerve injection.

where we inject, you know, peptides and exosomes into the vagus nerve or even stem cells. And then we also inject a stellate ganglion, which is kind of this sympathetic mechanism

fight or flight response system in your body and that that procedure has been around for a while but what it does is you just put anesthetic in there and it calms your nervous system down so think of it like a reboot for your nervous system and then helping your vagus nerve to work better because your vagus nerve is you know it's this highway from your brain to your gut and it regulates so many different things that anesthetics not um not ketamine derivatives or anything like that

No, no, we're not. Although people do feel a little bit high after the procedure, which is really interesting, but it's just, it's temporary, but we're not, no, we're just injecting bupivacaine, which is just like a local anesthetic. Yeah. And that's just to block the fight or flight response because some people, a lot of people with trauma,

they're just in this what's called sympathetic overdrive uh they're in this dysregulated cortisol state and they're basically their bodies always thinking that there's something going on or something's going to happen or something's going to go wrong and so their body is always kind of dysregulated from a central nervous system perspective so we're trying to re-regulate and rebalance it but the big difference is we're also injecting the vagus nerve which is different from conventional medicine where they just kind of do the block

That's the first time I've never heard of that even explored. Excuse my ignorance, but is that actually like you're locating the vagus nerve? These are specific location? Yeah, we use an ultrasound. So basically, yeah, we inject it, which is right around the neck there. So obviously, it's a very technical procedure. And, you know, just...

Only maybe a few doctors in the world who know how to do that. So that's something, you know, Dr. Matt Cook, I believe, he was probably the first one to do that. And then I kind of took a version of it and made it my own. And this is something I've kind of, let's say, experimented with first, and then obviously developed a protocol that was effective and reproducible.

Interesting. Yeah, because I've actually played around with those electric pulse. It's called a pulsator. You might be familiar. Yeah, exactly. Stimulators. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think those are, I think that, you know, it's dosing, right? Like you just don't know how many sessions do you need? How much do you need to really see a difference? This is obviously a very direct, it's still minimally invasive and just saying, hey, let's just put some good stuff around the vagus nerve and get that vagus nerve going and send the right signals and give it a supportive environment.

for it to kind of rebalance itself. - In terms of gut healing peptides, I know BPC's probably been one of your earliest peptides in your toolkit. Are there any other ones that you think deserve a little bit more attention or deserve a little bit more spotlight from a gut health perspective?

I mean, I think Kpb has potential. I don't, I cannot, I don't know that all the mechanisms of how Kpb works, but that's definitely 1 that's being used a lot for gut inflammation and inflammation generally in the body. Right and so I think that's because you can have in different formulations. There's like, intranasal Kpb and then there's the peptide subcutaneous. Um, but and so that 1 can be a good 1 too. And then obviously.

I think, you know, with gut stuff, it's, it's, it's the, there's a gut lining and then there's the microbes, right. And the microbes are obviously a big part of it too. And that's why I'm a, you know, I'm a big fan of the fecal, fecal microbial transplant, which I think is also another, let's say regenerative medicine tool, because you're adding microbes, you're adding, again, you're adding something into your body that can help to kind of rebalance it. And we're

We're working on our own FMT capsules as well. So we have a scientist developing that and hopefully we'll be ready sometime this year. We've had a hard time finding a good donor though. You basically have to find super poop, which is not easy. Have you heard of the name Crapsules? Like calling them Crapsules? No, I haven't. But that makes sense. But I'm actually really curious to hear more about the...

the FMTs that you've seen, you know, transform people's lives. I'm actually really curious to know about, like, have you seen any particular. Yeah. I mean, there's actually a guy in Australia, the top guy in the world is actually in Australia. His name is Dr. Thomas Brody. He's a gastroenterologist and he, uh,

I think it was like a two year wait list or something though. So, but he, but he's like the, you know, FMT guru. And so I, you know, I had some patients who had gone to him, but then it's just like, you know, it's like impossible to get access. And so I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna make it myself. And then, so I have a, obviously, so then I just, I found a scientist who's great. She's, she has a PhD in human microbiome and work with one of the top FMT people in the world. And so she's formulating the capsules for us. And there's a whole process because,

FMT is like a whole science now and it's evolved. And this is, again, the beauty of this whole, let's call it revolution in medicine, is that the technology is improving. FMT before, you had to go through a colonoscopy, which means if you wanted to get new poop into your colon or new microbes into your colon, you had to go through a colonoscopy, which is a fairly invasive procedure. And it's not super convenient. And there are clinics that do that. There's a clinic called Taymount.

That's kind of popular and that they do that, but that's still, you know, it's like a 10 day thing and it's pretty invasive and it's not the most convenient thing. And I don't think anyone's going to do that for longevity, especially because like, it's just way too invasive for that. So, so now the technology has evolved where you can make these, you know, enter it coded kind of capsules that are able to pass the stomach acid and survive. And then actually go into the colon and then, and repopulate the gut with these microbes.

And so they're just capsules or pills that you take just like a supplement, except they're much more effective than probiotics because probiotics are transitory, generally speaking, which means they don't actually repopulate the gut on a long-term basis. This is called a transplant because you're actually transplanting new microbes into your gut. I mean, is this being administered already in parts of the world?

Well, Dr. Brody is doing it, I know. And I know there's other clinics in the world that are offering FMT, but most of them are offering it through colonoscopy. I think there is one, I think there may be one, there is one group in the US that I think has some capsules now. And it is being developed by other groups too, yeah. Interesting. Wow. I find that fascinating. I actually had another question around, I'm always thinking about like novel product ideas, but even like,

Have you investigated the influence of certain specific strains of gut bacteria that might actually be able to stimulate the body's endogenous production of stem cells? I know it's not going to be anywhere near as potent as Muse or any of that, but like any research in that space?

I don't know, actually. I haven't come across much on that. I'd have to specifically search for it, I suppose, but I haven't read much about that. I have read, you know, there's so many interesting microbes. There's one that

for example, that can increase your cardiovascular fitness. And it's called OLP01. And because they named it that because it was found in the Olympic gold medalists who happened to be a microbiologist as well. And then so she tested her poop and found these microbes. And then when they transplanted them into other people that they found that their cardiovascular fitness improved too, which is so interesting. So I think these microbes, obviously, they play a big role

and something like two-thirds of the molecules in your blood are linked to the gut in terms of microbes you know they play a role in their synthesis so your body is very much dependent and again this is where systems biology come in right it's not it's not just it's not that the gut and the heart are separate or the gut and the brain are separate everything's interconnected and that's just systems biology uh it's not it's not some voodoo medicine anymore that's just accepted science but it's the problem is

we're taught in medical school as fragmented system based training. And doctors just don't think that we're not taught to train. We're not taught to think that way. Yeah, I think it's a I think it's actually holding the whole medical system back in a very, very, like negative way. And it's actually contributing to the burden on the healthcare system, people more sick than ever, chronic disease proliferating like crazy.

Yeah, and systems biology is the only way to solve chronic disease. System-based training works great for acute issues, right? If you broke your foot, you don't need to go through a systems biology approach. You just need to get someone to fix your broken foot. And so that's why it's beautiful.

conventional medical system works amazing for acute care and trauma and for, you know, sepsis and hospital-based medicine stuff. It doesn't work well for chronic illnesses. And that's just a fact to look at the data, like you said. So we obviously need a change. You're phenomenal. Phenomenal. In terms of anything else, I mean, you mentioned that OLP-01, that micro specific strain that that, uh,

cardiovascular athlete identified. Any other strains? I know Akimansi has been quite popular lately, but anything else that sort of caught your eye that you've maybe like excited about any, any gut bacteria? I don't, I don't know if there's a specific one other than that one that I can say I'm excited about, but although I would say, you know, the scientists I'm working with, she would probably be able to give that maybe more thought than I can. Cause I do have, she's obviously, that's what all she does. I call her the, the,

poop queen because that's like all her that's her full-time job she has a phd in that so that's that's all she thinks about and knows about so i'm sure she has some microbes that she's excited about but i think i think the diagnostic stuff is interesting too right like there's more data on like how the imbalance between certain

you know, different microbes and giving us more insight into how that correlates to disease and be able to detect disease before, you know, even certain tests pick it up because the microbes are showing that, for example, I know with colon cancer now there, I can't remember the exact bugs, but there's a, there's a ratio and you can start seeing that, Hey, if these bugs are off balance, this is going to be something you need to get checked out. So before, so you can testing your poop can have a, give you a lot of insight now than it could have, you know, five years ago.

Yeah, interesting. From like a blood testing standpoint, I mean, with sort of clients, you obviously still would prioritize regular blood testing, things like that. Are there any particular biomarkers that you think more doctors should consider as like part of like a routine check that's just not getting enough attention?

I mean, the routine test stuff is so outdated that it's kind of like, okay, I think it's just like, there's just so many. But I would say the ones that are going to have the most impact or the ones that I think are going to give you the most insight are going to be looking at the biggest kind of

let's call them the biggest drivers as to why, you know, your body starts becoming dysfunctional. And what, one of the biggest drivers is your immune system. So what's called immunosenescence, which is when you're, when your immune cells don't aren't able to do their job anymore. And, and so immune cells, as people probably know are kind of like cells that help to fight the bad guys, the invaders when they're in their body, but they do much more than that. There there's, there's, they help with so many different processes and, and,

When your immune system is not working properly, then that can lead to autoimmune conditions, that can lead to cancer, obviously, and that leads to so many different chronic diseases as well because your body can't deal with these different problems. And then that's also part of the reasons why

You know, like with fungal spores and chronic infections and all these other things that happen in the body, a lot of it has to do with dysregulated immune system. And obviously, even with obviously even with COVID, we saw, you know, why do some people get destroyed by COVID and other people are fine? Right. It has it all comes back to the immune system. And now before we were kind of just like we couldn't really measure it.

But now we can measure it to a certain extent. And so that's one of my favorite tests. It's called Lymphocyte Map. It's by Cyrex Labs. And they can actually map out like Th1, Th17, Treg, all the different types of T cells and natural killer cells and really give you a good profile of what's happening in the immune system. And then being able to rebalance that using different interventions, whether that's peptides or stem cells or just nutraceuticals and lifestyle.

Would that lymphocyte map be applicable even outside like autoimmune conditions? Like you're still considering that? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I would, I mean, it's one of those tests I would like, if you were to say, hey, what's one test you would do outside of the conventional, like just like standard blood tests and hormones that most doctors order? I'd say that's my top one right now, just because it gives you such good insight into

happening with your immune system and then again you can you can use it for prevention right like if you have a problem that's developing or not in balance and you can do something about it now as opposed to waiting till you have a full-blown you know chronic illness or something so what for example with that particular test the lymphocyte map what could an individual discover

like through that, would it be like, they've got something sinister brewing in the background that I know about? Or is it like, what have you sort of like uncovered from that? Well, it could be like, yeah, for example, it could be, there's something called your TH 17 to T reg ratio, which is basically like, you know, how well is your immune system being regulated to regulatory cells? Think of them as like the guys whose job is to, to make sure that's why they're called regulatory is to make sure the immune cells are behaving and not doing the wrong things and

And if your two regulatory cells get out of balance and they can't do their job, then that's part of the reason why you develop these autoimmune conditions. And so you can actually see if you're having early signs of that. And they found it even in MS patients.

for example, multiple sclerosis, which is an autoimmune condition, that ratio is one of the best predictors of severity of disease and progression of disease. And so I think there's all these different markers that you can use to kind of give you an insight into, hey, your immune system is not behaving optimally. So what can we do to bring this into optimization as opposed to just saying, let's wait till something bad happens. And then once you have an autoimmune condition, then let's try to reverse it. Like, why not? Why not try to do something about it?

Before that happens. Right. And so I think this is one of the lowest hanging fruit because it just gives you good insight into something that's going to regulate everything in your body. Right. Because what, for example, what is heart disease? Why do you why do you get heart disease? Chronic inflammation and oxidative stress are the biggest drivers of that. Right. And where does that chronic inflammation come from? It comes from your immune system.

And so a lot of that has, it comes back to those like root drivers as to why you're getting these different kind of chronic diseases. And that's why I like that test because it's a, let's say it's almost, it's up there with like almost hormones, right? Like hormones is such an important thing to understand. And a lot, like obviously doctors measure hormones. That's like a common thing most doctors do now, but a lot of, but no one, but this is like one of those things that I think a lot of people still aren't thinking about.

Do you feel like you have sniper rifle interventions when some of those white cell markers are out of balance? You have pretty good... Your treatment protocol is pretty rock solid in terms of... We're not there yet, unfortunately. I would say they're more, let's say, holistic interventions where they're rebalancing the entire immune system. We do have some, let's say, sniper ones. For example, if your natural killer cells are

are very low, which are like the soldiers in your body that have, you know, they're part of your innate immune system when you have an infection or acute, you know, some sort of virus, then your natural killer cells job is to mobilize and target them. And we can do natural killer cell infusions, for example, to try to get your own, to get

boost your own natural killer cell count for example and that's an immunotherapy that's also used in cancer but it could also be used for longevity because they help to clear senescent cells and they have other benefits as well so so there are let's say specific cell therapies and there's also t cell therapy that we have now and dendritic cell therapy so there are more specific cell therapies from the immune cell component that are being developed

That's all new to me and I'm really, I'm so excited to hear that and I'm definitely going to be exploring that a lot more because that's, I would say, it sounds like an extremely underrated test that a lot of practitioners need to know about, like, as part of their tool, as part of their like diagnostics slash examination process with patients. That's really profound.

In terms of, we're sort of wrapping up shortly, but I do wanna sort of ask yourself about, obviously, I would say you're definitely a pioneer in this space. You've got good scope and awareness of like interventions and protocols that are up and coming and trending and things like that. Where do you wanna see this space going in the next three to five years? Like where would you be happy, in your ideal scenario, what would you like it to sort of evolve into?

Well, this won't happen in five years, but I guess at least in the next five years, I would hope at least that the average doctor would have some concept of peptides and cell therapy and even FMT. You know, I think this whole ecosystem of interventions to get your own body to try to heal itself is really where it should become, at least maybe it won't become standard of care, but at least it should become

Let's say in the zeitgeist, you know, so there's their general consciousness and understanding of doctors so that they can say, hey, my patient who's coming into me with this problem, you know, these are your options. Because right now they're not even telling them these are options. So I would just like in five years for doctors to at least tell the patients that this is an option for them.

And not just tell them that the stuff is nonsense or that the stuff has no science on it because they just have no education on it. And that's the problem. You don't know what you don't know. And, you know, there's a reality. And like the more you learn, it's such a true saying. I always thought it was cheesy, but it is very true. The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. And the depth of knowledge on this stuff is just immense. And the more I'm learning, the more I realize how little I know. And so that's why I'm just trying to keep up.

like keeping these smart PhDs whose full-time job it is to know this stuff. And I ask them a lot of questions. And that's how I try to keep on top of the science because otherwise it's just impossible. But for most doctors, they just don't realize how much depth there is to this stuff. And so that would be my hope is that they would just give their patients an option for these other therapies. We need to find a way to set up a...

Dr. Adil Khan.ai so extract what you know and then like find a way to use AI to then find the gaps and the gaps in knowledge and things like that so

Yeah, that's, we are in the works. I have that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Adil, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, man. That was an absolute blast. And I know my audience would have gained a lot of attention. If they do actually want to check out your clinic and or your Instagram, let us know where they can do that.

Yeah, my Instagram is just at dr.akhan, K-H-A-N. And I'm pretty accessible. Obviously, I don't, I try to respond as much as I can. It gets hard sometimes. But also, obviously, we have emails for my team. Our website is eterna.health, like eternal without an L. And we have clinics all, you know, different parts of the world. The closest to Australia, probably if a

a lot of your listeners are from there. We have one in Tokyo that we're partnering with. And so patients could come to Tokyo for treatments potentially, or Dubai. And then we have clinics in Europe and Lithuania, and then also in Mexico and Canada. Awesome. No, definitely check that out. And I'm looking forward to catching up in Dubai when I come down next. Hopefully that will be the final move. So we'll definitely connect there. Yeah, exactly. You can probably try some of the longevity stuff.

Yeah, I'm actually really excited to give the new sales a shot and also some of the other interventions there. But otherwise, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to today's podcast. If you did enjoy the episode, please do leave a five-star review and please do share the episode. That does help with the algorithm. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

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